Saturday 26 January 2008

10 Biggest Mistakes In Affiliate Marketing And How To Avoid Them

10 Biggest Mistakes In Affiliate Marketing And How To Avoid Them


Though anyone can achieve success with affiliate programs, not everyone manages to do the same. The reason? Well, there are 10 of them, actually. These are the biggest mistakes that make success in affiliate marketing very elusive. Study them well, and read up on how to avoid them. Hurdling through these mistakes can spell the difference between monumental profits and dismal performance in your affiliate marketing campaigns.

1. Believing that people would just click on their affiliate links. Though an affiliate’s job is merely limited to pre-selling, pre-selling involves more than just displaying the affiliate links. It also entails encouraging people to click on them by enumerating the benefits that can be derived from the affiliate merchant’s products, giving favorable recommendations about the use of the same, and providing an encouraging offer that would entice readers to check out the package.

2. Believing that there’s such a thing as organic traffic. Organic traffic, or traffic that is naturally generated by a website, is a myth. There is no such thing! If you’re hosting your affiliate links in one website, you can’t expect people to find it just like that. You have to make them find it. This can be done through effective SEO techniques and efficient marketing strategies.

3. Believing that employing one marketing strategy is enough. Some people actually think that submitting one article to the article directories would give them the amount of traffic they need. This is a fatal mistake. Limiting yourself to a single, or even a couple, of marketing tactics would be limiting the number of visitors you could generate for your website. Also, you’ll fail to tap into other segments of your targeted market if your tactics aren’t flexible enough to expand.

4. Failing to study your campaign’s performance. Most affiliates merely check on how much they have earned per day, and if such an amount remains at low levels, they fail to make corresponding adjustments because, well, they don’t know which aspects of their campaigns need improving. It is important to study every facet of our marketing strategies. How many visitors are we generating for our website? How many of them are unique? How many are returning? How much time do they spend in our pages? Where are they coming from? To where are they exiting? These are the questions that can be answered by an excellent visitor tracking software program, and these are the questions that could help us improve the performance of our marketing endeavors.

5. Failing to find an affiliate program which actually offers sellable products. Some affiliate programs may offer as much as a 95% commission per sale. But if the products are impossible to sell, you’d never realize the profit the program promises.

6. Failing to find an affiliate program with a proven record of consumer satisfaction. The credibility of an enterprise depends on how people view it. If the affiliate program has established great relationships with the members of its target market, then it has established a brand which is recognizable for its excellent service. You’d have an easier time pre-selling such an affiliate program’s products.

7. Failing to keep abreast with the latest developments in the industry. There will come a time when the marketing knowledge we know would become obsolete, more so in the field of internet marketing where everything transpires at a rapid pace. You have to constantly update yourself with the newest trends, techniques and news in this field to always keep your competitive edge.

8. Failing to invest on knowledge. Knowledge likewise evolves and you have to evolve with it. Buy noteworthy eBooks, special reports and the likes… those which would teach you the latest tactics to help you conquer your field.

9. Resting on your laurels once a semblance of success is achieved. Success is not eternal. You have to sustain it. If you leave your business alone once it shows the promise of success, you’re just setting it up for failure.

10. Believing that affiliate marketing is a “get rich quick” scheme. It is not. You have to invest a certain level of commitment, a lot of time, some financial resources on occasions, and a whole lot of effort if you want to truly realize the many wonderful things that this field does promise.

Friday 25 January 2008

Are You Getting Maximum Impact with MySpace?

Author: Randal Williams

Are You Getting Maximum Impact with MySpace?
Are you getting maximum impact with MySpace? With more and
more community websites popping up where people can create
a profile and represent themselves as they want, no wonder
it can be difficult to get the maximum impact with such
communities as MySpace. Let's face it; everyone has likes
and dislikes as well as concerns and certain interests, so
you can really build a good social network on MySpace.
They can focus on their interests and let themselves be
heard by others in their network.

This is all a great thing for businesses in particular as
they can get a great deal of feedback from a large targeted
group of people. It is a smart idea for businesses to
invest some time to keeping up with these social networks
as they can play an important role in making or breaking
someone. Take time to consider the options for social
networks that are available to you and see who has the most
in an audience that is interested in what you have to
offer. That would be the one you want to be active with.

Perhaps one of the best ways to meet your goals is to
visualize what market you are trying to reach. Sit down
and make a list of who you want to target, what kind of
people are they, what do they look like? You can go down
to the very details of such things as what kind of car they
drive and what they do for a living. This will help you to
get a better perspective on your social networks once you
have the details ironed out.

