Part 4: Affiliate Marketing
About this part
Affiliate marketing is an exciting world, where online entrepreneurs make money by providing information to their users in exchange for a commission of product sales. It's a continuously changing environment, which requires a lot of knowledge, tools and resources for success. While a lot of information on this topic can be found online, there are very few credibile sources available to aspiring marketers.
This affiliate guide is going to hold your hands through every step of the process, and take you from “I have a great website idea” to “Holy crap I have a great website that’s making me money!” What this guide won't do is sell the same old lies that most other books do.
So, if you don't want to put a lot of time and effort into your online business, then this guide isn't for you. But, if you want to create a long term profit pulling business, then by all means, read it and learn everything you need to know about affiliate marketing.
Chapter 1.
What Is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a way to monetize your online efforts through a revenuesharing plan where an online automated marketing programs let webmasters place an advertiser's banner ads or buttons on their site.
Webmasters then receive a referral fee or commission from conversions when a customer clicks the affiliate link and performs a desired action, such as make a purchase or opt-in for downloads or newsletters on the advertiser's site. Advertisers invest in affiliate programs for lead generation and, of course, sales.
Webmasters are paid for leading potential customers to advertisers' sites who signup or buy something for the latter. While there are many ways for paying affiliates, in the most common forms the affiliate is paid each time a person clicks the ad (pay-per-click), a commission when a sale is made (pay-per-sale), or by lead (pay-per-lead).
Types of Affiliate Programs
Advertisers offer several types of affiliate programs. If you join a search engine affiliate program you most likely will place text links or banners to their advertisers and you'll get paid on a pay-per-click fee. E-mail list affiliates promote newsletters and get usually paid when a person joins that opt-in e-mail list.
Being an affiliate of any merchant usually means you are paid a commission per sale on the advertiser's site. Generally speaking, PPC affiliate programs pay the least amount, and that's the reason why many affiliates have shifted to CPA (pay per lead) programs, where they get much higher payouts.
Pay-per-lead programs are when you you provide the links to downloads, trial offers, e-mail opt-in lists and so on. Depending on the advertiser you may be paid per lead generation or you may not be paid unless the user subscribes and pays for a full service from the advertiser. Again, you may also get paid in both instances.
Pay-per-sale affiliate programs (also called revenue sharing) usually offer the highest commissions, and you'll typically receive a pre-set amount per sale or a straight percentage of the total sale. Because a user has to purchase something, you may find this program best suited for your site.
Why would anyone want to give advertisers a free promotion, because no one clicks on the advertised links? That's why many affiliates find CPA programs much better and more rewarding. Two of them are Amazon and Jvzoo, a great ways to monetize your online efforts.
The other is a super-charged commission generated system, which can be found here. Recommended.
Affiliate Program in a nutshell
After you've built a blog or site, you'll want to join one or more affiliate programs. Once you join an affiliate program you then are able to choose products or banners you want to include on your site and then receive the code you will need to embed into specific page or throughout your site.
However, this changes when you select an ad revenue partnership, such as Google AdSense, for example where you have little or no control over the advertisement displayed. Again, CPA programs give you much more control over the ads that you want to place on your site.
When you signup for any program, you'll need to accept their terms of use. While it may take some time, I suggest you make the time and read them, especially the small print. Some of them have special requirements, such as the minimum amount of traffic on your site, while others reserve the right to withold payments, if they find a suspicious activity from your side.
This is often just an excuse to take away your hard earned money. My advice here is to go with well known, established brands. Here is an example of one affiliate program, how it works and the requirements of the affiliate:WorldWinner is a "Pay to Play" online game Web site that offers a revenuesharing affiliate program. From the WorldWinner Web site (the advertiser in this case), you would first fill out an application to become an affiliate by providing basic information about yourself and your Web site through a Web-based sign up form. If you're accepted as an affiliate, WorldWinner will provide you with an affiliate ID as well as the address to a Web page where you can generate the code to place different links advertising WorldWinner on your own site. They offer rotating or static text links, banners or buttons, and co-brand Web sites are also allowed. When you generate the code to place on your own Web site, it will contain your unique affiliate ID. Any user who clicks a link to WorldWinner that contains your ID is tracked by WorldWinner via cookies. If they become a paying player and deposit money to their account and play games for cash, you then earn money yourself; it will be a percentage of that user's deposits for as long as you remain an affiliate (this particular affiliate program offers a 25 percent share in Net Applicable Revenue). WorldWinner also hosts and provides you with all the statistics and information you need to determine how many users your are sending to their Web site, if they are depositing funds, and also provide you with your revenue and payout information.
