Using articles to make money

Affiliate Marketing Tip 12

Looking through the universe of online affiliate marketing, you’ll notice that most sites fall into two categories. There are sites that simply have a list of links to other sites that sell products. You’ll notice that these sties come up often in web searches on Google or Yahoo, but they don’t seem very useful since all they have is other links and no actual content of their own.

The other kind of affiliate site is the kind that you want. It is a site that has all the same links that the others do, but it also has content. Now, what does “content” mean, anyway? Content is simply an internet term that means articles or information on a web page. Why do affiliate sites that use content work better than those that don’t? It’s simple.

If you click on a site, say, a site about growing roses, which would you rather find? A list of links that you have no idea if they are any good or not or if they even link to a reputable company? Or an informative, well-written article about growing roses that has a link at the bottom for a company that, while you still don’t know if they are trustworthy or not, the person who wrote this content thinks so and they sure sound like they know what they are talking about. Which one do you think does better sales every month? Exactly. The site that uses articles.

This is the number one reason why you should be knowledgeable about the products you wish to sell. It will be a million times easier to write content that sounds like it was written by an expert if you know your way around your product. If a web surfer stumbles upon your site, finds your articles well-written, informative and fun and then sees a link to buy a product related to the article, your chances of making money off of that customer go up 100 times. The big secret to affiliate marketing isn’t a magic formula or miracle catchphrase. It’s well-written content.

There are even companies out there that will write content for you, for a small fee. It may seem like a silly thing to invest in on the surface, but once you see the hard numbers that show how much better affiliate sites do with content then without, you’ll be on board in no time flat.

Affiliate Marketing Tip 12

Treat Your Affiliate Marketing Site Like A Business

Affiliate Marketing Tip 11
Maybe the single greatest part of affiliate marketing is that is can make you as much money as a real online business that sells a product or service without all the hassle that comes with inventory, shipping and returns. But that profit only comes with proper planning and care.

Let’s take a look at a few things you need to do to make sure that your affiliate marketing venture is worthwhile and done the right way.

• Do you research first. If you were considering starting a business in the real world, you wouldn’t just go rent out a piece of property, get the permits and open your business the next week. You would learn everything there is to know about the business you chose and you would try to make your business as successful as possible. While you may not need the same level of dedication with your affiliate marketing site, you should have a good idea of what you want you site to sell, what product you want to sell and where you are going to get your content from before you start. Are you a good enough content writer to have 15 different programs on your site, or do you only have strong feelings for two or three products and you want to stick to them? You need to give your affiliate marketing program a real chance to work so once you pick a style and theme, stick to it for a while to see if it makes you money or not.

• Learn the basics. You don’t have to be an expert web designer or web content writer to make money off of your affiliate marketing site, but it sure helps. Luckily, there are a slew of fantastic low-cost programs out there that can walk you through web site creation step by step so that even if you don’t know HTML from Java, you can have a great looking website. The same goes for web content. Your content needs to be informative, fun and interesting AND it needs to sell your product all at the same time. It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. You can head to your local library or bookstore to find books on how to write web content or you can simply read other affiliate marketing sites to get some pointers. If shoppers aren’t captivated by your site, they won’t use it. Plain and simple.

While it can be tempting to just throw up a quick, basic website with little to no content so you can start making money right away, the experienced affiliate marketer knows better. Take the time and do it right and you’ll see the results in your bank account.
Affiliate Marketing Tip 11

The biggest mistakes affiliates make

Affiliate Marketing Tip 10

For those that are new to affiliate marketing, the whole thing can seem too good to be true. A real business from home that make you more then enough money to live on and you don’t even have to bother with products or shipping. Many new affiliate marketers simply jump into the business without properly researching it first and end up frustrated and angry that they aren’t making big time money within the first few days. Here is a quickie guide to common mistakes that affiliate marketers make and how you can avoid them.

• Patience is the key. For even the best affiliate marketers, it takes time to build a customer base. The people that are legitimately making $10,000 a month in affiliate marketing spent years getting to that level, not days or even months. For some that are new to the trade, it seems like that level of success is an overnight thing, but it isn’t. Once you pick an affiliate program, after researching it ahead of time, of course, you need to stick with it. You should change your content on a regular basis, update your site weekly, add in some holiday-themed pages and make sure you stay up to date on product information from your parent company, but the most important thing to do is to simply stay the course. If you jump ship after a month, the chances of your affiliate marketing site taking off are slim to none.

• The second big problem that many affiliate marketers fall prey to is subscribing to too many programs at once. By doing this, it makes it very hard to provide top-level page design and content relating to all of these programs at once. You should only subscribe to two or three programs at once. This will allow you to give these programs your laser-like focus so you can turn them into money makers sooner rather than later. Patience is, again, very important. It may seem like the best way to go is to load up your site with two dozen affiliate marketing sites but there is little chance that will make you any money. If your site is focused, you’ll be in much better shape.

The vast majority of mistakes that new affiliate marketers make are ones out of inexperience. They want to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible. What they don’t realize is slow and steady wins the race. Dedication, hard work and focus are the best friends of affiliate marketers.

Affiliate Marketing Tip 10

Talking to your affiliate program

Affiliate Marketing Tip 10
If this is your first time running an affiliate program website, it can be a bit confusing. Is your site designed the right way to attract the right customers? Is my web content good enough? Am I using search engine keywords the right way? It can be a lot to handle if you’re new to affiliate marketing.

One thing that you can do to help yourself master each and every affiliate program is to simply talk to the company that you’re linking to. It sounds simple, but most affiliate marketers just set up a site, toss in some content and links and forget about it. They don’t go that extra mile that can mean the difference between selling a few units and selling a bundle. Here are a few tips for helping to boost sales on your affiliate marketing website.

• Before you go to your seller, set up your site for a month or two and record the traffic and sales you are able to do. That way, when you go to the parent company, you can say, see, this was what I was doing, and these are the sales I got. No one knows the product you’re trying to sell better then the company that sells it. Use this knowledge to your advantage. Maybe the company you link to just finished an internal study that shows that people are especially fond of a particular benefit of the product your selling that you don’t even know about! If you write your content around this benefit, you might see your sales double or even triple.

• By talking to the parent company, you’re sending a clear signal that you are taking this affiliate program seriously. And trust me, the people in charge will take note. Recent affiliate marketing studies have shown that over 90 percent of all affiliate sales come from only 5 percent of affiliate websites. If you can end up in that group, you’ll be making money faster then you ever thought possible.

• By keeping in contact with the parent company, you can stay up to date with any sort of product changes, price changes, shipping rule changes or any other information that might impact in content of your affiliate website. Nothing will anger a customer more than a promotion on your website saying that if a customer clicks here, they will receive free shipping, only to have it not be true. By staying connected to the parent company, you’ll always have the most up-to-date promotion info.

The benefits of befriending the parent company of your affiliate programs is vital to running a good business. You owe it to your customers, as well as yourself, to have the latest, most accurate information on your site at all times. Respect your customer base and they will reward you with loyalty that will pay off big.
Affiliate Marketing Tip 10

Search engine basics

Affiliate Marketing Tip 9

Maybe the single most important part of running an affiliate website is understanding how people find your site and how to make your site stick out among the billion or so other sites on the Internet.

If you’ve been using the Internet for more than an hour or two, chances are you know what a search engine is. Websites like Google, Yahoo and Ask.com have developed into multi-billion dollar corporations in the last ten years.

Using search engines is extremely simple. You just go to the site, type in what you want to find and click enter. But how can you make sure that your site will be found? As it turns out, it’s all about the keywords.

When a site like Google or Yahoo searches the Internet to come up with results from a web query, it takes the number of keywords on a site into consideration. It also takes particular keywords or phrases into account, too. If someone is doing a search for “Book about Rolling Stones,” a site that has that phrase or a phrase similar to it 10 times is going to come up higher than a site that only mentions it once. That’s why its so important to incorporate keyword text into your web content so that when someone does a search for, say, “Oolong Tea from China” and that just happens to be what your site sells, your site comes up high on the list, not buried on the bottom.

The trick is to incorporate these keywords or keyword phrases into your web content, and still have your content make sense. This is a super-tricky obstacle to get around. The best advice I can give is to simply read around and see what other affiliate marketing sites have done. Remember, your content is a huge part of your site. If people don’t stay on your site for a minute or two reading your content, they will never, ever click on any links you have and buy any products you’re selling. You must find the balance between a heavy use of keywords and well-written text.

Knowing how to use search engines is a big part of affiliate marketing. You can have the best content, the most timely links and the best product in the world and you won’t do a lick of business unless people can find you. Learning the art of incorporating keyword text into your affiliate website may seem tough, but it’s the difference between making a few bucks here and there and making it big in affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing Tip 9