5 Steps to Launching Your Affiliate Marketing Business

                               

BY BRIAN EDMONDSON

One of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online is by launching an affiliate marketing business (or adding affiliate marketing to your existing business).

Affiliate marketing allows you to make money online, even if you don’t have blog, website, or any products of your own. Following a few simple steps can get you up and running within hours and earning your first commissions right away. Affiliate marketing really is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online and should be a part of every online business owner's portfolio.

The formula for affiliate marketing remains relatively constant no matter what your market or niche. Your main task will always be traffic generation (i.e. driving prospects to the merchant’s website via your unique “affiliate” link). You can start by finding ways to drive free traffic and then adding paid advertising methods to your traffic mix.

Writing good advertising sales copy (copywriting) is the other important skill for internet marketers. The good news is that when it comes to affiliate marketing, many vendors will provide you with copy to use for your blog posts, websites ads, etc. They'll give you the emails to send, the banner ads to display, and even posts you can use on social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).

That being said, what are these essential steps for affiliate marketing success? Here, we focus on five critical steps to launching your own profitable affiliate marketing business quickly and easily.

1. Choosing the Right Affiliate Network

The fit must be right between you and the merchant who is going to benefit from your promotional efforts, or it simply won’t work. The easiest way to begin with affiliate marketing is to select an affiliate network. Many affiliate networks exist, some which are tied to well-known companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple, while others specialize in specific types of products and services.

You may have heard of ClickBank, one of the oldest and most popular affiliate networks. A billion-dollar company, ClickBank specializes in digital products like e-books and software, as well as membership sites. If you are comfortable selling information and don’t want the management and administration hassles of “real” businesses, this may be a good starting point. Its commissions can be anywhere from 10% all the way to 75%.

Sometimes, individual entrepreneurs with great products are worth a look, although you should check them out first and do some research. Entrepreneurs or companies may run their own affiliate program and you can apply directly to them to promote their products and services. Finally, Amazon is always an option as you can be an affiliate for just about any type of physical product on their network.

2. Research and Select the Right Affiliate Products

A sound product strategy is a must for new affiliate marketers. Ideally, you should choose a niche that you can make money online with and has a lot of product vendors. This will give you a wide selection of products to offer your online community. However, limit yourself to two or three products at a time, so that you become the expert others turn to and trust when reaching for their wallet.

As you become comfortable with the affiliate marketing process, you can consider both specialized (e.g. fly fishing) and broad (e.g. weight loss) niches. Don’t forget to track your marketing metrics! They are usually provided by your merchant and/or affiliate network. This way you'll be able to know which products your audience are responding to and which ones aren't generating any profits for your business. This is especially important if you are investing into paid advertising to drive traffic and promote products as an affiliate...

you need to know which campaigns are profitable and which ones are losing money.

You'll want to continually monitor the marketplace for new products, review and test promoting those products to your audience to see which ones resonate and convert.

3. Consider Buying the Product Before Promoting It

As a new affiliate marketer, you are not obligated to purchase every product you want to promote.  However, it goes without saying that actually owning and using the products is huge for establishing credibility and trust. Intimate knowledge of the product can mean the difference between making the sale and having prospects move elsewhere.

Writing product reviews are an excellent way to enhance your credibility as an affiliate marketer. This is especially easy with information products like e-books which are relatively inexpensive. After establishing some steady income it may even be worth buying higher-end products, provided you get in touch with the product creator to work out a strategic marketing plan that takes you to the next level.

If you actually use the product and get results with it, then sharing a case study or your personal experience can be one of the most effective ways of selling that products to your audience.

As you build a more responsive list of email subscribers and buyers and your reputation, merchants may offer you “free” samples of e-books or other products.

Note: in many cases merchants will be happy to offer you a free copy / sample of the product even if you don't have an established business -- it never hurts to ask! If so, you'll want to include full disclosure that you were provided complimentary access to the product in addition to having a disclaimer disclosing your affiliate relationship.

