Become A Master Affiliate Marketer

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• About Online marketing 
• The fundamentals of Affiliate marketing
• Using affiliation as mass promotion tool
• Creating an affiliate partnership
• Email advertising as Marketing Tool

Introduction

If you currently own a business or are thinking of starting one up, chances are, you are going to need some information about how to get the word out about your product or service. That is when you need to think about marketing and building a marketing strategy.

With the World Wide Web being the major source of information sharing and  communications in the world, it is natural that you would want to use this as a major focus for building your marketing strategy. That is what this e-book is for; to teach you how to become a major player in the field of business that you choose by taking advantage of the internet and using affiliation as your marketing strategy’s foundation.

Of course, before I can show you how to become a master affiliate, I think it would be best to begin with a basic introduction to marketing in general. So in this introduction to becoming a master affiliate, I will give you a basic explanation into marketing because this will help you to better understand how an affiliation can be done with expert precision.

Most people are aware of what marketing is, but most do not realize everything that is involved in marketing. Marketing is not a temporary thing. Marketing is more than sales. Marketing is actually an entire process of activities that is used to:

1. Get your potential customer's attention

2. Motivate them to buy

3. Get them to actually buy

4. Get them to keep buying

PICK BEST SERVICES FOR YOUR COMPANY/BUSINESS?

Marketing is how you define your product, promote your product, distribute your product, and to maintain a relationship with your customers. All of this is important if you want to run a successful business. When you become an affiliate, you are just gaining access to a world of customers instead of just 5 being available for a local customer base. It simply allows you to reach millions of potential customers instead of hundreds. With this kind of potential, is it a wonder that so many people are relying on the web as their marketing hub.

In order to get the consumer’s attention, you will need to know who they are and where they are. When you use affiliation, you can cut some of that work in half. When you are an affiliate, a lot of your customers will find you. This is a business feat that is just too good to be true, and if you know what you are doing, the benefits are simply awesome!

About Online Marketing

Your first interest in any type of marketing campaign is to start developing a marketing strategy that is going to be focused on who you will need to determine your target market is. This is exactly who you think will be your consumers. For starters, you need to know how to break down your consumers.

Target market is the group of potential customers that will be selected for the reception of your marketing strategy. It certainly makes it easier to develop your strategy if you know exactly who/how old/where people live when trying to sell things to them. If you are looking to segment the market, you need to determine the different target markets for each segment. For example, if you are selling tires, (which everyone needs) you will need to divide your market by knowing how people shop for tires, and who they are.

If you are selling high cost/quality tires, you have to market to a market that is likely to buy them such as middle aged and established consumers as opposed to teens and twenty-something’s who may not be able to afford them.

There are different means that are used by professional marketers that help you to find your target audience. You can use both of them that are within your means. Some of these methods include:

1. Researching the market through surveys, interviews, and setting up shop in a mall to see who questions you the most etc. to see who would benefit the most from your product and be most likely to buy.

2. Host experimental sessions for people to try out your product and give their opinions for improvements etc. so that you can ensure that you giving the people what they want or need.

3. Host trial websites that are geared toward finding the market by letting the market come to you. You can best do this by utilizing keyword centered articles that will let you know who is coming toy our website.

It really doesn’t matter if you stand on your front porch and just ask people what they want in a product or service like yours or not, as long as you get a good handle on who your market audience is. If you are selling T-shirts, you will likely want to appeal to younger people who are more likely to wear them; which means that you should market your wares to those people. To do this, you will have to begin your strategy where you know you will find them….on the internet.

When you are using the internet to market any product or service, you must understand the basics of what internet marketing is. When you are marketing on the internet, you are looking to reach a larger audience and therefore, you need something that will catch their attention and bring them to you. In order to do this, you will have to bring these people to your website.

Once you have your website built, you have to work on getting people to visit not just once, but over and over again. You can start this by using your website to do more than just sell stuff. You should always try to host a website that is also informational. It is generally the website’s that offer up to date information as well as sell wares.

It is through the information that you establish yourself as a trustworthy authority to your consumers. Doing this establishes trust with your consumers and brings them back again all of the time. Nobody wants to visit a website that is profiling outdated information in a month. It is the up to date website’s that get and keep clients. These are also the website that the search engines find relevant during a query.

A nice tip for keeping your information up to date; especially if you are selling a product or service that is rarely updated is to keep a weather program or stock ticker program running on your website because the search engine spiders and robots will view this as new content and still return to your site on a regular basis.

If you are running a website that can sell things directly or order services and make payments there etc. you will want to generate as much sales as possible. What this means is that you need to make search engines come to your site for a particular product or service before others. It is because of this need that search engines have to become your best friend, which I will explain what these are below.

 

Search Engine Basics

Search engines are computer programs that are used to explore the internet in search of web pages. They do this by using "spiders," "crawlers," or "robots" which are used to search for the most up to date information on any given search request. This may seem like an odd place to introduce you to the search engines, but I can assure that this section is well placed. Giving you the basics here will help you to understand what I am saying in the later sections. Anyways….back to the basics and explanation of search engine spiders.

These spiders (like those that are used by Google) are able to follow the links present on web pages that are located by specific keywords. When spiders are searching for a new webpage, they copy all or parts of the text present on the page into their search engine database. Other spiders revisit these pages on a regular basis so that they can register changes or dead links. The wait time varies greatly from search engine to search engine. It is for this reason that your website should stay current.

The search engine will have hundreds of millions of web pages in its database. In order to deliver relevant results, the search engine companies have developed special ranking algorithms that calculate the order of search requirement results. The keyword or keyword phrase the visitor enters into the search form of the search engine will determine which web sites get picked up by the query. The pages the search engine find most relevant will be listed first. This will determine where you will be listed upon search requests.

For instance, if you are searching for "Beethoven," and the search engine finds a main headline on that page containing the phrase "Ludwig von Beethoven," it will assume that this page is fairly relevant to your needs. If, on the other hand, it finds the phrase only once, and it is buried in a long text, it will ignore it because it will assume that this is not important. That is why so many websites use special keywords more than once in a particular article or webpage, because that is how the spiders pick them up and place them higher in the results of a search.

What does this mean to you as a business person? Well…..this means that in order for you to even consider affiliation; you must first have a website. If you want your website to get attention, you have to appeal to search engines first. Many potential affiliates will not want to associate with just anyone prefer a site that gets traffic. Knowing about search engines and how to appeal to them will get you this traffic. I will offer more on traffic in another section later. Right now I would like to get you started with website affiliation because that

is what this book is about and I have already given the basics about marketing in general.

The Fundamentals of Website Affiliation

As you can imagine from the above section that spends a great of time focusing on the basics of internet marketing, you must realize that it was all just an informed lead in to the affiliation, which is the whole reason that we are here. The first thing that you have to think about when getting into the affiliation game is how to go about it. In order to understand this, you will need to know exactly what it is and get basic knowledge about it.

Affiliate programs are an excellent way to generate income for your site or someone else’s, and it is a pretty good introduction into ecommerce, however but it's a numbers game. Basically, the more people who visit your site, the greater your chances become for creating a good income, especially if the programs you participate in are related to your site topic. Chances are you have probably come across many commercial sites that claim to offer the best affiliate program. What you will often learn is that this is simply not true.

So what exactly is an affiliate program, you might ask? An affiliate program is where a company offers to pay you a certain amount of money for either a click through from your site, or a fixed amount for a lead (where the visitor signs up for a newsletter, etc.) or a percentage of a purchase made by a visitor as a result of a click through. Even if the visitor does not make a purchase on the advertiser’s site right away, most programs will offer “cookie duration” of usually around 30-90 days.

What this really means is that as long as the visitor has the cookie in their cache; even if they return to the advertisers site one month later, you will still receive the commission from the sale however, as in all things that are business related, cookie duration is not a guarantee when you sign up for an affiliation program and is something that you need to check for before signing on.

Looking for the best affiliate programs

The best way to try to explain this to you is to give you some of my personal

experiences when looking for an affiliation program.

“When I first started searching for and implementing affiliations with various companies; it was one of the largest parts of time wasted during my day when it came to managing my website. I spent a disgusting amount of hours searching for suitable affiliate programs, implementing the links and then keeping track of what they did”.

If you are hoping that marketing a website affiliation is going to get you rich quickly, forget about it. You will have to spend a lot of time in your project if you want to make it work for you. Then again, all money making ventures do, just ask Donald Trump.

“Of course, the income that was generated from each program was actually pretty low at that time because at that time the number of visitors to my site was not high either. With this in mind, it was not particularly uncommon for companies to disappear on me without warning me about it and since most affiliate programs only pay out at around the $25 mark, I would lose a lot of  revenue in the end.

The other part of affiliation that I was not happy with was the idea of another companies banner’s being plastered all over my site, if you place too many of them on any given page it only serves to confuse and irritate your visitors. think about it; how do you like it when you visit a site. Any more than one animated element on a web page can be very distracting which leaves you with nothing gained at all, and many affiliate programs insist upon this type of bargain when signing on. By now, you must realize that I learned a lot just by trial and error.

Affiliate tracking can also a problem. After you have successfully applied to become an affiliate for a company, they will usually supply you with some personalized code or link. It is very important that this code is implemented correctly into your page; because otherwise you may be sending the company visitors without being reimbursed. Most snippets of code contain a unique user id; which is used by the company to distinguish which site sent traffic. Even if you do implement this code in the right way, it has been my experience on occasion for it not to function correctly”.

Having heard of my experiences, you can see why I would not really recommend that you hunt around and sign up without much research and thought first when finding a good affiliate program. Your time is too valuable and could be better spent creating content and updating your site. But there are some excellent individual companies offering affiliate programs out there.

What I have discovered to be very successful is to take advantage of companies like Offers Quest or Google for text link advertising. Text links are a great resource as they are bandwidth friendly, and when they are implemented properly add valuable content to your site which can also assist in search engine rankings.

When it comes to website affiliation, you will also need to know how to conduct a market study because this is how you will find your target audience. Without a targeted audience, your marketing campaign will not be effective. Below I have begun to give you an outline of what you should include in your market study. It is best to write it down; especially if you are hoping to entice someone else into investing in your marketing venture. That and it is a good way to keep track of your objective and provides a good guideline of what needs to be done.

