I Was An Adsense Dummy Are You

Writen by Mark Wallace

The ease with which webmasters can post the Adsense code made Adsense a very attractive way of monetizing a site. Google took care of coming up with the exact code - you just choose some color and other preferences - and you stuck the code on your pages to make money. Google improved the program substantially. They added new features, like AdLinks, which allowed webmasters to extract money from locations that were previously non-contributory; they added channels to allow monitoring of which locations were and were not pulling their weight. Like a lot of webmasters I made more from Adsense than I did from the day job and finally quit working to live the Adsense UPS club member life.

But, it's time for a radical rethink.

The problem with humans is that they like to take the easy way out. Google appreciates that and doesn't give you too much of responsibility for running the ads on your site. The general message is that you should trust them to serve the highest paying ads for the perfectly logical reason that as their earnings are a percentage of yours it's in their self-interest to maximize your ad revenue. And, that's the same expectation they have of advertisers: Bid high and trust us to adjust the bid downwards to stay just above your nearest competitor. Millions trust Google so let's assume they're trustworthy.

They then introduced smart pricing. Now this changes things in a lot of ways webmasters didn't appreciate earlier. The theory behind smartpricing is this: Google tracks which visitors are "converting" for the advertisers i.e. making purchases etc. Some publishers send visitors who convert, others send "low quality" visitors. Surely it's a fair system that rewards those publishers who send quality visitors? And to do that at the expense of those low quality sites with no original content who have visitors clicking on the Adsense links only to get out of the site? In theory, yes. But, let's step back a minute.

Previously Google's income was tied to yours; if you made more Google did too. Now, Google adjusts your earnings by a Smartpricing factor to take it down to ... well, whatever their formula tells them. That's a bit too convenient. Are we putting the fox in charge of the hen house? No, we're not! Remember, Google is an honest company and their motto is to do no evil. They claim that if you are smartpriced down then they lose money as well as they refund the difference to the advertiser. So why worry about smartpricing?

There are several good reasons but the primary one is the secrecy. As a publisher you have no knowledge of conversions: Google doesn't share that information. Further, some advertisers are good at converting traffic into sales, others have yet to learn that a landing page that doesn't work in Internet Explorer and Firefox is... pretty useless. Yet, even for the latter type of advertiser, you get penalised. The advertiser who converts well is not rewarded at the expense of the advertiser who wastes all the leads you send him. But, that's not all. Many advertisers do not or cannot allow Google to track their conversions. How those cases affect smartpricing is unknown but it wouldn't be stretching credulity to assume that there's some formula in some algorithm telling Google how much to penalise you for. So, even if your site is the highest quality site and your visitors are more likely to convert than visitors from almost anywhere else you could be ending up with the lowest payout because the formula says that your traffic is rubbish! Moreover, as you have no knowledge of the conversion rates you can't even work to improve your earnings.

How do you know that your earnings would be three times what they are now if it wasn't for Smartpricing? You don't.

This is what every publisher needs to do on a regular basis: Try the competition. Till now that was not easily done as there was no credible competition to Adsense. Now there is. Chitika is just one of the many contextual programs that's competing with Google Adsense and early reports suggest it's paying a lot more but only if you know how to use it. You may have thousands of pages and you may have Adsense served via an SSI or a Frontpage "include" page... or you have manually inserted Adsense into many locations. Isn't it too much of work to change all of that to test run a new program? It is too much of work... so don't do it. Pick a particular page or section, setup an Adsense channel for that section, monitor the payout for a few days - then try something like Chitika. The best pages for Chitika are product pages and the best ads they serve are where you choose the keyword/product to be advertised on your page (yes, you can do that with Chitika). Have a look at some Chitika tips here first and then conduct your trial run.

This may be the most profitable thing you did since you signed up for Adsense.

The author's website presents an extensive review of the Chitika program, and offers revenue enhancing ideas particularly in relation to using Chitika together with Adsense and staying within the legal agreements for both.

Benefits Of Being An Affiliate Marketer

Writen by Patric Chan

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.

Copyright 2005 Patric Chan

Patric Chan is a direct response expert, internet infopreneur, international speaker and author. His latest product, Online Niche Secrets Audio Course reveals how he started an online niche business and makes it profitable in less than 48 hours at http://www.onlinenichesecrets.com

Affiliate Marketing Diary Posts Of A Budding Internet Entrepreneur

Writen by Richard Smith

Affiliate marketing on the internet is one of the biggest buzzwords today. All over the world, people are looking for ways to make money on the internet. Like many business owners, many have tried and most have failed and given up. This is the story of one budding internet entrepreneur in his quest for financial freedom and a review of the different forms of affiliate marketing.

The world of internet marketing is a vast one. All interested parties are looking for the same thing -- to make money and gain financial freedom. Some have little patience and others have a lot. There are opportunities for all personality types.

Below are examples of some such opportunities.

Google Adsense

By placing the famous "Ads by Google" on their developed websites, affiliate marketers earn what is called PPC, or "pay per click" revenue each time a visitor clicks on the ad. It is one of the easiest methods of earning revenue on the internet but the amounts are individually small and so volume is key. Increasing the number of visitors and their "click through rate" is the objective here.

Amazon Products

Amazon, the world's largest online store, allows internet entrepreneurs to place ads for books, DVDs and other consumer products on their websites. If a visitor sees a featured product on the affiliate marketer's website and then decides to buy it, the website owner will earn a tidy comission from the sale. Other retailers also operate a similar scheme to Amazon but the idea is the same -- to target the big ticket products.

Adult websites

"Sex sells" as they say. It always has done and continues to do so, even in times of recession in the general economy. Whilst most visitors to adult sites are looking for freebies, the traffic potential to an adult site is so high that even a tiny conversion of traffic into sales can result in large revenues for the affiliate marketer. Blogs are a recent foray and popular theme in the adult website world of the affiliate marketer and offer new and lucrative possibilities.

For more information, regular commentary, and in-depth analysis of affiliate marketing, visit Affiliate Marketing Diary.

Web Affiliate Programs Experiences From The Frontline

Writen by J. Morgan

After two years of relying on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, organic search engine results, web directories and word of mouth, I finally decided to give web affiliate programs a try.

From my research, I knew that there are a lot of affiliate marketers (as affiliates like to refer to themselves) who are making a decent to good living steering customers to online stores. When I'd investigated adding our site to one of the programs, I always felt that the reputable sites were too expensive and that the cheaper sites were too risky.

Recently, I read some good feedback about Shareasale and took a look. Shareasale is less expensive to get into than Commission Junction or Clickbank, but has developed a reputation for having a well-run program.

I'd also heard that most of the many of the major affiliates that produce results are signed up at Shareasale, so I was eager to see what results I could expect. I handed over my $150 signup fee and $50 affiliate payout deposit and hoped for the best.

The site I wanted to promote is a designer and manufacturer of women's fitness wear. From ongoing research, I was already familiar with most of the high traffic sites with a readership that would be highly targeted to our store. I didn't expect to see many (if any) of them signing up as affiliate marketing is not a major source of their revenue models.

What I've found so far is that coupon websites are apparently all the rage right now in affiliate marketing. Within a day or two of joining the Shareasale program, a dozen or so coupon sites had signed up as affiliates. Coupon sites collect information about "good deals" on products available at online stores and then disseminate that information to their website viewers and newsletter readers.

Some of the larger and more popular sites in this space include FatWallet.com and SlickDeals.net. In addition to offering up coupons and discounts for shopping, some of the sites have gotten into the "cashback" game as well. If you order merchandise from vendors on their list, they promise to refund to you a small percentage of your purchase price.

All of this is fueled by affiliate marketing. From the perspective of an online store owner, it works out to be a pretty interesting channel. A certain percentage of your shoppers are going to be more price sensitive than others. Finding ways to sell products at low prices to those that demand it while getting top dollar from customers that aren't as concerned about cost is one of the major strategic challenges that a retailer faces.

The goods that our store carries are upscale. While our average customer does not want to overpay for their clothing, their primary consideration is value. Does the merchandise fit their style, fabric, and quality requirements. As a result, we very rarely run sales. But, even in our market there are customers who demand a bargain. My wife is like that. She just hates buying non-essentials unless she can get a discount. She's also the type of person that likes to feel like she got the best possible price on something and is willing to do whatever research is required.

If we can reach that type of customer via coupon sites without affecting non-price sensitive purchasers, that could very well be a win for us. There are two goals most stores try to accomplish with affiliate marketing. First, gain access to customers they would not likely have reached on their own. Second, find a way to bring customers to the store cheaper than they could do themselves. Coupon sites seemed to satisfy the first goal and so was something we were excited about.