4. Utilize Social Media Marketing to Get More Traffic

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and other social media marketing methods are great vehicles for “word of mouth” or viral marketing. Video marketing in particular is a great way to demonstrate your expertise via commentary, screenshots, and live demonstrations if necessary.

Right now doing videos on Facebook and Facebook Live are extremely effective as well as utilizing YouTube for a more longer term approach to video marketing.

While at first you may be focused on using social media as a free way to get traffic, keep in mind that there are powerful ways to use paid advertising on social media to reach your targeted audience and drive that traffic back to your site or your affiliate offers.

5. Consider Using Redirect / "Pretty" Links

Cloaking or using anchor links was a controversial issue in internet marketing circles, with some affiliate marketers swearing by it and others who feel it is unnecessary.

On one hand, long and ugly affiliate tracking links are a straight giveaway to people that you want to sell them a product (and people may be uncomfortable clicking on them). Therefore, making your link shorter and "nicer" looking will it give a more professional appearance. One of my favorite plugins for making links look "pretty" is the Pretty Links WordPress plugin.

This makes the link much shorter, more friendly, and easier to type in case they can't click the link for some reason and want to type it into their browser.

Original Article: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/launching-affiliate-marketing-business-2531501

Affiliate Marketing to Help You Earn Money Online

Affiliate Marketing to Help You Earn Money Online

SUMMARY Earning money online has become quite popular these days. People these days want more money because they are not satisfied with the amount they earn from the regular jobs. There are various programs available online which can help you make money fast and effectively. You Spend You Earn In the beginning you might need to invest some money but shortly after you start the business you will also start getting the results. There are people who are afraid of taking any kind of risk related to business. Choose Product Wisely If you are not sure about selling your own product or service on the internet then you can choose to advertise someone else’s product so that customers will buy it. Marketing and advertising will be the two major elements required for the sale of your product. To sell other people’s product you can use affiliate marketing programs, which have become quite popular these days. These programs are available all over the internet. There are certain steps which can help you start with this program. Choose Company The first major step is to choose the company which offers the best program. There are so many companies available these days that it might be a bit confusing to choose one. A good amount of research will help you find the best program which can help you earn the money you want. Avoid Mistakes There are certain affiliate marketing mistakes which you need to avoid if you want to make it big through affiliate marketing programs. First of all make sure you do not believe each and every person in business. You can only rely on the people who are experts in business. If you start believing everyone then you might end up with nothing in your hand. The other common mistake which people usually make is taking things for granted and thinking that business will be easy. Conclusion If you want success in business then it is important to work hard. Some people think that they do not need to provide much time to earn a lot of money using affiliate marketing programs. But this is wrong. More time always means more money. You can spend more time in thinking about new ideas to promote the products so that they can be sold easily. The more products you sell the more commissions you will earn. If you are new to affiliate marketing then you can go through the online training and expert advice available these days to help you earn money. Wish You A Great Affiliate Journey

Original Link: http://www.articlebiz.com/article/1051638128-1-affiliate-marketing-to-help-you-earn-money-online/

