Before plunging in and dissecting the three most important tools you'll need to succeed in Affiliate Marketing, let me first list at least some of the questions which any hopeful affiliate marketer worth his/her salt should want answered before even considering entering this profitable field.
1. What does it take to become a successful Affiliate
Marketer?
2. What are the key ingredients of an affiliate marketing
success story?
3. Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory?
These are the kinds of questions that play around in the minds of hopeful affiliate marketers, and I'll do my best to answer them in this article.
Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it's not as easy as it sounds.
The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. Having the right tools can spell the difference between becoming a major success story, or winding up beaten and penniless, as many do.
It is vital that the potential affiliate marketer accept the fact that only by using the right tools will his/her Affiliate Marketing business become a profitable venture.
We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business in this regard and they have generously revealed what are, in their opinion, the top three Key Tools for a successful affiliate marketing business. Straight from them to you, these are discussed below.
Key Tool #1: YOUR OWN WEBSITE
The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is having your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website.
Your website is the jumping off point for all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and services you are promoting (and, hopefully, make a purchase).
It is vital, therefore, to focus your efforts on building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.
The most important thing you should always keep in mind is that almost all web users go online to look for information, and not necessarily to buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content.
People love articles that are appealing and helpful. Remember that, on the internet, content is king, and good, quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking.
By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as an expert in that field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a tremendous step in building up a loyal customer base.
Key Tool #2: USING INCENTIVES
Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one step ahead of your competition to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market.
Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site, but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you're promoting.
Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather potential prospects. Start your own newsletter or ezine.
Then, offer value-added incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletter. You can give away fr.ee software, access to exclusive services, a fr.ee eBook, or even fr.ee access to any product you may have tried to market in the past which didn't sell well - this could be your own product, or one to which you have resell rights.
The fact that it didn't sell well for you doesn't mean that your prospect won't find it a valuable gift...particularly, when it's fr.ee!
Key Tool #3: LINK POPULARITY
The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website can't be overemphasized. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important properties in the internet world. Commit this to memory.
Attracting people to your site should be your first, and foremost, order of business. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings.
Thus, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive, no holds-barred, reciprocal link campaign.
One of the best ways to do this, at no cost at all, is by submitting articles with your website's link in the resource box to e-zines and article directory sites. This will not only bring exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for fr.ee just by including a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity can be.
Work diligently to make your articles are original, relevant and useful, so that more websites will pick them up. It's impossible to put a price tag on the exposure these efforts will bring you.
There you have them...
These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize his/her earnings potential. The
possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, and resourcefulness.
And, it goes without saying, you're encouraged to explore other ideas, and adapt other strategies besides these, in order to help you become a high rolling, well paid, affiliate marketer.
Showing posts with label home business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home business. Show all posts
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
2 Tier Affiliate Programs Explained
How will refering new affiliates to an affiliate program make me money in the future? Thats where a 2 tier affiliate program works like magic!
Affiliates are getting cleverer by the day. So these days, affiliates know the difference between the different types of traffic they can get paid for. There are a lot of definitions though – CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL, CPD and many more.
CPM is impressions, when the publisher (the website owner) gets paid every time a banner is shown.
CPC is clicks, where the publisher (or email marketer and other marketers) gets paid every time a banner or text link is clicked upon.
The other ways of getting paid are grouped together under the term performance marketing – and this is where the term affiliate is most commonly used as well.
An affiliate is a marketer who sends visitors to another site using a variety of methods (such as placing banners or text links on their own site, buying sponsored listings on search engines, email marketing and many other different methods) and gets paid when an action happens. This action can be a lead (CPL stands for Cost per Lead), a Sale (CPS stands for Cost per Sale), a download (CPD stands for Cost per download) and many other variations.
Some in the Internet industry refer to performance based marketing as CPA (cost per acquisition), although the term is also sometimes used for specific types of campaigns such as leads or sales.
Now that we’ve got over the hard part, the rest is easy to understand.
The affiliate gets paid for sending visitors to a specific landing page where an action happens – either a lead, a sale, a download or some other sort of action that the advertiser requires. As an example, some advertisers are looking to build up their databases, so they pay for each opt in email address they receive, others want leads from specific locations, so they pay for zip codes, and then try convince the visitors after they fill in their zip code, to fill in a more detailed lead form.
The common denominator is that the affiliate gets paid when an action happens.
A 2 Tier affiliate program is simply finding new marketers to sign up under you to do EXACTLY what you are doing – sending visitors to different offers and getting paid when the visitors perform some sort of action. So why would you want other marketers to sign up under you to promote the same offers? Simple – you get paid a percentage of the amount the affiliate you refer gets paid? Sounds complicated?
