title:$27,817 Monthly With Affiliate Programs author:John McLaren source_url:http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_2181.shtml date_saved:2007-07-25 12:30:15 category:online_business article:

I still remember thinking that promoting Affiliate Programs was a waste of time. Until I started making a small fortune.

At the end of 2004, I started some time exploring the concept of promoting affiliate programs through pay-per-click search engines. I knew of some Internet Marketing gurus who were claiming you could make thousands of dollars every month. But I was skeptical. I remember thinking, “I know what these guys are about. They just want to sell more books.”

But I decided that at least it was worth a look. The concept is quite simple. Choose a product – and one that has an affiliate program, of course. Set up an advertising campaign at a PPC search engine like Google and choose how much you want to pay per click. Write a three line advertisement and add your affiliate link. Whenever anyone clicks through your ad and buys the product, you earn a commission.

So I looked. And thought about it. And looked some more. I was still very uncertain about the whole concept, but I finally decided to test for myself whether it could really work. And since I knew I’d be spending quite a bit of money on advertising clicks, I felt it was well worth investing in a book so I could learn from more experienced marketers how to maximize the profitability of my campaigns.

As my business grew over several weeks I purchased and read several ebooks. By far the best I read was Chris Carpenter’s Google Cash ( http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq ). His approach is genuine, down-to-earth, and he explains very clearly how to build your own affiliate marketing business. And importantly, he makes a fortune doing what he explains in the book.

I started by testing 20-30 campaigns on various products. Most of them were unsuccessful, but I expected that from what I had been reading. I would test a product, and if it didn’t work, I would drop it quickly. The key with this business is identifying the affiliate products and campaigns that are successful. Once you find one that works, the money starts rolling in.

By February of 2005 I had identified several campaigns that were turning a profit. With one of these I was spending $0.08 per click to promote an affiliate product that pays me $18 commission on each sale. Approximately 1 visitor in 100 buys the product, so I make around $10 profit for every 100 visitors that I send.

What a formula! For every 1,000 visitors, that’s $180 in commissions. That might not seem like all that much, but remember once you have a successful campaign it keeps going all day, every day. If you send just 1,000 visitors to a program like this every day, then by the end of the month you will have earned $5,400 in commissions, of which $3,000 is profit.

Does it seem too simple? Well, if it was so easy everyone from your Aunt Mabel to the mailman would be doing it. In fact, while the concept is simple, getting your campaigns to run profitably does take some work. Since I can't possibly teach you all you need to know in one article, I'll give you a few tips here and recommend Google Cash for a detailed explanation:

Choose Your Product Wisely. The program should pay a commission of $15 or more, otherwise it won’t be worth paying for your clicks. And if the commission is very high, be careful. Some products like web hosting and satellite dish installations may pay commissions of $100, but you face intense competition from other affiliates, so the price you need to pay to get ad exposure and clicks will probably also be very high. Sometimes it is better to identify a niche product with less competition from other affiliates.

Track Your Campaigns Carefully. If you’re paying around 7 or 8 cents per click for a program that pays close to $20 commission, you need to make at least one sale for every 250 visitors. If you send 300 to 400 visitors with no sale, consider dropping it.

Days Of The Week Do Matter. When testing campaigns keep in mind the day of the week and even the time of day. Some products sell better on Mondays through Fridays, during business hours. Others, like entertainment products, sell better in the evenings and on weekends.

Getting back to my own experience, after identifying several campaigns that ‘worked’, I spent some time fine-tuning them using techniques I read about in Google Cash. By the end of February I had earned $27,817 in commissions for the month, all on products I had never even heard of at the end of 2004. My profit was a neat $10,795.

It’s incredible really. I made this money without a web site. From home. Working an average of just an hour or two a day.

I’m finally making the amount of money online that I dreamed about.

How about you? Would you also like to build an affiliate marketing business? Could you use some additional income? I encourage you to proceed, but be smart about it. There are risks involved and you should be aware of them. You should read Chris Carpenter’s book. That way you’ll be on a fast track to more profitable campaigns. And his book will save you hundreds of dollars, easily, as you avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls.

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10 Amazing Product Selling Formulas author:Steve Li source_url:http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_1753.shtml date_saved:2007-07-25 12:30:15 category:online_business article:

1. Sell your products at a wholesale price to retail web sites. You could sell them individually or in bulk.

2. Set up joint ventures with other businesses to sell your product to new customers. They can introduce it to their customers for a set price.

