Targeted advertising pioneered by Google has created an entirely new branch of marketing; affiliate marketing. Here is a basic guide on how to get started.
The latest and greatest area for home-based marketers is affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing? Have you seen the ads that pop up on the side of the page when you do a Google search? These ads are written by "affiliates" - marketers who sign up with a company and agree to promote their products in ads. Affiliates write these ads, usually for Google, and then bid on keywords. When searchers click on a keyword, their ads come up. When the searcher clicks on their ad, the marketer is charged his or her per keyword bid. If the searcher buys products, the affliliate marketer earns commissions based on their purchases.
Another way affiliates can make money is by putting advertisers links on their site - but this is a slower process.
Obviously, the name of the game is to earn more in commissions than you pay in keywords!!
There are many books for sale on the Internet that pitch affiliate marketing as an "easy" way to earn money. There is a lot of possibility here, but there really is no free lunch! You will have to work at it!
How do you get started?
1) Go to www.googlecash.com - buy this ebook and read it carefully from cover to cover. Some of the material here is antiquated, but it still is the " Bible" of affiliate marketing.
2) Make a list of product types that you feel comfortable with. You cannot "sell" a product you don't really believe in.
3) Set up an account at Commission Junction - www.cj.com Read through their CJ University pages to learn more about how successful affiliates structure their businesses.
4) Search through the companies available keeping your list in mind. Look for high commission rates and high payout amounts, both of which are listed on the site. Select your advertisers and establish a relationship.
5) I suggest steering clear of Clickbank (www.clickbank.com) even though Googlecash tells you to go this path. I have earned nothing here.
6) Go to Googles advertising programs, and set up an account.
7) Do a search for your advertisers, and look to see how the ads are worded that come up first. What do they say? How do they capture their audience?
8) Now, write your ads being careful not to plagiarize the ones you saw. Bid for your keywords but try not to go past 10 cents per word. Use misspellings, these often have little competition and drawn large crowds. Set up a maximum of $5 per day so you don't blow your budget with tire kickers.
9) Monitor your ads carefully to make sure that you are getting more in commissions than you are paying out! Run several ads at the same time for the same product to see which one gets more showings - Google runs better ads more often!
10) Review your results and be sure to kill non performing programs quickly. Being an affiliate means spending a lot of time reviewing your results! I suggest tracking them in Excel so that you always have a handle on your new business.
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