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What to Look Out For When Promoting An Affiliate Marketing Program

Affiliate internet marketing is one of the most versatile and a money-spinning department within the Internet marketing industry.

There are several problems that can be found this growing industry. In this article, I will touch on the activities and problems posed by online affiliate merchants.

1) Products that pay little commission

Why stick to promoting products that pay you mere $20, $30 when you can earn $100, $150, $175, $200 and more for the same efforts!

From my experience, some of the worst merchants are those paying peanuts to hard working affiliates like you. Just open your eyes and you will discover how you’d been cheated for so long.

2) The lack of support and marketing resources

Most affiliate merchants do not view affiliate marketers as partners.

Instead, they just order and install affiliate tracking software and advertise for affiliates to join their ‘great paying programs.’ Once this is done, they sit back and wait for the affiliate marketers to sell whatever they have on offer. This results in affiliate marketers who are confused, inactive, miserable and poor.

On the other hand, a merchant that regards its affiliates as true partners will make sure it provides a robust and dynamic marketing resource and human support for them to succeed. This leads to a platform where both merchants and affiliate marketers offer open criticisms, freely share ideas and improve every promotion for the benefit of both parties!

3) Cheating affiliates deliberately

The online affiliate marketing industry has its cheats and scammers. Visit any webmaster forum to get acquainted with complaints from affiliate marketers. You will be greeted with reports of the bad experiences they have gone through in the hands of merchants.

For example, there are verified incidences where merchants deliberately withheld commissions that belong to their affiliates without just cause. And there are times when some merchants simply went overboard and slashed commissions.

There are also some merchants who start by paying commissions promptly in order to gain a ‘good name’ in the mind of affiliate marketers. But once they gather some momentum, the merchants will stop payment without credible reasons.

There are also merchants that will do everything in the book to stimulate their affiliates to promote their products. However, just when the affiliate marketer except to be paid his commission or agreed fees, the merchant will simply fold-up operation and bolt away with thousands or millions of dollars worth of commission!

Then there are the the merchants who changed their company names and products line entirely to avoid being traced after swallowing affiliate marketer commission.

4) Half truths and lies

The internet marketing world is full of affiliate merchants who claim to operate certain commission types, but will later refuse to abide by it. For example, some merchants boldly promise a 2nd tier commission payout, but refuse to pay the affiliate marketer for his downlines as enshrined in 2nd tier commission policy.

Unfortunately, most of these situations cannot be effectively tacked because the informal nature of the internet seems to provide protection for this sort of illegalities.

5) Poor converting product and website in a competitive market

The two problems are dangerous enough by themselves. This twin problem can secretly kill off the hard work of most affiliate marketers!

Driving the most targeted traffic to a poorly converting website will not give you the kind of results that will change your financial fortunes.

Poor contents will do little or nothing to convert your visitors. So the readers you’d so worked hard to get eventually ended largely disappointed! So they simply clicked away.

As the affiliate marketer, you will end up bearing the brunt of low converting website. You will lose your money and time. Your hope of making money will get dashed.

In high-competitive markets, your efforts can end up in a bottom-less pit! This is one major reason many affiliates are forever roving round the Internet, searching for top affiliate program they can find.

This is the reason for affiliate marketers to diligently choose few merchants – 3-5 at most! Select the merchants that provide top-on-the-range resources, courses, training modules, support and high-paying commissions.

Don’t waste any more time or money with bad affiliate merchants and you can start making money online with affiliate Internet marketing.

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More Answers to Your Questions on Affiliate Marketing

Here are some more answers to  questions I’ve been asked about affiliate marketing and making money online:

Is It Possible To Do Affiliate Marketing Without Any Budget?

Yes you can.

First of all, you can sign up for free to become an affiliate for the merchants. Next, you can make use of a free blogging website such as WordPress or Blogger to set up your website to promote products for the merchant.

Once you’re done with your blog, you need to drive traffic to it.

You can drive web traffic by placing advertisements on free advertisement sites like usfreeads, or write articles around the product that you’re promoting and submit them to the various free article directories – such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard.

You can also participate in forums in the area where you’re promoting products in (for example, if you’re promoting health products, then you should visit health forums). Some of these forums will allow you to put a forum signature – which is a link that’ll appear at the end of all your forum posts – include a link to your website there.

You can even make use of social media such as MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster, etc. to drive traffic to your website.

