The Affiliate Guild has recently posted a great affiliate help list tips of 25 things that new and struggling affiliates trying to make a go of affiliate marketing should take a look at and give careful consideration to.

The Good Advice for New Affiliates post was inspired by Linda Buquet's super affiliate contest going on at 5 star affiliate programs.

Good Advice for New Affiliates
from the Affiliate Guild

25 Affiliate Tips To Success
1. Too much time building websites will bog you down. Make easy to maintain sites.

2. SEO does matter if you want targeted traffic.

3. Get a newsletter email opt-in on every page of every website you own.

4. Either get a forum or get a blog going. (Need one built?)

5. Write about your affiliate programs (article-repository.com). Tell everyone!

6. Focus on conversion not payout. Commissions are important though.

7. Get really, really niche.

8. Find affiliate programs that will be around awhile.

9. Find a search engine friendly cloaking script for your links.

10. There is more to affiliate life than Google! Diversify!

11. Learn about your affiliate programs and speak intellegently about them.

12. If you don't see what you want to represent, go get it. Consider your own affiliate network.

13. Make friends with Affiliate Managers … and if you have a lot of traffic ask for a bigger percentage on payout.

14. Work with reputable leadership (affiliate guild)

15. Buy from the affiliate program if you want to know how they work. We do it.

16. Monetize your websites.

17. If you have enough traffic sell ad space. If you have good SEO ranking, charge more for ads.

18. Ask for the sale. Most affiliate program banners don't close sales, you must do it.

19. You must work 8-10+ hours daily to be a successful super affiliate.

20. Keep it really simple … accomplish your goals with focused resources.

21. Find affiliate programs that offer a wide variety of advertising opportunities from banners to datafeeds.

22. Find affiliate programs that require strong marketing ethics and follow them, WIN-WIN.

23. Find affiliate programs that payout on schedule everytime. You're in control here!

24. Look for affiliate programs with affiliate tracking for phone sales you generate.

25. Look for affiliate programs with solid servers and software that works 100% of the time. Other affiliates write about the bad ones, so be aware and read the affiliate forums and blogs.

Posted by Bobbie Grennier on August 10, 2006 05:53 PM | Permalink

I was over at the 5 Star blog and saw the video tool for affiliates that Linda was impressed with. The video showcased is from The Secret. It's a powerful video … well, actually it's the trailer for the DVD so, yes a powerful video designed to get you to act on it.

What's interesting is that AMWSO used the movie trailer and laid a layer on top advertising their GAIAM client who is selling the DVD. It kind of reminds me of the branding that TV stations now do in the lower right of your TV screen … although I saw one on the top left the other day that blocked the face of the person talking.

This video overlay service is presented by webvideozone.com.  While it's impressive, my worry was that it infringes on rights of the people who made the DVD. I've been looking around to see how they've dealt with that issues, but I haven't found any info yet. Anyone know that answer? 

http://affiliate-blogger.com/2006/11/22/content-for-affiliate-websites/

What I love about Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, is the down to earth advice he gives to other bloggers looking to monetize their blogs to earn an income doing waht they love … blogging.

Darren's posted a nice advice series on How To Drive Traffice to Your Affiliate Programs that's well worth the read, if for no other reason than pure review to make sure you're doing the basics.

You also might want to go back and review the post I, Affiliate Bogger, posted for you about creating content to further help you prepare your affiliate websites and blogs for monetization Content for Affiliate Websites.

You can read Darren's next blog post contining this series by looking at his next post on Search Engine Optimization in the overall series of 31 Days to Building a Better Blog.

Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes.

Joining an affiliate program is a neat way to make money from your users. But just as you can join someone else's affiliate program, so you can set up your own program and invite webmasters to sign up. Here are my top 3 tips to succeed with your own affiliate program.

1. How to attract affiliates

One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates. This fear is a stumbling block that stops many site owners from getting started with affiliate marketing. Interestingly, with a proper marketing strategy, getting affiliates may not be very difficult. Given below are some tips that may help in attracting new affiliates.

