In this article, I’m going to look at the best sites to broker for. After all, this will be the basis of your earnings. As a JV broker, here’s what you do:

• Find someone who wants to sell products
• Find a marketer to sell these products
• Broker a deal between them
• Earn profits

You’ll remember in my last article, “Taking The First Step Towards Profits“ that I talked about how two-tier affiliate programs are the best ones to sign up for. To get a little deeper into this, here’s what you should look for.

Sites That Pay A Minimum Second Tier Commission Of $10

We are looking at a minimum commission of $ 10 per second tier sale. This is not tough to do. Even if the marketer you broker a deal with makes ten sales, you earn $100. If the marketer has a huge list of subscribers, just by sending them a simple email, you are looking at a high conversion rate that can earn you thousands in commission. See how powerful this method is? So even with a product that doesn’t cost much, you can still make a lot of earnings by identifying and leveraging marketers with huge lists.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

The marketer you are brokering the deal with will love it when he can earn without doing a thing. If you outline even a couple of simple jobs like sending out an email or setting up a banner ad, chances are that they’ll never get around to doing it. Instead, if the product site you are brokering for provides all the promotional material in a ready to use form, you can tell your marketer that all he needs to do is copy paste it into his email software and send. Don’t forget to tell him that he’ll see money within the hour of doing this. It’s a lot easier to send out an email campaign that has already been written for you than go through the process of writing them and then sending them. So you simply need to find a site owner who is smart enough to provide the promotional material to sell his products.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

In fact, this is your first priority as the success of your JV brokering depends on this. What if the marketer doesn’t sign up right away through your link? There is every chance of them signing up even a couple of months later. How do you keep track? More importantly, how do you ensure your commission on the sales generated by them?

Here’s where you need to ensure that your site owner has a cookie tracking system in place. Sign up with sites that offer you a two tier program as well as track everything through cookies valid for several months. No matter when your marketer signs up through your link you will get a commission on the sales they make.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Among list building methods for affiliate success, ezines are one of the most preferred. Simply put, ezines are online newsletters. Affiliate marketers use these to communicate and stay in touch with their subscribers. Through ezines, marketers share news, promotions, updates etc. Ezines can be used effectively to attract focussed traffic to your site.

Almost every ezine is ready to accept advertising from other marketers. The revenue from these ads can nicely offset operational costs associated with running the ezine apart from becoming a source of income in itself.

The best ezines to place your ads in are those that are very closely related to your own niche market to maximize the returns on the ad you put in. Different ezines have different rates depending on the number of subscribers they have and the specific niche. Rates are also based on the position of your ad.

Solo ads are found to work best in ezines even though they cost more because this means readers will see only your ad. In order to create a good solo ad, find an ezine that is directed at the exact target market you want. You can find other websites that run ezines related to your niche market. Searching on Google using your keyword or phrase followed by the word ezine or newsletter easily does this.

After you shortlist the most targeted ezines and newsletters to advertise in, find out the cost and number of subscribers each one has. We recommend actually subscribing to an ezine to see a few issues before advertising in it to get a good sense of the ezine. This will ensure that it speaks your language and reaches your message to your niche.

It is worthwhile spending time on designing your ad. What you say must be geared to getting your readers respond by doing what you expect them to.

Every activity in affiliate marketing must be tracked to monitor effectiveness. By tracking your ads you can know which ezines are bringing you the best response and which ones are not as effective as you expected. You can rephrase your ads to see which words work better so that you don’t waste money.

Some tips to ensure the success of your ezine advertising

• As you might have realized by now, choosing the right ezines to advertise in is the most important aspect of ezine advertising. Suppose the ezine you choose is crowded with ads, you hardly want your ad lost in it.
• When you offer something for free, as a sign up bonus in your ad, chances are quite good that the visitor would want to see what it is.
• Here’s something to check - if the ezine publisher has a policy of not running two ads for similar products within the same issue then you have a better chance of having your ad read by the ezine readers.
• Repeat your ads 2-3 times. The ezine publisher will probably offer you a bulk discount rate.

