Finding Profitable Affiliate Programs

(c) 2004 Linda J Bruton

In an earlier post, I told you that there are 3 main sources of products and services you can sell online and make money with:

1. Affiliate Programs
2. Network Marketing Programs
3. Create your own product or service

The easiest sources are #1 and #2. While creating your own product or service can be more profitable - since you won't have to share the profits with anyone - it will also take you a lot longer to get started.

So this ecourse will focus on choosing either affiliate or network marketing products. Remember - this is an ecourse for the 'Average Joe.'

Once you know how to find profitable products to sell, we'll talk about the 6 best ways to sell them and earn an above-average income.

Let's start with affiliate programs. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs online that will pay you a commission for referring people to their products. But how do YOU find these programs and sign up?

The best place to look is in the large networks that represent hundreds of individual merchants. The best of these networks allow you to sign up for individual merchants from their site. They provide tracking and stats. They have marketing materials, such as banners and text ads for each merchant and product. And they pay you the commissions each month (or twice a month, in some cases).

Because they represent so many merchants, it is very easy to find affiliate programs for any product you are interested in. And if you sell multiple products for multiple merchants, it is much nicer to get your commissions on just one check. Plus, be able to track how you are doing in just one place.

Commission Junction is one of the largest of these affiliate networks. They've been around for years and represent some of the largest companies in the world! They have merchants in just about any classification you could think of, including:

Art
Automotive
Books, DVD's, CD's, etc.
Cosmetics, Handbags, Jewelry, Shoes
Clothing
Computers
Gifts and Flowers
Internet Services
Loans
Satellite TV Systems
Health and Fitness
Home and Garden
Insurance
Legal
Web Services

And this is just a small sampling. Each of these categories is further broken down into subcategories. They represent literally thousands of affiliate merchants with a broad array of products and services you can represent.

It's easy to signup as an affiliate at Commission Junction. They call affiliates "publishers." Just go to

https://signup.cj.com/member/publisherSignUp.do

Link Share is another large affiliate network with thousands of merchants and products represented. To sign up as an affiliate with their network, just go to:

https://ssl.linksynergy.com/php-bin/reg/sregister.shtml

If you are intereseted in selling ebooks or software, ClickBank is the largest and best-known affiliate network to get involved with. They have over 10,000 products you can sell with your membership.

Incidentally, the commission percentages you will earn from ebooks and software is generally much greater than for physical products. With physical products, the merchant has to first recoup their cost, then earn their own profit, and then pay out an affiliate commission.

Ebooks and software have no product costs or shipping expenses involved, so these merchants can pay you a lot more. Many Clickbank products pay you 50% or more per sale. That can mount up in a hurry!

To sign up as a Clickbank affiliate, just go to:

http://clickbank.com/

If you are brand new to affiliate marketing, I would suggest that you sign up for all 3 of these networks, then browse their sites. You'll get a terrific idea of all the oppportunities that are open to you.

If you're a newbie (and even if you're not), you might also want to browse some of the best affiliate program forums. You'll find other newcomers, like yourself, asking questions. And many very successful affiliate marketers who share their knowledge in these discussions. Here are some of the best:

Allan Gardyne's AssociatePrograms.com Forum:
http://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php

Phil Wiley's Affiliate Talk Forum:
http://www.ozemedia.com/cgi-bin/webbbs/webbbs_config.pl

Michael Green's How-to Forum:
http://www.howtocorp.com/cgi-bin/webbbs_config.pl/#6661

WebProWorld Affiliate Marketing Forum:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=22

Anthony Blake Entrepreneural Success Forum:
http://www.ablake.net/forum/

Willie Crawford's Discussion Corner Forum:
http://www.williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

You'll pick up a wealth of information and advice for free in these forums. I've been online for over 7 years and earn a very nice income online. And I still pick up a lot of terrific information in online forums.

Just one word of advice - they are very addictive! :-) If you're not careful, you can end up spending all your time learning how to start a business and no time actually building it!