Maximizing Your Marketing with Data Mining & Retargeting

Maximizing Your Marketing with Data Mining & Retargeting 3 Steps to Not Fearing These Marketing Techniques; Embrace Them Instead From increasing conversions to enhancing the customer experience, all types of companies use data mining and retargeting. They’re very effective marketing techniques, but many consumers view them as creepy rather than creative. Remember when Facebook was in the news for data mining? Cambridge Analytica created a quiz app to gain access to millions of Facebook user accounts. While both companies claim users technically gave consent by agreeing to the terms, it’s incidents like these that make people afraid of data collection. As a marketer of your own business, you need to be careful not to let data mining and retargeting scare off your target audience… let alone be afraid to use it yourself. First Things First…What is Data Mining? Data mining is extracting and analyzing data from a larger set of raw data. For example, retail stores look at items a customer browsed in order to suggest related products. Mobile providers use data such as customer service interactions to predict who is likely to leave the company (known as ‘churn’) then target them with incentives to stay. What is Retargeting? Retargeting, or remarketing, is a technique to bring people who have left your website or mobile app back to it. This is done by putting a simple Javascript code on your site and when a new visitor arrives, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie. The cookie is stored on the user’s computer while they browse, allowing you to ‘follow’ them online and show them your ads. Retargeting Examples: • A tech website displays and ad for the laptop you looked at when on their site, as you move on to read your favourite blog. • A travel site shows you limited-time discounted flights after you’ve left their site and moved on to shop for shoes. By using data mining to retarget interested consumers, businesses can be ultra focused when it comes to serving their target market the most relevant ads. Retargeted users outperform new users when it comes to engagement and likelihood of buying with the logic being if they were on the website looking at that item, they are more likely to go back and purchase if reminded of it later. 3 Steps for Successful Data Mining & Retargeting If done correctly these marketing techniques can reduce customer acquisition costs and improve conversions and sales. You should: 1. Be targeted. You can’t message everyone in the same way. If someone abandons their cart, they need different messaging than a visitor who landed on the homepage. 2. Build confidence. Whether it’s making return policies clearer or assuring customers you’ll never share their data, generate trust. 3. Go pro. There’s much more to data mining and retargeting than I can cover here. Our team can help you build an effective retargeting campaign that gets results! Original Article: http://www.articlebiz.com/article/1051644928-1-maximizing-your-marketing-with-data-mining-retargeting/

How to Start a Profitable Online Business With Affiliate Marketing

How to Start a Profitable Online Business With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time — essentially, since the beginning of e-commerce.

But this “old school” method of making money online is still going strong because of all the benefits it offers to small-scale, solo internet entrepreneurs. And it’s an especially powerful business model to those without much experience doing business online. Many successful online business owners make their first dollar online with affiliate marketing.

Here are just a few of the many reasons why affiliate marketing is such a popular online business model:

• Low-Cost: With affiliate marketing, you don’t need much — if any — startup capital.
• No Inventory: You don’t need to create products or rent or buy warehouse space to store them. There’s no need for you to invest in “stock” that may or may not sell, in other words.
• Zero Hassles: Perhaps best of all, you won’t process orders or ship products… or handle returns, phone calls, or anything on the customer service side.

Affiliate marketing is hassle-free — allowing you to focus on marketing, sales, and making money. It’s perfect for beginners. And, because the money-making potential only increases with the more experience you gain, expert-level internet entrepreneurs stay in this game too.

So how does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate Marketing 101

At a basic level, affiliate marketing is a pretty simple business model.

1. You promote another company’s products in your own marketing efforts, like social media, your website, your email list, your blog, or any other marketing channels you use.

1. When a customer clicks on a link to order a product, they are taken to your affiliate partner’s shopping cart to complete the transaction.
2. The link is assigned to you specifically and tracked so that you get credit for any customer you send to your affiliate partner.
3. If the prospect buys, you get a commission, usually between 5 percent to 25 percent, sometimes, even more, depending on the product. In the cases of very high commissions (some up to 100 percent), the company is often hoping to later upsell the customer on a higher-ticket item. So they’re using you to help generate leads, essentially.

Getting just a percentage of a sale may not seem like a good way to make money but when you start sending hundreds of customers each week or even sell just a few big ticket items, it quickly adds up to a tidy income. It’s especially sweet when you consider that your startup and operating costs are so low.

As with any online business, success and a steady, high income is possible with affiliate marketing. But it’s not going to happen overnight. It takes consistent work, especially when you’re getting started. But soon, you could have a viable money-making business.

A Recipe for Affiliate Marketing Success

One of the key elements to success with affiliate marketing is picking the right products to promote. They could be digital information products, memberships, physical products, online services… there are many industries that use this model. When promotiing to your target market, you may be promoting one or many of these different types of products as an affiliate.

Speaking of target markets, you want to focus in on those popular niches with proven track records for sales.

