Frequently Asked Questions About Affiliate Marketing

Whether you are running an online business or a regular internet user who wants to make extra cash, affiliate marketing can be a great and lucrative way for you to earn online. But before you embark on this money-making opportunity, it is essential for you to know the fundamentals and important facts about affiliate marketing. 

Luckily, this guide can help you achieve that. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about affiliate marketing: 

Q: What is affiliate marketing?

A: Affiliate marketing is a marketing scheme that has been practiced by businesses and entrepreneurs for many years. Basically, it is a form of marketing based on performance, where a pre-set commission is paid to the affiliate who refers traffic to a merchant’s site that performs the requisite action, such as making a purchase. It is now used by thousands of online merchants, brands and companies to generate traffic and sales. 

In many ways, it is similar to referral marketing since both marketing forms rely on third parties to drive traffic and revenues to the business or retailer. 

Q: How does affiliate marketing work?

A: There are three major players involved in this marketing practice, namely:

• Merchant or retailer – This is a person or business selling a service or product. 
• Affiliate – The person responsible for promoting the service or product
• Customer – The individual buying the service or product
  
  

As a reward for the publisher’s marketing efforts, the merchant pays a commission to the publisher for every successful sale or when a commissionable event happens, such as, filling out a form or subscribing to a newsletter. The commission given to the affiliate varies program to program, often it is a percentage of the sale. 

Q: What are the benefits offered by affiliate marketing to merchants?

A: As a merchant and website owner, affiliate marketing can greatly benefit you in many different ways. 

For one, it helps you promote your product and brand to a wider global audience without having to spend a fortune. In fact, having affiliates can increase earnings by hundreds and even thousands of sales each month. Keep in mind that you will only have to spend money once a sale is made or an internet user responds to the CTA (Call to action).  Thus, with affiliate marketing, your cash flow will become a lot easier to account for and predict. 

Besides merchants and online businesses, affiliates can enjoy a few benefits from this form of marketing as well. With affiliate marketing, affiliates enjoy unlimited earning potential from methods, such as, email marketing, blogging, or building an affiliate niche site without the need to develop or support a product. 

In affiliate marketing, all an affiliate has to do is to promote and pitch the product to their own web traffic and then send them via an affiliate link to the merchant’s site. 

Q: Are there any qualifications in order to become an affiliate marketer?

A: There are no general qualifications for this kind of work. But, merchants have the full authority to turn down or approve an application from an affiliate. Some affiliate programs look for a particular set of qualities from their publishers and high quality websites that get the optimal amount of traffic. 

But, there are plenty of programs that approve all affiliates, such as, Amazon Associates. 

Most conventional programs reject affiliates with sites that have violent or sexually explicit content, as well as, those that promote political or religious views, advocate discrimination and violate a few international laws. 

Q: How can a merchant monitor his or her affiliate’s performance?

A: Merchants track commissions, sales and referral through web cookies and tracking links that embedded in affiliate links that use a personal identification that is assigned to each affiliate. 

In a nutshell, a tracking URL is a unique link provided by the merchant to his or her affiliate. With this link, a merchant can keep track of all the sales and traffic that are made through affiliate’s link. 

Q: Is a degree required to become an affiliate marketer?

A: No, only the knowledge of specific skills, and their implementation is required to start an affiliate marketing business. 

Q: How much can I earn as an affiliate?

A: This is not a question that can be answered in numbers, there are affiliates who are millionaires, they are known as super affiliates. Then there are those who make very little and everything in between. Earnings depend on the type of methods that are used, the level of commitment and work that is put in, and learning proper techniques which are implemented in the correct manner. One thing is guaranteed, the earning potential is unlimited.

Q: What are the most popular affiliate programs?

A: These are the most popular affiliate programs and networks:

• AWIN
• Wealthy Affiliate
• ShareASale
• Commission Junction
• LinkShare
• Amazon
• eBay
• Clickbank
  
• JVZoo
• PayDotCom

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How To Use Webinars For Successful Online Promotion

Chances are you have heard about webinars. You have probably even attended a few. That's because webinars are extremely popular right now. All of the big name gurus are using them to take their businesses to new levels. 

