It can be easy to make a good income with affiliate programs. You don't need a marketing degree or a college degree to do it. In fact, affiliate programs are an excellent way to make money online for anyone, and it can be easy to do if you follow some key steps.
Step One - Find a company with a product or service you have some knowledge of, or passion for. Don't take on a product or service that you have neither knowledge of, nor passion for. There is too much competition out there that may cause you to fail. Normally you will sign up at the company's website. If they don't manage their own affiliate programs you might be registering at an affiliate management site such as Commission Junction or ClickBank. There, you will be given your own unique ID# as an affiliate of the company which will allow you to sell its products online through its affiliate program.
Step Two - Take advantage of any promotional tools that the affiliate program may have. This will reduce the time you would have to spend in making your own. Most good companies will have a variety of marketing tools for you. Immerse yourself in the details of the product or service. In fact, the best plan would be for you to join as a customer and use the product or service, as this may afford you an insight into the product and company which most of the other affiliates will not have, and would give you a competitive edge to attract buyers.
Step Three - Link the company's site to your own blog or website, including your affiliate ID# in the ad so that you can be given credit for each sale. When people click on your blog or website, they will see the advertisement for the product or service you're representing and when they click the link to go to the company website, you will be given credit if they buy the product or service.
Step Four - Market yourself through your blog or website. With a blog you can write personal, newsy messages and you go a step further by keyword enhancing them to give your page more relevance in search engine return results. It's one of the best ways to "soft sell" interested parties in your affiliate program items. If you don't want to use a blog, set up a website. Successful websites are low-key in design using low graphics and light colors.
Another great way to market yourself is to write articles about your service or product you're selling. Post a product review style on any of the free article databases and include a link back to your site.
Step 5 - Keep track of all the Affiliate Programs you have signed up for, with special emphasis on which ad or article is giving the best conversion, i.e., which is sending most BUYERS to the company's website.
Concentrate on the best conversion rates, and TEST, TEST, TEST, your ads by tweaking them and measuring how the conversion rate changes.
When a sale is made, you will be given credit as long as your affiliate ID# was associated with the sale. If you market hard and consistently, you stand to make a good deal of money online through affiliate programs. That's the sheer beauty of using online affiliate programs.
Finally, you should now be ready to make money online with affiliate programs by signing up for some of the ones you are drawn to, but make sure you "do your homework" and research them well. It's not too late to get in on one of the fastest and easiest moneymaking opportunities you can find to make money online.
About the Author
You can get more tips in affiliate marketing by visiting my website at http://www.virallinktracker.com/vlt/links/10464 . You have full permission to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box.
Showing posts with label Affiliate Management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Affiliate Management. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
3 Top Ways to Find the Most Profitable Affiliate Products to Promote Easily
There are thousands affiliate programs online. Most people struggle to find the best affiliate offers and make money. Here are the top 3 ways that will help you find the best affiliate programs online easily within few minutes.
The Internet is full of money-making-schemes, and the possibility of making money online just gets bigger and bigger every minute. Affiliate programs are one of the best ways of making big profits online. The Internet arena is not only limited to big money making businesses but also to small businesses that makes big profits on their chosen fields too.
Marketing budget or having loads of money for marketing program strategies is not the only factor that will determine your success on affiliate programs, it’s only one of the factors and the cost of having a business. To get near the success territory of affiliate programs, the most important thing is to know what exactly you are looking for. You will always be in the right direction once you know where you are heading to. If you are aiming for success it is best to specifically choose affiliate programs that will provide you services or products that are in demand to sell online. It is important to have a market for your services and products for you to make money. Once you have determined a niche market, all you have to do weave certain services or products into it. You’ll have to do some research that will prove your niche idea is really in demand.
One of the best ideas that will probably work is to weave products or services into your niche market that has been used personally by you. Personal recommendations always works and it will gather more attention if you will be able to weave more testimonials for the use of a certain product or service, especially when it comes from others besides from you. With more than one good opinion of that service or product, your customer will have a more well-informed decision on whether to buy it or not.
