Affiliate Program Tutorial
You joined an affiliate program. Here are the 18 steps.
(Please bookmark this affiliate tutorial. You'll want to return to it.)
This Affiliate Program Tutorial (updated 2008) aims to give you a quick overview.
It's your road map to success as an affiliate.
I've been earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998. Based on that experience, this tutorial tells you the 18 steps to take to generate a useful income from affiliate programs.
No tricks. No gimmicks. Just solid, reliable methods designed to work for years.
You have the choice of many different ways of earning affiliate commissions.
In my experience, you'll have your best chance of success if you do the following. Find a niche and create a useful, interesting, content-rich, keyword-rich website on one topic and weave in affiliate links and AdSense ads.
This method - with the more recent addition of AdSense ads - has worked beautifully for me since 1998.
I urge you to master this basic method. It's a bit like serving an apprenticeship.
As part of your apprenticeship you'll learn SEO (search engine optimization) skills, copywriting skills and various other Internet marketing skills which will prove to be invaluable, whatever route you choose next.
With any luck, you'll have a bit of fun, too! I do.
I include Google's AdSense in this tutorial. Strictly speaking, AdSense is an advertising network. However, in many ways it's similar to an affiliate program. I think AdSense is fantastic. It's free to join, free to use and easy to use.
It's often much easier to earn good money from AdSense than affiliate programs, so it's essential that you include AdSense in your plans.
OK. Let's get started...
STEP 1: Set a goal
If you want to go somewhere, you need to know where you're going.
Let's start with a modest goal. Say you aim to earn a total of $300 (US) a month in affiliate commissions and AdSense revenue. Imagine what you could do with that money. A holiday? A better lifestyle?
I've kept the amount low, because it's important that you believe you can do this. Achieve small successes first, see the money in your hands or in your bank account, and then increase your goals.
Perhaps you have much larger goals. That's OK. Whatever your goals, I strongly recommend that you serve your apprenticeship by taking these 18 steps. They'll give you solid knowledge and experience on which to build your affiliate business.
STEP 2: Find your niche
To help you find your niche topic, read Ken Evoy's free Affiliate Masters Course and use the excellent advice in it to find a niche that suits you and your interests.
Print out the Affiliate Masters Course, find a quiet, comfortable spot and read it several times.
Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about this and jotting down notes. You're planning a business, so don't rush it. It's very important.
You'll probably avoid Internet marketing topics because that field is so overcrowded and competitive. It's much easier to succeed if you locate a less competitive niche.
Choose a topic that is easy to write about.
Even if you've already chosen a niche, I urge you to read the Affiliate Masters Course. It might make you change your mind.
You can follow your passion or chase the money. With luck - and a bit of keyword research - you may be able to do both.
Examine your potential competitors
If you're considering building a site about hiking boots, type "hiking boots" (using quotation marks) into Google and Yahoo! and carefully examine the top 10 sites which appear in the search results.
They're your real competitors. Can you create a better, more interesting, more useful site? Can you think of a new angle, a new approach?
Do those top 10 sites all have high PageRank - say 6 or more? If so, you'll have to work really hard to get in the top 10.
Let's say the top 3 sites in Google are PageRank 8, 7 and 6. If so, you'll probably have to work hard for a couple of years or more to outrank them. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it will require either a great deal of work, or a very innovative, eye-catching approach.
You can quickly check the PageRank of your potential competitors by using Seochat's free online tool - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search . Type in "hiking boots" or whatever and you'll be able to see the PageRank of the top 10 sites.
Do those sites all have the phrase in the title? (The title is the words that appear at the very top of your screen when you visit a site.) If not, you may be able to beat them.
How many links do your potential competitors have?
Do your potential competitors all have thousands of links to them? This is important, because links are important to search engines. You need good, relevant links to your site. To find out how many sites are linking to a site, use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - and login (set up a free account if necessary).
Type the URL of the site you want to explore.
Click on "Explore URL".