Another great tool that you can use with social networking
is video and audio blogs. Once you get these tools down,
you will see your business grow. When you use such tools
as the video and audio feeds, you can give your targeted
audience a better understanding of what you have to offer.
It gives them a feeling of seeing it first hand. Social
networks like MySpace can help you to build trust with your
audience and it also give them a place to communicate with
you. Most every person loves to be interactive with the
social networks and if give them a sense that they have
contributed to something that they value.

So when looking into social networks such as MySpace you
want to be sure that you are getting the maximum impact
with your services. You want o reach the right audience
and give them the sense that they are a part of what you
are offering. You will find that your sales will soar and
your clients will grow. Social networks are definitely the
way to go to reach people from all over the world. This is
a great way to go worldwide.


About the Author:

Learn more about http://www.FriendsWin.org the next
MySpace. Randal Williams aka 500KMentor is a Expert
Internet Marketer, MLM and Direct Sales industry leader
with business that spans 10+ countries who has been
marketing online successfully for over 5 years now. Randal
specializes in Lead Generation, Advanced Internet
Marketing, No Cost Prospecting and SEO. To learn more about
effective internet marketing strategies visit:
http://www.aka500KMentor.com

Tuesday 22 January 2008

website traffic

One thing that anyone who has their own site online is worried about is how to get website traffic. Though for many, this is essential for business reasons, even those who just have a small personal site want others to stop by and visit. This is something that has been important since the web became popular with the general public, and it is something that might never change. What does change, however is the ways people draw this traffic to their sites.

When I was first online, I noticed a lot people simple begging others to come visit their sites. This was how many thought they were going to get website traffic. Granted, back then, no one really knew what to do and how to get people to their sites. There were many searches, but I can’t seem to remember if Google was around then or not. I do know that it was hard to find what you were looking for most times, and the begging for website traffic couldn’t last long. It was very annoying and even the people doing it knew it. There are still some that do it, but most people have taken a different approach.

Today, people go about finding website traffic in much different ways. Some still visit forums and post links to their sites, and this does work well on a small scale. However if you are looking for huge website traffic numbers, you are going to have to do something else. One thing is advertising, and some like to do this. Google’s Adsense program is a good one. This uses the keywords in content to place relevant ads on the site. Some drive in traffic simply by using the right keywords.

No matter how you go about getting website traffic, you can keep tabs on who is visiting by getting software that tracks visitors. You will not see names and addresses, of course, but you can see city, state, and country, and you can also see how long they were there and what pages they visited. This can help you decide who is coming, and what is working on your site and what is being skipped over. This will help tailor any site to what the visitor wants. When they get what they want, they are more likely to come back. Even though you are not getting any personal information about these people, make sure they do not know they are being tracked. They may think the worst, even though you aren’t getting anything other than basic activity information

Sell On The Internet

For many people, the Internet has opened up a whole new world. The only is it a place to meet new people, find some great information, entertain yourself, and do many other things, it is also become a place to do business. Many people like to find things to sell on the Internet. This can be done through eBay, which is very common, or you can find many other ways to do this. One great ways to have your own web site, and to try to draw customers in through Internet advertising.

What you want to sell on the Internet is up to you. If you have a business in your home or in your community, you can always expand to the Internet. You can sell things online that you can sell anywhere. You will have to rely on shipping companies in order to get your product around the world, but when you sell on the Internet, you have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for yourself and your business. You don’t even have to sell things online, as you can sell many other things that do not require shipping.

The other things that you can sell on the Internet are your talents. If you are a writer oSell On The Internetr a photographer, there are many, many people online who need your work. Web sites rely on content to draw in people, and also to provide the information that people are looking for every day. People also need photographs to go along with this content. If you want to sell on the Internet, you simply have to look for freelance opportunities. There are many out there, and if you give it enough time, you can have a great career working exclusively online.

Remember that in order to sell on the Internet, you have to have advertising just as you would if you were to sell from a retail store. Another great way to get your business noticed by the online public is to have keyword rich content on your web site. When you want to sell on the Internet you have to be creative about your advertising, and you also have to make sure your customer satisfaction is high. Complaints in a retail store may harm your business a little, but it only takes one horrible review from an Internet user to tank your business. Make sure you take care of your customer, as well as you would take care of yourself, and you should have no problem finding a market online for whatever it is that you wish to do.

registering domain names

There are many opportunities to begin your own home based business through the internet. This trend is sweeping the nation and some experts predicted that sixty percent of the work force will be working from their home within the next ten years. Many of the companies are multi-level dealerships and others are stand alone free businesses. Many companies encourage the new business owner to name their company.

My husband and I started our own dealership and gave our company a name to place on our business cards. When I was talking to a tax consultant he asked me if I knew about registering domain names. I think he could tell by my silence that I did not know what he was talking about. He explained that when you name a company you can protect the name from anyone else using it by registering domain names with the state in which you live. He said that it was not necessary to do this, but many people have found that registering domain names can save them hassles in the future is someone else would use the same name. He also cautioned not to fall into schemes that charge money. Registering domain names is something that the business owner can do with the secretary of state’s office in the state you reside in. This can be done on line in most states, and involves filling out a form. Some people on the internet will run ads claiming that they will register you business name for a nominal fee. People will give them the business information and then the person will go on line and register the name for free and pocket the money that they charge.

There are many advertisements on the internet that make claims of registering domain names cheap, or for a nominal amount you can have the registration taken care of. I was glad that the accountant told me that registering domain names is free and easy to do, or I probably would have answered one of the ads and paid someone to do it for me. As I bring new business owners into our company I pass this information on to them. One of my business partners wanted to go through the process of registering domain names because she was quite proud of the name that she came up with for her company. She went on line and followed the directions of the state’s official website. She said that it took her less than fifteen minutes to complete the process.

paypal account craze

Ah, the future. It holds such wondrous things. Considering all that we currently have in the present, it's hard to even fathom what's all ahead of us. Possibly cell phones the size of peanuts and SUVs as large as tractor trailers. Does that sound about right to you? Anyway, one phenomenal piece of technology that has virtually changed it all is the Internet. Take your pick from countless tasks you can now accomplish online. I love this! Ten years ago I never would have though so, but know I know so. My Mac and wireless online access make so many chores so much simpler. You won't catch me driving to the back these days or ordering a pizza on the telephone. Why should I? It's all on the web and a breeze to access. I even have a paypal account that manages my electronic funds.

I realize that some folks are still not hip to the paypal account craze. Well let me make it simple for you. A paypal account is basically a way to pass money back and forth online. Believe it or not, some individuals actually get paid this way. If you're a grant writer working for random online clients, they can paypal you the fee when you're through. At that point you can either leave the funds in your paypal account, use them to purchase items online, or easily transfer them to your bank account. At this point you're probably thinking what I first thought. Pretty Sweet! Paypal came about after EBay. It is in fact an EBay company. Countless EBay auction lovers use their paypal accounts regularly to purchase items online. The next time you're on EBay, take a look at the paypal symbol next to most auction items. This means they accept paypal as a form of payment. Most even prefer it. When you pay with your paypal account instead of a check or money order, the funds are transferred and received instantly. All that's required by the payer is an email address.

Maybe it's time you looked into obtaining a paypal account for your future web purchases. This can indeed make shopping online so much faster. If you're curious who's affiliated with paypal, I suggest you check out their website at www.paypal.com. More and more businesses are hopping on the band-wagon.

Saturday 19 January 2008

making money online

For anyone that watches late night television and infomercials it is not news that there are many business opportunities on the internet. There are advertisements in print media, television and a few months ago I heard a commercial on the radio. With all the hype about home based and internet based business opportunities I decided that I would look into it to see if I could supplement our income.

There are many sites that make huge claims about making money online. In my research I found that some of them are complete scams and others are complicated business ventures. I did come up with a few pitfalls and tools that I used in sorting out the opportunities. It is very easy to get caught up in spending money to obtain information. That is the first pitfall that I fell into. When looking into making money online do not pay for information about the opportunity.

We have all come across the sites that claim that you can make thousands of dollars a week spending a few minutes a day whenever you want to. Most of these sites call themselves data entry opportunities. They tell you that if you can type an email you can do the job and make thousands of dollars a week. The information that is not shared prior to buying into the company is that you need to spend a great deal of money posting the advertisements that you type up. I paid to learn more about the data entry positions. In the hype portion I was told that all I needed to do was to fill out forms and post them on the internet. I was not told that I first had to pay to get the forms and then had to pay to post them. I also had to research which company had the greatest potential of helping me recoup my money as well as make a profit. It was a very complicated and misleading experience. The next pitfall that I fell into in trying to make money online was the completion of surveys. This is the biggest rip off that there is on the internet. For one thing you can join companies to get mailed the surveys without going through a third party. The third party has you pay money then they simply give you the websites of the survey companies. I ended up spending money joining music and make up clubs as well as ordering magazines. There was one survey that I took that I was paid $1.50 for taking. The third party company stated that you could make hundreds of dollars a week spending fifteen to twenty hours. This was not a sure bet in making money online for me. The person that was making money online in this case was the one that found the survey takers for the companies, who in turn bought from the companies.

