Tag: affiliate

    Digital Marketing or Affiliate Marketing Pros and Cons

    digital marketing

    The Digital Product vs. Affiliate Business Method

     

    Which Business Model will fit into your Lifestyle?

     

    When starting an online business, many newbies can’t decide on the business model which will fit their lifestyle while making them revenue. When starting a business, the decision often boils down to two options – promoting other’s products or selling their own products.

     

    There are definite pros and cons to each one, and some of that is based on your own personal skills and preferences. But other aspects of your decision will be based on things like profit potential, ease of implementation, and even the speed with which you can earn.

     

    There are some new things that have changed in the marketplace in recent years making it easier than ever for people to choose either of these methods for their business – or, combine them into one lucrative option!

     

    Below, we’re going to go over some things that might sway your mind to select one over another, and help you start off on a path that will not only be profitable, but personally fulfilling as well.

     

    How Fast You Can Get Your Money

     

    There’s a big difference between how fast you can earn money and how fast that money is deposited in your bank account. We’re starting off with this point, because for many (if not most) people, the desperation they feel in needing to get paid is palpable.

     

    In order to calculate the speed with which you can earn, several factors come into play. For example, as a digital vendor of products like eBooks or video courses, you have to factor in the product creation time and whatever amount of time you want to spend recruiting affiliates.

     

    This is going to vary for everyone because it takes some people months to create products and others a few hours. It’s feasible for some people to come up with a product idea, create it in a day, tell affiliates about it and start having money in their PayPal or Stipe account within 24 hours.

     

    But that’s not usual for everyone. Most people take at least a few weeks. Once it’s live, though, you will only have to check to see how fast your payment processor is in depositing the funds to your bank.

     

    Affiliates’ payments also vary by many factors. Each platform may have their own unique payment system. For example, ClickBank is going to pay affiliates on Fridays, two days after the end of the pay period and if you’re going direct deposit, you can get paid weekly.

     

    But on Amazon, you’re not getting paid until 60 days after you earn, and the payments are once a month. On Warrior Plus, you will have your affiliate earnings going into a site wallet, and the speed with which you can get those funds varies, too – from a few days to an entire month.

     

    How Much Money You Can Earn

     

    Now let’s dig into how much you can earn through each of the two business models. This is going to have variations as well. For example, as an affiliate, you have a myriad of options available that will impact the amount you earn.

     

    You might promote digital products, which have a low-price front end but an entire funnel of upsells and downsells that contribute to higher profits (not to mention some affiliate contests you can earn from, too).

     

    You might be promoting recurring income items that build your profits like a snowball, or you may choose one-time commission items instead. Even if you promote tangible products, there will be high ticket items that are harder to convert but pay more – and low ticket items that convert easily, but pay less.

     

    As a digital vendor, your earnings are going to be impacted by several factors. The first is the speed with which you release new products. Then there’s the matter of how many upgrades you have to add more profits to your bottom line.

     

    You also need to take into consideration whether or not you are going to spend time split testing your sales letter for improved conversions and recruit the top affiliates for your launches.

     

    There’s also the matter of control. You can earn as a digital vendor because you’re in control of your process. But as an affiliate, you’re at the mercy of the product creators and platforms, hoping you get approval to promote.

     

    There are some affiliates and vendors who only earn three figures each month because they’re slow or they just aren’t very good at what they do. Then there are seven and eight figure earners online, with many five and six figure earners as well.

     

    Basically, there’s no crystal ball that will tell you how much you can earn because everyone is unique and their process will vary from others’ processes, even if they try to copy someone else verbatim.

     

    What It Requires to Get Started

     

    The requirements include a mix of skill, tools and money. For some, it doesn’t require any money upfront. For others, it may require minimal investment – but nothing big or insurmountable for either business model.