But, what exactly is a webinar and how can someone like you or I use it to promote our products and services online? 

What Is A Webinar?

Let's start by defining what a webinar is. A webinar is simply a web based seminar where you can share valuable information with a target audience. Notice the word target, this is one of the most important benefits of webinars. 

Since the audience has to register to attend a webinar they are already pre-sold on the topics that will be discussed and so they are highly targeted and convert better than other types of traffic.

Incidentally, this webinar in the image is an example of a Recorded Webinar (as opposed to Live Webinar).  The training is done by my mentor Paul and will give you FREE training on how to make money online if you watch it.  (The same training I accessed to get started in making money online.

WATCH NOW for FREE Training

Now as you can imagine, there are a lot of different ways you can use webinars to serve  business needs, here are three of the most important ones. 

#1 – Build Brand Awareness 

One of the best ways to build brand awareness online is by offering a webinar to your prospective clients and customers. The webinar can be either free or paid, this really depends on the goals that you wish to achieve. 

The main goal of the webinar should be to provide value. You want people to leave the webinar thinking you are an expert and the one they should seek out when they need help. 

The more webinars you have the more brand awareness you will be able to build and the more you will become the “go to” brand in your niche.

#2 – To Promote A New Product 

The reason that webinars are so useful for product launches is because the Webinar platform offers various media that can be used to present ideas, media that is much more powerful than a simple text sales page. 

There are videos, images, desktop sharing, PowerPoint slides and a lot more. For this reason, product launches and webinars seem to go hand and hand these days. This is because webinars are a sure way to increase sales and reduce refund rates. 

If you have a new product coming out people will want to know what it’s about before they invest in it. A webinar allows you to educate your audience and actually show them how your product can help them and solve their problems. Along with the great media options there is also the power of your voice that can be used to sway and convert those in the audience who maybe on the fence.

During the webinar be sure to allow for a live question and answer session. This gives potential customers the opportunity to have their questions immediately answered. 

You can also offer the product at a special discounted price for all who stayed until the end of the webinar. This is a great way to get sales coming in quickly. 

As you are just starting out as a beginner, you may wish to promote an expert's webinar to get started, that way they take care of all the arrangements to record the webinar and deal with the customer queries and you just focus on getting people to listen to the webinar and collect the commissions when they sign up or upgrade.

#3 – To Sell Affiliate Products

Not only can you sell your own products with a webinar, but, you can also make money by promoting affiliate products as well. 

A good way to do this is to interview the creator of the affiliate product you are promoting. Ask them a serious of questions. Try to keep the interview to around 60 minutes. That's the perfect time for a webinar. 

Another way to promote affiliate products through webinars is show them in action, such as the case with a software or service that can be demonstrated within the webinar.

Be sure to add your affiliate link to the buy now button so you will get paid for every sale.

Archives

Place archives for all the webinars you have done on your website so they may continue to serve your goals for an unlimited amount of time by engaging new traffic and leads.

5 Common Affiliate Marketing Pitfalls

Affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding and lucrative ways to make money online. 

As an affiliate marketer you will market and promote someone else's product for a commission. Earning on this commission based model of making money online has unlimited potential and has made some into dotcom millionaires.

And while affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online it’s not simple by any means. It takes a lot of skill, knowledge and commitment to be successful. If you are looking for overnight riches this is not the way to go. However, if you are looking to build a solid business that can make you money on complete autopilot for many years to come, affiliate marketing is most definitely a great option.  

If you choose to go this route there are a few pitfalls I want you to be aware of. These are the most common pitfalls that newbie affiliate marketers run into. 

Pitfall #1 – Not Building A List

One of the things I see a lot of affiliate marketers doing, especially the new ones, is sending traffic directly to the sales page. This is not the best method.

Your first line of business should be to build an email marketing list. 

• If you send traffic directly to the sales page you will get a one off commission and that's all. 
  
  
• If you build an email marketing list first you will be able to make multiple commissions off of one customer. 
  
  
• You will be able to build long lasting and on-going relationships with a targeted audience. 
  
