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Getting Paid With Affiliate Marketing

January 11, 2009 By 2 Comments
This entry is part 10 of 10 in the series Affiliate Marketing

When do affiliate marketers get paid?

Generally speaking, you’ll get paid the month after sales have been made as many affiliate programs do monthly payment cycles.  Let’s say you referred 5 visitors to a site that converted into sales for that company in the month of January.  You would receive your commissions for those five sales sometime in February.

Each affiliate program payment cycles may be a little different.  I’ve seen some affiliate programs that will pay you more frequently, like every two weeks when your sales are consistently over a certain amount.  There are even affiliate programs that will pay a couple times a week for marketers that bring in very large amounts.  Basically, check with your affiliate program to find out what their payment cycle.

How do affiliate marketers get paid?

There are a few different ways that affiliate marketers get paid.  Most of the time, when you sign up for the affiliate program, you state how you want to get paid.  The most common methods are:

  • Paper Check – Received in the mail, or sometimes via FedEx/UPS depending on the amount/affiliate program.
  • Direct Deposit – The money gets directly deposited into your checking/savings account.
  • PayPal – This one is becoming one of the more common and widely used.  It makes it very easy as all you need to do is provide your email address for payment.

Once again, you’ll need to verify payment options with your affiliate program.

Affiliate Marketing Wrap Up

This is the last article in my Affiliate Marketing Series.  I hope you now have a better understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how it works.  I also hope I have answered your most common questions about affiliate marketing and what you need to get started.

Remember to refer back to the other articles in this series for valuable sites and affiliate programs to look at.  One of my favorite sites for affiliate marketing information is AffiliateTips.  Read the reviews and find the program that best suites your niche.

Thanks for reading!  Please check back soon for other articles and series on affiliate marketing, article marketing, blogging, and other resources to help you make money online.

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Finding Affiliate Companies Products To Promote

January 11, 2009 By 2 Comments
This entry is part 9 of 10 in the series Affiliate Marketing

What types of companies pay to promote their products and services?

This is another area with endless possibilities when it comes to affiliate marketing.  Every day more and more companies are realizing the benefits of having affiliates promote their products and services.  If they don’t have affiliate programs, they now implementing them into their marketing arsenals.

Some of the biggest companies in the world use affiliates to increase sales for them.  Here are just a few well known companies that know just how smart it is to recruit others to promote them and pay them good money to do so.  Heard of any of these companies?

  • Nike
  • Microsoft
  • Progressive Insurance
  • Walmart
  • Amazon

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.  There are companies everywhere from small online only businesses all the way up to Fortune 500 companies and bigger who will gladly pay a commission (and good ones too) to promote their products and refer sales to them.  I work daily with affiliate programs and I can’t really say I know of any fields that do not have tons of companies willing to pay someone in some form or another to promote their products for them.

Where can I find products to promote?

Affiliate programs are not hard to find, especially online.  Here are some ways you can find programs to promote with very little effort required.

  1. Website Searches – You can easily do a search on the Internet for companies in a specific market that have an affiliate program.  For instance if your market is dieting, simply do a search with words like “dieting sites with affiliate programs” or “dieting affiliate programs.”
  2. Visiting Sites You Already Know and Shop At – Do you have a particular website or company that you love to shop with? If so, head to their site and check to see if they have an affiliate program. Chances are they do.
  3. Affiliate Networks – This is probably the most popular.  There are a ton of sites which specialize in nothing but affiliate programs and those who wish to sell their products through them.  Some of the more common affiliate networks include:

Clickbank – This site makes it simple to promote tons of products in hundreds of fields. Simply sign up and receive an ID that you can then use to promote products listed in their Marketplace. New companies are adding their products to Clickbank’s affiliate marketplace on a daily basis.

Clickbank also allows companies and individuals to sell their own products through them. They will manage the affiliate programs for these companies and individuals. This is great for the company, but it’s even nicer for the affiliate. No need to sign up for hundreds of programs and receive separate checks for each one. Instead, Clickbank pays affiliates their commissions on a regular basis. (At the time of this report writing they had recently implemented the option of weekly direct deposits of commissions.) You also have the option of getting paid bi-weekly, semi-monthly and more.

