CAUTION! What You Are About To Read May Increase Profitability!

Key Word / Key Phrase research, in my opinion, is the FOUNDATION for all marketing / web site design,  layout and COPY. Key Word / Key Phrase research is also foundational in off-line marketing.

Why you ask? I’m glad you asked!

Key Words / Key Phrases is foundationally important when:
1. Choosing your website URL
2. Writing COPY
3. Creating Web Site design and layout (photo “alt tag” info)

Foundational because knowing what your market is looking for, what problem they need to solve or what desires they have, guides you in: 
1. Website URL selection
2. Framing and developing site “copy”
3. Developing photo “alt tag” info so that…

          Your copy speaks directly to them.
     They (your market) can say, “Wow! This is speaking directly to me!”

Search Engine Basics: Why Key Words / Key Phrases are important

The Big Secret is There is No Big Secret
It’s true: the ‘big secret’ of search engine optimization is that there is no big secret. It is all about understanding what is going on, followed by the hard work and attention to detail that are common to many business activities.

Inside the Guts of a Search Engine
For simplicity’s sake, let’s say there are three pieces of software that together make up a search engine - the Spider software, the Index software and the Query software.
If you understand what these three do, then you have the foundation for getting your website to the top of the search engines.

Spiders - Crawls the web looking for new pages to collect and add to the search engine indices’. This is a metaphor. In reality, the spider doesn’t do any ‘crawling’ and doesn’t ‘visit’ any web pages. It requests pages from a website in the same way as Microsoft Explorer, or Firefox or whatever browser you use requests pages to display on your screen.

The difference is that the spider used to only index text, links and URL’s. Today they also idex images using the “alt tag” for the image. 

A spider loves links because a link leads it to other web pages that have the things that it loves, guess what? Text, links and URLs!

Index - The index makes sense of the mass of text, links and URLs using what is called an algorithm - a complex mathematical formula that indexes the words, the pairs of words and so on.

Searching “Google” or “Yahoo” is what we use when you go to a search engine - it is the front end that everybody thinks of as a search engine - familiar ground at last. It may look simple but it presents the results of all the quite remarkable search engine software that works away invisibly on our behalf.

The “SEARCH” query doesn’t search the web - it checks the records that have been created by its own index software. And those records have been made possible by the raw material the spider software collects.

What You Need to Understand About Search Engines
The words people use when they search therefore determine the results the search engine presents.

So search engine optimizers want to know the words people use when they search – KEY WORDS / KEY PHRASES.

How to do Key Word / Key Phrase analysis

1. Collect / Gather
2. Evaluate and Quantify
3. Educated Selection

Collect / Gather
Use FREE or paid Key Word (KW) research tools to gather all the KW that could apply to your business (pay special attention to the areas where you did not think would apply).

I like to use these FREE ”keyword tools”:
Google Keyword Tool 
SEO Book Keyword Selection Tool 
Trellian Free Search Term Suggestion Tool 

Also, a real good “Paid” Key Word / Key Phrase tool is:
NicheBot

Rank the key word / key phrase results based upon your business goals, potential target markets and “competition” based on how many pages are currently serving that keyword/keyphrase.

Evaluate
Take time to review all the current web sites that show prominently on the search engines. I normally only use Google, because Google carries the bulk of search engine traffic/searches.

Review the websites that already rank high for the key word / key phrase you are evaluating and make a judgement call on how well that website “serves” the search term. (This is a judgement call you have to make, there really isn’t a “formula” to figure this out).

Educated Selection
Based upon your evaluation, which Key Word / Key Phrase would best fit your business / internet marketing goals (or future target markets)?

Then ask yourself this question:
** Can any of these areas be Niched? **

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Keywords In Your Domain - Just Do It!

I’m going to hold off on the importance of keywords/key phrases for my next post. Having a domain name of your own, based upon proper keyword research is important. Let’s take a look at the differing aspects of “choosing a domain name”.

