http://www.yourdomain.com/?ref=abcd1234

The next question is what do I do with this ugly looking domain name (URL)?

The easiest thing to do is use the raw affiliate link to drive traffic to the product sales page and collect the commissions. However in this case the simplest is definitely NOT the best.

Reasons NOT to use the Raw Affiliate Link

1. People trust direct links with normal looking URLs more than they trust an affiliate link with lots of foreign looking code.

2.The long ugly affiliate link can also drive potential customers away from your site which is exactly what you don’t want to happen.

3. If your raw affiliate link is visible then people can either chop off the code bit at the end of the affiliate link and you lose your commission or worse still they can substitute their own affiliate link for yours and once again you lose your commission for the sale!

4. Using your own domain name to promote an affiliate product gives you more control. You can track the clicks and conversion rates and you don’t have to rely on the statistics from the affiliate program which may not be that accurate.

5. If the affiliate product that you are promoting is no longer available you can use the same domain name to promote another product in the same niche and you don’t waste all of the hard work that you’ve already done building links for that site.

6. Also when you are building your backlinks you will want to promote your site with article marketing (more on that when we get to traffic) and some article directories don’t allow raw affiliate links in their articles.

Direct Linking

The next step up from using a raw affiliate link is direct linking. This is when you buy a domain name (which is keyword targeted for better SEO – more on that in the next post) and use a simple redirect from your domain name to your affiliate link. You can do this directly within your hosting account but there is a better way. Use the following script and save it is as an index.php file under your domain name on your server.

<?php
header( ‘Location: http://www.youraffiliatelink.com/abcd1234′);
?>

Hopefully I haven’t lost you with this small detour down Geek St. Leave me a comment if you don’t understand and I’ll try and explain it better.(Maybe I’ll even make a video if you ask really nicely)

Affiliate Link Cloaking/cloning

Sometimes even when you direct link you can see the raw affiliate link in your browser in the URL box or more commonly in the bottom left corner of the browser window as the website is being loaded. I prefer to have my affiliate links completely hidden so I use a program specifically for this purpose it’s called Affiliate Cloner and you can get it right here through my affiliate link. If you click on this link you won’t be able to see my affiliate code but I will still be credited with the sale.

I have found that Affiliate Cloner is an inexpensive program but really simple to use. It has several different features but so far I have only used the simple affiliate cloak function. It is simple tool that any newbie internet marketer who is serious about mastering the internet marketing game should add to their toolbox.

Pre Sell Page

The best thing to do with the new domain name is to build an SEO optimized single page with content that presells the product that you are promoting. This webpage has clickable links that take you to the sales page of the product that you are promoting via cloaked affiliate links.

This is a big topic and it needs much more explanation which will be done in future posts. So subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss out on any valuable information in the future.

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Affiliate Marketing for Newbies – Affiliate Links

The first post on affiliate marketing explained how affiliate programs work and that all are free affiliate programs.Then we discussed finding a niche and there were heaps of ideas from James Schramko’s video about what kinds of products you can promote on the internet. Lastly we talked about how to find a niche market product that will be profitable.

So now that you have chosen your market and you know that people are looking for solutions to their problems in your market, you need to find a specific product. After you have found the exact product that you want to promote, make sure you save your affiliate link somewhere you can find it again!

Places to Find Free Affiliate Programs

1. Clickbank

Go to the clickbank marketplace and see what comes up when you type in your chosen keyword.
There are a few things to understand about clickbank. It is a place where you can find products to promote on many, many different topics and keywords but there have to be able to be delivered digitally. This means you can’t sell physical products through clickbank.

When you are trying to decide which product to promote through clickbank there is lots of information that can be gained from the small description of the product. Look at the sales page for the product by clicking on the “view pitch page” hyperlink.

The statistics below the product are also important to understand.

$/sale is the average amount that an affiliate earns for each sale.

Future $ is only relevant if the product is a recurring product.

%/sale is the commission rate for the product.

%refd is the percentage of sales that were referred by affiliates.

Grav stands for gravity and is a calculation made by clickbank. The higher the gravity the more recent sales that product has had. Products with a high gravity are hot but may also have a lot of affiliates promoting it and therefore be more competitive.

Once you have decided on the clickbank product that you want to promote then click on create hoplink – the hoplink is your affiliate link.

2. Commission Junction

The first thing to do once you get to Commission Junction is to decide if you are an advertiser or a publisher. An advertiser is a product owner, so if you are looking to promote others people’s products you are a publisher. It is a simple thing to sign up as a publisher for commission junction – you just have to fill in a form with your details and wait for a confirmation email with your login details. Once you have your login details you can search for an appropriate product to promote and get your affiliate link.