Affiliate systems track your actions and earnings by using a combination of a unique user ID, sessions and cookies to track your leads and subsequent revenues. Most will offer a private affiliate section on their site where you can get your HTML code and also check your affiliate account status. Through the use of browser cookies, any person who uses your link to make a desired action within a set amount of time contributes to your affiliate revenue.
For example, if users follow your link and go to an online fashion store they are tracked as "your referrals" by the browser cookies. If that person makes a purchase before the cookie expires (usually in 30 and up to 90 days), you get the referral commission.
So even if users don't go back to make the purchase for three weeks, you can still get the commission, provided the cookie is still active.So, this is affiliate program in a nutshell. One of the hardest things is choosing the right program to promote. I suggest you head over to webmaster forums, read and ask about the best and most reliable programs within your chosen niche. Also, you should ask your potential program providers about their CTR ratio, but we'll get to it later on.
Always read the fine print.Make sure you understand how the payouts are structured, if you need to earn a minimum amount before your hard awaited payout, and compare commissions between similar affiliate programs.
Choosing an Affiliate Program
Because of a large number of affiliate programs to choose from and many are structured differently, here are some useful tips to keep in mind while looking for a good one.
It's the rule of thumb to pick affiliate programs that offer something that's relevant to your site. For example, if your site is about pets, look for affiliate programs that are related to the topic such as pet grooming, pet food, pet supplies and so on.
Take a look at what the advertiser is offering in terms of tracking and reporting tools for affiliates. Good programs will provide you with a way to access real-time stats to view your conversions, sales and commissions.
Also check the advert and product display options to integrate the advertising into your site. Can you change the colors, themes and choose from a selection of different sized banners and buttons? You'll want to blend the offers as much as possible with your site, as this gives you much higher CTR and more sales.
So, these are the basics of affiliate programs. Now you know how affiliate programs work and what you need to look for in a good program, when choosing it as your provider.
Chapter 2.
Common Misconceptions
Many newbie affiliates, who just entered into this exciting world of money making opportunities, often make mistakes or fall for lies, made by more experienced marketers. This short guide was designed to make your entrance into this world much easier, helping you to stay away from common scams and mistakes. Good luck!
1. Affiliate marketing is easy
No, it's not. In fact, it's a very hard work, which takes years to master and at least a couple of months to see the results of your hard work. Anyone who thinks that profits can be made in the first few days or even weeks, is wrong. The only way to get rich quick is to rob a bank or become a politician.
But in the online world, it usually takes at least 3-5 months to see a couple of hundred bucks on your acocunt. But guess what? After you've made the first couple of sales and managed to get a few thousand visitors, it gets easier. Just stick with what you're doing and your sales will go up and up.
2. You can get rich while you sleep
This is one of the most common scams that experienced self proclaimed gurus claim. They say that if you buy their super money making formula, you'll make a bundle of money without any effort on your part. Here, you have to use some common sense.
If that would be true, why are they selling this great formula? While it takes a lot of time and effort to make money online, it can be done within a couple of months. But not without a lot of effort, made each and every day.
3. Anyone can make money online
Well, this is only a half true. While it is true that anyone can make a decent living online, there are a couple of things to consider. First, you need to have a good amount of knowledge on your topic of interest. Whether it is shoes, bags, cars, or anything in between, you can't do much, if you don't have enough knowledge.
For instance, if you are trying to sell software, for instance, download, install, and get to know the product first. Provide screen captures of the essential functions and, if possible, videos of seeing the software in action. Second, you have to have some money to invest in your business. Without a penny, you won't be able to start anything. So, anyone can make money online, but everyone has to have these basics covered.
4. You can build a business with zero investment
Nope, that's not true. It's just not possible to create any kind of online or offline business without at least a small sum of money. While you don't really need thousands of dollars to setup a blog or affiliate store, you need a couple of basic things to get up and running. Things like hosting, design, and a plugin or two for your blog. So, if you know what you're doing, you can setup a new online business with a hundred dollars or so, but not with zero amount of money.
5. Competition is not important
Not true, because competition is one of the most important things to consider, when choosing your line of business. When you want to setup a blog, an affiliate store, or anything in between, first you'll need to check out the big players in your niche market. Needless to say, all mainstream niches are already covered.
