Benefits of Affiliate Marketing Part 2

Affiliate marketing is great to do from home.

• There are virtually no production costs.


• The product is already developed and proven by the merchant.


• all you have to do is find as many prospects as you can that will bring in profits for both theAmerchant and the affiliate.


• Affiliate programs are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs.


• There are thousands of products and services you can choose from. You can find affiliate programs for every product under the sun. Surely, there must be a product or service out there that is relevant to your website and your interests.


• In addition, there is no sales experience necessary. Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material.


• The simplicity of affiliate marketing allows you to be an affiliate marketer at the lowest cost and the most comfort.


• You can even build a successful affiliate marketing business right from the convenience of your own home.


• In affiliate marketing, your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant.


• You do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, and product shipping.


• These, along with customer service support are the duties of the merchant.


• Because of the global reach of the internet, you can relatively easily find thousands of prospects.


• You can intensify your advertising campaign by exploiting more aggressive and productive strategies such as viral marketing.


• By attracting more prospects, you also maximize your potential to earn.


• Another benefit of an affiliate marketer is the minimal risk involved. If the product you are advertising is not making money then you can dump it and choose another. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to products that are not making enough money.


• All the same, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to increase your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business.


• With your own affiliate business, you can earn easily earn extra income, although you do have to exert effort and use your imagination to maximize your earning potential. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the least complex and most effective business opportunities on the web today.

Try it out for yourself and see how thrilling and potentially lucrative it can turn out to be if you put in the effort and work smart. All you need is a computer, an internet connection and time to invest in your new project, be it full-time or as a sideline.

The Benefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer Part 1

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online.

• Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner. The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate because of the pay-for-performance scheme. Both the merchant and the affiliate enjoy some benefits in affiliate marketing.

Benefits on the merchant's side:

• It gives the merchant a wider market in which to advertise a product or service.


• Affiliate marketing will give the product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques.


• The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, which can convert to sales.


• Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who will do the advertising and will only get a commission if a customer purchases.

Benefits on the affiliate's side:

• Foremost among these is the easy way to make a profit.


• The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant's website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase.


• As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate's site, is redirected to the merchant's website and goes on to buy that particular product, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals there are the more profit for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing has become a popular of participating in the increasingly lucrative world of Internet Marketing and eCommerce.

We will continue exploring the benefits of affiliate marketing in the next post.

Tips for Affiliate Marketers to Survive and Thrive in the Online Business World

Affiliate marketers are always on the lookout for profitable markets - the ones that result in the biggest paychecks. Sometimes they think (and desperately hope) that there is a magic formula to be discovered just around the next corner. Of course, it is a bit more complicated than that because in business, whether off-line or online, we need to use good marketing practices that have proved their worth over time.

Fortunately, there some are tactics that have a history of having worked in online marketing generally and continue to work in online affiliate marketing in particular.

I will outline three major marketing areas that you need to understand and use in order to increase sales so that you thrive in your online affiliate marketing venture.

1. Use a unique website to promote each individual product that you are marketing. Do not simply put them all together in one site in order to save money on buying domain names and webhosting. That is false economy. As a beginner affiliate, it is better to have one small site per product that you are promoting. However, if it is your intention is to build an authority review site, then of course you will have many products in a particular niche together in one big website.

• Always include product reviews on the website so that your visitors will understand the specific feaures of the product and what it can do for you if you buy it.

• Testimonials from users who have already tried the product are also powerful because they let potential buyers know that both you and your product are trustworthyand need to be included in your site. Check that these customers will allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are promoting.
• You can also write articles describing the product and its uses. Be sure to include them on the website on their own page. Make the pages of your site compelling and include calls to action at strategic points. Headlines are crucial and need to rouse the reader's interest and stimulate their desire to buy. Highlight important points. In other words, make it easy for your readers to scan the text quickly and find all the most important information about the product to stimulate a sale or an opt-in.

2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible position the offer in an opt-in box near the top of your page where it will immediately catch the visitor's attention. If the page is long, include another opt-in box at the end of the page. Many readers hate having to scroll back to the beginning of the page again and you may miss out on collecting contact information of the ones who navigate away because they already have forgotten about signing up for the free report.