3. Paydotcom

Here is the link for the sign up page for paydotcom.
At paydotcom you will find both physical and digital products to promote and there is no maximum price limit of the products for sale.
It also a simple procedure to sign up and become an affiliate at paydotcom.

4. Google

Type your product or keyword + affiliate program into the Google search box and see what you get.
If you want to find an affiliate program with recurring commissions then search “your product affiliate recurring” – you might get some helpful results that way as well.

You can also Google “affiliate directory” – there are 38 million results for that search term so you should be able to find an affiliate product to promote somewhere in there.
The search term “affiliate program directory” also has 31 million results in Google.

Some affiliate programs are easy to join and you don’t have to supply much information at all – the basic information that you need is your name, email address and a paypal account. (If you don’t already have a paypal business account now is a good time to get one)

Other affiliate programs require a lot of information to become an affiliate including existing websites and traffic stats etc. This is extremely difficult to do especially if you are just starting out and don’t have anything established in that particular niche as yet. I suggest that if there are too many hoops to jump through on the affiliate signup page then it is time to move on. As was said before there are millions of places to find free affiliate programs!

It is also good to know that sometimes it takes a couple of days for you to actually receive your affiliate link so it is probably best to research and apply to a few different affiliate programs at the same time so that you don’ t lose a few days waiting…

Here is a present for you -  click here for access to a free video by James Schramko on How to Accelerate Your Affiliate Sales

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Affiliate Marketing for Newbies – Finding a Product

Product Test No. 1

Does it solve a problem?

If your product/niche solves a problem for your potential client then you are much more likely to find people willing to spend money on your product. Examples of products that solve a problem:

Learn how to lose weight fast
How to give up smoking effortlessly
How to stop your baby crying and get a good nights sleep

Look out for words or phrases that signal a person would like to buy a product or service. Things like: how to, stop, get, buy, learn, order. If you include these kinds of words on your webpage then you are more likely to attract people who intend to spend money rather than those looking for freebies.

Product Test No. 2

Is it already selling?

To find out if there already is a market for the product that you wish to sell then you need to see if other people are already selling it.

Type your product into the Google search engine and see if there are any paid ads. The paid ads are usually the first couple of listings on the left hand column and all of the listings down the right hand side of the Google search results page.

If other people are willing to spend money on PPC in that market they must be making money! If there are pages and pages of PPC ads then you may have found a very competitive market and it might be a good idea to start with something less competitive. Either choose a new niche or become more specific within the niche that you have chosen.

Probably 2 or 3 pages of PPC ads is a good place to start. You have some competition so you there is money to be made but as an internet marketing newbie, you won’t be overwhelmed!

Product Test No. 3

Does it pay?

The next thing that you want to know is are there any existing affiliate programs for your niche. Type “your product” affiliate into the Google search engine box and see what results you get. As discussed in a previous post, the best kind of affiliate program to find is something that has a recurring component, like when you are selling monthly memberships.

You can type into Google “your product” affiliate recurring and see if there are any results.

Product Test No. 4

Are enough people looking for your product?

Before you spend a lot of time, energy and even money on promoting your product, you need to make sure that the market is big enough to provide you with results. So you really want to know how many people per day or month are actually looking for your product. Google has a great tool for this the Google adwords tool.

This tool was designed to help people with their PPC marketing campaigns but there is a huge amount of information that can be found here.

You can make your search country specific if your product is specific for a country or local region. You can see how many searches per month and can choose whether to look at exact match searches, phrase match searches or broad searches.

I’m going to take the time to explain the difference between those 3 categories as it is a critical point to know for now and for later when you are doing your keyword research.

Broad match: your keyword
This is when you type your keyword into the Google search box without any modifiers. Your results will include websites with similar phrases or variations on your keyword.

Phrase Match: “your keyword”
Your keyword is typed into the Google search box in quotation marks. You will bring up results that match your phrase exactly. But there may be words at the beginning or end of your keyword phrase.

Exact Match: [your keyword]
Your keyword is typed into Google in brackets. Your search will bring up results that match your keyword exclusively.

Different people have differing opinions as to whether you should do your research based on broad, phrase or exact match. I personally think that you should start on exact match so that you ensure you have enough people in your market before you start promoting your product!

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Affiliate Marketing For Newbies – Test Your Niche

Magazines

Look at the magazine covers. Magazines have a huge research budget so any story that has made it onto the fron cover of a magazine has a large potential audience. You can check out what’s hot by heading down to your local newstand or check out www.magazines.com. This website has magazines under any category you can imagine. Just browse through and look at all of the front covers.See which topics are popular and what they are publishing articles about. If a magazine has devoted several pages to an article on a particular topic then you know there are people out there who are interested in that topic.