So, you have to drill down to smaller, specialized sub-niches. Use keyword planning tools like Google keyword planner or Long Tail Pro to get a list of the best possible keywords for your new domain. After that, do a lot of SEO optimization and hope for the best. Always follow your competition and adapt to their tactics. Good luck, you'll need it.
6. Expect less and try to do more
One of the most common mistakes that newbie affiliates make is having unrealistic expectations. They think that making a million dollars in a couple of months is a viable option. Well, it's not. While there are a few big earners, most affiliates make only a couple of hundreds dollars per month and many affiliates make nothing at all.
However, if you know what you're doing, if you know your niche well and if you know affiliate marketing process, you can make a five or six figure income in a couple of years.
7. Build and they will come
Many newbies think that if they build a site, people will just find them and come to their site. Well, that's just plain wrong. If you want to get visitors, you need to promote like a madman. Promotion takes around 99% of your time and should not be considered lightly. Performing a good promotion is one of the most important things you do online.
Without it, you have no business and no sales whatsoever. So, share your links with friends, connect on social media sites, bookmark your links and do anything you can to get the word out.Or, you can utilize the know-how of the big guns and join the automated passive commission generating system called MOBE. Trust me, these guys know what they're doing. In fact, one of them is JohnChow, one of my personal favorite IM big guns.
So, now you know a thing or two to watch out for, when starting making money with affiliate programs. Don't be afraid of failure, or many competitors out there, instead just go for it and do the best you can. Success will come naturally. However, in order to be successful, you have to know your flaws and try to remove them.
Also, by reading this chapter, I hope that you're better prepared for your online business and ready to make your first million dollars. Now, let's start by building your first affiliate website.
Chapter 3.
Planning And Research
Even before you start considering launching your affiliate business, you need to perform a lot of detailed research and plan the whole process from start to finish. It's like setting up any other offline business, but it requires different approach. However, good planning and research will give you that much needed advantage over your competitors.
Anything from niche keyword research, competition analysis to choosing affiliate partners will be of great benefit to your online success. So, let's start with planning, research and preparation, shall we?
Choose Your Niche
With thousands of competitors out there, covering all possible niches, this step is one of the most important ones. When choosing your preferred niche, make sure that you follow one simple rule - knowing it. This one is really simple. I mean, how can you possibly write excellent articles, or showcase your knowledge in forums, if people don't perceive you as an expert in your field?
Some would argue that a thorough keyword research does the trick. However, you don't want one time customers who visited your site only because your SEO efforts and long tail keyword domain, do you? What you really want is to get repeat visitors, who drool over your content and can't wait to see or get more.
So, the answer is obvious; choose the one niche you're an expert in, provide high quality content and let the word of mouth do the trick.Beside this claim, I would like to point out something else. Although a great content sells itself, you don't have to disregard a good domain, of course not. So, if you have found a great domain name, which would help you get more visitors organically, then by all means, get it as fast as possible. But how to find that particular domain that pairs with your niche?
Well, you should do some keyword research in order to find the best possible domain. For this purpose, you can use 3 great tools: Google keyword planner, Wordtracker and Long Tail Pro. The latter is a paid tool, but it's really powerful and worth of its money all the way. Not only it finds and recommends domain names based on your keywords, it also does the competitor analysis and a whole lotta more. I'd suggest you to download at least a free trial to see, if it suits your needs.
Segment your audience
Segmentation of your audience is one of the most important part of internet marketing. By knowing your audience and its desires, you're able to tailor your content and offering to the point, where you get the biggest impact, e.g. sales. If you can group your visitors by their interests, then you can craft a message that’s perfectly targeted at the group you want to pursue. It makes it much easier to grab their attention.
The data from your keyword research effort allow you to narrow your focus down to a specific niche, but it also shows you which topics to write about, and provides you with several ways to make money from your site.
When choosing the right set of keywords you need to combine a domain name, keep in mind that drilling to a narrow niche can bring you more results and more visitors with the least amount of marketing efforts.
For example: Many people search for pet related products. But do you know, how many competitors, e.g. big players are out there, covering this huge topic? And how much work is needed in terms of content creation, marketing, etc.? So, you might want drill down to one of the many sub-niches, such as dog food, cat litter and similar. Even though it might seem too narrow niche, rest assured that it has a big market to sell products to. Just check out the number of searches for that particular subniche in one of the provided tools from above and you'll see what I mean.
