Auto responders make it easy to always stay in touch with your subscribers, because you can schedule your mailing at regular intervals. Many marketers focus their attention on getting the sale, but it is even more important to contact your customer after the sale is made.

The beauty of using this system is that each of the components are affiliate marketing programs in their own right. Using these services to promote your affiliate marketing programs can have a double benefit for you. You can find affiliate programs for these services at the following sites:

Auto Responder Affiliate Programs

• AWeber
• Constant Contact
• Get Response

(This is not an exhaustive list, just the more common autoresponder programs I’ve seen used by other marketers.)

Whatever you do, make sure that you provide quality content to the visitors who have given you their valuable contact information. You can find hundreds of e-books to giveaway to your visitors at: Free E-books’ website.

Remember, your website visitors do not know you; you have to build trust with them. By giving them something valuable you can continue to build their interest in your marketing program, so that eventually, they will click your referral link and make the sale.

Once you have a few sales, it is a must to request the permission of some of your customers to display a testimonial from them.

A satisfied customers’ words underscore the benefits you have been promoting from actual experience of using the product or service.

Key point to remember: What a satisfied customer says about you is 100 times more powerful and believable than anything you say about yourself!

Testimonials from business customers that include links to their site can improve your marketing website link popularity as well as boost your credibility by reinforcing the quality of what you are offering.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Two of the ways to interact with and create real connection with your website visitors is giving things away and/or creating content that is so valuable they want to subscribe to.

Giveaways and Subscriptions
With all of the work you have done to get visitors to your marketing website, the task now shifts to making their visit one they will remember. Your objective is for the visitor to click your referral link, and one way you encourage them to do this is to give them something that they want without obligation. The idea is to extend the reach of your website content and give them a link back to your website.

A giveaway can be real simple, like an e- book, an article, a software program, white paper or an incentive like a discount coupon.

A subscription is an item that your visitor will receive at regular intervals; newsletters and ezines are two of the most popular types of subscriptions. Choose what you will giveaway or write about with your keywords in mind. Remember that whatever you use should be related to your marketing program website.

Forums
With the “plug and play” software available through most web hosting services and from independent software vendors, you can create your own discussion group or forum for the users of your affiliate marketing product or service.

Internet users are community oriented, giving them a place where they can share and exchange information that is important to them, gives them another incentive to visit your site regularly.

Giveaways, subscriptions and forums all give you the means to interact with your website visitor while they are on your site and after they leave. The best position for these offers or signup boxes is close to the top right or left corners of your web page and designed in a way that they are easily seen.

Make sure that all of your offers are “opt-in” where the visitor gives their consent to you to send email messages to them.

In addition, in accordance with the CAN-SPAM Act, each commercial email must include a means for the subscriber to “opt-out” or cancel their request to receive email.

These three areas of promoting your marketing program serve as “lead generators” helping you to build a list of the people who are interested in what you have to offer on your marketing website.

Underlying all of these efforts is the understanding that very few people take action of any kind on their first visit to a website. Be proactive in your approach to your visitors and make it easy for them to return - encourage your visitors to bookmark your site for future visits by incorporating a link at the top of your website to do this.

When a visitor requests a giveaway or becomes your subscriber, it opens the door for you to communicate new information about your products on regular basis. However, avoid the “hard sell” approach. Remember that most people are interested in improving the quality of their lives, i.e., saving money, having more leisure time or increased income.

Focus your attention on how your product can solve a particular problem that your visitor may have.

Offering a special discount for your subscribers is a wonderful incentive to bring you visitor to your website again and (hopefully) purchase from your website.

Keep the tone of your email conversational, in the same manner you would talk to a friend. In the wording of your e-mail avoid using the word “free” that has become one of the most famous “spam triggers”. To check your email content and make sure it is free of spam triggers. To read more about spam triggers, Google spam triggers and educate yourself on what “words” trigger spam filters.

In addition to the value of each of these ideas on their own, linking them to each other may provide you with even better results. For instance, here is an example of how to link your offers together to maximize the number of people on your mailing list:

• A newsletter subscription box on your website homepage
• A newsletter subscription box on each of your website pages
• A link to your giveaway on the subscription opt-in page or confirmation e-mail
• A text link to your giveaway or subscription signup page at the end of an article on your website
• A hyperlink to your subscription signup page on the thank you page of your giveaway offer
• Your giveaway or subscription in an “exit ad”, a form of pop-up advertising that is activated when your visitor leaves your site.

If you decide to offer a giveaway and/or subscription to your visitors, you can make this task very easy for yourself if you deliver this content through an automatic mailer or auto responder.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

At this point, the building (or planning) your online affiliate marketing business is moving along nicely. You have selected programs, registered your domain name, secured web hosting services and now you are building your website.

Once your affiliate marketing website is launched you will start making money, right?

Right, that CAN be absolutely true. And if that is the result you are looking for, pay attention and study how to put all of these pieces together that are covered in this “Affiliate Marketing Basics” articles.

You can make money if you do some careful planning of the features on your website, make a narrow selection of a customer base, organize your promotions and prepare customer service tools. You can start announcing your affiliate marketing website services and products months before your website goes “live”. Building excitement around an upcoming event within your market segment is one way to generate interest in your affiliate product or services.

Exposing your domain name to potential visitors to your website might well be the simplest part of online marketing process. The right mix of informative content and graphic images linked to your referral id code are necessary components of your website. And at this point your visitor makes their first decision about your site: is this what they are looking for?

This is where the first part of “visitor retention” comes into play. You want visitors to explore your site, become interested in the products and services from your affiliate marketing programs.

But your visitor will have to leave your site at some point, and once they leave your site what can you do? Not too much, unless you have given them a way to interact with you.

To retain and keep in contact with your visitors once they leave your website, we’ll look at two of the most popular methods of interacting with your website visitors in the next article.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Building your affiliate marketing business around your domain name is much more effective than using a general approach, like using the “affiliate done 4 you website”.

The more specific your focus, the easier it is to get your advertising message to prospective buyers.

Most affiliate marketing programs offer banners or text links embedded with your referral link that you can use on your website. Be aware that using these graphics is not always the best idea because they will cause your site to load slowly. If you want to use the “program” graphics, do some testing on your web site to see if there is a slowdown with load time.

What your visitors really want to see what new information you can offer them; what makes your site different from the other websites that they have visited. How well you meet the expectations of your visitors and deliver information that is of interest to them can have an impact on whether your visitor clicks your referral link or not.

The informational content of your website should be compelling articles about the products or services you are offering through your affiliate marketing programs. They should outline the benefits that the visitor will enjoy through its use.

Using highlighting to draw attention to the special features of your product or service, gives you the opportunity to ask your visitor to take action and make the click on your referral link.

Article headlines can be used to encourage the reader to continue reading, contact you, sign up for your FREE Newsletter or direct their attention to a specific feature of your affiliate marketing program.

Writing content articles is one of the best ways to target the market you want. There are a number of article submission services that will distribute your articles to other websites to be used as content, giving your site increased exposure on the Internet, which will increase your link popularity and in turn your search engine ranking. By submitting an article to these services weekly, you can rapidly build targeted visitor traffic to your site.

Never having done any “Article Marketing” myself, I purchased a good content program to learn a little more about it. Josh Spaulding has a product called “Article Marketing Domination” that I purchased and recommend to anyone who would like to learn more about this subject. Josh’s ebook steps through how to focus and strategically set up article marketing in order to rank your sales website high in the search engines. You can check out his product information and sales page here: Josh Spaulding’s Article Marketing Domination.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Website Design and Layout
Take your website design and layout cue from the audience you want to attract: if the product or service you are promoting is targeted toward pets, then your website should reflect this.

A good source for ideas and website information, Webmasters World at http://www.webmasterworld.com/ is a discussion group that offers real world experience on all the issues related to website design.

Developing the Picture of Your Business
From your side of the story, having an affiliate marketing business online can be compared to putting together pieces of a puzzle to produce a picture. The “picture” in this case is the image that comes to mind when your domain name information is displayed on a search engine listing.

Remember from doing our key word / key phrase research we developed a URL, domain name that contained our chosen key word / key phrase.

The easiest way to begin developing this picture is to create a unique website to promote each separate product or service you are marketing. Displaying a large number of unrelated affiliate links all on the same website can detract from your credibility and generally this approach does not encourage visitors to click your affiliate link. If your affiliate marketing program is focused on office supplies, your website content should be solely about office supplies.

Designing your website to be “search engine friendly” starts with understanding and applying the criteria that search engines use to create their index. Be careful here, because there is too much information available about this vital subject that is either outdated or can cause you problems.

One of the most trusted sources of working with search engines is Search Engine Watch, located at http://searchenginewatch.com/

Keep the viewpoint of your potential buyers in mind throughout this process. Remember, there are many other affiliates promoting the same product or service. You must exploit every opportunity to attract to visitors to your affiliate marketing website.

For example of “Windy City Widgets” can be used in the regional section of the search engines as well as the general index. This term “Windy City” is well known to the people who live in Chicago, and gives you an edge to reach them when they are ready to purchase their widgets.

Knowledge of your domain name or URL is your first marketing contact. On its own, it should be able to motivate a person interested in your product to your website. Visitors to http://www.saveyourmoney.com, already have an idea of what the website has to offer.

On the other hand, when someone visits your page from a search engine listing, they will see a brief description of your website content, which is generated by the “meta tags” on your web page.
The three pieces of information that search engines take from the source code of your web page to use in creating your listing on their index are:

· The title of your website
· The keywords
· The description

This information creates an expectation in the visitors’ mind that you must meet or else they will leave your site. Internet users are very smart, and a large number of them shop online regularly.

CAUTION: Getting visitors to your site using keywords that are totally unrelated to what you really have to offer on your site is a practice that is considered “black hat SEO” and can get your listing removed and banned from the search engine index.

As you begin building your affiliate marketing business, keeping your domain name as your focal point will prove to be very effective in all of your advertising efforts. The keyword that you use in your domain name should be used throughout your website content, as well as all of your online and offline advertising.

Your keyword usage should developed in a way that reads as we would normally speak or write. If you want to read some more on this, do a search on “Google Slap”.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Use the strategies covered in my previous post regarding key words and key phrases, use that information to develop a URL. They way I usually select a URL is:

1. Collect all the key words / key phrases that apply to the subject area I’m developing for the web site idea.

2. Go to a website that will allow you to check for domain availability - then start checking, putting in URL, domain names that capitalizes on the keywords AND would make a reasonable sounding web site name. (Usually I use GoDaddy for my domain checks - GoDaddy’s URL, domain name check will also give you more or additional URL name ideas).

Registering Your Domain Name
With your keyword list you can create several different domain names to check for availability to register. The simplest way of finding a reputable domain name registrar is to go to the source of registrar accreditation: the ICANN website at http://www.icann.org/ which has a listing of theri membership. You can go right to the list using this link:
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html, which has a listing of their membership.

Domain name registrations is one of the most profitable online businesses, the fee you will pay for this service can sometimes be included in a web hosting package as well. If you choose this option, make sure that you fully understand the web hosting features that will be provided will be sufficient to support your affiliate marketing website functions.

Once you have chosen a domain name registrar, you can check the availability of the domain names on your list and do not be surprised if many of your choices are already taken.

As you work through the registration of your domain name, you will begin to get an idea of the competition you are facing in the marketplace at large.

Locating Your Affiliate Marketing Website Online
Registering your affiliate marketing domain name is the first step in having an online business, now you have to find a reliable web hosting service.

Try to resist the temptation of using a free web hosting service. Most of these services require you to have advertising banners on your pages that will only confuse your visitor and may conflict with your marketing strategy.

Web hosting services do not have to be expensive. As mentioned earlier, there are many domain name registrars that offer service packages on web hosting and some even provide marketing tools like search engine submissions, website design and visitor traffic building software.

Choose your web-hosting provider carefully because your web hosting company is your silent business partner. Your website has to be accessible to Internet users in order for your business to make money. If your web hosting service goes offline, so does your business. Compare the features of the top web hosting service providers. Each of these links offer reviews of top web host providers:

http://www.top-10-web-hosting.com/

http://webhostinggeeks.com/

http://web-hosting-services.topchoicereviews.com/

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

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

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

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

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