Affiliate programs are one of the quickest and easiest ways of making profits online. But if you don’t market effectively, they can also prove to be the black hole that sucks away all your money and effort.

Affiliate programs work in two ways to make you money: they can be used as a full-time career option or can be used as a supplement to beef up your main income. Your aim should be to start slow and then make your way to bigger bucks.

Affiliate marketing is a source of multiple streams of income. You can choose to be a product producer with an affiliate program or you can take the easier route and just become an affiliate yourself.

You can promote as many products as you want. You can choose a single-tier program or a multiple-tier program.

All of these factors decide the amount of money you make. Most of the affiliate programs you see are single-tier. You sell a product and you earn a commission on it. End of story.

In two-tier programs, you earn a commission when you refer someone else to your website. When that person sells the product, you will earn a smaller commission on that too. So, you earn every time the people below you make a sale. These programs are comparatively rarer.

What should you do to become a top affiliate marketer?

• Do build a base: Your first step as an affiliate is to set up shop. That means you have to set up a website or a blog. This is the place where your customers come to find you and your affiliate ads. The easiest way for you to kick-start your program is to set up a blog through a reliable free blogging service. You can have several websites or blogs recommending your products.
• Do select your product carefully: Select a product through one of the clearinghouses like ClickBank.
• Do track your efforts: Ideally, you should not have to spend all your time tweaking your affiliate links or strategies. You must invest some time in tracking your efforts and maintaining links.
• Do choose a catchy name: The name of your blog should be short and catchy, so people can internalize it quickly and remember it at will.
• Do put up your affiliate links carefully: Remember, these links are the lifeblood of your income. Get them wrong and you’ll be throwing good money out of the window, literally. Copy and paste the text of your links carefully.
• Do drive in traffic: Being a super-affiliate is all about being able to drive in hordes of traffic. You can use multiple websites or blogs to drive traffic your way. Increase your web presence by starting an eZine through popular eZine creation websites. Feed your websites with fresh content using RSS feeds.
• Do use social networking: Social networking is the hottest item online, as of today. With a nice profile in sites like MySpace, TagWorld and others, you can drive traffic to your blog. Use search engines effectively to build up your web presence.
• Do use viral marketing to improve sales.

In my next article, I will be discussing something that is rarely talked about. Nevertheless, it is one of the most powerful tools available to affiliates to attract volumes of traffic - a well-written sales copy.

Popularity: 100% [?]

There has been a lot of controversy about how well safe lists work, but you’ll find that they are very effective in bringing traffic.

What are safe lists?

Basically safe lists are groups of people who agree to receive messages from one another. Similar to optin lists but more advanced, safe lists are operated from a website. So lets say you want to send a message to other members on the list. You will need to go to the website and post your message, after which it is personally sent to the members to ensure there is no junk being sent indiscriminately. Those managing the safe list take adequate care to ensure that bouncing emails and overfull inboxes are dealt with appropriately. Since the members on the safe list are double opt in, all the email ids are authentic.

You can join as many safe lists as you like and there are both free and paid ones. So what is the best way to use safe lists so that you don’t devote more time and effort than is necessary? Here are some tips:

• You must be wary about safe lists whose site is not professionally designed. Beware of websites that have too many ads, banners, overloaded with graphics and dollar signs. You must have enough information about the safe list. If no contact information or support link is forthcoming, forget it. If the safe list has no affiliate program or does not disclose the number of members on the list, don’t even consider it.
• Safe list users tend to look at ads when they clear out their safe list email folders. Often a catchy subject line appears tempting them to click and read the ad, resulting in making them sign up for a newsletter, an ebook, a bonus or even buy something. The point of the matter is - you must make sure your subject line is catchy.
• It is also worthwhile to write appealing ads. Your safe list advertising must be excellent to ensure that your affiliate marketing business is a success.
• Make sure you track your safe list ads. You will find a majority of the better safe lists have built in tracking tools.

There is a reason why safe list users don’t feel very comfortable using safe lists to bring traffic and in list building. This is simply because they lack the tools to deal with the huge email volume being received. One of the first things to do is get a large capacity mailbox. If you are looking for a paid email account, ensure that you get email filtering, web based email, POP3 and free affiliate programs. You can also get automatic email deletion.

To get more tips and strategies on how to use safe lists, and get access to several other effective ways to profit from affiliate marketing, get your complete list-building blueprint to success at 15Kin7days right now.

Popularity: 28% [?]

When you know how, it is not difficult to recruit and retain your affiliate army and reap the benefits in the form of huge profits. Building your affiliate army is all about recruiting them, activating them and keeping them motivated to keep up a steady flow of sales. So how can you inspire and motivate them?

