Affiliate Money Maker

I promised here I would post a little tutorial about using Google Base for affiliate marketing so here goes.

GoogleBase is Google’s service where users can offer their products, services, information and so on. It enjoys a tremendous amount of traffic so it only makes sense to use it for promoting your affiliate programs and getting some extra traffic and sales from it.

First thing you need is a Google account. If you don’t have one it only takes a couple minutes to register. Sign in with this account to Google Base. Once logged in, you will see the category listings for all the existing items posted to Google Base by all other users and three options you can use for posting your own items: one at a time, bulk or API. You mot likely will want to create your listings one at a time so select this option.

In the next screen, choose the item type you want to post - in our case, Products. Fill out all the fields applicable to your product. You can delete the fields you don’t need or add new fields for whatever you want to have in your product listing. You can even upload a picture of your product - this is a good idea as products with pictures tend to attract attention of potential shoppers better. Be sure to provide the URL - if you have your won site link to it, if not you can use your affiliate link, Google doesn’t seem to mind it. The description allows you to add HTML code so you can add your link right in the description field along with the features of your product you want to write about. Don’t write too much, the purpose of this listing is not to sell directly but to inform the visitors of the product, spark their interest in it and make them click on to your site to buy it there. Be sure to provide a very descriptive title for your listing as this is what will help your potential customers find your listing.

Once your product listing is ready you can eitehr save it as a draft or publish it. It only takes a few minutes for each item to be approved and published. But keep in mind that many item types can only be listed for a limited amount of time - e.g. your product listing will only be displayed for 30 days after which you will have to re-post it if you still want your offer showing up in Google Base.

Another kind of item you can benefit from is “News and Articles” - this one does not expire ever so once posted it will stay there. If you have an article on your site about the product youa re promoting, you can create an item in Google Base linked to that article and rip the benefits of additional traffic.

In your account, you get to see what items you have posted, when, when they are expiring and how many page views and clicks they got so far. For example, one of the listings I have created got 4 page views on the same day it was published - pretty good isn’t it?

An alternative to using Google Base that comes to mind is EBay - it is huge and gets as much traffic as Google Base, with the additional benefit of it being older and more familiar to online shoppers than Google Base. I haven’t personally tried using it for promoting my affiliate products but I see a lot of people doing it so it’s definitely worth a try.

What other sites and services do you use for affiliate marketing? Feel free to leave a comment and share your ideas.

I’ve been searching for some Firefox plugins to automate some of the stuff I do on a regular basis and came across iMacros - an extension that can record and repeat any recurring actions. I only had a couple uses for it in mind - but just around the time I installed it and started playing with it I have noticed this post by Linda Buquet who in her turn was quoting this post by Stuart of Earners Blog - both mentioning the same iMacros plugin. Stuart lists a ton of ways to use the plugn - which gave me a few ideas as well! The one I liked most is checking stats - this one takes a lot of my time daily - I guess I am addicted to checking stats, I do it every now and then! I definitely need to automate it.

However I might go even one step further and use another plugin, Check4Change, for notifying me when exactly my stats change and are worth a look at them. As the name of the plugin indicates, it tracks changes on a page and notifies you of them. You can select a bit of text on the page - like the number of conversions, in case of affiliates stats - and you will know exactly when a new conversion happens.

Most programs I use send email notifications when you get a new conversion so there is no need for me to track my conversions like this. (BTW, if your affiliate program has this feature of notifying of conversions by email do opt for it!) But for tracking clicks this is really handy, say when you launch a new site and want to know when visitors start coming to it.

What are your favourite tools for automating your affiliate tasks? Share them here!

I’ve been playing around with some Web 2.0 sites like MyBlogLog (I believe I need to make a post about using these for your affiliate online business) and came across something interesting. You see, one of the features MyBlogLog has is displaying the recent posts in the blogs that belong to the communities you’re a member of. This is exactly how I’ve found this post that caught my eye today.

A couple days ago, I’ve been posting about changes to Google’s site quality guidelines - so this one will be as handy as ever. Kieron Donoghue over at Here.org.uk has just done a great post entitled Google AdWords Landing Pages - how to build a page that won’t get banned, with examples. Now, like I mentioned before, I do not do PPC at the moment but this is a must read for every affiliate using PPC. Here’s just a short excerpt from Kieron’s post:

Your landing page website should contain the following pages as standard:

1. Sitemap - this should be accessible from all pages of your site.
2. Privacy Policy - lots of resources on the web to create one of these, just Google “privacy policy”. If you are in the UK then consider applying for the Data Protection Act. It only costs around £35.
3. Terms and Conditions - as above, here is a good resource.
4. Contact Us - with full physical postal address and telephone number.
5. About Us - description of what the purpose of the website is and the business operating it, i.e. you.

OK now that you have these basic pages, consider adding these pages too:

1. News - add a page where you regularly update with newsworthy stories related to the niche you are promoting.
2. Blog - like a news page but you can also add editorial comments here and opinions.
3. How To or What Is Guide - pages/pages with detailed unique content describing the product/service you are promoting and how they work. I.e. if you have a coupon site then add some pages describing what coupons are and how they work, an idiots guide really.
4. FAQ’s - think of every question related to the product/service you are promoting then list them and answer them here.
5. Glossary - every industry has its own terminology, create an A-Z of industry specific jargon here and define it.
6. Deals/Offer pages - again everyone has specific deals and offers, so list the ones relevant to your product/service on their own page.
7. Individual product/pages - likewise the chances are that your product/service will have different components. I.e. a certain brand of credit card will have a gold card, platinum card, reward card etc. So build pages for each product containing very detailed information, more so that you would find on a traditional landing page.
8. Submit your review - offer your users the opportunity to submit their own product/reviews. Not only does this create stickiness but it gives you free content.

Simple enough, although does require some additional work - but just think how your CPC can drop thanks to these few changes - not even to mention that with a landing page like this, you will no longer be banned from using AdWords.

For those of us affiliates wondering why this or that affiliate program pays exactly the commission it does, here’s an interesting post by Shawn Collins - with a video even - detailing his point of view on setting up the commissions level for the affiliates. A must read for everyone wishing to understand the other side of the affiliate game!

Here are a couple of interesting bits from his post:

You don’t want to pay out less than competing affiliate programs, and just the same, it doesn’t make sense to far exceed their commission rate.

Ideally, you will dig into your margins to pay some degree more than the competition to set your affiliate program apart from the pack.

Of course, this is just one piece of the puzzle. Your site has to convert well, too, in order to keep the affiliates happy.

I promiced to post about running an affiliate business in an international market so here goes.

First of all:

Why would you want to do it?

1. English is one of the most popular languages among the Internet users but it surely isn’t the only one. There is also a huge Spanish, French, Italian, German-speaking audience and so on.

2. With many affiliate programs translating their sites to target these audiences, it makes sense from the point of view of monetizing that international traffic.

3. As a rule, the competition in these international markets is much lower - resulting in much lower costs per click in PPC and much lower compatition in organic SERPs.

What do you need to do it?

1. Ideally, you should know at least a bit of the language of the market you’re targeting -  doesn’t mean you need to be a fluent speaker, but knowing just enough to select the most targeted keywords surely helps.

2. If you don’t speak the language but feel it’s still worth it, you might want to hire a native speaker to help you with creating your site and selecting the keywords.

3. Also, have this native speaker check the quality of the translated site of the affiliate program you’re promoting - sometimes their translation quality is rather low which might hurt your conversion rates and then it’s a lot of effort wasted on your part. You might want to have a couple of words with the affiliate managers in such case and ask them to improve the quality of their translation.

4. And NO, Google language tools just don’t cut it! As a person with some linguistic background, I can tell you that machine translation will never be quite the quality we expect from human translation.

Possible Drawbacks  of Targeting International Markets

1.  You might be unaware of some cultural specifics of the market you are targeting - which may render your campaign ineffective.

2. What seems like an affordable price for the US audience might not be that affordable for people in some other countries - again, this bearing negative impact on your conversions.

3.  What has been a familiar product for the English speaking market migth be a totally new product for the international market - so it might take some time before people get to trust your offer and those conversions start rolling in.

4. While for the English speaking markets, affiliate programs typically provide plenty of advertising materials such as banners, buttons, articles and so on, these may be scarse in other languages - so you will have to do most of the work yourself.

All in all, international market is a totally new experience, with its positive and negative sides, but let it not stop you from trying to conquer it - it is really worth the try. Currently, several affiliate programs I am using provide translated web sites:

• Leading Edge Cash - French and Spanish
• JoeBucks - Italian, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Dutch
• MoreNiche - they are currently playing with Google translation of some of their sites into german, Spanish and Japanese so I guess the real translation is coming soon as well.

Go ahead and give them a try and let’s compare our notes later on.

I’ve been browsing around the blog of Ricki, a fellow affiliate I’ve met over at MoreNiche forum (I must say he has a very impressive blog where he details his experience making money as an affiliate) and among all the other good stuff there found a few tips concerning selecting the right affiliate program. Since I was going to do a post om a similar topic, I thought I’d quote Ricki’s post and add a few comments:

• Firstly check the product. The best performing affiliates actually use their sponsor’s products and know them well. Know the market that will need these products and how to create a need for them.

• Check out the company carefully

• Not everyone can afford high end products so unless you are familiar with special markets who can afford high priced goods stick to the average market of $10-$500. It will be easier for you to promote products in this range.

• Commissions: Be sure the company is offering a decent percentage. Do not accept anything below 20% as it is not worth it.

• The company should also be offering good training and tools, their success lies in your success.

• Be sure they offer good, quick customer support.

• There should be no obligation for you to buy the product

• There should be a good tracking system, showing your earnings in real time

• The company should have a system in place to prevent theft of your ID

• You should be paid at least once a month and the minimum payout should not be more than $100. Also be sure that the company has a convenient method of paying your commission.

Great tips. What I have to add to these is just the following:

• An ideal way to make money as an affiliate is a two-tire commissions structure. This way, you earn not only by making sales yourself but also as a result of sales made by other affiliates who you referred to the program. Hence, I really like two-tire programs.
• When joining a program, check whether the payment options they offer are suitable for you - this applies first of all to non-US based affiliates. E.g., PayPal is not available in all countries - so if an affiliate program offers PayPal as their only payout option you need to double check if you would be able to receive payments through PayPal in your country.

As for Ricki’s tips: I am relatively new to the affiliate business though I am quite an experienced Internet marketer. Until I started putting up my own affiliate sites, I have never thought it would be so much different from what I was used to. Training, guides, tutorials provided by the affiliate program is an invaluable help in this case as it can shorten the learning curve a lot. One such program that I’ve found very helpul and providing a lot of trainign and assistance to the affiliates is MoreNiche.

Affiliate programs are a popular way of making money online. Here’s the principle behind them: a business has a website and sells its products or services through that website. In order to drive targeted traffic to this website and the offers featured on it, the business starts an affiliate program:

- people sign up and drive traffic to the website,
- the orders made by customers you bring are tracked back to you and
- you get a commission for every successful sale.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

It is easy indeed if you know what you are doing. The benefits of being an affiliate as opposed to running your own online business are numerous: you don’t have to handle shipping, customer support or anything else associated with serving customers. All you do is supply the traffic for the site you’re an affiliate for and they take care of all the rest. In many cases, you don’t even need to have a site of your own to do this. There are, of course, things you need to take into account to make your affiliate activities successful. One of the most important things is bringing the relevant targeted traffic. This way, you ensure high percentage of conversions - which, consequently, means less work with better results for you. The conversion rates vary from market to market depending on the products or services being offered - what is considered a great conversion rate for one market niche may be extremely low conversion rate for anotehr niche. But the general rule is to try to achieve the highest conversion rates possible.

In my future posts I will be looking into different aspects of being a successful affiliate, including ways to ensure highly targeted traffic.