     

    Let’s look at the cost of getting started first. If your plan is to launch products as a digital vendor, you pretty much need a domain and hosting. It is possible to set up a store on Etsy or elsewhere, but most people want control over their business, and if you’ll be creating sales pages, JV (joint venture) pages for affiliates and download pages, you’ll need to get a domain of your own.

     

    Look up GoDaddy coupon code and find a $0.99 dot com domain and then pay for a small hosting plan that should not cost more than $5-10 per month. From there, you can use WordPress themes for free.

     

    But if you want to, you can invest in a page building tool that will help you create   professional pages made from templates. The platforms (like Warrior Plus) won’t cost anything up front to sell on – but they’ll take a small fee from each sale as their cut.

     

    If you’re operating as an affiliate marketer, you definitely want to have your own site eventually, but it’s not a requirement up front. You can get started, though using social media platforms instead.

     

    You can promote products on YouTube, Facebook and other places that allow your links without having to buy a domain and hosting until you feel you can afford it. The only other investment you may want to make from time to time is of a product you’re reviewing, but that’s not a necessity.

     

    Now let’s look at the tools you may need to learn. In addition to WordPress or page builders, you’ll likely want a good keyword tool. This can be a free or paid tool, but it can tell you what the needs of your customers are and help you craft products and reviews.

     

    Graphics creators are another type of tool that will come in handy. But luckily, you can pair a free stock photo site with a tool like Canva (the free version) and use the built-in templates to create what you need.

     

    Last, let’s consider the skills you need to succeed with these business models. As a digital product creator, you have to know how to write well or how to record your course, depending on your preferences and those of your customers.

     

    You’ll also need to know how to create listings on platforms like Warrior Plus, JVZoo, ClickBank or an individual platform like Thrivecart, depending on how you want to set it up.

     

    There’s also the matter of customer service. As a digital product vendor, you’re going to need to deal with people directly. But as an affiliate, you’ll simply be the bridge between the vendor and customer, so the vendor will handle any customer service issues that arise.

     

    As an affiliate, you’re also going to need to know how to write or record your product reviews. Plus, you want your reviews to get found easily, so you have to learn more about search engine optimization than if you were a digital vendor getting traffic through a launch.

     

    For both business models, you’ll need to have good research skills. The good news is, there are tools that can help you with content creation, SEO and even customer service.

     

    Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can spiff up your content, it can conduct research on your behalf, engage in social listening and predictive analysis to help you create something your audience craves and more.

     

    How You’ll Get Customers

     

    This is one aspect that’s very different between the two business models – the way in which you’ll get customers. As a digital product vendor, if you have a launch coming up, you’ll want to recruit affiliates to promote for you.

     

    If you were to optimize your own site and promote it, you could also get customers that way, but it’s far more time-intensive than recruiting the right affiliates. They will send a recommendation of your product to their list of subscribers on your behalf.

     

    So in order to make sure you achieve this goal, you have to first ensure the quality of your product and that it’s something that will be in demand. Then price it so that it gives value to the buyers, with an upsell funnel that caters to the commission needs of your affiliates.

     

    The more you can do to entice affiliates onboard, the better. That means creating an informative JV page with readymade swipe files they can use, hosting a cash prize contest, and giving them advance notice so they can create a bonus (or give them a bonus to use instead).

     

    Traffic as an affiliate is a bit different. You’re going to need to optimize your content - whether it’s on social media or Google and other search engines. That means learning the algorithms and hashtags, which thumbnails will grab the attention of users and more.

     

    Knowledge You’ll Need to Have

     

    This brings us to the knowledge you need. In addition to what’s already been covered about research, tools and SEO, you will have other knowledge needs. For example, if you are a digital vendor, you are going to be immersed in a continual learning cycle.

     

    You must constantly pay attention to trends and research within your niche so that you can teach what your audience needs to know. But in addition to niche-based learning, you also have to stay on top of the marketing aspect have your business.

     

    There will always be new evolutions in marketing strategies, so you're going to have to learn how to sell in a way that allows you to be competitive. There also will be new ways of developing products.