Don’t worry, it’s not hard to understand. As an example, say John promotes 5 different offers on a single affiliate network. He gets paid for every lead, sale, email and zip code he generates from these different offers. John now tells Mark about the Network and gets Mark to sign up using a banner or text link that has John’s referral code built into it. Mark now signs up to the Affiliate Network under John and starts promoting various offers and advertisers from the Affiliate Network. These offers DON’T have to be the same offers that John is promoting. Mark can promote ANY of the offers on the Affiliate Network.
And this is the best part…
For any amounts that Mark gets paid, John receives a percentage of the amount over and above what Mark gets paid. So if Mark gets paid $1000 in Month 1, and the 2 Tier Affiliate program is paying 5%, then John would receive $50 just for referring Mark.
But it gets even better…
Some 2 Tier Affiliate Networks pay LIFETIME commissions. So John wouldn’t get a referral commission just for a month or a year – he receives it FOR ALL TIME.
If Mark becomes a super affiliate and starts generating HUGE commissions every month, John can just sit back and collect the checks as he referred him.
There are 3 important things to know when finding affiliates to sign up under you on 2 Tier Affiliate Programs:
Is the affiliate program or affiliate network credible, has proper tracking so your referrals are correctly tracked, has good campaigns and offers for the affiliates to promote so they actually do make money, and do they pay timeously? Assuming that the affiliate program or network is good, what percentage do they pay you on amounts that your referrals get paid? All programs vary so compare different programs to see what the industry standard is.
How long do you continue receiving referral commissions for? Some pay for a month, some for the lifetime, and of course there are many variations in between.
So do your homework and find a 2 Tier program that can make you money long in the future for the work you’re doing today.
Affiliates are getting cleverer by the day. So these days, affiliates know the difference between the different types of traffic they can get paid for. There are a lot of definitions though – CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL, CPD and many more.
CPM is impressions, when the publisher (the website owner) gets paid every time a banner is shown.
CPC is clicks, where the publisher (or email marketer and other marketers) gets paid every time a banner or text link is clicked upon.
The other ways of getting paid are grouped together under the term performance marketing – and this is where the term affiliate is most commonly used as well.
An affiliate is a marketer who sends visitors to another site using a variety of methods (such as placing banners or text links on their own site, buying sponsored listings on search engines, email marketing and many other different methods) and gets paid when an action happens. This action can be a lead (CPL stands for Cost per Lead), a Sale (CPS stands for Cost per Sale), a download (CPD stands for Cost per download) and many other variations.
Some in the Internet industry refer to performance based marketing as CPA (cost per acquisition), although the term is also sometimes used for specific types of campaigns such as leads or sales.
Now that we’ve got over the hard part, the rest is easy to understand.
The affiliate gets paid for sending visitors to a specific landing page where an action happens – either a lead, a sale, a download or some other sort of action that the advertiser requires. As an example, some advertisers are looking to build up their databases, so they pay for each opt in email address they receive, others want leads from specific locations, so they pay for zip codes, and then try convince the visitors after they fill in their zip code, to fill in a more detailed lead form.
The common denominator is that the affiliate gets paid when an action happens.
A 2 Tier affiliate program is simply finding new marketers to sign up under you to do EXACTLY what you are doing – sending visitors to different offers and getting paid when the visitors perform some sort of action. So why would you want other marketers to sign up under you to promote the same offers? Simple – you get paid a percentage of the amount the affiliate you refer gets paid? Sounds complicated?
Don’t worry, it’s not hard to understand. As an example, say John promotes 5 different offers on a single affiliate network. He gets paid for every lead, sale, email and zip code he generates from these different offers. John now tells Mark about the Network and gets Mark to sign up using a banner or text link that has John’s referral code built into it. Mark now signs up to the Affiliate Network under John and starts promoting various offers and advertisers from the Affiliate Network. These offers DON’T have to be the same offers that John is promoting. Mark can promote ANY of the offers on the Affiliate Network.
And this is the best part…
For any amounts that Mark gets paid, John receives a percentage of the amount over and above what Mark gets paid. So if Mark gets paid $1000 in Month 1, and the 2 Tier Affiliate program is paying 5%, then John would receive $50 just for referring Mark.
But it gets even better…
Some 2 Tier Affiliate Networks pay LIFETIME commissions. So John wouldn’t get a referral commission just for a month or a year – he receives it FOR ALL TIME.
If Mark becomes a super affiliate and starts generating HUGE commissions every month, John can just sit back and collect the checks as he referred him.
There are 3 important things to know when finding affiliates to sign up under you on 2 Tier Affiliate Programs:
Is the affiliate program or affiliate network credible, has proper tracking so your referrals are correctly tracked, has good campaigns and offers for the affiliates to promote so they actually do make money, and do they pay timeously? Assuming that the affiliate program or network is good, what percentage do they pay you on amounts that your referrals get paid? All programs vary so compare different programs to see what the industry standard is.
How long do you continue receiving referral commissions for? Some pay for a month, some for the lifetime, and of course there are many variations in between.
So do your homework and find a 2 Tier program that can make you money long in the future for the work you’re doing today.
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