Internet Affiliate Marketing - 6 Steps To Success In Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate programs are suitable for those who do not have their own product or service to promote. They can promote other people's products or services as Reseller or Affiliate. The commission income can be fairly substantial and there are many super affiliates that are earning six figure income on the internet promoting products and services for others.

Here are 6 Power Steps that will assist you in your Affiliate Marketing venture.


1 Choice of Company
The company that you're going to represent must be established. It must be credible and have an excellent track record. Remember that you are going into a joint venture with them to promote their product or service. Here are other factors that you should take into account:

(a) The company must have products or services that are unique, of value, and are in demand. (b) The company should provide excellent support, training and resources to assist you to promote their products or services.

(c) There must be excellent tracking employed by the company to ensure that you will be credited for all your referrals. The tracking should credit you even when your prospects make a purchase months later.

(d) The commission rate must be attractive. For ebooks, softwares and virtual products, an acceptable commission rate should be between 40% to 60%. Commission payments for physical products are normally lower, between 5% to 15%.

(e) The company should pay commissions on at least 2 tiers. This will make it attractive for you to refer others to join you since you will be paid a percentage on their sales.


2 Cloak your referral links
There are many affiliates who lost their commission because their prospects 'change' the referral links. These affiliates took all the trouble to promote the products or services but the commissions due to them are 'hijacked' by the prospects because the prospects realized that these are referral links and therefore changed it to their own link with their own user name. In order to avoid this from happening you should CLOAK your referral link. This will hide your referral link. There are various ways of doing this. Here are some ways: (a) Use a sub-domain name.

(b) Use a tracking URL. You can get this from many companies that provide such services such as Ad-Alyzer, Adminder and Hyper Tracker.
You can get a FREE tracking service from:
http://resultstracker.net

(c) Use a Free Service that shortens your 'long' URL.
http://www.tinyurl.com

(d) There are many softwares available such as Affiliate Defender and Instant Affiliate Masker.


3 Test and Track your Promotions
It is important to test and track all of your Ads and promotional activities. You should be able to know the ROI(Return On Investments) on all you various campaigns. This will enable you to zero in on those that are productive and provide you with the highest ROI. You will avoid those that do not produce the expected results. You could use the tracking services mentioned in step 2 above.


4 Build an Opt-In List
Most affiliates send their prospects to the web sites of the company that they are promoting. They may end up making a few sales and receiving some commission. However, that's all that they will receive. They have worked hard to convince the prospects but they have no further contact with these prospects. These prospects are now in the opt-in-list of the Affiliate companies that they are representing. The smart thing to do is to capture the details of the prospects to build your own opt-in list before sending these prospects to the Affiliate company web site. There are 2 ways to do this:

(a) Set up you own web site and collect the email addresses and names of your prospects before sending them to the Affiliate company web site. You should create a web form to capture the email addresses and names. This can be done using HTML or if you are using an autoresponder, you'll normally be able to generate the web form with the autoresponder.

This web form can be set up on your web site or as a pop-up.

(b) Plug into the systems set up by various companies on the Internet. How it works is that you'll be provided with a 'special' URL to promote. When your prospects click on this URL, they will be directed to an 'emotional' flash presentation. At the end of the presentation, they will be required to fill in a short questionnaire.
There are 2 benefits here. You'll be pre-qualifying your prospects and you will have a copy of the questionnaire that they filled it. This will make it easier for you to follow-up with them.

I'm using WTPowers for this and I must say that their service is excellent for a small monthly fee. Here is the URL if you would like to check them out:
http://www.wtpowers.com/dreambuilders


5 Autoresponder
The autoresponder is the heart beat of any Internet business. It has been discovered that 71% of Internet sales are made after 7 contacts. It is therefore important that you follow up with your prospects.
This is why the use of autoresponder is crucial to your success.
Here is one that I own:
TIMM Reply http://www.timmreply.com

Here are a few companies that you could check out:

Aweber - http://www.aweber.com
Get Response - http://www.getresponse.com


6 Getting Traffic
There are many ways to generate traffic. Always keep in mind that the more targeted is your traffic, the better will be your conversion rate and the more will be your sales. Here are a few ways that may be useful:

(a) Search Engines
This will be appropriate if you are having your own web site.
Concentrate on keywords that relate to the product or service
you are marketing. Make sure that the kewords are 'targeted'.

Submit to only a few of the top search engines such as Yahoo,
Google, Alta Vista, Netscape, Lycos, and All the Web


(b) Pay Per Click
For those who are new, the pay-per click search engines will provide you with the necessary traffic. Just like with the search engines, the keywords need to be targeted.

http://www.overture.com
http://www.kanoodle.com

Google Adwords is now gaining popularity and you may want to check it out. It works like the pay per click search engines.
https://adwords.google.com/select


(c) Ezine Ads
This is one of the best ways to generate targeted traffic to your web site. The Solo Ad is the best way to advertise but it may cost you a bit. It is important to choose Ezines that relate to your product or service.

You can check out from Ezine directories:
Ezine Search - http://www.ezinesearch.com
Ezine Seek - http://www.ezine-universe.com


(d) Viral Marketing
There are many viral marketing programs that you can join. The traffic may not be targeted but these are free traffic.

http://10000hits.net/default.aspx?userid=398012


These are the 6 power steps that will assist you to have the cutting edge in Affiliate marketing. Following these steps will put you in the 5% categories of those Super Affiliates who are making 'BIG' money on the Internet.