METHOD 2: AFFILIATE MARKETING

 Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a way of making money online based on performance. The  business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. The Affiliate marketing industry has four core players:

A.    Merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'),

B.       The network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments),

C.    The publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'),

D.    The customer (the person that makes the purchase)

Affiliate programs are also called associate programs and it is a deal between an advertiser and a publisher.

Different affiliate programs (in-house and the ones on various affiliate networks) follows different models. An affiliate program model can be: Cost Per Action (CPA), Cost Per Lead (CPL), Cost Per Sale (CPS), or even Cost Per Click (CPC).

• Cost Per Action (CPA) model pays you for specific actions and it can be simple form submissions, downloads, surveys, etc.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL) model pays for leads and it’s usually a “signup” that involves email or credit card verification (because it makes the lead more valuable).
• Cost Per Sale (CPS) model pays for actual sales and it means they share a percentage of sale value with you.
• Cost Per Click (CPC) model as you probably know pays for “clicks” — no matter whether your referral traffic helped them generate a lead/sale or not.

The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Some Salient Truth About Affiliate Income Potential

§  There is no easy way to make money online or offline.

§  Anyone can make a very successful and lucrative career out of affiliate marketing.

§  Most people who attempt it will not make a very successful and lucrative career out of affiliate marketing.

Steps To Successful Affiliate Marketing

Step 1.   Choose your Niche:  A “niche” really is a targeted group of people with a common interest or need. Choose a niche about something you are passionate about that way you find working on your site and promoting it enjoyable otherwise it would be a tedious work.

However when it comes to a choice between profitable Niche sites and Passionate Niche site,  you will be better off choosing a profitable niche site if your goal is to make money online.

Qualities of a Good Niche

• It should not be too General or Broad e.g. Home Improvement is too broad and can be narrowed down to for example wireless security systems. This will ensure that you have fewer sites to compete with.
• It should have low competition, which means the number of sites already targeting that niche are few.  Which means your site will be able to get on the first page in Google Search. High Competition implies your site will not appear on the first page when a search for your niche site is made using your Keyword.  Do your research before you commit to your niche website idea.   

Step 2.  Build Your Website.

To build a website you need a name that is unique to your site called a Domain Name.  The practice is that you buy one.  Make sure the name you choose can easily be related with your niche.  The idea is to drive relevant traffic to your site, so the domain name must contain relevant keyword.

“What is a Keyword?
A keyword is a word or string of words that are used to query Google or any other search engine for that matter. You type these keywords into your search engine of choice to get more information. For instance, if I type ‘security cameras’ into Google, I am asking the search engine to provide me websites that have information on the subject.”

You can buy a domain name from an Internet Domain Registrar. These companies manage the registration of domain names examples of these companies are NameCheap.com and GoDaddy.com

You will also need a hosting platform to make your website visible to the public.  You can use a free (e.g. blogspot) or paid web hosting service ( e.g. hostgator). 

Step 3.  Drive Traffic to Your Website.   No traffic = No Sales

Getting targeted website traffic is the challenge for every website owner.   It will either make you or break you.  It’s all nice having a great looking site but if you can’t get people to visit it, it will just be a big waste of time, energy and money. 

To get traffic to your website, you must first create awareness for your site and give them reason or reasons to stay on your pages.  Good content will keep visitors on your page.  For you to get people to visit for the first time, they must know that you exist, it is your responsibility to introduce your site through available channels.

These channels can be free (Social media) or paid

The best way to get targeted traffic to your website is by putting a lot of good content on your website.  You can either write your content yourself or outsource them to good writers.

The main reason why most people use the Internet is to get information. The information can be about anything under the sun.

You as niche website owner, need to think about the kinds of information “your visitors” will be searching for.  You then tailor your website to answer as much of these questions as possible. Including products reviews on affiliate products will help your visitor to take a decision about the product.

If you can answer many questions for your website visitors, and put those answers down on your webpage, people will find you!

Step  4. Monetize your website

Register with affiliate networks: Different networks have different documentation requirements.  Most of them are easy to follow and do not require any technicalities.

Get your affiliate links and paste on your site. After registering you are given an affiliate link( normally a set of codes with your affiliate identity or ID), which you can copy and paste on a strategic position on your site.  This position should be such as can be easily seen by visitors to your site.

 Monitor your sales and analyse your traffic:  It is important that you monitor your site so as to gain information that will help you improve on your strategies.  You can know the position that draws most traffic or the products people click on more frequently from analyzing your sales and traffic results.  You then put more efforts on the ones that make you more profit.

Finding Affiliate Program

To find affiliate program, search for one using any of the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.  Some popular Affiliate Networks include,

 

1.         CJ Affiliate

CJ Affiliate was formerly known as Commission Junction (or simply CJ.  It is one of the oldest affiliate network.  It is free to join the CJ Network and there are no special website requirements Once your application is approved, you can simply sign in to CJ Account Manager and apply to different affiliate programs.  CJ deactivates a publisher account if it doesn’t generate a commissionable transaction in six months.  You will also be charged a $10 dormant account fee.

2.Rakuten Affiliate Network

Rakuten Affiliate Network was formerly known as LinkShare.  The consistent investment in technology and people seems to be a winning formula in voting Rakuten Affiliate Network five times #1 Affiliate Network.  

3.     ShareASale

ShareASale is perhaps the most admired affiliate network with over 4,000 affiliate programs. There are so many affiliate programs on the web that are exclusive to ShareASale. So if you are unable to find an advertiser in CJ then most probably it’s there at ShareASale.