Click on "Inlinks".
Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks "except from this domain" and "entire site". This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.
If your potential sites have thousands of links to them, they're likely to be very tough competitors.
Don't decide definitely on a niche topic until you've taken the next two steps...
STEP 3. Choose a profitable niche
Do some research on Google AdWords and Wordtracker to choose the most profitable niche from among the ones you're considering. (The free trial at Wordtracker is fairly restricted. You need more than that. I find Wordtracker so useful I have an annual subscription. However, you can get a cheap one-week subscription and do an awful lot of research in one week.)
Because you're planning to use AdSense, you want valuable keywords or key phrases, if possible ones that people are paying at least 50 cents per click for on Yahoo! Search Marketing and AdWords.
You're going to build a site the search engines love, so you also want to find key phrases that many people are typing into search engines. You don't rely on guesswork.
You must do this keyword research BEFORE you start building your web site. That's critically important.
Find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's how.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play around with the free Keyword Tool.
For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "recipe" and click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency. I choose US.)
Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position estimates" is selected.
The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per click) for a whole lot of words and phrases.
Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.
You don't HAVE to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.
In July 2008, Google improved its free keyword tool, making it much more useful. It now shows you the approximate number of monthly searches done at Google for any keywords you type in. So you can now do some fast, reliable keyword research there free. So this is a very good place to start your keyword research, using real search numbers from Google.
If you use Site Build It to build your site, you'll find the brainstorming tool in it awesome to help you come up with ideas and phrases you wouldn't have thought of without it.
Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.
Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.
For a full list of topics you may wish to avoid see: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
Advertisers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites. Will AdSense ads you see on Google appear on your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at their AdSense ads.
For more accurate research, you can also use the free AdSense preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.
Don't make any firm decision on your niche until you've taken the next step...
STEP: 4. Research affiliate merchants
Before you make a firm decision on a topic for your site, you'll need to do research to see if there are suitable affiliate products which match your topic.
You want affiliate merchants that have excellent products, excellent reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling. You can search the AssociatePrograms.com affiliate directory for ideas.
Consider aiming for lifetime commissions.
If you're lucky, you'll manage to select a web site topic that has affiliate programs which pay lifetime commissions or residual commissions - the sort reviewed at LifetimeCommissions.com.
You'll earn repeat commissions when "your" customers make more purchases.
STEP 5: Build a useful, interesting website on your niche
Here's an very important step. Many newcomer affiliates who fail do so because they have overlooked its importance.
Don't just build a website. Build a useful, interesting website on your niche.
One of the best ways is to build a site which solves people's problems. Useful sites also often help their visitors decide which products to buy.
Create a content rich, keyword-rich site, designed to be found in search engines.
Show your personality. Have a bit of fun. Be memorable. You need to connect with your visitors. Remember that people like buying from people they like.
There's no space in this affiliate program tutorial to describe how to build a website. For that, you'll need a good instruction manual.
If you're short of money, you can hunt for free information on sites such HTMLGoodies.
You'll save yourself an enormous amount of time and frustration if you take the plunge and buy a good instruction manual.
Here are the two best options:
(1.) For keen do-it-your-selfers, I recommend Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook.
Rosalind is a real been-there-done-that super affiliate.
Her instruction manual shows you how she builds very successful sites using web authoring software.
It starts right at the beginning, discussing topics such as myths about doing business online, mistakes to avoid, how to choose the best topic, how to choose the right domain name, etc.
The book, updated in May 2006, takes you step-by-step through the whole process.
One particularly useful feature is her explanation of how she achieves high conversion rates (visitor-to-sales ratios), achieving conversion rates of 4% or 6% while most affiliates are happy with 1%.
Another of the strengths of the book is her descriptions of a wide variety of ways to get traffic to your site. This is important - too many affiliates rely on just one or two traffic-generating methods. The more traffic-generating methods you have, the safer your business is.
Rosaland is genuinely successful, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Now she's also a very successful author, with sales of more $1 million from her book, which is excellent value.