Marketing Study Outline—What you need to know

In order to be able to conduct a decent targeting and marketing campaign, you

must first understand the fundamentals of finding out who they are. They only

way to do this is to follow a specific guideline for you to follow. Check out the

guideline below.

1. Your Objective to the Research

• Explain in one paragraph why the research is being done, what you hope to learn and for what purpose the information that you attain may be used

2. Description of the Market

This should be general like one paragraph Who is your Target Market(s)

• Why you chose this particular market?

• Get a complete profile of your market (e.g., demographics, psychographics, behaviors).

• What benefits does your market seek (i.e., what points-of-pain or problems are being solved).

• What factors can affect their decision to purchase or use your product/service.

• What attitudes do they have about the products/services that are currently not on the market.

• How is the product used.

• Products and Services that appeal to the target market

• In general terms, what is currently so appealing to this market

• If there are no current providers, what types of products/services may appeal to this market in the future (i.e., what is used now to solve the problem).

3. Market Metrics

Get many Size estimates (current and future) for all of the following:

• Overall market

• Current size as it stands

• Potential size for the future

• Actual penetration of current products/service within the entire market

Individual market segments

• Current size

• Potential size

• Actual penetration of current products/service within the total market

• Usage rates

• Frequency of product purchases

• Growth estimates (current and in the future) for:

• Overall market

• Individual market segments

Competitive Analysis

You must include a Summary of who your Current Competitors are

Listing the competition by market share ranking (by each target market if

possible) is a good way to size them up. You can also be more specific by

searching for individual points listed below.

Current Competitors - full analysis of top competitors including:

• Products & Services (e.g., description, uniqueness, pricing, etc.)

• Their Market share at current

• Current customers (targeted audience)

• Positioning and promotion strategies

• Partnerships/Alliances/Distributors

• Recent news

SWOT Analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats

It is extremely important to focus attention on the SWOT section of this report. While most other information in this report can be gleaned from company and secondary materials, much of what appears in the SWOT section is based on the researcher’s own opinions of the competitor based on the information that is  collected. Consequently, this is often one of the hardest areas of the report to write as well.

Potential Competitors (any competition in the future)

• You will need to get an explanation (though it need not be as detailed as Current Competitors) on who they are or maybe and why they are seen as potential competitors

5. Additional

• Extraneous Variables to Discuss factors that may affect this market (e.g., technological, social, governmental, competitive, etc.)

• Market Trends and what is expected to happen in the future 

If you can follow these basic tips for finding and selecting your target market, you should be ready to search online and check out the competition and their rankings in the search engines. Below are some general guidelines for you to follow in creating your competitive analysis which is the most important factor in being an affiliate marketer. Knowing your competition just as well as your audience is the key point which is going to keep you on top of the competition.

GUIDELINES FOR DOING A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

The competitive analysis section works best when it follows a format like the one that is shown below. In general, I would recommend that this report would be made about each of the major competitors. While most of this report is intended to focus on the overall analysis of the competitor, you should recognize that you are primarily interested in how this information may impact your company and, specifically, a product or product line to you affiliates

For this reason, you should make sure, where possible, to focus your information on how it impacts the markets in which your products will compete with theirs. That is how your report will stand out among the other marketing affiliates in a merchant’s eye. It should be included in your proposal whenever it is possible. I have listed the guidelines in sections to make it easier for you to read and then furthered the report guidelines for you as well for easier reading.

Please note each sub-section within a section will contain 1-5 sentences

that explain the sub-section.

• General Company Information which includes name, location (headquarters, other locations of importance), website address.

• Summary of the Business which includes a section that will summarize the company, business units and the general nature of the business.

• Business Overview should include sections on the history, ownership structure, types of businesses, mission, strategy/objectives, and key executives.

• Recent News/Developments such as important company developments within last 6-12 months (e.g., reports from news sources, press releases, financial statements).

• Financial and Market Share Analysis – includes sections on corporate performance, trends, market share for product.

• Marketing in general should include sections on products and services that are offered, target markets, positioning, customers/users, pricing model, promotional efforts, sales force, and distribution.

• Other Miscellaneous Issues like adding sections on technology capability, partnership arrangements, and intangible issues.

• A list of your Competitors where you will list key competitors facing this company.

• SWOT – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Below, I am going to actually pin point what should be included in the market study like I did above, however in more detail and with explanation on how to write it. I am listing them in steps rather than points to make it easier.

1. The information that is provided in a market study should be based on the research that you have collected AND NOT on one’s own perceptions, guesstimates or other unsupported statements. This information should be based on fat alone! The only exception to this may

be within the SWOT analysis; however, even most of this should be supported with some evidence.

2. If you are unable to find any specific bit of information it is probably a good idea to make this known so that the person reading the report would know of this potential limitation of the market study and be ready for it. Obviously you need to collect good research so you do not end up having too many of these statements.

3. It is generally a good idea to define the most important terms and concepts when you first introduce them so as not to confuse the reader. This will benefit those reading the report who may not already possess knowledge in this area. Alternatively, you can create a glossary or definition section in the Endnotes area of the report.

4. Wherever it is necessary you should explain how the research was conducted or how data was collected (e.g., explaining how survey was done). This just helps the reader to understand your methodology so that they can decide how trustworthy the information is obtained from other sources) that you used. Unless there are very any significant limitations you can generally include this as an endnote.

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR PROFESSIONAL FREELNACERS FOR YOUR COMPANY/BUSINESS?

5. Make note of any limitations of secondary research (research you 

6. If you are investigating a new/different way of doing something with present customers, then you will need to provide a discussion of the cost/benefit of alternative options. That is, what will customer give up to use something new versus what they will get from using the new product?

7. Remember to reference as much stuff as you have to in order to get the best information. I would suggest using endnotes instead of footnotes of texts because this gives you the most accurate account. Endnotes appear next to the sentence, word, quote, number, etc. but usually not as a  superscript and usually in parenthesis like this (1). The full reference

would appear at the back of the report in an Endnotes section.

Once you have completed your market analysis and target audience, you will want to present it to the companies that you are looking to affiliate with. That is what the next section deals with. It is going to show you how to create partnerships with the merchants.

How to Deal with Online Merchants—Creating Partnerships?

When you decide to become an affiliate marketer, you are basically just asking another web host to add a link to your website to theirs which will bring your website more traffic and hopefully generate more sales for them, which gives you a commission sale. Of course, there are some things that affiliates look for in a website before they will sign you on as an affiliate. Before you even consider signing on as an affiliate, you should make sure that your website has something to offer that theirs doesn’t.

To be more specific, even if you are going to a “like” website as an affiliate, you don’t want to approach a site that is selling the exact same thing as you because that makes you direct competition with you. For example, if you are selling designer clothing of a particular label, you do not want to try to go to a site that is selling the exact same items as you, but a like site that may offer the same brand, but not the same items. That way, both sites are selling the same label, but can push each other’s sites for the items that they don’t carry.

Once you know exactly what type of website you want to run and which web companies are actually offering you the right revenue sharing opportunities for products and services that complement your web site genre, you can’t just offer to put up banners and buttons on their behalf. It is best to begin by writing up a review page of the product or service and how it will definitely help boost sales, especially if you are recognized as being knowledgeable in

your field.

One of the best ways to show that you know what you are doing is to offer articles and reviews on your website about your items for sale. Keyword articles are best for getting search engine to come calling. You can also put in a brief history of the product’s inception etc. Basically just put in as much information as you can about your product or service so that visitors and merchants will know that you are on top of things and know what you are

doing. Here are some more things that you should do when dealing with potential affiliates that you are trying to get in with. 

Talk to People

Talking to people could not only increase your sales, but also save you some heartache in the long run. It is very easy to talk to an affiliate company, and you can start by contacting the merchant, let them know what you are doing to promote their product and ask their advice as to how you could improve your marketing technique. Think about it, it is always best to approach a potential affiliate with a standing technique in mind as well as an outline of what you plan to do to help them. If you have the means, try it out for a while so that

you can approach a merchant with solid facts backing you up.

When you ask the merchant for advice you are setting yourself in great standing with them and showing them that you understand their knowledge. After all, the merchant knows their product best right? They would also have a very good idea of the strategies that are used by other affiliates to boost sales. Don’t bother checking for this information on an affiliate site because you will not be getting to the nitty gritty of it.

By contacting the merchant yourself, you are also showing your enthusiasm for marketing their products and services and that you are working to become known as a "power" or "super" affiliate! Any merchant who understands affiliate marketing knows that over 90% of sales are generated by less than 5% of their affiliates. A good merchant will see your efforts and give you further information and resources and may even boost your commission fees as a result of your efforts and success. All of this means more money for you both! 

Dealing with merchants directly:

When you are dealing directly with a merchant, there are some things that you have to realize. You need to know how to deal with them but also what to expect to encounter from the as well. That is what this section is going to help you with. Let’s take a look at some of the various things that you can expect to hear and deal with when going through a merchant.

a) If you are going to go to the trouble of emailing a merchant and they don't respond the first time, do not worry about it, be persistent because many merchants receive countless numbers of emails daily and take time to sift through them and weed out the spam. If they still fail to respond to your, think twice about continuing promotion on their behalf because a lack of communication can also be indicative of other problems such as payment or just plain disinterest. You should also bear in mind that some merchants work on the shotgun principle. What this means is that they make big promises, set a high payouts knowing full well that few affiliates will ever reach it. 

Next thing you know, they get as many affiliates promoting their products and services as possible which will give them the maximum exposure, with the minimum cost and effort on their part. It's not a good business model for them to use in the long term and after a while affiliates drop away, but not before the company has raked in thousands. Many MLM (multi-level marketing) programs also work 20 on this principle and only the guys at the top generate any serious revenue so you need to expect this and watch out for it.

