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Affiliate Marketing, just like everything else in life, the 80/20 rule still applies. 20% of the affiliates make 80% of the money; here’s why.

Focus

Number one, this is in most areas of life: Focus. You want to have some areas that you are really, really, good at and focus on those. Focus in those areas so you can excel and get ahead of everybody else. You don’t want to have a little bit of focus in so many areas and such in all of them because you are going to be mediocre. You don’t want that.

Use your comparative advantage. What on earth does that mean? It is similar to what Dan said. You do the things you are best at, and outsource everything else. If you are really good at the finances, do that. If you are really good at graphic design, do that. But, if you are not, let someone else do it that is good at it.

Keep Learning

This one is really a life point, it is certainly advice for affiliate marketing but it is really a life point. Never stop learning and growing because the world is always moving. There are always people coming in, new people and new companies coming around.

You always want to be learning and growing because if you are standing still you are actually falling behind, it is a hard concept to get across to a lot of folks. Remember the four most dangerous words; “I already know that.” That is why you see so many dinosaurs out there, “I learned this 20 years ago.” You know what, it has changed dude!

Keep an opened mind and always learn because a lot of time you hear something you thought you knew but you will get a different nuance to it and you will find something that works so much better than before. Follow great industry sources like Pro Blogger or Blog Success Journal, just always stay up to date and be learning. Also, Affiliate Marketing Summit is great. It is a great Affiliate Marketing conference.

Technology is constantly changing, as is the industry that you may be selling products in. It’s your job to keep on top of technology to make sure that your marketing techniques are up to date and effective. Keeping on top of what’s happening in the industry you are selling products in will also give you a competitive edge. Invest in quality eBooks, videos, and training programs that will keep you on top of your game.

People Don’t Just Click Links

One of the worst misconceptions out there is that people will just click on your affiliate links. This could not be further from the truth. Most people hate advertising and definitely won’t bother clicking on a basic link. Your job, as a successful affiliate marketer, is to tell people about the benefits of the product or service. It’s your job to give positive reviews about it and put a message out there that will entice people to use the product. You have to tell people why they need your product or service, and then include the link.

Organic Traffic Does Not Automatically Exist

Organic traffic is a term that is used to describe people who just naturally find your website or blog. If you think that simply posting up some links on your blog or website to your affiliate product is enough, then you’re never going to get anywhere. You have to keep in mind that for the most part, your website or blog will be hundreds if not thousands of pages deep in the rankings on search engines like Google and Yahoo!. It’s your job to bring attention to your blog. You need to do this with the methods mentioned above, like tapping into social media, and you will also need to familiarize yourself with proper SEO (search engine optimization) techniques that will give your affiliate marketing website or blog a real boost in search engine rankings.

Keep Track of your Performance

A lot of people who are new to affiliate marketing won’t actually keep track of how well they’re doing. Most affiliate marketing sites will allow you to see how much you have earned in a day, but if you aren’t keeping track of that very basic stat, then you will have no idea whether you are using the right marketing techniques or not. Check your stats, if not every day, then at least once a week to see how well you’re doing. Some of the questions that you should be asking yourself when you track your performance are:

- How many visitors are we getting to our website?
- How many of these are unique visitors, and how many are regular returning customers?
- How are they getting to the marketing page?
- How long do they spend on our site, and on what pages?
- Where do they go after they visit our page?

Of course, you don’t have a crystal ball so you won’t be able to answer this simply by looking at how much you’ve earned in a day or in a week. You need to download and use tracking software to help you keep track of this information. Some of the best are the Google Analytics tool, or even a basic stat counter tool may be all that you need.

Affiliate Marketing is Not a Get Rich Quick Scheme

Last but not least, if you’re looking to get into affiliate marketing because you think you’ll make a ton of money in a short period of time, you’re sadly mistaken. You have to be committed, both financially and with your time, and you must put in a lot of effort to make any cash. If you’re expecting a quick turn around, then you are sure to lose.

Social Media Marketing is all about getting your fans to share and promote your product or content.  Think of it kind of like having email subscribers, or an email list in real time.  You’re able to stay in touch with your customers at a very low cost.  Your motto should be “the more subscribers, the better.”

Using Facebook

The first one, Facebook, it started out as just a little website for college friends to connect, but we all know it has gotten much, much, much bigger than that. Then they rolled out something called pages where you can actually set up a page for your business. The reason that we recommend that you do not set up a personal Facebook page for your blog or business is because you can only have like 5,000 friends if you do that. Pages allow you to have unlimited amounts of followers so set up a page for your blog.  We will get into how to use those tools a little later in another video.

Twitter Magic

Twitter, less bells and whistles, is limited to 140 characters of text, and even more real time. Think of it this way, A lot of people say “should I be on Facebook? Should I be on Twitter?”  It’s a no brainer, yes, because some people like Twitter, some people like Facebook. Guess what, do you not like the Facebook folks? Do you like the Twitter folks? You like both of them and you want them to like you, you got to be in both places. You are going to have to post more often on Twitter if you want to build a following because there is a lot more noise going on.

You can make short announcements about new products and special offers on Twitter.  Use the Twitter search tool or tools like “Twiends” to locate people with interests or a business similar to yours, and follow them.  Chances are they will follow you too, and if you make your tweets engaging and beneficial to the public, they will retweet your tweets.  This again means that you and your blog will get more and more traffic, which of course means that you may be seeing an increase in ad or affiliate revenue very soon.

New Kid on the Block: Google +

A new player in the game is Google +, they came out in about the summer of 2011. There was a lot of excitement and a lot of hype in a typical Google fashion.  They came out in beta and rolled to the general public.  The interest is there again, but the jury is still out if they can catch up with Facebook, so pay attention to that one. You want to create an account on there but don’t put all your eggs there just yet. It will be interesting to see where it goes now that anyone can create an account there.

Social Media Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

There are quite a few differences between social media marketing and traditional marketing. Traditional marketing would be television and print ads, for example, which simply advertise your business or product and may give a brief description of what you or it is all about. Social media marketing, on the other hand, should always give your customers something of value and be personable. If you have nothing of value to offer, then they won’t waste their time talking to you about it.

You need to also have a real human voice when you interact on any social media platform. If you sound too sales-pitchy and are only promoting your product, then people are going to unfriend, unfollow and completely remove you from any social media lists. Interact with people just as you would online. You can use smiley emoticons and even some internet jargon, such as “LOL” and “TTYL”. Keep it casual – just make sure that you don’t keep it too casual. Be courteous, polite, and always reply to anyone who comments or asks questions either about you or your business.

Putting it All Together

If you’re new to social media, you may be wondering where to start. The best way to do this is to start with a blog. A blog gives you a good opportunity to introduce not only your company and the products that you sell, but it also gives you a chance to introduce yourself to the online world. Your blog is just as much about you as it is about your business, so it’s important that you keep your blog personable. Once you have written abut yourself and your business, start writing up blogs that are related to your products and business. Start posting things about yourself and your every day life that people may find entertaining (pets and children are a great place to start). Showcase your products on your blog, while also sharing things and news clips that you find funny. This will give readers the clear message that not your blog isn’t only for promotional purposes; it also shows who you are as well.

Once you’ve got your blog going, you can then open it up to all of the other social media outlets out there. You can open up your very own Facebook profile page, and then open up a “group” page for your blog as well. Encourage friends and family to join the group. Once they join, it will show up in the newsfeeds of their other friend and family who may not be on your “friends” list, thus increasing your exposure. Keep your Facebook group page updated regularly with your blog posts, and always provide a link back to your blog.

There are a lot of different ways that you can approach social media, and depending on your business, you may want to start off with Facebook or Twitter. The important thing is to make sure that you link up all of your social media accounts so that they direct customers back to your blog or website where they can find out even more information about your company.

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Follow your passion

Affiliate marketing can be a highly lucrative way to make money off your blog, but how do you find the best products to promote? That’s what we’re talking about today…

Now that you’ve learned how to start a blog and found a reliable web hosting, you probably want to start reaping the benefits of affiliate marketing. Follow your passion. Doing something just for the money never works, so why not promote something you actually believe in. Start by choosing products you actually use yourself. That way you can confident write about its benefits.

People are most successful at promoting products that they have a passion for and that they can get excited about. So, the first thing to do when you are taking your first step in affiliate marketing is to choose your niche. It means you have to choose in which industry you want to grow your affiliate business (e.g. health, finance etc).

You can choose a category based on your own passions and pick those areas where in which you can perform well and give most of your effort to. Potential customers feel your passion for a product or service can when they read the marketing copy. So, the best products to sell online are the things you enjoy and have the most interest in.

Play to the room

If you have a pet care blog, and you try and sell computer products or services in your affiliate program, how do you think that’s going to work? Not so well. Tailor your product offerings to things that people who read and enjoy your blog would actually be interested in.

But before you do anything else, survey your target market first. One of the biggest mistakes people make is to judge their potential success on what someone else did. You need to talk to your own target customer base.

If you don’t have one, aren’t established as an expert in your field, then you need to tackle these things first, before you even think about online product offerings.

One of the most important things as an affiliate is to build a list of potential customers. Regardless of what products you decide to promote, you want to make sure you feel comfortable recommending it so that you don’t destroy your reputation.

There is a great tool you can use, it’s called Google Trends and it helps you analyze the potential products you want to promote. It also allows you to monitor the search volume of keywords over time, which is a great way to check how well the products in your niche sell.

Stick to virtual products

Next, you must decide whether you start selling digital or physical products. Which is best? Physical products like cosmetics and gadgets or virtual products like e-books, music or software? Which products are more profitable and can get you fast and guaranteed profits?

We believe that digital products in almost all cases are more beneficial to promote. Why? Well, to start with, you have nothing to ship, there is no postage or handling and once the payment is made, your client gets a download link and simply downloads the product.

So, less hassle, worries and best of all, you never run out of stock. What we mean by that is avoid anything that requires you to purchase stock, and stick to things like software, ebooks, or things that don’t require any initial inventory or cash outlay on your part.

You could sell 1,000 copies and you do no more work than if you sold just one. But what if you sold 1,000 physical products? Well, that’s a lot of work… Think of all the postage and handling and if you need to make each product, it gets even harder.

Start with ClickBank

The fastest way to find profitable products to promote online is to sign up for an affiliate marketing site, such as ClickBank. You gain access to a database with thousands of products to promote in almost any niche. The commissions are usually between 50-75%, with a higher price tag.

They have a huge selection of electronically downloadable products to choose from and they handle all of the payment processing so you know you’ll get paid on time. Plus they provide real time reporting of all of your products. The site also provides good feedback on products that are selling well and have high commission rates.

A special feature you should consider when choosing your Clickbank products is Gravity. This is an indicator of how many affiliates are making sales with a specific product. The higher the number, the more people are selling it. However, you may want to stay away from products with 100+ Gravity, because this is a very competitive field.

Final thoughts…

Choose products that at least 20 other people are already promoting. This proves that the product has a sales letter that converts well and also it’s also trusted by other marketers.

Also, pick a product that’s not very expensive or very cheap. Low cost may lower down the product value, while higher price may result in fewer sales. It’s always a good idea to start your affiliate journey with no more than one product.

Stick with one, research and learn different strategies to become successful. Use whatever strategies work best in your 2nd and 3rd campaign and grow your online affiliate business gradually.

One last thing… Always try to find products that really serve people and solve their problems creatively. You’ll find that it doesn’t really matter about the product’s price or if your product is really unique. All you need to do is show your target prospects how your product is a key to their success.

These are just a few tips to consider when looking for the best products to promote online. Your ultimate success in creating a successful affiliate business will rest on each product you choose to promote and the way you turn its features into lifesaving benefits.

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Now here’s one more thing about Clickbank Affiliate Marketing , they actually pay you on time! You can sign up to 20 affiliate program and hope that at least some will pay, or you can use Clickbank and have a single source that reliability pays you once you’ve made sales. So it’s a great platform. You know that the money is coming.

Be Selective

As we mentioned earlier, there are a LOT of products out there. Because they are very easy to create, many product owners figure that they just throw a bunch of information together and someone will sell it. This result in tons of crap! It’s basically a bell curve like just about everything in life. A lot of them a going to crappy or at best average.

So choose very carefully. Look at the product. Look at the website , the landing page, the sales copy. Does it make you want to buy? Does the product really solve an actual problem? If the product sucks, then the conversation to sales will be poor too. You’re going to be associated with this product, so don’t ruin your reputation! Maintain a concept of quality. Do things well will be much better for your than be branded together with something crappy. Think of Apple. Their products rock, so other people want to be associate them. By promoting quality products, you’re also more likely to make sales in the converting funnel.

How do you Pick?

Well you can simply pick by category, and select one that’s similar to your niche, but by itself, it isn’t really the best way. So here’re some additional steps to help you. Go to Clickbank.com. Login to your account. Well technically you don’t even need to login, but it’s nice thing to do especially if you’re going to create an affiliate link later. Click on “Marketplace.” Use the “Advance Search” option. Select the category that most closely matches your blog, and then sort by gravity.

Grav, short for Gravity is a numerical representation of how likely people are making with that product, so usually the higher the gravity the better. But don’t be turned off entirely by low gravity scores. Some could be “Diamonds in the Rough” waiting to be discovered. There are fewer competition in promoting these products, but the risk is higher. You’d have to use your gut feeling instead of raw number to decide whether each particuar product would sell well.

So to play on the safe side, you might want to pick a Grav of at least 60+. It gives you an idea what products are best sellers, but you also want to pay attention to the percentage that you get from each sale, and how much that it. You can get that information by paying attention to the “Avg %/Sale” and “Initial $/Sale.”

While some product has a really high gravity number, you might make very little per sale. Instead, set a minimum payout amount, such as $30 for example. There are some products that pay hundreds of dollars, but often the conversion and gravity score could be low.

For affiliates who wish to expand into non-English speaking markets, you have the option to filter by language with French, Spanish, and German,.
Additionally with Advanced search, you could be searching by keyword, by title, gravity, average rebill total, average rebill percentage. Rebill is really interesting because it allows a subscription model, which means you make money both on the initial sale and also h ongoing revenue. It’s kind of like insurance really. The recurring commission makes it really attractive and lucrative.

The Avg %/rebill is a good statistic to inspect since the average commission rate on rebills might be lower than the initial sale.

Other Tips

Promote high quality products that you would personally enjoy and buy. When you actually like the products, you come across as more authentic when you’re preaching its merits to others. You will share a similar understanding and passion of other potential customers. It adds to your credibility.

Be sure to review the tools and tips that the product owners offer on the Affiliates descriptions of their programs web page. Many offer helpful advice on how to best promote their product, and also banners and marketing collateral that you could use.

Test the affiliate links (Hoplinks) periodically to make sure that they are still working correctly. Obviously if something is wrong, you won’t be making any money, and should contact Clickbank and the product owner immediately.

Also check out your competition. Are there other affiliates who are already promoting these products. How are they doing it? The Goldilocks Principle actually applies nicely here. There shouldn’t be too many or too little.

Review the seller’s landing page. You can do this by clicking on the Hoplink also known as the affiliate link. That’s when the rubber meets the road. If you’re diverting your traffic to their site, they should be able to convert. Read their sales copy, and ask yourself whether it’s convincing, true, and believable.

Watch out for hype and exaggerated promises, for example, “lose 50lbs in 1 week.” If for any reason you’re not comfortable, move on, there are plenty of others who have their acts together. Don’t waste your time with someone who has a sloppy affiliate program!

You can also filter by how the vendor have had their products by using the “Vendor Activation Field.” Working with new vendor carry the risk that they’re using you to test any rough spots in their online selling process.

So how do you find the best digital product for your blog? Leave a comment and let us know.

Many people have found that having the right idea is even more important than having the right traffic. If you work hard enough you will inevitably find yourself with a lot of traffic. The search engines take care of it as long as you are putting the right content on your site.

But what about getting people to actually give you money once they are on your site? You need to make sure you have the right business model in place before you get started. Here are five ideas that you may not have been aware of before but could get started on today.

Sniper Sites

These sites require a significant amount of research, but after that they are easy to run. They take advantage of any sort of monetization strategy that relies on heavy traffic, including Google Adwords and affiliate programs. So how do they work?

Start with a product (affiliate product or keyword) that has a decent pay out. Then start looking for search terms that have a high amount of traffic without a significant amount of competition. If you are curious about doing this efficiently, search the Internet to find more ways in which you can get started.

Once you have the right terms a site of five or six pieces of content, all focused on the right keywords, can get you into first place on Google. This requires no back linking or other processes and can start leading to money immediately. Since they are fast, you can easily make one per week and generate thousands of dollars per month.

Affiliate Sales Sites

By making a site that focuses solely on reviews of products through sites like Amazon.com you can sell their products. You can make a hefty commission, especially if you can make a lot of sales. This business takes practice, but once it is set up you can easily make hundreds of dollars (or more) per month.

Most people focus on selling high item electronics. But one trick that is really important to note is that if you sell a lot of smaller products you can make a lot more money. Your commission rate is determined by your total number (not volume) of sales.

Reseller Sites

If you find that you are good at keyword research then you could easily start a website where you are reselling someone else product. There are many products out there that offer affiliate or reseller options. It’s important that you inform the readers of your affiliation, though, as this is required by the FCC.

Once you get started with the process of creating your site and putting it together you can provide a number of options to those who are purchasing from you. By presenting them with many options and encouraging them to purchase the product, they are more likely to buy.
ClickBank.com

This is a site that could give you the opportunity to create your own products and sell them through Click Bank. You could easily put together a special report or an e-book and put it on Click Bank and have others sell it for you. This will allow you to relax while you make some cash.

It’s important that you focus on the products that are currently selling on Clickbank.com. The thing most people don’t understand is that Click Bank is not only marketed through sales pages and websites, but also on mailing lists. For most people who put together a mailing list, they are going to quickly find that they need to sell different products on a regular basis.

Offer a Service

The world of Internet marketing is one that relies heavily on outsourcing. While many people prefer to work with websites like Elance.com and Scriptlance.com there are many more who prefer to have a regular connection with someone that is able to provide their service on a regular basis.

Providing a service to Internet marketers will require that you have a good grasp of the types of services that they need. Here are three that they regularly use to build up their own online business. You are going to need to master all of these skills and more in order to take advantage of any of the ideas listed before, anyway.

1. Content Writing. This is a skill that many Internet marketers lack. If you find that you have a knack for putting together words, you can make a fortune writing articles for others.

2. Article submissions. Many people make money by submitting articles to article directories. The process can be tedious, but can pay well if you learn to do it fast and cheap.

3. Back link building. Whether you are providing comments on other blogs or links from websites you own, you can easily provide back links to a number of sites and make a good amount of money doing so.

4. Keyword Research: A lot of Internet marketers want to simply set it and forget it. If you have found that you are good at keyword research but don’t have the stomach to take a chance, then this might be a good spot for you.

Regardless of what type of business you start on the Internet, you are going to need to spend a lot of time working on it. You can easily find yourself immersed more than full time, so don’t get into these ideas if your goal is to slack off.

You want to make sure that, in the beginning, you allot at least 40 hours per week to these tasks. As time goes on, you may find that your business runs with only a few hours each week. But in the beginning hard work will pay off.

For those who can make a product, Clickbank gives you plenty of opportunities to get your product sold. It provides a great platform for you to identify the niches that are currently selling big time. It also gives you exposure to those who are good at selling as affiliates.

But for those who are able to market, but just can’t put together a product, click bank comes to the rescue. If you have developed a large following of readers, you have the perfect platform to sell some of these products and make huge affiliate commissions. And the best part is – it’s simple.

Setting up your mailing list

First of all, you need to make sure that you have a mailing list of people that will actually be interested in buying your products. There are a couple of ways you can do this, but the most popular is using the Aweber platform. The platform is far too involved for us to provide a detailed explanation in this article.

Once you are set up with Aweber, start driving people to your list. Entice people who are interested in extra special information by offering a free report or special content only for those on your list. From there, it becomes pretty easy.

Provide value to your list

Make sure you constantly provide solid value to those people on your list. You can do this by creating free information rich reports and sending them to your list. Heck you don’t even need to write the report yourself. Either get a ghostwriter, and establish partnerships with bloggers to provide these reports. Get creative and make sure that you are providing these valuable things regularly.

It’s also important to make sure that you communicate with the people on your list in an effective manner. Never refer to it as “my list” or anything like that. Instead, whenever you are referring to the members of your list, call it “the community” or something similar (think about Seth Godin’s Tribes).

Selling Products

Once you have established your list and a regular pattern of providing extra special bonus content, you can offer them products for sale occasionally. This is totally acceptable. If you are regularly providing great content and you decide that there is a product that will really blow them away, then you should offer it to them.

If the product is really worth it, then you will easily be able to show the value to the members on your list and make a pretty decent percentage of sales. You can typically expect that between 1% and 10% of the members on your list will purchase the product. It doesn’t matter if your list has a few hundred people or a few thousand – that equates to a lot of cash.

Selling your own products through Clickbank

Here is the biggest secret to making a ton of money with your blog and Clickbank. Take a look at all of the content that you have created. You no doubt have thousands upon thousands of words on your blog. Some bloggers literally write more words in a month than a novelist writes in a year.

Buried within all of that content are dozens and dozens of special reports and ebooks that others could sell to members of their lists. You just need to setup your account at Clickbank, scour your content, create a products, and go.

It’s really that simple. Remember earlier, when you sold a product to your list, and you had a few people purchase it? That was assuming your list only had 100 people. If your list had 1000 or more your sales would have been far more impressive.

Since it’s going to take a long time to increase your list by multiples, you can harness the lists of everyone in the affiliate community to make a lot of cash in no time at all.

If you aren’t sure what kind of product you want to make, then you can browse the Clickbank product list to determine what the hottest products are right now, and which are going to work the best for your existing content. Once you know, it doesn’t take long to make a product.

Creating your product – what’s the best kind

Understand that most people don’t want to waste their time reading tons and tons of content. The best products are those that sell for $20 to $30 and are no more than 20 to 25 pages. These are known as special reports and contain rich pieces of information that are culled from tons of research.

That’s exactly what you have on your blog. Go back and look through the comments on your site and all of the posts over the years. Grab a notebook and start writing down all of the ideas that come to mind. Once you have a good idea for a special report in mind, you can easily start collecting the information that you need to piece it together.

Your product can then be put on Clickbank and you will be able to start selling tons and tons of products. But it’s better to take it to the next level by looking for individuals who are already in your same niche with a mailing list.

Start going around to all of your “competitors” and look around to see who has a mailing list. You want to contact them and let them know that you also have a mailing list and wanted to know if they were interested in doing some cross site promotions.

You show them your product and give them a sneak preview, and they will review it on their blog and to their list. Get creative here, as this is one of the best ways to maximize exposure AND make yourself a ton of cash.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is essentially when you as a blogger sell other people’s products on your blog and receive a commission for each sale made. The commission rates vary depending on the product and are based on wherever the product owner chooses to set them.

Finding Affiliate Offers

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different sites out there that allow product owners to set up their information products and promote them to affiliates who can, in turn, pick which ones they want. These types of sites are a good place to start when looking for products.

A few of the largest sites out there that offer these types of affiliate products include ClickBank, Commission Junction, the Google Affiliate Network, and Amazon Associates.

ClickBank

ClickBank is made up mostly of information products – ebooks, online courses, video series, and the like. It has been around for a long time and has several great metrics and resources that you can use to decide what is the best selling product and what is the most likely to do well on your site. You can also track how many times your link has been posted and how many sales were made.

Of course, as mentioned above, ClickBank does have its limitations. There are no physical products sold there, so you can only promote online products. If you want to join ClickBank, just head over to their site and follow their approval process. It usually takes a few days to get in.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction is a huge marketplace that many of the larger retailers use to get affiliates for their products. Most of what is on Commission Junction is physical products, so you have a bit more choice in what you can make a commission on.

Signing up to Commission Junction requires a website plus a fairly rigorous application process, but once you are in, you have all kinds of retailers to choose from. The only downside is that you must get approval from each retailer to be able to promote their products for a percentage. However, many of the retailers in the system auto-approve everyone who applies, so it is not that hard to find something that you would like on your blog.

Google Affiliate Network

The Google Affiliate Network is very similar to Commission Junction. In fact, the entire setup and process is almost exactly the same as above.

Amazon Associates

This is one of oldest on the Internet. The Amazon Associates program allows you use basically anything that is sold on Amazon plus items sold on the other sites that they manage.

Think about all the products out there on Amazon.com! There is bound to be something related to your niche that you could blog about and sell! Amazon, also has a fairly rigorous approval process, so you will want a site with some good content on it, and maybe even some decent traffic, before you apply.

Once you are in, this program does not need you to get approval for every company or product that you want, so you can get right to it!

What Items You Should Choose

When you are trying to decide what type of affiliate marketing products you should promote on your blog, you need to consider very carefully your readers. Do not ever choose anything that is not a high-value, high-trust product. You do not necessarily need to own the product yourself, but you should certainly do your homework and make sure that the product is legitimate.

Also, think about what will really be pertinent to your readers. If your site is about bunk beds, find some bunk beds or something related to bunk beds. Do not choose to use say, an ebook about making money online. You probably will not get any sales on a product that is not relevant to your blog.

How You Can Do It

Once you have found a few products, now you obviously need to promote them! The first thing you will need to do is make sure you get the correct links so that any sales that are made are registered to your account. Each affiliate network has a different way of doing this, but in general, they will give you a link with some data in the URL, so that when someone clicks on the product from your blog, that visitor is registered as someone you sent, giving you the credit if that click turns into a sale. Most of these systems also register the click, and even if the person leaves and comes back, if they buy within a certain time period, you can still get the sale.

Most of these product owners and retailers also have marketing materials that you can use, especially ad banners that you can put on your site. These can make the process of selling a product much easier on you.

Once you have your unique links, there are several ways to promote the products. You could just put a link or a banner in your advertising space or in the sidebar of your site. This might get you a few clicks and sales, but you are going to want to do more than that to get even better sales numbers.

One of the best ways to promote these products is to write a review of them on your site. Write an honest review in a blog post specifically for a product that you are promoting and put it on your site. This way, people feel more comfortable about buying product having gotten their information from a third-party source.

If you will follow the steps outlined above and get signed up to one or all of the networks mentioned, you are bound to find something that you can promote!

However, how do you go about putting something like this together, especially if you have never done so before? Here are a few tips on how to do just that.

Consider What You Needed To Know

Of course, the first thing you are going to need when putting together an information product is a topic, and not just any topic, but something that people are interested in and would want to read or watch. A great way to know what this might be is to think about what it was that you needed to know when you started out in your niche.

Think about what you wished you would have known, or what you would have done differently when you started out in your niche if you had all the knowledge that you have now. These could be great starting points for an information product for your readers.

Ask Them What They Want

Another great way to come up with an information product that is going to be a hit would be to just simply ask your readers what they need to know about your niche! You might be surprised by their answers, and they may come up with something that you never thought of before!

You can go about this in a few different ways. First, you can simply ask in a blog post and have people leave comments on what they would like to know more about in your niche or what their biggest questions are. Second, if you already have a few ideas in mind and you are just trying to pick the best one, you could have a poll on your site and let your readers vote on which one they think is the best potential product. You could also ask your readers via social media what type of products they would be most likely to buy or read.

Do Thorough Research

Once you have your topic in hand, make sure you do your thorough research before you put out a product. Even if you are an expert on the topic, brushing up on the subject certainly will not hurt, and having a few sources mixed into your information product will only serve to add to its validity in the eyes of your reader.

You do not have to put together a dissertation here. Just make sure that you read up on the latest in this particular subject before you are ready to write about it. Check and see if there are any news stories about the subject. Has anything happened recently in your niche that readers really need to know about to thoroughly understand the subject? Also, if someone else has put out a similar information product recently that you could use as a guide as you create your product.

Decide On A Presentation Method

When people think of information products, they often think of an ebook in pdf format. However, there are plenty of other mediums you can use to do a product like this today.

Many presenters will now use video for their information products. It could be in the form of a recorded video, or it could be a slide show presentation done in real time while the presenter speaks into the microphone. Some people will douse audio or a podcast and present the information in that format for listeners.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with an ebook format, and many if not most folks still use it! You could, however, attach an audio presentation or a video to it as well.

Keep It Interesting

If you are going to be presenting facts and figures as your information product, make sure you find a way to keep it interesting so that you do not lose your readers or viewers in the process. If it is an ebook, include a few pictures along the way. If it is a video, keep the slides changing or break up the monotony somehow by adding a bit of humor.

Hire A Freelancer If You Need Assistance

Maybe you have the information you need, but you do not feel as if you have the skills or the time to put it all together as an information product for your readers. This is where a freelancer can be a huge help. You can hire someone to write the ebook for you if you want to go that route. You could even hire someone to do a voice over or a video for you if you plan to go in that direction. In any case, whatever format you pick, you can probably find someone on a freelancing site to do the work of packaging it together for you.

Decide How To Sell It

Once the product is done, you need to decide what you want to do with it exactly. Do you want to sell it to your readers to monetize your site? Do you want to give it away as just a thank you? Do you want to use it to have people opt in to your email list? There are several ways to go with this, and all depend on what you hope to accomplish with your product.

Get It Out There

Finally, get it out there in front of your readers, and do not wait until it is absolutely perfect! It does not have to be perfect. It just needs to be a good, informative product.

If you will follow the above steps, you can bet that you will have a killer information product that you can be proud of in no time – something that will be a hit for your readers and will keep driving traffic to your blog for a long time.

Once you have your blog running, you will begin to accumulate affiliate marketing partners. Not counting any potential drama, there’s a logistical downside of having a lot of affiliate partners, you’re going to have many extremely long, terribly looking URL’s that might make you barf. It can be a nightmare trying to manage (and test) all of the different URLs to the affiliate products you’re promting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why Long Affiliate URL’s Won’t Work For You

We appreciate finesse, and obviously don’t like messy URL’s. Your readers are less likely to click on them. So how do you promote these long URLs effectively in different platform like email and social media? Many won’t fit in a Twitter stream which only allows 140 characters! On a quick side note, you do use Twitter & Facebook to promote your blog, don’t you?

Here’s another common scenario. You meet an attractive affiliate marketing partner who offers products that would be fantastic for your readers (kind of sound like dating, doesn’t it?) You start promoting their products. After some initial success, you expand the relationship and place their URL’s on more and more pages.

Then one day all of a sudden, the partner stops responding to your email, and you no longer get that commission check. It turns out the partner has gone out of business. What happens then? Would you want to change a bunch of their URL’s to a variety of products that are coded in dozens of different places? Do you have to change them all individually?

How You Can Manage Your Affiliate Links Quickly And Easily – All In One Place!

If you’re like us with hundreds or even thousands of affiliate marketing URL’s on your website, while testing different ads and campaigns, it’d be a freaking nightmare, and just not feasible to do it one by one! This is what we’ll discuss today. Not the bad dream part, but how to make your life easier!

Drum roll please, ladies and gentlemen, we present to you, Pretty Link! So what exactly is Pretty Link? The short answer: it’s a simple tool that allows you to manage your URL’s in a simple easy way. You can just make a single change at a central location and update all the places where you had that particular link.

Here’s a longer answer. Pretty Link is a WordPress plugin that allows you to manage and shorten those big, huge, confusing and nasty URL’s into a small, pretty link that is easy tweetable, sharable, etc. You input the long affiliate marketing link, and get a much shorter one in return that points you to the same page that you want to go. This could essentially replace tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service.

There are other link management tools like LinkTrackr, which is a hosted service. But we’re not yet 100% confident of their reliability. It needs to be as steady as a rock for us to incorporate it in our business, in part because we’re fanatical about perfect uptime for our websites. At the end of the day, if something goes wrong, it would mean real money down the drain. Many internet marketers do recommend LinkTrackr so it’s definitely worth checking out however.

You can also use Pretty Link to mask affiliate marketing on your site. For example, if you have a site about car parts, and you have an affiliate marketing deal with an auto supply store, you can use it to mask the URL.

So the original long link might look like:

http://www.auto_supply_store.com?product_id=52kkdoijaadsfjwekjlkj3ejv9997u32wi342

Pretty Link might shorten it to:

http://www.YourDomain.com/Cool_Product

Why Should You Mask Affiliate Links?

Why would you want to mask your affiliate marketing URL’s? Well other than the purely aesthetic reason of making the links look better, for some reason some people think that you should NOT make money online because it’s somehow wrong.

Going to a soul draining job and getting paid a meager wage is fine, but earning a profit from publishing information products on the web is bad! They believe that the information on Internet should be free and won’t click on a link if it “looks like” an affiliate link.

Shocking isn’t it? We know! In our opinion if you provide quality content, there’s no reason why you should not profit from our recommendation. To paraphrase from The Godfather movie – the scene where the five crime families got together to discuss business – “we’re not communists after all”! Shoot, did we just compare ourselves to the mob?

So to get around the unfair perception of being greedy capitalist pigs (now we kind of sound like a communist propaganda), Pretty Link can make the affiliate marketing link look like another page on your site. That person would then click on the link, go to the product page, and ideally find what they’re looking for, and buy something. You’d then get a referral commission from the merchant. Everyone is happy.

On a darker note, there are those who try to profit from other people’s efforts and attempt to steal your affiliate marketing commissions by hijacking your link. For example hacking into your website and changing the link code to theirs. When the sale occurs, they’d get paid, instead of you! Pretty Link essentially makes it a lot harder for this to happen.

Should You Go Pro?

If you’re looking for more features, the pro version gives you a centralized place to manage and track all your affiliate marketing URL’s over your website, your twitter, etc. This is what we use. You can see all of your URL’s from within your WordPress admin panel. It also allows you to automatically tweet your new blog posts, saving you time, and eliminating steps.

You also get a ‘social button’ which will allow your users to spread your posts across all social networks. This can be a very effective way to get the word of mouth traffic coming to your site.

It also has the “Pretty Bar” which keeps your iframe (and logo) on top of page when you refer visitors away from your site. The reason for is so that they know how to easily get back to your site. It’s also more convenient for them to share that affiliate marketing link. The only gotcha with that Pretty Bar is that some merchanges (primarily ClickBank) as of this writing frown on any intercept of their website order page, which is technically what this is.

The pricing is very reason at $37 for a single web site, or $97 for unlimited websites, but in our opinion the best way to start is with the Lite version which is free and allows you to try the basic link management features right away.

And alternatively give LinkTrackr a try for yourself, there are some definite benefits to a fully hosted service, where someone else worries about managing the software and you focus just on managing your links and promotions.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

So where did affiliate marketing come from? Back in the pioneer days of the online commerce – also known as the mid 90’s – Amazon came up with a program where they paid people to refer clients to them.

For example, if you went to a blog and clicked on the Amazon link and bought something, the owners of said blog got paid a commission. Today, there are tons of affiliate programs out there for everything under the sun, no matter what your niche is. Companies will happily split the profit with you for referring customers to them.

Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation and a great way to make money online. They have the products and you have the audience that might be interested in what they offer. They’re basically giving you a cut of their profit that otherwise would have gone to advertisement. A lot of them have back end products as well, so you’re likely to get a high commission percentage of sales.

Choosing The Right Affiliate Program For You

So you’ve built up your blog, email list, and gained an audience. Now you need to decide which way you want to go in terms of monetization. There are many different types of affiliate programs that can help you make money online.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a popular option because it’s an easy program to apply for and it is simple to set up on your blog. All you need to do is apply for the AdSense program, then insert a snippet of code into your blog. Google will then display contextual ads, or ads that are related to your blog’s niche. They usually have decent click through rates. This is an amazing way to earn completely passive income!

However, the bar for getting paid is lower – it’s based on every click instead of a sale. Just don’t violate the program’s terms and start clicking on your own ads. That will get you banned from Google! You may think you won’t get caught, but Google has some very sophisticated programs and smart people with degrees in statistics checking for potential fraud.

Or perhaps you want to sign up some other affiliate network? They basically match merchants with affiliates. Instead of getting paid from like 100 different merchants, you get the money consistently and timely from just one source.

ClickBank

ClickBank connects digital product owners with website owners. We strongly recommend them over traditional affiliate networks Commission Junction, LinkShare, Google Affiliate Network and Share Sale which typically cater to traditional physical products that they’d then have to ship.

Digital products tend to result in faster transaction, thus resulting in more commissions and less potential headaches.  Physical products are often hinder by logistics that are beyond your control.  Web hosting companies and online software companies also enjoy the benefit of instant gratification on the part of the user.

Individual Affiliate Programs

Finally, you can also sign up to individual affiliate programs which often pays more than the networks, but the downside is that it might take longer to get paid. You’d have to be a lot more organized to track each merchant, and the corresponding logins and passwords.

Do your homework and pick the partner that’s right for you and who will help you make money online and meet your goals. Don’t just signup every affiliate program in sight. The product owners should be hooking your followers up with products or services they are actually interested in.

To avoid seeming “spammy,” make sure the products are related to your niche. Stay on topic. It has to fit in with your branding – or you’ll lose customers. You don’t want to have ads for sports cars on your dog food blog!

Promote, Promote, Promote

The more people you send to your partner products, the more you can make money online. It’s simply the law of probabilities. Use links, banners, directory listings and written article product reviews to promote your affiliate partnership.

If you don’t feel comfortable promoting your partners then you’ve picked the wrong partners. We never promote a product or service that we cannot truly recommend it to our friends and families! Basically, only promote products that you believe in. Otherwise, you’re going to feel bad and not really able to sell them well. Who needs the guilt when there are so many options out there?

Monitor Your Blog

When you start your own blog, you need to optimize it and constantly improve your numbers. We watch the whole sales funnel very closely from the impressions to clicks, and finally conversions. Make sure you’re getting good conversions from clicks to sales – you don’t want to promote a product that doesn’t convert. If your affiliate partner isn’t working out for you, find a new one! That’s why we like to have a few partners in each sub-niche of our site, then work closely with them to improve their sales funnels, because the more money they make, the more you will make. But if any of them doesn’t work out, it’s no big deal.

Your affiliate partner should provide you with accurate metrics. That’s the other thing we love about ClickBank which has all the detailed stats.

When you find something that works, try to make it work better. As an affiliate you can ask the merchant for higher commission percentages, money on back end sales, custom promotions, even white labeling their product. That’s where you re-brand it and sell it as your own.

In the age of uncertain economy and massive corporate layoffs, many people are looking for alternatives to support themselves and their families. Making money with affiliate marketing might just be that flexible option to help you make a few extra dollar, build a passive income, and perhaps even one day become financially independent! So take those steps.

Learn how to start a blog, then build an audience of dedicated readers, and join some affiliate programs. Remember to be creative and never be satisfied!