Affiliate programs - Learn from an affiliate marketing veteran - http://www.associateprograms.com/Free Internet Marketing courses
By Allan Gardyne (Published on 01/15/2006)

These free marketing courses produced by an internationally acclaimed Internet marketer, Ken Evoy, show you, using a step-by-step process, how to build an online business in an efficient and profitable manner. (UPDATED 2008.)
What is the easiest way to promote an affiliate product?

Build a themed web site - a site created around one particular theme. Make sure that every page on the site concentrates on one topic, which is closely related to your over-all theme.

An excellent tool for building themed sites is Site Build It! You're building for the future when you use it.

Another easy option: Buy a new domain name and set up a small, interesting, useful web site, specially for one product, or three to five closely related products.

Before you build your site, consider carefully how you're going to get traffic to it. If you're relying on free search engine traffic, it's absolutely essential that you build the sort of site which people will want to link to. If you have no links to your site, you'll have no traffic.

Learn how to get the site well ranked in search engines. Ken Evoy's book Make Your Site Sell includes more than 300 pages of excellent advice on ranking well in search engines. It's a superb Internet marketing manual better value than many manuals which are about 10 times the price.

Experienced affiliates often use pay per click advertising on Google's AdWords to promote specially designed landing pages or mini-sites. This can be highly effective but it's also very easy for a beginner to spend more than any commissions earned. Start slowly and be prepared to do a lot of learning if you try this technique.

Perry Marshall, author of The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords, is an acknowledged expert on AdWords. If you want to try PPC advertising, I recommend you start with his advice.

Sell what you know and love (Courses updated 2008)

These free marketing courses produced by an internationally acclaimed Internet marketer, Ken Evoy, show you, using a step-by-step process, how to build an online business in an efficient and profitable manner.

On the Internet right now, one small business opportunity stands head and shoulders above all the rest...

It's selling what you already know and love. If you do that, building an online business won't seem like work. It will be more like participating in a hobby you enjoy - only you'll earn income in the process!

These free marketing courses will show you how to do it. I highly recommend you download them and see just how valuable they are.

1. Recommend other people's products and collect the commissions.

As an affiliate, you don't have to worry about manufacturing a product, processing an order, shipping anything, or answering customers' emails.

The merchant does all that for you.

It's a wonderful way to get started in e-commerce. Just find manufacturers who make products related to an area that you know, join their affiliate programs, and start referring business and earning income.

I've been earning a very nice living by doing this since 1998. I strongly recommend it.

2. Sell your services

People will pay for your knowledge and skills.

Perhaps you haven't thought of this option. If so, don't dismiss it lightly.

3. Writing that sells.

To succeed at making money from your knowledge and skills (using either of the two ways mentioned above) there's one essential skill you really must have - Netwriting.

If you start an affiliate business, your words must PRE-sell. If you want to convince people to try your service, you must use words to build TRUST. And if you're selling your own product, your words must persuade your visitors to buy.

4. Sell at the perfect price.

Selling at the right price can be the difference between profitability and failure. Learning how to discover the "perfect price" is something that every entrepreneur needs to learn how to do.

Because if your prospective customer doesn't feel that they are personally profiting from using your product or service, they'll never buy from you again.

After reading Make Your Price Sell!, there will be no more "guessing" what price to sell your products. You'll know what price to go with, using proven and tested methods.

5. Work at home moms

It skillfully explains why having a successful affiliate website is the ideal answer for most mothers at home. Whether they are moms with young children or would-be empty-nesters. It starts right from the beginning, from reviewing all of the options and organizing properly, to the nitty-gritty of how to actually build a substantial income online.

WAHM It! is a dream come true for any woman who has battled with the question, "Now what do I do?" when they have often given up meaningful, well-paid jobs to stay at home and care for their children.

6. Sell products on eBay

Have a product to sell? There isn't a faster or easier way to sell your product than through net auctions such as eBay. Turn your closet full of junk into your own start-up eBusiness.

The Net auction business is an easy, low-cost, no-risk entry into e-commerce. There are virtually no start up costs and you can get started in as little as five minutes.

7. Already a skilled webmaster?

If you have good skills as a webmaster, consider setting up your own webmaster business. More and more small business owners are looking for help as they make the move to online promotion. Most don't have the time or skills to build their own site. As a result, they are actively seeking affordable webmasters.

So capitalize on this growing demand by setting up your own home-based business. Do the kind of work you love and reap all the financial benefits - i.e., the profit!

How To Become A Successful Affiliate 

Affiliate marketing is the wave of the future. The Internet is the most important and efficient marketing medium in existence today and good affiliate marketers know how to take advantage of it.

“Remember that you are trying to attract people who may stop at a site for only a few seconds.”

However, just getting involved in the affiliate marketing game doesn't guarantee success. A lot of factors determine whether your entry into the affiliate world will create a marketing dynasty, will fizzle out unnoticed or will fall somewhere in between. There are a few steps you can take, however, that may lead you on the path to a successful affiliate marketing effort. This is the first article in a series of five that will help you become the best affiliate that you can be!

Step One: Create a Great Site

You can't display advertisers on your site if you don't have a site on which to do it. You could cobble together a site that's simply a blank page to slap ads on, but that isn't going to attract many advertisers or much traffic. If you really want to succeed as an affiliate, you need to put serious thought into what your site is going to be.

Do What You Like

Not that many people actually love auto insurance. That's okay. The point is not to pick your overriding passion but you should pick something that interests you, something that will get you to want to work on the site very day.

If you have always understood the need for insurance and the desire to get affordable insurance to those who need it, a site based around insurance may be for you. On the other hand, if you work in real estate, a site geared toward finding good mortgage loan rates and great deals on housing may be just right.

Take Your Site Seriously

Even if your affiliate marketing site has appropriate content, you don't want to just throw everything together. Remember that you are trying to attract people who may stop at a site for only a few seconds. As a result, you need an eye-catching design and interesting content. People won't stay on your site and click ads just because you want them to.
Creating a site is just one part of a successful affiliate marketing strategy. Once you have a site that you are happy with, you are ready to move on to other factors that will place you firmly in the affiliate marketing world.

You already understand by now that you can't have a great affiliate marketing setup without a great website. Once you've picked a topic dear to your heart, created an eye-grabbing design and filled it with content, what's the next step? Is it time to start loading up with advertisers?

“There are a number of ways to build links for your site. One of the best is simply to trade links.”

You can probably add some advertisers at this point. However, if you really want to do things the right way, you should start to think about link building. We hope that you enjoy and pick up a tip or two from our second article covering the topic of how you become a succesful affiliate.

Step Two: Building Links

What is link building? It's based on the idea that search engines are attracted to sites that have a lot of links to them. If other sites link to your site, the search engines read it as being important.

It makes sense -- if others who can actually read have recognized the importance of your site, the search engines should recognize it too. However, how do you build these links?

Link Building Tips

There are a number of ways to build links for your site. One of the best is simply to trade links. You agree to put a link to someone else's site on yours and they agree to do the same.

Do this enough times and you build a strong link network. In addition, posting to other sites with useful information, as either a guest content provider or a blog commenter, is another way to generate links.

The Importance of Links

Having multiple inbound links on the Internet can generate traffic in two ways: directly through the sites linking to you and through the added attention that search engines provide. Good links lead to good traffic. When you have good traffic, you are ready to add advertisers.

You have a great website and you've created some good linking relationships. Now you're ready for the fun part -- partnering with advertisers. Advertising affiliate partners are the way you monetize your site. Getting the right advertisers will determine whether your affiliate marketing campaign is a minor hobby or the foundation of a full-fledged enterprise.

“You are much better off posting links to affiliates who offer a product connected to your site.”

Step Three: Finding Affiliate Partners

Finding affiliate partners isn't hard to do. There are multiple websites dedicated to offering affiliate program opportunities. The challenge for you is finding the right advertising programs to bring maximum profitability to your site.

Metrics

You may want to start by generating metrics for your site. These are statistics generated for you by various sites. They reveal important information about the performance of your site. You'll learn how many people are visiting, the demographics of the people who are visiting, how long they stay on the site and which keywords are bringing them there. This can help you know what advertisers to try to bring on and help the advertiser know that your site will benefit them in bringing them new business.

Choosing Appropriate Partners

Some sites may happily put banners of any company that wants to on their site. However, your chance of getting a significant number of clicks in this situation is low unless your site is wildly popular.

You are much better off posting links to affiliates who offer a product connected to your site. So, if you have real estate articles on your site, there should be links to real estate companies or real estate lead generation forms. If your site gives poker tips, you can have plenty of ads from online poker affiliates on your pages.

The partnerships are how you make your money as an affiliate marketer, so choose them wisely. A brute force approach to this stage of the affiliate marketing process is easy and tempting, but probably won't yield as positive long-term results as a measured, thoughtful approach.

So you have created a terrific website, built strong links and found the right advertisers as your affiliate partners. It's time to sit back and let that affiliate money roll in, right? Wrong. As with any business, you get out of it what you put into it, and setting up a great affiliate site is just the beginning. Now you have to make it work. This is our fourth article out of five on how you become a successful affiliate.

“Even if a visitor is interested and motivated to buy, he may still need a little push.”

Step Four: Calls to Action

You can have a site that attracts traffic and has appropriate advertisers and still not be getting as many clicks as you would like. Why? One reason is that you may be missing a strong call to action. A call to action is content on your site that gets your visitors to do what you want, namely, click on your advertiser's links.

How to Create a Strong Call to Action

To create a strong call to action, you simply need to develop a piece of content that speaks to your traffic and helps them understand why it is important that they perform the suggested action, be it to click on a banner ad, order a project or fill out a lead generation form. You need to draw visitors with compelling copy and provide strong reasons for why they need to perform the action.

You have to tell your visitors how to perform that action (fill out the simple form on this site to get information about cheap auto insurance rates). You also have to let them know when to perform the action (now, before it's too late, of course!).

The Importance of Calls to Action

Even if a visitor is interested and motivated to buy, he may still need a little push. Remember that while your visitors are just enjoying your site, they are free from any kind of commitment.

Once visitors to your site follow your call to action, they are making a commitment. You need to convince them that it's something they want, so they can click with confidence.

You have a great website and have built an impressive network of links. You found just the right affiliates to partner with and your site contains good calls to action to get those who visit to click on your affiliate links. Is your part in the affiliate marketing enterprise over?

“New content may not necessarily create more search engine attention than you garner from other methods.”

Of course, the answer is no. The Internet is constantly evolving, and your part in creating a successful affiliate marketing arrangement is never over. If you want your site to become successful, to grow and to continue to flourish, you have to manage it all the time. Most importantly, you have to give people a reason to keep coming back. This is the fifth and last article in the series on how to become a successful affiliate

Step Five: Fresh Content

In order to keep a website lively and drawing traffic, you must have fresh content. Ideally, there should be something new on your site every day for people to come back to. At the very least, something new should pop up once or twice a week.

It's not hard to keep content fresh. You can write new articles every day or keep a store of articles and ration them out as needed. You can put RSS feeds on your site to provide automatic information, be it news, sports or stock updates.

The Importance of Fresh Content

New content may not necessarily create more search engine attention than you garner from other methods. However, people use the Internet for new information. The longer your site goes without providing such information, the more likely it is that your traffic will go elsewhere to stay amused and informed.

If you want affiliate marketing success, you cannot let that happen. Thus, fresh content is paramount.

You now have all the basic tools you need to create a great affiliate marketing campaign. The rest is up to you. Only your creativity, determination and confidence can truly make your affiliate program what you want it to be.

Affiliate Marketing - The Ultimate Testing Ground

By: Guido Nussbaum

How Many Affiliate Programs

There is a lot of temptation on the Internet, especially when it comes to starting your own Internet business. It doesn't matter which direction you look, there is going to be another moneymaking opportunity that hits you in the face. Although it certainly is possible for you to make a great living on the Internet, you need to make sure that you're not being distracted by too many of these offers. This is especially the case if you are working with affiliate marketing. This is one of the easiest ways for a beginner to earn money on the Internet but unfortunately, it comes with some pitfalls that are not always spelled out from the start.

One of the worst things that you can do whatever you're first starting out with affiliate marketing is to get involved with too many different products. Although it never hurts to diversify to a certain extent, spreading yourself too thin will be counterproductive. The Internet works differently than things work in the real world. In a real world store, it is possible to offer a variety of different things and still be able to be profitable with the same audience. On the Internet, however, people are looking for something specific and unless you have that specific something to offer them, you're not going to make the sale.