Find complimentary sites - "Complementary" sites are sites that sell products or services that compliment your offers. If you sell "gardening tools", a site that sells books on "gardening tips" would be a perfect affiliate.

Find content sites - There are many sites that do not sell any kind of product or service but are mainly content oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are used as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.

Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated to listing affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in these directories.

2. Classifying Affiliates for Better Management

The hardest part of administrating an Affiliate Program is deciding what your affiliates need to help make the sale. But, by carefully categorizing your affiliates, you can easily determine what their needs are and how to accurately meet them.

The first step is to pick at least three types of affiliate. Take a look at your affiliates and try to determine one outstanding characteristic that can easily be compared across the board and choose at least three types of the characteristic.

The Second Step is to determine the needs of each type. Each of your affiliate types will have different needs; some of their needs will overlap, but you should find a distinct difference in many of their needs. If you find that all of them have the same needs, go back to step one and re-think your types.

The Third Step involves the process of creating and compiling linking methods for each group of affiliates. Based on the needs you identified in Step two, create and compile linking methods for each type.

3. Safe Guarding Against Spam

Any time you run a program where your affiliates rely on other signups to generate profits, you will eventually have a problem with spam. One of your affiliates will inevitably get it into their head to blitz the Web with unwanted garbage.

When this happens you need to be ready to take action otherwise it will cost you! Your Internet company can boot you off your server and you can find yourself blacklisted. Not good for business. If you get an email from someone claiming they received spam with your URL, then take it as an early warning.

I am not advising you to immediately terminate the affiliate's account, but be sure to contact them to follow up on the complaint. Let your affiliate know you received a complaint and advise them to remove this person from their list.

If you only get one or two complaints, it's probably not spam, the complainants might simply have signed up for an email list and forgotten all about it. You will know when one of your affiliates is spamming, because you will get anywhere from 10 to 100 complaints in the same day all regarding the same URL.

The best thing to do in this case is to immediately terminate or disable the account of the affiliate URL that was spammed.

Running your own affiliate program can become an extrememly profitable venture for your business. You can recruit a HUGE sales force promoting your products for you, and ONLY pay them when you make a sale!

About the Author:
Andy Murray is a marketer and publisher writing informative reports to help grow your online business. Get his latest offering "Get Stinking Rich From Affiliate Programs" for FREE by simply following this link: http://www.zerohourmarketing.com/Affiliate-Marketing-Report.htm

My Odeo Channel (odeo/0a80d6da719ef29b)

Affiliate Blogger launches a new performance marketing blog focused on performance based marketing and marketing that converts.

[ClickPress, Thu Aug 31 2006] Affiliate Blogger launches a new performance marketing blog focused on performance based marketing and marketing that converts.

Bobbie Grennier, widely known as the Affiliate Blogger (http://affiliate-blogger.com), is following on the heals of Jim Kukral (revenews.com/Forge) who recently announced the acquisition of BlogKits (blogkits.com).

"The shift into performance based marketing for bloggers looking to earn income through blogging has taken a big step forward," said Grennier. "I wanted to be an active voice in helping to shape this transformation within the blogsphere."

Bloggers spend hours each day researching and writing about their topics just as any copywriter or journalist does. The desire for bloggers to earn income from their efforts is growing, though there are divisions between those bloggers wanting to be paid to blog and others who prefer to earn income through affiliate programs or selling ad space on their popular blogs.

In a 2005 survey by BlogKits, 73% of bloggers acknowledged that using affiliate links on their blog was acceptable.

Bobbie Grennier brings a discerning eye to the affiliate space and now to the performance based marketing space. In addition to having years of experience as a media buyer and lead generation solutions provider, she has also racked up many years within the SEO/SEM search engine strategies side of marketing (http://www.seo-writing.com). Bobbie's SEO writing websites, blogs and articles consistently appear in the top ten natural search rankings in Google's search engine for "SEO writing" and "SEO writer" keywords.

