Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Here is an introductory post to affiliate marketing. I realized I didn't have one to explain to people what it is. I myself am not overly involved in affiliate marketing, but I got connected with somebody who is.

Many Americans are working harder than ever to make up for the increasing costs for living and a lot of people are looking for a job on the side of their regular job to make up for the extra expenses. It’s a sad fact since it means that more and more peopleare spending less time at home with their family. Fortunately there’s affiliate marketing!

Affiliate marketing is a cheap way of making money, and there’s a lot of money to be made in affiliate marketing. The other bonus is that you’ll also get more spare time when making your dollars online. It doesn’t take that much time and effort to learn and work with. Some have been so successful that they’ve been able to quit their day job in order to lay all of their efforts on affiliate marketing. Here are a few tips and tricks on how to do it.

Create a Website Devoted to a Merchant

If you’re going to promote a well-known brand it could be a good idea to create a website that is totally devoted to this brand. On this site you should add industry-related news or anything that may concern your selected merchant. I guess one could say that you’re tailoring the site to a single merchant and its customers.

Building one of these sites is cheap but it also takes some understanding of how to create a website. Also important to take into consideration is an understanding of search engines work. Many talk about search engine optimization and it means that you try to rank as high as possible on search engines. There’s much to read about this topic on various forums on the Internet.

Working with Blogs

If you don’t know how to create a website you could very well work with blogs instead. They also come cheap and many are entirely free of charge. If you want to make money from your blog then it should be based on a certain topic – you need to create a following! Promote brands/merchants that are in some way related to this topic. The readers of the blog should have the possibility of somehow benefiting from the products/services you promote. For example, if you a blog about famous authors then you should promote a company selling books. That’s a win-win situation for both parties.

Your blog needs to be updated on a daily basis in order to get a high ranking on search engines. As mentioned earlier can you find much information about search engine optimization on the Internet. Take the time to learn this before starting your affiliate business, you will have a much greater chance of becoming successful if you do your homework!

Both of these methods will take some time in the start-up – your site or blog has to become a presence on the web in order to make money from it! However, once this is done you’ll be on easy street. If you don’t give we are sure that you’ll be able to make a killing off affiliate marketing.

This guest post was provided by AffiliateTips.com - a resource for anyone is interested in affiliate marketing. Don't forget to check out their reviews to find affiliate programs to get started with.

Turn Your Blog Into a Business NOW

Your blog isn't just supposed to be a blog.

That's if, like many of us, you want to build it into a business that succeeds. If you haven't thought about what it would be like to have a very successful, time consuming blog, maybe it's time to plan for it. There are a number of reasons why to do this.

First of all, and most obvious, is that once you get to this point, you won't be able to organize things and you won't have time to do everything you need to do. Blogging takes a LOT of time and effort. If you really want to make a killing off of it, do you really think you'll have enough hours in your day to do all of the things you do right now?

There are a few really easy ways to improve your infrastructure.

Create Your Own Guidebooks, For Yourself

Everybody who blogs has had to learn things the hard way - whether it was putting together a crappy ad campagin, throwing up a poll that nobody answered, marketing an article that nobody cared about, or running ads on their blog that never made enough money.

You need to create guidebooks for yourself of everything you do successfully. For instance, if you want to hold a contest for your blog, wouldn't it be nice to have a document put together of who you need to contact to get the word out, where you submit your contest information, and what sites you would advertise on? It's a lot simpler to do that than to have to remember these things again and again.

The only thing that many bloggers have recorded is their traffic stats and their earnings. Well, great. It's lots of fun to monitor those things. But, these are simply outputs of your inputs. When you want to relearn your inputs, you will need to go back and do it all again. Every blogger overestimates how much of this stuff they can remember and organize in their heads. In reality, they are wasting loads of time because they fail to view their blogging career as a systematic business.

If Your Blog isn't a Business, Nobody Will Treat it Like One

Imagine a wise CEO who had worked with a company for 15 years just got up and left. Do you think his shoes would be easily to fill? What about all of the things he had learned along the way which he hadn't written down?

