Entries Tagged 'Affiliate Marketing' ↓

My Story of Lifetime “Unpaid” Commissions

Author: Mark Tse

Yesterday I found a site that I have been an affiliate for a long period suddenly disappeared. This site let me make about $100 commissions every month. Not much but because I only used automatic methods like article marketing to promote it, thus it was a nice residual income. And since the site made sales, I have absolutely no idea why the site and its owner disappeared from the net.

If you have been in internet marketing industry for a period, you should know the situation in my story is very common. Sites and their owners disappeared everyday. As an affiliate, if the site you are promoting suddenly goes away, what leaves to you will just be lifetime unpaid commissions…

So do you want to protect yourself from this situation? Here are 2 suggestions that I want to share with you:

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Originally posted 2005-07-06 10:33:10. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Author: R.L. Young

Thinking of buying an affiliate website? With the web these days growing at a substantial rate, just about everywhere you turn on the web, you will see offers to own your own web business. Many of these offers are legitimate businesses with real products and items waiting for you to open one of their affiliate sites and start selling. They can sound very good, get you excited, tell you that you can make tons of money and sometimes be under $100.00 dollars to start. But there are some important things you should consider before you buy.

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Originally posted 2005-05-31 11:09:48. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Author: Dan B. Cauthron

As competition within the online affiliate sales arena rises to a fierce boil, affiliate sellers expecting any degree of success must first find effective methods to set themselves apart from the crowd.

An uninitiated affiliate may expect to make sales simply by placing a referral link on his website, or by distributing the link in an email. On the other hand, a seasoned affiliate seller knows that a unique marketing twist of one sort or another must be built into the campaign for a satisfying profit to be realized.

One tested and proven method is to develop a unique landing webpage for each and every affiliate campaign engaged.

A landing page is nothing more than a proprietary webpage owned by the affiliate seller, hosted on his website, and and located at a URL within that domain. A well developed landing page will not only contain the actual affiliate referral link, but will also serve as an introduction to the product or service being offered, and will warm the customer prior to directing her to the main sales page.

Here we present three types of affiliate landing pages that have been proven effective in promoting a broad range of products and services.

However, the reader should note that no particular order of effectivenes is presented here. Determining the best type of landing page for a particular affiliate campaign will be a matter of careful consideration and diligent testing.

Landing Page #1 – The Product Review

This style of page takes the form of a factual and objective report, and should be completely free of any wording that attempts to sell. Direct experience with the product is a must, as the writer will be providing her or his own first hand observations regarding the benefits and problems that arise while actually putting the product or service to use.

Typically, a single product is reviewed for the sake of simplicity. Yet some successful landing pages do feature reviews of multiple products within a given category. In this case, each individual product should be rated by means of an easy to understand system, ie. one to five “stars.”

For the sake of credibility, the product review must reveal both positive and negative product attributes. Still, the positive factors should firmly overshadow the negative in a realistic and honest sense. If not, look for a different product to promote.

Landing Page #2 – The Pre-Sell

This tactic has also been referred to as the “soft sell.” The content here can borrow some of the effects of the product review method, but should be more directed overall toward defining a problem and offering the product or service as a solution.

It is advisable to carefully examine the main seller’s page to discover and capitalize on overlooked product benefits or hooks. It is also acceptable to use highlighted or bolded words and phrases to a degree, providing they will enhance the reader’s understanding.

A strong headline may be used, and bulleted lists may also be inserted to clearly illustrate product features and benefits. But keep in mind this is a “soft sell” page. The purpose is only to warm the reader, and there should be no hard sell or call to action other than asking her to “Click This Link to Learn More.”

Landing Page #3 – The Forced Opt-In

This type of page typically consists of nothing more than a strong headline, a problem reinforcement, an offer to solve the problem, and an autoresponder opt-in box. The prospect can be redirected to the main salespage after she signs up.

Experienced affiliate marketers have varying opinions as to the effectiveness of this landing page, especially when used behind a paid advertising campaign. There is some conjecture that too many prospects are lost when they fail to opt-in.

