Affiliate Marketing Terms Defined

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Aug 4, 2011 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

For new online marketers it can get a little confusing trying to define what some of the more common affiliate marketing terms are. This quick explanation should help.

Affiliate Program: This is a system that is built to track sales by third parties. The third party’s incentive to sell is defined by the affiliate program owner and is usually a percentage of the sale or a pre-determined one time payout. A high quality affiliate program will include a control panel to view traffic and sales, obtain sales materials for the product or service that you (the affiliate) is marketing, and the ability to keep in touch with the affiliate with news and updates.

Affiliate: An affiliate (you) is simply a person who signs up to sell another merchants product or service. The affiliate (you) is paid a commission for each sale they create for the merchant.

For example, one of the greatest affiliate marketers I know is Rosalind Gardner, author of the Super Affiliate Handbook. This book is one of the very first books that I purchased online as a download and is an important part of my entrepreneurial library. I also recommend and promote it as an affiliate, which is exactly what I am doing now as an illustration. I know Rosalind. I have followed her career and business advice for many years. I have interviewed her several times on my Internet radio show, Your Partner In Success Radio. So am I confident that I am promoting one heck of a product? Yes. In fact, let’s make that a “Hell Yes!” I greatly admire Rosalind’s work and am hoping that if you are interested at all in affiliate marketing that you will purchase and study her book and follow her on her blog. She is in my opinion, quite simply the best person to learn affiliate marketing from. If nothing else, connect with her on her blog and on Facebook!

Some of my favorite affiliate programs:

• ClickBank
• Commission Junction (CJ.com)
• Shareasale

What you need to know:

When I mention a product or service in my blogs, I give you my word that I am using it myself and think enough of it to endorse it. I NEVER promote a product or service that I am not fully familiar with and that I don’t use for myself in my own life or business. More often than not the link is my affiliate link, and if you click through using my link and purchase something, I will get paid. Not all links are affiliate links however, as I am always willing to share great advice, tips, products or services from people who do not have affiliate programs set up.

Your Partner In Success Welcomes Rosalind Gardner

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Jul 15, 2010 in Your Partner In Success | 0 comments

Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Are you ready to learn about affiliate marketing?

This week I chat with one of my absolute favorite online entrepreneurs, Rosalind Gardner. Her book “The Super Affiliate Handbook; How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online” is one the staples in my entrepreneurial library.

Using a step-by-step plan to help you build you online business, this book answers all the questions you may have about affiliate marketing and many more that you didn’t know you needed answers to. Not only is this book one that I consider an important addition to any small business owners library, the Super Affiliate Handbook is stocked in libraries and used in University and College ecommerce courses. For more information click here.

Do you want to know….

• How you can use your web site, blog, or email list to “presell” visitors into affiliate purchases?
• The strategies that lead to high conversion rates?
• Why it’s critical to pick affiliate products you believe in personally?
• How to write product reviews that convert into sales?
• How to use affiliate offers to solve your customers problems and make money doing it?
• What Rosalind’s #1 success tip for anyone considering information marketing or for those already involved in information or affiliate marketing?
• What Rosalind feels is the biggest challenge or pitfall that she feels holds individuals back from success in Information Marketing?
• Marketing your own products on ClickBank

Why would affiliate marketing be something that you should add to your business building activities?

The profit potential of the Net is growing at an amazing rate. And the list of people who can benefit from becoming involved in cyber commerce is getting longer every minute. For example, over one million retirees have returned to work in recent years after sustaining huge losses in their retirement savings portfolios.

Rather than working at the local laundromat, many have chosen to make MORE money and work at HOME as affiliate marketers.

An affiliate marketing business is perfect for anyone in the scenarios listed below.

Are you…

• An at-home parent with young children?
• An at home caregiver?
• Physically challenged?
• Unemployed?
• A victim of downsizing and at an age when finding new employment will be difficult?
• A Retiree looking for a stimulating activity and/or need extra cash?
• A Student who needs cash and flexible hours?
• A Graduate who lacks job experience?
• An Individual who needs extra cash, but can’t take a second away-from-home job?
• Someone with a real-time business who needs extra cash?
• Someone with skills or hobbies that can be turned into an online service or business?
• Individuals who are ‘stuck’ in their current jobs or businesses?
• Someone who needs a challenge?
• A person who wants an intellectual challenge?
• Someone with expensive habits?
• Someone who could use some extra cash
• Someone with a job who wants to earn extra for retirement?
• A person who wants to make a risk-free career change?
• Someone with a large expense to save for: e.g. college for the kids?
• Those who need more flexible working hours?
• Someone who is ready to fire their boss?
• A person who feels ‘stuck’ in the 9 to 5 rut?
• Someone who wants to stop commuting to work?
• Someone who wants to work at home?
• A person who feels discriminated against in traditional jobs?
• Someone who lives in a remote area where employment opportunities are limited?
• Someone who WANTS to live in a remote area and still have an income?

Learn from a master of affiliate marketing and dial in on Friday, July 16^th to listen to Rosalind Gardner live. She will even stick around for Q&A if you need. If you have any questions you would like to ask Rosalind, or to speak with us live please join us in the chat room or on the phone.

Your Partner In Success Radio Show

When: Friday, July 16, 2010

Time: 9 am PST, 10 am MST, 11 am CST, 12 pm EST

Where: Your home office telephone or computer.

Website: Your Partner In Success Radio Show

Call-in Number: 347-843-4988

We look forward to “seeing” you!

Denise Griffitts

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Jul 13, 2008 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

Affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant’s products or to send potential customers to the merchant’s website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Click — Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by “clicking” on the link leading to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

Pay Per Sale — Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate’s account. One good example of pay per sale is Amazon.com.
Amazon has hundreds and hundreds of affiliate partners that market their products through Amazon’s web mall. When someone purchases, say, a computer from HP off of Amazon’s site, HP pays Amazon a commission for that sale. When you become an affiliate for Amazon, you will be paid a small commission for any sales you make from their site.

Pay Per Lead — Every time a potential client registers at the merchant’s website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate’s account, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

How Does It Work?

Once you join an affiliate program you then are able to choose the products or banners you want to include on your Web site, and then receive the code you will need to insert on specific Web page or throughout your Web site. You can also create email campaigns.

When joining the affiliate program, you will agree to their terms of service, called an affiliate agreement, which will tell you what requirements you must meet and how the click-through, lead generation or sales are tracked.

Affiliate programs work by using a combination of a unique user ID and cookies to track your leads and subsequent revenues. Most will offer a private affiliate section on their Web site where you can get your HTML code and also check your affiliate account status and information. Through the use of browser cookies, any person who uses your link to make the desired action within a set amount of time contributes to your affiliate revenue.

Make sure you really understand the affiliate agreement and that you’ll be able to comply with it. Take the time to check out the advertiser before joining to ensure they really do pay out to affiliates and that their program is not a scam. Look at what the advertiser is offering in terms of tracking and reporting tools for affiliates. Good programs will provide you with a way to access real-time automated statistics to view conversions, sales and commissions.

Pay-per-click programs offer the lowest dollar value for conversions, and you’ll need a higher click through rate to earn money. Pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale programs will usually offer a higher commission, but you’ll have fewer visitors clicking through to complete the transactions, so you need to have a lot of unique visitors. Use your own traffic and reporting tools to determine which type of program will have a better chance of success on your own site.

If you want to learn how to use affiliate marketing to build and grow your online business (and you should!), one of the best resources that I can recommend to you is Rosalind Gardner’s step-by-step “Super Affiliate Handbook“. Rosalind regularly earns $30,000 to $50,000 per month and is considered the industry standard bearer. At $47 for the book, this is a must-have for any online entreprneur’s library.  There is no out of date information here, by the way.  Rosalind updates this manual on a regular basis, and has done so for many years. This means that when you purchase the Super Affiliate Handbook, you will also gain access to the Super Affiliate Handbook Members club and will receive free updatesof the Handbook as they are ready.  It doesn’t get any better than this!