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“Free” Money with Affiliate Marketing A customer who purchased one of my books called me and was talking about Internet marketing. Affiliate marketing came up in the conversation and he mentioned how he really wanted to get into that because it was FREE MONEY! I stopped him right there and reminded him that it was not really “free” money. It would require tremendous amounts of work and study on his part before he ever got to the point where he felt the money was “free”. Affiliate marketing is not so different than any other kind of Internet marketing. Whether you are selling your own products or someone else’s, the same principles of Internet marketing apply. Both require much knowledge and experience before any significant money can be made. If you are one of the people looking for “easy money”, you will benefit from this eBook no matter what. You will either learn how much work is involved and give up on the idea of affiliate marketing and put your time to more valuable uses, or you will see the potential and dig in for the long haul and become successful after much work and practice…either way, you win! Click here to read how I get 100% affiliate What is Affiliate Marketing? In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a method where people with products or services to sell allow you to promote their products and will give you a commission if you send a buyer their way. Most vendors who wish to include affiliate marketing in their business plan will join what is called an affiliate network. Two of the largest affiliate networks which primarily involve digital products are ClickBank and PayDotcom. For tangible products, Commission Junction and Link Share are two of the major affiliate programs for goods and services. It is relatively inexpensive for merchants to setup an affiliate program through ClickBank and PayDotCom. But for the affiliate networks like Commission Junction it can cost several thousand dollars to get started.
How Exactly Does it Work? Let’s say I write an eBook and would like other people (affiliates) to help me sell it. I can sign up with a network like PayDotCom and register my product with them. Depending upon the program, my product will end up in a searchable directory where would-be affiliates can search for items they may be interested in promoting. John Doe may register with PayDotCom and search for products he wishes to promote. If he likes the looks of my eBook, he can select it and be given a special URL which contains his affiliate ID and the ID of my product. John can then promote this link in any numbers of ways. I will discuss these ways in detail later. Perhaps John has an existing website he puts the special link on. Now if one of the visitors to John’s site clicks on that link, it will take him to my product’s sales page. Remember the link contains special code with John’s affiliate ID. So when the visitor comes to my site, a cookie is placed on the visitor’s computer which will identify who the affiliate is should a sale be made. If the visitor makes a purchase, the PayDotCom system will register the fact and automatically show the distribution of sales between the affiliate and the vendor. How Will I Get Paid? Some affiliate networks handle these themselves. For example, Commission Junction will send you a check for your affiliate earnings. They collect this money from the vendors as an initial deposit and then as ongoing billing as needed. Other networks leave the payments of affiliates up to the vendors. There usually is no problem getting the earned money from vendors because it is to their great advantage to stay in good standing with the affiliate program. How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing First let me describe how NOT to get started. • If you don’t know anything about Internet Marketing, starting an AdWord’s or Yahoo PayPerClick campaign will only result in lost money. It is all but impossible for beginners to make money with AdWords. But most importantly, AdWords is one of the few forms of Internet marketing which can COST you a lot of money if you are not careful. If you are new to Internet marketing, stay away from PayPerClick! • Don’t buy ANYTHING that promises easy money. Any product which says you can start making hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month right away is a scam. Whether they are promoting an affiliate marketing product or any other, it is nothing but a scam if they promise easy money. Making money on the Internet is not easy for beginners! • And along those lines, don’t buy anything for a while. There is so much FREE information available online it simply does not make sense to spend money for any type of tool or information product. • Don’t buy an email list. Purchasing 10,000 email addresses for $19.99 is simply a waste of money. You must create your own mailing list. • Don’t waste your time with submitting classified ads to free sites. This is another waste of time. There are Three Main Ways to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing • Placing affiliate links on your own website is an excellent way to market products. If your site is about gardening, find some products to promote in that area. Of course your site must already be getting traffic for this to work. And don’t think you can build a site and then drive traffic to it with AdWords. If you are counting on the AdWords’ traffic to click your affiliate links, some of the visitors will. But you simply won’t make a profit with this plan. Your clicks will cost you more than you make in affiliate sales. You must have a website which already gets natural traffic (free traffic from the search engines). • The second way is to promote your affiliate links in your newsletter. If you own a targeted email list, it can result in the highest conversions of any affiliate marketing method. You must have your own list or use someone else’s. The list must be targeted to a group which will be interested