As affiliate programs are becoming the premier way for website hosts to generate income from their website traffic, the parameters of selecting a reliable affiliate program have become more rigid.  Any affiliate program will not benefit the webmaster unless there is ample traffic to the affiliate site, the affiliate program is of high quality and the methods of marketing the affiliate program are comprehensive.
 
When searching for an affiliate program to join, be sure to look for the following qualities:

Make sure the website is established and has been online for some time.  Before committing to a company that you will rely on for income, or have any type of long term financial agreement with, it is imperative that you verify the stability of the company you will be working with.  Check out how long the company has been in business and verify its standing with the Better Business Bureau.
Examine the affiliate programs product line for quality. Your reliability with your clients will promote referrals to other clients.  If you are representing sub quality products, your reputation will be damaged and that is the kiss of death in the affiliate marketing profession.

Generally expect to yield 50 to 75% commission on the products of the affiliate program.  If the affiliate program is screaming that you’ll be filthy rich in the next 30 days, it is likely not a reliable program.
 
Reliable affiliate marketing programs have excellent tracking systems which incorporate programs that track visitors to their site using both CGI and cookies so you always get accredited with sales that you generated from your own site.  The tracking systems will also allow you to check all of your promotional methods to see which affiliate links are most beneficial to you at any given time.  In order to maximize your commissions, seek out affiliate programs that track site traffic for 30 days or more.

Also be sure to find out how you will be paid, how often payments are sent and if there is a minimum threshold to bypass before receiving commission. In addition to your initial research of an affiliate program, be sure to thoroughly read the affiliate agreement and save a copy of it.  Ask if you will have a personal affiliate manager and find out how long he or she has been with the company.  Staff that turns over regularly is a red flag that the company practices are unstable or there are problems with product quality which the staff gets frustrated in dealing with.  In addition, ask the program manager for references of the top affiliates, if they balk at this request, keep looking.

Also don’t overlook the benefits of affiliate messageboard forums.  These can provide a valuable resource for getting inside information on working with particular affiliate programs. Don’t be afraid to ask questions on the message boards.  The benefit of a wide audience is in that one false claim will not go unnoticed by the rest of the site.  You will likely receive good feedback to help you make your determinations. 

Popularity: 100% [?]

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Reviewer: Joshua
Rating: (Best Overall)
Website Reviewed: Affilorama

Affilorama is a members only website, created by Mark Ling, that provides instruction and support to the affiliate marketing community, including everything from basic affiliate marketing and web design techniques, to advanced PPC and SEO strategies. Mark Ling is already known on the internet marketing circuit for his other instructional videos, and a quick scan of the web will prove that previous customers are pleased with Mark’s instructional products ang generally trust him to provide comprehensive instruction and support. 

Affilorama takes the techniques that Mark Ling has implemented so successfully in the past and instructs his students on how to be just as successful as he has been. In addition, Mark Ling combines the teaching of these advanced techniques with the basics of choosing a topic, the complexities of keyword research and the methods and research techniques needed in finding quality and profitable products thereby increasing bottom line affiliate commissions.

Prior incarnations of the Affilorama product sold for $200 and included a video package with website access to discussion forums with experts in the field, including Mark Ling.  Again, public blog site postings from during the first release timeframe indicate that this product was also very well received, and Mark Ling contributed to the blogs, acknowledging any skepticism and recommending the 5 day free trial version that he had available at the time. 

What You Get

With paid enrollment to Affilorama, at $29.95 per month, you will have access to over 40 hours of step by step instructional online videos outlining:
 
- Setting up a website with Dreamweaver or XSitePro
- Keyword Research
- Pay Per Click
- Email marketing
- Designing Landing Pages
- Commission Theft
- Gender Advertising
- Web Directories
- Co-Registration
- Blogs
- How to Use Ghostwriters
- Google Video and Image
- Google Adsense
- 9 Videos outlining a 90 Day Plan for any site
- eBook on Search Engine Optimization
- Traffic Travis keyword searching software

Members who purchased the original package at $200 now have unlimited lifetime access to the online forum, which is wildly gaining in popularity and positive accalaides.

One of the most enticing aspects of Affilorama is that Mark Ling personally participates in online chat forums in video format.  This attention to the needs of his clients makes Affilorama a trusted product. Absolutely designed with brand new affiliate marketers in mind, every aspect of starting out in the industry is covered here. 

