Serasi

One of the first things most experienced online business owners learn, when we learned how to make money online, was how to make money with affiliate marketing. This is a great way to start because you don’t need to come up with your own product or pay for and then test a sales page–it’s all done for you!

The absolute cheapest way to begin affiliate marketing is what is known as “bum marketing.” All you really need is the ability to write a basic article–or rewrite inexpensive private label rights material–and work with an easy content management system like Word Press.

So how to do you make money with affiliate marketing, using this low-cost to no-cost affiliate marketing strategy?

First, you need a website or at least a blog in your chosen niche. You can buy a domain name at Namecheap.com for less than $10 a year, and hosting at Hostgator.com for under $10 a month.

Make sure your domain name is keyword rich. If you can’t find YourKeyPhrase.com, try separating the words with hyphens. If that doesn’t work, see if you can get a .net or .org name. You can also get .info names for considerably cheaper costs per year.

Now, write about 10 pages worth of content for that site. Focus each page on a specific long-tail keyphrase within your niche.

What’s a long-tail keyphrase? It’s one of the ultra-specific but less searched for keyword phrases within each niche market. These phrases have less competition, yet are more highly targeted toward buyers–just what you need as a beginner. (Don’t worry. You can also focus on higher-traffic keywords once your site has really been up and running. Right now, though, it’s best to go for the long-tail traffic.)

At the top and bottom of each web page put an affiliate link to a niche product. You don’t have to even mention the name of the product in your content–in fact, it’s often best if you don’t. You’re not trying to sell with your content. Sales writing is a time-consuming process that you don’t need to worry about. The product owners have likely paid thousands of dollars for someone to write their products’ sales pages.

Instead, you want to hit on emotional hot-buttons for you keyphrases. This will help pre-sell your affiliate products (you should have at least three of them) by getting your readers revved up about their niche problems or concerns.

Now, you’ll want to write and submit one or two articles a day, every day, to Ezinearticles.com. Target both your long-tail and high-traffic niche keyword phrases for these articles. This is where the bulk of your traffic will come from.

Finally, make sure you have an appropriate author bio-box at the end of each article. You’ll want to tell a little about yourself (or your pseudonym) and your website. Link various boxes back to various pages on your website, using link-text that matches the targeted phrase for each page.

And that’s it! Pretty soon you’ll be making affiliate sales without ever spending an advertising dollar!

If you are starting a business to run from home or are new to affiliate marketing, you will be feeling a wide range of emotions as you get started. You will be excited that you have found a way to supplement your income or replace your day job. You will also be full of anxiety about whether you will be successful and meet your income requirements.

However, both those emotions will quickly be replaced with confusion as you try to figure out what sources of information to trust as you build your business. There will be a lot to learn and you will find yourself deluged with information, but not sure which information to believe or follow. You will have your hands full as you try to learn pay per click (ppc), search engine optimization (seo), affiliate marketing networks, website development, website hosting, tracking, generating content, obtaining private label rights (plr) content, getting traffic to your site, and on and on.

As you start to weigh through all of this information about affiliate marketing, you may find a good source of information for one topic or another, but you will be wondering if there is a single source of information that is both trustworthy and complete. If you don’t find that complete source, you will start to feel like it is impossible to get all of the information under control and to understand how it all fits together. You may even get so frustrated that you feel like quitting.

First let me just say that you will put it all together, so don’t give up. I am also here to tell you that there are some excellent sources of information out there, where the creators of the information are looking out for your success rather than just selling you another ebook that doesn’t get you any closer to understand how it all works. You just have to find them.

How will you know that you found them? Here are a couple of clues. The product that they offer will be about the entire process and will show you how it all comes together. It will not just be about a single subject (you may want the depth of that single subject, but wait until you get the basics down first). The other way to tell is that they give you some free quality information that will teach you something. By providing you value before you purchase their product, you will know that their product isn’t full of empty promises.

Look out for those two clues for finding your information and you will be well on your way to be a successful affiliate marketer.

Is Google the way to go for affiliate marketers?

Let’s have a look and see if Google is the best way to promote your business as an affiliate marketer or if there are better ways - why do they say no to Clickbank links and what does the Stockholm syndrome has to do with it? And finally will have a look at why all most all affiliate marketers are content with following instead of leaving.

