WHY TO START AFFILIATE MARKETING?

 WHY TO START AFFILIATE MARKETING?

Affiliate marketing is a low to zero investment business. It will provide you with instant product through choosing among thousands of vendor's products . You do not need to create your own product which takes time to research and requires resources, and  you will not run risk of  not attracting enough customers to generate sufficient revenue, because when one product does not work well you can quickly switch to other without losing any money. You can make use of free blogging platforms, blogger, free web hosting, with no need to buy your own domain, you can also host your blog or website on subdomains such as ecommerce.accasupport.com, and earn a high commission by selling the product without paying for credit card payment process, designing e-book and its covers, protecting e-books, after sales service, which are accomplished by vendors.

Affiliate marketing is highly rewarding job, you do not need to work every day for eight hours as an employee, you are flexible to work form home, anywhere , at any time, full time, part time, taking holidays without affecting your affiliate marketing growth. It does not require any academic or professional qualification, it requires patient, time, hard work to learn internet marketing skills. It will not make you an overnight billionaire, so my advice to you is not to quit your job and you start earning reasonably.

Remember, affiliate marketing will only work if you are willing to research and treat it like a real business. Real businesses do projections even before they have a product. If you want to set concrete and attainable goals and reach them, you must be familiar with the metrics. To paraphrase Peter Drucker: what gets measured, gets managed. Learning how to project your affiliate earnings lets you create a sustainable marketing strategy.

In my blog, I'll be teaching you how you can compute your earnings, how to make affiliate marketing profitable for you, and the types of payment terms used by most affiliate programs along with why affiliate marketing is the ultimate win-win scenario.

WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?

 WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?

Affiliate marketing is PRINCIPAL (vendor) and AGENT (affiliate marketer) relationship. Affiliate marketer receive COMMISSION from vendor after completing delegated TASKS such as sales completed, forum sign up, click on vendor link etc. Tasks with higher risk of non-payment such as sales completed carry higher commission, unlike tasks such as click on vendor links carry lower commission.

Affiliate marketing is one of the internet marketing strategies available for vendors, affiliate marketers should adopt to other internet marketing strategies to monetize via affiliate marketing.

People who’ve never tried affiliate marketing either think it’s too easy or too hard for it to work. Some even believe only the lucky get rich and all others won’t be able to make more than a couple of bucks a month. In reality, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. One truth I’d like to make clear is this: Affiliate marketing is NOT easy money and you won’t get rich overnight from it, but it is the easiest way to make money online as a beginner. There is money to be earned in affiliate marketing, but whether you’ll earn from it or not will depend on a lot of factors such as your commitment, experience, site traffic, etc. that i will discuss them later in MY BLOG.

HOW TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG?

 HOW TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG?

Every business owner who's ever hosted a blog has experienced the frustration of trying to gain readership. Though we’d all like it if readers just magically came to us, the reality is, it takes some work to build an audience.

It’s easy to get frustrated and just give up on blogging, but once you experience the benefits, you'll understand that your blog can have a tremendous impact on your business by attracting traffic to your site, helping you build a social media audience and making an impression on prospects and clients alike.

Following are 20 proven strategies that can help you boost readership and increase traffic to your blog.

1. Write more.

Studies show that the more often you update your blog, the more traffic it will receive. Google gives higher priority to websites with fresh content, so if you want to get more attention from the search engines, update your blog at least twice a week.

2. Promote with social media.

Share each new blog post across your social media networks, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. If you spend time cultivating your networks and share great content, social media sites can become some of your top traffic sources.

3. Write better titles.

The titles for your blog posts are almost more important than the content itself. That's because titles help potential readers decide whether they should click and read more. Pay attention to the article titles you see on magazine covers. They entice readers with promises and solutions. When you do the same, your readership will increase.

4. Know your niche.

While you may be interested in sea life, exotic travel destinations, Little League baseball and weight loss, you'll confuse your audience if your content doesn’t follow a clear theme. Decide who your target audience is, what they want to read and what specific messages you want to convey.

5. Include photos.

Studies have shown that photos in blog posts boost readership. Not only does a photo make the post more visually appealing, but you can also include keywords in the Alt Image tag on the photo, boosting search engine optimization (SEO) for your site. Keep in mind that you can’t just pull any photo from Google because you risk violating copyright laws. Instead, locate royalty-free images from a site like Clipart, Vectors and Royalty Free Photos at Clipart.