Dummies books

If someone has taken the time to write a Dummies book about a topic then you can be sure there is a hungry market out there. Either the bookshop or Amazon.com is the place to look for Dummies books.

While you are at Amazon.com you might also want to check out the best-seller lists. The top 10 best-sellers might give you an idea of a profitable niche.

And always remember you can never be too rich, too thin or too beautiful!

Still stuck? – Ask yourself the right questions

What products do I use everyday?

What videos are popular right now?
You can check out the top 10 videos on YouTube.

What are my friends and family talking about?

What are the issues being discussed on current affair shows and morning TV?

If you are still having trouble finding ideas then check out this video that James Schramko put on his blog. James is a very savvy and successful internet marketer and this video gives you some great ideas for niche markets. He is just sitting in his garden reading the Sunday papers. It is also hugely instructive to watch a fantastic marketing mind at work.

Online Places to Research Niches

The following is a list of websites that you can visit to check out the latest trends. Look for what is popular and what is increasing in popularity. Hopefully after all this you will know what you want to promote and what market you want to concentrate on.

clickbank.com

lycos.com

googletrends.com

froogle.com

technorati.com

ebaypulse.com

Now I just wanted to add that if you liked James Schramko’s style – I certainly do and you want to learn more from him then check out his Superfastresults forum – it has a ton of information for the newbie internet marketer and the not so new internet marketer as well!

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Affiliate Marketing for Newbies – Niche Product Ideas

Before you choose the product that you want to sell make sure that there are people out there who want to buy it.

There is no point in spending time and money trying to sell something that seems like a good idea to you but that no-one else can see the need for. This seems extremely obvious but many internet marketing newbies and even those that are moderately successful will tell you at one time or another that they too have fallen into the trap of trying to sell or promote something that nobody wants. It’s even worse when you spend a lot of time creating and developing a product without first checking that there is a market out there.

Niche Marketing

The next thing that you want to consider when choosing the product that you want to promote is how much competition there is. Some of the most profitable markets on the internet are related to health, wealth and happiness but these are the most competitive as well. If you choose a market with a large amount of competition it will take much longer for you to get a result. Whilst you are learning I suggest that you pick a less competitive market so that you have small successes before you get discouraged. The major reason that people don’t succeed in internet marketing is that they give up way too early.If you pick a smaller goal to begin with you will have small successes and this will encourage you to keep going. If your target is too large to begin with then you may not have enough determination and persistence to keep going. Set yourself up for success rather than failure by using effective strategies.

Narrowing your target market down is called finding your niche. Niche marketing is when you target a product or service to a small part of a market that is not being catered to by the main suppliers to that market. For example, in the skiing market if you type the general term “skiing” into Google there are more than 40 million results but if you get more specific and want to market a product directed towards people who enjoy skiing in out of the way places then the competition for “heli skiing in Alaska” is way less. When I typed this keyphrase into Google there were only 1.7 million results. This is probably still a little too competitive to begin with. When I typed “heli-skiing Alaska” in quotation marks into the Google search box there were only 2,000 results. This tells me that I have gone a little too specific and probably there are not enough people on this topic to make it viable.(Check it out for yourself)

One of the most important things about a niche is that it is very specific and you are able to clearly define your target market eg women between 40 and 50 who are interested in …. Once you understand your target market you will be able to provide them with what they want and need.(If you are not exactly sure – then ask them)

Validate Your Niche

To make sure that your are choosing a profitable niche ask yourself these 3 questions about your target market:

Do they have a need?

Do they have money to spend?

Do they need or desire to spend money?

This is an important distinction to make. Make sure that your target market has money to spend. A cookbook with fast, easy meals for the time-poor single mother may not be a good bet because single mothers are usually doing it tough and don’t have much extra money to spend. They would probably appreciate your wholesome  quick dinner ideas but they would probably be looking for the free recipes. Contrast this with the wealthy, retired car enthusiast, a person with plenty of time and cash to splash. This would probably be a profitable niche if you took it down to something more specific like a particular make or model of a car. (I’m not a car enthusiast so I don’t even know which car brands would evoke passion and desire but I know there are a heap of car enthusiasts out there!)

How To Choose A Niche

Sometimes it is easy to promote something that you are passionate about so think about your own passions or hobbies. Is there something that you like doing that other people are interested in as well?