By using the free methods above you’ll be able to receive tonnes of traffic to your website, and get some sales.

Do I Choose The Product First Or Niche in Affiliate Product Marketing?

Look for your niche first. There’s no point in choosing the most profitable product to promote if you know nothing about that niche or product – it will be very difficult for you to be able to convince potential customers for that particular product to buy from you as well.

How Can I Drive Traffic To My Website?

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website – both paid and free.

Let me go into the paid methods first – you can advertise your websites on the various search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. For these paid search advertising, you’ll have to pay whenever someone clicks on your advertisement to go into your website.

I’ve talked about the various ways to drive traffic to your website for free earlier.

Can I Succeed by Using Only Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing In Affiliate Marketing?

Yes, you can use Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing alone in affiliate marketing and make a lot of money from it.

However, you need to have the right skills in order to be able to create profitable campaigns.

How Can I Market Affiliate Products Without A Website?

You can pay to advertise on the various search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN or you can make use advertising sites such as usfreeads .

What Is URL Masking In Affiliate Marketing?

URL Masking is basically hiding your affiliate URL and make it shorter. For example, if you are promoting a ClickBank product, your affiliate link will look something like this:

http://your_affiliate_id.product_id.hop.clickbank.net/

Doesn’t the above link look very long and bulky?

One look at the URL people will know you’re trying to sell them something as an affiliate.

URL masking can hide your affiliate id as well as to make your link shorter.

You can make use of free services like TinyURL or PinURL.

Should I Use Landing Pages / Squeeze Pages With Affiliate Marketing?

A landing page or squeeze page is basically a page that is used for the purpose of collecting your potential customers’ first name and email address in exchange for something – it could be a free email training course, free report, free audio program, etc. It has the intention of eventually leading the potential customers to the products/services you’re promoting.

As to whether or not you should use a landing/squeeze page with affiliate marketing will depend on your marketing effort, it all depends on what your marketing strategy is – my advice is, try both of them out, and see which one works for you better.

There are people who did not use a squeeze/landing page – they would just send potential customers directly to the product sales page.

There are others who build one to build his/her list so as to be able to sell to them in future (as the saying goes “the money is in your list”).

But remember this – do NOT build a list and just send them emails to ask them to buy the products/services you are promoting – it’s probably going to turn them off. You have to give them VALUE, such that they’ll open up your email when they see them in their inbox instead of sending them to the thrash can.

Hope the above have answered most of your questions about affiliate marketing. You can find out more about making money online here.

FAQs on Affiliate Marketing

In this article, I’ll attempt to answer all questions you have about affiliate marketing and making money online.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is where you recommend other people’s products and services to potential customers, getting paid commissions whenever someone purchases the products and services you promote.

What Are The Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing?

Some of the advantages of affiliate marketing include:

There are no physical boundaries on the Internet – your website or promotion will be seen by everyone around the world. In a physical business, you can only sell to people within the country where your business is located.

No need for you to have a warehouse to store products. It is done by the merchants.

No need to bother about inventory

No need to set up payment processing

All you need is to sent potential customers to the merchant’s website, and everything else will be taken care of.

You can make lots of money from affiliate marketing

You can sell to anybody around the world

How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?

Start with affiliate products that answer these questions like  “What do I like to do in my spare time?” or “what am I interested in?”

If you’re interested in golf, you can either sell  golf clubs, golf balls, etc or you can sell digital books on how to improve your golf swing

Then you’ll need to find a merchant in the golf niche that has an affiliate program so that whenever somebody you referred to purchases something from the merchant’s website, you’ll be paid a certain amount of commission.

To find merchants in the golf niche that has an affiliate program, simply head over to Google and type in the following:

Google will return a list of websites with merchants that offer an affiliate program. Visit those sites one by one and sign up for their affiliate program. Normally, it’s free.

Once the merchant approves you to be their affiliate, they will give you a unique affiliate  link , which you’ll have to give to your potential customers to visit to purchase products/services that you’re promoting (you’ll only be paid commissions if your potential customers purchase the services/products through your affiliate link)

Is Affiliate Marketing Legitimate Or Is It A Scam?

Affiliate marketing is 100% legitimate. It is definitely not a scam.

Lots of people have managed to generate millions of dollars from affiliate marketing every year and you can do the same as well.

