Day 1 - What Are Affiliate Programs?

Welcome to the wide world of affiliate marketing!
Affiliate marketing (sometimes called referral marketing) is based
business people.

So, what is an affiliate and what does he or she do?
The affiliate marketer acts as a middle man between merchant
and consumer, but without adding anything to the consumer's
cost. Affiliates do not mark up or resell products.
Instead, the affiliate educates and directs the consumer to a
product, and he receives a percentage of the sale in commission
from the merchant. The affiliate acts as an independent lead generator for the
merchant by bringing in new customers. This is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant.
The affiliate can reap a full-time income marketing a whole suite of
products that he does not own. He doesn't pay for product
creation, doesn't have to ship anything and doesn't deal with
customer service issues or returns. The merchant benefits from the influx of new
customers, the boatloads of cheap traffic and low cost
advertising. Merchants get their product and their brand in front of thousands of potential
buyers without paying a dime until someone makes a purchase.
It is truly a pay for performance arrangement.

Day 2 - Choosing an Affiliate Program

Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, it is
necessary to choose the right program for you. There are almost
as many programs out there as there are products! When you
first start out, it's easy to go overboard signing up to as many
programs as possible, but this isn't the right way to go about it.
First, you need to decide on a area of particular interest to you.

What products do you know the most about and think you could
do the best job of selling?
Once you identify your specialty, you begin by sorting through
the available merchants and examine the structure of their affiliate
programs.

Key areas to investigate:

1. When and how do you get paid?

Find out whether the program pays you weekly, bi-monthly,
monthly, etc. Most programs have a minimum payout amount,
meaning that you don't receive your commissions until hitting a
minimum number of sales for the pay period. You'll also want to
find out whether the programs pays you via check, direct deposit,
Pay Pal or any combination of the three. With our
PushButtonHealthGuide.com, we are linked to clickbank.com, you
will be rest assured that you will be paid accordingly twice a
month.

2. How much do you make per sale?

Remember you'll be investing your own money into advertising
and other expenses to promote these programs. Therefore, you
should seek programs which reward their affiliates well. You'll also
want to seek out high-value products. A fifty to sixty percent
commission on a $100 product is very good, but it's not so hot if
you're promoting a $15 product.
At the time of writing, we offer 75% of commission to our
affiliate, which is the highest by the industry standard.

3. Is the program managed well? Is this a reputable company?
Larger companies usually have affiliate managers devoted to
maintaining contact with their affiliates. Even if you go with a smaller outfit, they
should at least offer clear contact information. You might want to
try e-mailing them at their contact address to see how fast they
respond to you. Mismanaged programs are, at best, a sign of
disorganization and, at worst, could indicate a company in trouble.
The last thing you want is to be sitting on a grand worth of hard
earned commissions and see the merchant go out of business
before paying you.
Keeping these factors in mind, here are some great places to seek
out products you can promote:
www.clickbank.com <http://www.clickbank.com>
www.cj.com, www.linkshare.com
Commission Junction (CJ) and Linkshare provide affiliate hubs for
major brand corporations and mid-sized businesses. Their focus is
generally on tangible products and services. Clickbank is the
leading source online for affiliates of information products like e-
books, software and membership sites.

Day 3 - Five Approaches to Affiliate Marketing

As a new affiliate, one of the first things you'll want to know
where and how to promote your affiliate link. Today we'll cover
several options and discuss the merits of each method.
1. Direct Links via PPC Advertising If you use PPC advertising, you
can embed your affiliate to the
ad and send the prospect directly to the merchant's site. This is a
really lazy to do things, though. You might make a few sales, but
it's far better to approach the process as outlined in tactic
2. Linking to Your Site via PPC Advertising
Place ads for your target keywords and direct the prospects to
greet them with an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter.
Once you've collected a prospect's email address, they are yours
to market to on a repeat basis.
3. Build Content Focused Sites
This approach aims for long term traffic through search engine
optimization. You'll need to publish content related to the type of
product you're trying to sell. Searchers will be drawn in by
informative articles. You're affiliate links will be sprinkled discreetly
across the site.
4. Advertise in E-Zines
This is a good method to use if you can find targeted lists for your
product. E-zine ads can be purchased in most cases, and in other
cases you can snatch them up for free by bartering with the list
owner.
5. Purchase text link or banner advertising on high traffic sites.
This type of advertising isn't quite as popular as it used to be. It is
most effective when you can find high traffic sites for smaller
niche subjects. These sites tend to focus heavily on content and
run
only a handful of ads on site. Space is limited and rates are likely
to be at a premium.