If you turn your blog into a business, you make it easier to sell it. Your ability to sell your blog is highly dependent on its track record, and proof of how and why it will continue to succeed. If someone comes along wanting to buy your blog and finds out you can provide them with all the tools they need to keep it running the way it was, its value will skyrocket. If you can put an intangible value on your blog above projected earnings and stats, you'll be in a good place.

Prepare to Delegate Duties

Making money online doesn't have to mean minimizing costs.

Those were the words of Yaro Starak, an extremely successful online entrepreneur. He knew through his experience that if you don't plan to be a business down the road, you won't ever be. You need to be able to take your guidebooks and records of your blog and put them in somebody else's hands if you need them to work for you. If you don't have these things, you won't have the time or energy to delegate. And as your blog grows bigger, you will miss more and more opportunities to grow. Eventually, you will learn things the hard way and delegate powers long after you should have done.

You don't have to learn things the hard way. Listen to other bloggers who have already 'made' it. Ask them questions. Hear their story. Plan, from top to bottom, to run a business of that size one day. Once you see your blog as a business, others will too.

Quick Tips for Creating a Damn Good Sales Pitch

When I was in Shanghai this past month I was given an excellent sales pitch which left me extremely impressed. I didn't end up making a purchase, but I picked up on a few really simple pointers on how to gain the attention of even the least interested buyer. I was up in Jinmao Tower in Shanghai and I was walking around the observatory, when I came across a table with two ladies making pearl necklaces.

Grab Their Attention

The first thing they said to me to get my attention was 'May I see your ticket please?' I was unable to divert my attention from them because they established themselves as officials. I showed them my ticket, and they then told me 'You are eligible for a free pearl'.

Keep Their Attention

At this stage I thought, 'okay, this better be free, I am not going to forget the fact that I was told I was getting this for free no matter what they say'. My eyes were then drawn to the second part of their table, where the lady was prying open oysters and giving letting the customers look at them.

When I got my turn I was going to just turn around and leave with the pearl, but the lady then said, 'Would you like me to drill a hole through it so you can make it into a necklace? That is also free'. I said sure, why not. After all, it's free. At this stage I know that the pearl is going to be mine by the end of the salespitch.

When she finished drilling the hole, she then said, 'Because today is the 8th, we are giving away the necklace part for free too' (The 8th was the day of the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics). I said great, I will take that too.


She then told me that 'if I had a friend or girlfriend I might want to consider getting a custom designed connector piece' for my necklace. This was the first time anything which I had to buy was brought up. But because I already had a pearl, with a hole drilled in it, and a necklace, I just might find that useful.

I didn't end up going for the necklace, because I guess I'm just too conscious about when somebody is making a salespitch to me. But to the average customer, I just might buy.


Turn Them Into a Customer

The pearl sellers took it slowly with me and gave themselves the best possible chance to get me to buy their necklace. Here's what they did.

1. They caught my attention by establishing themselves as an authority/official. They did this not by trying to sell the product, but by engaging me with conversation.

2. They kept my attention with an actual demonstration of how the product was being made (Cool!).

3. They put a FREE product in my hand. (The Chinese absolutely love free stuff. More than us.)

4. They kept me at the table for an extended period of time, creating the illusion to myself that I am actually interested in a product which I had originally had NO intention to buy before.

5. They made me think about other people when making the purchase - girlfriend, friend, mom, etc. This made me consider of how much the product was worth to these other people in my life, not me. It almost made me buy it.

Don't Sell, Pre-sell

The necklace sellers put all of their efforts into the PRE-sale, not the actual sale. They turned the product buying into an adventure, and made me consider buying something I would never seek to buy. That's a little better of an effort than the vendors on the streets in China who ask you immediately to buy a watch or wallet from them.

How You Can Immediately Improve Your Sales Pitches

A good way to improve your sales pitches on your websites is to keep a dossier of what has and hasn't worked as a sales pitch. In fact, soon after this little occurrence happened, I took down the details on my cell phone.

If you keep a record of what you find good and bad, what works and doesn't work, what was unique and what turned you off, you are reminding yourself that you too are a customer. If you can look back at that, you will have a better grasp of the customer's perspective, and how to turn on the light in their head that gets them into a buying mood.