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Affiliate Marketing Newbie

By on September 23, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

Advice for the Affiliate Marketing Newbie

Are you an affiliate marketing newbie? Whether new or experienced, there are some tips of the trade that you should follow.

First of all, the lure of working from home in your pajamas with nothing but a computer is almost too much to bear. In fact, more and more people are trying their hand at affiliate marketing exactly for this reason. But in order to be successful in your efforts, you do need to spend time and at least a little bit of money. It is hard work, so be prepared.

If you are an affiliate marketing newbie, start out promoting something that you are familiar with and, even better, something that interests you. As you get more experienced, this aspect will not be quite so important — you will be able to promote things that you know nothing about or care nothing about and still be successful — but in the beginning, it helps to start with something that you will be committed to as you go through your learning curve. Keep in mind that taking this route may not end up as the best converting method or gain you the highest commissions, but it will be easier for you to build a website and to stick with what you are working on

When you do get your site up and running (and, by the way, a WordPress blog is a very fast and way to establish a reputable website), promote more than just one product in the same niche. This also gives your visitors a choice and allows you to track which products are selling more or less.

Always remember the tried and true saying: content is king. “Contents sites” are the ones that offer educational, instructional and topical content about whatever it is they are promoting. And the best of these types of sites actually make the promoted product or service seem like an afterthought. This is another reason that it is easier if you are new to affiliate marketing to start with something you are familiar with and/or interested in. While content is important, your main goal is to drive visitors to the sales of your affiliate products, so make it as easy as possible for them to get there.

Do not give up. There is a lot to learn when it comes to affiliate marketing and it takes a lot of work in the beginning. It’s also important to keep up with rules and regulations that change in the field of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing revenue can end up being passive (meaning you don’t have to do anything to earn it), but it takes a while to get to this point. Most people will take months even to make enough money to cover costs. Keeping these tips in mind when you are an affiliate marketing newbie will help you in achieving a profitable status.

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Affiliate Marketing Offers

By on September 18, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

How to Find Affiliate Marketing Offers

There are many different sites that you can use to find affiliate marketing offers. Clickbank is one of the most well-known and also very popular and it focus on digital informational products. Clickbank is a great place to start if you are new to affiliate marketing because it has a wide variety to choose from and it’s very easy to get started. Clickbank lets you, as an affiliate, sell electronic products even if you do not have a merchant account and the commissions generally range from 50% to 75% of the sale. Right now, Clickbank boasts over 100,000 affiliates that are selling over 10,000 products.
In order to choose the right products, most people look at the “Gravity” and popularity score which is assigned to each product. The easy definition of gravity is a measure of how much competition there is for the particular product – however, the actual measurement is derived by a more complicated formula. In general, you do want a comparatively high gravity when looking for a product to promote, but not so high that it is too hard for you to compete.

Commission Junction (CJ) is another popular site that has many affiliate marketing offers from which to choose. The merchants that put their products and services on Commission Junction tend to be bigger and more established companies who are experienced in product development, marketing, and promotion. CJ also offers many types of promotional links for its affiliates. So, you can promote the products and services that you choose with banners, text links, product links, and search boxes.

Amazon was one of the founders of the affiliate movement and it is a noteworthy affiliate network to join if you want to sell products from your site or blog. While the commissions with Amazon are generally lower, it is extremely easy to get set up with promoting products on your blog or website, and it is much easier to make sales with these products. And you can even choose to set up what is known as an Amazon aStore. Another handy feature of Amazon is that it offers context link ads and Widgets.

If you want to take your analysis a step further, you can take a look at OfferVault.com. This site allows you to search for the type of product or service you would like to promote and then gives you a list of all of the platforms that offer these products and services. Offervault offers both CPA and affiliate network offers and it is completely free for affiliates and publishers alike which makes it accessible to everyone — even the newcomers to the affiliate marketing game. This site can save you lots of time in searching for the right product or service to promote and comparing various products/services and networks. New affiliate marketing offers are added daily to this site.