Website Content Management
The advantage of using the ready-made or “replicated” affiliate marketing website that is provided by the company that you have agreed to represent is that it is an easy way to do business. All you have to do is advertise your referral link.

The disadvantage of operating your affiliate marketing business in this manner is that you have little or no control over the design and contents of the website. In the early years of affiliate marketing on the Internet, it was easy to have an affiliate marketing website on the search engines index.

As affiliate marketing programs gained in popularity, search engine companies began to remove these replicated websites, because the content on all of them was exactly the same. Now it is almost impossible to submit a replicated website to a search engine and have it listed. If you’d like to read more on the “duplicate content” removal “Google” the term “google slap”.

This fact supports the advantage of having your own domain name. If there are 1,000 affiliates for the Widgets in a Flash company, and they all have websites on the search engines, which site a visitor chooses to learn about what this company can do for them is all a matter of luck.

Choosing your domain name to incorporate a keyword that relates to what you have to offer is extremely important. Your domain name IS your primary marketing tool.

Marketing Method Flexibility
Now that search engines have begun to remove replicated websites from their listings, a lot of the related marketing methods are following suit. Affiliate marketing is enough of a challenge, but it is almost impossible to distinguish yourself from other affiliates if you are using exactly the same website design and content.

It is important for you to have targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing website based on your product or service.

To accomplish this, your marketing efforts must be focused only on the people who are most likely to purchase the products.

Having your own domain name and website, allows you more flexibility in how and where you advertise. It gives you the ability to focus on what interests your prospective buyer. A person looking for widgets in Chicago is more likely to first choose to visit a site entitled “Windy City Widgets”, than “Widgets in a Flash”.

Administration Freedom
After your domain name, search engines are your most important marketing tool. With millions of websites on the Internet, this is the first resource that people use to find what they want to learn or purchase.

The fact that you create a website does not automatically mean that thousands of people will come to see what you have to offer, you have to combine the information that search engines use to index sites with the information that is of interest to your target market to create a balance that works in the best interests of your affiliate marketing business.

The way your site is designed can make a huge difference in how quickly the search engine index your site into their directories and what position it holds among the thousands of websites in your category of products and/or services.

In most cases, a replicated website is beyond your administrative reach, you do not have access to change anything about how the website is designed. The advertising sponsor decides whatever title, keywords and description used.

Choosing Your Domain Name
At this point, the advantages of having your own domain name should be very clear.  It will allow you to step away from the massive numbers of affiliates who are marketing for your advertising sponsor and focusing buyers’ attention on your website by using a keyword in your domain name.

Having in-depth knowledge of the benefits of your affiliate marketing product or service will help you to identify keywords that could be used in the search engines to use in your domain name.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

The Power of Titles - Claim Your Market!

One of the most important aspects of marketing is creating a Title. The power of a title is a dynamic that cannot be  overlooked. Consider the time an book author takes to “Title” a written work…

A Title has the ability to convey the “real meaning” without having to read through an entire work.

Take a stroll through the business/marketing section of your local book store and note (even write down) the titles of books that by the title alone you have a real good idea what the book is about.

A Domain Name of Your Own
Here is your first statement as an affiliate marketer. Complete this sentence:
“My website address is www. _________________________. com”

That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Domain name registration - choosing your TITLE tells others what you and your website is all about.

Domain names exist because of the Internet and now have become as valuable as physical real estate.

Why invest in registering your own domain name when there are many affiliate programs that supply websites to their representatives?

There are several reasons why it is more to your advantage to have your own website address:

· Website content management
· Marketing method flexibility
· Administration freedom

Investing the time and proper research into key words or key phrases is well worth the time and will reward you with profits. We’ll take a look through key word / key phrase research in my next article.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Affiliate Marketing Basics - “YOUR” Action Plan Checklist

Your Action Plan Checklist
Seventh in a series on Affiliate Marketing Basics…

The previous 6 articles on affiliate marketing have simply covered the basic points that you need to know about what affiliate marketing is and how you can profit from it.

