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March 15, 2009
How Big Is Affiliate Marketing?
By James Martell
I chuckle when recalling how
friends and family used to
ask, "is it legal?", after
they saw how much money I
was making from affiliate
programs. This was back when
affiliate programs were
totally new, -- 1999-2001.
I guess one could hardly
blame them because in those
early days very few could
see where the Internet was
headed.
I mean, this was before
Google, YouTube, iPods,
Blackberry's or social
networking, just to name a
few recent innovations that
are here to stay.
And it was definitely way
before anyone could foresee
a candidate for President of
the United States using
millions of small donations
through PayPal to seriously
out earn his closet rivals.
Yes, my friend, the Internet
has changed everything!
So where do you fit in?
Has it dawned on you that an
entirely new way to do
business has been born? Are
you getting that the truly
independent "little guy" now
has a shot at big income
with very little risk or
overhead?
Yes, it's true.
With affiliate programs you
simply need a computer,
Broadband Internet and a
website with traffic that
entices a visitor to stay
long enough to possibly
click the ad of one of your
merchants.
Based on the performance of
those click-thrus you earn
income. No employees needed.
No delivery needed. No
customer support needed. No
shopping cart needed. No
inventory needed.
 Of
course, you could build a
website to handle the sale
of your own products if you
want to. Nothing wrong with
that. But, now your
eliminating the sheer genius
of affiliate programs.
If you are entirely new to
the topic of affiliate
programs I encourage you to
read the article on
Wikipedia.
It should get you excited
about what is now possible
for the person with ideas
who simply wants to publish
those ideas and make money
from it.
But before you read the wiki
article let me just say
this: It is not rocket
science.
Publishing a website has
just a short list of
essentials, such as:
-
Basic familiarity with some
sort of web-publishing
application. (many to choose
from these days)
-
Domain registration of your
site. i.e.
my-great-idea.com
(easy to check on
availability through many
free sources)
-
A hosting company (where
your site resides) The cost
is peanuts, as low as
$6.95/mo
-
Excellent content, nice
layout, a visually appealing
header graphic. (if you
can't write you can easily
hire professional writers
for a lot less than you
would think -- and graphic's
guys are plentiful too.)
-
Properly thought through
navigation. (you know
yourself when this is done
properly from your own
experience, right? Just
model the best)
-
Regular and ongoing new
content. (Fresh content
pleases the search engines
which rank the pages of your
site -- and you want to
please the search engines so
your pages migrate to the
top positions where they can
be easily found)
-
Maybe some audio or video.
(a little advanced but
entirely doable with a
little coaching)
-
A forum (also slightly
advanced, and not a
necessity)
-
Possibly a newsletter people
could subscribe to. (easier
than you think and this too
is not essential to earn
money)
Now having a good website is
one thing, but making money
with it is an entirely
different thing. Here's a
quick overview of what's
needed to profit from your
website:
-
You need plenty of free
traffic. (You could pay by
using any number of
advertising methods, but
this will eat into your
revenue. And it could
possibly swamp you if you're
not careful. Not recommended
until you have great cash
flow from free traffic)
-
You need merchants. Every
page of your sites needs
some or all of these:
-
text ads or display ads
provided to you by a
merchant with embedded
code identifying you so
commissions can be paid.
-
content ads, usually
provided by Google
(AdSense program) that
you insert on pages of
your site (usually
displayed in a box with
four text ads) Google
charges advertisers a
pay-per-click fee which
they'll split with
publishers, such as
yourself.
-
books of interest to
your visitors. The
biggest book vendor, and
one of the first
innovators of affiliate
programs, Amazon.com,
will pay you a
commission for every
book sold off your site.
With all of the above in
place what you need then is
a way to gain the most free
traffic possible.
To do this you need to
proceed strategically
otherwise your site will get
swamped by the competition.
But, due to the sheer volume
of new people using Internet
search engines -- especially
Google -- any page you
publish has a shot at
gaining top positions.
In a nutshell here's what
must be understood:
-
Every page gets a separate
ranking. The more pages you
publish, the potential
income for you.
-
You must plan for continuous
and ongoing publishing of
new, interesting content,
otherwise the competition
will leap ahead of you. Google
has amazingly complex
algorithms that utilize
advances in Artificial
Intelligence to determine
what your page is about and
how relevant it might be to
a visitor based on the
visitors search query. So
you can't stay idle and
expect to get high rankings.
-
You can't expect to outwit
Google anymore. It's been
estimated that their
algorithms analyze
500,000 factors of every
page in their database to
determine relevancy and
positioning in the rankings.
This allows them to easily
weed out low quality sites,
which they consider "spam",
something you, as a visitor,
won't find interesting.
Those types of pages are
buried deep or are taken
right out of the index.
-
You must gain some back
links from trusted authority
sites within the Google
index. This will give any
page with such back links
pointing to them an
immediate shot of
credibility. It amounts to a
vote for that page, or an
endorsement from a credible
source. And it's money in
the bank if you understand
how to do this right. This
is one of the main things I
teach in my trainings.
One of the biggest
indicators of growth in this
industry is the amount of
money spent online during
the Christmas period.
Ever since I've been doing
this I've seen it grow by
leaps and bounds. It even
grew this year during a time
of a great economic downturn
in the general economy on a
Global scale.
So get involved.
By all accounts affiliate
marketing revenue sharing
programs are here to stay.
Doing it right can change
your life as it did for our
family.
All it takes is a little
know how.
Regards,
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