3. Allow other web sites to sell your product for a set commission. They can take a percentage of the sale and send you the rest of the order to drop ship.

4. Sell your product through an affiliate program. You just pay people a set commission for each of their sales or click throughs.

5. Sell people the rights to reproduce your product. You could sell them straight out for one price or collect royalty payments from each sale they make.

6. Set up a cross promotion deal with another web business. Allow them to sell your product as a back end product to their existing customers base.

7. Sell your product in a package deal with other web businesses. You can both advertise it and split the profits.

8. Rent your products out for a set period of time. It's like selling but, you get the products back to rent again.

9. Allow people to subscribe to your products. It works best when selling info products, services or memberships.

10. Allow people to lease your products. It's like renting them but they have the option of buying at the end of the lease.

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10 Key Strategies for Success in a Home Based Business author:Geoffrey Young source_url:http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_3197.shtml date_saved:2007-07-25 12:30:15 category:online_business article:

When you finally decide to work from home in an internet based business, you will need to follow certain steps to be successful.

Following are the basic steps in setting up for home business success.

1. Attitude

This is the key to your business.

Treat your business like a business.

This is critical no matter if you work part or full-time. One of my friends is a work at home mom. She has always put her family first whilst at the same time developing her business. She says, "I work part-time, but I have a full-time attitude."

Put another way, "If you have a hobby attitude you will have a hobby income, if you have a business attitude you will have a business income."

You can be successful working part-time and you can be successful working full-time but it is highly unlikely that you will be successful working in your "spare time".

2. Working Environment

A space that you can call your own, free from distractions for your scheduled time.

A comfortable chair and organized desk. Stationery supplies as required. For example:

- pens

- highlighters

- stapler

- hole punch

- sticky tape

- note book(s)

- a simple filing system

- ring binders

- manilla folders

Consider the value of a broadband connection. Your time is valuable and a broadband connection can allow you to get more done in a given time frame.

3. Schedule

Develop a schedule that works for you, your family (or "significant others") and your business. When you allot a block of time for work then use that time for work. Equally important is to schedule time for your other commitments - family time, self education ( reading, listening and viewing), "health time" (exercise, cooking and eating), and leisure time. During these other times don't work. After all if one of the reasons to work from home is to spend more time with your family then you don't want your working at home time to consume your family time.

You are working for yourself and your schedule (by your choice) is your "boss". When you have people calling you or dropping around unexpectedly or maybe out-of-town visitors may want to catch up with you then you need to make a choice. Are you committed to your own business success? What will be your choice in these situations? Only you can decide what is important to you.

In a family environment you may need to negotiate with your partner and children to have your business time agreed upon, during which you will not be interrupted. Put this schedule prominently somewhere so all family members are aware of your work schedule.

4. Describe Your Business

Be able to describe your business concisely; a powerful one or two sentence description that someone can repeat in describing your business to others. A unique and memorable tag line can also be invaluable for promoting your business.

5. Know Your Product or Service

Once you have selected your product or service to sell, it may or may not be something that you use yourself but you need to know your product intimately. If you are selling ebooks then know the content and its value. If you are selling software then use it know it "inside out". You will develop a reputation of providing quality information and because of your product knowledge you can become the preferred supplier.

It is not practical to use certain products (for example a woman may choose to sell man's shoes or vice versa) in which case the seller won't be a product user, however the seller can still know the benefits and features of the product intimately.

6. Administration

Use good record keeping practices.

This may involve a consultation with a tax advisor who can let you know about the optimal way to set up your financial records and what records need to be kept. Your advisor will also recommend record keeping systems and you can find out what software may simplify this aspect of your business. Additionally your obtain advice on the best arrangement for your bank accounts. You will most likely be advised to have a separate bank account.

You will also need to keep track of your various logins, usernames and passwords. A very handy little software tool for this is Treepad available as either the free Lite version (without password protection) or the commercial Plus or Biz versions. http://www.treepad.com

There are other useful tools for this also from a simple paper notebook to free and commercial password keepers. One popular solution is Roboform that will remember your login details and can automatically fill out your login and other registration forms. http://www.roboform.com

7. Computer Protection

Your computer is the lifeline to your business dealings and must be protected including the data that is stored.

