The Basics of Affiliate Marketing for Newbies

Every affiliate marketing newbie’s greatest asset is knowledge; understanding the basic concepts of successful affiliate marketing. So how do we define the overall concept of affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing basically means selling someone else’s products online and earning a commission for each sale.

As an affiliate marketer you will research and find products to promote on your website. Each time you make a sale through your affiliate link you will earn a portion of that sale. The commissions can vary from as low as 7% to a generous 75%. The sales are tracked through your unique affiliate ID which is assigned to you at the time you sign up for a specific affiliate program. Your unique affiliate ID is tracked and each time a sale is made through your link it’s recorded. Some of the better affiliate programs give you a wide variety of marketing tools to help you successfully promote their products as well as a comprehensive member’s area to make it easier for you to track your affiliate sales and commissions.

Affiliate marketing is a good way to get started online. You can be set up and ready to go within a few days and there is no need to spend any time creating your own products or purchasing inventory. You are simply promoting other people’s products, which means the vendor is actually responsible for order fulfillment, customer service and anything else related to the sale. You simply refer the sale to them and get paid a commission for it.

For example if you have a love of cooking, you can create a website around cooking related topics and include tips, recipes, and reviews of all your favorite cooking gadgets. You can then find affiliate programs online and promote some of those products on your website. You can find programs by doing a search under your chosen topic such as “cooking” and adding the words “affiliate program” to that term.

You can also find affiliate programs at places like CJ.com.

Although affiliate marketing is an easy way to get started online, there is a little more to it than just throwing up a few links and banners and waiting for the affiliate check to arrive. Heads-up, affiliate marketing newbies, it takes time and effort to make sales.

The best way to do this is by providing quality information on your website and only linking to affiliate products where appropriate. Another good tip is to review the products you promote so that you can accurately describe all the features – good and bad. Your customers will appreciate honest feedback and will be more likely to buy from you if you give them good quality information and honest reviews.

Affiliate Marketing Newbie SEO 101

Search engine optimization, better known as “SEO” can be a daunting process for affiliate marketing newbies to learn. However, we cannot stress enough the importance of mastering this process in order to succeed in the business of affiliate marketing. This may seem like a tall order for a newbie to the whole SEO game, but fortunately there are a couple of things you can learn that will help you understand, and hopefully implement, the SEO process to quickly boost your site’s ranking.

What is SEO?

The first step is to get a basic understanding of what SEO is and how it will benefit your affiliate marketing site. Search engine optimization is an important skill that will allow your website or webpage to get better rankings in search engines, such as Google, which in turn makes it easier for people to discover your site so you can make money online. There are a lot of techniques and processes involved in SEO, which is why learning how it works first of all is one of the most important lessons for affiliate marketing newbies.

Basically, SEO helps online businesses get a certain amount of exposure on the web by making them more visible and easier to find through the use of search engine indexing software. This allows the search engines to redirect traffic to your site and business, improving your chances of receiving a steady stream of market.

How is your site or page ranked?

Before your website can make full use of SEO, you must first get it indexed by search engines. How this works is that search engines find your website or webpage through the use of different indexing programs, such as “bots”or spiders that basically follows all links that lead to your site or page and downloads copies of it as it goes.

After this, your site or page will be analyzed and indexed based on some algorithms and criteria set by the search engines, thereby giving your site its ranking. This can be achieved through effective link building, which requires you to create connections to other sites that have similar contents to that of your site.

Benefits of SEO for your site

One of the more obvious benefits of SEO is that It can help improve your site’s web ranking in search engines, thereby increasing the amount of web traffic that your website can generate. Since your site is now easier to locate on the web, it is a safe bet that there will be a significant change in the amount of visits from potential customers that your site can get. Keep in mind that making your site easier to find makes a whole lot of difference in the survival of any online business.

Avoid spamming

Spamming is one way of getting traffic directed to your website, however, this type of method will only work for a short period of time, and will ultimately lead to your site’s failure.

