A step-by-step guide on how to break into affiliate marketing.

The following is an excerpt from the fast track guide on how to begin as an affiliate. The guide has been written aimed at people who know almost nothing about the industry or how to get started.  This guide walks newbie affiliates through the very basics just to get them started in generating revenue. The guide is filled with resources and tools and information using blogging methods by way of example for those who may not know how to get a website together. I have opted to charge a nominal fee of $8.73 for the complete guide which can be downloaded here
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/affiliate-marketing—how-to-begin-as-an-affiliate—a-step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-break-into-affiliate-marketing/8218631

I never understood and still don’t understand why so many people never looked at this industry to supplement their income. Affiliate marketing is ideal for people on low incomes, the disabled, parents who want to stay at home and look after their children or simply to supplement their income. Affiliate marketing facilitates the opportunity to work from home and enjoy what you will be doing.

I know that it will always be easy when you know how, but even I had to start somewhere and I am still learning after all these years. This article is intended for anyone coming into the industry that has little or no understanding about affiliate marketing. This is specifically aimed at anyone wanting to become an affiliate/publisher.

What is affiliate marketing? Some call this performance based marketing, some call it referral marketing, some call it revenue sharing, some call this loyalty marketing and I have heard it being called partner programs, associate programs, all these terms are correct. Affiliate marketing is predominantly on-line advertising whereby the affiliate is paid a small commission for referring their own website traffic to an online store. Affiliates get rewarded based on an action performed by his/her referred visitor, the affiliate remuneration (referred visitor action) can be based on cost per click, pay per sale, CPA, CPA (2) can also mean pay per lead (example, insurance quotes).

“A system of advertising in which site A agrees to feature buttons from site B, and site A gets a commission on any sales, clicks or leads generated for site B. Affiliate Marketing is on line advertising where the advertiser (Merchant) pays for advertising purely on results. All affiliate campaigns are based on a revenue share or hybrid commission/leads deal.”

          Source: Jessica Luthi, E-Consultancy.com (Affiliate Marketing–A Buyers Guide April 2004)

Do people really make money from Affiliate Marketing?

“High-level findings from USA Affiliate Census… At the hobbyist end of the spectrum, nearly a quarter of affiliates (23%) generate less than $50 per month in sales for their merchants, and a further 7% generate between $50 and $100. At the other end of the scale, 17% of affiliates generate more than $50,000 a month in revenue for their merchants”

          Source: http://econsultancy.com/reports/us-affiliate-census

Reported in the United Kingdom Affiliate Census, “the UK affiliate market was worth £3.82B in 2008, a 22% increase from £3.13B in 2007. An estimated £227M was paid last year in commissions and fees to affiliates and networks.”

          Source: http://econsultancy.com/reports/uk-affiliate-census

Please keep these figures in perspective; whilst there is big money to be made in this industry, the figures should not mislead you into thinking that you can give up your day job in a week. The report is to show you how much money some affiliates earn. I can tell you the majority of affiliates work very hard to achieve a sustainable income.

One problem with this industry that I have found is that it can be vague when it comes to information on how to do affiliate marketing from an affiliate’s perspective. The problem of ambiguity seems to stem from the fact it is an individually defined kind of sector, meaning it’s based upon the affiliate being seen and operating as an individual. Each affiliate will have their own level of understanding about the technology, marketing, how the internet works to name but a few. However, there are some basic rules to follow. Tip: walk before you can run, start off small, and get it all working before reaching for the moon.

When do you start making money?

Realistically, by month three you could be looking at double figures and depending on the subject/topic you chose, you may even reach three figures, (this is also subject to many variables) I can tell you if you have reached double figures by month three, you have something viable to build upon, don’t give up. What this will show you is that you are on your way and what you are doing is working, just some further fine-tuning may be required. There is no magic wand, there is no such thing as a sure thing, and it all takes time and effort. If I was coming into the industry as a newbie today, here is how I would do it and I wouldn’t need to have technical skills or even a website. This is how to become an affiliate using simple blogging

 To buy the guide
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/affiliate-marketing—how-to-begin-as-an-affiliate—a-step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-break-into-affiliate-marketing/8218631

Christian Blake dvd

Affiliate marketing has stepped up a gear with more respondents now declaring they engage in affiliate marketing full time as opposed to part time.  Just over half of all affiliate respondents declaring they now devote all their working time within the industry.  This is a very significant statistic.  It clearly indicates that what ten years ago was regarded as a hobbyist activity and a way of earning a little extra towards the household budget has now progressed and transformed itself into a highly professional and marketing oriented industry.  What is extremely significant is that there is still scope for a strong expansion in the industry with 85% of affiliates working from home.  This indicates that whilst many affiliates are engaged in full time activity, in terms of numeral quantity regarding commercial interlinking, affiliates are still on the whole small operators in the commercial sectors.  It indicates that affiliate marketing has grown from a part time activity over the last decade to a full time commercial prospect for many individuals but that there is still significant room for expansion with affiliates directly employing others as the industry expands further.

