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It’s best to ask questions before you settle for promoting an affiliate program. Do some research about the choices of the program you intend joining and get the positive answers you are looking for because none of us want unpleasant surprises along the way.

What is the cost to join?

Most affiliate programs are free of charge. You will probably be spending your hard earned money on the promotion of this program so why pay up front money to join.

When do they Pay us Affiliates?

This depends on the program you are promoting. If you choose a program from Clickbank, you would be paid twice a month by Clickbank however, some other programs issue checks monthly or quarterly so you can see the importance of understanding this aspect from the get go. Some affiliate programs also have set a minimum earned commission amount prior to issuing a check.

What is the hit per sale ratio?

This statistic is very important. It is the number of hits on average it takes to generate a sale. From this the affiliate can approximately figure out the amount of traffic needed before a commission is realized.

How are referrals from an affiliates site tracked and for how long do they remain in the system?

When the affiliate marketer joins an affiliate program, he is issued an i.d. number. This number is added to the programs URL so purchases that are generated using your i.d. will be credited to you. When your prospect visits the programs website, a cookie is generated and credited to you so if no initial purchase is made but they return sometime later to make a purchase, you would still get credit. You need to know the term of the cookie. They do vary from program to program but aproximately a 3 month duration.

What are the kinds of affiliate stats available?

The affiliate program that you are researching should be able and willing to supply these stats. They are generally available to the affiliate after logging into the members area. These stats should be constantly checked by the affiliate to know the amount of impressions, hits and sales generated from your site. Impressions show the number of times a banner or text link was viewed whereas a hit is clicking the banner or text.

Does the affiliate program also pay for the hits and impressions besides the commissions on sales?

This depends on what goods the program sells. If it is an e-book for example where the commission is generally 50 to 60%, then do not expect to get paid for your hits and impressions generated from your site. If the program sells tangible goods generally they offer much lower percentage commissions and hits and impressions could also be paid.

Who is the online retailer?

It is very important to know who you, the affiliate, are representing in business. You should know the products you are representing, you should also be aware of how good the retailers customer relations is and also check out the endorsements that generally appear on the sales page. Your name and reputation could be blemished if the program and the principal of that program do not meet the advertised jargon.

Is the affiliate a one tier or two tier program?

A single tier program pays only for the business you yourself have generated whereas a two tier program pays you for your business plus it pays you a commission on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor into the program. There is another important aspect that many programs are now implementing, namely One Time Offers. This is a page that is displayed after the initial transaction is complete and generally offers an upgrade for X amount of $s. This is a bonus for the affiliate marketer because it could be 2 commissions earnt from one client. Sometimes the commissions vary from the initial sale to the O.T.O., for example, 60% for the initial sale and 50% for the O.T.O.

Lastly, what is the amount of commission paid?

Depending on the program the range can be anywhere from 5% - 70%. If you are an affiliate who represents a program who only sell digital products your commissions are generally in the 50 to 60% range. The reason for this is because product cost is very minimal due to instant downloads. For tangible items, the wholesale cost of the product plus the shipping and handling costs involved must be deducted from the retail price so the affiliate marketers commission would only be based on the retailers mark-up.

These are some of the questions affiliate marketers should get answers to prior to getting involved with any affiliate program. There are many, many programs for you to choose to represent, but look at individual programs the same way as you would any conventional business that would require a front end investment. Remember, representing any affiliate program will certainly cost you time and generally promotional money so be sure to do your due diligence at the outset.

Are you looking for “Hot Items” to sell on your eBay Auction? Are you having trouble deciding on a category? Being an active eBayer, I am often asked about what products to sell. As explained in the book “eBay Marketing Wholesale SourcePak” finding the right product in the right category is crucial.

Many people ask me whether jewelry is a good item to sell on their eBay auction. My opinion is yes, it can be. For the most part jewelry is easy to package and easy to ship. And provided you have done your research first, you should be able to make a good profit selling it. One of the points you will need to research before adding any jewelry to your eBay auction is, what are eBay shoppers looking for in the jewelry niche? Knowing this will help you to decide just what type of jewelry you could include in your auctions. Below you will find Top Ten Buyer Searches for Fine Jewelry (at the time of this writing) as per eBay

10. Earrings
09. Turquoise
08. Sterling Silver
07. Cameo
06. Italian Charms
05. Vintage
04. Gold
03. Diamond Rings
02. Designer Jewelry

And the number 1 jewelry search at the time of this writing is… Italian Charm Watches.

By knowing what people are searching for you will have a better insight of what items are popular, and what items should sell well on your auctions. If you decide to sell jewelry on eBay, finding items that fit into one or more of the above categories will see your number of bids increase substantially. Always remember to do your research before listing any item for auction. Know what categories are “Hot!” Do a price analysis of your product. Know what the item costs you and what you can potentially sell it for. Then sit back and watch the bidding heat up!

