Dec 182012
 

Affiliate marketing strategies are the methods or ways that tie in all aspects of affiliate marketing. Why use strategies? Simple – you have blueprints that you can use over and over again. No more staring at the computer screen thinking of your next move.

affiliate marketing strategies that make money

Affiliate Marketing Strategies – The One Most Widely Used

Out of the most widely used affiliate marketing strategies, the most common one is to use your site as a landing place for visitors. Here are the things you will need:

Web Hosting and a Domain

I must repeat myself here again – do not use free website / blog platforms (such as Blogger or WordPress.com) if you intend to take up affiliate or internet marketing seriously. You will need professional web hosting that is reliable and affordable. Why? You are dependent on the provider and your site could be removed at any time.

Torn between choosing Bluehost or Hostgator? Check out this comparison.

If you have already decided that you want to get web hosting, I can only recommend Bluehost. For only $4.95 a month you get reliable web hosting and a FREE domain. Click Here to Take Advantage of This Limited Special Offer

Your affiliate site

Your site can be a blog or website. Some people freeze at the thought of creating a website or blog. They think it’s difficult and technical. They are right but only because they have not come across the right tools.

However there is nothing stopping you from creating your own blog or website. If you want to create a website then I would recommend using XsitePro as I have used it to build websites myself. However if you want to build a blog then WordPress from wordpress.org is the winner.

However you don’t need to build a website or blog to start using many affiliate marketing strategies. You can just have a domain that has your niche in it. Then a simple redirection to the merchant’s site is all you need. Domain redirects is explained in greater detail in redirecting affiliate links.

Affiliate Marketing and the Products to Promote

If you are a bit unsure how affiliate marketing works and what to watch out for, then check out the blueprint about affiliate marketing. Then you can start thinking about products to promote.

It’s no use loving a niche if there are no products to promote. Usually a niche that has demand will usually have related products. Before choosing a product to promote and checking out affiliate merchants, please read affiliate marketing products for some valuable tips.

Traffic

Traffic means visitors and without them you cannot sell anything. No traffic means no money.

Other Affiliate Marketing Strategies You Can Use

Here are a few affiliate marketing strategies that you can use:

  • This is one affiliate marketing strategy I like and used before. Create a simple report, include good content and some affiliate links and give it a way for free from your site. Advise readers that they can give the ebook to anyone they know. In this way, your ebook starts to be passed around with the increased possibility of more sales and readership. This method is called viral marketing.
  • Article marketing is another favourite strategy used by internet marketers. I use it myself. Seen as time-consuming by some, writing articles builds backlinks and allows promotion of your site.
  • Video is the big thing at the moment and getting easier to create by the day. All you need is a webcam and a microphone. For more information, please read the computer resources to set up an online business. Then record a video promoting your site and put it on YouTube. You can also use your articles to build video. These affiliate marketing strategies are commonly used in video marketing.
  • Just created a video? Then take out the audio from it and create a podcast. Or just get an article you wrote and record yourself reading it. In all recordings, clearly repeat your website Url so that it could be easily identified and typed into a browser. Then upload your recording to podcasts sites like PodcastingNews.
  • Your site has a great advantage of receiving visitors to get more information about what they seek. Capture their email address and build a list. Then send out informative emails and weave in your affiliate links. This method is called email marketing and you can try it below:
  • This is one of the best affiliate marketing strategies but is long term in nature. Build an authority site about a topic you are passionate about. Create good content and you will be rewarded by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Good content allows your site to start rising in search engines rankings. Good visibility means more traffic and it’s all free. Put in a few affiliate marketing products and sales might start to roll in.

So with these affiliate marketing strategies in mind you can start to use affiliate marketing to earn money online. If you prefer not to create a blog or website, then please read affiliate marketing without a website.

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Nov 172012
 

I thought of sharing with you the secret affiliate marketing tip that super affiliates use at this stage. Why now? Because by now you should have a good understanding of the affiliate marketing basics. And you might have already decided on a niche, product and a merchant. If you have, congratulations!

