Category Archives for Affiliate Marketing

5 Online Businesses You Can Start Today

If there’s a business model entrepreneurs should strive to succeed in, it should be those that generate passive income.

Why? Because with a passive income you’re literally earning money with minimal to no effort on your part.

Sounds like a dream?
Yes, it’s quite the dream life when you get to that point. Obviously getting there is not easy. Otherwise, everyone will be living off of their passive incomes and traveling around the world!

How do you find the perfect business that will generate passive income for you?

If this is something you’ve been meaning to ask, then you’re in luck because, in this short report, you’re going to learn 5 of the best passive income businesses you can start today!

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is often one of the first methods newbies try out when they first get involved in Internet marketing. The idea behind this business model is very simple and is a proven profitable method. You simply need to promote other people’s products as an affiliate, and you get a commission every time someone buys those products through your affiliate link!

Commissions vary wildly. In some places like JVZoo and Clickbank, you can get commissions as high as 90% or even 100%! If you’re an Amazon affiliate, the maximum commission you ‘d get would be 10%, but the good thing is you get a commission for all items bought on Amazon (not just the ones you’re promoting on your website).

The key to getting good income with affiliate marketing is by sending plenty of traffic to your website. It’s a numbers game basically so you ‘d need to look for where your target audience is hanging out and promote your affiliate products to them.

One great advantage of affiliate marketing is that it’s relatively easy to setup. You can promote products anywhere you want– on your blog, on your guest posts, on forums, on social media, on your emails, and many more places!

All you have to do is just sign up to be an affiliate of a product you like, and then use that special link and promote it. Of course, not all affiliate networks and product owners are going to approve your request.

Most of them will ask for your website address and ask you questions on where you plan on promoting their products. If they don’t like your answers, then you don’t get approved as an affiliate.

Product vendors require you at least have some solid online presence before they approve your request.

Product vendors do get scammed too, so they tend to be pretty careful when it comes to approving affiliates.

If you find it difficult getting approved on a network, it’s best to establish your online presence first by building your own website or blog and letting it age for a few months before re-submitting your application.

When your application gets approved, and you create valuable content around the affiliate product, then you can pretty much get passive affiliate marketing income for as long as the affiliate product is available.

If you want to learn more about Affiliate Marketing I would recommend to check out Wealthy Affiliate. Read here my review.

2. Sell eCourses and Info Products

If you are an expert in a particular subject, and you want to share your expertise with the world, then you may want to create your own course and info products. If you don’t have specialized knowledge in anything, don’t fret.

It’s not the end of the world. You can still sell eCourses and info products even if you don’t have the first-hand experience in any subject!

You’ve got two options basically.

• First is you take the time to learn the subject, research it thoroughly and then apply what you’ve learned when you create your course.
• The second option is to just outsource the content creation to someone who actually knows the subject.

There are plenty of freelancer-for-hire platforms. You can go through any of them and place an advert for a qualified freelancer to come help you out with your project.

The great thing about selling your own course and info products is that you can set your own price. Unlike affiliate marketing where your commissions are capped at a certain percentage, selling your own products allows you to put your own price tag! If you think your course is worth $197, then set that price.

For best results, however, you should, of course, do your own research to find the best price for the product you’re offering. Look at what similar products in the same niche are priced at.

To boost sales, you may want to consider creating an affiliate program so other people can help promote your product. If you offer your affiliates a good share of the profits, you ‘d have plenty of applicants knocking at your virtual door.

While you may think it’s not such a good idea to share your hard-earned profits with other people, just think of it as hiring salespeople to promote your product for you. You do still get to keep a certain amount for every sale your affiliates make, so it’s still a win-win situation for everyone!

3. eCommerce Store

eCommerce has been all the rage these days. Probably the most popular eCommerce stores you see are those businesses that promote their products on Facebook and Instagram! You’ll see plenty of these businesses advertising their wares and services on your newsfeed.

With eCommerce, you can basically sell anything you want. You can sell your own products and services, you can sell affiliate products, you can do dropshipping, and so much more. Your options include selling things from your own website or using a third party platform like ClickFunnels to simplify the business side of things.

You can have a brick and mortar shop, but also sell your products on your own website, or even list it on eBay and Craigslist. The possibilities for eCommerce are nearly endless.

A great advantage of eCommerce is that your business is open 24/7 and you can sell to anyone in the world, if you so choose.

If you’re selling physical products, you ‘d have to factor in shipping costs and delivery times to your price. For digital products, eCommerce provides a platform where vendors get paid instantly, and buyers get access to their purchase in mere seconds.

eCommerce businesses are also much easier to scale than brick and mortar businesses. With eCommerce, you can simply add your products to another platform or duplicate your current website, and you ‘d have a new income stream on your hands.

While eCommerce is a great source of online revenue, not all eCommerce businesses provide passive income. For most stores you ‘d need someone to handle the orders, ship products (if you’re not dropshipping), provide customer support, and so much more.

Once you reach a certain level of success, you can pretty much build a team to work on your business and just manage it from afar!

You can train your staff to handle all aspects of your business– from sourcing products to fulfillment to customer service– everything really. If you take good care of your employees, they’ll take good care of your business. Once your team gets the hang of your business, they’ll work like a well-oiled machine providing you with a hands-free passive income stream!

4. Service Providers

For this type of business model, you can literally earn passive income from any type of service. This means you ‘d only need to find clients, customers or buyers, and you let someone else do the job for you. While this may not sound like a passive business model, hear me out.