Make sure that your niche or sub-niche receives at least a couple of thousand monthly searches and has a medium or even low competition with your chosen keywords.
Optimize your content
Once you picked your niche and bought a nice domain name, the next question would be - how to get noticed? The main problem with young sites is they don't have a lot of audience, if any. Don't expect that people would just find your articles, instead focus on a proactive targeting people that are perhaps interested in your topic.
How to do it?Well, here are a few examples: Doing interviews with known experts in this field, writing keyword rich posts with mind-blowing titles, a resources section with huge list of useful links, providing video clips on YouTube and of course, promoting your content on related forums, social media and blogging sites.
Choose your affiliate partners
Now you have the right domain, thanks to a thorough keyword research and dozens of keyword rich articles to start with. But now, the next question pops out: "How to make money out of it?" Well, for starters, read these helpful tips about choosing the right moneymakers. You see, the things you promote must tie in with the content on your site.
There’s no point in writing about pets and advertisi ng movies, right? Second, try to find high ticket price items, because they will generate considerably more commission for each sale. You’ll have to sell a lot of books to make the same commission as you will from just one LCD TV.
Third, recurring commissions are always better, as the thing like membership subscriptions and backup services continue to pay commission on auto pilot. Last but not least, pick those program providers, who have good ratings in the forums and have been in business for at least a couple of years, for example Amazon, Jvzoo, CJ, Linkshare and similar.
Determine your income sources
This is the good part, where you can find and determine ways to make money out of your efforts. While there are a plethora of options to choose from and most of them suits all niches, you have to consider the profitability factor of your niche as well. Let's explore the most common income sources and how to use them in order to achieve the maximum effect.
Reviews: Doing reviews of products and services is one of the best ways to monetize your site or blog, where you provide a useful information to your visitors and make money from sales commissions at the same time. While reviews are nice, you need to keep in mind the credibility.
This is oftenly forgotten by newbie affiliates, as they would write anything and praise everything, just to make a quick buck. That's a big No-No. Why?Well, because it hurts the credibility of your site as a whole and you as an expert. You really don't want to fall into the same basket as most other competitors, where you're labeled as not trustworthy source or even a scammer, right? Sure, doing a positive review about a bad product can make you a quick buck, but it also drives away most of your current visitors and all of the future ones.
So, when doing reviews, be as honest as possible and think long term.PPC Ads: Another way of making money with your site is displaying pay-per-click ads from Google AdSense or similar. It can be a nice supplement to your existing income sources, but I would suggest that you stick with the reviews of affiliated products from the above as your main source of income. Why?
Because AdSense requires loads of traffic to be profitable and most affiliates just can't cut it. But, if you decide to add PPC ads to your site, than make sure that your ads are relevant and interesting to your audience, and have a high cost per click (CPC), earning you a good profit for every click.
Also, you can maximize both the relevance of the ads and the CPC by targeting certain keywords with your content. Google even has a nifty feature called “Selection Targeting” that allows you to focus on a certain set of keywords, which helps you determine the profitability of selected keywords.
The bottom line of this chapter is: Before you even start thinking about going online, you need to perform as thorough research and planning as possible. The better you're prepared, the more chances you have to become a success. Remember, research and planning makes your future business much easier, if done right. So, sacrifice a couple of days or weeks to do it properly and only after you've finished with your blueprint, start making your first affiliate site.
Chapter 4.
Building An Affiliate Site
Building an affiliate site isn't very hard to do. Most times, people choose a free blogging platform called Wordpress, which covers almost everything you need for your site. Whether you want to build a pet related blog and promote pet products, or embed 3rd party product feeds, such as Amazon or anything in between, WP has tons of useful plugins to get you up and running.
However, there are a couple of other things you should consider, when building your affiliate site that makes you money. This chapter will cover the most important steps on building a profitable affiliate site, one by one.
Get domain and hosting
First, you need to register a good domain name and signup with one of the hosting providers. Which domain name to choose and how to find the best possible domain for your site will be further explained in chapter 5, but for now, let's stick to the basics. When you find a suitable domain name that's free to buy, go to one of the known providers, such as Namecheap or GoDaddy and register it. If you want to setup a site that will be sold in 6-12 months, register a domain for 1 year, which is a minimum.
Secondly, you need a hosting provider, where your new site will reside. Just make sure that your hosting provider enables you to run all scripts you need for your site. But almost all providers have a WP powered hosting already included.