When you learn from her, you're learning from a winner.
Learn more about Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook here.
If you choose to follow Rosalind's advice, you'll also need a website-building tool. A very popular choice among affiliates is XSitePro, which is designed for people who want to build small, niche sites. XSitePro, or the new version, XSitePro2, isn't suitable for every type of site, so make sure you read our XSitePro2 review before you decide.
(2.) For affiliates who want to simplify things as much as possible and automate the tedious techie stuff, I recommend Ken Evoy's Site Build It (SBI).
SBI is a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting suite of tools, all in one place.
Once you have SBI, you don't have to go scurrying all over the Net adding more tools and software. You have almost all you need in one package, so you can concentrate on the fun part - creating useful, interesting content.
Here's what one happy SBI user says
SBI comes with a newly updated, truly comprehensive instruction manual, a step-by-step Action Guide, and a truly superb private forum where SBI users share information and help each other.
SBI is the tool I give my assistants. Take the free Video Tour and you'll understand why.
Ken Evoy's instruction manual is doing my work for me. First it taught Rupert and then Ros how to build a high quality, successful, revenue-generating site. Now it's being used by another assistant to whom I outsource website maintenance.
You could build a site without SBI, but using it saves you time and effort by simplifying the process. It provides a recipe for business success.
SBI teaches you how to optimize your web pages so they'll be found in search engines. After building a page, you click the "Analyze It" button and it tells you what you need to do to improve it.
The SBI technique really works. Two of the SBI sites that Rupert built are included in the case studies on the SBI site.
See the proof in the SBI case studies
STEP 6: Add affiliate links
As you write the articles for your site, weave affiliate links into them. Always have a typical visitor in mind as you write the articles. Speak to that visitor.
Your task as an affiliate is to help your visitor decide what to buy.
One successful technique is to gradually lead your visitor towards a purchase. Start by outlining a problem, discuss a good solution that has worked for you, and end the article with a link that is a call to action, such as a hyperlink that says, "Find out more here."
Your task as an affiliate is NOT to sell (that's the merchant's job) but to presell, to warm up your visitors. You want your visitors in a ready-to-buy frame of mind when they arrive at the merchant's site.
For superb advice on preselling, I strongly recommend you join Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. It's free to join.
Ken is an absolute whiz at preselling and he's renowned for working extremely hard to help his affiliates succeed. He has a superb program. It's been No.1 in my Top 10 for several years. I earn five-figure monthly commissions from this affiliate program.
STEP 7: Place AdSense ads on your site
If you have a good, popular site, it's remarkably easy to make good money with Google AdSense. AdSense is free to join.
Here's an excellent free AdSense tutorial.
STEP 8: Get good quality links to your site
Without links to your site, your site won't be found in the search engines. So you MUST get links to your site, if possible from "authority" sites - ones that have lots of links to them.
First, link to other sites. Choose sites that have similar or related themes, and invite those sites to link to you.
This is hugely important. Search engines love sites that have many links to them - especially if those links come from sites which are themselves popular.
Now you see why I said build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, people are more likely to link to your site.
Here's an article I wrote describing how to get reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links should be only a small part of your marketing strategy - not your whole marketing strategy.
Even better than reciprocal links are one-way links. Here's an article describing how to get one-way links.
Some of these one-way links techniques are fairly advanced and require considerable work. Most of your competitors will be too lazy to do them, so you'll have a big advantage if you do. They can make the difference between a hobby site and a serious, very profitable business.
STEP 9: Anchor text
You'll also need to understand the importance of anchor text, the words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when they link to your site.
To search engines, anchor text is very important.
STEP 10: List your site in major directories and niche directories in your industry.
You probably already know about Yahoo! (good but expensive) and DMOZ (often takes months to get into).
Here are some more directories (some charge a fee):
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
Business.com
GoGuides
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
Looksmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind
Guides to web directories
David Mahler has a Guide to Web Directories. It's a good list of recommended web directories.
