Affiliate Marketing- The changing phase

Affiliate Marketing- The changing phase

Affiliate Marketing is touted to be the most effective Internet marketing service of the future. Catering to the needs of both merchants and affiliates, an online affiliate network serves as a platform for both these entities that come together for a common objective – profit.

Affiliate Marketing conventionally can be described as a method of carrying out promotion or marketing of a particular service/website/product by joining hands with affiliates or associates. These associates or affiliates (as they are popularly called) charge a certain sum of money for promoting the business of their merchants. And thus is established an affiliate – a merchant association that carries out affiliate marketing through the World Wide Web.

While Affiliates here can be termed as the agents, who are hired to assist or aid merchants to promote their stuff online, Merchants are those who want their merchandise/website or service to be promoted.

There are various terms used to address this novel concept of web marketing which very well explain the mechanics of this service. One might find jargons like relationship marketing and associate marketing which convey the concept of this style of Internet marketing in very few words.

History of Affiliate Marketing
Most of us acquainted to this subject of affiliate marketing have certainly heard of the ‘cocktail party’ story from where the concept got a kick-start. For those who aren’t aware, the story goes like:

Jeff Bezos, The CEO and founder of Amazon.com, while talking with his guests at a party came across the idea of linking the website of one lady guest to his site (Amazon). She wanted to invite traffic to her site, for which he would receive a commission. That’s where the idea of associate marketing came into being. That was June 1996; and in almost a decade since then, affiliate marketing has grown to be recognised as a full time Internet marketing service. Though there are several stories that float online about its inception, Bezos’s story remains the most popular.

The Rise of Affiliate Marketing:

However, the interesting fact that draws all the attention is the Statistics that show the total sales generated by affiliate marketing in the year 2006 to be a stifling 2.16 billion in the UK alone; and the figures are expected to rise phenomenally in years to follow.

The reasons anticipated for the flourish and sudden popularity is the rise of ecommerce all over the net, when more and more people begin indulging in trading activities online. Retail, gambling, adult – these have remained the three major income grosser for affiliates, all this while making the affiliate marketing story extraordinary! Now, with the changing times and the evolving face of Internet Marketing, more industries such as travel, finance telecom, mobile telephony have picked up momentum to match the beat of affiliate Internet marketing.

Payment structure: Pay for performance

Made up of a structure or elements, affiliate marketing rewards both the affiliates and the merchants pretty well and that is the reason why it was popularly accepted. With no harm done and an all-gain strategy, it offers a payment on performance structure for advertisers (merchants) & publishers (affiliates). Payment on performance is the payment module which lets the merchant pay its affiliate for the amount of success they bring.

Here the advertiser pays his publisher because of the banner/ads. Published by the publisher, the advertiser receives traffic etc.

Contrary to all other advertising modules, this does not exploit the merchant who otherwise ends up paying a huge amount of money when advertising anywhere else.
The affiliate is able to cash on his inventory (his website) and earn money out of it, without having to invest separately, and that becomes reason enough for affiliates to be contented too.

Pros n Cons

Affiliate marketing programmes can be carried out in two ways. Some merchants run in-house affiliate programmes by the help of standalone software, while others hire affiliate networks or hosted services to run the programme for them and track the various details of sales and leads etc.

Like every other activity this too comes with some handicaps and limitations.

With its share of past and present issues, affiliate marketing is growing and growing steadily; but to have a comprehensive view of a service as effective as this, it is imperative to mention the prevalent affiliate marketing issues and handicaps:

Past and current affiliate issues:

Unlike display ads. Affiliate marketing is not scalable
eMail spams have never been alien to this service.
Search engine spam- spamdexing
Ad ware
Trademark bidding/ppc
Lack of self regulation
Lack of industry standards

The Internet cannot be quoted as the best example of an organised arena. Most of the times, things and practices have evolved here to give rise to new terms and systems and the same is the case with associate marketing.

Training and certification

Affiliate marketing is not a certified field of specialisation. There are no Industry standards, training schools, certificates, courses that can train one to be an affiliate. The existing literature online, first hand knowledge and some few training courses and seminars result in certifications.

Here, as the common saying goes, ‘education happens only in real time.’ There are no set A-Z dos n don’ts that one needs to take care of, and thus most of the prominent affiliates have only gotten skilled while practising it in real life!