Another viewpoint is that this tactic produces a high quality list of action-taking propects with a proven degree of interest. Given these two viewpoints, it may be wise to perform a split testing action, using the forced opt-in page and at least one other landing page configuration.

Regardless of either view, the forced opt-in tactic will enable the affiliate to capture a unique and highly targeted mailing list, a valuable asset in and of itself.

About the author: No Hype – No Bull – No Pie In The Sky! Dan B. Cauthron tells it like it really is, and shares 30+ years of direct marketing wisdom. Entrance to his member’s only website will never cost you a penny. ==> http://DanBCauthron.com

Originally posted 2005-03-30 19:20:27. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Copyright 2005 Kurma Group

Don’t get offended, I was not speaking directly to you. I was speaking to the horrible companies who are stealing not only my affiliate commissions, but yours too!

These companies are called “spyware.” They specialize in invading a consumer’s computer through unethical means and then literally replacing YOUR affiliate ID with their own! It is almost as if you never even existed!

Not only that, they even steal your future affiliate commissions by making sure that all future IDs are automatically replaced with their own. Even more, they can make it so that if the consumer goes to a website, a pop-up for a competing website (with their own affiliate ID) pops up and makes it impossible for you to get a sale.

As you likely agree, this is a major problem and it gets bigger and bigger every day. The more we fight back, the slicker these companies get.

How much are they really stealing?

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Originally posted 2005-07-05 12:34:06. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Copyright 2006 Peter Tarrida del Marmol

Affiliate marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years. Affiliate programs offer merchants the opportunity to employ vast armies of sales people who only get paid for the results they achieve.

The rewards for affiliates are high also, and the skilled affiliate marketer can earn many thousands of dollars a month. This win-win situation has led to an explosion in the number of affiliate programs that are available to the would-be marketer. With this proliferation of opportunities has come many questions; how do you go about choosing the right opportunity for you? What qualities should you look for in a program and which gives you a good chance of making a sustainable income? Below are some tips that will help you to evaluate merchants and their programs, and help you to avoid wasting time and money.

1. How Much Commission Does The Merchant Pay?

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Originally posted 2006-03-20 07:00:43. Republished by Old Post Promoter

In poking about the world of affiliate programs and scripts I’ve discovered that there are people who make a good living off them. I was surprised by how sites that are nothing more than affiliates links can thrive.

I’m not talking about websites that build a site around affiliate links and have an attractive design. Nor the evil bottom feeders who think referral log spamming is a tolerable form of advertising.

Some seem to thrive by having domain names like goddamnedcheap.com, decent navigation menus and somehow getting Google to index their sites (sometimes they are masters of mod_rewrite). So instead of “Gerbil Breeding for Millions at Amazon” you’ll see “Goddamned Cheap Gerbil Breeding for Millions.” No reason Bezos shouldn’t share his wealth; the sites aren’t costing the buyer an extra penny. I’m surprised that it works. And wonder how long it will as Google refines things and the search engine business fragments.

Some dump lots of public domain text into their pages. To say there’s nothing special about it is being kind. But googlebot sees it as content. Some of them have been downloading and adding DMOZ but I gather the useful of that strategy is fading. (I’d often thought about adding one section of DMOZ here but don’t want to offend Google, DMOZ load time can be awful so I thought I’d save myself a wait if nobody else.)

Others are just stockpiles to hundreds (thousands) or products, coupons, services, all sorts of crap. Possibly one of the reasons Yahoo’s search may depreciate lots and lots of external links.

Again, I’m not knocking these guys. They aren’t cheating anybody. Mostly I’m startled to learn how well it has worked. If their current tactics fail maybe they’ll go into the SEO business.

Originally posted 2004-03-04 16:33:39. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Author: Mario Giordani

There is a lot to learn about Internet marketing. At times it can seem overwhelming, especially if you are just starting out.

We hear a about people making obscene amounts of money with Internet marketing. Most of it is true. Some of it is hype.

I have been marketing online since 1993 and I’d like to give you 40 simple, straight-forward tips that will help you become a top affiliate and Internet marketer with the least amount of hassle: 1. Goals -Set your goals and know what you want to accomplish with your marketing efforts.

