How To Profit From Affiliate Programs Working just 10 to 20

The beauty of the Internet is you can own your own business andearn good money without spending much time at it. You don't haveto mind the store or keep office hours. You don't even have tobe there to answer the phone.I've known any number of successful Internet entrepreneurs whogot started earning profits online while still working demandingfull-time jobs. Kevin Needham of Memail.com became a major nameon the Web while still holding down his government job. Themedia often tells the story of Jim Daniels who started his onlinepublishing empire while working as a middle-manager for a techfirm.Kevin Nunley was a DJ at an oldies station when his articlesstarted appearing on AOL. Superstar Internet biz person and techconsultant Kate Schultz was a corporate manager when shebegan posting her own ads online.The moral of these stories is don't let your busy life stand inthe way of your desire to earn extra money or even a good livingonline. The Internet will bend, twist, and adapt for you morethan any other kind of business.But you have to go at it the right way or you will wind upspending way more time and money than you intended. Here is asimple plan to get you earning online while working at it just 10to 20 minutes each day.1. Choose your affiliate program wisely. You will want one mainprogram you can promote intensively. It is much easier to makean impact with one good program you market heavily than spreadingyourself too thin over a dozen or more programs.Right now affiliates report their biggest earners are informationproducts that tell affiliate program members and others how toearn better profits. Ken Envoy's "Make Your Site Sell" course,Corey Rudl's "Insider Secrets," and Jim Daniels' big "Make ALiving Online" are real winners in this category.You can also do well working with a company that represents manyproducts and other affiliate programs. Check the many affiliateproducts and services housed under the ClickBank.com umbrella.QuinStreet.com features direct marketing services and ecommercetechnology.2. Market to friends and associates using a simple signaturefile in your email. This is dirt simple yet incredibly powerful.Email messages have a very personal quality that sells. Youremail program will let you set this up.Your sig file should start with a headline that tweaks thereader's interest. Then follow with your web site address andyour autoresponder address (more on this later.) Here's whatyour "sig" might look like.------------I made $500 with this program last month. Wantto know more? See http://DrNunley.com/affilates.htmor write to mailto:bizguru@aweber.com------------3. Remember how I promised you would only have to work 10 to 20minutes per day? The key to this is using the Internet's abilityto automate tasks.No question about it, you will want a series of canned emailmessages you can send to people who are interested. Use amultiple autoresponder to do this (freeautobot.com is a goodone.) When someone emails your autoresponder address, they getyour messages, one each day.Chances are the affiliate program offers sales letters you canuse. If not, get a professional writer to help you put togetherthree sales letters. A set of three often works as well as themore common seven messages.4. Finally, get your own web site. It is super easy to build anice page or two using the free systems at Tripod.com andHomestead.com.While most marketing on the Net is done with email, customersexpect you have a web site with additional information.Rather than using the free site the affiliate program gives you,create your own site. Your site can tell your story, help peopleget to know you, tell why you support the affiliate product, thenlink to your affiliate member site.There are two reasons for this. Starting prospects with your ownsite gives you a lot more power to sell. You can tell the storyof how you used the product and succeeded (very powerful!) anddisplay additional products or services that compliment your mainaffiliate offer.Most search engines won't list a canned affiliate site, but theyWILL list the original site you create. Search engines can be animmense automated source of free visitors.That's all it takes! Do these four things 10 to 20 minutes perday and you will be well on your way to earning with affiliateprograms.Recent stats show the average person spends 20 hours per weekonline. If you get organized, there is no reason you can't useat least a little of your weekly Internet time to work your ownsmall business.

Generate More Sales in ANY Affiliate Program – Part Five

Affiliates make money in pretty much two ways, firstly by direct sales (straight forward, no need to elaborate on this) and secondly by commissions from on-selling.In this article I will be focusing on the affiliates, better known as your down line, your team, your partners, your network.There are several different types of affiliates, the elusive Super Affiliate, Active Affiliates from Direct Sales, Active Affiliates who On-Sell and inactive affiliates.The Active Affiliate from Direct Sales are the ones who join up under you and maintain their subscription to the program/service but don’t on-sell to others. Giving you Direct Sale Commission.The Active Affiliate who On-Sell’s are the ones that provide you passive income giving you a percentage of their sales, this is known as TIER income. It is estimated that less than 5% of your Active Affiliates from Direct Sales will become On-Sellers. However, in saying that, the higher the commission on the product/service the higher percentage rate for Active Affiliate from Direct Sales to become On-Sellers.So, lets look at a scenario, 25 Active Affiliates join under you, selling web hosting and you get $10.00 per direct sale as commission per month, assuming the Active Affiliate maintains their subscription. That’s and extra $250 a month in your pocket. Not a lot of money, BUT if you repeat this process in 9 other programs then your monthly income increases to $2500.00.If the program being promoted is a necessity i.e. web hosting, auto responders etc, it is likely the Active Affiliate will maintain their subscription. However if the program is not a necessity item such as an ebook or similar then it is unlikely the affiliate will maintain their subscription, so choose affiliate programs wisely.Dedicated Active Affiliate On-Sellers are a picky group that require a lot of maintenance, online support and regular contact. The product/service has to be lucrative for them to on-sell, with at least a 4+ tier system for it to be worthwhile.Unless you have the time and money to invest in On-Seller’s then my suggestion today is for you to go for width not depth, and then duplicate it many times over providing Multiple Streams of Income.The last article in this series will focus fully on ACTIVE AFFILIATES and how to get them. Till then to your online success!

Free Ways to Promote Your Affiliate Program

After learning of the success many online businesses have had increasing their sales with an affiliate program, you decided to follow suit. You hammered out a compensation plan both encouraging to affiliates and profitable to your business. You’ve got tracking software in place. You’ve turned the key in the ignition of your marketing machine… and nothing’s happening.Your army of affiliates can be viewed metaphorically as a tree. Full grown, it will thrive in rain and sunshine. Strong changing winds can shake its branches, but the tree will continue to grow. In the early seed stage, however, special care is needed if you want your tree to break through the surface. You spent a great deal of time, energy, and likely at least a little money creating your affiliate program. You need to attract strong affiliates that can rapidly build your customer base and return your investment. How can you bring these powerful marketing dynamos into your camp, ideally without drawing on your already diminished cash reserves?1.) Submit to Online DirectoriesThe method that will show the most immediate increase in new affiliates is listing your program in online affiliate directories. These reference sites are the first stop for hungry potential affiliates looking for the income opportunity that is going to allow them to quit their 9 to 5 jobs. Many such directories exist, and obviously some will bring you better results than others. Since submitting to almost all of these directories is free, though, get listed on as many as you can. Here are a few links to submission pages to get you started, but by no means should you stop with just these few:http://www.becomeanaffiliate.com/cgi-bin/add.cgihttp://www.affiliatesoftware.info/joinaffiliatedirectory.phphttp://www.affiliatescreen.com/suggest_program.phphttp://www.affiliatematch.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgihttp://www.2-tier.com/cgi-bin/add_url.cgihttp://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/links/add.cgihttp://www.earnfind.com/addprogram-howto.php2.) Advertise in Your Own NewsletterHopefully you’ve been collecting email addresses from your website and sending a regular newsletter to your visitors. (If not, read this article: http://www.zeromillion.com/ebiz/creating-an-email-newsletter.html) Your newsletter subscribers are a precious handful of people that have expressed direct interest in keeping abreast of the latest developments with your product/service and company. Give them what they want! You can kick off your affiliate program with an article in your newsletter explaining the benefits and encouraging your subscribers to participate. Your future newsletters can contain short blurbs about the affiliate program and how it’s progressing to inform new subscribers and remind your original readers.3.) Post to Affiliate Forums and NewsgroupsApproach this method with caution. No one will be impressed if you post a blatant advertisement or a plea to join your affiliate program. If you find a forum that contains such messages, don’t even bother making a post there. The forum probably isn’t moderated, and almost certainly isn’t read by many people. The place to include information about your website and program is in your profile (and in your signature line if other posters do so). A serious forum, read by the type of people you want to have as affiliates, will only contain posts with relevant and useful content instead of advertising fluff messages.How can you add relevant and useful content? The first step is to read some of the existing posts and get a feel for the general personality of the forum. At best, reading old posts will spark questions that can be turned into relevant posts and generate interested responses. At worst, you’ll see what’s been talked about recently, so you don’t make the awkward mistake of asking a question that was answered a few days ago. If no topics come to mind after reading old posts, a possible strategy is to ask for the advice of some experienced affiliates in how you could improve your program. You’ll find different ideas on what constitutes a solid compensation plan, tracking system, or incentive program. Beyond getting attention for your program, this is a great opportunity to improve your program by picking the brains of people who’ve been in the game longer than you.This list is obviously not comprehensive, but it contains a few forums worth investigating:http://www.ablake.net/forum/http://iwiz2.richdad.com/jive/application2/forum.jsp?forum=33http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/forum/gforum.cgi?forum=7