Affiliate Marketing Tips for the Newbie

Today, many of us want to pack up our jobs and be our own bosses. The idea of working for YOU is attractive to many folk. However, the vast majority of us cannot get a business off the ground due to two main factors; the first being money, and the second being the risk involved.

Starting even a small business takes a fair amount of money. You need to buy or rent premises, purchase your stock and equipment, and pay staff if you have any. You will also have other expenses such as advertising, mailing, transport etc.

Even if you’re lucky enough to obtain the capital with which to start, nearly 90% of all small businesses fail in the first year. If yours is one of the lucky ones, you have to keep reinvesting your time and money to build up your business’ reputation. It could be anywhere from 5-7 years before any significant profit is seen. Patience was not a virtue with which many of us are blessed, not me anyway, so we really cannot wait that long. This is one of the reasons that affiliate marketing is such an attractive option for many.

Affiliate marketing involves you, working as an affiliate for a merchant or company. You sell either goods or services and you’re paid on the number of sales that you can make. There are no costs and no risk. You put in the time and the effort and are rewarded accordingly.

Running an affiliate marketing business is challenging. You’ll have to work very hard to build it up. However, you will be rewarded for your hard work, and not someone else. Getting an affiliate marketing programme going may seem difficult. The truth is that it is down to you and how much you want to put into it. There is no sure fire way to success but there are some good tips that you can follow to make your affiliate marketing scheme as successful as possible.

There are literally thousands of programmes for you to choose from. However, to get started you may want to choose something that you are familiar with. This product or service may not be the hottest thing on the current market or make you a millionaire, but you will certainly sound more confident and sincere if you are trying to sell something that you know and believe in.

This will also help when it comes to creating your site. Something familiar will allow you to be personal and creative. Trying to create a site around something you know little about will soon become boring and tedious, and your readers and would be customers will notice—trust me! You can always expand, and start promoting other things at a latter time when you have more confidence, and you are more familiar with marketing practices.

I will let you in on a secret tactic now that will come in handy for you in months and years to come. (You can thank me sometime!) A very successful way of getting buyers to click on your ads is to have a review site set up, giving a comparison of different books, courses etc. which are related to the same topic. One of my review sites can be seen here. After all, you can walk into any supermarket, and you’ll find several competing products stacked on the same shelf. The reason is simple …. It makes it convenient for the buyers to make direct comparisons, and then choose for themselves which product best suits their needs.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money, as the risk to you is minimal and there are no start up costs. There are many great affiliate marketing programmes out there and choosing the right one may seem like a daunting task. When you first start out remember to stick to what you know. Find something you know about and have an interest in. Make your site attractive to others, and resist the urge to fill it with banners. Finally remember, there is no perfect programme. Some will have success where others have failed. It is all down to YOU!

Basic Affiliate Internet Marketing

All of us would love to make a little more money. Sometimes just a little to supplement our 9-5 income can be a huge help. Today it is easier that you think to get a little extra cash into your bank account (or accounts, if you’re successful!). Quite a few of us today have our own personal websites, usually blogs. We can get them for free and use them as a method to keep others informed of what we are doing. You can actually turn your website into a way of making some extra cash for you. By placing some ads on your site, you have the potential to earn some cash.

Whenever folk go onto your site, and they see an ad that is interesting and click on it, you receive what is known as a referral payment. The more clicks the better. Gradually your earnings will increase as your website gets more views. I’m surprised that even I could work that one out!

You’re not very likely to get filthy rich with just your own personal website. However, it is a way to get started. There may come a time when you create another site and you can start turning that one into a money making venture. You could sign up for an affiliate program and make money through their ads. To do this well you need to think of an appropriate affiliate program that readers of your site would appreciate. For example, if your site deals with pets, you may want to look for affiliates that work with pet supplies, pet food or veterinary services. As I think I mentioned in another post, having ads for rare books or sporting goods on a website dealing with pets is not a very bright idea, and certainly won’t too much attention.

Once you have a site up and running, you need to get a list of affiliate companies that will give you their advertising banners. There are loads of companies on the net that will help you. You can also get performance statistics on them as well. You will be able to track how much you will earn and how you will be paid. Once you get a few banners onto your site you’ll be able to check the progress for yourself.

Two companies that are incredibly popular are Commission Junction and LinkShare. These will both help you find affiliates for your website. They have loads of good, accurate information available on what companies would be best and how well they perform.

Signing up for one of those affiliate programs couldn’t be easier. You will be asked for personal information, but don’t let that put you off. This is necessary because they will be paying you commission money.

Commission Junction has all of the information available on which companies pay which rates of commission. They also have information on how well and timely they make their payments. If a company has a dodgy reputation, Commission Junction will be aware of it.

Of course, there are individual programmes that you could sell for commission, and which are not listed with those companies, or with the big one, Clickbank. You can see an example here – I began selling this ebook just a couple of days ago, and the response has been encouraging, to say the least. I had bought and read the book myself, and it’s got loads of great tips on how to make recurring income, even by using Ebay.

If you’re looking to make a little more money then it is fairly easy. Why not take the first step and turn your personal website into a way to make cash? Fill up those blank spaces with advertisements and let the money roll in. you can always expand and create different websites. The more ads you can get, the better for your pocket. Affiliate programmes are great ways to help you earn money. You can start off in a small way with your own site and then expand into other areas. Eventually, you could build your own affiliate business. Look into affiliate marketing. It could be quite lucrative.

Affiliate Marketing and Pay Per Click

Do you want to make more money? Do you want to turn that computer you spent so much money on into a cash cow? Well it is possible. It won’t happen overnight but with time and hard work you’ll soon be working from home if you so choose.

Do you currently have a website? Do you wonder why it isn’t making you any money? You keep posting great content, great writing samples and articles, but still your balance stays at zero, zilch! Well perhaps you need to expand your horizons. By signing up for pay per click affiliate sites you can soon see cash going into your account simply by maintaining your site.

One of the most popular pay per click programmes is Google Adsense. Google Adsense will take care of the advertising for you. When you sign up, your site will have new advertisements and banner places in the open spaces. If anyone visits your site and clicks on one of the ads, you get a referral payment. Again, Google takes care of the ad placement allowing you to concentrate on increasing the traffic to your site.

Joining a scheme such as Google Adsense is an excellent idea. They will help to promote your site and advise you on how to increase your traffic.

If you have been maintaining your website for a while, you probably know that one of the best ways to attract traffic is through the use of keywords. The right keywords should have visitors flocking to your site. The wrong words will not attract anyone, believe me! Sites such as Google Adsense can help with this, of course. They operate Google Adwords, which helps to maximize the key word usage and help get the correct one for the most traffic. Google does charge for this service so you need to be sure it is worth it before you buy. You don’t want all of your profits eaten up by what you are paying for Adwords.

When you sign up for Google Adsense, you can be assured that appropriate ads will be placed on your webpage. If you have a pet care site then things related to that topic will be placed. Obscure ads that have nothing to do with your page are not likely to impress or interest your reader, or increase your earnings.

Google Adsense is only one example of search engines that offer a pay per click money making service. There are hundreds of others. One of the most notable is Yahoo Publisher. It functions in much the same way as Google Adsense and offers a similar style of service. Which one you choose will depend largely on you. If you have several sites, you could try both schemes. See which one is doing best for you, and go with that one.

If you have several web pages that just seem to be doing nothing, then have a look at pay per click programmes. Sites such as Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher will do most of the hard work for you. They will place the ads and decide which ads will be best for your site. This will leave you time to get on with the most important thing; increasing your site traffic and eventually your ad revenue. If you have websites, look into pay per click. The service is free so you have nothing to lose.