There are many affiliate products to promote in the market. For new affiliate marketers, the easiest way to start is to join affiliate networks such as Clickbank or Commission Junction. Besides noting the commission percentage cut you can get out of each sale, keep your eyes open for these three aspects of each affiliate program as well.
1) How long is the duration of the cookie?
It is not easy to get your visitors to convert to customers immediately at their first exposure to your affiliate merchant site. An average visitor requires at least a few visits before he may feel comfortable enough to commit to the purchase.
Cookies are coded to expire after a certain amount of time. Some merchants set it at 30 days, while others at 60 days. The longer the cookie sits in the visitor's computer, the more it works in the favor of the affiliate. As long as the visitor returns to buy something from the same website before the cookie expires, the affiliate will be credited for the sale, so a longer cookie buys the affiliate more time and a higher chance of making a sale.
2) Are the commissions recurring?
Certain affiliate products, such as membership sites, offer recurring commissions. Every time the customer you refer renews the membership subscription, you will be credited with commissions. Can you imagine how long this can go on to? You could be receiving commissions for months and years as long as the customer stays! Sounds cool right!
3) Is the program two-tier?
When we talk about two-tier affiliate programs, it is somewhat similar to the concept of MLM. There are two sources of income for the affiliate. One is to promote the affiliate product, while the other is to recruit new affiliates under their wing. The second income could be a one-time commission for every new headcount under your second-tier or a cut of the second-tier affiliates earnings. If you actively promote the product as well as recruit new affiliates, you could possibly earn much more than a normal pay-per-sale program.
These three factors have the potential to optimize your affiliate earnings to a higher level than the usual affiliate program. But never rush into every affiliate program that is offering these terms. Always check if they are reputable companies and dependable in their payments to their affiliates as well.
Authored By:
Angela Tay
The Super Affiliate Handbook
Learn How You Can Progress To Be A Super Affiliate!
Friday, October 24, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Affiliate Marketing Tips - How to Search Engine Optimise the Meta Keywords For Your Website
There are many ways in driving traffic to a website, for e.g., pay-per-click advertising, etc. But these cost a lot in the long run, especially if you have a niche affiliate website that is highly competitive. Do you know a simple tweak of your website's meta "keywords" tag can help you optimize the chances of visitors finding your website by search engines instead? And the best part of it is, there is absolutely no cost if you do it yourself!
But how do you know what keywords are good enough to capture the traffic? The right keywords will draw targeted visitors who are looking for information in your niche to your website and not any Tom, Dick or Harry. Targeted visitors are important as they probably have set their mind in purchasing the product and are just searching on the internet for more information.
There are three basic steps to finding the best meta "keywords" for your website.
1) Brainstorm a draft list of phrases and words that are closely related to your website content
Write down as many words and phrases you can think of, in different permutations, according to how you think your targeted visitors will do the search. You can also use singular and plural forms of the words if necessary.
2) Research on these keywords
With these keywords, you can conduct a search to find out how often they are searched by "real" traffic with search term suggestion tools, like Word Tracker (freekeywords.wordtracker.com). These are free to use and are really useful in other aspects of affiliate marketing as well. Highlight those keywords that are highly sought for, and discard those that result in few or even no searches. In the process of your research, you may also see some keywords that are not in your brainstorm list, but are actively searched. Pick up these keywords as well.
3) Check out the competition for your keywords
Now that you have a list of short listed keywords that you can probably use for your meta "keywords" tag, one by one, check out your competition with Google search engine. Find out the Google Page Rank for the last website on the first page of the search results for a particular keyword. If the last website has an average Page Rank of 3 or 4, keep the keyword. Repeat the process for all keywords. Keywords that show results with websites of high Page Rank even at the last position are deemed to be too competitive, you may consider discarding them. This is because even if you optimise your website with this keyword, it's quite unlikely you will be on the first page of the Google search results. Unless you reach a higher Page Rank than them!
After finding the appropriate keywords that could possibly get you ranked high in Google, select no more than 30 of them to put at your meta "keywords" tag. Also do not get the idea that repeating the same keywords (unless they differ as singular and plural) will give you better search results. You will get penalised by Google instead.
You may wish to customise these meta "keywords" for different pages of your website as well. Although this may seem very time consuming, but it should show some improvements in your search engine traffic after some time.
Want a shortcut? This could help!
Authored By:
Angela Tay
But how do you know what keywords are good enough to capture the traffic? The right keywords will draw targeted visitors who are looking for information in your niche to your website and not any Tom, Dick or Harry. Targeted visitors are important as they probably have set their mind in purchasing the product and are just searching on the internet for more information.
There are three basic steps to finding the best meta "keywords" for your website.
1) Brainstorm a draft list of phrases and words that are closely related to your website content
Write down as many words and phrases you can think of, in different permutations, according to how you think your targeted visitors will do the search. You can also use singular and plural forms of the words if necessary.
2) Research on these keywords
With these keywords, you can conduct a search to find out how often they are searched by "real" traffic with search term suggestion tools, like Word Tracker (freekeywords.wordtracker.com). These are free to use and are really useful in other aspects of affiliate marketing as well. Highlight those keywords that are highly sought for, and discard those that result in few or even no searches. In the process of your research, you may also see some keywords that are not in your brainstorm list, but are actively searched. Pick up these keywords as well.
