tmelvin 0 Report post Posted April 13, 2007 Hi Friends,Anyone in this forum who is involved in AM and did it successfully ? If yes, what did you do ? If no, what was the stumbling blocks ?I just read too many successful stories and begin to feel skeptical about it. Maybe its just a hype or maybe its not ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
blogmaster 0 Report post Posted April 24, 2007 Affiliate marketing is not just hype. You can indeed make money off affiliate marketing. I agree that many Internet marketers hype a lot of things these days. What you need to do is cut through the hype and try to see the logic behind it. Affiliate marketing is like salesmanship. We all know that sales persons have been around for a long time. Amazon (as I?m made to understand they are the ones that brought it online first) simply brought this brick and mortar strategy online.What I will tell you, however, is that it?s easier to fail than it is to succeed online. I struggled a lot in order to start making any money online until I decided to learn the real ?secrets? (the so called secrets are not really secrets at all) behind online marketing. Many merchants will tell you to simply copy and paste a code to your website and start making money. Yes this is possible if you already have a well trafficked website with the right audience too. If not then you won?t generate a single sale!Besides traffic there are also some other things you will need to know. For example, how good the tracking software of the merchant really is. It?s very possible to generate loads of sales for a company and not get a single cent in commission. There a lot of things I can tell you about affiliate marketing, being an affiliate marketer myself and also an owner of an affiliate program, I really understand how the whole system works.In a nutshell, do your research first before you decide to join any affiliate program. If you are not sure which kind of research you need to do post your questions here and I will help you out whenever I can.All the best Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
global results 0 Report post Posted April 27, 2007 Good day,Great advice I have been successful in affiliate marketing because I did my homework and also I attend a IM University that has taught me how to do it.It really shortened my learning curve.I was doing it by myself but the learn by yourself was taking and costing me to much money.Click here to Know Where I learned to Market and Make money with Full Support.! Notice from serverph: referral links removed. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tmelvin 0 Report post Posted April 28, 2007 Hi Blogmaster,Thank you for your post. I read alot of books but still have no idea how to start. Some people says have yr own products, some says just do affiliate marketing..then after which traffic generation, tracking software, Seo, list building...all these got so overwhelming that I simply dunno how to start....Is there a blueprint or maybe u can share how u got started....thanks a million... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
blogmaster 0 Report post Posted April 28, 2007 Melvin, deciding whether to market as an affiliate or create your own products depends on various factors and your own circumstances. Either decision you make has its own merits and demerits. You will just have to decide which demerits you can put up with  Here are a few factors you may need to take into consideration when making this decision  Having your own product gives you the freedom to set your own profit margins. You decide how much profit you want to make for every product you sell. You will also be able to set up your own affiliate program and decide how much commissions you want to pay your affiliates. Setting up an affiliate program is very easy and you dont even have to buy affiliate software to get started. You can get a lot of experienced marketers promoting for you if you plan your affiliate program carefully.  Marketing your own product, however, brings with it a heavier burden. You would need to provide support to your customers and fast. This can be frustrating if you are marketing as an individual. The sheer volume of support queries you can get, especially if you are running a successful affiliate program, can wear you out. This is where affiliate marketing becomes attractive.  With affiliate marketing, the support that you need to provide is limited. If you decide to build an email list for your marketing campaigns then you may need to provide basic support to build a trust relationship with your subscribers. You can also simply direct all queries to your merchant if you like.  What I really admire about affiliate marketing, however, is the possibility of getting paid for leads you generate. The leads would not need to buy anything. This kind of affiliate program is usually found in affiliate networks, as bigger merchants are usually the ones that practice it. You can also drop none converting merchants whenever you like.  With affiliate marketing you can also launch your site much faster as you would not need to carry out some marketing research that is necessary when making your own product. For example, you would not need to research on a appropriate pricing strategy.  However, as an affiliate, you wont have access to the merchants website files. Hence you will not be able to integrate it with your affiliate program. This means you would need to market all by yourself  Bearing these in mind, I say if you dont have the money to outsource support or build your own support team, its better to start off as an affiliate marketer. It will also help you acquire the necessary skills you will find very helpful when you decide to finally promote your own products.  As you have noticed already, there are many ways of marketing your site. Which can be overwhelming All these help you build long a steady and long lasting traffic to your website. You will need a focused approach, however. Trying to implement them all at once will confuse your marketing strategy and makes it difficult to measure your success with a particular method. Try to dominate one strategy first and then move on when you build a steady and reliable traffic with that method. SEO is an ongoing process which starts the moment you start gathering content for your website. You would need to use appropriate keywords.  