11 Tips for Joining Affiliate Programs

By David McKenzie

Here are some things that I look for before joining an affiliate program. They are items I feel are imperative to being in a successful affiliate program.

1. The affiliate program has a great payment structure. For me, a high commission that is also a high percentage of the purchase price is essential. Nothing under 25% commission.

2. Make sure the affiliate program you are joining has a good looking site. You do not want to be sending visitors to a site that you do not like yourself.

3. Make sure they offer a comprehensive affiliate statistics page that lists the number of click throughs, number of sales and amount earned. This should be broken down per month.

4. Also make sure that the affiliate statistics are updated automatically and immediately. You do not want to find out today about a sale you made a week ago.

5. Ensure they give a wide variety of text links, banners and graphics to put on your web page. Although I prefer text links, certain types of banners and graphics still work well.

6. Know how often you are going to be paid. If you are tossing up between 2 programs and one pays monthly and the other pays quarterly, the one that pays monthly is better. You do not want to wait months before getting paid for your hard work!

7. See if the affiliate program gives examples of how the top affiliates are doing. This can be a great pointer to whether it is good or not. If some affiliates are earning many thousands per month, it is a good affiliate program.

8. Along these lines, also see if they give examples of what marketing methods these successful affiliates are using to get the best results.

9. An affiliate program that offers a special monthly newsletter just for the affiliates is great. Here you can get extra tips and techniques that are working well.

10. See if they offer email notification when you make a sale or get an affiliate signed up under you (if it is a 2-tier program). It is good to see `You have made another sale' in your inbox.

11. Ensure top level support is given. If they cannot answer your query straight away make sure they can respond within 48 hours.

There is tremendous demand for affiliate programs and choosing the right one is no easy task. Make sure you do plenty of research before joining one.

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11 Tips for Joining Affiliate Programs - Article by David McKenzie of www.brisney.com For great ideas on promoting your web site or marketing your affiliate programs subscribe to our Free twice monthly newsletter by sending a blank email tobrisney@brisney.com

How to Setup a Website for the eBay Affiliate Program

By Jorge Gurza

There are two ways to set up a website for the eBay affiliate program. However, before we get onto that, it will be important to explain to you what the affiliate program is.

Many thousands of people begin using the internet daily, and many of these are seeking good prices for the products that they are seeking. Some will look immediately for eBay, but others will simply enter a search term for the product. If they reach your website for the product they are seeking, you can then provide them with a link to the eBay registration page and earn $20 - $30 for each registration.

Not only that, but you can earn a proportion of the listing fees for the product, which is why you can make a lot of money by having a website offering products for sale on eBay. You win two ways: through eBay registrations for first-time users and also through your commission for any purchasers they make.

So, how do you set up a website? You can do it the normal way or the easy way. The normal way involves a number of different steps that you have to carry out:

• First you have to find a domain name: that is the name by which your website is registered in the Domain Name System (DNS), and once registered, nobody else can use your domain name. It is useful, but not essential, for your domain name to reflect your business.

• Then you have to find a web host. You can try one of the free hosts, though there is normally a price to pay through you having to include adverts on your site, or to use the website for only one specific purpose. Free sites are not the best, and you are well advised to pay. A reasonable web host will cost you from around $5 to $25 monthly, and the more you pay the more you get.

• You will need email addresses and an auto responder system. The auto responder automatically answers email inquiries, takes orders, meets them and accepts payments all automatically, even while you are sleeping. Your business can run 24/7.

• Now the time-consuming part: you will have to design a website or web page for every product type you promote. If you are promoting 50 product types you will have to develop 50 websites or pages. This is very time consuming, even if you knew where to start. You will have to learn HTML and/or CSS and also how to put a functional website together.

• You will also have to have some means of advertising your websites, or driving traffic to them. You can do this through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which can be expensive if you don't know what you are doing. Alternatively you can optimize your sites for the search engines and achieve high listings, although you might have a lot of competition to beat. You can also attract traffic through article marketing or by the use of a blog on your websites. Both of these last two techniques can be very effective in directing traffic to your sites.

• Another tool that will be necessary is analytical software to capture the statistics of your websites and income. You will want to know which advertising method brings most customers, and what type of product your customers tend to purchase. That information will allow you to fine tune your advertising and the products you promote.

There are other steps you will have to take, and all of this can be quite daunting, especially to a beginner to internet marketing. You need all the help you can get, even if you already have your own websites.

Software programs such as ez Affiliate Website Builder set up a website for the eBay affiliate program for you, in fact as many as you want in a short period of time, and help you to easily and quickly transfer them into money-making machines that will work for you day and night.