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy – Important Aspects of Affiliate Marketing

By on September 13, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the winning affiliate marketing strategy involves getting as much traffic (and as much targeted traffic) to your affiliate products as possible. And getting enough traffic starts with choosing a product or service that is guaranteed to generate interest and then to convert into sales.

One part of an effective affiliate marketing strategy is making sure that you leverage off of the merchant’s time and effort that have been put into his or her product or service. An experienced and skilled merchant will know that the more his or her affiliates are selling, the more he or she will earn. And therefore, he or she will continue to test and tweak the product’s or service’s sales page to make it into a the most compelling offer possible that makes it hard for people to refuse once they land on the page.

Look for sales pages that are simple and clean, that offer a compelling headline, testimonials and, if possible, even a timer that shows people how long they can claim the product or possibly the bonus that comes with it.

Once you’ve chosen a product with a proven sales page and conversion rate, you need to get as much high-quality traffic to the offer as possible. You can do this directly by advertising your affiliate link with PPC (pay-per-click), classified ads, banner ads, etc. Or you can set up a content blog or website that provides useful information on the niche of the product or service you are selling.

If you are just starting out, a blog might be the easiest way to get started and a WordPress blog is often the most highly recommended because it comes with many free plug-ins that will allow you to be more visible to the search engines.

Keyword research is an important part of any kind of affiliate marketing plan of action. After you’ve chosen the product or service that you want to promote, then choose the keywords that you are going to use to get traffic to your link or to your website or blog. Again, if you are new, you want to choose less competitive keywords.

Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool (which is free of charge) and type in the general term that describes your product’s niche. This tool will then provide you with all the related search terms that people are actually using when they go to their browser and do a search. The tool also provides you general statistics on how often each term is searched, how competitive each term is, what people are bidding on this term in PPC ads, etc.

Start with lower-searched terms and use these in your blog/website content, or in your direct link advertising methods. As you start to get more visitors, you can start using more competitive terms in your affiliate marketing strategy.

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Affiliate Marketing Support

By on September 8, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

Getting Affiliate Marketing Support

One of the biggest advantages that you can have when you decide to get into the world of affiliate and online marketing is some kind of affiliate marketing support. As more and more people decide to test out this relatively new way of making money on the internet, there is a great deal of hope, confusion, and skepticism. You want to make sure that you start out on the right foot and avoid any scams that are out there. And this is where a good support system can really make the difference between failing and succeeding.

Affiliate marketing support will be necessary throughout your whole affiliate marketing career–not just when you start out. In fact, it may even be more valuable as you actually start to gain experience and insight in the industry. Forums can help you keep up with what the new trends in the industry are, as well as get advice and make valuable connections that will prove useful in both the present and the future.

Another good place to look for help is with the actual affiliate merchant that you are promoting. The best merchants will provide you with tips, training, and support that will allow you to make the most sales with the product or service you are promoting. It is obviously in their best interest to arm you with whatever you need to sell their products.

Another good idea is to find a mentor. This will be someone that you can have direct access to and learn from–not a guru who is marketing a product but not his or her actual help. Many mentors actually spend a great deal in forums and offer free advice so as to build up their credibility and expert status. There is no real substitute for learning from someone who is successful in doing exactly what you want to do. While there are many products on the market to help you get started, keep in mind that the world of internet marketing and affiliate marketing is constantly and quickly changing so it’s very easy for a product to become outdated with methods that worked at one time but do not work now.

You can also decide to pay a nominal fee to become part of a membership training or support site. Make sure you join one that is targeted specifically for affiliate marketing and any of the other various forms of internet marketing. Do your research to make sure that the site is what you are looking for and check out the testimonials provided. Sometimes you can even contact the people who offer testimonials and they can help you in your decision as well as in other aspects of your affiliate marketing path.

The above are just some of the easiest ways to obtain affiliate marketing support and to maintain it as you proceed in your journey.

