Affiliate Marketing Tips for Getting Started in the Business

By Sue Barrett

Lots of business-minded people have taken an interest in affiliate marketing because it offers the opportunity to work from home. It does not cost a lot of money to get started, and you do not need specialized training or skills to be successful with it.

Unlike many traditional companies, affiliate marketing gives business owners a very flexible work schedule and is extremely low risk. Comparing yesterday's retail store to today's affiliate online business is like night and day.

With all the benefits that affiliate marketing offers, one can only figure that there is a lot of competition, which can make the business challenging. Not everyone will succeed. It is wise to get educated on the industry before diving in head first. By getting advice from a successful affiliate marketer, you can save yourself a lot of headaches.

So what is an affiliate?

An affiliate marketer is basically a sales rep that promotes products or services for a company (or multiple companies). An affiliate forms a partnership with a company that has a product or service to sell. The affiliate advertises the product or service using whichever marketing strategies he or she chooses - and the company pays the affiliate a commission for each sale made.

The majority of affiliate programs are free to join, and the products and services you can work with are virtually endless. When you choose items to advertise, select a niche for your website (such as golf, travel, credit, real estate, toys, etc). You may find it easier to work with affiliate networks that connect you with hundreds of programs through one website.

The key is to stay focused. Only sign up with affiliate programs that fit into your website niche. Some things you want to look for:

1. a high commission payout,
2. free, high quality marketing materials that you can use and
3. help available for affiliates if needed.

As an affiliate, you will need to set up your own website to act as your "storefront". Compared to a traditional storefront, a website is cheap. You can operate a professional looking website with lots of bells and whistles for under $20 a month - compare that to a $5,000-a-month lease.

When creating your website, here is a tip that will put you head and shoulders above most other affiliates: make it content-rich. This means include articles, blog posts, product reviews, etc.. to educate your visitors and provide them with answers to their questions.

In addition to giving your visitors what they want, websites with lots of high-quality content generally get more free traffic from the search engines. Pack your website with content that relates to your niche and the affiliate programs on your site. You will end up paying less money to advertise your site.

Internet marketing requires effort, but it is really quite simple. Website creation, however, often leaves affiliates feeling overwhelmed and at a standstill. The good news is that there are low-cost solutions out there for those who want professional ready-made websites that are easy to operate.

After you have your website up and running, you can structure your affiliate business however you like - part-time or full-time and promoting products in a variety of different ways.

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Visit HomeBusinessCenter.com to get more tips on How to Get Started in Affiliate Marketing and easy website builders.

Children's Learning Games - Make Money at Home Business

By Amanda King

Children's learning games are popular. Many people are realizing that a child's education is encouraged and improved by allowing children to play a range of games that cover a wide range of skills that a child needs to gain in order to be successful at school and in life. It is as the website thebalancedchild says: "Children learn best in an environment that is non-threatening and fun, where they learn by discovery and by experiencing, where their creativity and imagination are unimpeded. Interests discovered in youth open the way to a lifetime of career skills & hobbies".

There are many games being promoted online that are available for affiliate marketers to promote. By becoming an affiliate of a games website such as Bigfishgames the affiliate can earn a generous income and in turn if the affiliate is able to encourage others to promote these games they can earn a residual income. This means that the affiliate can earn a commission for their direct sales and a commission for their indirect sales. Therefore by promoting a valuable product like children's learning games the affiliate or promoter can earn a worthwhile income to boot.

Why then promote children's learning games as an affiliate marketer? There are several reasons. These include low start up costs, no need to carry these games yourself and you can work from home for twenty four hours around the clock, so you choose your own times. An increasing number of people are wanting to establish a small business that they can operate from home. If you are thinking about going in this direction yourself then you are probably wondering about what products you might be able to sell.

There are actually a lot of products on the market one can sell from their home. However there are problems of having the capital flow that enables you to purchase an adequate volume of stock. Then there is the problem of having the room to carry this stock. Finally there is the problem of deciding your opening times. With affiliate marketing there is no need for these problems. Your computer becomes your office. Your computer carries your stock online and you are able to get in to your office any time you want to and sell stock to people all over the world.

The problem still exists what products you want to promote. The products of course have to be marketable and in high demand. Furthermore most people want to promote products of quality and value to others. This is why marketing games is so good. Children's learning games are of great value and are increasing in demand and importance in the education of children.

There are of course many other games to promote and these will be promoted along with children's educational games. Many of these other games also have an educational impact. For example word games are highly educational. It has also been shown that even action games are very good at building up skills that assist a child's development.