As we begin moving into more “nitty gritty” information, take time to conisider:

· What is your motivation to become an affiliate marketer?
· How much money do you want to make per month?
· How many hours will you work per month?
· What are your THREE main areas of interest?
· Which products or services are related to these interests?
· What is your budget for your affiliate marketing business?
· Which commission plan do you like best?

Why make a distinction between your motivation, your interests and the amount of money you want to make? Because,  these are the three vital points that can “make or break” your success.

In whatever your work may be, there is a driving force that gives you the determination to complete the tasks that will bring you the income to support your lifestyle. Describe in words what it is that gives you the drive to work. Keep this and the rest of your action plan in front of you and read it everyday to help you stay focused as you make your way through this process. Go as far as to write this description down so you can go back and review it and refine it as you learn more about your new business venture.

We encourage you to be open-minded as you consider your interests. No matter what it is, there are other people in the world with the same interest. This creates the market for the related services and/or products, which in turn can create an affiliate marketing program.

There are many people who think that simply wanting to make money is motivation enough. It is difficult to devote hours to something that holds no interest for you when you are working on a salary basis. Choosing an affiliate marketing program that is related to your personal interest(s), gives you the opportunity to get paid while you are learning and sharing what you learn with people who share this interest.

Finally, the budget for your affiliate marketing business will cover (pay for) the basics of “setting up shop” on the Internet. This includes your domain name, your web hosting package and website design.

Coming up I will cover “putting up your affiliate marketing building”. I will cover how to bring all of the different components together to create an effective affiliate marketing business for yourself online.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Visitor “Actions” - Creating YOUR Income Stream

Sixth in a series on Affiliate Marketing Basics…

Affiliate marketing allows you to make money - creating as many income streams as you would like. There are some affiliate programs that offer only one way to make money, and there are others that give you a combination of ways to earn your commission. Choosing an affiliate program that offers you more than one way to earn money is great choice and of course, could result in more income for you.

A program that will pay you for a combination of any of these actions:

· the click of your referral link,
· the lead form they complete on their site,
· the trial download of their product or service
· and their purchase of the product or service

are the most popular because they are an affiliate marketing website’s gold mine. While they are few and far between, there are some programs that will pay for each of these actions.
If one visitor completes all of these actions, you will be paid 4 times – this is equal to 1 person buying 4 different products from the same store.

It provides you with four different ways to present the benefits of the product or service that waits on the other side of your referral link.

There are a variety of marketing approaches you can use to reach your prospect when you have more than one activity to promote.

The advertiser that has the foresight to offer many different ways to interact with their website visitors and offer the affiliate marketer an incentive for each of them, are represented by some of the best known names on the Internet; Amazon.com, Dell.com, and GoDaddy.com are just a few outstanding examples of lucrative and responsive affiliate programs.

COMMISSION CATEGORIES

Pay Per Sale
The most common form of affiliate marketing incentive is called Pay Per Sale (PPS).
When the visitor clicks you link and makes a purchase from the advertisers website, you are paid a percentage of the sale. This form is very popular with the large Internet retailers.

Advantage: You will make the most money from this type of affiliate marketing program on items that are considered “high ticket” items, i.e., sophisticated software like Adobe (Macromedia) Dreamweaver that retails for $899, a 10% commission of this sale is $89, a 25% commission of this sale is $224.75.

You can see how important it is to pay attention to the amount of the percentage.  If they are only offering a 2% commission on this same $899 item you will only earn $17.98.

Risk: You need to be aware that if the purchase is returned to the company for any reason, you will lose your commission as well.

Pay Per Lead
Information is the oil that makes the Internet run, and this is why the Pay Per Lead (PPL) type affiliate marketing programs is extremely popular. In this type of program, you are paid for every inquiry for information about the advertisers’ product or service that meets a certain criteria, i.e., the visitor is in a particular age group or income bracket.
Industries that cater to the basic human needs such as financing, housing and health tend to offer the most generous pay per lead programs.

