I haven’t promoted it yet for one very good reason. I haven’t seen it! I had the original Traffic Secrets course which was good so I’m hopeful for version 2. It never ceases to amaze me how many affiliates promote a product without first reviewing it.

There are various people promoting the course so if you’re desperate to get your copy, go ahead. I’ve just ordered mine and I’ll do a review once I’ve had a chance to go through it.

Is this an experiment in harnessing social networks for rapid link building? It seems harmless enough and the site offers to show anyone how to make more moola (ouch!).

Jeremy is the super-affiliate who wrote a fantastic book called ‘High Performance Affiliate Marketing‘. Having successfully sold the book, he decided last year to give it away for free.

Now, he’s gone one massive leap further and has started The Black Ink Project. An entire affiliate coaching program, complete with webinars, PDF handouts and presentations. How much is Jeremy charging? Nothing! I don’t want to give the BS about how he could have sold this for zillions of dollars but it is just really great to see someone who is clearly successful giving back to those who are interested in furthering their affiliate business without having to hype everything up.

As well as the main site, one of the project members has made The Black Ink Project plan available so you can follow along if you want.

Great stuff and hats off to Jeremy!

Affiliate Marketing Articles - dmnews.com
Local.com Corp. partnered with MediaSpan, a digital content management and online marketing solutions provider. The partnership will provide Local.com’s Local Connect search platform to more than 1,500 of MediaSpan’s newspaper, television and radio

Omnistar Etools Joins HostSearch.com’s Value Added Service to - PR.com
Omnistar Etools has joined HostSearch.com’s Value Added Service, it was announced today. The company offers a range of PHP software products. Bangkok, Thailand, December 09, 2007 –( PR.com )– Omnistar Etools has joined HostSearch.com’s Value

Archive for Kevin Newcomb - Search Engine Watch
Today’s search engine marketing news and opinion: Top 5 Non-SEO Ways to Increase Your Search Rankings; Avoid the Pitfalls of Mobile Marketing; Training Your Search Marketing Employees; and more. May 2, 2008 SearchDay: Search News and Views from May 1

CAP Spring Break Bahamas 2007 - Gambling 911
Category: Business - CAP Spring Break Bahamas 2007 was part of a series of events put on by Casino Affiliate Programs one of online gambling’s largest trade organizations. The Spring Break session is less focused on seminars and the conference

Well, 2 British guys may well have set the bar at a new all-time high for the affiliate marketing industry. The
prestigious Sunday Times newspaper in London recently profiled the astonishing success of web entrepreneurs Duncan Cameron and Simon Nixon of www.MoneySupermarket.com. Their web site enables visitors to easily compare a massive range of
financial products such as credit cards, insurance and mortgages.

The UK-based entrepreneurs only started in the affiliate marketing business in 1999 and their business is now valued by the Sunday Times at an astonishing $925 million–Yes, you did read that correctly by the way, although I did fall off my chair when I read their real life true story.
This makes them near-billionaires, and achieved largely via affiliate marketing in less than 5 years! It also makes them probably the wealthiest affiliate marketers in the world today!

More importantly, what does their success tell us about the affiliate marketing industry and what can we learn from their astonishing level of success?

1. Clearly, there is a lot of money to be made in the Financial Services industry as an affiliate marketer. Credit card companies for example, pay huge commissions (from $30
up to $80 and more) for every successful card application
completed. This highlights the enormous potential of this niche.

2. Their site is easy to navigate and use, allowing the comparison of several related financial products at one time.

3. The site solves problems for people and provides easy solutions. It is designed for people who perhaps do not
spend too many hours surfing but need services like this one.

4. The web site “pre-sells” a massive range of financial products. “Pre-selling” has been a frequently used term in the affiliate marketing industry. The site gently informs
visitors of all the key details associated with any financial
product and allows visitors to make truly informed decisions.

5. It tells us that Affiliate Marketers like you and I can
compete with big companies in the financial services niche. Here are just a few affiliate marketing sites that I found today, each with tremendous Google rankings. I happen to know that each are all home-based or small independent businesses:

www.creditcardexpert.co.uk

www.canadiancreditcenter.com

www.credit-cards-comparison-charts.com

www.creditcards121.com

www.ccapplication.com

The amazing thing is that affiliate sites like those above often significantly outrank some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. That, more than anything else,
shows the power that can rest with the little guy or gal, working at home on their affiliate marketing business.