Click HERE to Visit Site

Potential Drawbacks

There is a ton of information contained here, which requires extensive time and concentration to comprehend.

Unfortunately, there is a glitch in this very detailed program in which some of the lessons are incorrectly sized for the screen, requiring screen scrolling to view the entire lesson.  This only occurs when viewing from the website.  Downloading the video to your pc corrects the screen sizing issues.

The Recommendation

As a program designed for primarily new affiliate marketers, this course is comprehensive and well organized.  Overall a highly recommended for someone starting out in the online marketplace, primarily due to the accessibility of the program creator for one on one coaching.

Click HERE to Visit Affilorama

Popularity: 41% [?]

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As we’ve all been conditioned to believe that our business will crash and burn if our search engine positioning falls, the knee jerk reaction when this happens is to revise site and ad copy to try to reestablish the previous rankings.  Is this necessary?  Perhaps not, it depends on other factors in addition to the simple mechanics of search engine ranking. 

If, for example, you’re conversions have declined you absolutely want to consider modifications to your copy.  While a decrease in conversions may not necessarily be due to site copy, this is a marker of your site traffic and needs to be addressed.  Simple tweaks to your current copy may be all it takes to re-energize your site and bring your search engine rankings back up to their previous glory.

Obviously, a decrease in business coinsiding with a drop in search engine ranking is cause for reviewing the site copy and making adjustments to try to regain ranking.  In addition to reviewing site copy, it is always advisable to employ additional marketing campaigns, at least on a temporary basis, to work in conjunction with your new copy in bringing your site visitor numbers back up.  If accomplished through a system of backlinking, this will also help to restore your search engine ranking.

Other reasons for possible drop in search engine result rankings can include that the search engine spiders are being rejected by the website server due to alterations in your spam bot blocker or your robot.txt file.  Changes to these files may render the search engine spiders unable to crawl your website, resulting in loss of ranking.
In many cases, there is a change to the algorithms of the search engines.  These are maddening and sometimes occur with no warning or reasoning.  The solution to this issue is to allow the algorithm to finish its update and allow the website rankings to regenerate back to pre-change status.  In most cases, the website rankings will stabilize and your site will be restored to its original ranking.

Always keep in mind that the SEO game is one of competition.  As other users are becoming skilled in building ways to increase search engine rankings, and even if nothing has changed in the search engine algorithms or in the makeup of your website, others may simply be doing something more effectively than you are.  Regular review and maintenance of your website will help to ensure your list rankings and benefits to your website traffic.
Plummets in Google search engine ranking over the last few weeks resulting from prolific spamming have site owners scratching their heads, and experts offering some advice: Padding up your keyword meta tag with well researched related phrases will help to restore your placement, over repetition of a keyword registers with search engines as duplicate text and hurts your ranking, and add related content to your web pages to boost crossover marketing.  Google is overdue of an algorithm update, and indicators are that the listings are beginning to stabilize, but implementation of the above suggestions will speed the process along. 

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The knee jerk reaction to the question is “yes, of course!”   Upon further consideration, there are many cases of eventual disloyalty of the customer base by continually trying to sell something to them that they do not want.  If the customer knows that you are going to attempt an upsell with every sales opportunity, you lose credibility with your customer, and are relegated to the level of a bottom feeder who will say anything to make a buck.  The sense of trust that you have fostered with your customers is then broken.

By selectively upselling, your customers will come to know you as someone who understands the specifics needs that they have and can recognize when a product hits the market that would be of use to them.  The customer appreciates the upsell when it feels like customer service rather than a sales tool. 

Cross selling is another tool that can promote additional sales, when appropriate.  Unlike upselling, where the attempt is made to convince the customer to purchase a more expensive item, in a cross selling situation, the customer is offered additional items which are companions or accessories to the main item.  Again the attempt to cross sell should be taken advantage of on a sporadic basis to relieve the customer of the knowledge that you are a commissioned salesperson, but in most cases customer are more receptive to cross sell attempts than upsells.  Be that as it may, there are still general rules to cross selling that the experienced online salespeople use on their website. 

Never display more than 3 cross sell items, and these are done best if displayed in a “customers who bought this, also liked this”  format on the right side of the screen in a vertical format.  Extensive studies have been conducted regarding the perception of vertical and horizontal elements, and the vertical stacking will actually produce more final sales.

