How to Find Good Affiliate Programs to Promote

      

Affiliate Programs 

Because there are literally thousands of affiliate programs on the internet these days covering almost every product and service you can imagine.  Finding the right affiliate program can be a daunting task, but it pays off;  So it's worth the effort.  If you are new to affiliate programs, here is a good list of things you can do to find the right program for you:

First, you need to know that for the business owner, affiliate programs are seen as a virtually 'free' marketing tool that allows them to generate additional business without investing in any significant upfront costs.  Because affiliate programs pay based solely on their performance, they usually have nothing to lose by recruiting more and more affiliates.

This is an important thing to keep in mind because most affiliate programs will do their best to present themselves as a great affiliate match for any given site because business owners see that they have if you can't generate sales.  There's nothing to lose.  However, if you are into affiliate marketing, you do so because it means it has lost income potential.

You need to learn to define your audience For example: do you have general traffic or specific types of visitors?  Does your audience primarily consist of a particular age demographic?  Male Female?  If it's possible, first determine what kind of potential buyers you would have visited your site.  This is again called "finding your target audience Remember to write everything down.

Secondly, you must decide which industries are best for your audience.  Before you can start looking for affiliate programs, you need to decide what type of content will most appeal to the audience you just defined.

In the example above we are dealing with middle-aged women who were looking for entertainment (maybe they were on a chat site, reading stories, playing games, whatever).  Then try to decide what your target audience is willing to spend a little money on.  Write this down too.  Actually, just for the record, write it all down!

Now you have to see if there is a good Affiliate Program that sells that stuff.  I know this sounds like a given, but you'd be surprised how many affiliates put on affiliate programs because they pay high commissions, only to find out it doesn't matter because nobody knows anything.  is buying.

Here's a good formula to always remember:

No Buyers = No Money

Think about it this way;  If your web site is related to your interests, would you buy it?  Now how do you go about applying that principle to the audience you just defined?  From whom can they buy?  Now you have to try to reduce it even further by using programs that have the best reputation, commissions, marketing materials, and of course trying to add it to the offers of the real buyer.

This part should be the easiest if you implement it individually.  Use your common sense about the price of the products or services you will be marketing for these programs;  They may pay 50% commission, but do they charge twice as much as the buyer?  If so, would you be willing to pay those prices?

Of course you want good commissions, but you also need to market something that people will actually buy or you won't get at all, which is usually a fair price from sellers!  You may earn less per sale, but think about the sales volume and the right balance that makes you the most money.

Avoid any affiliate program that offers nonsense deals to the buyer.  Compare commission structures, and try to find programs with a good history of conversions and prompt payouts.  You need to pursue affiliate programs that have good commission structures and good conversions (how many visitors does it take to get a sale?) You also want to make sure you get paid!

Don't forget to read the Affiliate Terms first!
You might be surprised how many affiliate programs have certain terms buried in their fine print that don't work in your favor, so I've given you a sample merchant contract to give you an idea of ​​the terms that might be on their side.  Inside.

When it comes to how many sponsors you need, you should first consider how much money you have.  If you're just starting out, it's best to try out a few sponsors to find out who will perform best.  How many programs should you start with?  Try as many good, relatable events as there are, that you can give a reasonable 'chance' to promote in a reasonable amount of time.  Remember that whoever sponsors your website is investing in your capabilities as well.

If your website has a lot of traffic, you may be able to rotate dozens of sponsors on your site.  If you only have a few hundred visitors a month, you should limit yourself to just a few, as you don't have the audience to support a large trial of affiliate programs.  You need to send a little bit of traffic to an affiliate program before you can really gauge its performance, and you probably don't want to be in the 'testing phase' for months on end, so you need to arm yourself accordingly.  should be limited.

Finally, you should start by knowing that sending 5 visitors to an affiliate link without a sale is not a fair test.  Depending on what you're selling and who you're trying to sell it, it can take a lot of traffic to start seeing revenue.  If you remove affiliate programs without a proper shake, you may be defrauding yourself of the proceeds;  Maybe the next visitor is your first sale.  The moral here is to be patient again!

At this point you are ready to make some money.  If you have narrowed down your list a lot, don't worry, try to find other related things to sell from various affiliate programs, rather settle with mediocre programs that you have removed from the list.

