Saturday, December 8, 2007

Benefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer

Benefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer


Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner.

The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website.


In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.


Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate because of the pay-for-performance scheme.


Both the merchant and the affiliate enjoy some benefits in affiliate marketing. There are many benefits on the merchant's side. It gives the merchant a wider market in which to advertise a product or service. Affiliate marketing will give the product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques. The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, which can convert to sales. Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who will do the advertising and will only get a commission if a customer purchases.


Meanwhile, since an affiliate marketing relationship is a win-win situation, the affiliate also enjoys many benefits.


Foremost among these is the easy way to make a profit. The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant's website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase. As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate's site, is redirected to the merchant's website and goes on to buy that particular product, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals there are the more profit for the affiliate.


Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn money while at home.


  • There are virtually no production costs.
  • The product is already developed and proven by the merchant, and all you have to do to find, as many prospects as you can that will bring in the profit for both the merchant and the affiliate.
  • Affiliate programs are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs.
  • There are thousands of products and services you can choose from. You can find affiliate programs for every product under the sun.
Surely, there is a product or service out there that is relevant to your website.

In addition, there is absolutely no sales experience necessary.


Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material. The simplicity of affiliate marketing allows you to be an affiliate marketer at the least cost and the most comfort.

You can even build a successful affiliate marketing business right in the convenience of your own home. In affiliate marketing, your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, and product shipping.

These, along with customer service support are the duties of the merchant.


Because of the global reach of the internet, you can easily find thousands of prospects. You can intensify your advertising campaign by exploiting more aggressive and productive strategies such as viral marketing.

By attracting more prospects, you also maximize your potential to earn. Another benefit of an affiliate marketer is the minimal risk involved. If the product you are advertising is not making money then you can dump it and choose another. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to products that are not mBenefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer


Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner.

The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website.

In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate because of the pay-for-performance scheme.


Both the merchant and the affiliate enjoy some benefits in affiliate marketing. There are many benefits on the merchant's side. It gives the merchant a wider market in which to advertise a product or service. Affiliate marketing will give the product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques. The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, which can convert to sales.

Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who will do the advertising and will only get a commission if a customer purchases.


Meanwhile, since an affiliate marketing relationship is a win-win situation, the affiliate also enjoys many benefits. Foremost among these is the easy way to make a profit. The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant's website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase. As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate's site, is redirected to the merchant's website and goes on to buy that particular product, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals there are the more profit for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn money while at home.


There are virtually no production costs. The product is already developed and proven by the merchant, and all you have to do to find, as many prospects as you can that will bring in the profit for both the merchant and the affiliate. Affiliate programs are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs. There are thousands of products and services you can choose from. You can find affiliate programs for every product under the sun. Surely, there is a product or service out there that is relevant to your website.

In addition, there is absolutely no sales experience necessary. Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material. The simplicity of affiliate marketing allows you to be an affiliate marketer at the least cost and the most comfort.

You can even build a successful affiliate marketing business right in the convenience of your own home. In affiliate marketing, your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, and product shipping.

These, along with customer service support are the duties of the merchant.


Because of the global reach of the internet, you can easily find thousands of prospects. You can intensify your advertising campaign by exploiting more aggressive and productive strategies such as viral marketing. By attracting more prospects, you also maximize your potential to earn. Another benefit of an affiliate marketer is the minimal risk involved. If the product you are advertising is not making money then you can dump it and choose another. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to products that are not making enough money.

All the same, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to increase your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business.


With your own affiliate business, you can earn easily earn extra income, although you do have to exert effort and use your imagination to maximize your earning potential.

Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective business opportunities on the web today.

Why Is Keyword Research So Important?

Why is keyword research so important?
Well, even if you're doing affiliate marketing, you'll need to find a way to reach your target market. There are so many websites out there peddling their wares that you need to find a niche within a niche in order to find a small group of people who are actively searching for whatever you have to offer.
This is especially true in the world of home business opportunities and information products.
For example, your main keyword cannot be "Home Business" or "Internet Marketing" when you are starting out with your new home business. There are too many big companies out there compeing for those keywords who have tons of advertising money and have been around for a while.
Think about your interests and your strengths.
You want your website to reflect on topics that you have researched or learned through experience. Is there something you've always wanted to learn? Something you are an expert on? Something you're really interested in?

Figure out what your going to make your website about and then research the possible keywords you could use. Make sure you check out your competition and see how you could give your target market something different.
Give them something more than they're currently finding on the Internet.
When you're doing your research, don't be afraid to dig really deep and find out what your market wants that they're not already able to find. This is going to be your long term strategy. You want your site to be content filled and resourseful enough that you won't have any trouble getting other webmasters to do link exchanges with you.
Let's do a little brainstorming.
Let's say that you're an affiliate marketer. You need to think like someone who is searching for what you have to offer. Let's say you're selling an information product about starting a home based business. This can be a really hard niche to get noticed in because there are so many information products out there and there are so many affiliate opportunities out there.