Commission structures should not also be neglected when dealing with affiliate programs. A monthly basis of income might not always be the option for you or your business because it will always depend on your market niche. Doing a little research or an investigative work will give you a little background on the commission structures of other competitors. It’s also good to go for affiliate programs that will pay you a big amount for one time sale.
Your website should also be promoting more than one service or product. It would need a good balancing act from you to be able to do this because surely you would not want to confuse your potential customers but you would also want to generate sales for every option available.
Let’s have a concise summary of the things you need to consider to find a profitable service or product online.
So, here are the tips to find the best products to promote:
1) It should be top of the list to find services or products that are in demand.
2) Consider finding the best affiliate product that will provide you with the best commission rates.
3) Multiple income streams are always better choices if you’re into generating more profits. These are the things to be considered when looking for affiliate products that will surely bring you great amounts of profits.
There are many networks that offers products, but only a small fortune of them allows you to track all aspects of your affiliate campaigns – how many visitors you brought, how many sales are made, where did the customers come from, which advertising sources gives you the most targeted visitors that converts into buyers and even which keywords used on search engines or pay per click campaigns bring you sales. Click2sell.EU (www.click2sell.eu) affiliate marketing network is one of reputable companies where you’ll find affiliate products and services that are much in demand. It will also allow you to completely track all aspects of your affiliate campaigns in depth. You will know which advertising sources gives you the most sales and which campaigns are the most profitable to run. So all you need is just to go and find the right products to promote using the given tips above. Happy profiting!
Egidijus Andreika is a creator of Click2Sell.EU Affiliate Network. Click2Sell provides the opportunity to track all aspects of affiliate campaigns – visitors, sales, referrer sources, keywords that bring real sales. Sell products online with Click2Sell.EU . Visit Click2Sell Affiliate Programs.
The Internet is full of money-making-schemes, and the possibility of making money online just gets bigger and bigger every minute. Affiliate programs are one of the best ways of making big profits online. The Internet arena is not only limited to big money making businesses but also to small businesses that makes big profits on their chosen fields too.
Marketing budget or having loads of money for marketing program strategies is not the only factor that will determine your success on affiliate programs, it’s only one of the factors and the cost of having a business. To get near the success territory of affiliate programs, the most important thing is to know what exactly you are looking for. You will always be in the right direction once you know where you are heading to. If you are aiming for success it is best to specifically choose affiliate programs that will provide you services or products that are in demand to sell online. It is important to have a market for your services and products for you to make money. Once you have determined a niche market, all you have to do weave certain services or products into it. You’ll have to do some research that will prove your niche idea is really in demand.
One of the best ideas that will probably work is to weave products or services into your niche market that has been used personally by you. Personal recommendations always works and it will gather more attention if you will be able to weave more testimonials for the use of a certain product or service, especially when it comes from others besides from you. With more than one good opinion of that service or product, your customer will have a more well-informed decision on whether to buy it or not.
Commission structures should not also be neglected when dealing with affiliate programs. A monthly basis of income might not always be the option for you or your business because it will always depend on your market niche. Doing a little research or an investigative work will give you a little background on the commission structures of other competitors. It’s also good to go for affiliate programs that will pay you a big amount for one time sale.
Your website should also be promoting more than one service or product. It would need a good balancing act from you to be able to do this because surely you would not want to confuse your potential customers but you would also want to generate sales for every option available.
Let’s have a concise summary of the things you need to consider to find a profitable service or product online.
So, here are the tips to find the best products to promote:
1) It should be top of the list to find services or products that are in demand.
2) Consider finding the best affiliate product that will provide you with the best commission rates.
3) Multiple income streams are always better choices if you’re into generating more profits. These are the things to be considered when looking for affiliate products that will surely bring you great amounts of profits.
