Affiliate Marketing - How To Get On Track In 6 Stress-Free Steps

If you are just starting out or have had trouble making money with affiliate programs, you may not have realized how straight-forward it is, once you know the steps to follow.  This article shows you the six steps you require.

Affiliate marketing is probably the simplest business model you can take to build a business. Of course the devil is in the details, as they say, but the overall model can really be broken down into six steps.

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Before we get to the steps, I want you to ask yourself a question. What do you look forward to accomplishing with affiliate marketing? This is an easier question to meet than it might seem. There are really only two major choices here.

The first is what I call the “fast buck” choice. In other words, you want to make a few dollars instantly, and you are not interested in building a business. If this is you, all you need to do is learn how to put in writing exceptionally superior ads, and then use them to promote your affiliate product. Scores of people will say I am improper, but there is nothing wrong with doing this, as long as you are honestly not demanding to build a long term business this way.

In other words, if you are looking to shape a business with income potential for the long term, then you will have a longer road ahead of you. It will take you longer before you see any profit from your efforts, but it will be worth it when you are able to take a day off, or even a week off, and still earn profits in your absence.

These steps should be followed in order. If you try to go out of sequence, you will not get the results you are hoping to achieve.

1. Select a Marketplace

Why pick a market and not pick a product? Because you will sooner or later want to add other products into your pipeline. You should pick a market that interests you, and maybe something you already know something about. Don't forget that you are building for the long term.

2. Choose a Product

Once you have your marketplace selected, you should settle on just one product to kick off with. It will be very tempting to try to add all kinds of related products at first, but don't. Having just one product will help you focus on the important tasks. You will want to choose a product that converts well. What this means is that the product sells to a high percentage of visitors. This will help keep your cost per visitor down and increase your earnings.  Although there are quite a few affiliate programs online, the one that I advocate is Clickbank, because of their handsome commission pay-outs, many as high as 75%!

3. Build An Auto-Responder Cycle

Also called a follow-up series, you should build one based on the subject and the contents of the product you are suggesting. If it is a physical product you are suggesting, you will have to establish or locate substance that is directly related to the product. For example, if you are promoting golf clubs, you could make a sequence about how to pay money for golf clubs that fit, or the benefits of custom clubs, or even something about the club preferences of famous professional golfers. Be as creative as you can, and do not stray off issue. It has been said that most sales are not made in the preliminary link, they are made on the seventh. If you are not following up with your prospects, the bottom line is you are down in commissions.

4. Build up an email capture page

This is where you will opt-in information about your prospects so you can send your auto-responder run. If you are putting together a business, having your own web site is a necessity, if only because you will control the subject matter, and be able to capture email addresses for yourself. You might be able to get by for a short time without this, but it just isn't worth it in the long run, especially if you're trying to construct a long-term business.

5. Force traffic to your squeeze page

Until you have completed step four, you shouldn't even think about traffic techniques. If you don't have anywhere to propel the traffic, why concern about how to spawn it in the first place. Depending on the traffic generation techniques you go for, it may take some time for you to start seeing sales in your program. You should spend this time creating one or two streams of traffic, and refining these techniques to help you propel more traffic with less effort.

6. Attain Added related products

Once your business is making some commission, it is time to start off tallying to your list of products. I don't mean you should go out and sign up for every affiliate program that is even remotely related. What I do mean is that you should carefully go for an additional product or two, and add them into your pipeline. Because you have been forming a list of competent prospects, you will be able to market these new products to them. This is the really long term commissions for your business. As long as you go on to market good products to your customer list, you can remain to make money off of them, even the ones who have already purchased your last product suggestion.

So these six steps are all you necessitate to go from nothing to having a profitable business promoting other peoples products. It can be easy to loose focus if you are not seeing fast results, so keep your sights on the end goal of having a profitable business. You may also find it difficult selecting your initial market and product. Take your time and pick the best product you can. If the product you want to promote is less than desirable, your prospects will not persist to take note of your recommendations.

Here's How You Can Make Money Online From Home In Affiliate Marketing

People all over the internet are looking for ways to make money from home. Many folks who browse the internet long enough discover that there are people who are actually making money online. In fact, they've even heard that some people are making a living earning online.

Earning a living, making money online? ...Think about that for a moment.

* That means that if you're earning a living online, you are no longer driving to a miserable job every day.

* You no longer have to put up with a boss who doesn't care what your problems are and isn't going to be sympathetic to you or your needs.

* That means not having to keep your alarm clock set every night before bed, to ensure that you get up on time every morning...and that's usually at the crack of dawn...the sun isn't even up yet!

* Then when it's time to fly out of the door with your bag in one hand and your half-eaten breakfast in the other, you have to fight traffic in order to make it into work about 5-10 minutes late, making your boss give you another "I want to fire you" look.

Is this the way you want to continue living your life...Every Day? ...Until you finally reach retirement?

...And guess what? When you're 60-something and retired, you're still held prisoner to remaining limited to living on a fixed income which means social security checks approximately under $1000 per month and if you're lucky enough to have retirement income, you might be able to supplement your social security income.

...Maybe social security and a decent pension check every month will be enough to live on until you die...and maybe not...especially if you didn't participate in your compay's 401K plan, or maybe it wasn't available to you because of budget cuts in light of the present economy.

This is truly the reality that we are all facing today. It's not like it was 20+ years ago when you thought that you would be taken care of--things have changed.

More and more people are discovering that finding a way to earn a living online can actually be a real possibility. You already know that there are other people doing it right now.

Well, there are several methods for earning a living online but it's like with anything else in the world...You have to search for those legitimate opportunites....and we all know what that's like, don't we? It seems the scams out number the legitimate opportunities online that really exist.

For someone new to the online world, where do you go?

You're probably like I was a couple years ago--you've tried so many things online that you might be thinking that "maybe it's not possible to make money online--maybe it's all a big lie!"

Well, after stumbling around and losing money online for about the last ten years, I finally found something that makes sense. I've tried MLM, Network Marketing, Surveys, Gifting programs, Money Doublers, etc., you name it, I've tried them all...and I lost heap loads of money over the years trying them all too. I finally figured out that the best online business opportunities are those that involve Affiliate Marketing.

* To become an Affiliate Marketer does not require any formal training nor a degree of any kind.

* Affiliate Marketing is one of the few online businesses that will not require any start-up fees. You don't even need to have a website to start.

* Affiliate Marketing is virtually risk-free!

There are thousands of free affiliate marketing programs online that a person can join and begin to start making money. The real trick to Affiliate Marketing however, is to know how to market online--that's not something that you automatically know and many of the free affiliate marketing programs online don't thoroughly show you how to do that either.

Once you learn how to market online, it becomes second nature and that's when you'll discover that you can do Affiliate Marketing and succeed.

I know of a program that teaches you how to affiliate market and they demonstrate effective ways on how to target your market, get lots of free traffic and get those conversions up.

What you learn is invaluable and if you don't start earning money from practicing the steps of this program, you simply aren't doing a thing with it. Period!

You'll discover how easy it really is to earn money online and you'll be wondering why you didn't find this life-saver sooner! But I always say..."Better Late Than Never!" =)