Advantage: Because no purchase is involved, the chances are higher that the visitor will be “converted” from being a website visitor to a prospective customer when they complete the action of entering their contact information on the lead form.

Risk: Commissions are not as generous as pay per sale affiliate programs.

Pay Per Action
In this type of affiliate marketing program, the advertiser pays you when your referred visitor decides to download a trial version of their software or report.
Similar to pay per lead programs, the visitor has not made a purchase; they have simply agreed to take a closer look at what the advertiser has to offer.

As you would imagine, companies that offer electronic goods and services, such as publishers, computer and software companies dominate this particular market. In many cases, campaigns for pay per action are used in combination with pay per sale.

Advantage: The “try-before-you-buy” option encourages visitors to download the product with the understanding that it is for a specific period of time.

Risk: If the performance of the product or service fails to impress the visitor, they will simply cancel the program rather than purchase it.

Pay Per Click
The first and most famous of all affiliate marketing programs is called Pay Per Click. Thousands of merchants lost money when this affiliate marketing program technology became the target of malicious hackers. The sophisticated software programs that they developed to circumvent the tracking methods caused this form of affiliate marketing to become unpopular.

However, the pay per click model is enjoying a rebound in use. It has been adopted by contextual (“text”) advertising companies, who are using encrypted reporting and tracking features behind this technology to prevent fraud.

Advantage: The easiest affiliate marketing programs to promote, with a growing number of contextual ad providers to choose from.

Risk: Many of these contextual ad providers’ referral links use a large amount of website page space. Commissions can be very small i.e., $.005 per click or have extremely high payout levels, i.e. commissions only paid after 1,000 clicks.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Buyer BEWARE! Checking Out an Affiliate Program

Fifth in a series on Affiliate Marketing Basics…

What makes one affiliate marketing program better than another? Most of the experts in the field say that it is a combination of factors; here are 10 of the more important aspects to consider before you join any affiliate program:

The Affiliate Marketing Program Checklist

1. Minimum 25% Commission
The affiliate program has a great payment structure; meaning a high percentage of the purchase price.

2. Excellent Company Presentation
The website of the affiliate program you join should have a clean, attractive design, easy to navigate with full disclosure of their program details. Remember, you will be sending your prospective buyer and possibly, affiliates to this site.

3. Accurate Tracking Methods
The affiliate program should provide a comprehensive affiliate statistics page that lists the number of clicks, sales, lead and amount of commissions earned on a monthly basis.
The affiliate statistics should be updated automatically and immediately. Who wants to find out today about a sale you made in the previous month?

4. Marketing Tools
Make sure the affiliate program provides a wide variety of text links, banners and graphics to put on your web page. Text links have statistically performed better.

5. Payment Schedule
The affiliate program should tell you how often you are going to be paid. There are programs that pay monthly, quarterly and by percentage. In addition, there are some programs that have a payout minimum. In most cases, the programs that pay monthly are a better choice. No one enjoys waiting for months to be paid.

6. Affiliate News
Investigate whether or not the affiliate program shares data about how their top affiliates are doing. This can be a great indicator about the popularity of the product or service they are offering. If there are some affiliates are earning over $5,000 per month, it is a good affiliate program.

7. Affiliate Strategies
Check the affiliate program website for a forum of tutorials, strategies, tips and techniques between the affiliates. The affiliate forum is a great place to learn successful strategies and ask questions from the more “seasoned” affiliate.

8. Company Updates
Does the affiliate program offer a company newsletter on a regular basis for their affiliates? This is a great way to get extra tips and techniques that are working well.

9. Communication
Find out if they offer email notification when you make a sale or get an affiliate signed up under you (if it is a 2-tier program). It is very motivating to see ‘You have a new affiliate’ in your inbox.

10. Customer Support
Ensure there is a well set up “support” area, and that your questions will be answered within 48 hours.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Do You Want An Internet Marketing Business - OR - Play The Lottery?

Do you want a strategically placed Internet Marketing business or do you want to WIN THE LOTTERY?