A good way to protect your payments from merchants is to sign up for affiliate programs that are extremely well established ad networks such as Offers Quest or Fast Click if you want to get paid for your work. When you are working with a major ad network means that even if you only make a few dollars from each program, those dollars that are generated will all feed a common account, accumulate rapidly which will allow you to reach the payout threshold in a shorter time period. Most ad networks work with merchants on a "money up

front" or monthly "pay as you go" basis because this decreases the risk of those merchants who are suddenly disappearing with your hard earned commissions. For this to work, you need to demonstrate your web marketing prowess.

b) Unless you have a web site that already generates high traffic, don't ask the merchant for higher commissions in the first communication. So many affiliates do this and end up being totally ignored because most affiliates probably can't deliver on their promises due to the fact that too many of their claims are unachievable. If you don't have a solid sales record for the product or service you are promoting, you'll need to prove yourself to merchants off the bat and put some thought into your promotion and rack up a few sales before attempting to secure higher payout rates. Be professional in your communications.

c) When you are communicating with merchants, you have to make sure that you use a professional manner not the laid back style that you use when talking toy our friends. If you have suggestions of how a merchant could improve an offer that would convert into more sales, let them know, but be very polite and constructive in your feedback –not insulting by saying things like: "Your banners suck" because this will alienate them.

d) You have to remember that the Internet as a trading place is still very new in comparison to the business platforms of the last few millennia like regular advertising through television or newspaper ads. Some of the quality companies that are offering an affiliate program may be just breaking into this side of marketing and will appreciate any feedback you can give them.

e) A smart merchant understands that good affiliates can’t be found everywhere as is often assumed and hoped. Merchants need someone that acts business like and treats them with respect, assists with resources and provides prompt payments. Smarter affiliates understand that a merchant wants quality promotion and sales performance for minimum outlay. Successful merchant/affiliate partnerships happen when both parties understand these points and work together because that is when the money starts rolling in.

Here is a sample of the type of contract that you can expect to see from a merchant and/or some of the listings that will be in it.

Sample Affiliation Contract was located at and provided by:

http://partners.pcsecurityshield.com/agreement.html?CLIENT_NAME=nextaisle

PUBLISHER TERMS OF AGREEMENT

PCSecurityShield ACTIVELY monitors traffic for Fraud. If we detect Fraud,

your account will be made inactive pending further investigation.

1. All websites, newsletters, companies, or individuals need official approval from PCSecurityShield, Inc. ("PCSecurityShield") http://www.pcsecurityshield.com before they can become an Affiliate Partner ("Affiliate"). Only websites and newsletters that have been

reviewed and approved are permitted to use the programs. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to withhold or refuse approval on any website, newsletter, company, or individual for any reason, whatsoever. 

2. In order to be eligible for Affiliate approval, all websites and newsletters must meet the following criteria:

1. Be content-based, not simply a list of links or advertisements, nor can the site be centered around making money off of our Advertisers.

2. Be written in English and contain only English language content.

3. Receive a minimum of 1,000 unique page views per month.

4. Have a top-level domain name.

5. Cannot offer incentives to users to click on ads; incentives include but are not limited to awarding them cash, points, prizes, contest entries, etc.

6. Be fully functional at all levels; no "under construction" sites or sections.

7. Spawning process pop-ups and exit pop-ups are prohibited for click approved affiliates.

3. The content of the website and/or newsletter cannot contain any adult content nor link from, or to, any adult materials including but not limited to:

1. Explicit, vulgar or obscene language.

2. Posting or referencing of sexually explicit images or other offensive content.

3. Promotion of adult services, such as phone sex or escort services.

4. The content of the website and/or newsletter cannot infringe on any personal, intellectual property or copyrights including but not limited to:

1. Racial, ethnic, political, hate-mongering or otherwise objectionable content.

2. Investment, money-making opportunities or advice not permitted under law.

3. Gratuitous violence or profanity.

4. Material that defames, abuses, or threatens physical harm to others or to you.

5. Promotion of illegal substances or activities such as illegal online gambling, how to build a bomb, counterfeiting money, etc.

6. Software Pirating (e.g., Warez, Hotline).

7. Hacking or Phreaking.

8. Any illegal activity whatsoever.

9. Any questionable or controversial subject matter.

10. Any spoofing, redirecting, or trafficking from adult-related websites in an effort to gain traffic.

5. You cannot place our advertisements into your framed environment,

unless approved by PCSecurityShield in writing.

6. Unless expressly approved in writing by PCSecurityShield, Inc., YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED to provide compensation, benefits, or incentives of any kind whatsoever, including, but not limited to, points, cash, contest entries, or rewards, to encourage a user to click on an advertisement or to complete a form.

7. In order to be approved as a "Click Program" Affiliate, all websites and newsletters must meet the following criteria:

1. Be approved as a "Leads Program" Affiliate.

2. Be content-based, not simply a list of links or advertisements, nor can the site be centered around making money off of our Advertisers.

3. Cannot offer incentives to users to click on ads; incentives include but are not limited to awarding them cash, points, prizes, contest entries, etc.

4. Spawning process pop-ups and exit pop-ups are prohibited.

8. You cannot send Unsolicited Commercial Email (i.e., SPAM). You cannot post any specific messages to newsgroups, chat rooms, bulletin boards or any other places unless expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. You can post messages which are generic in nature and do not mention any specific client or offer, which are expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. You must be in compliance with our Policies and Guidelines posted at _____________________.

9. If you fraudulently add leads or clicks or inflate leads or clicks by fraudulent traffic generation (as determined solely by PCSecurityShield, such as pre-population of forms or mechanisms not approved by PCSecurityShield), you will forfeit your entire commission for all programs and your account will be terminated. PCSecurityShield reserves sole judgment in determining fraud, and you agree to this clause.

10.It is the OBLIGATION of the Affiliate to prove to PCSecurityShield that they are NOT committing fraud. PCSecurityShield will hold your payment in 'Pending Status' until you have satisfactorily provided evidence that you are not defrauding the system. We flag accounts that:

1. Have click-through rates that are much higher than industry averages and where solid justification is not evident.

2. Have ONLY click programs generating clicks with no indication by site traffic that it can sustain the clicks reported.

3. Have shown fraudulent leads as determined by our clients.

4. Use fake redirects, automated software, and/or fraud to generate clicks or leads from our programs.

11. Filling out this form constitutes an agreement between PCSecurityShield and the Affiliate. The commission payment that is generated to the Affiliate varies per registered subscriber to the programs offered and or per clicks. This commission payment is made approximately 60 days after the end of the month and after receiving payment from the

Advertiser. Delinquent Advertiser payments received by PCSecurityShield will be credited to the Affiliate in the month that they are received. PCSecurityShield does not guarantee payment to the Affiliate if the Advertiser does not pay PCSecurityShield. Commission payment totals must exceed $25.00, otherwise this payment will not be made until the $20.00 minimum is reached. International Affiliates (outside of the United States & Canada) agree to a minimum $50.00 to be reached.

12.Affiliate agrees not to carry objectionable materials on their website which would revoke their affiliation as determined by PCSecurityShield. Affiliate will only run approved banners and text in their advertising of our programs and will NOT create their own banners or advertising text, unless expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. Violation of

this forfeits your commissions. Affiliate WILL NOT spam or send unsolicited email mentioning or promoting the Affiliate programs. Any violation of this will result in the Affiliate being liable for damages of  $1.00 per email sent and other damages as deemed by a court of law.

13. Editing of an Advertiser's program images or copy is strictly prohibited. Affiliate will only use approved banners and text to link to an Advertiser's sign-up pages. Affiliates will not mislead people to make it seem that they are signing up for an offer that is offered by the Affiliate site. Affiliate can ONLY use banners and approved text, any other use of link and sign-up processes will result in the loss of all sign ups/leads accrued for the Affiliate.

14. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to terminate any Affiliate's contract for any reason whatsoever. Termination notice will be provided via email and will be effective immediately. All legitimate moneys due to Affiliate will be paid during the next billing cycle. If Affiliate defrauds the system, then payment is revoked as determined solely by

PCSecurityShield.

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15.You guarantee that all content, products, and services on your website are legal to distribute and that you own or have the legal right to use any and all copyrighted material.

16.Affiliate irrevocably covenants, promises and agrees to indemnify PCSecurityShield and to hold harmless from and against any and all losses, claims, expenses, suits, damages, costs, demands or liabilities, arising from any and all claims and lawsuits for copyright, slander, libel, and trademark violation as well as ll other claims resulting from member's web pages.

17.If any Affiliate violates or refuses to take part in their responsibilities, or commits fraudulent activity against us, PCSecurityShield reserves the right to withhold payment and take appropriate legal action to cover its damages.

18.PCSecurityShield reserves the right to change any conditions of this contract at any time. Change notices are sent to Affiliates by email, and Affiliates are responsible for complying with any changes to the contract within 10 calendar days from the date of change. Failure of the Affiliate to terminate the agreement within those 10 calendar days will constitute acceptance of the changes to this contract.

19.PCSecurityShield gives no warranty, express or implied, for any and all services and products provided, including, but not limited to, warranty of merchantability and warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. This statement expressly includes any reimbursement for losses of income due to disruption of service by PCSecurityShield or its upstream providers.

20.You agree to settle any dispute under this agreement under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Any litigation arising under this Agreement will be brought in the federal or state courts of Western Pennsylvania.

21.Any legal action taken by an advertiser, agency, client, person, or entity against PCSecurityShield for actions of you (the affiliate) that violate these terms and conditions, you accept that PCSecurityShield will work with the advertiser, agency, client, person, or entity to divulge your personal information. You also agree that PCSecurityShield is not liable for your actions, and you will bear all costs (legal or otherwise) that PCSecurityShield incurs if PCSecurityShield is sued by advertiser, client, agency, person, or entity.

22.If any provision of this agreement shall be held or made invalid or unenforceable by a court decision, statute, rule or otherwise, the remaining provisions of this agreement shall not be affected thereby.

23.You must be 18 years or older to sign up as a PCSecurityShield affiliate.

24.Your traffic must come from relevant countries to the campaigns. We monitor IP source and will remove credit for non-country relevant traffic. This means english related campaigns must be delivered to english speaking countries. USA based campaigns must be delivered to USA based citizens, and so forth. (i.e Clicks coming from China for USA

based campaigns may not result in credit).