Why struggle when you can leverage the popularity of established products that customers love. The cool thing is you can also often run an affiliate marketing business in an industry that you have a personal interest in — you can combine passion with profits.

Here are some ways to do your necessary market research.

1. Keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter for trends. What niches or types of products are “hot”
2. What are the best-selling products on sites like Amazon.com and eBay?
3. What’s on the news… what are people talking about?

The more buzz a product or niche has… the better for you. A popular product means more sales.

Some popular niches right now include yoga, natural health, gluten-free, organic, supplements, financial and investment advice, dating, apps, online video games, and more.

Remember, while most inexperienced marketers shy away from markets that are popular and have a lot of competition, successful marketers know that these are the markets you want to focus on because that's where the money is.

Finding Affiliate Partners

There are many, many affiliate programs out there covering just about any product or service imaginable. But not all of them are created equal. You want to join a trusted program with a reputation for taking care of its partners — and paying them the right amount of their commissions on time.

Any time you find an affiliate network that you think has potential, do a quick search on Google or forums related to affiliate marketing to see what people have to say about them.

Here are some established affiliate partners with good reputations.

• Clickbank.com focuses on digital, downloadable information products.
• Rakuten.com (formerly Buy.com) is a major online retailer offering everything from electronics to groceries.
• Amazon.com — you’ve shopped here. You know the range of products it offers. Now become an affiliate with the Amazon Associates program.
• CJ Affiliate by Conversant works with some of the best-known brands in the world.

Marketing Your Affiliate Marketing Products

Social media is a great free way to get the word out about your business.

Everybody is on Facebook and Twitter these days. And they’re not just sharing funny cat videos. Often they are in the mood to buy, especially if an appealing offer comes across their feed.

Also free is search engine optimization. Sounds daunting, but SEO is at its heart a simple proposition. Basically, you add valuable content related to your niche to your website or blog consistently using “keywords” that someone searching for products like yours or information about your niche might use.

You post regularly, at least a few times a week. And over time search engines like Google find your content and reward you for providing valuable information by putting your website higher in the results. The higher you are in the results, page 1 in particular, the more traffic to your site.

Scan your email inbox right now. No doubt there are at least a few emails you get from merchants or other businesses with products you’re interested in. This is email marketing. And it’s a great tool for affiliate marketers. Essentially, on your website, a landing page, blog, or social media, you ask visitors to your site to provide their email address. Then you send them valuable content along with promotional offerings through email.

Email is a relationship-builder with your potential customers. You want to send them a balance of useful information related to your niche, perhaps an email newsletter, as well as marketing messages, like a sales email, asking them to buy a product on sale. The free information you’ve provided helps them come to know, like, and trust you… which makes it more likely they’ll buy a product.

Paid ads should be your last step in marketing your range of affiliate products. You want to make sure you’re in a money-making niche and have a roster of products proven to sell, as well as proven sales funnel that compels your prospects to buy. That way when you invest the money in a paid ad, which can cost hundreds and thousands of dollars, you’ll see a decent return on investment.

Another tip: start small with paid ads. Test your copy. And once you have an approach that works and you know your systems are in place, you can try rolling out a major paid campaign for your affiliate marketing business.

Next Steps for Starting an Affiliate Marketing Business

Now you have the overall structure for a successful affiliate marketing business, with a step-by-step guide for getting started.

It might seem overwhelming. But if you take it a day at a time, you can do it. Just do one task related to starting your business each day, whether you can dedicate 15 minutes or a few hours. Slowly but surely, you’ll be able to launch your business.