Be sure that all displayed cross sell items are in stock.  The loss of credibility is not worth the additional sale.
Cross sell items should be full price – do not display sale items as cross sell suggestions as it will give your website the appearance of trying to “clear out” old merchandise.

Each cross sell item should be less expensive than the item originally purchased, to retain the accessory mindset of the customer.

All cross sell images should be of same size, but smaller than the main item, and link to enhanced product discriptions. Keep in mind that the customer was likely already familiar with the main product when he arrived at your site to purchase it, but will have to be educated on the features and benefits of the cross sell items.

Obviously there are additional sales opportunities to be made with upsell and cross selling techniques.  The promoter should also not neglect to follow up a sale with a quick ‘thank you’ email and a note regarding an additional item that he came across that the customer may be interested in.  This, very often, is a good way to switch up cross sell methods, and still increasing sales.
 

Popularity: 26% [?]

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Marketing to a List

By marketing your products and accessory products to a generated opt-in list, you have the benefit of targeting a market which already trusts you and the products you deliver.  The way to capitalize on this is be consistently forwarding offers to your list of additional products and services. As you have already established a relationship with those on your list, additional revenue generation should be an easy step.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click, or PPC, is a method of advertising your site by posting site ads within other related websites.  Through this method, you would be responsible to pay the web host a fee every time an interested consumer clicks onto your website ad for more information.  Basically, you are purchasing advertising space on another site.  Fortunately for the provider of an affiliate marketing program, there are many adjacent avenues available over the internet that are closely related to the affiliate marketing and make these sites good locations for advertisements and generating site traffic.  Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Adcenter are the most widely used and provide you with the most targeted traffic. 

Article Writing

Taking the plunge into article writing is a good way to promote yourself as an expert in your field as well as promoting your site as a reliable source for the affiliate marketing products and services that your company provides.  By writing and posting articles on various website and blog forums you have the advantage of asserting name recognition in addition to providing information about the services of your site it’s course materials.  The added advantage of having direct exposure to the issues that others related to your topic are experiencing with your competition also provides a way for you to illustrate differences between your programs and others and then direct readers to your site. 

Enzines.com

Enzines.com is an article site where authors are allowed to post up to ten articles on the topic of their choice.  As a website business owner, a great marketing tool is to post articles relating to the issues surrounding your product or service and outlining the benefits of your affiliate program in helping other writers and readers in generating income through your affiliate marketing program.  In addition, you can purchase ad space on Enzine and have them send your offer to their subscribers.  This is an excellent way to quickly advance your own subscriber list.

Viral Report

Creating a viral report is one of the most successful ways to market on online affiliate marketing program.  By using rebranding software, you create your own viral report, complete with a link to your site and issue it to as many people as you can through article marketing websites, purchased email lists, and your own website.  The premise of a viral report is that other users can take your report and rebrand it under their own name, offering your product along with products of their own as “bonus” items, thereby benefiting both companies simultaneously.

Popularity: 30% [?]

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The popularity of the newsletter to promote current events in business to the client list has grown exponentially with the advent of the internet and the now common usage of email methods of delivery.  When in its infancy, the email based newsletter was eagerly opened by the recipient, as was all email in those days, and you were reasonably certain that your monthly newsletter was being at least skimmed for relevant topics to your client base.

As the receiving of email is becoming more of a psychological chore, it is up to the newsletter writer to effectively compose his objectives in a way to ensure that his business is remaining fresh and current in the minds of his clients.  There are several ways to accomplish this task in a monthly or quarterly email newsletter without letting the impact become stale:

Tell Your Story

Include a personal item in your periodic newsletter that reminds the recipient that you are a real person.  This personal connection is what drives business relationships that culminate into referrals and long term alliances.

Publish Reader Reviews

Have a subheading in your newsletter where you publish reader responses or comments.  This prompts your readers to not only read your letter, but offer responses; again promoting a mutual feeling between partners in business.

Video Content

A quick video clip in your newsletter will ensure that at least that portion gets noticed, even if the reader is too busy to look over the rest of it.  Keep it short and light, prompting the recipient to look forward to the next issue.

The Cliffhanger

Use a heading in one of your articles listing the top 10 whatevers, then only list the first 5 in this issue and leave the remaining for the next.  With some creative content, this is a good way to keep your newsletter fresh and anticipated.

Don’t Overpromote

Obviously, you want to let your readers know the current status of business in your newsletter, and they all understand that this is the reason for your writing it.  Don’t beat a dead horse.  In many cases your readers are glancing over the newsletter over lunch and will be less inclined to do so if they feel like they are being subjected to a sales pitch.

Don’t Use Extreme Words

One of the quickest ways to lose credibility with your readers is by professing to be “the Worlds Greatest…” or the “Number One Selling…”  or “The One Most Preferred…” unless you have quick proof to back it up.  Obviously if you want to congratulate a peer as the top selling associate for the first quarter, that is legitimate and a good thing to do in a newsletter, but the rampant overuse of extreme words and phrases (like the word “extreme” for example) in advertising has reduced their impact to almost meaningless.

Cater to Specific Markets

If you can swing it, but out more than one version of your newsletter to cater to the specific niches of your email audience.  A relatively easy way to accomplish this is to put out 3 versions of a quarterly newsletter, tweaked to meet specific market demands in 3 sectors, but stagger the delivery so you are only writing the newsletter once a month.  Obviously be sure to separate your email lists, so each sector is only receiving 4 letters per year.

Personality

Have fun in the writing!  Business newsletters do not have to be dry.  Little tricks like putting afterthoughts in parenthesis in writing (as I did above, yep, and here again!) makes the recipient feel as though they really know you and like you, just by inserting some of your own personality into the newsletter.

Keep It To One Page

Respect your recipients’ time.  Assume that they are busy also and do not have time to read a four page newsletter.  They will actually respect you much more for that small effort.  Additionally, a long newsletter gives the impression that you have nothing else to do either…

Relevant Quiz

A quick 5 question quiz on a light topic of relevance to the business is a nice way to finish off a newsletter over lunch.  Or alternate with a piece of business related trivia.  Make sure it’s light and amusing to leave your recipients with an overall good feeling about you and your business until next time.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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Reviewer: Joshua
Rating:  
Website Reviewed: Butterfly Marketing

Butterfly Marketing is the term given to the viral marketing process when your customers promote your product for you. Once you successfully set up the initial online marketing system, the promotions multiply on their own and you don’t need to spend money on advertising or ongoing promotion.  Hence the term “viral” marketing.

Mike Filsaime, the creator of The Butterfly Marketing system teaches and promotes small actions that contribute to viral growth and result in a dramatic advantages in outcome. In essence, the Butterfly Marketing system teaches its users how to start up a managed membership site with built-in affiliate marketing systems.  The promotion of every product listed on your site expands exponentially, thereby becoming viral in its marketing.

What You’ll Get

This is a bit convoluted.  For a current cost of $497, Mike Fisaime makes available the entire digital version of the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript and software package.  Originally, the package sold at a launch promotion price of $997.  After selling out, the program was re-launched at an increased price of $1497.  Currently, the complete program is available as I have indicated above, for $497, but you have to know how to get it.  The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript is the manual only version, with no software included, which is listed at the website for a price of $97.  Upon agreement to purchase the Manuscript, there is a back-end offer which makes the complete package, including the software, available for a total cost of $497.
 
To facilitate the making of a viral website, the Butterfly Marketing system provides plug-n-play software to build lists on the principle that the larger the list, the more revenue it will generate, as well as website templates which can be used as is or be fully customized.   In addition to vital software, the Butterfly Marketing program also enables the user to develop a multiplying opt-in list.

The really unique aspect of Butterfly Marketing is its ability to provide the user with fully functioning links to other websites, and the ability to develop and control the additional websites that the user’s original site links to.  Each of the websites the marketer creates and links using the Butterfly Marketing system increases his list, thereby providing an increase in revenue which the marketer keeps in its entirety, as he is the website host and beneficiary.

Potential Drawbacks

Butterfly Marketing is not for the novice affiliate marketer.  There is a substantial amount of understanding of the online marketing system to comprehend before advancing to a Butterfly Marketing style of promotion, including a firm grasp of the concepts of a landing page, opt-in list and an autoresponder.

Butterfly Marketing is also not a get-rich-quick program.  There is a considerable amount of front end work to be done to establish a site that will continue to generate income.

The Recommendation

If you are an experience affiliate marketer, are already making money online with your products and want to increase your online marketing exposure, the entire Butterfly Marketing package, including the software, is highly recommended.

Click HERE to Visit Site

Popularity: 34% [?]