Nowadays, you can get millions of different goods and services on the Internet, advertisers look to individuals and companies to help them sell their products by using webmasters and others to spread the word. These advertisements can come in the form of banner advertising on affiliate sites, text links, reviews written by affiliates, direct email, blogs etc.

How it works is that the advertisers pay webmasters for displaying the ads, or for click throughs that are sent to them, (Called pay per click) which is a commission that is paid on any sales that happen as a direct result of a referral from their web site or email message or during each visit. I will explain more on this in a later section.

The fact of the matter is that you will likely not need to be bothered with a merchant at all if it weren’t for the money involved. The fact that affiliations can be used as a mass promotional opportunity for both sides that results in more money for both just adds icing to the cake. That is why the next section is about mass promotion through affiliation. 

Using Affiliation as a Mass Promotion Tool

There are Hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there that you can choose from and all of them are claiming to be the best. Some of them will give you the impression that all you have to do is implement their banners and links and wait for the money to start rolling in. This CAN be the case at times, but this scenario usually only applies to very large sites that have massive web traffic already. For most of us, being a successful affiliate requires a little more work than that!

When you are selling your wares through a website, you will be needing as much help as you can get and that is why affiliation is such a good deal. It gives you and like companies the chance to market your wares in more than one spot. As the marketing affiliate, it is your job to get you and other companies together to do it. Most affiliates use their own sites and combine marketing strategies with others. Your website is likely not geared toward one thing in particular so affiliate’s who come in will gain a lot more from your services.

 

As the variety of goods and online services offered over the Internet has grown at an incredible rate over the last few years, and in response, so has the competition. Web site visitors need to have a very good reason for clicking on link or banner. In most affiliate programs, you are offered a wide variety of banners that you can place on your site; all of them will be effective in getting attention from your target audience.

If you can gather a click through rate of at least 2%, then you are doing very well. It has been my experience, that highly colorful and picture filled banners do not perform as successfully as their simpler counterparts. The main reason for this is the time it takes to download it. If a banner is the last thing to load on your page and the banner ad is excessively byte "heavy", by the time it has loaded your visitor may already have scrolled down the page already and miss it entirely.

Heavy banner ads can also slow down the loading of your pages, or even some of the critical elements of your page and you can lose your visitors altogether. This is why A graphically rich banner can also confuse the actual message because the artwork and marketing blurb can be imbalanced. For these reasons, I would recommend that banners you implement be no more that 15kb wherever you possibly can.

Banners that have a lot of animation in them, such as rapid flashing, are also something to consider very carefully before setting them up. While these do achieve high click rates, they are also highly annoying to the average visitor. If you do decide to implement this form of banner advertising, you have to use it very sparingly.

Whenever you begin selecting any form of advertising that requires graphics you should try and keep the theme of your site in mind. In general, while graphical ads are meant to stand out and catch a visitor’s eye, it shouldn't be to the point that everything else on the page is ignored. Whenever you can, you have to make sure that all banner ads or advertising that you use uses a link that opens in a new window. That way, if a visitor does choose to visit one of your advertisers it is easy for them to return to your page and review what they actually came to your site for.

A lot of companies are now offering their affiliates the options of using pop up and pop under ads. However, the fact is they annoy most visitors and are usually closed before they even have a chance to load by automatic program blockers. It is for this reason that you should use pop-unders instead and preferably those that only display once per visit. I will talk more about pop unders in a later section.

Successful affiliate marketing requires patience

If you are sure that your web site can get a lot of traffic and generate fantastic sales for a certain company, you have to contact them to negotiate a tailored arrangement. If they aren't too enthusiastic to begin with, be patient because companies are approached every day by affiliates wanting to cut a "better deal".

The reality of it is that many affiliates cannot deliver what they promise, and the companies are extremely aware of this. For you as a potential affiliate marketer, you need to implement their links and banners, go the extra mile with ad articles and other unique strategies, generate some sales and then approach them again better prepared. You'll probably find that they'll have a change of heart. Finding good affiliates is very difficult and if you are performing for these companies they will keep you.

Most forms of advertising take some time to kick into gear. Putting a link up for a couple of days and then pulling it down because it is not generating any interest may not be a reflection on the product, but just in the way that it is being presented to your web site visitors. You know how fickle they can be.

If you have run successful campaigns before, try to remember the elements that made it a success and implement them again. Of course, you need to remember that what works for one product may not necessarily for another, but it's worth a try. Again, if you are having problems with promotion, contact the company. They will more than likely have thousands of affiliates and will know what strategies are working. A good advertiser may even go to the trouble of reviewing your site and provide you with some tips and hints based on their observations. 

Email advertising as an affiliate marketing tool

Direct promotion that are using email has boomed over recent years, but has brought with it mountains of spam. If you intend on using email as a method of advertising products and services, you have to be sure that you stand behind the products you're promoting and make yourself available to answer any questions that may be asked. If you hide from people, they will wonder what you are hiding.

An effective promotion technique that I have found is to combine email with the ad article strategy. This generally means creating an ezine or newsletter promotion that visitors can sign up for that goes directly to their email inboxes. You can occasionally put a summary of a product or service, however, you should include just enough information to stir the curiosity of your readers in an ezine. The summary then contains a link to the ad article on our site. The benefit of this is not only that you have a good opportunity to promote the product or service, but while visitors are on your site they may also look at other sections at the same time This way you as the advertiser benefits through having highly targeted potential clients visit their site.

Getting Started As an Affiliate Marketer

If you are a beginning Internet Marketer and you do not actually have any money to work with the best way to start marketing is by using the payperclick search engines. The truth is, when you are a marketer products are not the things that actually sell, it is the traffic that sells. However true this is you still want to promote the programs that meet certain criteria. If you are wondering what the criteria are they are listed below and are as follows:

1. Look for programs that offer to pay you over $10.00 per sale. If not that then at least search for programs that pay you $50.00 per month or more in residual income because just one customer can be worth $1,200.00 to you in 10 years.

2. Look for products to promote that don't have more than one or two external links to that connect to other programs. If you're going to pay good money to send people to a web site, you should at least make sure that you're sending them to a good money resource and not a resource that has with 50 holes in it.

3. Look for products that have limited ordering options because you don't want to send people to a site if you only get credit when they pay by credit card. The result will be that you will lose people because the site also accepts payment via PayPal and the average person doesn’t know how to integrate PayPal with their current affiliate software or some other more complicated payment method like direct checking.

4. Try to find sales sites. You can check out associateprograms.com and find five programs that meet the criteria. It will take some digging, but they are there if you look for them. Let's say you're promoting sneakers, for example. What you are going to want to do now is find as many applicable keywords as you can that are directly relating to sneakers. You can find lists of keyword variations for any products or services by going to jimtools.com and clicking the 'keywords' button at the top.

How this works is that you can do keyword searches and find every variation of the word sneakers that you can think of. If you save all your keywords in a text file you can place bids at all the major payperclick search engines. Here is a list of some of them:

http://www.overture.com They are very critical and will bring you the most

leads.

http://www.findwhat.com delivers pretty good traffic

http://www.bay9.com

http://www.ahha.com

http://www.kanoodle.com

http://www.sprinks.com

http://www.searchandconquer.com This one is Free

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com

There is a trick to making huge profits with payperclick search engines and one of them is to bid on as many keywords as possible. How it works is that you bid on a 100 keywords and it is the exact same thing as getting 100 links back to your web site. When you are submitting your listings, you must always be sure to put the price there as well. The key factor here is that you want everyone who clicks through your site to be prepared to divvy up some cash.

If you don't do this, you'll loose a lot of money from the people who are always seeking freebies every single time. With this in mind, say you submitted 350 keywords that are relating to sneakers to each and every one of the search engines above. If all of them are totaled together they will give you a combined total of 150 clicks per day. This is assuming of course that only one out of every 300 people make their purchases because this is a particularly popular item.

If you sell one pair of sneakers and make $10.00 per sale that's one sale every two days. If your average bid is 10 cents per lead, it's costing you $3.00 in advertising costs just so that you can make $10.00. So each month you could average $800.00 from just this one product in net profit per month. That is pretty good, but if you are pushing 5 different products you will have $4000 in one month’s profit.

The next thing that you have to do is try to find five products that are just like the first one. If a company/website doesn't have an affiliate program setup, try calling them and asking if you could strike a special deal with them. The best part of using this marketing technique is that after you set up one income stream using this method, and you've tested it and it's working, you can start on another one right away.

You can promote one or 100 companies if you want to it is really up to you. You can literally set your own desired income this way. Plus, by doing this, you get the chance to build long lasting working relationships with the owners of these programs most of the time. It is like out of nowhere, you suddenly have a network of people you're working with.

If you follow this article closely you'll be drawing more targeted traffic to programs that you promote than most of the high traffic sites that just have a simple link to the product in question. You can do all of this with little to no money at all in the beginning.

Once you start making enough money with the payperclick search engines, you can start investing some of your money in your own idea or business on the Internet that you want to start; which when you think about it just makes sense. You can simply take the easy way out and make more and more money promoting other people's programs. As Internet marketing gets more sophisticated in the next few years, there will be more and more companies that are offering solid moneymaking opportunities to experienced resellers, so it is best that you do your homework and learn this stuff while you can because eventually everyone will be trying to cash in on this ‘then ancient’ method. 

The craft of Listing

Owning a list is the most profitable online marketing tool out there today. As an affiliate marketer, you are going to have to get used to listing. In fact, there's not a time when you can send out your mailing to the A+ Marketplace where you won’t make $300.00. You can build your list with little to no effort to over 6,800 subscribers within five months and have over 35,000 subscribers by using some highly effective tactics. Let’s take a look at some of those tactics now.

Popup Emails:

This method is 10x as easy to get once you visit the Opt In Lightning site or any other site that Opt In Lightning is installed on. When you do this, you'll notice that it captures the visitor's email address without the visitor having to fill out a form when they sign on for it. They just have to click “OK.” Instead. This is commonly known as Auto Info Capture, and makes it 10x easier for people to subscribe to your mailing list. The basic principle here is that the easier you make it for people to subscribe the quicker your list grows.

