Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The Real Truth About Effective Affiliate Marketing

By Bruce Hoover


Many debates go on about the best affiliate marketing programs and no real winners are found so perhaps it is just best to stick with regular websites. Affiliate marketing is a great way to sell other peoples products etc., while earning a commission. All that is required is a small website to promote the product or service and this can be anything from one page to something much bigger. Unlike applying for a sales position in the real world, on the Internet you get to choose what company you want to sell for.

Before you go creating a website you will need to have a product or service to sell. Each company has a terms and conditions page for their affiliates which you should always check before you start selling for them. This is your chance to safeguard your earnings before you lose anything for a misunderstanding of their objectives. It is quite normal for certain companies that cannot send items to other countries to restrict where their members can live.

Unless you intend to have a massive turnover with a product, steer clear of affiliate programs with less than 50 percent commission payments. A good place to look for products is clickbank.com or for the latest trends (changes daily) google.com/trends/hottrends, both of which will show which areas to put your affiliate marketing effort into. Steer clear of any affiliate programs that request money for membership, this is not normal and it might be the way they earn an income. The majority of programs will use Paypal or Clickbank and both are trustworthy so to ensure you are covered, register with both systems as it is free. There is no reason why you cannot use other companies when you become more experienced at affiliate marketing.

Actually marketing affiliate products can seem difficult at first if you are new to the business but there are many websites and ebooks that can help, in fact you may be overloaded with information. Many of the free ebooks contain web links to buy products that the author receives an affiliate commission on but you do not have to click on these and it does not mean the information is of little worth. It is easy to spend a great deal of money when you start before you have made your first dollar if you are not careful; start by using whatever free resources you can at first. This use of free products works well because it is a way for you to see whether the person who supplied them knows what they are doing.

In Summary

Remember that affiliate marketing does not have to rely only on online advertising methods, others exist. The purpose behind this is to direct traffic to your website where a certain percentage of people will place an order. To find out where your affiliate marketing efforts are best spent you will need to track where the traffic to your site is coming from and stick to those methods. There is a huge amount of freedom associated with affiliate marketing and the potential earnings are massive, but this can take many years to build up. Do not spend too much time learning about this because some people become permanent learners, never actually doing anything to ear money.

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