One thing that you need to decide before signing up affiliates for your online store is whether you will allow them to use PPC to send customers to you. In the past, there was a thriving trade where affiliate marketers would bid on PPC keywords and send traffic directly to a webstore with their affiliate ID attached. Depending on the circumstances, may or may not be a good thing. Affiliates might do a better job of writing ads that appeal to target customers and may be able to convert traffic less expensively than you could yourself. On the flipside, its also possible that you would be paying more in affiliate commissions than you would have in PPC charges for the exact same customers.

The first sale credited to an affiliate for our program actually came in this way. The affiliate cleverly realized that they could bid just slightly higher on our company name than we were and capture customers who were specifically looking for our brand. By far the highest converting keywords we have in our PPC campaigns are based on our company name, so this could be a goldmine for the affiliate. However, for obvious reasons, paying 15% commission to the affiliate on the sale rather than 0.15/click to Google's Adwords just didn't make business sense for us, so we modified our affiliate rules such that affiliates are not allowed to send traffic directly to our website via PPC campaigns.

We're still early in the program and its yet to be seen whether affiliates will drive a significant part of our sales or not. We'll be certain to add new articles to the archives as we continue to learn from our experiences.

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(c) 2005 Ecommerce-Daily.com

J. Morgan is a serial entreprenuer who has been involved in the cutting edge of Internet ecommerce since its earliest days. He is presently the VP of Marketing for an upscale designer and manufacturer of women's fitness wear. In addition, Mr. Morgan runs several content websites including Ecommerce-Daily.com.

Dear Affiliate Manager 7 Ways To Tell If Your Affiliate Program Stinks

Writen by Nicole Dean

Question: Why aren't my affiliates promoting my affiliate program? And, how do I get more to sign up?

Dear Affiliate Manager:

I can tell you in a heartbeat whether or not your affiliate program is attracting loyal, motivated affiliates. It's easy. Just put yourself in your affiliate's shoes. If you're not creating loyalty in your affiliates, they're going to look for a better program to promote, and you'll be left in the dust.

Now that I've got your attention, let's go through some key components of making your affiliate program attractive to affiliates, so they don't start shopping around.

1. Reputations are on the Line.

Of course, number one is quality. Do you have quality products and customer service? An affiliate's reputation is on the line every time we consider promoting a product or service. If your products are junk or you're making our referrals upset in any way – we'll drop you faster than something *really* hot.

2. Lay the Money on the Table.

It's not just about the percentage commission. That won't motivate and make loyal affiliates, but, it is a start. Are you talking 5%? Then, unless you offer millions of products at great prices and have a solid reputation, you're not going to be getting a whole lot of affiliates.

3. Who's getting credit?

Show your affiliates that you value them by setting long cookies and they'll keep sending you traffic. How long are your cookies? The longer the better.

4. Closing the Deal.

If your affiliates are sending you traffic, I hope you have a newsletter (or ecourse) on that sales page for two reasons. 1. It means you're smart and know how internet marketing works, and 2. It means that the affiliates get more than one chance to close the deal, because you're going to be following up with the lead and closing the sale for us. This shows us that you take your business seriously – a very important indicator.

5. Like Frosting on the Cake.

Assuming all things are equal, if your program is two-tier or residual, you'll have affiliates lined up to promote you.

6. Are you even trying?

There is nothing more frustrating than joining an affiliate program that you're really excited about, logging in and seeing … nothing but a couple of links. No content, no ebooks, no videos. Zip. This is especially disappointing if you know the author or owner is sending out a weekly newsletter. Share your articles with your affiliates, allow them to be rebranded, and I guarantee you'll get loyalty.

7. That's just Rude.

Almost more insulting than not providing any content is providing 'leaky' articles. Yes, I have seen affiliate programs that so "generously" provide articles for their affiliates. But, the articles had plugs for their other programs in the body of the article. Now, I'm not naming names, but I do feel that's pretty cheap to be stealing from your own affiliates.

Those are just a few ways to tell if your affiliate program stinks.

I hope you read and reread this advice. Treat your affiliates like partners and they'll plaster your link all over the web. You'll have affiliates lined up to promote every new product you offer, and they'll sing your praises every chance they get.

Nicole Dean is on a mission to find a few good affiliate programs. She's found a handful of programs that don't stink. Check them out at http://www.freeaffiliatearticles.com/free-affiliate-programs.htm and be sure to grab some Free Affiliate Articles while you're there.

How To Make Money Selling Other Peoples Stuff

Writen by Lee Lister

In affiliate marketing, an affiliate marketer doesn't need to have their own products and services to sell. All they need to do is to refer people to the merchant's business site for them to buy the products and thereby, earn a commission. Affiliate marketing is great for beginners new to the internet business as well as those that want to add to their current business.

That sounds a great idea – what do I need to be good at Affiliate Marketing?

Well, obviously a computer, but also a web site will make life a lot easier, but mostly you need a great affiliate program and an efficient and detailed marketing strategy.

So how you choose the right affiliate program for yourself? Here's Some Tips

Information: Join affiliate forums and learn some tips and get suggestions from experienced affiliate marketers. Find a program that suits your interests and experience.

Quality of the Program: As an affiliate marketer your goal is not only to make visitors of your site click the link to the business site; but more importantly, to promote the product so they buy it. They don't buy – you don't earn. Make sure the products you are endorsing are worthwhile or in the business context, saleable. Ask yourself: if I were the customer, would I buy it? Would I recommend it to my family or good friends? If you can't convince yourself or your family and friends to buy it, take a look at your next option.

Compensation Level: Carefully study the company's compensation plan. Your purpose for joining the program is to earn, so make sure you'll be paid for all your efforts fairly.

Marketing Pack: If you do not have the time or ability to create graphics, sales pages or articles, choose affiliate programs that help you create these for your web site. It would be great if the company provides training on how to effectively market products online. Remember that affiliate marketing is a partnership, so make sure your partner is able to support you as you help him promote their products and services.

Write down all the advantages and disadvantages of each program you are considering so you can clearly see the difference among your options; then later, compare the advantages of the programs with your own checklist. Take time to gather all the info you need to choose the right program.

Remember an informed choice is the best choice.

© Copyright 2006 Biz Guru LLC

Lee Lister, writes as The Biz Guru, for a number of web sites including her own site http://www.BizGuru.us With over 20 years management and business consultancy experience with businesses large and small as well as being a serial entrepreneur, she now helps others set up, develop and market their businesses. Also visit http://www.clikks.com for all our informational products. You might like to join our:

Clikks Ezine: - aimed at the small businesses – click or brick with a web site presence. We provide business strategy and internet marketing assistance and products. clikks_ezine@aweber.com

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Top 10 Free Affiliate Program Will Put Cash In Your Pocket If You Understand Affiliate Marketing

Writen by Christopher Kyalo

Finding the top 10 free affiliate program will not be of any use to you if you do not understand affiliate marketing. This is a fact that many affiliates have already found out to their great disappointment.

Joining a top 10 free affiliate program that is making lots of cash for others is no guarantee that it will do the same for you. In fact if you do not understand affiliate-marketing chances are that you will hardly earn much.

The first key rule about affiliate marketing has to do with traffic volumes. The plain truth is that you will not make anything from any affiliate program if you do no have enough traffic. It matters little whether you have joined a couple of leading top 10 free affiliate programs or not.

A good measuring rod to use here is the Adsense affiliate program. One of the reasons why it is wildly successful has to do with the fact that it is probably the affiliate program that requires the least traffic to start earning an affiliate some money. Usually small change but at least a couple of dollars by the end of the month and not just cents.

If your Adsense affiliate program is earning you just a few cents at a time, then it is highly unlikely, that you will be able to make anything from even a top 10 free affiliate program.

Learn more about the best home business opportunity from a blogger who rakes in thousands of dollars... and growing from their home business

Affiliate Money How To Make Them Coming To You

Writen by Alex Sysoef

Affiliate programs and ability to generate residual income utilizing them are the hottest and one of the most searched for items on Internet right now. It is true that anyone can build their entire home based business and make money online doing nothing more that promote variable affiliate programs. And yet over 90% of people who start in this path fail! Let's look at reasons why and how to avoid it using only tools freely available.

I will not go over obvious thing that you should pick affiliate programs that closely aligns to what you know or addresses your target audience. What I'm interested in is to how properly present them to make people actually buy into offers you suggest, increase your conversion rates and as such increase you net profits.

So you have build your website and expecting that people will flock to you and start buying like crazy … think again. Most people on Internet browse in search of information and unless you have content or product that interest them – you are out of luck. Content is the king so finding an affiliate program that gives you many options for promotion including free and tested sample content is very important. Don't try to sell – offer information that people are searching for and make it easily available to them and once they come to trust you, make a suggestion that will be more readily accepted than outright sale pitch. Second part is to get your content presented in proper way so it will be found by search engines and hopefully reach the top positions for your target keywords.