The new performance based marketing blog will discuss such topics as media buys, multi-channel marketing, affiliate partners and publishers, search engine strategies, datafeed marketing, lead generation and marketing solutions that convert to sales.

About Bobbie Grennier:
As the Affiliate Blogger, Bobbie Grennier is the driving force behind the Affiliate Guild (http://affiliate-guild.com), an online free guild for affiliates to find a common bond, tools of their trade and an educational environment to learn and fine-tune their skills. Grennier is an Internet Strategist who often consults with merchants, helping them to develop SEO and affiliate marketing strategies, in addition to a focus on affiliate partner relationships through recruitment and management of affiliate programs. Bobbie's articles are widely published throughout the Internet and she offers free reprint articles at the Article Repository Directory (http://article-repository.com).

http://www.clickpress.com/releases/Detailed/17552005cp.shtml

BECOME A MEMBER OF THE AFFILIATE GUILD TODAY!
Affiliate Guild is a self-help learning resource for people who want to learn to be affiliate, are already affiliates, and want to learn to be super affiliates. The website offers a wide variety of help-tools and is a great resource to keep open on your desktop as you work on your affiliate programs.

Are you interested in becoming an Affiliate Guild Member?
Affiliate Guild members can enjoy courses taught in the Affiliate Guild online school classes.
Affiliate Guild members are the only ones legally allowed to use the Affiliate Guild logo with a link back to the Affiliate Guild indicating they are working within professional guidelines as an affiliate.
Membership is FREE for all affiliates!
Affiliate Guild members also enjoy our exclsuive Affiliate Guild Newsletter.

Affiliate niche domains for sale

Whether you're an affiliate just getting started and in need of an already built website, or you just need a good domain to get started and can build your own website, you're going to want to consider a big list of affiliate niche domains I've just posted for sale here on Affiliate Blogger.

I speak with newbie affiliates on a daily basis who are struggling to build their own websites on their own because of the costs associated with having them built. In fact, I spent a few hours yesterday helping an affiliate who is also a Marketing Specialist in the affiliate space, and needed help installing a WordPress blog. You know who you are *grin* … and that's what helped me to realize that newbies to coding need a little more help.

So, while I'm only listing the domains I have for sale, if you need a website or blog built and hosted … I'm open to negotiating that with you.  Many of these domains I have up for sale have old websites and affiliate programs that I used in the past. Almost all of these domains have Internet history, meaning it won't be that hard to get the search engines to look at them when you give them a facelift.

If you see a domain you want, make your best offer the first time! I can't stress that enough. I hate haggling. I own a Saturn car … 'nough said.

Is there another of my domains that you're more interested in buying? I'm always open to offers. In my world, everything is for sale if the price is right. Best offer always wins!

The second Affiliate Bootcamp was a little rough going because of technical problems with the new VOIP conference facility, but everyone huddled together and a work-around was soon presented.

Good thing because the second class has a lot of visual aids to help you to understand the concepts and tools presented.

The big lesson to be learned in the second class is something I learned years ago … the hard way. It's imperative to your business success that you work in an organized manner. Keeping records of your URLs, usernames and passwords is not a trivial task.

One of the tools James Martell endorses and uses is Affiliate Organizer. Affiliate Organizer's affiliate program is only open to customers who have purchased Affiliate Organizer.

According to James…

As a successful affiliate marketer and author of the Affiliate Marketers Handbook I learned very early on the importance of *properly recording* all the usernames, passwords, control panels, hosting companies, domain name registrars, software serial numbers, etc. provided to me by the various companies so that I could *find this important information when I needed it*.

Getting and staying organized can be a daunting task, however I could see that it was important if I wanted to succeed with affiliate programs, …so I had to figure out a way. I did, and then dedicated the first chapter of my training manual to the subject and titled it: "How To Get And Stay Organized".

It's that important.