Once you've given the programs enough time to examine the results, you're ready to narrow down your affiliate programs to programs that work for you. Let's look at at least two of the best affiliate programs.  Take a look at the ones I've seen and worked with so far and what they have to offer.

ClickBank

There are many reasons why I love the ClickBank affiliate program so much.  ClickBank Marketplace is a great program that helps you generate revenue which is included in their affiliate area.  This site is a friendly, resourceful site that generates traffic, drives sales and runs on its own.

ClickBank also has a professional design and is fully developed as a search engine fed by ClickBank's marketplace of over 50,000 products and businesses.  ClickBank Marketplace offers an automated database update system and ClickBank cookie features that give you a commission on sales from visitors for up to three months after a visitor leaves your site!

The commission percentage structure is based on monthly revenue through sales from your ClickBank ID.  You get the commission rate set by the partner site from 5-65%.  This is one place where you won't have to sit around and wait for your check because ClickBank lets you pay through faster locations like PayPal.

ClickBank not only allows you to accept credit cards on your web site without the need for a merchant account, it also provides other ways you can generate income.  I will highlight five different ways to start making money with ClickBank by the end of the day.

1. Become an affiliate for ClickBank  products

You can easily sign up as an affiliate through their website: http://clickbank.com and then you can take a moment to see the full range of products that are available in their marketplace for those products.  what you want to promote,

It's like buying.  For example, you can start by looking at the appropriate category on products that you have good control over.  You should find products that match your existing business well and that you are able to promote on your mailing list.

 To promote a product, you simply create a Hoplink, which is designed in the following format:

http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?nickname/merchant

 All you have to do is replace the word 'nickname' above with your own ClickBank alias and 'merchant' with the merchant's surname.  It's that easy.  If you're not sure what the merchant's nickname is, you can always go to their sales page and get it from their sales link which will probably look like this:

http://www.clickbank.net/sell.cgi?Merchant/1/ProductName

where 'merchant' is the surname of the merchant.  Or you can find an automated way to generate hoplinks by trying to find it on the page below:

http://clickbanktoolkit.com/promoteaproduct.html

 2. Sell Your Product Through ClickBank
There's no better way to make money online than selling your own product, and with ClickBank you can get started with it very quickly and with little hassle.

You can sell 50 different downloadable products through ClickBank with a single account and it costs less than $50 to become a merchant, not the hundreds of dollars it often takes to set up your own merchant account.  .

The best part is that you won't even go it alone.  There are literally thousands of web masters who sell their products through ClickBank.  Some of these people include, but are not limited to: Ben Prater, Joe Vitale, Jeremy Burns and Jim Edwards.

3. Sign Up Your Own ClickBank Affiliates
When you sign up with ClickBank as a seller, you can start recruiting affiliates to sell your product almost immediately.  If other affiliates are getting commission from selling your product then it means you are also making money.  The best part about this is that you can choose what level of commission you want your affiliates to receive.

4. Refer New Customers to ClickBank
You can make great money only by promoting ClickBank.  You can get full details about it here: http://clickbank.net/reseller.html You won't make millions from this referral but it is useful as an additional income stream with commissions that range between $0.05 and $10.00  may be in between.  When you're trying to make some money, every little bit helps.

5. Promote a ClickBank Storefront
What makes ClickBank such a great program is that ClickBank actually has its own Marketplace which is pretty much functional, but different companies offer 'storefronts' for all (or some) of the products listed in ClickBank's Marketplace.  and each of which will have your ClickBank affiliate alias associated with it, which will put you at even greater risk.

The idea is that you can promote your own storefront, and receive commissions from the people who go to and buy the listed products, which is attractive to all web affiliate marketers.

The most powerful link up I've seen so far is http://www.CBGold.com, but there are others you can check out at 1stPromotion.com and ClickbankAffiliates.com for comparison.  I guarantee it will be worth your time.

Paydotcom.com

PayDotCom.com is much like ClickBank with an alternative 'marketplace' approach to an affiliate network.  PayDotCom itself offers many enhancements and unique approaches to affiliate marketing.  Specifically, sellers can offer an unlimited number of products for sale for a lifetime subscription of only $29.00.  Sellers pay commission only after selling a product and not before.  PayDotCom also provides :-

One Tier or Two Tier Affiliate Program

monthly billing

Ability to sell digital or physical products

gives instant commission

track hits and stats live

PayDotCom will ensure that you see an immediate increase in the sales of your products!  Not only this;  But establishing yourself as a seller is going to be completely hassle free.