There are many networks that offers products, but only a small fortune of them allows you to track all aspects of your affiliate campaigns – how many visitors you brought, how many sales are made, where did the customers come from, which advertising sources gives you the most targeted visitors that converts into buyers and even which keywords used on search engines or pay per click campaigns bring you sales. Click2sell.EU (www.click2sell.eu) affiliate marketing network is one of reputable companies where you’ll find affiliate products and services that are much in demand. It will also allow you to completely track all aspects of your affiliate campaigns in depth. You will know which advertising sources gives you the most sales and which campaigns are the most profitable to run. So all you need is just to go and find the right products to promote using the given tips above. Happy profiting!
Egidijus Andreika is a creator of Click2Sell.EU Affiliate Network. Click2Sell provides the opportunity to track all aspects of affiliate campaigns – visitors, sales, referrer sources, keywords that bring real sales. Sell products online with Click2Sell.EU . Visit Click2Sell Affiliate Programs.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Ways to Make Money from your Website
Websites are one of the top ways to make money online, and tthere are many ways to make money with your website. Do you want to monetize your Website? Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their Websites. If you think commercializing your Website is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it. But also remember that if your website provides quality information it is just like any magazine or newspaper. Generating income from your Website is very challenging in today’s environment compared with several years ago. You should feel good to earn income from your Website — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your website provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it.
Can you make a decent income online?
Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.
How should you choose an affiliate program? My suggestion is not to choose a program according to the payment scheme, but rather according to the kind of people who are likely to visit your website. For example, if you are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience. Affiliate systems allow you to run ads for other businesses and make money when people click on the ads. Content websites typically earn money through one of four ways: Commission/Affiliate ads, selling text links, selling your own ads, and pay for click search engine content.
Most news websites earn the bulk of their money through ppc advertising networks. Google, Yahoo, and Miscosoft search engines all offer these services. Ad networks can handle the sale and display of ads on your site. All you need do is drop a few lines of code into your Web pages where you want the ads to appear. The most popular ad network for independent publishers is Google's AdSense program. AdSense is a "pay per click" program, where you earn money each time one of your readers clicks on a Google-served ad. Since you earn money on clicks, rather than completed sales, PPC ad networks can provide a more reliable source of income for sites whose readers are not looking to make a purchase right away. Other notable PPC ad networks include the Yahoo! Publisher Network and Ad Voyager.
The following are the Various way to earn money.
PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click. The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education
Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremos it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
Text Link Ads
After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular. Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not. The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process. The major search engines determine a websites rank and placement based on how many other sites link to them. So, webmasters buy links to their website to help boost their search engine rankings.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based. Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews. Commission Junction, cj.com, is one of the most popular Affiliate networks.
Monetization Widgets
The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links. Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy in the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model. Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics.
RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel. Feedburner already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually. This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members
Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic. The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
Marketplaces
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings. The problem with this method is that there is no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. Basically, you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
Selling or Renting Internal Pages
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way. Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content. Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems.
In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money. Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make as much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them. If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small advertising audio (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time. Marketplaces on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they use parameters to determine the value of a website, such as the monthly revenue.
Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter. On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way. Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Automated Context-Sensitive Advertising
One of the latest trends in website sponsorship is to sign up with an advertising network like Google AdSense The advertising network automatically checks your web page and determines the most relevant advertisement for the page. As a result, without much additional effort from you, you get advertisements targeted at the interests of your visitors. As mentioned earlier, targeted ads tend to result in better performance and returns
Selling Banner Ads
Advertising revenue is one of the most effortless ways to earn money from your site. You merely have to put the banner there and wait for the money to roll in. (Well, okay, not quite. You will still need to have some visitors first before you can make anything.)
How to build traffic for your Websites,
Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom? Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can mess almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming). If you can’t build traffic, it is going to be very difficult to succeed. Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.
With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.
In the End I don’t think one will get very far if money is his motivation for website. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters most.
About HostChart.com
HostChart, a Web Hosting Company Resource, is a leading web hosting directory website that has been in business for over 5 years. They provide numerous web hosting articles and tutorials as well as news, interviews, and reviews. You can use their extensive set of tools to research and evaluate your current or future web hosts. HostChart is a Property of Advantage1 Web Services, which also operates ResellerConnection.com, a Reseller Web Hosting Resource, HostingKnowledge.net, and FoundHost.com, a Budget Hosting Resource
Can you make a decent income online?
Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.
How should you choose an affiliate program? My suggestion is not to choose a program according to the payment scheme, but rather according to the kind of people who are likely to visit your website. For example, if you are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience. Affiliate systems allow you to run ads for other businesses and make money when people click on the ads. Content websites typically earn money through one of four ways: Commission/Affiliate ads, selling text links, selling your own ads, and pay for click search engine content.
Most news websites earn the bulk of their money through ppc advertising networks. Google, Yahoo, and Miscosoft search engines all offer these services. Ad networks can handle the sale and display of ads on your site. All you need do is drop a few lines of code into your Web pages where you want the ads to appear. The most popular ad network for independent publishers is Google's AdSense program. AdSense is a "pay per click" program, where you earn money each time one of your readers clicks on a Google-served ad. Since you earn money on clicks, rather than completed sales, PPC ad networks can provide a more reliable source of income for sites whose readers are not looking to make a purchase right away. Other notable PPC ad networks include the Yahoo! Publisher Network and Ad Voyager.
The following are the Various way to earn money.
PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click. The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education
Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremos it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
Text Link Ads
After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular. Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not. The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process. The major search engines determine a websites rank and placement based on how many other sites link to them. So, webmasters buy links to their website to help boost their search engine rankings.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based. Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews. Commission Junction, cj.com, is one of the most popular Affiliate networks.
Monetization Widgets
The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links. Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy in the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model. Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics.
RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel. Feedburner already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually. This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members
Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic. The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
Marketplaces
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings. The problem with this method is that there is no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. Basically, you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
Selling or Renting Internal Pages
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way. Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content. Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems.
In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money. Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make as much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them. If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small advertising audio (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time. Marketplaces on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they use parameters to determine the value of a website, such as the monthly revenue.
Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter. On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way. Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Automated Context-Sensitive Advertising
One of the latest trends in website sponsorship is to sign up with an advertising network like Google AdSense The advertising network automatically checks your web page and determines the most relevant advertisement for the page. As a result, without much additional effort from you, you get advertisements targeted at the interests of your visitors. As mentioned earlier, targeted ads tend to result in better performance and returns
Selling Banner Ads
Advertising revenue is one of the most effortless ways to earn money from your site. You merely have to put the banner there and wait for the money to roll in. (Well, okay, not quite. You will still need to have some visitors first before you can make anything.)
How to build traffic for your Websites,
Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom? Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can mess almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming). If you can’t build traffic, it is going to be very difficult to succeed. Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.
With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.
In the End I don’t think one will get very far if money is his motivation for website. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters most.
About HostChart.com
HostChart, a Web Hosting Company Resource, is a leading web hosting directory website that has been in business for over 5 years. They provide numerous web hosting articles and tutorials as well as news, interviews, and reviews. You can use their extensive set of tools to research and evaluate your current or future web hosts. HostChart is a Property of Advantage1 Web Services, which also operates ResellerConnection.com, a Reseller Web Hosting Resource, HostingKnowledge.net, and FoundHost.com, a Budget Hosting Resource
Saturday, February 2, 2008
The Essence of Affiliate Management
If you have a product that you want to sell, whether it's an e-book, audio or video, it's usually a very wise idea to create an affiliate program around it.
If you have an affiliate program for your product, you will get a ton of traffic that you would not normally have received.
The reason is because a lot of people will promote your product for you when you're paying them a commission to do it!
Would you rather have 100 people buy your product from you? Or would you rather have 100 affiliates when each has a hundred people buying your product from them?
It's a no-brainer when there can be a better way to boost your income by leveraging on the combined efforts of hundreds of affiliates to sell for you. This demand for a better way creates a market for affiliate management software (like JVManager) which makes the whole process of setting up, recording and releasing commissions so much more...well, manageable.
Without such a software, you would never have been able to get the amount of traffic and sales multiple promoters could give you, compared to achieving it all by yourself. It would have been impossible to 'promote' every customer into an affiliate automatically. Talk about missing out on an exponential effect on your financial bottomline!