This is what is known as niche marketing and it is a concept that you must absolutely understand before you get started. You need to market to specific niches and whenever you're first starting out, you need to limit the amount of niches that you are working in to something which is reasonable. If you try to be everything to everyone, you are simply not going to be able to keep up with everything that needs to be done. There is a lot to learn when it comes to affiliate marketing, although it is relatively simple if you keep it simple. If you make it complicated by offering a lot of different products and services, you're going to get discouraged and more than likely, quit.

There will come a time after you have tasted success with affiliate marketing in which you will be able to branch out into other areas. It is important for you to make sure that you get your feet wet in one or two specific areas first. This will teach you some of the basic principles that are necessary for you to understand in order to be successful in any area of affiliate marketing where you decide to settle in. Most of the principles that can be used in one of these areas can easily be adapted to another. Just make sure that you are successful with the first before you go for a second.

Eventually, there will come a time when ever you have your hand in many different affiliate marketing pots. Until that time comes, make sure that you are focusing your efforts on one or two areas in order to find the success that you are desiring.

The Ultimate Testing Ground

One of the best ways for you to make a lot of money on the Internet is by offering your own product or service. The reason why this is the case is because you control every aspect of your business. You're not relying on somebody else to take care of anything and all of the profit becomes yours. Very few of us, however, come on to the Internet and begin marketing in such a way. After all, most of us don't have a ready-made product in order to begin making money in such a fashion. If you want to start earning money now and would like to do so without the problems of coming up with a product, affiliate marketing can be your answer.

Not only is affiliate marketing profitable, it also gives you the ability to test your marketing skills without having to worry about a lot of the other headaches that are usually attached to a business. Yes, owning your own business and product is more profitable but affiliate programs give you the ability to spread your marketing wings and learn how to fly. All you will be responsible for is pushing people in the right direction in order to find what they are looking for. Once you get them there, landing the sale and any future customer service that is necessary is none of your responsibility. You are totally free to go back and refine your marketing efforts in order to make more money.

That is why a lot of the people that get involved with Internet marketing try to get involved in an area that they plan on sticking with for the long term. If you're interested in dog related products and would like to own your own web store eventually, why not try marketing some dog related products through affiliate programs? There are a lot of benefits to doing so.

First of all, you are going to be active in the niche that you are really interested in. If you do a little bit of forum marketing, you will already be making a name for yourself and it will be easy to switch over to your own product eventually. The same is also true if you're building a newsletter. A newsletter can not only be profitable if you are offering your own product, affiliate programs can also be marketed through them as well. Once you finally bring your product online, you can switch your newsletter over to it and receive immediate sales as a result.

Yes, affiliate marketing can be used as the ultimate testing tool in order to begin promoting your own product. Some people find, however, that they are so successful with affiliate marketing that they really never stop. They may put out their own product and begin marketing it regularly but they may always keep their foot in the affiliate marketing waters. After all, it is always good to diversify to a certain extent and with affiliate marketing, you have that opportunity.

About the author: founder of the Proft Work From Home system

Beginners Affiliate Marketing Tips

By: Debbie Ducker

Beginners affiliate marketing can be quite overwhelming. It is clear from the start that you have a huge learning curve before you will see your first commission earned. But what many do not realize is that they are their own worst enemy. By not knowing some vital "affiliate marketing tips" you can lose quite a bit of money right out of the box without even realizing it.

Below you will find some beginners affiliate marketing tips that are often over looked or unknown altogether.

1. Test URL's - Never assume you have put your URL's in your ads correctly. I have been advertising affiliate programs for years and still make mistakes with this. Always copy the URL from your ad and paste it in a browser and hit enter to make sure the URL goes to the site you intended for it to.

2. URL's Capitalized - if you are using a URL and typing it out such as this: YourAffiliateProgram.com instead of this youraffiliateprogram.com then you need to know that some browsers will not parse this correctly from an email ad or even a web page link. I.E. included. As an advertising agent for many customers over 10+ years, I have seen this happen over and over. Don't risk it. Always use lower case letters.

There is one exception to this and that is if a file name has been named with upper case letters or you have signed up with a username with upper case letters in it. Examples such as: youraffiliateprogram.com/FileName.html, .php, .asp etc. or youraffiliateprogram.com/?YourAffiliateUsername or ID then it must be used just as named and cannot be altered. This warning is pertaining to the main domain name part only.

3. Using Direct Affiliate Links or URL's - using direct affiliate links in your advertising can mean less click through's, to your web site, because of a possible block on the link. There are many major ISP's that keep up with URL's that have complaints on them. If there are so many complaints then this URL will quickly go on a block list. Then what happens is when you use this straight affiliate URL in your advertising as the advertisers send your ad out, many bounces come back with the warning that this message could not be sent due to a URL in the message being on a blocked list. It is always best to use your own web site to either forward to your affiliate URL or a quality tracking or cloaking system of some type. Again I highly recommend setting this up on your own site as well with something like Covert Affiliate Links or Protrack Manager.

One side note for tracking and/or cloaking software. Avoid having to use a ? in the tracking URL. This is a major problem with many free advertising sites and numerous other reasons I don't have room to list here. A URL without a ? in it is always better.

4. Cloaking - also be aware that cloaking your URL can keep your affiliate id from being passed to the visitor. Cloaking is different then simply tracking a URL. Cloaking usually sets up a frame set itself making the site it lands on look as if it is from your own web site or the site of the cloaking software. Test any cloaker or tracking system you use before advertising with the URL. Because if your cloaking software or the site your are advertising on is using frames it can prevent your affiliate ID from passing on to the visitors that land on your site.

Check this by clearing your cookies and temporary Internet files, then use a URL frame breaker tester such as you find on many traffic exchanges and safe list sites. While your affiliate site is in the frame, go to the join page and make sure you are the referrer being credited. This will let you know if your cloaking software is doing more harm then good.

A good rule of thumb on the above is not to use the cloaking option on a URL that will be used in any framed environment, such as a traffic exchange or a credit based safe list. Ask any one you are paying to place ads for you, about this, if you are unsure. Any good tracking software will give you the option to cloak or not cloak a URL.

