Affiliate Marketing - How to Start Earning Money Today
Earn Top Dollar With Affiliate Programs
If you're new to Affiliate Marketing and your finding everything that your learning is a little mind blowing but really want to start making money today then here is the quickest way to get results.
First, I would begin with using ClickBank. They have a gazillion affiliate programs to choose from. If you don't already have a ClickBank account then you can get one for free at http://clickbank.com/overview.html
We aren't going to bother making a website or anything like that; I'm going to show you the quickest short-cut to earning the money today.
Now once you've signed up with ClickBank we're going to go to the button Promote Products
Finding your first product to affiliate with I would suggest you go for a topic that you know something about. This will make writing your Google Ad much easier.
Search for a subject that you know a little bit about. I would also recommend choosing a product where you will make at least $20 for the sale.
Of course first, I want to be sure that there is a market for this product, I want to check to see if people are searching for it. So I'm going to head over to overture http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ And place in the keyword of the product I think I would like to promote.
If the keyword is being searched over on Overture a decent amount then I know there is a market for this product.
Now I'm going to see if the salescopy (website) is up to scratch.
Does the header draw you in and make you want to read more? Yes
Does it have believable testimonials? Yes
Is the offer genuine and believable? Yes
Does it have visuals of the product? Yes (not a requirement for myself)
Does it have Free Bonus's? Yes (also not a requirement for me to promote it but definitely adds value)
Are they offering a money back guarantee? Yes
I would definitely promote this website. So now I need to set up a Google Adwords campaign.
This is now going to be the hardest work of it all. As you can see everything else we've done so far is a breeze.
If you're not sure on how to set up a Google campaign I show illustrations on how to do this in my book Affiliate Marketing Quick Start Guide. If you don't already have this book you can get it for free by signing up to my newsletter at http://www.joesy.com
Because this is a digital download (they all are through ClickBank, ClickBank only deals in digital products) and if the subject refers to people worldwide I would promote this globally in my Google Adwords campaign.
Now you need to write your ad that will bring people to want to click on it. Say if I was promoting a product that shows people how to play the guitar I would test a heading like: Learn to Play Guitar (in this subject line I've used the main keyword they've probably searched for guitar and I've suggested what this site will teach you Learn to Play.
Next is setting up your keywords. I use either http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ or wordtracker to help me find keywords for this product.
You will want to come up with around 200 to 300 keywords. I generally try to find keywords with little competition, this way I pay less per click.
You ad should be activated in around 10 minutes. You can check this by typing one of your keywords into Google and look for your ad.
Reselling Products with Resale Rights: is this Trend Here to Stay?
Selling intangible and digital goods on the internet has brought a new e-commerce era in which resale products, resale rights and reprint rights have become an extension of the activity itself. Such intangible goods include software, e-books, manuals, articles, tutorials, certificates, forms, files, music, podcasts, movies, digital art, and many others that may be purchased through an electronic payment processor or with a charge to credit or debit cards.
Electronic payment processors are also called e-payments and are those made via a web browser for goods and services using credit or debit cards but processed by third party escrow agents or companies. Third party payment systems include Cli ckbank, Paypal, Stormpay, eGold, moneybookers, emo, worldpay, etc. Altogether, the number of resellers, also known as A ffiliate Marketers, is increasing every day making it possible to find whatever you look for on the internet.
All these facilities are to encourage the acquisition of products via internet, but behind the goods offered, there are many individual stories of innovation, hard work, and redrawing of marketing strategies. Established companies, solution providers, software developers and entrepreneurs, just to name a few, are moving from traditional marketing, telemarketing, printing, direct mail and emailing methods, to more effective efforts reselling products and products rights.
While many services stick to the model in which a reseller pays out from a few dollars to thousands of dollars in annual membership fees for reselling vendor programs, many vendors are moving to a scheme in which resellers pay for a product with resale rights. Ss the sale is final the buyer now owns the product, and then resells the product.
He may raise the price following the suggested price guidelines of the vendor, or determines the price at his sole discretion, keeping the total amount of the sale. This includes what would be the affiliate commission. So products sold this way are profitable for both the vendor and the reseller.
Resellers are found practically in every type of industry land-based and web-based, from housing to technology. Resellers perform one of the most important roles in the supply chain of digital products and intangible products worldwide, otherwise limited to one online and physical location; the vendor's location.
One of the first implementations of this marketing model was made by Independent Software Vendors (ISV) term applied to those companies specialized in making and selling software, a digital good usually for niche markets, such as health care professionals, real estate brokers, barcode scanning or factories' stock maintenance.
