Affiliate Marketing 101

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 receive 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 receiving 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.

Ways to Make Your Affiliate Website Successful

An affiliate website is defined as a website that sells other’s products or information for profit. This is one of the best types of investment sites simply because you do not have to product any of the products, just the website to market them.

Here are a few ways that you will maximize your profits from your affiliate website.

1) Join affiliate programs that offer high commissions. Each affiliate program is different, especially when it comes to the amount of money is paid for each referral.  If you are only going to make a fraction of a penny each sale, why bother when they are thousands of other programs that offer much more?

2) Join 2 or 3 tier programs. A “tier” program allows you to not only sell their product or service for profit, but it also allows you to recruit others to do the same. Once you recruit others, you then gain profits for each of their sales as well. A 3 tier program allows you to collect profits for the people your recruit AND the people they recruit. Essentially, you make money off of their efforts.

3) Join affiliate programs that offer lifetime commissions. Lifetime commission means that you not only make money on the initial sale, but you will also earn commission each time that customer comes back and buys something additional.

4) Join Google Adsense. Google Adsense is by far one of the most profitable and well known affiliate program on the internet today. Instead of making money based on sales, you make money based on when someone clicks on the link. Perhaps one of the best features is the fact that the ad generated by Google Adsense is targeted towards the content on your website. This means that the customers that visit your website are more likely to click on the ads because they pertain to what they were looking for in the first place.

Alternatively, Google also allows you to place a search box on your site, and you will be paid each time someone uses it and visit a link.

Because Google Adsense changes its links to match the content on the page in which it is found, it can be used easily on every page of your website, including pages with other affiliate links on them.

5) Join affiliate networks. An affiliate network is a website that offers a wide variety of products and services to sell on your website. This allows you to easily search for affiliate program in which you want to market. It also will monitor all of your commissions from the various programs, add it to one account, and then send you one check once the amount in your account exceeded your specified amount. If you have ever tried to manage several affiliate programs at once, you will greatly appreciate this feature.

6) Optimize your website. You will want to make your page friendly for both search engines and your visitors.

Search engines use bots to scan and track your website in order to index it. You must provide these bots with easy to read code, keywords, and content. Use keywords and information that describes the product you are trying to sale.

More importantly, you will want to make your page friendly for your visitors. Make sure you have a clear, easy to read website that remain constant throughout.

Make sure that your pages load quick, as you may have some customers that are on dial-up. Make sure you include a navigation menu on all pages of your website, which leads not only to the type of product that they are looking for, but also other categories as well. You never know if some may be looking for a specific item, but may also stumble on something they were technically  looking for, but something they are still interested in none the less.

The Year That Was...

I started doing online marketing a year ago. In this first year, I must say I learned a lot. Naturally, there was a lot of trial and error during that period. I have joined a few programs, that although sound, are not really working out for me. :(

In one program, I even joined a huge team that promised to give me ten down lines. With a team working together, I thought what could go wrong? Oh boy,  I was not right.! Apparently being a huge team has its downside too! LOL! ^_^ You can't say I'm program hopping as I've waited a year to really give the program a shot. But it has hurt me financially already as I'm investing in a tool that has not given back any ROI. Boo-hoo!

In another occasion, I relied on other marketers' judgment and joined a site they promoted with zest, but one wherein I had qualms on. I did promote with gusto, but the program went down as program owner wasn't quite capable of running it. Boo-hoo-too!

I've tried another one which is a cycler that cycled quite well the first few months I was on. From one position, I now have seven positions. Unfortunately for me, some members seemed to have bled the program dry. I haven't cashed out and now it has gone to sleep. I'm still waiting as to when it will start cycling once again. Boo-hoo-hoo!

Now on my second year, I've decided to cut down on some expenses. For one, I now have my self-hosted site. Since I like blogging and maintaining my site, I'm making that my priority. Fortunate for me, my site's hosted at GVO. Just recently they launched GVO Host Then Profit -- a sort of starter package for online marketers. For only $9.97 per month, you enjoy the benefits of having complete marketing tools -- autoresponder, video producer and video hosting, prospecting system, live training.

For now, I will be focusing on that plus my own email series that I'm slowly pushing out. You can sign up and join me in "Keeping Up with Rain."

http://cash2track.com/go/?s=205

I hope to see you on the inside! ^_^

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Of Surfing & Winnings...

It's another Monday.. yup! 5days to go till the big day -- Christmas! I've been attending the dawn masses on TV daily. 'Tis indeed the first time I've done that! But all's good except my time zone has pretty much changed. LOL! ^_^ I've been working nights mostly these days. As usual, clicking on PTCs and surfing on TEs are part of my routine. I've got a great news though. I believe my website is ready. True, it's a work in progress but I'm working on it on a daily basis. My daughter made banners for me. This is the first time these banners are being posted. This is indeed the best place to share them. Anyway, click on any of the banners and it will take you to my site that I've aptly titled Raincrystal.

All righty, time for updates.. some more winnings from surfing that is! ^_^

First, there's the win at Traffic Showdown. I won 5000 text impressions! Cool huh? Here's the proof:

I keeping joining at TShow 'coz at least I get to win prizes! ^_^  It's tougher to win in some other TEs. Next is a site that I recently joined, Volcano Hits. Honestly, it's turning out to be such a cool site. So far I like surfing on it as you can also earn cash from surfing there. VH gives $0.01 (250), $0.02 (300), $0.03 (500) daily depending on the number of sites you visit daily. I usually settle for the middle one. He-he! Anyway, here's my winning from VH:

And last, but not the least, a major win at FairTradeTraffic. The funny part here is that I wasn't even aware of the win until I decided to check my cash balance on the site. I was surprised that the amount was bigger than I expected so I checked the daily credits and found out that I actually won $4.20. Wow! That's a major prize on a Friday special day surf. Here's the list of winners:

Although luck really plays a big part in winning anything at these raffle games and surfing promos, one can not discount the hard work that also comes into play. 'Coz if you didn't surf, you wouldn't even get a chance of winning at all! I'm so happy that my efforts somehow paid off. I'd say that second weekend of this month was lucky for me. Imagine I won multiple times at different traffic exchanges!!! I believe that it was an answer to my prayers too. ^_^ For that I'd say, God is good! 

My next update would be on the payments that I've received. Yup! I've received three payments to my PP account. But that would be for next time... so watch out for more updates. Till next blogging time.. but before I say ta-tah this time around, I would like to invite you all to join me in Samurai Hits.I have signed up as chat moderator there and I'd be happy to hear from you! ^_^