The fact is that you’re not able to promote your affiliate product from Clickbank with your affiliate ID. Isn’t it strange someone is willing to hand over a bunch of advertising dollars to them but they say no! Google really doesn’t like affiliate marketers. I live in Stockholm, Sweden but that doesn’t mean I suffer from the Stockholm syndrome, but the thing is that many marketers seem to be, because they agree with Google even though they are playing by their rules almost as if they were held hostage. This is known as the Stockholm syndrome, but there are ways to get out of this bond made up of their rules - their slapping and their steep prices for terms they don’t happen to love - luckily for us. One of the answers is Yahoo advertising. Yahoo is superbly and many advertisers say that surfer from Yahoo is much more responsive, that the traffic is more targeted and still cheaper than on AdWords.

So how come there are so few affiliate marketers on Yahoo? Interestingly enough this is another psychological factor because all the gurus and all the other marketers are telling you to use AdWords exclusively and since they do it you follow and so does everyone else, the outcome is that you are competing against giant advertising agencies and super affiliates who have the power of spending millions of dollars, but you don’t. It doesn’t matter how many gurus systems or guides or “secrets exposed” you buy - you still have to compete with the huge masses promoting the exact same thing you but no one is willing to tell you this.

So breaking out of the psychological bond is easy! You don’t have to be a victim of the Stockholm syndrome and you can for a fact the leader instead of a follower or you need to do is add Yahoo advertising to your marketing mix, you don’t have to get rid of AdWords and the others, but you might when you find out how effective Yahoo can be using the right methodology.

How to know which of the ‘Net’s highest paying affiliate programs are right for YOU!

When looking for an online affiliate program, you may be tempted to join only the highest-paying affiliate programs. But there ARE other factors besides commission that come into play when choosing the affiliate program that’s going to result in the highest profits!

Let’s take a look at some of the top questions you need to ask yourself before you commit to one of the Web’s top-paying affiliate programs:

• Is the product or service something you would personally use? It doesn’t matter how large a commission is if the product isn’t going to inspire any sales!You’ll also be able to sell your product more effectively if you really believe in it. And your customers will come to believe in YOU — and your future recommendations.
• Is the product relevant to the theme of your site? The most successful websites feature only one or two complementary products. Sites filled with a hodgepodge of unrelated items are extremely difficult to market! (They also come off as small-time and unprofessional.)
• Does their website convert visitors into sales? Even a great product can’t make up for a bad sales process. Don’t waste your time and energy sending people to a site where they’re not likely to buy anything once they get there!Do a quick site assessment. Do they have compelling salescopy that makes YOU want to buy? Does their site look professional? Do they have an opt-in form and customer testimonials? If the answer is “yes” to all, chances are their visitor-to-sale ratio is decent.
• Do they have a tracking system that will credit you for EVERY sale? You’ll want to look for programs that have “cookies” — or small files encoded with your affiliate ID — that are set to last for a year or more.The files are automatically downloaded by your site visitors, so that even if they don’t buy an affiliate product right away, you’ll still get credited for the referral when they do.
• Do they offer tools and resources for promoting their products? Good affiliate programs will supply you with promotional tools like banner and text ads, email promotions, and even informative articles. The amount of money you can generate depends on how well you’re able to promote your products!

All of these factors are ultimately going to affect the amount of money you can make with a particular affiliate program. Just remember, the top-paying affiliate programs are not always the ones that will generate the most bang-for-buck.

The first step for almost anybody who wants to make money online is to learn how to make money with affiliate marketing. This is a good first step because it teaches, by way of experience, the basics of internet marketing. It’s also good for the beginner because you don’t have to spend time or money creating your own product or spending lots of money on a good sales writer.

As an affiliate marketer, your job is not to sell but to pre-sell your affiliate products. This doesn’t involve making a direct pitch. Rather, your affiliate marketing website, blog or e-list should concentrate on the problems your niche market experiences. After all, most products–especially information products–are sold to people who have a problem they want to solve.

When you sell someone else’s product, you don’t have to worry about paying anyone to write a sales letter because it’s already done for you. You also don’t have to worry about testing different versions of the sales letter to see which one works better. (Product owners do this all the time, because even something as small as a new headline or extra bullet point can add thousands of dollars of value if it drives up enough site traffic.) The benefit of this is that you can use the sales letter that’s already been written to identify not only what the problem is, but also the emotional triggers associated with it. Then, on your blog, your web pages or on your e-list, you can talk about those problems from the angle of a consumer. You don’t even have to directly pitch the product–in fact, it’s often better if you don’t! Just make sure you provide a link and a small advertisement about the product somewhere close to your content.