Besides all this, there are number of online communities, blogs, forums, video seminars etc that get into group collaboration and brainstorming sessions to come out with new strategies, not forgetting that the solutions are only short-lived for the google algorithm updates every now and then!

Affiliate marketing and Web 2.0

With many a things in the pipeline, the face of the Internet is changing. The emergence of web2.0 sites has not only refurbished the entire look and feel of sites and incorporated interactivity, but it has also bought about positive changes to the world of Affiliate Marketing.

The new media (blogs, interactive groups, forums) facilitates closer interaction between merchant and affiliates, and also helps curb many a crooked affiliate from making money using unethical ways.

All in all, affiliate marketing is growing, evolving and emerging. Walking towards a more structured arena, it has the potential to caste a spell and dilute the eminence of alternative marketing practices in the long run.

By kailyn morgan Published: 7/23/2007

The Key To Writing Affiliate Marketing Articles

The Key To Writing Affiliate Marketing Articles

In this article, I am going to give you a brief outline for writing affiliate marketing articles. This will put you head and shoulders over your competition that will post affiliate marketing articles without caring about how they are written.

There are a lot of methods to driving targeted traffic to websites. One commonly overlooked method for getting free traffic to websites is writing affiliate marketing articles. Unfortunately, this is even more true for affiliate marketers who are trying to siphon traffic to their sites.

In this article, I am going to give you a brief outline for writing affiliate marketing articles. This will put you head and shoulders over your competition that will post affiliate marketing articles without caring about how they are written.

1. Don’t try to write the perfect affiliate marketing article. Frequently, when writing affiliate marketing articles, people tend to "overthink" the article writing process and think they are writing Shakespeare or are rivaling Stephen King. Thankfully, you don’t have to have a Masters degree in English to write excellent affiliate marketing articles. All you need to do is write in an interesting way that conveys the information.

2. Make sure your keywords are placed in the affiliate marketing article frequently. Ideally, when writing affiliate marketing articles, you’ll want to sprinkle your target keyword into the article. The ideal place for inserting your target keyword is the headline, the first paragraph of your article, and the last paragraph. Be careful not to "keyword stuff" your articles— the search engines can pick up on that really quickly and penalize you in short order.

3. Make sure you have a call to action in your affiliate marketing article. AT the end of the article, you want to have a call to action that refers them to a website for more information. Ideally, you want this to be the "money site" or the affiliate site where the person can buy the product.

4. Make your affiliate marketing article informative. You must make sure that your affiliate marketing article makes the reader feel good that they read it. They must learn something or feel like your affiliate marketing article was worthwhile if you want them to check on your "call to action button:" to your affiliate page. If you just have an article the wastes the reader’s time, they are not going to request further information from you.

5. Make sure you are not too "salesy" in your article. When writing affiliate marketing articles, you don’t want to write a sales-letter. Articles are supposed to be a "soft sell" that nudges them toward a buying decision. Be sure to remove "salesy" language such as "ground-breaking,"breakthrough," and "cutting edge." Also remove the pronoun "You" so it looks like it is informing a wide audienceand not a sales letter that speaks directly to a single person.

Writing affiliate marketing articles also gives you a perfect change to get free traffic to you’re website. Why is that? Since you are usually getting a percentage of total sales (around 50% for most information products) it limits how much you can spend on common advertising methods such as pay-per-click and banner advertising. Writing affiliate marketing articles that subtly promote your affiliate product or service can reap huge dividends for your affiliate marketing efforts.

To discover affiliate email marketing strategies from the internet’s most experienced email marketers, get this free video.

About the Author:
Russell Brunson has been a successful internet marketer over the last 4 years, he is actively helping other people to achieve their goals online. For more information go to http://www.dotcomsecrets.com/

By Russell Brunson Published: 10/1/2007

The Characteristics of the Perfect Affiliate Marketing Manager

The Characteristics of the Perfect Affiliate Marketing Manager

At the heart of every company that makes healthy profits every day is an affiliate marketing manager that ensures that affiliates around the world are selling their products and services automatically. Affiliate marketing is a huge part of a business plan, and the affiliate marketing manager is the one who keeps everything running.