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Amanda King is an affiliate marketer who provides opportunities to access the best available fun games online. Visit her games website for more information and a range of games and articles. She is also interested in welfare issues. Visit her case worker website for more details.

How to Pick Profitable Affiliate Programs

by Olakitan Wellington

Although it has been said that affiliate marketing is a simple way of making residual income from the comfort of your home, you should not plunge into any affiliate program without carrying out your due diligence.

You need to ask a lot of questions before you choose which affiliate program to join. This foundational stage is very crucial to your success in affiliate marketing and you should not joke with it. What are the questions you need to be asking? I have a few suggestions below.

Are you going to pay any money to join the affiliate program? If yes, drop it like hot potato. Almost all affiliate programs are free to join, and rightly so. After all, you will be making money for them; plus you increase the profit turn over the affiliate master will make on his product. It is in the interest of the affiliate master to sign you on free because he does not pay you a red cent until you make sales from your affiliate link.

How much does the product sell for? It is important that you are not wasting your time promoting products that sell for pennies. As an affiliate, your commission is paid by percentage. That simply means the higher the cost of the product, the more money you make. Do not forget that you will spend valuable time and money promoting the product; hence the commission you get on it must be reasonable enough to pay your bills and give you a comfortable profit.

What percentage of sales price are you getting as commission? Generally affiliate programs pay at least 50 percent commission, some even 75 percent. If the affiliate master knows his onions well, he will give attractive commissions so that the affiliate marketers will be inspired to really promote his products and make him money.

How popular is the product? Go to related marketing forums and ask about the product. See what people are saying about it and form an opinion. Do a Google search on the product and see how many people are selling it. If it is a product that everybody's uncle and grandmother is selling, please keep away from it. It will be all over the net and might be difficult to sell.

What type of affiliate program is being offered here? Is it a one tier affiliate or a two tier affiliate? Of course, the two tier affiliate will make you more money. This is because when you get people on your list to promote the product, you make money from their efforts as you are paid commission on every sale they make.

How do you get paid? What are the terms of payment? When do you get your commission check? This is different from program to program. Some programs will pay you once a month, some (very few) will pay your commission weekly while some might even pay quarterly. I don't like this type of program because it holds on too long to your money.

Who is the creator/owner of the product? What is his reputation online? Again you can find this out from forums and discussion boards. The gold fish has no hiding place. If he is a credible, reliable person you will know. If otherwise, people will also let you know. If there is any hint of you not getting paid what is due to you, look for another program. 

How good is the affiliate tracking system? It is quite important that your chosen program should be able to track every single sale made by you so that you get truly paid on your efforts. How long does your referral remain in the system? If they buy 90 days after you sponsored them, will you still get paid your commission?

Although there are a few more questions which you may ask, but the above are the crucial ones. Once you are satisfied with the results you get on the above questions, take immediate action steps to start your business.

As you can see, affiliate marketing is a serious business and should be so handled if you want to make maximum money from it. Sure, it is possible to become extremely wealthy marketing affiliate products and that is why you should be prudent about it.

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Would you like a free training on how to become wealthy working from home? Olakitan Wellington is a seasoned Internet Marketer with a passion to helping people get started quickly to make money online. Visit her site, financial-freedom-elites.com to gain free access to ideas and resources on every aspect of building an online business that will give you steady passive income and financial freedom.

Selling Digital Products Through ClickBank

By Jeff Kontur

Think of ClickBank as sort of like the eBay of instantly downloadable digital products. It is a vast marketplace of such products. Of course there's one little twist to the analogy: instead of being the storefront, it's more like the back room warehouse.

End-user consumers generally do not browse ClickBank for things to buy. Instead it is where you can store your product(s). It's also a place where enterprising entrepreneurs from around the world can look for things to sell.

If someone finds one of your products and decides he likes it enough to want to help you sell it he can sign up to become an affiliate, grab your link, sell your products and collect a commission on each sale he generates. These sales may take place on his website, through emails he sends out, he may create online ads such as with AdWords or in a hundred other ways.

You determine the amount of commission you are willing to pay beforehand and ClickBank takes care of everything automatically.

What kinds of products can you sell?

ClickBank only handles memberships and digital products which can be delivered instantly via digital download. You can offer a physical product, such as a book or CD but only if it's a supplement to an instant download. Specifically, ClickBank allows:

• Streaming and downloadable audio files
• eBooks
• Games
• Software
• Streaming and downloadable video files
• Web site membership fees

What does ClickBank do for you?

Aside from helping you recruit a worldwide sales force of commission only sales reps, ClickBank does several other things for you:

• It acts as an online shopping cart and payment processor
• Takes care of delivery and product fulfillment
• Provides tracking and reporting services

How much does it cost and is it worth it?

When you first sign up to sell your own products, you must pay a one-time only $49.95 fee. That fee is good for life (provided you don't violate ClickBank policies and get your account terminated) and allows you to sell an unlimited number of products in an unlimited number of categories.

Other than commissions that you pay to affiliate marketers for selling your products and a 7 percent sales commission to ClickBank, there are no other fees or costs.

Are there strategies for affiliate commissions?

ClickBank affiliate commissions are set by you but are applied in blanket form to all products marketed under your account. The minimum commission is 1 percent and maximum is 75 percent.

There are two strategies you might think of pursuing with ClickBank affiliates. The first assumes that you only want ClickBank as a payment processor and fulfillment house and would prefer that others not sell your products. In that event, set your commission percentage to 1 percent. Such a low percentage would not be worth anyone's while and no one will want to sell your stuff.

A generally more sound strategy is to set a high commission, 50 percent - 75 percent. I've even heard of some marketers offering special bonuses which must be paid manually outside of the ClickBank system, in essence making the commission rate even higher than ClickBank allows. In some cases even slightly over 100 percent.

By offering such high commissions, you attract and motivate profit hungry entrepreneurs to sell your products for you.

The theory behind this approach is that once someone has identified themselves as a buyer of your products - someone who is interested in what you have to offer and willing to pay for it - it is much easier and more profitable to sell to that prospect than to an "unknown" prospect. So you offer some front-end product as a loss leader to get customers in the door then market higher priced and more profitable products directly to those buyers without allowing affiliate marketing or paying sales commissions on those subsequent sales.

A secondary consideration is that your affiliates - your commission only sales force - can collectively attract more people than you can on your own. They are also likely to attract prospects from different places than you will try on your own. So you cast a wider net and bring in a more diverse clientele.

Another very important consideration is that, because these are all digital products, there is essentially no overhead in stocking or delivering them. You can afford to pay a higher commission when your costs are so low.

What if you want to become an affiliate yourself?

There is no cost to being a ClickBank affiliate. (The $49.95 fee is only if you want to sell your own products.) If you find products in the ClickBank marketplace which are similar or complimentary to yours, there is no restriction on selling those products and earning a commission on the sales.

The same strategy applies as outlined above; once you have turned a prospect into a customer, even of affiliate products, you are free to market your own back-end products to them for a higher profit potential. Assuming you have captured their contact information and have a way of marketing to them.

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Jeff Kontur is a freelance copywriter and marketer specializing in helping small businesses promote themselves effectively online. Digital and eReader copies of his book "Fat-Free Marketing" are available for FREE from his web site Fat Free Marketing Group.

Before buying anything, read this first

By: Doris C. Dumlao
Philippine Daily Inquirer

ORMAN: PH would soon shine in global arena.

ARNOLD ALMACEN

She chooses to live in a New York apartment that can fit in her friend Oprah’s bathroom, even if she could afford to buy a penthouse residence. She wears the same set of earrings and holds on to the same purse for decades until it’s worn out and beyond repair. If she sees a penny on the road, she will stop and bend over to pick it up because she believes every penny must be respected.


That’s American personal finance guru Suze Orman—a woman who emancipated herself out of poverty and made a career out of helping others do the same—practicing what she preaches. This multiawarded television host, motivational speaker and best-seller author who was once described by USA Today as a “one-woman financial advice powerhouse, Orman was in town last week to fulfill a promise made for the last five years to her friend Doris Magsaysay Ho, chair of Asia Society Philippines, to help inspire Filipinos in their quest for financial freedom.


While Orman herself chooses to adopt a lifestyle that’s much more Spartan than her means, many other people in the world do the opposite and she gained fame, fortune and influence for her advocacy to help people who are  caught in the debt trap. The host of the award-winning Suze Orman Show which airs every Saturday night on CNBC earns around $190,000 on speaking engagements in the United States but she agreed to speak before Filipinos for free and expressed interest to come back and help draft financial literacy programs for the country pro bono.


‘Highway to poverty’
In a speech before employees of Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands which backed her visit to Manila, Orman says the Philippines would soon shine in the global arena. She says, however, that Filipino consumers must avoid going the way of the United States, which has allowed its economy to grow on credit, lending to people who could not afford homes, driving more people “on a highway to poverty.”


“Build this country on cash so that it could never collapse, then you can change your lives,” says Orman, who was raised in an unruly Chicago neighborhood and who used to wait on tables before transcending poverty as a securities broker at American investment house Merrill Lynch.


“You’re going to be taken note of in other countries, see investment money come and you’ll see that the time for the Philippines has just about arrived. The question is, will you be able to hold on to the gifts that are about to come your way?” she says.



Good and bad debt
The American personal finance guru spoke strongly against incurring debt to purchase non-essential things, noting she had watched her own country fall apart because of this.
She said consumers must distinguish between good and bad debt, good debt being amortizing to one day own a home.  On the other hand, she said that credit card debt was “very bad debt.”


“If you have credit card debt, what that says about you is that you are buying things that you can’t afford,” she says, urging banks to issue credit cards only to those who can responsibly use credit.  Ideally, she says credit card users should use their card all they want but pay everything when the bill arrives.


In the US, she says it was a common mistake for banks to even increase the credit limit when somebody had maxed out his ceiling and only paying the minimum due.
The best way to help these people would be to stop charging interest and as the borrowers pay off, reduce their credit limit.


For overseas Filipinos, Orman says her advice would be to consider whether sending money to adult brothers or relatives would only be encouraging dependence. “Is it possible that it’s hurting them rather than helping them?” she says, adding that some people may not reach their potential or may not be driven into making contingency plans because they have remittances to fall back on.


But she stresses that for parents, it’s a whole different light, as she herself would want to take care of her mother. Orman herself has Filipino helpers in the US and also taps Filipino call center agents in Manila to service her own voice call outsourcing needs.


Best commodity is time
For young people, she says they should realize that their best commodity is time and that by starting to regularly save a portion of their earnings regularly, they will accumulate more wealth with the help of compounding, which means earnings from an initial investment are reinvested over and over.


With the help of compounding, she says a person who sets aside $100 a month starting the age of 20 would end up with $1 million when this person is 60.  But if one waits until age 30 to start saving, the same person will end up with only $300,000 at age 60. This 10-year delay in starting an investment plan has thus cost the person $700,000, she notes.


On insurance, she says it’s a must for young people who have dependents—spouses or young children—and who have yet to build enough wealth that these dependents could live on if something happens to them. But she says the only type of insurance that would make sense would be term insurance with tenor approximating the time that one’s dependent would have reached adulthood.


From rock-bottom
Before becoming a prominent personal finance expert and inspirational speaker, Orman used to earn $400 a month as a waitress and at one point in time, slept in her car because she could not pay the rent.  She waited on table for seven years until the age of 30, when she dreamt of opening her own restaurant.  She asked her mother for $20,000 to open her restaurant but her mother was unable to help her.  One of her regular customers took a pity on Orman and pooled $50,000 from other customers to lend to her for 10 years without interest.  She brought the money to Merrill Lynch but the attending broker convinced the then naive Orman to speculate in the stock market. She says she was made to sign papers to make it appear that she was a sophisticated investor who was qualified to invest in stock options. Within three months, she lost all the money.


“If I hadn’t lost that money, I won’t be standing here today. Nothing ever goes wrong, everything happens for the best,” she says.


Realizing she still owed $50,000 to her customers, she thought of getting a job as a broker at Merrill, which at that time never hired female brokers.  She was hired but with a caveat that she would be fired in six months.


One Merrill Lynch executive took a liking at Orman and advised her to sue Merrill Lynch for the bad handling of her $50,000 investment even when she was still an employee. This she did and because of the ongoing case, Merrill Lynch could not fire her. As the case dragged on, she had become one of Merrill Lynch’s top producers and realizing that the firm was earning more money than Orman’s $50,000-suit, the brokerage gave back her money plus interest.  This in turn allowed Orman to pay back her kind-hearted friends.


Orman says this only showed that any wealth that she had made was something she had worked for.  Even as she has gone a long way since then, Orman is not fond of splurging on jewelry or clothes.  She had to change her purse recently, after 15 years, only because it was beyond repair.


‘Horrible’ investment
Jewelry, for her, is a “horrible” investment. Orman says that if you purchase jewelry and try to sell it when you need to cash in, you usually end up selling lower than your original buying price. But for her, investment in gold as a commodity, is “fabulous” and noted that gold is part of her personal portfolio.