With PayDotCom, you will not face any wait for any product approval, as you can take advantage of a simple and easy cut and paste HTML buy button, awesome affiliate program with your own customizable affiliate page  No set-up mandatory and 90 days money back guarantee.

One of the best things about using PayDotCom is that you don't have to spend $50 every time you set-up a new product.

In fact, your first product is actually free!  You can get your money deposited into your PayPal or StormPay accounts instantly which makes life a lot easier than constantly waiting for checks in the mail.

You don't have to worry about those lost commission sales because someone took your XXXX lwEh I.D.  And relaxed it with them either.

PayDotCom gives you every reason to choose them with the amount of services they offer.  At PayDotCom, you can rest assured that they are just as interested in seeing you make money as you are.  You can earn up to 85% sales commission by engaging your customers with any of the products and services available in their market.  Sign up is also free.

With PayDotCom you can earn great income for your customers by promoting their product links or putting the link on your website.  You can also use the Marketplace to find products and services that will be of interest to people visiting your site.

Under each product or service on the market, you'll see a description of the affiliate program so you can be sure they meet your needs.  All you have to do is click on the description to promote that product or service.

PayDotCom provides you all the links and promotion tools from the seller's affiliate tool when you select the product.  Then you can better keep track of all your statistics through PayDotCom.

As you can see, there are a lot of benefits to using both PayDotCom and ClickBank.  It's all about which company you would prefer.  If you want, you can always go through both of them.  In the end, it is all about the commissions and both the websites have a lot to offer in this regard.

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how to protect your commission

protect your commissions

As I mentioned in the section above, there can be many problems on the trader end of commission tracking.  I also briefly talked about the issues related to affiliate links.  Many people are a little nervous about clicking on affiliate links like this one:

http://www.johndoe12345.com/affiliateid

I really don't know why people do this, but it's just that they are not aware of the fact that if a site owner has gone to the trouble of providing valuable information on their site for free, it will include  nothing is wrong.  Getting money for that effort.

Simple fact: the best affiliate networks are actually $$.  earn

You have to make revenue with banner, pop under and in-view ad networks, whether you lie to it or not when using affiliate marketing.  Advertisers pay on average by impressions (up to $14 CPM) and clicks (up to 50c CPC) and you get paid 65% of the total revenue from that ad.  Sounds great doesn't it?

Quick payouts, control over ads, steady revenue stream are highly recommended.

The fact is that some people will have a tendency to hover their mouse over an external link and then look at the URL in the status bar of their browser.  If you think there is an associated code or URL;  Your visitors will simply mark the top level of the domain and type in manually in the address bar of their browser, or if you mentioned the company name they can simply do a search to locate the company home page  .

Protecting your affiliate commissions.

There are a million different premium software products on the market ranging in price from US$15 - $50 for specialized software that will help you protect your affiliate commissions.

Their effectiveness and ease of use are about the same, so before you pay for one of these software applications, you should try some of these suggestions.  I have listed strategies from least effective to most effective.

Install Banner Server: Banner servers don't just display banners;  Many new ad servers will also display text links.  The link coding associated with frequently shown ads is usually so long that your visitors won't be able to see the status bar where it was directing them.

However, when you consider how difficult it is and how long it takes to set up an ad server, it's probably the least effective tool if you only have a few affiliations.

Click tracking software and scripts: Nowadays, you can get a click-counting software application that won't show the target URL because the links point to software that is usually installed on your site.  After you click on the link, the click tracking application redirects the visitor to the URL you specified in the script.  Click tracking software also provides a great way to monitor how effective your ads are and not just rely on reports provided by merchants that may be false.

These scripts can be easily found on any search engine using the following search request:

Click Counting Scripts That Are Free"
These are usually fairly easy to set up.  The most effective ones I've used are based on PHP scripting.

JavaScript Link Cloaking"
You should be able to see it in the first part of your affiliate link, the second part shows you what will be displayed in the browser status bar and the last part is the link text.  The link is set to open in a new window so you don't lose any visitors from your site.