If you have an agency selling writing or designing services, you can set up a website with your portfolio on it and promote it to the world. When people buy your services, you hire out the work to a freelancer.
You can sign up on freelancer marketplaces, bid on jobs, and when you win a project, you hire another freelancer to do the work for you at a much cheaper rate.

Do you see the possibilities? You can have any number of clients and not worry about not fulfilling any of the work because all you do is just hire someone else to do the actual job. You simply pocket the difference between the amount your client pays you and the amount you pay your contractor!

To ensure the quality of work doesn’t suffer, you ‘d need to vet your freelancers thoroughly. Doing this may take time. While a lot of freelancers, especially those based overseas, can afford to work on peanuts, the quality may not be up to par.

You ‘d have to go through a lot of profiles and applicants before you find a keeper. When you do find a qualified freelancer whose rates you can afford (and still earn some profits), then consider yourself in business.

To make the most amount of profits, you ‘d have to win plenty of projects and have a good number of freelancers on your team. Now the thing with freelancers is they quite literally have the freedom to work with other clients.

If you want to book blocks of their time, say 40 hours a week, then you ‘d have to hire them as regular employees, and not as contractors. A different set of rules would apply in terms of pay and benefits, but for the most part, the business model will still provide you with a good stream of regular passive income.

5. SaaS Business

SaaS, or software as a service, has been gaining popularity in recent years. You basically create a software, or have it developed for you if you’re not a coder, and sell subscription to people. There are plenty of apps nowadays that have been created on the Saas model.

Popular examples include Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Google Apps, Dropbox, and Slack.

To develop a SaaS business, you need to have a good and profitable idea. You ‘d basically need to have a solid business plan in place because winging a SaaS project is going to be very costly.

If you decide to just hire a developer without making sure your idea is going to even work at all, or if there’s a market for it, then you could end up losing thousands of dollars in developer fees! If that’s something you can afford to lose, then by all means, go ahead and develop your software. For more prudent entrepreneurs, a business plan is obviously the best option.

With a business plan, you will be able to define and clearly see what makes your software stand out from your competitors. Tests are going to be necessary, so you ‘d need to take this into consideration.

Once you find a winning idea, you ‘d need to find the best developers who will share your vision and your passion for your software. You ‘d also need to have a marketing team in place to help you market your product to your target audience.

Because you ‘d need to spend a considerable sum of money before your product even gets launched! And once it’s launched, you ‘d need to spend even more money to market it in front of the right people!

The good thing is once you start seeing some profits, your Saas business will be pretty much on autopilot, and you can expect to see those dollars trickling in your bank account regularly.

Conclusion

As you can see there are many ways to build a business and create a passive income. It was never easier to build an online business and to generate a passive income which lets you live a life you freedom.

Have you already built a business? What kind of business? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

How to Build a Solid Foundation for Your Business

If you want to build a skyscaper you need a solid foundation. Otherwise your skyscraper will crash to the ground one day if you haven’t put enough effort in building your foundation.

But how does the foundation of a successful business look like? Check out these points to build your foundation!

Make It A Goal To Help As Many People As Possible

Identifying your business goals right off the bat is important. I know making a profit is the ultimate goal but don’t stop at money.

Your ultimate goal should be to help other people. As the great salesman Zig Ziglar famously said, “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

If you’re only doing your business for money, then people are going to know about it soon enough. They’re going to stop buying from you, and they’re going to tell their friends to stay away from you. Greed is not going to get you very far in life.

Look at what happens to so-called gurus– they ‘d be profitable for a few months but once word gets out that they’re not really in the business of helping, then these gurus disappear.

If you follow Mr. Ziglar’s advice, and do your best to help people, then you’ll have more money than you know what to do with!

If you want to create evergreen products, make sure that those products are actually helping people solve their problems. Don’t sell for the sake of selling. If you focus on helping people, then you’ll have loyal customers coming to buy your products over and over again.

They’ll refer you to their family and friends, and if you continue to provide the same level of service, then they’ll be your loyal customers, too. And before you know it, you’ll have plenty of money in the bank than you know what to do with!

Having other business goals is perfectly fine. They’re the reason you’re in business.

Having concrete plans and solid systems in place mean nothing if you can’t deliver what your customers need help with. They are the lifeblood of your business so take good care of them. When you do this, you will no longer need to think of money constantly as people will give it to you willingly!

Have A Business Plan In Place

Some first-time entrepreneurs may say having a business plan for a small business is overkill. If you want your business to grow and scale eventually, then it’s best to have a business plan in place. It’s not too late to write one so if you haven’t got a plan yet, then take the time to write it up and see where your business is going to be in the future.

One of the advantages of creating a business plan, before you even start working on your business, is that you can determine right away if your idea is feasible or not. You could, of course, just wing it and go right out and implement your business idea.

If you value your time and money, then this may not be the best route for you to follow.

A business plan has a section on competitive analysis or market analysis. At this stage, you should be able to assess if your idea is a good one or not. Just imagine how much resources you would have wasted if you decided to try out your idea in the real world only for it to fail miserably!

Investing in the time to work on your business plan will help ensure a smoother startup period, and you’ll know what problems to expect. Yes, you’ll still run into some unforeseen problems here and there, but if you did your business plan correctly, then you should already have mapped out solutions to most problems.