Search engines play a very important and central role in the field of affiliate marketing. These are considered to be your ultimate weapons.

Search engines are responsible for the introduction of your website to hundreds and thousands of people. Most of the traffic that is hitting your website mainly comes from the search engines. Popular search engines are Google, Yahoo etc.

When a person searches for any information, the search engine goes through all the indexed pages and presents the searcher with all the websites that match the written phrase. The pages that have high ranking come first. It is very obvious that visitor will click on the website that is coming at the top. It is very rare that someone will browse 5 or 10 pages of results and then visit the website listed there. So in order to maximize your web traffic your website must have a high ranking in the search engines.

It is also noticed that most of the visitors search the top seven to eight search engines. The most important search engine is GOOGLE. Your website will be introduced to lots of users by these search engines. A search engine is a really big source to attract people and bring in traffic to your website. So in affiliate marketing you must learn how a search engine works.

Keywords Importance

Keywords have a great importance to carry traffic to your website. As we know, the majority of the users search their topics, through various search engines, using the keywords. Select the keywords for your website. Always try to select the keywords that have less competition and are hot. After selecting the keywords for your webpage try to get the higher page rank. If someone searches for your keywords on the search engines, then your website should come in on the first page to get the maximum benefit.

How People Come to Your Website

Researches have proved that if a consumer wishes to search a website to get any kind of information or to purchase any product or service, he searches websites through either of the ways which are given below:

First method is the use of search engines. The most well known and used search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Someone can find the link of your website in an article, forum or another website. By hitting that link he may visit your website. Some others may find the link of your website in their email. There are many possible sources from which someone can find the link of your website.

It is however observed that 90% of your website visitors are coming from the search engines. Only 10% traffic is generated by other sources like emails, forums and various miscellaneous websites. This means that you should concentrate on your page rank in the search engines to receive the high traffic.

How Search Engine Works

Every search engine uses an algorithm to calculate the page rank of a website. No one knows the exact algorithm. But it is a known fact that the websites that have high website content related to their keywords are ranked higher. Another important factor is the traffic coming from other high ranking websites. For example if you have joined a forum which has high page rank, you should post your text there and at the end you can paste your website link. Now, whenever someone from that website clicks on your website, it will make your page rank higher.

Another factor is how many websites have your websites link on their page. If such a website is greater in number and are highly ranked websites, then your ranking will also be increased. You can use the link exchange and banner exchange techniques to take this benefit.

Conclusion

If you want to get more traffic and more sales in affiliate marketing then you should use different methods to increase your page rank in major search engines like GOOGLE, MSN and YAHOO.

It is a known fact that almost 90 percent of affiliates earn less than hundred dollars per month. So, you cannot depend on affiliate marketing. But if you put in some extra effort, then you can increase you commissions.

Before entering into this field, a lot of people are under the false assumption that affiliate marketing is basically a short-cut way of becoming rich without much effort. Actually it is not such an easy business. Do not think that you will put a couple of banners on your website and you will start earning.

There are some tips to increase your affiliate commissions:

1. Build a good website

Good website means, a website that attracts the visitors attention. It must not be rich in graphics. It should be simple and easy to navigate. It should be simple for the visitor to find anything that he wants.

2. Do Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is very necessary to drive steady traffic to your site. This is a very big topic. There are various techniques to increase the page rank of your website. Banner exchange is a famous technique. Search engine friendly URLs is another search engine optimization technique.

3. Pick the Right Merchant

Pick the right merchant to start with. Do not look at the profits offered. Look at the expertise and experience of the merchants. See their history. How many products they have launched in the markets and how many were successful. Are they good in marketing? Are they providing good service to their customers?

Find the answers of all above questions and you will find the right merchant that will give you good and constant business.

4. Increase Traffic to Your Website

Getting a lot of traffic to your site is basically the key factor in this field. You must remember that not every visitor is your buyer. Only a few of them will buy your product, so it is important to get more and more traffic to your website. Some important techniques are email campaigns, banner exchange, RSS feeds, selection of the right keywords, writing search engine friendly content on your website etc.

5. Pre Sales

An important point is to read the minds of your visitors to understand what they need and then offer them the right thing at the right cost. Try to attract your visitors with the extra things that they would like. For example, if you are selling laptops on your website, then you can put some useful articles on how to troubleshoot laptops. This will attract your visitors.

It is possible that your visitor might not make a sale in the first visit. But if he likes your articles he will come back to study your articles and it is possible that he may make a purchase after some visits. This concept of offering some useful free gifts to your visitors is called pre sales. It is very helpful in increasing your sales.