To be honest all these affiliate marketing tips (see below) are important. However the most important is at the top. This is the secret tip that super affiliates use and what makes them super affiliates in the first place. Read on to find out why…

Most Important Affiliate Marketing Tip – Build your list and do it now!

secret affiliate marketing tipAll super affiliates use email marketing. Why? Because they will tell you that the money is in the list. To build your list you will need email marketing software. This will include an autoresponder and will also allow you to communicate with your subscribers. You could also prepare a series of messages that you can send to your list. You can also integrate your blog into your email marketing software so that your blog posts are sent to your list whenever you publish a blog post.

Why is it important to build a list of subscribers?. As you are well aware, not everyone buys something the first time round. Having their email address will allow you to keep in touch with your subscribers and convince them to buy your products later. You can also offer them other products to buy, increasing your revenue dramatically.

You have two choices.

Use a complete package to build your website which includes an autoresponder so everything is integrated. Click here for more details.

Or you can use a standalone autoresponder. My preferred autoresponder is Aweber and I am currently subscribed. You can take a free test drive today by simply entering your name and email address below:

Other Affiliate marketing Tips

The following tips are still highly relevant and important. Read each individual affiliate marketing tip and take action:

Do something every day.

For example, create content and keep creating content for your site. The more pages or blog posts your site has, the more authoritative your site becomes in the eyes of search engines. Another example: If you set yourself on a target of creating 7 inbound links to your site, then do them. Do not leave them for tomorrow.

Unlimited Domains.

This is crucial to your success. The reason is simple: affiliate marketing allows you to target multiple niches that you either know well or are able to research well. So you will need multiple sites with unique domain names. Don’t restrict yourself to a web hosting subscription that offers single domain hosting just to penny pinch. Choose a web hosting company that offers a subscription package that allows you to host unlimited domains. The choice is usually between Hostagator or Bluehost. You can read a comparison here

Get your site indexed fast.

This is more about Search Engine Optimization but I will keep it simple. In a nutshell, it’s useless having a great site without the search engines such as Yahoo, Bing and Google knowing about it. You can wait for them to discover your site (it could take weeks or a few weeks). Instead of waiting you can try to make them take notice. To get your site noticed quickly you can use social bookmarking sits such as facebook and digg. Other ways include commenting on blogs related to your niche. This post will show you even more ideas to get indexed fast.

Know your audience well.

I already mentioned this when you start choosing the ideal affiliate marketing products. If you know your visitors well then you know what they want, what problems they want to solve and what they are looking for. Not knowing your audience will hamper your affiliate marketing efforts.

Use different merchants for the products in your niche.

First of all it’s always good not to depend on one merchant just in case it goes bust or something similar. In this case your income dries up. Secondly you are offering variety to your visitors. Thirdly you can test which merchant is consistently offering the best conversions (visitors converting to customers).

So there you have it! Go through each affiliate marketing tip to get an edge over your competitors and boost your affiliate income.


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Nov 112012
 

This affiliate marketing for beginners guide will ensure that you have or need to obtain the qualities need to be a successful affiliate marketer.

Being an affiliate marketing beginner is not a disadvantage. No one was born knowing anything. Affiliate beginners merely have to learn the ropes. The only problem you might face is that you might feel overwhelmed. You don’t need to be. I will help you get things sorted out.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners’ Challenges

However, affiliate marketing for beginners can be quite tough. First you have to see if you get what it takes to a successful affiliate marketer. You must possess certain characteristics if you want to succeed. Go through the questions below and see how well you size up to the following challenges:

  • Are you eager to learn? Learning takes two forms. The first is learning from mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, this is part of the learning curve. The second way to learn is by educating yourself. At this point I suggest a quick read of the affiliate marketing definition to familiarise yourself better. Then come back here when ready. It should help you get a get started in the right direction.
  • Are you patient? In reality you must be, because as I pointed out before, results might not come quickly and you might be tempted to give up.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners Qualities

  • Do you have motivation? This is closely related to being patient. You need to be motivated all the way. Setbacks, lost commissions, wrong marketing and so on are some of the things you will go through. At least I did :) Otherwise demotivation creeps in and you will find succeeding becomes harder.
  • Do you have an attitude? By attitude I don’t mean you put people off. What I mean is the attitude to succeed. Usually the ride becomes a bit rough sometimes. Not making sales, wondering what you did wrong and so on.
  • Are you able to persevere? This is one of the key traits of successful affiliate marketers. They don’t give up and keeping on pushing.
  • Are you a perfectionist? Do you keep putting off starting out affiliate marketing because you want to keep on researching the subject? Move forward and take the plunge. Stop over-educating yourself and instead start trying things out.