Making money online is possible, but it is not a get rich quick scheme and the old saying “if it sounds too good to be true it probably isn’t” definitely applies.

How To Make Money On The Internet

Here's the problem. Millions of us trudge off to work everyday with little enthusiasm. Now, why do you suppose this is? I'm going to tell you. We don't like our current situations. Maybe it's because we chose a field that hardly interests us. Or, maybe we struggle on a daily basis with certain co-workers of supervisors. Regardless, we don't feel appreciated, nor do we ever feel secure. That lingering notion dangles in the back of our minds whether we like it or not. Tomorrow we could be laid off, let go, or just flat-out canned. There really doesn't have to be a reason. Not a legitimate one anyway. Companies tend to make things up, bend the rules, and discard employees on a whim. It's no big thing to them. However, it's clearly a massive deal to us. We depend on that income to pay the bills. Now, haven't you heard enough? Can't you relate to this diatribe? Maybe your next step should be researching ways to how to make money on the Internet.

I often ponder the many ways people start their own businesses. I suppose it just depends on their preferences and fortes. We all should take advantage of what we're good at. What do you enjoy, and take utter pride in? This may be your way to make money on the Internet. People just like yourself do it everyday. If you think they can't, you're only fooling yourself. Some individuals build websites and right informative articles to answer questions. Your questions, my questions. They place ad links on their websites, so that when folks like you and me read their articles, we just might be intrigued and click on an ad link. This earns them revenue. Maybe you've already heard of Google Adsense. Feel free to use it yourself.

Naturally there are also oodles of scams. To this day I've never come across a legitimate survey site. Those ads that claim to pay large amounts of cash for surveys are bogus. You'll only get flooded with irksome emails and junk coupons. Take a moment and consider the kind of business you could start to make money on the Internet. Maybe you want to sell organic coffee, holiday gift baskets, or an array of fun treats. There are no limits when it comes to cyberspace business. You too can ditch your retched career and make money on the Internet doing something you enjoy.

Internet traffic websites love tons of traffic

You know how we redundantly complain about the traffic we encounter on the Interstate in the morning and after work? Well imagine that times 100 or maybe even a million. While we all deal with the daily pile-ups on the way home from work, it only involves who lives in our area. Imagine how terrible it would be if it involved the entire planet. Now that would be one serious traffic jam, and you can bet there would be countless fits of road rage. Well, lucky for us, we don't have to battle that kind of traffic in the physical world. Now, Internet traffic is an entirely different story.

I will be the first to admit that often Internet traffic really ticks me off. Maybe they should call that cyber-rage. Anyway, like me, you've surely been on the web at times and had difficulty maneuvering from one site to another. This may concern your actual online connection, or more likely it involves the current Internet traffic. You know, all the other web-surfers who're online with you. I typically encounter this sluggish mess when I'm checking my email. You've got to love Hotmail. Now, I really shouldn't complain, because this is a totally free service. But yet it's still annoying to get on MSN and not be able to check my email account. I will say that this overload of Internet traffic generally happens when folks are getting off work or primarily on Saturday.

Websites love tons of traffic. They want as much as they can possibly accumulate. Traffic is wonderful for them because it either means more business or more web-surfers clicking on ads. Ad clicking often means revenue earned via advertisers. If you know what you're doing with this stuff, you can really generate a chunk of change off it. So the next time you're surfing net-land and notice your computer being sluggish, you can assume it's the overload of fellow cyber nuts. Although there is room for everyone in cyberspace, things do tend to get a bit slower when we're all crammed in together. Just don't get upset and toss your expensive laptop out the window in a fit of rage. You'll need it later to check your email.

Internet business

In this day and age, you'll routinely hear people gripe about their jobs. Why do you suppose this is? I think I have a grasp on the problem. They feel obsolete or unsure about their future. You never know when you just might be canned and/or replaced. Surely you've noticed that oodles of workers get booted out for simple reasons. Maybe you're no longer needed or the company is downsizing. But what do you do then? Well hopefully you leave with some sort of severance package. At least this way you'll have some cash to pay the bills while searching for the next gig. Those who don't, often have it rough. Now, you may be wondering what I'm getting at, so I'll cut to the chase. It's high time to start thinking about a personal Internet business, or independent company that's actually yours.