You cannot get the desired results in a few days, but it requires some time. Concentrate on how to improve your business by making a good website and driving more and more traffic to your website. Choose the right merchant and attract the people by offering useful products and gift packages. One satisfied customer will bring 10 more customers.

You might be one of the thousands of individuals who open a trading account with eBay and dream about making auction selling a full-time home-based business.

However, before that dream can become a reality, you need to do many important things while running an auction business.

One of these important things to do is to pick the right products to sell. The right products to sell are the ones that people on eBay want or will buy.

eBay tells you what people actually want and what people actually will buy in four areas of its website.

“In Demand”

One of these four areas on eBay’s site is the “In Demand” section. There is an “In Demand” link for each of the main categories on eBay. Listed in these areas are the previous month’s top ten products that people wanted and the top ten searches for each subcategory. To see the data in these areas follow the link below and when you reach the page, scroll down and click on the link “In Demand” under any of the categories shown.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/sellbycategory.html

“Hot Categories Report”

The next area containing information on finding what to sell on eBay is the “Hot Categories Report.” This report lists the “fastest growing” categories on eBay for the previous month. The explanation for what eBay considers “hot” can be hard to understand on your first reading. Nevertheless, the important thing to know is that the categories listed are the ones were buyer demand for the items under those categories are growing faster than the seller supply. This report is a PDF file so you will need Adobe® Reader® to open it. Here is the link:

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf

“eBay Pulse”

“eBay Pulse” is another area where you can figure out what people are looking for on “The World’s Online Marketplace®.” It contains a category’s daily snapshot of the ten most popular searches and the stores with the most active listings. A subsection on “eBay Pulse,” known as “Most Watched Items,” reveals the ten auctions that are getting the most attention. Visit this page and select a category to study from the drop-down menu.

http://pulse.ebay.com

“Merchandising Calendar”

The last area with information on what to sell on eBay is the “Merchandising Calendar.” Here, eBay shows you the categories they will promote on their homepage each month. This is where eBay “tells” you what to sell. You can ignore their calendar and sell anything you choose, but wouldn’t it be easier to make sales if you took advantage of eBay’s promotional influence? Look at this page and use the calendar as a guide in planning your inventory and listings.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/calendar.html

Last Thoughts

Now that you have the links to data that tells you what people will buy on eBay, you can look forward to listing these items and making sales. The next step is finding the wholesale or drop-ship sources that carry those items that are “In Demand.” That is when you will be one-step closer to achieving your goal of making a living from eBay.

Some will say look for a successful market which will produce tones of money. With other words, do a lot of research on choosing the keywords. Others will say it is not a magic formula: it is just a lot of hard work and dedication in your part. Yes, they are right, but it is not enough, the devil is in details.

I will review now tactics and practices that have been proven over the years with astonishing results.

Use unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. I know some people are not comfortable with buying a domain for each affiliate marketing product. But this way you make a visitor to focus on just one product. If you offer 50 e-Books on one Website it will be really hard to convince a potential buyer what to buy. And now, the domains are extremely cheap, there is no reason not to try this tactic.

Always include product reviews on the website and testimonials, this way your potential customers will have a better understanding about your product and it will build trust. Use customers name and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

A couple of beginners asked me, if it is your first own product, you have nothing to include because nobody knows you well enough. The answer is you do not jump directly to promote a product. You must have a pre-sell phase, and in this face you give your product to be reviewed for free and collect some testimonials.

Offer free reports to your visitors in addition to the product you promote, this is other element of trust building in. Try to position them at the very top part of your page. Not all visitors will browse until the bottom.

Create autoresponder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal info in your opt-in box. Usually a sale is made on the seventh contact with a customer prospect. The content must be directed toward specific reasons to buy the product, talk about benefits of the product, not about features. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch.

Look to get targeted traffic to your product. An effective method is to write articles and publish them on ezines, e-reports, mini e-courses, and open discussions in forums. If you use ezines, definitely only interested visitors will open links from your resources box.

Be patient, do not give up because only 1 of 100 people will buy your product. Drive traffic paid or free, this is crucial. Personally I have spent in 2007, 2008 a lot of time talking about free traffic, social bookmark. My articles reflect my ideas about free traffic; you can find them in my websites as well. You must do split testing for your keywords which will appear in title and content, you need good key works but do not overdo it.

If you do Internet Marketing, to protect yourself from thieves, please cloak your links all over: websites, articles, signatures in email and forums, squidoo lenses.

Experiment all of the above with several affiliate marketing products you want to promote and have an open mind set for new tactics, but do not lose your time trying to invent the wheels. Those are methods which have been proven over the years.