You would have an idea of how much money you need to invest so you can start or scale your business. If you fly by the seat of your pants, you may not get very far. Unforeseen expenses could come into play even before you break even and you may be forced to quit your fledgling business.

Your business plan is like your crystal ball– if you believe in that stuff– as it allows you to practically get a glimpse of your future. If the future looks bleak for your idea, then scrap that and move on to the next one.

If the future looks bright then, by all means, go ahead and build your business right away. Your business plan has already foretold good tidings, the next thing for you to do is further solidify your foundation by moving on to the actual business building part!

Separate Your Personal Life From Your Business

Most entrepreneurs start by being a one-person team. You do everything in your business– you create your product, you market it, you do customer service and after-sales support, and so much more. You’re going to be a jack of all trades literally.

In the beginning, it’s going to be hard to separate your personal life from your business life. You might not have boundaries for your business and personal expenses, and that’s fine. If you’re serious about growing your business, then you need to find a way to separate your two lives.

If you work out of your bedroom, or any other room in your house, as plenty of new entrepreneurs do, then you most certainly need to have rules in place.

You’ll need to have a designated workspace where you focus a hundred percent on doing the tasks for the day. Make your family or roommate understand work time is for working, not playing.

To successfully separate your personal and business lives, you ‘d need to have self-discipline. I mean, how easy is it to walk over to the couch and watch Netflix the whole day instead of answering emails from your customers?

You’re probably thinking you can bring your laptop over to the couch and multi-task. Do you think you’re really going to be productive that way? I don’t think so.

If you can’t keep your two lives separate, then you’re not going to have a very solid foundation for your evergreen business. Even if you do work at home, or in an office, or even at the beach, you need to draw the line between fun and work so your business will succeed in the long run.

Have Systems In Place

Having a good business plan in place means you’ve already got some basic systems in place. When it comes to streamlining your business and making the most of your resources, you need to have highly effective and efficient systems in place.

When you’re just starting, your systems may not be as defined. Sure, you can plan ahead, but the nitty gritty is not going to materialize until you finally start working on your business. You may need to adjust your plans as you go along because working off of theory and practice are two different things.

When you’re working off of theory alone, you’re not in touch with the practical side of things. Some systems may look good on paper, but when it actually comes to following those systems, they’re not going to be as efficient and may cost you a lot of time and money.

You need to adjust accordingly and tweak your system to be as efficient as possible. Don’t set your systems in stone, you need to be flexible and adapt as needed.

Building working systems are essential to solidifying your business foundation. Identifying your marketing and product delivery systems is essential to your success.

You may need to undergo some trial and error first to find the best system that works for you, but once that’s out of the way, you now have a winning system in place. You can then use that system over and over again as you move forward with your business.

Don’t forget to document your systems. You may think you’re working all alone, so you don’t need to document everything. What about when you finally gain some traction, and you need to hire new people to help you out?

Without documentation, you ‘d need to retrace your steps, and because you’re under time pressure, you might miss out on a few key steps. If you’re proactive with documenting your processes and your systems, then you can start training your new team as soon as you hire them!

Conclusion

As you can see, it is not that hard to create a solid foundation for your business. However, the foundation is the most important part of a successful business so take your time and fulfill all the points I mentioned in this article.

How to Use Social Media in Affiliate Marketing

The key to effective social media marketing is the exact same as the key to effective content marketing: providing value.

This is something that a huge number of businesses have absolutely no idea how to do and that results in some very poorly managed social media.

Take a look at the social media pages of your typical local B2B companies and you will find that they tend to post some rather uninspiring and vapid statuses and posts. You’ll see things like:

“Find out why our contact management solution is the best in the business!”

And

” Order our EPOS system today to start serving your customers better!”

This is nothing but blatant self-promotion and not even interesting self-promotion. Ask yourself: why would anyone be interested in following that? What are they gaining by reading your posts?

One of the single most important questions to ask when looking at your social media or your content is: would you read it? If not, then you need to do something to make it more interesting!

That means that your social media now needs to provide some kind of purpose for the viewer. It should be interesting, it should be entertaining, it should be useful or it should be inspiring.

Inspiring social media can work particularly well. Take a look at Instagram and you’ll find lots of accounts filled with people wearing stunning clothes, posing to show off their rippling muscles or even just showing off their wealthy lifestyle. There are the travel accounts with lots of pictures of beautiful mountain ranges and sunsets.

Why do these work? People because see those channels and they feel inspired– they live vicariously through them and they enjoy daydreaming about having a life like that! They know that if they follow that account, then they’ll be shown much more similarly inspiring posts and they can continue to live the dream.

And guess what? When you then promote a piece of clothing or an ebook on how to get fit, they listen.

Examples of popular Facebook pages are things like ‘IFL Science’, which posts links to articles with some really eye-catching titles and gets tons of likes and tons of shares as a result.

The best Twitter accounts are the ones run by personal brands and that let fans feel as though they are really getting to know them with insights into their daily routines, with jokes or with insider tips.

Want to make a splash on Pinterest? How about creating a board to show off life hacks?

The aim again is to provide real value and the way to know if you’re doing this well is to ask yourself: would people be disappointed if you stopped posting to your account? Not just your blog– but your social media channels?

Your social media needs to be able to stand on its own two feet and be something that people enjoy on its own. That’s how you gain followers and shares and that’s how you get people to visit your site and buy your products.

