Affiliate Programs as your Online Business
If you have made some research about Affiliate Programs, more or less, you already have an ideas what is it all about. Affiliate Programs can also be known as an associate, referral, reseller or partnership program depending on how the Affiliate providers want to called it. The formula is very simple, you have a revenue sharing arrangement with affiliate and received payment from them for products or services that you help to promote on their behalf.
Depending on the affiliate you join, payment can be monthly or quarterly or until you reach a certain target amount as specify by them.
For the learning stage, affiliate programs is a good way for New Internet Entrepreneur to start an Online Business as you don't have to worry about developing your own product or service. Your job is purely promoting someone else product or service and getting a share of the revenue for your efforts.
There are no bad debts to write off and you do not have to worry about warehousing or logistics headaches. All this task is left to the business whose products/services you are helping to promote.
As you get familiarize with your online business, you will find that in order to SUCCEED with an affiliate programs, you need to FOCUS on ONE that pays a RESIDUAL or Life-Time commissions for e.g. SFI Marketing Group or one that pays a 2 or 3 tier commissions.
There are people who still make a good Internet Income from Affiliate just like those brick and mortal Retail Store (they are just like affiliate who does not have their own product).
You can still make a good Internet Work At Home Income by joining a large and LEGAL Internet Networking Company that have a MLM compensation scheme or TARGETING those affiliate with BETTER PAYMENT or like the Retail Store, you must have a high traffics sticky site to sell MORE of the affiliate product.
In short, a Networking company is like owning a Franchise rights as a BUSINESS OWNER to sell the company services/products by followings their pre-defined Business Concept provided by the company through their training program.
Firstly, it will allows you to earn a RESIDUAL INCOME that keeps coming month after month like a book royalty.
Secondly, you can earn additional LEVERAGE INCOME through the team member that you recruit in a WIN/WIN way.
Therefore, whether to use an Affiliate program for your online business really depends on your site. Of course the best way to make MONEY from an affiliate programs is to join one that pays a RESIDUAL INCOME.
Copyright © Arthur
http://www.sap-basis-abap.com/homebusiness/
"Opportunity are often shy, you just have to keep looking for them." Learning and putting what you learn into Action is the key to success in operating a successful Work At Home Business Opportunity.
Making Money with Affiliate Programs
By © Nowshade Kabir
In this holiday season online shopping is hotter than ever! According to US Commerce Department online sales continue to grow with a robust 25-27 percent this year over 1992. Online holiday shopping at a rate of 10 percent is also considerably outpacing the 5.7 percent growth of overall retail sales. Goldman Sachs predicts 23 percent of all gift-buying this holiday season will take place online!
So, if you don't have a product of your own to sell online, how can you profit from this exciting trend?
One of the finest ways of making money online is to promote other people's products or services by becoming their affiliates. Affiliate is a term used for a website that drives traffic to another website in exchange for a predetermined commission.
Thanks to the success of several affiliate programs in the early days of online business, most merchant websites, today, use some kind of affiliate programs to promote their sites and generate sales.
Considering the sheer numbers of affiliate programs available on the Internet, you may feel overwhelmed. However, if you set some basic criteria, it would be lot easier to find a good program that suits your need.
Free sign up
The affiliate program that you are planning to join must be absolutely free. There are way too many good programs available for free, why should you pay for one? Moreover, the programs that require payments to join are mostly multi Level Marketing (MLM) programs. Although, there may be many good MLM programs existing on the Internet, I don't think it's a viable option for an average person.
Good commission
You deserve handsome compensation for all your hard work! No matter, how you look into it, in most of the cases, promoting a product or service is not an easy job. Since you are doing the uphill struggle of bringing the client to the merchant's door, your commission should be real good one. What is an acceptable commission anyway? If you are promoting an information product, don't go for less than 50 percent. For more tangible products and services your bare minimum commission should be 15 percent of the sale. If you are promoting monthly subscription, choose a program that pays a portion of subscription fee as recurring commission to you as long as the client referred by you stays subscribed.
Tow-tier affiliate program
An affiliate program which pays certain percent as a commission from the sale for bringing in a client and another if that client brings in other clients. Two-tier affiliate programs are more preferable since once a client base is built, it becomes a great source of residual income.