When you use Optin Lightning programs, you can nab any email address from the visitor's client browser. The number of Hotmail and Yahoo addresses is that you can pick up is practically zero. The few Hotmail or Yahoo addresses you do capture are those that they configured in their browser, and will go right into their main inbox anyway instead of them having to retrieve them over the 'net. This is commonly referred to as your "Pull Ratio."

When you use a regular or "traditional" subscribe box, what you are doing is subject your list to what can be called pollution. What I mean by this is that, nothing is stopping people from populating your list with FFA confirmation email addresses, Auto Responders etc. If you ever decide to sell ads, your advertising clients are going to get very angry as your list grows because they will expect that their own ads that they paid good money for to pull more.

Using the old method over an extended period of time will eventually hurt your business. This is why Internet Marketing experts all agree that Ezines that get larger lose all or most of their pull. Now you know why. Someone using the traditional subscribe method can put all their friends etc. on your list, and force you to deal with spam complaints. This is called "List Bombing" and by using Popup Email Capture only, you will be able to avoid this completely. If you can avoid these problems from the start, you'll slowly and steadily grow a

solid clientele hungry for your products and services.

Personalizing email

You should always personalize each and every email that you send out because this gives people who are on the list a feeling that you’re not just another newsletter editor, but their friend and that you truly care about their success. Doing this can increase your sales by at least 200%. You have to think like a marketer as well as a consumer. If you start to think like a salesman, you will loose customers. The competition here is fierce but if you work on it, you will succeed. You want to shoot for the feeling where you actually become one with your list. By personalizing your emails, I mean that you can write as if you were sending a note to your friend. That's when you know for a fact that you will have a following.

Send Emails on Friday

I always send my newsletter on Friday at noon because it reaches the East Coast at 3:00 p.m. This way your readers will have the entire weekend36 to read it, when they are relaxed and comfortable. During the week, your consumers have to work, deal with family and home matters etc. They simply do not have the time to really give your emails much thought. When you wait till the weekend to send the mails, you can take the weekend off and come back Monday to find a stack of orders just waiting for you.

Offer Incentives

Offering incentives like free bonuses just for subscribing with no obligation to remain a subscriber can really boost your orders. Doing this builds a level of trust with new people who don't know you. You see when you start by offering freebies, you will attract a whole new crowd of consumers.

Follow up your Emails

By using an AutoResponder you can deliver your follow-ups without effort. Each follow up should be a sales letter to a residual income product you’re selling, an MLM program you’re promoting or a product you’re selling. There should not be any free content and these sales letters don't beat around the bush. I make thousands per month using email follow up alone. You can get an occasional flame and some unsubscribes, but this is exactly what you should want. You want to be building up your client list and the follow-ups actually WEED OUT people who aren't ready to make some kind of monetary commitment which will make your job a great deal easier.

No free content

Do not offer any free content because this gives the reader nowhere to go. They either get involved with what you’re doing or they get off the list. Besides when you are offering free content, all that you are really accomplishing is you owing more money and having less bandwidth to work with.

Don't accept any form of paid advertising

By accepting paid advertising, you only succeed in polluting your list and 37 This takes attention away from whatever your newsletter's main theme is. You want to keep your readers informed of MLM and Residual Income Programs because this just another way of building and keeping their trust in you.

Don't put copyright on it

Some lists add copyright information and I really don't know why. It is best to simply forward this information to anyone that might be interested. It's a lot easier than using a script and it's been working for me. In any case, most people generally don’t care anyway.

Purchase Subscribers

Every email address that you could possibly get is like potential gold to you so if you are going to purchase any email addresses from the many lists that are available for purchase, however, you have to be very specific in who you choose to buy from so watch out. You can purchase 1,000 subscribers for as little as $197.00 with some companies. It helps to be on the lookout.

Talk about yourself a bit

This may sound a bit strange, but people like to do business with people they know and trust. When you include SOME personal information about yourself, people will get to know you as a person. This helps break the ice and makes it a lot easier to do business with people. I don’t know about you, but I always respond better to a business person that is willing to be a bit more friendly and personal with me.

Make money using Popunder Ads

I told you that I would explain more about this later on, and here we are. While pop-under ads would appear not to pay as much as say emails do, they actually provide better dividends. Most Internet users have become quite accustomed to closing pop ups before they load. Because of this, you will not be able to make money on an ad that doesn’t appear. Pop under ads load in the background, so you'll receive higher payouts with minimum interference while giving the advertiser a decent "show" here are a few reasons why this works.

1. Technology in advertising delivery: Some banner networks now have the delivery of pop under ads down to a “T”. What they do is load quickly which allows your visitor is only shown a popunder ad once per visit and that is why some networks allow you to specify that the particular visitor only sees the popunders once every few days.

2. Read the fine print: Remember that you will probably not be paid for every pop up/pop under ad that is displayed so you have to read the fine print in the terms and conditions area that is always in the network you are applying to and you will find that no matter how many ads that are presented to a particular visitor in a single day, you will only be credited with one notice.

A good Internet advertising agency will also target popunder ads to your audience and just like every other banner ad campaign you will also have to be allowed to choose which pop under advertising you wish to display.

3. Putting pop under ads to use: Pop under code from the networks is easy to use than it ever was before. The code that is supplied by the agency is usually pasted between the <HEAD> </HEAD> tags in the HTML of the web pages where you want the ad to be triggered. Popunder ads can usually be run in tandem with a banner ad campaign, depending on the agency’s own set of guidelines. AGAIN, Be sure to review the "terms and conditions" of ad networks before you sign up.

The best link cloaking method

If you create a new web page that contains the following HTML code in it and save it this link cloaking method works. This example was provided by MerchantABC

<html>

<head>

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

<meta http-equiv='refresh' content='0;

url=http://www.merchantabc.com/app/aftrack.php?afid=12345'>

</head>

</html>

Now, rather than using your personal link with your cookie ID as you can see

below:

http://www.merchantabc.com/app/aftrack.php?afid=12345

you should have a link that looks like the example below:

http://www.yoursite.com/offer.htm (link to the page you created)

As soon as someone clicks on the new link, the page would automatically redirect to your affiliate URL. You just have to make sure that you set the link to your cloaked page in a new window so that you don't lose visitors from your site.

Unavoidable Search Engine Issues

The Robots line in the cloaking page is there specifically to prevent Search Engines such as Google from trying to index the page. Google hates meta refresh pages because it thinks that they are a spamming technique. It's safer for them to keep search engine robots out of the page, and since the page will have no content, there's no point in it being indexed anyway.

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You must not be tempted to have search engines index the cloaking page in the hope that your affiliate URL page will be listed highly because the penalty that is imposed by some search engines if you are caught is not worth the risk. You could loose everything this way.

You can play it even safer by having all of these special pages in one directory and then introducing a robots exclusion statement for that directory in your robots.txt file. I would highly recommend that you begin by cloaking your affiliate links. You will definitely experienced higher conversions and therefore commission revenue when you begin implementing cloaking strategies. There's nothing unethical about it; and like many other site owners, you have to work hard on our site and have poured thousands of hours into it over the years there's nothing wrong with receiving a few bucks for this effort. 

Getting Started-How to Find Good Affiliation Programs to
Promote

When you are ready to get started with affiliate marketing it can seem overwhelming at first, but this should not be a problem now since I have given you the basics of what you need to know. It is often hard to know where to start and how to begin to market products online. With thousands of affiliate programs, different marketing strategies and countless people trying to pull you into their program how do you know where to start, or how you could go

about it, you might wonder. Well….let me tell you.

With this getting started section, you can be up and running in as little as 6months and seeing some results. Here is how you can get started in some quick and easy steps.

#1-Don’t look for Get Rich Quick Method

If you have been alive for the last few decades, chances are you have come across the "get rich quick" schemes that are plastered everywhere. If you are going to succeed as an internet marketer you will want to get that thinking out of your head first.

Think about it; do you know anyone to ever make 10 grand in there first three months in a business, especially one that anyone can get started with for less than $50 bucks? Probably not, so do not think that this is how affiliation will work for you. Instead, you need to understand that anyone that makes serious money in this industry has been at it for a while, and they realize that they have to work for a business to make it work for them. By understanding that your going to have to learn the ropes so that you will not be setting yourself up for disappointment weeks later as your wondering why your not seeing any revenue. So let’s get started!

Basic Skills you will need To Do Well Online

* Ability to Create and Maintain Your Own Site(s)

* Hosting Of Your Own Websites

* Get Proficient with Email

* Grasp Basic SEO Strategies & Online Marketing Ideas

* At Least Basic HTML code understanding

* Motivation and Patience

Chances are that if you are hoping to be a master affiliate, you already have these skills and you will have an easier time during your fist few months. If you don’t, I would suggest that you do get these skills before you even try. You should begin by creating what is known in the industry as a "content site" this type of a site is also known as a hobby site. This practice project is meant to get you familiar with the process using the techniques in this manual.

How you do this is that you choose any topic that appeals to you, such as fishing, boating, hot rods etc. it can be anything you enjoy to do you can create a website about. This is meant to be your guinea site that you can learn on. During this time your goal with this site over the next three months is to find your target visitors and learn how to get their attention and keep it:

• Increase you site traffic weekly.

• Create a Memorable Site that has no pop up, hard navigation, crazy flashing banners or anything related to making money.

• Understand How People Use Search Engines & Learn Which Terms People Are Finding Your Site For and Increase Those Numbers by Monitoring them Regularly.

If you follow those basic skills over the next several months you will learn the most important aspect of online marketing which will drive targeted traffic to ANY site you create. Most people get it wrong with online marketing because they think HUGE NUMBERS of visitors to there sites will generate income. That is just not true. I mean; have you ever searched Google for a particular topic and ended up on some unrelated site? If you did I bet you were off that site faster that you can count to three.

However, that is how many people try to drive traffic to there site and then hope those people will in some way do something, weather it is by subscribing to a newsletter or buy a product or service. Until these people learn that sear numbers do not equal dollars they will always be scratching there head. The "trick" here is to drive as many "targeted" visitors to any site that you ever create. Weather your website is a hobby site about your favorite hobbies and music, or a commercial site that sells high end real estate, targeted visitors

will be the visitors that will make you your money in the end, so these are naturally the visitors that you want coming to you.