When first introducing a site, I always start by forum marketing. I love it because of the instead traffic that it builds. You also build a lot of one-way backlinks (for SEO) fast plus you can target your specific audience in their numbers. Put your site in your signature for the backlinks but for traffic you need to mention the site in your post. Make it the center of attention and you will get a lot of click throughs. Be very careful not to spam though. Mention it only when it is absolutely necessary. You can create the environment to make it necessary to mention it Just be creative.  A great way to get highly targeted forums is to search for intitle:keyword forum in Google. For example if I wanted to market a SEO related site I would search for intitle:"seo forum" in Google. I can then join these forums and start my marketing campaign  TIP: You will get more click throughs if you try to be the first one to reply questions. This way, anyone who reads the original post is likely to read your reply and click through to whatever site you mention in your post if its not familiar to him or her. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tmelvin 0 Report post Posted April 28, 2007 Hi Blogmaster,Thank you for your detailed explanation.I get a better idea now. I really appreciate your effort in detailing such a long reply. It really warms to know that you are willing to share so much info. I will visit this forum often to learn. Hopefully will be able to generate some income soon. Thank you once again. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
blogmaster 0 Report post Posted April 29, 2007 No problem Melvin. You have started on the right track. When I started, I was nothing more than a webmaster. I just knew how to create website so I jumped into affiliate marketing without even trying to learn how to market effectively. It took me time to swallow my pride and decide to do some research I like helping people avoid the mistakes I made. So feel free to ask anything you like. I'm sure a lot of members around here will be glad to help too. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tmelvin 0 Report post Posted April 29, 2007 Hi Blogmaster,Thank you. I really appreciate it.I will learn as i go along.Melvin Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tabufx50 0 Report post Posted June 23, 2007 Yeah great post.  I've found that in order to be successful in affiliate marketing online you need to test your results and also follow those that have gone before you and succeeded, why re-invent the wheel.  Clickbank.com is a must to go there and sign up. The you need to start getting traffic via adwords and also submitting articles that are relevant to the topic. You landing page needs to have a optin form to get visitors email addresses so you can follow up with them. Send them to an autoresponder and let it do the follow up for you.  See example here http://www.ihavetoadmit.com/rg-erdr.php?_rpo=t  Then you must keep learning because there is so much to know when it comes to this internet thing and it changes on a monthly basis...   enjoy    Melvin, deciding whether to market as an affiliate or create your own products depends on various factors and your own circumstances. Either decision you make has its own merits and demerits. You will just have to decide which demerits you can put up with  Here are a few factors you may need to take into consideration when making this decision  Having your own product gives you the freedom to set your own profit margins. You decide how much profit you want to make for every product you sell. You will also be able to set up your own affiliate program and decide how much commissions you want to pay your affiliates. Setting up an affiliate program is very easy and you dont even have to buy affiliate software to get started. You can get a lot of experienced marketers promoting for you if you plan your affiliate program carefully.  Marketing your own product, however, brings with it a heavier burden. You would need to provide support to your customers and fast. This can be frustrating if you are marketing as an individual. The sheer volume of support queries you can get, especially if you are running a successful affiliate program, can wear you out. This is where affiliate marketing becomes attractive.  With affiliate marketing, the support that you need to provide is limited. If you decide to build an email list for your marketing campaigns then you may need to provide basic support to build a trust relationship with your subscribers. You can also simply direct all queries to your merchant if you like.  What I really admire about affiliate marketing, however, is the possibility of getting paid for leads you generate. The leads would not need to buy anything. This kind of affiliate program is usually found in affiliate networks, as bigger merchants are usually the ones that practice it. You can also drop none converting merchants whenever you like.  With affiliate marketing you can also launch your site much faster as you would not need to carry out some marketing research that is necessary when making your own product. For example, you would not need to research on a appropriate pricing strategy.  However, as an affiliate, you wont have access to the merchants website files. Hence you will not be able to integrate it with your affiliate program. This means you would need to market all by yourself  Bearing these in mind, I say if you dont have the money to outsource support or build your own support team, its better to start off as an affiliate marketer. It will also help you acquire the necessary skills you will find very helpful when you decide to finally promote your own products.  As you have noticed already, there are many ways of marketing your site. Which can be overwhelming All these help you build long a steady and long lasting traffic to your website. You will need a focused approach, however. Trying to implement them all at once will confuse your marketing strategy and makes it difficult to measure your success with a particular method. Try to dominate one strategy first and then move on when you build a steady and reliable traffic with that method. SEO is an ongoing process which starts the moment you start gathering content for your website. You would need to use appropriate keywords.  