This method is not foolproof and depending on the affiliate software being used by the merchant, the affiliate link may still appear in the address bar after the merchant page is loaded, although the visitor may have visited the merchant site and cookies.  It should have a merchant set up with your ID.  By using links like these, you can usually see an improvement in conversion rates.

Using keyword articles and reviews to increase revenue
As I've said before, you have to generate traffic to your site, and one of the best ways to do this is to introduce keyword rich articles and reviews on your website because this is how you will establish a bond of trust with your visitors.  .  .

When your website has content-rich articles and genuine reviews, your customers will know that you know what you are talking about and will start relying on your website for information and only then you can sell similar products.  Sellers can contact "Like" merchants.  , services or ideas as yours.  By doing this your website will also be filled with new content for your regulars.

Your regular site visitors will see you as an authority on a particular topic, so it only makes sense that you should write a review on the product or service you are advertising. Many websites like www.cnet.com offer product and service reviews for the things they're selling because it makes it easier for surfers to decide between products. I'll admit I'm on this stuff  It also provides excellent material for catching search engine spiders as the information changes quite regularly.

If you are going to use this particular advertising article concept to promote products, then you need to believe in what you are writing because if you don't believe in it then you will get visitors to believe in it.  How can you expect to do? Research the product and company thoroughly and try it out if you can so that you can offer the specifications.  Contact the company and let them know what you are going through and ask for further resources and support if needed.  Once you have created a review, send them the link as you might be surprised at the response you get like this.

choosing the right keywords
As I said earlier, keywords are used to help you generate traffic to your website.  This is why it is so important that you choose the right keywords for your website.  When you choose keywords, you should choose words that are not just related to the content of your website, but that actually describe the content.  When you do this, you will avoid getting the wrong type of traffic and actually get the type of traffic that can bring you some business.

For example, if you're using your website to sell dog food, you'll want to get traffic from people looking for dog food, not people looking for dog collars.  are in.  If you choose "dog" as your keyword, you will get a lot of traffic to your website, but you are not guaranteed to get any sales from it.

Think about it, how often do you search the web, only to find yourself smack dab in the middle of a website that has nothing to do with what you're looking for, except that the site is a generic term.  or word phrase that you used in your search query?  This happens to me all the time and when I first start the query I automatically leave the site and just freak out a bit.

The main point I'm making in this section is that when you reach sites with a certain quotient of regular traffic already established, it becomes easier to gain affiliation.  This will surely make it easier for you to connect with other websites as it shows the progress in your endeavor.  This would be great especially if you are seeking pay per click.

You might be wondering how any of these will help you in your affiliation search in real life.  Ok?  Links coming from sites related to your topic will get you Google and Yahoo!  Like can give proper boost in engines.

Google has a tendency to group related pages into groups that are dedicated to a specific topic.  At the heart of these clusters are pages with lots of inbound links from sites in the same cluster.

If you can get a link to one of these major sites, you're in luck, as search engines will find your site more relevant to queries related to this specific topic.  What is it actually called? Affiliation!  It helps a lot if the text of the inbound link contains the keyword phrase for which you are optimizing the page.  Search engines like Google try to find out what the main topic of your page is.  One way to do this is to analyze the main theme of the sites you link to.

You should also avoid link forms.  All link free-for-link farms set up to increase the link popularity of participants should be avoided at all costs.  This is because those clever people have found ways to spam link popularity rankings by setting up link farms, where members are guaranteed links from other member sites in exchange for adding a similar link page to their site.  Basically a link farm is a public affiliation.  If you are trying to use this method to get more business, you want to go with a private affiliation as it is not as open to spam artists.

Those people are also very smart as Google has started penalizing sites that have link-form pages, and expect other search engines to do the same thing as it does.  If you are a member of one of these plans, you will need to delete the Important Links page and ask the others to remove them.

what is online marketing

There are also lots of free-for-all link collections, "directories" and "search engines" available for cropping webmasters' e-mail addresses.  Therefore it is also not recommended that you post your email address on your website as well.  These harvesters look for the @ sign used in email addresses and add them to spam lists.

It is for this reason that you will lose points with the search engines on your website so you should avoid these automated search engine links at all costs.  Genuine website affiliation requires that you do much more than just add a link, so be careful!