If you feel you have the above qualities then you are already past the beginners’ stage. The next step on your journey is to check out how does affiliate marketing work. But always keep this affiliate marketing for beginners guide in mind to ensure success and prosperity for the future.


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Nov 072012
 

A definition of affiliate marketing, in simple terms, is that you are the middle man between a buyer and seller. Effectively, you earn a pre-agreed commission when someone buys the products you are promoting. For a lengthier definition see Webopedia’s definition.

A definition of affiliate marketing can be visualized as follows:

visual definition of affiliate marketing

Merchant or Affiliate Program Provider

The Merchant or affiliate program provider is the entity that supplies the affiliate marketing products you will be promoting and selling. Merchants establish their online presence by means of a merchant website. They advertise their desire to engage prospective affiliates by posting an affiliate agreement on their site. In this agreement they establish various conditions such as the products for sale, the affiliate marketing commissions payable, payment conditions and so on. Care must be taken when inspecting such sites because of affiliate marketing scams. There is a small percentage of merchants who are dishonest.

Definition of Affiliate Marketing – Positioning of Your Site

In the above affiliate marketing definition diagram, you are the focal point. You are very passionate about a topic and decide to build a website. You feel that you could really present good information about this topic.

While creating the actual website you come up with another great idea. Why not try to make money online by selling a product related to your topic? But you might felt helpless (as I used to) because you had no product of your own. You have a choice – either create your own product or sell products made by someone else. Creating your own products is not impossible but it does mean hard work. Selling ready-made products looks more attractive.

So you search around for merchants / affiliate program providers. These can be found individually or in an affiliate marketing directory. You check them out and find a product you really like. You sign up with the merchant and get your own unique affiliate link. You continue building your website and prominently display the affiliate product. Your website is ready and you put it live on the internet. You now start to promote your website. You are in business!

Potential customers

These are the final part in the equation. They are searching for information related to your website topic and come across your website. They feel that your website provides good and informative content. They also feel that you are really knowledgeable about the topic. They are interested in your site and start to browse around. They are presold because of the good information you have in your site. Your product looks like what they have been looking for. And some decide to buy through your affiliate link. Bingo – you are now making money online!

The next step to become a successful affiliate marketer is checking out the affiliate marketing for beginners checklist.


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Nov 042012
 

How does affiliate marketing work is a question whose answer is very simple to understand.

Understanding this concept will put you miles ahead of the competition. Indirectly, you will also understand the basics of affiliate marketing. This will be an important step in your journey to becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

So How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Basically you are the link between the merchant and the customer.

Let us say that the merchant is offering 60% affiliate marketing commissions on all his products. And the product we intend to promote sells at $50.

Therefore, for every sale I should approximately pocket $30 ($50 x 60%). I say approximately because there might be some charges for money to be transferred in my account. But $30 should be a good guideline.

This is the brief answer to the question: How does affiliate marketing work?

However there is more. Read on…

The advantages? You don’t process payments, don’t handle complaints and don’t need to keep any stocks!

