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Joining an Affiliate Program is a great way to start earning a sizeable income on the Internet without many of the hassles that come with running your own business.

But the problem is… there are so much affiliate programs out there for you. In this article I will guide you to choose the most suitable and profitable Affiliate Program for you. I recommend you to follow this rule before choosing an Affiliate Program.

1. Find a great quality product or service

Remember that any recommendation you make will reflect directly on you. If you recommend a great quality product, the people you recommended will always trusted you and be interested in future recommendations that you make. If you recommend a bad quality product, and I’ll guarantee that they will likely hesitate to act on any offers you recommend.

Don’t get greedy. Only recommend products that you truly believe in.

2. Look for a program that offers top commissions.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for you to expect to be paid 30% to 50% of the profits on each product sold. 5% to 10% is very low. You should look for companies who understand the “lifetime value” of new customers you refer and appreciate your efforts.

Only consider joining programs that show a similar level of respect for their affiliates.

3. Make sure they have a high sales conversion ratio

Make sure that the affiliate program is turning a reasonable number of visitors into sales. If not, then your efforts directing traffic to their website will be completely wasted. A 1% conversion ratio (1 out of every 100 visitors) is quite good, 2%+ is better.

4. Be sure you’ll be credited for every sales you make

You should find out what kind of tracking software the Affiliate Program that you’re interested in joining uses. You MUST look for a program that uses quality affiliate tracking software that is reliable and tracks ALL (online, by phone, fax, mail orders, etc), because there are many companies only track online orders, and this means that you will never get credit for anywhere from 5% – 10% of your affiliate sales!.

Make sure they have a high sales conversion ratio and a good tracking software.

5. They should allow you to access your sales statistics real time

What I mean is that the Affiliate Program you join should give you a special username and password that you can use to access your own personal affiliate sales information right on their website. Many affiliate programs have done this, you don’t have to worry about that, but incase they don’t, you should reconsider to join them.

6. Look for a program that teaches you to maximize your affiliate sales

A good affiliate program will provide you with everything you need to be successful. They’ll provide you with traffic-generating banners, text-links, and recommendation letter templates. They’ll tell you which techniques work well in which circumstances.

Find an affiliate program that is similarly dedicated to educating their affiliates.

7. Make sure they are reputable.

I still feel I should mention the importance of doing business with a reputable company. I know many people who have worked really hard, made a lot of sales for a company, but then they have never been paid or forced to wait months and months to get their money, I’ve been there too. If you have any concerns about a company that you are thinking of doing business with, ask for references and do some checks on them before you join them.

8. Be sure to read all contracts and agreements.

Before you join any affiliate program, just make sure that you read all contracts and agreements very carefully. Pay very close attention to exclusivity clauses in the agreement. Be careful that any affiliate agreement or contract you sign does not restrict you.

Copyright 2005 Syahriansyah

Syahriansyah is the owner of http://www.advancetactics.com. His website offers an idea for home based businesses related, feel free to check all the guide and articles.

Sound crazy? You’re right. It does…. but you’re only seeing a fraction of a much bigger picture that I guarantee will not only help you recruit 100’s of new affiliates, but increase revenues to your existing products and give you a super-boost of targeted traffic.

If you run your own affiliate program and you’re trying to recruit more people, you likely did all the basics – adding a link on your site, submitting the affiliate program to directories, etc. Since nearly everyone has their own affiliate program these days, affiliate networks and directories are getting a little crowded. If you’re just starting out, you’ll likely start out at the bottom of the pile and it is especially difficult if you sell only one or two products.

As the whole concept of affiliate marketing exploded with the onset of ppc advertising and the ease of setting up affiliate programs, so did the demand from internet marketers for only the best affiliate opportunities. Just like you have to compete for the best web traffic, you have to now compete to get the best affiliates selling for you.

So how you do get more affiliates to promote your website?

Now this might surprise you, but if you’re trying to find a way to attract more affiliates, one good solution is through reselling ebooks and software in a way that taps into the money-making desires of affiliates. People want the biggest & easiest commissions possible and will invest more time, energy & resources into promoting programs with big payouts.

