4 Big Reasons Why I’m Promoting Your Competition’s Affiliate Program And Not Yours
Today, I’m sitting at my computer, about to launch a new site and I’m going through Clickbank, looking for potential affiliate programs to promote.
Time and time again, I’m shaking my head, wondering if these Internet Marketers realize how many potential affiliates they are losing, as I click the red “x” and go to the next product. And, of course, this isn’t only a problem with the products listed at places like Clickbank (and it certainly isn’t a reflection of the quality of Clickbank, itself). Affiliate Programs everywhere are lacking in their professionalism and respect for their affiliates.
It’s pretty obvious that many people don’t realize what turns off a potential affiliate. Could it be, perhaps, that the people writing these books have not been successful at Affiliate Marketing themselves?
After much frustration, I’ve decided to run through my list of reasons I did not choose your product to promote, and, instead chose your competition.
1. Your page is gaudy and unappealing.
Now, we all know the saying that ‘Ugly sites sell’. That’s absolutely true. A plain blue background with Arial text can make millions. However, a site that looks like a sparkly, flashy mess and gives your visitors a seizure is not cool. Leave the cursors alone. Don’t stick animation on there. And, for goodness sakes, stick with only one or two fonts, please.
2. Typos and spelling errors.
This one is actually kind of frightening. If the product you’re selling is an e-BOOK then please act like you know how to write. Have a friend or even an enemy read and reread your sales letter for you. If you don’t have any friends or enemies, then pay someone. Just don’t try to sell an e-book on a sales page that looks like a third grader wrote it. It’s not going to sell. At least I’m not going to sell it.
3. You offer sales options that I won’t get affiliate credit for on the sales page.
For instance, you list an electronic and a hard-cover version of your book through amazon. Tacky! Why should I send you traffic through Clickbank so that you can make a commission on amazon? Not a chance. Or even worse, you have both a Clickbank button and a paypal button.
And, my #1 biggest irritant –
4. You’ve got google ads or actually have the guts to sell advertising on your page. (And, no, I’m not joking here.) I don’t even need to go there. Anyone who’s a successful affiliate knows that this is the sign of death for any affiliate program.
So, there you have it. Four reasons why your competition is getting my loyalty and you are not.
The Top 10 List of the Best Affiliate Networks
First, if you’re new to affiliate marketing, some preliminary explanations may prove helpful in your quest for becoming a part-time or full-time affiliate marketer.
preliminary explanations may prove helpful in your quest for becoming a part-time or full-time affiliate marketer.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is quite simple to explain: you promote and market a product or company in return for a commission if a sale or lead is made from your marketing efforts. With online affiliate marketing you simply place your affiliate ID embedded links on your web pages and if a customer clicks
your link and proceeds to that designated company’s site and makes a purchase or signs up for a service, you earn a commission.
Affiliate marketing, if done right, can prove to be a very lucrative venture. Commissions can run anywhere from a few pennies to thousands of dollars for just one click or sale. Professional marketers develop affiliate relationships with hundreds of companies and build sites to promote these companies and products.
Needless to say, the advent of the Internet has been a golden opportunity for affiliate marketers to really expand their promotions and marketing. As more as more customers choose to buy online, advertising and purchases keep increasing at a maddening pace.
To accommodate all this online ecommerce we have seen the birth of large affiliate networks, operated by large corporations. Make no mistake, affiliate marketing is big business, accounting for billions in sales and commissions.
What is an Affiliate Network?
An affiliate network is a third party facilitator which brings affiliates and companies together. It connects Advertisers (companies with products or services to sell) together with Publishers (those who display and promote these products or services) so they can do business. The affiliate network does all the tracking, accounting and payment of commissions.
The following Top 10 list of the best Affiliate Networks is compiled by an actual full-time affiliate marketer who has worked these programs for over five years. This list is subjective and based on first-hand experience. It should be seen in this light and every marketer probably will have a different list or have these in a different picking order depending on the type and nature of their marketing.
But this list of the 10 Best Affiliate Networks will give you a general rundown on these affiliate networks and how they operate.
1. Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
Now owned by ValueClick, Commission Junction was one of the first affiliate networks. It is also one of the most important with many of the Top Fortune 500 companies listed here.