Quality affiliate tracking system
The merchant should have a very good and well-organized affiliate sales tracking management software system. You have to be absolutely comfortable with the statistics generated by the affiliate program. The program should show such important aspects as repurchase, if any, by the client referred by you, your second tier affiliates, activities by your second tier clients, etc. If you do not feel comfortable with the tracking system provided by a merchant, better stick to the merchants, who use third party affiliate managing system. At least, you will know that a dishonest merchant won't be able to defraud you.
Efficient customer support
You should feel satisfied with the service and support you get from your affiliate program owner. A good program highly values its affiliates and gives priority to its customer support system. As the clients that you are sending to the merchant are primarily your site's visitors, you should be extremely picky about the quality of customer service the program renders. After all, your own site's reputation is also at stake here!
Promotional materials
If you are planning to promote an affiliate program, you will need more materials then mere banners. Unfortunately, even many high-end affiliate programs do not carry enough promotional materials to satisfy the need of the affiliates. Promotional material should include: contents to build mini-sites, various ad articles, different kind of text links, product brochures or presentation, etc.
Commission payment policy
The affiliate program should have a sort of minimum payment policy, where you can receive commissions if even you have made just one or two sales. A reasonable amount is US $25. Less than that is not viable due to processing costs. Commission should be paid each month. If you are located outside of US, see if the merchant makes payment through Paypal or other similar services or not. For most of the countries checks issued in other countries are not a good option.
If an affiliate program meets all these above mentioned criteria, you can consider joining in this program. However, to get best result from your efforts, before signing up, you should also consider the following rules: You have to like the product you are promoting Any salesman will confirm you that this is one of the fundamental rules of selling. If you are selling a product or service you must have confidence in it. If you like the product and will use it yourself gladly, you found a product to promote! Don't waste your time with a product that is not up to your taste! Promote a product or service consistent to your website's subject matter If your site is all about soccer, you will be better off with products and service related to soccer. If this same site promotes, for example: pesticides, no matter how hard you try your success will be very limited! Before joining in any affiliate program first you should identify who your visitors are, what do they like and which products they will probably buy online. Once you know your niche market it's lot easier to find products or services for it.
Many webmasters think that in order to make money through affiliate programs, all you have to do is to come up with a site and fill up the site with affiliate links. Sooner all later people will click on them. Unfortunately this does not work! Making money through affiliate programs is also a business and like any business you have to have a proper business plan. Only a well prepared business plan followed by its meticulous implementation can bring success to your affiliate endeavor.
About the author:
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Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at mailto:nowshade@rusbiz.com , http://ezine.rusbiz.com , http://www.rusbiz.com
A Simple Way To Dramatically Increase Your Affiliate Earnings
by © Terence Tan
Affiliate programs are undoubtedly one of the most powerful systems of business available today. When they first appeared, they were a stunning example of how the powerful traditional strategy of joint-venture marketing, when combined with the power of the internet, created an entire new industry that solved the biggest problems faced by webmasters and web merchants.
For webmasters who specialized in creating valuable web content and building web traffic, the problem was how to effectively convert their traffic into a viable source of revenue.
For web merchants who had to spend their energies on creating good products and delivering them to customers, the problem was how to do web promotion in a cost effective way.
Affiliate programs quickly became a natural solution to these problems, offering merchants a way to market their products in a "cost per sale" manner, while allowing content publishers to profit from recommending affiliate products to their visitors.
As a result of the huge success of affiliate marketing, there is now an incredibly large number of affiliate programs for publishers to choose from. These vary in the type of products offered, the reliability of the affiliate merchants, and many other areas.
An unfortunate problem for affiliates is that it is often very difficult to decide which affiliate programs will make them the most money in the limited space available in their ezines and websites.
A small but rapidly growing number of merchants, in their attempts to stand out from among the crowd of available affiliate programs, and sign up good affiliates, have begun to offer affiliate programs that pay affiliate referral commissions to multiple levels of affiliates.
In doing so, they offer affiliates the opportunity to leverage their efforts through the viral nature of such programs and maximizing the value of their visitors.
The opportunity to affiliates lie in the power of "lost" visitors to increase their earnings.