6. Incorporate keywords.

Speaking of SEO, keywords are at the heart of SEO. One of the easiest ways to generate more traffic to your website is to ensure that every page on your site has a keyword strategy. So for each blog post you write, choose one key phrase that you believe readers would use to find that post. Next, incorporate that phrase into the title of the post, the headline on the page, within the content on the page at least two times, in a featured image on the page and also as part of the page link. Keyword concentration helps Google understand what that page is about, which can ultimately lead to more traffic from the search engines.

7. Incorporate links.

When you mention another company’s product or service in a blog post, include a link to that company’s page. Not only does Google like to see outbound links on your site, the company you mention may also notice your post and link back to you. Plus, readers appreciate it when you provide resources to make it easier for them to find the things they're looking for.

8. Add social sharing buttons.

At the top and bottom of your blog posts, make sure you include social sharing buttons for Twitter, LinkedIn and the other major social networks. Make it easy for readers to spread the word.

9. Retweet past content.

We aren’t all looking at Twitter at the same time, so when you share a new blog post link, the majority of your fan base won’t see it the first time. Repeat your tweets, and don’t be afraid to share past content. Readers don’t care when it was written as long as it’s still relevant.

10. Invite guest contributors.

When others write for your blog, you add more content that you didn’t have to write yourself. As a bonus, those contributors will also share with their networks and may ask you to write for them, opening up new readership avenues for you.

11. Add video.

Google owns YouTube, which is one of the many reasons that videos can drive more traffic to your site. Supplement the written content on your blog with short videos that are informative and entertaining.

12. Invest in promotion.

If you believe your audience is spending time on Facebook, occasionally invest in sponsored posts. For as little as $10, you can “Boost” a post and increase its reach significantly.

13. Conduct give-away events.

Create fun theme days such as “Free Book Fridays” where your readers can win a prize by submitting a comment or sharing your link via social media. You can provide prizes yourself or invite companies to donate or sponsor these promotions.

14. Write guest posts.

Locate other blogs that reach your target audience, and offer to contribute guest blog posts. If the site has a substantial audience, you can bet that readers will in turn want to engage with more of your content.

15. Cross-promote to your mailing list.

Instead of writing all new content for your electronic newsletter, share the first paragraph from several recent blog posts and include a link to continue reading on the site. Not everyone is taking the time to read your blog each week, so this will help get your subscribers invested in your blog.

In addition to the tips above, the following smart strategies will also help increase readership:

16. Make your content easy to read by using plenty of subheads, bullets and numbered lists.

17. Promote your blog in your email signature and your bio in any online profiles.

18. Make it easy for blog visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed.

19. Invite readers to leave a comment, then respond and let them know you’re engaged.

20. Finally, have fun with your blog. If it feels like drudgery, your readers will notice. But if you enjoy producing the content, that will come across and have a tremendous impact on your success.

SUMMARY

Getting more people to read your blog is both an art and science. Employ these 20 tips on how to get your blog noticed.

HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR BLOG NICHE?

 How to choose your blog niche?

The best formula to choose a best topic to you blog is:

YOUR INTEREST + YOUR SKILLS= PERFECT NICHE.

But a niche does not have to be your passion although it is definitely easier to stay committed to starting your blog when you are passionate about it. But it does have to be an interest of yours. The best niches are exciting enough that you will be motivated to continually post about it, and accessible enough that you can build an audience.

Now if you are unsure of what your niche should be, answering the following questions below will help you more to decide:

1. Why do you care about the topic you want to blog about?
2. Why should other people listen to what are you saying?
3. Why is this a topic that you can add value to?
4. What is a dream from your childhood that you find exciting?
5. What is the absolute part of your day?
6. Do you have any hobbies that you want to learn?
7. What is a deeply held value of yours?
8. What’s one achievment that you are incredibly proud of?

If you want to make money from your blog, you also want to do a bit of research to see if there is a market demand for your niche. Are people actively searching for what you want to write about?.

some niche examples:

1-Health: - Fitness - General Health - Healthy Food.

2-Parenting: - Raising Children - Home Schooling - Babies.

3-Marketing: - Online Marketing - SEO Marketing -Affiliate Marketing.

What is GETRESPONSE?

 

What is Getresponse?

Getresponse is an email marketing app that allows you to:

• create a mailing list and capture data onto it

• send emails to the subscribers on your mailing list

• automate your emails to subscribers via use of ‘autoresponders’

• view and analyse statistics related to your email campaigns – open rate, click through, forwards etc.