Fourth in a series on Affiliate Marketing Basics…

This is the reality check time. You have as much chance of making $10,000 the first month your affiliate marketing website is up and running as you do to win the lottery. It’s NOT going to happen.

You will see many exaggerated claims of “overnight profits” from some affiliate program providers. But you need to read the fine print, to find out what you can expect. You may find that many of these “business opportunities” involve the payment of a fee in order for you to participate in their program.
In other words, you have to pay the company a fee to get the opportunity to make a commission.

If the purpose of becoming an affiliate marketer is to get paid for referrals by advertising a company’s product or service, why should you have to pay for this?

Yet everyday, many people register and pay money to participate in these programs, and unfortunately, for many of these same people, the dream that they bought never becomes a reality. In truth, affiliate marketing is a lot easier than direct marketing, but it is not a walk through the park either.

It takes a considerable amount of time and effort to put all the pieces in place that are needed to generate a substantial income through affiliate marketing.

All of your efforts are focused on one point: getting visitors to your affiliate program providers’ website. Once you accomplish this goal, the ball is in their court. You have provided the introduction, now they have to make the presentation that closes the sale.

How Many Affiliate Marketers are Too Many?
The fact that the field of affiliate marketing is competitive should be easy to understand because of the incredible income potential and actual sales revenues that it produces.

But the impact of the competition is a lot different because of the size of the population in the territory. The Internet is the medium that millions of people are using to sell their products and buy products from others. There’s plenty of room for you to Make Money Online!

Find a Niche
Again, the importance of doing your “homework”; understanding the benefits your program offers and who this will appeal to cannot be overemphasized.  In addition to this, you have the opportunity to identify a segment of the market where the product or service you are marketing is completely new. Being first in the marketplace with a new product or service that offers benefits that are highly desired can produce fantastic profits.

Locating this type of affiliate marketing “program niche” takes research, the more you know about benefits of the product or service you are marketing, the easier it is to identify the most likely prospects for it. Meaning you need to do the appropriate “key word or key phrase” research. A topic that I will address later.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Get Paid For “YOUR” Efforts

Third in a series on Affiliate Marketing Basics…

The Reward of Affiliate Referrals
* Direct Referrals
Beside the profit potential of affiliate marketing from your own efforts, you can also earn money from “direct referrals”, when you introduce a new affiliate to the program, they become your direct referral, or sub-affiliate.

Affiliate programs will pay you a commission for every direct referral you make. This is sometimes called a “residual” to distinguish it from the commissions paid in relationship to product or service.

While direct referrals are the most common type of residuals you can earn, you can find some affiliate programs that will pay you a residual on different levels, also called “tiers”.

There are affiliate programs that have an unlimited number of tiers. These are Multi-Level programs. Tiers are just like steps, in a 2 tier program; your referral link is tier one, the visitor who clicks the link they find on your website and becomes an affiliate of the company is your direct referral or sub-affiliate. When they place their referral link on their own website, their referral link becomes tier two. The commission for each sub-affiliate usually is not as generous as for your own direct sales.

In a 3 tier program, the same process is extended; you are paid a commission or residual when your direct referral’s link is clicked on their website and as a result another person becomes an affiliate of the company.

You now in a position to earn commissions three different ways:

1. by referring visitors to the company website that results in a preferred action
2. through a referred visitor who becomes an affiliate of the company
3. through payment of a certain percentage from the first referral, a smaller percentage from the second referral and on through the number of tiers in the program for each sub-affiliate.

Depending on the number of tiers in an affiliate program, and the promotional efforts of your self and your sub-affiliates, residuals can add between 5-10% to your overall commissions.

You can create your own websites that can systematically generate income for you day or night, even while you sleep. 

You can link your web sites to the Online Merchants you represent, and earn commissions from the visitor traffic you “Drive” to them.

* Freedom to Express Yourself
Take an interest or hobby and let it produce income for you. Operate your business at the time and place that suits you best. Organize your activities according to the system that works for you. Use your time in the way that satisfies you.