Once again, from there the key is to post regularly and to be consistently on-topic. Don’t create a blog on fitness but continuously post on social media about your love of gardening or people will get tired and they’ll leave.

How frequent should this be? Ideally, the more frequently you post the better. Several times a day is generally recommended, especially since sites like Facebook will only show each post to a small percentage of your followers.

More Tips for Getting Your Social Media

Providing Value in a Dull Niche

One thing you might be wondering is how exactly you provide this kind of entertaining, engaging value when you run a website about life insurance. What could you possibly do on Instagram or on Pinterest that would be appropriate?

The answer is to think not about the service directly but rather about the value proposition and audience. Your aim is to post things that will be interesting to the same demographic and that will be relevant– that doesn’t have to mean that you only ever post directly about life insurance!

People who want to be better Mums and Dads can follow your Instagram, which will be in the same spirit as your business, and once you have their ear, you can recommend life insurance policy X.

Likewise, you could do something similar with a Pinterest account. You could show money-saving hacks, budgeting tips etc. and then use that in order to promote your life insurance as the best financial option, or your website as the best place to learn about life insurance.

Targeting a Specific Audience

Another important tip is to think about your audience and who they are. If you want people to share your posts (this is the best way to ensure that they reach the maximum number of people), then you need to be sure that you are targeting your audience specifically. This is important, seeing as trying to reach too wide an audience will ultimately mean that you don’t specifically appeal to anyone.

This is the mistake that a lot of people make with their posts on ‘How to Get Abs’. They think that they need to appeal to everyone and thus they end up with very safe and very generic content.

Content performs best when it is targeting specifically at a particular type of person. Why do we ever share content?

We communicate by sharing things that we think will appeal to someone we know. If you see a post on ‘How Working From Home Turns Your Brain to Mush’, then you’re going to share that with your friend Bill who works from home as a cheeky joke, as a way to help them work from home better, or perhaps just as a way to show you’re thinking of them.

If you work from home yourself, then you might post it to express how you feel about working from home and to help others to understand you better.

Notice that in both these scenarios, the post only works because it applies to specifically to people who work from home.

While being very specific might appear to exclude potential customers, it makes it much easier for you to market to the particular type of person who is likely to buy from you.

And to make this work you need to spend some time profiling what that person is like. What websites do they spend time on?

You’ll see why this is even more important shortly …

Making a Strong Brand

Once you’ve decided how you’re going to provide value, through sharing your blog posts or by posting images, you then need to make sure that you have a strong brand that will have good visibility and that will tie your social media channels neatly to your website. It’s important that when someone sees a post from you, that they know it’s from that same website they saw the other day.

Make sure you have a good logo and use that as your profile picture or your cover image on each account.

Use the same name wherever possible.

Another tip is to integrate your social media and your website as closely as possible. It will take a while to build up momentum on your social media but one thing you can do to help that along is to add social media buttons to your website so that people can check out your Facebook directly from your website.

Ideally, you will gain new followers each time someone goes to your website and that way, they’ll be more likely to see your future posts and share them, bringing in yet more visitors who can subsequently become followers!

Important is simply to ask people to follow you on social media. This is particularly effective in videos– so if you have a YouTube channel, then don’t be shy to simply ask the people watching to follow you on Twitter and to give them some good reasons to do so! At the end of a blog post why not just ask your readers to share the post with their friends using the handy sharing buttons you provide?

It’s also a good idea to integrate your various different posts to save time and to ensure that you fill each channel with as much content as possible. You can make it so that you post all your Tweets on your Facebook page, or so that each new YouTube video is automatically shared on Twitter.

Interact

Don’t forget that social media is still primarily a communication tool. One of the best ways to ensure that people are engaged with you is to actually talk with them and doing something as simple as just following people or liking their pictures.

This will then motivate you to check out their channel and in many cases, to follow it! Just spend some time posting and of course be sure to actually respond to people. Running contests and surveying your audience can also be a very good way to increase engagement and to get a better idea of what your followers want to see from you!

A good example of a contest is to award a follower with a free gift if you get ‘over X number of likes’. This can help you to build more shares and likes as well as being a great way to thank your fans!

Conclusion

As you can see, Social Media is no magic. These tips should cover enough to start a successful page on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. As you might notice, if you want to be successful with online marketing you have to give value first. That is one of the “golden rules” when it comes to online marketing!

How To Monetize Your Blog

There are many reasons to start a blog. One of the main reasons is often to earn enough money with a blog to escape the 9-5 life and start living a life of freedom.

Unlike those bloggers where teenagers share their angst-filled thoughts, you’re blogging as a business.

You’re looking to turn your content into cold, hard cash. And that means you need to create a plan as to how you’re going to monetize your blog.

Let me share with you the following three ways to do it:

1. Sell Your Own Offers

Do you have your own products or services? If so, then your blog is a natural outlet for advertising these offers. And best of all, there are plenty of ways for you to promote your offers on your blog, including:

Using graphical ads. You can place banners and graphics of all sizes in your header, sidebar, footer and even between the content.

Note: A word of warning, however: Just don’t stuff your blog so full of graphical ads that it looks like a circus rather than a blog.This will rather get the people leaving your blog than reading your content.

You can place your text ads in the same places you put your graphical ads. Your blog should be about great content and not be overwhelmed by ads.

This is often one of the best ways to advertise your offers because it puts your ads directly in front of your readers. In other words, you can create blog posts which contain promotions.