Keep in mind that millions of people are buying on eBay every minute of every day, and your websites will provide best results if they are running 24 hours every day of every year. You will also do a lot better the more sites you have, so having an eBay website builder will help a lot.

If you choose to do it all manually, then there is no reason why you cannot get the same results, although it will take a lot longer: weeks or even months longer to begin making reasonable sums of money. If you use a program that gets these sites up rapidly, one after another as often as you like, you can spend all your valuable time on driving traffic to them, and making lots of money.

That, then, is how to setup a website for the eBay affiliate program. Either manually or using software dedicated to the task. The choice is yours as to which you prefer to use, but whichever way you choose there is a lot of money to be made by promoting eBay auctions and referring new members to the eBay program.

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You can make it a lot easier to automatically build lots of eBay Affiliate websites if you use ez Affiliate Website Builder eBay affiliate script. Check it out here: How to Setup Website for eBay Affiliate and see how simple it is to generate website after website for you to make a business promoting eBay and its auctions.

Seven Reasons Why You Should Start with Affiliate Programs

By David McKenzie

There are thousands of business opportunities online. Most of them require some capital to start with. Not affiliate programs! Here are seven reasons why you should consider joining an affiliate program as your home based business.

1. Joining an affiliate program requires no outlay of capital. That's right, none! You can join an affiliate program for free and start promoting the product immediately.

2. The internet marketing tools are already provided for you. A "top" affiliate program will supply you with lots of affiliate marketing tools that are "ready to go". You just copy and paste and put your affiliate code in. Then you start selling.

3. You do not need a product. It takes a LOT of time to develop your own product to sell online. With affiliate programs, the product is already there. Someone else spent all the time developing it so you do not have to.

4. Affiliate statistics are already provided as part of joining an affiliate program. You do not have to go out and buy expensive software to track your sales because the product owner is doing that for you. You don't even have to pay for it, it's free!

5. You do not have any "time lag". With most businesses it takes a certain amount of time in the "start up" phase. With affiliate programs there is no such thing. Once you join you can start selling.

6. You do not have to worry about sales administration and technical support. The product owner takes care of the sales process and all the after sales service. All you have to worry about is receiving your affiliate check!

7. You do not have to worry about direct contact with the customer. In an affiliate program you are a re-seller so if the customer has a complaint they contact the product owner, not you.

Affiliate programs are simple to join, easy to start promoting and best of all they have no downside. If one affiliate program does not work out, you can leave and join a different one.

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David McKenzie is offering a Free Email Course "5 Tips to Being Successful with Affiliate Programs"www.1sthomebasedbusiness.com. Click now for your FREE course!

How to Embed Your Affiliate Links Into YouTube Videos

By Malcolm Leyshon

If you think that making your own videos is too difficult or time consuming you can find a lot of videos in the public domain that can be easily embedded in your website. For example, if you're promoting an affiliate product, you can enhance your promotion by looking on YouTube for someone else's video that describes the benefits of that particular product.

However, this may not be the best option because if someone watches the video and then goes to the video maker's YouTube page, they'll more than likely find that person's affiliate link and click on it instead of yours. This is only fair, though, as you're using their video on your website. To get around this, you can embed your affiliate links into other people's YouTube videos. This can be done quickly and easily, and it can be done entirely free of charge.

Method 1: LinkedTube.com

LinkedTube.com allows you to place a button that appears "on" the top of a YouTube video. You can add your own text or also add hover text that will appear when the viewer moves the cursor over the button. You can place your affiliate link in the button, so when someone clicks the button they're taken to your affiliate page.

This is very simple to do. First, you'll have to find a YouTube video you want to use on your website and then copy the video URL or video ID code. (This code will be in one of the fields to the right of the video on the YouTube page.)

Then, go to LinkedTube.com and paste the ID code or URL in the top field that you'll see on the right of that page. Next, add the button text that you want to appear. Enter your affiliate link in the third field. Other fields include how long you want the button to appear over the video and also add your hover text.

After the steps are completed hit the "Update Preview" link, and if everything looks okay, hit the "Save & Get Code" button. Your link code will be generated and can be seen by clicking the little arrow button to the right of the HQ button.

Copy and paste the link code into your web page where you want the video to appear. That's it!

Method 2: BubblePly.com

BubblePly.com allows you to embed your affiliate link in a bubble that appears "in" the video screen. You can also choose from several styles of bubbles and the size and location it appears on the screen.

First, copy the YouTube video URL and paste it into the bubble URL field. Click the "Next" button, and you'll be taken to a screen where the video will start playing. Click the "Pause" button to stop the video, then select a bubble from the bubble menu. I suggest that you choose the plane bubble and stretch it so that it's wide enough to cover the width of the video. Once you've done that you'll be able to type in some text, then click a link button and insert your affiliate link.

