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16 steps to Affiliate Marketing

STEP 1: Set a goal If you want to go somewhere, you need to know where you're going.Let's start with a modest goal. Say you aim to earn a total of $300 (US) a month in affiliate commissions and AdSense revenue. Imagine what you could do with that money. A holiday? A better lifestyle?I've kept the amount low, because it's important that you believe you can do this. Achieve small successes first, see the money in your hands or in your bank account, and then increase your goals.Perhaps you have much larger goals. That's OK. Whatever your goals, I strongly recommend that you serve your apprenticeship by taking these 18 steps. They'll give you solid knowledge and experience on which to build your affiliate business.

STEP 2: Find your nicheTo help you find your niche topic, read Ken Evoy's free Affiliate Masters Course and use the excellent advice in it to find a niche that suits you and your interests.Print out the Affiliate Masters Course, find a quiet, comfortable spot and read it several times.Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about this and jotting down notes. You're planning a business, so don't rush it. It's very important.You'll probably avoid Internet marketing topics because that field is so overcrowded and competitive. It's much easier to succeed if you locate a less competitive niche.Choose a topic that is easy to write about.Even if you've already chosen a niche, I urge you to read the Affiliate Masters Course. It might make you change your mind.You can follow your passion or chase the money. With luck - and a bit of keyword research - you may be able to do both.Examine your potential competitorsIf you're considering building a site about hiking boots, type "hiking boots" (using quotation marks) into Google and Yahoo! and carefully examine the top 10 sites which appear in the search results.They're your real competitors. Can you create a better, more interesting, more useful site? Can you think of a new angle, a new approach?Do those top 10 sites all have high PageRank - say 6 or more? If so, you'll have to work really hard to get in the top 10.Let's say the top 3 sites in Google are PageRank 8, 7 and 6. If so, you'll probably have to work hard for a couple of years or more to outrank them. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it will require either a great deal of work, or a very innovative, eye-catching approach.You can quickly check the PageRank of your potential competitors by using Seochat's free online tool - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search . Type in "hiking boots" or whatever and you'll be able to see the PageRank of the top 10 sites.Do those sites all have the phrase in the title? (The title is the words that appear at the very top of your screen when you visit a site.) If not, you may be able to beat them.How many links do your potential competitors have?Do your potential competitors all have thousands of links to them? This is important, because links are important to search engines. You need good, relevant links to your site. To find out how many sites are linking to a site, use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - and login (set up a free account if necessary).Type the URL of the site you want to explore.Click on "Explore URL".Click on "Inlinks".Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks "except from this domain" and "entire site". This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.If your potential sites have thousands of links to them, they're likely to be very tough competitors.Don't decide definitely on a niche topic until you've taken the next two steps...

STEP 3. Choose a profitable nicheDo some research on Google AdWords and Wordtracker to choose the most profitable niche from among the ones you're considering. Because you're planning to use AdSense, you want valuable keywords or key phrases, if possible ones that people are paying at least 50 cents per click for on Yahoo! Search Marketing (it used to be called Overture) and AdWords.You're going to build a site the search engines love, so you also want to find key phrases that many people are typing into search engines. You don't rely on guesswork.You must do this BEFORE you start building your web site. That's critically important.Here's a useful free tool I like using for quick, rough keyword research: pixelfast.com/overture/Type in a phrase, for example, "hiking boots", click "Go", follow the instructions, and you can see how much advertisers are paying per click for that phrase on the Overture network of web sites.You can also see how many people searched for the phrase the previous month. For a number of reasons, this figure is often unreliable and can be grossly exaggerated. For example, it gives you the SAME results for "wool rug" and "rug wool", which is ridiculous. That's why I double check results using Wordtracker.Wordtracker's free trial is fairly limited. Fortunately, they allow you to subscribe cheaply for a day or a week at a time. It's very fast, so you can do an awful lot of keyword research in a day. I use the annual subscription now.Go to Google's AdWords and find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's how.Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play around with the free Keyword Tool.For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "recipe" and click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency. I chose US.)Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position estimates" is selected.The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per click) for a whole lot of words and phrases.Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.You don't HAVE to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.If you use Site Build It to build your site, you'll find the brainstorming tool in it awesome to help you come up with ideas and phrases you wouldn't have thought of without it.Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.For a full list of topics you may wish to avoid see: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_USAdvertisers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites. Will AdSense ads you see on Google appear on your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at their AdSense ads.For more accurate research, you can also use the free AdSense preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.Another niche-finding tool I'm very fond of is Myleena's NicheInspector. Using this powerful tool will save you a LOT of time, because it automates a great deal of the work. If you're going to get this tool, make sure you read her free report before you start using it, because her free report explains why she uses the methods she does.Don't make any firm decision on your niche until you've taken the next step...Research affiliate merchants.