If this doesn’t work for you then walk around your house and list every product or service that you have purchased and utilize that cost you more than $100. the BBQ, your camera, TV, computer etc – you get the picture. All of these things can and are sold on the internet every day.

So start thinking about the products that you want to promote and find your niche market…

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

How to Find an Affiliate Product to Promote

Affiliate marketing is when you drive traffic to someone else’s website and help them sell their product.Affiliate programs work in different ways. Some will pay you commission on the sales that you are directly responsible for. So if you send a prospective customer to the merchant’s website and the prospect makes a purchase (becoming a customer) you are paid a commission on the product sale.

Commissions are usually a certain percentage of the purchase price. The percentage is extremely variable and depends on the product and the merchant and probably the profit margin. I have noticed that the percentage commissions are usually more generous with digital products than with physical products and that is probably because once a digital product is created there are no further costs involved. Whether you sell 20 copies of a digital product or 20,000 the cost involved in producing the product is only the initial creation and time costs of the product owner. Digital download can be completely automated and doesn’t incur any extra costs. Physical products, however always have a cost per unit. Merchants can get discounts for purchasing from wholesalers in bulk but in general there is a fixed cost per unit and therefore a fixed profit margin.

Lead Generation

Another type of affiliate program is essentially a lead generation or lead capture business model. In some industries or niches where the product or service is expensive even a prospective customer is valuable. Rather than paying you, as the affiliate marketer, a commission on any product that is sold to that prospect, the merchant can set up their affiliate program so that they pay you a smaller sum of money just for the lead. I think that this is definitely a win-win situation. You, as the affiliate, win because the prospect just has to be interested in the product or service and you get paid. In this situation the affiliate gets paid whether or not a product sale occurs.
There are many things that you can do to make extra money online. Some companies will pay you if you can get a prospect to fill in a form online. Some companies will pay for an email address or telephone number. The companies that have their affiliate programs set up this way also win. They get new prospective clients and I’m sure that they know their conversion rates. They know how many prospects they have to make a presentation to, to make one sale and they know exactly how much the average customer will spend with them. Once they know all this they can calculate a commission for the affiliate that is generous and represents the value of the potential client to the company.

Recurring Commissions

An affiliate program can be set up to give you a one time commission for the first sale that the merchant makes to the customer or it can be setup so that you, as the affiliate gets a commission every time the customer buys a new product from the merchant. With each subsequent purchase that the customer makes, she becomes more valuable to the merchant. You, as the affiliate also benefit if the affiliate program is set up in this manner. This is called back end sales. It is common for a merchant to have multiple products for sale and usually they sell you their cheapest product first. Once you have bought from the merchant once they build a relationship with you and gradually try and sell you more expensive products. If they have done their job well and have provided good value and service then their customers are more likely to buy from them again. You, as the affiliate, get rewarded if the merchant has an effective sales funnel.

Another way to get recurring commissions is to sell a membership product. This is a product that the customer has to make a monthly payment for. There are many examples of this online. You pay for your webhosting, auto responder service and shopping cart each month. Things like teleseminar and webinar services are also paid for by the month. So are membership sites and forums, link building services and article submission services. Mobile phone plans and internet access are other products that incur a monthly fee. These are just a few examples, I’m sure you can add you own.

Second Tier Affiliates

Some affiliate programs even pay you for introducing other affiliate marketers into their affiliate program. You may get a fixed amount for a new affiliate – a reward for a lead. Or you may get a commission on every product they sell as well.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

So why am I an advocate of affiliate marketing? The truth is that whilst the affiliate does make money from selling other people’s product, the product owner usually makes more and the product owner can have an army of affiliates selling his product for him!
The true benefit of affiliate marketing, if you are an internet marketing newbie, is that you can learn to sell stuff online without being too invested in the product.

If you spend time developing your product before you learn to sell online your product may or may not be a success. If your product fails you’ll never know if the reason was because no-one was interested in  what you had to sell or whether you didn’t sell it well enough online. You tend to take things more personally when you are selling something that has taken you time and effort to produce.

Learn how to sell online using other people’s products then when you get to the point when you have something of your own to sell at least you will have the skill to market your product properly on the internet.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketers to the Merchant

Affiliates are very valuable to the merchant. They are the sales force of the merchant. But, because the merchant doesn’t have to pay out a commission to the affiliate marketer until a sale has been made they  are an extremely cost-effective way for the merchant to have an army of people selling his product. In the offline world salesmen are usually paid a retainer and then commission on top of that but online it is not usual to pay an affiliate anything until they have been successful.

In my next post I will discuss how to find a product to sell online and how to find an affiliate program.

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Affiliate Marketing for Newbies