Other popular affiliate networks include:

Finding affiliate programs to enroll in and promote is not difficult at all.  As a matter of fact, it’s probably the easiest part of the whole process.

How do I know which products are the best to promote?

I’ll make this very easy for you and just get straight to the point.  The following one thing is the biggest determiner of whether or not you’ll convert clicks into sales in an affiliate program – YOUR MARKET!

You have to have a market that is interested in the types of products you are promoting. For instance, you will do no good promoting chocolates to a dieting market or engagement rings to married couples.  You must do your research and know your market before determining which types of products will appeal to them.

Let me make this clear because it could mean the difference between success and failure as an affiliate marketer if you get it wrong. Don’t forget this basic but crucial fact:

You MUST know your target customer in order to successfully promote products and services they will actually buy!

Would you recommend a dating service to your spouse?  I know I wouldn’t.  That would probably not go over very well!  The same goes with affiliate marketing.  Suggesting products your market has no use for will get you no where and fast.  It’s just not a good idea.  Stick with what is relevant and carefully choose what you promote.

Now, that being said you could have an eager market and find the perfect product that could make their dreams come true, only to find the product stinks.  So, how can you tell if the product really lives up to its name?

Some programs, especially those listed in Clickbank, will actually give you statistics of how well their program converts lookers into buyers.  If you have access to these stats use them to help determine if it’s worth signing up to promote the product.

Another thing you can do is purchase the product for yourself.  If it is what it says it is, you’re good to go.  If it isn’t or you find it’s not worth the investment for whatever reason, you know you probably shouldn’t promote it.

Lastly, read reviews on the product or ask others who promote it how it does.  There aren’t many products out there that you can’t find a review for online.  Take the time to search for reviews of products from various sources and take the writer’s thoughts into consideration before jumping into an affiliate program you’re unsure of.

You can use a tool like AffiliateElite to see how well others are doing with a particular affiliate product and help you decide which products to promote.

See how I promoted that product?  Very relevant…you’re obviously here reading about affiliate marketing so it makes sense.

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Affiliate Marketing Costs

January 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 7 of 10 in the series Affiliate Marketing

Does it cost anything to become an affiliate marketer?

Generally speaking, there are no startup costs required with affiliate marketing.  There may be costs depending on how you decide to promote the affiliate products such as advertising costs, or additional web hosting costs.  Advertising is optional and if you already have a web hosting plan or plan to promote from an existing website, there should be no other costs.  In reality, you don’t even need a website but we’ll talk about that in the next article in the Article Marketing series. 

Once you figure out how you will promote products, then you simply find products you’d like to promote and sign up for their affiliate program by filling out a short form.  Each affiliate asks for different information, but generally speaking all affiliate programs will ask for the following information.

  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Email Address
  • Login Information including login name and password (if they aren’t automatically generated)
  • You PayPal email address (so they can send your commissions)
  • Your Mailing Address (especially important if you are receiving your commission payments via check)
  • Social Security Number or Tax ID Number

Don’t be scared because they ask for your social security number.  If you live in the United States and make over $600 in any given year in commissions, the affiliate program is required by the IRS to send you a Form 1099 for tax reporting purposes.  This is why they need your social security number or tax ID. 

I have found that if a company needs to send you a Form 1099 and you don’t provide your Tax ID or Social Security number at sign up; they get it from you when the time comes.  Many times this is a required field so there may not be a way around it.  They can alternatively ask you to fill out a form W9, which is an IRS form and is completely legal. That being said it is up to you whether you feel comfortable giving them your information at sign up or waiting until the IRS requires it.

Just remember, affiliate income is taxable income so be sure you are reporting it to the IRS.  I believe you even need to do it if the amount is under $600.  Tax advice is definitely out of the scope for this article so I suggest you consult a tax person or you can visit the IRS website and research information regarding self employment income for more information.