Nobody likes to read ad after ad. Your blog readers are coming to your blog for the great content– not the ads.

Instead, you can weave your offers directly into useful content.

Example: If you’re writing a “how to” article about how to lose weight, you might have a step that talks about reducing calories. You can then include a link for your low-calorie cookbook.

If you really are interested in selling your own products I can recommend ClickFunnels. With Clickfunnels it is very easy to build high converting landing pages and sales funnels. (See here my review)

2. Promote Affiliate Products

Usually, if you start blogging you don’t have your own products or services. That is absolutely no problem.

Another option is for you to promote affiliate products on your blog. This includes:

Digital products, such as those found at Clickbank.com. These are often some of the best products to promote, simply because they usually have high commission rates (50% or more).

Physical products. Because of the overhead and fulfillment costs associated with physical products, these tend to have low commission rates– as little as 5% or 10%. Depending on what you’re selling you may have high conversion rates, especially if you sell through a trusted vendor like Amazon.com.

Services. These also tend to have lower commission rates, simply because the vendor is trading his or her time for dollars. There are exceptions, such as certain services which the vendor may have automated or otherwise found out how to do at a low cost.

And some of these programs also award recurring commissions to affiliates. This means that if you sell the program once, you get paid again and again for as long as your referral remains a member of the program.

Here’s a hint: If you want to start selling products, it is always a good idea to start a mailing list. If you want to know how to start with email marketing check out this post!

Let’s say you send your visitor to an affiliate product. Of course, only a small percentage would immediately buy the product.

Again, don’t do too many ads. Try always to bring value first and then advertise.

3. Sell Advertising

Another way to monetize your blog is to sell advertising to other marketers in your niche. Here you can sell banner ads and other graphic ads, text ads, links (especially if your blog has a high Google Page Rank), and even ads embedded directly in your content.

The benefit of this particular monetization method is that you get cash in your pocket no matter what happens with the offer. In other words, you’re not in charge of writing ad copy or trying to figure out how to get your visitors to buy an offer. All you have to do is sell the advertising space and let your advertisers take care of the details.

The money you get per visitor is pretty small. I would always recommend trying affiliate marketing because the earning potential is much bigger and no one wants to see a website with a lot of ads on it.

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And of course, you can certainly use more than one method at any time. You just need to do a little testing to see which methods bring you the greatest revenue.

What method did you try on your blog? And what has been your most effective? Let me know by writing a comment below!

How To Start With Clickbank As Affiliate

As you know, affiliate marketing is big business.

It’s genius actually …

What better way to get the word out about products and services online than through advertising, right?

The original advertising method was word-of-mouth.

Affiliate marketing is word-of-mouth advertising for the Internet age.

Using a variety of tools, those with an eye for entrepreneurship and an online presence can use their sphere of influence to sell affiliate products using their websites and blogs.

What’s not to like? You get to promote products that appeal to you.

Most affiliate marketers have either used the products they help to sell or it fits with their interests. It is easier to write and speak about an item or service that you identify with. Many products promoted by affiliate marketers would interest their current business customers.

People start businesses in areas where they have previous knowledge. Choosing affiliate products along those lines mean content can do double duty. And, your customers will likely want to hear more about them. In this way, affiliate programs offer additional streams of income for online business owners.

Promote as many affiliate products as you have time for and interest in. sites with affiliate programs offer most of the tools that you need to advertise their products. Best of all, there is no product order fulfillment or customer service questions to answer.

Those who have been using affiliate marketing as a business know all of this already. This business model is also the key to taking your affiliate marketing career to the next level.

Sure, you can continue to earn commissions for others and make a great living at it. What if you could also boost income in your direction?

Maybe you have since developed informational products for your website or an actual product. What’s to stop you from using your affiliate marketing business to enhance the awareness of your services as well?

Affiliate marketing can be used to build your list as well.

Whether you have a blog or a website, there is no substitute for a dedicated group of subscribers who are interested in what you have to say. Increasing that list requires work, research and time. You can kill two birds with one stone (so to speak), by using advanced methods through your affiliate marketing methods, to grow your list as you increase business for affiliate owners. It’s time to raise the roof on your current affiliate marketing projects.

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, the easiest way to get started is to target hungry market and choose products to promote from www.Clickbank.com.

In Clickbank, you will be promoting digital products. These are downloadable products like ebooks, memberships to websites, videos, software and similar items.

You may find commission rates as high as 50%, 75% or even more on digital products since the vendor doesn’t have as high overhead costs for these products.

Target the Market

You need to target hungry market and find out what the market is already buying, and you’ll sign up for related affiliate programs.

That way, you earn a nice commission every time someone buys one of these products through your link.

So let’s go through the steps required to find these products and then do your due diligence to make sure they’re suitable. These steps include:

1. Find out what’s already selling.
2. Research the product.
3. Check for commission “leaks”.
4. Join the program and get your affiliate links.

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail:

Step 1: Find Out What’s Already Selling.

Go to www.Clickbank.com. What you want to do is run a search for your niche’s main keywords (like “dog training” or “organic gardening”), and then look for two things:

1. Bestselling and popular products. Clickbank automatically sorts your results according to bestsellers, meaning the popular products will appear at the top of the results.
2. Multiple competing products. The second thing you want to look for is whether there are several similar products being sold. For example, if you ran a search for “affiliate marketing” in Clickbank, you ‘d immediately see hundreds of results … and many of these products are nearly identical. That is a GOOD sign because it tells you that the product is so popular that there is plenty of room in the market for competitors to sell similar products.