Next, set the amount of time that you want your affiliate links to appear while the video is playing. To do that, slide the video tracking slider buttons at the bottom of the video screen to your preferred start and finish positions. Finally, click the "Done" button. Now you'll be able to copy the system-generated embed code and paste it into your web page where you want the video to show up.

No matter which method you decide to use, embedding your own affiliate link in or on the video will help you "level the playing field." Ask your readers and viewers to pass on the video to make it go viral. As long as they pass on the video that is on your page, they'll be passing on the embedded affiliate links as well.

Now there really is no excuse for not having video working for you on your website.

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For more information about how to start a home business and get a Recession Proof Business with Internet Work from Home Ideas and Opportunities at Internet Work From Home you will find a wide range of tried and tested ideas including a daily newsletter and a free 325 page e-book.

Your Own Website is Critical for Niche Affiliate Marketing

By Travis Winn

Niche marketing is a great way to build a home business. Everyone can find a niche that they can market that best suits their individual passions and interests. This is what makes niche affiliate marketing so enjoyable. You can choose to market products and services that you actually have interest, knowledge, and passion for.

I see people trying to market their niche in a wide variety of ways. Blogging, articles, classifieds, PPC's, etc. Don't get me wrong, these are all terrific marketing methods and people have been extremely successful using all of them. Heck, I built my first online business using nothing more than properly written and placed online classifieds. But it was when I built my own Website that my home business success, as well as my online income, really began to flourish.

So what is a niche Website? Well it's just what it sounds like, a website based around your niche. The niche is up to you, it can really be anything that you love sharing with others, something you're passionate about, or just anything that you have knowledge about that you can share with others. The key to a great niche website is content.

Original, interesting, informative content. This is the meat of the website, this is what draws in the visitors. Content is also what gives you top search engine rankings, and this is the key to nailing a niche. When you have a content rich website, you will always have a fresh supply of new and return visitors. And then depending on the nature of your niche, you can monetize accordingly.

Six Benefits of Building Your Own Niche Website ...

1. Having your own Website allows you to properly pre-sell your customers. Pre-selling is a key to high conversions. People on the Net are not looking to get sold, they are looking for information. When you have a content rich website, a site that is informing and interesting to your visitors, you can successfully pre-sell them on whatever it is that you are offering.

Pre-sold customers are much more likely to purchase from you because they feel like they are making the decision to do so on their own. People do not like being sold, they like to feel that they are in control of the buying experience. Pre-selling equals a warmer audience and high traffic conversions.

2. Having a Website allows you to generate a returning customer base. This is also a key component to long term, ever increasing affiliate incomes. When you make a sale, that's great. But how great is it when that customer comes back to you to meet their needs again ...and again... and again. Obviously this is a great thing.

When you can develop a relationship with your customers you will be able to make offers to them over and over, and they will be more apt to purchase. Having an informative niche website allows you to build a relationship with your visitors, even if it only be through the pages of your site. When people see something they like, they keep coming back. Repeat customers plus a constant flow of new ones equals an ever growing income.

3. Having your own site allows you to utilize very powerful marketing methods. Namely we will discuss the Search Engines. Why? Because they really are the "kings of traffic." Online searching via the Internet has literally changed the way the world does business. Having a niche affiliate marketing website that is getting pulled up through a variety of related keywords is the best free marketing method around. Thousands of fresh visitors every day ... that's online potential.

This is why it's so important to have a content rich website. The content ...the information... is what gives your website visibility and credibility to the engines. They are providing a service to searchers, giving them the information they are looking for. Give the engines content, fresh interesting content, and you they will reward you very nicely.

4. Having your own website gives you the ability to market a wide variety of products and services. This is key for having a diversified income, and a large one at that. Creating a niche website gives you many options for monetization. You can easily market a wide variety of products, services, and programs ... depending on your market. Having a site also opens up other monetization possibilities like Google AdSense, referral fees, and other paid for advertising methods.

Many affiliate marketers that do not have their own website are always looking for great hubs to advertise on. Your site can be a great, high traffic hub that attracts a lot of advertisers willing to pay you for a small ad spot. And of course, your main offerings are still getting prime attention.

5. Building your own website gives you the ability to create long term, passive income streams. This is what Internet marketing is all about ... the wonderful passive income. A passive income is a source that earns money for you, 24/7, no matter what you are doing (or not doing.) A passive income allows you to not only make more money, but also to have the time to enjoy it.