The 6 Best Ways to Sell Your Product or Service Online

(c) 2004 Linda J Bruton

Now that we've looked at where to find something to sell online, let's look at how to sell it.

Marketing is by far the most important skill you can acquire if you want to make money online. It is more important than finding products to sell.

In a future lesson, I'll show you how to quickly find thousands of products and programs you can sell online in just about every area.

Here are the 6 best ways to market your products and make an above-average income online:

1. Start an Ezine
2. Sell Your Products With Google Adwords
3. Build Mini-Sites Around A Theme Or Niche
4. Start a Blog
5. Sell on Ebay
6. Write and Submit Articles

I'm going to give you lots of information on each one of these options in the lessons to come. But first, there is something very important you must keep in mind if you expect to make money from any of them.

You really must focus -- I mean really focus -- on one marketing method at a time. Spend some time choosing what you want to sell, and how you want to sell it - then focus. Don't jump from one thing to another.

Don't put up one Google Adword campaign, then jump off to build a mini-site. Spend the time it takes to learn everything you can about making money with Adwords. Learn how to tweak your campaigns to make it even more effective.

Once you have one campaign running successfully, create a second campaign. Tweak it, and make it more effective. Continue to do this until you have fully learned this technique. Do it until you have your own system and rhythm. Don't jump to something else until you are making a nice income from Adwords.

Only then should you even think about trying something else. In fact, the best reason to try other marketing methods is to enhance your primary method.

For example, let's say that you've put in the time to create several successful Google Adwords campaign. You've decided that the next step is to also run these campaigns in Overture. After all, you already have a good keyword list. You have successful ads that are pulling a good response. You are making money on every click you get. So why not make even more money by running these ads in Overture as well and increasing the number of clicks you get every day?

You'll find when you add Overture to your marketing mix that they have some different requirements than Google. For one thing, you can't use an affiliate URL in your ads. So if you are making money on affiliate products, you'll have to first build a website, or a landing page on one of your websites, in order to run your ads.

This is the time to think about adding a website to your marketing mix. You don't need a website to succeed with Google Adwords, but you will when you move to Overture.

If you've already successfully built a number of Google Adwords campaigns, you won't be losing money while you spend time building a website with specific landing pages for your campaigns. Nor will you be taking time away from learning your primary marketing method if you are already successfully using it.

You will find that it is very easy for newbies to get information overload online. There are hundreds of different methods for making money and promoting your products online. There are an infinite number of twists you can add to each method. It is very easy to get so distracted that you never follow through with anything.

You will be more successful in the long run by focusing on one thing at a time and allowing yourself to be successful at it before jumping to something new.

Something else you'll discover is that there is a lot of overlap in several of these marketing methods.

For example, let's say you produce an ezine and are gradually increasing your subscriber list. Every week you write an article on your chosen subject and send it to your ezine readers.

Once you've settled into this routine, you'll discover that setting up a blog doesn't require much more work. A blog is essentially an online ezine. If you have an email ezine, it makes a lot of sense to put those same articles every week into an online blog. You'll greatly increase your readership. Plus, you can add an online subscription form to your blog that also adds subscribers to the email version of your ezine.

Once you're comfortable producting a weekly ezine and blog, you can again increase your readership by submitting some of your articles to many of the larger article sites. Each of your articles would include a reasource box at the bottom that links to your blog. Now you'll again increase your readership, plus have links to your site that will increase your search engine ratings.

As you can see, we've taken 3 marketing methods - an ezine, a blog, and article submission - and made each more effective by working them together.

This is much easier to do successfully if you start with one of the 3 methods, learn it thoroughly and become successful at it - THEN add another piece. Adding all 3 pieces at the same time when you're a complete newcomer can be overwhelming.

That's my challenge to you - choose what kind of business you want to
build. Plan your business and learn the skills you need to be successful. Then you must ACT. The internet is filled with people who own every marketing book every internet guru has written. And they have yet to get started.

In the next few lessons, we'll start looking at each of the marketing methods I've mentioned in much greater detail.

The Nuts and Bolts of Building an Online Business

(c) 2004 Linda J Bruton

The nuts and bolts of making money online are really pretty simple.

You find a product or service to sell.

Then you find the most effective way to sell it.

That's what this e-course is all about - finding something to sell, then looking at the 6 top ways to sell it.

Today, we'll look at the basics. Then in the next few days, I'll show you all the details of how average people are using this information to create above-average incomes for themselves.

Let's start right at the beginning. First, you need a product or service. Obviously, to make money online, you have to have something to sell. So how do you find things to sell that people want to buy?

Unless you already have a large and thriving business (which most newcomers don't), here are your 3 best bets:


1. Affiliate Programs
2. Network Marketing Programs
3. Create your own product or service

Most of the top Internet marketers - the people you may think of as 'gurus' - make their money from 1 or all 3 of these areas. They are terrific for the newcomer, since they don't require hundreds or thousands of dollars of startup capital. And they don't require you to already be an expert.

But that doesn't mean you can just join a program and start selling without any kind of training! That's exactly why there are so many internet 'failures' - they thought this busy was easy, required no training, and didn't take much time. But we already know those things aren't true.

Affiliate Programs

If you sat down and really think about it, I'm sure that you could come up with thousands of products and services that people buy online.

People shop at Amazon.com, for instance, for books. People shop at LL Bean, the Gap, and other retailers for clothes. People buy CD's, tools, DVD's, insurance, home loans, exercise equipment, gardening tools, toys, and hundreds of other products online.

Many of the large merchants making these sales have affiliate programs. If you sign up as an affiliate at Amazon.com, for instance, they will pay you when you send someone to their web site and they buy. Different companies pay different commission percentages, depending on the product.

In one of the next lessons, I'll tell you where to go to find large affiliate networks of some of the top online retailers where you can pick and choose the programs you want to join. You'll have your choice of thousands of products you can sell online and earn a commission from.

Network Marketing Programs

Network marketing is one of the best ways to build a large income without spending a fortune. People have been earning full-time incomes from network marketing since the '40's, when Amway started the first program! People have made incredible incomes offline for many years. And now many people are doing the same thing online.

Network marketing programs are such a good money-maker simply because they pay you 'residual income.' That's money you make month after month after month from the same customers. You don't have to sell to them over and over again, as you would with other kinds of programs. Once they sign up and join your downline, you make a commission on what they buy every month.

Think about this: suppose that the product you are selling pays you a $10 commission per sale. Let's also say that you want your online business to earn you $500 per month as your first goal.

If you were making your money from an affiliate program that pays you a one-time commission - you would have to make 50 sales per month to earn your $500. Please note that I said PER MONTH.

With a network marketing program, on the other hand, you will just need to find 50 people TOTAL who want to join you in building a business. Those 50 people will put $500 PER MONTH into your pocket. Once you have 50 people, you don't have to keep finding new people to
sell your product to, as you would with an affiliate program.

In a future lesson, I'll point you to some of the best network marketing programs for newcomers.

Create Your Own Product or Service

This is one of the most lucrative ways to make money online, since you don't have to split your earnings with someone else.

Remember, with an affiliate program, the merchant makes the lion's share of the profits. You get a percentage of the sales, but they reap the greatest rewards.

You also make a percentage in network marketing programs. However, keep in mind that you also earn income when your downline sales team makes sales. And in many programs, you can earn income from the work of your upline.

Creating your own product or service, however, gives you the freedom to set your own price, market it any way you want, and keep all the profits.

Many top Internet marketers are earning a six-figure yearly income from the ebooks they have written.

What about services? Well, if you are a programmer or a writer, you can make all the money you want online by selling those services. There are even websites that help you find customers, such as ecoder.com.

In a future lesson, I'll point you to some resources that will help you try your hand at creating your own products.



"A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."

- Christopher Reeve, 1952-2004, truly a Superman in anyone's book!