And ShareASale also has a lot of similarities with CJ like user experience, payment, dormant account policy, and affiliate program types. So yes, all inactive ShareASale accounts will be deactivated if its balance is less than $25.

4.     Affiliate Window

Affiliate Window is one of the best affiliate network in Europe with an advertiser and publisher base of over 1,500 and 75,000 respectively. It’s got a user-friendly interface with real-time reporting.

Affiliate Window even supports deep linking so that you can link to any web page on the advertiser’s website using your affiliate link.

5.     eBay Enterprise Affiliate Network

eBay Enterprise Affiliate Network was formerly known as Pepperjam Network. The eBay Enterprise Affiliate Network is a proprietary platform that connects businesses with 200,000+ publishers and has over 1,500 advertisers

6.      Tradedoubler is perhaps the most popular affiliate network in Europe with over 2,000 advertisers.

Because there’s a very good chance that you won’t find an American retailer in Tradedoubler and likewise if you live in Europe then your favorite retailer could be there in Tradedoubler (and not in any of those American networks).

7. Zanox

Zanox is another affiliate network popular in Europe with over 4,000 advertisers. Some of these European affiliate networks becomes important when they have an exclusive relationship with a brand.

For instance, the super-popular handmade marketplace Etsy.com’s affiliate program is powered by Zanox. So you will need a Zanox publisher account to become an affiliate of Etsy.

8. MaxBounty: MaxBounty is a CPA network launched in 2004. For over 10 years, MaxBounty has been dedicated to providing affiliates with the good payouts on the some popular campaigns, and providing the very good and fast affiliate support.

9. PeerFly: PeerFly is a CPA affiliate network with 1,878 active affiliate offers. PeerFly Offers was built to index all of those offers and make it easy to go through them with or without a PeerFly publisher account.

10. FlexOffers:  FlexOffers is an affiliate marketing network that provides comprehensive solutions to both advertisers and publishers via multiple marketing options, various data delivery options, advanced payment solutions through NET 7, and ultimately - profitable partnerships .  They  have  6,000+ Affiliate Programs , which can be promoted using a selection of applications that includes content feeds, text links, and many others.

11. Clickbooth: The concept of Clickbooth's CPA (Cost-Per-Action) & CPC (Cost-Per-Click) affiliate marketing model is quite simple. They unite those who sell products with those who drive traffic. An Advertiser only pays when there is a sale, eliminating risk. Because the consumer is in control, the better the product is, the more value it will have and the more successful the company will become.

With this performance based model, barriers to entry are toppled for both those who want to drive traffic and those who want to sell products, thus eliminating boundaries.

Automated Affiliate Networks

These networks literally automates all the processes like advertiser selection, affiliate link placement, reporting, etc.

It works like this. Instead of partnering with advertisers they have partnered with various affiliate networks like CJ, ShareASale, etc. so that when a publisher is linking to a merchant (using direct links) it converts the regular links into affiliate links.

And the best thing is… if you are already using an affiliate link then it doesn’t convert at all. It’s that easy. All you need to do is paste a code on all the web pages that you want to monetize. If you are a web developer then you know that it takes just minutes.

12. Skimlinks

Skimlinks is a ‘cool’ automated affiliate networks that gives access to over 20,000 merchants. And it basically means that, when you join any of them you get immediate access to over 20,000 affiliate programs without the hassles like sign up, application, affiliate code generation, etc.

There’s absolutely no cost to join Skimlinks and it works on a revenue split model.

13. VigLink

VigLink has over 45,000 advertisers but more or less everything seems similar to Skimlinks. Like Skimlinks, VigLink also works on a revenue split model.

You can always avoid an affiliate network and join an advertiser’s in-house affiliate program (when it’s available) if you want.

Some affiliate programs are in-house examples include:

14. ClickBank

ClickBank is the most popular marketplace for digital products with over 6 million products and 200 million customers. In other words, ClickBank is the Amazon for digital products.

So if you are looking for a guide (or an ebook) then you can search the ClickBank marketplace and if it’s there then you can instantly purchase and download it — there’s no need to wait.

And if you’re a digital product creator, then it’s super-easy (and cheap too) to sell your products on ClickBank. And that makes the ClickBank Affiliate Program one of the best around.

As a ClickBank affiliate, you can get up to 75% commission on all sales (including recurring payments).

15. Digital River

oneNetworkDirect by Digital River is again an affiliate network for digital products.

16. iTunes Affiliate Program

iTunes Affiliate Program lets you promote the millions of songs and thousands of apps, books, movies, etc. on iTunes and earn a commission for all sales referred by you.

17. Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is perhaps the web’s most popular affiliate program.

Amazon is the biggest online retailer in the U.S. and is one of the most popular company in the U.S. (and world too).

Amazon is so huge that it’s got over a million products that you can promote on your website or blog and make money.

Amazon pays up to 10% commission for all affiliate sales. Since the inventory on Amazon is so diversified, the commission rate changes frequently.

You can link to any web page on Amazon and get paid for all purchases made by your referral.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

18. eBay Partner Network

eBay Partner Network represents eBay.com’s and its partners’ affiliate programs across the world. The commision rate depends upon the category of products that you are promoting.

 And you also get a bonus for referring new eBay buyers.

While this list is not exhaustive but it will go a long way to get you started.  Remember there is no free money anywhere, but one thing is certain if you try hard enough you will definitely make it even as a professional Internet Marketer.

You can follow me on facebook or twitter.