From the typical example above, it becomes clear that to succeed in affiliate marketing:

  • Treat It Like A Business
    If you want your efforts to make money online to be really successful, then treat it as a serious business. This is one of the most important of all the affiliate marketing basics. If treated as a hobby, it will only render results of a hobby. It all depends on your commitment and perseverance.
  • Check for Possible Scams
    You must check the merchant’s website for possible affiliate marketing scams. A good merchant will also have a spotless reputation. Simply Google the merchant’s name together with the word scam. If there are many results, then it’s best to stay away from its site.
  • Understand How the Merchant Runs Its Affiliate Program
    In the example above of how does affiliate marketing work, the merchant was using the Pay-Per-Sale method. This means you get paid a pre-agreed percentage of the product selling price when you make a sale. It is the most common method used by merchants. However you might meet merchants offering other methods:CPC or Cost-Per-Click is when merchants allow you to display their banners, text link or other promotional method on your site. In return, you will get paid a small fee everytime a visitor clicks on them, regardless if a sale is eventually made. Today this practice is mainly restricted to contextual advertising. CPA or Cost-Per-Action is a general way of saying you will get paid for a pre-agreed action made by your customer. The most common action is a Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) or Pay-Per-Lead (PPL). This usually happens when a customer fills out a form. The merchant pays you for introducing visitors. Then it will decide to convert them into customers or not.
  • Picking The Right Products
    Choosing the right affiliate marketing products is essential to be successful. It’s no use trying to make money online if we choose lousy products. Products with huge competition, bad reviews and so on will not help our efforts.
  • Promoting More Than One Product
    Everyone knows the expression “Do not put all your eggs in one basket”. This is especially true in affiliate marketing. Ideally you are promoting a product in a niche that you are familiar with. This will ensure that you know what you are talking about in your website.You should promote at least two related products on your website. It also shows that you are giving your would-be customer a choice.Also promote different products in different niches. Do not stick with one niche. Why? Diversify – your original product choice might not be doing well.
  • Driving Traffic
    Without traffic, our efforts are doomed. We need visitors to be turned into customers. There are 2 ways of driving traffic: free or paid traffic. Free traffic is mainly obtained by being in top positions in the search engine rankings. To do so you would need a website. However it takes hard work to get there. Paid traffic is less work but more costly. However you could then perform affiliate marketing without a website, saving the costs and time of building a website and hosting.

Now that you have understood the answers to the question how does affiliate marketing work, you are now ready to start choosing suitable affiliate marketing products.


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Oct 272012
 

Affiliate marketing products are the products that we, as affiliates, will be promoting. Since you now understand how does affiliate marketing work, the time has come to choose the affiliate marketing products that you intend to promote. And hopefully sell!

As explained before, the beauty of affiliate marketing is that if you do not have your own product, you can still make money online by selling other people’s products. You simply earn commissions when a buyer makes a purchase.

Digital or Physical Affiliate Marketing Products?

Affiliate marketing products can be roughly classified into physical or digital products. Physical products are those like fridges, cookers, cars, computers and so on. Digital products are those products that are downloadable from the internet.

Physical products have some slight disadvantages when thinking of using them as affiliate products. Customers tend to want to inspect them, open them, test them and so forth. What sometimes happens, is that they read the information you provide in a review of a physical product. Afterwards, they might go to the nearest shop and inspect them there. More often than not, the majority of customers will then actually purchase the product there.

However online merchants selling physical products usually offer better prices and this might be an incentive to would-be buyers. Don’t get me wrong, there are affiliate marketers who earn a lot of money online selling physical products. The trick to selling physical affiliate products is to use reputable affiliate marketing companies like Amazon.

Digital Products are affiliate marketing products that are in a digital form, such as software and ebooks, They are usually related to providing information whether providing analysis or value. Because many people use the internet to seek information, digital products are ideal products to promote. Why? The internet is all about instant information gratification. And this is where digital products come into play: They are immediately available for download once payment is done. Clickbank is one of the largest online marketplace for digital products.

Finding Affiliate Marketing Products

The easiest way to find affiliate products is to search in Google using “product + affiliate”. For example if you want to find products related to flowers then you would search as shown below.

finding affiliate marketing products

Then use the following checklist for more ideas:

  • Look for Two Similar Products
    While looking for the product you intend to sell, keep an eye open for another related affiliate marketing product. This other product could be a directly competing product or complimentary product. For example if you intend to enter the fridge niche, then you can for example promote 2 rival brands. This gives your readers a sense of choice.
  • Look for a Cross-sell and an Upsell Product
    However you might also want to consider promoting a chest freezer for added freezing space. This is an example of a complimentary product.
    Also look for an upsell product. In the example of the fridge and freezers, you might also want to upsell a fitted kitchen that incorporates a fridge and freezer in the kitchen layout. Got the idea?

Choosing Affiliate Marketing Products

Here are a few pointers when choosing good products:

Choose a Niche You Know Well
Although you can promote products in any niche, it’s best to start out with products in a niche you know well. Actually I can rephrase the last sentence by saying that you can promote products in any niche unless you are prepared to fully research the niche.

Choose Evergreen Niches
Unless you are fast on the mark, it’s best to stick with evergreen niches. What is an evergreen niche? Just like evergreen trees that remain green in any season, your prospective niche should be a niche that has stood the test of time. Niches like weight loss, sports and so on are examples. They are easier to handle as there is a lot of information out there to help you in your research.

However if you are able to spot the next cool niche, by all means go into it. These niches come and go. The idea is that you get in at the very beginning and hold on for the ride while it lasts.

Money Back Guarantee
Would-be customers always like a money back guarantee. Does the affiliate marketing product have one? It’s always best to find products with a money back guarantee as it keeps their mind at rest that they have a way out if unhappy.

Try to Own the Product You are Promoting
The biggest advantage to doing so is that you will shine in when you write about your niche and product. If you have already bought a product that you found very useful, then writing about it will become second nature. Knowing the niche and Knowing the product is the killer combination!

Price and Commissions
In brief, if the products are really good but have lousy prices and / or lousy affiliate marketing commissions then it’s best to give it a miss.

The product price is eventually what will compel a visitor to buy or not. If the price is too expensive then a visitor will look somewhere else. If the product is too cheap then a potential customer will think that the product has little value. So how do you determine if the price is right?

An easy way is to see how much are similar products selling at. Another way is too think as a customer would. Does the sales page over-deliver? Does the product really satisfy my needs?

See What Other People Are Saying
This is all about perception – what are other people saying about your chosen affiliate marketing products? Too many negative reviews will scare your customer away. Google the product for negative reviews, see what comes up. If the negative comments are few and trivial, such as people wanting more pictures, then I will still stick to my chosen product. But if the negative comments are numerous and more fundamental (such as off topic, not finding what was advertised), I would look for other affiliate marketing products.

Finally, before moving on to what everyone is really interested about – making commissions – it’s best to check out some common affiliate marketing scams to save us doing hard work for nothing!

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Oct 212012
 

Affiliate Marketing Commissions are the ultimate reward for all your hard work. More often than not, an affiliate marketing commission is worked out as a percentage of the product selling price.

Let’s say some time ago, I found some affiliate marketing products that I really would like to promote. They’re in a niche I know very well. And one I really like is selling for $55 and the merchant is offering 50% commission.

So I sign up and the merchant gives me a unique link to use to promote the product. This unique affiliate link allows the merchant to track my sales and allocate all affiliate marketing commissions to my affiliate account. Therefore I start promoting the product aggressively.

So How much will I earn?
On every sale I get an approximate gross commission of $27 (60% x $50). And I used the word gross commission because there might some third party commission fees such as Paypal and handling fees.Clickbank Affiliate Marketing Commissions

Types of affiliate marketing commissions

I like to split affiliate marketing commissions broadly into two: lifetime (or recurring) and one-off. So what’s the difference?

  • One-off commissions are those commissions that are paid once for every sale. In the example above, you will be paid $30 and that’s it. To make more money you have to sell the product to another customer. The underlying theory is simple: you constantly need new customers to make commissions.
  • Recurring affiliate marketing commissions are usually earned when the product requires a recurring payment by the customer as opposed to a one-time payment. A monthly subscription is a good example and so the commissions attached to this product are paid monthly. Every time customers pay their monthly subscription, you earn the commission.

The difference between a recurring and a one-off is usually in the amount payable. Recurring are usually paid at lower percentage rates than one-offs. But recurring commissions keep on coming in. They can build up into a nice monthly cheque – they are a regular source of income! On the other hand, one-offs are an irregular source of income. The lesson: Try to sell products that pay out recurring commissions!

