A Theme-Based Website, Part 3- Choosing Affiliate Programs

by: Julie Georg

In parts 1 & 2 , I determined that developing a theme-based
site is a great way to generate income. It's going to be a
WINing situation for the search engines, my visitors, my
merchants and ME. I've chosen a theme that I know (or can
find out about) and love. I've found lots of keywords that
are related to my theme and have lots of ideas for good
content to offer my visitors. Now I need to find merchants
who sell products, programs or services that are
appropriate for my site and will fit with my content.

Once again, I'm going to look at my list of keywords.
Since people are going to use these words to search and
I've used them to write my "keyword focused" content for
each page of my site... it only makes sense that the
products and services I want to represent should also be
related to these keywords. That will help me to seamlessly
recommend the product within my content and really use my
content to presell.

There are several ways to find merchants.

Technique 1: I'll do a search on my keywords at several
of the engines - Google, AltaVista, Overture, or any of
the others. Then I'll have a quick look at the first ten
or twenty listings. If I use SiteBuildIt!, the Manager will
automatically show me ten related sites for each keyword.
(You can take the quick tour of SBI! at...
http://quicktour.sitesell.com/assist3.html ) Wherever you
get the listings, some will be merchants, while
other are content sites. (Of course some are always
irrelevant. Lots of room for my theme-based site!)
I'm going to take a look at the merchants' sites
and see if they have something I'd like to offer my
visitors and if they have an affiliate program. If so,
great. They go on my "keep in mind" merchant list for that
keyword. Next I can explore the content sites. Maybe I'll
find ideas for content, but I'm mainly here to see if THEY
link to any merchants. If so, I can click through and see
what I find. Can you see the beauty of this? I'm going to
have content ideas and possible merchants all organized by
keyword. That's going to make things pretty easy when I go
to build my "keyword focused" pages, no?

Technique 2: I'll do a search for each of my keywords,
plus the word "affiliate", like this... +Italian wine
+affiliate. Or I can try this... affiliate wine. What
will come up are either merchants with affiliate programs
or content sites that are affiliates. Again, for the
merchants, I'll see if I like their product and affiliate
program. For the content sights, I'll check their links.

Technique 3: Now I'm going to check the directories.
There are a lot of affiliate program directories out
there. I'll check with a few of the best, like
AssociatePrograms.com, Refer-It.com, CashPile.com and
Associate-It.com. The directories list programs by
category, so I'll go right to the catagories that fit my
site theme and see if there is any program I like.
They often have reviews as well, which I'll check.

Technique 4: One more thing I could do is to join
affiliate networks. These networks provide merchants with
affiliates and vice-versa. It's a good place to get
exposure to a wide variety of merchants. I'm sure to find
some I haven't run across already, so I'll check to see if
any programs are featured that will work for me. I can
join Commission Junction, BeFree, LinkShare, and/or
ClickTrade.

That took a bit of work, but now I'm ready to narrow down
my choices and weed out merchants with less than great
products, or poor affiliate programs. I'm going to be
pretty particular. The products I choose to represent will
reflect on me. And the quality of the affiliate program
will be reflected in my commission checks. I want my
visitors to be happy and come back to my site. And I want
fair compensation for delivering such valuable, presold
customers to my merchants' sites.

In part 4 of this series, I'll explain how best to build a
theme-based site. Questions?
mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com

About the Author

Julie Georg is a consultant to individuals and small
businesses interested in establishing a web presence.
Step-by-step directions for building a theme-based site can
be found in the excellent, free Affiliate Masters course.
Blank email mailto:tamsassist3@sitesell.net

A Successful Affiliate Program

by: Hamoon Arbabi

Two Christmases ago I tugged on one of those paper crackers and after a small bang, out opped a piece of yellow paper the size of a credit card.

On one side was a riddle that didn't make much sense, but on the other side was an 'Inspirational Quote' that made a lot of sense.

So much so, that I still have it in my wallet.

This is what it said: "The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours".

I'm constantly amazed to see affiliate programs that offer 20%, or even as little as 15%, to their affiliates.

It is generally accepted that the production of any information product is only 10 percent of the whole process.

What's the other 90 per cent? Marketing!

My own affiliate program gives 50% commissions, and I wouldn't dream of offering less. After all, who makes the sale - me or the affiliate?

It may be disappointing to see 50% of your sale price going to your affiliates. But it's worth remembering this: without your affiliate, that sale simply wouldn't have occurred.

Of course, there are many other factors involved in building a successful affiliate program, but this is the first and most important: make your affiliates your equal partners, because they'll be doing 90% of the work.

Good luck.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hamoon Arbabi
Find more about Affiliate programs, Online business opportunities, Marketing tactics, Free services, Free tools and... In http://homebusiness.nexuswebs.net

101 Affiliate Research Results: Affiliate Program that pays!

by: Emmanuel.N. Uduezue.

Are you an online marketer or an ezine publisher and you interested in Affiliate program? Let's start from basics.
What is Affiliate Program?
Affiliate program is a program introduced by web business owners where opportunity is been created for other people to participate in selling their products and service on the internet without


necessarily buying the products or services and they are paid a percentage of the amount, paid for the products or service or a particular amount as comission made from sales of those products or service.

If you are a web business owner, my advice to you as an online marketing strategist is you invest having an affiliate progam in your website, because it helps you create markerters for product or services free, there by boosting sales for your products and services real fast. For more information, visit www.clickbank.com, www.assoctrace.com

Who is an Affiliate
An Affiliate is somebody who advertise the products and service of a web business owner for a comission of the product made from sales, all he does is register with the web master's Affiliate program and he is given an affiliate link which he will use to refer people to the website, write a good advertisement and advertise his link to draw customers to the website and when it results to a sale he is paid a part of the profit made from sales as comission.

What Makes a Good Affiliate Program
As i browsed through the internet and visit search engines to search for a good affiliate program to join, though I get to join, some affiliate programs but i found out something that i should let you, do you know some affiliate progams are not worth joining despite the fact, they promise to pay you a "fat" sum as comission. So carefully read the next few listed points and I suggest you stick by it and always read these points before you join any affiliate program because i have learn't my lessons so i dont want to hide it and allow you make the same mistakes because it could be a very ugly situation you might not forgive me for not telling you because this article was written to empower you on what makes a good affiliate program and how to make good use of your time advertising good programs you 've joined.


My Research Result
Althrough my research on how to make money on the internet, the concept of Affiliate program has proved to be the easiest way on how to make money on the internet because, you
(i) Don't need to have your products before you join an affiliate program, though some web marketers insist you buy their products and services before you can market them but it is very rare to find such programs online but they exist.
(ii) You don't need a website, but in most cases, when you want to really earn a living onlne through affiliate program, i suggest you need a website to advertise as many programs as possible, all you need to do if you want to go into this kind of affiliate advertising, just place the programs in categories, i tell you this is the secret of making $10,000 a month without owing a product, but if you just want to go into part time Affiliate advertising, you don't need a website, effective affiliate advertising will be discussed in my next article coming up soon.
(iii) You don't need to wait for long before you earn commissions except if you have not advertised your affiliate link or you did not write a good and catchy advert or promotion, there is every possibility you can earn a commission in the next six hours with a good advert.

BELOW ARE THE POINTS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE JOINING ANY AFFILIATE PROGRAM.
(i) Products and Services of the Web marketer, whether it is a one-product or multiple products web business, they must be market moving products (i.e fast selling) information or "how to" products.
(ii) Is the website an interesting site that customers can really get in and dont want to go anymore they just keep reading the sales letter and eventually buy to know if the owner has put up a cachy salesletter, read it for your self does it entice you to buy or make you feel bored reading such letter tip. If it is a good and catchy salesletter, you can even catch some points in the letter and form a good advert for the program.
(iii) Did the site owner create a way of following up visitors by inviting visitors to signup for his ezine or newsletter on his site, because that is an excellent way to ensure your visitors buy from you and that's commission for you as his affiliate. for referring customers to his website.
(iv) Does (web marketer) after a two-tier affiliate program where people can sign with their affiliate program under you, thereby building a down line for your self and it is another way you can earn commission when members of your down line makes sales, you are paid a percentage commission (eg 6%)
(v) How is the sign up process, do you spend up one hour signing up or a few minutes people tend to ignore joining his (webmarketer) affiliate program if the sign up process is difficult to complete, you should be able to tell this fact since you signed up with his affiliate program.
You can get more of these facts on what makes a good affiliate program, if you sign up for newsletter. I advice you signup for my newsletter because there are still more to know on what makes a good Affiliate program if you know these things you still enjoy be earning fat residual income on monthly basis. So be empowered.
Learn the basics and stick to it.
It's worth knowing. To your success

About the Author

Emmanuel .N. Uduezue teaches what make good affiliate program and marketing offers free resources on starting and succeeding in an online business in his articles and newsletters, to subscribe to his article publication(E-BIZ INFORMANT),send an email to:emmanuel_nnamdiuduezue@yahoo.com.