  
• When you have a list you can market to them over and over for as long as they stay subscribed. 

So please, start building a list from day one.  Find out here how to start building your list.

Pitfall #2 – Promoting Products Based On Commission Only

You should care about the products you promote. Never promote a product based solely on the amount of money you will get per sale. You have to remember, your goal is to be able to make money for a very long time into the future. 

If you promote crappy products just to make a quick commission you will be out of business before you know it. You want to promote legit products you know your list and site visitors will appreciate. If you promote products that are irrelevant and don't produce results you will end up with a lot of refund requests and subscribers who do not find your messages credible. 

Pitfall #3 – Signing Up For Too Many Affiliate Programs

Just because there are a thousand great products with affiliate programs doesn't mean you need to sign up for all of them. 

Sign up for 3-5 if you are just starting out. Get those products set up in your funnel first and then add more as you become well versed in the business and start seeing success. If you sign up for a ton of affiliate programs you will overwhelm yourself and end up doing nothing.

 Pitfall #4 – Promoting Low Converting Products

Just because a product has an affiliate program doesn't mean you should promote it. Conversion rates are extremely important when it comes to the products you promote. If you promote low converting products you won't make very much money. 

Pitfall #5 – Having Unrealistic Expectations

Yes, there are a lot of people who make millions a year from affiliate marketing alone. However, what most people fail to realize is the amount of time, effort, learning and expertise it took for them to get to that level. 

A lot of newbie affiliate marketers expect overnight riches when they get involved with affiliate marketing. It doesn't work that way. You have to put in the time and effort if you want to be successful.

6 Blog Design Tips To Please Visitors And Lower Bounce Rates

Creating an effective and well converting blog design can be a challenging task, whether you do it yourself or outsource it. In reality, there is no one better qualified to determine what you want to achieve on your site than you, and so it is important to brainstorm, and test to come up with the proper design solutions that will increase conversion rates on your blog.

It is a fact that in 2022 the main ingredient in the online success recipe is originality, and this also applies to blog design and layout. 

But, no matter your approach, there are several elements to be aware of when designing your site that are universal must haves, read on to learn more about the most important elements to consider in blog design. 

Elements to Consider When Designing Your Blog

1. Pleasing Colours - The very first impression that a visitor has of your blog is visual, and a dynamic presence online should start with a nice, comforting blend of colours. You should maintain a balance, so do not go for the extremes, too light or too dark. Select a colour palette that well represents your niche. 

If you are using a banner image for your header, then use complimentary colours for the rest of the site. When used properly the right colour combinations can really bring your blog to life. 

One of the worst colour ideas is to use black background with white or yellow font. While this may be ideal for a gaming site, it is very hard to read. It's usually best to make text background white or a light colour, and use dark font colours, like black or very dark blue.

2.  Simple Site Navigation - Web visitors do not like to, nor will they stick around long to search too long for what they are looking for on your site. Navigation should be simple and easy to find, this includes the use of sidebar menus and top navigation menus. Simple to use site category widgets are always a good idea. 

Also, besides listing a Recent Posts widget on your blog, consider adding an archives or visitor sitemap page, such as that provided by the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin. This will allow visitors to reach all the pages of your site and if they are intrigued keep them on your site longer, consequently, reducing bounce rates.

Another thing to keep in mind is your calls to action and exactly what you want your visitors to do on your site, those calls to action should be easily accessible from all angles of the site.

3. Provide Related Posts After Content - Make sure to provide related posts within each piece of content on the blog, this keeps visitors around longer and lowers bounce rates. 

4. Threaded Comments - When comments are threaded and each comment has a separate reply button, visitors are often more inclined to join the discussions or share a viewpoint than when they have to browse comments and provide names in their replies to provide their viewpoints. 

5. Mobile Ready - Less and less individuals surf the web with their computers and even notebooks. Many think it is much easier to access the internet from their smartphones or tablet computers. When your blog loads fast and it’s optimized for mobile, visitors will find it easy to browse, read and comment and they will definitely return. 

6. Make Links Look Like Links - This is really important because if you want visitors to click on your links, for example, affiliate links, then they should stand out within the text font colour.

You should be flexible and open to innovation, to handle a broader array of internet users and to design your blog to be user friendly, welcoming and accessible by all types of computing devices. 

When your site visitors like what they see and the content they read they will undoubtedly return and tell their friends. Don't be afraid to experiment and test to find what makes your blog pages convert the best.

As previously mentioned, it’s important to various elements to see how users react and how they affect conversions on your calls to action, it is only by collecting and analysing data can you really zero in on problems and create fixes.

Best Methods For Monetizing Viral Traffic

Making money from viral traffic differs than that earned from other types of traffic. The fact is that viral traffic lands on your page without looking for something specific, as is the case with everyday traffic like that from the search engines or from a specific link on the web.

Because they come to see the content that went viral, the bounce rate of viral
traffic tends to be higher and conversions much lower. 

Viral Versus Regular Traffic Scenario

Consider that a user from a search engine comes to your site after searching for “buy coffee makers” or “best coffee makers,” these are “buy” keywords and they are obviously looking to buy a coffee maker so offers for those will be considered much more seriously and therefore are much more likely to convert.

On the other hand, another user comes to your site because you created a video that went viral because it demonstrates how to make iced vanilla ice cream latte, that user is not likely to be interested in buying a coffee maker. Likely, they already have one and that is why they want the recipe, or they are just curious. 

But, there are different ways to make money from viral traffic, read on to learn more.

Grow Email Lists

Make sure to have an opt-in in place and a great subscriber gift so you can get them on your list for email marketing purposes. This is a much more effective tactic than trying to convert them directly, and then you can market to them on an on-going basis via email. 

In the coffee example, you can offer an eBook of coffee drink recipes that will engage that traffic to sing up.

Engage Them To Subscribe To Blog Updates

Since viral traffic came to see a particular type of content, it’s best to offer them the same with a blog subscription form prominently placed near the target content they came to see. It is likely they will be interested in getting more of the same type of content in the future.

Prominently display the RSS feed button or the email blog update form, and then cater to them and keep them engaged with more great content. As they keep getting more interesting content, the likelihood of them buying something increases significantly.

CPC Ads)

Google Adsense and other CPC ads see high conversion rates because they are so highly targeted to the specific user that comes to a site. Typically ads are based on recent searches that user has done online and so when a site has a great deal of traffic those click rates and the revenue they bring can be substantial.

Advertising

One of the best ways to monetize high traffic sites that enjoy viral traffic is to offer advertising space. 

Advertising revenue increases significantly on sites that have a lot of traffic and it can be one of the best earning potentials for viral traffic surges. 

You can use various advertising platforms to connect with advertisers looking to buy ad space, such as, Buy Sell Ads, or engage in direct deals. Make sure to advertise your ad space on site and have an “Advertise With Us” page to provide all the necessary information to engage those looking to buy space.

Get Paid for Leads

When viral traffic won’t convert into sales, a good method of monetization is with CPA (Cost Per Action) affiliate programs. These programs pay anywhere from $2 to $40 or more per lead in specific industries. Netflix pays publishers $25 for every successful free trial sign up on their site. That type of payout can really be lucrative. 

The key to converting CPA offers is to make sure and choose highly relevant offers to the content on your site. For example, if your content is about cars and you create a video showing classic car restoration and it goes viral, relevant CPA ads can be placed that refers traffic to insurance companies. The fact that they don’t have to pay anything, just supply their contact information can lead to much higher conversions than other offers. 

Testing

The above methods, like any other online marketing tactics require testing to see what works best on your site and within your niche.

Test different methods, different ads and placements, and always make sure to have either a blog update sign up or email marketing list opt-in form with a great offers, as these two methods facilitate the ability to capture their contact information and cater to them on a long term basis. 

How To Lower Website Bounce Rate

You have built a great site, added stellar content, performed the requisite on site and off site SEO and now you are getting organic search traffic coming at a steady pace.

You can now sit back and toast your efforts because you’re work is done right? 

Wrong! 

There is still much more work to be done, and one of the most important jobs is to analyse site’s traffic behaviour and bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Bounce rate is a metric that is used to gage how long visitors stay on your site once they land there.