When first introducing a site, I always start by forum marketing. I love it because of the instead traffic that it builds. You also build a lot of one-way backlinks (for SEO) fast plus you can target your specific audience in their numbers. Put your site in your signature for the backlinks but for traffic you need to mention the site in your post. Make it the center of attention and you will get a lot of click throughs. Be very careful not to spam though. Mention it only when it is absolutely necessary. You can create the environment to make it necessary to mention it Just be creative.  A great way to get highly targeted forums is to search for intitle:keyword forum in Google. For example if I wanted to market a SEO related site I would search for intitle:"seo forum" in Google. I can then join these forums and start my marketing campaign  TIP: You will get more click throughs if you try to be the first one to reply questions. This way, anyone who reads the original post is likely to read your reply and click through to whatever site you mention in your post if its not familiar to him or her. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
eka_ys 0 Report post Posted July 20, 2007 I used to be in affiliate marketing and have some success, but I found out later that getting a lot of 1st tier and 2nd tier people to help me market is not as good as giving personal help to a few people who are willing to help me sell the products. And if you have more than 1 products, make sure that they are complementing and supporting each other so you can get more selling. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
abivelj 0 Report post Posted November 21, 2007 I have started a website BestPaidOnline.com and it's doing pretty good.The only thing that really isn't going so good is having enough people sign up.I'm not that good at marketing online. I am a webmaster and have created the site myself.I use commision junction because it's got this SID which will allow me to write in anything to know who did an offer.If someone could help me with the marketing, like how to market good online and stuff. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
anwiii 17 Report post Posted November 21, 2007 I have started a website BestPaidOnline.com and it's doing pretty good.The only thing that really isn't going so good is having enough people sign up.I'm not that good at marketing online. I am a webmaster and have created the site myself.I use commision junction because it's got this SID which will allow me to write in anything to know who did an offer.If someone could help me with the marketing, like how to market good online and stuff. blog master already gave GREAT advice on what your asking. so to recap, he stated to post in forums but do not spam. post relevant information in what your site is about with a link back to your site. he stated it's great advertising at first and is also good for seo(link backs). i recomend that you do this. you cannot post referal links here but if you have your own website, that's ok to post it as long as you include some relevant content along with the link.a lot of people do press releases on the web for their newly created websites. i also suggest to join a traffic generating program. update your website to be search engine friendly and get on the first page for 2-3 keywords. keep updating your website and keep posting your link when it's relevant in the forums just like blogmaster described. be patient and your work will not be for nothing. in another 6 months, you will see a difference depending on the effort and time you put in to it. it takes time and effort to market online. it takes dedication and also lots of patience since people don't see dramatic results in the first couple months. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
abivelj 0 Report post Posted November 21, 2007 blog master already gave GREAT advice on what your asking. so to recap, he stated to post in forums but do not spam. post relevant information in what your site is about with a link back to your site. he stated it's great advertising at first and is also good for seo(link backs). i recomend that you do this. you cannot post referal links here but if you have your own website, that's ok to post it as long as you include some relevant content along with the link.a lot of people do press releases on the web for their newly created websites. i also suggest to join a traffic generating program. update your website to be search engine friendly and get on the first page for 2-3 keywords. keep updating your website and keep posting your link when it's relevant in the forums just like blogmaster described. be patient and your work will not be for nothing. in another 6 months, you will see a difference depending on the effort and time you put in to it. it takes time and effort to market online. it takes dedication and also lots of patience since people don't see dramatic results in the first couple months. So you're telling me that the first 6 months I pretty much have to advertise like crazy to acctually see some results??? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
anwiii 17 Report post Posted November 21, 2007 So you're telling me that the first 6 months I pretty much have to advertise like crazy to acctually see some results???what i am saying is an online business is just like an offline business. you need determination, time, and lots of patience.what i am saying is yes, wait 6 months to a year for the results you wanted to see. you see, most people quit after less than a month. they don't have the determination or patience thus, they don't see the results quick enough. don't go in to it thinking you will see results right away because when you don't(and you probably wont if your like most people), you will quit! you CANT QUIT if you want to succeed. that's what i mean by needing determination.i don't have the link off hand, but read the post from opaque in what he had to go through in creating Xisto when it was NOTHING. well, he made it SOMETHING and that something didn't happen in a month or two.so yes, advertise it.....not like crazy, but spend an hour a day to market yourself and your site. i talk about yourself too