This type of method works by literally tricking traffic to get redirected to your site through the use of some deceptive techniques, such as using irrelevant keywords and using duplicate content on other sites just to try and increase your site’s page ranking.

Initially, this can generate some traffic to your site, but it will create some problems later on for your site, resulting in the loss of some potential customers along the way.

Learning how the entire SEO system works is your first step towards managing your online business or website, especially for an affiliate marketing newbie such as yourself. Understanding how it works can help you determine what other steps you need to take in order to fully realize and take advantage of the entire SEO process in turning your business into a complete online success.

Article Marketing for Affiliate Marketing Success

The use of article marketing is a great way to increase traffic to your website, establish yourself as an expert in your field and get people on your list. Writing and distributing articles online may seem simple but it really can do all of that for you. This is an important lesson for affiliate marketing newbies.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you use articles to help with your affiliate marketing:

• Write quality articles. Don’t write articles just for the sake of building incoming links. Sure this is a great reason to write and distribute articles but you also want your article to be more than that for you. By writing a quality article you can get those incoming links and other business owners to place your articles on their websites (even more incoming links, not to mention good traffic).

And the quality content you write can become the icing on the cake if your article gets picked up and published by a large offline or online publication.  Now that’s the way to get in the spotlight! The bottom line is that mediocre articles just won’t get you the same results. So if you’re going to spend the time writing and distributing articles, why not make your articles really work for you.

• Be the expert. When writing see yourself as the expert. You chose this field and it’s your job to communicate your knowledge to your readers who will hopefully become customers. Believe you’re the expert and let it show in your content. Remember if you don’t establish yourself as an expert in your field, no one else will do it for you.

• Write author bios that sell. Many people may the mistake of writing the same mundane author bio at the end of their articles: Joe Bananas is the owner of a website called joeswebsite.com and enjoys writing. Ugh! Don’t waste that valuable Internet real estate at the end of your articles by putting in a weak, ineffective bio. If you’ve written a good article the reader will look at the author bio. If they are intrigued by what you say, they will click over to your website to learn more.

Be precise and write a benefit-oriented author bio like: ‘To learn more about how to build websites that sell, visit joeswebsite.com” or “For a free 15-page report on building sales-producing websites, visit joeswebsite.com”. See the difference? Even in your bio, always concentrate on the benefit to your reader. Following the affiliate marketing newbie tips here can go a long way to helping your success in making money online.

Don’t Get Lonely Out Here – Join A Best Web

If you’re like me, you’ve jumped into this thing called affiliate marketing with both feet. You spend hours on the computer and look up and the day is gone! Well, that’s no way to live, even on this major learning curve we affiliate marketing newbies are on. The whole point of affiliate marketing is that one day you’ll get some freedom to live life the way you want to – on your terms. If you think there’s no time for freedom now, then it’s time for a wake-up call. And you can get that and more over at A Best Web, the online forum and mega resource for affiliate marketers. I did.

Feeling more than a little intimidated by the sheer number of members – 57,400 strong, I signed up today to be part of this affiliate marketing community. Yes I felt like a newbie, but I got out there anyway. When you sign up, make sure not to just blow past the rules. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about – the form comes up, you click OK and don’t read what it says. Well here’s some of what you’ll miss if you do that at A Best Web:

• You can’t reveal your name or website in your posts.
• No recruiting anyone for something you’re selling – BIG no-no!
• You earn the right to display a signature or send private message other members after you make 250 posts.
• And break the rules and you’ll be banned and banished.

So it’s a commitment to join this forum. But my sense is that if you participate, read and post, you’ll get back tenfold for your efforts. Ask questions, get to know not only affiliates like us but the affiliate managers who are members. Learn everything you can on how to make money and how to get a life in affiliate marketing. The information is all there for the taking over at A Best Web. After you register, look me up and give a shout to a fellow affiliate marketing newbie. I’m “Midlifetrip”.

Now turn off your computer and take a break!

