Affiliate Marketing Secrets

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Morrison, Greg B.”.”.3 Aug. 2010EzineArticles.com.10 Aug. 2010

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The simplest form of affiliate marketing is to drive traffic to your affiliate link, and every time someone buys through this link you get paid your affiliate commission. This form of affiliate marketing is also called “direct linking.”

Being the simplest form of affiliate marketing makes it the first option for an affiliate as long as it works. Sometimes this option is not the best one and hence an affiliate marketer will consider building a buffer web page and drive the traffic to it.

There are cases when you need to stick to the direct linking method, especially when you are just starting to test a market that had never been proven to be profitable. As long as the affiliate commission is high enough to cover the expenses of advertising, an affiliate can test a market by direct linking to different sales pages. This testing process can give you a lot of valuable data to use in further promotional activities in this “niche” if proven profitable. Even if your direct linking campaign is losing money, by gathering these data you can turn it into a profitable one.

How to Benefit from Direct Linking in Affiliate Marketing:

1. Through direct linking you can figure out the size of this market. The number of impressions and/or clicks that your ads get is a good indicator for how big this market is, especially if you are driving traffic from various sources.

2. Testing two or more sales pages (or products) can also give you an idea of what this market requires in a sales page in order to take action.

3. Testing different ad copies will also give you an idea of what words trigger more sales. This is extremely valuable when you build your own niche website.

4. By tracking your results during the direct linking phase you know exactly what keywords trigger more sales. This is the most accurate keyword research tool ever.

Formal affiliate marketing training, unfortunately, doesn’t exist. The good news is that I have a completely free affiliate marketing training series posted on my website: http://marketing-online-101.com where I explain it the way I do it.

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CloseMLA Style Citation:
Orr, Dan”.”.30 Jul. 2010EzineArticles.com.10 Aug. 2010

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It’s no secret that every discussion about affiliate marketing seems to start and end with Clickbank. Which is great for a lot of people, but I feel it short-changes a lot of newcomers who either don’t have success with Clickbank right away or simply don’t see any products on that network that they want to promote.

The affiliate marketing business has billions of dollars shifted around every year and while Clickbank is huge, it’s only a part of that. Of course, Clickbank is the best network for newcomers.

They accept almost all members, they take care of affiliate revenues instantly, and they pay regularly. But, if you’re interested in diversifying or finding a few new ways to make a profit, these other 10 affiliate networks are top choices as well.

Plimus.com – Plimus is very much like Clickbank in many ways with quick acceptance times and plenty of offers.

After setting up your account, you’ll have access to live account reps to ask questions and prep your account, and will have plenty of customization options for how your checkout screens look, as well as how the affiliate linking works.

Additionally, they don’t force the customers to buy things like insurance or CD ROMs for software promoters and they are upfront about nearly everything they do -making their service much more effective for both marketers and vendors. Options are a plus in this business.

Markethealth.com – For those interested in physical products in the health and wellbeing niches with better payouts than other physical goods sites, this is a good place to get started. Acceptance is quick and easy as well.

Payouts here are really one of the big reasons they have become so popular. Maximum payouts range upwards of $100-$150 for single products and with plenty of recurring memberships in their catalogs; the potential for long-term profits is rather high.

Additionally, they will pay directly to PayPal, which means less waiting for payment release.

Linkshare.com – Linkshare has super simple acceptance and top notch tracking of hops and conversions. The commission rates are, unfortunately, lower than other networks though, because merchants pay for the right to use the service.

Payments are slow in coming as well. This is a site that you can find top level companies that people will be familiar with, allowing you to use their brand prowess as a selling point – including things like American Express.

They also provide a number of useful tutorials and development tools, along with a development team that can answer most of your questions.

As Seen on PC – The acceptance process here is also pretty simple, but you’ll need a website of some sort before they’ll generally let you through. They do offer physical products as well, with decent commissions.

If you’re interested in having a good array of products to sell and upsell through a newsletter sequence or on your website, this is a great way to do that.

Commission Junction – The commissions here are wildly varying, but with easy acceptance and some decent products to choose from it can be a good place to spend some time promoting.

The variety is fantastic, but if you’re a newcomer, you’ll need to navigate the bad offers carefully to avoid anything that doesn’t pay out well. As one of the older networks out there, the site can be a bit messy to navigate, and again, there are quite a few offers here that payout very low and don’t convert very well.

While you can be approved for just about anything rather quickly, you may want to wait to signup for this site until you’ve developed a clearer idea of how to identify a good offer.

Share a Sale – This is a slightly smaller option than Commission Junction, but is growing fast and has generally better commissions than most other sites. It is also fairly simple to join up with, so the time investment is small.

The tracking from ShareASale is among the best on the Internet and they do not approve any offers that have tricky rebilling structures or oddball payment structures that can lead to ethical quandaries.

Additionally, the offers do not include software, or sketchy health, home business, or scam-like products. It’s quickly becoming a popular choice for those seeking quality products to promote.

Never Blue Ads – This is a tricky one, because they are a little selective in their signup process. They usually want intermediate and advanced affiliate marketers on their teams, so I usually recommend users to have a Clickbank account for a bit first, so you can build a site and your commissions and use them as your examples when applying.

If you are using PPC, make sure to mention it on the application. PPC traffic is a quick seller. If you’re a fan of affiliate managers, you get quite a bit of help from the people at this one as well.

Azoogle – This is another site that wants to have higher level marketers on their teams. Again, they have a great staff of managers and they also add some fun little programs into the mix with contests for earnings from affiliates.

This site has also been around for a while, which means they know how to keep affiliates, vendors, and customers alike happy between sales. The publisher volume is well over 45,000 as well, which makes for a great deal of options.

Affiliate.com – Yet another site that expects you to spend some time working on your marketing skills before you sign up. The variety is rather small too, which can be frustrating, and most of the offers are CPA.

However, if you are successful here, you can make a tremendous amount of money due to the high payouts. Online since 2001, affiliate.com has been focused on helping affiliates as much as possible.

They have high standards, but they reward those who meet them with top notch tools and only the best opportunities, all prescanned before being posted.

Unique Leads – A relatively new site with a solid selection of well performing CPA programs. They are selective in their choice of new members, but if you get in, you’ll have the opportunity to make substantial income with their wide array of money making opportunities.

I’ll reiterate though – this is a very selective site. They claim only 30% of affiliates are approved, and in my experience that number might even be a bit lower. If you’re just starting, definitely go with one of the first 6 sites on this list and then come back to this one later.

But, the PayPal payments, high payouts, multiple product types and affiliate managers all make this is a fantastic choice if you’re interested in going to the next level with CPA.

Choosing Your Affiliate Networks

The thing about choosing a good affiliate network is that you’re never going to need all 10 of them. In fact, I know marketers who have reached 7 and 8 figure incomes without only 1 network and they never run out of things to promote.

But, if you are looking for variety or options that don’t have the same level of competition that a site like Clickbank breeds, the 10 sites above are a fantastic place to start.

Have you enjoyed my article? Then you might want to sign up to my FREE money making newsletter. All you have to do is simply go to How To Make Money Online Fast and sign up. I also have a FREE report on “How To Make Super Affiliate Commission.” I guarantee you’ll love this ebook.: )

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In today’s article, we’re going to take a close look at how to pinpoint the most profitable niches.

Affiliate marketing starts and ends with finding the right niche to market in. It’s pretty simple, really. You find a hotbed of buying activity and you plant yourself firmly there to market as many hot products as possible to a very active market of potential customers.

It’s worked for hundreds of marketers who have become very, very rich. But, let’s face it – when you’re getting started, nothing is ever quite that easy.

So, I want to delve deeper into the idea of niche research, along with the mistakes that so many of us tend to make over and over again. Because, when you can eliminate those mistakes, life gets much easier and the profits are more consistent.

The Niche Research No-Nos

First up, let’s take a closer look at what so many starting affiliate marketers do wrong. At the very top of the list, and something I’ve been preaching against for years is diversification. Of the super affiliates I’ve met, the vast majority (pretty much all of them, including myself), make their profits almost entirely from one or two niches.

Yup, that’s right, it’s exactly as it sounds. They spend hours a day working on just dog training, or just marriage advice or just weight loss. They find a profitable audience and they hit them up over and over again with different products, sites, and selling points.

Second, as you might have guessed, they stuck to the big niches – the evergreen ones that have always been solid money makers. Sure, they experiment a little bit, but only enough to check out other niches, not so much that they dilute their income from big one or two niches. Which niches are considered the “big niches”?

Weight loss, making money, satellite TV on PC, muscle gain, self help, anti-spyware, forex, and money online. People are always looking for new products in these niches, so you cannot cannibalize your sales, nor can you run out of warm leads. Of those niches, weight loss and fitness are the biggest across the board, with making money coming in at a close second.

Finding Your Niches and Products

Of course, just saying “try out the stuff that works” isn’t very helpful, so I want to go into a bit more detail on what you can promote and how to make your selection. Lucky for you, I have a couple of methods I like to use that have always been highly successful for me.

In terms of finding product ideas, I usually stick to Clickbank and Amazon. On occasion, I will also use Google to review possible affiliate networks in greater depth.

Amazon.com Research

Let’s start with Amazon.com. I start here because I want to first find a niche that has a large buying base. You can always find a product in Clickbank with high gravity, but even before that I want to identify the breadth of a potential audience first. You’ll see why very shortly.

To start with, visit Amazon.com and start reviewing products and topics in niches that you are interested in. This is very important, because you’ll be spending a lot of your time investing in that niche, especially if it becomes one of your big two niches.

So, be sure it’s something you’re willing to write about and market extensively for months to come. If you could care less about weight loss or are afraid of dogs, those might not be the best paths to success.

With that in mind, start searching on Amazon for books, products, and other niche products. Your goal here is to find products with at least 20 reviews. Why just 20 reviews?

Considering the fact that Amazon estimates only 1 in 1000 people actually review something they buy from their site, a product with 20 reviews is likely to have been purchased by at least 20,000 people – that’s a huge market, especially if it’s just one product in an information niche.

If you can find multiple products in the same niche that all have 20

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Hey Joseph Here,

So yup, there’s no way around it – keyword research is the foundation of every good affiliate marketing business. It doesn’t matter if you’re an organic search guru or a PPC baron, you’d better be able to pinpoint the keywords that matter and become competitive for them as fast as possible.

I’ll admit that when I got started, keyword research was always at the bottom of my to-do list. I almost never seemed to get to it on time. That’s obviously changed over the years, because to be a true super affiliate, you’d better have some fantastic keyword lists.

So, for all the marketers out there who don’t know where to start with their keyword research or who do but dread doing it, here are some tips that I’ve been using for some time now to great effect.

Basic Research

To get started, you need to do some basic research. You probably have a very rough idea of what people are searching for – the simple keywords that every good marketer pinpoints early on. But, that initial list is the same as brainstorming for a novel. Sure, you have a rough outline, but you still need to sit down and write the thing.

I like to get started in the Google Keyword Tool – it’s free, easy to use and has a decent amount of data to draw from. Like most free keyword tools it’s not 100% accurate and is based on PPC data, so if you’re working on an organic campaign, it’s not going to be exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s a good start.

To get started, you can use Google Keyword Tool and enter a basic term or phrase into the search tool. You can enter multiple terms, but for now, just one will do. I’ll use “lose weight” as an example. The top level of search results will be terms that use the basic term, and will include things like: