What is Affiliate Marketing?

By Joel Gehman, The ClickZ Network, Jul 28, 2000


Last week, I had the good fortune of attending IIR's Online Affiliates conference as a panel moderator. Of course, the panelists for "Product Placement Gets Context Centric" were great.
Stuart Watson discussed the power of Dynamic Trade's DDI service (Dynamic Trade recently signed a deal with Inktomi).
CJ's Todd Crawford explained how EnContext is helping merchants and affiliates find better points of integration.
Dave Louden from Affinia pitched its Product Placement Network, which we discussed in an earlier column.
SuperSig's Peter Crofut pointed out that context happens in many places, including email.
For sales channel-based brick and mortar companies, Rick Wardell of iMediation offered a very robust set of solutions.
Overall, the panel presented a fun collection of next generation affiliate stuff.
And while the panel was all about the future of affiliate marketing, what struck me most was the incredible demand for just the basics. The cocktail hour after the first day's sessions was a parade of conversations about where to get started with affiliate marketing. About what exactly affiliate marketing is. About how to apply affiliate marketing to one industry or another. About how it can improve business. That got me thinking...
It Started With Amazon...
When it comes to the web, Amazon.com really started the affiliate ball rolling. In July 1996, it launched its "associates" program and now counts over 450,000 sites in its network. The basic model works something like this: A small website owner registers with Amazon (or any other affiliate program), she then puts various links, banners, and products on her web site. When her visitors click through on these links and purchase a book or other product, the small web site owner is paid a commission for generating the sale.
But Others Have Followed
While Amazon remains the most visible pioneer, the concept really isn't new. In fact, one of its oldest practitioners, Amway, has even taken to the web and affiliate marketing with its Quixtar site.
Looking a bit farther afield, consider merchants that dont even have formal affiliate programs: auction buying clubs like Mercata and MobShop (formerly Accompany, which I thought was an equally descriptive name). These sites work on the premise of variable volume discounts as demand for an item increases, the price goes down. Both sites encourage buyers to get their friends to buy too. Instead of earning a commission, the "affiliate" is rewarded with a lower purchase price.
It's Pay for Performance
In all cases, the goal is for marketers to only spend money when their particular performance objective is met. While Amazon only pays when a sale is made, merchants selling big ticket items like cars, or marketing services like credit cards, have modified the model paying instead for clicks or qualified leads.
In fact, compensation schemes are as varied as the merchants themselves from a 15 percent commission on Amazon books, to 1 percent on Dell PCs. On the financial services side, LendingTree offers up to $14 per qualified application and NextCard offers $20 per enrolled cardholder. Consumer retailers like FogDog offer a fairly typical 5 percent.
Consider a Third Party
As merchants have rushed to build programs, an entirely new category has been born: affiliate networks. Running a network of affiliates is not rocket science, but it does require quite a bit of time and commitment. For that reason, many merchants are finding that outsourced providers offer a compelling solution.
Some vendors like LinkShare provide tracking, reporting, and affiliate recruiting. Other programs like Dynamic Trade and Commission Junction offer additional services: cutting checks, sending out end-of-year tax forms, and responding to webmaster queries. Complete do-it-yourselfers should check out the listing of affiliate scripts at the CGI Resource Index. Several dozen scripts are listed, ranging from freeware and shareware to scripts costing a few hundred dollars.
In a few short years, affiliate marketing has become a significant force in how commerce on the web occurs. Thousands of merchants now use affiliate marketing to get business done. The model is now being flexed to drive behavior beyond mere commerce transactions.
And yet for all the jargon and hype, affiliate marketing is about connecting buyers and sellers and rewarding those that facilitate the connections. After all, the value isn't in the transaction, it's in the relationship...

Learning Affiliate Marketing Program Can Lead to Earn Massive Profits

Learning affiliate marketing Program can be a little tricky when there are so many sources available. The business of affiliate marketing Program is relatively simple despite the mass confusion that some encounter.
The concept of affiliate marketing Program is simple. Most of us are affiliates right now and we don't even know it. Have you recommended a product or service to someone recently? Did you get paid for it? Affiliate marketing Program works much the same way in that you can pick and choose the products and services you would like to tell people about and earn( massive profits ) a commission every time someone follows through on your recommendation.
The beauty of affiliate marketing Program on the internet is that you can do it part time and in the privacy of your own home rain or shine, hot or cold.
There are quite a few websites you can go to and sign up as an affiliate for free. Some of them include:
-Clickbank -Linkshare -Commission Junction or cj -Paydotcom -AssociatePrograms -Amazon -Ebay
The opportunity to make money online by learning affiliate marketing is a huge one that anyone can take advantage of.
Having a simple system yet effective system to make it work is crucial as there are some key steps that can make or break your affiliate success.
In addition to the key steps that you must take in order to achieve success as an affiliate, there are a variety tools you'll need to make your business work. Consider a carpenter or doctors' need for the right tools in order to get the job done, as you begin learning affiliate marketing Program you will come across many tools that can help you to automate the affiliate marketing process

How To Build Affiliate Website ?

6 Critical Rules When Building an Affiliate Website


There are 6 rules you must use when building any affiliate website if you want the website to make you any money.
Building Your Site
Rule #1 Always write strong headline.
No matter how great your sales copy is or how great your content and information is... no one will stick around long enough to read it unless you grab them with your headline.
Make sure you have a compelling enough headline to make the person want to stay and read your information.
Building Your Site
Rule #2 Make your home page a strong sales letter that combines elements of an article and an endorsement.
The best way to have a sales letter that is not hyped up and can still do a good "pre-sell" is to have a form of a product "review" or "endorsement." What most people are interested in is reading the pros and cons about a product. Spend some time and dedicate the home page to a good product, write a good "endorsement" article.
Building Your Site
Rule #3 Stop hiding your links. Let your visitors read your articles...
Some advocates of the old mini-site strategy advised you to have NO other links on your site. There was supposed to be just one other link - the BUY NOW link. And I think this still works, but for merchant sites - not affiliate websites.
Remember, your job is to PRE-SELL, not sell. You're not trying to corner your potential customer, you're just trying to gain their trust. The best way to gain their trust is to offer them a bunch of useful advice and helpful content. That means you'll need LINKS to all that good stuff on your site.
Now remember, the other articles on your site should also be "pre-selling" your readers - so one way or the other, you will be able to gain their trust and get the sale.
Building Your Site
Rule #4 Offer lots and lots of articles - all with easy navigation.
As PPC gets more and more expensive, it's getting harder and harder to get qualified leads from search engine advertising. It's also getting tougher and tougher to find easy shortcuts to a #1 placement. A cheaper and more effective strategy is to patiently work WITH the search engines rather than trying to trick them or buy into them.
How do you work WITH the search engines? You offer content: articles, reviews, specs. If you can provide the search engines with what their users want, then the search engines will gladly send you free traffic. Affiliates are taking a strong turn towards doing search engine optimization and search engines want to see content.
Building Your Site
Rule #5 Add some other services and products to your site.
Focus your site on one niche marketing AREA; then introduce additional products or services in key spots throughout the site. These additions should ALWAYS be tightly related to your site theme. Your potential customers are introduced to additional choices in the CONTEXT of an article or a review. You're giving them additional ways to spend money on you.
And by additional products, I mean products that you have potentially created yourself - high ticket products that can bring in a lot of money. High-ticket affiliate products are OK as well.
Building Your Site
Rule #6 Include an FAQ section - most critical!
Almost NO affiliate sites use this strategy. However, it's one of the most powerful.
You're probably very well aware of the most common questions people ask? Well, build them into your sales letter/endorsement/article. Use sub-headlines to draw attention to them. The quicker your visitors can find their answers through your website, the quicker they will buy from you and the more they will return to your site.
The above 6 rules should be followed very closely for every affiliate site you ever launch. Together they optimize your website to be the most profitable.