Now that you have found the top-selling products in your niche, you have to research them:

Step 2: Research the Product and Vendor.

Now you need to make sure that you’re recommending good products to your prospects. That’s because your reputation is very important, and you’ll be developing a relationship with your newsletter subscribers.

If you recommend poor products, you might get your subscribers and other visitors to buy from you once … but never again.

If you consistently recommend good solutions, then your subscribers will come to trust you, and they’ll buy your recommendations again and again.

Your first step is to read or otherwise review the product yourself.

In other words, buy the product and use it.

If it’s an ebook, read it. If it’s a software, use it. You should automatically eliminate any poor-quality products from your list.

Now you have a list of solid products. Your next step is to do some research on Google by searching for the product name and the product creator’s name. You might also do additional searches using words like “review” and “problems” (e.g., [product name] problems). What you’re looking for are any red flags, such as customers complaining about lack of functionality, lack of support, an inability to get a refund and so on.

Once you’ve further narrowed down the list by doing your due diligence on the products and vendors, go to the next step.

Step 3: Check for Commission “Leaks”

You need to make sure that there are no commission leaks on the page.

That is, you need to make sure the vendor hasn’t inadvertently (or deliberately) set up the page in a way that hijacks your commission link or decreases the conversion rate.

Here’s what to look for:

• Pop up screens with affiliate links.
• Any type of links or advertisements to other offers on the web page.
• Non-essential links (basically, anything that doesn’t point to an order form like a blog link, other products, etc).
• Other forms of payment for which the affiliate doesn’t get credit.
• A newsletter subscription form, where the newsletter content itself overrides the affiliate cookie.

You can use link shortener link bit.ly, tinyurl.com, etc to hide your affiliate link. Or if you’re familiar with WordPress, there are many affiliate link plugins that are free to use.

Once you’ve completed this check, then move onto the next step …

Step 4: Choose the Best Product.

Now that you’ve done all the research, you can choose the best products from your list.

You’ll do this based on the overall quality of the product, the commission rate and other relevant factors (such as whether you think the sales materials will produce a high visitor-to-buyer conversion rate).

Go ahead and rank these products, with your top pick at the top of.
the list.

While you may promote all of these products at some point, you’ll.
start by focusing on just one product.

Finally, join the affiliate program and get your affiliate link (this is the link you’ll give to your prospects when you promote the product so that you get credit for the sale).

It’s very simple to get your affiliate link.

Once you decided the product you wish to promote, just click on the “Promote” button beside the product description like the following:

With that link, you can start promoting this product as an affiliate!

Very simple, right?

Conclusion

As you can see, it is not very hard to start selling products from Clickbank. However, there are much more steps needed in order to build a successful online business. If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing you can check out Wealthy Affiliate or download my free ebook with 5 steps to build a successful business below.

Have you already started promoting Clickbank products? How did it go? Let me know by commenting below 🙂

5 Powerful Reasons To Start A Niche Website

“Content Is King” … and will stay ‘King’ for as long as the Internet is and exists for this real reason WHY you ‘d be smart to develop a network of these sites on your own to make money from for many years to come.

Let me ask you this … “What do many people browse the web for?”

If you stated “INFORMATION” – then you are absolute.

And besides, that IS and always will be the Internet’s primary function and will always be among the main reasons that individuals come online to look for.

So, with that stated, you should now have a great idea regarding why Niche Content Sites are the method to go if you are aiming to develop a network of websites that will produce a nice recurring income for years to come and will progressively grow with time on there own all by utilizing other peoples content and products.

Now that you have the idea, for the rest of this short article I ‘d like to share with you my 5 TOP factors you need to seriously think about building your own network of Niche Content Sites of your own, then at the end will expose to you a couple of examples of exactly what type of Niche Content Sites you can build.

Reason # 1. Online search engines definitely enjoy them.

If you don’t know by now Search Engines enjoy material and exactly what do Niche Content Sites include? That’s right … Content.

The more material you have to provide, the more pages you’ll get listed within the online search engine, which then gives you more direct exposure to your target market from within the online search engine and more opportunities for you to profit, which I’ll discuss in more information in a couple of minutes.

Point being, this is a terrific way to grow your company and offer your audience exactly what they’re searching for all at the same time, Plus … to obtain the Search Engine spiders to return for regular indexing.

Factor # 2. Your Niche Content Sites will grow easily.

Content is literally the FUEL that powers the web as well as more so is among the most efficient methods to grow your own service online.

Exactly what I suggest by that exists are literally countless material publishers out there on the web trying to find places to submit their content for publication. Depending on your niche, you will constantly have an abundance of content to continuously grow your network of Niche Content Sites no matter who your target audience is.

I will likewise be giving you some examples of some Niche Content Sites to completion of this post to provide you some idea of exactly what to anticipate.

Factor # 3. The info is targeted towards your Niche.

Specific Niche Content Sites are simply as the name illustrates and even more so the information in which they consist of mainly target your target audience and feed their hunger for information.

Remember exactly what I mentioned earlier about why individuals come online in the very first place.

You’re just providing what they ready desire and making a profit from it at the very same time which I’ll discuss in more detail in the last two sections of this post.