STEP: 4. Research affiliate merchantsBefore you make a firm decision on a topic for your site, you'll need to do research to see if there are suitable affiliate products which match your topic.You want affiliate merchants that have excellent products, excellent reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling. You can search the AssociatePrograms.com affiliate directory for ideas.Consider aiming for lifetime commissions.If you're lucky, you'll manage to select a web site topic that has affiliate programs which pay lifetime commissions or residual commissions - the sort reviewed at LifetimeCommissions.com.You'll earn repeat commissions when "your" customers make more purchases.Build a useful, interesting web site on your niche .

STEP 5: Build a useful, interesting web site on your nicheHere's an very important step. Many newcomer affiliates who fail do so because they have overlooked its importance.Don't just build a website. Build a useful, interesting website on your niche.One of the best ways is to build a site which solves people's problems. Useful sites also often help their visitors decide which products to buy.Create a content rich, keyword-rich site, designed to be found in search engines.Show your personality. Have a bit of fun. Be memorable. You need to connect with your visitors. Remember that people like buying from people they like.There's no space in this affiliate program tutorial to describe how to build a website. For that, you'll need a good instruction manual.If you're short of money, you can hunt for free information on sites such HTMLGoodies.You'll save yourself an enormous amount of time and frustration if you take the plunge and buy a good instruction manual.Here are the two best options:(1.) For keen do-it-your-selfers, I recommend Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook.Rosalind is a real been-there-done-that super affiliate.Her instruction manual shows you how she builds very successful sites using web authoring software.It starts right at the beginning, discussing topics such as myths about doing business online, mistakes to avoid, how to choose the best topic, how to choose the right domain name, etc.The book, updated in May 2006, takes you step-by-step through the whole process.One particularly useful feature is her explanation of how she achieves high conversion rates (visitor-to-sales ratios), achieving conversion rates of 4% or 6% while most affiliates are happy with 1%.Another of the strengths of the book is her descriptions of a wide variety of ways to get traffic to your site. This is important - too many affiliates rely on just one or two traffic-generating methods. The more traffic-generating methods you have, the safer your business is.Rosaland is genuinely successful, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Now she's also a very successful author, with sales of more $1 million from her book, which is excellent value.When you learn from her, you're learning from a winner.Learn more about Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook here.(2.) For affiliates who want to simplify things as much as possible and automate the tedious techie stuff, I recommend Ken Evoy's Site Build It (SBI).SBI is a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting suite of tools, all in one place.Once you have SBI, you don't have to go scurrying all over the Net adding more tools and software. You have almost all you need in one package, so you can concentrate on the fun part - creating useful, interesting content.Here's what one happy SBI user saysSBI comes with a newly updated, truly comprehensive instruction manual, a step-by-step Action Guide, and a truly superb private forum where SBI users share information and help each other.SBI is the tool I give my assistants. Take the free Video Tour and you'll understand why.Ken Evoy's instruction manual is doing my work for me. First it taught Rupert and then Ros how to build a high quality, successful, revenue-generating site. Now it's being used by another assistant to whom I outsource website maintenance.You could build a site without SBI, but using it saves you time and effort by simplifying the process. It provides a recipe for business success.SBI teaches you how to optimize your web pages so they'll be found in search engines. After building a page, you click the "Analyze It" button and it tells you what you need to do to improve it.The SBI technique really works. Two of the SBI sites that Rupert built are included in the case studies on the SBI site.

