|
|
7 Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commissions
Suppose you could launch an online business in the next tenminutes? Suppose that this business did not require yourown website, dealing with customers, refunds, productdevelopment or maintenance? This is the ideal world ofaffiliate marketing. Made popular on the internet by Amazon.com, marketers cannow earn a referral fee for directing visitors to countlessmerchants' website. According to Forrester Research,affiliate program earnings will represent $53 BILLION ofall e-commerce sales by 2005. How could you earn a sizeablepiece of this pie? Here are some powerful tips that wouldget you rolling in those big commission checks and laughingall the way to the bank. 1. Know what programs and products to promote. Of course you will want to promote those programs that willbring you the greatest profits in the shortest time. Thereare several factors that play into selecting such aprogram. Choose programs that have a generous commissionstructure, products that fit in with your target audienceand a solid track record of paying their affiliates ontime. If you cannot recoup your investment, then prune suchprograms and keep looking for better ones. There are tensof thousands of affiliate programs online so you can affordto be picky. This is a case where you will want to choosejust the cream of the crop and so reduce the risk of losingyour advertising dollars. 2. Write free reports or short ebooks to distribute fromyour website. Most likely you will be competing with other affiliatemarketers who are promoting the same program. If you writea short report on a related topic to the product that youare promoting, then you can distinguish yourself from allother affiliates. In this report you can provide valuableinformation for free with a "recommendation" of theproduct. This is often referred to as a 'soft sell'. The report or ebook allows you to develop credibility withyour audience and your readers are more likely to followyour recommendation. There is less resistance to this typeof selling because the prospect doesn't feel 'sold', justinformed. The next step is to make this ebook 'viral' byallowing those who bought the product through your link to'brand' the ebook for their own promotional use. 3. Collect the email addresses of those who download yourfree ebook. Research has shown that over 60% of the sales of anyproduct are made after the fifth exposure to the salesmessage. In other words, most people do not make a purchaseon the first solicitation. You may need to send yourmarketing message over six times before a sale is made.This is the reason why you should collect the contactinformation of those who download your report. You can thenfollow up on these contacts to gently remind them to makethe purchase. 4. Never send prospect directly to a vendor's websitewithout collecting their contact info first. Affiliate marketing is ideal but not perfect. You must keepin mind that you are providing free advertisement for theproduct owners. The merchants only pay you when you makethe sale. If you send prospect directly to their websitethen these prospect are lost to you forever. If you collectthese names instead, then you can always send othermarketing messages to them and earn an ongoing commissioninstead of making a one-time sale. 5. Publish an online newsletter or Ezine. It is always easier to recommend a product to a friend thanto sell to a stranger. This is the philosophy behindpublishing your own newsletter. A newsletter allows you tobuild a subscriber list and develop a relationship of trustwith this list. Your subscribers will then trust you torecommend products that will benefit them. This strategy requires a delicate balance of providinguseful information along with a 'sales pitch'. In otherwords, if you send out frequent advertisement to your listand little valuable information you are likely to losecredibility with your audience. But if you writeinformative editorials you will build a sense ofreciprocity in your readers that will lead them to'support' you by purchasing your affiliate products. 6. Ask merchants for a higher than normal commission. If you are very successful with a particular promotion youshould approach the merchant and negotiate a higherpercentage commission for your sales. If the merchant issmart he or she will likely grant your request rather thanlose you. Keep in mind again that you are a zero-riskinvestment to the merchant, so don't be shy in yourrequests. Just be reasonable. 7. Learn to write strong Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. One ofthe most effective means of advertising online is throughPPC search engines. As an affiliate, you can make asizeable income by just managing PPC campaigns on servicessuch as Google Adwords and Overture. Monitor your campaignsto see which ads are pulling their weight and trim thosethat are not. You can use the ClickBank? Market Place, for example, andjust choose a hot-selling product and start promoting. Onceyou are earning a decent return on your investment then youare in profit! Just this strategy alone can make all thedifference to your commission checks. Affiliate marketing is an entrepreneur's dream come true.Minimum investment, zero inventory, no employees, noproduct development-just BIG checks! Author Bio: Subscribe to Net Marketing Weekly today and receive free enrollment to the entire 27 lesson Internet Marketing Success Course! http://www.netmarketingweekly.com