Today, software reselling has expanded not only to companies but to independent developers and amateur programmers who create small but fully functional and useful application software rather than system software such as operating systems and database management systems.
Under the new schema, software vendors sell their programs directly to resellers who are in charge of the product distributorship, being totally independent of the vendor and independent in their approach to working with their potential clients at their convenience. With this same behavior, other intangible and digital goods developers work with resellers to commercialize their products.
As a derivation of the reseller activity, some vendors offer resellers the opportunity to resell products to the end-user consumers keeping 100 percent of the earnings in a schema known as "resell rights". These can be limited rights, such as only reprint rights, or full rights, known as Master Resal e Rights.
These may include the commercialization of the software as the reseller wants, including printing, modification, distributorship, integration in CD bundles or even as give aways to encourage the participation in other activities, such as getting memberships.
With this panorama, we can confirm that resale products and resale rights are here to stay. If you want to become a reseller and earn an immediate commission on the sale. With affil iate marketing, the number of intangible products and digital goods you can resell are as big as your imagination can figure out. This includes all possible commerce branches as well as innovative digital business developed by entrepreneurs.
If you want to resell digital goods and intangible goods keeping 100% of the earnings, the possibilities are as large as the reselling of products, but depending on the goods in which you are interested, it is required to purchase the goods to get full master resell rights included. Or it might require getting a membership to a certain website.
Is reselling products with resale rights here to stay? You better believe it is! Get involved early, and you should profit from this current ctaze.
How affiliates can subsidise all their purchases using customer reciprocation
Imagine if you had received a subsidy for every online purchase you've ever made?
As an affiliate marketer, how would you like to earn sales commission each time you purchase from any website?
How many commission payments have you put in someone else's pocket?
Did you know that anyone can now be subsidised in the form of a guaranteed sale at their own or affiliated merchant site, whenever they purchase any product, service, membership or program from any website?
If you did, then you would have heard of "customer reciprocation, the new buzzword taking root in the world of affiliate marketing and customer acquisition.
It describes two of the newest services around namely affiliate directories (not to be confused with affiliate program directories) and customer acquisition exchanges. These are in effect an evolutionary improvement on link exchanges in that they provide paying customers instead of potential traffic (leads, click-throughs, or visitors).
From a merchant's perspective, imagine selling more of your own product each time you purchase anything online. For merchants running an affiliate program, you will make additional sales each time any of your affiliates shop online.
However, the ultimate benefit customer reciprocation brings to merchants is that their products become exponentially more appealing. This is because a customer acquisition exchange will subsidise the cost of the purchase to their customers with no loss of profit to the merchant.
If you are an affiliate marketer, imagine partnering with other affiliates in a way that allows each of you to gain the commission for personally referring each other. With "customer reciprocation", this happens automatically each time you purchase anything online.
A customer acquisition exchange allows all affiliate and network (MLM) marketers to leverage off each other's commission and downline potential. It also allows merchant website owners to leverage off each other's profit potential.
The beauty of customer reciprocation is that it can be exploited without risk!
Merchants just need to list their sites for free while affiliate and network marketers just enter their referral URLs for free.
I sincerely hope you consider making customer reciprocation work for you.
How to Track Online Marketing ROI Using Cost-per-Action?
Forget clicks, page views, and impressions; the only way to effectively track your online marketing ROI is through Cost-per-Action (CPA) analysis.
As the online advertising market is poised to grow nearly $10 billion over the next six years, it's essential that we remember the importance of measuring the effectiveness of that spending. There's no point undertaking any marketing or advertising campaign unless you can measure its results. And results are best measured in terms of return on investment (ROI).
Unfortunately, in the world of marketing and advertising, many businesses seem to be losing touch with their general objectives. The tools may have changed, but the principles remain the same Your advertising campaigns are only successful if they meet the objectives you set out to achieve. So if you're after increased sales, you need to measure the cost of each sale generated to determine your return on investment.
Fortunately for advertisers, tracking ROI for online advertising is much easier than it is for traditional forms of advertising, such as TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, and Billboard. When you market online, every advertising campaign can be tracked and measured all the way down to the penny. This is why more and more advertising dollars are being spent online every day.
Why Not Cost-Per-Click or Cost-Per-Impression?
When it comes to tracking campaign effectiveness, many businesses rely on Cost-per-Click (CPC) and Cost-per-Impression (CPM) statistics. But what many people forget is that for most businesses, clicks and impressions don't earn you money. So by tracking clicks and impressions, you're not really tracking return on investment. The same is true of page stats.