When you visit one of the providers, you'll see a breakdown of all the different hosting plans. If you want to go into detail, you can click the “Compare all hosting plans” link for a comparison chart. “Shared hosting” means that your site will reside on a server shared by many other site owners, but no problem.
If your site becomes very popular, you may need to think about a dedicated server or another more expensive option, but for now, shared hosting should suit you just fine. Now, all you have to do is Click the “Order Now” button once you’ve chosen a suitable hosting plan.
Please note: Many hosting providers offer a domain registration as well, so you can perform these two tasks at the same provider, which is recommended. Just make sure that you write down the provided hosting access info, as you'll need them to login to your cPanel account.
Install and setup Wordpress
Now you have a brand new domain and a hosting account. But in order to setup your affiliate site, you need to install it first. For this purpose we'll use WordPress, a Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to create beautiful, professional looking websites with little or no coding experience.
WordPress uses a combination of themes and plugins that will suite almost any requirements you might have. Anything you can think of that you want your site to do, you can be almost certain someone has created a plugin to do it.
The easiest way to install WP is to login to your cPanel account, navigate to the Software installer feature, click on WP icon and follow the simple procedure. The installer will then perform a new WP installation on your chosen domain.
Please note the following, when installing WP: The Install in directory box can be left blank and make a note somewhere about your admin information. So, if done correctly, you should see a brand new WP installation on your domain. Now, just head over to your admin area at: www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin.php, enter the username and password you set earlier in the installation and click “log in.”
You should then see the main WordPress dashboard.
Install plugins and themes
Now, you need to choose a suitable theme for your affiliate site. While there are many free themes out there, I strongly recommend buying a premium one, as it will give your site a much more professional look and feel. Premium themes cost around 10-30 dollars, so it's not a big investment, compared to the user's experience, when he visits your site.
Let me just add one thing here. Blog themes are great for bloggers, while landing pages are the only option, if you want to sell one product, or promote one single offer. With this in mind, you really need a good landing page or squeeze page, which allows you to do some fast promotion and/or capture leads at the same time. For this purpose, I'd recommend looking at this site, which offers very nice and also cheap landers.
Ok, let's assume that you already have a brand new theme at your disposal. Upload the provided .zip file to wp-content/themes folder in your cPanel's File manager. Now, you need to install it on your WP site. Login to your admin dashboard, navigate to “appearance” and click the “Themes” option. Choose the "Add new theme" feature, select the uploaded theme and click on "Install". Theme will be automatically installed and now, just click the "Activate" button on your installed theme. That's it. Please note: When choosing the right theme for your site, make sure that it contains as many advertisement spots as possible, as they are a blood line for your business.
More ad spots you'll have, more money you'll make from displayed ads.Plugins. There are so many of them to choose from, so which ones you need? Well, when choosing the plugins, keep in mind at least 3 things - User experience, SEO and making money. These three things will boost your traffic and profits, so choose wisely.
You don't need dozens of plugins, as they'll only slow your site down. But you do need at least 3-5 useful plugins to power-up your site and make it more userand-SEO friendly.
I'd suggest to have at least the following ones: Email subscription plugin, SEO Yoast plugin and one of the Affiliate link cloaking plugins. While there are many free plugins available on the main WP site, it's better to pay for some premium plugins and have a reliable plugin that makes or breaks your profits.
How to install plugins: Simple, the same as themes, just click on the "Install new plugin" option and that's it. Activate the plugin after installation and that's it.
Place adverts
Advertisements are the blood line of your site. When placing them, you need to position each one of them in order to get the best possible result, when it comes to user's experience on your site. I mean, you really don't want to put the best performing ad into your footer, where almost no one would see it, right?
So, determine the best and worst performing ads and place them accordingly. The best ones should be placed somewhere at the top or sidebar, while the worst ones at the bottom.
How to place ads: First, navigate to “Appearance” and click “Widgets.” Next, locate the “Text” widget from the list of “available widgets”, which allows you to embed form text or any HTML code.
Drag the “Text” widget to the desired widget area, where you want your ad to be placed. Finally, copy and paste the ad code you got from your affiliate program provider into the empty widget area and click the blue “save” icon. That's it. You have now placed your first advert and leaned the basics of placing the affiliate ads on your site.
Write and optimize
Now, the final thing. By now, you have configured a real live website, just waiting to get loosed into the wild. The last thing you need to do are your well-written articles. I'm not going to discuss about the mind-blowing and