It is true that financial services is a highly competitive niche. However, this can also be viewed positively as it validates the business model. When I interviewed Colin M. in my Success
Alert book recently, I came to realize that he certainly viewed it this way. Colin M. is an example of a guy making a mere $250,000 each year just from one financial services affiliate web site based around credit cards.

So, should we all go out today and build ourselves a range of affiliate marketing web sites based around the financial services industry?

Well, the business model is certainly valid and clearly there is a lot of money to be made from this niche. However, the competition out there is fierce so be aware of this. Never
though, has the small business operator been able to so effectively compete with large corporations.

Perhaps more importantly though are the lessons of helping people find solutions to their problems and gently
pre-selling them all the way to an affiliate commission. This
approach can usefully be applied to any niche market in the full knowledge that it does work amazingly well. Honest and useful product reviews are always a massive benefit to potential buyers.

Maybe you don’t want to end up like the www.moneysupermarket.com
guys but you can easily duplicate Colin M’s success as profiled in my recent Success Alert book.

About the Author

John Evans is the author of a universally acclaimed book
profiling 11 amazingly Successful Internet Entrepreneurs.
Each of the entrepreneurs profiled were all largely unknown until they were revealed in this amazing book. One of the affiliate marketers profiled makes over $250,000 each
year from his credit card affiliate web site! Check out his book now at
=>http://www.SuccessAlert.net/amazing

Find out about affiliate marketing at Affiliates World:

http://www.affiliates-world.com

Affiliate Marketing is having Affiliates do your Marketing for you. What I mean by Affiliate is someone who tells people about your product/service and you pay them for a desired response, such as a purchase.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your product/service.

The best way to pay Affiliates is pay per sale. This means that you only have to pay your Affiliates when they actually make a sale. This reduces your advertising costs dramatically. your Affiliates take on all the risks so you don’t have to worry about wasting your money on advertising which may not produce any results.

Using Affiliate is a very cheap way to advertise, however it is very effective. The software required to start up your own Affiliate program can cost only about $50 per month.

Then after that just wait for people to start promoting your product/service for you.

Please remember that 5% of your Affiliates will do 95% of the selling. What I mean by this is that most of your Affiliates will just sit there and do nothing. This can be countered if you teach them what to do, exactly how to do it and providing everything for them so they have to do as little work as possible.

To find out about teaching your Affiliates please see the “How To Super Charge Your Affiliates” article

You don’t have to use this form of advertising just to sell your product or service. You can also use it to grow your opt-in mailing list. This is discussed in another article.

How Much Should You Pay Your Affiliates

How much you pay your Affiliates really depends on how much your product/service costs, its profit margin, how much you’re willing to give up and what action you want to take place.

Lets say that your product is priced at $100. Lets also assume that it cost you $10 to make it. This leaves you with $90 profit.

How much of this do you want to give away to the person that made this sale possible?

Personally, I believe that you should give a rather high percentage of the profits back to the affiliate (Depending on how many sales they regularly generate), because without them, you wouldn’t have made that particular sale at all, so reward them for it.

A fairly decent reward is about 50% of the revenue generated. Your product is priced at $100 so a $50 commission is quite generous. It really depends on your other costs (such as a mortgage) you have, which would help decide on a fair commission to both you and the Affiliate.

Another factor which plays a part is how much additional advertising you do, such as pay per click. For example, if you rely solely on your Affiliates to Market for you, then you may want to reduce the commission you pay to them to help you survive. However, you may want to pay them more, to encourage them to send more sales you way. It really is a judgment call.

On the other hand, if you advertise in other ways effectively, then you can afford to pay higher commissions, because you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.

In the end it’s all down to how greedy or generous you are. The best advice I can give you is to pay the affiliate what you think he/she deserves. Hopefully that way everyone is happy and earning their fair share.

That is the key to a successful affiliate program.

Stephen Warren is the creator and webmaster of http://www.marketershandbook.com, a completely free business and marketing resource which anyone may use.

freeserve.net@swarren30.fsnet.co.uk

Find out about affiliate marketing at Affiliates World:

http://www.affiliates-world.com

Out of all of these Internet marketers, there are a few hundred thousand affiliate marketers trying to make a living on the Internet. Many of these affiliate marketers are very successful at what they do. There are also many affiliates that try and die. They simply give up on trying to make their affiliate programs work any more.

There are a few reasons why many affiliate marketers give up. There seems to be a lack of understanding about time management and personal investment.

A large mistake many people make has more do to with becoming a affiliate marketer for the wrong reasons. When the only true goal is fast-cash, then the affiliate will soon find out that affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. The sad thing is that there are many affiliate programs that try to induce people to join their programs to get rich quick!

Being a successful affiliate marketer has nothing to do with getting rich quick. Any successful marketer will tell you it takes a lot of hard work and dedication before seeing any real, steady traffic. Affiliate marketing is about personally investment and unwavering commitment to do whatever it takes to make the campaign work.

There are many daily tasks that require attention. A lot of these tasks are boring and mundane, but need to be done. There are no short cuts to using any marketing methods effectively. A good campaign is not one where the marketer clicks a couple of times, then watches the money flow in. This only happens in Internet scam advertising pitches.

Another mistake affiliates make is making the same mistakes over and over again. Often times, marketers will be unfamiliar with a technique for generating traffic to their websites. They put in the time, but no traffic is being generated for them. In all likely-hood, a part of the marketing method probably got lost in translation to them.

Marketers need to slow down and take the time to analyse any problems taking place in their campaigns, then fix them. Good affiliate marketers will learn from their mistakes and move on instead of giving up.

A common mistake a few affiliates make is spamming. Some site owners try and market their affiliate programs by monitoring traffic that visit their sites. They then begin sending this raw traffic email advertisements. This might sound like a good idea for a quick moment, but this is spam and no one likes to be spammed. If any of these people being spammed complain to the affiliate company, this puts the marketer at risk of being kicked out of the company’s affiliate program.

One of the most common mistakes that affiliate marketers will make is choosing products to market they have no real interest in. If you do not have an interest in the product you are marketing, you will soon lose interest in your marketing campaign. Chose to market products you are interested in. This will help to solidify your commitment to the work you must put in to make your career a success.

There are many opportunities to make money working on the Internet. Becoming an affiliate marketer is a great way of having your own online business. Here are ten excellent reasons why you should choose affiliate marketing for your home based business.

1. Be Your Own Boss - What a magical ring that phrase has to it! This is my absolute favourite reason for being an affiliate marketer. Actually, it is my top reason for having any home based business.

2. Low cost set-up - Most affiliate programmes are free to join, so all you need to start your business is an Internet-connected computer and word-processing software. You can work from absolutely anywhere in the world and it makes no difference whether you have a cosy office or work from a corner of your kitchen table.

3. No shipping costs - You don’t need to worry about paying for postage or buying packing stuff such as boxes, wrapping paper, parcel tape, labels and so on. You never have to struggle with carrying heavy packages to the post office. The cost and bother of packing and shipping products to customers belongs to the merchant, not the affiliate.

4. Choice of thousands of products and services - All you have to do is decide what you want to sell (and, of course, what you think people will want to buy), just about everything is available online. With affiliate directories like Clickbank it’s easy to find products to sell.

5. No merchant account or invoicing software required - You can forget the problems associated with invoicing, collecting payments and processing credit cards. The merchant handles all payment processing; as an affiliate, you never have to worry about chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.

6. On sale everywhere - Your sales area has no geographic limits but you don’t have to leave home. You can promote your web site worldwide, every Internet user in the whole world is potentially your customer (and you call this a small business!).

7. High income potential -With your own affiliate business your income level is limited only by your desire and effort - not by corporate salary scale structure or the whim of your boss.

8. No inventory to carry - You can sell any item, large or small without having to worry about storage space. You could sell trucks from a one-bedroom apartment! You don’t have to the worry or expense of insuring stock or having extra security to protect it.

9. Low running costs - Apart from a modest budget for advertising and a small amount to pay for your internet connection, you have nothing much in the way of overheads. You work from home, so the big expense of renting premises is avoided and it is possible to get income tax reductions to cover some things such as part of your electricity and phone bills.

10.Always open for business - As an affiliate, your business keeps running and pulling in profits for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even on Bank Holidays. You are open for business even while you are asleep. You don’t have to worry about business hours or delivery deadlines, all that proceeds on autopilot. You don’t have to worry about scheduling staff holidays: you don’t even need any staff!

About the Author

This is one of a series of articles published by
the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons) at
http://www.Huntingvenus.com
Subscribe to Online Profit newsletter by
mailto:huntingvenus@SubscribeMeNow.com
100’s of free tips and advice on working online

Find out about affiliate marketing at Affiliates World:

http://www.affiliates-world.com

Developing relationships with your clients is paramount in any successful campaign, and to do this, you need more than a series of advertisements hitting the airwaves. You have to “lock” your readers in so that you can get assurance that the highest number of people are reading anything you send out.

In other words, you need to get yourself a mailing list of people who have signed up to get information from you. These people have agreed to hear what you have to say, and so will be more likely to open your emails than, say a cold contact would. You give them a taste of the area of sales you’re focusing on, and no doubt, they have similar interests.

So how do you go about getting a mailing list, and how do you keep track of it?

Obviously, you’ll need a place for your potential customers to sign up. You can do this a few different ways:

1. You could create a simple sign up page on your website with a form on it that’ll let you gather names and email addresses. Then place a link to that sign up page on your main site with a brief statement about what they’d be signing up to.

2. You could create what’s called a “landing page” that also has a sign up form on it. Landing pages are good when you’re working with Google AdWords or a similar advertising method. You could create an ad that simply states, “Get some free information about (your marketing focus) and be on the road to success in no time.” As the link URL, you’d supply your landing page, where people could sign up. Add some pertinent info about your offer and you’re on your way.

3. Or you could build the newest form of page used to develop a good mailing list called the “squeeze page.” A squeeze page can be a stand alone web page that offers your readers some information about a product much like a sales copy page does. However, the difference here is that you’ll be splitting the information into two separate pages thus giving only half of the information along with an, “If you’d like to learn more, simply fill in the form and you’ll be immediately given a much better idea of what it’s all about.”

Which ever way you choose to get sign ups, you’ve only won half the battle however. Now you have to keep track of your new customers and give them something to read that’ll get them to buy from you.

This is where autoresponders can come in handy.

Autorepsonders make it easy to build relationships with your customers because, as the name suggests, they are automatic. Most autoresponders can be tied into any sign up form and harvest names and email addresses for you, so you don’t have to keep track of them manually.

They’re also used to send out mailings automatically whenever you schedule them, so you could load something into your autoresponder today and have it emailed out several days or weeks later. Or, if you have something exciting and new to tell your readers, you could have the autoresponder mail it out right away. It’s all up to you and how you want your mailings scheduled.

Many autoresponders also keep track of how many readers open each email you send out, giving you an idea of which mailings are the most popular. This way you can find products through your affiliate programs that get the best responses and not waste time and effort promoting things that aren’t received as well. You get to keep your customers happy, you become more popular with them, and at the same time, create an efficient selling machine.

Another handy feature of most autoresponders is that they allow you to personalize your emails. With a click of a button, you can add each reader’s name to your message and give them the sense that you’re talking directly to them. Who wouldn’t rather open an email and see, “Hi Fred,” than “Dear Reader” any day? And which emails do you gravitate to when you open your email client, those that have headlines that read, “Important Information for You,” or “Hey Fred, Here’s Something You Might Like to See”?

Yes, autoresponders can help you achieve a highly personal and efficient sales machine, building relationships between you and your customers for weeks, months, and even years to come. They can help you put your best foot forward and give the impression that you are a professional online affiliate marketer that can be counted on to give regular and valuable information. This will gain you trust from those who read your messages, and trust always leads to more sales.

Fred Farah

copyright 2005

About the Author

Fred Farah is a long time business man who is willing to share his expertise. Check out my best affiliate products at: Best Affiliate Products

It’s all about affiliate marketing to niche markets.
Lots to learn from the Niche Madness 7-day eCourse, as well as the Niche Market Strategies newsletter.

Find out about affiliate marketing at Affiliates World:

http://www.affiliates-world.com