• Use an autoresponder to collect the sign in information as well as to create messages that are emailed to the visitors who opted in to receive the free report. This is how you will build your list - and as they always say in the business "the money is in the list"! The names on your list are your prospects for future sales on products you are selling. According to current research, a sale is usually closed on about the seventh contact with a prospect.

Only two things can possibly happen when someone visits your web page: a sale is closed sale immediately or the prospect navigates away, never to return again. By collecting a list of names and email addresses you broaden that scenario. Now you can email your prospects directly with information and offers and you can remind them of the product they thought they wanted.

• For the emails you write for your list, focus on things like how the product can make life easier and more enjoyable. As far as possible, avoid using the word free because there are still some spam filters around that filter out those kinds of content classifying them as 'junk mail'. You need to convince those who signed up for your free report that they would be missing out if they do not buy your products and services.

3. Target traffic that is interested in your product. A person who has no interest in your product is not going to spend any time or money at your website. They will simply navigate away immediately. Targeted traffic, on the otherhand, will spend time - a little or a lot depending on whether what you say interests them at all.

• To bring interested people to your website, write articles and reviews about the product and publish them in ezines and article directories. They will be directed to these ezine articles after doing a search for information on the topic in one of the search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Be sure to include a link to your website in your article, so that anyone interested in following up on what they have read will be able to reach your site and buy from you.
• 
  Two articles per week of between 300-600 words in length is something to aim for. By writing and submitting articles, it is possible to get as many as 100 targeted visitors to your site in a day. The more targeted visitors you have visiting your site, the more sales you are likely to make over time.

Once you have worked out what works best for you as an affiliate marketer, you can simply duplicate those processes with any number of products and websites and end up making a very good living.

Working From Home: Creating an Online Internet Marketing Business

These days a great many opportunities exist for you to create a home-based online business.

The Internet has opened up so many possibilities that there are any number of options to choose from, for example, affiliate marketing, auctions, article marketing and, of course marketing your own products be they digital or actual.

With affiliate marketing, you'll find a great resource at http://www.affiliateprograms.com/ Here you can learn much and profit even more.You'll need to spend a lot of time at this website because there you'll find many different affiliate programs listed under a variety of categories. Categories include fitness and health, automotive, finance and investment, automotive, food and drinks and health and fitness.

Spend time browsing at the website because each affiliate program will not only list their website, but also provide you with a short description of what they do and the products they need affiliates to promote. Visiting their websites will give you a clear indication of how professional they are. If you are going to be spending much of your time and effort promoting a particular product, you need to ensure that it is a good quality product and therefore worth your while.

Also, very importantly, you should see how much commission you'll be earning when you sell particular products or programs. Remember to focus on what raises your interest because in that way you can't help but be passionate about promoting and selling it and, of course, your passion will be catching and customers will also feel enthusiastic enough to buy from you.

Another great online home business opportunity is to be found at eBay where you can sell items on auction. It's hugely popular and can be very profitable. Learning the 'eBay skill' is a great way to develop an income stream. You'll need to learn how to write sales copy to promote your auctions as well as yourself. As an added bonus, if you take the lessons learned on eBay and apply them to other Internet marketing areas, you will find yourself ready to tackle almost anything out there.


But Be Warned! There are some websites that offer seemingly huge sums of money simply for taking surveys or for spending a few hours each day making postings on diffefrent forums, but they turn out to empty promises. Unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous people on the web who take advantage of the unsuspecting. Many people have been burned in this way after having fallen for the empty words, signed up enthusiastically only to discover that they have wasted a great deal of their time and money. So just be cautious and do your homework well. Research those 'online companies' that make these kinds of promises before you sign up with them. Scams are a reality on the web.


Let's hope this brief article on starting an home-based online business has been helpful to you. We've looked at two options for internet marketing that you can consider. Working from home on your own internet marketing business allows you to be your own boss and to be flexible in your working hours...but take care to remember that it is work and not a hobby!