Use these beginners affiliate marketing tips to quickly become a pro affiliate marketer without worries of missing commissions due to you.

About the Author: Debbie Ducker is owner of Ducker Promotion.
Learn more about beginners affiliate marketing by visiting:

How to Start an Internet Business without Capital

I often meet new Internet marketers on various forums and they aspire to earn the big bucks like some of the well-known personas out there, such as Yanik Silver and Bryan Kumar. However, most of these new marketers have only the slightest ideas on where to start, and a lot of them are not willing or able to invest a startup capital in their online business. However, it is almost impossible to start an Internet business without spending some money on basic infrastructure such as web hosting, domain names and so on. Hence, here is a rough guide on how to build an Internet business starting with $0.

The first and most important thing to do is to list out all your skills. What skills do you have? You may have picked up these skills through daily life (for example languages), through your job (hands-on knowledge on a specific niche) or from your hobbies (for example fishing). It is most vital to list down skills or knowledge that you have and might be in demand elsewhere. For example, you love fly-fishing and you do it every day after work. You may build your Internet business upon this: writing an instructional guide on fly-fishing, teaching people how to do it, etc. Best of all, you do not need to spend money to acquire this knowledge: you already have it.

So, the very first option, if you have no money to start off your online business, is to earn some capital using your already existing skills or knowledge. You can give tuition to students on your dominant subject in college, you can teach stuff about your hobby to people who are interested, you can write guides on knowledge or skills you picked up through experience and cannot be found in theoretical books.

Okay, let's say if you just can't think of any skills or knowledge that people might be interested in. Then, it's most important that you locate a workable business model and focus on that alone. You can obtain almost everything you need through bartering, web hosting, domain name or credit card processing, to name a few in exchange for your product (if you own one) or services like copywriting, ghostwriting and website designs. There is always some mundane job that people don't want to do, and you can do that for those people in exchange for things you need. You just need to ask for it!


Creating A Sellable Product


Many marketers have created or acquired products that they thought would sell well and, in their enthusiasm, set up everything from sales letters to websites to getting traffic. However, a lot of these marketers have forgotten the single most important factor that will affect their product sales – the "sellability" of the product.

When you begin creating products or buying rights to a certain product to sell, the most important factor you must take into account is the demand of the product. Do people want your product? It is simply stupid to waste a month's time preparing a product, setting up the website and required sales techniques only to find that people do not even flick an eyebrow at your product!

Your final goal is to deliver the product to your customer and collect his or her money. In order to do this, you must make sure your customer wants to buy your product in the first place. How do you find out if they want your product? Simple. Just ask! Ask in forums related to your niche. Hold a survey or public poll. The Internet is a flat playing field, and you have the power to reach just about anyone in the world who has an Internet connection.

Let's say you have this brilliant idea on creating a step-by-step instruction on how to cook Malaysian food. First, you must find out if anyone is interested (or even heard of) Malaysian food. To do this, go to a food-related forum and ask tactfully if anyone would be interested in learning Malaysian cuisine. Do not ask blatantly whether anyone would like to buy an ebook with instructions on how to cook Malaysian food, or you might be in danger of being accused of spamming.

On the other hand, you can give out a few samples of your Malaysian recipes to test the waters – see how the forum members react to them. If they show enthusiasm for learning more, then you definitely have a market in this. If they show no interest, then it is time to look for a new idea to market. You save time in the long run because you don't have to find out the low demand for your product the hard way.

If your idea is welcomed by the forum members you surveyed, you can go ahead and compile your extensive ebook on cooking Malaysian food because there is interest in the information you possess. Where there is interest, you can easily build up desire for your product, and with desire (plus good marketing), your purchases will arrive naturally!


The Importance of Overdelivering


As an online merchant, your customers cannot see your face. They cannot hear your voice when you are recommending your products, and they cannot see the emotions on your face when you are telling your customers what benefits they can derive out of your products.

The Internet is a level playing field for every Internet marketer and merchant out there. The sheer connectivity means that you can reach every individual in the world. You are not limited by geographic constraints and anyone can be your customer or client.

This is precisely why you should over-deliver. When every competitor of yours has access to everyone in the market, your only way of winning the battle is to overdeliver, again and again. When you   over-deliver, you present yourself as a person with the customer’s interest at heart. You become a trusted friend and not a greed-driven marketer out looking for their money. Overdelivering is simply your only way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

You can start overdelivering by providing superb support for your customers. How many times have you been turned away with rude answers when asking about a certain product you purchased? Compare that with the number of times you have been provided very good service, as if you're being helped by a personal friend. The ratio is just off balance, proving how scarce good customer support is. By providing excellent support to your customers and answering to their every needs patiently, you will gain customers that are fiercely loyal to you because they know you have their best interest at heart.

When you provide excellent customer support, you're already ahead of most of your competitors. Take it a step further and think: in what other ways can you over deliver to your customers?

One very good way is to give your customers a pleasant surprise when they make a purchase from you. For example, if a customer buys your cooking utensils, you might throw in a bonus recipe book for them. However, do not use the bonus as an incentive for the customer to buy your products. Your products must be good enough to make the customer buy it in the first place, and the bonus must serve as a surprise element; you must not announce it in the product catalogue.

The final way is to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers. If a customer buys regularly from you, you should send greeting cards during birthdays and on every holiday, be it Christmas, New Year, Easter, even Chinese New Year! Your customer will again remember you as a friend, not a business associate, and will favour you above other merchants because of the warm relationship.

So, remember to start overdelivering today!


Getting the Word Out


You have created your own product that has been proven to have great demand, you have a salesletter that has a sky-high conversion rate, but all that would be futile and you will earn nothing if you don't have a single soul passing by your website since you will have no one to sell to! You might be a total beginner and therefore do not have a massive mailing list to sell to, and your website is on the 103th page of search engine results pages. We can change all that with a few tried-and-tested traffic generation techniques.

First and foremost, let me make it clear to you that search engine optimization is not the only way to gain massive amounts of traffic! You see, search engine result pages are in a sense just web pages – similar to regular websites around the web. It is only so lucrative to have your website listed on the top of search engine results because many people use the search engine to search for information and arrive on the search engine results page. Hence, loads of people see your site's link and you attract loads of traffic.