This clear indication that affiliate marketing is growing and that there is significant room for expansion also highlights that there is room for many more individuals to participate in affiliate marketing and that new “blood” to the industry can benefit the merchant and also that existing affiliates can have the interoperability to expand into major companies.

Nearly a quarter of all affiliates are reporting they are at the lower end of productivity, generating around $50 a month in revenue.  Just under a fifth of all affiliates who responded to the survey report conversely that they generate in excess of $50,000 every month in revenue for a merchant.  This is a significant figure.  What is even more interesting is that more than 32% of affiliates generate $10,000 a month or more for merchants.

There is an extremely close differential between paid search activity and true content undertaken by affiliates from which affiliates indicate as their priority of importance.  More true content is now being generated and this can only strengthen Brand awareness, particularly for smaller merchants wishing to expand into the market place.

More US affiliates promote UK retailers proportionately than UK affiliates promote US retailers.  This clearly indicates particularly amongst established affiliates, a willingness to embrace new markets.  98% of US affiliates promote US merchants.

• Free Willy release

The strongest US sector promoted by affiliates in the US is the Health, Sports & Fitness sector.  This sector is heavily promoted by 41% of all affiliates.  Two fifths of all US affiliates promote 10 merchants or less and this could be an indication when put together with the information revealed that a significant number of affiliates are lone operations.  It means that at present the industry is growing but that it is not in a position to absorb greater and heavier intensive promotional activity by the majority of affiliates.

One interesting demographic about affiliates is that everyone has misconceived what age an affiliate is.  I had always assumed that young people (the tech savvy new age) were the main recruitment source for people wishing to be part of the affiliate industry.  It shocked me to discover that half of all affiliates are actually aged 31 – 50.  Looking at these figures in closer detail I can see why.  Many affiliates still consider affiliate marketing activity to be part time and a supplementary income stream.  What is clear is that as more affiliates expand into outright commercial enterprises employing staff, younger people will become more involved in the industry as affiliates or working for an affiliate company.

54% of all affiliates in the industry joined prior to 2007 so a massive 46% are new entrants with less than two years in the industry as affiliates.  This is highly significant as it demonstrates that affiliates who are newly joined are looking for additional income sources and with further experience could themselves expand into full time commercial operations employing others.  This clearly identifies that the economic downturn is also playing a part in affiliate recruitment with more people looking for supplementary income.  What is encouraging is that the number of women involved in the industry is increasing with 28% of all respondents indicating they are women affiliates.  The industry however is still far too male oriented but the improvement in women affiliate numbers is encouraging.  As an Agency, we know very clearly that some of the best producing affiliates in many sectors are women and that this industry needs more women to participate.

Affiliates are also getting smarter with many more people from the “professional classes” (people with BA/BS or higher) now participating as affiliates.

Little Fish full Just under a third of all affiliates are generating significant traffic (over 10,000 visitors) every month and this reflects the high earning potential being indicated by affiliates who responded to the survey.

Dressed to Kill ipod

What has seriously interested me is that two fifths of respondents use a blog for marketing. 

What has shocked me is that only a quarter of affiliates use a datafeed. More stimulating is that text with embedded links accounts for half of all preferred activity.  This lack of use by datafeeds has come as a shock.  Far too often I read in forums complaints by affiliates about datafeed quality.  So my questions here are supplementary to the report.  Are datafeeds NOT used because they are rubbish, they are not in depth, they are not suitable, they are not needed or because the affiliate does not know how to use them?  Why is it that only a quarter of affiliates use material from a datafeed?

The strongest affiliate network by revenue in the US as indicated by affiliates is Commission Junction with half of all affiliates indicating it is in their top three.  A third of all affiliates indicate Linkshare in their top three.  A surprising newcomer is Google Affiliate Network with just over a fifth of all affiliates indicating this in amongst their top three.