in the product you are promoting. Again, it is a total waste of money to purchase an email list. So how do you get your own list? First you need a website or at least a web page. On your site you can offer a free download and require an email address. With this method you will build a very targeted email list. • The third method to promote affiliate links is with PayPerClick programs like Google AdWords. As I stated above, if you are a beginner to Internet marketing, you will not make money with AdWords. Worse yet, you will likely lose money. AdWords requires much study, practice, and testing before you will begin to see a profit. Only now am I finally able to use AdWords myself to make money. Don’t think you can jump right into it and make money. Here's what I suggest: Start small with tiny niches. Find 3 or 4 small areas for which you can optimize a 4 to 5 page site with. Focus on SEO for free traffic at first. Use a host that lets you host all your sites for a low price in order to keep your overhead low. Read my section on SEO for how to do on and off page SEO. You MUST learn that part well in order to get the traffic to the sites! What to Do Then? You say you don’t have a website (you may not even know how to make one), you don’t have an email list or access to a good one, and you don’t want to waste money with AdWords until you have a good understanding of Internet marketing. So is affiliate marketing out of the question for you? Yes and no. Yes, you can make money with affiliate marketing. No, you can’t do it today. Here is a short game plan to consider if you are a beginner and are serious about making money with affiliate marketing: Learn simple web design. It is not rocket science. Go to nvu.com and get their FREE editor. They have great tutorials too. NVU is not as good as Dreamweaver, but you could sure learn with it and get a site created using it. You could purchase a copy of Dreamweaver and a book on it for about a hundred dollars on eBay if you wanted to. You will eventually want to do this. If you are serious about learning Internet marketing, the sooner you get a good web editor like Dreamweaver, the better. I don’t suggest buying FrontPage. If you have it already and want to start with it, that is fine, but FrontPage is not an editor I would want to keep using for very long. Study SEO First! Before you build your first page, study SEO. This part is free too. There is plenty of free info on the web about Search Engine Optimization. Again, let me emphasize this part, DO NOT START BUILDING YOUR SITE UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION! For success, you will have to optimize your site for search engines. You can do it along the way, or you can go back and redo it after you are finished. It is much easier to do it along the way. Find a niche area you know something about. Use FREE keyword tools to help you develop a theme for the site. Build your site around these keywords using correct SEO methods. Read all you can about SEO! So far you cost is ZERO and you have started building a solid foundation for yourself. Next buy a domain...just $8.95/year Then buy hosting...just $3.95 per month Your site will show up on the first page of Google if you study niche and keyword selection and SEO well. It is not that difficult to get a page optimized with a niche keyword and have it show up on Google’s first page of results. You should create many pages optimized content for different keywords within the niche. Many of these will also land on Google's first page for those keyword searches...if you study SEO along the way. Now you have a site which gets FREE advertising with Google! You can sell things on it, give freebies to build an email list, promote affiliate products...the sky is the limit and you are spending just $3.95 per month! You simply have to be willing to put the work into it. I did it just like this and know it works. People Spend Four Years Getting a College Degree Why do people spend four years of their lives doing something which pays them nothing? They are far sighted enough to see a very bright light at the end of the tunnel. They know a well deserved career is awaiting them after graduation. People are willing to put the work in when they believe a reward will follow. Internet marketing is a lot like getting a college degree, but it does not require four years to be successful! Don’t be one of those people wasting time, money and energy on trying to get rich quick. There are NO FREE LUNCHES! Online Retail and Affiliate Marketing are Very Similar Before I started affiliate marketing, I created our very successful retail site, www.CactusCanyon.com. Since working in affiliate marketing, I have found the skills and knowledge I gained from building a successful online retail business carried over to the affiliate marketing world. Without my experience with marketing an online retail business, it would have been very difficult to be profitable with affiliate marketing. I see many people who want to jump to the head of the line when it comes to an online business. I don’t know why so many people think there is some secret or some tool they can simply pay $39.99 for and start making money online. If it were that easy, wouldn’t everyone do it? Of course they would. If you are a beginner to the Internet marketing world, you may be thinking this short eBook has done nothing but prove you can’t make money with affiliate marketing. This is NOT what I want you to take from the book. I hope I have helped you take stock of your situation and also helped you understand how futile it is to try and “buy” your way to success with get rich quick schemes. I hope I have inspired you to start educating yourself and building a solid foundation of Internet marketing skills. The Internet offers tremendous potential for those who are willing to learn the skills necessary for success. Here's a way to turn "ugly" affiliate links into "pretty" ones. Click Here For Info About a Very Cool 100% Affiliate Program! |