Here's another list: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
How to find niche directories:
Write articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them (more challenging.
This step isn't absolutely essential, but it helps enormously if you do it. Now you understand why it was so important that you chose a topic that was easy to write about.
STEP 12: Add more pages and get more links.
Keep adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich pages (you do research at Wordtracker for this) and keep encouraging more sites to link to your site.
Make friends with other web site owners, and more people will link to you...
STEP 13: Be patient.
If your new site is typical, nothing much will seem to happen for the first couple of months or so, and you'll probably become frustrated and find it hard to believe that this is going to work.
You're likely to feel annoyed, cheated and ready to quit. You're likely to be a prime target for people selling get-rich-quick junk.
Many affiliates give up at this stage. Stick with it. If you're persistent and get the details right, the process I'm describing works beautifully.
Learn something new every day. Do something to improve your business every day. If you do this, success is inevitable.
STEP 14: Expect to see signs of success.
Eventually, because of all the links to your site on other sites, Google, Yahoo! and MSN will find your site and start sending you traffic.
Perhaps around the three-month or four-month stage you'll be receiving 100 visitors a day. Visitors will like what they see and some site owners will start linking to you and asking you to link to them.
Keep at it. You're just getting warmed up.
STEP 15: The payoff...
About six months down the road, after little expense but quite a lot of hard work and research, you hit your magical $300 a month mark, from affiliate sales and from AdSense ads on your site.
Depending on the niche you've chosen and the skills you've learned, you might earn considerably more than $300.
Perhaps after 12 months, you'll be earning $500 to $1,000 a month from your site.
The checks keep coming in, month after month, even when you take a little vacation. You start telling friends how easy affiliate marketing is, and are puzzled when they're not convinced.
Of course, it's not really easy. It just seems easy after you've done the hard work.
...or the NON-payoff
If you've merely scanned the instruction manual and jumped right in without doing any research and built a "Make Money on the Internet" site, you'll probably earn very little. A search on Google for "make money" displays more than 4 million pages. If one of those is yours, you have a LOT of competition.
If you did this and it isn't working for you, go back to step 1 and start again.
STEP 16: Tweak your site
To boost your conversion rate (your visitor-to-sales ratio), try little experiments, one thing at a time.
Try changing the heading on a page, the words, the colors, the placement of your links. With each change wait until about 1,000 visitors have seen the change, and monitor your affiliate commissions to see if they rise or fall.
You do this because you understand that if 1% of your visitors are buying and tiny changes boost your success rate to 2%, you'll DOUBLE your commissions.
STEP 17: The future
When you reach your goal of $300 a month, you wonder whether you should expand your site, perhaps adding a newsletter, an autoresponder course or two, a forum, RSS newsfeeds, a blog, a whitepaper, a report to sell ... and turn it into a portal. You dream big. Perhaps you even start dreaming of having your own affiliates promoting your reports for you...
Or perhaps you just research another little overlooked niche and start on your next simple little, low-maintenance money-generating site.
It can be done. The main ingredient needed is persistence. Been there, done that, and I have a very nice lifestyle to prove it.
The $300 a month target is very conservative. If that's all you earn, you've done something "wrong". You haven't chosen profitable keywords carefully enough, you haven't built enough attractive, keyword-rich pages, you haven't learned the basics of optimizing pages for search engines, or you haven't attracted enough good quality links to your site.
That's the wonderful thing about this business. You can make lots of mistakes and still earn useful money. Just don't make TOO many mistakes.
STEP 18: Take the first step
That's the one that matters most.
I suggest you go back and read through this affiliate program tutorial again.
Picture yourself owning a successful Internet business. Picture yourself opening letters and finding checks in them. Picture yourself going into your PayPal account and seeing the latest commissions you've been paid by affiliate merchants.
Imagine enjoying yourself spending the money, perhaps even giving up your day job so that you can concentrate on your own business.