If you're like most businesses, impressions, clicks, and page views are simply a means to an end. (In fact, without corresponding sales conversions, they're nothing more than unjustifiable expenses.) If you only earn revenue from sales, you need statistics linking costs and sales. In other words, you need to measure cost-per-action (CPA).
Cost-Per-Action (CPA)
In a CPA campaign, you run an online ad on third party sites and they charge a commission when a lead is generated or converted. It's performance-based pricing. This means the publisher wears most of the advertising risk, as their commissions are dependent on good conversion rates.
Perhaps the most widespread use of CPA is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you determine what actions you will reward and how much you're willing to pay per action. For example, you might engage an affiliate site to promote your business. If they generate sales for your business, you can pay them a commission. Your cost-per-action would then be the cost per sale or lead generated.
Tips on Conversion
The following conversion tips will help you plan your CPA campaign and avoid some common pitfalls.
1) How are sales and leads recorded?
For many businesses, the obvious result which constitutes a conversion is a sale. If your sale is recorded or registered online (e.g. e-commerce), it can be considered a measurable action. This means you can choose a sale as the desired action in your CPA campaign.
Depending on the aim of your campaign, you may want to measure other outcomes in addition to, or instead of, sales. For instance, you might measure leads in the form of membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any other activity beyond simple page browsing. So when your customer clicks register, or subscribe, or download, etc., the conversion is automatically registered and the details are fed back you're your CPA campaign.
In either case, at any time, you can log in and view your campaign results in real time.
2) Set up a landing page to capture lead contact details
If you're paying for leads, you obviously need to know when a lead is actually generated. Generally a lead becomes a lead only when the customer supplies you with their details (name, contact numbers, email, etc.). This means you need to set up a landing page on your site capture these details. Your capture page can be collect contact information or it can be as simple as a signup for a monthly newsletter.
3) Get your CPA provider to set up your landing page
If you don't have the time, inclination, or resources to set up the necessary forms and database on your own site, the CPA provider can do it on their hosted server. They collect the leads and calculate the statistics. For many businesses, this is the ideal option because it saves them time and money, and there are no tracking discrepancies.
4) Find a CPA provider you can trust
If your CPA provider will be collecting leads and calculating statistics, you need to know you can trust them. There are plenty of trustworthy providers out there; you just need to find them. A trustworthy provider will find out what your exact needs are and spend time researching your niche market online. By performing this marketing analysis, your provider will be able to tell you exactly how much business they can bring you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. If they can't provide you with this important information, then this is a good indication that you are not speaking with a professional internet marketer.
Just as importantly, with a trustworthy provider you'll be able to personally speak with the internet marketer who will be working on your project. This person will be an expert in the field of internet marketing, not just a sales rep.
5) Avoiding excess fees
WARNING: Some CPA providers charge a setup fee ($2,500 to $10,000) and/or a network fee (20% to 30%) for each sale or lead that is generated. Before committing to a provider demanding high fees, make sure you are getting more for your money. Most of the time high fees simply mean the sales rep is getting a higher commission!
6) Measuring your conversion rate
The Formula for measuring CPA is by dividing the total cost per advertising campaign by the total number of actions (conversions) that were received from each ad campaign. For example, if your online ad campaign costs $1,000 and generates 50 sales or leads, your cost per action (CPA) is $20.00 each.
7) Improving your conversion rate
A high conversion rate depends on several factors:
Visitor Interest Level The interest level of the visitor is maximized by matching the right visitor, the right place, and the right time.
Offer Attractiveness The attractiveness of the offer includes the value proposition and how well it is presented. TIP: Small, impulse items typically have a higher conversion rate than large shopping items.
Ease of Process The ease with which the visitor can complete the desired action is dependent on site usability. Important considerations here include intuitive navigation, contact info capture page, Buy Now or Apply Now buttons and fast loading pages.
In summary
Because CPA allows you to identify exactly how much it will cost to acquire a customer, there's no guesswork involved. You have the ability to precisely calculate your ROI. And because online tools and ad serving technologies allow you to monitor effectiveness in real time, you can even tweak campaigns while they're still running. If you can master effective online advertising, you'll not only save thousands in implementation costs, you'll also reap the rewards of a far higher return on investment.
About The Author
Rick Crosby is CEO of a full-service internet marketing and online advertising agency, MarketingWebTraffic.com . Visit http://www.marketingwebtraffic.com for further details.
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