     

    For example, webinars and video products were not always an option in the early days, where people had to teach from text only. Anytime a new strategy emerges that consumers embrace fully, you want to be aware of it so you can use it in your business.

     

    As an affiliate marketer, you're going to have to stay on top of different trends and marketing methods that are used on social media and elsewhere. But you also have to pay attention to different products that are being released within your niche.

     

    It's not just an affiliate’s job to present the product and tell people about the features and pricing. You have to know enough about the niche itself, such as the problems and pain points you are audiences having as well as the new technology or strategies that are being released so that you can select the right products to review.

     

    Time Benefits and Obstacles

     

    Lastly, you want to compare the time benefits and drawbacks of both business models. Many people avoid being a digital vendor because it's more demanding than affiliate marketing.

     

    If you decide to have an info product launch, you are going to be setting a date for the release of that product that your affiliates are going to expect you to abide by. That means you will need to put yourself on a schedule with boundaries in place to ensure your launch goes live at that date and time.

     

    It can be a bit more pressure filled than working as an affiliate, where you are on your own timetable discussing products that are already released, unless you are getting ready for a vendor’s product launch and trying to create a bonus or review for it.

     

    As a digital vendor, you're also going to be restricted by time when it comes to providing support to your customers. If you have an inbox filled with customer service requests, you need to make sure you are replying to them in a timely manner rather than letting them go unaddressed.

     

    With affiliate marketing, there's more pressure to scale your business so that you can continue bringing in profits, so you must be consistent with your reviews. As a digital product creator, depending on how well your post launch sales go, you may be able to take your foot off the gas a bit and slow down in the development of your next launch.

     

    With both options, you'll be able to scale your business into something bigger, but it's going to require you to invest more time and effort so that you can continue serving your audience well and even expand your audience base.

     

    There are definite benefits and drawbacks to both business models, but that’s true of every option you have available to you. The key is to find what you enjoy and pursue it vigorously so that you build a thriving online empire – even if that means combining them into one!

     

     

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    What’s The Best Way To Learn Affiliate Marketing?

    So you’ve spent some time figuring out what’s what with Internet marketing. You realize there are lots of different ways to make money online, but the one that really resonates with you is affiliate marketing. You’re ready to dive in and become a successful affiliate earner. Maybe you’ll even make the Leader Board in some of those big launches.

    Usually the best place to start is with some research so you can study the subject and also learn best practices. Look for the quality products about affiliate marketing – the ones that get rave reviews from buyers because they’re getting results from what they’ve learned from the product – and buy them to study. Best practices are tried and true business tactics that don’t resort to blackhat shenanigans or exploiting loopholes in the system.

    Another idea is to watch over the shoulders of successful affiliate marketers and do what they do. This is a great way to learn. Don’t copy them exactly; you need to show your own personality. Perhaps pick three super affiliates and optin to their lists. That way you can be the potential customer and you’ll see exactly how they promote products to you.

    I recommend you make a spreadsheet and track specific things about these marketers such as: how often they email, how often they pitch in their emails, what social media outlets they use, how often they promote via these outlets, whether they offer bonuses of their own with purchase and what those bonuses are, how they use content to recommend products (podcasts, interviews, PowerPoints, infographics, video, webinars, blog posts, guest posts, article marketing, advertising, etc.). This way the bigger picture of how these marketers are successful will become clearer.

    Get coaching. You may be able to get group coaching or access to an insider forum as part of a package you purchased about affiliate marketing, and that’s one way to get some special attention and your questions answered. Group coaching is certainly a less expensive option, but to really move forward quickly, one-to-one individual coaching is usually a better way to go. Yes, it’s not going to be cheap but if they can train you into a super affiliate extraordinaire, then the money you’ve paid them to coach you might be well worth it.

    Pick a coach that walks the walk. This person has to have a lot of success and experience with this income stream before you should even consider them as a possible coach. It also needs to be someone you respect, who doesn’t spam people, and who resonates with you. Give it lots of thought and choose carefully. If you don’t know anyone offhand, ask other people whose opinions you value.