How do ebooks & software with resell rights fit into this picture?

The more products you offer for sale, the more reasons affiliates have to link to your website and the more visibility you’ll have in your affiliate network. If you offer very big commissions (70-80-90%) on those ebooks, you’re bound to get a lot more attention from potential new affiliates. The goal here is not in generating huge profits from reselling these products – it’s the traffic factor – getting a large amount of targeted visitors into your site by having your affiliates do all the work. If the visitors they send don’t buy the ebooks you’re reselling, a good percentage of them will buy your main products or click on some Adsense ads. If they do buy an ebook, then that’s just extra gravy on your potatos. Even if you end up with a measly $5 on every sale, if your affiliates bring in 100 new sales every day – then that’s a fast $500 every day.

But I’m not saying you should increase affiliate commissions as much as 90% for your main products – certainly not! That would just be foolish. I’m saying that you offer these huge commissions ONLY on the ebooks and software you are reselling.

When you think about it, the one-time cost of an ebook or software reseller package ($30-$60) is probably one of the best investments you can make and most contain dozens or even hundreds of products to get started with.

As you gain more affiliates, you get more traffic, and thus make more money.

Carole Nickerson has been a successful internet marketer since 1998. To learn more about internet affiliate programs, visit: WealthAddict.com

With all the companies on the internet that offer affiliate programs, you want to be able to differentiate between the types of programs that are being offered.

The three main affiliate programs you can choose from are, pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead and pay-per-click.

Pay-Per-Sale programs are definitely the most popular. By putting a link on your website and promoting their product, these companies will pay you a commission (usually 10% to 25%) on every sale you make on their product. Some of the companies will even pay out bonuses to their top producers.

There are many companies that pay you consistently from repeat sales from a customer who continues to buy products.

Some of these companies offer a two-tier program, whereas you receive a small percentage of commissions from anyone who signs up as an affiliate through you. With this type of program is where you will begin to build a consistent stream of revenue.

To significantly increase your levels of success, choose an affiliate program that is in relationship to your website. If you choose a program that is also a good match with your viewer’s interest, than you can see great results and do very well with this program.

Pay-Per-Lead with this type of program the company pays you a fixed commission amount for all qualified leads that you send them. Generally the leads would be signing up for; a newsletter, credit cards, new email subscribers, new applications to loans or requesting more information are a few examples.

Even though it is not as popular as pay-per-sale, some look at pay-per-lead programs as easier to promote because you are not requesting your visitor to make a purchase.

When considering this program, check out the company that you are going to be referring. You want to refer companies that offer a good product or service. Remember, if you refer someone to a bad experience, they will most likely not have any trust or interest in what you have to offer in the future.

Pay-Per-Click With this program you agree to put a link or banner on your website. The company pays you for each click through to their website. The payouts can be anywhere from $.01 to $.025 per visitor that you send to their website.

When considering this affiliate program, look for reputable companies that give you access to a statistics page to your account. This page should show you the total number of clicks that have come from your website, your earnings, new affiliates and contact information. This will be your only means to measure your earnings and how many clicks you have provided with this type of program.

A good word of advice is before signing up with any company, be sure to check out their program thoroughly and review their terms and conditions.

John Kovacs is the CEO and founder of “A Home Business Opportunity”. His website mainly focuses on supplying free marketing tips, resources and support for home startup businesses and Internet marketing. To get a step-by-step guide in building an online business, visit http://www.ahomebusinessopportunity.net

“Which Affiliate Programs Should You Join?”

There are so many affiliate programs in the net. For certain niches, the numbers are huge. But please be very careful in picking affiliate programs, because your reputation is on stake!

I’ve written an article on this tricky matter and you can read it in Affiliate Marketing Article (if you have trouble with this link, then just right-click on it, copy the link and paste it to your browser).

After reading the article, we come to a conclusion that… to reduce risk, you should never ever stick to one single merchant within your niche! Pick a couple of solid merchants in order to stand on a safe spot.

