http://marketingsource.com/articles/ Articles at marketingsource.com Articles Library en-us http://marketingsource.com/articles/affiliate-marketing/affiliate-marketing-101-what-is-affiliate-marketing.html http://marketingsource.com/articles/affiliate-marketing/affiliate-marketing-101-what-is-affiliate-marketing.html Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:52:11 -0500
Affiliate marketing is based on sharing revenue sales between two parties. On one hand you have the merchant, the owner of goods, products and/or services, and on the other you have the affiliate.

Through a unique affiliate link, the affiliate is rewarded for each action the visitor takes based on the merchant's reward system. The affiliate is rewarded depending on which actions the merchant decides to reward their affiliates by. The affiliate (via their affiliate link) may be rewarded by each visitor who clicks on their link, enters certain details such as a name, zip code and email address into a form, or by purchasing a product or service.

For example, if a merchant decides to pay the affiliate for each visitor who purchases a product through their affiliate link, the affiliate is then rewarded a percentage of each sale that occurs through their unique affiliate link.

A numbers example of this would be if a company has a $97 ebook that they sell through their website and then decides they would like more traffic and sales for their ebook. They would then create an affiliate program where affiliates who promote that ebook with their affiliate link will generate (say) %50 commissions for each sale they produce. Each sale produced by the affiliate makes him $48.50, while the other half of that sale goes to the merchant, who did not have to promote and market to generate that sale.

This creates a win-win situation for both parties involved, each makes a profit for each sale that's produced. The more sales made by the affiliate, the more revenue each party will make.

There are literally thousands of merchants who use affiliate programs to grow their business exponentially. Sites like ClickBank have made it easy for merchants to create an affiliate system whereby affiliates can promote their products, and likewise affiliates can sign a form, have their own unique affiliate ID created for them and begin promoting products for the merchant immediately.

This is the essence of affiliate marketing and is one of the greatest ways for anyone to earn a secondary or main income by putting this type of marketing into practice.

Of course, there's more to affiliate marketing than meets the eye.

One of the fastest ways to make money with affiliate marketing is by setting up and creating your own marketing funnel system.

Sure, you can generate a few sales by promoting an affiliate product by various means on the Internet, but I (and countless others) have found it extremely valuable and 10x more powerful to create a system whereby affiliate sales are made one right after the other and on autopilot. ]]> http://marketingsource.com/articles/marketing/marketing-on-line/internet-marketing-4-steps-to-implement-immediately.html http://marketingsource.com/articles/marketing/marketing-on-line/internet-marketing-4-steps-to-implement-immediately.html Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:17:54 -0500
Let's get started...

1.) Create a landing page. What the heck is a landing page? If you're particularly new to Internet marketing you may have no idea what this is. A landing page is a website that builds your list of subscribers and prospects and eventually, with the information you provide them with, into customers. When you create a landing page you'll want to get as many visitors to this site as possible and on a continuing basis through traffic generation.

Ideally, the minimum to ask your website visitors for is their name and email address in exchange for something of value. Use your landing page in conjunction with an autoresponder service.

2.) Get an autoresponder service. An autoresponder service is what you'll be using to systematically build your list and communicate with your subscribers. In the back office of your autoresponder provider will be an HTML code that you will embed to appear on your landing page. When visitors go to your website and fill out the forms shown through this service, such as "Name" and "Email Address", and click the access button, you will have gained one subscriber.

3.) Generate traffic to your landing page. No visitors = no sales. You need people to get to your site to take you up on whatever it is you have to offer. This is where traffic generation comes in and will be vital to your overall success.

4.) Build your list. The amount of people you can communicate with and in the time you can do it is massive leverage in today's fast-paced world. By building your subscriber list you have the advantage over most by sending your subscribers an email to virtually anything you want and have that message read by the majority of your list. The bigger, and more responsive your list is can be the most valuable asset you can ever own online. ]]> http://marketingsource.com/articles/marketing/marketing-strategies/unlimitedleads.html http://marketingsource.com/articles/marketing/marketing-strategies/unlimitedleads.html Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:58:28 -0500
There are four easy steps to follow to get this going. Follow each one in order and you'll know exactly where to find the right people for your website.

Step 1: What you'll need first are your primary KEYWORDS for the niche that you're in. Use this to brainstorm and find those words: Google AdWords Keywords Tool. These words will describe in detail what kinds of people are looking for what you have to offer.

Step 2: Position yourself in your customers' shoes and think about what they would ask if they were looking for what you have to offer. For example: If you were looking to buy Hip Hop beats on the Internet you would probably ask "where can I buy hip hop beats?". If YOU were the one selling Hip Hop beats online then the person who's asking this question is just the person you're looking for! Right? You would even probably ask the same question in several different ways. Such as:
-"how can I buy hip hop beats online?"
-"are there hip hop beats for sale?"
-"where can I find hip hop beats to buy?"
There are pretty much endless ways you would phrase this. All you'll need is a few to start off with.

Step 3: Create an email account with Google.

It's best to keep the names of these accounts short and easy to remember.

Step 4: Create an account with Google Alerts and set up an alert using the question you came up with in Step 2. Be sure to include the ("") quotation and (?) marks to receive precise hits for the words you choose. These will then get forwarded to your email account. Within 20 minutes you should start getting feedback and websites of where some of your best leads are located on the web.

What To Do Next: The feedback and websites you'll be receiving in the email account you created is where you'll want to provide a link back to your website where your lead can gain more information and possibly buy from you. What you really want to do is provide as much value and simply help the other person inquiring about their question. You never want to spam these sites, or anything for that matter, once you find them. Leaving a helpful and relevant comment on a blog post, in a forum, or even on Yahoo! Answers (where I have received some alerts from) and then placing your website link is how you're going to get traffic back to your site. Also by applying the method above is a double bonus if you can see it...

When you keep placing your link on these sites with helpful information you'll be slowly building more and more backlinks to your website. And you should know that when it comes to traffic generation it's all about links; the links that link back to your website!

Don't Let This Go To Waste I mentioned earlier in the beginning of this post that many TOP Internet marketers are using this tactic. They do it because it works. Since I've started implementing this tactic into my traffic generating arsenal I have seen a fair amount of free leads coming in from doing this alone. The best way to monetize this process is to set aside a specific time each day or week to look through each alert that comes in and see if you can add value and place your website link on that site. Not every feedback alert will be an opportunity to get your link out there for more traffic, but that's fine. Say you get 20 alerts each week but only 14 out of those 20 will give you an opportunity to place your link, well then guess what? You now have 14 targeted sites looking for what you may have to offer...

Don't let this go to waste! Start implementing this tactic immediately and watch the leads start trickling in, the sooner you do this the more results you'll start seeing. ]]>