* Affordable Operating Expenses
Even the most modest brick and mortar enterprise can cost thousands of dollars to start and operate. Having an e-commerce website on the Internet has reduced these costs, but what you save in money, you can pay in complexity and time.

In contrast, launching an affiliate marketing website can be as easy as choosing a username for your account and having a ready-made site given to you to market the affiliate program product or service.

On the other hand, you also have the freedom to design your own website from yourself, with the assistance of a website creation software package or by enlisting the services of a professional website designer.

The start up costs for the options mentioned above range from $50 to $1,000 or more. It all depends on how many activities you want your visitors to have access to on your site.

* Peace of Mind
Is there anything as frustrating as depending on another person to perform a task by a certain time and in a certain manner, only to discover that they did neither?

In today’s marketplace, employers are experiencing this type of frustration more frequently. Locating qualified employees has become a multi-million dollar industry; there are employment recruiters and agencies for every profession, and using these services can be quite expensive.

And that is just the beginning of the spending. Once you find a qualified person, you must be able to afford their salary, along with the benefits that they expect. Add to this, the amount of money that you have to spend in order to comply with the laws and regulations that apply to employment issues where you conduct business and the total amount can be staggering.

In the worst case scenario, if things go very wrong and you can no longer afford to continue to have employees. The realization of the liability associated with being an employer or an employee is one of the strongest motivations behind the decision to manage or operate an affiliate marketing business.

* Automated Management
Behind that affiliate marketing referral link is the organization that is producing the product, providing the service and performing all of the related tasks that make it possible for you make money.

You are supplying the company with a very valuable commodity; exposure. The more people that are aware of their product or service, the more possibilities of introducing the benefits of whatever they are selling, presenting an opportunity to purchase it and increase the profits of the company.

There are thousands of products and service providers that operate affiliate marketing programs, which can range from an individual who will pay a commission on sales of their book to multi-national companies that have hundreds of products to sell.

* Unlimited Prospects
Everywhere that the Internet is accessible, a potential customer for the affiliate program that you represent can be found.

The more highly concentrated the number of potential customers is in a certain area, the more opportunities you have to increase your profits. Within this statement lies another key to affiliate marketing success:

You have to know the BENEFITS of the product or service that your affiliate program provides, and:

You have to know WHO is looking for these benefits

While it might be POSSIBLE to sell a person living in Antarctica ice, is it PROBABLE?  You know the answer. You have to know the facts about your market; knowing who they are and where they are, will make your job of promoting a lot easier to manage. This is the rule of thumb to keep in mind when you begin selecting affiliate programs for your business.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Affiliate Marketing - Your Key To Financial Independence!

Second in a series on Affiliate Marketing Basics…

Affiliate Marketing is a good example of passive income; you are paid for simply selling a product or service for a company using your resources and methods. Using the power of the Internet, affiliate marketing is High Performance commission sales.

Affiliate marketing has come a long way over the past few years!

Wikipedia: Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.

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, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques like publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing — using one site to drive traffic to another — is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers’ marketing strategies.

You can read more here: Wikipedia - Affiliate Marketing.

What makes affiliate marketing so attractive is that is what is NOT required of you. You do not have to worry about product manufacturing or providing customer service, designing marketing material or ship the products for the company.

Your sole responsibility is to promote the product or service of the advertiser and deliver visitors to their website. 

You agree to abide by the terms the company has set for their marketing representatives to perform these services and in exchange for these services you will be paid a certain fee for each action they want people to take.

To help you accomplish this goal, and to make sure your account is credited correctly, affiliate marketing program providers provide you with a unique identification code that is embedded in all of the marketing material that they provide you to promote their product or service. Many affiliate marketing programs allow you to select a “username” that becomes the method that identifies your account, for example:

“http://www.affiliatemarketing.com/your-name.asp”

While most affiliate marketing programs use graphic banners or contextual ads embedded with your referral id, there are some companies that provide complete websites to their affiliates. In this case, your referral id becomes the name of the sub-domain of their company site, for example:

“http://www.your-name.affiliatemarketing.com”
“http://www.affiliatemarketing.com/your-name/index.html”

Each graphic image or line of text that is supplied to you to promote the advertisers product or service is embedded with your referral id. When the link is clicked, it transports your visitor to the website of the company you are representing.