Now, to improve your research on those merchants, you can actually steal a look at their performances. How are they doing..? Let’s go to:

http://www.Alexa.com

Let’s say that you want to know more about this merchant named XYZ.com. Just input the domain name to Alexa and it will tell you how many links are coming into XYZ.com. These coming links are telling you the predicted numbers of its affiliates.

You’ll know also how many visitors XYZ.com has. This number is often called “traffic”. Alexa also shows you some other helpful stats, including the related sites of XYZ.com. From there you might find other available merchants for your niche.

Well that just ends this lesson.

You probably notice that I mentioned “rich-content sites” before in this lesson. Well, in the next lesson we are going to talk about it and see how you can build a money-making one easily. Wow, you’re getting closer to your potential-high-income internet business!

Farid Aziz is the author of “How to Make Money Onine with Your Hobby”. Visit http://Internet-Marketer.blogspot.com to grab your FREE copy of “Internet-Business-In-A-Box”, a kit worth US$ 497.00.

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In preparing the affiliate marketing program, the online businessman must first find professional affiliates. One affiliate is not enough. Therefore, there should be a sizable number of affiliates that will create a significant impact on the sales of the online business. But once the affiliates have been recruited, the next important step for the online business is to provide his affiliates with promotional materials.

A promotional material is a feature in the website or Internet system that can be utilized by the affiliate to advertise and pre-sell the products of the online company. Without such promotional materials, the affiliate marketing will be slow or will come to a stand still. But one affiliate is different from another. Thus, the online businessman should be able to identify the type of promotional material that will meet the unique needs of the affiliates.

Here are some promotional materials that an online businessman should consider preparing for his affiliates. These promotional materials are quite basic and the online businessman may try other methods that are less conventional and more revolutionary. In the meantime, these are great for any affiliate marketing program on its first steps.

1. Effective email ads – This type of promotional material is ideal for affiliates who have e-zines or newsletters that they send their consumer/visitor base. In fact, most professional affiliates have their own newsletters.

Therefore, a shrewd online businessman must place email advertisements that will be included in the newsletters. He should create several email ads with varying lengths. Some affiliates like these ads to be short, while others prefer longer email ads.

In writing email ads, the online businessman should remember to use animated words that trigger emotional responses from the readers. The reason for this is that buying is mostly an emotional action.

2. Signature Files – This type of promotional material is sought by some affiliates who have signature lines. Thus, the online businessman must submit several clever lines to his affiliates. When the affiliate finds a signature file that he likes, he will include in his own signature line.

3. Articles – This type of promotional material is needed by affiliates who wants good content in their websites, and even in their newsletters. The online businessman should have good articles that can be posted in the affiliates’ websites. Such good articles can also help the website’s ranking in search engines

4. Banners – This type of promotional material may not be the most effective that it can still attract visitors. The online businessman must be ready with his banners that will fit various parts of the website, such as the toolbar, the sidebar, the top, and the bottom.

5. Product Images – This type of promotional material is attractive to affiliates who wanted to display the images of the products that they are promoting.

Peter Garant’s affiliate marketing site sells affordable unique website content to webmasters that understand the need for unplagerised and high quality content on their websites.

About once a week I grab my laptop and head to a café to work, brainstorm, and map out business plans. I usually enjoy a latté, cappuccino, or green tea while I work and I’ve found the change of scenery ignites my creativity and jump starts my productivity. For years I’ve gone to the same café on Yale Avenue for my weekly ritual, but last week I stopped into a Barnes & Noble Cafe. I approached the counter to purchase a latté and the sales person immediately responded with an “up selling” offer. She asked, “Can I get you a slice of cheesecake to go with your Caramel Macchiato?”

I wasn’t even thinking about dessert, yet I somehow let the unexpected query: “Can I get you a slice of cheesecake to go with your Caramel Macchiato?” entice me into accepting a rich slice of cheesecake.