3) Check out the competition for your keywords
Now that you have a list of short listed keywords that you can probably use for your meta "keywords" tag, one by one, check out your competition with Google search engine. Find out the Google Page Rank for the last website on the first page of the search results for a particular keyword. If the last website has an average Page Rank of 3 or 4, keep the keyword. Repeat the process for all keywords. Keywords that show results with websites of high Page Rank even at the last position are deemed to be too competitive, you may consider discarding them. This is because even if you optimise your website with this keyword, it's quite unlikely you will be on the first page of the Google search results. Unless you reach a higher Page Rank than them!
After finding the appropriate keywords that could possibly get you ranked high in Google, select no more than 30 of them to put at your meta "keywords" tag. Also do not get the idea that repeating the same keywords (unless they differ as singular and plural) will give you better search results. You will get penalised by Google instead.
You may wish to customise these meta "keywords" for different pages of your website as well. Although this may seem very time consuming, but it should show some improvements in your search engine traffic after some time.
Want a shortcut? This could help!
Authored By:
Angela Tay
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Choosing Between a Free Web Host Or Paid Web Host For Your Affiliate Website
A web host is a company that stores your website on their servers and makes it accessible for others to access via the internet. So should you opt for free web hosting or paid web hosting for your website?
My advice is, if you are new to the internet and would like to explore the functionalities of having a website with no business links, feel free to try out the free ones. But if you are intending to set up a business related website, for e.g., for your affiliate business, do think twice about it!
If you have an affiliate business website on a free host, you may risk your website being down for no reasons. As you are not paying anything to warrant their customer support, do you think they will bother much? They might not even attend to your complaints and your website will be down for an unlimited time beyond your control! This will deeply affect your business in this downtime period as visitors who try to click on your page gets an error page instead. Do you think they will come back again? They will just think your website does not exist. You will face loss of traffic and potential earnings for that whole time.
Free hosts can also shut down your website anytime. If you have directed all your promotion links to the web address of this website, it's going to be a big blow to suffer! Imagine if you have written tons of articles with this link and submitted them to many directories, it's a nightmare to even think about modifying all the articles with this old link.
The reason why these companies can offer free hosting is because of the advertising revenue they get from your website. Notice all the annoying pop-ups or banners that are not part of your website? You have absolutely no control on the appearance of these advertising widgets if you are using their free hosting service. If these irritate you already, it would most likely affect your visitors as well. They might feel that your website do not look professional and credible enough for them to click and buy the product you are recommending.
On the other hand, by investing just a couple of dollars a month for a paid web host, you can have a greater peace of mind! Your website will also be more protected against any unnecessary downtime or shut down problems as legitimate web host companies rely a lot on customer feedback and reviews to build their business. A satisfied customer will introduce another customer, so on and so forth, so if they have a reputation of being reliable, it is the best form of advertising they can get.
It is also important to check if the paid web host company has excellent customer support as well. In the event that you have problems with your website, all you want is to get it up again as soon as possible. The best scenario is when you are able to reach their customer service in a very short time, and have someone help you fix the problem immediately. Time is very important in an online business. At the time your website is inaccessible, your potential customers are turned away, not by their choice. You may be losing their business in those precious minutes! It is not worth paying for an unresponsive web host who can't give you the appropriate support when needed.
In general, I always recommend paid web hosting, especially if you are building the website for business in the long haul. If you do not wish to spend the money first, you can consider building your site on free blogging platforms and eventually upgrade it to one that is hosted with a web host when you are more ready.
Authored By:
Angela Tay
My advice is, if you are new to the internet and would like to explore the functionalities of having a website with no business links, feel free to try out the free ones. But if you are intending to set up a business related website, for e.g., for your affiliate business, do think twice about it!
If you have an affiliate business website on a free host, you may risk your website being down for no reasons. As you are not paying anything to warrant their customer support, do you think they will bother much? They might not even attend to your complaints and your website will be down for an unlimited time beyond your control! This will deeply affect your business in this downtime period as visitors who try to click on your page gets an error page instead. Do you think they will come back again? They will just think your website does not exist. You will face loss of traffic and potential earnings for that whole time.
Free hosts can also shut down your website anytime. If you have directed all your promotion links to the web address of this website, it's going to be a big blow to suffer! Imagine if you have written tons of articles with this link and submitted them to many directories, it's a nightmare to even think about modifying all the articles with this old link.
The reason why these companies can offer free hosting is because of the advertising revenue they get from your website. Notice all the annoying pop-ups or banners that are not part of your website? You have absolutely no control on the appearance of these advertising widgets if you are using their free hosting service. If these irritate you already, it would most likely affect your visitors as well. They might feel that your website do not look professional and credible enough for them to click and buy the product you are recommending.
On the other hand, by investing just a couple of dollars a month for a paid web host, you can have a greater peace of mind! Your website will also be more protected against any unnecessary downtime or shut down problems as legitimate web host companies rely a lot on customer feedback and reviews to build their business. A satisfied customer will introduce another customer, so on and so forth, so if they have a reputation of being reliable, it is the best form of advertising they can get.
It is also important to check if the paid web host company has excellent customer support as well. In the event that you have problems with your website, all you want is to get it up again as soon as possible. The best scenario is when you are able to reach their customer service in a very short time, and have someone help you fix the problem immediately. Time is very important in an online business. At the time your website is inaccessible, your potential customers are turned away, not by their choice. You may be losing their business in those precious minutes! It is not worth paying for an unresponsive web host who can't give you the appropriate support when needed.
In general, I always recommend paid web hosting, especially if you are building the website for business in the long haul. If you do not wish to spend the money first, you can consider building your site on free blogging platforms and eventually upgrade it to one that is hosted with a web host when you are more ready.
Authored By:
Angela Tay
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