What’s In A Click?
The Dynamics of Getting Paid
The click on your referral link is registered on the visitors’ computer in the form of a “cookie”, a small line of code that tells the company to credit your account for this visit. If the “click” is the action that the company is paying you to encourage your visitors to perform – you just made some money! The same holds true for the other actions we described.

A simple idea, that sounds deceptively easy. Putting this idea into motion is where the challenge lies. Consider this question: What makes YOU click a link when you visit a website?

If you have a website that is focused on cars, and you have a referral link that is related to this theme, then there is a good chance that this link maybe of interest to your visitor.

While you do not have to fulfill any orders or answer any customer service questions at the company, in order for you to make money with affiliate marketing, your job of getting visitors to your affiliate program sponsor is just as challenging and providing them with the information they need to click your referral link is just as important.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

FREE Money – Affiliate Marketing Basics

I’m going to start a series on affiliate marketing. The last 4 years has been focused on retail Internet marketing, with intense study/testing with SEO, traffic strategies and COPY that sells.
Affiliate marketing is my latest venture and I’m going to share my learning as I go.

Starting With a Change of Perspective
There are three very important points you need to keep in mind as you begin your journey in affiliate marketing:

1. There are thousands of affiliate marketing programs. Start with one or two, and select the programs you will promote carefully. Not every affiliate marketing program is right for every person. Make sure you are clear on the requirements and rewards of each program. 

2. The Merchant who sponsors the affiliate marketing program you select actually becomes your client. You must take the time to learn about their products and services in order to focus your efforts and make the kind of money you want to make.

3. You do not have to face this challenge alone. There is an incredible amount of resources available to you in a cooperative environment of affiliate marketing professionals. There are hundreds of discussion boards, newsgroups and forums where the members are all working toward the same goal; making the amount of income they want and need to support their lifestyle. To get an idea of what an affiliate marketing forum is like, take a look at A Best Web, located at http://www.abestweb.com/.

THE FIRST STEP
Deciding on Your Course of Action
Hopefully by this point you’ve set a goal for yourself:

“What amount of monthly income is your goal and how much effort you are willing to exert toward reaching that goal?”

Whether your goal is $100 a month to $100,000 a month, one thing both of these goals have in common is that they both take effort.

Motivation is the key here; some people need to be between a rock and a hard place before they will take action, others read the writing on the wall and act accordingly, while there are some that take action, just to see what happens.

Take stock of what is motivating you to pursue affiliate marketing as a means to make money online and then use it as your action plan. A plan is useless you put the power behind it to make it meet its goal.

Learning the ropes of affiliate marketing can be an exciting, challenging, frustrating, rewarding and a satisfying experience all at the same time. You can customize your online affiliate marketing experience to be as enjoyable as you want. There are products and services for every type of interest.

IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU
Selecting a Focus for Your Business
Are you fascinated by Internet technology? There are affiliate programs that offer generous commissions for everything that is related to this subject.

What Are Your Interested In ?
Choose your area of Interest, and find something that you are Passionate about. There are Online Retailers and other Service companies that are willing to pay you for your valuable expertise and have you represent them. The greatest success comes from representing a product or service that you really care about,

Research The Market
Find a need and fill it. Look for a product or service that people really want or need. There are 1,000’s of people out there who are looking for a solution to their problem, whatever that might be. Find a way to solve the problem and you can make a fortune.

Give The People What They Want
To be successful in affiliate marketing you want to represent products and services that people really want, and they are actively looking for. Do this and you can’t miss!

One important concept I learned from Jim Edwards is: “Find a product people need, but package it as something they want.”

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com