Now take the first step.
And when you've quit your day job, please write and tell me. I love getting emails like that.
This Affiliate Program Tutorial (updated 2008) aims to give you a quick overview.
It's your road map to success as an affiliate.
I've been earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998. Based on that experience, this tutorial tells you the 18 steps to take to generate a useful income from affiliate programs.
No tricks. No gimmicks. Just solid, reliable methods designed to work for years.
You have the choice of many different ways of earning affiliate commissions.
In my experience, you'll have your best chance of success if you do the following. Find a niche and create a useful, interesting, content-rich, keyword-rich website on one topic and weave in affiliate links and AdSense ads.
This method - with the more recent addition of AdSense ads - has worked beautifully for me since 1998.
I urge you to master this basic method. It's a bit like serving an apprenticeship.
As part of your apprenticeship you'll learn SEO (search engine optimization) skills, copywriting skills and various other Internet marketing skills which will prove to be invaluable, whatever route you choose next.
With any luck, you'll have a bit of fun, too! I do.
I include Google's AdSense in this tutorial. Strictly speaking, AdSense is an advertising network. However, in many ways it's similar to an affiliate program. I think AdSense is fantastic. It's free to join, free to use and easy to use.
It's often much easier to earn good money from AdSense than affiliate programs, so it's essential that you include AdSense in your plans.
OK. Let's get started...
STEP 1: Set a goal
If you want to go somewhere, you need to know where you're going.
Let's start with a modest goal. Say you aim to earn a total of $300 (US) a month in affiliate commissions and AdSense revenue. Imagine what you could do with that money. A holiday? A better lifestyle?
I've kept the amount low, because it's important that you believe you can do this. Achieve small successes first, see the money in your hands or in your bank account, and then increase your goals.
Perhaps you have much larger goals. That's OK. Whatever your goals, I strongly recommend that you serve your apprenticeship by taking these 18 steps. They'll give you solid knowledge and experience on which to build your affiliate business.
STEP 2: Find your niche
To help you find your niche topic, read Ken Evoy's free Affiliate Masters Course and use the excellent advice in it to find a niche that suits you and your interests.
Print out the Affiliate Masters Course, find a quiet, comfortable spot and read it several times.
Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about this and jotting down notes. You're planning a business, so don't rush it. It's very important.
You'll probably avoid Internet marketing topics because that field is so overcrowded and competitive. It's much easier to succeed if you locate a less competitive niche.
Choose a topic that is easy to write about.
Even if you've already chosen a niche, I urge you to read the Affiliate Masters Course. It might make you change your mind.
You can follow your passion or chase the money. With luck - and a bit of keyword research - you may be able to do both.
Examine your potential competitors
If you're considering building a site about hiking boots, type "hiking boots" (using quotation marks) into Google and Yahoo! and carefully examine the top 10 sites which appear in the search results.
They're your real competitors. Can you create a better, more interesting, more useful site? Can you think of a new angle, a new approach?
Do those top 10 sites all have high PageRank - say 6 or more? If so, you'll have to work really hard to get in the top 10.
Let's say the top 3 sites in Google are PageRank 8, 7 and 6. If so, you'll probably have to work hard for a couple of years or more to outrank them. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it will require either a great deal of work, or a very innovative, eye-catching approach.
You can quickly check the PageRank of your potential competitors by using Seochat's free online tool - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search . Type in "hiking boots" or whatever and you'll be able to see the PageRank of the top 10 sites.
Do those sites all have the phrase in the title? (The title is the words that appear at the very top of your screen when you visit a site.) If not, you may be able to beat them.
How many links do your potential competitors have?
Do your potential competitors all have thousands of links to them? This is important, because links are important to search engines. You need good, relevant links to your site. To find out how many sites are linking to a site, use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - and login (set up a free account if necessary).
Type the URL of the site you want to explore.
Click on "Explore URL".
Click on "Inlinks".
Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks "except from this domain" and "entire site". This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.
If your potential sites have thousands of links to them, they're likely to be very tough competitors.
Don't decide definitely on a niche topic until you've taken the next two steps...
STEP 3. Choose a profitable niche
Do some research on Google AdWords and Wordtracker to choose the most profitable niche from among the ones you're considering. (The free trial at Wordtracker is fairly restricted. You need more than that. I find Wordtracker so useful I have an annual subscription. However, you can get a cheap one-week subscription and do an awful lot of research in one week.)
Because you're planning to use AdSense, you want valuable keywords or key phrases, if possible ones that people are paying at least 50 cents per click for on Yahoo! Search Marketing and AdWords.
You're going to build a site the search engines love, so you also want to find key phrases that many people are typing into search engines. You don't rely on guesswork.
You must do this keyword research BEFORE you start building your web site. That's critically important.
Find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's how.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play around with the free Keyword Tool.
For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "recipe" and click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency. I choose US.)
Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position estimates" is selected.
The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per click) for a whole lot of words and phrases.
Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.
You don't HAVE to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.
In July 2008, Google improved its free keyword tool, making it much more useful. It now shows you the approximate number of monthly searches done at Google for any keywords you type in. So you can now do some fast, reliable keyword research there free. So this is a very good place to start your keyword research, using real search numbers from Google.
If you use Site Build It to build your site, you'll find the brainstorming tool in it awesome to help you come up with ideas and phrases you wouldn't have thought of without it.
Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.
Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.
For a full list of topics you may wish to avoid see: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
Advertisers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites. Will AdSense ads you see on Google appear on your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at their AdSense ads.
For more accurate research, you can also use the free AdSense preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.
Don't make any firm decision on your niche until you've taken the next step...
STEP: 4. Research affiliate merchants
Before you make a firm decision on a topic for your site, you'll need to do research to see if there are suitable affiliate products which match your topic.
You want affiliate merchants that have excellent products, excellent reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling. You can search the AssociatePrograms.com affiliate directory for ideas.
Consider aiming for lifetime commissions.
If you're lucky, you'll manage to select a web site topic that has affiliate programs which pay lifetime commissions or residual commissions - the sort reviewed at LifetimeCommissions.com.
You'll earn repeat commissions when "your" customers make more purchases.
STEP 5: Build a useful, interesting website on your niche
Here's an very important step. Many newcomer affiliates who fail do so because they have overlooked its importance.
Don't just build a website. Build a useful, interesting website on your niche.
One of the best ways is to build a site which solves people's problems. Useful sites also often help their visitors decide which products to buy.
Create a content rich, keyword-rich site, designed to be found in search engines.
Show your personality. Have a bit of fun. Be memorable. You need to connect with your visitors. Remember that people like buying from people they like.
There's no space in this affiliate program tutorial to describe how to build a website. For that, you'll need a good instruction manual.
If you're short of money, you can hunt for free information on sites such HTMLGoodies.
You'll save yourself an enormous amount of time and frustration if you take the plunge and buy a good instruction manual.
Here are the two best options:
(1.) For keen do-it-your-selfers, I recommend Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook.
Rosalind is a real been-there-done-that super affiliate.
Her instruction manual shows you how she builds very successful sites using web authoring software.
It starts right at the beginning, discussing topics such as myths about doing business online, mistakes to avoid, how to choose the best topic, how to choose the right domain name, etc.
The book, updated in May 2006, takes you step-by-step through the whole process.
One particularly useful feature is her explanation of how she achieves high conversion rates (visitor-to-sales ratios), achieving conversion rates of 4% or 6% while most affiliates are happy with 1%.
Another of the strengths of the book is her descriptions of a wide variety of ways to get traffic to your site. This is important - too many affiliates rely on just one or two traffic-generating methods. The more traffic-generating methods you have, the safer your business is.
Rosaland is genuinely successful, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Now she's also a very successful author, with sales of more $1 million from her book, which is excellent value.