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We all know that getting traffic to your site is the most important factor to converting sales and bringing home the bacon. PPC is the fastest way to get an extraordinary amount of traffic in very little time. Unfortunately Adwords and other PPC programs are a double edge sword, you really must know what you are doing or else you can really burn through some cash. I ‘m sure most of you already know about that. What if you could get FREE traffic? Yes I do mean organic traffic supplied by none other than search engines.

A good way to do this is to target a keyword with little competition that gets searched a lot and also converts into sales. Usually adding the keyword to both the title tag and your H tags will drastically help your rankings in the serps, but what many fail to do is purchase a domain with the primary keyword in the domain. Believe it or not I have put up sites with just the keyword as the domain, added a couple great articles and listed on the first page of Google within a month. (This is NO joke) That’s without a link campaign, literally no work involved. So for your next project put this tip to the test, do your research and buy a domain with your primary keyword. Spend a little time on your on page optimization but concentrate on getting a few quality back links and start watching your site climb to the top! More tips to come soon.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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When we make discussion of verbs that will increase the punch of your website, the first impression is always that we mean to punctuate the perimeter of the copy with “Pow! Zap! Zing!”  Okay, perhaps not quite as dramatic as all that, but you get the idea.  The premise behind using strong verbs to accentuate your website copy is not to give the impression of shouting one word phrases at your potential customers.  Nor is it intended to over sell your site by claiming to be “the world’s number one….” or “the only …. that you will ever need!”  While these types of phrases have their place in certain formats of marketing, the style of copy that will gain the confidence and psychological vibes of the visitors to your site are filled with action and emotional verbs.

Action verbs will literally keep your visitors at your site longer by drawing them through the site.  Action verbs have the psychological impact of keeping your customers moving and the motion is what links them from one aspect of your site to another.  Skillful use of action verbs are what will convince your client of the necessity of your product or service, the urgency associated with the need for the service, and the intelligence and trustworthiness of the company promoting the product  or service. 

Another method of verb usage which is very successful in print copy are emotional verbs.  Any verb which can describe the emotional state of the person while they are in action brings the reader closer to the source of the action and promotes a feeling of knowing the person that the verb is describing.  A person can walk across the room, or they can trudge across the room, or they can saunter across the room or they can slink across the room.  Each one of these descriptive words not only conveys movement across the room but also provides a mental image of the person doing the walking.

This use of action and emotional verbs also amplify other words in the copy.  Rather than being wet, your customer can be drenched to the bone, which prompts a more urgent response to purchase your moisture wicking long underwear.  You get the picture.

Use of action and emotional verbs doesn’t come easy to some, it takes some practice.  Really all it takes is a little forethought and a good thesaurus.  If you are writing your own site copy, be sure the consider the way that you convey your message.  Be sensitive to the temperament of your product and try to relay that emotion to your site visitors through words and phrases that will bring them into the action of what you are attempting to sell.  Of course, if you decide to hire someone else to write your ad copy, you’re partially out of the woods, but not completely.  This is still your copy to take ownership of, and you need to proof the copy with the same critical eye that you would use if you wrote it yourself.
 

Popularity: 22% [?]

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I am often asked why do follow blogs are better than no follow?, the answer is pretty simple. For the newbie’s out there, do follow blogs pass page rank and help your ranking in the search engines, they also provide traffic. No follow blogs provide traffic and exposure, but do not help rankings. I will provide you with a compiled list of do follow blogs, please remember blogs change there status all the time and they may not all be do follow at the time of reading. Here they are:

ArticleSnatchBlog
CutieGadget
EricSocia
LcdLove
MenstrualPoetry
WomanTribune
OnARidge
FatLadySingz
PixelHeadOnline
Revellian
Logon
TriathlonTraining
YourWebsiteProfit
HowToWakeUpEarly
LondonerLife
LaughOutLoudDogs
BillHartzer
FootbagShop
NeoMeme
Marenda
SavingMoney
SunlightFlavor
TheBuffaloRiver.com
MeloVillaReal
Jakeldaily
TallFreak
BaseballInvestor
TheDarkLightOfLoveTheDailyFuzz
ErikKarey
RobertaFerguson
MarketingASolicitor
BloggersJourney
SecretsOfUnlimitedProsperity
Amorphism
Jenny’sCorner
JadeHat
News Notion
BrilliantCheers
Achille
ChrisHoyt
LinkItForMe
RamblingThoughtsBlog
BlogThatOutside
Tobsy
SweetAgring
LayerCake
PajamaProfessional

Please remember not to spam, and respect the blog owners.

Popularity: 27% [?]

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