This article is written by Anik Singal, founder of AffiliateClassroom.com. Anik Singal has developed his own affiliate system that helped him earn well over $10,466 in just 60 days. Now, he's looking for a few students to train one step at a time. http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anik_Singal

How To Become a Succesful Affiliate marketer In 7 Roles

Definition of a successful Affiliate Marketer - a person who makes money, lots of money! So how do you become a successful Affiliate and make lots of money with Affiliate Marketing programs ? Well there are a number of rules you must to follow if you want to be successful.

Rule 1.

Promote something that people want. This might sound obvious but you can spend hours of time and energy searching for the Affiliate Marketers "Eldorado" that golden niche that no one else has discovered and that when you discover it is going to make you lots of money. Or you can play it smart and search for a product that hundreds are trying to promote and millions of people want. Don't be put off promoting your business that everyone else appears to be promoting too. If you do it right i.e. follow the rules, you will be amazed how little competition you will have, even in a high-demand market.

Rule 2.

You must have one type and only one type of visitor to your site, the visitor who wants to BUY what you are promoting, or selling. Now again this might sound obvious but you would be amazed how many sites don't appear to care who their visitors are.

Rule 3.

Help your visitors to find your site from among all the other sites on the Internet by spending time in research. Research the product you are going to promote thoroughly and make sure your content, be it on your site or in an article or e-mail, is product-related i.e make sure you have plenty of keywords and key phrases that relate to the the visitor you want to attract and the product you want to promote.

Rule 4.

Make your visitors WANT to click on the link to your Vendors site. So make sure that your reviews, information pages etc. are kept nice and short and simple but contain plenty of reasons why the visitor should click on the link. Make sure also that you have plenty of links to your Vendors site scattered throughout your promotional copy.

Rule 5.

Be patient. If you want to make money with Affiliate Marketing it's like any other business you must devote time and energy and most importantly patience to it. Remember always that Affiliate Marketing is not a "get-rich quick overnight business" there is no such thing! So don't get scammed into buying the latest instant money making "business-in-a-box" or buy useless "prospect" lists that have already been worked to death.

Rule 6.

Keep records and statistics, so you can discover which headline, article, advertisement, image etc. is pulling in your visitors, and review your records regularly.

Rule 7.

Invest in your business. When you start making serious money and you surely will if you follow these rules, remember to re-invest at least 33% of your profits back into your business. Oh! and remember when you start making serious money you will also need to put aside some for taxes.

How a 2 Tier Affiliate Program Generates Money

The concept of a multiple tiered affiliate program involves bringing in other people to market the same product that the primary affiliate is marketing towards. These people are known as sub-affiliates and they perform essentially the same job as the primary affiliate, marketing for businesses to attract customers. However, the primary affiliate, or person that recruited the sub-affiliates generates income based on the sales of the people they recruit. This is the basic format of how a 2 tier affiliate program works.
1 Tier Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs that involve only one promoter are called 1 tier affiliate programs. 1 tier affiliates generate income by promoting and targeting customers directly and earning income off of the customers that the business they are marketing for, receives. This is an excellent way to generate income, but is losing popularity to multiple tiered programs where affiliates can earn income based on the efforts of their sub-affiliates.
2 Tier Affiliate Program
By using a 2 tier affiliate program, affiliates have the possibility to make money in several ways. They generate income based on their own marketing efforts, but earn additional money from the efforts of the sub-affiliates that they recruited. Because of the way multiple tiered affiliate programs are organized by businesses, primary affiliates earn a percentage of the commission generated by the people they recruit. This makes affiliate programs that are structured in this way an easy and simple path to an additional passive income. In many ways affiliate programs such as these can generate unlimited income based on the efforts of sub-affiliates. Because of this reason it is important to choose a program that pays well based on the sales generated from sub-affiliates. This makes your possible earnings only that much higher and is an essential aspect of a good affiliate program.
Choosing An Affiliate Program
Choosing an affiliate program that promotes products that are of high quality and of high interest to customers is an important aspect of working through an affiliate program to make money. Working or promoting for a product that people don't want, aren't interested in, or doesn't generate large commissions means that your efforts might not produce the results you deserve for your time.
Marketing professionals suggest looking for affiliate programs that offer marketing tools and materials on top of searching for programs that promote high quality and high commission products. Once a primary affiliate has begun promoting the product, the next step is to begin recruiting others as sub-affiliates in order to complete the circle of a money-generating, multiple tiered, affiliate program.
To learn more about a Top Rated 2 Tier Affiliate Program, visit Brian's Big Ticket To Wealth website.
Author: Brian McCoy is a six figure earner and one of the top income earners in the home business industry. Brian works with entrepreneurs around the world. He devotes the time, energy, and effort into his team and works with them to ensure their success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_McCoy