That sums up my sharing a little about the second Affiliate Marketer's Bootcamp class.

In case you missed my first post on Affiliate Bootcamp ….

Joining solid affiliate programs is a good start. But the affiliate program is usually only going to give you banner ads and text ads … most don't provide the content part.

Here's my advice, do a search on "free rewrite articles." Pick an article repository, go there, search on your keywords … not sure what they are for you, but an example would be "music" … be as specific in the keywords as you can. Music might be too general.

Grab yourself some articles. You must publish articles with the author's signature at the bottom. Give credit for the content where credit is due.

Now, keep yourself out of trouble with Google. You have to write some content too. You need to have about 20-40% of the content on the page be unique. On every page!

So, if I were you I'd write a few paragraphs about the article's topic, maybe getting a little focused on the keywords you're going for on that page. Definately use your keywords as the anchor text for the affiliate program's links.

Meaning, if you're talking about electric guitars on a page and have an article on electric guitars, then in the part you write, link the words "electric guitars" to the affiliate program's link to their electric guitars. See?

You can't touch the content of the author's article. It's a matter of honor on that reguard. It's your way of valuing that author giving you free content.

Basically, you're writing an intro to the article and you need to make a clear distinction between what you're writing and what the other guy wrote. This should resolve your content issues for now.

It's a lot of work, but that's how it's done. Dig in!

Currently, I don't offer any one-on-one tutoring at Affiliate Guild … yet! If you guys think that's something I should do sooner rather than later, then let me know. I would have to charge a fee, but I also could keep it reasonable. Affiliate Guild has a complete school already in place, so it's not that hard to do.

You might have read my posts about the Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp. Taking this course is really helping me to be more aware of what the newer affiliate's needs are. It's all information I already know, but it's always good to hear it again. I'll be blogging and posting about things I think could benefit others. Maybe some of that will help you as well?!

Let’s start with an important fact. Though you can earn from affiliate marketing even without the benefit of having your own website, it is still a much better option that you get one. A website is the anchor of your work at home business. It will be easier to promote your business and products or affiliate products if you have your own pages in cyber space.

We have previously discussed the basics of creating your own website and optimizing the same for the search engines.

In this article, we’re going to tackle some initial steps you should take in securing an enrollment to an affiliate program and in ensuring that it will be a profitable enterprise. Study these steps carefully.

* Choose the right affiliate program as covered in last weeks article.

* Enroll for the said program. Keep in mind that before you can be a part of this work at home business, you must first opt-in, or verify your application, through your email.

* Once enrolled, you will be given access to a website where you must log in. Do not forget your login details.

* You will see the list of the affiliate merchant’s products inside. You will be given the option to choose a product for which a campaign will be launched. Once a product is chosen, you will be furnished an affiliate link. Do not lose this affiliate link!

With your affiliate link at hand, it’s time to move to the next level!

Your affiliate link is what will tell the affiliate program’s system that a purchaser was referred by you. Your pre-sells that end up becoming successful sales are actually coursed through your affiliate links, thus informing the affiliate program that commissions are due to you.

It is quite evident then that affiliate marketing as a work at home business is all about persuading a potential customer to at least check out the affiliate merchant’s products through your affiliate link. The reason why affiliate marketing is called, well, marketing is because you need some promotional strategies to induce a person to become a purchaser.

We will discuss these marketing strategies in the next article.

The success of an enrollment with an affiliate program as a work at home business depends on the amount of commitment and effort you invest in the same. Being an affiliate, you must remember, is an online job, but a job nonetheless. You cannot just sit down and let this home business earn for you, at least, not initially.

Eventually however, you should be able to automate most of the process by installing some tools for a self-sufficient system of your own. We will cover this thoroughly in subsequent articles.

About the Author:
Mal Keenan can show you step-by step how to set up and run a successful online home business. Learn the 7 essential strategies to internet marketing success. To receive your free 7 day mini-course visit: http://www.malkeenan.com