How To Become A Powerful Affiliate Marketer Part 1

Day 1 - What Are Affiliate Programs? Welcome to the wide world of affiliate marketing!Affiliate marketing (sometimes called referral marketing) is based business people. So, what is an affiliate and what does he or she do? The affiliate marketer acts as a "middle man" between merchant and consumer, but without adding anything to the consumer's cost. Affiliates do not mark up or resell products. Instead, the affiliate educates and directs the consumer to a product, and he receives a percentage of the sale in commission from the merchant. The affiliate acts as an independent lead generator for the merchant by bringing in new customers.

This is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant. The affiliate can reap a full-time income marketing a whole suite of products that he does not own. He doesn't pay for product creation, doesn't have to ship anything and doesn't deal with customer service issues or returns. The merchant benefits from the influx of new customers, the boatloads of cheap traffic and low cost advertising. Merchants get their product and their brand in front of thousands of potential buyers without paying a dime until someone makes a purchase. It is truly a pay for performance arrangement.

Day 2 - Choosing an Affiliate Program Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, it is necessary to choose the right program for you. There are almost as many programs out there as there are products! When you first start out, it's easy to go overboard signing up to as many programs as possible, but this isn't the right way to go about it. First, you need to decide on a area of particular interest to you. What products do you know the most about and think you could do the best job of selling? Once you identify your specialty, you begin by sorting through the available merchants and examine the structure of their affiliate programs. Key areas to investigate:

1. When and how do you get paid? Find out whether the program pays you weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, etc. Most programs have a minimum payout amount, meaning that you don't receive your commissions until hitting a minimum number of sales for the pay period. You'll also want to find out whether the programs pays you via check, direct deposit, Pay Pal or any combination of the three. With our PushButtonHealthGuide.com, we are linked to clickbank.com, you will be rest assured that you will be paid accordingly twice a month.

2. How much do you make per sale? Remember you'll be investing your own money into advertising and other expenses to promote these programs. Therefore, you should seek programs which reward their affiliates well. You'll also want to seek out high-value products. A fifty to sixty percent commission on a $100 product is very good, but it's not so hot if you're promoting a $15 product.

At the time of writing, we offer 75% of commission to our affiliate, which is the highest by the industry standard.

3. Is the program managed well? Is this a reputable company? Larger companies usually have "affiliate managers" devoted to maintaining contact with their affiliates. Even if you go with a smaller outfit, they should at least offer clear contact information. You might want to try e-mailing them at their contact address to see how fast they respond to you. Mismanaged programs are, at best, a sign of disorganization and, at worst, could indicate a company in trouble.

The last thing you want is to be sitting on a grand worth of hard earned commissions and see the merchant go out of business before paying you. Keeping these factors in mind, here are some great places to seek out products you can promote:

www.clickbank.com (pushbuttonhealthguide.com uses)
www.cj.com
www.linkshare.com

Commission Junction (CJ) and Linkshare provide affiliate hubs for major brand corporations and mid-sized businesses. Their focus is generally on tangible products and services. Clickbank is the leading source online for affiliates of information products like e-books, software and membership sites.

Day 3 - Five Approaches to Affiliate Marketing As a new affiliate, one of the first things you'll want to know where and how to promote your affiliate link. Today we'll cover several options and discuss the merits of each method.

1. Direct Links via PPC Advertising If you use PPC advertising, you can embed your affiliate to the ad and send the prospect directly to the merchant's site. This is a really lazy to do things, though. You might make a few sales, but it's far better to approach the process as outlined in tactic 2. Linking to Your Site via PPC Advertising Place ads for your target keywords and direct the prospects to greet them with an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter. Once you've collected a prospect's email address, they are yours to market to on a repeat basis.

3. Build Content Focused Sites This approach aims for long term traffic through search engine optimization. You'll need to publish content related to the type of product you're trying to sell. Searchers will be drawn in by informative articles. You're affiliate links will be sprinkled discreetly across the site.

4. Advertise in E-Zines This is a good method to use if you can find targeted lists for your product. E-zine ads can be purchased in most cases, and in other cases you can snatch them up for free by bartering with the list owner. 5. Purchase text link or banner advertising on high traffic sites. This type of advertising isn't quite as popular as it used to be. It is most effective when you can find high traffic sites for smaller niche subjects. These sites tend to focus heavily on content and run only a handful of ads on site. Space is limited and rates are likely to be at a premium.

Day 4 - Beating the Odds This will be a cold, hard dose of truth, but you need to know the facts. The majority of people who go into affiliate marketing fail to break even. Some people will earn thousands in this business, while others will struggle to generate even a few hundred in sales per month.

Affiliate marketing is very competitive and cut-throat. You've got to stay on your toes to win in this game. While I can't guarantee your success, I can provide you with some fundamental knowledge that just might help you beat the odds. Get ready to learn how to play hardball with the super affiliates.

#1: Never Stop Searching for Profitable Keywords Successful affiliates are never satisfied with the status quo. Even if you endured hours sweat producing research to find your target keywords, keep on searching out new ones and adding them to your list.

#2: Become Obsessed with Testing and Tracking If you aren't testing and tracking absolutely everything - and I mean everything from your keywords, your ppc ads, your web site copy and any thing else you can think of to test/track, the odds are stacked against you. Successful affiliates are maniacal about testing and tracking every detail of their campaigns. They are details oriented and use all of their collected data to refine their entire system on a day to day basis.

#3: Innovate and Update Constantly Keep your approach fresh by testing new conversion tactics. If you rely on PPC engines for advertising, start throwing in e-zine advertising into the mix. If that doesn't produce the desired results, investigate banner ads, classified ads, message boards, offline media and anything else you can think of to get your message across.

Don't rely on one conversion channel. If you send your prospects direct to the merchant, change up your campaign and start sending leads to your own web site and start collecting email addresses. Experiment with your content and your web copy. Try out different link headlines. Never settle for the familiar. Tweak everything until you've squeezed the maximum conversion power out of it.

You may consider joining our lucrative affiliate program here:

About The Author: Roy Chan is a wellness practitioner. Receive free weekly health tips and claim your 4 bonus gifts (worth $127) when you subscribe to the Health & Wellness newsletter. Go here now for details:   

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