Here's the Top 10 Best Affiliate Programs

1) Strong Future International (SFI)
Well, if you have sailed on this site for everything you have probably noticed that this is one of my first choice to start work at home business. IFC I have on my home page and myself have also created a page on all it called the # 1 business opportunity on the Internet. The reason why I have placed here, in the position # 1, because I think that accession to the IFC you before anything else is simply intelligent. Like other sites listed below you'll affiliation with an existing business, when you join the IFC, but it is rather a home business opportunity rather than an affiliation program. IFC is very well known and respected business opportunity. Many Internet marketing top start and continue with the IFC, and most of the best work at home Web sites are promoting it for the moment, as you read this. I started ISC way back in 2003 and learned from them more than I could ever express in writing. I've done countless hours of research on all kinds of possibilities, but found that some compare to IFC, all around. You get valuable information and training resources as well as hundreds of products to promote - all for free. The rest of affiliate programs on this page are wonderful and highly recommended. However, I suggest you begin by IFC and then use the programs below to complete your IFC. Using these programs, you can form a very profitable business from home. Sign up for free to get more information -------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
2) Ken Envoy's Site Sell
Ken is an absolute genius when it comes to build a business! He came with some of the best products in the world to build a successful business and make money on the Internet. Regarded by many as the # 1 Internet guru marketing, it is not surprising that it comes at # 2 on the list. The Site Sell-mark on offer with exceptional value. The products give everyone a chance to get a piece of e-commerce pie. For a price affordable and reasonable price, they empower people to really win on the web. Some of the many amazing products in the site Sell arsenal: Site Build It! "Building income content!" The sites built with SBI! always get a very heavy traffic, as a recent survey shows Alexa.com. 51% of SBI! sites fall within the top 6% of the most popular sites on the Internet 30% fall within the 3% most popular 17% fall within the 2% most popular. You want proof that SiteBuildIt! is the best? Click here! Click here to take a quick Slide Show Tour of building site! Make your site Sell-The final work on making any Web site SELL! " Do you know Sell-turn knowledge into income - to sell your brain on the NET. Make sure that your words-Sell You want to sell more? Become an e-persuasion .... And, of course, the Affiliate Program! Ken offers one of the best affiliate programs on the Internet ... FREE! The 5 pillars of the programme, combined with your motivation and energy, undoubtedly help you build a profitable business. The five pillars of the programme are: 1) In addition, synergistic, the online application of high-value products. 2) A large committee of the first purchase. 3) A lifetime commission on all purchases by customers initially referred by you. 4) A lifetime commission based on the income of your entire team affiliates. 5) A limited number of affiliates - "too many affiliates spoil the program!" Join the 5 pillar affiliate program here -------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------
3) Derek Gehl's Insider Secrets
If you were looking for information on how to sell products or services online, then you probably find Derek Gehl the names of at least a few times. This is because it is right up there with Ken usually as one of the best internet marketing guru in the world. It was a pitch as if I was going to save Derek or Ken # 2. In the end Derek stood at # 3, but it would not be difficult to establish a viable argument for him to be in second or even first position. Derek products are highly recommended by virtually everyone who uses them. I have heard many internet marketing guru to give its products wonderful comments. Personally, I give my its products above absolute recommendations! You can make a large income by using its products yourself or by their promotion of its affiliate program, or both. Here's one of my favorite products of the collection Derek Gehl: Derek has recently published a new version of its best-selling: "Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet! It has 1,000 pages + Update minute research, test results, examples, case studies, and the newest and hottest strategies for marketing your business on the Internet! In 10 easy to follow steps, with 61 complete lessons you learn even tested and proven rapid growth strategies Derek personally used to build his one-man business into a $ 7.6 million enterprise - on a tight budget. This is the same system that literally 1000 of his protégés have used to earn $ 30000 to $ 2.5 million per year using the Internet. To preview Derek brand new courses, and learn the secrets of the most profitable here. Profit Maker Internet-Seminar know how other successful entrepreneurs are traffic to their websites for the rest of their lives - for FREE! Secrets of their success-in-depth case studies of how ordinary people are now earn $ 100,000 + per year. "No BS" examples of real people for real money! At a very small price is a fabulous way to learn from people like you and me who can prove their success. You will learn exactly how they did, what mistakes they made, what are their recommendations, and much more. The Affiliate Program Derek's top-rated affiliate program is free to join and gives you the possibility of generating a continuous stream of income without cost or obligation on your part. You also get an arsenal of Internet marketing tools only for accession. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- --------
4) Scam Free Zone
These guys offer many products and information. Whether you're a "Newbie" or a "guru of experts," you can find something that you will benefit the creation of a zone free scam. I arrived in the Free Scam when I was doing research to find good information to be included on the "Be free fraud for life - swindling Information" page of this site. I noticed that many of the best resource sites that I was researching had links with the scam-free zone on them. I thought they must be appropriate to consider whether in all these big names have been promoting websites. I quickly discovered that I was right. From beginning to end, they have quality information for each step of your work at home business. I found the whole "Internet success series" to be simply breathtaking. With the step-by-step guides, marketing advice and secrets, Films, E-books, Top secret revealed, and much more. It includes everything you need to launch and succeed in an online business! Discover some of my products recommended by the Free Scam: Internet Success Blueprint - For beginners - Start your own business profitable online following a plan proved successful triple your money-back guarantee! Internet success diamonds -30 Secrets of 10 top Internet marketing revealed! Internet success Interviews-What the masters of marketing speak directly to you! The Scamfreezone Associates Country Programme to 50% of each sale is impressive and real-time statistics and products that are easy to sell. He is free to join and is an excellent way to save your work at home dreams into action. -------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
5) Marlon Sanders' Amazing Formula
Marlon is a master marketer Internet! It was it for a long time and built a super successful Internet home business. People even pay thousands of dollars to attend a day of seminars. I love because it does not seek to you all hyped with promises like many other companies. Marlon does not give you these guarantees of $ 100000 per year that we see so often with other programs, but with its products and affiliate program you could very well achieve that goal. It generates legitimate reputation, and useful information in an honest and modest. Its affiliate program and business products have helped many people to become a great success with their business at home. I think this is due to its sincere desire to help combined with the impressive products it has developed. Marlon has 19 great products to choose. Here's one of my first four choices: The Amazing Formula sells products such as Crazy-If your interested in selling your products by the hundreds, even thousands, read this! -- Works for all types of enterprises -- More than 100 pages of testimony Cover online and offline marketing Triple your money back guarantee Gimme My Money Now-How to create products and rapid roll successfully using your own Web page 2! Like Clockwork cash-How to species like clockwork - true that the systems Marlon uses to enable him to work from home and make great money! Scoreboard marketing point-and-click sales and profits! Of course, Marlon also a very lucrative affiliate program. You can make a life quite associating with him and the promotion of its products. Just click on a link above product and you will find the affiliate program link in the upper right. -------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
6) Yanik Silver - Surefire Marketing
Yanik has pulled up the online world very quickly. It is actually quite new to the website business, but only a few months, he became a leading Internet marketing gurus. How is he able to do so? Easy! He came with some spectacular that people love and set the price low enough to allow them. It is also a darn good marketing it could get its products to the public. Besides, he adds a great affiliate program by offering a mixture of generous commissions so that his associates can make a nice profit. I think Yanik is a great guy who offers products very useful. If you want to find something to start your business or you stimulate business you find in the list Surefire marketing of products. Some of my favorite Yanik Silver: Instant sales letters you can create your own powerful sales letters in a few minutes without having to write ...! 33 Days benefits online-Here 's exactly what you do to make money online in 33 days! Mind-Motivators Unlocking the secret door instantly to persuade prospects to Buy now! ... No matter what business you! As you can see from the list of products above Yanik came with good things. It has at least ten more that everyone is really too good. Its information is not only a purchase value, it should also be promoted at all! To join the Surefire marketing affiliate program here, you will see where it says "make money" at the top, right. -------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
7) All-In-One-Business
Kevin Bidwell, the owner of All-in-a-business has come with some products that are rapidly climbing the ranks in business online. Kevin sell products really well and get feedback from customers. Everybody seems to love them. The two most popular products of all-in-a-business are: Report of passive income-How to create a passive income ... without a site, a mailing list, a product or a piece of expenditure! Success Secrets-The course is more common in Internet marketing exposed! The associate program offered by all-in-a-business tends to be an easy to promote. It is well received by people and can easily generate a stable income for anyone who wants to promote. Click here to sign up and start earning money. -------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
8) Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki
Now here's one that I absolutely love. I'm sure you've heard of numerous books on Roberts. This is because it has a certain New York Times best-sellers with his most famous is without doubt a Rich Dad Poor Dad. It has a whole series of books designed to give you a trip to financial freedom and a very popular game treasury. I read four books by Roberts and currently seven of them. I also have a CD containing an interview with him called "The Perfect Business." In fact, when I came across his Rich Dad Poor Dad books that I try to find a job. After reading his book, I had a whole new perspective on how to secure my financial future and a ton more motivation to do so. Then I read more of his books and loved them equally. In fact, I read two of his books twice this year. I recommended the Rich Dad series of books to many people and I know that everyone who read out comes with a whole new positive outlook on their future. Here are some books that I really like: Rich Dad Poor Dad - What the rich teach their children about money that poor and middle class are not! Remove retired Rich Young - How to become rich quickly and stay rich forever! Cash Flow Quadrant - Ideal for those interested in finding ways to generate cash flow! Guide to become rich - Turn bad debt in good debt without cutting your credit cards! Mr. Kiyosaki also a big money program. Since he has so many must-have products at a very low cost, it is very easy to promote its products and earn a good income. Click here to find all the products and the affiliate program. -------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
9) James Martell
This is another excellent program with a super products. James has really done everything when it comes to internet marketing. It is a very successful man and took all his secrets and put them into an easy-to-follow guide. I strongly recommend his "Manuel affiliate marketing." Learn more about this below: "James Martell of AFFILIATE MARKETERS MANUAL" - 8-Steps to take to succeed with Affiliate Programs on the Net! ... James Martell - a bona fide expert with the Internet affiliate programs share insider secrets that have propelled him to the summit of the major search engines in three competitive industries: Credit cards, cellphones and satellite. It is a comprehensive training programme in a downloadable PDF format, written in simple English and set out in a step-by-step system that virtually safeguard users will make money on the Internet at the completion the step-8. You get 40037 words easy to understand a text, 107 helpful illustrations and 257 pages to guide you through the process of building a very strong traffic websites as a marketing subsidiary for some large companies. If you dreamed of working from home and earn money using your computer, it is the only manual you need! You can also make very good money by promoting this superb manual through its affiliate program. Just click on the link above to go to the site. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------
10) Affiliate Mistakes - Chuck McCullough
Chuck runs one of the most visited sites on the Web. All its sites are in the top 1% of the millions of sites. He worked very hard to build a solid home-based business that will be many years. So it is not surprising that made the list of top 10. I really think that Chuck is a great person. Even if it has reached celebrity status on the net, he always thinks of himself as a regular guy. Many people get caught in their fortune and forget where they came from but this is not the case with Chuck. Check out these three products recommended by Mr. McCullough: Mistakes affiliation - In 5 minutes you'll know exactly why over 97% of businesses fail online! Traffic System Web site - Now you can drive crazy traffic volumes on your website! Search Primer - A step-by-step system to get high rankings in search engines ... and it is FREE! It is also doing its utmost to make this one of the best affiliate programs on the net and I think he did an excellent job of it so far. You can find the program involved here

