Affiliate Marketing on the Internet - Your Questions Answered

==== ====Learn More About Affiliate Marketinghttp://www.imz6.com==== ====This article is perfect for those who are looking to start out with Internet Marketing, as well asthose who are new to it, and want to know more about what exactly is affiliate marketing.Ill attempt to answer all questions you have about affiliate marketing in this article.What Is Affiliate Marketing?Ive seen lots of people asking this question - Im going to answer this question in layman termshere, so everyone can understand.Affiliate marketing is where youll be promoting other peoples products and services to potentialcustomers and get paid commission whenever someone purchases the products and services yourecommend.Is Affiliate Marketing Legitimate Or Is It A Sham?Of course affiliate marketing is 100% legitimate.Lots of people have managed to generate millions of dollars from affiliate marketing every yearand you can do the same as well. ;)It is definitely not a sham...What Are The Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing?Some of the advantages of affiliate marketing include:No need to bother about inventoryNo need for you to have a warehouse to store products. It is done by the merchants.No need to set up payment processingNo need for you to set up payment processing as well - as it is also done by the merchant. All youneed is to sent potential customers to the merchants website, and everything else will be takencare of.You can make lots of money from affiliate marketing

Take digital books for example - most of these merchants pay out up to 75% for a sale of a digitalbook - for example, if you manage to refer a sale for a digital book worth $40, youll receive acommission of $30 - its as simple as that.You can sell to anybody around the worldTheres no boundaries on the Internet - your website or promotion will be seen by everyonearound the world - this means that you have a chance to sell to anybody around the world! This isunlike a physical business, where you can only (in most cases) sell to people within the countrywhere the business is located.What Is The Difference Between Affiliate Marketing & Multi Level Marketing (MLM)?In affiliate marketing, the amount of money you will make will depend on the amount of sales youmake - and the merchant will pay you a certain amount of commission based on every sale. Thereare no downlines in affiliate marketing - you work directly work the merchant.However, for Multi Level Marketing, the amount of money youll eventually make will depend onthe money you make as well as the money your downlines make. The more number of downlinesyou have and the more money they make, the more money youll make in turn. It is impossible foryou to profit a lot from Multi Level Marketing if do not have a good downline. I personally am notinto Multi Level Marketing so I cant comment any further.Affiliate Marketing - How Quickly Can One Start Making Money?My answer to this question is - it all depends on how much time and effort you want to put into it.You need to follow the right steps and strategies - there are many people out there who claim thatthey can help you make millions of dollars overnight - most of these are scams, so please do notbelieve them.It is possible though to make millions of dollars over a period of time - you need to first establishyourself on the Internet community as someone people can look to for answers on a certainsubject/topic - and once youve built that trust with people, you can be sure that the community willbuy whatever product/service you promote (and thats when youll see millions of dollars comingin)Does Anyone Really Make Any Money On The Internet Or Is It Just A Dream?To be honest with you - when I was first introduced to this Internet Marketing business in late2006, I, too, was also very skeptical as to whether this whole thing is genuine or is it nothing butscam.After some persuasion, I decided to try it out and I was lucky enough to learn from the rightInternet Marketing gurus (I was also scammed by some) who taught me the right techniques andstrategies to profit from Internet Marketing as an affiliate marketer.What Can I Sell To Make Money As An Affiliate?

You can choose to sell either physical products (e.g. televisions, cameras, books, computers, etc.)or digital products (e.g. digital books, MP3s, etc.).If you are interested in selling physical products, you may wish to sign up as an affiliate forAmazon (where you can promote anything on the Amazon website and get a commission of about4% - 8% per sale), or an an affiliate in Commission Junction, Performics (In Commission Junctionand Performics, you can find many companies where you can promote products for - such asSony, HP, etc.)If you are interested in selling digital products, you can sign up as an affiliate for Clickbank whereyou can sell digital books on any topics such as business, health and fitness, personaldevelopment, marketing, etc.In addition, you can also make money by giving out free memberships to people, free products(like free game consoles, free gift cards, free ringtones, etc.) or when someone requests for a freefinancial quotation, etc. - Here are some of the networks you may want to sign up - MaxBounty,ClickBooth, CPA Empire.How & When Will I Receive My Payment?Most of the affiliate networks (such as ClickBank, Commission Junction, Performics) issue outpayments by check, and most of them issue out payments once every month. However, there aresome (like ClickBank) that issues out payment every fortnightly.Once youve received the checks, you can just bank them in your countrys local bank the sameway you bank in normal checks. However, the checks might take a little bit longer to clear -between a week to approximately a month, depending on the bank - my suggestion is to checkwith them directly.Is There Any Way To Track The Number Of Sales I Generate As An Affiliate?Yes, all affiliate programs will have an option for you to see how many sales youve generated asan affiliate, as well as how much youve made over a period of time - such as in a single day, in aweek, in a month, or in a year.Youll also know when payments are being sent out.How Do I Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?Ask yourself these questions - "what am I interested in?", "What do I like to do in my spare time?" -For example, you love playing golf during the weekends, and you have an affiliation for it, thenthats what you should start off with - selling golf products as an affiliate.Still continuing with the example of golf, you can either sell digital books on how to improve yourgolf swing, or you can sell golf clubs, golf balls, etc.Next, youll need to find a merchant in the golf niche that has an affiliate program so that whenever

somebody you referred to purchases something from the merchants website, youll be paid acertain amount of commission.How you can find merchants in the golf niche that has an affiliate program is very easy - just headover to Google and type in the following:[your area of interest] affiliate program - using the example of golf, youll type the following into theGoogle search:golf affiliate programGoogle will return a list of websites with merchants that offer an affiliate program. Visit those sitesone buy one and sign up for their affiliate program. Normally, you do not need to pay to sign up fortheir affiliate program.Once the merchant approves you to be their affiliate, they will give you a unique link (known asyour affiliate link), which youll have to give to your potential customers to visit to purchaseproducts/services that youre promoting (the reason is because youll only be paid commissions ifyour potential customers purchase the products/services through your affiliate link)Thats how you can get started with affiliate marketing.Affiliate Product Marketing - Do I Choose The Product First Or Niche?I would say you should look for your niche first. Theres no point in choosing the most profitableproduct to promote but you know nuts about that product - it will be very difficult for you to be ableto convince potential customers for that particular product to buy from you as well.Affiliate Marketing On A Zero Budget - Is It Possible?Absolutely. Let me show you how.First of all, its free to sign up to become an affiliate for the merchants. Next, you can make use ofa free blogging website such as Blogger to set up your website to promote products for themerchant.Once youre done with your blog, you need to drive traffic to it (no traffic = no sales) You can makeuse of free traffic generation methods such as MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster, etc. to drive trafficto your website.You can also drive traffic by placing advertisements on free advertisement sites like usfreeads, orwrite articles around the product/s that youre promoting and submit them to the various articledirectories - such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard.By using the methods above youll be able to receive tonnes of traffic to your website, and getsome sales.So there you have it! A nutshell of how you can do affiliate marketing on a zero budget. ;)

How Do I Drive Traffic To My Website?There are many ways to drive traffic to your website - both paid and free.Let me go into the paid methods first - you can advertise your websites on the various searchengines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. For these paid search advertising, youll have to paywhenever someone clicks on your advertisement to go into your website.Next, for free advertising, theres lots of ways for you to drive traffic to your website (Im going tolist some of them here):1. Write articles and submit them to the various article directories - in the authors byline, include alink to your website.2. Participate in forums in the area where youre promoting products in (for example, if yourepromoting golf products, then you should visit golf forums). Some of these forums will allow you toput a forum signature - which is a link thatll appear at the end of all your forum posts - include alink to your website there.3. Sign up for social networking websites - such as MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster, etc. andconnect with people in your niche area.4. Post a free advertisement in free advertising networks such as usfreeads.How Can I Market Affiliate Products Without A Website?You can make you of advertising sites such as usfreeads, or you can pay to advertise on thevarious search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.Is It Possible I Use Only Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing In Affiliate Marketing AndSucceed With It?Yes, you can use Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing alone in affiliate marketing (Ive donethis before and made quite a lot of money from it).However, you need to be equipped with the right skills in order to be able to create profitablecampaigns.Which Is More Profitable? Affiliate Marketing Or Google Adsense?Heres my answer - both can be very profitable - if you do them right. I wont go into GoogleAdsense here but in essence, as a newbie, you should pick one (either affiliate marketing orGoogle Adsense) and focus on it.Should I Use Landing Pages / Squeeze Pages With Affiliate Marketing?First and foremost, for those of you who do not know what a landing page / squeeze page is, its

basically a page that is used for the purpose of collecting your potential customers first name andemail address in exchange for something - it could be a free report, free email training course, freeaudio program, etc. It has the intention of eventually leading the potential customers to theproducts/services youre promoting.As to whether or not you should use a landing/squeeze page with affiliate marketing will dependon your marketing effort - some of them build one to build his/her list so as to be able to sell tothem in future (as the saying goes "the money is in your list"). But remember this - do NOT build alist and just send them emails to ask them to buy the products/services you are promoting - itsprobably going to turn them off. You have to give them VALUE, such that theyll open up youremail when they see them in their inbox instead of sending them to the thrash can.There are people who did not use a squeeze/landing page - they would just send potentialcustomers directly to the product sales page.So it all depends on what your marketing strategy is - my advice is, try both of them out, and seewhich one works for you better.What Is URL Masking In Affiliate Marketing?URL Masking is basically hiding your affiliate URL and make it shorter. Let me give you anexample - if you are promoting a ClickBank product, your affiliate link will look something like this:http://your_affiliate_id.product_id.hop.clickbank.net/Does the above link look very long and bulky?One look at the URL people will know youre trying to sell them something as an affiliate.Heres where URL masking comes in - to hide your affiliate id as well as to make your link shorter.You can make use of free services such as TinyURL or PinURL.What these sites does is that theyll turn your long URL into a short one - such ashttp://www.pinurl.com/1ab - isnt this URL much shorter and easier to remember? Also, youraffiliate id is hidden from people.To find out more questions and answers on affiliate marketing, please visit my website on affiliatemarketing on the Internet - your questions answered by clicking here[http://www.squidoo.com/affiliate-marketing-on-the-internet] You may also submit any questionsyou have on affiliate marketing there, and Ill personally answer them.Are you a newbie Internet Marketer looking to start your own Internet Business? If you are, clickhere to get your free report on "How To Work From Home And Make Money On The Internet",where I reveal never-before-revealed secrets Ive used to generate a healthy 5-figure income fromInternet Marketing, and how you can do so as well - simply by following what Ive done.

Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=JunYuan_Lim==== ====Learn More About Affiliate Marketinghttp://www.imz6.com==== ====

Affiliate Marketing on the Internet - Your Questions Answered

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