You have to look for related sites
When you are hoping to get your website name out there, you should try to list your site on the most important sites in your area of ​​interest.  To achieve this, you must do the following:

1. To find sites related to you, search through the categories in Open Directory.  Then study some of the most promising to find out which sites are most popular in the region.  You can also look for sites that have links to your major competitors as well.

2. Build a content-rich site that's full of high quality that's bound to pique the interest of the editors of the sites you're contacting.  It simply means that you can put any and all relevant and up-to-date information on the topic that you can find.

3. Create a Recommended Links section on your own site that will interest your visitors.  Keep in mind that each link should be accompanied by a description.  Typically, the most effective link pages are those that include brief reviews of relevant sites.

You should optimize these pages by adding specific keyword phrases, and you will get some additional legitimate doorway pages for free.

In the end, all this website optimization only leads to one place.

connection
As you can imagine, we are finally at the stage where we are actually going to talk about website affiliation.  I bet you weren't expecting it so soon.

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Creating an Affiliate Partnership

Creating an Affiliate Partnership

When you decide to become an affiliate marketer, you are basically just asking another web host to add a link to your website to theirs which will bring your website more traffic and hopefully generate more sales for them, which gives you a commission sale. Of course, there are some things that affiliates look for in a website before they will sign you on as an affiliate. Before you even consider signing on as an affiliate, you should make sure that your website has something to offer that theirs doesn't.

To be more specific, even if you are going to a ?like? website as an affiliate, you don't want to approach a site that is selling the exact same thing as you because that makes you direct competition with you. For example, if you are selling designer clothing of a particular label, you do not want to try to go to a

site that is selling the exact same items as you, but a like site that may offer the same brand, but not the same items. That way, both sites are selling the same label, but can push each other's sites for the items that they don't carry.

Once you know exactly what type of website you want to run and which web companies are actually offering you the right revenue sharing opportunities for products and services that complement your web site genre, you can't just offer to put up banners and buttons on their behalf. It is best to begin by writing up a review page of the product or service and how it will definitely help boost sales, especially if you are recognized as being knowledgeable in your field.

One of the best ways to show that you know what you are doing is to offer articles and reviews on your website about your items for sale. Keyword articles are best for getting search engine to come calling. You can also put in a brief history of the product's inception etc. Basically just put in as much information as you can about your product or service so that visitors and merchants will know that you are on top of things and know what you are doing. Here are some more things that you should do when dealing with potential affiliates that you are trying to get in with.

Talk to People

Talking to people could not only increase your sales, but also save you some heartache in the long run. It is very easy to talk to an affiliate company, and you can start by contacting the merchant, let them know what you are doing to promote their product and ask their advice as to how you could improve your marketing technique. Think about it, it is always best to approach a potential affiliate with a standing technique in mind as well as an outline of what you plan to do to help them. If you have the means, try it out for a while so that you can approach a merchant with solid facts backing you up.

When you ask the merchant for advice you are setting yourself in great standing with them and showing them that you understand their knowledge. After all, the merchant knows their product best right? They would also have a very good idea of the strategies that are used by other affiliates to boost sales. Don't bother checking for this information on an affiliate site because you will not be getting to the nitty gritty of it.

By contacting the merchant yourself, you are also showing your enthusiasm for marketing their products and services and that you are working to become known as a "power" or "super" affiliate!

Any merchant who understands affiliate marketing knows that over 90% of sales are generated by less than 5% of their affiliates. A good merchant will see your efforts and give you further information and resources and may even boost your commission fees as a result of your efforts and success. All of this means more money for you both!

Dealing with merchants directly:

When you are dealing directly with a merchant, there are some things that you have to realize. You need to know how to deal with them but also what to expect to encounter from the as well. That is what this section is going to help you with. Let's take a look at some of the various things that you can expect to hear and deal with when going through a merchant.

a) If you are going to go to the trouble of emailing a merchant and they don't respond the first time, do not worry about it, be persistent because many merchants receive countless numbers of emails daily and take time to sift through them and weed out the spam. If they still fail to respond to your, think twice about continuing promotion on their behalf because a lack of communication can also be indicative of other problems such as payment or just plain disinterest. You should also bear in mind that some merchants work on the shotgun principle. What this means is that they make big

promises, set a high payouts knowing full well that few affiliates will ever reach it. Next thing you know, they get as many affiliates promoting their products and services as possible which will give them the maximum exposure, with the minimum cost and effort on their part. It's not a good business model for them to use in the long term and after a while affiliates drop away, but not before the company has raked in thousands. Many MLM (multi-level marketing) programs also work on this principle and only the guys at the top generate any serious revenue so you need to expect this and watch out for it.