|  | | | RELATED ARTICLES Is Earning Money With Affiliate Marketing A Myth? Day 1 - What Are Affiliate Programs? Affiliate Programs... Whos Really Making The Money? There will be a million and one affiliates out there who will tell you that the affiliate program they promote is going to be the best one for you. Five KnockoutAffiliate Tips Here are five "hook em in the jaw" affiliate tips that really work. Implement them and see how well they work for you. Affiliates Go To School! It has been said that only 2% of affiliate marketers ever make any "real" money from their efforts. The rest struggle and flounder as they see most of their efforts fail. Rather like master archers hitting the bull's-eye each time while the rest struggle to sharpen their arrows, draw the bow and try to figure out what to aim at! Multiple Income Streams From Niche Markets Multiple income streams; exciting words, but what does it mean in every-day English? Setting Up Your Own Affiliate Program(Part Two) This article is the second of my two part series on setting up your own affiliate program.Once you are starting an affiliate program, you must manage and keep track of it. Why is Affiliate Marketing Popular with Home Based Business Entrepreneurs? The great strides made in the development of the Internet in the recent past has enabled information to be transmitted thousands of miles away with such ease and claritythat time and space are hardly of any consequence to the Internet Marketer today. 3 Tips To Succeed With Affiliate Programs Dear friends, when it comes to promoting affiliate programs we all follow a certain defined process. We first go to google.com, type affiliate programs in the search field. When the results get displayed we look for "high paying" affiliate programs. By "high paying" I mean those who pay 25% commissions. Guaranteed Signups - Scams or FastTrack Growth? One thing that seems to be cropping up in many online Forums (of which I am a member of a few) in recent months is Guaranteed Signups for various online Affiliate and MLM programs. It would appear from the trends in those discussions; that there is, to some extent, a lot of confussion about definition. A decent number of companies or websites offer this service and a Google search for the term returns over 57,000 hits along with a huge list of PPC Ads. This post is about determining whether Guaranteed Signups are scams or they are a means to FastTrack growth and increasing your earnings from online Affiliate programs. Are they worthless However, the first order of business would be to define or describe what Guaranteed Signups are or are not. How to make money with Affiliate Programs - The Sensible Way Every day, thousands of would-be marketers scour the internet looking for any and every affiliate program, sign up, sit back and wait for the money to pour in and get frustrated just as fast when the bank balance still shows a big, fat ZERO! 5 Essential Tools of the Successful Affiliate Marketer In the time I have been running my internet home business I have realized that there is a wealth of information available about 'working at home'. Unfortunately a lot of this info does nothing more than waste your time and money.It has become very difficult for the beginner entrepreneur to get started successfully in the online world. I am writing this article because I believe I have found the 5 essential tools necessary to run a successful home business as an affiliate marketer. The tools outlined below play the biggest role in the operation of my home business and they don't break the bank either. A Few Words on Affiliate Team Building It might have been Vince Lombardi or some other famous coach who said, "There is no I in team." ( I was too lazy to look up the source of the quote;) I think that this is as true in business as it is in sports. Especially in a business like ours, where we recruit many affiliates who are new to the internet, new to business, new to computers....... You get the idea. And yet due to the nature of what we do, we must rely heavily on these new folks, or our stay at home jobs will definitely fail. Ebook Review: The Super Affiliate Handbook Rosalind Gardner's 270 page ebook "The Super Affiliate Handbook" is the "Holy Bible" of affiliate marketing. It's also surprisingly well written (I've seen some real junk passing as informative writing) and logically steps through each of the 15 chapters, all but the Introduction building on the previous in an easy to understand style. 5 Deadly Mistakes That Affiliates Make - A Quiz Some people are making big money with affiliate programs-some are not. With a little research I have discovered that the people that are not cashing many checks are making the same five mistakes. Why not take a short quiz to see how you rate? Do you qualify as a novice, average, or super affiliate? Try this true and false quiz. You might learn something! Affiliate Marketing Opportunity Every Affiliate Marketing Opportunity At Your Fingertips Your Home Based Affiliate Marketing Business Did you know that you can make money on the internet without ever selling anything? There are very few home based business opportunities that are easier or cost less than affiliate marketing. There are businesses and people earning thousands of dollars each year doing affiliate marketing. Affiliate Marketing - Conversions What is a good converting site? How To Use Articles To Build Your Affiliate Program Articles are the perfect promotional tool for your affiliates - they bring in more sales than banners, book covers, and ezine ads. Your affiliates can post them on their website, use them in their newsletter, or turn them into a free eBook. 8 Reasons To Be An Affiliate Marketer When I began affiliate marketing I knew only half of these things but, in hindsight, if I had have known these things then it would have made the decisions I made so much easier. Such is the intention of this article, to contribute towards the success of affiliate marketing newcomers.Here are 8 reasons to be an affiliate marketer. Affiliate Marketing Tips If there really is a big secret at all, it undoubtedly would have to be: "work hard." We hope that the information provided here helps you get rolling down the road to affiliate marketing success. We also hope it will save you a little time and money in the process. Some of the below suggestions are pretty obvious ones, but sometimes it's nice to have someone else tell you that the obvious answer is a good one. |