CJ is an international network with excellent stats and tracking (some of the best you will find), along with regular monthly payments makes this the obvious first choice for anyone wishing to try affiliate marketing.
For those new or old at affiliate marketing, CJ also holds regular seminars and training sessions.
Most merchants offer pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale, one of the best features is the performance bonuses and incentives. As most experienced marketers will know, selling 50k to 100k each month for merchants will bring in the big incentives or bonuses.
Commissions run as high as 50% but most are in 3% to 15% range. You have the option of direct deposit for your payments. One major plus, CJ will tell you which merchants
and ads are earning the most revenue for affiliates so you can easily choose which merchants are worth promoting.
2. ClickBank (www.clickbank.com)
ClickBank is another professional affiliate network with
excellent stats and tracking. Easy to use and pays every two weeks.
ClickBank is slightly different from the other networks in that it deals mainly with digital download products. The commissions from ClickBank are usually much higher than the other networks, around 40% to 50% or more.
ClickBank has over 10,000 products but keep in mind, info-marketing products will have stiff competition from all the savvy and well established Internet marketers promoting these same products. Consider youself warned!
The most successful marketing tactic here is to first dominate your targeted niche with your blogs and sites, then find affiliate products to match your content or niche subject matter, whether it be gardening equipment, gaming laptops or Mediterranean cruises!.
3. LinkShare (www.linkshare.com)
LinkShare is another excellent affiliate network. It is one of the oldest affiliate networks on the web. LinkShare was recently acquired by the Japanese Portal Rakuten, with a price tag of $425 million.
Very good stats and reporting with their Synergy Analytics system. Many Top Fortune 500 companies are presented here so you will no trouble finding products and services to romote.
LinkShare pays commissions as they receive them from merchants – monthly checks.
4. Affiliate Window (www.affiliatewindow.com)
Affiliate Window is an UK based affiliate network which offers top brand companies and good commission rates. Pays once a month and has excellent stats.
Savvy affiliate marketers know promoting in other countries can be much easier than promoting in the American market place. Mainly because these other countries haven’t become saturated with online marketers, little competition means more sales.
5. Amazon (www.amazon.com)
Amazon is another excellent affiliate network to join if you want to sell products from your site or blog. Amazon has excellent stats and the links are very easy to create and place on your web pages.
You also have the option of creating your own store with Amazon aStores. Amazon also now has context link ads and Widgets!
Commission rates are somewhat lower than the other networks but making sales thru Amazon is much, much easier. You will make more sales mainly because Amazon is a well known and trusted online company. Amazon now pays monthly.
6. Shareasale (www.shareasale.com)
Shareasale is yet another easy system to work with good stats and simple to create links. With 1,700+ merchants to choose from, Shareasale is another good affiliate network to promote.
The control panel is easy to use and the reporting is very good. Usually pays the month following your sales.
7. Google (www.google.com/adsense/)
Many won’t think of Google as an Affiliate network but it does run affiliate products thru its Adsense program. Very few products but like everything from Google it is professionally run and top caliber all the way.
Please note, top marketers know affiliate links/products on their content pages will return 10 times what Google Adsense will give them. However, these marketers will also know using Google Adsense on less targeted pages throughout your sites or blogs will give you a healthy return.
Besides receiving that monthly check from a multi-billion dollar company like Google will put a smile on your face every time.
8. LinkConnector (www.linkconnector.com)
LinkConnector is a relatively new affiliate network which launched in 2004. It has Pay Per Click, Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Lead. Good stats and reporting. Worth checking out for their different types of new affiliate technology such as Direct Linking which passes pagerank along to the merchant’s site.
9. CPA Empire (www.cpaempire.com)
Great CPA (Cost Per Action) network especially if you do a lot of email marketing and promotions. Geared towards acquiring leads and sign-ups but does offer other merchants as well. Good stats and reporting.
10. Independents
Individual affiliate deals with different companies which may or may not be listed with the major networks above. Your independent affiliate deals will be some of your most lucrative since you can sometimes work out separate private commission rates and bonuses. Aim for residual income here. Don’t ignore this aspect of affiliate marketing as it will pay the highest dividends.
Keep in mind, all the above affiliate networks are iddlemen,
they come between you and the merchant you’re promoting. For affiliates with a proven track record, who have shown they can deliver the customers and sales, a private deal cutting out the middleman/fees can prove very beneficial for both parties. If you’re fortunate enough to become known as a super affiliate, these private deals will become more common and more profitable.
Professional affiliate marketers use all of the above networks to create multiple income streams from their marketing efforts. In the process, they build a healthy monthly income for themselves and their families. There is no reason why you can’t do the same.
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest and most effective web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools
Or why not try these excellent free training manuals and videos:
Free Marketing Courses
Social networking advertising techniques
Which networks deserve your traffic. Google? Yahoo? Adbrite? Check my guide to see which networks can mail you big checks.
Adsense
To most people this is the best since it requires almost no user interaction to show the most profitable ads. You do not need any special website, one that has some content and not weapons, porn or violence should be approved by Google. The amount of money you can make with Adsense is completely unpredictable. Not only the ads change every hour, but the click ratio and the price per click change constantly. The price per click will ultimately be determined by the conversion ratio of your website. Recommended for beginners. Experts can find better networks
Yahoo Publisher Network
Adsense carbon copy network. Yahoo is like the mirror of Google, except in the quality… YPN pays up to 8 times more per click according to Joel Comm an internet millionaire, however since the ads are so untargeted, you end losing money if you use YPN instead of Adsense
Adbrite
This company is performing very well. They have text ads, image ads, full page ads and inline ads. The text ads pay up to 100$ per click and I already got some of these ads in my site. However currently I only get 5$ ads. The system is completely transparent, you can see for each ad what is the max price per click the advertiser is willing to pay, how many times that ad was impressed, clicked and how much revenue generated. For image ads you can see exactly how much it pays per CPM and how much each banner makes you.
Full Page Ads pays based on CPM too and you can choose to make them appear after one page, after two pages or more. The interval between ads can be 6 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours, per user.
Inline ads will see which keywords your website has and that that word a paid link. Adbrite will turn 8 words into paid links.
Adbrite will pay you 70% of the revenue share. If you get a click on an ad that costs 1$ to the advertiser, you get $0.70.
Tribal Fusion
This network is for pro webmasters. You need at least 60.000 unique visitors per month just to get approved. They pay you 55% of the revenue. The revenue generated is based on CPM ads. The price per CPM varies from category to category. It starts at 1$ per CPM (you get $0.55) and goes up to $10 per CPM, you make $5.5 of that CPM.
Advertising.com
Probably the biggest and most difficult advertising network to join. You need 2 million page views per month to get approved. They claim they have the best CPM rates of the advertising market. Not only you can show CPM ads but you can show too behavioral ads and much more. A must see.
Bidvertiser
Another network that pays you based on the clicks your site get. You can see which are the most expensive ads and how much the advertiser is willing to pay for each click. Bidvertiser pays you by Paypal!
Chitika
This new network seems to be the best one for some webmasters. It shows images of the products and when the user clicks on the products you make money. For international traffic, it will show some banners…
Finally Widget Bucks
It claims to be the fastest growing ad network. It is the most beautiful one that shows with Flash animations products that will pay you for every click. For international traffic you will get CPM banners.
The Ebay Affiliate Program
Many people believe that becoming an eBay affiliate is a cumbersome process and that diving into this unfamiliar world is beyond them. Good news. They are wrong! Becoming an eBay affiliate is an easy endeavor – you’ll be making extra money before you know it. In fact, you could make A LOT of extra money. eBay has featured multiple individuals that have made millions of dollars with their affiliate program. It’s actually quite a simple process. You place a link to eBay, or a particular auction or category on eBay, and a potential buyer will click on your link. If they end up buying a product, and many do, you will make a percentage of the overall price of the sale.
The eBay affiliate program can work for anyone. Most affiliates are webmasters, Internet researchers, online sellers and partners. You can promote the site with text links, a vast assortment of banners, eBay articles, placing classified links, etc. You can even download a snippet of code from eBay and place an entire category of auctions on your site. The content will update automatically so you don’t have to worry about spending time learning how to manipulate html code. The top 25 affiliates listed on eBay earn well over 100k per month in monthly commissions and most of them use a well-balanced mix of the above methodologies to achieve that success.