Now that you understand about targeted visitors and just what type of visitor you want at your site you can spend your first several months of your "online affiliate marketing career" in designing a site that will have them coming back for more and telling their friends about you. It will be much easier to learn about keyword optimization while you are creating a site about outdoor fishing than creating a sales site about "selling Trim Spa" while prescription drugs are incredibly profitable you need to practice and perfect your craft before you jump into a highly competitive arena like prescription drugs, credit card or

loans. 

Things to Watch out For As Your Traffic & Site Grow

1. Site Traffic & Referral Logs

2. Visitor Feedback

The Importance of Traffic & Referral Logs

You will want to be able to monitor very closely any site that you ever build because you should be able to know how many visitors visit your site daily, where they came from, if they have ever visited before and most importantly what keywords they searched for when finding your site (this only works when they came from a search engine). All of this information has to be logged so that you can know who to approach when you are researching who your target audience is and what they want from you.

Getting Visitor Feedback

You have to keep track of what types of feedback are your visitors giving you, and whether or not people enjoy the site and the content. Do they find the navigation is tricky and hard to understand? Take this information and use it to your advantage. If you can offer a suggestion or rating section in your site that allows visitors to tell you directly what they like and what they don’t like. This feedback is going to be invaluable to you when it is time for you to build your marketing website and track your feedback information for gaining partnerships with merchants in the future.

Your Money Making Commercial Site

Once you have spent some time working on your hobby site and you begin to feel that you have learned some of the skills that I talked about above you will be much more prepared to jump into the competitive affiliate marketing field.

 

Now you are ready to take the knowledge you have learned and apply it to a commercial site that requires you to sell some sort of product or service. Again the most important thing to consider is "how will you drive targeted visitors to your site.

You would be doing yourself a favor if you think before you choose your commercial site topic before you choose your next program to promote or site to create. Take a look at the supply and demand. Try to find a product or service online that has an existing consumer base and little or no competition. The best thing that you can do to get started with choosing the right commercial products to endorse on your website.

You should study the various programs that look appealing to you and then make a list of your top 10 programs. From here you can take your list and run a handful of searches on Google to get an idea just how many other websites are catering to this program. Take a look at the Google results below which helps you get an idea of what you can expect to see when you type in keyword queries:45

1. Searched the Google for fishing:

Results 1 - 10 of about 46,200,000

2. Searched the Google for Trim Spa:

Results 1 - 10 of about 16,800,000

3. Searched the Google for car parts:

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,850,000

4. Searched the Google for tank parts:

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,080,000

From the information that is gathered from the keyword query, you can get an idea of the amount of competition among those websites and pages that are selling any of those things mentioned above. Form this it should be easy to see that tractor parts has the least amount of competition and would be easier to get a higher ranking on the popular search engines simply because there are less sites than a Trim Spa or fishing site.

Now that I have pointed that out so subtly, it is also important that you try to understand just how large of a consumer base each industry actually has. I think everyone would agree that car parts outsell tank parts because more people own cars than tanks.

When it comes to your method of tracking the data, you can use a service called wordtracker which will do this automatically. I use word tracker myself to find niche areas, it won best affiliate tool on abestweb.com in 2002. I use it because it is reliable and takes much of the leg work out for me.

You have to work for any results that you are expecting to get. Don't expect to be able to put four of five hours into a site and have that site generate thousands of dollars worth of commissions for you because that is just not realistic. Like anything worth while it does take work, If you know that going in and are prepared to put in the time that it takes to make a great site chances are much better that you will see hundreds to thousands of dollars worth in commissions monthly at your leisure.

If you make it this far you will be past the affiliate newbie stage and ready to take on the affiliation world. With the popularity of the market ever rising it can be at the stage of collecting so much money that you can live on this income alone. If you just follow your dreams and be willing to put in the effort to see them become a reality. When your ready to choose you second sales site stop by my top programs, you might find a winner that makes sense to you!

Protecting your Commissions

As I mentioned in an above section, there are many problems that can occur at the merchant end of commission tracking. I also briefly touched on the issues associated with affiliate links. Many people are a bit nervous about clicking on an affiliate link like this one:

http://www.johndoe12345.com/affiliateid?345

I don’t really know why people do this but it is just that they do likely not know of the fact that if a site owner has gone to the trouble of providing valuable information on their site for free, that there is nothing wrong with them receiving money for that effort.

☺

Simple Fact: Best affiliate networks actually do make $$

You have to create revenue with banners, pop unders and in-vue advertising networks whether you lie it or not when using affiliate marketing. Advertisers on average pay by impression (up to $14 CPM) & click (up to 50c CPC) & you're paid 65% of all of that advertising revenue. Sounds great doesn’t it? Prompt payments, control over ads, stable revenue stream is highly recommended.

The fact of the matter is that some people will have a tendency to move their mouse over an external link and then view the URL that is in the status bar of their browser. If an affiliate code or URL is in your view; your visitors will simply mark the top level of the domain and manually type that into their browser address bar on their own, or if you've mentioned the company name they may just carry out a search to locate the home page of the company.

Protecting your affiliate commissions.

There are like a million different premium software products on the market that are ranging in price from US$15 - $50 for special software that will assist you in protecting your affiliate commissions. Their effectiveness and ease of  use ranges just as much, so before you pay for one of these software applications, you should try out a few of these suggestions. I've listed the strategies from least effective to most effective.

Install a banner server: Banner servers just don't serve banners; many of the newer ad servers will also display text links as well. The link coding that is often associated with served ads is usually so long, that your visitors wouldn't be able to see the status bar where it was directing them to.

However, when you think about how hard it is and how much time that installing an ad server takes, this is probably the least effective means if you just have a few associations.

Click tracking software and scripts: Nowadays, you can get a click-counting software application will not show the target URL as the links point inwards to the software which is usually installed on your own site. After you have clicked on the link, the click tracking application then redirects the visitor to the URL you specify within the script. Click tracking software also provides a great way to monitor how effective your ads are and not just having to rely on the reports provided by merchants which can be false.

These scripts can be easily found on any search engine by using the following search request:

“click counting scripts that are FREE”

These are usually pretty easy to set up. The most effective ones I've used are based on php scripting.

“JavaScript link cloaking”

You have to be able to see it in the first part your affiliate link, the second part shows you what will be displayed in the browser status bar and the last part is the link text. The link is set to open in a new window, so that you will not lose any visitors from your site.

This method isn’t foolproof and depending on the affiliate software being used by the merchant, the affiliate link may still show in the address bar once the merchant’s page has loaded, however the visitor would have arrived on the merchant site and the cookie from the merchant with your ID in it should have set. Using this kind of link, you can usually see an improvement in the conversion rates.

Using Keyword Articles and reviews to boost Revenue

As I have said before, you will have to generate traffic to your site, and one of the best ways to do this is by offering keyword rich articles and reviews on your website because that is how you will establish a bond of trust with your visitors. When your website has content rich articles and real reviews, your customers will know that you know what you are talking about and they will begin to depend on your website for information and that is when you can approach “like” merchants who are selling similar products, services or ideas as

yours. Doing this will also keep your website filled with new content for your

regulars.

Your regular site visitors will view you as an authority on a particular subject, so it simply makes sense that you should write a review on a product or service that you are advertising. Many websites like www.cnet.com offer product and service reviews for the things that they are selling because this makes it easier for surfers to decide between products. I will admit that I rely heavily on this stuff. This also supplies excellent content for search engine spiders to latch onto because the information often changes regularly.

If you are going to use this particular ad article concept to promote products, you need to believe in what you are writing because if you don’t believe it how can you expect visitor’s to believe it? Research the product and company well and try it out if you can so that you can offer specifics. Contact the company and let them know what you are doing and ask for further resources and ssistance if you need it. Once you have created the review, send them the link because you may be surprised at the response you get this way.

Choosing the Right Keywords

As I stated before, keywords are used to help you generate traffic to your website. This is why it is so important that you choose the right keywords for your own website. When you are choosing keywords, you should choose words that are not simply related to your website’s content, but that actually describe the content. When you do this, you will avoid getting the wrong kind of traffic and actually get the kind of traffic that may bring you some business. For example, if you are using your website to sell dog food, you will want to

get traffic from people who are looking for dog food and not those who are looking for dog collars. If you choose ‘dog’ as your keyword, you will end up with a great deal of traffic on your website, but you are not guaranteed to get any sales out of it.

Think about it, how many times do you conduct a search on the web, only to find yourself smack dab in the middle of a website that has nothing to do with what you are looking for except that the site uses a common word or word phrase that you used in your search query? It happens to me all of the time and I just end up leaving the site automatically and just a little bit angrier than when I began the query in the first place.

The key point I am making in this section is that you could find that it is easier to get affiliations when you approach sites with a certain quote of regular traffic already established. It will certainly make it easier for you to link up with other websites because it shows progress in your effort. This will be particularly great if you are seeking pay per click.

You might be wondering just how any of this is going to help you with your affiliation quest in real life. Well…incoming links from sites that are related to your topic may give you a fair boost in engines such as Google and Yahoo!.Google has a tendency to group related pages in clusters that are devoted to a specific topic. At the center of these clusters are pages with a lot of inbound links from sites in the same cluster.

If you can get a link from one of these major sites, you are in luck, as the search engine will find your site more relevant for queries related to this specific topic. What is this really called—Affiliation! It helps a lot if the text of the inbound link contains the keyword phrase that you are optimizing the page for. Search engines such as Google try to find out what the main topic of your page is. One way of doing this is to analyze the main subject matter of sites linking to yours.

You should also avoid link farms. Links from free-for-all link farms that are set up to increase the participants' link popularity should be avoided at all costs. The reason why is because those clever people out there have found ways to spam the link popularity ranking, by establishing link farms where the members are guaranteed links from the other member sites in return for adding a similar link page to their own site. Basically a link farm is a public affiliation. If you are trying to use this method to get more business, you want to go with a private affiliation because that is not as open to spam artists.

Those guys as Google are very clever too because Google has started punishing sites that have link-farm pages, and other search engines are expected to do the same thing because it is the ‘IN’ thing to do. If you are a member of one of these schemes, you have to delete the important link page and ask to be removed from the others. 