I will assume that you already have signed up with good affiliate program that presents you with all the needed tools and proceed to the description of how to present it optimized for search engines and make it easily searchable. There is as many opinions about doing it as there are people who work in this field. I will not attempt to write a new SEO course here just share some basics that I know work. To make the best of it create many content pages each one optimized for a different keyword combinations. Not only it will help your search engine rank but will give you more chances to make you suggestion and convert your visitors into customers.

1. Find right keyword combination. This is the focal point of the page and finding what people are looking for in your category is crucial to your success. Think about what keyword combinations would you use to search for whatever it is you are trying to promote, ask your friends and family what would they use to search for. Once you have your possible keywords combinations go to the free tool that will help you analyze your keywords and will tell you different combinations that other people actually use and get 2 or 3 combinations that fit your needs. I use Overture keyword suggestion tool available here http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Use search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) to search for your chosen keywords. Take a look at the couple, three top pages found for YOUR keywords and analyze their "page title", "page content", "meta tags – if they have them". Get ideas how to present your page to compete against them, find what you like and what you don't like and use it to your advantage. Your goal is to create a Content Page that will be not only competing against them but also offering something they don't have, something that will separate your page and make it stand on its own.

2. Create a new page for promoting your newly found keywords and include the most searched for combination into the name of the page. Use the "-" symbol between keywords, it will make page more attractive to search engines and easy to read in search results.

3. Optimize you page "Title", "Meta Description" and "Meta keywords" tags to include the primary keyword combination on first place as well as other combinations you have found using keyword suggestion tool.

4. Fill the page with content that is relevant to keywords you have chosen and make sure you specifically included them into your content. Use your imagination to do it as well as sample content from Affiliate Program I have mentioned above. Search engines might actually penalize you if content of the page doesn't include your chosen keywords.

5. Include you affiliate program recommendation on this content page.

Steps above are fairly simple and as any SEO pro will tell you probably not enough to get the highest rankings but what they will accomplish – is create a Content Page that is easily found by search engines and your future customers. The best part of it is that people arrived to your page in search of information "they have searched for" and have a lot more open mind to your suggestion than customer who clicked on paid ad to arrive to your page. They are "presold" customers because "they have found you" and if your content page has information or product they need a lot more likely to buy into your suggestion.

Affiliate Marketing is not about quantity but quality of presentation. Giving people what they need and search for generates quality traffic volume of "presold" customers who arrive to your site with mind open to your suggestions and offers. Ignoring or following these simple but tried and true process is what separates successful and failed affiliates.

Alex Sysoef is a webmaster and owner of http://www.free-secrets.org where you can find free information on home based business and online money making opportunities and download detailed guides to online success for free.

Utilizing Affiliate Marketing To Sell B2b

Writen by Kevin Webster

Performance, or affiliate marketing, continues to be a big buzz phrase in the online marketing community. But what specific benefits can your business gain from it? Do you even have the correct type of business to pursue affiliate relationships?

Important questions to consider before you commit human and financial resources to the project.

We all know that B2B marketing is far different from traditional B2C marketing. You need to impart a different message, and you need to gain leads above all else. Consumers are initially more likely to buy on the first visit to your site if you're selling flowers or shoes than is a company to purchase $200,000 worth of software without negotiation and discussion.

As part of your strategy in determining whether or not affiliate marketing can assist you, you need to determine the following:

What is our current cost of acquisition? Is it currently where you want it to be, or is it, like for many companies, sky rocketing out of control. If it's currently too high, a good affiliate program could help you level it out, and bring it into the parameters that will allow you to show positive growth.

How long is your sales cycle? The traditional affiliate sales force is used to an instant turnaround for the web traffic they send your way. At the outside, most sales take place within thirty days from the initial click through. If your sales cycle ranges 2+ months and up, will affiliates be interested in promoting your brand? The answer is maybe. You could look at a per lead payout, leveraged by a sales commission at closing. There may be other opportunities as well. To say the least, though, you may encounter some resistance from the super affiliates, until they fully understand what they can gain from a relationship with you.

Will companies buy your product online? It may seem like a simple question, but unless you want an affiliate program that is intensely manual, you need your customers to click the Buy Now button. The option exists to manually add commissions for off line purchases through your traditional sales force if they were referred by an affiliate, but not only does that include work, it could also weigh against you with the super affiliates because of the increased possibility of over sights, mistakes, and even fraud. No one is going to trust you right out of the gate.

Are you willing to compensate sufficiently? The other challenge with B2B affiliate marketing is going to be a lower conversion rate than most super affiliates appreciate. If they are getting 3 sales every 100 clicks with a B2C program, they will be programmed to expect the same from you. More than likely, that's unrealistic. So it must be made up for with strong payouts for the sales that do close, or at least a decent close payout coupled with a per lead payout. There are a couple of different ways to approach it.

With all of this being said, I want to stress that affiliate marketing is a viable sales channel for B2B. With the proper guidance, you can lower your cost of acquisition, fill your sales pipeline, and broaden your customer base dramatically.

Kevin Webster runs OPMWeb, an outsourced affiliate marketing management firm located in Rochester, NY. You can contact him through his site at http://www.opmweb.com

How To Get 4075 Profits From Contextual Ads

Writen by Alex Sysoef

It's not a secret that context ads are an excellent way to get additional income from your site. Google AdSence and Yahoo are current leaders in this market and pay fairly high amounts per click. But is there a way to get more for the leads generated from your site than just a few cents (in most cases)? Yes, there is but it's not for everyone!

So, let's take a look at couple scenarios that will hopefully help you determine what type of context ads you should use:

1. If you have an informational site with nothing to sell or a site you are using to attract certain type of visitors than Google AdSence or Yahoo Ads are for you. They require minimum involvement from you to get them running and are not competing with what you have to offer.

2. If your website used to sell any type of product, be it an informational or some hard goods you have to be very careful placing above mentioned ads on your site. There is a very good chance that competing products will be displayed there and instead of getting your product sold – you loosing customer when they click on one of the ads. What about sites that are not accepted into programs mentioned above due to their targeting to a very specific customer niche? If this sounds like you – than you should read this article.

First and foremost let me explain my idea of why AdSence or Yahoo ads could be damaging to your online business.

You have build your site, worked hard to make it Search Engine Optimized, add a content targeting you customer base, perhaps even use one of the PPC services to get those customers to your pages, where you present your sales campaign with a full force. You rightfully expect results, since you worked so hard, doesn't matter what type of results: be it a product sale, newsletter sign-up, paid membership or any other form. You get the idea. Now let's look at visitors that come to your page. For the sake of simplicity I will split them into 3 distinct categories:

1. Directly targeted customer. He has come to your site in search of exact information or service you have to offer. How he got there is not important and I leave it up to your imagination. This one is almost guaranteed to become your customer as long as he found what he needed. Not likely to be distracted, although it could happen.

2. An accidental visitor. He got to your site by pure chance, click on search engine or any other means. What you have to offer doesn't interest him and he is just glancing. If you are extremely good marketer – you might be able to convert him into customer but chance are that 99 out of hundred will simply leave your site. I'm not even going to waste my time on this group.

3. A searching customer. He has come to your site searching for something that falls into same category as what you are offering but he is looking. He likes what he sees on your site but due to his nature he is not sure … he feels that your carefully crafted sales pitch is getting to him … he is almost ready to take the action you want him to … and at same time he feels been sold and just looking for ANY way (excuse) to get away from it. Here comes into play contextual ads from one of the services mentioned above that in most cases will offer an ad from you direct competitor. He sees it and decides to investigate, clicks on ad and he is gone from your site! You might have gotten a few cents or dollars but you just lost a customer. I hope you are happy with results and satisfied with a small chunk of change you just got from that ad!

There is a way to fix that situation! People will always click on ads and you cannot stop it short of not having any on your site! How about another option: still use ads that present information to same category of people that visit your site but are not competing with your offer? And how about getting a 40-75% of profits from each sale generated by these ads?

Here is what I use on couple of my niche sites. It requires some basic technical knowledge and ClickBank account. If you don't have one just go and register – it's free. Once you complete registration you have the ability to sell affiliate products from ClickBank market place and get the commissions from each sale. Average commission is about 50%. Only we will do the sales intelligently and have them displayed in form of context ads on your site. I offer a quick review of couple scripts that could be easily installed on your site and get you the profits you deserve:

1. CBQuickAds. Script is free to download and extremely easy to use. Once installed all you have to do is specify your click bank account and a category of CB market place to be displayed on your site. It will automatically pull current available products and show them on your site. You can control what products are displayed by using variable to make sure that your competition is not shown, although it's not guaranteed.

Pluses: Easy to install and setup. Fully automated solution.