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Affiliate Marketing Tips

By on September 3, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

3 Important Affiliate Marketing Tips

Affiliate marketing is a very hot topic right now. Who wouldn’t want to just start making money from selling someone else’s product or service online, without even leaving their home? Sounds easy, right? While affiliate marketing is not rocket science, it does require work, dedication, and patience. You are not the only person who finds it intriguing to think that they can actually be making money off of someone else’s product without even leaving your house. The field is very competitive and if you want to become a player you will need to invest time and effort, and possibly money, into your endeavor.

The first step in effective affiliate marketing is choosing a commercially viable product to sell. This is not particularly hard, but keep in mind that you have millions of products and services to pick from, some good and some not so good, so you want to have a list of criteria that your product must meet. Clickbank is an extremely popular site and a good place to get started with affiliate marketing. The site itself also offers many affiliate marketing tips. And, you can see stats which tell you how well a product or service is doing. Some feel that these stats aren’t all too reliable, but if you find a product that you like, and one that has a good “gravity” and “popularity” measurement, then just go ahead and contact the owner of the product and ask him or her to show you some sort of proof of sales and conversions. This is very simple, and any merchant worth his salt will be happy to provide you with the details.

Another of the most overlooked affiliate marketing tips has to do with traffic testing and tracking. As you probably already know or will soon realize, there are a million and one ways to get traffic to your affiliate offer. How do you know which one to choose? You really don’t. You have to try one for a while and see how that works, or try several at a time and compare them with each other. When you find some that are clearly outperforming others, invest more time, effort, and/or money into those and let the others go.

Last but not least, take a look at the support that you can offer your customers. Yes, that’s right. If you are selling a product (whether it’s yours or not), you should be prepared to answer questions about that product. While this may bother you, it is also one of the factors that will separate you from other affiliates who are not answering questions. This also probably means that you will have to actually buy the product and not just promote it blindly, without knowing its real features, advantages, potential problems, etc. Making use of these three affiliate marketing tips will distinguish you from the other affiliate marketers in the business today.

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Affiliate Marketing Website

By on August 29, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

How to Increase Traffic to Your Affiliate Marketing Website

Having an affiliate marketing website will do you little good if it is not well-ranked in the search engines. If you are well-ranked, on the other hand, your site will come up when someone does a search for the types of products and or services you are offering, or information that is relevant to that. There are many ways that you can increase your site’s rankings. Here are just a few of them.

First of all, you should try to add new content to your website or blog on a regular basis. A good rule of thumb is to do this about 2 times a week. If you’re stuck about what to write about, do a product review, or take an article that you’ve written and break it up into more detailed points. You can also do an article about a video that is relevant, or an e-book that you’ve read.

Next, an easy way to get your website indexed is to submit it to directories. Many directories are free and some charge you to submit your site but they offer greater visibility. There are thousands of directories to choose from. Try to add your site to 10 to 20 directories a month, or you can hire a person or a service to do it for you for not too much investment.

Article directories are another great asset of affiliate marketers. While it does take some time to write articles and submit them to the directories, it is completely free and very effective. There are two schools of thoughts on this. Some say that you can submit your article to the top three directories, and others say it works better to submit them to hundreds of directories. If you do choose to submit them to many directories, you might want to consider investing in some article submission software.

Making use of forums are another way that you can establish both credibility and links to your site. Try to stay active in at least one forum by asking genuine questions and answering what you can. If you can keep up with it, try to contribute at least one comment per day. This will definitely generate links to your affiliate marketing website. Use the same principle to post comments on highly ranked blogs. If possible, comment on blogs that are ranked higher than your website or blog is.

Use socialmarker to bookmark your site on some of the social bookmarking sites. Do not bookmark your site on all the sites at one time or in one day. Instead, do it in a randome fashion. Bookmark your site with one social website on one day, along with some other sites, and maybe the next day bookmark your site twice along with some other sites, and maybe skip a day of bookmarking your site.