At the beginning of this answer I talked about some of the additional costs that may be associated with affiliate marketing depending on how you choose to promote the offers.  While the details of these types of promotions are also out of the scope of this article, I just wanted to provide a list of the some of the items that may incur costs.

  • Purchasing a website specifically for promotion of a program
  • Buying the actual product or service in order to get a better idea of how it works, what the customer service is like, etc.
  • Paying for options such as taking out newspaper ads, Google Ads, or other forms of advertising for the product beyond things you may already possess

Again, these are extra costs that you choose whether or not to incur.  They are not required to be an affiliate marketer by any means.  There are plenty of free ways to promote products.  You can write reviews and submit them to article directories or post comments in forums or blogs with a link to the product (don’t spam though) to name a couple.  Be very careful when posting comments to forums or blogs.  Make sure the product you are promoting is relevant and that the topic calls for a product recommendation.

I’ll talk more about how to promote products in a future article in the Affiliate Marketing series.

Good Luck!

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is Internet Marketing for Real?

January 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 4 of 10 in the series Affiliate Marketing

There are a ton of get rich quick schemes and just plain scams online.  Is Affiliate Marketing a legitimate way to make money from home or is it just another get rich scheme or scam?

Yes, it is absolutely legitimate!  Affiliate Marketing is a valid and legal way to earn money (and when done right, earn a nice living) on the Internet.

Of course that’s the short and easy answer, I know.  I realize you are more than likely sitting at your computer reading this report and thinking something along the lines of:

“That’s what they all say.  Prove it to me.”

Wait!  Don’t click that little X in the top right corner of this document without reading further.  I’m going to tell you WHY Affiliate Marketing is legit!

Let me first assure you; there probably is not one successful affiliate marketer out there who wasn’t taken by some kind of rotten scammer when they first started looking for a way to work from home.  I made that mistake plenty of times.   We’ve all been there, done that.   It’s those who are ready to get serious about making a living online and continue to work hard that will succeed.

There are many differences with Affiliate Marketing that make it a proven way to make money without being scammed.   Here are just 5 of those differences:

  1. There is no cost to start. – Find products that you like that have affiliate programs, sign up and begin promoting.  Simple.
  2. You control the decision of what products you choose to promote.  I promote products I have bought or would buy.
  3. If the program is legit, you can easily find others promoting the same products and services on their websites.  Do some research.
  4. It takes work on your part! – No promises of making a 6 figure income without doing any work.
  5. With affiliate networks such as Clickbank, Pepperjam Networks, PayDotCom, LinkShare, and others, it’s easy to get started with well known, reputable companies who have been around long enough and have a reputation of paying their affiliates on time every time.

If that isn’t enough reason, I encourage you to research further. Visit sites like Clickbank, Pepperjam Networks, PayDotCom, LinkShare, Commision Junction and others.  Do all the investigating it takes so that you feel comfortable with the fact that Affiliate Marketing is a REAL way to make money.  Read the income reports produced by some of the more successful bloggers and Internet marketers out there.  You’ll see that Affiliate Marketing is real and actually works.

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Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

January 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment
This entry is part 3 of 10 in the series Affiliate Marketing

How exactly do you make money from Affiliate Marketing?

We touched on the answer to this question in the previous question. When you (the affiliate) refer someone to a product (or service) and that person makes a purchase, you receive a commission on the sale.

However, there is more to it than that. After all, how can a company know for sure that you are the one who sent this person to their website since you’re not there to tell them and the person buying may not even know your name?

When you sign up to become an affiliate with a company or individual, you’ll receive a special link (your affiliate link) that is embedded with a tracking code to let the affiliate program owner identify you among other affiliates and their own marketing methods.

Whenever you use this special affiliate link to refer someone to the company’s website the person’s visit is tracked to you via that special code. There are various software programs that make this possible and the process is beyond the scope of this particular report. Just remember that visitors to the website are tracked back to you from this special code within your affiliate link.

Whenever someone who uses your link purchases something from the company’s website you are credited for the sale and receive some sort of payment.