    If you’re determined to become a successful affiliate marketer, take some time to do some research, learn strategies from quality products about this subject and follow a successful marketer to see how they do it. If you want to jump ahead several paces, consider investing in a coach who can help you.

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    How NOT To Do Affiliate Marketing

    Affiliate marketing is all about promoting other people’s fine products and earning a commission. That sounds like a wonderful way to earn money – you don’t have to create your own product and you don’t have to deliver the product or handle customer service after the sale. But HOW you operate as an affiliate marketer requires some finesse.

    Here are examples of what NOT to do as an affiliate marketer:

    Do not promote junk. Promote one bad product and customers question your decision. Promote many bad products and you ruin your reputation. Pick products created by reputable businesses and check out feedback about the product and their customer service.

    Do not continually promote products without ever giving your list valuable free information too. The people on your list aren’t on your list because they love to be constantly bombarded with promos, they’re there to learn from you and they want to see you and your personality, and learn what you have to teach them.

    Do not email too often. How often is that? It depends on your list and what they’re expecting from you. When they opt in to your list it’s best to explain a little in your first email about what they should expect. If you are going to email them every day or every Monday, tell them. People like to know and they like routine.

    Do not send promotions via email to your list about offers that are not targeted to your list. If your subscribers are interested in finance and financial issues, then stick with that topic or something closely related. Don’t start sending them promos on off-topic offers that sound good to YOU.

    Do not promote only one way. To be successful as an affiliate marketer, you need to show the offers in other forms. Email is only one avenue. Write up thorough product reviews and post them on your blog, interview the product creator and put a link to the podcast on your blog and throughout your social media channels, do a How To video and post it on YouTube, host a Google hangout or webinar answering questions, etc. It’s better to take the time to thoroughly promote one product in all ways you can think of rather than shallowly promote offer after offer.

    Becoming a successful affiliate marketer does take effort on your part. Even though you’re not the one having to create products, you’ve got to do your research to make sure they’re something you’d be proud to promote – your reputation depends on it. You also need to watch how often you promote to your email list and learn how to successfully recommend products in various ways. It may take a little trial and error to find what’s successful for you, but once you do, you’ll be smiling every time you check your PayPal account.

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    Consider These Things Before You Promote…

    As an affiliate marketer you have a huge number of products and programs you could promote. In fact, you probably have too many choices. To help you decide, consider the issues below.

    When someone asks you to promote their new product, consider the timing. Are they letting you know enough ahead to give you time to put together a proper promotion?

    Is the timing going to conflict with another exciting promotion coming up? Of course promoting your own products will take precedence over someone else’s unless you don’t mind moving your date back. But what about that thing you were already going to promote? Your email slots are valuable real estate. You don’t want to hammer your subscribers with a bunch of promo emails one week and then not email them again for three weeks. As you can see, timing is important. It’s a good idea to have a promo calendar laid out so you can showcase each on different days or different weeks to your list.

    Another thing to consider before promoting is what kind of cookies the product owner uses. If they use first or forever cookies it means when someone first clicks on an affiliate link, they are cookied by that affiliate. So no matter how hard you push at converting sales, you won’t get the commission when they buy if they’re already cookied by another affiliate. This a bummer for you if your hard promotional work is giving someone else the commissions. Last cookies mean if a customer clicks on your affiliate link last and they buy, you get the sale.

    There are pros and cons to first and last cookies. It makes the most difference to you depending on whether the product you want to promote is brand new and you get to be one of the first to tell others about it, or if it has been around for a while and other marketers have already been advertising it. Always make sure you know which type of cookie you’re dealing with.

    And importantly, take a look at the product itself. You should have a list of criteria it needs to meet before you endorse it. The first one can cut out a lot of them from the start – is it a good fit for your list? You know your subscribers, will it really help them? Do they need it to fill a void, fix a problem? It doesn’t have to be an exact match; maybe you’re in a non-IM niche but you found a tool or software that they’d benefit from having, even in that non-IM niche.