When I was first introduced to this Internet Marketingbusiness in late 2006, I, too, was also very skeptical as to whether this whole thing is genuine or is it nothing but scam.

After some persuasion, I decided to try it out and I was lucky enough to learn from the right Internet Marketing gurus (I was also scammed by some) who taught me the right techniques and strategies to profit from Internet Marketing as an affiliate marketer.

Affiliate Marketing – How Fast Can You Start Making Money?

Well, it all depends on how much time and effort you want to put into it.

You need to follow the right steps and strategies – there are many people out there who claim that they can help you make millions of dollars overnight – most of these are scams, so please do not believe them.

It is possible though to make millions of dollars over a period of time – you need first to establish yourself on the Internet community as someone people can look to for answers on a certain subject/topic – and once you’ve built that trust with people, you can be sure that the community will buy whatever product/service you promote (and that’s when you’ll see millions of dollars coming in)

What Can I Sell To Make Money As An Affiliate?

You can choose to sell either digital products (e.g. digital books, MP3s, etc.) or physical products (e.g. televisions, cameras, books, computers, etc.).

If you are interested in selling digital products, you can sign up as an affiliate for Clickbank where you can sell digital books on any topics such as health and fitness, business, personal development, marketing, etc.

If you are interested in selling physical products, you can sign up as an affiliate for Amazon (where you can promote anything on the Amazon website and get a commission of about 4% – 8% per sale), or an an affiliate in Performics or Commission Junction(In Commission Junction and Performics, you can find many companies where you can promote products for – such as Sony, HP, etc.)

You can make money online as well by giving out free memberships to people, free products (like free game consoles, free gift cards, free ringtones, etc.) or when someone requests for a free financial quotation, etc. – Here are some of the networks you may want to sign up – ClickBooth, MaxBounty, CPA Empire.

How & When Will I Receive My Payment?

Most of the affiliate networks (such as ClickBank, Performics, Commission Junction) issue out payments by check, and most of them issue out payments once every month. However, there are some (like ClickBank) that issues out payment every fortnightly.

Once you’ve received the checks, simply bank them in your country’s local bank the same way you bank in normal checks. However, how long the checks will take to clear will depend on the bank – my suggestion is to check with them directly.

This article may not be long enough to answer all the questions you have about affiliate marketing and making money online. Look out for more tomorrow.

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Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

 Affiliate marketing networks offer an environment where companies who have something to sell (Advertisers) meet with companies who know how to sell it (Publishers). Many large Affiliate marketing networks provide hundreds of products to be sold to their network of thousands of publishers.

Affiliate marketing networks generally work on a performance basis (CPA), where you only pay when a sale or lead is generated for you. You receive a sale or lead at a predetermined cost and then award the affiliate network with a bounty for generating the sale or lead for you. The Affiliate network then pays their publishers for generating sales on your behalf, minus what the network keeps for itself for putting the deal together. This may sound similar to a shopping portal, however there are some distinct differences. A shopping portal places your products in direct connection with the online shopper. Affiliate marketing networks place your products in direct connection with publishers (marketing or media companies.) Each publisher will then use their own resources to generate sales for you, be it PPC, SEO, email, banners and the like.

Not every product or service will work with an affiliate marketing campaign, and many affiliate networks will not accept your offer unless certain criteria are met. The average website is not “marketing ready” for an affiliate marketing campaign, and often requires a redesign or a separate website to allow for easy sales or lead conversions. Most sales lead generation campaigns work across affiliate marketing networks as long as you are not trying to collect too much information, or information that makes your customers feel nervous such as a social security number. For product sales, you need to present a very attractive offer like “a free 7 day trial for a diet pill”, “free services for 1 month”, or anything that can be considered a low risk bargain. An offer such as “a 42 inch plasma screen Television for only $1,597″ will not work. As always, there are exceptions, and you may need to work closely with your affiliate manager to produce a campaign that will be popular amongst the publishers.

Due to the nature of the affiliate networks, they can be volatile and risky, and are not recommended for any company until they have a lot of internet marketing experience under their belt. The overall sales potential of affiliate network marketing can be enormous, and any time gigantic sales numbers come into play, so do gigantic risks. Many affiliate networks have what are known as “Super Affiliates” who have the potential to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales commissions each month. The volatility stems from both the marketing power available through an affiliate network, along with the performance-based environment they provide.