For example, a successful website may attract 1000 visitors a day and recommend a related affiliate product to them. Of these 1000 visitors, only a small number, perhaps about 5 visitors, would be interested enough to buy the product. The other 995 visitors end up as "lost" visitors, of no value to the affiliate. However, if the affiliate program paid commission on multiple levels, some of the 995 visitors (and also the 5 who bought products), would probably sign up as sub-affiliates of the original affiliate. When they in turn recommend the affiliate products and make sales to their friends and to visitors of their own websites, the original referring affiliate will also get paid a referral commission for these sales.
Depending on the number of levels of referral commissions the merchant offers, the original affiliate may even make commissions on subsequent levels of sales!
Through such affiliate programs, affiliates end up benefiting from the viral multiplication of their commissions generated through visitors who would otherwise be of no value to them.
While some people have compared these multi level affiliate programs with the MLM programs which flood the net, web merchants have been careful to draw a clear distinction in that as with single level affiliate programs, no joining fees, training fees, nor "start-up" fees are ever required. Since no money is ever required to participate in these multi level affiliate programs, no money can ever be made by simply recruiting people to join these programs.
The value of these programs lies in their ability to unlock the huge earnings potential in the large numbers of web visitors who would otherwise be "lost" to affiliates.
If you already participated in affiliate programs, simply switch to a multi level affiliate program and watch your affiliate earnings multiply.
Use an 'Affiliate Network' to Boost Your Commissions
by © David McKenzie
Most affiliates concentrate exclusively on direct sales. For affiliates this means joining an affiliate program and
marketing the product or service through their web site or via email. The affiliate earns a commission for every sale made.
Very few affiliates appear to focus on the 2nd tier.
Most good affiliate programs are 2 tier which means that as well as direct sales you can also build what I call an
affiliate network'.
An affiliate network is the ability to get affiliates signed up under you and earn commissions on the sales that those affiliates make.
A common commission structure might be 25% for direct sales and 10% for indirect sales.
As an affiliate you can earn 25% on any sales you make.
Building an affiliate network means you can earn 10% on each sale that each affiliate makes. If you have 100 affiliates in your affiliate network then you can see that a few 10% commissions can quickly surpass the 25% direct commission.
If you have an affiliate network of 100 then you will probably only have 5 to 10 of those affiliates making money for you. The others will make nothing.
However those 5 to 10 affiliates can earn you much higher commissions than you alone can make with direct sales.
It is just like having your own sales force!
Only difference is it's not your product or service.
Becoming successful with affiliate programs need not be all that difficult. One way to make it easier is to build an affiliate network for each of your affiliate programs. It will certainly boost your affiliate commissions.
About the Author:
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David McKenzie is the author of a new e-book titled The Facts You Should Know About Affiliate Programs
Get a Free 5 Day Email Course http://www.1sthomebasedbusiness.com
Things To Test On Your Website To Increase Sales
By Erny Setyawati
The Internet is powerful selling tool. Never before has been easier to start a business ,be able to reach out to literally millions of potential customers and make your business succeed. Yet time has taught us that there is much more to success that simply having a website or using these tools.
A lot of money can be made by promoting product and service through website ,however in order to promote them effectively you will need to be committed to making it work.
Most affiliate program will give us a unique URL ,though these methods work ( especially ezine advertising ) they are limited to how long the ad stays visible. We can not generate long term promotion by just submitting ads using that URL.
A website of our own. Promoting affiliate programs whether it be mlms or any other affiliate program where you are given a unique URL is limiting without a website of our very own. There are literally thousands of ways to promote if we have our own website. Therefore it is imperative that you decide how serious you are about your business and to what level you wish to take your business.
That's why we're devoting this issue to giving you the top six tests you can run on your web site right now. These tests are quick and easy to implement and can start increasing your sales by 400%... 700%... even 1,000%... in less than 48 hours!
Bottom line... testing is the ONLY way to discover what works --and what doesn't -- on your web site ,and it's the BEST way to start increasing your sales exponentially.
And if you take the plunge and test even just one of the following six things ,you'll learn just how true this is... especially when you start seeing a dramatic improvement to *your* bottom line!
Test #1: Offer ONE product or service on your homepage.
We've found that offering fewer products in one place with more copy describing those products ALWAYS translates into higher sales. It's all about focus. Instead of trying to please *everyone* who visits your web site by offering a large range of products with minimal detail about each one ,if you offer just one product (or one set of related products) ,you can really focus on one key set of benefits and answer *all* of the possible questions and doubts your visitors might have about your product.