2. Traffic – Set up an efficient mechanism to generate quality traffic to your site.

3. List Subscribers – Develop a list of loyal, permission-based subscribers to educate and sell to. 4. Niche Markets – Seek markets with little or no competition to sell to.

5. Promotion – Marketing online requires you to promote to the right people.

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Originally posted 2005-08-07 16:07:08. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Author: Jason Gazaway

Want an online business with a win-win opportunity for both the merchant and the publisher? Try investing your money, time and effort in affiliate marketing business and be overwhelmed by the profit you’ll get out of it. It has been written in almost all articles about affiliate marketing that it is among the greatest ways to earn money online.

For those who didn’t know what it is, affiliate marketing is a cooperative effort between the merchants and online publishers or affiliates, whereby an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor or customer provided through his effort. The moment a customer is gained, a part of the profit from that customer will go to the affiliate as a commission. This compensation, otherwise known as affiliate commission may be based on a fixed value for each visit (pay-per-click), registration (pay-per-lead), or a commission for every purchaser (pay-per-sale).

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Originally posted 2005-08-21 18:14:00. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Author: Bukit Sorrento

Here’s a tip that can change your thoughts about the best way to market an affiliate program.

What is the difference that leads some people to make a very good income with online marketing while others make a few dollars here, a few dollars there, but never really make any substantial income. What is the most common mistake made by those who don’t get the results they are looking for with their associate or MLM programs? It’s very simple. They are marketing the WRONG website! Let’s look at it a little more closely.

You know that nice self replicating website that you are given as part of the package you received after joining affiliate program A. You know, the one with the URL that looks something like this: http://www.myprogram.com/affiliate/cgi?13658/

That website they gave you is the single BIGGEST obstacle to you making any money. Why? It looks nice doesn’t it? It has a nice sales letter, and best of all, it was easy. You’re right. It’s all of those things, for you and about 5000 other people, or however many are in the program. The solution is very simple. Get your own website. And I don’t mean a freebie site like Hotyellow or Geocities. (There’s nothing wrong with these sites, but they are not for people trying to make money. In fact they are just short of useless.) I mean get your own real domain hosted on a real web server with real features. Sure it costs $70 to register your own domain name for 2 years. But if you are serious about making it in the online business world, it’s not even a question of should you get your own domain. YOU MUST! Look for domain names that contain your keywords or keyword phrases. And sure it costs maybe $15-$30 per month to have your site hosted with a quality hosting company, but this is how the game is played. If you are not skilled in website design, hire someone.

If you are serious about making money online this is what you MUST do. The people making the BIG money ALWAYS have their own domains. They advertise their associate programs on THEIR own website, in THEIR own words. They promote THEIR website. All the traffic comes to THEIR website. They make their own personal recommendation about the programs they are offering. These are the folks who are making good money. Some more than others, but each of them will be marketing from their own domain. You can still link to the self replicating site you were given originally from your site to make sales. But having your own website is almost 100% guaranteed to get you more traffic than a self replicating website. Most of the major search engines will not even list a domain with characters such as ‘?’ in the URL. You are just out of luck. With your own website and domain, you can control your own meta tags, you can control everything. Search engines give far more weight to sites having their own domain. Freebie websites often won’t get listed either. Most search engines limit the amount of pages from any given domain that they will list. So what are you waiting for? This is one thing you can do yourself. It’s totally in your control.

About the author: Bukit Sorrento: The Peer-to-Peer Traffic Revolution has begun: Discover how to get all the FREE, targeted online traffic you can handle by clicking here: http://www.milliondollartraffic.com …Start getting traffic in just 5 minutes from now!

Originally posted 2005-03-30 19:49:42. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Commission Junction announced the new links policy just as I was preparing to change a number of my sites. Not being sure what to do I skipped adding CJ links for the time being. I’d hate to have to go back and modify a bunch of sites.

Thankfully Commission Junction realized how unwelcome the new policy was for many of us:

At this time we have not scheduled a date for which the Legacy links will no longer be available or supported. We will notify you at least six months in advance of making this change and will not require the change during the 2006 holiday season.