Money And Money Again

When it comes to skepticism, few things are met with as much doubt as affiliate marketing. We all have heard both sides of the story. There are those who claim to have made millions of dollars merely by being an affiliate online. Others are angry and feel cheated because they have no such thing to boast about through their affiliate marketing efforts. So who is telling the truth? Most probably both!

Like anything else, you will only get results from affiliate if you do it right. Look at it this way: if it were that easy then everyone would be making heaps of cash from affiliate marketing. But the reality is that only a selected few actually make big money from affiliate marketing. Most people never really learn how to do it right. The reason they are not able to get it right is precisely because they do not understand it before they get into it.

The main problem with most people who try a hand at affiliate marketing is that they enter the field without actually knowing what needs to be done. There is only one reason why people become affiliate marketers: to make money. But making money is the end result. But before that, there are a number of things you need to get done in order to ensure that you get there.

So being a good affiliate marketer is not entirely possible without a good amount of training. Many affiliate marketers believe that it is all about common sense. Again, if it were as easy as that, everyone with access to the Internet would be rich. It is not enough to have an affiliate marketing site, you actually have to work on it before it will give you results.

Maintaining a good relationship with your merchant is key. Over the years, merchants have started becoming stricter about who their affiliates are and are revising policies in order to regulate affiliate marketers’ actions. As an affiliate marketer, you need to realize that anything and everything you do via your affiliate marketing site reflects on the merchant. Merchants take this very seriously and it is not uncommon for merchants to cut out affiliate who do not behave according to the merchant’s policies. Many merchants have also started tracking their affiliate’s actions. For example, there are a number of merchants who keep an eye on the emails that affiliates are sending out. Most merchants do believe that all these types of communications by their affiliates have a direct connection to their standing. Merchants are, especially, careful to ensure that affiliates do not send out any spam.

However, keeping track of affiliates is not an easy job. A merchant might have quite a few affiliates and the team that manages these affiliates might be made up of only a few people. Most merchants do not have the time or the resources to ensure that all affiliates are tracked all the time. This, of course, does not mean that you can afford to be slack as an affiliate marketer. The merchant might track your actions for the sake of its own reputation, but your success or failure as an affiliate marketer depends purely on your efforts.

You can look at affiliate marketing from the merchant’s or the marketer’s point of view. At the end of the day, both parties need the other to sustain. While the affiliate’s goal might be to earn money, the merchant values the affiliate’s participation just as much. Not only does an affiliate get merchants increased sales (read: profit), but the affiliate also gets the merchant new customers. Keep in mind that the cost of getting new customers is much higher than retaining old ones so merchants would be more than happy to have these new customers through the affiliates efforts.

As for what affiliate marketers actually have to do, your main priority should be to promote the merchant’s product as much as possible. Of course, there are costs for keeping a website up and running. Affiliate marketers keep their site running by getting advertisers. That is usually the best way to cover the costs that you will be faced with.

It is safe to assume that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that is exactly what affiliate marketing will teach you. Affiliate marketing thrives on idea of being mutually beneficial. Though it might seem that merchants are overly stern about an affiliate’s behavior, the truth is that merchant’s need the affiliate just as much as the affiliate needs the merchant. Merchants are often caught between letting affiliates have some leeway and holding them back.

Affiliate marketing is definitely not an easy task and getting success is not a guarantee. The affiliate has to put in a lot of marketing efforts to get commissions in return. At the end of the day, affiliate marketing will give to you only as much as you put into it.

| posted in Affiliate Tips | 0 comments [ More ]

Once you have made the decision to become involved with an affiliate marketing product, your first major task will be to drive traffic to your affiliate page. Now, some beginners believe that if they just buy thousands of clicks on their site that eventually they will get somebody interested and a sale will be attained. I like to relate to this as the needle in a haystack approach, because that is in all likelihood that this approach to affiliate marketing your product will be successful. More likely you’ll have wasted money on clicks that had no interest in your affiliate product and stayed mere seconds before going on to the next site.

Targeted traffic is what you need. Targeted traffic are readers surfing the Internet who have an interest in the topic about your affiliate product and are driven into your site with a thinking of taking your offer. Oftentimes targeted traffic is obtained from ads at search engines such as Yahoo or Google and articles like this. In most instance, they are the keywords or phrases that will draw in traffic. Choices of keywords and phrases are the most important component of marketing on the Internet. As an example, you would not place an ad "Fly to Hawaii Free" and then set up a campaign to sell winter products or services. There are keywords and phrases that are associated with every product and service that will generate traffic to your site. Looking for those keywords are your key to a sale. Instead of merely acquiring clicks to your site. That targeted traffic will dictate the success of your online business in affiliate marketing.

Now, how do you find keywords? One of the best places to find keywords will be at the advertising sites themselves, such as Google, where you will find tools to assist you in the selection of your keywords. You can examine ads for similar products and services and get a feel for the key words that they are using to target traffic as well. It takes dedication to educating yourself about the use of keywords, but once you master the process you will find your marketing efforts will improve exponentially and the amount of money you lose because of poor ads will drop dramatically.

Now, how do you find keywords? One of the best places to find keywords will be at the advertising sites themselves, such as Google, where you will find tools to assist you in the selection of your keywords. Be sure to include keywords and phrases in the title and several times in the body of your article.

I can’t stress enough how important educating yourself on keywords will be to your ultimate success. Keywords and phrases are the keys that will open the door of affiliate marketing success. Good luck.