The two most important aspects indicated by affiliates as to which network they would participate in are a broad range of merchants and tracking.  Surprisingly payment terms came very low on affiliates criteria of importance.  The size of a network was not an important issue, indicating that smaller networks can attract a loyal following of affiliates if they excel in many key strategic areas.

Labyrinth the movie Enough rip

The key point that affiliates have indicated in terms of merchant approachability is that too many merchants are stand off in their approach.  Affiliates clearly (two thirds) indicate they want someone to talk to.  Merchants would be well advised to have someone dedicated to the needs of affiliates as many indicate they will not promote a merchant who ignores them.

The US Affiliate Census strongly indicates that the industry is maturing with many older affiliates becoming involved.  It also indicates that if you are prepared to take the time to learn the industry you can make significant sales turnover.  I am very encouraged that US affiliates are embracing non US markets although this seems mainly restricted to Canada and the UK with few venturing beyond that.

I am delighted to see more women affiliates.  From a male perspective it makes those important affiliate get togethers all the more convivial.  Women account for half this planets population.  We need even more women affiliates.  They are highly motivated and extremely successful carving out niches and maximising revenue for merchants.

Dirty hd As indicated, communication between affiliate is vital.  This does NOT mean that affiliates wish to be bombarded with information overload.  What they want is communication and action taken when they raise an issue.  They wish to communicate and they do not wish to be ignored, but a fine balance has to be drawn between the desires of the merchant to get greater exposure and sales and the needs of the affiliate to be allowed to just get on with things without being constantly called on.

What has clearly come across in this survey is that merchants now have at their disposal an effective marketing team with many highly professional affiliates capable of taking their programs to greater levels of achievement.  I have great hopes for the future of affiliate marketing and US affiliates are now seriously becoming highly professional in their expertise and activity.

buy Masked and Anonymous To download the full report

• Sleepaway Camp hd

During Affiliate Summit West I was absolutely inspired when I had the signal privilege of attending a Seminar moderated by Scott Polk, Senior SEO Analyst, Bruce Clay Inc

• Twister divx

.

On the advisory panel were:

Eric Lander, Organic Search Manager, ADP inc
Carolyn Shelby, Director of Natural Search, CShel
David Snyder, Co-Founder, Search&Social LLC

As soon as the official Seminar close time came along I rushed out and collared another journalist to get these enthusing words on video The Best SEO Advice Ever

• Aladdin and the King of Thieves full movie

.

One very sound piece of advice on CSS was to keep the designer away from h tags which they prefer to use for design instead of their proper use in SEO. The advice on how to get the best out of it was quite inspiring.

What the panel did was look at audience websites both retail and affiliate and share with the audience on how to maximise the SEO potential on an individual basis. So professional were the answers, so relevant and so accurate…the audience were gagging and I mean gagging for more. The session overran until they were kicked out and the panel offered to continue elsewhere for the dozens of delegates who wanted their sites reviewing.

I have attended many business seminars and conferences over the last few years. I have seen the so-called “professionals” and “market leaders”. They pale in comparison to the sheer giants that were in that conference room. You want sound SEO advice? Now you know who to tap. They were absolutely superb. Definitely the best session ever.

Commencing IMMEDIATELY and available in appreciation of the immense efforts on all our behalf by members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, Stand-Out.Net is launching a special promotion to all serving members of HM Forces and their immediate family.

Cocoon: The Return ipod With IMMEDIATE effect, any order made by a member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces or their dependents delivering to a BFPO address shall receive 15% off ALL products.

I encourage everyone to publish this code, available SOLELY to military personnel.

Keeping costs down on your ppc campaign!

So by now you already know how useful a ppc campaign can be! It’s an excellent way of getting immediate targeted traffic to your site (making it perfect for new sites!), and it’s great for small and large businesses alike. There are low set-up costs, and you can see quick returns for your investment, making it a cost effective method for online advertising. It can also help to boost brand awareness, and as it’s been shown that 60% of individuals will click on organic results; that leaves another 40% left to target! You can allocate whatever budget you choose to your ppc campaign, and adjust this whenever you want. But in order to keep costs down, you should definitely consider the following:

Set your budget for ppc!

This will be driven by what you can afford, and by your ROI (return on investment). To determine your budget for ppc, you first of all need to calculate how much a ppc conversion is worth in profit to you. Say your profit on each conversion is £10, you are receiving 100 leads per day and have a 20% conversion rate, then over the course of a 30 day month you will realise £1,500 in profit. So if you spend £500 as your ppc budget for the month, then you will have made £1,000 profit on your ppc campaign!

