One of the best ways to make money online
So what is affiliate marketing?
There are merchants on the internet who want to sell their products and services.
Some merchants decide to use "affiliates" (also known as partners, associates) to help advertise and sell their products.
You sign up to become an affiliate for a particular merchant, and then every time you direct traffic to the merchants website and the customer buys a product or service, you, the affiliate, gets a commission.
There are many many people making through the roof incomes through affiliate marketing, and every day, there are more and more people just starting out.
Affiliate marketing CAN make you a lot of money, but unless you understand and employ the right techniques and knowledge your process will be slow and
frustrating.
Like anything in life, you will get out of affiliate marketing what you put into it. If you start off on the right foot, and take the time to LEARN you can start building an income that can have you earning more money than your day job.
That's the BIG reward with affiliate marketing. You can essentially give up your day job!
Affiliate Marketing Secrets
In short, there aren't any affiliate marketing secrets.There are techniques, there are tools, there are strategies.......but there are no secrets.
In a nutshell, the best way to succeed in affiliate marketing is NOT to just sign up to a few affiliate programs and put their links on a website or blog in the hope that someone will click on them.
To make money you have to get lots of targeted visitors who are eager and looking for the information or product you have on your website or blog.
The first thing you NEED is knowledge.
I can't stress this enough, going into affiliate marketing without the knowledge and tools of the trade is like trying to drive a car without a license. You will crash a LOT!
There are a few good programs and eBooks around that can give you help and guidance with affiliate marketing, and there are also some programs around that are good, but way too expensive, or quick fix guides which offer you nothing more than a few pointers.
Why do you need a guide? because it's very easy to get confused, disorganized, frustrated and disheartened if you don't use a "system" that works. It pays in the long run to get a good understanding of affiliate marketing and use proven methods used by people who have "been there". It also cuts down on the "information overload" that new affiliate marketers face.
Confessions Of A Lazy Super Affiliate
Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate is with out a doubt one of the best guides youcan get.
It's what made the "daylight dawn" for me and how I went from making very little money as an affiliate to making a regular daily income.
If you only ever get one "how to make money on the internet" guide, just make sure it's this one. Blows all the other ebook guides out of the water in both content and simplicity.
You can get Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate here
Profit Lance
Profit Lance is a complete system for learning affiliate marketing which offers not only a wealth of information, tutorials, videos and tools but also gives you 15 already hosted websites which can get you USING the skills you learn straight away.One of the first keys to making money online is actually "starting something".....so many people just get as far as the "read a few eBooks" stage and never really START anything out there online. Once you start, you begin LEARNING how it all works, learn how to improve your skills, and you are making money WHILE you are learning.
That's why the Profit Lance system is so popular. It gets you ORGANIZED, FOCUSSED and out there DOING!!!
Michael Andrews, the founder of Profit Lance is also ALWAYS updating his information, so it's current and he's accessible....he responds to his emails usually within 24 hours.
The information in the Profit Lance course is suitable for both beginners and experienced affiliate marketers.
If you want to start out on the right foot or refine and improve what you are doing already, then I can't recommend the Profit Lance system highly enough.
For more detailed information click here to visit the Profit Lance site.
Affiliate Marketing Steps
Below is a quick guide of what the steps are to build a site and start affiliate marketing.
1. Find Your Niche
You need to find a profitable niche. Sometimes it's easiest to start with something YOU are familiar with and passionate about. Finding a niche that you are interested in, have knowledge you can share and something that you can write about easily is an advantage. Having said that however, if there is no market for you passion, or very little, then setting up a website will be a waste of time if you want to make money. It PAYS to do some research first. You can save yourself a LOT of wasted hours and disappointment by getting the foundation of your niche choice RIGHT in the beginning. So take the time to do research BEFORE you start creating your website.
Choosing a niche topic that is broad is NOT the way to go.