Other affiliate marketing methods take daily effort. If you are not actively promoting, you are not making any sales. A website is passive. It takes time to get it going, adding great content and allowing time for the engines to notice it and start driving traffic to it. It may take a couple of months with little or know results. But then what? Once it's going, it's going. And it is out their working for you, making you money, every minute of the day. The Internet never sleeps, and a great website doesn't either.

6. Having a website lets you make money by sharing your knowledge and passions with the world. And this is for many people the most exciting part. We have all heard the saying "do what you love and love what you do." Many people don't think that this is possible in the "real world." Well it is, you just need to look for the opportunities.

Niche marketing allows you to earn money, a lot of passive income, from simply sharing with others whatever you enjoy sharing. You can literally turn a hobby into a full time income. You will never lose passion because the passion is integrated in the very thing you are expressing. The net truly provides opportunity for you to love what you do, and you can do whatever you love!

With new technology and the demand for personal, inexpensive, and easy to build websites, building your own site is simple, cheap, and can actually be very enjoyable. It is a great way to find a niche and really master it. Mastering a niche is a great way to build an ever increasing, very profitable home business.

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My name is Travis Winn and I am a professional Internet marketer, home business entrepreneur, and online success coach. I enjoy teaching people how to use natural laws to unlock their potential for great home business, financial, and personal achievements. For more information on building a Search Engine Optimized niche website, take a look at Best Website Building and Hosting.

Six Ways to Make More Money With Affiliate Programs

By Mario Sanchez

Affiliate programs are one of the web’s most effective marketing techniques. They create a win-win situation by which site A refers a visitor to site B, and site B pays site A a commission if that visitor purchases something. If you are the referrer site (affiliate), you can make money with no overhead (no product, no warehouse, no collection risk). On the other hand, the destination site receives a steady stream of qualified leads from hundreds, maybe thousands of affiliate sites, and doesn’t have to spend a dime unless a visitor purchases something.

To maximize effectiveness, affiliate sites need to keep in mind some common sense suggestions:

1. Resist the temptation to add too many affiliate links. Affiliate link overkill confuses visitors and hurts credibility. You want your visitors to view your site as a value-adding destination and not just a cheesy sales site. Recommend links to products you have tried, or that come from good, solid companies. Don't recommend something you don't know just because you're getting paid. Give your visitors the best advice and they will reward you.

2. If you write articles for your website, try not to include the affiliate links in the body of your articles: it will give the impression that you have a vested interest in recommending them. You want your visitors to trust your advice, so don’t turn your article into an excuse to promote products and make a commission. It’s OK to include affiliate links, but do it on a side bar or on a resource table. Whenever possible, link to your affiliate partners with text links (since banner ad click-through is at its lower rate ever, and people tend to ignore banners).

3. Include only affiliate links that are related to your business and the topic of interest to your visitors. Links to unrelated products will not generate good leads for the destination sites (and therefore won’t be a source of significant commissions for you), so they are best avoided.

4. Managing your affiliate programs can be a hassle if you have to deal with many different companies. Try to sign up with a site that administers many affiliate programs to chose from (one of the best out there are Commission Junction and LinkShare). These sites give you hundreds of affiliate programs to chose from, and act as a one-stop shop where you can sign up with multiple vendors using only one account and receiving one consolidated commission check.

5. Chose affiliate partners that offer long term cookies. A cookie is a mechanism that allows the destination site to know when a visitor is referred by your site. A long term cookie (for example, a three months cookie) means that a visitor who follows a link to one of your affiliate partners today but doesn’t purchase anything, can come back and purchase at anytime during the next three months and you will still be paid a commission. The best programs are those who offer unlimited cookies (although there are not so many of them around). However, a 90-day cookie or more is very good.

6. Link directly to the product page and not to the main page of the destination site. If you link to the main page, the visitor will have to find its way to the product and may not find it, making you lose commissions. By linking directly to the product, you will increase the prospects of the visitor buying the product (and of you making a commission). Many destination sites, like Amazon, recognize this fact and offer a higher commission to affiliates that link directly to the product pages than to those who only link to the main page.

Follow these simple guidelines and you will improve your chances of success with all your affiliate programs.

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Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digestwww.theinternetdigest.net a website and newsletter that gives you useful advice on web design and Internet marketing, one free tip at a time.

Affiliate Programs - The Perfect Home Business

By Tim Fulcher

Affiliate programs are a simple way that anyone - even if they don't have a website - can make money by advertising a link to another website. This link is called an affiliate link because it contains some extra characters which record the details of the affiliate so that when a sale occurs the affiliate can be paid their commission

An affiliate program is simply a commission only arrangement where a set percentage commission is paid depending on the sale price. This could typically be anywhere from 25 to 75 percent, although there are many products which carry a 75 percent commission payout.

