Affiliate marketing, a business with no hassle
For many people, the lure of working from home is too strong to resists. Being able to set up your own hours, your own schedule and your own your speed is an extremely attractive way of living to most people.
But the thought of setting up your own web-based business can be a huge hassle. You have to have a web design, a product and then you have to sell it, ship it and handle customers. A much easier way to work from home and run a web-based business is called affiliate marketing.
Setting up a site that works as an affiliate marketing site isn’t really that hard. There are many different web-page building programs out there that walk you through every step of the process. Once you have a functional web site, you need to come up with a list of companies that will pay you to link to them. Many major websites like Amazon have an affiliate program that you can join and then get paid for simply linking to their website.
But if you really want to cash in, you don’t want a webpage with just a list of links on it. This may earn you a buck or two, but when most web surfers stumble upon these kinds of pages after a Google search, they tend to get frustrated and leave. The best route for you to go is to provide interesting web content that relates to the company you’re linking to.
If you can’t write interesting web content yourself, there are many companies that will do it for you for a very reasonable price. Once you’ve got your content, you can weave your links throughout it. People will find your web page on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Ask.com and when they see the well-written content, they will hang around and read what’s on your site. They will, in most cases, click on the links provided and you’ll be counting the cash in no time flat.
While there is no guarantee that affiliate marketing will turn into a cash cow, with enough hard work, the odds are in your favor. When you combine a cool site design with quality content and a good mix of interesting links, you are bound to get a good number of hits that will quickly translate into dollars for you. Give it a try, you might be surprised at how well it works!
Friday, February 1, 2008
Smart Way To Make Money Online
Affiliate marketing with NO money
Maybe the single greatest part about affiliate marketing is the incredibly low initial investment you need to start earning money for yourself. All you really need is a website. That’s it. There are so many FREE programs out there that will walk you though basic web design, even if you know nothing about it, you can be up and running in the span on a day. All that’s left at this point is finding an affiliate marketing program to subscribe to.
Here are a few tips about starting up your affiliate marketing campaign today!
• There are tens of thousands of affiliate marketing programs you can subscribe to. The list is essentially limitless. An important piece of advice, though, is that if an affiliate marketing program wants you to pay money to sign up, you might want to think twice. Unless the initial investment is very small, there are many other choices that you could make. You see, almost all affiliate marketing programs are FREE! That’s right, you read that right. FREE! And not only that, but some of the big time programs will even train you and give you tips on the right keywords to put on your webpage so random web surfers will find you, click on your link, buy a product and earn you money! Unless you really want to be part of an affiliate marketing program that charges money, don’t do it. There are thousands that are free.
• Don’t use a low-quality internet provider. This can be a tough choice for those looking at keeping their costs at zero or as close to zero as possible. But your local full Internet Service Provider is going to do a better job of hosting your new money making website then some free site that crashes all the time. Your new web site is a money-making machine for you, don’t trust it to a company that isn’t going to do everything they can to make sure it’s up and running 24/7. You probably pay for an internet connection in your home already, and with your basic Internet account, you get web space. Use it and rest easy knowing that your website is in good hands.
As you can see, there are a few ins and outs to affiliate marketing that everyone needs to know. But the key here is the fact that you can earn money with almost no work involved. Just make a website, write some snappy content and set up your links and then sit back, relax and count your money.
Choosing a “niche market”
Now that you’re considering opening your own affiliate marketing website, you have to pick a product to sell. In previous articles, we’ve talked about how important it is to pick a product you know a lot about since you’re responsible for writing articles that try to get people to buy your product.
But there is more to it then just writing snappy articles and providing a link at the bottom of the page. Knowing how to market your articles will go a long way in determining if your site is a success or a failure.
In the process of picking out a product, don’t be afraid to go “niche.” What that means, essentially, is don’t worry about picking an item that may only appeal to a small number of people. If you pick something like televisions or books, people can go down to their local Best Buy or Barnes and Noble and get those items. If you deal with a company that most people don’t have in their towns like L.L. Bean or Tower Records, people will be more likely to shop with your affiliate site because of the prestige of those companies. People can get a pair of boots or a CD anywhere, but getting those items from those stores is extra special.
