Friday, September 5, 2008

Affiliate Marketing Business

Below are some tips of building a good and sound affiliate marketing income.

1. Identifying a niche market. Try to identify the niche market you want to focus on or you are passionate about.

2. Find a stable affiliate program in the niche market you have identified. Here are some of the top affiliate networks that might contain the affiliate program you are looking for:

ClixGalore.com
Shareasale.com
CommissionJunction.com
Clickbank.com

Do some researches before signing up for an affiliate program. Find out the conversion rate of the affiliate product. A product that has a conversion rate of 4% is fairly good. This means that for every 100 visitors you send to your merchant's website, 4 visitors will buy. Also, take a look at your merchant's website to find out whether the offer pages or sale pages are convinced enough to generate sales.

3. Create a website to promote your affiliate products. You can make your website looks like an online store by displaying all your affiliate products with a description on each product on your homepage. Or you can write a review for each of your product on your website to encourage visitors go to your merchant's website and buy the product. Another alternative is to provide a product recommendation list on your website such as 'Top 3 Affiliate Marketing e-Course', 'Top 3 Herbal Products' and so on. Don't recommend something that your are not certain about.

4. Create Your own newsletter and invite visitors to subscribe your free newsletter when visiting your website is necessary in affiliate marketing because people usually don't buy in the first visit. You need to collect their email addresses to follow up with them. To encourage your targeted visitors or audience to sign up your newsletter, you may offer free gifts, e-courses, tutorials or tips. Teach and sale is one of the effective techniques to encourage your subscribers to buy your affiliate product. For instance, let’s say you are promoting SEO software, you can teach your subscribers how to optimize a website to boost the website's ranking in search engines and recommend the seo software to them. Tell them the SEO software will save their time and tons of SEO work.

5. Drive targeted visitors or traffic to your website to generate sales. There are many ways of getting targeted traffic. You may start off with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising programs like Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. PPC advertising can drive traffic to your site with minimum effort but the costs aren't cheap. You should test them first before investing a lot of money in PPC advertising.

Article marketing is another way of getting traffic. This method is absolutely free. What your need to do is create some articles related to your website with a link to your site in the articles resource box and submit them to many article directory. Some of readers may visit your site after reading your articles and increase your website's traffic.

5 Simple Steps to Posting Your First eBay Auction

It's surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Here's what you need to do.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller's account
If you've bought things on eBay, then you already have an account - just log in with it and click 'Sell' in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click 'Create a seller's account'. If you've never used eBay before, then you'll need to open an account first using the 'register' link underneath the toolbar, and then click 'Sell' and 'Create a seller's account'. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell
For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn't really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you're in - I'm sure there's something in there that you're not all that attached to and could put in the post. Small books and CDs are ideal first items.

Step 3: Submit your item.
Click 'Sell', and you're on your way to listing your item.

The first thing you need to do is choose a category - it's best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.

Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn't, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but will also seem to drag on forever. If you've taken a picture, add it now - items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (just PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you're done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell
This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing - buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

Remember that if your item doesn't sell then you can list it again for free.

Step 5: Collect payment and post it
eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything.

Once you've got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer's address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, post it, and you're done!

I hope you enjoyed selling your first item. Now that you're starting to get into it, the next email will give you a checklist of things you need to do to be a successful seller.

Link: http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com

Make More Money on eBay - 10 Tips for Increasing Your eBay Response

So you've got the buyer in front of your auction, and they've read the description. They're must be interested, or they wouldn't be looking… but just how can you push them over that line and make them leave a bid? Read on for some tips.

Improve your picture: In all that description writing, you might have missed the vital importance of your item's picture. A picture with bad lighting or an intrusive background looks amateurish and won't make anyone want to buy from you.

Add an About Me page: You'll be surprised how much you can reassure bidders just by creating an About Me page and putting a little bit about yourself on your business on there. You can also have a few special offers there for people who bother to look at the page, and let people subscribe to your mailing list so that you can email them updates.

Use SquareTrade: Signing up at SquareTrade and displaying their logo on your auctions shows that you are committed to have them resolve any disputes that arise. You always see this on PowerSellers auctions - it makes you look more professional.

Write terms and conditions: Have the 'small print' clearly visible on all your auctions, giving details of things like shipping times and prices, your refund policy, and any other business practices you might have. This helps build confidence with buyers.

Show off your feedback: Copy and paste a selection of the feedback comments you're most proud of to each item's description page, instead of making bidders go and look for it. If you have 100% positive feedback, be sure to write that on every auction too.

Add NR to your titles: If you have extra space in a title, put 'NR' (no reserve) on the end. Bidders prefer auctions that don't have a reserve price, and doing this lets them see that yours don't.

Benefits not features: Make sure your description focuses on the benefits that your item can give to the customer, not just its features. This is a classic sales technique. If you have trouble with this, remember: 'cheap' is a feature, 'save money' is a benefit.

List more items: If you want more people to respond to your items, then list more items! You might find you have better like listing items at the same time, instead of one-by-one. There's no need to use a Dutch auction - you can just keep two or three auctions going at once for an item you have more than one of in stock.

Accept unusual payment methods: To reach those last few buyers, accept payment methods that many sellers don't, like cheques.

Buy some upgrades: The best upgrade is the most expensive one, which makes your item appear first in search results. In crowded categories, you might find that this is worth the money.

Once you've got some buyers, you want to keep them coming back to you. The next email will show you how to turn one-time buyers into long-term customers.

From: http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com