Affiliates can also cross promote other eBay sellers items and get commissions from these sales. However, eBay does not allow you to put these links on certain web pages such as My World, About Me and item pages. It is highly recommended that you take the time to read the affiliate terms and conditions thoroughly before joining and utilizing the program. This might take a little bit of time but it will be worth it in the end.
There are many other affiliate programs out there, but eBay has become one of the most popular, and profitable, opportunities available today. This is partly due to the myriad of opportunities that it offers. If you own a website that deals with fishing there are items that can be sold. If you have a website that deals with dolls with pink hair and red outfits there are items that can be sold. The possibilities are endless with this opportunity because it gives you the ability to reach a niche market. Affiliates can concentrate on a particular subject and sell what they know.
Most of the methodologies that eBay affiliates utilize are easy and automatic. You can offer millions of products and not have to worry about keeping track of inventory or shipping off products. Once the sale is completed, your commission percentage is automatically credited to you and is easily accessible at any time. How easy is that?
As of April 1, 2008, eBay is now administering its own affiliate program. It’s called the eBay Partner Network. They were previously utilizing a service called Commission Junction. eBay feels they can offer even more services to their affiliates by tackling this endeavor on their own.
Backlinks and Traffic – Just Why is it Such a Big Deal?
Nowadays if we want a website to be successful, we have to deal with niche markets, great content, search engine optimization and tremendous competition. And this list is simply the starting point. We will quite possibly need to acquaint ourselves with marketing and copywriting and converting our visitors into buyers. However, for just about every webmaster, the big difficulty is bringing in traffic.
That leads us to the topic of this article. How can I attract Internet surfers to my site? One answer to this question is backlinks! So, exactly what are backlinks and just what do backlinks have to do with attracting visitors to my site?
The first thing to understand is that there are two basic forms of traffic, paid traffic and organic traffic. Examples of paid traffic are such things as advertising through pay per click networks, placing banners on other sites and any other way in which you are able to pay to attract a surfer’s attention and tempt him to visit your site. If you’re only focusing on paid traffic then you don’t need to pay much attention to backlinks.
Organic traffic is traffic that comes from someone searching on one of the search engines for a topic which they are interested in. Then when all the free listings come up the surfer clicks on a link to visit a webpage. In the case of organic traffic the webmaster does not have to pay directly for the link which the visitor clicks on.
In general, organic traffic is simply called free traffic. Despite the fact that it can be, it usually is not really free. To get a website page included on the first couple of pages of results the webmaster will have to put in quite a lot of work. This brings us back to the topic of backlinks.
Generally, the quality and number of backlinks attached to a site are what determines sites which appear when we do a search. A backlink is nothing more than a hyperlink from one site to another. So it is very helpful if you have a whole lot of websites linking to your site if you want to be ranked highly in the organic search engine results.
But remember that quality matters too. A backlink will be seen as offering high quality if:
* The words used to create the hyperlink (called the ‘anchor’ text) are highly relevant to the topic of the page which the link is leading to. (You should not use “click here”!)
* The topic on the site where the backlink originates is relevant to the topic on your site.
* The site linking to you has plenty of good quality backlinks pointing to it.
* The page rank of the site linking to you is relatively high (ideally a PR3 or more) and the higher the better.
Of course there are other criteria, but the criteria given here are a very good starting point.
So, just how does a webmaster go about building up the necessary quantity of high quality backlinks pointing to his site? There are many ways of doing this and an even greater number of software programs which are designed to assist in providing the answer. Purchasing the software increases the cost of your backlinks.
The truly free way is to simply wait for other webmasters to discover your site and think enugh of it to link to it. That is super, but can take quite a long time. Of course you can contact other webmasters and ask if they will trade links with you. You simply give them a link from your site and they give you one from their site in return. These are however called reciprocal links and are generally thought to be of uncertain value these days.
Another way is to make use of Article Marketing which initially means writing articles about subjects that are relevant to your site. You then submit your articles to several article directory sites and include links of your choice in the resources box following your content. Submitting your website to a number of site directories is another method that fits into the category of free links.
You might also opt to pay for backlinks. One of the simplest methods is to buy a link directly. Internet marketing discussion boards are a very good place to find links on offer. You could pay $50 a month or more to get a link from a PR5 site. You’ll get a lot of traffic from it, but you will pay for it. Naturally the lower the PR is then the lower the cost.