    While looking at the product, look at the creator too. Their reputation for putting out quality goods is mandatory, but they also need to have stellar customer service and back it all with a good guarantee.

    Start by considering these three things when looking at products to promote as an affiliate. It’s crucial for it to be of high quality, but the timing of the promotion and the type of cookies will matter to you too.

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    Affiliate Marketing Myths

    Myths abound when it comes to affiliate marketing. Let’s go over some of these myths now and see what the reality is.

    It’s better to create your own products instead of marketing others’ products.
    While it’s always a good idea to have some products yourself, it’s not the only way to make good money. You can do both! In fact, one can complement the other.

    For example, if you’re promoting an ebook about A and B but people want to know about C too, whip up an ebook or video series about C to sell to these customers. Or set up a paid membership where you can group coach them through further aspects of ABC.

    If you’re selling your own ebook about how to do something, you can promote someone else’s tool within your ebook or on the backend that helps automate that something. Or maybe after customers learn about it from you and they decide they want a done-for-you option, you can promote, as an affiliate, a company that will give them that.

    You can make more money when you have your own products.
    Yes, it’s true IF you have a good-sized list of ready buyers. But… think of the time it takes to make something yourself – you have to make all the components, get a sales page written, set up all the pages, have something to offer people as a lead magnet, get the marketing parts set up and in place, and so on. It’s pretty time-consuming and exhausting. You really don’t have to recreate the wheel. If another marketer just introduced her own huge whiz-bang creation, then promote it. You could make just as much money introducing three or four affiliate products to your list in the time it would take to make your own.

    As an affiliate marketer, you never have to handle customer service.
    Technically, your name is not on that product. But realistically, you’re endorsing it and when customers don’t get their downloads or their bonuses, many will come to you about the problem. Your reputation is on the line and sometimes you have to step in and represent the customers who bought through you.

    You should only promote profitable niches.
    If you’re new to affiliate marketing, it’s better not to jump on the bandwagon of the newest and biggest product launch. There’s quite a bit of competition from seasoned players. Instead, start with a niche and products that appeal to you. It’s a real yawner to try and sell stuff you have absolutely no interest in. Your efforts will come across as flat, if you can force yourself to even keep promoting. If it’s something that excites you, it’s a lot easier to excite others.

    Affiliate marketing doesn’t take much work.
    While it’s true you don’t have to do the initial work of putting a product together, your work comes on the other end, the marketing end. It won’t sell itself just because you put a small ad on your website, you have to promote it in a myriad of ways.

    That could mean a video where you walk through the product, a podcast interview with the owner, a webinar answering questions, a blog post showing your results from using it, PPC ads, emails to your list and lots and lots of social media posts, tweets and pins. Where do your potential customers hang out? Those are the places you want to be.

    Hopefully this has busted a few myths for you and given you some further insights into affiliate marketing. It’s not a Sunday stroll in the park but with some strategic work, you should find this particular income stream quite rewarding.

    Categories: Affiliate program Tags: Tags:

    5 Things You Need To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing

    Perhaps you’re switching business models or maybe you’re totally new online. Either way, you’d like to create an income stream by promoting products as an affiliate marketer. So what do you really need to have to start making affiliate sales? Here are 5 things in no particular order:

    #1 You need at least one promotional platform to start, but several are better. By a platform I mean something like a niche blog or static site. A place, your home base, where you can showcase the products. People need a place they can go to check out the item they’re interested in, learn about it and get their questions answered, and decide if it will solve their problem. Importantly, they need the opportunity to buy it, and from a trusted source.

    It is possible to promote products by simply doing a redirect from your website address to the creator’s product page, but that’s not usually the best way to do it. You need to presell before you send them on. Potential buyers are more comfortable having a recommendation before they buy.