Minuses: You can't control what exactly is shown. Only supports text ads.

Author of the script offers a "pay for" solution that creates a directory from CB market place but its not what we need and who wants to pay when you can have something fro free.

2. Ads-Rotator. Script is very easy to install and use. Comes with a list of ads from CB market place ready to use, just replace the account with yours and start generating sales. Has an admin interface through which you can ad or remove any ads or affiliate links and not just ClickBank. Gives you an option to use horizontal or vertical ads. Supports any type of ads be it a text ads or a banner rotators.

Pluses: Easy to install and setup. Can be used as advertisement solution for your entire site. Has an easy to use admin interface with reporting of number of clicks generated by each ad. You have full control of what ads are displayed.

Minuses: Not fully automated. Not free.

This is a solution I use myself and highly recommend to anyone.

Visit Author's site: Free-Secrets to Home Based Business to get additional details on location of both scripts.

Affiliate Marketing In Ezines

Writen by Peter Garant

Affiliate marketing is all about promoting the product. But it is not cold or hard selling. The affiliate lures the Internet user to visit his website by offering information and even free online courses. The visitor of the affiliate's website will find the free information and will even enroll in the free online course. And while reading the informative articles, the visitor will slowly be convinced of the value of certain products.

And when the visitor realizes the value of certain products, he will most likely click the banner that links to the website of the merchant who manufactures the product or who officially sells the product. The affiliate does not do the direct selling. The affiliate simply sets the mind of the visitor, who is the target client, so that this visitor will be easier to convince to proceed to the purchase or order form of the merchant's website.

Thus, for an affiliate marketing business to be successful, the promotional strategies carried out by the affiliate should also be successful. One that will contribute to the success of such promotion is the utilization of e-zines.

An e-zine is basically a newsletter which is emailed to the subscribers of the e-zine. This newsletter contains the types of information that the subscriber has already expressed a willingness to read about. And when an ad is placed together with such information, the subscriber will be made aware of the presence of the products promoted by the affiliate.

There are two types of e-zine ads that an affiliate can pay for. The first type is similar to a banner ad. It contains a couple of sentences composed of well-chosen words that will entice the reader to visit the website of the affiliate. An affiliate can easily write such an e-zine ad since he already has promotional materials for the products.

The second type of e-zine ad is called the solo ad. In such e-zine ad type, the newsletter being mailed to the subscriber contains only the advertisement of the affiliate and nothing more. Usually, such a solo ad is mailed separately from the regular newsletter. For example, if the newsletter is sent every Tuesday of the week, the solo ad is sent on a Thursday or a Friday.

There is no limit to the number of words placed in a solo ad. But the affiliate must keep in mind that such a solo ad is sent through email. Therefore, the solo ad should not be too long that reading it will take up so much time that the subscriber is not willing to sacrifice. The usually suggested number of words is 500.

With e-zine ads, the opportunities of earning more increase. And the affiliate moves closer towards that goal of affiliate marketing success.

Peter Garant's affiliate marketing site offers unique website articles to webmasters who wants to maximize traffic and revenue on their affiliate sites.

5 Magical Steps For Creating A Profitably Potent Affiliate Program

Writen by Grady Smith

There are a few reasons why your affiliate program isn't bringing in the traffic and profits you've always hoped for. And below, I've outlined 5 quick ways to change that so you can get more traffic and profits using the power of "super" affiliates.

1) Make Sure Your Sales Letter Converts -- Nothing puts a damper on an affiliate program quicker than having affiliates sending you tons of traffic but not giving them anything in return.

If your sales letter really works hard to turn prospects into customers, then you're going to make your affiliates (and yourself) very happy.

So, spend some time getting your sales letter converting well. Study how to write better copy, or hire a professional to write you a hard-selling letter.

2) Offer Affiliate Tools -- This is so important. Most affiliates will promote your program if you give them the tools to do it.

Hire someone to design some strong banners. Create a weekly "affiliate tips" newsletter to share new ideas. Create sales letters and graphics affiliates can use that will work to get the word out on your product fast.

3) Start An Affiliate Contest -- And give away prizes for top sellers and those most improved. Or, make an offer that an affiliate making 10 sales through their link gets your product free. It doesn't cost much to run a contest of this type, and the return is great.

4) Define Your Perks And Tell Potential Affiliates Why They Should Promote Your Program -- If your sales letter converts visitors like crazy, tell them. If you split profits down the middle and share 50% of each sale with the referring affiliate, let them know.

Tell them about contests you run and tools you offer to make it easy. Put your offer into focus for potential affiliates. If you have a high-priced product, you could say something like, "This sales letter converts 1 out of every 50 visits. And with the product going for $297, and you getting half of that for each sale, 100 visitors sent from your site can put an easy $297 in your pocket."

5) Get The Word Out -- Place a link on your sales page that sends those clicking to a full-page sales letter detailing all the benefits of offering your product to their visitors.

Promote your affiliate program instead of the product. There are hundreds of ezines in existence that cater to those promoting affiliate programs. Take out an ad and tell them why they want to be an affiliate for you.

Check out keywords online that target your audience and get in touch with the webmasters. Tell them about your programs benefits and give them the opportunity to sign up.

Affiliate programs, once in place, can bring you automatic, low cost traffic for years to come. Take the time to set yours up right, and reap the rewards for years to come.

About The Author

FREE: One Copywriting Critique of your sales letter detailing how you can improve conversion and increase profits (a $95 value). Visit Grady's website for your free critique and more copywriting resources to improve your selling abilities. Click: http://www.cheap-copy.com

grady@cheap-copy.com

Writing About How Easy Affiliate Marketing Is Dont Make It So

Writen by Stephen Brennan

It seems that the VERY popular fashion of article writing is not unlike real world clothing fashion in that; the same things keep coming around with seasonal regularity. In fact, more so with the fast paced development of the 'home business' or 'work at home' article topic conveyor.

I'm probably guilty of the above for writing on this specific subject itself, having seen a few others lament the continual rehashing of the 'same ol', same ol'. Although in my defense, today's comment is not so much the same lamentation but, in my eyes at least, an attempt to put the record straight about a specific subject, of which I've read far too many articles about recently.

To be fair, I'm sure only good intentions (and a need for something to write about) are responsible for the latest round of 'Affiliate marketing is simple' and 'You'll be earning online in no time as an Affiliate' type articles. In so many of these articles, Affiliate marketing is touted as the 'way to go' for anyone who has a website (or EVEN NOT, which is rubbish for all but a few).

I currently run seven Affiliate websites, recently 'trimmed down' from twelve because of the amount of time involved in all that was required to keep each website competitive in the Search Engines and interesting to visitors, both new and returning, chasing PR and generally maintaining what have become known as 'affiliate content websites'.

Some merchants supply complete website templates, which are helpful, provided you have total SEO control, but even so, they are not generally well packed with content and certainly they don't have 'ready to go' RSS feeds, news updates, blogs and articles etc. So even though, as I said, they do help, there is still much to be done initially and maintained continually to end up with a comprehensive, interesting and SE friendly Affiliate website.

I had to 'trim down' my activities simply because, even though I am fortunate enough to be a full time Internet home businessperson, I did not have the time to keep that number of websites producing viable 'income for effort'. When you consider the amount of work involved in just one affiliate content website, I'm sure most will understand why I have had to 'streamline'. At the same time, I hope a realization of the effort and time involved will also become apparent.

Of course, before we even start any of the following, we assume we have the ability to build our own websites with a degree of professionalism and functionality, templates aside. Without these two aspects at least, anyone who does visit, will leave shortly after. For the sake of the exercise, we have magically received the knowledge and experience to achieve this… overnight!

Our website will need to be nurtured through a period of at least 3 - 6 months of little or no activity (unless we also happen to be, again miraculously, well versed, experienced, and game enough to throw money at PPC engines). During this period we will be setting up and making use of the advantages of RSS feeds, blogs, content articles (both other's and hopefully, some of our own). We'll be updating and changing things almost daily in order to achieve some targeted traffic through the SEs, when we're finally out of the 'sandboxes' etc.

While this is all coming together, we're spending a lot of time on a link exchange program (not so much for PR, but because back links are an important component in the SE results). This needs to be done manually because the automatic programs do more harm to a website's SE chances than help (but that's another article!).

Slowly, our website is gaining some targeted traffic, the only kind of any use to an Affiliate website. We may even have managed a few sales, provided we have, again miraculously overnight, become confident and made good choices of Affiliate programs and products around which we have built and nurtured our website.

The traffic and occasional sale, although exciting to the 'first-timer' serve only to create more time consuming work. These 'hits', as we call them, need to be analyzed. We need to know where they came from, what particular promotional method brought them to us, what part of the world they originated, the referring URL if any and so on, so we can concentrate our efforts in the right places and forego those which don't seem to be successful.

