Affiliate marketing is an Internet based marketing practice in which a business rewards it's affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's efforts. It all comes down to driving traffic to a businesses site really. If you are a website owner and can help a business in this way, you will be rewarded.
There are three individuals or groups that are involved in affiliate marketing. The business selling the products, the affiliate promoting the products and the customer who visits the affiliate's website. Usually the affiliate earns a commission on sales of a businesses products but it can be possible to find affiliate marketing schemes that generate revenue on an ad-click basis.
Types of affiliate website include:
Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers' offers (i.e., search arbitrage)
Comparison shopping websites and directories
Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back
CRM sites that offer charitable donations
Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions
Content and niche market websites, including product review sites
Personal websites (This type of website was the reason for the birth of affiliate marketing; however, such websites are almost reduced to complete irrelevance compared to the other types of affiliate websites.)[citation needed]
Weblogs and website syndication feeds
E-mail list affiliates (i.e., owners of large opt-in -mail lists that typically employ e-mail drip marketing) and newsletter list affiliates, which are typically more content-heavy
Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website
Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparisons, or other features based on information that changes frequently, thus requiring continual updates
Cost per action networks (i.e., top-tier affiliates) that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates
Websites using adbars (e.g. Adsense) to display context-sensitive, highly-relevant ads for products on the site
It is important that when you are looking into affiliate marketing you do not participate in any schemes that may be spam based, either email or search engine, and do not choose a program that uses adware; spying software illegally placed onto web users computers.
There are great advantages for businesses who own a webblog, both large and small. Perhaps the most obvious advantage is that one can maintain excellent communication relationships with employees and customers. Nowadays blogs have even become a means of sharing information and expertise at very advanced levels meaning increased profit for the company. You may think that large businesses stand to make the most from blogging, you are wrong! A highly specific set of web pages such as a blog, successfully substitutes an extensive online presence. Dynamic blogs also offer feed-back and various issues are tackled quickly.
Blogs are regarded as informal but they are still a great way to develop business contacts. They are not 'in your face' like many promotive sites offering the reader a more relaxed introduction to the company. As for personal blogging customer feed-back can be negative or positive and a business must prepare for both. Monitoring a weblog is essential if one does not wish the company to have a bad name.
A blog can also be used to spread information to employees on a daily basis. Blogs have been shown to significantly contribute to team building and communication between departments of the same company. So perhaps a blog would be better than your current weekly newsletter?
Blogging is not without its short falls. For instance, maintaining a blog requires hard work and can be time consuming. Additionally e-commerce opportunities are fewer when it comes to using a blog over a regular site. Blogging is a great way to promote a new business online but eventually you may choose to parallel it with a regular promotion site.
When you ask how a successful business communicates I am in not doubt that the main reply will be 'online'. Online communications are by far the most successful and effective ones worldwide. Email means no stamps, quick access and direct contact, no questions asked. More advanced techniques such as video-conferencing even allow the user to meet face to face with their clients, even though they are half way across the world. Yes online communication saves money, time while also allowing transactions,advertising and administration. Now forming part of this trend is blogging. There are a few outline rules you need to follow to get started blogging, but believe me, it can be as easy as putting finger to keyboard. Now a lot of sites and indeed other blogs will try to make this process sound more advanced, specialised and technical than it actually is. I aim to make blogging as simple as learning your ABC's or 123's.
Image from http://edutech.csun.edu.
Purpose
The most important thing for the creation of a blog is the purpose, why are you actually writing it and who are you writing it for. Now be honest here, if you are writing a blog to make money then thats fine but realise this. Do not fool yourself into believing you are interested in a subject that clearly you are not; you may lose enthusiasm later on down the line and heres why:
Joe wants to make money online so decides to write a weblog. 'Great!' he thinks, 'This seems easy enough!'. He reads online about how Politics and Camping are commonly searched for themes on Google. He decides to base his blog on Politics while making money from advertisements. Joe has no interest in Politics but realises the potential for making money from this area. Guess what, 4 weeks down the line and no new content is being posted to the blog, Joe has forgotten about it, members have moved on.
It IS difficult to continuously write about a subject that you have no interest in. There are ways around this by obtaining blog content from elsewhere but initially it is good to base your blog on a subject you are interested in. That way you have more to give and can interact with your readers honestly and effectively. You can make money from any blog on any subject.
Doing the Work
Who will create your blog, you? Or will you hire somebody to do it for you? If you are a business owner trying to promote yourself perhaps you do not have the time to write and maintain a blog, but you see the potential in it. This is not such an extravagant idea and quite a few people hire a blogging pro to get thing started and on the right track, then take over themselves.
Plan, Plan, Plan
Before even starting the actual blogging project, create a detailed plan. You really need this so that you do not get distracted from your true goal. Read alot, I mean alot. Download popular ebooks that will help you through this process, a favourite of mine is Blogging to the Bank. The author is a successful blogger now earning a living from his work. As with anything preparation is key and the 'Cash In On Blogs' blog will help you through this important process. You will need objectives, investment and the analysis of cost and profit, targeted audience, blog updates, administration and monitoring tools. You will need to really ask yourself 'Can I do the work?' 'Do people want to read this?' 'Will it make money?'
Attracting Visitors
The full potential of a blog is realised when you are attracting visitors. If your visitor numbers grow and consistantly return to check for regular updates, you know your content is sticky and interesting. To get the ball rolling search for special software that helps you choose the best keywords to use in your posts (the kind people search for all the time on search engines). This process is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO as you might have already discovered. You need to learn as many SEO secrets as you can. Note, you will not find all of these in books and guides. If you had found a way to get high traffic yields to your website, would you share it with the world and potential competition? SEO should be a buzzword for all bloggers.
Sources of Revenue
Bear in mind that if you have great content and lots of visitors you still are not making any money. The hard bit however is out of the way. Now you need to monetize your blog by placing advertisements, sponsored links etc in appropriate places on your site. This is known as affiliate marketing and will be discussed further in a later blog post. A popular marketing scheme I use comes from ClickBank. The key point here is that great SEO + great advertising = $$$!
Do Not Forget the Basics
It is very easy to get caught up in marketing hype and trying to out do the competition and forget about the most important principle, content. Great content fill the best sites and is the reason why people subscribe to your blog and come back time and time again. Search engines love great content including videos and pictures. If you offer free email advice or a weekly newsletter, advertise it and use it as a way of retaining your members.
Be dedicated, punctual and responsible. Learn from the ground up and you will go far. You can even start write now, doing your research and learning about blogging. Choose a niche topic and start writing draft posts. If you really want you can even have a play with the free blogging utility Blogger. I have found a video for you on YouTube that should help:
As always any comments are more than welcome, I am here to help! This blog will step you through the process piece by piece, goal by goal and within no time you will have a successful Internet blog!
I think we are all in agreement that the Internet contains a wealth of opportunities for making some extra money and supplementing an income. Blogging harnesses these revenue prospects but in a low cost way with little effort actually coming from the blogger. Is it really possible to earn money in such a simplistic fashion? If so, then why isn't everybody doing it? I have described blogging initially as an online diary but over time through confidence in personal expression and advancing monetization methods, blogging has evolved. Most desirable by bloggers is to now turn their work into a home-business. Who wouldn't want to earn money for doing something which they enjoy? This is a goal for all of us.
We will start with the established blog. Great quality content, a witty and interesting author and the subject base 'Making Money Online'. This blog has a large number of subscribers and consistantly has 1000 hits from visitors per month. Now anyone running a business that specialises in delivering advice for making money online, runs an online marketplace or produces a product that delivers more traffic to a website etc would see advertising on this blog as a great money spinner. Heres why:
The visitors to the blog are clearly interested in making money online, perhaps they have their own businesses and want to make more money through increased sales or they just want to supplement their income using the Internet for this means. A well established businessman would see the marketing potential here and ask to advertise on the homepage of the blog, somewhere near the top of the page with a catchy slogan: Fat Loss For Idiots
Now my friends this is bound to draw the eyes of the 1000 visitors away from whatever article they are reading on the blog for at least 1 second, yes? Well so far so good, 1000 glances at this advertisement per month. Now lets be really conservative here, say 10% of the visitors actually click the link attached to the slogan: Fat Loss For Idiots
Thats 100 people per month following through to the business' homepage to read about the product, great! Now we are going to be even more conservative and say that just 10% of these people go and actually buy the advertised product. Thats 10 sales extra per month the business has gained. If the product is priced at say $20 then thats $2400 in extra sales per year. Most bloggers will advertise for a small commission, for continuity we will again say 10% (although much higher commissions can be made!). Now the blogger is earning $240 per year, and the business is earning and $2160 per year! Very lucrative!
So you can see that through little effort on either part, both are earning money. You can scale this up for yourself for popular webblogs recieving 100,000 visits per month etc.
A key factor mentioned here is visitor numbers, you must be recieving plenty of hits for this process to work.Luckily this is attainable for most by following a few simple procedures that I will discuss in the following weeks. To summarise though you must make web search possible directly from your blog using perhaps one of the Google programs available. Then your blog visitors should be able to interact with your blog; make comments, download images, subscribe etc. You must regularily update your blog to make it 'sticky' for the reader and then monitor your site statistics regularily; visitor number, time on site etc.
It is not just companies promoting single products that want to advertise on your site, there are also great advertising companies like Google Adsense, Google Adwords, Clickbank and Amazon Associates that allow you to advertise lots of different products for lots of companies using banners, link groups etc that are created by the marketing company for you.
If you have great content, great functionality and good adverts then word will get around and traffic will come to your site and you will make money. However there are a few tips and tricks that will make this a much quicker process, some of which will be discussed next time.
Some people choose to create blogs and others choose to read them, why? The answer comes from the very working principle behind the entire phenomenom. First off, bloggers are like journalists or columnists and the material we find on blogs is often personalised giving it a more associable and interesting theme. We cannot ignore the interactive dimension of blogs which promotes this form of communication advantageously. We have comment boxes for instant feedback, links to a variety of media across the web, the opportunities to make blogging a two way affair are endless.
Lets face it, blogging is becoming trendy. We all have personal sites on popular social networking applications like Facebook or MySpace which in themselves are autobiographical blogs that are communicated through text, photos and videos. You get an idea of what people appreciate in your writing and get the chance to speak up and comment upon events of public interest in an environment free from discouragement and general demeanour. Everything that you post on a blog is easily accessible, reliably so, such that whenever you need it you know exactly where to find it. Blogging gives the amateur journalist the opportunity to get his/her ideas into print without the intermediary of another publication.
Many webblogs offer constructive debate on current news where many will voice their opinions. The feed-back is not always what you expect but it is important to realise that it is what it is, feedback on a particular issue. Whether negative or positive this is at large what you want from interactive debate; a way of finding out how to improve a product, business or website. If all feedback were positive we would have nothing to aim for.
Many businesses have discovered that blogs are the perfect way to regularily keep in touch with customers and even employees since these 'online journals' are regularily updated. Traditional websites are known for being static in their content and approach but blogs remain to be dynamic, informative and quirky enticing the reader to come back week after week.
Next Time: Blogging, Seriously...whats it all about?
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the past f...
