Turn Freebies into Cash System - Lesson 2

Turn Freebies into Cash System - Lesson 2

What is Affiliate Marketing

Now ... I'm sure by now you're familiar with "Affiliate Programs". If not, I'll briefly explain: An affiliate program is a program where a merchant will pay you a commission to refer folks to their website. If your referral buys ... you make a substantial cut of the profit.

You receive a "special" link that has your affiliate ID in it and that's how the merchant knows you're the person who referred the sale to them. And, it seems nowadays everywhere you turn webmasters are enticing their website visitors into clicking on a banner or a link and then you're instantly re-directed to an affiliate's website to buy – CHING! And that's a great thing!

The problem is ... most of us are becoming more and more "blinded" by all the flashy banners and links we see on every web page we visit ... and that means less and less profits for those websites who spend a significant amount of time, money, and effort into promoting these programs.

Do these webmasters make money from their referrals? Yup! Do they make a lot of money? Well. .. that would depend on the amount of traffic they get to their website and the clever strategies they use to send folks off to their affiliate partners.

But you really need to consider these factors as well:

· How much time do they spend out of their day updating, adding and editing their affiliate links (remember ... time is money).

· How many costs are involved in hosting and maintaining their website.

· And most importantly ... How much money do they spending getting all the traffic to their website.

These three big factors (amongst other things) can make or break the success of any website. Think about it...If Joe Webmaster makes $1000 a week from affiliate referrals but he spends 15 hours a day at his computer, spends $300 a week hosting and maintaining his website, and spends $700 a week on marketing, search engine optimization, and internet advertising ... Do you think Joe Webmaster is making a nice living online? Hell No!

This poor sap is spending his entire life on his business and coming out at a break even point at best. Yes ... he could brag to all of his friends about how he gets a "hefty" check every month for X amount of dollars from his affiliate partners ... but he's only kidding himself and practically wasting his life away in the process!

Plus... many of us aren't web designers so we'd need to pay to have a site designed and maintained and that could end up being a huge expense in itself – cutting into our profits from our affiliate commissions. I don't want to spend my life in front of my computer! And ... I want to be able to see a real profit from my efforts online! And I certainly don't want to have to rely on someone else to update my website for me ... NO WAY!

Wouldn't you agree? And that's why my system doesn't require a fancy website, 15 hour days in front of the computer, or a big advertising budget to see any real profit! As I mentioned previously .... all you need is a computer, an affiliate account or two ... and a keyboard... that's it!

For now, forget the fancy website or big advertising budget! We don't need it! We're going to capitalize on an ingenious method where we simply write one article a day (approximately 700-1000 words) and in that article we offer a detailed, unbiased review of someone else's product. That's it!

Then, we're simply going to submit our article (product review) to some of the most popular article directories online – directories where folks browsing the web frequently visit to read on specific information they're searching for.

The good news ... many of these article directories get tens of thousands of hits per day. They're all well ranked in the search engines already so they've done the marketing for us. Talk about exposure for our articles! YEEE HAWW! No big fancy website ... No big advertising budget ... Just an hour or so of our time each day to write a quality product review (in the form of an article) about someone else's terrific product or service!

What an ingenious concept ... no? So ... let me ask you ... "DEAL OR NO DEAL?" (hehe ... I love that show)! Alright... sorry I got off track there. Anyway ... rest assured, I'm also going to provide you with a system to submit your articles to hundreds (even thousands) of these directories with just a click of your mouse.

Plus, I'm going to share with you some of the most popular directories out there so that you can check them out for yourself (Hey! I told you you'd have to do some homework on your own!)

So.. just to recap a bit.... · We've setup a few affiliate accounts with Clickbank, etc· We're going to find some products we're interested in reviewing and write a short product review about that product. We'll then submit these article to some popular article directories.

And here's the kicker...Once we've written our article, we are afforded the opportunity to place a small "About The Author" byline at the bottom of each of our articles. Many article publishers use this "ad space" to tell folks a little about themselves and then also place a link back to their website.

Well ... guess what! We don't have a website. We don't want a website! So ... we're going to use this small ad space to place a brief note about our affiliates website and also use our special "affiliate link" in the process. This way, when someone reads our rave review about a particular product, they just might want to learn a little more about it. So, they simply click on the link at the bottom of our article and VIOLA! We get credit for the referral and more importantly a commission if this person decides to buy the product.

Dang! I love the Internet!

And think about this ... Once you start writing these articles on a daily basis and submitting them to the various article directories ... they remain on that directory's website indefinitely! So, the more articles you have written, the more money you'll begin to see coming in from all those affiliate referrals. Cool huh?

And, by using affiliate accounts through Clickbank and PayDotCom, they handle all the tracking and also issue your commissions on a set schedule so you don't have to worry about whether or not you're accurately getting credit for your referrals or getting paid on time.

They handle EVERYTHING and they do a great job in the process! Well ... that about sums things up for this lesson... But in the next lesson we're going to go over some of the most popular article directories and I'm going to show you a few tools you could use to submit your articles to these directories with ease! It's gonna be a real eye-opener for sure! Just you wait and
see....

So, for your homework tonight ... why not jump on over to Google and do some searches for "article directories". Then, take a look at some of the articles you see there and also check out the various topics that you can browse. There's a plethora of information awaiting you.

Also, pay special attention to the "about the author" sections and also the style and formatting most article publishers use for their articles. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the wealth of information available that you probably didn't even know existed.

It's a golden opportunity.

Now that you have the basics of what Affiliate marketing is we can now move onto the very important part of choosing a profitable product.

To do this you must understand Niche marketing and Keyword research.

Niche Marketing - What Is It And How To Choose One

Deciding on the niche market you will target is critical to your success so this is a subject that you should not cut any corners on. One of the critical aspects of you achieving success online is that you understand niches and the impact they have on your internet business including the most important task on how to find a profitable one.

A tip on checking if a niche is hot or not that I use is by going to Clickback. Do a search in the Clickbank marketplace on the category the niche you are researching is in.

In the field ‘sort by’ choose gravity, you can choose this from a the drop down menu in the search window.

Gravity gives you an indication of how popular a product is, generally if you find at least 6 to 10 products in the category that you have searched with a gravity above 10 it will mean that the category is very profitable, if you find categories with a number of products in the 100’s then you may find the competition to be very tough and maybe not the best to start out in if you are a complete newbie.

Now don’t forget to keep in mind that it will help you if you have a genuine interest in the niche that you choose.

From what you have learnt alone with the techniques on how to find a profitable niche you should have picked the niche that best suits you.

Turn Freebies into Cash System - Lesson 2