There is also another type of commission which is called a referral. It is used extensively in Cost Per Action (or CPA) programs. You get paid for a commission if someone does an action, such as signing up for an offer and so on.

A referral is also common in multi-tier affiliate programs. It works like this: you refer a potential customer who signs up for free with the merchant. The new person you introduced is placed one level below you. If, and only if, the new customer buys something you earn money. If the merchant allows it, you can also earn money from his referrals.

You might be wondering if this is a pyramid scheme. It’s not for a very simple reason. The new customer is NOT being asked to pay money to join the affiliate program.

Protecting your affiliate marketing commissions

Before trying to sell our first product, we have to make certain that no money is snatched away from us.

First step is to check for affiliate marketing scams.

Next is to cloak our affiliate link. Why? Because they look suspicious and weird – putting off potential customers. Unscrupulous visitors might also try to hijack your affiliate link by inserting their affiliate link. Or they might cut you off completely by going directly to the merchant’s site. Either way you lose your commissions and nothing to show for our hard work.

Affiliate links usually look something like this:

http://www.bestproduct.com/?affiliate_id=27401

Wouldn’t it look better if it looks like this www.bestproduct.com?

The link looks clean and fresh. No hint of an affiliate link! And that’s what programs like Ninja Link Cloaker do! This amazing program effectively hides or cloaks your affiliate link, protecting and increasing your earnings. The price for this software will easily be recouped by the sales you would have lost if you did not have this tool. Find out more here

How to earn more affiliate marketing commissions

Now that our commissions are protected, we aim for more! Remember your first affiliate marketing commission? Felt like you won the lottery, right? Let’s see how to repeat that feeling many times over :)

What I usually do is buy the product with the money I just earned. My reasoning goes like this:

If I sold one product just by looking at the sales page, how many more would I sell if I knew the product inside out? There are no guarantees but this plan has helped me achieve more sales since I started using this method. And more commissions. Why? Because now I speak both as a promoter and as a user of this product. The extra knowledge and passion I have for this product presells my customer even more. End result? – more sales!

These commissions are the fruit for our hard work. We must aim to make more. And affiliate marketing commissions must be protected at all costs if we want to be successful as affiliate marketers.

Our next step is to check out affiliate marketing strategies to put everything together.


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Oct 142012
 

Affiliate marketing scams are all over the internet. The good news is that you do not have to be a genius to spot these scams. And it’s a very small percentage of affiliate merchants who are dishonest. In brief, they cheat you out of your commissions and keep all the sale proceeds to themselves.

It always starts like this:

After days browsing and searching for affiliate marketing products, you finally feel that you found the perfect product. Good commission, good presentation and good material to promote. You are eager to sign up and start promoting.

Stop! Don’t rush. You have to finish the most important part of your product analysis… ensure you are not being scammed.

avoid affiliate marketing scams

Here are 12 Ways to Spot Affiliate Marketing Scams

  • Are you being asked for money upfront? I would run!
  • No affiliate support contact? See if the merchant is offering an email address or contact form for affiliate support. Contact them and see if they reply. No replies after a reasonable amount of time is not a good sign.
  • Some merchants offer a free website to start out. The problem is that they control everything. Moreover you might end up not knowing anything about your visitors’ statistics.
  • Are there multiple payment options? Preferably the site should offer only one way to receive payment.
  • Are there many external links? This is one of the classic affiliate marketing scams. Why? These are distracting and worse, could lead your would-be buyer elsewhere to purchase, resulting in a lost sale.
  • Are other similar products being advertised on the merchant’s site? Possibly cheaper or have more features?
  • Is there a prominent link to sign up as an affiliate? Your potential buyer could become an affiliate and purchase the product himself.
  • Are there offers to get a free report or join a mailing list? Using these methods, the affiliate merchant could make a sale via his own link.
  • Watch out for this Affiliate Marketing Scam! Does a popup appear when leaving the site? In this way, the merchant could possibly convert a leaving visitor into a sale and cut you out of any commission.
  • Is there a prominent merchant hotline or toll-free number displayed? Chances of cheating are greatly increased. Why? Because the would-be buyer might call the number and the merchant might advise another route instead of allowing the potential buyer to purchase using your affiliate link.
  • Are there are sales tracking tools offered by the merchant? No? Then how should we be able to see how many visitors landed on our website? Or, more importantly, how many visitors actually bought the product we are promoting?
  • Is there a lot of fine print? Don’t understand all of it? What does retainer fees means? What to do? Ask the affiliate program provider direct questions and see what they come up with. Or ask in an affiliate marketing forum for 3rd party answers.
  • Is there a money back guarantee? There isn’t?? Then I will leave it alone. Today, a money back guarantee is standard and customers are put off when they do not see one.