When you learn from her, you're learning from a winner.
Learn more about Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook here.
If you choose to follow Rosalind's advice, you'll also need a website-building tool. A very popular choice among affiliates is XSitePro, which is designed for people who want to build small, niche sites. XSitePro, or the new version, XSitePro2, isn't suitable for every type of site, so make sure you read our XSitePro2 review before you decide.
(2.) For affiliates who want to simplify things as much as possible and automate the tedious techie stuff, I recommend Ken Evoy's Site Build It (SBI).
SBI is a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting suite of tools, all in one place.
Once you have SBI, you don't have to go scurrying all over the Net adding more tools and software. You have almost all you need in one package, so you can concentrate on the fun part - creating useful, interesting content.
Here's what one happy SBI user says
SBI is the tool I give my assistants. Take the free Video Tour and you'll understand why.
Ken Evoy's instruction manual is doing my work for me. First it taught Rupert and then Ros how to build a high quality, successful, revenue-generating site. Now it's being used by another assistant to whom I outsource website maintenance.
You could build a site without SBI, but using it saves you time and effort by simplifying the process. It provides a recipe for business success.
SBI teaches you how to optimize your web pages so they'll be found in search engines. After building a page, you click the "Analyze It" button and it tells you what you need to do to improve it.
The SBI technique really works. Two of the SBI sites that Rupert built are included in the case studies on the SBI site.
See the proof in the SBI case studies
STEP 6: Add affiliate links
As you write the articles for your site, weave affiliate links into them. Always have a typical visitor in mind as you write the articles. Speak to that visitor.
Your task as an affiliate is to help your visitor decide what to buy.
One successful technique is to gradually lead your visitor towards a purchase. Start by outlining a problem, discuss a good solution that has worked for you, and end the article with a link that is a call to action, such as a hyperlink that says, "Find out more here."
Your task as an affiliate is NOT to sell (that's the merchant's job) but to presell, to warm up your visitors. You want your visitors in a ready-to-buy frame of mind when they arrive at the merchant's site.
For superb advice on preselling, I strongly recommend you join Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. It's free to join.
Ken is an absolute whiz at preselling and he's renowned for working extremely hard to help his affiliates succeed. He has a superb program. It's been No.1 in my Top 10 for several years. I earn five-figure monthly commissions from this affiliate program.
STEP 7: Place AdSense ads on your site
If you have a good, popular site, it's remarkably easy to make good money with Google AdSense. AdSense is free to join.
Here's an excellent free AdSense tutorial.
STEP 8: Get good quality links to your site
Without links to your site, your site won't be found in the search engines. So you MUST get links to your site, if possible from "authority" sites - ones that have lots of links to them.
First, link to other sites. Choose sites that have similar or related themes, and invite those sites to link to you.
This is hugely important. Search engines love sites that have many links to them - especially if those links come from sites which are themselves popular.
Now you see why I said build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, people are more likely to link to your site.
Here's an article I wrote describing how to get reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links should be only a small part of your marketing strategy - not your whole marketing strategy.
Even better than reciprocal links are one-way links. Here's an article describing how to get one-way links.
Some of these one-way links techniques are fairly advanced and require considerable work. Most of your competitors will be too lazy to do them, so you'll have a big advantage if you do. They can make the difference between a hobby site and a serious, very profitable business.
STEP 9: Anchor text
You'll also need to understand the importance of anchor text, the words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when they link to your site.
To search engines, anchor text is very important.
STEP 10: List your site in major directories and niche directories in your industry.
You probably already know about Yahoo! (good but expensive) and DMOZ (often takes months to get into).
Here are some more directories (some charge a fee):
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
Business.com
GoGuides
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
Looksmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind
Guides to web directories
David Mahler has a Guide to Web Directories. It's a good list of recommended web directories.
Here's another list: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
How to find niche directories:
- Go to Search It! (It's a very handy free research tool.)
- Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
- Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
- Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
- Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It!
- Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results
- Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are free.