Common types of affiliate payments:

  • Sales Percentage – This method is the most common form of payment to affiliates. Example: For every sale you refer as an affiliate, you’ll earn 50% of the total sales price. You refer $50 worth of sales and we’ll pay you $25. Percentages vary and are set by the company or individual who runs the affiliate program. They can vary from 5% all the way to 100%.
  • Pre-set dollar amount – This type of commission is not extremely common, but it is out there, specific dollar amounts could include things such as: For every $5 worth of product sales you refer to us, we’ll pay you $1 or a flat $20/sale.
  • Credits – Some sites pay their affiliates in credits that can be used for future purchases of their products. An example of this would be receiving 1 credit for every dollar’s worth of product sales you refer.

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Automate Ad Buying Process with OIOpublisher WordPress Plugin

December 19, 2008 By 1 Comment

250x250 1 Automate Ad Buying Process with OIOpublisher Wordpress PluginEveryone knows that private advertising on a site has far more potential to make lots of money for your blog than the Ad Networks do.  With private advertising, you don’t need to share the earnings.  You get 100%.  The problem is it can be difficult to manage all of the different types of ads without an ad network.  

Enter OIOpublisher. 

OIOpublisher is a WordPress plugin that automates the process of selling ads on your site.  It allows you to directly sell text ads, banner ads, in-content ads, and paid reviews.  It also provides the ability to sell custom items such as digital downloads.

Here are the features from the OIOpublisher website.

  • OIO can be used as a standalone platform, or as a WordPress plugin
  • Sell text ads, banner ads, in-content ads and paid reviews
  • Sell custom items; from custom ads to digital downloads
  • Entirely automated; purchases and epxirations all handled automatically
  • Your own ad server; javascript output lets you display ads on any website
  • Break ads into zones; display ads easily over multiple sites
  • Click and impression tracking; weekly ad reports emailed to advertisers
  • No empty ad slots; show your own default ads until slots are purchased
  • Ad status management; approve / reject / expire / renew / validate ads
  • Setup your own affiliate program; reward people for selling your ads
  • Easily extend functionality; modules let developers go further I
  • Integrated marketplace; let us help you advertise your ads

The cost of the plugin is $47, which is not that much considering that it does for you and the license you get with it.  The license is a multi-use license which means you can run it on any website that you own.  You also get a lifetime membership and access to the marketplace. 

I purchased OIOpublisher this morning and am working on integrating it into my sites.  So far, it is fairly easy to setup and has decent documentation.  The support forum also has a lot of useful information. 

For $47, you really can’t go wrong with this tool.  The first private ad sale could easily make up the cost of OIOpublisher.

 

468x60 1 Automate Ad Buying Process with OIOpublisher Wordpress Plugin

Filed Under: Advertising, Blog Optimization, Blogging Tools, Making Money Tagged With: ,

Tips for Making Widget Ads Perform Better

December 17, 2008 By Leave a Comment

For those using widget ads on your blog, the following article from Problogger.net provides 5 tips for making these ads perform better on your blog.  Check it out! 

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/12/17/5-tips-for-making-widget-ads-perform-better-on-your-blog/

Filed Under: Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Making Money Tagged With: , ,

Blogging in Action Review

November 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’ve discovered something very, very interesting recently. I discovered a product that reveals as clearly and accurately as I have ever seen, how to start and profit from a professional blog. Now, I’m not talking about these run of the mill blogs that are popping up everywhere.

No, I’m talking about the true blogs, the ones that earn money, the ones that pull traffic blogs like the six-figure earners use.

I’ll admit, when I first heard about this product, I figured it would be another get-rich-quick blogging scheme. But I wrote to the author, and his response was the most genuine, honest perspective on blogging I’d ever heard.

The funny thing is, I just knew I had to get my hands on the book after reading that e-mail.

I downloaded it immediately and couldn’t wait to dig into the content. But the thing was HUGE!  Browsing the table of contents, I just “felt” that this book was going to become a trusted resource in the blogging community very quickly.