No serious Affiliate relies on a single product or program for an income. We all know about the security and sense in 'multiple income streams'? Well, the concept is a very important aspect in Affiliate marketing., so this ONE website we've just managed to bring to a point where it MAY BEGIN paying for some of the time effort and expense involved in it's inception, really needs to be one of a number for an Affiliate to hope to became self-sufficient through Affiliate marketing.

Of course, luck plays it's role in all things and some do make good quickly and sometimes, one product or program WILL be sufficient for the desired income. Maybe, with some, the whole exercise is more a hobby or interest and a little pocket money to pay costs is all that's wanted. These are all personal aspects, which are of no consequence. We're talking about people who are being told how easy it is to become an Affiliate for 'income' purposes.

Having now totally destroyed the Affiliate dreams of thousands, I will now say that it IS a marvellous Internet home business model and you can start and progress to the point where you are making some income, without spending very much at all. In fact, the only outlay that is absolutely necessary, in my opinion, is the domain and hosting for your website. In that respect, Affiliate marketing is TRULY the 'no-risk' home based business model.

Still again, there is much to know about the domain and hosting aspect of the preparation, which will have consequences if not considered correctly, before we even think about what I have spoken about above.

Do yourself a favor if you're relatively unfamiliar with Affiliate marketing or even halfway there, get the right advice from the right sources. The right sources are people who have been, and/or are doing it themselves and aren't afraid to explain that it's not all that EASY, but certainly possible for those who really WANT the 'work at home' dream for themselves and their families.

This article may be copied ONLY in it's entirety and ONLY with this Author's Resource attached with links functioning.

The 2005 Edition of Steve Brennan's popular ebook title 'The Affiliate Guide Book' is available now. He also operates a number of Affiliate wesbites which include The Diet & Weight Loss Place and The Home Based Business & Affiliate Center.

Beginners Guide To Affiliate Marketing

Writen by Robert Rogers

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online. Companies like buy.com, amazon.com, and walmart.com all have successful affiliate programs that you can join free.

So what is an affiliate program?

Affiliate programs allow you to sell another company's service or product and make a commission on every sale or lead. They provide you with links, ad-copy, banners, and sometimes datafeeds of their entire inventory. They also tell you what their best sellers are and give you exclusive coupons to offer your customers.

How do you find an affiliate program?

Three of the biggest "brokers" for these affiliate programs include cj.com, linkshare.com and clickbank.com. It's easy to apply, get approved, and get started. You don't have to deal with customers, inventory, shipping, or returns. All you do is refer a customer to the company and they in turn reward you with a referral fee or commission when a sale is made. Many companies also offer residual income opportunities where you will earn month after month. This is common with membership sites such as email autoresponders or dating sites.

How do I choose a program?

Think about the things that you are best at, things you enjoy. Start writing them down, sharing them with your friends and family. You should research the popularity of some of your interests. Try to determine if people are buying that product or service online. Look through the affiliate directory. They are categorized by the most popular subjects. In cj.com, all you need to do is type in a keyword like "cars" and a list of affiliates with products and services related to cars will be presented to you.

Start Marketing Your Campaign.

The reason affiliate programs are so great is that you only need to focus on marketing. Many affiliate programs have information on how to market and give you tools such as banners, product feeds and more. You can also look for other information on marketing including writing articles, creating pay-per-click campaigns, commenting in online forums etc.

Here is a short list of what you will need to get started on the right foot.

Visa or MasterCard

To start and advertise your business, you will need a credit card to open up advertising accounts with google and yahoo. If you don't have a credit card, you can get a prepaid visa. There are several offers online, just do a simple search in Google or Yahoo. All you do is fill out the online application, then they will mail a real visa or mastercard to you. Take the card to a local dealer where you give them cash and that will be your line of credit.

$11.95/ month - A domain name and hosting account.

A domain name is the name of your website i.e. www.yourdomain.com. Try to get a domain name that will represent what you will be selling. If you are not sure about that at this point, you can pick a more generic domain name, but keep it short and easy to remember. Something like "Smith-Enterprises" will do.

Hosting is where your website will stored and seen online. Yahoo has a small business center where you can get both your hosting and domain name in one place. They also have site building and design tools to help the beginner make great looking websites.

$300 - Advertising expenses for Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing

After you have your website setup, you will need to advertise the products and services that you have chosen to sell. Pay Per Click is basically the fastest way to generate instant targetted traffic to your website. Setup accounts with google.com adwords and yahoo search marketing. They will display your ads on their search page based on the information people are looking for. For example, if someone types in "dating online" and you have an ad targeted for dating, then google will show your ad usually on the right side of their search results.

You've probably seen these ads many times while you were doing your own research. Before spending any money on advertising, you need to read Perry Marshalls free Adwords course. In this course, he gives you tips on how to write ads, research keywords, and lower your advertising costs. Also review Google's terms of service carefully. Generally speaking, you are not allowed to advertise anything illegal, gambling or prescriptions. Google also provides you with a wealth of information and tools to get you started.

Now all you need to do is design your short text ad that will display in Google and your "landing page". The text ad consists of 3 lines and a link to your landing page. The landing page is a page on your website that Google will send your potential customers identified by the link in your ad.

Here is a simple example of a text ad in Google.

New Widgets On Sale!
Incredible savings on a huge
selection. Free shipping available.
www.yourlink.com/landingpage.htm

On your landing page, you will have a description of the product, banners and/or coupons, and other information that will help pre-sell the item with links to the affiliates product page. You need to do your best here at selling the customer before he/she goes to the affiliate. Do an in-depth review, showing why this product or service is better than it's competitors. If you use the product yourself, give examples of how it improved your quality of life or helped you finish a project faster. Testimonials from satisfied customers are also very powerful.

As you gain experience marketing you will make adjustments and you will be on your way to a fabulous income!

Robert Rogers is a writer in the Washington DC area. For more tips and resources found in this article, visit his site at ==>Affiliate Programs and Internet Marketing

Clickbank Data Entry

Writen by Joseph Mosely

Affiliate Programs have exploded on the internet. Thousand of people join them every day. Amazon.com is probably the best example of such phenomenal success.

If the affiliate program is so popular and so widely available and booming like mushroom...Why do most affiliate have a hard time making $100 per month ? And some never see have receive a check ? It's probably because they are not effective in their marketing campaign or doing noting at all.

But some affiliates are making big bucks. They are the one with an income of ($100,000 and over per year). There is also a big majority who still make a good income (around $10 000 to $75 000 a year). Of course the vast majority of affiliate will never make that much money. They fail miserably.Even some of the largest online merchants, who spend huge sums setting up the infrastructure for their affiliate programs, do nothing to coach or motivate their affiliates. Nor do they provide any of the basic materials necessary to optimize the quality of referrals.But, by treating affiliates as a valued marketing resource instead of a risk-free ad service, you can achieve astonishing results. This means investing effort in helping your affiliates.

The most fundamental way to prime your affiliates for effective selling is by producing a support pack that leads them in the right direction and makes the process as simple and effortless as possible.

Of course, the pack should contain all the staple advertising tools, like banners, classified ads, headlines and a variety of short and long descriptions for search engines and classified listings. But it should also include content that your affiliates can use to extend the value of their websites or distribute in their newsletters.

by joseph mosely

My Affiliate Experience

Writen by Krash D

Let me start off with some things not to do from experience:

1. Do not place mass quantities of banners on the main page of your site. For the most part surfers do not pay attention to banner ads.

2. Do not sign up with affiliate programs that have nothing to do with the content or scope of your website.

3. Do not put all your faith in one affiliate program, you should have a few backups just in case.

4. If you do place a banner or two on your main page don't pick the super flashy banner that makes your eyes hurt.

Here are a few things you might want to to do:

1. Pick affiliate programs that are well recognized by the general public.

2. If you must place a banner or two on your main page try and locate a banner that matches the color scheme of your site.

3. Use text links in the main content of your site (instead of banners) to funnel your visitors to your chosen affiliates.

4. Pick affiliates that match your content fairly close but try to avoid affiliates that would create competition for your site.

5. If you are showcasing multiple affiliate programs make sure you make navigation to your affiliates fairly easy for your visitors.

Like I mentioned before I don't claim to know it all when it comes to using affiliates. All I wanted to do is give a bit of information that I have gained through trial and error in hopes that what I know can be used.

Please feel free to republish this article in its entirety and visit http://www.supremeaffiliates.com for even more webmaster information. Want to share your knowledge? Submit your articles here http://www.compositiondepot.com/

The 5 Surefire Ways Of Building Massive Traffic And Making Thousands In Affiliate Sales

Writen by Brian Lam

Why are those top affiliates able to easily make so much money just by recommending and selling other people's products?