6 Copywriting Tips for Affiliate Marketing Newbies

Copywriting is the one skill that all affiliate marketing newbies should learn. As an affiliate marketer you communicate through words and if those words aren’t effectively conveying your message, then you’re in for a long, bumpy and unproductive ride.

Here are a few copywriting tips to help you get started writing in a way to get the right attention:

1. Know your target market. Good copywriters know exactly who they’re writing for – and to – before starting. They speak directly to ONE person and keep that same person in mind at all times. If you try to reach too many people with your copy you’ll end up missing your target altogether and even worse not reach anyone at all. Decide exactly who you’re writing your copy for and stick to it.

2. Use headlines that intrigue. Use clear headlines throughout your copy to guide the reader. Your main headline should be in bold and large letters to grab the readerís attention. It is often the headline which can either make or break your copy. Use a benefit-focused headline, which explains in powerful detail how you can help solve the customerís problem. Then use sub-headlines throughout the copy to keep the reader intrigued so they will keep reading.

3. Don’t use big words. Online writing is different from the writing you did in English class. Throw out the text book and forget all those rules your teacher taught you. Online writing is casual and should convey emotion and a clear purpose. Speak to the reader as though you’re sitting down with them, chatting over a cup of coffee. Avoid big words and long adjectives like the plague or risk boring (and losing) your prospects.

4. Be persuasive. You may love your product thatís great but you’re biased. Your customers want to hear about unbiased people who have used your product. Include customer testimonials, if you have them. Remember that not just any testimonial will do – the more information you can include the better. Try to include the person’s full name, city, state, website URL and if possible a picture of that person. A video or even audio testimonial is better yet. The more information your testimonial includes the more persuasive and believable it will be.

5. It’s not about you. In fact, it’s not about you at all. Effective copywriting is concerned with and focused on the needs of the customer. This is a big first lesson for affiliate marketing newbies. The writer doesn’t really matter! Of course, you may want to add a little personal information about yourself in order to build a connection with the reader and explain why they should trust you, but even in this case it’s all about what you can do for them. Go through your copy, does it contain a lot about what you think, then it’s time for a serious re-write. Your writing should always be about the customer and the benefits to them.

6. Don’t forget the call. The call to action that is. You must guide your readers and tell them exactly what you want them to do. If you want them to click over and purchase your weight loss product, then say so and say it in a clear way that promotes all the benefits of your products. For example “Click here to learn how you can lose those last 10 pounds and keep them off for good”. Be precise in your wording and always include a call to action that leaves the reader with no doubt as to what to do next.

If you follow these 6 tips, you’ll find that you can have success at copywriting – even as an affiliate marketing newbie.

Ten “Must-Know” Acronyms for Affiliate Marketing Newbies

Affiliate marketing newbies take note. You will quickly discover that visions of acronyms and affiliate marketing terms are haunting your sleep. Relax, you’re not alone. It’s not the least bit unusual for affiliate marketing newbies to experience acronym overload at some point in the learning process. Well we’ve been there too, and we understand the need to have one place to find the definitions of those acronyms that are most relevant to this business.

We’ve discovered that there’s a whole new lingo that all affiliate marketing newbies need to learn. In the following quick reference guide we share the ten most common acronyms. We’ll provide updates periodically, so stay tuned.

1. CTR – Click-Thru-Rate – The percentage of people who actually click on a banner.

2. PPC – Pay Per Click – This is when you get paid each time a customer clicks a certain link.

3. RSS Feed – Really Simply Syndication, Rich Site Summary, Raw Data Feed Site Summary – You have certain reader programs (Google Reader, Internet Explorer has a reader) that allows you to subscribe to the RSS Feeds of different websites and see the updates on those sites as soon as they make them.

4. SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Used to ensure that a website ranks at the top of a search engine result. This is a popular marketing technique that uses articles, keywords and other methods to help ensure the website is within the top results and thus more likely to be seen by searchers.

5. CPA – Cost-Per-Action – Refers to a click, lead or sale. For example, a merchant offers its affiliates $0.30 per newsletter sign-up. Even if the visitor doesn’t buy anything, the merchant will still pay you for the “action” or in this case, the newsletter sign-up.