    #2 Every affiliate marketer needs an audience. You can write up a nice little product review on your blog but obviously if no one reads it, you won’t make sales. SEO every piece of content you put on your site, offer free lead magnet material that people actually want, join online forums, offer your lead magnet material somewhere highly trafficked such as on a forum, do joint ventures, partner with marketers who have followers, run ads, create and post YouTube videos, and any other method that gets exposure to you and the products you’re promoting.

    #3 Related to #2 and the desire for traffic, you need to open several social media accounts. Which ones? Start with Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You won’t know which are the most successful for you until you get them established, work them, and look hard at your results.

    #4 This probably goes without saying, but you need quality products to promote. The best place to start is with products you already own and use. If you want to promote Internet marketing items, what have you purchased that you’ve had great success with? Tell your story. People respond to authentic stories and they want to have the same great experiences.

    Otherwise, choose carefully. Products need to be well presented, without problems or the problems already fixed, backed by a guarantee, have good customer service, and plenty of “meat”.

    #5 Successful marketers need to track their various promotions. Why waste your time throwing everything at it in hopes that something will stick and you’ll make some sales? Not only does it waste your time but drains your energy and is very discouraging. Track your promotions! You can use tracking software and do split tests with ease. At the very least, use a separate affiliate link for each way you promote. Are you selling a bunch via email or your blog post? Is the tweeting a bust? You will know with tracking.

    There is a lot more to affiliate marketing and as you go along you will settle into methods that work best for you. But if you’re just getting started, these 5 things are what you need now.

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    How to Attract Super Affiliates

    Every brand wants to attract super affiliates to their program. The fact is that one super affiliate can generate a full-time income for a brand. That’s why they want them so badly. You too can attract a super affiliate or two to your products if you plan for it and are ready for it.

    * Create an Excellent Product – Let your products speak for themselves. The more value you offer the audience, the better. Be sure that your product over delivers and offers additional value over what you state on your sales pages. This will ensure that affiliate want to promote such a phenomenal product.

    * Develop Fabulous Customer Care – Don’t skimp on customer care, because affiliates do not want to deal with a lot of returns and problems for the products they’ve worked hard to promote. Be clear about how consumers can access customer service and back up all your products with an ironclad guarantee.

    * Offer High Commission Rates – Super affiliates aren’t going to work hard for a dollar here and there; they want high commissions on high value products. If you can offer that for at least one or two products, your other products will also benefit.

    * Create Full-Fledged Marketing Materials – Super affiliates don’t want to create marketing materials. It is likely they will improve on what you do offer, due to their experience, but they’re not going to start from scratch. Create content, email messages, sales pages, brochures, graphics and more where appropriate.

    * Offer High Converting Sales Pages – Test out numerous sales pages until you get it right so that you can offer high converting sales pages to your affiliates. If your sales page doesn’t convert then there will be no point in having super affiliates or any affiliates sending people to the page.

    * Offer a Bonus for Their First Sale – Super affiliates like making money and winning prizes. Offer a bonus right away for their first sale and then additional bonuses and prize opportunities for more sales.

    * Give Them the Product Free in Exchange for Promoting It – Many super affiliates need to see and use the product before they will promote it. If you do your research and choose a few affiliates who are known from being awesome, and who promote products to your niche, you can approach them with an offer.

    * Join an Affiliate Network – Even if you offer an excellent affiliate program on your own, keep in mind that many super affiliates want to join known affiliate networks that they know have rules, and will pay out on time.

    * Pay On Time – Don’t make affiliates wait to earn money or have silly and arbitrary requirements to sell 100 dollars’ worth of product before you pay out. It’s reasonable to wait for returns but outside of that, making people wait for money they earned is just frustrating.

    * Allow Bidding on Your Brand Keywords – Many brands make a huge mistake not allowing affiliates to bid on keywords. Affiliates do a lot of keyword research on the products they promote; if you hold them back you will lose out on them.