The effect would have been exactly the same if your website is mentioned in a website with very high traffic. For example, imagine what would happen if your website was mentioned on the front page of Yahoo's website! Your website will receive so much visitors your bandwidth might go over the limit. So, the trick is to get other high-traffic websites in your niche to link to your website. To do this, you must give them very strong reasons to link to you – maybe it's this very thought-provoking article you've posted on your site, maybe it's the ingenious solution to this lifelong problem everyone has had for all their lives. In short, give people amazing reasons or value to earn a link from them.

Alternatively, you may link to a certain high-traffic website that's related to yours and ask for a link back. This technique is called reciprocal linking and is a very common technique for gaining links. However, before you even ask for the link, check your own website and ask yourself if you would be proud to recommend such a site to your readers, and whether it will provide useful information to your readers. In short, make sure your website has its own value and not just an empty shell devised to attract traffic!


Ethical Marketing


To sell a product well, it is very important to use powerful selling words to really convey each and every little benefit that your product has to convince the customer. It is not uncommon to see words like “unbelievable” and “phenomenal” and something along those lines in really great salesletters.

However, there are some marketers who intentionally use hyped-up descriptions to sell off their products. These marketers mislead customers into thinking that their products offer benefits that do not really exist in reality. At this point, it would be appropriate to quote a story that really happened:

One evening, a fellow marketer in my MSN Messenger list messaged me to check out his newest salesletter for his product, an ebook on earning revenue with contextual advertisement. I logged on to his website and was drawn right into his sales copy! The reason was the salesletter dived right into my desires and promised that “everything I have ever wanted” can be obtained just by purchasing the said ebook and executing whatever is inside. The salesletter also made it seem that the author owns fleets of Mercedez Benz cars, luxurious mansions and private yachts.

The problem was I know this particular marketer personally. He is actually a 17 year old high school graduate looking for a few quick bucks by selling a little ebook he compiled with information collected from various sources from the Internet. My emergency alarm immediately kicked in and I can just imagine how many naïve newbies can be fooled with the deceptive sales copy.

The sad but very real fact is that there are many scam artists online, waiting to rip you off your hard-earned money. Hence, remember that the usual advice for consumers still apply online: use your common sense. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

Remember, when you intend to purchase something from the Internet, do a basic check-up on the merchant website. First and foremost, if you have even the slightest question on any of the features of the product mentioned, email the merchant regarding it and observe the attitude with which he/she replies. Customer support reveals a lot about the integrity of a business.

Finally, if you can't even find support email on their website, click the “Back” button and run away from the site at once!


Building a Customer Base


Let me ask you a question: do you think it is easier to sell your product or services to a complete stranger or to a person you have had contact before; whether it's an email conversation, forum participation or even an existing customer relationship (i.e. He has bought something from you). Without doubt, it would be harder to sell to a total stranger who does not know whether or not you are an honest seller, and whether or not they should trust your words and believe that your product or services will truly benefit them.

This is precisely why you should build up a customer base -- a group of people who trust you and will most likely buy a product that you offer to them. This will ensure that you have a recurring and consistent source of income. When you release a product or make an endorsement, you have a group of people always ready to hear what you have to say.
There are several sources that you can tap into to start building a customer base. For example, you can participate in an online discussion forum and give advice and help for free. It won't be long before people start to recognise your name and stop and listen everytime you have something to say. You will become a valuable friend and teacher, and gain the trust of these people. Would you buy something your close friend recommends?

Another way to build a customer base is to build a mailing list. There are a gazillion methods to collect subscribers, but when it's boiled down to the very essence, it's all about proving your value to the crowd and offering an incentive to make people become part of your mailing list. A typical example would be a website choke-full of freely available, helpful and quality articles on a certain subject plus a "special report" that can be downloaded for free provided you give your email address. The rich content provides value, and the "special report" is the extra incentive.

Yet another source for your customer base, which is often forgotten, is your existing customers. If you bought this product from this particular person and he answered patiently to your every question, would you buy from him again in the future? Definitely. When a customer has given you his money, that's not the end of the affair because by keeping in touch with him and developing a flourishing relationship with him, you will have a lifetime source of income.

Imagine if 100, 1000 or even 10000 customers are waiting to grab your newest products even before they are released! Hence, it's vital to build a customer base because it simply saves a lot of time and effort. 

Benefits of Joint Ventures


Let's imagine a situation where we have two Internet marketers who know each other. One has a great product that will sell very well but he has no mailing list, no affiliates, nothing. The other is a great marketer with tens of thousands of subscribers in his mailing list, but the problem is he has nothing to sell to them. The very obvious solution here is to give the product to the great marketer with lots of contacts, and split the profits between them. This, my friend, is the very essence of 
Joint Ventures.

As more and more people start their own home based businesses online, the market is going to get more and more saturated and the competition will grow fiercer by the minute. The fastest, most effective and easiest way to build your own online business empire is through joint ventures. That is, join forces with other marketers to sell your product.

When you joint venture with another marketer, you can ask him (or her) to send an endorsement of your product to his existing mailing list, so you do not need to worry about collecting subscribers from scratch. You already have an easily accessible target market. The trick is to find the right marketer whose subscribers will be interested in your product. Once you achieve that, you won't even have to worry about generating traffic to your salesletter or finding affiliates to promote your product. All of that is already done for you.

When you joint venture with a solid player in the field, your perceived value and reputation will instantly increase because if this well-known person in the field is willing to work with you as a team, you must have some substance! Hence, when you manage to hook up a joint venture with someone who's a “regular player” in your niche market, your status will instantly change from “total newbie” to “guru status” overnight!

Last but definitely not least, you will get a chance to build a lasting relationship with a big figure in your niche market, and that alone will worth more than the profits you pull in over that single Joint Venture. When you have a dominant figure in the market as your friend, you will gain a lot of privileges and perks that no newbie like you could ever get their hands on – for example new insights into interesting product ideas and marketing strategies. You can't even buy that for hard cash!

So, start looking up a potential Joint Venture partner and try your best to convince him or her to strike up a deal with you!


Preselling - The Art of Building Anticipation


Preselling is the work you must start doing before you release and sell your product; that's why it's called pre-selling. It's the work you do to convince your to-be-customers that your product has great benefit and only a fool will pass your offer without purchasing -- all this without actually "selling" the mentioned product.