Let's begin with explaining what an affiliate program is.
An affiliate program is a way to offer partners who are interested in promoting your product or service a share of the profits generated after they make a sale. Your affiliate partners are "commissioned salespeople" who will take your marketing message to their audience, convince them to buy from you, and then get paid a proportion of the profit they create for your business.
The advantages of having affiliates (or associates) build your business and help you with marketing is that you have no upfront expense to cover. Apart from setting up an infrastructure to manage affiliates and create marketing material for them to use, you pay nothing until after a sale has been made. Contrast this with conventional advertising where you pay first, and then hope you make enough sales to make back your investment. Another benefit is you can reach an audience through your affiliates which you otherwise wouldn't be able to by yourself. This multiplies your reach and can explode your sales and profits.
Unfortunately, despite the benefits, running an affiliate program is not as easy as it seems because the symbiosis or synergistic relationship between affiliates and merchants is not always and fully understood. The most successful programs are based on mutual respect, open dialogue, and proper recognition and reward for success.
The affiliate management software can only go so far with proper reporting of up-to-date statistics like number of impressions, click-throughs, leads, sales, 2nd-tier affiliates and others on a monthly and daily basis. But of course it wouldn't be called an affiliate management software if it can't process these data, so there are features that affiliate managers must look out for and diligently evaluate before they prepares to invest in a software. Affiliates would want to know what statistics are available so that they can determine how well they are succeeding.
On the managers' part, they are obliged to provide all the sales tools and material affiliates need to sell their products as effectively as possible. This is not easily done because:
1) they become lazy :)
2) they presume affiliates know what to do.
Affiliates must feel they are well equipped to sell the merchants' products because even if they have not reviewed the products themselves, only the merchants know their stuff best and how to present them to the audience in the best possible light.
Besides the standard affiliate link, the tools for online promotion include banner graphics, e-mail messages, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, a giveaway viral report, a review article, PLR articles, testimonials, one-time offer (OTO) page, forum signatures, press releases, popup HTML codings and other affiliate marketing suggestions affiliates can take up.
The truly successful affiliate managers are the ones who can respond and better still, pre-empt the kind of help affiliates typically ask for, thus providing an optimal level of support affiliates require, leading to every possible sales conversion whenever the opportunity arises.
Successful affiliate programs have dedicated personnel that work with the affiliates to ensure that they have the tools that they need, the reporting that is required, and to ensure that they are compensated fairly and in a timely fashion. Again these services are either provided to the affiliates by an individual or team that works directly for the merchant, or by an independent affiliate management company. Either solution is acceptable to affiliates providing that they receive the level of support that they require.
Providing that the affiliates are successful in delivering prospects to a merchant-customers that convert into paying customers-and they earn money, they will continue to promote them, and the more that they earn, the better the promotion is likely to be. Online affiliates have a set amount of "real estate" on their sites for promotion-they of course have to provide content to their visitors-and this is allocated to those merchants from whom they earn the best return. In return, the manager can reward better-performing affiliates according to the results they have achieved.
But bear in mind the reality is that 80%-90% of your affiliates will be inactive under normal circumstances. The Pareto principle also applies that 20% of your affiliates are likely to be responsible for 80% of the total sales.
To keep affiliates motivated, merchants should work with them to create incentive programs and special events that will provide them with opportunities for increased recognition and revenue; for example, increase affiliate commission for a certain time period. They should also take the time to communicate with them whenever possible to help them with their promotions. One method is to publish regular affiliates-only newsletters that contain their statistics for the week/month, affiliate marketing tips, product and promotion updates, interviews with successful affiliates etc. Your affiliates will never forget they joined your program.
Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts!
If you have an affiliate program for your product, you will get a ton of traffic that you would not normally have received.
The reason is because a lot of people will promote your product for you when you're paying them a commission to do it!
Would you rather have 100 people buy your product from you? Or would you rather have 100 affiliates when each has a hundred people buying your product from them?