    * Treat Them as Valued Partners in Your Business – Affiliates aren’t employees; they are independent contractors who are helping you earn a living. They are more partners in your business than they are employees, and should be treated as such. They can make suggestions, give ideas about new products, and rate the products you have so that you can improve.

    * Don’t Change Things Too Often – When you get a lot of affiliates and especially super affiliates, don’t change the links to the sales page or other things too fast. Affiliates do a lot of research on your behalf and promote your products to their audience, so you don’t want to make them have more work.

    Attracting super affiliates to your program can be exciting and life changing. Business will be awesome with even just one good super affiliate. The way that you attract them is the same way you should use to attract any affiliate or customer. By being the best.

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    How to Choose the Right Products to Promote as an Affiliate

    A major step in becoming a profitable affiliate marketer is to choose the right products to promote. You want to be sure that you choose something your audience needs, that has a good reputation behind it, and is made by someone you trust. After all, if people buy it due to your recommendation, it needs to be good so that you can maintain the trust of your audience.

    * Understand Your Audience – The more you know about your audience, the more you can be sure that you are finding products that they need and want. If you don’t know who you’re marketing to, it will be very difficult to choose the right products.

    * Solve Problems for Your Audience – You want to find products that solve problems for your audience. If you’re not solving a problem, you may be creating one. Find two or three pain points your audience has. Then search for products to see if you can find solutions for your audience for these pain points.

    * Try the Product – It’s probably better (at least at first) that you do not promote products you have not tried yourself. Consider the expense to be part of the cost of doing business, but also as an insurance policy against complaints. If you truly love a product, you’ll feel better about promoting it.

    * Check Conversion Rates – Any product that is worth selling should give affiliates some idea of how high their sales pages conversion rate is. This can help you know whether or not it’s worth it for you to spend time and perhaps money promoting the product.

    * Know How Much Your Commission Is – Always understand up front how much your commission is. Remember to subtract any fees you’re charged via the payment processing center that you use. Read the information on ClickBank so you know what it takes to actually collect there (or any other affiliate network for that matter).

    * Know the Payout Procedures – Every affiliate program out there has a different payout procedure. Some pay out monthly, some make you wait until you have a certain number of sales, and others have even more confusing rules. Read all the rules, and understand when and how you’ll be paid.

    * Stay Digital – The best affiliate products are digital over physical. The reason is that people will buy them faster and get their products sooner. Plus, you’re likely to earn more money per item when promoting digital items.

    * Trends Are Nice – Don’t be afraid to jump on a trend bandwagon if it fits. But, don’t force it. If you can find a way that the trend fits in with your audience, you can capitalize on it in a big way. If you can’t, just let it go.

    Being an affiliate marketer can be a tremendous career. Your income-earning potential is truly unlimited. Only your imagination can stop you from making a good income via affiliate marketing. But, you want to be sure to pick the right products at the right time for maximum impact.

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    Software to Help You Start an Affiliate Program

    One thing you need to run your affiliate program is the right software. The best way to pick the right software is to make a list of the features that you want the software to have. Plus, set a budget for the software so that you can rule out some. But, don’t be too cheap either. If you want your business to grow, you need to pick the right software to avoid too much changing, as affiliates get tired of too many system changes.

    * PostAffiliatePro.com – This affiliate program software can work in the cloud or as a download that you upload and run from your own server. There are different levels that you can purchase for the SaaS program that are affordable. What’s great is that in this case you own your affiliates even though it is a cloud-based service.

    * aMember.com – This is a plugin that works with WordPress and other website software. You can even set up a membership website with this software. It’s a one-time purchase with yearly upgrades and excellent customer care.

    * AffiliateWiz.com – This is software you’ll purchase and put on your server yourself in order to run your affiliate program. It offers all the typical bells and whistles, allowing people to sign up for the program, grab code, as well as other marketing collateral that your affiliates will need. Plus it offers a way to pay out your affiliates via PayPal Mass Pay.