You need to break down and focus your site on one small sector. Say for example, you are interested in cell phones, having a cell phone site with everything you could possibly include on cell phones and services will not only be time consuming, but you will be competing with MANY other sites and probably be lost in the crowd.
When people "search" for things on the internet, the might start out with a "broad" search, but as they get closer to what they want, their search terms get more and more focused.
For example, instead of "cell phones" the searchers are gradually refine their search and look for "Nokia cell phones", or even more focused, "Nokia cell phone battery", and still further "NK-3390LI Nokia cell phone battery".
A focused niche would be a site that revolves around the last search "NK-3390LI Nokia cell phone battery", and perhaps a few other model specific Nokia phone batteries. These searchers know what they want, they aren't wandering aimlessly, these people are your targets, and your site has to stand out and be on that first search page so they can find you.
You also have to make sure that your niche has a market potential.
- There has to be a strong demand for your product (consumable products that people will always need and have to replenish are good choices. Electronics, batteries, beauty products, phone cards are some good examples)
- Assess the competition (not only how much competition you have but the quality of your competition)
- Make sure it's a product that isn't a fad that will fade quickly, find one that has some longevity or a proven track record that has been around a while.
eHow
Google Directory
Yahoo Directory
Yahoo Shopping
DMOZ
wikiHow
eBay Pulse
Google Trends
Yahoo! Buzz Index
AOL Hot Searches
Ask.com Top Searches
magazines.com
Trend Hunter Magazine
Amazon.com Bestsellers
Amazon.com Most Popular Tags
Lycos 50
Compete Blog
CBengine
43 Things
KeywordFetch
Springwise - Idea Database
(don't forget that you can also get ideas from browsing through products on affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, ClickBank etc)
Just have a pen and paper handy as you look through the above links, jot down any niche ideas/products that you find, then check them out with keyword tools to see which ones have the most potential. (good search volume, low or low quality competition)
Don't forget, keep an eye out for new products advertised in papers, magazines, flyers, on TV. If you know there is a new hot product coming out soon you might be able to be one of the first to get marketing pages set up and running....sometimes being one of the first out of the blocks can be an advantage (not to mention there is less competition)
Even as you go about your day to day activities. Sometimes just jotting down anything and everything, not thinking about whether it can make money or not is the easiest way to find a good niche for affiliate marketing. Like not long ago I had a terrible problem with mice invading my house.....so maybe "how to get rid of mice" is a potential idea. Just an example of how you can use your everyday life and your friends every day lives to get ideas.
You then have to work out what money making potential your niche ideas have.
You need to choose a niche that has related search keywords that are highly searched
every day.
No point in choosing a niche that only brings in a handful of searches a month. (eg. people
typing in keywords in google that relate to your niche)
You need to find a niche that has lots of searches, and preferrably not that much competition. (or competition you can easily outrank)
Below are some good keyword tools I use when researching potential niche markets.
Free Keyword Tools:
Wordtracker Keyword Suggestion Tool Free Online Version (most accurate of the free tools....doesn't include bots and DOES include searches that are excluded from other tools)
Wordtracker Keyword Suggestion Tool (free) with Google Trends data (quick way to pop in a few keyword ideas to see if there is a viable market without a lot of competition)
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Keyword Selector Tool
Good Keywords
Keyword Explorer (gives you an idea of your competition)
Give this great keword gadget a try!
You can get quick Keyword data from numerous sources all in the one place!
Pop in some keywords, like "dog training" for example, and look at what results this
great little gadget can give you.
Excellent Time Saving Browser Extention
The SEOQUAKE Browser Extention is super handy for quickly checking out your websites competition or for sussing out what websites are ranking for particular search
terms in a niche you might be investigating.
It's available for both IE and Firefox.
Get the SEOQUAKE here
Best Keyword Tools:
If you want to automate your niche keyword searchs (and finding the right keywords IS extremely important to your success) then I recommend using the tools below.