Original Article: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/affiliate-marketing-4161605

How To Enhance Your Affiliate Marketing Profit

How To Enhance Your Affiliate Marketing Profit The dream of all affiliate marketers is to make an abundance of profit from their business empire(s). As an affiliate marketer it’s possible to earn a lot of profit by advertising and selling merchandise, and carrying out other related activities. Due to the fact that our world is an ever-changing one that could sway away from status quo, all marketers have to always be on their feet to invent and employ unique ways that can popularize and sell their products. Listed below are some ideas that expert affiliate marketers use to maximize their profits: i. Give Peculiar Proposals or Offers Those affiliate marketers who have a good conscience, would always try to help their clients get commodities that the clients need. If you really intend to attract more customers, employ ways to beat down the existing price of commodities — to a price that is, at least, a bit less than the rate at which most sellers are selling those particular products. Try to give out discount rates and incentives, or bonuses. If you are not the owner of the business or merchandise, then you might need to ask the owner to set up special offers for clients — especially if you are convinced that both parties will gain from it on a long term basis. When giving discounts, don’t worry about the lesser amount of profit you are going to make around that particular time (when you are giving out discounts). Rather, look at the long term picture where your number of customers might greatly increase in the future. The truth is that most customers are attracted to prices that can accommodate the available amount of money they are willing to spend on acquiring a products. ii. Give Reliable Reviews About Your Commodity Customers can hastily note the difference between an affiliate marketer who is bent on advertising anything to earn money fast, and one who advises customers to buy the best type(s) of products that suits their desire(s). At all times, it’s advisable to use all commodities you intend to sell so that you ‘ll be able to give a reliable review about them. Also, whether you can use a particular product or not, ask customers to give their review(s) about products they’ve bought and used. Such reviews will assist you (an affiliate marketer) to serve customers better because it’ll provide information about what they expect from you. iii. Take Note of the Differences between Your Products The desire of all customers is to get the best quality products. The best quality should go hand in hand with a pocket-friendly price tag. Always make a comparison between the different types of commodities that your clients are attracted to. Create articles on your website that state the price(s) of each product(s), and explain the advantages and disadvantages, if there be any, of using any of the products. iv. Employ Successful Marketing Strategies One of the most effective platforms for advertising commodities is by placing articles on a blog created by you. These articles should expose all details about the product you intend to sell. It is advisable to sign up with social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, and advertise your products where multitudes of people can see links to your web page where they can actually buy any product. Your sales can also be enhanced by using emails to market your products. Successful affiliate marketers have the emails of people who have shown a desire to buy their product(s). Always send out emails to them whenever you want to advertise a new product or give reviews about products you sold in the past.

Original Article: http://www.articlebiz.com/article/1051640972-1-how-to-enhance-your-affiliate-marketing-profit/

Affiliate Marketing: 8 Greatest Ways To Converting Your Traffic Into Your Greatest Profit

Do you have a website which pulls in large number of visitors everyday? You can actually benefit yourself with the traffic and earn a great, residual income if you give a little more effort. Here are some of the greatest ways you can convert those traffic into mountainous cash:

1. Sell a product/service
Of course, to earn money you need to sell a product or service to your visitors. It is the best way to profit from your own product. Usually, an e-book or software works the best - they can be downloaded right away, no shipping included, no handling to be done. You earn 100% of the profits without any investments to be taken before that.

Other than that, selling your own product allows you to set your own price.

2. Opt-In list
It is very crucial that you try to convert every visitor of yours to a subscriber of your mailing list. The most important asset that an Internet marketer has is his or her list of subscribers. They define whether you will go far in the online business venture.

With an opt-in list, there are tons and tons of ways you can profit greater in the future. You can make previous customers purchase again from you, making them your repeating customers - that is of course, if they are in your mailing list and you can urge them to buy again.

Building a closer relationship with your own subscriber will be the best thing you can do. By having your subscribers 'trust' you, you can endorse many other useful products to your subscribers and the chances that they will buy from you will be high - because they trust you.

3. Viral marketing
You can provide a free product or bonus to be listed on your site to be downloaded by your visitors. Usually it'll be an e-book where people can read from and learn useful information. In this bonus, you include give away rights and urge readers to give it away to anyone they want to. This way, you increase your own publicity and branding.