One of the great things about ppc is that you can measure your ROI, so if your ad stops paying for itself – you can pause your campaign and change the ad, or just cancel a campaign that’s not working.

Target your ads!

Reduce your CTR (click through rate) by ensuring you only get targeted traffic to your site. The idea of reducing your CTR might sound an odd thing to do! But actually when you think about it, the only visitors you want are those that are actually interested in your site. And as you’re paying for every click, make sure you are getting traffic that’s actually interested in your site. Otherwise, they will click on your ad and then just click away. The best way to avoid this is to make sure your ads are aimed at your target audience. It sounds obvious, but you only need to do a google search to see how often ads come up for eBay that aren’t really relevant to the search term you used. So make sure you word your ads carefully and include all relevant info and keywords. If you do that, you will keep the costs down on your ppc campaign, as well as increasing conversions. Basically what you’re aiming for are qualified leads that give you the lowest CTR with the highest conversion rate!

Don’t forget to check out your competition’s ads, what keywords and terms are they using that you aren’t. Also, wherever possible try and find relevant keywords with little competition, and don’t forget to include common mis-spellings in your campaign. Most important of all, think about what people will actually be searching for!

Make sure you link directly to the product you’re promoting rather than to a generic page – it makes a difference!

Some more tips to refine your ads (and lower your ppc budget!)

When you set up your ppc campaign, begin with a higher bid in order to build up your. Basically, the top spots get more clicks. As more clicks mean a higher CTR, starting with a higher will actually lower your CPC whilst maintaining your ad position!

You need to run your ppc ad for a full 24 hour period to see how it’s working, but if you have set your ppc buget too low, then your ad will stop running during that period, and you won’t get an accurate view of how your test has been running.

Use negative keywords to help target your ads. You may discover your ad is showing for search terms that are unrelated to your ad, but just happen to include your target keywords. So for instance if your ad is for white wedding dresses, you could use red as a negative keyword to stop your ad appearing for “red wedding dress”. This is easy to deal with, simply add the negative keywords to your ppc campaign to stop this happening! After all, you don’t want to target anyone who is not actually looking for your ad!

With google adwords, you have the option of using broad match, phrase match and exact match to help you refine your campaign. Broad match is the default option, if you include terms such as wedding dress in your keyword list, then your ads will also appear for searches such as wedding and dress. But if you enter your keyword in quotation marks, then your ad will only appear when a user searches on “wedding dress”. Alternatively, you can use brackets, i.e. [wedding dress], to ensure your ad only appears when someone searches for that specific phrase without any other terms in the query.

Don’t forget!

Having a long-standing ppc campaign and a good, will mean you will be more likely to get lower bids/higher positions. So get that campaign up and running!

Use the ppc engine of your choice to find out what your top priority keywords will cost if you try to get in the top 3 ppc ranks for most of your keywords. And don’t worry too much if you can’t afford to grab that no 1 spot, because you could well find that it isn’t the best spot for you in terms of optimum ROI. In fact, you might find the no 3 spot actually converts better for you! Basically, you’re aiming for the lowest CPC rate you can, whilst still placing your ad in one of the top positions. So aim for somewhere between the 2nd and 5th spot. Positioning yourself on the first page is important if you can achieve it, but the no 1 spot is often not essential, because quite often people will click on the first two ads of a search results page, and in fact they will often click on the first ad, leave and go to the second ad!

And lastly, don’t forget to consider your own level of enthusiasm! The bigger your campaign, the more the work! (i.e. more keywords and more adds = more effort!) So don’t take on more than you can realistically handle!

http://www.tamba-games.co.uk/internetworld/

And it works and I love it, I know…. I cant help myself, its just soooo cool.
It’s a little addictive :0)

Oh yes sorry here is the serious bit!
29th April – 1st May 08
Remember to register FREE for Internet world ,it looks like its going to be mega huge and the key note speakers, well the list goes on and affiliate marketing is getting a pretty big presence. If there is one event NOT to be missed, its this one. Ill be going and if your about let me know and lets grab a coffee.