These are just some ways to get your affiliate marketing website ranked to get more traffic.

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Affiliate Marketing Without A Website

By on August 24, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

Succeed in Affiliate Marketing Without a website

Is it possible to succeed in affiliate marketing without a website?

The answer is yes, it is. While most would agree that you’ll eventually make more if you can implement certain strategies on your own website, it is definitely possible to profit without worrying about how to go about starting your own site or blog. And it might be a good way to start so that you can begin profiting right away and gradually learn how to build your own site.

Affiliate marketing is very appealing because you have a ready-made product along with a sales page and all you have to do is find a way to get traffic to it. That sounds easier than it actually is, especially because you are not the only one trying to sell the products that you decide to promote. But when you do make a sale, you will most likely get anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of the sales price in commissions.

One of the quickest and easiest places to start is on Clickbank. This site offers an enormous choice of mostly digital products and services that you can sell. Take a look at the training offered on the site to help you get started. Based on the stats that Clickbank offers for each product, you can decide which one or which ones you want to promote. If you are new, it’s generally recommended that you start with just one product.

One of the best ways to then proceed with your affiliate marketing without a website is to do some article marketing. But before you do this, you’ll need to do some keyword research. Use the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to come up with the exact keywords that people are typing into the search engines when they do a search for whatever it is that you are offering. Then, you should purchase a domain name with the top keyword in it so that you can direct that to your affiliate link. Next, write an article on one of the keywords you select — the article should be between 400 and 600 words. Include the keyword in the title of the article and in the first sentence of each paragraph of the article. You should try to hit a percentage of about 3% of your article being your keywords. Then, submit your article to sites like EzineArticles.com. Keep in mind that while you cannot place links from your article to your affiliate page, you can do so in the resource box which appears at the end of the article. This is really the most important part of the whole article so make it compelling enough for the person to click on the link.

Writing articles is really one of the best ways to succeed in affiliate marketing without a website because it helps you establish a presence and some sort of authority, even though you do not have the website.

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Affiliate Search Engine

By on August 19, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing

Affiliate Search Engine Programs

You can find an affiliate program almost anything nowadays — including affiliate search engine programs. Although the list has decreased greatly in the past years, there are still some search engines that give you, as an affiliate, a part of what they earn if you refer their service to others. These affiliate search engine programs are not offered by the big search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo, but you might be able to get some commissions by promoting them. Many people are fed up with Google and all of their “unfair” rules and rule changes that happen overnight. And they could be looking for other options.

The most recognized search engine that offers an affiliate program is 7Search. It is also one of the few remaining. The 7Search affiliate program is a Pay-Per-Search program and it advertises over 14,000 participating affiliates. You can earn commissions in two ways: by installing a search box on your website, and then getting a commission when someone does a search, or through direct text links to search results. You make three and a half cents per search or 63 percent of the revenue share from all of your text links. You could also decide to accept a bit lower rate for each search that is performed in exchange for earning credits at the 7Searches mother company’s (Emergency24) banner exchange program. You get paid on your commissions every 3 months and you must have earned at least 25 dollars for your check to be sent out. Otherwise, your earnings accrue until you meet the 25 dollar mark.

In general, 7Search seems to be a popular choice for many marketers both for its PPC results and its affiliate programs. Claims from those who have used the PPC platform to advertise their sites and businesses are that their ads are getting viewed by a large, targeted market, and returns on investments are very impressive. Those who participate in the affiliate program also claim to earn a decent share and they do get paid on time.

When you sign up to be an affiliate, you get a search engine box that you can put into your website and when your usual visitors come in, they can easily use this box to do their next searches. When they do this, you make money since the box that you are given has its own code that is specific to you and your earnings. You will not be able to make a living off of this type of affiliate income, but it is something that you can use to enhance your current earnings. Will affiliate search engine programs come back into play again? Right now it seems that most traffic is still going through Google which is definitely at the forefront of PPC. But it’s hard to predict even what will happen with Google in the fast moving world of the web.

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