All the affiliate marketing scams above are important but I left this affiliate marketing scam for the end. Call it the unlucky 13th if you like. As you will read, this is very important to retain your credibility.

If you are sure that the merchant looks genuine, I would try to own the product. Not a review copy but actually go through the buying process myself. The reasons are simple:

What better way to promote your product then to own it and know it inside out?

More important: A review copy could be sent out but is a product delivered after checkout in the sales process?

There is no faster way to lose credibility than to promote a product that does not exist! This means that after the payment process there is no thank you page or no email received with the product download link. This scamming method hurts you big time. Because you convinced potential customers to buy something that doesn’t exist. And they will always suspect that you have a cut in this scam and they will talk about your site all over the internet!

The solution: use reputable providers like Amazon and Commission Junction among others.

ALWAYS check ALL these underhanded tactics BEFORE starting to promote the actual affiliate product. You will save yourself the hassle of promoting and not getting paid.

If you know of any other affiliate marketing scams, please share in the comments section below.

Did your product pass the affiliate marketing scams test? Good, so let’s move onto our desired rewards – affiliate marketing commissions.


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Oct 102012
 

Do You Need a Website for Affiliate Marketing? Nope! You can do affiliate marketing without a website and this simply means you do not need to have a website as part of your affiliate marketing strategies. You can also take this to mean as not having a blog.

Diagrammatically, this unique method can be shown as:

Affiliate Marketing without a website diagram

So in effect you generate traffic and direct it straight to the merchants’ site. And pocket the affiliate marketing commissions. Obviously after choosing an affiliate product and ensuring that you cannot get scammed.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing Without a Website

The biggest advantage is no site required. This leaves you more time to concentrate on building traffic through many promotion methods. In this manner you save on hosting and to a certain extent a domain name.

Disadvantages

Since you do not have a site of your own, you do not have a place where to show your knowledge and products (whether your own or affiliate products). You also forsake the use of other powerful ways to make money online such as email marketing, blogging, selling advertising and so on.

You also don’t have the benefit of free traffic through search engines because you do not own a site. It is not an easy way – you must constantly drive traffic to the merchants’ site or your income dries up the minute you stop. And you have virtually no chance of recurring visitors or repeat customers because you have no way of knowing your visitors, so upselling and cross-selling are non-existent.

Ways to use Affiliate Marketing Without a Website

One of the simplest ways to make money online is to use offline advertising. Offline advertising methods such as newspaper ads and flyers can be very successful methods to drive traffic. In the first case, just pop down to your local newspaper and take out an ad with a link to your merchants’ site. On the other hand, flyers are simple to create and print. Or get a printing company to print out your flyers in a professional manner. Then just hire a distribution firm to distribute them to households.

Another way of using affiliate marketing without a website of your own is to use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. You create an ad, sign up for Google Adwords, deposit money in your newly set up account and start to bid for the keywords you wish to rank highly for. Your ad should appear in the right hand column of Google’s search engine rankings. Ranking highly depends on a number of factors: the competition, your choice of keywords, and the amount of visitors clicking on your ad (the more, the cheaper your ad becomes). If your ad ranks highly, you are likely to get a good number of visitors and hopefully a good number of sales.

Similar to PPC above, you can approach high ranking websites for a niche you like. A simple Google search will reveal such sites. You could email the webmaster and ask for the advertising rates. If acceptable, you pay for your ad (whether graphic or text) which includes your affiliate link. Like this you are using classified ads. You could also seek out e-zine publishers and pay for an ad that will be seen by their subscribers. Or you could use sites such as Craigslist.

