3 Truthful Facts about Affiliate Marketing

By: CHERYL MUSTIAN

The reality about affiliate marketing is the fact that 90% of affiliates will actually earn less than $100 a month. Consequently, you shouldn't count on earning full time income unless you can get very good at the following:
1. Creating a good web site that converts.
2. Search engine optimization. You'll get need lot of traffic, as possibly 1 out of 200 visitors will buy your products. SEO can assist you get your site in the search engines so more people will be able to locate you.
3. The trial and error of picking the suitable merchants and learning the appropriate ways to promote them.


Too many people out there assume that affiliate marketing is positively a get rich quick type of program. These types of people will create a couple of banners, then wonder why they never make a single sale or any money at all.
How long you'll need to do it depends on how much money you are wanting to make. If you are a quick study and truly understand affiliate marketing, you may earn as much as $2,000 in 2 years. This is based on the fact that you are beginning at 0 and the fact that you have another full time job, not being able to devote a lot of time working with your affiliate marketing program.
If you decide to give it a try, the hardest challenge will be the first few months. If you check your stats and see that you are only making a couple of bucks, you'll find yourself wondering if all the hard work is worth it. If you get some sales going and stay committed with your hard work, the commissions should start growing.
One of the crucial factors with affiliate marketing is the traffic that goes through your site. Even though you'll get a lot of traffic passing through your website, only a fraction of the traffic will be buyers.
The key here is knowing your visitors and then being able to determine which affiliate programs you can offer to meet their needs. There is also the concept of pre-sale, which is the ability to put your visitors in the necessary open mind set that's essential for them to actually click on what you are selling.
By sticking with affiliate marketing, you'll understand more and more through the years. You can't expect to be the best when you first start, it'll take a lot of hard work and perseverence . By putting the time and energy into your programs, you'll be well on your way to succeeding in the very profitable and exciting world of affiliate marketing.

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Good Customer Service in Internet Business

Good customer service is becoming more important to us in our daily lives due to the fact that we are continually being placed at the mercy of automation by companies that we depend on. One example is our banks. Banks provide many self service automated functions such as self-managed computerized banking, customer service via email (live chat had an early death). While the self-managed customer appreciates these features, that we are often charged for, there are other times when we really do need some old fashioned, good customer service.


Another example of customer service disappearance is that our private doctors do not take calls nor do their staff. We now must listen to long menu systems in order to chose the correct mailbox option, or to find out that your option does not even exist in the menu system, which is usually "I just want to talk to a staff member!"

With that said, I run an Internet-based leather accessory business. We make it our #1 priority to provide not good, but excellent customer service. It is really a rather simple choice to do so because as we know, our history follows us in life! At Leather Gift Items, we do a few things that seem to make a difference in our virtual 24/7 e-tailer business, which we would like to share with you.

1. We always respond to customer inquiries immediately, by phone if possible, otherwise by personal email, not an automated email. Tracking information and obvious communications such as order confirmations should be automated, for expediency and efficiency. However, that is as far as we take it. Each inquiry, each order, and each shipment is handled by a person and we try to interface with our customer personally, if at all possible.
2. Good customer service can come in the form of anticipating a customer’s needs. Examples of good, bad or excellent customer service lie in the answers to these type of questions:
* Can the International customer actually return an item in less than 14 days if they live outside the United States?
* Can a customer contact me by an althernate method than email? Is that contact information information easy to find?
* Do I provide enough information, pictures, description about the products I sell for a customer to feel confident about their purchase?
* Are my communications to my customer courteous? "Please" and "thank you" are alive and well!
* Have I done my homework about the road blocks to good customer service, i.e. do spam filters continually block my communications?
* Am I able to set boundaries for customers who may take advantage, so that bad situations do not spin out of control?
* Have I spelled out my policies in easy view so customers do not have to wonder what the rules are?
* Do I go the extra mile when a customer has a special request?
* Do my customers feel like a number or do they feel that they have made a connection when they do business with me.
* Do my customers know that their orders are insured?
* Do my customers know how returns are handled?
* Do I provide tracking information and a way for the customer to monitor the delivery of their order so they can be home to receive the product?
* Do I provide quality merchandise and does it match the customer expectations?
* Do I stand behind my policies?

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How To Find A Profitable Niche

Author: Zachary Gaehwiler

There are many simple methods you can utilize to find a niche market for yourself.

The biggest problem internet marketers face when starting out is finding a niche for themselves. This was the greatest challenge for myself and many of my associates. There are millions upon millions of niches out there and new niches are born daily. Don’t worry, there are a variety of simple ways to find a profitable niche for yourself. Without a specific niche, you will not make money online or become a successful internet marketer. It is important to find a niche that you can relate to or have a passion for. Within this targeted audience you will have the most success and the least difficult journey. To find a niche for yourself all it takes is some research and evaluation.