Make sure your content relates to the demographic your after. If you’re selling life insurance, you probably want to have content that is going to connect with older folks, not the skateboarding crowd. And this advice goes the other way, too. If you’re selling skateboards, make sure your content is going to appeal to that generation. You wouldn’t want your content to read like an ad for life insurance. Of course, there are some products, like books and CDs, that cross generations, but you can still write your content so it aims at a particular audience. This is the other side of “niche marketing;” making sure that your content is written for exactly the people you want to buy from you.
Niche marketing can be a hard skill to master. Most people want to create a broad affiliate marketing site that doesn’t have a lot of focus so that it appeals to the most people. While this is tempting, you can be left with a site that appeals to no one at all. By zeroing in on the group most likely to buy the product you sell on your site, you can lock yourself into a niche market and, chances are, your sales will explode.
Creating multiple streams of income
One of the great things about affiliate marketing is the idea that you can subscribe to as many different affiliate programs as you can manage, all at the same time. We’ve talked in depth in previous articles about how important it is to have some focus on your website so that you can appeal to customers instead of appearing like a hodgepodge of links. It’s a fine line to walk between having multiple streams of income and having too many programs. Let’s take a look at the right way to handle this problem.
• Make sure your streams relate to each other. This is a tip worth a thousand bucks, alone. Think about it for a moment. Yes, you want to have more than one program on your website at once, but you don’t want 10 or 15 because it’s too much to manage. So, what’s the best way to go? Have 4-5 and make them all related to each other! Say your first program is through a company that sells pet supplies. You’ve written some stellar content on pets sine it’s a passion of yours, but you want more than one stream of income. How about a program through a gourmet pet food distributor? You can SHARE CONTENT then, since you already have great content written about pets to begin with. Want more? Find a company that sells pet treats from around the world. Or maybe one that specializes in pet medications through the mail. The choices are endless and by relating all of your companies, you won’t have to write separate content for each program. You’ll save time and make money!
• Have fun with your content. Let’s say you find an affiliate marketing program that you just have to add to your site, but it’s about a topic you don’t know much about. Don’t worry! You can still write interesting and informative content, even if it’s about a product you’re not an expert on. Try a list. Just flip through the TV listings this week and take a look at all the list shows on right now. People love lists. You can make a quickie top-10 list style article and relate it to your new affiliate program. This will allow you to diversify your business and add extra streams of income at the same time. You don’t want your site to be entirely lists, but one out of three or four is fine and it makes your site appear more fun!
Creating multiple steams of income is pretty easy when you look at it. Group your products under the same umbrella to save time or add a program that you can make funny and informative lists on. Your site will benefit and you’ll have happy customers to boot!
Get your Affiliate Site ready for the holidays!
For many affiliate marketing sites, the holidays are a dream come true. Some affiliate sites see their traffic double or even triple as millions of shoppers from around the world bypass the mall for the convenience and fun of online shopping. Most people would agree that if they had a choice between navigating snowy roads, finding a parking space and then battling crowds only to stand in a checkout line for 30 minutes or staying at home in their pajamas with a hot cup of coffee and doing their shopping that way, they would choose the latter.
So, how can you make sure that your affiliate marketing site is ready for the holiday shopping season? Let’s take a quick look at a few things you can do to spruce up your site and get it ready for that special time of the year.
• First off, if you don’t have your site all spruced up by the Monday after Thanksgiving, don’t worry about it. Evidence shows that “Cyber Monday” isn’t really the sole busiest shopping day of the year, but it’s more spread out between that date and the 15th. You can still revamp things and capitalize on the Christmas shopping season.
• Make sure you have a handle on the cut off dates for shipping. No matter what product you link to, they should have clearly posted dates for shipping, both domestic and internationally, for Christmas. Make sure you post those dates on your site, too, so that no one ends up disappointed on Christmas morning.
• If you deal with a major online superstore like Amazon, remember, you don’t always have to sell books or CDs. Some sites offer big rewards to affiliate marketers for gift cards, and since they are a smaller item to ship, they usually have later deadlines then gifts so people can order then after the cut off deadlines and still get them by Christmas.