And you don't have to stop selling your other products -- you can always offer them to your customers from other web pages or by using follow-up offers .
Test #2: Reposition your opt-in offer to BOOST your opt-ins and build a bigger list of loyal subscribers.
Your opt-in offer is your tool for gathering your customers' e-mail addresses. In exchange for their address ,you might offer them a free report containing valuable information or a regular free newsletter. Your opt-in is your mechanism for building your e-mail list , which allows you to regularly keep in touch with your subscribers ,build relationships of trust and loyalty ,and sell them your products or services.
Test placing your opt-in in the "first fold" of your salesletter -- the area of screen first visible to a visitor before they scroll down the page. If you have a long salesletter ,you should test placing it within your second "page" of text -- after you've grabbed your visitors' attention by identifying a problem they have and established your credibility by impressing them with your credentials , experience ,and glowing testimonials from happy customers.
You should also test placing your opt-in offer on EVERY page of your web site so it's always in front of your visitors ,and try using a "hover ad" (see below). The more sign-up opportunities you provide, the more subscribers you're likely to get. Test it and see!
Test #3: Add impact to your promotions with "hover ads"
I'm sure everyone's familiar with pop-ups. They're the small windows containing a special offer or other information that sometimes "pop up" when you visit a web site.
Love them or hate them ,pop-ups have been a very useful online marketing tool for years.However, because a percentage of Internet users disliked them ,Google ,AOL ,Netscape ,and others developed pop-up blocking software to combat them But that was before we discovered a very impressive technology that actually lets you use ads that BEHAVE like pop-ups ,but that are NOT pop-ups -- so they don't get blocked. They're called "hover ads" and they're well worth testing on your site.
In fact ,when we tested adding a hover ad to our site ,sales increased by 162%! They're effective because they put important information, such as your opt-in offer or a special time limited promotion ,right in front of your targeted visitors.
Test #4: Establish a problem in your copy and show how you can solve it.
In the first couple of paragraphs that appear on your homepage ,you need to go into more detail about the problem you introduced in your headline -- showing your audience that you relate to them. (Only when your audience feels you understand their problem will they feel confident that you can solve it.)
Once the problem is established ,you can then begin introducing your product or service as the solution to this problem. By emphasizing exactly *how* your product or service will solve the reader's problem ,you are guaranteed to see a boost in sales!
Test # 5 :Focus on your readers... not yourself.
The most successful salescopy focuses on the reader. Too often ,business owners neglect this simple golden rule.Look carefully at your salescopy. Is it filled with references to "I," "me," and "we"? Instead of using sentences like ,"I designed my time-management software with the busy homeowner in mind ," try "Your new time -management software will free up hours of time for you to spend with your family." See how much more powerful that is? Try searching on "I," "me," and "our" in your salescopy and replace them with "you" and "your."
It's very important that your salescopy instills a sense of urgency in your visitors ,compelling them to buy NOW. The best place to do this is towards the end of your salesletter ,near the call to action (when you ask for the sale). Here are a few of the most effective ways to create a sense of urgency. Try testing each one against your current copy:
- Offer a limited-time price discount offer where
visitors must buy before a certain date in order to
qualify for the discount.
- Offer additional bonuses for free if they buy within a
certain time frame.
- Offer only a limited quantity of your products or
services.
Test #6: Boost your product's desirability by adding images.
Images of your products make them seem more tangible and "real" to your visitors and are a powerful sales tool. In fact ,our testing shows that you can increase sales by more than 10% just by adding product images. But sometimes revealing what the product is too early in the sales process can kill the sale -- you may need to highlight the product benefits and value before you reveal exactly what it is. Test placing images near the top of the page against placing them near the call to action at the bottom (where you're asking for the sale). You should also test adding images to your order page ,and test the response to using no images at all. By carefully analyzing sales during each test ,you'll learn exactly whereto place product images for maximum impact.
Erny Setyawati is Editor and Publisher of Bali Global market Ezine who has been writing many articles for Internet Marketers. She also campaign about Indonesia culture ,history and traditional foods. To know more ,visit us at : http://www.baliglobalmarket.com
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