Write articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them (more challenging.
This step isn't absolutely essential, but it helps enormously if you do it. Now you understand why it was so important that you chose a topic that was easy to write about.
STEP 12: Add more pages and get more links.
Keep adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich pages (you do research at Wordtracker for this) and keep encouraging more sites to link to your site.
Make friends with other web site owners, and more people will link to you...
STEP 13: Be patient.
If your new site is typical, nothing much will seem to happen for the first couple of months or so, and you'll probably become frustrated and find it hard to believe that this is going to work.
You're likely to feel annoyed, cheated and ready to quit. You're likely to be a prime target for people selling get-rich-quick junk.
Many affiliates give up at this stage. Stick with it. If you're persistent and get the details right, the process I'm describing works beautifully.
Learn something new every day. Do something to improve your business every day. If you do this, success is inevitable.
STEP 14: Expect to see signs of success.
Eventually, because of all the links to your site on other sites, Google, Yahoo! and MSN will find your site and start sending you traffic.
Perhaps around the three-month or four-month stage you'll be receiving 100 visitors a day. Visitors will like what they see and some site owners will start linking to you and asking you to link to them.
Keep at it. You're just getting warmed up.
STEP 15: The payoff...
About six months down the road, after little expense but quite a lot of hard work and research, you hit your magical $300 a month mark, from affiliate sales and from AdSense ads on your site.
Depending on the niche you've chosen and the skills you've learned, you might earn considerably more than $300.
Perhaps after 12 months, you'll be earning $500 to $1,000 a month from your site.
The checks keep coming in, month after month, even when you take a little vacation. You start telling friends how easy affiliate marketing is, and are puzzled when they're not convinced.
Of course, it's not really easy. It just seems easy after you've done the hard work.
...or the NON-payoff
If you've merely scanned the instruction manual and jumped right in without doing any research and built a "Make Money on the Internet" site, you'll probably earn very little. A search on Google for "make money" displays more than 4 million pages. If one of those is yours, you have a LOT of competition.
If you did this and it isn't working for you, go back to step 1 and start again.
STEP 16: Tweak your site
To boost your conversion rate (your visitor-to-sales ratio), try little experiments, one thing at a time.
Try changing the heading on a page, the words, the colors, the placement of your links. With each change wait until about 1,000 visitors have seen the change, and monitor your affiliate commissions to see if they rise or fall.
You do this because you understand that if 1% of your visitors are buying and tiny changes boost your success rate to 2%, you'll DOUBLE your commissions.
STEP 17: The future
When you reach your goal of $300 a month, you wonder whether you should expand your site, perhaps adding a newsletter, an autoresponder course or two, a forum, RSS newsfeeds, a blog, a whitepaper, a report to sell ... and turn it into a portal. You dream big. Perhaps you even start dreaming of having your own affiliates promoting your reports for you...
Or perhaps you just research another little overlooked niche and start on your next simple little, low-maintenance money-generating site.
It can be done. The main ingredient needed is persistence. Been there, done that, and I have a very nice lifestyle to prove it.
The $300 a month target is very conservative. If that's all you earn, you've done something "wrong". You haven't chosen profitable keywords carefully enough, you haven't built enough attractive, keyword-rich pages, you haven't learned the basics of optimizing pages for search engines, or you haven't attracted enough good quality links to your site.
That's the wonderful thing about this business. You can make lots of mistakes and still earn useful money. Just don't make TOO many mistakes.
STEP 18: Take the first step
That's the one that matters most.
I suggest you go back and read through this affiliate program tutorial again.
Picture yourself owning a successful Internet business. Picture yourself opening letters and finding checks in them. Picture yourself going into your PayPal account and seeing the latest commissions you've been paid by affiliate merchants.
Imagine enjoying yourself spending the money, perhaps even giving up your day job so that you can concentrate on your own business.
Now take the first step.
And when you've quit your day job, please write and tell me. I love getting emails like that.