What did they do to be so different from the rest of the 96% of the affiliates out there who are making little or no money at all?

The key to making those huge affiliate sales really lies on what you portray to your visitors and what you can give to your visitors.

But before that, let's deal with getting lots of targeted traffic to your website so that you could build a huge mailing list to mine your income from.

There are a number of different ways to increase your targeted traffic and in this article; I will touch on 4 different effective methods.

Sure-Fire Way #1 - Ezine articles

Writing articles is a very good strategy of a free advertising establishing you as an expert in the field. When people read your article which provided them with good quality information, they will tend to follow and click on your link to learn more about how you help them.

In this way, your credibility is quickly established and you will soon be recognized as an expert in your field. Being an expert in a field will automatically attract hundreds or even thousands of visitors who will be looking for a solution on your website.

Your articles can also act as a one way link giving you a steady stream of traffic to your website permanently as long as it is being published.

If you need more articles or information on how to write quality articles, you can go to these websites:

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.ezinesearch.com

http://www.dime-co.com

http://emailuniverse.com/ezine-tips/

Sure-Fire Way #2 - Reciprocal Links

This free method is another great way to guarantee your website in getting a steady stream of highly targeted traffic. But in order to get highly targeted traffic, you will need to exchange links with websites that can both complement and compete with yours.

Not only that, they need to have a stream of huge targeted traffic so that you can tap into that vast wealth of the traffic using your link.

All you need to do is just to type in your keywords that describe what you are offering in any search engines and search through the results and finding those sites. After that, you will need to send them a personalized email requesting an exchange of links. Most will be happy to exchange links with you. Sometimes, you will need to include a few incentives in the offer.

Therefore, you will have many good quality websites providing you with a small amount of targeted traffic that will amount to a huge permanent source of highly targeted traffic to your website.

Sure-Fire Way #3 - Search Engine Optimization

You may want to optimize your website content so that the major search engines can easily spider your sites and rank them accordingly.

You need to maintain a good number of specific keywords targeted to your market on your website. This has to be done in a way such that the search engines spiders love the keywords and your visitors love your content.

This way, you not only attract visitors but also spiders from many search engines that will be happy to index your site. If you need help in creating theme-based content site pages that are full of keywords filled content, you can get this free ebook that will teach you how to create them.

Get the free ebook titled: "The Affiliate Masters Course" at: http://aff-masters.sitesell.com/acemarkbiz.html

Or if you want any good quality search engine optimization service, what I recommend is 1st Search Ranking at http://www.acemarketingbiz.com/links/1stsearchranking/

Both of these resources will definitely be able to help you in greatly improve your site's ranking.

Sure-Fire Way #4 - Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

This method is the most direct and effective in getting the type of traffic you want. This is because you can specify the kind of keywords your target audience will key in to search for what you offer.

If you are selling golf clubs, all you have to do is just to bid on keywords such as "golf clubs", "golf equipment", "golf" etc. You can specify the amount of money spent for every visitor who clicks on your link, so you can immediately calculate the total cost and the rate of return before you make a sale if you know your sales conversion rate.

In a way, you will have complete control over your advertising budget. A good big name pay-per-click search engine is Overture at http://www.overture.com but there is also another good quality pay-per-click search engine that charge a flat rate bid at http://www.acemarketingbiz.com/links/1stsearchranking/ppc.html

Ultimate Sure-Fire Way #5 – Building Your List and Pre-selling Affiliate Products

With all these traffic building and driving methods in place, you can get a substantial amount of traffic to your website. Now, in order to build a huge mailing list, you will have to create your own freebie or bundle one up as a package.

It can be in the form of a course, ebook, software or audio etc. this freebie has to offer not only good but absolutely incredible information to immediately entice and encourage your visitors to join your mailing list in order to get your freebie.

Once you have people in your mailing list, continue to offer them quality information, you can get readily available articles at ezines sites such as:

http://www.bizsitebiz.com

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.ideasmarketers.com

This is absolutely essential in continuing to build credibility and reputation for you. Once you have established a trust between your subscribers and you, you as an expert can easily make a few thousand dollars by personally recommending a few quality affiliate products that can help them solve their problems.

All you need to do is to send them an endorsement email stating the benefits you have gotten from the product and tell them they also can get those benefits by using the products and then direct them to your affiliate link.

Do not sell them; just create the urgency and the excitement to find out more about what and how the product you recommend can help them.

The key is to pre-sell them and lead them to the affiliate sales page with an open mind.

So all in all, you just drive highly targeted traffic to those quality affiliate sites which need your traffic and with your established credibility and reputation, you can easily make a couple of thousands with just one personal endorsement mailing.

Thus, this is the ultimate key to making the most affiliate sales and income for you.

Brian Lam, author of many articles and ebooks at Email Marketing Solutions, provides a new opt in email marketing system plus many Free Internet marketing resources, Courses and Bonuses.

Make Money Fast Opportunity Where To Find A Genuine One Online

Writen by Christopher Kyalo

Everybody knows that the World Wide Web is crowded with hype peddlers promoting the sort of opportunity which rather than help you make money is designed only to raise funds fast for those promoting them who really do not care about you.

This makes it quite a challenge to find a genuine make money fast opportunity online. Actually if you know all the right places to look, it is in fact fairly easy to identify the only obstacle will be in how you are able to quickly decide if it is really for you.

The right place to look for a genuine make money fast opportunity online is at the relevant discussion forums and discussion groups online. Here you will find other people sharing their experiences and both failures and successes. It is not only a great place to learn stuff, but it is also the ideal place where you can get to know about every scum free and excellent make money fast opportunity available that could be just right for you.

Never trust a make money fast opportunity that you have just stumbled on which nobody has referred you to. More so if it is still relatively new. No matter how good and full proof it is. Just remember that people are falling for this kind of make money fast so-called opportunity scams every day.

Learn more about the best home business opportunity from a blogger who rakes in thousands of dollars... and growing from their home business.

Affiliate Alternative Google Adsense

Writen by Sharon Housley

The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs were once a great source of online revenue, a savvy webmaster with an eye for marketing could easily parley a site into a money making machine with a little luck and effort. However, the evolution and growth of the Internet has hampered the growth of fortune making affiliate programs. Constant search engine algorithm changes, along with the search engine's clear distaste for sites participating in affiliate programs; have made it a little more difficult to earn a healthy affiliate revenue. An influx in the use of software programs that terminate cookie tracking and privacy programs that prevent webmasters from tracking referrers, have also hindered the affiliate sales channel. While it is still possible to make money through affiliate marketing, other alternatives ought to be considered.

A Healthy Alternative or Supplement

Google's Adsense program allows approved websites to dynamically serve Google's pay-per-click Adword results. This has become a popular alternative and an effective revenue sharing program for webmasters. Google's spider parses the adserving website and serves ads that relate to the website's content. While the Google's Adsense program still has some issues, they are making efforts to improve it.

The website maintenance related to Adsense is very easy and requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to insert javascript into the webpage or website template. The javascript calls the ad from Google and will ensure that ads are served each time a visitor goes to the webpage. If the visitor clicks one of the Adsense ads served to the website, the website owner is credited for the referral.

The implementation, while simple, has its drawbacks. Google dictates the format of the ads. Webmasters can select from a handful of preformatted text boxes that lack creativity. A recent improvement allows webmasters to modify the ad boxes to resemble the website's color scheme. Still, a far cry from some of the creative ads webmasters are accustom to.

The example below reflects how the color scheme can be modified to match the look of the website, but the ads physically don't fit well into the overall website design.

sample modified to match sites color scheme:

http://www.hospital-software.com (scroll to the bottom)

Google determines the content of the ads that are shown/ Sometimes the ads are poorly targeted, and of no interest to the website visitors.

sample of poorly targeted ads:

http://www.real-estate-supply.com

Adwords can be a great addition to a website, and when well matched to the content the revenue stream from Google is consistent and effortless.

sample of effective Adsense program:

http://www.police-supplies.com (scroll to the bottom)

http://www.small-business-software.net (scroll to the bottom)

Not that the Google Adsense program is not without its problems.as the reporting provided by Google is lacking. Google has not implemented any way to track multiple sites that serve ads; they simply show the number of ads served, the percentage of clicks received, and the revenue earned each day. Google does not disclose the amount of the revenue they share, what percentage of the revenue they earn and what someone can expect to receive for each click. Webmasters with multiple sites will have difficulty determining which websites are producing the money in the Adsense program.

With affiliate programs many webmasters implement a new browser launch with each click off the site, Adsense removes the visitor from the website and there is not currently an option to launch the visitor into another browser.