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If you run a website and would like to make money by putting some affiliate commission-based advertising on it, you may notice that there are many different affiliate marketing companies, and also there are companies who have their own independent affiliate programs too, for example with Kowabunga. As an affiliate of some experience I thought it would be nice if I share the knowledge I have of good and bad practice I have seen in the affiliate marketing business. With independent affiliate programs you have to consider them on their own merits, for example most gambling casinos have their own contracts. But a great many companies work with affiliate marketing companies who do all the affiliate tracking for a whole set of merchants and affiliates. This is good because of the economies of scale and for various other reasons, and here are a few aspects which in my opinion show good and bad practice:
Centralised accounting. Most companies will do all the accounting for you and tot up all the commissions from all the merchants you are with. This is good. The bad approach is to have all the merchants totted up separately, in which case you have to achieve the threshold level on EACH merchant in order to get paid!
Automatic acceptance. In my view there has to be a good reason for refusing an affiliate. I regard affiliate refusing as a very dodgy thing anyway, rather like a shop refusing to serve some customers because of the colour of their skin/hair. Why do merchants ever refuse affiliates?. Therefore it's best to choose affiliate companies who will automatically accept anyone who is prepared to sell for them. To get an idea of the prejudice aspects, see the judging page and the regionalisation assumption
Tracking code. It's best if this is anybrowser-compatible, contains no cookies or 1x1 gifs, preferably is without ampersands, and there is proper generic text-only option. (Text links can always be used with a banner, but not vice-versa). The more generic the code, the easier it is to implement by the affiliate. It's also good if deep linking is allowed.
Contract. There should be only one contract for the entire affiliate company. If affiliates are expected to read and sign a separate contract for each merchant it becomes impractical, and it would be better if the companies all had their own independent affiliate programs! You SHOULD read all the smallprint, for example to avoid really stupid things like "you agree that we shall be the exclusive merchant at your site" etc, so any extra contract-reading should be kept to a minimum. See Unfair clauses in contracts to avoid. Changes in contracts should be published by e-mailing everyone, not just by changing the contract at the site, as it's unreasonable to expect affiliates to keep checking the contracts all the time just to see if they've been changed! Also, the contract should be reasonable, not long-winded, and should include reciprocity, ie not be a totally unfair one-sided setup. To see an example of the kind of thing to avoid, read the appalling bureaucratic contract of Linkshare, which is exactly the wrong way to do it!
Payments. Payments should be to an optional "payee" which is allowed to be different from the main company identity. Minimum payments are ok, but all small payments should always roll-over indefinitely until the appropriate threshold has been reached. However it is arranged and agreed, affiliates should never forfeit payments through being a bit slow or underperforming. We all have to start somewhere and it's best to show sympathy for those who are just starting.
Good communication. It's important to be able to be in contact with the people at the affiliate company. If you are an affiliate you should avoid places that will not bother to reply to your e-mail. To test this, it's best to send an interesting question to a company before joining and see if you get a proper reply.
Quality of the Merchants. There's nothing wrong with an affiliate marketing company having a few spivvy merchants on the books, after all it takes all types in business. However, it gets a bit worrying if an affiliate company is stuffed full of MLM, get rich schemes, questionable medical treatments, porno, and offers which make extravagant claims. It's best if there is a sensible balance with a reasonable ratio of reliable stable merchants and more maverick lines. Having said that, it's also best if it's not too snooty either, and allows a wide diversity.
SPAM. An affiliate company should not have a zero tolerance of spam, but should settle for the affiliate not promoting that affiliate company's merchants in any spam! In a similar way, it's reasonable for a company to expect you to agree to refrain from smoking while in their building, but it's not reasonable for a company to expect you to sign a pledge to give up smoking!
Odd rules. Whatever rules there are should be made clear, and not be arbitrary. Reasonableness is important. There should be no nasty surprises for transgression of unseen rules. Also, mistakes and imagined mistakes should be reversible and there should not be something that looks like a school black-mark record!
Affiliate recruiter bonus. An affiliate company should always have an affiliate program with itself, for the recruiting of new affiliates and also new merchants. This can take the form of bounty or second-tier commission. This encourages new people to join in. Revenue Share is best. There are issues to do with this which you can see explained in the pros and cons of having an affiliate recruiter program
Long-termist reliable marketing preference. (sometimes termed SEO v PPC). An affiliate marketing company should support and encourage good reliable affiliates who create long-term prevailing dedicated pages with relevant content, rather than PPC (pay per click), spam, pop-ups, and other types of splat advertising. Quality is what matters, not quantity of impressions. We the affiliates who create solid web material that's built to last are still going to be around long after the short term silliness of splat advertising is discredited. If you're an affiliate marketing merchant, you should be looking for long term relationships, if you want to still be in business in years to come. Affiliate marketing companies who recognise this fact ahead of the rest of the field have an advantage and are likely to still be with us in ten years' time. Also see no ppc and no incentivised leads. Who knows, next it will be no voucher codes?! Long term continuity of merchant affiliate programs is important, so capped programs aren't a good idea!
Expired affiliate merchant arrangements. If an affiliate merchant's affiliate program ends, it should stay recorded at the affiliate marketing company that the affiliate program WAS there. This enables affiliates to keep track of expired programs properly. Positive information about the disappearance of an affiliate program is much better than it just "disappearing" and being mysteriously absent. Also, what happens to expired links? Do they just go through and leave affiliates working for nothing? Or do they come up with "expired"? The best scheme on this is at ClickXchange where the visitors are redirected to a page of the affiliate's choice specified in the affiliate account preferences, eg http://www.affiliate website.net/whoops.htm . Another good one is at CJ where the affiliate can review invalid links generating traffic.
Leakiness. Some affiliate marketing companies "leak like a sieve", either by having security holes in the merchant arrangements where circumvention occurs, or where there are phone numbers on the merchant sites even when visitors link through an affiliate link, or by merchants being victim to fraudulent leads. These problems can be eliminated by good practice and there is a lot to be said for road-testing the system.
All-inclusiveness. Questions of "streamlining". It's important to be fair to everyone. There are always going to be some small affiliates whose clicks and sales performance figures are going to be minimal. No-one should be "streamlined out" or in other ways prejudiced against just because they don't fit in with an elitist notion of supporting "only the top affiliates". Flat-rate percentages are best. See Being Fair to All Affiliates
These are guidelines to good practice at affiliate marketing companies, as seen from the viewpoint of an affiliate. If you run an affiliate marketing company, you can check to see how your company shapes up. Don't worry if you don't pass on every score - no company I know gets everything right on this! However, some are better than others! The idea of publishing this guide to good practice is to encourage good practice and to help to avoid bad mistakes being propagated, especially where with a bit of thought and good planning, mistakes and bad practice can be avoided.
If you're considering setting up a new affiliate marketing company, this set of guidelines is a good start! Of course you've also got to keep the merchants happy, and make a profit as well! It's a market which already has some major players in it (see affiliate marketing companies list), but the available market is so big that there is plenty of room for new companies to start!