Day 4 - Beating the Odds
This will be a cold, hard dose of truth, but you need to know the
facts. The majority of people who go into affiliate marketing fail to
break even. Some people will earn thousands in this business,
while others will struggle to generate even a few hundred in sales
per month.
Affiliate marketing is very competitive and cut-throat. You've got
to stay on your toes to win in this game. While I can't guarantee
your success, I can provide you with some fundamental
knowledge that just might help you beat the odds. Get ready to
learn how to play hardball with the super affiliates.
#1: Never Stop Searching for Profitable Keywords
Successful affiliates are never satisfied with the status quo. Even if
you endured hours sweat producing research to find your target
keywords,
keep on searching out new ones and adding them to your list.
#2: Become Obsessed with Testing and Tracking
If you aren't testing and tracking absolutely everything - and I
mean everything from your keywords, your ppc ads, your web
site copy and any
thing else you can think of to test/track, the odds are stacked
against you.
Successful affiliates are maniacal about testing and tracking every
detail of their campaigns. They are details oriented and use all of
their collected data to refine their entire system on a day to day
basis.
#3: Innovate and Update Constantly
Keep your approach fresh by testing new conversion tactics. If
you rely on PPC engines for advertising, start throwing in e-zine
advertising into the mix. If that doesn't produce the desired
results, investigate banner ads, classified ads, message boards,
offline media and anything else you can think of to get your
message across.
Don't rely on one conversion channel. If you send your prospects
direct to the merchant, change up your campaign and start
sending leads to your
own web site and start collecting email addresses. Experiment
with your content and your web copy. Try out different link
headlines. Never settle
 
for the familiar. Tweak everything until you've squeezed the
maximum conversion power out of it.
#4: Pay Attention to the Industry and Communicate with Other
Affiliates
The world of affiliate marketing changes every day. There is
always a new tactic to implement, a change in the rules at one
advertising service or another, a serious technology failure at one
of your merchant's sites and so on.
Even though affiliate marketers are rabidly competitive group,
they are also quite helpful and willing to trade information and tips
with one another.
You should bookmark the following sites and make a point of
visiting them weekly if not daily:
http://www.associateprograms.com/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/

Day 5 - The Importance of Building a List
Out of all the possible approaches to affiliate marketing, lead
capture and list building represents the smartest and most
effective option.
Why?
A lost visitor is a lost sale. A lost visitor is the loss of potential
repeat sales. Think of it this way: you're putting time and money
into your advertising. If you aren't capturing your visitor's email
addresses,
you're basically throwing all of that traffic right down the drain.
When you capture your visitors to your list, you open a whole
new world of profit opportunities - not just for the short term,
but for the long term as well.
The Benefits of List Marketing
 You can educate your prospects. This will increase your
conversion rate by giving you the opportunity to turn hesitant
prospects into enthusiastic customers.
 You can market to your prospects over and over again. Your
long term profit potential exists in repeat sales. Never work for
just one sale.  You can double your return on investment while lowering your
advertising costs. Once you've got a list in place, you don't have
to limit your offerings to just affiliate product. You can bring in any
additional, related products of interest to your list and make sales
immediately without going through the same advertising process
all over again.

Can you see the benefits yet? Why spend money over and over
again sending people to the same page and hoping for a sale,
when you can capture them to your list and have full control over
the conversion process?
Any other approach leaves you at the mercy of the merchant's
web copy and the customer's mindset at first contact. You've got
to lure your prospects in and expose them your message multiple
times. This will save you so much time and money you'll wonder
why you ever did it any other way.

Day 6 - Advanced Topics

We've come to the last day of the course, and it's time to tie up
the loose ends and cover some advanced topics.
As you know by now, affiliate marketing can be incredibly
rewarding when done properly. There are also a lot of pitfalls you
need to watch out for as well. One of these is merchant fraud.
Merchant fraud, unfortunately, does happen. Merchants can use
any number of clever tactics to cheat you out of your commission.
One of these methods is to offer multiple payment options to
customers without linking each one
to their affiliate tracking software. For example, let's say that a
merchant offers credit payments, payment via Paypal and
payment via check to the customer.
The merchant tracks your affiliate ID up to the point of sale and
credits you if the customer chooses to pay via credit card through
the merchant's main payment gateway. However, if the customer
chooses Paypal or check, your
affiliate ID is immediately tossed.
The only way around this clever trick is an exercise of caution on
your part. When you evaluate a potential affiliate program, check
to see how many payment methods the merchant offers.
Secondly, after you sign up for an account, examine you referral
links. In fact, if you have the budget to spare, follow your own
link and choose one of the alternate payment options and
purchase a product. Did you get credit for that sale? Great! If you
didn't receive credit, though, it's time to can that merchant and
move on to more ethical waters.
Here's another 'advanced' tip to consider: use affiliate networks
like Commission Junction to evaluate potential merchants. Joining
programs via a network is often a better choice than signing up at
individual, non-networked sites. The reason is simple: membership
in an affiliate network imposes stricter standards on merchant behavior. You also have access to a
wealth of data on the overall performance of other affiliates in
that merchant's program.
Last but not least, you need to focus on building trust among
potential customers. If your merchant site doesn't do a very good
job of this, then send your visitors to your web site. Make it clear
what products and/or information you have to offer.
Also, be vigilant about posting your contact information in a
prominent place. Anonymity might be fun in a chat room, but it
turns off consumers very quickly. For an extra advantage, consider
having your site evaluated ¡°net cop¡± programs like the one at
http://www.i-cop.org/, and get your site listed in the online
section of the Better Business Bureau's web site.
 
Day 7 - Let's Work On it!
Now you are fully equipped, let's do some work today and rake in
profits together!

You may consider joining our lucrative affiliate program here:

http://www.pushbuttonhealthguide.com/affiliate_signup.thml