For the most part, the publishers who do the selling through the affiliate networks are greedy. They want to sell only the products and services that yield them the most revenue. It is their right, after all, because they are working on a performance basis and assume all marketing risks. If a good offer comes across an affiliate network, where a lot of money can be made, many publishers will market the product and sales will come streaming in. If a product comes in that does not generate good, or at least acceptable, revenue for the publishers, they will chose to not market the product and sales will be almost nonexistent. It is difficult to find the right balance to satisfy all parties involved (advertiser, publisher, affiliate network, and potential customer.) All parties must be happy in order to yield a successful affiliate campaign. The swing between a high performing campaign and an unpopular one can be tremendous. This volatility introduces significant risk, which comes in three flavors.

Affiliate Network Marketing Risk:

(1)  Too much business You hit the nail on the head… Your offer is hot and the publishers love it. They love it so much that sales flow in faster than you can handle. Your call center can handle 50 leads per day but the publishers are generating 200. For each sale or lead made you must pay a commission whether or not you can address it. You are literally downing in too much business, and your pocketbook can’t hold out long enough to expand accordingly.

(2) Not enough business

You have put significant time and resources into building an Affiliate marketing campaign. You have commissioned all types of marketing creative, website design and even bulked up your sales staff. Despite this preparation, your offer is not a money maker for the publishers, and they are not marketing your campaign. Your expenses have increased in anticipation of increased sales that simply never materialized.

(3) Cheating
You didn’t invest much effort in validating your sales or leads. Your affiliate marketing campaign is generating a lot of leads, but sales are not happening. You are receiving numerous disconnected phone numbers, invalid credit card numbers or people who say “I only signed up for the free gift.” Leads are coming in, but a bunch of crooked publishers are submitting fake information to get paid as if their data was real. Notice how that last lead had a Texas area code, their zip code was “12345,” they stated they live in Alaska and gave you the credit card number “4444555544445555.”

Many Affiliate marketing networks will also ask if they can run your campaign exclusively. This means that they are the only affiliate network that can provide your offer to the world. There are some distinct advantages and disadvantages to running your campaign exclusively with one network.

Exclusive Affiliate network Campaign Advantages:

Your Affiliate marketing campaign manager may pass your campaign on to other affiliate marketing networks, and manage your account for you. This saves you considerable time by not having to seek out new networks, organizing campaign launches, marketing creative, and other tasks required to launch a new campaign.
You will not have to pay startup fees or sign contracts for the affiliate marketing networks that your affiliate manager passes your campaign on to. You simply work under your single agreement with your affiliate manager. This can save you thousands of dollars in startup costs, and lots of time.
Affiliate marketing networks use exclusive campaigns as “bragging rights,” and often give priority to their exclusive campaigns. Your campaign is more likely to be advertised to the publishers and given special attention. This helps to get your campaign noticed by the publisher, and ultimately increases sales or lead flow.

Exclusive Affiliate network Disadvantages:

Your campaign manager will outsource your campaign to other affiliate marketing networks. You will not know exactly who is marketing your offer and therefore the quality of the web traffic coming into your website is unknown.
Your affiliate manager may not be as ambitious as you. Your campaign may not get passed on to other affiliate marketing networks, and because it is an exclusive offer you can’t pass it on to other networks. Growth may become stifled.
The publishers who run your campaign through outsourced affiliate networks will not receive as high of a payout (sales commission). There are effectively two affiliate marketing networks: Your direct affiliate network and the outsourced network. More hands are in the pot, taking money and leaving less for the publishers themselves. The decreased publisher bounty with result in decreased interest in your campaign, so the outsourced affiliate marketing networks will not be as productive as if you worked with them directly.

Most affiliate networks will want to incorporate email marketing into your campaign. This is strongly recommended, as sales or lead generation volumes could be significantly higher. If you do allow your campaign to be email marketed, you will need to be able to maintain an email suppression list. The suppression list is a list of email addresses of people who want to opt-out from receiving your offer. An opt-out link must be provided on your email marketing creative where people can opt-out from your offer. You must then supply the suppression file to your affiliate network so they can in turn pass your suppression file to their publishers. This is a part of the Can-Spam law and it can be effectively managed with a small opt-out landing page connected to a simple database. Make sure you provide an updated suppression file to the affiliate networks at least once per week.

Launching affiliate marketing campaigns that convert:

Your goal is to generate a campaign that puts the most money possible into your publisher’s pockets, while also generating a profit yourself. Keep in mind that a break-even campaign is also a successful campaign as long as you can re-market to your clients and generate additional sales, upgrades, etc.
Design your campaign to maximize conversions. Minimize the clicks needed to purchase a product, or have your lead generation form on the home page. Don’t collect information that you really do not need, or that people do not like to give out (like an SSN.) You may have to build a unique website for the affiliate marketing campaign if your current website is not fine-tuned for affiliate marketing.
You are competing against all of the other campaigns on an affiliate network, not just ones selling the same thing you are. Publishers optimize the offers they market and drop the poor performing campaigns. Design an offer that works both for you and your publishers; your affiliate manager can help.
Make the steps necessary to allow your campaign to be email marketed by the publishers. This means you will need to create Can-Spam compliant email marketing creative, an opt-out page linked to a database, and provide access to an updated suppression file (a text dump of your database suppression file.) Email marketing will significantly amplify your campaign’s effectiveness.
Develop a large selection of various marketing creative, lots of standard size banners, multiple email creative, multiple email titles and subject lines, various text links and so on. Your affiliate manager will provide you a list of critical media types and sizes, but try to provide more than their minimum requirements.
Stay on top of lead quality and fraud. No matter how advanced your validation system may get, someone will try to sneak fake data past you. Make sure that you can track all lead sources, including the subIDs that are passed on through the affiliate network.
Every time you make a change to your website, submit a test to ensure that the affiliate campaign is still running as it should be. If your website has an error preventing sales conversions or introduces tracking problems, you may be asked to pay the publishers for their lost business. Remember that your broken website will affect many companies who stuck their neck out for you.
Be prepared for large volumes of leads, or no leads at all.

The risks associated with affiliate network marketing are many, and they are significant. You must be on your toes, thinking ahead and quick to move if things turn sour. But if you come prepared and design an offer that the publishers love, the financial rewards can be enormous.

Free Affiliate Marketing Page Pays $755 in Commissions From its First 100 Visitors

Affiliate marketing is an easy way to get started making money online. You just sign up to be an affiliate, and refer new customers to the sales site(s) with a special, coded affiliate link. When your referrals click the link and make a purchase, you get paid a sales commission on the sale. Many of these commissions are now paid instantly, at the time of the purchase, as in the system below.

But few new affiliate marketing sites are as successful as the new system reviewed here. It is a free-to-copy, self-duplicating affiliate referral system that pays growing, residual sales commissions, and actually MULTIPLIES an affiliate’s income, from a low, ONE-TIME purchase of less than $30.

From fewer than its first 100 visitors, it produced $755 in INSTANT affiliate marketing sales commissions from a total startup cost of $30. So it produced 25 times as much as it cost, from fewer than 100 visitors. This is a phenomenal return for ANY web site.

As you will come to realize, this new, free affiliate page is very different from anything you have ever seen. This new affiliate marketing system is very powerful and unique, and anyone can use it for free. It has several very innovative features:

First, it combines three special, hand-picked affiliate marketing programs, all of a unique type, which pay the highest commissions possible. (One pays 100%, $100 sales commissions.)

Second, you sign up sequentially, making it pay for itself from that first $30 purchase.

Third, It produces continuing, RESIDUAL income, from just that ONE-TIME $30 purchase.

Fourth, the residual income from the system GROWS exponentially, due to those special affiliate programs. The residual income MULTIPLIES automatically, in the same way that a viral affiliate marketing plan multiplies a merchant’s customer base.

Fifth, you can ‘set it and forget it’. After you make a sufficient number of new referral customers, it takes on a life of its own, and the income keeps growing, whether you do anything more, or not. You do NOT have to keep referring more and more new customers, to keep generating more and more income. (But your affiliate page can continue to refer more and more new customers as more people find it – each referral customer can start another multiplying pile of those instant sales commissions for you.)

No other affiliate marketing referral system has ever before combined all of these features into such a simple, copy-and-paste free system. It is very simple to use, although the affiliate plans may appear difficult to understand at first.

The secret of its success lies hidden in the special, unique affiliate payment plans. All three programs are lifetime membership affiliate marketing sites, offering ‘tons’ of marketing expertise and tools for affiliate marketing and traffic generation, for a low, one-time cost.

