Hi readers!

This is a simple article…the last one was heavy

The thought of being able to Make money online with affiliate programs may have sounded like a great business opportunity to you. The thought of being able to work at home in your own internet business, without having to worry about the things that have traditionally come along with running a business, such as inventory, storage, packing, shipping, complaints, returns, phone calls, emails, checks and credit cards,  just to name a few, must have seemed like the greatest business idea you had ever come across!

Now that you are all set up with your affiliate programs however, you may be wondering, what can I do to generate traffic to my affiliate links?  Lets explore some of the ways we can accomplish this.

The first thing you will want to do is to have a webpage with brief descriptions of all of your affiliate programs along with your affiliate links accompanying it. The reason for this is, for the most part, you will want to promote your own website as opposed to your individual affiliate links. Your webpage dose does not have to be fancy. Once you have accomplished this you will have a huge advantage over simply attempting to generate traffic to your individual affiliate links.

Start a business Blog. A Blog, short for, Web Log, is a great way to promote yourself as a knowledgeable person. People will begin to believe in you and will eventually trust you. Just make sure to post a new article every day so that people will keep coming back to read your latest article. That will breed familiarity. People will buy much more readily from people who they know and trust. Another reason to post every day is that, although it won’t be long before the search engines find your Blog, you can ping the search engines every time your Blog is updated and search engines L-O-V-E new content! Make sure to have a bio along with a link back to your website. Your bio should contain a brief description about you such as, [ John Doe is the owner of yoursite.com. John specializes in helping people to work at home in their own home based business. To learn about the different business opportunities John has to offer you visit his website at www.yoursite.com].

Write and publish your own business articles. This is the greatest form of free advertising available. By writing and submitting articles, along with your bio at the bottom of each of your articles, you will not only have more and more non-reciprocal links pointing back to your website but most importantly the search engines will begin to spider your articles(read them word for word.)  When people type into a search engine, keywords or phrases, that match what is in your articles, they will show up on the search results along with a link back to your website! Make sure to insert keywords into your articles that are relevant to your website such as business opportunities, affiliate programs, work at home, home based business, etc. The more relevant links there are pointing back to your website the higher your page rank will be. A higher page rank means your website will show up higher on the search engines results page, so keep writing those articles!

Ezines are email newsletters that people subscribe to on every topic imaginable. Find Ezines that are relevant to the business you are promoting such as business opportunities, affiliate programs, work at home, home based business, etc.  Most Ezines will accept advertisements. This is not spam because the subscribers have agreed to accept offers from time to time as part of their subscription and can unsubscribe at any time. With Ezines it is better to advertise your individual affiliate programs along with your affiliate link (your squeeze page) as opposed to your website with a link back to it.

Email lists are another great way to advertise your individual affiliate programs. These are people who for whatever reason have agreed to receive certain offers. Find lists that are relevant to what you are promoting such as business opportunities, affiliate programs, work at home, home based business etc.

Pay-Per-Click(PPC) advertising such as Google AdWords is a form of advertising for the first time in history were you only pay for advertising if people are actually interested in your ad, since you only pay if someone is interested enough to click on it! These are ads that show up along with the regular search engine results. In the case of Google AdWords for instance the ads appear overhead and also on the right side. This form of advertising however requires a deep technical understanding to make it cost effective, otherwise, it will suck up your advertising dollars in no time!

Promoting your affiliate links dose not have to be expensive. It all depends on wether you would prefer to spend time, money or some sort of compromise between the two. You have various options available to you and what path you decide to take is entirely up to you.

Don’t forget your comments…If you have a question about a particular topic…Just ask!

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Hi readers,

I have exciting news today!

The launch of my training sites…with a lot of great content (audio,videos, pdf and more) to help you Make money from home.

And you can get a FREE Silver Membership for both sites today!

1) Traffic Generation Club

Need to learn more about getting traffic?
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and
2) Affiliate Profits Club

Need to learn more about Affiliate marketing?
Click here

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Dear reader/affiliate,

Interesting reading today! Go grab a cup of coffee

I have bad news for you: You are probably losing money and you didn’t pay attention to it! Let me explain…

When you joined affiliate programs you probably considered the following factors:

- The commission
- The conversion rate

The profit formula looks like a child play: Commission x Conversion Rate = Your Profit

In fact there are three big pitfalls here and if you don’t manage them properly, your profit is at risk. Let consider them:

- Price: A high price means a higher affiliate commission for every sale but it may result also in a lower conversion rate… If the product is too expensive, nobody will buy. You shouldn’t be blinded by the promise of a very high commission. You should keep in mind that the best price is not the one that gives you the highest commission but the one that makes the highest profit. An optimized pricing that makes satisfied customers and satisfied affiliates is what you should look for.

- Refund Rate: Refunds can kill your marketing efforts! What are worth the sales you see in your account if customers request their money back? A lot of sales mean nothing unless you keep the money!
This is the whole responsibility of the merchant to keep refunds as low as possible. A site that sells well is good. A site that also keeps refunds very low is much better! There is only one way to keep refunds very low: To deliver very high quality services meeting customers’ expectations or going beyond what they could expect!

- Product Quality: Quality is king! Quality makes superior conversion rates! Quality enables higher prices and better commissions! Quality keeps refunds as low as possible! In a word: Quality should be your compass. Don’t associate your business with low quality products or services. On the top of your list, promote only the very best. It will also keep your profit on top.

How much money are you losing today?

The money you earn and lose is significantly determined by the quality of the affiliate program you have selected as your top pick.

The question is: How do you measure what is more qualitative and what is less?

There is an objective criterion to use for answering this question and for optimizing your profit: The refund rate of your top affiliate program!

A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that affiliates lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for affiliates.

If you get many refunds with your top affiliate program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn’t sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn’t do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money!

What are good, medium and poor refund rates?

Refunds can’t be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It’s important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale:

2% or less: Excellent
3% – 5%: Good
6% – 10%: Medium
11% – 15%: Poor
16% – 20%: Very Poor
21% or higher: Run away!

With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn’t get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote.

What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program?

There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program:

1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program

Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate

Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760!

You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program.

2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program

In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.

The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs.

The average refund rate of an affiliate program is:
(Commission – $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate

What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank?

As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discovering how much money affiliates can lose when promoting these programs:

- Surve***: 16.2% refund rate!
- Survey Pla****: 20.9% refund rate!
- My Consu*****: 35.2% refund rate!

We learn three lessons about these paid surveys affiliate programs:
- A lot of customers are dissatisfied.
- Affiliates lose big money.
- The quality of these programs is very questionable.

What should you do to stop the bleeding?

You have no influence on the quality of the affiliate programs you promote. Your only real influence is on the quality of your recommendation!

Giving your top recommendation to a very professional affiliate program that delivers the utmost quality services to customers will keep your profit as high and as safe as possible.

How to identify quality in affiliate programs?

Defining quality is a difficult job. In general, people can’t define clearly what quality is but they recognize it when they see it. So what should you look at in affiliate programs?

The most qualitative affiliate programs find the right balance between the value they offer to customers and the value they generate to affiliates:

1. Value to customers – It includes:

- Rich content
- Good looking website
- State-of-the-art organization
- Friendly functionality
- Affordable Price for most visitors
- Detailed documentation
- Bonuses strengthening the main offer
- Timely Customer Support

2. Value to affiliates – It includes:

- High conversion rate
- High commission
- Low refund rate
- Commission paid on time
- Good affiliate support

Post your comments and questions…

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Hi readers!

Here is a great reading for this weekend…enjoy

It is a known fact that it takes from 7-10 contacts with your prospect clients before they actually will make their purchase.

If you do the right way, opt-in email marketing in fact, is an extremely effective method to create new leads as well as develop continuous client and prospect. Opt-in email will help you to yield easily new sales as well as meet your marketing objectives.

1.    Your copy’s message contain spelling or grammatical errors. Take note that these kinds of errors show a “lack of professionalism” on your side.

For readers, reading a message with errors is very irritating and it suggest that you were rushing to send your email message not really caring about what message you are imparting.

2.    Poor choice of “subject” and “from” lines. You need to pay meticulous attention your “subject” and “from” lines since your recipients will immediately delete your message if they can not identify the sender of the email.

Put the precise newsletter or company name which your recipients signed up to in “the from line” and a brief attention-grabbing headline of your newsletter in “the subject” line.

3.    Graphics overload. Too much graphics can slow downloads and at times tend to outshine your attachments and message that results to turn your readers off. Just keep your newsletter simple and concise.

4.    Not giving your recipients what they need. Newsletters that focus mainly on general materials or all concerning your business will bore your recipients.

Give them something that can solve their problems, something they need. For instance, supply valuable information that will make them check out your site.

If you are selling for instance natural vitamin supplements, write a well-researched newsletter on how natural supplements can help specific types of ailments.  Readers are anxious to know what you have for them.

5.    Too much offers. This confuses your recipients.  Just send out a one email concept at a time. Never list your entire offers in one email newsletter or message.

If you hope that one of the concepts will lure your reader, you are wrong. Your recipient does not really want to view an assortment of hyperlinks in your message.

Generally, what your reader is looking for is only one specific solution. All your hyperlinks plus the message’s length can turn them off and worst, may never again open another mail from you.

6.     Including all details in your “email message”. When you do this, then your recipient will not have any reason to visit your website.

7.    Sending a very long message. This is because people in the net are distracted easily and will not read excessively long copies.

8.     No testing. Before you do send out to your email list, you need to first test out some subject lines, graphics, different content, as well as designs on small groups of individuals. By this technique, you can identify the number of opened emails plus determine which “test group” obtained a good number of responses.

9.    No or lack of call for action. The purpose of your message is that you want your readers to visit your website, purchase something, give comments, etc. Make this call simple and clear.

10.    Not having landing pages. Pay meticulous attention to your key pages where individuals land after when click on your link from that you provided in your email.

Often, customers assume that they will land unto a “shopping cart” where they can make a purchase, but are disappointed to learn that they land in your homepage and are left to “find their way around”.

11.    Making an email that is a complete replica of your sales message in your site. When you lure individuals to click onto your website but are met with the same exact information as you have in your email message, you are just going to turn them away.

You have to make or create a different message that you will send thru email and another different content for your website. You can summarize in your email what have in your website.

Opt-in email marketing will work for you.  It will take some time, but if you do it correctly, the rewards are great.

Have a good day,

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Hi guys,

Here is a Free video on how to add followers to your twitter account automatically. It’s a great lesson and a short video.

Don’t forget your comments!

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