In the future, you will receive great benefits as when you are known, people will trust you more and this profits you. Between a product - let's say a tooth brush from a beggar and a doctor, who will you prefer to purchase from? Unless the beggar offers something special, it is hardly that you will purchase the tooth brush from him.

4. Pay-per-click
In this case, you don't pay for every click but earn instead. There are many advertising programs that give you a percentage of the bidding on a certain keyword. The famous ones are Google Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera.

When people click on the ads shown from either of these advertising programs, you will earn a small portion of money. Nevertheless, if you have high traffic to your site - these programs alone can generate your residual income.

5. Offer an advertising space
Usually websites which brings in very high traffic will sell a small portion of space on their web page. You can charge a minimum of $300 for advertising someone's ad a single month on advertising fee if your web page is pulling more than 2000 visitors a day.

Other than that, you can also create exit pop-ups that advertise other websites as well. By doing this, you don't clutter your website with too many ads and you can earn a better reputation from your visitors.

6. Affiliate marketing
If you don't have your own product for sale, you can sell other's products instead and receive a commission on every sale. With affiliate marketing, you have an unlimited source of products to sell and you don't need to go through any problems after your sales.

No customer service, you don't need to issue any refunds, just let the owner do everything else for you after each sale. If you have a mailing list, you can endorse many other products and earn very great profits from your subscribers.

7. Pay-per-lead
Instead of earning money from every click your visitors clicked on, you are paid if you get your visitors to subscribe into other's mailing list. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that you just get visitors to become other's subscribers.

There are a lot of bigger companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi which holds survey every few months. By referring your visitors to them in order to complete a survey, you can also earn great profits from it.

Applied correctly, you can make a huge fortune on the Internet and build a steady online business - taking over the place of your day job. Take some time to put effort in either of these strategies, because it can make your day bright.

Original Article: http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/affiliate_articles/convert_traffic_greatest_profit.htm

Podcast: Business Podcast Marketing Case Study Proves Results

Business Podcast Marketing Case Study Proves Results

By: Rodney Rumford

Business Podcast Marketing Case Study Shows How Podcasting Delivers Dramatic Results for Client. Podcasting has significant business marketing potential. If the business podcast strategy and online visibility plan is properly executed; podcasting has the potential to be a marketing tool that delivers great marketing results.

The professional business marketers over at marketingsherpa.com have just released a new case study titled "How to Use a Podcast to Promote a White Paper That Generates New Business Sales Leads". This case study is about how Bearing Point used podcasting to promote a white paper and saw sign up rates of over 30% versus a traditional 10%. This is a 200% increase over traditional marketing techniques.

Here is a short excerpt: "Dunay wasn't sure if the podcasts would be a hit or not, especially as his key prospects tend to be fairly conservative. So he didn't roll out trumpets and strobe lights for the launch.

Instead, the team posted the podcasts and announcements at several related sites including Podblaze.com, FreshPodcasts.com, and iTunes (all of which currently promote podcasts for free.) They also rolled out a press release and an email announcement to the house list. Their first podcast launched quietly July 29, 2005.

RESULTS
Joy and exultation! Hundreds of executives downloaded the podcasts. Dunay had hoped that 10% of podcast listeners would respond to the white paper download offer. Instead, 30% did..."

This is a great example of how marketing professionals should and could be using podcasting to help their business. This is the future of podcasting, Podcasting is going to become a marketing tool that communicates, educates and drives listeners to action. In this case the action was to download a white paper and effectively generate leads.

I have been trying to inform the business markets of this trend for the past 9 months. I discussed this very scenario in a Podcasting White Paper that was released a few months back. Read the full case study at MarketingSherpa.com

Experienced online marketing professionals that have expertise in the areas of podcast production, strategy, and visibility such as www.LeveragedPromotion.com can help your business achieve these same levels of results. Just creating a podcast in a vacuum of space is the wrong strategy. Make sure that you achieve maximum exposure for your podcasts so that they can deliver measurable marketing results.

Original Article: http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/podcasting_articles/podcasting_proves_results.htm

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