6. CR – Conversion Ratio – The percentage of clicks, views, etc., needed to achieve a specific action (sale, lead, etc.). Translation: If one out of one hundred visitors to your website signs up for your report or newsletter, your website has a two percent signup ratio for that item.

7. SEM – Search Engine Marketing – Promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). Methods include: search engine optimization (SEO), paid placement, paid inclusion, digital asset optimization and contextual advertising. This term is also used to describe an individual (Search Engine Marketer).

8. HTML – Hyper-Text Markup Language – the authoring language used to create documents on the internet and to define the layout and structure of web documents using various attributes and tags.

9. URL – Uniform Resource Locator – the global address of documents on the internet specifies the protocol identifier and the resource location name (IP address or domain name) which are separate by a colon and two forward slashes.

10. ISP – Internet Service Provider – a company that provides access to the Internet for a monthly fee. Service includes a modem which allows you to log on to the Internet to browse, and also allows you to send and receive email.

Affiliate marketing newbies: These are important acronyms to know and understand. They are critical not only to online marketing but also to everyday life on the world wide web (WWW) in the 21st Century.

Stress Management for the Affiliate Marketing Newbie

When you’re just starting out as an affiliate marketing newbie, you might find yourself completely overwhelmed by all there is to learn and all the things you want to accomplish ASAP to be successful. How do I know this? Ha!! You should see my “to do” list. What I realized over the last few weeks of filling my poor brain with info on SEO, keyword searches and Google Wonder wheels is that you can definitely overdo – and take on a lot of unnecessary stress in the process.

Stress can never be completely avoided in life, but as an affiliate marketing newbie you can deal with it better if you know why it comes up. When you find yourself overwhelmed with the stress of the new learning curve you’re on, just remember this saying from the famous Chinese philosopher, Lao-tzu that:

“The journey to a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

Simply put, it is better that we finish our tasks one at a time rather let them overwhelm us to the point that we don’t make progress at all.

Here are a few ways to manage your day to reduce the stress of trying to juggle a number of different and unfamiliar tasks at one time:

1. Plan your day out. Know what needs to be done and follow the time-frame you set for each task. Stress occurs every time you don’t keep with your schedule and postpone work that piles up and ends up taking longer to complete.

2. Order your tasks. Figure out what needs to be done first, whether it’s article writing, keyword research or searching for great backlinks. Establish your own guidelines that allow to prioritize upcoming tasks. This way you’ll be able to focus on what needs to be done first, next and so on. Even though you’re an affiliate marketing newbie, you’ll soon learn how to best schedule your work so it all gets done – even the grunt work that you don’t enjoy!

3. Know when to delegate or outsource. There are always people who have the skills that we don’t have. Take me for example. I have worked to set up one niche affiliate marketing website. It took forever. I’m great at adding content but the technical part of putting a website together is just not my skill-set. I’m glad I learned this early and am prepared to outsource this kind of work when it comes up. When you realize that you need help to get something done, find a free lancer who can help.

4. Limit distractions. Some people work better with the radio blasting, others need complete silence. Whichever one you are or even in between, make sure to surround yourself with a comfortable environment that will help you concentration and inspire you to be more productive.

5. Know when to take a break. Nonstop work without a break cause stress that will catch up with you pretty quickly. Everyone has a saturation point. If you reach yours, it just means that you need to give mind and body a rest. Taking a break, spending time doing something you enjoy will help you refresh and come back to your affiliate marketing newbie tasks with renewed focus and determination. As my mom always used to say:

Take care of yourself!

These stress management tips can really help you make the most of your learning curve as an affiliate marketing newbie. And here’s one last suggestion. Surround yourself with people who can be part of a strong and ongoing support system. I’m lucky that I’m part of an incredible mastermind group that includes my sister and two good friends – each one an affiliate marketing newbie. We talk regularly and support one another to minimize stress and maximize our joint success as we learn online affiliate marketing.

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