The best way to find a niche for yourself is to be as narrow, specific and targeted as possible. For example, the idea of graduations as a possible niche is way too broad. You need to narrow that idea down to sub-niches such as: graduation speeches, graduation gowns, graduation banners, graduation decorations, graduation gifts, graduation planners...etc. A great way to evaluate your niche ideas is to conduct a Google search using specific keywords and take a look at the Adwords advertisements of the right side of the page. If there are 4-5 pages of results, you will need to have very precise keywords to run advertisements with low cost or PPC. However, if there are only a few ads on the right side you may have a million dollar niche idea.

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Why Do People Start Home Based Businesses

Author: Campbell Shaw

One of the most popular reasons is for retirement. A home business is a GREAT way to save for the future, the money earned through the business goes straight into a retirement savings account or any other form of savings that one might have.

One of the most popular reasons is for retirement. A home business is a GREAT way to save for the future, the money earned through the business goes straight into a retirement savings account or any other form of savings that one might have.


That means when you do retire you will have...
A: enough money to be comfortable and B: A residual income still being earned even though you are doing nothing but relaxing or travelling the world. That is one of the great benefits of your own home business. Do something once but get paid for it for the rest of your life. Retirement will be great when you don`t have to worry about anything but which tropical Island or ski resort you will travel to next.

So lets talk about the benefits of owning an International Home Business.

1. Work at Home Online:

Learn What Real Freedom Is Be your own boss in your own home business. Work when you want. Where you want. Flexible hours. No dress code.

2. A Family Business with Tax and Inheritance Benefits:

Your family can work with you ...allowing you tax deductions on help from your children. Plus, deductions for travel, publications, seminars, gas, phone, electricity bills, etc.. Save money. Plus, you can pass on your business to future generations.

3. Tap the Exploding Global Market of the Internet:

4. Build a Global Network of Success-Oriented Business Partners Worldwide:

Develop valuable contacts around the world! As a Home Business owner, you will associate with entrepreneurs, architects, doctors, engineers, investors, business people, teachers, secretaries, computer enthusiasts, managers, business owners, mothers, students, construction workers, housewives and people of all walks of life -- globally!

5. The Lowest Cost Way to Earn Income Online:

Thanks to the Internet, your business expenses are minimal. You can contact millions on the Internet via email, search engines, directories, free ads, etc. All free! No door to door sales. No postage. No printing. No brochures. No tapes. No videos. No long distance calls. Instant communication -- worldwide. Save loads of money.

6. Turn Your Dreams into Reality:

Anyone, regardless of country, financial situation, education, experience, or background has an equal opportunity to reap the rewards of success this opportunity offers. You could have your home in a country with a low standard of living and be able to earn more money than a person in the richest country in the world. This is because your income can come from the productivity of people in dozens of countries.

7. A Global Income is a Secure Income:

As the world becomes more global, the economy of one nation can affect the financial situation of all other countries. By having your income come from many countries -- no matter where you live, you will have a more steady and secure income.

They are definitely some of the benefits of owning your own home business. But more importantly these are the things that a legitimate and successful home based business company should be offering to its affiliates. If they are not, I suggest you keep looking.

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Top 10 Tips To Write SEO Friendly Article

Writing an SEO friendly article is one of the most important steps in process of link building. Here I am sharing the summary of tips and tricks to generate SEO friendly content. The process of link building is a long one. Remember Rome was not built in a day! I will not talk about the process itself in this article. What I would talk here is about the crucial aspect of content generation (basically writing SEO friendly articles) that happens when one tries to do link building. Content is the King! Good SEO friendly articles and content is what is required when you are into serious link building. Here I am sharing tips on how to write content that has an impact on your link building process. After all i am sure you are running a business then you are not writing content for charity, you are indeed looking for some link juice out there.



Here are to 10 tips to make your article SEO friendly:

1. Keep it Short - Limit your article to less than 1000 words. A long paragraph without breaks is boring. Best is to put things in short points (like the one you are reading) else you can break the article into small units, making the articles reader friendly. If its any longer consider break it into two posts.

2. Reliable Data - Give links to authoritative domains like Wikipedia when quoting facts. Don't give outbound links to non authoritative sites that seem spam. Mention reliable sources you used to collect the data. Always give credit to original authors. In return you might even get a link back.

3. Classic simple layout of content - Introduction, main content, and finally the summary. Keep it simple.

4. Choose Keywords before writing : Before you write any article think of keywords you are targeting as you write SEO friendly article (hint hint). Use the keywords in your article title (see the title of this article is Top 10 Tips to write SEO friendly article), start your article with mention of keyword in the beginning of the sentence. Search Engines just love this.