It's a no-brainer when there can be a better way to boost your income by leveraging on the combined efforts of hundreds of affiliates to sell for you. This demand for a better way creates a market for affiliate management software (like JVManager) which makes the whole process of setting up, recording and releasing commissions so much more...well, manageable.
Without such a software, you would never have been able to get the amount of traffic and sales multiple promoters could give you, compared to achieving it all by yourself. It would have been impossible to 'promote' every customer into an affiliate automatically. Talk about missing out on an exponential effect on your financial bottomline!
Let's begin with explaining what an affiliate program is.
An affiliate program is a way to offer partners who are interested in promoting your product or service a share of the profits generated after they make a sale. Your affiliate partners are "commissioned salespeople" who will take your marketing message to their audience, convince them to buy from you, and then get paid a proportion of the profit they create for your business.
The advantages of having affiliates (or associates) build your business and help you with marketing is that you have no upfront expense to cover. Apart from setting up an infrastructure to manage affiliates and create marketing material for them to use, you pay nothing until after a sale has been made. Contrast this with conventional advertising where you pay first, and then hope you make enough sales to make back your investment. Another benefit is you can reach an audience through your affiliates which you otherwise wouldn't be able to by yourself. This multiplies your reach and can explode your sales and profits.
Unfortunately, despite the benefits, running an affiliate program is not as easy as it seems because the symbiosis or synergistic relationship between affiliates and merchants is not always and fully understood. The most successful programs are based on mutual respect, open dialogue, and proper recognition and reward for success.
The affiliate management software can only go so far with proper reporting of up-to-date statistics like number of impressions, click-throughs, leads, sales, 2nd-tier affiliates and others on a monthly and daily basis. But of course it wouldn't be called an affiliate management software if it can't process these data, so there are features that affiliate managers must look out for and diligently evaluate before they prepares to invest in a software. Affiliates would want to know what statistics are available so that they can determine how well they are succeeding.
On the managers' part, they are obliged to provide all the sales tools and material affiliates need to sell their products as effectively as possible. This is not easily done because:
1) they become lazy :)
2) they presume affiliates know what to do.
Affiliates must feel they are well equipped to sell the merchants' products because even if they have not reviewed the products themselves, only the merchants know their stuff best and how to present them to the audience in the best possible light.
Besides the standard affiliate link, the tools for online promotion include banner graphics, e-mail messages, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, a giveaway viral report, a review article, PLR articles, testimonials, one-time offer (OTO) page, forum signatures, press releases, popup HTML codings and other affiliate marketing suggestions affiliates can take up.
The truly successful affiliate managers are the ones who can respond and better still, pre-empt the kind of help affiliates typically ask for, thus providing an optimal level of support affiliates require, leading to every possible sales conversion whenever the opportunity arises.
Successful affiliate programs have dedicated personnel that work with the affiliates to ensure that they have the tools that they need, the reporting that is required, and to ensure that they are compensated fairly and in a timely fashion. Again these services are either provided to the affiliates by an individual or team that works directly for the merchant, or by an independent affiliate management company. Either solution is acceptable to affiliates providing that they receive the level of support that they require.
Providing that the affiliates are successful in delivering prospects to a merchant-customers that convert into paying customers-and they earn money, they will continue to promote them, and the more that they earn, the better the promotion is likely to be. Online affiliates have a set amount of "real estate" on their sites for promotion-they of course have to provide content to their visitors-and this is allocated to those merchants from whom they earn the best return. In return, the manager can reward better-performing affiliates according to the results they have achieved.
But bear in mind the reality is that 80%-90% of your affiliates will be inactive under normal circumstances. The Pareto principle also applies that 20% of your affiliates are likely to be responsible for 80% of the total sales.
To keep affiliates motivated, merchants should work with them to create incentive programs and special events that will provide them with opportunities for increased recognition and revenue; for example, increase affiliate commission for a certain time period. They should also take the time to communicate with them whenever possible to help them with their promotions. One method is to publish regular affiliates-only newsletters that contain their statistics for the week/month, affiliate marketing tips, product and promotion updates, interviews with successful affiliates etc. Your affiliates will never forget they joined your program.
Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)