Keynote Theatre

The leading names deliver the cutting edge

Tuesday 29 April 2008

The future of the social web
10.15

Myspace , Travis Katz , Senior Vice President International

Consumers reconfigured: identity and lives online and off
11.00

Futureal , Tamar Kasriel

Harnessing Social Media for B2B and B2C marketing campaigns
11.45

Intel , Chris Hogg , Director of Marketing

How UK Government approaches the web and social media
12.30

Central Office of Information , Jamie Galloway , Director of Digital Media

Session: New trends in digital marketing
13.15

McKinsey & Company , Jacques Bughin , Director

Monetizing Social Media: a case study in measuring the value of social media marketing online
14.00

E-consultancy , Ashley Friedlein , CEO (reccomended by APA)

The dangers of the proprietary web – Future of Internet and Open Source
15.00

Mozilla Europe , Tristan Nitot , President (recommended by APA)

Google University Adwords Masterclass
15.45-17.00

Google , Google University

Wednesday 30 April 2008

Beyond media cannibalisation: feeding the always-on consumer hugry for more…
10.00

ITV Broadband , Annelies Van Den Belt , Managing Director

Marketing 3.V: Strategic marketing, next generation immersive advertising and brand engagement in virtual worlds
10.40

Habbo UK , Phil Guest , Managing Director

Mobile Internet: a broadcaster’s perspective
11.20

BBC , Peter Mercier , Head of Mobile

To see the full list of key note speakers go here

http://www.internetworld.co.uk/masterclasses.html

IDM Academy
http://www.internetworld.co.uk/idm-academy.html

Digital Marketing theatre
http://www.internetworld.co.uk/digitalmarketing-theatre.html

Enterprise Content Management
http://www.internetworld.co.uk/ecm.html

The Microsoft Pavilion at Internet World
http://www.internetworld.co.uk/copy-microsoft-sharepoint-pavilion.html

More than 1,000 respondents took part in this survey, making it the most authoritative study of its kind about this fast-evolving marketplace.

“The percentage of organisations using Yahoo!’s paid search platform has climbed from 45% last year to 49%. The proportion of advertisers using Microsoft’s platform has dropped slightly from 33% last year to 30% this year.”

"9% of companies surveyed are spending more than £1 million annually on paid search"

“Gregoriadis added: “As separate entities, Yahoo! and Microsoft are struggling to make significant inroads into Google’s seemingly impregnable position.”

The research also found that 89% of search advertisers rate Google as the best for return on investment and, identically, 89% of company respondents rate Google as the best for quality of traffic. Google is even more dominant for its management tools. An overwhelming 94% of client-side advertisers and 91% of agencies said that Google was the best in this regard"

Down load a sample of The UK Search Engine Marketing Report or for the full report from E-Consultancy.com

My thoughts are, evidence shows that MSN & Yahoo, whilst indeed they don’t have volume, for some merchants, they can yield a better conversion, indeed Yahoo came in as No 2 for next best converting engines. Whist this report is UK it would be intersting to see a US comparison re MSN and Yahoo.
"Some 77% of UK company respondents are based in the UK"

I would be asking the question how many people are seriously investing into other search engines to complement their google efforts. “Google’s seemingly impregnable position” The concerns I have and still have is that far too much investment into the one google basket is dangerous for a business and still advocate not putting all your eggs into the one google basket all that data about your business, would you hand the keys to your safe to a complete stranger?
Also some food for thought, what’s your plan B if google died tomorrow?

Was this latest move from google’s changes in their trade mark policy good for your business? Some will argue yes and some will argue no, it depends on who you are, what is clear is that google likes to keep us on our toes and throw a few curve balls and all we can do is be reactive, this makes me nervous. Impo, we need a serious competitor to secure our businesses and MSN/Yahoo have got to get it together to provide that choice. All the signs are there it’s in their conversions (for some companies) this is encouraging and I really do hope they can get the juice and tools to propel them on and fast! Don’t get me wrong, I think google is a super power and they command respect. Now here is where I can see an interesting scenario developing which could work to MSN’s advantage. “According to company respondents, the biggest problems preventing paid search marketing success are as follows:

1) Keywords too expensive (38%)
2) Lack of internal resource (36%)
3) Lack of budget (34%)"

Where by click costs become so expensive it starts to drive companies to the competitors and it will start with the small to medium businesses. Internal resources, lack of… may also drive businesses to google’s competitors. The more the google goal posts keep shifting, the more appealing their competitors become, now that would be an interesting scenario. Never underestimate the little person, whilst economically they may have less then the deeper pockets, collectively they have the power to influence and change the search landscape over time.
We’ll see :0)

Matt Cutts, April fool joke gone a bit pear shaped?
I know a good SEO guy that can help roflamo
Used to rank No1 for SEO blog, still ranks at No1 now says “HACKED”
You couldn’t make this up – what a cracker!
Bless your cottons ;0)