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.

6 Hot Tips to Get Your Articles Read

If you use articles as a means of promoting your online business or website, you know that getting them read by article directory visitors is a key to getting them to click through to your website.

Here are 6 ways you can help to ensure your article is read.

1) Use short paragraphs.

When the paragraphs are very long, the words get jumbled in the mind of the reader just looking at it. It can get quite confusing and hard work to read. Sometimes, the reader will just quickly disregard the paragraph and move on to much easier reading articles that are good to look at as well as read. Paragraphs can be a single sentence, sometimes even a single word! Plus, don't forget that many of us skim read, and shorter paragraphs allow readers to get the jist of the article content quickly.

2) Make use of numbers or bullets.

As each point is stressed out, numbers or bullets can quickly make the point easy to remember and digest. Format your bullets and numbers with indentations so that your article doesn't look like a single block of square paragraphs. With long lists, try bolding alternating bullet points. This too allows the reader to easily distinguish each item while scanning the article.

3) Use Sub-headings to further divide your article.

Subheadings are another visual key that article readers can use when scanning the article. It's a further indication of the topics the article covers. Use bold, or heading tags to distinguish the sub-headings from the content.Using your keywords or phrases along with the bolded heading can, in some cases, help with search engine rankings.

4) Keep your readers interested from the start to the finish.

By making the article flow from one paragraph to the next, and writing in a conversational style, you draw the reader from beginning to end.Conversational style may not be appropriate for all articles -- particularly technical or formal business articles, but in most situations, it is the most engaging style for people to read.

5) Make them want more.

Since the ultimate purpose in most cases is to draw readers to the website you're promoting, don't give it all away in the article. While it should be information-rich, keep some key information back -- you can then use that info as a teaser in your resource box.

6) Provide a good attention-grabbing title or header.

If your title can entice a person's curiosity you're already halfway in getting a person to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords that people are looking for. Provide titles or headers that describe your articles content but should also be short and concise.

Thanks to Jean at DupeCop.net for this snappy reminder of what strategies to use to draw in and hold readers' interest.

3 Essential Requirements to be a Successful Affiliate Marketer

• What ingredients are required to make a success of affiliate marketing?


• What does it really take to flourish as an affiliate marketer?


• Are there any shortcuts to achieving success?

These are but some of the questions that constantly niggle at affiliate marketers - especially those who are just starting out.


Often affiliate marketing is put forward as one of the easiest ways to make money online, but that really is a bit of an over-simplification as there are many pitfalls in the way forward. As with any business getting to know your subject is crucial. So, too, is drawing up plan a of action and carrying it out efficiently and diligently. In this business, equipping yourself with the right tools is vitally important and can spell the difference between success and failure. We have consulted some of the most successful online affiliate marketers and they all seem to agree that the following are the top three requirements for success.


Essential Requirement 1: Your Own Website


A very important and almost indispensable requirement in Affiliate Marketing is having your own website. Some affiliates manage without one, but that is definitely not the norm. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the launching pad of all your marketing efforts. So, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your potential buyers and encourage them to click on links to the products and services you are promoting and buy something from there. Concentrate your efforts on building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.
Remember searching for information is what most people do first of all when going online and they do not necessarily to buy something, so be sure to have a lot of interesting, relevant and useful content on your site, too. Visitors will enjoy reading articles that are helpful and interesting in keeping with the dictum 'content is king'. Good quality content will not only build your credibility, it will also assist in getting you higher search engine rankings. By regularly posting good articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, who people begin to trust and see as a trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a vital step in building up a loyal consumer base.


Essential Requirement 2: Incentives for List Building


Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible avenue available to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. By offering a free report on the subject, a newsletter or an e-zine in exchange for a name and email address is how you begin to build up your list. Other list-building incentives are: offering free software, access to exclusive services and other free ebooks. All these will not only be helpful to your prospects, but also actively build your list.


Essential Requirement 3: Link Popularity


The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. Getting web traffic is at the top or very close to it of the most important requirements of the internet world. Attracting people to your site is something you should actively pursue including the necessary steps to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use when determining how your page ranks for search engines. So, to grow your link popularity, you need to launch aggressive reciprocal link and backlink campaigns.
One of the best ways to encourage both types of links, at no cost at all, is by submitting articles on your topic to e-zines and free article sites. Be sure to include your website link in the resource box of the article submission. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity can potentially be. If your articles are original, relevant and useful, more websites will pick them up and use as web material on their websites.


These are regarded as the three essential requirements that an affiliate marketer needs to maximize earning potential. There are, of course, other requirements and tools that can be of enormous help to the affiliate marketer and will extend the range and depth of options available.


The possibilities are endless and limited only by your knowledge, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high earning affiliate marketer.