The lady at the Barnes & Noble Café flawlessly executed the “up-selling” technique and without any hesitation I accepted. Not once in the three years of my attending my usual café has anyone tried to upsell me. As I enjoyed each delectable bite of the cheesecake I wondered, “What would it mean to Barnes & Noble’s bottom line if every salesperson in the Café attempted to upsell beverage seekers? What would it mean to the bottom line if just 2% of customers everyday were upsold?” What would it mean to your bottom line if every one of your employees flawlessly upsold your customers?

In my experience both as a consumer and as a Business Growth Strategist, I have discovered that many businesses avoid up-selling because they’re concerned that the customer may feel irritated or pressured, and often customer service professionals are reluctant to upsell because they’re uncomfortable with a “selling” role. But here’s the thing: If you don’t try to upell you are 1) Leaving money on the table and 2) Withholding value-added services from your customers. When done right, upselling offers translate into sales 5-20% of the time. And research shows that most customers appreciate up-selling when they are offered additional benefits that are relevant to their needs. Read on to get 5 tips to help you confidently and successfully upservice your customers.

Think of upserving as “Up-Servicing” – When done right, upselling is simply offering a “suggestion” to an already receptive buyer to enhance the value of her service. This is exactly what I experienced at Barnes & Noble Cafe. I was already a receptive buyer and the cheesecake most definitely enhance the value of my experience. When viewed as truly upservicing as opposed to upselling, selling doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

Make sure your upserving offer is always relevant to the customer’s needs. Offering a buyer of a latté a book on Feng Shui tips may not be relevant and is likely to be rejection waiting to happen. But offering dessert truly offers to enhance the receptive customer’s experience.

Be more interested in being of service than in getting a commission. Always focus on offering products or services that are relevant to the customer’s needs and will arguably enhance the customer’s experience. If your sole objective is to get a commission, customers will smell you a mile away. And trust me, they will not buy.

Recognize that upservicing increases customer satisfaction. Surveys and research has found that offering products your customers might find useful is a proactive effort on your part that conclusively leads to increased satisfaction and loyalty.

Think of “up-servicing” as a proactive service initiative. When you add upservicing to your skill repertoire, you will increase customers satisfaction and grow your bottom line.

Myra Golden is an award-winning professional speaker and principal of Myra Golden Seminars, LLC, a customer service training firm serving clients in food and beverage, banking, healthcare, hospitality, and other industries. Her client list includes McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Frito-Lay, Michelin Tires, Pirelli, and Procter & Gamble, among many others.

For hundreds of ideas for customer service improvement for use in customer service training, visit the customer service training resource portal by going to www.totalcustomerservicetraining.com

Paypal has quickly and easily become one of the most common used forms of online payments on the internet today. Paypal is a website that allow consumers, businesses, and sellers to unite and make it an easier method of payment for a variety of services, products, and memberships. Paypal has over 100 million accounts with their service and there must be a reason why.

Paypal makes everything just a little easier when it comes to selling your products or services online. For example, many online gaming portals such as POGO or Spogg have opted to include paypal as a form of payment for their gaming communities. This saves a lot of time and hassle for a variety of people. One specific advantage to Paypal is the fact that your customers will not have to enter their credit card numbers over and over again along with all of their information. Paypal conveniently and safely stores all this information, which means your customers will only have to choose the Paypal option, log in and approve the amount you are charging.

Other advantages for sellers is the fact they have free tools for use with eBay, accepting credit cards, merchant solutions and gateways, simplified shipping and tracking, sellers protection, and low and affordable fees. For your customers, Paypal allows them to send money from 55 countries throughout the world in many different types of currencies. Speaking of currencies Paypal allows those purchasing items from the another country to convert their currency into that of the sellers, making things much easier on both ends.

Paypal offers four different solutions for merchants using their services. These solutions include:

• Standard Payments
• Pro Payments (Available in the USA only)
• Email Payments
• Addition payments

Standard Payments

The standard payment option allows you to accept payments from your website with Paypal, even if your customers do not have an account. With this option there is no approval needed, shopping cart is not required, no commitment, no fees regarding startup, cancellation, or monthly. Additionally, you also have the option of accepting credit cards over the phone, fax, or in person for an additionally monthly fee.