Preselling can be seen as selling yourself to the customer before you sell your product. When you sell yourself to the customer, you are making your customers think "okay, this guy is not one of those greedy marketers. He's actually here to help me out." so that they will let their guard down and listen to your sales pitch.

Preselling is also the art of building up anticipation. If a friend told you his chronic headache has been solved overnight by “some new medicine” but did not mention what it really was, would that leave you wondering what the medicine really is? More so if you're having a chronic headache yourself! That's why by mentioning a benefit which would get your prospects' ears perked up again and again but not really revealing what the solution is, you will get your prospects dying to hear what you have to say next as you reveal slightly more about the solution each time. When you finally uncover the whole thing, your prospects will be crawling all over your website looking for the buy button!

However, preselling is not just about unveiling your product bit by bit. In fact, that was only one of the various ways one can presell. For example, you might run a weekly newsletter on acne problems and coincidentally you have just written this great ebook called “10 Ways to Solve Acne Woes Once and For All”. In your newsletter, you can pre-sell by including a snippet or two from your ebook and mentioning it as a viable solution to acne problems. If people get good advice from your newsletter, they will perceive you as an expert on acne problems and naturally will be curious to find out the ways you can teach them to solve their problems.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to giving value to people before you ask people to buy something from you. If you can help people to solve their problems, they will, more often than not, be very willing to buy products from you.


The Importance of Selling



Not so long ago, when the computer was first mass-produced for selling to the public, a lot of industry experts predicted that nobody will want a box that does nothing besides handling data and hogging up the entire garage. They were obviously wrong – nearly every household will have at least one computer in the US, and most even have two or three desktops!

This little bit of history tells us that no matter how good your product is, you cannot earn even a penny from it if you have a lousy salesperson.  Likewise, no matter how good your product is, you cannot sell even one copy of it with a weak salesletter. Hence, it is vital to have a compelling salesletter that will pull the prospect right into it and see clearly the benefits that are presented against the very reasonable price you are charging.

A good salesletter will first catch the attention of the reader by resonating with the reader's needs and desires. That's why you often see headlines such as “Have you ever felt...” or “Does ... sound familiar”? They work because they empathize with the reader's needs, problems or desires. The Internet is like a very busy freeway and everyone's in a rush. Only a strong headline like that in big, bold letters will stop your target audience dead in their tracks to read through your salesletter.

Once you've obtained your reader's attention, you want to spend the first few paragraphs on telling your story – how you have gone through what your reader probably has, the agony of the whole experience, etc. Once you get your reader thinking “he's one of us”, you would be perceived as an understanding individual offering a solution and not an anonymous marketer looking to sell his product.

Next, you have to elaborate on the benefits of the product you are selling. List them all on a piece of scrap paper until you have quite a long list; then write your salesletter from there. In your salesletter, highlight the benefits in point form and elaborate on each benefit. Be sure to point out how your product helps the reader instead of pointing out the features of the product. For example, instead of saying “this gizmo cures headaches”, say “this gizmo can relieve your headaches”. Make it relevant to the reader.

Then, write a paragraph or two on how the reader's life could be changed if the problem he is facing can be totally solved with your product. It is important to use very descriptive words so that the reader can fall into the imagination more easily.

Last of all, make a strong call for action! Your final objective is to make your readers buy your product, so it is important to make a final, strong call for action, be it “click the Buy button”, “whip out your credit card” and so on. Do not make the mistake of forgetting such an important step after coaxing your reader through the lengthy paragraphs.


Outsourcing Your Business


An online business consists of many essential components: website design, product creation, payment processing, salesletter, affiliate programs and so on. How about coupling that with sales and advert tracking?

When a lot of Internet marketers start out with their small home based businesses, they have totally no idea that their businesses could grow into "something that huge". One-man eBay stores grow into full-fledged online shops run by a team of dedicated salespersons, logistics and customer support personnel. At the end, you can never manage every little aspect of your business when it grows to a certain extent, and that is when outsourcing comes in handy.

However, care must be taken to choose the right people to outsource your tasks and equal detail must be paid attention to to provide the best working environment for greatest productivity. The tasks you should outsource to people are those mundane and repetitive jobs like answering emails, keeping track of stocks and sales figures and so on. This ensures that while you hand some of your responsibilities to other people, they have the least chances of screwing up because the jobs they are handed are easy and straightforward. In contrast, never let others make decisions that will greatly affect your business if you do not want to risk losing your business overnight.

While you have to hire people on wages for some jobs such as book keeping, some jobs can also be accomplished by outsourcing to freelancers. For examples, you can get ghostwriters to write good content for your website and you can get freelance designers to spice up your merchant site. You do not need to hire these people on a regular wage because once their job is done, they do not have much follow up work to do for your business. A good resource for freelancers would be www.elance.com and www.rentacoder.com, where freelancers and buyers have transactions on a per job basis.

When your business reaches a certain extent, you will start to find it hard to keep track of everything and this means time to outsource. Think of it this way: you may lose a little money to hire other people to do some of your daily tasks, but you earn more money from the increased productivity.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the revenue sharing between online advertisers (and merchants) and online
salespeople.  Compensation and pay is based on performance measures, normally in the form of clicks, sales, and registrations.

The advertisers and merchants are normally referred to as affiliate merchants, and publishers or sales people are known as affiliates.

The many benefits of affiliate marketing include the potential for making lots of money.  You can
automate a lot of the advertising process and receive payment only for desired results, which
includes sales, registrations, and clicks.

Even though most merchants will assume some level of risk with fraud, there is still a level of risk involved.  Once you know what you're doing with affiliate marketing, you'll be on top well before you know it.

Affiliate marketing has been a contributor to the rise of many companies online, including Amazon.com. Amazon.com was one of the first adopters of affiliate marketing, and now has thousands of affiliate relationships. 

When it comes to making money, affiliate marketing is in a league of it's own.  You don't have to
worry about bosses breathing down your neck, and you are in control of everything you do with
your company and your website.

Affiliate marketing also gives you the chance to stand behind products you know and love, be
offering links and banners to them on your personal website.  You'll receive money for each product purchased that you represent, which is reason enough to participate.

If you've been looking for extra money, affiliate marketing is the way to go.  You can stick with
one merchant or go with as many as you need for your business.  Affilate marketing on the internet is truly becoming more and more popular - making now the time for you to get your foot in the door.