Surf the web sometime and you'll see just how many individuals have started their very own Internet business. Seriously, cyberspace is loaded with them. Maybe some of the websites that you check out on a regular basis. I was shocked to find out that one of the custom knife sites I always sort through was owned by a housewife. She even let me in on her story. She was basically a stay-at-home mom with no college degree, therefore she decided to start her own at-home Internet business, selling custom cutlery. At first she did this as a way to bring in extra money, but then it turned into something huge. Now her husband does it with her and it's their only source of income. You have to admit; that's pretty darn sweet. And it all started with her father's passion for knives, and the knowledge she picked up from him.

You too can begin an internett business if you really want it. A close friend of my wife started hers by making custom children's clothing. She uses her sewing talents and creativity to make an honest living. Now she just has to keep up with the various orders. What awesome about this picture? How about the facts that she works from home, sets her own hours, answers to no one, and can never get CANNED? Wouldn't you enjoy a lifestyle like this?

how to promote a website

There are some tried-and-true methods to how to promote a website, but I think that people rely on them too much. Everyone knows some of the standard how to promote website techniques: you want to increase hits, increase visibility, and increased traffic in any way you can. You can do this by getting a lot of keyword optimized web content, signing up for ad space on various other websites, Setting up business referral arrangements and the like.

The problem is that everyone uses this approach to . There are literally thousands upon thousands of people in whatever area you are involved in doing exactly the same thing. It is obvious why this is a problem. There are only so many people can who can rank high in any given Google search. It can be good to learn how to promote a website in this manner, but it can't be your only strategy. Unless you are very good at SEO optimized content, you need something more site-specific.

As a music promoter, I have a somewhat novel approach to how to promote a website. You see, I knew all about how to promote music before I even got involved in the Internet. I have become comfortable with it over the last couple of years, but it is certainly not my background. For me, the key is promoting a website in the real world.

You see, national coverage and national attention are very difficult to dig get for an independent band, but local coverage is comparably easy. I have many strategies for how to promote a website in a geographic area. Basically, the key is to include the URL in all of your materials and have a great street team together. If you can have some web-based giveaways, so much the better. That will get people looking at your website, and once they are looking, you have gone halfway to winning the battle.

I know that these strategies for how to promote a website are not universal. Many people will tell me – and many people already have – that my advice doesn't help them in their line of business. What they don't realize is that that is the whole point. Everyone knows the universal part of how to promote websites. It can help to study up on it of course, and to increase and optimize your hits as much as possible, but that will only get you halfway there. The key is to go beyond your competition. Think about what strategies you can employ that other people are not using. Those are the ones that will pay off most of all.

Tuesday 15 January 2008

affordable web site design

As web design becomes cheaper and cheaper, people are willing to pay less and less money for it. It has gotten to the point where, for many people, the most affordable web site design is the design that they do themselves. Web design programs make it so easy to get your web page off the ground that many people will not even pay a professional for cheap web site design any more. They feel like they are being ripped off if they do not do it by themselves.

Although I can appreciate this do-it-yourself sentiment, it still makes sense for serious businesses to hire a web developer. Just because you can design your own web page does not mean that you have the skills, the knowledge, or the technical savvy to do it well. On the contrary, many of the greatest champions of affordable web site design have some of the worst web pages that you have ever seen. They will have broken links, bad layout, flash applets that do not work, and poor user interface. These would-be amature web designers need to understand that you can – and should – have it both ways. A business needs to have affordable web site design that is also high quality web site design. Otherwise, they are just shooting themselves in the foot.

This is especially true if you are using flash web site design. It is possible to make your own affordable web site design for simple web pages that consist mostly of text and links, but once the applications become complex, it is time to bring in a professional. Believe it or not, you can find affordable web site designers for almost any need. There are so many web designers out there right now that many are willing to give you a deal just to get some work! It will not cost you an arm and a leg, and it will make your page look better and your business, more professional.

Of course, not all affordable web site designs are the same. Just because someone promises you affordable web site design does not mean that you should hire him. There is no formal certification program for web professionals. He may know no more about website design than you do! Find someone to do affordable web site design with a body of work that you like. Insist on seeing a portfolio before you hire him!