A good way to protect your payments from merchants is to sign up for affiliate programs that are extremely well established ad networks such as Offers Quest or FastClick if you want to get paid for your work. When you are working with a major ad network means that even if you only make a few dollars from each program, those dollars that are generated will all feed a common account, accumulate rapidly which will allow you to reach the payout threshold in a shorter time period. Most ad networks work with merchants on a "money up front" or monthly "pay as you go" basis because this decreases the risk of those merchants who are suddenly disappearing with your hard earned commissions. For this to work, you need to demonstrate your web marketing prowess

b) Unless you have a web site that already generates high traffic, don't ask the merchant for higher commissions in the first communication. So many affiliates do this and end up being totally ignored because most affiliates probably can't deliver on their promises due to the fact that too many of their claims are unachievable. If you don't have a solid sales record for the product or service you are promoting, you'll need to prove yourself to merchants off the bat and put some thought into your promotion and rack up a few sales before attempting to secure higher payout rates. Be professional in your communications

c) When you are communicating with merchants, you have to make sure that you use a professional manner not the laid back style that you use when talking toy our friends. If you have suggestions of how a merchant could improve an offer that would convert into more sales, let them know, but be very polite and constructive in your feedback 'not insulting by saying things like: "Your banners suck" because this will alienate them .

d) You have to remember that the Internet as a trading place is still very new in comparison to the business platforms of the last few millennia like regular advertising through television or newspaper ads. Some of the quality companies that are offering an affiliate program may be just breaking into this side of marketing and will appreciate any feedback you can give them.

e) A smart merchant understands that good affiliates can't be found everywhere as is often assumed and hoped. Merchants need someone that acts business like and treats them with respect, assists with resources and provides prompt payments. Smarter affiliates understand that a merchant wants quality promotion and sales performance for minimum outlay. Successful merchant/affiliate partnerships happen when both parties understand these points and work together because that is when the money starts rolling in.

Here is a sample of the type of contract that you can expect to see from a merchant and/or some of the listings that will be in it. Sample Affiliation Contract was located at and provided by: http://partners.pcsecurityshield.com/agreement.html?CLIENT_NAME=nextaisle

PUBLISHER TERMS OF AGREEMENT

PCSecurityShield ACTIVELY monitors traffic for Fraud. If we detect Fraud, your account will be made inactive pending further investigation.

1. All websites, newsletters, companies, or individuals need official approval from PCSecurityShield, Inc. ("PCSecurityShield") http://www.pcsecurityshield.com before they can become an Affiliate Partner ("Affiliate"). Only websites and newsletters that have been reviewed and approved are permitted to use the programs. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to withhold or refuse approval on any website, newsletter, company, or individual for any reason, whatsoever.

2. In order to be eligible for affiliate approval, all websites and newsletters must meet the following criteria:

1. Be content-based, not simply a list of links or advertisements, nor can the site be centered around making money off of our advertisers

2. Be written in English and contain only English language content

3. Receive a minimum of 1,000 unique page views per month

4. Have a top-level domain name

5. Cannot offer incentives to users to click on ads; incentives include but are not limited to awarding them cash, points, prizes, contest entries, etc.

6. Be fully functional at all levels; no "under construction" sites or sections

7. Spawning process pop-ups and exit pop-ups are prohibited for click approved affiliates

3. The content of the website and/or newsletter cannot contain any adult content nor link from, or to, any adult materials including but not limited to:

1. Explicit, vulgar or obscene language

2. Posting or referencing of sexually explicit images or other offensive content

3. Promotion of adult services, such as phone sex or escort services

4. The content of the website and/or newsletter cannot infringe on any personal, intellectual property or copyrights including but not limited to:

1. Racial, ethnic, political, hate-mongering or otherwise objectionable content

 2. Investment, money-making opportunities or advice not permitted under law

3. Gratuitous violence or profanity

4. Material that defames, abuses, or threatens physical harm to others or to you

5. Promotion of illegal substances or activities such as illegal online gambling, how to build a bomb, counterfeiting money, etc.