Factor # 4. Get paid for other peoples work.

With the rising popularity of Google’s Adsense program and the earnings that can be made from other peoples content using Google Adsense, this offers individuals all the more reason to build a network of Niche Content Sites due to the fact that of the residual income you can make through Google’s Adsense program.

The technique is this … the more pages you have actually noted, the more chance you need to create BIG Google Adsense cheques, all from someone else’s work.

Pretty COOL!

Reason # 5. Make money through targeted affiliate programs.

Wish to get paid in between 30 – 70% again by offering targeted affiliate programs about the content within your Niche Content Sites?

That’s right, make money for referring other peoples products that straight reflect the content which your Niche Content website offers and what your target market is searching for.

By having a Niche Content Site with the targeted material, this offers you a fantastic chance to assist Pre-Sell your target audience to wish to get more info, Information which they need to ‘Pay For’ which is where the targeted affiliate program you pick comes into play.

Now … are those 5 factors enough for you to obtain begun with your very own network of Niche Content Sites?

Only you can answer that concern.

It’s reasoning enough for me, and the genuine cool thing is you don’t have to produce any of the material yourself and you can utilize other peoples products to make earnings, Plus … Google Adsense.

Just envision exactly what a network of 30 to 50 of these websites would bring in.

I could ramble on but I think you get the picture.

Before I go though I stated I would offer you a couple of examples of what a Niche Content Site may be so here are the 2 I would begin with – Article Directory or a Niche Blog.

Article Directories will target Multiple Niches whereas Niche Blogs will only target One.

So, you have an option. Now, all you need to do is make a decision.

Have you already started your niche website? If you are ready to start with your niche website, click here!

How To Avoid The 3 Most Common Affiliate Mistakes

As the handbook draws to a near end and closing publication, here are some hazard signs and dangerous waters you shouldn’t be treading on in the affiliate marketing scene!

Listen up …

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways of earning some money online. This program gives everybody a chance to make a profit through the Internet. Since these affiliate marketing programs are easy to join, implement and pays a commission on a regular basis, more an more people are now willing in this business.

Like all businesses, there are lots of pitfalls in the affiliate marketing business. Committing some of the most common mistakes will cost the marketers a large portion taken from the profit they are making every day. That is why it is better to avoid them than be regretful in the end.

Mistake number 1: Choosing the wrong affiliate product

Many people want to earn from affiliate marketing as fast as possible. They choose the product that is in demand without actually considering if the product appeals to them.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, try to choose a product in which you are truly interested in. For any endeavor to succeed, you should take some time to plan and figure out your actions.

Pick a product that appeals to you. Do some research about that product to see if they are in demand.

Promoting a product you are more passionate about is easier than promoting one for the sake of the earnings only.

Mistake number 2: Joining too many affiliate programs.

Since affiliate programs are very easy to join, you might be tempted to join multiples of affiliate programs to try and maximize the earnings you will be getting. You may think that there is nothing wrong and nothing to lose by being part of many affiliate programs.

True, that is a great way to have multiple sources of income. Joining multiple programs and attempting to promote them all at the same time will prevent you from concentrating on each one of them.

The maximum potential of your affiliate program is not realized and the income generated will not exactly be as huge as you were thinking initially it would. As soon as you see that it is already making a reasonable profit, then maybe you can now join another affiliate program.

The technique is to do it slowly but surely. There is really no need to rush into things, especially with affiliate marketing. With the way things are going, the future is looking real bright and it seems affiliate marketing will be staying for a long time too.

Mistake number 3: Not buying the product or using the service.

As an affiliate, your main purpose is to effectively and convincingly promote a product or service and to find customers. For you to achieve this purpose, you must be able to relay to the customers that certain product and service.

Try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate to see if it is really delivering what it promises. If you have done so, then you are one of the credible and living testaments aware of its advantages and disadvantages. Your customers will then feel the sincerity and truthfulness in you and this will trigger them to try them out for themselves.

Many affiliate marketers make these mistakes and are paying dearly for their actions. To not fall into the same situation they have been in, try to do everything to avoid making the same mistakes.

Time is the key. Take the time to analyze your marketing strategy and check if you are on the right track. If done properly, you will be able to maximize your affiliate marketing program and earn higher profits.

How To Use Product Recommendations

In affiliate marketing, there are many ways in which you can increase your earnings and maintain the account that you have worked so hard for already. They are available online, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

One of the more important ways of increasing affiliate marketing bottom line and sale is through the use of product recommendations. Many marketers know that this is one of the most effective ways of promoting a certain product.

If the customers or visitors trust you enough, then they will definitely trust your recommendations. If you start promoting everything by recommendation, your credibility will actually wear thin.

Do not be afraid to mention things that you do not like about a given product or service. Rather than lose any points for you, this will make your recommendation more realistic and will tend to increase your credibility.

If your visitors are really interested in what you are offering, they will be more than delighted to learn what is good about the product, what is not so good, and how the product will benefit them.

When you are recommending a certain product, there are some things to remember on how to make it work effectively and for your advantage. Sound like the true and leading expert in your field.

Remember this simple equation: Price resistance diminishes in direct proportion to trust. If your visitors feel and believe that you are an expert in your niche, they are more inclined to make that purchase. On the other hand, if you are not exuding any confidence and self-assurance in endorsing your products, they will probably feel that same way and will go in search of another product or service which is more believable.