5. Multiplicity of Keyword: Use your keywords multiple time in your SEO friendly Article (see I used it again) Use in title, headlines of sections, and in sentences. Don't abuse it though.

6. Keyword Positioning - In your SEO friendly article try to have the keyword used at least two times. Best places to use are the beginning of sentence and at end of paragraph sentence. In addition try using the keyword as the first word of the first paragraph, as well as the last word of the article, can be even more effective(as an example see this article - Notice the first and last sentence in article both have SEO friendly article keyword)

7. Don't be greedy, Give out good links - After writing your article inject it with interesting links at appropriate places. Counter intuitive fact - You may even give a link to your competitor here (of course use rel="nofollow"), but the point is that the article is for your readers not you. It should make a complete read for them. You will end up winning finally when you get more diggs, readers, subscribers doing this.

8. Write article for readers not search engines - Don't abuse the tips in this article. Write for users not for search engines. Keep the reader engaged (I just hope you have reached till here)

9. Choosing right Title - If you are editing in HTML then give utmost attention to title. Title must contain keyword. Insert appropriate keywords in meta keyword. In meta 'Description', write about two sentences which describe briefly your article and contain the keyword at least once.

10. Be innovative and original - Use your own innovative ideas and knowledge. Update your articles whenever you find new things.

Follow these tips and create SEO friendly articles which will spread faster and rank better in search engine world.

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Quick Tips For Serious Real Estate Investors

You want to have a lot of leads and your marketing will bring them to you. Drive those leads into a local number even if you are not local to them. They are going feel secure. The prospect list that you are mailing to is going to feel more secure if they are calling a local number than if they are calling an 800 number. The perception of an 800 number is that it is a big company, but if it is a local number then it just must be the guy down the street that buys houses.


I also recommend using an answering service. If you have people go to voicemail you will lose 50% of your callers. Understand that motivated sellers are really hoping that nobody is there that way they can say well I called but nobody answered the phone. You have to have a live person answering the call. If you have a voicemail 50% of them will not leave a message. The other thing about an answering service is you are going to get seller phone calls at all times of the day and the night. And it’s not always going to be the most convenient time for you. You could be at a nice restaurant and all of a sudden you get this seller call and it is just not going to be appropriate. Or like me, I’m working on something and all of a sudden I get a seller call and it is hard to switch your mental thought process to get ready for this seller call. It is easier if somebody else answers it. One great answering service I recommend to my students is weanswer.com.

What you do is give them your script of questions you’d like to be answered. A live person will answer the phone as if they are your company. In other words, let’s say that you are Mike Buys Houses. They will answer the phone Mike Buys Houses how may I help you? “Um yeah can I speak to Mike?” They will take the information for you and ask the questions that you have in your script then e-mail you the details. Then you can call them back at your convenience. Even if you are going to call them back right away what an advantage it is to already have that information. Now you have the address so you can go in and pull comps before you call them back and know what the property is worth. You can figure out how much you think you might be able to offer for the property before speaking with them. The only thing that is going to be missing for you is repairs which you will get from them when you start talking to them. You can formulate your plan even before you get on the phone with them.

Remember when you get on the phone what your purpose is. The purpose at this point is not to try to sell your service to them. It is not to buy the house. The first purpose of the phone call is to prequalify the caller. Remember I told you you have prospects versus leads. You want to now separate the prospects from the leads. They are all leads coming in but what you want to separate is the tire kickers from the ones that are real motivated sellers. And that prequalification process should take no more than 5-10 minutes on the phone. What you are looking for is the answer to two questions.

First, are they motivated and second are the numbers going to work? Unfortunately you can’t say are you motivated to sell your house. You are going to have to build some rapport with them and find out from the questions you are asking what kind of motivation is there. Why is it that they are looking to sell there house right now? How soon do they need to move out? The biggest indication to me as to whether they are motivated is when I start asking some of the personal questions. How much do they owe on their house and I throw out some lowball prices. When they just laugh at me and they almost don’t want to continue on then I know that this person is not really all that motivated. When I explain why I need this information or I explain why my price came in so low and they say “let’s go on” I know I have a motivated seller.

The next question is; Are the numbers even going to work? Are we playing in the same ball park? I don’t have to zero in on the number yet, but I need to get an idea. If I can only pay $150,000, but they owe $250,000, then we aren’t even in the same ballpark. Or if they are adamant that they have to get at least 200 and I am at 150 well we are pretty far apart. If I can’t get them off that number then why go forward, because I don’t want to spend an hour with each caller. The first five or ten minutes is just about deciding whether I want to move forward with this caller or not. If they are motivated then I will spend an hour, hour and a half with this person really building a rapport. I will go as far as making some ballpark offers based on what I already know from the comps and from what they told me about the house. I ask them some questions about the house and based on what they told me give them a ballpark on what repairs will cost. I will give them a ballpark offer if they seem flexible, if it seems like something that they want, I will go to the next step. If it is a local house then go out and visit it and if you are working out of a different city then certainly you have somebody on the ground that you are working with. Don’t send your eyes on the ground to every house only to the ones where it looks like there is really going to be a deal.

If you handle your incoming leads that way then you won’t find your incoming leads to be overwhelming. So many investors complain about having too many leads coming in. You know I have 60 leads coming in I can’t spend an hour on the phone with each one of these leads. What you want to do is prequalify and find out which ones of are motivated and will turn into a deal. That is where you want to spend your time anyway right? You don’t want to spend your time with a tire kicker. You want to spend your time with somebody who actually has a deal.

by : Lou Castillo

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The key to make your Web traffic jump up is the"Search Engine Optimization" Strategy

Establishing a strong search engine presence requires proper optimization strategy and time.

But doing so typically yields higher quality website traffic and improved online visibility.

Google ranks pages according to several factors, but the top few include:


1. Whether or not you are a dot.gov, dot.edu, dot.mil, or dot.org. Dot.coms and dot.nets typically rate lower.
2. Longevity of the site
3. An optimized site
4. Constantly updated quality content on your site
5. The volume of inbound links, or referral "votes" to your site

There aren’t many things that can be done to affect the first two. The nature of your organization or industry determines what type of site you have, so that may not be an easy thing for you to change. The longevity of your site is what it is. The longer you are up the better you will be ranked.
However, the last three are all things that a quality SEO and website content vendor can improve upon and increase your online visibility and website traffic.

Google ranks pages according to several factors: for instance, Page Rank scores websites on the presence of incoming links. However, it's not just how many websites link to you; it's who is linking to you as well. It’s important to use quality links, such as with articles, or related industry websites with which you enjoy a relationship to improve your website's reputation and standing. Rotating links from relevant websites will also provide Internet users more opportunities to naturally find your website.

Another proven search engine optimization strategy involves incorporating multiple pages of quality content related to your business and its products or services. Instead of utilizing misleading techniques or expensive pay-per-click advertising, you can rank higher in search engines by providing visitors with what they want: information.

How Search Engine Optimization Strategy Has Changed

Search engine optimization strategy has changed dramatically over the years. At one time, all it took to rank high were pages full of relevant keywords repeated over and over again. Eventually, search engines became much more intuitive, now they can identify and ignore websites that employ these deceptive tactics, often referred to as Black Hat, so they can provide surfers with more accurate and relevant search results. Nevertheless, ranking high in search engines still requires a sound optimization strategy.

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10 Reasons to Start a Home InternetBusiness

When we have no financial worries and life is goin running well, it's not so easy to find a really strong reason why one should event think about starting a home internet business.

Such is life that we never know what is in store for us from one day to the next. Life can be really comfortable and easy one day and turned upside down the next, so it makes good business sense to have an additional source of income.

Do you ever wonder what the motivating factors behind successful business owners are? Here are some of the reasons that motivate people to start and succeed with a home internet business which may just give you food for thought.


1. A huge motivating factor to start a home internet business for some people is when they calculate how much capital they will require to enable them to retire and live comfortably.

2. Having to find a way to make their own income in order to provide for their family after being retrenched or losing their job.

3. Calculating how much money is required to educate their children and provide for college or university fees.

4. These days more and more people start a home internet business as a way of eventually replacing their salary so that they can quit their day jobs.

5. So many Moms want to stay at home with the children so as to avoid the heart break felt every morning when they drop a child off at the day care center or not being at home to welcome the child home from school or being unable to attend a school concert or sports event.

6. Many working people nowadays just cannot afford the little extra luxuries or a vacation with the kids and are sick and tired of trying to make ends meet. Instead of just existing they want more out of life.

7. Unexpectedly being encumbered by a huge expense resulting from for example a car accident or illness can be a very strong motivating factor.

8. So many have the problem of mounting debt due to the fact that their salaries can no longer cover the basic expenses.

9. Others have finally had enough of having less quality time to spend with their family due to the amount of time wasted and stress involved in travelling to and from a day job.

10. An increasing number of people now help their ageing parents financially as their pension is just insufficient to cover their expenses and so look for ways to make additional income.

These are only a few of the many and varied reasons that motivate people to start and succeed with a home internet business.

Whatever your reason, remember that it takes time to build a profitable internet based business so it is important not to wait for disaster to strike before getting started.

Rather plan ahead and be prepared and try and find a strong motivating factor to start an internet based home business now, so that it is already providing an income for you when you really do need it.

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