They use payment processors like Paypal and Stormpay, so a referring affiliate’s sales commissions are actually deposited INSTANTLY, directly into the referring affiliate’s account, even before the site owner gets his payment for the lifetime membership.

The continual growth of an affiliate’s income is assured when his referral customers begin generating affiliate income for themselves. The pay plans are very unique: Every new affiliate gives up his first two sales commissions; they are automatically passed up to a sponsor above. This causes your commissions to multiply, automatically.

They are not MLM plans, they are one-tier affiliate marketing plans with a special, multi-tiered pay provision. This pass-up provision causes the pay to YOU as the referring affiliate to DOUBLE with each successive tier that spreads below you, starting from EACH new customer you find for them, after you pass up those first two sales.

You purchase from the next plan in sequence as soon as you receive $20 instant sales commissions from the first $30 plan. Each successive affiliate plan pays a higher sales commission than the plan before it. Adding up the commissions passed up, you wind up being paid $300 for each successful new affiliate you refer to this affiliate system. Yet you started it with only a $30 outlay, for membership in the first affiliate marketing site.

And those $300 sets of affiliate commissions then start DOUBLING from each tier, automatically, from each new successful referral affiliate you sponsor. From the next tier, you get $600, then $1200, then $2400, etc. That’s how it was possible for less than 100 visitors to this system page to pay over $750 in affiliate sales commissions. And that’s just the BEGINNING of the income from it.

Most of my referrals have not even finished signing up for all three of the plans in sequence yet, so I have much more affiliate income to look forward to in the near future, with no more effort on my part.

Like me, my referrals start their own doubling sales commissions with their third referral sale, after passing up the first two. And the passing up of the doubling commissions goes on for as long as the viral marketing of the plan goes on below you. It’s the most lucrative affiliate plan ever designed.

Making the simple, affiliate system referral page free to copy-and-paste, makes it easy for anyone to duplicate it and keep it growing virally below you. Copying and pasting it for free makes the system easily self-replicating, ensuring the continued growth of your residual income, from that one-time $30 purchase. The system has instructions for setting up your own copy of the page online for free, too.

As your referrals purchase memberships in the rest of the plans and start using them, it will just continue multiplying your own affiliate income from the system.

I put my system in a free blog page, just to keep costs down as I got it started. And free blogs are as easy to use as email – just copy and paste, click a button, and it’s immediately online with its own URL. Then just paste in your own affiliate links as you get them, and make some referrals to your page. There’s a list of 14 free blog hosts in the system instructions. If you don’t want to use a web site, use a free blog like I did.

The multiplication of your commissions is explained more fully on my free system blog page, at [http://www.MoneyGrower.info]

Although the affiliate pay plans are not easy to understand the first time through, the system ‘works like a charm’, as the saying goes. As you can see, this free system is entirely different from any other affiliate marketing plan or system in the world. And it PAYS like nothing else in the world, too.

Copyright 2004 by David L. Thorne

Copy this article free, keeping the links intact. David Thorne observes the many masters of internet marketing who make innovations, and make it simple for people to succeed. View his innovative system at [http://www.MoneyGrower.info] – TIP: Copy the system, then refer your readers to your OWN copy of the page, for your own multiplying, residual income.

An Affiliate Marketing Success Story

The following is an  interview with Shawn Collins, a prominent expert in the

affiliate marketing field. Shawn has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the field and now runs his own

affiliate program management and consulting firm. As this interview is inherently

limited in scope, one is encouraged to read more about Shawn’s experiences

in the field and the advice he dispenses through his books, conferences,

blog, articles, reports, and weekly radio show. The reader can also meet

Shawn at the Affiliate Summit, a “can’t miss” conference for those

interested in excelling in the competitive world of affiliate marketing.

Q. Shawn, how would you describe your initial experiences with affiliate

marketing?

A. It was back in 1997. I had a dial-up account on AOL, a 14.4 modem and

a desire to make more money. At the time, I didn’t know a thing about

creating websites, marketing, etc. But I went through a tutorial at AOL on

writing HTML and picked up the basics. Then, I created a hideous, single

page site about New York City and put up some Amazon links. I never earned

a cent on that site.

Q. What growing pains did you endure at first? What were the biggest

obstacles and challenges from that period of time?