• Try and concentrate on specialty niches. While it may be tempting to get into an affiliate marketing program with Sears or Wal-Mart, most people have these stores near them. If you with someone like The Sharper Image or L.L. Bean, you’re dealing with very high-end product that is unique. You’ll make more money and you’ll find that you’ll do better business on your site.
The holidays come only once per year and the chance to capitalize on it is brief. But if you tune up your affiliate marketing site in time, you’ll be full of extra cash as well as holiday cheer this season.
How to write articles to boost sales
If you’ve been checking out this series of articles, you’ve seen how important it is for any serious affiliate marketer to have good web content. Good content can mean the difference between someone clicking onto your site and clicking away a moment later and someone staying for a while and then clicking through to buy the product or service you’re trying to sell. But what if you just aren’t a very good writer? What if your mind is programmed for business, not English. Don’t worry, there are options for you.
• Search the public domain. There are millions of articles that are currently in the public domain that you can use on your web site free of charge. A simple web search can bring up hundreds of these kinds of articles. And the best part is you can edit them, change them, alter them or do whatever you want to them so that they sound exactly like you want them to. You don’t have to worry about paying any authors or stepping on any toes. This is an excellent way to go if you don’t want to write content yourself.
• You can pay companies to write content for you, and in most cases, it’s cheaper than you think. When you consider how important good web content is, paying someone a few dollars to write exactly what you need isn’t such a bad idea. Of course, some companies charge more than others and it always pays to shop around, but don’t shut yourself off to the idea of paying for content. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money and this is one of those cases if you don’t want to write your own web content.
• Maybe the best choice of the three is to simply read and learn. Spend a week or two clicking around on the Internet and reading the web content on other affiliate websites. Take as much of that content in and then try to write in a similar style about the product you’re trying to sell. You don’t instantly become the best writer in the world this way, but studies have shown that the more you read, the better writer you’ll be. Experience pays and the more you know about how to write in this style, the easier it will be.
Having solid web content can’t be overstated. You will never have a truly successful affiliate marketing website unless you have good content. If you can’t write it yourself, you do have other options, but the best thing you can do is to learn how to write in this style. It will be an investment that will pay off time and time again.
Is affiliate marketing MLM?
Because affiliate marketing works so well and seems to genuinely benefit both the website that is advertising as well as the website that is hosting, people tend to look for problems that just don’t exist. One of the “problems” that has dogged affiliate marketing for years is the idea that is is a multi-level marketing scheme.
What is multi-level marketing? It’s much better known as a pyramid scheme. In most traditional cases, pyramid schemes are illegal. They work by constantly signing up new people to sell a product that doesn’t actually exist. The people at the top of the pyramid make money be collecting a commission off of all the sales that happen below them in the pyramid structure.
In recent years, pyramid schemes have tried to gain a bit of respectability by offering legitimate products like phone cards that made the whole operation legal. But, in essence, pyramid schemes are still tainted by the perception that they are inherently dishonest and, unless you start a pyramid scheme and are at the top of the pyramid, you’re earning money for someone else.
Affiliate marketing is, in no conceivable way, multi-level marketing. In most cases, a site that wants to advertise pays another site to direct traffic to them. There are multi-level affiliate marketing set ups that have one site direct traffic to another site and then that site directs people to the site that pays both previous sites, but even in this case, the customer isn’t tricked or misled and there isn’t any sort of financial transaction that takes place, either. Multi-tiered affiliate marketing is simply another way for web pages to create traffic and revenue.
The way earnings work for multi-level affiliate marketing is different than a pyramid scheme, as well. Is it true that in the end, the site that is being linked to makes the most money? Sure, but that’s because they are the ones offering the product or service. The other sites are simply steering customers to them. With multi level affiliate marketing, everyone makes money and assuming a legitimate good or service is being sold at the end of the path, the consumer ends up happy, too.
It can be a little confusing for those new to Multi level affiliate marketing to tell the difference between it and a pyramid scheme. But rest assured the two have very little in common, most importantly the fact that almost all pyramid schemes are illegal while multi level affiliate marketing is quite legal and a very effective tool in Internet advertising,