Affiliate Marketing In 3 Steps

Affiliate marketing is a process where the merchant will pay a portion of their sales revenue to an
affiliate if the sale is result of the affiliate's promotion to the products and services offered by
the merchant.

Now days, it's one of the fastest growing industries because it's cost efficient and quantifiable for
both the affiliate and the merchant.  Other players can profit as well, such as the affiliate network
or the affiliate solutions provider.

The best benefit for the merchant is the fact that he will gain opportunities to advertise his
products to a much larger market, therefore increasing his chances to earn.  The more affiliates
the merchant obtains, the more sales he can expect.

With the merchant having affiliates market his products and services, he will save himself time,
effort, and money in looking for markets as well as customers.  The affiliate marketer will benefit
from each customer that clinks on the link in his website and who actually purchases a product from the merchant.

If you have wanted to join the growing legion of affiliate marketers and have an unlimited potential
for income, simply follow these 3 steps to start an effective affiliate marketing program.

1.  Identify something that interests you or you feel very passionate about.  Then, focus on a
specific area you know a lot about, as this will help you bring out your best and give your
visitors who are possible buyers a demonstration of your expert in this field.  This way, you'll
gain their trust and encourage them to buy the products that you endorse. 

2.  Search for merchants and products or services that are related to your interest  then creat a
web site with top level domain names and very reliable hosting.  When you choose the products
for your web site, you need to consider the commission structure and the conversion rate.

There are many different affiliate networks and affiliate solution providers where you can obtain
the information on most profitable products and which merchants pay the best.  Take your time -
and be sure you choose the right one.

3.  Now, you are ready to promote.  You've chosen everything you need and even created your very own website. You'll need to be creative, flexible, and willing to embrace new ideas.  By this stage, you'll be well on your way to making more money than you ever imagined - and enjoying every minute of it.

Affiliate Marketing 101 & Tips

Affiliate marketing programs are a great way to get income for your website, and a great introduction to e-commerce.  The more people that drop by your website, the great your chance will be at creating an excellent income.

Affiliate marketing programs are where a company offers to pay you a set amount for either a click through from your website, or a set amount for visitors signing up, or even a percentage of a purchase made by visitors as a result of being referred from your website.

Even if visitors don't make a purchase immediately, almost all programs offer cookie duration, normally consisting of 30 - 90 days.  What this means, is that as long as the visitors have the cookie in their cache, you'll still recieve a profit from the sale. 

The biggest amount of time in maintaining your site will be searching and implementing affiliations with various companies.  Even though there's a lot of money in affiliate marketing, you have to take the time to search for the best programs.

One thing that you may not be happy with, is the idea of other companies banners littering your
website.  If you use too many banners or links on any web page, it can confuse and help to irritate your visitors.  More than one animated element on a web page can be very distracting as well.

Affiliate tracking can also be a problem.  Once you have applied to become an affiliate for a
company, they'll usually supply you with a personalized link or code.  It's very important
that you implement this code into your page correctly, or you may be sending visitors to the
company without recieving any profit.

A majority of snippets in the code will contain a unique user ID, which the company uses to
distinguish which site sent traffic. 

Affiliate Marketing Tips

No matter what you may have heard about affiliate marketing, it's impossible for everyone to make 5,000 - 10,000 dollars a month, as there is simply too much competition.  There is also no money that will fall into your hands without you doing anything for it.

With that in mind, you'll find some high level tips below that will help you make money with affiliate marketing programs on the internet.

1.  Google and Overture
Even though the days of free traffic aren't completely over, they are surely fading away quickly.  You can choose to work hard creating web pages that score well in the search engines, although it's very hard to do.

By paying for clicks with Google and Overture, you'll have the top three positions on the search engines that matter the most.  If you hope to generate web traffic from Yahoo, all you need to do is be at the top of Google.

2.  Your own email list Sending offers to your very own email list is the ideal way to build freedom and residual income. Instead of sending traffic away then hoping for the best, you should instead have your own email list to which you are able to send multiple offers.

3.  Your own affiliate program If you knew that each filled out form on your site generated .50 cent in revenue, would you still be willing to pay someone else .25 cents to generate that same traffic?

The most overlooked ways of generating traffic is having others generate it for you.  There are many advantages to this method, including the fact that others will be getting your traffic for you.

When it all comes down to it, everything involves paying for traffic in one way or another. To
make more income, you'll need to invest very wisely in advertising.

Make Money Selling Websites

Many people who come online to make money that hold few skills, often wonder about what it is they can do to make an extra income. Here's one proven method of generating profits in a short space of time that you should consider.

Domain names and the web site content they hold are considered prime real estate on the world wide web, and there's a term called 'flipping' that proves you can make money selling websites online. This article gives you 10 tips on how to get started flipping web sites.

1. Choose a niche that has a recognised audience. There's no use trying to build or buy a web site in a niche that doesn't have a following. The whole aim of flipping a web site is to make a profit, so the more popular a niche, the higher chance you'll have of making a good, decent profit.
2. Buy a relevant domain name, and other similar domain names in the same niche. Take advantage of discounts or bulk purchases through cheaper domain sites like godaddy.com etc.
3. If you have creative skills, then create a new web site from scratch. All you need to do is buy a good domain name, then create the content and drive traffic to the site.
4. Short on time and creative skills? Search online for web sites for sale, and pick up a bargain that you can enhance and add content to for a quick profit.
5. If you are able to find content, but don’t have graphic design skills, consider using a template for your web site. You can find free or paid web site templates online.
6. Membership sites are a good type of site to sell because they have an established audience. As a matter of fact, ANY site that has a member list, customer list or opt-in list of any kind has value. When you think that each member of a list has the potential to generate $1/mth, the possibilities are endless!
7. Do your homework and research the internet for a niche that is popular right now. Don’t choose one that might be out of fashion next month, but one that has the potential to grow over time. You want your customer to be happy with their purchase.
8. Make sure your site is making money before you attempt to sell it. Aim to be making at least $500-$1000/mth for a better profit margin. Have proof available to show your prospective buyers should that be required.
9. The perfect type of person to approach to buy your web site is the most popular sites in that niche, or their competition.
10. When you find the right combination, flip your first web site for profit, duplicate that process and repeat it again for further profits.