Good sales letters written by competent sales writers can cost anywhere up to the low four-figure to the five-figure range. One reason good sales literature costs so much is because the writer may end up spending a whole month researching it. It’s not just sales words that go into the material. Hours and hours of product research–and more importantly, market and consumer research–go into the building of a sales letter. Good sales writers are “worth their rate” in gold, though. After all, a sales letter is what gets that prospect to say the final “yes.”

Ultimately, creating your own product (or paying somebody to create it), then marketing it, is one of the best and most fulfilling ways to earn an income online. But this can take time and financial resources that most beginners just don’t have. Learning to make money online with affiliate marketing can also keep you from making costly mistakes when you finally do have your own product. Mistakes are part of the learning process, and you should expect to make a few when you first start out. But it’s best to make them when you don’t have large amounts of your own money, or your own brand, at stake.

For many who just starting to dive into the world of affiliate marketing the following tips may help you a little. Without further ado let’s start with the list …

1. Affiliate marketing is not easy money.
Some people do make easy online but that because they are lucky or smart or both. For most people like you and me it is hard work. Don’t worry though; your perseverance will pay eventually.

2. Don’t promote too many products at once.
You will just get swamped with too many ideas and work if you do this. Instead, choose a couple of trustworthy affiliate programs offering good products that pays well and complement each other. Focus your effort on promoting those products. Try your hardest to make the first sale then repeat to make your second, third and so on.

3. Take your time to learn.
To be a good affiliate marketer you need to master some essential skills like writing and SEO. Focus on one skill at a time and try to get the hang of it before moving on to the next skill. For example if you can not write a good promotional email or sales page try to learn as much as you can about it and practice.

4. Do not use the same promotional emails and articles as any other affiliates.
If don’t customize them you will be competing with hundreds and thousand other affiliates who are also using them. Whatever products you’re promoting always customize and fine tune the emails and articles so you can state the exact benefits of the product to your specific audience.

5. Give it some time.
It took me 6 months to see any significant money from my fist effort in mid 2004. I made a programming tutorial site back then with around 20 pages or so and after three months I gave up because the money (I was using AdSense) is so disappointing. However, in early 2005 I checked my AdSense stats and saw that I made about $300 on December. The search engines were giving high rank for my website and it received thousands of visitors daily.

Maybe this is not such a good example but I firmly believe that success takes time - both in online and offline world. Don’t give up too soon. In the future you will regret it and wish that you spend more time into your internet marketing venture.

6. Spend your money wisely
There are thousands of e-books sold today explaining how to make money on the internet and all kinds online business opportunities. You can be sure that most of them are basically explaining the same method so there is no need to buy each and everyone of them. Use your common sense before taking your credit card out of your wallet.

7. Keep your day job (if you still have one)
I “left” my job because the company I worked for went belly up. I decided to go full time making money online since the money I made from my sites already three times bigger than my paycheck. However if you still have a day job keep it! Don’t write that resignation letter just yet. In case your online venture take longer to succeed than you expect the monthly paycheck you get from your day job can keep the food on the table for your family.

8. Learn to discipline yourself.
Keep a schedule or to do list, be flexible about it but make sure you stick to it. For example if you plan to write and submit four articles today make sure you actually write four. Taking a break, nap or play games every time you finish an article is okay but you write those articles even if you have to stay up late to finish the last one.

Having some previous knowledge about the dynamics of any given business venture is always an advantage, but it is not a must. Many people migrate from a business model to another completely different one and achieve a level of success many could only dream of.

Their secret is not super-intelligence or good luck, but a will to explore and conquer. There are many activities, profitable ones, that really do require a special background and a very complex education process that often involves several years of study. So for example, you cannot expect to become a successful engine designer in 1 or 2 months.

However, profitable activities like affiliate marketing allow you to start making money from it after just a few months of hard study and work. You may think, if it is so easy why is not everybody doing it?

The answer to this question is simple: the dynamics of affiliate marketing and internet marketing in general are unknown by 99.99% of the people, and a large percentage of those people simply do not believe it is possible to make money online. Therefore, as much as affiliate marketing is one of the simplest ways to make money, most of the people sadly chooses not to do it.

In my own experience, the basics of affiliate marketing are not complex principles that demand an extra bright mind to understand them, however, as much as they are not complex, they are not obvious to the naked eye and therefore, they will not come to you just by way of osmosis.

Affiliate marketing is pretty much like a puzzle, no matter how smart you are, you will always have to put the pieces together. So, in order to understand how you can make money from affiliate marketing you will not have to learn quantum physics, but you cannot expect the necessary knowhow to fall from the sky and hit you, you have to go after it and put the pieces together.