This metric can tell you a lot about what is wrong and right with the site. Also, it is a fact that Google uses bounce rate as a ranking signal in their algorithm.

Usually if visitors leave the site soon after they arrive it is a sign that something is wrong with the site, or they are not getting their needs met. This is how Google sees it. 

Exceptions To This Rule

Consider this for a moment:

If a user that comes to a website finds exactly what they were searching for, why should they stay even a second longer, or browse the site further?

If the landing page has some type of exit link that takes them away from the site quickly, such as, as an email marketing opt in, or affiliate links that are converting in optimal numbers, or their question was answered quickly and accurately, then likely that site’s goals are being reached. Though, the search engines, such as, Google, won’t see this as a good thing, the site owner won’t care much.

But, if that is not the case, and you expect visitors to stick around, or offers are not converting then you will need to find out what is wrong with those landing pages that have such low bounce rates.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer regarding what is an acceptable standard of bounce rate. It is important to consider the intent of the site to determine what % is acceptable.

Tips To Improve Bounce Rates

Content Quality Versus Quantity

While some site owners focus on having a lot of site pages and constantly updating, they fail in providing high quality content. This can result in a high bounce rate, especially when the site is focused on informational content that web traffic is not responding well to.

This does not mean that you should post once every three weeks, this means that there should be regularly scheduled content added, but, such that is high in quality and will engage visitors to maintain a low bounce rate. If you can’t swing the balance of quality and quantity you can always outsource.

Also, it’s important that the content be properly formatted for the web. What works best is short paragraphs, bullets, appropriate paragraph headers and an overall easy to read layout, as opposed to, long blocks or text and long paragraphs. 

Of course, content that is interesting, and portrays the personal voice of the writer who presents it, is usually more engaging than some generic write up that is dull and has no personality.

Site Design

The theme used on blogs and sites can also lower bounce rate. If the colors are not pleasing and easy to look at, people will leave.

Clean themes are usually best, they are classy and look good, and they allow you to show off your most important content, without it being drowned out by a loud design.

Here Are Some Considerations

• Is it easy to find pages on your site?
  
  
• Is the content buried and hard to locate?
  
  
• Is it clear where users should click?
  
  
• Will a quick scan of the page show users a clear picture of what they can expect to find?

Navigation

Navigation is another element of utmost importance in determining bounce rate. If, for example, the person that landed on a page likes what they read and wants to browse your site more, there needs to be easily accessible navigation of the entire site. 

Top menu bars and sidebar menus are ideal to display your most important pages to web traffic.

Placing related content after a piece of content will entice users to stay on and read more.

Too Many Ads

Are there ads, like Google Adsense, in between every 3 lines of your site’s content pages? This is annoying and can be a major culprit in high bounce rates. 

Ads should complement the content, not be an eye sore that annoys and distracts from what the visitor came to see. 

Pop ups can be especially annoying, particularly those that keep popping up continuously as someone is trying to focus on reading, watching a video or navigating through a site.

Users cannot be expected to navigate through a sea of ads to zero in on the content they were promised when they came to the page.

Sidebar

There is a thin line between an over populated and an under used sidebar. A sidebar has numerous possibilities, and when used correctly it can have major benefits for keeping visitors on the site and also for displaying your most important calls to action. 

Just as with the main content section of the site, too many ads in the sidebar is not always effective. Consider displaying your most popular content, such as, that that has the most comments. 

An email marketing opt-in can have a great home at the sidebar, and your social media follow links as well. 

Internal Links

If you have a reasonable quantity of content on the site then interlinking with relevant relevant keyword terms can also lower bounce rate.

Each page on your site should have at least one or two links to another page with a relevant relevant keyword anchor. 

This will engage readers to browse other pages on your site, and can help to lower the bounce rate. Coincidentally, interlinking also helps with on-site SEO as well.

Final Thoughts

Typically, a lower bounce rate shows that you are doing something right. But, unless your site is making good money or visitors are performing the requisite calls to actions on a regular basis, a bounce rate that is higher than 60% means that there are issues on the site that need to be addressed.