Payments Pro

This option is an all-in-one feature, which allows you, for a low cost to get the features that merchant accounts and gateways offer, your customers have the ability to pay for items purchased from you right on your website, and your customers have the ability to pay you by way of fax, mail, in person, or telephone. Paypal offers a shopping cart that you can use with their services for free.

Jeff Lakie is a contributing author at our website where
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Copyright 2006 Bina Omar

Deciding to create a website for your home business is one of the best ways to maximize your business success. However, as a home business owner, you probably don’t have any expertise in website creation, nor the money to hire an expert. The good news is that this by no means that you can’t have a professional, functional, and appealing website of your own at an affordable price.

The trick is to know how to proceed, and what tools to use.

The following are 7 easy steps to get your own website off the ground with little or no experience.

* Step 1: Plan your web site

This is the stage where you decide the purpose of your website, what it will contain, and what keywords you need to focus on in order to attract the most people. You may even want to start thinking about the layout of the site at this point.

Before you go ahead, you must at least know what your site is going to be about and what you’re planning to do with it. Planning is probably one of the more boring parts of the web building process, but nevertheless, remains to be one of the most important.

* Step 2: Register a Domain Name

Once you’ve done that, you can start thinking about your domain name. These days, you can get a domain name for as little as $8.95 a year . Getting your own domain name is one of the most important investment you’ll ever make for your web site.

You can purchase your domain from any registrar on the net. If you’re not familiar with any, check out: http://www.GoDaddy.com

Decide on an appropriate domain name that is easy to spell, easy to say, and isn’t too long to be impractical, then register it. Your own domain name can instantly give you a professional aura even before your customers reach your web site.

* Step 3: Choose a web host

The next thing to do is to rent some space on a server that is permanently connected to the internet i.e. sign up for a web hosting account. Decide upon an affordable, reputable, secure, and well equipped web host company that can meet your requirements of web site design, minimum downtime, and reliability.

Depending on your requirements, you may want to check out the web host’s support system, connection speed, storage space, data transfer limit, e-mail features, FTP access, CGI and PHP support and database access.

There are plenty of web hosts out there. Do your homework BEFORE you sign up with one. And when you first start up with a new web host, sign up using the monthly payment plan first. That way, if you hate their services, you can always switch after the first month.

If you’re in a hurry, I recommend signing up with http://www.website-webhost.com. They’re not the cheapest host out there but they provide many extras that could prove to be time savers to home businesses.

* Step 4: Search for a web site template

Okay! You have an idea of what your web site is about, you’ve registered a domain name and you’ve found a great web host. Now, it’s time to look for the perfect web site template.

Why?

Well … because it’s a lot easier to start off with templates. And you can get a much more superior web design quality.

Web site templates are created by web design experts. who has the experience and skill to know what works and what doesn’t. They’ve tried and tested more site designs than we’ll ever want to see in our lifetime.

There are thousands of web site templates out there at our disposal. Just go to Google.com and type in “web site template”.

You can choose free web site templates, or you can pay a one time membership to a template reservoir, or you can even pay per template. It’s up to you.

My favourite is http://www.TemplateMonster.com.

* Step 5: Get some tools

Once you have a your desired web site template, you will need to get some tools to make changes to the template.

Since you don’t know any HTML, you’d want to get web authoring software that will allow you to work ‘visually’. What you need is a WYSIWYG web design software. And just in case, you decide to learn HTML in the future, get one that will also work in code mode.

There are many softwares out there today. The more popular ones include Dreamweaver and Frontpage. If you’re after a free software, you may want to check out NVU.

You’ll also need a web graphics software. Not so much to create a graphic but more to customize the images in your web template. To add labels on the buttons, for example.

A popular software is PaintShopPro. If you’re after a free software, try out the GIMP.

* Step 6: Customize your web site template

Now that you have your web site template and your tools, all you need to do is customize the template.

When customizing a template, all you really have to do is replace the template content with your own. You may also need to customize some of the images. Usually, this would be the logo. Some templates uses button images as the navigation. You may want to add text to these buttons to set up your navigation.

