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Imagine that you could earn commissions on a popular brand-name product just by placing a link on your website or in your email. That, my friends, is “Affiliate Marketing”!

OK… So it’s not quite that simple, but it doesn’t have to be much more complicated either.

Let’s start with a few definitions. An advertiser, or merchant, is the company who is selling a product. An affiliate, sometimes referred to as a publisher or partner, is another person or company who assists in the promotion of the product and earns a commission for doing so. (That could be you!) In between is the account management service that partners the advertisers with the affiliates and keeps track of the sales and commissions.

If you want to become an affiliate, you first need to choose either a product you want to sell, or an account management service. You will end up with both, but the choice of one will determine the choice for the other. If you choose the product first, the advertiser will direct you to the account management service that they already work with. If you choose the account management service first, they will provide you with a list of merchants that they do business with.

To see if your favorite product or company offers an affiliate program, go to their website and check the menu bar or the bottom of the screen. Look around for the word “affiliate”. Click on that link, read about their program and requirements, and fill out their application. Some companies require specific types of websites to place their links on. They will email you all you need to know to get started.

If you don’t know what specific product you would like to promote, or if you want to promote several, I recommend browsing the participating merchants on the account management service’s website.

Try to stick to products or ideas that you are familiar with and passionate about. It will be much easier to market to your visitors if you can add value to the link you want them to click on. Personal recommendations or stories will get way better results than just a banner or solo text link. Give them a reason to “click here”.

Welcome to the world of Affiliate Marketing! Good luck with your new venture!

Dear friends, when it comes to promoting affiliate programs
we all follow a certain defined process. We first go to
google.com ,type affiliate programs in the search field. When
the results get displayed we look for “high paying” affiliate
programs. By “high paying” I mean those who pay 25% commissions.

Then we visit each and every website listed and join the
programs becuse they are free! to join. We put all sorts of
banners and text ads on our links page and expect to see a
check in our mail box the next morning.

Well, I am here going to reveal a very different way of
promoting affiliate programs. Let us revise the process
one-by-one.

Step 1> Search for affiliate programs with your favorite
search engine. Look for only those affiliate programs whcich
have products which interests you. For example if you are
interested in “radio controlled airplanes” then look for such
products first. Don’t start with promoting “herbal shampoos”
or “yoga cd’s” just because they pay 40% commissions.

Since you already know a little about rc planes it wiil be
much easier for you to promote various aspects of the
product.

So when selecting the affiliate prgram keep in mind the
following sequence

a)Product which you know about or are interested in.
b)Qulaity of the product. To know the quality of the
product it is advisavle to buy the product yourself
first.
c)The organisation associated with the product. Look for
the promotional material they are giving to affiliates.
This shows the confidence of the manufacturer in their own
product.
d)Commission structure. Some webmasters provide 2 tier
commission structure. Some have a threshhold amout before
the affiliates get paid. Here is a nice place to sart with.
This is a list which contains 50 affiliate Programs That Pay
AT LEAST 50% commissions.

Visit http://www.myfriendlyebooks.com/Aff/a1.htm)

Step 2> Design a simple landing page to “presell” the product
before sending the visitors to actual sales page. Now this step
is extremely imporant. Why do you to presell the product ?. This
is because this is internet. No one knows you here or has seen
you personally.

Normally when someone buys from the internet he is going to look
for similar 4-5 products before he gets to the final decision.
Here if he comes to your affiliate landing page it becomes
much easier for him to compare the product you want to promote
with similar 4-5 products in the category.

The landing page you have designed can have testimonials, which
you can borrow from the sales page. It can also contain your
own experience about the product. You can use before/after
situations for describing the benefits of the product. You can use
photographs of yourself using the product successfully. This
adds instant credibility to the product you want to promote.

Step 3>When the visitors reach your landing page you must have
a system to capture their names and email addresses. Because
as I said earlier there are many people who look for similar
4-5 products before buying. By capturing email addresse you can
“follow up” your subscribers later on using newsletters or
product features using email autoresponders.

The best way to capture email addresses is to provide a
free gift related to the product. This free gift can be
an eBook written by you or many webmasters already have an
ebook written for the affiliates. SO again this is a very
importan tpoint, join only those programs where you will find
a decent promitional material already prepared for the
affiliates.

That’s it friends. I hope these words were helpful. I wish
you good lick in your affiliate promotional journey

Copyright 2005 Shrinivas Vaidya

About the Author

————————————————————-
Shrinivas Vaidya is the webmaster of http://myfriendlyebooks.com
To help you start with right affiliate progrmas I have assembled
a list of 50 affiliate programs that pay AT LEAST 50% commissions.
You can access the listing for fr`ee at the followinf url.

http://www.myfriendlyebooks.com/Aff/a1.htm

————————————————————–

All businessmen know the importance of that last stage of selling which is called the “closing”. Such stage of selling will clinch the whole session. The same is true among online businesses, such as the affiliate marketing business. The affiliate must conduct such a closing by asking the client for the sale.

Unfortunately, the asking for the sale in online businesses, such as affiliate marketing is more challenging than the asking for the sale in a brick-and-mortar business. In land-bound business marketing, the salesman can closely observe the target client’s movements of the body and the eyes so that he can gauge if it is time to close the sale or not. But in an online business, the closing of the sale will not be helped by the body language of the customer. Obviously, the affiliate cannot see the customer’s body posture.

And therein lies the problem for closing and asking for the sale. The affiliate has no means of knowing whether it is time to ask or not. The asking may be too early, when the customer is not convinced enough. Or the asking may be too late that the customer has already lost interest in the product.

In online businesses, such as affiliate marketing, the affiliate need not wait for signs. The affiliate should be gutsy enough to ask for the sale, whether it is time or not. And when the asking for the sale is too early, the target customer may decide to click on the back button and never come back. When the asking for the sale is too late, the target customer may already be exploring other websites.

Despite such a difficult situation, the affiliate must still ask for the sale. If he does not ask for the sale, some visitors will think that it is a government-sponsored website and all the information provided are free of charge. Perhaps the information is literally free in many articles. But such information is posted due to one single purpose – to make a sale.

Therefore, the affiliate should not just wait for the time when the visitor eventually realizes that he is expected to click on a link that will take him to the website of the merchant. The affiliate must indicate in his website and in his emails that what he has is a business and businesses involve selling. He should also state that the recipients of his emails are not obligated to buy immediately. These recipients can make their purchases later.

After blazing it out with Snoop a few days ago, Wiz linked up last night with another Left Coaster for some studio time. Hours of recording without smoke would be a joke.

After blazing it out with Snoop a few days ago, Wiz linked up last night with another Left Coaster for some studio time. Hours of recording without smoke would be a joke.

After blazing it out with Snoop a few days ago, Wiz linked up last night with another Left Coaster for some studio time. Hours of recording without smoke would be a joke.

After blazing it out with Snoop a few days ago, Wiz linked up last night with another Left Coaster for some studio time. Hours of recording without smoke would be a joke.

After blazing it out with Snoop a few days ago, Wiz linked up last night with another Left Coaster for some studio time. Hours of recording without smoke would be a joke.

After blazing it out with Snoop a few days ago, Wiz linked up last night with another Left Coaster for some studio time. Hours of recording without smoke would be a joke.