You can start using affiliate marketing without a website by owning your hub or lens. I am referring to HubPages and Squidoo. These allow you to create a hub and lens respectively which are mini-sites but without having to pay for hosting and a domain. You can build a site, advertise affiliate products and pocket the profits. You can also display advertising like Google Adsense or Kontera and share in revenue generated by such ads with HubPages and Squidoo.

I don’t recall mentioning this method before but if it works you could really make big affiliate money without a website. Create ebooks with affiliate links and upload them to sites like eBookBay – you make money by selling ebooks and also if people buy through your affiliate links.

Use your facebook and twitter account to sell to friends and followers. Want to go one step further? Advertise on Facebook and send people to your merchant site.

I left article marketing, forums, blog commenting and guest blogging for the end. These methods of affiliate marketing without a website have all one thing in common. You are allowed to write content/ reply and leave your link. Depending on the article directory, forum or blog you may or you may not be allowed to leave an affiliate link. Always check the Terms of Use before attempting to leave an affiliate link. You might get banned!

If you are allowed to leave an affiliate link then all is well. If you cannot leave an affiliate link, then you need to set up a domain redirect to the merchant’s site.

These are some of the most popular strategies using affiliate marketing without a website. Obviously this list is not and will never be complete given the number of creative ways internet marketers constantly develop. Please check this page from time to time as I will be adding more new ways to earn money online through affiliate marketing without a website.


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Jul 242012
 

Meta refresh, or meta redirect tag or HTML redirect as it is also sometimes known, is another way of redirecting affiliate links. This happens when a user lands on your site and clicks on your affiliate link. The user then lands on another page having a meta refresh tag encoded with your affiliate link. This page then sends the user to the affiliate merchant’s site.  This ensures that any sale made is credited to you and you earn an affiliate commission as agreed beforehand.

Just for the record this method achieves the same results just like the previous methods I showed you in how to redirect affiliate links. These were a domain redirect and a php redirect. In these cases, the redirection was instantaneous and the visitor would not be able to see any transition.

However using this method is slightly different in that a timer can be set. This means that the redirect does not need to be instantaneous but can be delayed by as long as you like. This is usually done so that a message can be inserted informing visitors that they are to be redirected. Ever seen the message “You are about to be redirected to So and So within 5 seconds”? This is achieved by using a meta refresh.

Anatomy of a meta refresh

HTML is used to code a meta refresh. The coding is simple and below is a fully explained example:

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”5;url=http://affiliate link.com/”>

The number 5 means 5 seconds and this is the time that the existing page will be displayed before moving on to the affiliate site. This can be changed as desired. If you want an instantaneous redirect set the timer to 0. The “affiliate link.com” will be swapped with your affiliate link.

So if your site is called A and someone clicks on the link to buy your advertised affiliate product, they will be redirected to another site called B. B has the meta refresh encoded in it and after 5 seconds the same person will be redirected to the affiliate site. You could display a message on site B taking the form “Redirecting to Product Site in 5 seconds”.

meta refresh visual

Here is the coding below:

<html>

<head>

<title>Redirecting You</title>

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”5;URL=http://affiliate site.com/”>

</head>

<body>

Redirecting to Product Site in 5 seconds.

</body>

</html>

Please note that the HTML snippet has to always be placed in the <head> section.

Disadvantages of Using Meta refresh

The use of this redirect can be disabled on the client side and so will not work.

If visitors click the back button after the redirect was done, they end up on the redirecting page and are redirected again. This is not good for user experience on your site.

Search engines may penalise you, as this method was and is still used by spammers.

One uses this form of redirect when using free web hosting. Why? Because they are unable to access their domain settings in the case of a domain redirect. And they are also unable to upload php files to their web host as they have no web hosting. And there are also serious disadvantages when using free web hosting. Click here for more details

So meta refresh has lost its popularity and today the two other methods are superior as explained in the how to redirect affiliate links tutorial. However for the people still using free web hosting, this method allows them a way of site redirection.

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