STEP 6: Add affiliate linksAs you write the articles for your site, weave affiliate links into them. Always have a typical visitor in mind as you write the articles. Speak to that visitor.Your task as an affiliate is to help your visitor decide what to buy.One successful technique is to gradually lead your visitor towards a purchase. Start by outlining a problem, discuss a good solution that has worked for you, and end the article with a link that is a call to action, such as a hyperlink that says, "Find out more here."Your task as an affiliate is NOT to sell (that's the merchant's job) but to presell, to warm up your visitors. You want your visitors in a ready-to-buy frame of mind when they arrive at the merchant's site.For superb advice on preselling, I strongly recommend you join Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. It's free to join.Ken is an absolute whiz at preselling and he's renowned for working extremely hard to help his affiliates succeed. He has a superb program. It's been No.1 in my Top 10 for several years. I earn five-figure monthly commissions from this affiliate program.

STEP 7: Place AdSense ads on your siteIf you have a good, popular site, it's remarkably easy to make good money with Google AdSense. AdSense is free to join.Sign up for AdSense. Here's an excellent free AdSense tutorial.Get good quality links to your site .

STEP 8: Get good quality links to your siteWithout links to your site, your site won't be found in the search engines. So you MUST get links to your site, if possible from "authority" sites - ones that have lots of links to them.First, link to other sites. Choose sites that have similar or related themes, and invite those sites to link to you.This is hugely important. Search engines love sites that have many links to them - especially if those links come from sites which are themselves popular.Now you see why I said build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, people are more likely to link to your site.Here's an article I wrote describing how to get reciprocal links.Reciprocal links should be only a small part of your marketing strategy - not your whole marketing strategy.Even better than reciprocal links are one-way links. Here's an article describing how to get one-way links.Some of these one-way links techniques are fairly advanced and require considerable work. Most of your competitors will be too lazy to do them, so you'll have a big advantage if you do. They can make the difference between a hobby site and a serious, very profitable business.

STEP 9: Anchor textYou'll also need to understand the importance of anchor text, the words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when they link to your site.To search engines, anchor text is very important.

STEP 10: List your site in major directories and niche directories in your industry.You probably already know about Yahoo! (good but expensive) and DMOZ (often takes months to get into).Here are some more directories (some charge a fee):
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
Business.com
GoGuides
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYearLooksmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind
Guides to web directories
David Mahler has a Guide to Web Directories. It's a good list of recommended web directories.Here's another list: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.phpHow to find niche directories:Go to Search It!www.searchit.com (It's a very handy free research tool.) Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories" Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It! Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are free.Place your articles on other websites .

STEP 11: Place your articles on other websitesWrite articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them (more challenging.This step isn't absolutely essential, but it helps enormously if you do it. Now you understand why it was so important that you chose a topic that was easy to write about.

STEP 12: Add more pages and get more links. Keep adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich pages (you do research at Wordtracker for this) and keep encouraging more sites to link to your site.Make friends with other web site owners, and more people will link to you...

STEP 13: Be patient.If your new site is typical, nothing much will seem to happen for the first couple of months or so, and you'll probably become frustrated and find it hard to believe that this is going to work.You're likely to feel annoyed, cheated and ready to quit. You're likely to be a prime target for people selling get-rich-quick junk.Many affiliates give up at this stage. Stick with it. If you're persistent and get the details right, the process I'm describing works beautifully.Learn something new every day. Do something to improve your business every day. If you do this, success is inevitable.

STEP 14: Tweak your siteTo boost your conversion rate (your visitor-to-sales ratio), try little experiments, one thing at a time.Try changing the heading on a page, the words, the colors, the placement of your links. With each change wait until about 1,000 visitors have seen the change, and monitor your affiliate commissions to see if they rise or fall.You do this because you understand that if 1% of your visitors are buying and tiny changes boost your success rate to 2%, you'll DOUBLE your commissions.

STEP 15: The futureWhen you reach your goal of $300 a month, you wonder whether you should expand your site, perhaps adding a newsletter, an autoresponder course or two, a forum, RSS newsfeeds, a blog, a whitepaper, a report to sell ... and turn it into a portal. You dream big. Perhaps you even start dreaming of having your own affiliates promoting your reports for you...Or perhaps you just research another little overlooked niche and start on your next simple little, low-maintenance money-generating site.It can be done. The main ingredient needed is persistence. Been there, done that, and I have a very nice lifestyle to prove it.The $300 a month target is very conservative. If that's all you earn, you've done something "wrong". You haven't chosen profitable keywords carefully enough, you haven't built enough attractive, keyword-rich pages, you haven't learned the basics of optimizing pages for search engines, or you haven't attracted enough good quality links to your site.That's the wonderful thing about this business. You can make lots of mistakes and still earn useful money. Just don't make TOO many mistakes.

STEP 16: Take the first stepThat's the one that matters most.I suggest you go back and read through this affiliate program tutorial again.Picture yourself owning a successful Internet business. Picture yourself opening letters and finding checks in them. Picture yourself going into your PayPal account and seeing the latest commissions you've been paid by affiliate merchants.Imagine enjoying yourself spending the money, perhaps even giving up your day job so that you can concentrate on your own business.Now take the first step.
bukky ogunlusi,
http://internetbizmind.blogspot.com

3 ways to drive traffic to your website or blog

Affiliate program participants rely on sales to make money withaffiliate programs. The only thing is that many new participants forget that they also need to rely on websitetraffic. After all, without traffic, no one will be able to seeyour affiliate products, let alone buy them. That is why, ifyou are in an affiliate program, you need to work on increasingyour traffic. There are a number of steps that you can take toincrease your traffic. Just three of these steps are outlinedbelow.

STEP # 1 SEO If you are an established webmaster, you likely already knowwhat SEO is. If not, you need to familiarize yourself with itright away. SEO, which is also known as search engineoptimization, may have an important impact on the success ofyour website, even its failure. The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase yoursearch engine ranking. Having a high search engine rankingincreases your chances of seeing traffic from search engines. Search engine optimization encompasses a number of differentmethods, but one of the most important is content. You need tohave content on your website; it is what search engines pickup.You will also want to use keyword tracking tools; they enableyou to determine what keyword phrases internet users aresearching with. Using those keyword phrases on your website issure to increase your website traffic.

STEP # 2 Article Distribution Have you heard of article directories before? Article directories are websites that act as hosts for collections ofarticles. They often contain a large collection of articles,sometimes even millions of articles. In exchange for providingyour content free of charge, article directories will allow youto insert a link at the end of your article. This link shoulddirect readers to your online website, namely the page thatoutlines the affiliate products that you are selling. Not onlywill it help to increase your website traffic, but your salesmay also increase.When it comes to submitting to article directories, which isoften referred to as articles distribution, you are advised tocreate yourself a schedule. To effectively use articledistribution, you need to submit multiple articles. In fact,the more articles the better. You should create a goal foryourself, like submitting at least five articles a month. It isalso important that you create content that is relevant to yourwebsite. If it is not, your readers might not click on yourclink; thus defeating the purpose of submitting to articledirectories.

STEP #3 Blogging Over the past few years, the popularity of blogging hasskyrocketed. In addition to personal blogs, a large number ofonline businesses are now relying on blogs to help increasetheir website traffic and you can too. Blogs are nice becauseyou are given choices. You can create your own, free blog oryou can pay to have your blog hosted on your own domain name. When creating a blog, you can create your own content, which mayinclude product reviews or recommendations. In fact, you don'teven have to write your own content. You can use content frommany free article directories; many will give you free usagerights. Speaking of article directories, if you submitted yourown articles, you can even use them for your blog. The onlything you need to remember is to link back to your originalwebpage. Doing so in each blog post will help to increase yourtraffic. The above mentioned three traffic increasing steps are just afew of the many that you can take. These three; however, are afew of the easiest ways that you can go about increasing yourwebsite traffic. With a small amount of effort, you can easilysee an increase in traffic, in what seems like no time at all. In fact, you will not only see an increase in traffic, but youmay also see an increase in your affiliate sales.
To your success,
bukky ogunlusi
http://internetbizmind.blogspot.com
P.S. Increasing your website traffic will not only look good for your website, but it may also help your pockets, money wise.

Free Report on how to make $500 monthly

How to bum rightly

The difference between bum marketing and Article marketing
is that article marketing sells any product but bum marketing sells
Products with a lower number of search, at least 30,000 searches in google.

WHAT IS BUM MARKETING: Bum marketing is a method of advertising?
Affiliate products through a website or blogsite by posting articles about the
Products in Ezine directories so as to get no1 search in google. In other word
You pick a product,write articles on them in Ezine directories after 2 days or less,
google put your article on their site among the first ten for FREE. Since bum marketing
is all about selling products/market, then I think it is better we understand what ‘’Niche market’’is all about.

How do I find a niche?
This is where the money in bum-marketing start. The first and only place I use to get
Niche market is www.nicheaday.com. After signing up you will be sent different niches
Market that has a high number of search. Expect a different niche everyday .Finding and
Locating a niche market requires diligent search but you will need some keyword research tool
and software .Do a brainstorm of products. Create a list of keyword and phrases you think individual looking for this products may use. One keyword tool you shouldn’t do without is www.297dollarebooks.com/research.php because they give you the number of search it was done in google per keyword. You get to know the keyword suggestion+google result. After you have picked a niche market, you will need to get number of keyword on that niche market, for example Acne is a niche market under health with this software you will get list of keyword under acne like ‘’Acne treatment’’ ‘’how to cure acne in 3 days’’ e.t.c it will show you different keywords and the level of competition on each keyword. Below are list of niche market/keywords you can start with immediately:
consulting
spyware
Digital photography
Bankruptcy
Bahamas
Information technology
use other program software like:
www.inventory.overture.com
www.adwords.google.com/Select/KeywordToolExternal
www.wordtracker.com
www.pixelfast.com/overture

These are some hot market keyword at the moment but you can decide to spend time to get your own niche market. Finding a niche market can open the door to a profitable online business. Research the market to see if there are suitable products which match your niche. To help you find more on niche topic read ken Evoy’s Free Affiliate master course. Choose a topic that is easy to write about. You don’t have to choose a topic which has expensive keyword. Often topics that have expensive keyword are very competitive.


HOW TO LOOK FOR AFFILAITE PRODUCTS TO SIGN UP
We are going to be looking at some ways to locate Affiliate products that you can sell and earn commission from. lets look at click bank, as at now they are the largest information product website, with more than 100,000 Digital product on their list. The first thing to do is to register as an ‘’affiliate’’ at www.clickbank.com from there you can go to the marketplace link. put you niche market name at the ‘’keywords’’ box, then click enter…. In less than 30seconds you will have different affiliate products displayed .look for the product that specifically sell your niche market but make sure they pay a minimum of $15 to their affiliates Another important thing to note is that the sales page of the product is good enough to make a potential customer buy the product .To read the sales letter of any of the affiliate link to the product click on the ‘’view pitch page’’ link and also to get your affiliate link to the product click on ‘’hop link’’
HOW TO REGISTER IN CLICK BANK
To sell any affiliate product you have to be registered in click bank. if you want to start selling immediately and you don’t have live or reside in America or you are among the countries that click bank did not accept to use click bank, well don’t worry I will show you an alternative in registering with clickbank.www.graphcard.com provides you the opportunity of getting a USA personalized address which you can use to receive any item including check and guess what it will be sent to you in less than a week after they receive your check. The first thing to do is register and interestingly they give you a trial of 30days FREE. That means you get a USA address you will use for 30days and after that you upgrade to ‘’silver’’ where you just pay $4 every month .Are you surprise with $4 monthly you will continually receive check worth $500 or more.

HOW TO WRITE ARTICLE
One of the best way is to write article that solve people’s problem. I will give you a simple recipe for writing article………its really quite simple.

In the intro: Tell them what you are going to tell them in the article. Always have typical visitor in mind as you write the articles .speak to that visitor. Try and be descriptive as possible. Paint a clear picture upfront for your readers so they know immediately what you are presenting.

In the body: Tell them .keep paragraphs short .200-300 word is ok.

In the summary: Tell them what you told them.

If you don’t have a website you can as well use blogs. In bum-marketing two blogs are often use blogger and wordpress.

BLOGGER;
From the website www.blogger.com you will scroll down and click on the link that says ‘’create your blog now’’ it will redirect you to a page that ask you to fill some informations. Go ahead and fill the information then click on, after that it will finally take you to the place where you are asked to fill the desire blog address, blog title, blog description fill correctly ,you will be directed to the last page where you will be asked to select the blogsite template and after choosing your desired template. Your Blogsite is ready.
To your success,
bukky ogunlusi
http://internetbizmind.blogspot.com