On real estate, Orman says she had homes in different parts of the world but does not consider them as investments because they were for her own use.  She did not care whether their values go up or down.  On taking out equity in a home to buy another home, she says this was a no-no unless the owner had money backed up somewhere.


“Every single person in this world has the ability to be more and have more and it’s the choices that we make about ourselves that become our net worth,” she says.

On tithing............

tithing is only one of the keys to prosperity. There are other practical keys that one has to do to become prosperous. Like what? Like living simply; And saving regularly; And learning how to invest and knowing where to invest

~ Bo Sanchez

Money-wise, not ‘money-faced’

By: Efren Ll. Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Question: What is the best way to help my child grow up to be money-wise and avoid the ruts that I fell into while I was growing up?—Concerned parent

Answer: How many new college graduates have entered the workforce with P100,000 in savings? Probably not a whole lot. Yet, you’d think that the many years of schooling would have prepared kids for the “real” world.  You see, here’s where the problem lies. There is too much reliance on schools when learning at home can be as easy and rewarding.

Try our 10-step approach to boosting savings among children. The approach is by no means comprehensive. You may even want to add your own steps or take out a few.

1.) Help set a goal. Children need to visualize things in order for them to comprehend complex concepts like savings and financial freedom.  Saving enough to buy a much sought after toy is one way to help children visualize their goal.

2.) Teach your child to give first. Money is but a tool to realize the more important and practical goals in life. By giving away some money first, like to the church and the needy, you are teaching your child to be free from the clutches of money. Besides, money given away first, cheerfully, faithfully, wisely and quietly will return in other forms of benefits pressed down, shaken together and running over.

3.) Collect loose change. By saving just P3.50 a day for five days in a week, four weeks in a month and 12 months in a year, your child would be able to save P840. That’s more than what somebody, who already has P100,000 to start with, will earn by keeping his money in a savings account in a bank for one year.

4.) Catapult your child’s savings. Tell your child that if he or she reaches a certain level of savings, you will triple those savings (i.e. add 200 percent of what he or she had saved). If you gave your child P50 a day starting at age 5 and told him or her to save at least 10 percent of his or her allowance and also promised to double his or her yearly savings, your child would accumulate P111,600 in savings (assuming the allowance goes up to P100/school day by age 10 and up again to P150/school day by age 15).

5.) Use the magic of compounding. To further grow your child’s savings, you could place your child’s money in a savings account or even a time deposit to make it earn faster. Given modest assumptions on the rate of interest, your child could end up with more than P136,000 by age 20.

6.) Allow your child to taste some of the rewards. Being able to reap some of the rewards from our hard work allows us to better recognize the value of all of that work. So let your child enjoy some of the fruits of his or her labor. Even if you let your child withdraw 5 percent annually, your catapulting his or her savings and using the magic of compounding will ensure that he or she enters the workforce with at least P102,000.

7.) Introduce the meaning of debt and risk. Your child will encounter debt and risk. It would be better that the teachings come from you rather than from just anybody out there. So when your child is already in his or her teens, teach your child the meaning and implications of debt and risk.

8.) Get your child’s feet wet in entrepreneurship. Being in business is a form of investing. Not all are cut out to be businessmen though.  Nonetheless, it would be ideal if your child realized his or her calling to being an entrepreneur when he or she is still young and able to quickly bounce back from any losses.

9.) Teach your child the value of insurance. Insurance is needed by everyone; all the more by young adults. Insurance is a way of managing risks in life and business, just like diversification is a way of managing risks in investing. Teach your child not to run away from a life insurance agent. To be prepared for such encounters, however, you must also teach him or her the right way of buying insurance.

10.) Be a shining example to your child. Perhaps the most important lesson that you can impart to your child is to be a shining example. All of the other nine steps would be lost if you don’t practice them yourself.

Applying these 10 steps in raising your child will definitely help him or her to be money-wise and not money-faced.

If you want to learn more about the foregoing computations as well as the foundation of effective personal cash, debt, risk and wealth management, attend the EnRich training scheduled on May 16, 2012. Visit www.personalfinance.ph, e-mail info@personalfinance.ph or call (632) 216-1541 for more details.

Take care of your child. Children are among our greatest treasures and blessings.

(Efren Ll. Cruz is a registered financial planner of RFP Philippines, personal finance coach, investment adviser and bestselling author. Questions about the article may be sent by SMS to 0917-505-0709 or e-mailed to efren@personalfinance.ph. To learn more about the RFP program, visit www.rfp.ph or e-mail info@rfp.ph.)