A. Back then, there was a monopoly on registering domains, and it cost

$35 a year. At the time, that was a bit prohibitive for me (I didn’t

realize what a good investment a short name would be). That was a trend -

an unwillingness to invest in my affiliate efforts. I was going the free

route with tools, hosting, etc. That definitely delayed my progress.

Q. What was your first “Ah-ha” moment? How did you incorporate the

lesson learned into your affiliate marketing business?

A. The first time I got my reporting via email from Amazon with

information on commission earned. Back then, there was no option to login

to an interface – just a periodic email with affiliate stats. When I

realized it was real that I could earn money this way, I was excited and

motivated. This persuaded me that I was wasting my time working in

magazine publishing – it was time for me to get into a line of work that

was stimulating and rewarding.

With my limited affiliate marketing experience, I managed to get a job

with a start-up in 1997 called Medsite.com, and I bluffed my way into

running the affiliate program there. I’ve enjoyed my work ever since.

Q. If one is gifted marketing an affiliate product or service, is it

likely that this individual can effectively market his/her own products or

services? Should people look into developing their own items while

marketing or instead of marketing others’ products/services?

A. I’d say anything that is already selling online can be effectively

marketed through an affiliate program. Selling your own products or

services can certainly provide more rewards in the best case scenario, but

then you’ve got a lot more risk, too.

If somebody has the infrastructure and know-how to sell a certain product

or service, I’d say to go for it. But don’t take uncalculated risks.

Q. Without mentioning names, have you joined affiliate programs that did

not keep their promises and/or provide appropriate compensation? What

measures did you take when confronted with this situation and what advice

can you give others to avoid this circumstance?

A. Lots of affiliate programs lie in their recruiting efforts – they

talk about how easy it is to earn commission from them. That’s simply not

true – it’s not easy. I just don’t pay attention to most recruiting

efforts from affiliate programs. I would encourage affiliates to ignore

proclamations of easy earnings and high EPCs – the most important thing is

to test everything yourself and promote what works for you.

Q. How has affiliate marketing changed in the last seven years? What

strategies would you implement now that you would not or could not do

years ago?

A. The industry has matured greatly. Seven years ago, many affiliate

marketers were content sites which relied on 468×60 banners. The analytics

were primitive and fewer companies offered affiliate programs.

Now, the industry is so diversified. Essentially, any way to market online

is being leveraged by affiliates… including comparison shopping,

domaining, video, SEO, e-mail, social networks, PPC, rewards programs,

etc.

If I could turn back time, I would have started up multiple niche

community sites back then for popular topics. By now, if nurtured they

would have grown nicely and become lucrative affiliate sites.

Q. What are crucial mistakes that newbies tend to commit?

A. Lack of investment and understanding. It’s really difficult to

succeed in affiliate marketing if you are unwilling to spend the time and

money required to develop a long-term strategy. And affiliate marketing is

most certainly not a quick endeavor – it takes patience to endure and

succeed.

Q. What are some of the creative (perhaps seldom used) strategies to

employ in the affiliate marketing field?

A. Simply going beyond the banner. There are a lot of exciting

opportunities out there with Web 2.0. It’s just a matter of figuring out a

unique angle.

Q. How long does it realistically take to build a full-time income with

affiliate marketing, assuming “full-time commitment”?

A. I don’t think you can qualify and quantify passion. And to me,

passion is an essential ingredient in affiliate marketing success. Also,

there are so many variables, like the size of a given vertical, the

margins involved, competition, etc.

Q. Is it easier to build income from this type of marketing now or was

it easier years ago? (Please consider competition, Internet usage, advent

of Adwords and Pay Per Click, etc.)

A. It was never easy. There was certainly less competition in the past,

but also less in the way of options of advertisers to choose and methods

to promote them. Plus, there is the continuing growth of ecommerce. I

think the opportunities for success are just as healthy now as they were

years ago.

Q. While I know that you do not recommend any particular affiliate

marketing programs, in your estimation, what are the “hottest fields?”

A. The “hottest fields” are a slippery slope. They change over time. I

think the hottest field for any given person should be the area that

interests them most. You can certainly go out there as a mercenary and

promote the most lucrative thing at the moment, like ringtones or debt

consolidation, but I suggest going with a long-term plan in an area that

interests you.

Q. Is there any affiliate marketing software that is a “must” when one

pursues an affiliate marketing venture?

A. This really depends on the type of affiliate. There are software

programs that help optimize affiliate efforts for different affiliates.

For instance, if you’re working with data feeds, you should check out

WebMerge.

Q. What are your views concerning affiliate marketing networks such as

LinkShare and Commission Junction?

A. I think they’re the backbone of the industry. The affiliate networks

account for the majority of large affiliate programs, and they also

provide a level of convenience in that you can consolidate a lot of your

activity under a few logins.

I would like to see them work together to establish standards. For

instance, there is a lack of standards in data feeds, which is a challenge

for the folks using them.

Q. Can any absolute statements be made regarding the most lucrative type

of affiliate marketing payment system (e.g pay per sale, pay per click,

etc.)?

A. In general, CPA seems to be more profitable, especially offers for

products and services that are not physical items.

Q. What influence, if any, will blogs make on the affiliate marketing

landscape?

A. I think some are influential in the way networks, merchants and

affiliates operate. For instance, Jangro.com is considered to have had an

impact in the decision by Commission Junction to change their plans on the

Link Management Initiative (LMI).

Q. What are, statistically, the best avenues to market an affiliate

program?

A. It depends on the vertical. Email and PPC work well for some CPA

offers, while an established web presence can be more important for

selling goods on a revenue share.

Q. Do you see any future trends in the affiliate marketing field?

A. Smaller affiliate programs. Affiliate managers are focusing on

working more closely with fewer affiliates. Also, I think we’ll see an

increasing number of affiliates embrace the opportunities out there with

Web 2.0 and innovate with the new tools that roll out.

Q. What current projects are you undertaking in affiliate marketing, including

your work with the Affiliate Summit?

A. My main focus is Affiliate Summit, the largest affiliate marketing

conference. Our last show had over 2,000 this past January in Las Vegas.

We also have events scheduled in Miami (July 8-10) and London (September

28) this year.

Additionally, I provide affiliate management and consulting services as

Shawn Collins Consulting, and I publish an annual report on affiliate

marketing benchmarks called AffStat.

I also have a blog at http://blog.affiliatetip.com where I post daily

about issues in affiliate marketing. And I’m the co-host with Lisa

Picarille, Editor-in-Chief at Revenue Magazine, for the weekly show,

Affiliate Thing, on WebmasterRadio.FM.

Q. What do you attribute your affiliate marketing success to (e.g.,

building content, writing articles, following footsteps of a mentor, forum

participation, etc.)? Please include any last words of advice for one who

aspires to succeed/excel in the affiliate marketing field.

A. It’s all about dedication, tenacity, and relationships. I don’t look

at my affiliate marketing activity as a job, but rather a fun, profitable

hobby. Over the decade I’ve been involved in the industry, there are way

too many factors to list that have contributed to my success. But I’d say

the most important of all is to constantly endeavor to learn from others.

_____________________

Conclusion – Do’s and Don’ts of successful affiliates

Analyzing the success stories, we may conclude the following do’s and

don’ts of being a successful affiliate:

Do’s

Build a useful website. Visitors must gain some benefit by visiting

your site.Retain visitors through unique content or adding your “personal

touch.” Provide something unique / personal on a consistent basis so that

visitors will be motivated to revisit your site.Sign up with a known and established affiliate program. They have

their tracking systems updated and so you can be rest assured that you

will get your payments.Market your affiliate program so that you can increase the number of

visitors who see your affiliate offering.Optimize your website so that you get a high ranking in natural search

engines.Know your competition. You have to provide something better than

them.Choose the advertisement model that is in line with your overall

business model.Launch your site for some time, before joining any program. Good

affiliate programs may like to see your site and study the traffic before

enrolling you.Look for outside help. You may employ skilled people.Use blogs and RSS feeds for promotion.Remain active in your industry. You must know the latest trends and

needs of visitors.

Don’ts

Join just any affiliate program. Many affiliate programs are outright

frauds.Ignore your competition. They are the best evaluators of your

products/services.Get obsolete. Update your content regularly.Rely only on banner ads. Experiment with all types of

advertisements.Waste time. Be the first to capture any new opportunity.Encourage spamming. You will get blacklisted.

With successful identification of customer needs, providing a way to

fulfill those needs, and collaborating with established affiliate

programs, it is possible to create your own affiliate success story. You

just need to manifest a methodical, patient approach and perform lots of

hard work. But raising an affiliate program cash cow is certainly worth

the effort!

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