Whatever technique you choose, building backlinks is critical to your search engine ranking success. You’ll want to acquire hundreds or if possible thousands of them. The important thing is that you get started and build up your links steadily over the months ahead so that you can begin to enjoy a steady and growing flow of traffic to your site.
Search Engine Optimization And Why You Gotta Use It?
E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.
Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.
But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.
So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.
With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.
So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.
Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.
You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.
You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.
Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.
If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.
Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.
Yahoo! Publisher Network – The next AdSense?
Yahoo announced that their Publisher Network, formerly available in the US for large websites, will be extended to small and medium-sized websites.
As stated by Yahoo representatives, this will allow the whole publishing community to take advantage of Yahoo’s products and services through what they have described as an “easy-to-use self-serve platform”.
Although it will initially be available only in the US, expansion is expected through use and projected increase in popularity.
What Yahoo will offer is very similar to Google’s AdSense to start with: Content Match ™. This will allow publishers to place content-relevant listings on their sites and receive a part of the revenues that they generate.
However, that’s not all Yahoo has to offer. In the near future, additional features will be added “to enhance the visitor’s experience”.
In an interview with Will Johnson, general manager of the Yahoo! Publisher Network self-serve offering, what makes the Yahoo! Publisher Network different from Google AdSense is:
- Additional controls for publishers,
- Providing superior customer service
- Focusing on the development of a high quality network
In the longer term, they plan to differentiate by providing integration with other great Yahoo! content and services. This includes web search, RSS ads, shopping, travel, and in the longer run, music and video.
The main idea, as with AdSense, is to offer publisher’s with a means of generating additional revenue, as well as engaging their users.
According to Yahoo!, the Yahoo! Publisher Network platform enables you to “generate additional revenue from your site, take advantage of Yahoo! Publisher tools, services and programs and help shape what Yahoo! offers the publishing community.”
The Yahoo! Publisher Network website is at:
http://publisher.yahoo.com/
You can apply for the beta program here:
http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/ypn/leads/index.php?loc=USYPN0005
Money Making Secrets from Expired Domain Names
Once you have registered an expired domain of your choice, you will be ready now to devise and plan ways for making money with the expired domain. You can use a number of monetizing methods to make money from your expired domain names. Each expired domain sold by domain traders is unique and two domain names are never similar. Thus, you can never find a monetizing method that works in a similar way for all domains. Above all, there is no one monetizing service that can work and perform better than other domains.
Almost all expired domain speculators and traders use a number of monetizing services for their expired domains. The first service that they use for monetization is domain parking offered by a number of domain parking firms. Almost all domain expired traders use this service as a tool to drive traffic to the domain. Domain parking firm works almost like a Pay per Click engine, when every successful click on the ad banner hosted by the firm will provide a small share of income.
Some of the popular domain parking services is Sedo, Domain Sponsor and Fabulous. Pay per click services provides a parking space for your expired domains. Under normal circumstances, as the owner of the domain, your share of the income will be roughly 50% of the amount paid out. The web hosting charges, page development cost and bandwidth are all on the house, while most of the firms do not charge anything for the basic service. It is possible to create targeted traffic to other web sites by using this excellent service.
Most of the domain parking services offers a number of facilities and features to any expired domain trader who wishes to opt for the service. Here are some of the basic features offered to users:
a) Ultra quick and fast loading pages
b) You can choose a number of special landing pages
c) You can also opt for an One Click type of landing page for creating highly targeted traffic
d) As a user, you can also ass a paragraph or two of text or a small image to make the page more relevant and convenient.
e) Create landing page that are SEO friendly
f) Create friendly meta tags to focus at SEO capabilities
g) Choose from an attractive pay package options.
Apart from domain parking, expired domain traders can also choose a convenient affiliate service to create opportunities for making money online in the form of handsome commission. If a visitor makes a decision to purchase a product or service from a web portal, the owner of expired domain will get a percentage of commission. A number of expired domain traders use a popular affiliate web portal like Commission Junction to provide hundreds of sponsors. This wonderful method works profitably with the right type of targeting of site visitors. Expired domains offer you a number choices and methods to monetize your expired domains.
friends of link the dot com