How Affiliate Programs Track Your Sales

How affiliate programs work is that when someone clicks on an affiliate link they are sent to the merchants website where the product is sold. This product will often be a digital downloadable product of some kind such as an eBook, software, videos, templates, graphic files etc. The extra codes in an affiliate URL - typically the affiliates nickname - are used by a tracking system which saves the data in a cookie, which is often recorded temporarily on the computer of the web visitor. When this person then goes to pay for the item, this affiliate information is then used to record which affiliate was responsible for the sale

Is it Easy to Make Money with Affiliate Programs?

It can be both very difficult and very easy to make sales as an affiliate. This is partly due to the fact that selling anything online is a lot more difficult than it might at first appear

You will have no doubt have noticed that there are thousands and thousands of websites, many with products for sale, or at least links to products for sale. Although it might look as if all these products are selling like hotcakes, nothing could be further from the truth, with many websites struggling to make any sales even after the website has been online for months - maybe even years. Often what happens is that most websites will sell just a small amount of product - this means that taken altogether, the amount of products sold online is large and growing, but each individual website sells very little.

Fortunately there are exceptions to this - some big websites like amazon.com and ebay.com etc - these websites outsell many thousands of other websites combined. This fact should prove to you that if you can position your website correctly in the right niche, you could easily be selling several hundred dollars at least every month.

So What Is The Best Way To Get Started Selling With An Affiliate Program?

The key to being successful and closing your own sales and earning yourself a nice monthly commission is to follow a few simple successful strategies

Here is my six-point plan that will work for you:

1. Find a suitable "niche" or theme for your website

This means doing some keyword research so that you don't choose a theme for your website that has already been chosen by millions - yes millions! - of other websites. In general this means finding a two or three word key-phrase. You can start by searching under your main keyword theme and then seeing if you can find another word that can sensibly go with it from the search results e.g. if "holidays" were your main theme, you might find that "holidays abroad" or "spanish holidays" might work for you. This could mean doing quite a bit of checking until you find the right niche or theme for your website

2. Check that your chosen "niche" or theme will be profitable

You can do this by doing a search on the search engines and seeing how many pay per click advertisers have ads running for your niche. As it costs quite alot of money to get onto the first page of a search engine as an advertiser, often as much as $5 or more per click, then this advertiser must be succeeding with their advertising otherwise they will just bankrupt themselves. You might also check for how long these ads have been running - or just watch how long these ads are running, simply check every week and see if the ads are still running

3. Make a list of all possible page headings or titles

These will be individual content pages on your website. These should be based on keyword phrases you might already have come across from your research. You can then create articles that will match these headings, and the search engines will start indexing your content especially if you write all the articles yourself and therefore everything on your website is unique to you

4. Join as many forums for your niche or theme

Find out about and join as many forums related to the niche or theme of your website and start making comments or providing answers to other peoples questions, making sure you leave behind a link back to your website within your signature file. This can be easily set up with the UserCP part of your account on the forum. One way to find all these forums is to simply search on the search engines adding the word "forum" to your search e.g. "affiliate program forum"

5. Start an email list

This means adding a bit of code to your webpages so that people can signup to your email list and start receiving a preset series of emails all related to the theme of your website. You can add as many emails as you like to the system - referred to as an autoresponder - and the idea is to send interesting article like content which will be interesting to your readers, but will also have a link to some online resource - e.g. a product or service for which you are an affiliate. The emails must be written in an informational style without any attempt to "pitch" people or try and sell anything directly. If you send overt sales pitch type emails you will simply lose all your email list subscribers and you will have wasted your marketing efforts

6. Post Articles to free article directory sites

Once you have answered a few questions on forums and written some interesting articles on your website for individual content pages, plus written some useful emails, you are bound to have lots of content that you could split up and use for syndicated articles. Posting these articles will help you further by providing more traffic to your website, and establishing you as an "expert" in your field

These are just six easy ways you can get started making sales for any affiliate program or product you have in mind. If you follow these steps I am sure you will be well on the road to turning your dream of earning hundreds of dollars at least into a reliable monthly income online. I do understand that following these steps might take you a bit of time, but when you have done it once, you can then go on and produce more niche themed websites, and gradually increase your online affiliate empire, not to mention your monthly earnings.

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Tim Fulcher is the author of Affiliate Programs Cash Generator, a free guide thats shows anyone how they can make money with affiliate programs. You can download his eBook from his website at: Affilite Programs Cash Generatorebiz4every1.com