There are also a lot of free-for-all link collections, “directories,” and “search engines” out there, that are set up to harvest the e-mail addresses of webmasters. That is why it is also not  recommended that you post your email addresses on your website either. These harvesters search for the ‘@’ symbol that is used in the email address and add them to spam lists.

It is for this reason that you will likely loose points on your website with the search engines so you would be better off just avoiding these automatic search engine links at all costs. Genuine website affiliation requires that you do more than just add a link, so be on the look out!

You have to look for related sites

When you are hoping to get your website’s name out there, you should try to get your site listed at the most important sites in your field of interest. In order to achieve this, you should do these things:

1. To find sites that are related to your own, search through the categories in the Open Directory. Then study some of the most promising to find out which sites are the most popular in this field. You can also check out sites that have links to your major competitors too.

2. Make a content-rich site that is filled with high quality that is bound to interest the editors of the sites you are approaching. This just means putting any and all relevant and up to date information on the subject that you can find.

3. Make a “recommended links” section at your own site with sites that might interest your visitors. Keep in mind that each link should be accompanied by a description. Usually, the most effective link pages are those that include short reviews of the relevant sites. You should optimize these pages by adding specific keyword phrases, and you will get some extra legitimate doorway pages for free.

In the end, all of this website optimization just leads to one place…….affiliation. There’s that word again. As you can imagine, we are finally at the stage where we are going to actually talk about website affiliation. I’ll bet you weren’t expecting it so soon. 

How to Find Good Affiliation Programs to promote

Because there are literally tens of thousands of affiliate programs on the Internet these days that are covering just about every product and service you could imagine. Finding the right affiliate programs can be a difficult task, but it does pay off; so it's well worth the effort. If you're new to affiliate programs, here's a good list of things that you can do to find the right programs for you:

First of all, you have to know that to the business owner, affiliate programs are seen as a virtually 'free' marketing tool that allows them to generate extra business without having to invest in any significant up-front costs. Because affiliate programs pay based solely on their performance, they typically have nothing to lose by recruiting as many affiliates as possible.

This is an important thing to keep in mind because most affiliate programs will do their best to present themselves as a great affiliate match for any site because business owners see that they have nothing to lose if you can't generate sales. However if you are the marketing affiliate, you do because that means that it is lost income potential.

You have to learn to define who your audience for example: Do you have general traffic or specific types of visitors? Is your audience mainly comprised of a particular age demographic? Male/Female? If it's possible, first narrow down what kind of potential shoppers you might have visiting your site. This is again called ‘finding your target audience’. Remember to write everything down.

Secondly, you have to decide which industries fit in best with your audience. Before you can start looking for affiliate programs, you have to decide what kind of stuff would appeal most to that audience you've just defined. In the above example we're dealing with middle aged women who were looking for entertainment (maybe they were at a chat site, reading stories, playing games, whatever). Then try to decide what your target audience is willing to spending a little money on. Write this down too. Actually, just for the record, write it all down!

Now you have to see if there are any good affiliate programs that sell that stuff. I know that this sounds like a given, but you'd be surprised how many affiliates put up affiliate programs because they pay high commissions, only to find out it doesn't matter because no-one's buying anything.

Here is a good formula to remember always: 

No buyers = no money!

Think about it this way; if your web site relates to your interests, would you buy it? Now what do you think about applying that theory to the audience you just defined? Who might they buy from? Now you have to try to narrow it down even further by using the programs that have the best reputation, commissions, Marketing materials, and of course trying to tie it all into offers for the actual BUYER.

This part should be easiest if you apply it personally. Use your common sense about the price of the products or services you will be marketing for these programs; they might pay 50% commissions, but do they charge twice what they should to the buyer? If so would you be willing to pay those prices? Of course you are going to want good commissions, but you also need to market omething people will actually buy or else you will not get any at all, which usually means fair prices from the sellers! You might earn less per sale, but think about the volume of sales, and the right balance that makes you the most money.

Avoid any affiliate programs that offer crap deals for the buyer. Compare the commission structures, and try to find programs with a good history of conversions and prompt payments. You need to push affiliate programs that have good commissions structures and good conversions (how many visitors does it take to get a sale?) You also want to make sure you get paid!

DON'T FORGET TO READ THE AFFILIATE TERMS FIRST! You might be surprised how many affiliate programs have some terms buried in their fine print that don't work in your favor that is why I gave you a sample merchant contract to look through so that you can get an idea of the terms that may be inside of them.

When it comes to how many sponsors do you need to start with you should consider how much money you have first. If you're just starting out, it's best to try out a few sponsors that will gauge which will perform best. How many programs should you start with? Try out however many good, related programs there are that you can give a reasonable 'chance' to promote in a reasonable amount of time. Remember whoever sponsors your website is investing in your abilities too.

If you have lots of traffic on your website, you might be able to rotate dozens of sponsors across your site. If you only have a couple hundred visitors a month, you should limit yourself to only a few, because you don't have the audience to support a larger test of affiliate programs. You need to send a fair bit of traffic to an affiliate program before you can truly gauge it's performance, and you probably don't want to be in the 'testing phase' for months on end so you should limit yourself accordingly.

Finally, you should begin by knowing that sending 5 visitors to an affiliate link without a sale is simply not a fair test. Depending on what you're selling and who you're trying to sell to it can take a lot of traffic to start seeing revenue. If you remove affiliate programs without giving them a fair shake, you could be cheating yourself out of income; that next visitor may have been your first sale. The moral here is again to BE PATIENT!

At this point you're ready to start earning some money. If you narrowed your list down too much, don’t worry just try to find other related things to sell from different affiliate programs rather that settle with mediocre programsyou've scratched off the list. Once you've given the programs enough time to check for results, you're ready to start narrowing down your affiliate programs to the ones that work for you Let’s take a look at least two of the best affiliate programs that I have seen and worked with so far and what they have to offer. 

ClickBank

There are many reasons why I like the ClickBank affiliate program so much. The Clickbank Marketplace is an awesome program that helps you generate revenue that is included in their affiliate zone. This site is a friendly, resourceful one that generates traffic, commission sales and runs by itself.

Clickbank also features a professional design and comes fully developed as a search engine that is fed by the Clickbank's Marketplace of over 50,000 products and businesses. The Clickbank Marketplace offers an automated database update system and Clickbank cookie features giving you commissions on sales from visitor's for up to three months after a visitor has left your site!

The commission percentage structure is based on monthly revenues through sales from your Clickbank ID. You receive a commission rate determined by the partner site from 5-65%. This is one place where you won’t have to site around and wait for your checks because ClickBank pays you through faster venues like PayPal.

ClickBank not only allows you to accept credit cards on your web site without the need for a merchant account, it also provides other ways in which you can generate income as well. I'll highlight five different ways you can start making money with ClickBank by the end of the day.

1. Become an affiliate for ClickBank products

You can easily sign up as an affiliate through their website at: http://clickbank.com and then you can take some time to look through the full range of products that are in their marketplace for products that you'd like to promote, it’s like shopping. For example, you can start by looking in the appropriate category on products that you have a good handle on. You should find products that match up well with your existing business and that you'll be

able to promote to your mailing list.

To promote a product, you simply create a hoplink, which is designed in the following format:

http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?nickname/merchant

All you have to do is replace the word 'nickname' above with your own ClickBank nickname, and 'merchant' with the nickname of the merchant. It’s that simple. If you're not sure what the nickname of the merchant is, you can always go to their sales page and get it from their sales link which will probably look like this:

http://www.clickbank.net/sell.cgi?Merchant/1/ProductName

Where 'Merchant' is the merchant's nickname. Or you can look for an automatic

way to generate hoplinks by trying to find it at the page below:

http://clickbanktoolkit.com/promoteaproduct.html

2. Sell your own product through ClickBank

There's no better way of making money online than selling your own product, and with ClickBank you can start doing this very quickly and with little trouble. You can sell up to 50 different downloadable products through ClickBank with a single account and to become a merchant costs less than $50, rather than the hundreds of dollars it often takes to set up your own merchant account.

The best part is that you will not be going it alone either. There are literally

thousands of web masters that sell their products through ClickBank. Some of

these people include, but are not limited to: people like Ben Prater, Joe

Vitale, Jeremy Burns and Jim Edwards.

3. Sign up your own ClickBank affiliates

When you sign up with ClickBank as a vendor, you can start recruiting affiliates

to sell your product almost immediately. If the other affiliates are receiving

commissions from selling your product that means YOU are making money as

well. The best thing about this is that you can choose exactly what level of

commission you want your affiliates to receive.

4. Refer new clients to ClickBank

You can earn a great deal of money just by promoting ClickBank itself. You can get complete details about this at: http://clickbank.net/reseller.html You won’t make millions doing this referral, but it's useful as an additional income stream with commissions that can range between $0.05 and $10.00. When you are trying to make some money, every little bit helps.

5. Promote a ClickBank Storefront

What makes ClickBank’s so great a program is that ClickBank actually has its own MarketPlace that is fairly limited in terms of how functional it is, but various companies offer a 'storefront' for all (or some) of the products listed in ClickBank's MarketPlace, and each one of which will have your ClickBank affiliate nickname attached to it which will give you even more exposure.

The idea is that you can promote your own storefront, and get commissions from people who visit and go on to purchase products that are listed is one that is appealing to all web affiliate marketers.

The most powerful link up that I've seen so far is http:/www.CBGold.com, but there's a couple others you can view for comparison at 1stPromotion.com and ClickbankAffiliates.com. I guarantee that it will be worth your time.

Paydotcom.com

PayDotCom.com is a lot like ClickBank in that is an alterntive 'MarketPlace' approach to an Affiliate Network. PayDotCom offers a number of enhancements and unique approaches to affiliate marketing in its own. In particular, vendors can offer an unlimited number of products for sale for a lifetime membership of only $29.00. Vendors only pay a commission once a product is sold and not before.

PayDotCom also offers:-

• one-tier or two-tier affiliate programs

• monthly billing

• ability to sell digital or physical products

• pays instant commissions

• Tracks hits and stats live

PayDotCom will ensure that you see an immediate increase in the sales of your products! Not only that; but setting yourself up as a vendor is going to be totally hassle free.