In recent years however, Getresponse has shifted its emphasis considerably: the product now aims be more of an ‘all-in-one’ e-commerce and marketing solution rather than just an email marketing tool.

Accordingly, in addition to email marketing, Getresponse now also provides e-commerce features, webinar hosting, landing pages and automated sales funnels.

Getresponse has been in business since 1998 and, according to the company, over 350,000 individuals and businesses now use the platform for their email campaigns.

Whilst this userbase is not as big as those of some other email marketing tools (notably Mailchimp), it is large enough to provide confidence that the company is well-established and is not likely to disappear any time soon.

Getresponse pricing

There are four Getresponse plans:

• Basic — starting at $15 per month to send an unlimited number of emails to up to 1,000 subscribers

• Plus — starting at $49 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers

• Professional — starting at $99 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers

• Max — negotiable.

As you add more subscribers to your list, the costs increase. At the top end of the scale, you can expect to pay $450, $499 or $580 per month to use Getresponse with a list containing 100,000 subscribers on the ‘Basic’, ‘Plus’ and ‘Professional’ plans (respectively).

With regard to the “Max” plan, exact pricing depends on requirements and list size — if you’re interested in this plan, you’ll need to contact Getresponse to schedule a demo, discuss your needs and negotiate pricing.

Decent discounts are available if you pay upfront for 12 or 24 months of service (18% and 30% respectively).

In addition to the paid plans, a 30-day free trial is also available, which you can access via this link.

Key differences between plans

All the Getresponse plans cover the email marketing basics you might expect — core features include:

• the ability to import, grow and host a subscriber list

• a selection of themes to use for your e-newsletters

• autoresponder functionality

• responsive email designs

• split testing

• landing pages

• in-depth reporting

• RSS / blog to-email functionality

• list

   segmentation options

There are a number of differences between the ‘Basic’, ‘Plus’ and ‘Professional’ plans, but for me the key ones are below:

• Automation builder — arguably Getresponse’s standout feature, the automation builder (which allows you to build complex autoresponder sequences based on user behaviour) is only available on the ‘Plus’ plan or higher (you can create 5 automations on the plus plan; or an unlimited number on the other plans).

• Conversion funnels — you get access to more automated sales funnels as you go up the pricing ladder.

• Webinars — this functionality is not available at all on the ‘Basic’ plan and the number of webinar attendees is capped for the ‘Plus’, ‘Professional’ and ‘Enterprise’ plans at 100, 300 and 500 respectively.

• Team management — you can only have one user account on the ‘Basic’ plan; by contrast you get 3 on ‘Plus’, 5 on ‘Professional’ and 10 on ‘Enterprise.

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• E-commerce — the abandoned order recovery feature is only available on the ‘Plus’ plan or higher.

How does Getresponse pricing compare to that of its competitors?

So long as you are happy to use one of the entry-level ‘Basic’ plans, the pay-per-month Getresponse plans are on the whole cheaper than those provided by many of its key competitors, particularly if you have a reasonably large number of email addresses on your database.

At the entry level database end of things, Getresponse’s pricing is fairly competitive — you can host a database containing up to 1,000 email addresses for $15 a month with Getresponse, compared to $29 per month on Aweber and Campaign Monitor. The pricing for Mailchimp’s broadly comparable ‘Standard’ plan is $14.99 per month.

As you go up the pricing ladder, Getresponse remains competitively priced.

If you have a contact list containing 10,000 records, hosting it on the ‘Basic’ Getresponse plan costs $65 per month.

This works out:

• $4 per month cheaper than Aweber

• $24 per month cheaper than Campaign Monitor

• $40 per month cheaper than Mailchimp (Standard Plan)

Some other things to be aware of on the competitor pricing front are:

• Some competing providers — notably Mailchimp and Aweber — offer free accounts for users with a small number of records (note however that these do not offer the full range of features that you get on a paid plan).

   Getresponse doesn’t yet offer a similar free plan.

• Some solutions (Mailchimp again being a prime example) charge you to host both subscribed and unsubscribed contacts, which can become a significant hidden cost. Getresponse only charges you for your active subscribers.

• If you are prepared to pay upfront for 1 or 2 years, you can avail of substantial discounts with Getresponse that other competitors don’t yet provide.

So the bottom line is that its lack of an entirely free plan aside, Getresponse stacks up well against competitors in the pricing department.