Best affiliate programs

By Allan Gardyne Published 03/4/2007 Beginners Articles
My top 10 affiliate programs
No vague theory, no complex rating system - this is my top 10 - a list of the top 10 affiliate programs which are earning the most money for AssociatePrograms.com.
These are the best affiliate programs for me. They have superb products, pay very good commissions and provide reliable online reporting of affiliates' sales. They work well for me.
If you have a site aimed at website owners, or a section of your site aimed at them, these affiliate products should sell well for you, too.
(My sales are helped by the free Associate Programs Newsletter, which examines affiliate marketing and reviews the best and worst affiliate programs. It has more than 33,000 subscribers.)
Ken Evoy's Site Build It! is right up at Number 1, where it belongs.
I earn four-figure commissions (and sometimes five-figure commissions) from Ken's affiliate program now, with only minimal maintenance.
Ken is a truly amazing, multi-talented individual. Among his achievements, he has taught medicine, designed toys and games which earn millions of dollars in royalties, and invented a "virtually impossible to sell" niche software product - which he sold on the Net, earning $1,000 to $5,000 a day. SiteSell's fast-selling Site Build It! (SBI) has been my top money-earner for years.
It makes it easy for you to create your own website simply and easily, even if you have no technical knowledge at all. It analyzes which themes will be profitable.
Even better, it helps you optimize the pages for the main search engines and teaches you how to promote your site effectively. This remarkable tool also generates your Google and Yahoo! Sitemaps and automatically submits them when necessary so you don't have to!
Site Build It! doesn't just teach you search engine optimization. It teaches you Internet marketing.
Most important of all, it teaches you how to be successful. No wonder SBI! has thousands of happy users. Ken Evoy explains how SBI changes lives
URL = "http://videotour.sitesell.com/makemy-sbi.html";

Ken Evoy was the first to introduce the concept of PREselling to affiliates. This is the process of building relationships with your visitors and putting them into a warm, willing-to-buy mood so they are much more likely to make purchases based on your recommendations.
The Site Build It! Action Guide and videos show you how to master this technique to drive your affiliate conversions through the roof. You won't just be building a website, you'll be building a long-term web business.
There's an incredible private SBI forum where SBI owners and users share tips and help each other. There's nothing else like it on the Internet.
I use Site Build It! for several websites and highly recommend it.
SBI! sites succeed. 61% of SBIers end up in the Top 3%. And only SBI! sites prove success. You'd think that others would if they could, wouldn't you?
See the proof.
As well as offering fantastic value for money, SiteSell President Ken Evoy works extremely hard to help his affiliates earn money. I've spent many hours chatting with him and learning about his products and plans. You can trust him to OVER-deliver on his promises.
The SiteSell program offers:
Outstanding value for money. You can feel comfortable promoting excellent products.
Lifetime commissions. You don't just earn a commission on the first sale. You earn a commission on every purchase by that customer - for life. Think about that. You sell once, earn indefinitely!
Two-tier commission structure. You earn revenue on the sales made by the people you refer to Ken.
Limited number of affiliates. Your efforts are protected.
A fair contract, which has non-terminatable/non-modifiable features. Ken looks after YOUR interests.
The BEST manual for affiliates - 224 pages packed with useful ideas - totally FREE. You receive excellent advice to get you started earning money.
A site that SELLS!Ken's site makes the sale for you.
All these features ensure this program is a long-term winner.
SiteSell's lifetime commissions are for active salespeople only. You stop receiving lifetime commissions if you stop generating new sales.
Ken writes THREE newsletters which consistently offer the most detailed, helpful, step-by-step advice for affiliates I've seen.

Affiliate Programs directory

There are many ways to publish a web site. The Affiliate Program's aim is to bring customers to the merchants' site. Affiliate networks mediate between merchant Web sites, who wish to advertise their site, and affiliate services. Making people to visit your site is much easier, when you work with an intermediary such as existing affiliate networks. Affiliate networks hold a catalogue of many different merchant Web sites. Affiliate networks track the activity on the Web site, arrange all payment, and help affiliates set up the necessary links on their site. This kind of service makes it easier for affiliates and merchant sides to find each other, and come to mutual agreement. http://www.1webindex.com - Affiliate Programs directory . Website, where merchants submit and market affiliate programs, and webmasters learn all about affiliate marketing. Affiliate programs guide presents industry news, feature articles and helpful affiliate resources. Categories include recent news of affiliate programs, articles about affiliate events, affiliate programs of different countries (USA,UK ), different types of affiliate programs (Pay per lead, pay per click, revenue share).
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com

Affiliate Program Tutorial 3

Sharing All Types Of Computer affiliate Files now easier

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STEP 13: Be patient.
If your new site is typical, nothing much will seem to happen for the first couple of months or so, and you'll probably become frustrated and find it hard to believe that this is going to work.
You're likely to feel annoyed, cheated and ready to quit. You're likely to be a prime target for people selling get-rich-quick junk.
Many affiliates give up at this stage. Stick with it. If you're persistent and get the details right, the process I'm describing works beautifully.
Learn something new every day. Do something to improve your business every day. If you do this, success is inevitable.

STEP 14: Expect to see signs of success.
Eventually, because of all the links to your site on other sites, Google, Yahoo! and MSN will find your site and start sending you traffic.
Perhaps around the three-month or four-month stage you'll be receiving 100 visitors a day. Visitors will like what they see and some site owners will start linking to you and asking you to link to them.
Keep at it. You're just getting warmed up.

STEP 15: The payoff...
About six months down the road, after little expense but quite a lot of hard work and research, you hit your magical $300 a month mark, from affiliate sales and from AdSense ads on your site.
Depending on the niche you've chosen and the skills you've learned, you might earn considerably more than $300.
Perhaps after 12 months, you'll be earning $500 to $1,000 a month from your site.
The checks keep coming in, month after month, even when you take a little vacation. You start telling friends how easy affiliate marketing is, and are puzzled when they're not convinced.
Of course, it's not really easy. It just seems easy after you've done the hard work.
...or the NON-payoff
If you've merely scanned the instruction manual and jumped right in without doing any research and built a "Make Money on the Internet" site, you'll probably earn very little. A search on Google for "make money" displays more than 4 million pages. If one of those is yours, you have a LOT of competition.
If you did this and it isn't working for you, go back to step 1 and start again.

STEP 16: Tweak your site
To boost your conversion rate (your visitor-to-sales ratio), try little experiments, one thing at a time.
Try changing the heading on a page, the words, the colors, the placement of your links. With each change wait until about 1,000 visitors have seen the change, and monitor your affiliate commissions to see if they rise or fall.
You do this because you understand that if 1% of your visitors are buying and tiny changes boost your success rate to 2%, you'll DOUBLE your commissions.

STEP 17: The future
When you reach your goal of $300 a month, you wonder whether you should expand your site, perhaps adding a newsletter, an autoresponder course or two, a forum, RSS newsfeeds, a blog, a whitepaper, a report to sell ... and turn it into a portal. You dream big. Perhaps you even start dreaming of having your own affiliates promoting your reports for you...
Or perhaps you just research another little overlooked niche and start on your next simple little, low-maintenance money-generating site.
It can be done. The main ingredient needed is persistence. Been there, done that, and I have a very nice lifestyle to prove it.
The $300 a month target is very conservative. If that's all you earn, you've done something "wrong". You haven't chosen profitable keywords carefully enough, you haven't built enough attractive, keyword-rich pages, you haven't learned the basics of optimizing pages for search engines, or you haven't attracted enough good quality links to your site.
That's the wonderful thing about this business. You can make lots of mistakes and still earn useful money. Just don't make TOO many mistakes.

STEP 18: Take the first step
That's the one that matters most.
I suggest you go back and read through this affiliate program tutorial again.
Picture yourself owning a successful Internet business. Picture yourself opening letters and finding checks in them. Picture yourself going into your PayPal account and seeing the latest commissions you've been paid by affiliate merchants.
Imagine enjoying yourself spending the money, perhaps even giving up your day job so that you can concentrate on your own business.
Now take the first step.
And when you've quit your day job, please write and tell me. I love getting emails like that.

Affiliate Program Tutorial 2

STEP 7: Place AdSense ads on your site
If you have a good, popular site, it's remarkably easy to make good money with Google AdSense. AdSense is free to join. Here's an excellent free AdSense tutorial.


STEP 8: Get good quality links to your site
Without links to your site, your site won't be found in the search engines. So you MUST get links to your site, if possible from "authority" sites - ones that have lots of links to them.First, link to other sites. Choose sites that have similar or related themes, and invite those sites to link to you.This is hugely important. Search engines love sites that have many links to them - especially if those links come from sites which are themselves popular.Now you see why I said build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, people are more likely to link to your site.Here's an article I wrote describing how to get reciprocal links.Reciprocal links should be only a small part of your marketing strategy - not your whole marketing strategy. Even better than reciprocal links are one-way links. Here's an article describing how to get one-way links. Some of these one-way links techniques are fairly advanced and require considerable work. Most of your competitors will be too lazy to do them, so you'll have a big advantage if you do. They can make the difference between a hobby site and a serious, very profitable business.


STEP 9: Anchor text
You'll also need to understand the importance of anchor text, the words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when they link to your site.To search engines, anchor text is very important.


STEP 10: List your site in major directories and niche directories in your industry.
You probably already know about Yahoo! (good but expensive) and DMOZ (often takes months to get into).
Here are some more directories (some charge a fee):
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
Business.comGoGuides
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
Looksmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind

Guides to web directories
David Mahler has a Guide to Web Directories. It's a good list of recommended web directories.
Here's another list: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

How to find niche directories:
Go to Search It! (It's a very handy free research tool.)
Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It!
Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results
Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are free.


STEP 11: Place your articles on other websites
Write articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them (more challenging.
This step isn't absolutely essential, but it helps enormously if you do it. Now you understand why it was so important that you chose a topic that was easy to write about.


STEP 12: Add more pages and get more links.
Keep adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich pages (you do research at Wordtracker for this) and keep encouraging more sites to link to your site.
Make friends with other web site owners, and more people will link to you

Affiliate Program Tutorial 2

STEP 7: Place AdSense ads on your site
If you have a good, popular site, it's remarkably easy to make good money with Google AdSense. AdSense is free to join. Here's an excellent free AdSense tutorial.


STEP 8: Get good quality links to your site
Without links to your site, your site won't be found in the search engines. So you MUST get links to your site, if possible from "authority" sites - ones that have lots of links to them.First, link to other sites. Choose sites that have similar or related themes, and invite those sites to link to you.This is hugely important. Search engines love sites that have many links to them - especially if those links come from sites which are themselves popular.Now you see why I said build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, people are more likely to link to your site.Here's an article I wrote describing how to get reciprocal links.Reciprocal links should be only a small part of your marketing strategy - not your whole marketing strategy. Even better than reciprocal links are one-way links. Here's an article describing how to get one-way links. Some of these one-way links techniques are fairly advanced and require considerable work. Most of your competitors will be too lazy to do them, so you'll have a big advantage if you do. They can make the difference between a hobby site and a serious, very profitable business.


STEP 9: Anchor text
You'll also need to understand the importance of anchor text, the words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when they link to your site.To search engines, anchor text is very important.


STEP 10: List your site in major directories and niche directories in your industry.
You probably already know about Yahoo! (good but expensive) and DMOZ (often takes months to get into).
Here are some more directories (some charge a fee):
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
Business.comGoGuides
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
Looksmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind

Guides to web directories
David Mahler has a Guide to Web Directories. It's a good list of recommended web directories.
Here's another list: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

How to find niche directories:
Go to Search It! (It's a very handy free research tool.)
Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It!
Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results
Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are free.


STEP 11: Place your articles on other websites
Write articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them (more challenging.
This step isn't absolutely essential, but it helps enormously if you do it. Now you understand why it was so important that you chose a topic that was easy to write about.


STEP 12: Add more pages and get more links.
Keep adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich pages (you do research at Wordtracker for this) and keep encouraging more sites to link to your site.
Make friends with other web site owners, and more people will link to you

Affiliate Program Tutorial 1

You joined an affiliate program. Here are the 18 steps to take next
This Affiliate Program Tutorial aims to give you a quick overview.
It's your road map to success as an affiliate.
I've been earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998. Based on that experience, this tutorial tells you the 18 steps to take to generate a useful income from affiliate programs.
No tricks. No gimmicks. Just solid, reliable methods designed to work for years.
You have the choice of many different ways of earning affiliate commissions.
In my experience, you'll have your best chance of success if you do the following. Find a niche and create a useful, interesting, content-rich, keyword-rich website on one topic and weave in affiliate links and AdSense ads.
This method - with the more recent addition of AdSense ads - has worked beautifully for me since 1998.
I urge you to master this basic method. It's a bit like serving an apprenticeship.
As part of your apprenticeship you'll learn SEO (search engine optimization) skills, copywriting skills and various other Internet marketing skills which will prove to be invaluable, whatever route you choose next.
With any luck, you'll have a bit of fun, too! I do.
I include Google's AdSense in this tutorial. Strictly speaking, AdSense is an advertising network. However, in many ways it's similar to an affiliate program. I think AdSense is fantastic. It's free to join, free to use and easy to use.
It's often much easier to earn good money from AdSense than affiliate programs, so it's essential that you include AdSense in your plans.
OK. Let's get started...

STEP 1: Set a goal
If you want to go somewhere, you need to know where you're going.
Let's start with a modest goal. Say you aim to earn a total of $300 (US) a month in affiliate commissions and AdSense revenue. Imagine what you could do with that money. A holiday? A better lifestyle?
I've kept the amount low, because it's important that you believe you can do this. Achieve small successes first, see the money in your hands or in your bank account, and then increase your goals.
Perhaps you have much larger goals. That's OK. Whatever your goals, I strongly recommend that you serve your apprenticeship by taking these 18 steps. They'll give you solid knowledge and experience on which to build your affiliate business.

STEP 2: Find your niche
To help you find your niche topic, read Ken Evoy's free Affiliate Masters Course and use the excellent advice in it to find a niche that suits you and your interests.
Print out the Affiliate Masters Course, find a quiet, comfortable spot and read it several times.
Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about this and jotting down notes. You're planning a business, so don't rush it. It's very important.
You'll probably avoid Internet marketing topics because that field is so overcrowded and competitive. It's much easier to succeed if you locate a less competitive niche.
Choose a topic that is easy to write about.
Even if you've already chosen a niche, I urge you to read the Affiliate Masters Course. It might make you change your mind.
You can follow your passion or chase the money. With luck - and a bit of keyword research - you may be able to do both.
Examine your potential competitors If you're considering building a site about hiking boots, type "hiking boots" (using quotation marks) into Google and Yahoo! and carefully examine the top 10 sites which appear in the search results.
They're your real competitors. Can you create a better, more interesting, more useful site? Can you think of a new angle, a new approach? Do those top 10 sites all have high PageRank - say 6 or more? If so, you'll have to work really hard to get in the top 10.
Let's say the top 3 sites in Google are PageRank 8, 7 and 6. If so, you'll probably have to work hard for a couple of years or more to outrank them. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it will require either a great deal of work, or a very innovative, eye-catching approach.
You can quickly check the PageRank of your potential competitors by using Seochat's free online tool - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search . Type in "hiking boots" or whatever and you'll be able to see the PageRank of the top 10 sites.
Do those sites all have the phrase in the title? (The title is the words that appear at the very top of your screen when you visit a site.) If not, you may be able to beat them. How many links do your potential competitors have?
Do your potential competitors all have thousands of links to them? This is important, because links are important to search engines. You need good, relevant links to your site. To find out how many sites are linking to a site, use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ - and login (set up a free account if necessary).
Type the URL of the site you want to explore.
Click on "Explore URL".
Click on "Inlinks".
Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks "except from this domain" and "entire site". This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.
If your potential sites have thousands of links to them, they're likely to be very tough competitors.Don't decide definitely on a niche topic until you've taken the next two steps...