Early on Google implemented a filtering system that allowed webmasters to prevent a specific domain's ads from being served on the website. Ad blocking meant that webmasters could prevent their competitors ads from being dynamically served on their website.

Overall, adwords are great supplements to websites where affiliate programs are either not performing or when affiliate programs don't exist that target the sites content.

Give it a Try

Implementing and maintaing Google Adsense program on a content site requires very little effort and can often bring a steady stream of additional revenue for webmasters. Consider supplementing content and see what happens.

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net

What You Need To Know Before Paying For Another Moneymaking Program Online

Writen by Hanif Khaki

If you are thinking of paying for a home based business or Get Rich Quick program online,then you need to read this important message.

We've bought and tested just about EVERY moneymaking program offered on the Internet,and what we've found will shock you.

Imagine making tons of money with no effort, while just sitting at home in your pyjamas. I don't know about you, but I'd love to be able to spend more time with my kids while having thousands of dollars automatically pouring into my bank account without having to do much work or punching in a time clock.

Is it really possible to make boatloads of money on the internet with very little work and very little money? We've certainly been told that there are countless individuals and marketing gurus that are making bushels of money on the internet everyday.

I'm sure you've seen all the programs with the following headlines:

"How to make thousands of dollars on the internet doing nothing"

"Buy my e-book or course and you too can make millions just like I did"

"How I was dead broke until I discovered a "secret formula" to make millions"

"Money making secrets revealed at last"

"Who else wants to Retire in 3 months doing affiliate marketing"

"Make thousands of dollars a month doing e-currency trading"

"Make unlimited income with resale rights"

These "marketing gurus" all claim they've made millions of dollars and they can help YOU do the same…..you've seen the promise, "If I can do it, so can you….and it's so easy that my 13 year old daughter can do it".

Really?

Well, you'll be happy to know that I have bought and tried almost every program over the last 3 years and have a revelation to make. More than 99% of all these programs are just plain money making SCAMS. And the so-called "marketing gurus" are SCAM ARTISTS. Their "sales pages" promise all kinds of riches and rewards that are completely unrealistic for most people. These scam artists prey on people's vulnerabilities and take advantage of people's well intentioned hopes and dreams. Most people simply want to make some extra income or make a better life for themselves. Perhaps you've fallen prey to some of these scam artists who convinced you that "Your search is over, you've finally found the answer to all your money worries".

You see, most people believe that if you just work hard and follow the programs, than they will work for you too. Well, I set about to go digging and find out if there were any REAL programs out there that actually worked. After all, there must be a few decent people out there offering something of REAL value. I was determined to find legitimate programs that were making real money for everyday people.

Here's what I did…

I got in touch with the seller of nearly every moneymaking, "get rich quick" , and home-based business opportunity program on the internet. I simply stated that I wanted to buy and "resell" their program and website. This didn't require much convincing since I offered them money upfront. Once they knew I was serious and willing to pay, I requested that they allow me to check out their membership forums before going any further. Let me tell you….I got more then what I bargained for,a lot more. To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement.

Here's what I found:

• Vague information, no specifics or details
• Lack of any real support
• Forums full of the owners pushing their own products
• Useless and out of date information
• Requests to recruit more people into buying
• Links that didn't work

It didn't take long to see that all these programs were outright scams. And it was fairly obvious that the people pushing these scams knew it but were making too much money to even care. Needless to say I decided not to follow through with any of the above programs

However, the good news is that there WAS light at the end of the tunnel. It turns out that out of more than a hundred programs that were tested, there were notably a few that actually worked, In fact only 2 of the programs we tested, worked as promised.

Hanif Khaki is a well known author and trusted reviewer of numerous business opportunities and home based businesses online. He is also the founder of the popular website http://www.best-scam-free-programs.com.

Affiliate Marketing An Excellent Choice For Your First Home Internet Business

Writen by Bob Davis

Promoting affiliate programs is the least costly and least stressful of all types of home Internet businesses and makes an excellent starting point for Internet marketing novices. It is also one of the best ways to earn revenue from your web site if you don't have a product of your own to sell. In fact, there are some 'super affiliates' out there that make their living online doing nothing but promoting other online merchant's products or services through affiliate programs.

So, just what is an affiliate program? An affiliate is someone who partners with another online merchant to help drive targeted business to that merchant's web site in order to increase sales. An affiliate program is an inexpensive marketing strategy used by an online merchant in which a monetary incentive is offered to webmasters (affiliates) to drive traffic to that merchant's web site. The monetary incentive is usually in the form of a percentage-based commission or a fixed dollar amount. Affiliate programs are sometimes referred to as associate programs or referral programs. Affiliates are also referred to as publishers in many cases.

Sponsoring an affiliate program makes sense for an online merchant because it helps to

• Increase online exposure
• Increase traffic leading to greater sales
• Generate more targeted leads

For an Internet entrepreneur there are many more reasons it makes sense to start an Internet affiliate business. Here are just some of them:

• Low cost set-up
• Affiliate programs are free to join
• 24x7 passive income
• No employees
• No inventory
• No order processing
• No product shipping
• No merchant account needed
• Minimal risk
• Large income potential

There are three general types of affiliate programs:

• Pay-Per-Sale (PPS) - in which an affiliate earns a commission or fixed dollar amount based on each sale made through links from the affiliate's site.
• Pay-Per-Lead (PPL) - in which an affiliate earns a fixed amount every time a customer directed from their web site fills out a survey, requests information, joins a program, etc.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - in which an affiliate earns a fixed amount every time a potential customer clicks on a link from the affiliate's site to the merchant's site.

Once you are affiliated with a merchant, you may place their ad(s) on your web site. When a customer clicks on one of these ads and is taken to the merchant's online store, if they then make a purchase, fill out a survey, etc., you get a commission for that sale or referral based on the merchant's payout structure.

The 'million dollar' question that I had when I first started, and that you may be wondering about right now, is "How does the merchant know that the sale/referral came from my site?"

When you join an affiliate program, you are assigned a tracking number or code, usually referred to as an affiliate ID. This ID is unique only to you. When you create a link from an ad on your web site, you simply include this ID in the link.

Once a customer clicks on your link, a tracking cookie with your affiliate ID is placed on the customer's computer. If that customer then makes a purchase, the tracking cookie will identify them to the merchant as being referred from your web site. Depending on the affiliate program, the tracking cookie may be valid for just that one visit, up to a lifetime for that customer.

Most merchants realize that a customer may not make a purchase during the same visit in which they were directed from an affiliate site. As an incentive to the affiliate, if a customer returns directly to the merchant site within the time specified by the cookie duration and makes a purchase, the affliate will still get credit for the sale.

While a normal link to a page that is selling product 'abc' at merchant 'XYZ' may look like:

http://www.xyz.com/products/abc.html

Your affiliate link may look something like:

http://www.xyz.com/product.asp? PID=1234567&AID=9876

where your affiliate ID is '9876' and the product ID or SKU for item abc is '1234567'.

This example is a hypothetical link to a specific product or product page. Most merchants also permit you to link to their home page, or any other page on their web site. Most of the ads you will place on your site are in the form of banners, text ads, images or text/image combinations. Many merchants also supply you with more advanced linking options such as data feeds, storefronts, virtual stores, search boxes, and the like.

If you're contemplating starting a home internet business, then promoting affiliate programs is the best way to test the waters. Affiliate marketing is a proven win-win-win scenario for online merchants, internet marketers, and consumers alike.

Bob Davis is a professional database consultant, web designer, graphic artist, and Internet marketer. If you'd like some solid tips on starting your own legitimate internet business, then read his free 'Home Internet Business Guide for Beginners' at http://www.internetbusiness-home.com.

Here are some of Bob's other sites you may enjoy visiting:
http://www.petsnfamily.com
http://www.cats-furniture.com

Affiliate Advertising That Will Get You Big Results

Writen by Christopher Kyalo

The biggest challenge for any affiliate has to be advertising. How does an affiliate achieve effective advertising that will get them the massive audience they require to make money from their affiliate program?

It matters little how good the affiliate program that one has joined is. It matters even less how generous the affiliate commissions' structure is. If the advertising program carried out by the affiliate is not effective, then failure is inevitable.

The most effective affiliate advertising that will get you big results involves only two simple steps.

Effective Affiliate Advertising is Setting Up A Blog To Capture Prospects Blogs are very simple to set up and yet they tend to build up traffic much quicker than sites. Search engines also love them due to the fact that they are usually regularly updated with fresh content.

These are just some of the reasons why blogs are the most effective advertising weapon for any affiliate.

The affiliate will need to understand well in advance, what kind of audience they would like to target their advertising at. This will tend to be the audience that is most likely to purchase the affiliate product or service being advertised.

