Affiliate Is Not A Dirty WordBY: Sarah Smith
When I first started out on my journey to become a successful Internet marketer I used to wonder about all the advertisements I came across that begged me to join an affiliate program. They made huge claims about how much money I would earn if I joined them so I just ignored them. That is until I started to understand more about affiliates and affiliate programs. WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE? An affiliate is someone who promotes other people’s products or services. When you become an affiliate you have a money making business opportunity but you have none of the worries or expenses of a typical business. You’ll never have the bother of dealing with processing or shipping an order or be involved with customer care. You will however receive money for your promotional efforts. When someone purchases a product or service through your efforts you receive a commission on the sale. All you have to do is promote and wait to receive your payment cheques. WHERE DO I FIND AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM? There are literally thousands of affiliate programs to choose from. Many of them will tell you that you will earn thousands and thousands of dollars per month if you join them. They will state all the amazing benefits to you and how new and fabulous their particular product or service is. I’m sure you have seen these advertisements everywhere on the Internet. If you type in affiliate programs into your search engine you will see what I mean. You will also just come across them as you are surfing. It can be quite over whelming to make a choice. HOW DO I DECIDE WHICH AFFILIATE PROGRAM IS FOR ME? There are three approaches to choosing the right program for you. Choose something that has a high demand Choose something that you have a passion for Combine the above two points so you will have a product that is in high demand and you are passionate about it. I personally think a combination of these approaches is the best. If you choose something that is in high demand then there will be a market for the product or service. It is essential to have a market otherwise you will find that no one will be interested in buying from you. The down side here however is when there is a high demand there is also a lot of competition. If you choose something you are passionate about then you’ll have more fun and you’ll be more passionate about what you are promoting. When you have something you can put your heart and soul into you will generally do better than if you are promoting something you don’t care about or know nothing about. Make a list of what you are passionate about. Then do a search on the key words to see how many other people have this same interest. You can do this by using a key-word search. Good Key Words offer free software you can download. Use this to search for the information. Just type in the key word and see how many results come up, i.e. how many people searched for those word over the last month. Then use your search engine to locate your affiliate program. For example my personal primary interests evolve around living a better life. This means I am interested in health, wealth, developing better relationships and emotional and spiritual well being. Because I have these fundamental desires I searched for an affiliate program that helped me to attract more of these things into my life. You may decide to go with just one program. The ideal situation would be to find one program. Understand how it works then branch out to include a few more that connect to your primary interest. Once you’ve understood what’s involved in promoting your primary program it will be only a little more effort to hook up with other programs and start increasing your monthly cheques! You may also find that as you go along you will need to buy a few things for example, web hosting and domain names. You may then see the value of adding these services to your affiliate list too. For example once I found my primary program I realised I had to advertise in order to get customers. I also discovered that I really did need my own website even though I had acquired several free ones when I joined my affiliate program. So I learnt all about web hosts and domain names and website design. As I went along I picked up a few more affiliate programs. After much trial and error I came to develop an understanding of the concept of organic search engine optimisation. I loved the whole concept so I added this to my list of programs too. I have also developed a deeper understanding and appreciation for how Internet business works. HOW DO I MAKE AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM WORK FOR ME? The big thing is PROMOTION. You will need to promote your affiliate products or services. When you join an affiliate program you will usually be given one or more free websites and some links and banners. When someone clicks onto the links or banners and purchases the product or service you will receive a commission. This is how affiliate programs work. Regardless of which program you are involved in, advertising and promoting your links and banners will become your number one priority! If you are not prepared for this you will not be successful. It is that simple. There is no way around this. The best way to do this is by becoming educated in the right things to do. You have a choice of paying for advertising or not paying for advertising. A great place to start is with understanding how organic search engine optimisation works and how to get it to work for you. This method of advertising is time consuming to get set up if you do it manually but once your done it will provide you with an endless source of free targeted traffic to your website. There are soft-ware programs you can buy that will get you set up if your short on time. Unfortunately the truth is that 95% of Internet entrepreneurs make no money. There are lots of reasons for this. Some of the more serious and common reasons are that many people just don’t understand how to promote. Many still don’t even realise that they have to have their own websites. Many spend more money than they are comfortable with because they head down the road of paid advertising and they are not in a position to afford this. My best advise to you is that you enjoy your affiliate programs. Get your own website. Learn about organic search engine optimisation and spend your money wisely. I hope this article will help position you for great success with you Internet marketering
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