Wordtracker - excellent and most accurate of the keyword tools. (sign up for one year, one month or one week)
Keyword Elite - great for making keyword lists, checking PPC ad prices, checking out your competition, creating adsense sites, creating adwords campaigns....an EXCELLENT investment, cuts down on so much of the drudgery relating to keyword research!!!
There's an excellent free eBook by Ken Evoy called The Affiliates Masters Course which explains the niche finding process very well and includes links to free online tools you can use also.
You can download the eBook from the link below (right click and save as, then unzip)
Download The Affiliates Masters Course
2. Find Affiliate Merchants
You need to find merchants with products or services that
tie in with your site content.Signing up for lots of affiliate programs shouldn't be your aim, finding a few products (or even only a couple) which are quality products that sell well should be.
A quick way to see what affiliate programs are available for products that relate to your niche is to look and see what your competition is promoting. Doesn't mean you have to promote what they are, but it can give you a quick overview of what's available and even sometimes, what products sell well.
You can find affiliate programs easily by using Keyword Elite when you are doing your keyword research......or you can just have a browse through affiliate networks. They are a good starting point, but not the only way to find affiliate merchants for your site.
Some of the bigger networks are:
Commission Junction
LinkShare
TradeDoubler
Value Click
ShareaSale
ClickBank
Also check out affiliate networks that apply to your geographical area. EG if I type in "australia affiliate" in Google search I get quite a few networks advertising Australian affiliate networks.
You don't have to stick to the affiliate networks to find merchants however.
If you go to Google and type in your niche keywords and add "+ affiliate" you can find some merchants that haven't listed their affiliate programs through affiliate networks.
(other words merchants use for affiliate programs are "associates" and "partners")
Quite often merchants set up their own affiliate program for their products themselves. So it pays to look around and see what's available outside the affiliate network directories.
Sometimes you might find a terrific product, but can't see any affiliate program attached to it. There's nothing to stop you from contacting the merchant and asking if they could have an affiliate program set up.
3. Build Your Site
Build your niche website, paying particular attention to good CONTENT. Useful, unique websites will do much better than websites that use recycled information and are, well, boring.Make sure you OPTIMIZE your site and individual pages for the keywords you want to get traffic for. Paying attention to your website optimization should be an important factor when you build your website, BUT, don't forget to also build it for people......you can make it easy to read, information rich, even add a bit of humor and still optimize your pages well for search engines.
Also remember that when you are promoting affiliate products on your site, you are only doing a presell......the page that your affiliate link goes to does the BIG sell.....so incorporate your affiliate links into your content, but don't go overboard with the sell.
Yes, you want people to click your links, write copy that will let them know that by clicking that link they will get exactly what they are looking for.....but don't do the "hard sell" on your website. Your job is to funnel your visitors to your merchants sales page.
A great way to do that is to write product reviews. Not many people these days buy products without testing the waters first, seeing what other people think of the product.
Incorporate product reviews (and even product comparisons) into your website.
Writing a page about a problem and how to overcome it is also a good way to endorse your affiliate product. People want solutions to problems, you discuss the problem and how you eventually found an answer to your problem, which would be your product in your affiliate link.
Ken Evoy's free eBook Make My Content Presell is a must read.
If you want to add Google Adsense into your website.....go for it. If you have your pages optimised to the hilt, then you can earn some good money from Adsense also. The downside of this it that people might "click away" from your site, and also your affiliate product link that a sale from could be worth far far more than a 50 cent Google ad click.
If you use Google Adsense then, limit your ads to no more than a few a page. If people do click away, with only a few ads shown on your page, there's less of a chance that people will click on a low paying ad and don't make Adsense a "focal" point on your pages (or only on the pages where you don't have affiliate links)
IMPORTANT!!! Spell check your site, read through it out loud (make sure it makes sense) and check that it is viewable with both Internet Explorer AND Firefox!