These are just a few of the many ways in which you can use ezine advertising successfully.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Much of your marketing efforts rely on email marketing. So you want to make sure that the emails you send your subscribers reach their inbox and are read by them. To be successful with your email marketing efforts, you need to develop your own lists. Why? Because if you rent a list and email them, no matter how legit, its very short term. With your own list, you can build a customer relationship and communicate with them again and again. You build your list as a result of your subscribers opting in to receive your messages and avoid the risk of being reported as spam.

In spite of a well-planned marketing strategy and designing an effective series of emails, sometimes these emails end up in cyberspace, thanks to automatic spam-filters. To avoid this happening, you will need to be conversant with the words, phrases and characters that can kill your email before it reaches your recipient.

There are a lot of unscrupulous marketers out there who send unsolicited messages and give the legitimate ones a bad name, causing people to be doubly wary about which websites they subscribe to and which emails they receive.

The first step, then, is to do some quick research on the kind of words and phrases that can activate these filters and avoid using them completely. Filters especially look for certain symbols and words and by knowing what they are you can avoid them. So make sure your emails comply with the CAN SPAM Act.

You must put specific information in the title and from fields of your emails. Include your name and state your purpose. Don’t write so much in your email that your recipient has to keep scrolling till eternity to get to the point of the message. Rather than use superlative words, present the topic and content of your email so that your recipient is keen to know what it contains and how it will benefit them. Sign off with a call to action.

Many affiliate marketers invest in a reliable email service provider who also makes sure about email deliverability, hosting, customizing content and compliance with the CAN SPAM Act.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Expert internet marketers know that lists are the foundation of their online marketing business. I have put together some critical tips to cost effectively build your email lists - use this as a checklist to enable you collect focused email addresses at every opportunity. 

• Make sure that each and every one of your web forms includes an email list opt in box, whether it is to do with registration, information requests or ordering products.
• Ensure that your website URL appears on all official stationery, promotional material, newsletters etc. You’d be surprised at how many people will immediately visit your link to know more and be ready to optin for email communication.
• While browsing your website your visitor must be able to optin from any page of your website.
• If you use direct mailing methods or paper forms offline, make sure your customers are requested to give their email addresses. At offline events it is standard practice to have a “Visitors book”. Have your visitors write down their email in it so that you can be in touch with them.
• Each and every paper that goes out to your customers and contacts must include an email request. Use every possible way to get hold of email addresses to build your lists - when you respond to customer questions, your invoice, etc.
• An effective way to build your list is to look at your current list. When you mail them request them to tell a friend or refer you to someone. Since these people receive the message from someone they know already, they are receptive to signing up with you! In turn, these people can refer you to others. Not only do you get an authentic list but also an endorsement. Provide a link that your optin list can forward to their contacts and grow your list.
• Be honest about the frequency of mailers you intend to send your optin list before they sign up so they know what to expect. If you send too many mailers too often, you’ll just get blocked.
• Solicit feedback from your subscribers so that you can design your messages according to what they want. If not, they will simply use the ‘unsubscribe’ option and that’s the end of the relationship.
• Your optin list is looking for value when they sign up with you - so make good use of your autoresponder to keep in touch with them with useful stuff.
• Remember that every interaction with a prospective customer is your chance to grow your list. Use ethical ways to build your list.

As you experiment with different methods you will learn different ways to succeed. List building is an activity that never stops as long as you are in business!

Popularity: 20% [?]

Most online marketers sign up with affiliate programs at some time or other. Chances are quite good that you have, too, before you launched your affiliate program and decided to recruit your own affiliate army. Have you noticed how some affiliate managers regularly connect with you while some go silent after that first automated welcome note?

This sort of thing can easily make an affiliate gradually ease out of the program and join another one where there’s continuous support and communication. It is necessary to at least maintain a once-a-week contact system with your affiliates so that they are always motivated to keep promoting your program and stay active. Here are some ways:

• Start an affiliate blog. Your affiliates can subscribe to this blog via an RSS feed that will update them as new posts are added. Post news about any important news about Internet marketing that appears useful and interesting. Provide links to websites where free ecourses or ebooks are being offered so that your affiliates can keep themselves in tune with what they need to know. Post success stories that are inspiring on the blog. Allow your affiliates to comment and participate.
• Have a monthly newsletter. This is a great way to be in touch with your affiliates and can also serve to keep them active. Announce contests and bonuses on the newsletter and list the winners of the previous months. This can be inspiring for others to strive to win.
• Each time you intend to add a product, create a buzz among your affiliates through teasers. By allowing them a preview, you can help them get prepared by getting ready with their content to suit the new product. They in turn can start the teaser campaign or viral marketing among their customers and subscribers. This will help make the product launch successful.
• While passing on information to your affiliates, consider what works best. Some affiliates prefer teleseminars, which they can attend from the comfort of their own location. Teleseminars also help in training affiliates about marketing, product features and benefits and other vital info. These calls can be recorded and a link to this posted online on your blog and your affiliate library, so that those that missed it can access it. This can also be very useful to new affiliates who keep joining.

Keeping a free line of communication between your affiliate army and yourself is very crucial to maintain loyalty as well as enthusiasm. When you take care of your affiliates, they will tell others and this will encourage them to sign up as well.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Here’s a compilation of all the things you must be wary about in your on-going list building process:

• You’ve got to remember that when a visitor signs up on your list, he or she is doing the same with your competition - and there is nothing you can do about it. Your list will receive email messages from both you and the competition. Over time, they may decide to use the ‘unsubscribe’ option and there’s a good chance it could be with you. Is there anything you can do about that? Yes - one way to stop this from happening is to design your emails so that they are distinctive. Don’t make the mistake of sending the same email twice. It’s also important to be alert about what the competition is doing - and BE different.
• You are probably signed up with several affiliation programs that are good money-earners. You are selling someone else’s products here, and you will obviously be sending traffic to a squeeze page. This is where the traffic will register with the original seller whose products you are promoting. But hey, granted you will earn commission on sales through you; however, what about the contact information of the customer who bought the product? It is the original seller who gets to be in touch with the customers - what about you? Perhaps you have other products you’d like to offer them! So what you do is - send these customers to your own squeeze page first! Let them sign up here for something in return - maybe an ebook or information related to the product. From here, they can move to your affiliate’s squeeze page through your free download or even your autoresponder. When you do this you will also be able to build your lists - and a targeted one at that!
• WOW! So you have a free ebook to give away. There are plenty of free ebooks that you can distribute even if you didn’t write them. But wait - did you notice that this ebook has the name and URL of its author with an optin form where the visitor must register to get actual access to the ebook? What this means is your subscribers will head there directly. What do you do then? You can counter this by getting your potential customers to first opt in to YOUR list before receiving the ebook download link. You can even bundle two or more ebooks that relate to the same topic as a gift for signing up. In fact, better still; get the resale rights of the book, rebrand it with your own opt in form so that everyone is happy.

The important thing is to use list-building methods in such a way that you get the contact info of the visitor and keep them!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Regardless of which social bookmarking website you choose to use, the tips that follow will help generate traffic to your website. So lets move to the 5 steps:

Action Tips To Leverage Your Social Bookmarking Campaign

Now, you know what a job it is to appear on the home page of social bookmarking websites like Digg, Del.icio.us, etc. You also know that being there could mean massive traffic and links to your website, in addition to high search engine rankings. Well, its not the Holy Grail anymore, if you know how. You are about to! Read on:

Your Posts Must Have Good Titles

Ask any SEO expert - and they’ll tell you that it’s in the title. It, in this case, is the keyword or keywords. Did you put the keywords for which you want to be found in your title? Say yes, because that’s how the people who see your content or article on these sites will link to you - that is, through the titles. This gets your keywords in the anchor text. This increases your search rankings. It’s a neat cycle.

Keep It Short

If you’ve noticed, visitors on social bookmarking sites don’t have a whole lot of patience to read lengthy text. What you need to do then, is to create content that is interesting, short and easy to read. The first two lines must grab your reader’s eyeball and keep it till the end of your content. Then they might link to it, if they like it.

Use RSS Feeds

Social bookmarking site members are there for information. Not for ads or to do their shopping. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost them. Why not put an RSS feed button on your webpage so that they subscribe to your site, and also submit your site to the social bookmarking sites? You can also position ads in your RSS feeds. That’s more money, more pageviews and more subscribers.