With PayDotCom, you will not have to deal with any waiting for any product approval, because you can take advantage of a simple and easy cut and paste HTML purchase buttons, awesome affiliate program set-up with your own customizable affiliate page, and NO mandatory 90 day money back guarantee. 

One the best things about using PayDotCom is that you don't have to keep dishing out $50 bucks every time you want to set-up a new product.

In fact, your first product is actually FREE! You can get your money deposited immediately into your PayPal or StormPay accounts which makes life a great deal easier than waiting constantly for checks in the mail.

YOU NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THOSE LOST COMMISSION SALES BECAUSE

SOMEONE HIGH-JACKED YOUR XXXX I.D. AND RELACED IT WITH THEIRS EITHER.

PayDotCom gives you every reason to choose them with the amount of services that you get. At PayDotCom, you can rest assured that they are just as interested in watching you make money as you are. You can earn sales commissions up to 85% by linking your customers to any of their products and services that are available in their marketplace. Sign Up is FREE too.

With PayDotCom you can earn a great deal of income by promoting their product links to your customers or by placing links on your website. You can also use the Marketplace to find products and services that will be of interest to people who visit your site.

Under each product or service in the marketplace you'll see a description of the affiliate program so that you can be sure that they meet your own requirements. All you have to is click on the description to promote that product or service.

PayDotCom also provides you with all of the links and the promotion tools from the Vendor's affiliate tools when you select the product. Then you can keep track of all of your stats in a better way when you go through PayDotCom.

As you can see, there are just too many benefits to using both PayDotCom and ClickBank. It all is about which company you would prefer. If you would prefer, you can always just go through both of them. In the end, it is all about the commissions and both websites have a lot to offer in that regards.

Making Money with Affiliation with Pay Per Click

It doesn’t really take a whole lot of knowledge to realize that the internet is the new wave in marketing right now. It is even better than traditional methods for marketing because this method can give you returns almost immediately upon your investment if you know what you are doing and how to best capitalize off of it.

As you can probably imagine, the entire purpose of using affiliation as a part of your marketing technique is so that you can make some money. Below, you will learn how you can make money with affiliation without spending more than you can afford to spend. There are more ways to generate traffic to your website and this is just one of them. However, I Thought that it deserved more attention on its own as its popularity gets higher. Look Below for more options.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click advertising is a bonus for affiliate marketers because it basically does exactly what it says. When your visitors click onto your web pages you will get paid just for the visit. It doesn’t apply to how much stuff the visitors purchase. Let’s take a look at some of the most common questions about it to help you get an exact idea of what this really is.

What Is Pay Per Click?

Pay per click advertising on search engines allows you choose keywords you would like your site to appear for when a search query is performed. You get to decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. The more you are willing to pay per click, the higher your site will appear in the results for the keywords you choose. Because of this, your site’s appearance listing can rapidly fluctuate. However, this method is great for the marketer that is just starting out. 

Which Search Engines Offer Pay Per Click Advertising?

There is literally hundreds of pay per click search engines such as MSN, Yahoo, Google and Overture. Generally, the larger the pay per click search engine is, the more you will have to bid to get to the top for your keywords. This is why it is worth investigating different search engines to find what it would cost to bid on your keywords and how much traffic they draw in.

The largest companies in the pay per click industry are Overture and Google. Google is not a pay per click search engine, but it does provide pay per click advertising in text ad boxes to the right of search results it delivers. It also delivers pay per click ads to other content sites as well. One advantage the lesser known search engines have is that these search engines can provide lower costs per click to rank for a keyword than the larger search engines.

In addition to the general pay per click search engines, you may also be able to find thematic search engines that serve your industry or specifically cater to your target audience.

Important Thoughts Before Choosing Pay Per Click Search Engine

One very important thing that you must do when you use pay per click advertising is that you must test, test, and test again before you settle on your bid amount. You shouldn’t start off with a major investment before testing the service. Start with the minimum bid amount and see how the search engine performs in terms of the traffic it delivers and how well that traffic converts into paying customers.

A necessary aspect of your testing is having a method in place that allows you to track your return on the money that you have invested. For example, if your goal is to bring in new subscribers to your newsletter, you could direct visitors arriving from your pay per click link to a subscription form that is set up just for them. You can then monitor how many clicks actually result in a new  subscription. As such, you will know how much you are paying for each new subscriber.

Before you begin spending any money with a pay per click search engine, be sure they can answer the following questions first:

• How many searches a month are performed at the search engine approximately?

• What major search partners or affiliates does the search engine already have?

• How many searches are generated each month by the search partners or affiliates?

• Is it possible to avoid having your listing appear in the results of the affiliate sites?

• What fraud prevention and security precautions are in place?

• What is the procedure for filing a "fraudulent clicks" report?

• Will an account be credited for fraudulent clicks discovered?

• Is it possible to refuse to have a listing appearing for searches originating from specific countries?

• Is there a term of service for search partners or affiliates that is easy to see? Look for search engines that have very strict guidelines for dealing with their search affiliates. This is important because you want to be sure the search engine is working hard to prevent fraud among all of its affiliates.

While search engine optimization can be an intensive and time consuming process that requires a complete site overhaul, pay per click advertising is fast, easy and a much more exact science than search engine optimization. Pay per click search engine advertising offers so many benefits that overshadow search engine optimization such as the following benefits:

• You only have to pay for visitors to your website whereas most banner and rich media ad campaigns that are purchased on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis.

• Pay per click programs only charge you when someone actually visits your website.

• You get the chance to reach worldwide consumers during a time when a consumer is using a search engine like Google to look for information so that you don't have to interrupt them while online in order for you to get them to visit your site.

• You get the advantage of Precise Targeting that will help to get Target people who are looking for your products, services, and informational content regardless of age, sex, income, or other classifications.

• You can easily control your expenses when you use pay per click because you know exactly what you are getting for your money. If you receive visitors from the marketing campaign, you'll pay a price that you get to determine for each visitor.

• Rapid testing and feedback from pay per click advertising can be instant if you use one of the pay per click ROI tracking or campaign management tools. You'll know exactly how well your investment is performing in real time. It just doesn’t get any easier than this.

• You get the advantage of having Rapid deployment that is complete with ROI tracking is very fast to set up and can be up and running in 15 minutes. There are no banners (and associated costs) to create and haggle over; simply write some text ads and get them up and running.

• The affordability that you get with pay per click is awesome whether your monthly budget is $20.00 or $200.00 you can use pay per click advertising to grow your business.

• Not only can you be up and running in 20 minutes, you can reach a global audience quickly and easily, particularly with Google AdWords.

Pay Per Click Search Engine Basics

When you setup an account with any pay per click search engine advertising program your ranking for each keyword is determined by the amount you are willing to pay per click (your bid). The higher you bid, the higher you will rank.

You do have the option with search engine’s like Google to set a different bid price for each keyword. If you are a small business with a minimal budget to invest in pay per click advertising you'll probably want to take a guerrilla approach and bid low on keywords that your competitors have overlooked. If you've got a larger budget than that it can be best for you if you start with higher bids because then you can collect some conversion data and evaluate the direction your campaign should take a little bit faster.

The best pay per click programs 

Google AdWords is by far the best choice right now for pay per click programming; in part because it is the most popular search engine in the world. When you take part in the AdWords program you have the option to syndicate your message on all international version of Google, its search partners like AOL, Ask Jeeves, and Earthlink and content sites like HowStuffWorks.com. Next thing you know, you can be up and running with a worldwide advertising test campaign.

When you use Google AdWords you are not buying placement within the actual search results because you can’t, but you can purchase text ads in the little colored boxes that are located on the right hand side of the main search results. The ads that generate the most revenue for Google will quickly rise to the top.

Like the pure pay per click search engines like Overture you only pay Google when someone clicks on your listing no matter how many times it is displayed. For now, go check out the tutorial on how to set up a Google AdWords Account.

Overture - Massive Reach on MSN, YAHOO!

Overture started out as GoTo.com which was a pioneer in the pay per click search engine advertising arena and has always based search engine rankings on the amount of money that the advertiser was willing to pay per click. The price per click on Overture starts at $0.10 and the monthly minimum amount that you can spend is $20.00.

When you advertise on Overture and set your bids high enough to rank in the top 3 spots your listings will usually be syndicated on YAHOO!, MSN, AltaVista, and FAST. Your rankings in Overture will change constantly because the market for keyword placements is extremely competitive and everyone is trying to hit at the right balance between traffic, and bid price.

Thanks to a more extensive editorial review process than Google AdWords, it generally takes up to a week to get active with the standard account, or 3 days if you choose to sign up for the more expensive ($199.00) Fast Track option.

LookSmart -Target MSN

Just like Overture and Google AdWords, business at LookSmart is moving pretty good too. LookSmart offers pay per click advertising at $0.15 per click. With the LookSmart Small Business Listings, you can submit one URL to the LookSmart directory for a fee of what is usually around $49.00 unless you get a promotional discount. If your content is approved, and most listings are, your site will be placed in the LookSmart directory. Within a day or two it will be syndicated across the LookSmart syndication network.

MSN is currently the largest and most important syndication partner of

LookSmart and 90% or more of the traffic you will receive from the LookSmart

network will come from MSN. 

The main difference between pay per click advertising on LookSmart and other programs like Google AdWords is the flat $0.15 rate per click and the fact that you cannot buy specific placements for specific keywords (Google Adwords use fluctuating rates). If you utilize the LookSmart pay per click program you will be subject to a $15.00 monthly minimum spend. LookSmart creates special offers that lets small businesses to submit up to 5 pages from a website.

In addition to the major programs that are mentioned above there are shopping search engines like that will also offer pay per click programs for product listings, which is smaller pay per click engines. There are literally hundreds of other pay per click search engines out there.

iGetNet keywords is another program that chances are, you have never heard of. You've probably gotten email Spam from someone trying to sell IGN keywords or a phone call from a sales rep that is trying to sell you this product. While it's not a pay per click program, it is a source of confusion for many new to keyword marketing. I would suggest that you leave these people alone because you will likely get more than you bargained for here or not enough.

TO BE CONTINUED.................