Advanced Topics

Advanced Topics

We will covering some advanced topics in this weeks blog.

As you know by now, affiliate marketing can be incredibly rewarding when done
properly. There are also a lot of pitfalls you need to watch out for as well. One
of these is merchant fraud.

Merchant fraud, unfortunately, does happen. Merchants can use any number of
clever tactics to cheat you out of your commission. One of these methods is to
offer multiple payment options to customers without linking each one to their
affiliate tracking software.

For example, let’s say that a merchant offers credit payments, payment via
Paypal and payment via check to the customer.

The merchant tracks your affiliate ID up to the point of sale and credits you if
the customer chooses to pay via credit card through the merchant’s main
payment gateway. However, if the customer chooses Paypal or check, your
affiliate ID is immediately tossed.

The only way around this clever trick is an exercise of caution on your part.
When you evaluate a potential affiliate program, check to see how many
payment methods the merchant offers. Secondly, after you sign up for an
account, examine you referral links. In fact, if you have the budget to spare,
follow your own link and choose one of the alternate payment options and
purchase a product.

Did you get credit for that sale? Great! If you didn’t receive credit, though, it’s
time to can that merchant and move on to more ethical waters.

Here’s another ‘advanced’ tip to consider: use affiliate networks like
Clickbank to evaluate potential merchants. Joining programs via a
network is often a better choice than signing up at individual, non-networked
sites. The reason is simple: membership in an affiliate network imposes stricter
standards on merchant behavior.

You also have access to a wealth of data on the overall performance of other
affiliates in that merchant’s program.

Last but not least, you need to focus on building trust among potential
customers. If your merchant site doesn’t do a very good job of this, then send
your visitors to your web site. Make it clear what products and/or information
you have to offer. Also, be vigilant about posting your contact information in a prominent place.

Anonymity might be fun in a chat room, but it turns off consumers very quickly.

For an extra advantage, consider having your site evaluated “net cop” programs
like the one at http://www.i-cop.org/ and get your site listed in the online
section of the Better Business Bureau’s web site.

That's all for this week-

Link Theft

Today we’re going to talk about the dark side of affiliate marketing: Link Theft.
It’s not ethical, but it happens.

You should know that there are people out there who, for whatever reason,
absolutely hate the idea of someone earning a commission off their purchase.

These are the cranky, paranoid customers of the online world. There are also
fellow affiliate marketers who would deny you your hard earned commission as
well.

The term “link theft” isn’t entirely accurate, though it’s what you’ll see used to
refer to this phenomenon. The accurate term, in a nuts and bolts sense, is “link
altering”.

Quite simply, the link thief does one of two things:

1. Erases your affiliate link from his browser window, deletes any cookies set
by the link, and then proceeds to the merchant’s site via the main www url.
2. Erases your affiliate I.D. and replaces it with his. He then purchases
through his own link and takes his commission as a rebate.
The solution to link theft is “link cloaking”. Essentially, you turn an obvious
affiliate link such as www.clickbank.com/hop?=affiliate, into an encrypted link
or you mask it behind a short domain name.

There are pros and cons with each method. Link cloaking software such as
Affiliate Defender and others use javascript to encapsulate your URL into an
indecipherable scramble of characters. This prevents anyone from seeing the
real affiliate link at the bottom of their browser window when they mouse over
it.

The only problem is that your link can still end up exposed once the user clicks
on to the main site. The link often “unscrambles” and appears naked yet again
in the address bar.

Domain masking, when done properly, allows you to use your own short url
which redirects to the merchant site while keeping your url in the address bar.
You can use domain masking with any address you choose. For example, you
could register one domain name to devote to your affiliate redirects.

You can use subdomains (subdomainname.mysite.com).


The downside to domain masking: the technique involves what’s called an
“invisible frame”. The frame pulls in the affiliate site within the main window.
Imagine your site has a set of navigation links down the left-hand side, and
clicking those links causes the main window to pull up content, while leaving
the left column unchanged. This is the basis of the technique – it’s just set up
on one link and hidden from the surfer’s view.

Unfortunately, sites like Clickbank frown upon this practice.

There’s a good chance that your redirect link will break frames and wind up
exposing your affiliate URL anyways. Nothing wrong with that other than the
fact that you went through a lot of work for nothing!

A greater concern: frames have a bad habit of confusing affiliate tracking
applications. Your referral ID might not be recorded and you wind up losing the
sale.

Obviously, you are free to test out any of these “solutions”. Just keep in mind
that they aren’t fool proof. Ultimately, the link theft problem occurs much more
frequently in the Internet Marketing niche than it does anywhere else due to
the large number of fellow profit-motivated customers within the niche. Link
theft occurs infrequently, if at all, in other niches.

Those customers are less likely to know (or care) what affiliate marketing is –
and less likely to take notice of affiliate URLs in general.

The Importance of Building a List

Out of all the possible approaches to affiliate marketing, lead capture and list
building represents the smartest and most effective option.

Why?

A lost visitor is a lost sale. A lost visitor is the loss of potential repeat sales.
Think of it this way: you’re putting time and money into your advertising. If you
aren’t capturing your visitor’s email addresses, you’re basically throwing all of
that traffic right down the drain.

When you capture your visitors to your list, you open a whole new world of
profit opportunities – not just for the short term, but for the long term as well.

The Benefits of List Marketing

You can educate your prospects. This will increase your conversion rate by
giving you the opportunity to turn hesitant prospects into enthusiastic
customers.

You can market to your prospects over and over again. Your long term profit
potential exists in repeat sales. Never work for “just one sale”.

You can double your return on investment while lowering your advertising
costs. Once you’ve got a list in place, you don’t have to limit your offerings to
just affiliate product. You can bring in any additional, related products of
interest to your list and make sales immediately without going through the
same advertising process all over again.

Can you see the benefits yet? Why spend money over and over again sending
people to the same page and “hoping for a sale”, when you can capture them
to your list and have full control over the conversion process?

Any other approach leaves you at the mercy of the merchant’s web copy and
the customer’s mindset at first contact. You’ve got to lure your prospects in and
expose them to your message multiple times. This will save you so much time and
money you’ll wonder why you ever did it any other way.

It'll also put you in the top 5% of affiliates that actually do this. . .
Get started building a list, generating traffic, and earning money non-stop for free...
http://www.viralnugget.com/members/?s=5479

Five Approaches to Affiliate Marketing

As a new affiliate, one of the first things you’ll want to know is where and how to
promote your affiliate link. In this week's blog we’ll cover several options and discuss the
merits of each method.

1. Direct Links via PPC Advertising
If you use PPC advertising, your PPC advertising should be SEO(search engine optimized) and target keywords .  You can embed your affiliate link to the ad and send the
prospect directly to the merchant’s site. This is a really lazy thing to do
though. You might make a few sales, but it’s far better to approach the process
as outlined in tactic #2.

2. Linking to Your 'Affiliate Enhanced' page via PPC's
Place ads for your target keywords and direct the prospects to your capture
page created with our AffiliateEnhancer software - Greet them with an invitation
to subscribe to your newsletter or to download a special report. This is
**Vital** because once you’ve collected a prospect’s email address, they are
yours to market to on a repeat basis.

3. Build Content Focused Sites
This approach aims for long term traffic through search engine optimization.
You’ll need to publish content related to the type of product you’re trying to
sell. Searchers will be drawn in by informative articles. You’re affiliate links will
be sprinkled discreetly across the site.

4. Advertise in E-Zines
This is a good method to use if you can find targeted lists for your product. Ezine
ads can be purchased in most cases, and in other cases you can snatch
them up for free by bartering with the list owner. Remember, rather than link
directly to the affiliate site use your Affiliate Enhanced page to capture
subscribers and build your list. Not only will this allow you to follow up and
convert more sale (for free) but it will also enable you to shield your affiliate
link.

5. Purchase text link or banner advertising on high traffic sites This type of
advertising isn’t quite as popular as it used to be. It is most effective when you
can find high traffic sites for smaller niche subjects. These sites tend to focus
heavily on content and run only a handful of ads on site. Space is limited and
rates are likely to be at a premium.

Beating the Odds

This will be a cold, hard dose of truth, but you need to know the facts. The
majority of people who go into affiliate marketing fail to break even. Some
people will earn thousands in this business, while others will struggle to
generate even a few hundred in sales per month.

Affiliate marketing is very competitive and cut-throat. You’ve got to stay on
your toes to win in this game. While I can’t guarantee your success, I can
provide you with some fundamental knowledge that just might help you beat
the odds.

Get ready to learn how to play hardball with the super affiliates.

#1: Never Stop Searching for Profitable Keywords

Successful affiliates are never satisfied with the status quo. Even if you endured
hours sweat producing research to find your target keywords, keep on
searching out new ones and adding them to your list.

#2: Become Obsessed with Testing and Tracking

If you aren’t testing and tracking absolutely everything – and I mean everything
from your keywords, your ppc ads, your web site copy and any thing else you
can think of to test/track, the odds are stacked against you.

Successful affiliates are maniacal about testing and tracking every detail of their
campaigns. They are details oriented and use all of their collected data to refine
their entire system on a day to day basis.

You might want to take a look at an amazing software tool called 

#3: Innovate and Update Constantly

Keep your approach fresh by testing new conversion tactics. If you rely on PPC
engines for advertising, start throwing in e-zine advertising into the mix. If that
doesn’t produce the desired results, investigate banner ads, classified ads,
message boards, offline media and anything else you can think of to get your
message across.

Don’t rely on one conversion channel. If you send your prospects direct to the
merchant, change up your campaign and start sending leads to your special
capture page created with our Affiliate Enhancer software and start collecting
email addresses. Experiment with your content and your web copy. Try out


different headlines. Never settle for the familiar. Tweak everything until you’ve
squeezed the maximum conversion power out of it.

#4: Pay Attention to the Industry and Communicate with Other
Affiliates

The world of affiliate marketing changes every day. There is always a new
tactic to implement, a change in the rules at one advertising service or another,
a serious technology failure at one of your merchant’s sites and so on.

Even though affiliate marketers are rabidly competitive group, they are also
quite helpful and willing to trade information and tips with one another.Well that is all for this week.

Choosing an Affiliate Program

Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, it is necessary to choose
the right program . There are almost as many programs out there as
there are products! When you first start out, it’s easy to go overboard signing
up to as many programs as possible, but this isn’t the right way to go about it.

First, you need to decide on a niche (area of particular interest to you). What products
do you know the most about and think you could do the best job of selling?

Once you identify your specialty, you begin by sorting through the available
merchants and examine the structure of their affiliate programs.

Key areas to investigate:

1. When and how do you get paid?
Find out whether the program pays you weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, etc. Most
programs have a minimum payout amount, meaning that you don’t receive
your commissions until hitting a minimum number of sales for the pay period.

You’ll also want to find out whether the programs pays you via check, direct
deposit, Pay Pal or any combination of the three.

2. How much do you make per sale?
Remember you’ll be investing your own money into advertising and other
expenses to promote these programs. Therefore, you should seek programs
which reward their affiliates well.

3. Is the program managed well? Is this a reputable company?
Larger companies usually have “affiliate managers” devoted to maintaining
contact with their affiliates. Even if you go with a smaller outfit, they should at
least offer clear contact information. You might want to try e-mailing them at
their contact address to see how fast they respond to you. Mismanaged
programs are, at best, a sign of disorganization and, at worst, could indicate a
company in trouble.

The last thing you want is to be sitting on a grand worth of hard earned
commissions and see the merchant go out of business before paying you.


Keeping these factors in mind, here are some great places to seek out products
you can promote:

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Welcome to the wide world of affiliate marketing!

So, what is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
Well let's find out...

The affiliate marketer acts as a “middle man” between merchant and consumer,
but without adding anything to the consumer’s cost.

Affiliates do not mark up or resell products.

Instead, the affiliate educates and directs the consumer to a product, and they
receive a percentage of the sale in commission from the merchant.

The affiliate acts as an independent lead generator for the merchant by
bringing in new customers.

This is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant.

The affiliate can reap a full-time income marketing a whole suite of products
that he does not own. They don’t pay for product creation, don’t have to ship
anything and don’t deal with customer service issues or returns.

The merchant benefits from the influx of new customers, the boatloads of
cheap traffic and low cost advertising. Merchants get their product and their
brand in front of thousands of potential buyers without paying a dime until
someone makes a purchase.

It is truly a pay for performance arrangement.

It's also one of the toughest types of business to earn a significant income
from. Competition is fierce and almost 95% of affiliates earn little or no
income.

For the lucky few, the ones that know how to do it the rewards can be
amazing. This blog has been created to help you become one of the few and
to perform at the very highest levels of Affiliate Marketing .