How do you establish this aura of expertise? By offering unique and new solutions they would not get anywhere else.

Show proof that what you are promoting works as promised. Display prominent testimonials and endorsements from respected and known personalities, in related fields of course.

It is better to sound low key and confident than to scream and seek attention. You would not want to sound unprofessional and have that thinking stick to your potential customers and clients, now would you?

They are actually turning to experts and may already know the things that you know. If you don’t, they are smart enough to try and look at your competitors and what they are offering.

People are already familiar with the concept of offering freebies to promoting your own products. Try to offer freebies that can promote or even have some information about your products or services.

Before you add recommendations to your product, it is given that you should try and test the product and support. Do not run the risk of promoting junk products and services.

If possible, have recommendations for products that you have 100% confidence in. Test the product support before you begin to ensure that the people you are referring it to would not be left high and dry when a problem suddenly arouse.

Have a look at your affiliate market and look at the strategies you are using. You may not be focusing on the recommendations that your products need to have. You plan of action is sometimes not the only thing that is making your program works.

Try product recommendation and be among those few who have proven its worth.

The 3 Things All Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive Online

Now every affiliate marketer is always looking for the successful market that gives the biggest paycheck. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them. Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication.

There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online.

What are these three tactics?

1. Using unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing.

Do not lump all of it together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.

Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do to those who buy them. Include testimonials from users who have already tried the product.

Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points.

This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more.

2. Offer free reports to your readers.

If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it simply can not be missed. Try to create autoresponder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign up box. According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospect.

Only two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: closed sale or the prospect leaving the page and never return again. By placing useful information into their inboxes at a certain specified period, you will remind them of the product they thought they want later and will find out that the sale is closed. Be sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the product. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch.

Focus on important points like how your product can make life and things easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email. As much as possible, avoid using the word “free” because there are still older spam filters that dump that kind of contents into the junk before even anyone reading them.

Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing something big if they do not avail of your products and services.

3. Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product.

Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be among those who move on and never come back. Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that is focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest.

Try to write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and maintaining these articles you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day.

Always remember that only 1 out of 100 people is likely to buy your product or get your services. If you can generate as much as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you can make 10 sales based on the average statistic.

The tactics given above does not really sound very difficult to do if you think about it. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part.

Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end maintaining a good source of income and surviving in this business that not all marketers can do.

Think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving!

Are you ready for your huhe paychecks? Then sign in below and receive my free ebook!

How To Become A Super Affiliate In Niche Markets

Over the past years, web hosting has grown bigger than it used to be. With more companies getting into this business and finding the many benefits it can give them, the demand for web hosting has never been higher. These seem to be the trend of today.

38 million people have put up their very first websites online this year 2005 alone. It is estimated that by 2008, the Internet sales industry will top the dollar bank. And to think, the majority of those sites will be offering different affiliate programs for people to choose and participate into.

This only means one thing. It is easier now to find the right web host for your application. The possibility of quality web hosting companies separating themselves from the rest of the industry is anticipated. If this is done, the unprofessional and incompetent ones will suffer.

Support will be the number one consideration for people when choosing a web host. It will be obvious that traditional advertising will become less and less effective. Most people would rather opt for the web host based on things that they see and hear. Based on the recommendations by those who have tried them and have proved to be successful.

This is a great opportunity for web hosting affiliates and resellers alike. There would hundreds of web hosting and programs to choose from that the difficulty in finding the right one for them is not a problem anymore.

How does one become a successful affiliate in the niche markets using web hosting?

If you think about it, everyone who needs a website needs a web hosting company to host it for them. As of now, there is really no leading hosting industry so most people choose hosts based from recommendations.

Usually, they get it from the ones that have already availed of a web hosting services.

With the many hosts offering affiliate programs, there is the tendency to find the one which you think will work best for you. Think of the product you will be promoting. Pattern them to the site and see if they are catering to the same things as you are.

When you have been with one host for quite some time and seem not to be making much despite all your effort, leave that one and look for another. There is no use in trying to stick to one when you would be before off in another one. Things will only have to get better from there because you already have been in worst situations.

Try this out. If you are quite happy and satisfied with your web host, try to see if they are offering an affiliate program you can participate in. Instead of you paying them, why not make it the other way around; them paying you. The process can be as easy as putting a small “powered by” or “hosted by” link at the bottom of your page and you are already in an affiliate business.

Why choose to pay for your for your web hosting when you do not have to? Try to get paid by letting people know you like your web host.

Always remember that when choosing a web host, choose the one that is known for its fantastic customer support. There are also many hosting affiliate programs. A residual affiliate program is also being hosted. This is the program wherein you get paid a percentage every month for a client that you refer. This can allow you to have a steady source of income. With perseverance, you can even be quite successful in this field.

There are a lot of niche markets out there just waiting for the right affiliate to penetrate to them and make that dollars dream come true. Knowing which one to get into is being confident enough of your potentials and the good results you will be getting.

Web hosting is just one affiliate market you could try out and make some good and continuous income. Just remember that to be successful in your endeavor also means that time, effort and patience is needed.

Nobody has invented the perfect affiliate market. Some people do know how to make it big in this kind of market. It is just knowing your kind of market and making the earnings there.

If you want to learn more about niche marketing I can recommend Wealthy Affiliate (see here my review). Wealthy Affiliate is an online university where you’ll everything you need to know to build a successful niche business based on affiliate marketing.