So, what are the characteristics of a perfect affiliate marketing manager?

 
Well, first of all, the perfect affiliate marketing manager has to be able to talk to people face to face and on the phone. Affiliate managers are the face of the company when they go to conferences and anywhere else where there’s contact with potential affiliates. They must be able to sell themselves and their company to affiliates and persuade them to promote their product.

The perfect affiliate marketing manager must be able to provide whatever tools and services affiliates need to make as many sales as possible. They realize that, in general, most marketers are lazy and don’t want to do a lot of work to promote your product. Therefore, affiliate marketing managers must provide tools such as banner ads, emails, and text ads to the affiliate to make it as easy as possible.

Another reason the perfect affiliate marketing manager must be a good "people person" is because he must be able to motivate affiliates to keep selling their products. The affiliate marketing manager either calls potential affiliates on the phone or devises incentives such as bonuses or a refund of part of the commission to keep affiliates motivated. It can be a tough job since most affiliate partners have busy lives, but the dividends of increased affiliate sales are well worth it.

One thing the affiliate marketing manager knows very well is that, when the affiliates are happy, then they will keep promoting products. Therefore the job of the affiliate marketing manager is to keep everyone happy as possible so they keep promoting.

In addition, the affiliate marketing manager knows the importance of having a good affiliate marketing process for the company. It works well both ways: the affiliate makes money without having to create his/her own product, and the affiliate marketing manager’s company makes money on autopilot with minimal marketing.

If you are starting out in online marketing, you’ll be able to be your own affiliate marketing manager. But as your business grows and you need to hire employees, a good affiliate marketing manager can bring extra profits to your company—even while you sleep or are on vacation with the kids.

If you want to discover affiliate marketing techniques that’ll require hiring an affiliate marketing manager to take care of the extra business, then head on over and get this free video.

About the Author:
Russell Brunson has been a successful internet marketer over the last 4 years, he is actively helping other people to achieve their goals online. For more information go to Internet Marketing also located http://www.dotcomsecrets.com/

By Russell Brunson Published: 10/10/2007

Affiliate Marketing Tutorial Secrets Revealed

Affiliate Marketing Tutorial Secrets Revealed

One of the most efficient forms of today’s internet marketing is the affiliate marketing, and this article is designed as an affiliate marketing tutorial. This is mainly because many people know that money can be earned online, but they don’t know exactly how to do that. For many, affiliate marketing may be the answer, as it requires less effort, having an own product to sell isn’t mandatory, and it can bring reasonable profits.

Definition: Affiliate marketing is the action of referring your visitors to a merchant’s website, and getting a commission out of that merchant’s sales if the buyer was a person you referred. Although it can be done even without having a website of your own, it is better if you design one. Choosing an appropriate field for you, doing some quality research and finding good affiliate programs are all very important processes, which have to be dealt with a lot of involvement and perseverance.

And first thing’s first. Before you actually build your website, you have to think about how it is going to look, what it’s going to be about. Just sit down and start a brainstorming process. It is recommended you organize everything well, and write everything down. Find a subject you feel confident about, and start taking notes about the competition, affiliate programs, everything. You have to think of it as a serious project, and every good project needs a good sketch.

Now, once you’ve made your sketch, start designing your website accordingly. Buy a domain, preferably a .com one, because these are the ones that people trust the most. Now, if you are not a programmer, then you should hire one for designing your website according to your specifications. Even though it’s going to cost you some money, if you do it right, that amount should come back as profits multiplied many times.

Your website should look professional, the hallmark of a person who knows what he’s talking about. You should respect your visitors with quality content, if you want this internet marketing strategy to be successful. And although this affiliate marketing tutorial tells you what to do, it ultimately depends on you if it is going to work or not.

Now, once you’ve designed the site, it’s time to get some traffic in. There are many online marketing tactics to do that, and you could also consider hiring a Search Engine Optimizer to get you high ratings on Google searches for your site. If you can’t afford one, don’t lose hope, because there are many SEO tutorials available on the web. You can catch on a few of these important SEO techniques and try to do it yourself. Apply al this information to your sketch and continue working on your project.