Key Getresponse features

By comparison with other email marketing tools, Getresponse comes with an unusually large feature set — even on its entry-level plan.

Not only does Getresponse provide all the key stuff you’d expect from an email marketing platform — list hosting, templates, autoresponders, analytics and so on, but as mentioned above, it’s recently been expanding its feature set to the point where has morphed into an all-in-one marketing and e-commerce solution.

The question is whether all this makes the product a jack of all trades and master of none.

Let’s drill down into its key features to find out.

Autoresponders

Autoresponders are e-newsletters that are sent to your subscribers at intervals of your choosing.

For example, you can set them up so that

• immediately after somebody signs up to your mailing list, they receive a welcome message from your business

• a week later they could receive a discount offer for some of your products or services

• three weeks later they could receive an encouragement to follow you on social media.

And so on.

Getresponse’s autoresponder functionality is a key selling point — the product provides some of the most comprehensive autoresponder functionality available.

You can send either time-based or action-based messages; time-based options include cycles such as the example above, and action-based messages can be triggered by user actions or information, for example:

• opens

• clicks

• subscriptions to particular lists

• changes in contact preferences

• completed transactions / goals

• birthdays

• changes in user data

Marketing automation tools

In addition to the basic ‘drip’ style autoresponders mentioned above, Getresponse provides a more sophisticated option for sequencing emails automatically. This is called ‘Marketing Automation,’ and is available on plus plans or higher.

This feature allows you to create automation workflows using a drag and drop builder — you basically set up an ‘automation flowchart’ that instructs Getresponse what to do if a user opens a particular offer, clicks on a certain link etc.

The functionality on offer here goes far beyond what’s traditionally been available from autoresponders, and allows you to create a user journey that can be customised to the nth degree.

Getresponse email templates

There are around 115 Getresponse templates available — less than some competing email marketing solutions (notably Aweber, which offers around 700) — but they are varied in nature and the designs are very contemporary (and tweakable).

The email templates are grouped into a few categories focussed around core goals (promoting, educating, selling etc.).

The quality of all the templates is high and I’d have no reservations about using them for my email campaigns.

There is one omission worth flagging up however — the option to set ‘global’ styles for headings and text. As things stand, the template editor doesn’t let you define heading and paragraph styles that you can re-use throughout a message — this means more formatting of text as you compose emails, which is a bit of a pain.

On the plus side, the Getresponse email creator allows you to make extensive use of web fonts. A really wide selection of Google Fonts can be used in your e-newsletters — more than any competing tool that I’ve tested to date.

This wide selection of web fonts is great, because — given the prevalence of Google fonts in corporate branding these days — it will help many users to create email campaigns that maintain brand values.

It’s important to remember that not all email programs support use of web fonts — you can specify a ‘fallback font’ in Getresponse to accommodate those — but in the ones that do, emails created via Getresponse have the potential to look very nice indeed.

Finally, the Getresponse templates are all responsive, meaning they adjust themselves automatically to suit the device that an e-newsletter is being viewed on — mobile, tablet, desktop computer etc.

A preview function is available to see how your newsletter will appear on each.

Analytics

Getresponse offers a good range of analytics and reporting options.

You get all the basics of course — open rate, click-through, unsubscribe rates and so on — but in addition to that, there are some very nifty reporting features that are worth a particular mention, namely:

• ‘one-click segmentation‘: the option to identify people who did not engage with an e-newsletter you sent and put them in a segment of subscribers which you can then email again with a different version of the e-newsletter

• ‘metrics over time‘: you can find out exactly when most of your subscribers take action on your emails, and time your future mailouts based on this information

• ‘email ROI‘: by adding some tracking code to your post-sales page on your site, you can find out how effectively (or not!) your email campaigns are driving sales, and work out your return on investment in email marketing.

• per-user information — you can click on one of your subscribers and see where they signed up from, where they’re located and which emails they’ve opened in the past.

• e-newsletter performance comparison — you can compare the performance of two e-newsletters side-by-side really easily.

Mailchimp and Aweber offer some similar reporting functionality — particularly where sales tracking is concerned— but Getresponse’s reporting tool is definitely one of more fully-featured out there.

Split testing

Split testing involves sending variants of your e-newsletters to some of the people on your subscriber list, monitoring the performance of each, and sending the ‘best’ version to the remainder of your list.

Getresponse allows you to test run split tests using up to 5 subject headers or content variants. However, you can only use one variable at a time during a split test — for example, you can test two emails with different subject headers against each other, but both versions of the email must contain the same content.

Some other email marketing tools are a bit more flexible in this regard, allowing you to test using more variables (for example send time or sender name) or the option to mix variables during tests.Landing page creator

Online advertising campaigns that make use of landing pages will usually generate far more leads if, rather than simply directing people to an information-packed website, they point users to attractive ‘squeeze pages’ containing clear information and a clean, well-designed data capture form.

Getresponse offers something very useful in this regard that many of its competitors don’t: a landing page creator (and one that’s mobile-friendly too).

Not only can it be used to build squeeze pages, but you can test the conversion rate of these pages against each other in real time, and roll out the best performing one. This can have a massively positive effect on the number of leads you capture and improve the reach of your email campaign.

Similar products often require you to make use of a third-party landing page creating tool like Unbounce or Instapage to attain this sort of functionality, so the inclusion of the landing page feature is a really useful — and cost-saving — piece of functionality to have in your email marketing toolbox.

HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM?

Affiliate marketing programs have sky-rocketed in popularity in the past few years. As one of the fastest and easiest ways to start an online home business people are jumping on this wave by the millions. Affiliate programs offer merchants the opportunity to employ vast armies of sales people who get paid for the results they achieve.

The rewards for affiliates can be very good, and the skilled affiliate marketer can earn many thousands of dollars per month. This win-win situation has led to an explosion in the number of affiliate programs that are available to affiliate marketers.

With this growth of affiliate opportunities have come many questions, such as: how do you go about choosing the right affiliate program for you? What qualities should you look for in a program and which gives you a good chance of making a sustainable income? Below are some tips that will help you to evaluate affiliate programs, and help you to avoid wasting time and money.

1-What Commissions Does the Program Pay?

It is very important that you know how much you can expect to earn from a sale. There is no point in spending time and money promoting a product that pays very small commissions. You could end up spending more on marketing than you make on sales. It is probably best to stick with marketing products with a high commission value, unless you have found a niche market where you can sell vast quantities of product, and make substantial commissions on your volume of sales.

2-How Much Traffic is their Website Getting?

Try to discover the amount of traffic the affiliate owner’s website is already receiving. Alexa.com is a very useful tool for doing this research. If the website is ranked in the top 100,000, the merchant is getting a good volume of traffic, so it’s possible that there may already be too many affiliates. If it is ranked below 500,000 it may be no good, or it could be a golden opportunity to make some real money by becoming one of the first affiliates!

Always research a merchant’s product if their website has a low traffic ranking. It may be a good idea to buy the product yourself if you can afford it. Otherwise you could do a search to find out if there are any negative reviews about it on the internet. Be careful who you listen to though because many people are in the habit of bashing affiliate programs with nothing to really support their comments. If you find a large amount of negative reviews with little positive ones then it would probably be a good idea to stay away from that affiliate program.

3-How Often Are Affiliate Commissions Paid?

Some affiliate programs pay commissions every week; some once a month, others only pay every quarter. It is important that you know how often you can expect a pay check if you are going to have financial control over your business. Do you have the financial resources to continue to market a product if you have to wait a long time before you get paid? It would also be wise to find out the minimum commission that you have to earn before you get paid.

4-Does The Affiliate Program Use Tracking Cookies?

Many customers do not buy on their first visit to a merchant’s website. It is important therefore that the merchant uses cookies for their affiliate program, so that you get credit if the customer returns and buys at a later date. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer the cookies lasts; the better the chances of you getting paid!

5-Does the Affiliate Program Pay on Subsequent Sales?

Some programs will only pay commission on sales that come through customers visiting their site via a direct link from your site. They pay you nothing for any subsequent purchases that the customer makes if they visit the merchants site directly. It is important that you get paid no matter what route the customer returns by if you are to build a sustainable affiliate business.

6-What Marketing Resources Does the Affiliate Program Offer?

Look at the type and quality of the marketing resources that they provide. Do they provide articles, advertisements, or other content that you can use to put on your site? Do they provide free guides, special offers, free viral e-books, or product samples that you can send to your list? If the marketing material they provide is good then it is likely that the business will provide good support for their affiliates.

Finding the right affiliate program for you can be tough to do. The best advice is to do your own research, follow the advice above, and listen to your instincts. Use the above questions as an aid to finding an affiliate program that enables you to reach your financial goals. You never know… You might just strike affiliate marketing gold!