and not just your site....well...i'm going to give you something now i rarely talk about you can just market your site and be successfull, but you also want to market yourself. build your reputation. write quality posts to BUILD your own reputation. the bigger your reputation, the more people you will have that will follow your advice. build trust. get known. post some quality content in the areas you know. if people don't know you, they are less likely to follow you to your site. this has been RARELY talked about on Xisto(and i read most of the internet marketing posts) so i offer this to ya as STRONG advice. why? because i am catching a couple of your errors already in your posts.so post quality content. get your name out there. build trust with solid information and advice. then incorporate that with your website and you will have more success than the average joe blow that you are obviously competing with. also, make sure you build that good reputation because if it ever turns bad, i gaurantee that nobody will be visiting your site if they know who you are and your bad reputation.while you are building your reputation, make some friends and contacts along the way. that never hurts. it helps and when you can build friendships along the way with your communications through your posts, it makes what you are doing more fun and you are less likely to quit if you can make what your doing more fun than work or just a tediuous job.don't just join 1 forum, join 100 forums. post once a day to each forum and get known out there. it takes time and patience. it's not easy. that's why you need the dedication to have that winners attitude.....and whatever you do.....if this is what you want to do.....DONT QUIT! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
abivelj 0 Report post Posted November 21, 2007 what i am saying is an online business is just like an offline business. you need determination, time, and lots of patience.what i am saying is yes, wait 6 months to a year for the results you wanted to see. you see, most people quit after less than a month. they don't have the determination or patience thus, they don't see the results quick enough. don't go in to it thinking you will see results right away because when you don't(and you probably wont if your like most people), you will quit! you CANT QUIT if you want to succeed. that's what i mean by needing determination.i don't have the link off hand, but read the post from opaque in what he had to go through in creating Xisto when it was NOTHING. well, he made it SOMETHING and that something didn't happen in a month or two.so yes, advertise it.....not like crazy, but spend an hour a day to market yourself and your site. i talk about yourself too and not just your site....well...i'm going to give you something now i rarely talk about you can just market your site and be successfull, but you also want to market yourself. build your reputation. write quality posts to BUILD your own reputation. the bigger your reputation, the more people you will have that will follow your advice. build trust. get known. post some quality content in the areas you know. if people don't know you, they are less likely to follow you to your site. this has been RARELY talked about on Xisto(and i read most of the internet marketing posts) so i offer this to ya as STRONG advice. why? because i am catching a couple of your errors already in your posts.so post quality content. get your name out there. build trust with solid information and advice. then incorporate that with your website and you will have more success than the average joe blow that you are obviously competing with. also, make sure you build that good reputation because if it ever turns bad, i gaurantee that nobody will be visiting your site if they know who you are and your bad reputation.while you are building your reputation, make some friends and contacts along the way. that never hurts. it helps and when you can build friendships along the way with your communications through your posts, it makes what you are doing more fun and you are less likely to quit if you can make what your doing more fun than work or just a tediuous job.don't just join 1 forum, join 100 forums. post once a day to each forum and get known out there. it takes time and patience. it's not easy. that's why you need the dedication to have that winners attitude.....and whatever you do.....if this is what you want to do.....DONT QUIT! Thank you for the information. I knew about the building reputation... outsite of online business... my parents own a business and I pretty much learned everything about business like that plus I am about to finish school for business. Never really thought I had to be popular online to have a good business online too... hmmm.. kinda makes more sense now.I have to treat online as if it were offline.... Thank you for your information.... hmmm...let's try and start to build my reputation now... you tell me if I am doing good so far.I am 20 years old and for a few years I was searching how to get rich quick online. I found a lot of these quick schemes, but they all seemed false to me. So I quit on the get rich quick thing. Instead I started to focus on something else. For me to get paid at all I have to offer a service or product. Product... I really didn't have anything to offer. Only 20 you know. Service?... I do know how to create websites. And I then just started to create websites just for fun and adding adsense to every page possible lol. That didn't do no good, the sites weren't visited lol. Then I found our about affiliate marketing. Thought to myself this is the perfect service. I can offer people money for leads and clicks and sales. No I won't get rich quick, I might just have enough to pay for the site and maybe get a little extra on the side every month.Heck that's not bad if I can make $100 extra every month in a year that's $1,200 to pay for hosting and things and giving someone out there that really needs money an opportunity to get it. I figured for every $100 I make I can share about 70% of it.Instead of taking 100% commision for myself I will share with the person that did that lead.I think this is the best way. I heard a saying many, many times "You have to give to get." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites