Sunday, July 24, 2011

Successful Affiliate Marketing On The Internet

 by: Merv Stevens
People often want to earn commissions by selling products or services, but do not own a company, or have their own products, or even have a website. This does not exclude them from making a decent living in the sales industry; they can become affiliate marketers. Countless thousands of domestic and foreign companies want independent help in promoting their merchandise, and contrary to popular belief, affiliate marketing is not a closed industry.

Becoming an affiliate marketer for someone else's product line is not a new fad. In fact, it has been a staple of the sales industry for centuries. In today's internet-based economy, old-fashioned word-of-mouth has a new meaning, because information exchange is not only lightning fast, it is available to just about everyone on the planet. The way companies conduct their everyday business, from testing out new products to keeping established customers, revolves around the 21st century version of getting the word out.

Basically, affiliate marketing in its contemporary dress is rather simple: an affiliate marketer seeks a company whose products or services are interesting and saleable, and then decides to help out with the promotion of that company's product. In return, the affiliate earns a share of the profit. For example, if Company "A" sells garden gnomes, they are probably advertised on the internet. Company "A" will have their own website, complete with product information about their garden gnomes, and customers can order by placing items in a shopping cart and proceeding to online checkout, paying with a credit or debit card. In addition, the company advertises on Google, Internet Explorer, or other search engines. An affiliate is allowed to participate in the same advertising game.

The independent affiliate will obtain a special destination URL code that is incorporated into all online text, video or banner ads. Customers who click on these advertisements will signal a charge to the affiliate's account with the search engine company. The affiliate, in other words, is charged on a pay-per-click basis even if the potential customer does not buy anything after being directed to the Company "A" website. But if they do purchase product, the embedded code in the advertisement will record the sale as one made by the affiliate, and he or she will earn a percentage of the sale.

This is a very simple explanation of online affiliate marketing. Obviously, the affiliate will want to promote services or products that seem to have enough appeal for a large internet audience, otherwise the advertisements created will not receive enough traffic to make the venture worthwhile. Also, the affiliate marketer will need to gain knowledge about online advertising. This includes knowing how to set a budget, how much to charge for a click-through, and what search engine optimization (SEO) tools should be employed.

A new strategy being employed today involves the use of social networking sites as a tool for directing traffic to an advertising link. Of extreme importance is the understanding that an affiliate cannot market a product simply because it is well-known or greatly desired. Unless advertisements are worded correctly and are quite relevant to the web page to which they direct the consumer, the search engine companies will not give a favourable rating, and the ad will rarely show. Although little or no advertising dollars are lost because of this, a great amount of time is wasted, and it becomes easy for the affiliate to become discouraged.

Rule Number One for individuals who want to get in on the affiliate marketing game is to find a good tutorial that explains in detail how to sign up with companies looking for advertising help, and also how to successfully market any product using the search engines. It is a matter of trial and error, but persistent affiliate marketers will usually find good products to promote, and gain a foothold in the world of internet marketing.
About The Author
Merv Stevens works in Internet Marketing. For tips and advice to help you succeed in Affiliate Marketing he is offering a FREE Video Training CD that is typically being sold for $47. To get this FREE CD, packed full of useful information, go to his websitehttp://AffiliateSystemExplosionHQ.com. Act now to get this Affiliate Explosion CD shipped right to your door.
The author invites you to visit:
http://www.affiliatesystemexplosionhq.com

Friday, July 15, 2011

Google AdSense and AdWords - Like Yin and Yang


Many websites include a section or two with the "Ads by Google" above it or below it. These are ads displayed via Google's AdSense. When you do a search on Google and see ads in the search results pages, they are generally AdSense ads.



AdSense - The Yin:

Google's AdSense is programming that "senses" the content of a page or search. It finds keywords on a web page or in a search phrase to determine the subject of the content. It does this by either "reading" the page, or taking a look at the search term that was typed into Google Search. It can "Sense" which ads in the system are relevant to the content or search and display them - thus: "AdSense."

Before ads on a page are displayed, AdSense searches its database of advertisers and finds ads that are associated with keywords on the page or in the search. Now AdSense needs to decide which of the thousands of ads vying for position are actually displayed. To make this decision, AsSense looks at the advertiser's bids for the relevant keywords. The advertisers that have a combination of the highest bid, keyword relevance and best click through get displayed first.

Google tracks clicks on ads and advertisers pay Google the bid price for each click. When the AdSense ad is on someone's web page, Google pays the website owner a portion of the payment for each click. The term "monetizing" your site refers to taking your existing site and placing ads like AdSense on it to make money (or finding other way to make money with websites). If you get 10,000 visitors and 10% of them click an ad that pays you, theoretically, $0.75 per click, you just made $750! Not bad for just copying some AdSense code (which Google provides) into your popular website's HTML (if your site is not popular, learn about SEO - Search Engine Optimization - from sites like AcmeWebResources).


AdWords - The Yang:


The other side to AdSense is AdWords. AdSense ads have lists of relevant keywords associated with them. Each keyword is bid on by the advertisers for placement in the results pages and on web sites around the world. The words that will prompt a display of an advertiser's ad are bid on by the advertiser. When an ad matches the words on a page, the ads are displayed; thus: AdWords. AdWords is the system in Google that is used to place ads that display in AdSense.

You can enroll in AdWords to pay for AdSense ads to drive traffic to your site. The first step is to sign up with Google. The next step is to associate keywords to associate with your site. 

The idea is to drive traffic to your site through the use of relevant ads. The more relevant the ad to your content, the more targeted your traffic will be. Compose your articles around your list of keywords. Next, write an ad based on the keywords and assign keywords to the ad. You will bid on the keywords at the time you associate keywords with the ad. If one of your keywords is searched for or relevant to a site, and you have a good bid and relevant ad, your AdWord ad will be displayed. Only when someone clicks your ad are you charged by Google.

The more popular keywords are wanted by many competitors, so the prices per click can get pretty high. It is not uncommon for a click to cost $5 or even $10. If you have 10,000 ad clicks, after you account for your conversion rate (the rate that you convert visitors into buyers) you better be sure you are making more than the ad click costs! But it should never break your bank because you can set the bid limits and the monthly budget.

What if you can't afford $5.00 per click? Since the more popular keywords are so expensive, it is best to bid on less popular keywords because the cost per click is lower. Google presently has a minimum bid of $0.05 per click. If you can get those, you can reduce your advertising budget. 

A popular site can make a lot of money, however, a lot of money and time can be wasted. To avoid waste, you have to learn as much as possible and get the right tools to do the research.

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Author Bio
Nicholas LaPolla has been a web applications developer for 11 years. He created www.AcmeWebResources.com to help others build or improve, market, and monitize their websites with a focus on
web design, website seo / internet marketing, and working to make money online.