You need a virus scanner, personal firewall, anti-spyware and anti-adware and preferably an email scanner with the ability to delete suspect of spam email from the server before it is downloaded to your computer.

Some suggestions are:

AVG Anti-Virus: http://www.grisoft.com

Spybot S&D: http://www.safer-networking.org

Microsoft Anti-Spyware: www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx Adaware: http://www.lavasoft.com/ Mailwasher Email Scanner: http://www.mailwasher.net

8. A Domain Name

You will most likely need a domain name for your business and one cost effective registrar is GoDaddy, http://www.godaddy.com.

9. Payment Processing

You will need a way to process credit cards; that may be using services such as: - PayPal https://www.paypal.com - Storm Pay http://www.stormpay.com - 2 Checkout http://www.2checkout.com - Clickbank http://www.clickbank.com or others.

This is the most economical way to get started. Once your business picks up you may need to look into your own merchant account for credit card transactions.

Consideration may also be given to other forms of online currency such as eGold http://www.egold.com

10. Email accounts

Once you have your own domain you can use an associated email account. This can further assist in the promotion of your business and promotes a more professional business image.

As a final comment on continuing in your internet business, conduct your business ethically, provide extraordinary service and be proud to put your name to the products or services that you are selling and you will be on track to developing a sustainable long term internet business.

Copyright 2005 Geoffrey Young

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10 Extremely Effective Ways to Increase Your Sales author:Shane Kukec source_url:http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_2792.shtml date_saved:2007-07-25 12:30:15 category:online_business article:

The following are 10 simple yet very powerful ways to increase your sales significantly:

1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could follow-up with a "thank you" email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up with them regularly. The goal is to begin building a relationship with your customers so you need to keep in constant contact with them.

2. You could upsell to your customers. When they're at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses' products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You'll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.

There you go. The great thing about these powerful strategies is that you can implement them immediately. As I said, they are easy to start using but the outcome could be a substantial increase in your conversion and/or buy rate which is the ultimate goal. It is extremely important to make your customer and/or prospect feel special and to provide them with additional value-added items that will keep them coming back.

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10 Killer Secrets For Making Your Customers Respond To Your Email Now! author:Dan Lok source_url:http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_4101.shtml date_saved:2007-07-25 12:30:16 category:online_business article:

Email has resulted in a revolution in marketing-an explosion in messaging.

For some it is a god-send, a technology and a method that allows people to sell products and services quickly and effectively.

For others, it's a doomsday machine, a spam filled mailbox filled with angry mail from people who will never again be customers.

Website Conversion Expert Dan Lok says you have to learn several special techniques before you can truly leverage and make maximum use email -- the Internet's wonderchild.

Here are some of the Dan's most important keys to successful email marketing campaigns:

1. Get Permission. Use web page sign up forms or post card return cards, but get permission in a valid way. Create and offer incentives for people to sign up online to receive value-added information.

2. Target carefully and make it relevant. Send only relevant email to opt-in subscribers. Develop and give people what they wanted and what you promised. Don't send email that is outside the scope of what was promised to people who opted in. Target and segment your subscriber base and tailor your messages to specific demographic characteristics.

3. Your Subject Line is Critical. Don't make it look or sound like spam. The purpose of the subject line is NOT to sell, but just to get people to open the email, that's it! Be careful of the words you select. Check your email against a spam checker to see that it doesn't contain words that will automatically result in deletion.

4. Use your personality. Talk in the first person. Develop your persona as a friend or as an expert. Define your persona based on your customers' needs and desires and based on professional behaviors.

5. Don't sell. Advise, advise, advise. Offer value-added problem solving information, advice, tools and help. Use email to get people to use your email as a reason to call you or visit your web site. Offer people more of what they like to build and your personal relationship and their satisfaction and your personal connection with your customer.

6. Create a single, clear and benefit laden call for action. Focus on getting people to take one action. Don't offer more than one action. Identify the action clearly and persuasively and track the results. Get them to click and go to a relevant landing page to net them to take further action.

7. Create a life-cycle campaign. Design a program that results in you sending out four to six messages over a six to eight week period. These recurring campaigns can be created in advance and operated in a totally automated fashion.

8. Use triggered email. Design and set up automated email campaigns so that when clients order product or sign up for items or request information online, that a suite of email messages are then sent to them periodically automatically.