So, you can narrow your topic down to your area(s) of expertise.
  • Have you tried different methods of running your business without success? make your website about what NOT to do when starting a home based business.
  • Are you a techie? Make your website a how to website for the more technical aspects of home business set up.
  • Are you a master at creating website design? make your website a how to for home business entrepreneurs who want to have their own website.
  • Are you a people person? Get into network marketing and make your website about techniques network marketers can use when prospecting.
Even if your not an expert yet, find a topic that interests you and get to researching it!
If you plan out your business before creating your first website, you'll save a lot of time and money. Whatever it is that you want to do, you'll find plenty of learning resources on the Internet. Just remember to be careful out there.

There are a lot of "companies" selling information that can be found for free on the Internet. I am always adding new free resources for Newbie affiliate marketers, because you are their prime target. Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter. before you leave here today.

With that said, there are also some really good products out there if you want to learn something in detail. For example, I really wanted my business to get a head start and I found an awesome full course on Internet Marketing (after buying a couple of other 'newbie targeted' products that were junk). I also wanted to get a thorough education on website design and found a great product for that as well. Those are just some examples of things that I wanted to have some know how on and I found it.

There are resources on the Internet for just about any subject you could ever wajnt to learn about. Just be aware of the 'expert competition' that's already out there.

One thing I found when researching the "Home Business" niche is that a lot of people are just parading their opportunities on a website with a good domain name.
If you set out to help people rather than make a quick buck, I promise you that you'll have far greater results.
That was the best advice I ever got when I was building my business online. Once I really set out to give my readers good solid information instead of trying to 'sell them', I got a lot more interested people coming to my other website.
Now, I want to offer you some help.
If you want a head start, I have a great opportunity that is really exploding. The best part is, I have a list of keywords that people are actively searching but aren't finding much of a solution.

Monday, December 3, 2007

'Insider secrets' to marketing your business on the internet

By Derek Gehl

Product Review

By: Sheree Motiska

How many times have you bought an ebook claiming to give you the secrets of starting a home based business only to find you were still clueless?

What if you could have, physically in your hands, an entire 8 step bluprint to your business at home?

That's what you get with Derek Gehl's 800+ page Internet Marketing Course.

Not only that, but you also get a bunch of inspirational audio CD's and a "Website Makeovers" DVD for business websites.

I'm going to tell you exactly what you're going to get in Derek Gehl's course (without giving away his secrets of course).

Let's go through
each of the 2 parts (2 binders, each approximately 4oo pages of good, solid instruction).

Part I : "Build Your Business"
Lessons 1-44
Steps 1-5
Step 1 Talks about researching your niche and deciding what you're going to sell, before you start signing up for affiliate programs and buying resale rights to all kinds of different types of products. The best part about Step 1 is Lesson 9 where Derek talks about branding strategies for your home business.

Don't think you can't get your business branded, you can.

Step 2 is a detailed, 5 lesson course on how to write good salescopy and what kind of salescopy works best with each type of business model. It doesn't matter whether you're offering a product, a service, or someone else's product or service, you need salescopy. Otherwise, the customer won't know why they need what you're offering.

Step 3 is my favorite step. Here Derek teaches you, in lessons 16-28, how to design a great website for your business.
  1. Choosing a great domain name depending what you're offering.
  2. Choosing a web host.
  3. Designing your website.
  4. How to accept credit cards and other payment methods.
  5. Putting a shopping cart into your site.
  6. how to deliver your products.
  7. How to automate some of your customer service.
  8. Protecting your business from fraud.
  9. Dealing with chargebacks & refund requests.
This was my favorite lesson, there is also a DVD that goes with it for visual aid. Before I read this, I thought my site looked just fine. I also thought it was optimized for search engines. Boy was I wrong Then, I went out into the home business opportunities niche and saw that many amrketers are amking a very common mistake with their web pages. Once I fixed the mistake on my site, traffic really changed, and so did my opt-ins.

Step 4 is all about Search Engine Optimization to get targeted traffic to your website. You get a lesson in search engines and how they work followed by step by step directories for getting your home business website ranked in search engines. There's even a Pay Per Click lesson.Then, it goes into detail about how each page and the "secret" to getting all of your pages indexed in the "Big 4" of the search engines.

Step 5 gives you 9 lessons on "The Secret Sources Of Cheap and Even Free Traffic."
  • How to get other sites to link to you (very important for search engine rankings)
  • Giving away expert content
  • Viral marketing
  • Forum marketing
  • Classified ads
  • And more.
Then, we come to...

Part 2:" grow Your Business"

  • Lessons 45-64
  • Steps 6-8
Step 6 is 13 lessons on "how to build your opt-in list" which is about the most important part of your entire business. You need people that actually want to hear what you have to say.
  • Newsletters and other methods of collecting opt-ins.
  • How to create a great opt-in offer.
  • How to manage you list.
  • How to abide by spam laws when doing e mail promotions.
  • How to write and format emails.
  • And more email marketing tips and tricks.
Step 7 is "How To Increase Your Income With Follow- Up Offers."

Step 8 is about taking affiliate marketing to the next level. Even having your own affiliates to make money for you!

Then, you've got extra secrets to effective Internet marketing and a glossary, which is especially helpful for the Newbie Internet marketer. It explains what all of those Internet business terms really mean.

All in all, this is the most in-depth and well organized guide to starting a legitimate home based business I've seen so far.

I refer to this course every day and I learn something new every day.

Insider Secrets To Marketing Your ZBusiness On The Internet