It All Comes Back To The King, Content

Have lots of content or linkbait - the more the better. It enhances your chances of focussed traffic. On social bookmarking sites, users comment. Do away with obstacles like asking users to sign in before they comment. Rather, lure them to comment.

A Word About Coming Up With Content For Social Bookmarking Site Users Here:

As obvious as it sounds, users browse to read as much as they can. They don’t want to linger. So make it easy for them by formatting your content to ensure that they read it and hopefully link to it. No point writing a great article if it isn’t easy to read.

• Make use of paragraph headers that highlights important points
• Get the best out of top ten/five lists - people love it
• Use images instead of words where possible.

You must identify the social bookmarking and networking sites that work best for you. The biggest may not necessarily mean the best for you. So identify those niche sites that can bring you a whole lot of traffic and customers rather than lose time on the passive ones. Check the sites you would like to be associated with to see if the content gels with you. Look for sites where the activity level is high. After you identify the right sites, establish yourself by submitting content and build the community’s trust in you. This will naturally lead them to your website.

Popularity: 28% [?]

One of the most effective ways to generate online traffic is through FORUMS or online communities. Every online business identifies a niche to plan its marketing strategies and chances are that it has signed up with a forum or two. Let’s see how you can maximize your benefits from a forum!

Forums are not just a place to share your knowledge and views. Forums are goldmines, literally. You can effectively use these forums to generate focused traffic and establish your web presence. And you know the best thing about this? It is free!

People love to express their views on various subjects and head over to the relevant forums and sign up there to do so. This is why online communities exist - so that like-minded people can communicate freely. These forums or communities experience massive traffic and you too can tap into this traffic to grow your business.

The critical thing to remember here is - you just don’t go and advertise in a forum! You become a part of the community. Advertising on a forum is a total no-no because you’ll not only be banned, but also labeled a spammer. Nobody needs a bad reputation, now, do they?

Instead, you sign up with these forums and become a relevant contributor. This is what will bring you traffic. Forums are basically like message boards where members help each other with information. They are highly interactive places. As a feasible list-building strategy, forums are up there with the best. They are great places to build credibility and trust through good content.

Okay, so here’s how you can use forums to get that focused traffic rushing to your site:

• The first thing to do is identify a forum (or two), which gets massive traffic that is relevant to your site. A Google search can help you do this. See the number of members and posts to get an idea of its popularity.
• Become a member of the forum(s) you shortlist. Make a profile. Introduce yourself briefly, but NO hardsell promotional messages. It is quite likely that you will receive several welcome messages from existing members - so don’t forget to thank each one of them.
• Read previously posted messages to post useful content. This could be in the way of answering questions, asking relevant questions, and so on. Never advertise your website. However, you can include your website in your signature, but make sure this is allowed when you join.
• Spend at least a few minutes each day on the forum to be active. Forum members like someone who posts regularly and the best part is - they will recommend you to others who will not hesitate to click your link!

These steps can be followed with more than one forum. You will benefit by building your list, getting affiliates for your affiliate programs, subscribers to your newsletters, and a lot of new customers. Just make sure you diligently follow the forum rules.

Why not go out, find a couple of forums right now, and try what I’ve described above?

Popularity: 15% [?]

StumbleUpon

As a social bookmarking site, StumbleUpon is a favorite among many internet marketers. One of the reasons is that it doesn’t take a whole lot of time like some of the other sites out there. In a nutshell, you can quickly join groups relevant to your line of activity, add friends, etc. The next step is to add content that’s useful - either your own or others. When visitors stumble upon your page, and like what they see, they endorse it with a “thumbs up”. When this happens, it is seen by lots more people.

Before we go on to the step by step process of going about this, here’s what you can expect: Traffic - and a lot of it, and links. Rather than actual sales which can also result, you can look forward to a lot of exposure, publicity, readership to your blog, subscribers to your content feed, etc.- all of which are essential components of your online business.

Now Here’s How You Generate Traffic From Stumbleupon

As you become more popular, it increases the traffic to your website. You have to be a regular on the site, which goes without saying for any social bookmarking site. It is also important to be perceived as someone who posts useful content that appeals to the users. How do you do this?