9. Use email to get them to Click! Keep the email short - no more than 3 or 4 pages. Relate first paragraph to subject line. Drive people to a web page and then close the sale, don't try to close the sale with an email. Don't mention price or cost in email. The purpose of the email is to PRE-SELL, not to sell. Again, it's to get them CLICK, then go to your web page. Then you can do the selling there.

10. Comply with CAN-SPAM Act requirements. Send from a valid address. Respect all remove requests promptly. Never send a second email to someone who has requested removal.

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10 Deadly Website Mistakes Made by Service Business Owners, Part 2 author:Donna Gunter source_url:http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_4081.shtml date_saved:2007-07-25 12:30:16 category:online_business article:

Websites of service companies seem to make some common website mistakes over and over again. Part of the function of your website is to establish a relationship with potential clients and get them into your marketing funnel. Previously, I listed the first 5 deadly website mistakes most often made by service business owners. Here are the last 5:

6. Hidden prominent benefit or feature that makes your company unique. When I'm doing online research for a particular product or service, I want to know right away what makes any company unique or different from their competition. Several months ago I was speaking with the owner of a fencing company and was confused about why people would buy fencing online and have it shipped, as the shipping cost would negate any savings they might realize on the product over buying it locally. I learned this company offered free shipping on purchases of $2500. I replied, "That's great, but how would I know that?" The offer was buried in an internal page of the site. I encouraged the company to put the offer in a prominent place on the home page so that prospective clients would immediately know the unique feature of doing business with this company.

7. Creation of a website that looks like every other business website in your industry. Sometimes I cringe when I go to the website of a web design company that serves a niche market, like dentists, for example. When I look at the company's website portfolio, every single website looks virtually the same, except for color variation or changing the graphic on the home page. Granted, if I'm seeking a dentist in Houston, there's little chance I would stumble across a dentist in Dallas with a similar website.

However, what I frequently see business owners do is to scope out the websites of their competition and format their own site in a similar fashion, but with their own information. My online searches for a product or service often make me yawn because I see website after website that essentially says the same thing -- nothing stands out enough to rouse me out of my stupor. Don't fall victim to a cookie-cutter website -- make sure that your personality is prominently featured throughout your site. Give visitors a great experience of "you" when they visit. And, flagrantly flaunt your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) so that your visitor instantly realizes why they should do business with you instead of your competitor.

8. Lack of additional resources. One of the ways I gauge the usefulness of a website is if they have incredibly useful resources to help me research and/or resolve my problem. I've bookmarked websites and subscribed to email newsletters solely on the strength of a website's resource page. One of the things that my clients love about working me with is that I have a mental Rolodex of resources -- they ask a question about doing business online, and 95% of the time I have a ready resource to give them that helps them solve their problem. A number of these resources are listed on my website or featured in my email newsletter. Many times, I receive no compensation for the resource I recommend -- I just know that it's the best source of which I'm aware to do a particular task. Your clients want the same capability from you -- the more you know about your industry and its problems and how to find solutions, whether you offer the solution or not, the greater the perception of your expertise, and consequently the greater value you offer your client.

9. No testimonials or case studies to demonstrate how you've helped others solve problems. One of the easiest ways you can create customer confidence in you is to list testimonials on your website. Testimonials that simply say you're great and wonderful do little to establish your credibility. You need testimonials that clearly state how someone's life, business, career, etc. is different and improved after working with you. Those are the ones that make a difference to your visitor. Case studies outlining a problem and how your service helped solve it are also very powerful in convincing a potential client that you can do what you claim.

10. Website that is "you" focused. There's a very funny country song sung by Toby Keith called, "I Wanna Talk About Me" in which the refrain, in part, says, "I wanna talk about me, Wanna talk about I, Wanna talk about number one , Oh my me my, What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see..." Do you spend all of your website real estate talking about yourself and how wonderful you are? Your visitors need to know a bit about you, but what holds their interest is the knowledge that you understand their problems and issues and have ready-made solutions that resolve these problems. Make your website about your visitor, not about you.

Your website can function as an attractive online brochure, or it can be a client-generating tool to help you grow your business. Businesses in almost every industry can benefit from a website, and the majority of those can critically evaluate their website again this checklist of mistakes so that they can increase their client prospects online.

Copyright 2006 Donna Gunter

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