Once you’ve customized the template, just upload it to your “rented” server space and you’re live on the internet.

* Step 7: Learn HTML to customize further

Although you don’t have to, I highly recommend that you learn a bit of HTML. You don’t have to master it but knowing some basic HTML will take you a long way when it comes to having more control over your web site.

Follow these 7 easy steps and you’ll have a smooth and affordable entry into the world wide web.

Back in 1998 (through 2000 or so), I worked for a small company (called PaymentNet / then Signio) that handled online transactions. Verisign later purchased this company, and the product team I led integrated the “client” – the portion that took the credit card information and sent it to our servers for processing. The product name is Payflow Pro – maybe you’ve heard of it?

I’m going to limit this discussion to Visa / MasterCard credit cards — Amex and others operate slightly differently.

First, there is the bank that the consumer’s credit card is attached to. That bank is called the “acquiring institution” … it handles the “credit” you have on your credit card.

Then, there is the merchant bank. That’s where the business opens up a “merchant account” to be able to accept various forms of credit cards.

The merchant account is connected to another company called a “processor”. This “hidden” layer is the company that actually moves the funds from the acquiring institution to the merchant account (that process is called “settlement”). The processor also handles talking to the acquiring institution to make sure that the customer has the funds available (a process known as authorization).

Some well-known credit card processors are First Data Merchant Services (FDMS), Nova and PaymentTech.

Sitting on top of the processor is one of two primary systems either a swipe-card terminal (like those you see in Wal-Mart) or a “gateway” company that does basically the same thing, but over the Internet – that’s what Verisign Payment Services and Authorize.Net do.

Note that the waters are even muddier in many cases, for example, Wells Fargo can act as every piece of the puzzle in some circumstances.

So, what actually happens when you purchase something at Wal-Mart using a credit card?

a) You place your items from your “basket” onto the counter and scan them. the checkout system provides a total.

b) You swipe your card through a “terminal”, which reads the # off the magnetic stripe.

c) Wal-Mart dials their processor, and asks if you have the funds available on your credit card. The processor talks to your bank (the acquiring institution). If funds are available on the card, they are marked as “held” in your account (an authorization) – if not, the transaction is declined (yuk). Authorizations that are never settled tie up your credit card funds for a period of time, usually 10 days or so.

d) At the end of the day, Wal-Mart marks all the transactions they want to receive funds for, and submits them to their processor in a “batch”. The processor then contacts the acquiring institutions and transfers the funds to your merchant bank – which may make the funds available instantly (in a day or two), or may hold them for a while, or may hold the funds in a “rolling reserve” (keeping some funds held back in case a consumer fights the transaction, called a chargeback).

In the online world, replace the cash-register with an online shopping cart, and the electronic credit-card with terminal with called a “gateway” such as Payflow or Authorize.Net. the process is basically the same, with slightly more complexity.

Be careful going “a-la-carte” with ecommerce credit-card services: if the gateway you chose can’t talk to the processor your bank uses, or your software can’t talk to the gateway, you’re hosed. That situation was MUCH more common (things not working together) back in the mid/late 90’s than it is today. However, most “brick and mortar” banks (like your local branch) still don’t have a clue about online credit-card processing … if they attempt to sell you a “leased terminal”, it’s best to run the other way and find a solution from reputable online source.

As an online merchant looking to accept credit cards, all you really need to know is that all services purchased through a single solution will usually work together seemlessly.

Nick Temple is a former engineer for what is now Verisign Payment Services. He can be reached at his website, http://www.nicktemple.com. He is part-owner of the CommerceStore.com; complete online credit card ecommerce solution.

My site, CommerceStore.com handles the entire “shopping cart” and storefront process, including talking to the gateway. It knows how to talk to every major gateway (online credit card terminal) available. In addition, we have direct relationships with various banks that can help you open a merchant account in the US or in Canada, and the system works with PayPal. There’s a whole lot more, including AutoResponders, built-in affiliate system, etc.