There are 2 more factors that you can utilise, and 3 areas to be aware of before flipping web sites. To become successful when you make money selling websites, please visit the web site below:

Make Money Selling Domain Names

There's a little-known money-maker that eludes most marketers, even though it's something that most everyone has done at least once in their lifetime... and that is to buy domain names. Just like real estate in the offline world, domain names can be worth more when you hold onto them for a while, then sell them for a profit later. Some domain names actually sell for thousands of dollars. So if you can choose the right domain names to buy, you can make a healthy profit.

This article will explore some of the ways that you can make money selling domain names, and provide you with eight good guidelines to follow.

1. When it comes to domain names, dot com names are by far the most popular, yet they have fewer names available than dot net or other domain names. Therefore it's always good to search for domain names that end in dot com first.

2. It's not true that all good domain names are already taken. In fact, you can subscribe to special lists that inform you of the details of domain names that are about to expire. Then you can purchase them as soon as they become available.

3. There's no use purchasing domain names that no one will ever want to buy... It pays in the long run to research the niche of the domain names that you buy, so you can be sure that they will be in high demand.

4. Physically searching for domain names can be an arduous task, made much easier by using a good domain name search tool. Alternatively, you can subscribe to newsletters that advise you of quality domain names currently available, or about to expire.

5. When you find an available domain name that you think will resell well in the future, it's worthwhile looking for similar domain names at the same time to secure in your portfolio.

6. It's important to spend as little as you can to register domain names. Some places offer discounts for bulk ordering. Either way, aim not to spend more than $10/yr for the domain names that you register.

7. When it comes time to sell a domain name that you have, you can promote it on auction sites and domain sales sites online. There are also web sites that will sell your domain name on your behalf for a small fee.

8. Always aim to make a good profit with the sale of your domain name, but don't outprice yourself in the market. There are many domain names that will never be sold, because the asking price is just too outrageous. Keep your price at an affordable, reasonable level to turnover more domain name sales.

Put to practice, this information should help you enormously when it comes to making money selling domain names.

To find out the specific names of the newsletters to subscribe to for expiring domain names, and the best web sites to sell domain names and make money fast, please visit the web site below:

Make Money With Google Adsense

There's one sure way to attract a warm audience to your web site, and that's through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. The most popular PPC advertising network online is Google, and this article will show you how to make money with Google Adsense. This method works for webmasters with their own domain, or programs that include Google Adsense promotions where you can enter your Google publisher ID.

Firstly, you will need to signup for a free Google account, that can be used for several Google programs. Once you've done that, you will need to edit your banking details and validate your account. Then you can setup your first ad campaign.

Most PPC campaigns are keyword-oriented, and relevant ads relating to the keyword content of your web page will display on your site. When someone clicks on an ad displayed on your web page, you will make part of the keyword bid that the advertiser is paying for that ad. These click bids will add up to a monthly total, which will be paid to you on a monthly basis.

When you create your Adsense account, you will be given the opportunity to format the way the ad block will look on your web site. You can choose the colour, size, how many ads will be displayed, whether to include graphics or not, and more. You will be able to view a preview of what the ad block will look like online.

When that step has been completed, you'll continue to be presented with a small snippet of code that needs to be added to your web site. It's best to choose a high traffic web page that is frequently viewed. All you need to do is paste in the code snippet where you would like the ad block to be displayed. Save the web page, and upload it to your server.

Sometimes it takes a few hours for live campaigns to start displaying online. Remember, the more web pages you add the code to, the more potential you have to make money with Google Adsense.

Some things to note about Google Adsense:

It's important to read over the terms of service at Google as their rules are rigid, and your web site may not be approved if it is displaying similar PPC ads from another search engine. Just ensure you read the rules so you lower the risk of losing your account, and the potential income.

You can include the same snippet of code more than once on a web page to display multiple ad blocks to earn money from.

A good place to include the code snippet is within the first fold of a web page, near menus, on logout pages of membership sites, and on thank you pages.

I hope this information helps you to get started making money with Google Adsense.

Make Money With Ebooks

Information products are possibly the most popular sought-after items online today. There's always something that someone wants to know, and is often willing to pay for. In this article we're going to focus on ebooks, and how you can make money with ebooks starting as soon as today!

Reselling existing ebooks:

You can buy an ebook with resale rights, then turn around and resell that book straight away and keep all the profits. This is a low-effort form of reselling other people's products, and making a quick profit.

There are 3 different types of rights you can purchase:

1. Resale rights (RR) - where you can simply buy an ebook, then resell it.

2. Master resale rights (MRR) - where you can buy an ebook, resell it plus the rights to resell it.

3. Private label rights (PLR) - where you can add your name to an existing ebook as the author, change the content as you see fit, then resell it and keep all the profits.

Creating your own ebooks:

You can either use PLR ebooks that you have purchased, and change them to suit your name, web site and niche-related content, or you can write your own content. If you can write, this could also be a quick option, but if you aren't a confident writer, then you can outsource the content to a freelance writer.

There are many freelance web sites online like elance where you can submit a job for freelancers to bid on. You can also use content from the public domain for free.

Once your ebook is written, you will need an ecover graphic to add to it, then Adobe Acrobat or a similar program to convert the document to portable document format (PDF). This is the best format, as it is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems.

Once your ebook is ready, you only need to upload it to your web site, and create a sales page to sell your ebook from. Then you would add a payment button to the web page so you can collect payments to your online processor. PayPal and ClickBank are good options for electronic products.

Each time you make a sale for your infoproduct, you should have an autoresponder system in place to email the download link to your customers. By building a list of customers who purchased your ebook, you will also be able to ask them for feedback to include on your web site. By building trust with your customers, you can send them a broadcast when you create your next ebook. Chances are they'll be likely to buy from you again.

Marketing your ebook:

When your ebook is ready to sell, it's worthwhile adding your ebook sales page to ebook directories, and promote it through online advertising venues. Another great way to get the word out about your ebook is to create an affiliate program.

This allows your customers to sell your book for you, and make commissions. It's a good idea to make the commission rate competitive, and add the markup for the affiliate commissions to the price of your ebook.

Pricing is also important, and testing has proven that prices that end in a 7 sell more frequently.

These are just a few ways that you can make money with ebooks, but for even more practical make money online guide,