Effective Affiliate Advertising Is Getting Enough Traffic To Your Blog Once the blog for affiliate advertising has been set up, the next challenge is how to get enough traffic to it. If you can get enough one way links pointing at your blog from as many high traffic sites and blogs, then you are guaranteed of success. The immediate impact of these links will be to drive traffic to your blog that is more targeted than any traffic you will receive directly from search engines. Over a period of time, the links will help you get a good ranking with search engines which will in turn drive massive traffic direct from search engines to your blog through most of the keywords that you will have used at your blog. Most keyword phrases will be almost useless if your blog does not have enough links pointing at it from other blogs. Actually the more links you can accumulate, the more successful you are bound to be advertising your affiliate program.

The challenge will be how to generate a constant flow of one way links pointing at your blog.

Christopher Kyalo is a successful online entrepreneur who runs a simple system that is capable of helping any blogger or webmaster quickly acquire a high number of quality one way links pointing at their site. To qualify to join the program you will need to subscribe to his affiliate insider secrets newsletter. Simply send a blank email now to Affiliate-insider-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Affiliates Publishers Success

Writen by Wes Stephens

Making Money From Your Web Site

You've created a great site with lots of great content and you have chosen your web host. So… big question… what's next? Unless you are especially altruistic (and if you search the web, you'll be surprised to see just how many people are), you'll probably want to make some money out of your efforts. But how do you turn this stream of dots on a screen into a revenue stream? Here are a few pragmatic tips that might help… basic steps that will get you started and (hopefully) start you thinking.

How will people find my site?

Before you can make money from your site, people have to visit it - it's as simple as that. Your first job then is to get people to visit your site. It doesn't matter whether you have the best site in the world, if people can't find it you are never going to get any visitors. Getting your site known means using search engines, and to get you started, that means submitting to a few of the key engines, particularly Google.

Luckily, there are a number of free web sites that help people to submit sites to search engines. The one I use is Addme.com. This has a very simple interface which guides you through submitting to a number of engines including Subjex, Alexa, Scrub The Web, FAST Search AllTheWeb, LookSeek, Jayde, InfoTiger, NerdWorld, Aeiwi, Walhello, LifeTips, ExactSeek, and EntireWeb. Most importantly, Addme.com gets you into Google. You might want to supplement this with a registration to MSN and Yahoo! (outside Google two of the biggest players) although I have never found registration to the latter particularly easy. Take a look around on the Internet - you might see others submission sites that I don't know about that will help you out with Yahoo! In fact there are thousands of search engines you need to submit to, but for now, until the ball starts rolling, this will do. Don't make the mistake many people do – don't hit as many registration sites as possible in order to increase your chances of a good placing. It doesn't work like that – submitting to the same engine many times actually does the opposite. In fact, it could get you completely banned from a search engine. And don't submit specific pages of your web site as an alternative – it won't help. The search engines are smart enough to recognize the similarities between www.yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com/page1.html!

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How will people even know my site exists?

OK – so search engines are going to direct people to your site, but that's not the whole story. If you had a regular business, a 'bricks and mortar' business, you'd want to let as many people as possible know as quickly as possible that you have started operations, right? Why would an Internet business be any different? As soon as you are up and running, make sure you send out Press Releases. Fortunately, there are now countless Press Release sites on the Internet, most are free; some provide a much more expansive coverage for only a few dollars. Here are a few good ones: http://www.prweb.com http://businesswire.com http://www.prnewswire.com http://www.free-press-release.com http://www.free-press-release.com http://www.theopenpress.com http://www.prleap.com http://www.openpress.com http://www.pr.com http://openpr.com

Have a good look through these sites; many have articles on how to write a successful Press Release. A well written Press Release will significantly increase your chances of getting visitors to your site.

What about directories? Should I use them?

One of the other ways of getting people to your site is registering to directories. There is every possible type of directory on the Internet. They are comprised of lists of items related to a specific topic – travel directories, used car directories, etc. You will almost certainly find a directory to meet your needs. One good one is Craig's List. This site gets hundreds of thousands of visitors a day and people who list their sites here can get up to 800 visitors a day immediately! Don't stop there though. If you look around the Internet you can actually find services which, for a small fee, will find directories for you and place your details in them. Generally they are not too expensive.

Should I advertise?

Aside from press releases and directories, you can also pay for advertisements that link to your site. Of course that can be very expensive, but there are a number of cheap alternatives currently available. Particularly popular at the moment are 'Pixel Ad' sites. These sites allow you to buy small amounts of adverting that is stuck on a single page. The 'father' of these web sites was Alex Tew's 'MillionDollarHomepage' but there are now scores… A search for 'pixel ad' in Google reveals the following: www.pixeladmall.com www.milliondollarspixel.com www.freepixeladvertising.com

The list goes on and on… and on… and on… and on… and… is likely to continue growing! How do I make my site make money? By now you should have a few people visiting your site, which is a good start. Without them you won't have a chance of generating revenue! But how do you start making money now the visitors are coming? One of the problems with the Internet is that everyone wants, and (because of the history of the Internet - DOT COM Boom, etc.) to some extent expects to become at least a millionaire overnight. Very few people do this (the 'MillionDollarHomePage' mentioned above took 5 months to make Alex Tew his million - I doubt the other sites listed are even close) and you should start small. Think of making a dollar a day as a good start on the way to something better, rather that an outright disaster that makes you think about quitting! In my experience, if your objective is to make a living from a web site, there are ways and means of achieving this, no matter what the subject area of your site or your current circumstances.

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Affiliate Marketing Vs Google Adsense Let The Battle Begin

Writen by Scott Patterson

Lately there has been a lot of discussion on how to make tons of money with Google Adsense. In fact, many people are making the claim that Adsense sites can earn a higher revenue then an affiliate-marketing site.

So that brings us to an important question: Which is a better online business – Affiliate-Marketing sites or Google Adsense sites?

Let's explore each one and then find out which online business is better option:

Google Adsense

How do you like the idea of earning m*ney without dealing with customers or answering emails. This is possible when you run a Google Adsense site. With Adsense sites, you can have a virtual passive-income that requires little maintaining. But is this the best option for an online business?

Here are the positives of Google Adsense sites:

• They are perfect for people who run information sites that have no related affiliate product

• You can set it and leave it. With Google Adsense, you can create a content page, and there is little need to update the content.

• Adsense sites are easy to scale. Since they require little upkeep, you can easily create multiple websites that each make a nice income.

Here are the negatives of Google Adsense sites:

• They are not a great long term solution. Instead of getting your visitors to subscribe to a mailing list, you are focusing on getting people to click on ads. Real online businesses concentrate on building assets that can use for long-term growth.

• These sites are dependent on search engines. Most Google Adsense sites make the mistake of depending on search engines for the majority of their traffic. If the SE algorithms change then your income might drop significantly.

Affiliate Marketing

Being an affiliate marketer is great for those who want build a theme site. With this type of business, you can easily create web pages around a topic and get people to buy products through your products. If done correctly, you can easily build a loyal following that will help you make money for years to come.

But can affiliate marketing make you more money then Google Adsense?

Here are the positives of affiliate marketing:

• A great advantage of affiliate-marketing is that you can build a long term business that will bring in a revenue stream for years.

• With affiliate-marketers you need to focus on building an email list. This list is a major asset of your business. Every time you have an offer, you can go to your list and increase your profits.

• Unlike Google Adsense sites, which only concentrates on high paying keywords, an affiliate marketing site can be centered on a topic that you have an interest in.

Here are the negatives of affiliate marketing:

• You have to learn how to write persuasively and get people to purchase the product that you are recommending. For many people this is a difficult skill to learn.

• Each affiliate marketing site requires a lot of effort. You must spend a lot of time writing product reviews, building your email list and creating web content.

So which is better: Affiliate marketing or Google Adsense?

The answer is that both are great solutions for an online business. Instead of choosing one over the other, you should create websites that can take advantage of both.

Here is how you can do this:

1) Create a content site on a topic that you are interest in, while paying a good amount per Adsense click.

2) Integrate your Adsense into the menu bars and the top of your web content.

3) Add web pages for affiliate-products and your opt-in email list. But, make sure that you leave out the Adsense blocks on these pages. This way you are ensuring that you are building your long-term assets.

4) Create optimized web page articles that focus on a specific keyword phrase. Place your Google Adsense in these blocks.

5) Provide your email list with good content and product recommendations. Once in awhile, email your list and provide a link to some of your web articles. That way, you can earn a little bit of m*ney from your subscribers while giving them good content.

By focusing on both affiliate products and Google Adsense, you will be building both short-term and long-term profits.

Scott Patterson is a self-proclaimed Dunce, yet last month he earned $12,124 from one of his online businesses. Find out how YOU can do the same, download his free ebook- http://www.duncemoney.com/affiliate-adsense.html A Guide to Online Businesses