You’ve got your affiliates. However, it’s a highly competitive world out there and you need to keep them enthusiastically promoting you as well as recommend you to their successful peers. Here’s how you motivate your affiliate army:

1. You’ve got to help your affiliates by giving them all that they need to be successful. Have a regular affiliate newsletter featuring tips. You could have a toll free number to provide them affiliate support with someone knowledgeable answering their queries.
2. Inspire your affiliates by demonstrating by example the methods used by your top affiliates to be successful. This must be a step-by-step method and simplified so that they can replicate them.
3. Recognize the affiliates who are doing well. A token gift would be a good idea.
4. Treat your affiliates as friends and phone them. They will be impressed that you care. Your top affiliates can turn into your loyal friends and supporters.
5. Ask your affiliates for their feedback to improve your affiliate program. Act on it.
6. Praise your super affiliates on your website and provide their affiliate links. They benefit with more traffic while other affiliates are inspired. It develops loyalty in the top affiliates.
7. Another way to build affiliate loyalty and motivate them is to recommend your super affiliate in email discussion groups. They will really appreciate you for it.
8. Make sure your affiliate receives the commission for a sale whether the customer visits the next day, the next week or even one year later. Customer tracking will make this possible. Set your ‘return days’ duration to a minimum of 30 days - the more, the better.
9. Think about paying lifetime commissions to your affiliates.
10. Allow your affiliates to earn special bonuses when they perform well.
11. Categorize your affiliates and consider paying the top ones special commissions.
12. Apart from commissions, you also need to work out residual commissions and two tier commissions. Referrals are valuable and deserve compensation.
13. Give your affiliates preferential treatment in discounted prices.
14. If there are multiple products, it is better to give your affiliates one link per product.
15. Make sure all your loyal affiliates get a mention from you at affiliate marketing conferences. They feel good.
16. Don’t ignore those affiliates who are not very active. Instead, ask them what the issue is so that you can fix it.
17. Drop by your affiliate’s sites and give them suggestions for more success.
18. When you add to your product portfolio, and a customer buys via an affiliate link give them credit for it. Your affiliates shouldn’t have to sign up each time a new product is added.
19. Let your affiliates be informed via email each time they make a sale. Give them the option of receiving these emails or turning them off.
20. Make sure you send a weekly status report that is easy to understand.
21. Pay your affiliates as often as you can. Give them the option of setting minimum payments.

Affiliates are your business associates. To keep your affiliate army performing well, it is important to motivate them and treat them specially.

Popularity: 16% [?]

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% [?]

We already know that a well designed website is crucial to an online business’ success. Special care has to be taken in the pre-launch stage before you tell the world about your online presence. Making sure that your website is effective is an ongoing process, but especially just before you launch it. You will need to make sure that there are no broken links, no spelling mistakes in your content - because it adds to your credibility. Just imagine a visitor clicking a link that turns out to be broken - or even worse, having your affiliate program links not working efficiently!

To avoid last minute glitches and ensure that your website is launched successfully, here are some tips you must keep as a checklist no matter how many sites you launch!

• Check all links. Even though you have done nothing in the past weeks except crosschecking each link, just do it again. Broken links are a curse. Make sure that each link points your visitor to the right information page. No visitor enjoys receiving error messages. They will simply think that you don’t care enough and be lost in cyberspace forever!
• The fold - this is the border at the bottom of your web page and you must ensure that all the information above that line must have content you want your prospective customer to see. Lay the page out in such a way that your visitor sees what you want them to see first. Catchy headlines, bulleted content, subheadings, highlighted text, space, links to more information - are techniques to avoid clutter.
• Spell check - use it. All web building software come with spell check function. In fact, get a friend to re-check manually as well. Since you’ve been looking at the page constantly, any error will be more obvious to someone else.
• Take a fresh look at your website. Test the site. Have your close associates and friends look at it and get their reactions. It doesn’t hurt to make those little changes that will make a big difference. It could be something as simple as font size, color, the flow of text…
• Test your navigation links - menu titles must be succinct and to the point. There’s no point being overly creative with ambiguous words here. The most important information must jump out at your visitor in the few seconds he or she takes to glance over various elements of your website. This will make sure your conversion rate is high.
• Too much is too bad. This applies to the content on your page. Your prospective customers already know what they want. So make a page that is user friendly and easy to navigate. They can always be directed to ‘know more’ if they wish.
• Keep images relevant and to a minimum. An overdose of graphics will make the page take ages to load and no one is going to wait around until it happens.
• Check all your registration forms, submission forms, sign up links - everything.

Popularity: 23% [?]