    * E-Junkie.com – This is a simple cloud-based affiliate software that starts at only $5.00 per month. This program doesn’t have many of the features that you may want such as allowing subscriptions, but it does offer many other features such as easy payouts and hosting of products, images and other marketing collateral.

    * ClickBank.com – This is a very popular affiliate network that you can join that will help you run your program in a professional manner. The one drawback is that you don’t own your affiliates, and you will need to ask them to sign up for a separate list or something that enables you to give them more marketing materials to use.

    * JVZoo.com – This is free software that you can use in the cloud to promote your products and run an affiliate program. It has all the bells and whistles, plus you will be part of their marketplace which will enable super affiliates to find you.

    Figure out what features you want in your affiliate software, test out many different systems before picking, and then try to stick to particular software so that you don’t run off the affiliates you do attract. But, if you choose right you’re not going to want to switch. Don’t be afraid to find an experienced affiliate manager to help you set up your affiliate program to get started fast on the right foot.

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    Ten Reasons to Start an Affiliate Program

    Starting an affiliate program is the best way to increase your income and build a bigger business fast. You have a whole army of fans promoting your product, pushing your website up on search engine results, and talking about your product. There are so many reasons to have an affiliate program that you should just almost stop reading now and get to work on starting one. But, if you’re not convinced yet, keep reading.

    1. Low Startup Costs – There is hardly any business that you can start that has a lower startup cost. Depending upon what type of software you want to use and the functionality you want, you can start your affiliate program for just five bucks through E-junkie.com, or for about 50 bucks via ClickBank.com, or a little more by using software like aMember.com.

    2. Low Cost Marketing – Face it; marketing isn’t cheap. But, when you have an affiliate program you get other people to foot the bill for a lot of it. You will need to create marketing materials for your affiliates, but they will often pay for ads and PPC campaigns if your payout is high enough for them to do so.

    3. Winning Business Model – When you consider the business model, it really is just hiring sales people who work on commission only. This means your labor force is very cheap and essentially free unless they make a sale. Sales people have always been around and will always be around. Just because you’re good at making your product doesn’t make you a good sales person, but hopefully you can attract good sales people via your affiliate program.

    4. Easily Scale Your Business – When you have a practically free sales force, that means you can scale your business easily. Once you have enough affiliates you can close or open the program as you wish. You can start focusing on building products instead of selling, and still keep growing your business.

    5. Increases Your Streams of Income – If you already sell products of your own as well as other people’s, then you know what it means to have multiple streams of income. Having many ways to bring money into your household keeps you from having financial problems, because you’re not reliant on just one source of income.

    6. A Key to Higher Profit Margins – Getting other people to do work for you is a huge key to making more profits in your business. Once you get your affiliate program going, and your affiliates are promoting and selling your products, your main job will be to create new products and marketing materials and then let them go for it.

    7. Word-of-Mouth Marketing at Its Best – In many cases affiliates are also users of the product or service. In fact, you can make that a criterion for promoting it if you want. Then you can take advantage of the idea of word-of-mouth marketing with a boost. Affiliate marketing is like word-of-mouth marketing on steroids.

    8. Improves Traffic to Your Website – When you have multiple people sending traffic to your sales page, this is automatically going to create links outside of your website. Many of these will be considered authoritative in nature, which Google Search likes.

    9. It’s Team Building That Gets Results – When you have an army of affiliates working for you, you can get them together and work on team building, even offer them training to help them sell your products better.

    10. Helps Expand Your Entire Business – When you start and run a successful affiliate program, it will shift the emphasis of your business drastically. You’ll be able to hire customer support, outsource more (maybe even product creation) and focus on running your business instead of working in your business.

    An affiliate program is not hard to start, and it’s something that you should definitely consider doing if you sell products and even services (especially if you outsource). Give your affiliates a lot of incentives, awesome products to promote, great promotional materials and you will be successful.

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