People spend so much time on all the SEO, the niche research, making the site look "pretty".....but if it doesn't make sense, has errors all through it, or the formatting goes everywhere in different browsers, then you have neglected a simple yet important step that could cost you $$$$! (the ONLY time spelling errors are handy, are when they are put on a page for a reason.....eg. to get traffic from that mistake. If you find that you are getting decent traffic from a spelling error, you would be crazy to correct it BUT, remember that spelling can affect your sites credibility also, and possibly your sales.)
Here's a good free online spell checker.
4. Drive Traffic To Your Site
Kick start your traffic driving campaign, either through paid
advertisements
(eg Adwords) or using other traffic making
techniques.Pay particular attention to getting quality BACKLINKS! (and if you get great backlinks that are keyword orientated, not just your site address...this is called "anchor text")
These two pages below give you a lot of ways you can get quality traffic to your site.
Increase Traffic to Your Site
Traffic Links List
5. Check Your Site Statistics
As you start to get traffic (and if you have a new site it will only trickle in at first) see what pages are getting the most traffic, what pages are converting well, which ones aren't and "tweak" your site. Add more content and get more incoming links to your site.
As you start researching different niche markets, keeping up with the latest developments in your niche is important. You are always looking for extra, fresh information.
Bloglines is a great way to keep up with what's happening in your niche market.
You sign up to Bloglines, and when you have, you can use the little RSS feed button on the search bar to subscribe to feeds from web pages which have an RSS feed and add them to your Bloglines main page. (or add the Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet in the Bloglines additional features section by dragging it to your browser toolbar and just hit that when you find a feed you want to subscribe to)
If for example you want to look for anything relating to "photoshop" in Google News for example, when you're on the applicable Google news page, just hit the little RSS button and subscribe to the feed under Bloglines. (or the Sub with Bloglines button on your toolbar)
Then on your Bloglines main page you can give this feed it's own folder, or include it in another folder, and it's neatly filed away for further use.....and it gives you the latest updates when you go to that folder.
You can subscribe to any page on the web which has an RSS feed. So you could quite easily have quite a few feeds that are regularly updated for your niche all easily accessible in a folder at Bloglines.
Keeping organized is important, so that's why I highly recommend using this tool, plus it's a great way of keeping up with new information for your niche and makes finding and writing new content so much easier.
Register with Bloglines
6. Make Another Site
Once you start generating money on autopilot with one site......make another!The more sites you have, the more income you will make.
Plus, you can link similar sites together. If you have a site that's doing well and it has a good page rank or good traffic, put a link to your new site on it.
This is also the QUICKEST way to get your sites listed in Google. In fact, submitting your sites to Google isn't really necessary. Having a link somewhere out on the web coming back to your site is all you need to do to quickly get your site in the search engines.
When you have more than one site the importance of being organized becomes paramount.
Just remember, keep your sites as focused as possible....the Internet is already like a huge shopping mall, there's no need to put anything and everything into your sites. Just focus on your niche and the traffic will come. Lot's of little sites are worth a LOT more than one big one (for affiliate marketing anyway)
Affiliate Shop Builder
I had to just add this hot site called PopShops that uses product data feeds from Affiliate Networks which you can "copy and Paste" easily into webpages or blogs.PopShops has over 1000 merchants (and growing) from Commission Junction, LinkShare, Performics, Red Galoshes and Shareasale affiliate networks.
If you have a niche website, chances are you'll find a feed which could be incorporated into your site framework....there are literally thousands of products to choose from.
Below is a little "mini" version of a "tiny" feed from PopShops (because I don't want a page full of cameras here)
This site Amazing Baby Dolls is a terrific example of the PopShops technology in action!
PopShops basic plan is FREE, Pro is $5/month and Enterprise is $30/month.
It is SO easy to use, is customizable and then you can search to find products across the different networks using your keywords.
I had to put this little video in.....not just because I work with children and found it gorgeous, but because it really illustrates just how easy it is to use PopShops on your website.
Visit PopShops