Now that you’ve managed to get a decent amount of traffic to your site, it’s time to introduce you to the new term, which is conversion rate. The conversion rate shows you how many of your visitors actually click on the links of your affiliate partners and buy something from them. Taking into consideration that you don’t have a product of your own, your approach in increasing your conversion rate should be pre-selling. What do I mean by "pre-selling"? Let’s put it this way. The content of your site is the one which actually forwards your visitors to your affiliate partners’ links. I mean, if you have a very high quality content site, your visitors will unknowingly be much more open-minded about visiting the links you display. Keeping in mind that you don’t actually have a product of your own, it’s better not to have an aggressive looking page or your visitors will exit immediately. Also, choose the best affiliate partners in your field, and don’t try to put so many links on your page. You need 3 or 4 quality partners at the most.

The rest is history. With a lot of involvement, professionalism, dedication and a little bit of luck, you can design a site which has the potential of being your cash machine. Once the whole mechanism starts to work, you don’t have to do anything as it will run by itself. OK, maybe a few adjustments from time to time, but nothing too complicated. With the hope that this affiliate marketing tutorial has shed some light on the subject, grab a pen and design your sketch!

By dan borlan Published: 10/30/2006

Ways to Make Money Online with Squidoo

Ways to Make Money Online with Squidoo

Learn ways to make money online by creating a Squidoo lens and generating free traffic and quicker sales.

I’ve had the pleasure recently of getting involved with Squidoo, which is a Web 2.0 site that allows you to create small web pages packed with brief information about your sites, products, and services. If you are looking for ways to make money online, you might want to start with Squidoo.

The reason I suggest starting there is that if you visit Squidoo’s website, you can do a free search for various topics – anything under the sun – and find short web pages with brief overviews of what you are looking for, and do this all for free.

It is like a mini search engine really where you can find information on the latest and greatest celebrity news, or new ways to make money online. You can even find information about future events, launches, and promotions. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always start your own lens on the topic that interests you.

What is a lens you ask? When you look through a microscope, you get a magnified image of a mass of cells for example. When you look at a lens on Squidoo, you are looking at a magnified image of someone’s topic, all concentrated together in a single web page.

It’s free and incredibly easy to set up a lens on Squidoo. You don’t have to know any HTML – they do it all for you, and your lens can be set up within minutes, after which you will quickly discover how easy it is to get traffic via Squidoo.

If you are searching for ways to make money online, you can do it with Squidoo. Not only can you search for information you want, but you can create a lens and promote your own products and services – either your own products or someone else’s through affiliate links. If you already have a website, you can link your lens to your website for additional traffic.

There are a few ways to make money online with Squidoo. Not only can you promote your own or other people’s products, but you basically get your own site setup by Squidoo that already comes with Google Adsense ads on it. You don’t need to do anything other than take a few minutes to create a lens, and you could be earning extra money through Adsense!

Another way to make money online with Squidoo is to use the "modules" they provide you when you set up your lens. At a first glance you may not understand how the system works. You are free to delete modules they provide, such as their eBay module, and their Amazon.com module. Why would you want those?

I wondered the same thing, until I found out that you can carefully choose keywords for your Squidoo lens, type them into the eBay module they provide, and see what products come up for auction at eBay. Once you’ve done that, Squidoo kindly updates your eBay auction list every 6 hours, and you have the opportunity to make money online if anyone clicks those eBay links that are linked to your lens!

It’s not a greedy system either. You have the option of donating all, or portions of what you make by people clicking the ready-made links on your Squidoo lens to charity! There is a growing list of charities to which the money can be donated too, so this is a fabulous system for giving something back.

Heck, you can even decide not to donate to charity and pocket the cash yourself through your PayPal account for additional extra income in your pocket!

With Squidoo, it’s easy to rise in the search engine ranks, particularly Google. If you create a lens and share it with others, and get your friends or other Squidoo group members to add your lens to their favourites list, and rank your lens, you will achieve a high lens rank quickly. The higher the rank, the more potential there is to make money online because others will find your lens quicker.

As you can see, Squidoo offers ways to make money online by providing an almost ready-made portal to promote your products and services, to promote other people’s products and services, to share information, rise in the ranks, and make money from Adsense and online auctions. You can’t beat this method, especially because it’s free!

By Liane Bate Published: 5/7/2007