Submit Under The Right Topic

When you browse around the internet and find a site that you like, you can submit it under the relevant topic. This is crucial. You must select the most appropriate topic under which to submit the site in order to receive the ‘thumbs up’ to it. If it is under an irrelevant title, then there’s a good chance that it might not get noticed at all. Be as specific as possible to ensure that more people see it. If your site is about football, then let it go under football and not sports in general.

Tags

Tags are to your submission what keywords are to your content. After you submit the site, you must add the right tags. This will enable the site you submit be stumbled upon frequently, as well as help those who are searching for these tags. When you use the right tags, your site will get more visibility.

Send To Friend

An important feature of StumbleUpon is the facility to send your stumbles to your friends, directly. Get the StumbleUpon toolbar. So should your friends. Each time someone sends them a stumble, a red number appears next to the stumble button. When they next use the button they can view the page sent to them. You can also add and receive messages to these.

Groups And Forums

You name it, and they’ve got a group or forum for any topic you want. You can join about 63 groups. The special part is you can post links on some of the groups which can be seen by other group members. Don’t even think of spamming though as it is the best way to get deleted.

Blog

Start your StumbleUpon blog and post HTML and images on it. This kind of blog is more visible since it can greatly increase your stumbles and add more friends. This in turn creates a good impression.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Thriving in the internet marketing world means building a list that is growing all the time and you can do with every possible method you can lay your hands on, provided it is effective. Converting every visitor into a customer is every online marketer’s dream.

The Internet has evolved so much, that there are Internet gurus getting closer and closer to that dream. So what is the best way to attract traffic to your site and more important - how do you keep them active?

You know your product is terrific and there’s every possibility that your visitors will buy it today. But - what if they don’t? You probably have several other products they could be interested in - so how to get hold of their email address and name before they leave your site so that you can keep in touch with them?

Hold on! There’s yet another question you must answer before we find the answer to the earlier ones. Do you have the system in place to manage your growing list? Do you have an autoresponder? It’s the first thing you must set up.

An autoresponder is every Internet marketer’s best friend because it saves a massive amount of time that would otherwise be spent on routine follow-ups with hundreds of thousands of subscribers! An autoresponder allows you to automate the whole process of communicating with your list, so that even when you are sleeping or - away on vacation, it takes care of everything once you set it up properly.

But why go in for an autoresponder? Emailing is no big deal - and it is free. Is that what you think? The truth is, if you mail out promotional messages from your ISP, before you know what hit you, you’ll be labeled a spammer and be forced to shut down. That is bad publicity that you definitely don’t need.

Most online businesses use an autoresponder to do the following:

• Recognizing how you perceive yourself
• Taking responsibility for who you are
• Making a list of the things you want to change
• Making the decision to improve
• Setting goals to achieve
• Seeking the methods that will help achieve self-improvement
• Following these methods consistently

But in addition to these, did you know you could also use your autoresponder for these:

Build your credibility: Publish a newsletter and keep in touch with your visitors to let them know about new products, while sharing useful information with them

Article marketing: It is an acknowledged fact that article marketing works very effectively. Use your autoresponder to distribute your keyword rich articles and watch the focused traffic rush to your site! Add an author’s bio with a link to your autoresponder URL and you are ready to count the money.

Repeat your advertisement, automate the sales process: the more people see your ad, the more likely are they to remember you. Word it appropriately and tempt them with a ‘to know more” link - not only will you build your list, but also stand a very good chance of converting your visitors to customers.

Attract customers: Offer your visitors a trial version of your product - give them a sign-up bonus in the form of an ebook, software, membership to your site etc. this gives your visitors the feeling that you are serious about your business and also tempts them to sign up for the trial. Your autoresponder can do the job of send out messages that carry instructions on receiving the free trial, following up on it and closing the sale.

A word of caution here, though - make sure the person who signs up gives you permission to email them because you don’t want to get into the hassle of spamming.

It is necessary to know exactly how to use these methods effectively to get the maximum advantage from them. Different methods work for different people, obviously since every individual is unique. But it all comes back to “self help is the best help” because unless you take action, nothing else will follow.

Popularity: 15% [?]