And this is where the good news come in: learning everything you need to become a true online entrepreneur with affiliate marketing will not take you years, it will only take you months, and I am not talking about 9 or even 6 months, I am talking about a learning period of less than 2 months, where you will not only be learning, but starting to make some good money.

Indeed, the learning process of the affiliate marketer involves putting to work everything as you go, and this will become part of your educational process. Your first few bucks in profits will be the validation of your knowledge.

Once you have achieved this, all you have to do is scale up the process and you will be on your way to an income from which you can make a very decent living, a goal that you will likely reach after roughly 6 months kicking it.

So as you may have concluded by now, the answer to how can you make money from affiliate marketing with no previous internet background is: education and a bit of effort. Once you learn the basics, the rest will be easy and you will see how this business has not limits whatsoever. All you have to do is start.

For many years I had been hearing that many people -and I mean common fellows not gurus- were making a lot of money on the internet by way of marketing online.

When I finally decided to take a shot at this internet business thing, I really got and remained lost for quite a while and I almost abandoned the quest to make money online, because everywhere turned I got scammed by some website offering to make me rich by the end of the week.

It is obvious to me now that such offerings are the classic signal that we are before a con artist, but at that time I had no idea where to start, so everything sounded great to me until I really got my firsts tastes of  tough internet business reality.

After many failed attempts and harsh experiences, I think I am in the position to tell you how and where to start, and what to do in order to make money online.

First, I will tell you that probably the best place to start is affiliate marketing, because in this field you will need a very small initial investment and your internet business expenses will be near zero, plus once you have developed your business structure you will be able to benefit more and more from the power of automation allowed by the internet.

Second, I must tell you that the only way to realistically start making money from affiliate marketing is by getting access to education and business oriented tools. This does not mean that you have to go to college and study during a three year period in order to start working on your business development.

No, you do not have to go through that, because you see, the remarkable thing about affiliate marketing is that it is not quantum physics, it is far simpler than you think, but as much as it might be simple it will demand that you set you mind to learning mode and put your brain power at the disposal of your personal development for a few weeks.

However, after a week or two into a good learning resource I can assure you will start seeing results, no matter if you have not ever done anything internet related. Believe me, this is how I started and I have managed to become a near expert in the field in less than 6 months and affiliate marketing is today my main source of income.

Of course, I started seeing these results only after I landed on the right places to find actual internet business education and the necessary tools and resources to build and run a successful affiliate marketing operation.

So it is perfectly possible for you to start a profitable internet business based on affiliate marketing, but honestly, if you really want to make money you have to forget about easy money and start thinking about learning and working hard at least in you early stages.

Most people approach the internet business arena with aspirations of millions of dollars overnight. That mind setting usually opens the door for con artists to pull their tricks on desperate folks who are eager for a quick buck.

It is only reasonable then that, after being scammed a few times, people simply give up and therefore join the list of those who have failed and abandoned the idea of making money from affiliate marketing.

You see, the thing is that making money from affiliate marketing is just another business model, that demands what any other business would: studying, learning and working hard.

Most people fail to see this, and assume that because they are setting out to make money from their computer it will be dead easy, and that can not be farther from reality.

Making money online offers a lot of advantages, among them, that you need little to no money to start your business, you will certainly have to work a lot less than you would have to within a traditional business and you will be able to create a huge stream of income within a relatively short period of time.

But, in order to achieve all that, some dedication will be in order, particularly in your early stages. You will not need to spend a lot of money, nor will you need to spend a year studying, but you will have to commit a small amount of money to your education and take the time to go through a 1-2 month learning process.

Many people are mislead by the sales pitches of some money making schemes which promise you will become a millionaire within a day or a week, and that usually keeps them away from what really matters in order to make money from affiliate marketing: knowledge and understanding of how affiliate marketing works.

This is main reason why people fail in making money from affiliate marketing: they have a misconception of what affiliate marketing is all about, which leads them to believe that in this business you will not have to learn, work or wait.

People then ends up paying for memberships or schemes that are supposed to guarantee success no matter what they do or not do, and when they finally become aware that this is not the way to go, they have run out of money, or what is worse, they have run out our of faith and confidence.

Therefore, if you do not want join the victims of scams and con artists, you should start on the right foot seeking for proven and honest ways to gain useful knowledge and business education that you can really put to work. Add some dedication and patience and you will be on your way to make a lot of money from affiliate marketing.