The massive content and the originality of the contents simply blew me away. The amount of time, effort, and expertise that went into this book is obvious. Believe it or not, I even had to hold myself back from taking notes, and from time to time I’d ask myself: “Who the heck is this guy? I’m going to tell everyone about this!”

I loved this book so much that I contacted the author personally, thanked him for writing it, and was able to convince him to give you a {insert discount} as one of my valued subscribers. But hurry, because he said he could only hold this discount for a limited time.

This book has my highest recommendation. Check it out today:

http://www.yourblogriches.com/go/blogginginaction

 

Blogging in Action 300 Blogging in Action Review

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Is blogging profitable?

November 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

For anyone eager to make some extra money, the Internet is probably the richest source of business opportunities, and blogging is one such great chance to generate income with low costs and little effort. How is that possible? At the beginning blogging started as the modern online diary, but it evolved towards new forms that presently provide both personal expression and money making advantages. Let’s take a look at two main ways to turn a blog into a home-business. The starting point for any online commercial action is the creation of a highly interesting web page.Anyone running some form of business that could benefit from online promotion may choose blogging as a great form of advertising. A blog targets a special audience segment: those people interested in the products and services you offer. A blogger should therefore create a highly specific web page with content that is relevant for his or her field of activity. There may be references to the promoted products, or just links to them. Most business owners who take advantage of the profit blogging brings, choose to include various options on the pages.

First and foremost, you have to make web search possible directly from your blog; hence, you’ll need to use one of the Google programs that enables such facilities. Then, any blog visitor should have a minimum degree of independence once he or she has accessed your site, meaning that they should be allowed to perform actions: download pictures, documents and files, post comments or simply subscribe for regular updates. In order to make blogging profitable, try to keep a close watch over the traffic the blog receives, and constantly monitor how well it appears in search engine rankings.

Last but not least, blogging is also profitable for those who don’t have a business to promote: you may actually make money by allowing ads and banners related to your domain appear on the site. By the intermediary of the Google advertising programs, Adwords and Adsense, you will be paid for each click a visitor makes on a specific ad, or every time somebody performs a certain action on the blog. You’ll just have to follow the Google Adwords or Adsense instructions and apply them to the blog pages; the best way to generate revenue under such circumstances is to make sure your blog appears on the first result page of the search engines.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: ,

Blogging – making it pay

November 15, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Maybe the starting point of a profitable blog is a great topic, but there is definitely more to the business than that. There are two options a blogger has when trying to make the page generate revenue from advertising: either to stay on top of other blogs or provide good-quality material that ensures a high readership. Though the former option may look like the true Internet promise, things are slightly different when you have to achieve a high ad click rate. Let’s see the dos and don’ts of blogging when it comes to making money from advertising.First of all, you need to consider the number of readers you target with the blog articles, and set an average or modest click rate in case the domain you’re dealing with is not a very common one. You may get valuable clicks, but they may not be enough to generate the income you need; therefore, always try to maintain a balance between the advertising rate you set for the blog and the amount of traffic you manage to draw by well-researched, informational content. The best Google program to use here is definitely Adsense, but keep in mind that the ads are relevant for the site material and vice versa, hence, focus on quality not quantity.

One of the smartest ways to attract traffic and therefore increase the chances to get more ad clicks is by the use of continuation links. All you have to do is post a link with an excerpt from the blog article and post it on the main page. The whole point is to make it catchy: the reader sees it, interest rises and he or she clicks on the link to get to the body of the story. If you only post the title of an article within the link, you risk that the visitor leave the page without actually minding the post.

Don’t make the mistake of linking your blog only to top pages in the business. Yes, there are sites that are considered reference points in the field, and you actually risk of orienting the reader’s attention towards a competitor. Links are great tools, but they are not everything for a blog: first comes nice, unique information, and only then should you focus on directing the reader to other similar pages. The best links to use are those that take the visitor to a detailed explanation of the information on your blog, while also allowing the return to the initial page. Good luck!

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