STEP 3. Choose a profitable niche
Do some research on Google AdWords and Wordtracker to choose the most profitable niche from among the ones you're considering. (The free trial at Wordtracker is fairly restricted. You need more than that. I find Wordtracker so useful I have an annual subscription. However, you can get a cheap one-week subscription and do an awful lot of research in one week.)Because you're planning to use AdSense, you want valuable keywords or key phrases, if possible ones that people are paying at least 50 cents per click for on Yahoo! Search Marketing and AdWords.
You're going to build a site the search engines love, so you also want to find key phrases that many people are typing into search engines. You don't rely on guesswork.
You must do this keyword research BEFORE you start building your web site. That's critically important.
Find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's how.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play around with the free Keyword Tool.
For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "recipe" and click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency. I choose US.)
Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position estimates" is selected.
The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per click) for a whole lot of words and phrases.
Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.
You don't HAVE to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.In July 2008, Google improved its free keyword tool, making it much more useful. It now shows you the approximate number of monthly searches done at Google for any keywords you type in. So you can now do some fast, reliable keyword research there free. So this is a very good place to start your keyword research, using real search numbers from Google.If you use Site Build It to build your site, you'll find the brainstorming tool in it awesome to help you come up with ideas and phrases you wouldn't have thought of without it.
Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.
Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.
For a full list of topics you may wish to avoid see: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
Advertisers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites. Will AdSense ads you see on Google appear on your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at their AdSense ads.
For more accurate research, you can also use the free AdSense preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.Another niche-finding tool I'm very fond of is Myleena's NicheInspector. Using this powerful tool will save you a LOT of time, because it automates a great deal of the work. If you're going to get this tool, make sure you read her free report before you start using it, because her free report explains why she uses the methods she does.Don't make any firm decision on your niche until you've taken the next step...

STEP: 4. Research affiliate merchants
Before you make a firm decision on a topic for your site, you'll need to do research to see if there are suitable affiliate products which match your topic.
You want affiliate merchants that have excellent products, excellent reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling. You can search the AssociatePrograms.com affiliate directory for ideas.
Consider aiming for lifetime commissions.
If you're lucky, you'll manage to select a web site topic that has affiliate programs which pay lifetime commissions or residual commissions - the sort reviewed at LifetimeCommissions.com.
You'll earn repeat commissions when "your" customers make more purchases.

STEP 5: Build a useful, interesting website on your niche
Here's an very important step. Many newcomer affiliates who fail do so because they have overlooked its importance.
Don't just build a website. Build a useful, interesting website on your niche.
One of the best ways is to build a site which solves people's problems. Useful sites also often help their visitors decide which products to buy.
Create a content rich, keyword-rich site, designed to be found in search engines.
Show your personality. Have a bit of fun. Be memorable. You need to connect with your visitors. Remember that people like buying from people they like.
There's no space in this affiliate program tutorial to describe how to build a website. For that, you'll need a good instruction manual.
If you're short of money, you can hunt for free information on sites such HTMLGoodies.
You'll save yourself an enormous amount of time and frustration if you take the plunge and buy a good instruction manual.
Here are the two best options:
(1.) For keen do-it-your-selfers, I recommend Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook.
Rosalind is a real been-there-done-that super affiliate.
Her instruction manual shows you how she builds very successful sites using web authoring software.
It starts right at the beginning, discussing topics such as myths about doing business online, mistakes to avoid, how to choose the best topic, how to choose the right domain name, etc.
The book, updated in May 2006, takes you step-by-step through the whole process.
One particularly useful feature is her explanation of how she achieves high conversion rates (visitor-to-sales ratios), achieving conversion rates of 4% or 6% while most affiliates are happy with 1%.
Another of the strengths of the book is her descriptions of a wide variety of ways to get traffic to your site. This is important - too many affiliates rely on just one or two traffic-generating methods. The more traffic-generating methods you have, the safer your business is.
Rosaland is genuinely successful, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Now she's also a very successful author, with sales of more $1 million from her book, which is excellent value.
When you learn from her, you're learning from a winner.
Learn more about Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook here.
If you choose to follow Rosalind's advice, you'll also need a website-building tool. A very popular choice among affiliates is XSitePro, which is designed for people who want to build small, niche sites. XSitePro, or the new version, XSitePro2, isn't suitable for every type of site, so make sure you read our XSitePro2 review before you decide.
(2.) For affiliates who want to simplify things as much as possible and automate the tedious techie stuff, I recommend Ken Evoy's Site Build It (SBI).
SBI is a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting suite of tools, all in one place.
Once you have SBI, you don't have to go scurrying all over the Net adding more tools and software. You have almost all you need in one package, so you can concentrate on the fun part - creating useful, interesting content.Here's what one happy SBI user says
affID = "makemy-sbi.html";

SBI comes with a newly updated, truly comprehensive instruction manual, a step-by-step Action Guide, and a truly superb private forum where SBI users share information and help each other.
SBI is the tool I give my assistants. Take the free Video Tour and you'll understand why.
Ken Evoy's instruction manual is doing my work for me. First it taught Rupert and then Ros how to build a high quality, successful, revenue-generating site. Now it's being used by another assistant to whom I outsource website maintenance.
You could build a site without SBI, but using it saves you time and effort by simplifying the process. It provides a recipe for business success.
SBI teaches you how to optimize your web pages so they'll be found in search engines. After building a page, you click the "Analyze It" button and it tells you what you need to do to improve it.
The SBI technique really works. Two of the SBI sites that Rupert built are included in the case studies on the SBI site.
See the proof in the SBI case studies

STEP 6: Add affiliate links
As you write the articles for your site, weave affiliate links into them. Always have a typical visitor in mind as you write the articles. Speak to that visitor.
Your task as an affiliate is to help your visitor decide what to buy.
One successful technique is to gradually lead your visitor towards a purchase. Start by outlining a problem, discuss a good solution that has worked for you, and end the article with a link that is a call to action, such as a hyperlink that says, "Find out more here."
Your task as an affiliate is NOT to sell (that's the merchant's job) but to presell, to warm up your visitors. You want your visitors in a ready-to-buy frame of mind when they arrive at the merchant's site.
For superb advice on preselling, I strongly recommend you join Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. It's free to join.
Ken is an absolute whiz at preselling and he's renowned for working extremely hard to help his affiliates succeed. He has a superb program. It's been No.1 in my Top 10 for several years. I earn five-figure monthly commissions from this affiliate program