 6. Software Pirating (e.g., Warez, Hotline)

 7. Hacking or Phreaking.

 8. Any illegal activity whatsoever

9. Any questionable or controversial subject matter

10. Any spoofing, redirecting, or trafficking from adult-related websites in an effort to gain traffic

5. You cannot place our advertisements into your framed environment, unless approved by PCSecurityShield in writing.

6. Unless expressly approved in writing by PCSecurityShield, Inc., YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED to provide compensation, benefits, or incentives of any kind whatsoever, including, but not limited to, points, cash, contest entries, or rewards, to encourage a user to click on an advertisement or to complete a form.

7. In order to be approved as a "Click Program" Affiliate, all websites and newsletters must meet the following criteria:

1. Be approved as a "Leads Program" Affiliate

2. Be content-based, not simply a list of links or advertisements, nor can the site be centered around making money off of our Advertisers

3. Cannot offer incentives to users to click on ads; incentives include but are not limited to awarding them cash, points, prizes, contest entries, etc.

4. Spawning process pop-ups and exit pop-ups are prohibited
8. You cannot send Unsolicited Commercial Email (i.e., SPAM). You cannot post any specific messages to newsgroups, chat rooms, bulletin boards or any other places unless expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. You can post messages which are generic in nature and do not mention any specific client or offer, which are expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. You must be in compliance with our Policies and Guidelines posted at 

9. If you fraudulently add leads or clicks or inflate leads or clicks by fraudulent traffic generation (as determined solely by PCSecurityShield,

such as pre-population of forms or mechanisms not approved by PCSecurityShield), you will forfeit your entire commission for all programs and your account will be terminated. PCSecurityShield reserves sole judgment in determining fraud, and you agree to this clause.

10. It is the OBLIGATION of the Affiliate to prove to PCSecurityShield that they are NOT committing fraud. PCSecurityShield will hold your payment in 'Pending Status' until you have satisfactorily provided evidence that you are not defrauding the system. We flag accounts that:

1. Have click-through rates that are much higher than industry averages and where solid justification is not evident

2. Have ONLY click programs generating clicks with no indication by site traffic that it can sustain the clicks reported

3. Have shown fraudulent leads as determined by our clients

4. Use fake redirects, automated software, and/or fraud to generate clicks or leads from our programs

11. Filling out this form constitutes an agreement between PCSecurityShield and the Affiliate. The commission payment that is generated to the Affiliate varies per registered subscriber to the programs offered and/or per clicks. This commission payment is made approximately 60 days after the end of the month and after receiving payment from the Advertiser. Delinquent Advertiser payments received by PCSecurityShield will be credited to the

Affiliate in the month that they are received. PCSecurityShield does not guarantee payment to the Affiliate if the Advertiser does not pay PCSecurityShield. Commission payment totals must exceed $25.00, otherwise this payment will not be made until the $20.00 minimum is reached. International Affiliates (outside of the United States & Canada) agree to a minimum $50.00 to be reached.

12. Affiliate agrees not to carry objectionable materials on their website which would revoke their affiliation as determined by PCSecurityShield. Affiliate will only run approved banners and text in their advertising of our programs and will NOT create their own banners or advertising text, unless expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. Violation of this forfeits your commissions. Affiliate WILL NOT spam or send unsolicited email mentioning or promoting the Affiliate programs. Any violation of this will result in the Affiliate being liable for damages of $1.00 per email sent and other damages as deemed by a court of law.

13. Editing of an Advertiser's program images or copy is strictly prohibited. Affiliate will only use approved banners and text to link to an Advertiser's sign-up pages. Affiliates will not mislead people to make it seem that they are signing up for an offer that is offered by the Affiliate site. Affiliate can ONLY use banners and approved text, any other use of link and sign-up processes will result in the loss of all sign ups/leads accrued for the Affiliate.

 14. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to terminate any Affiliate's contract for any reason whatsoever. Termination notice will be provided via e-mail and will be effective immediately. All legitimate moneys due to Affiliate will be paid during the next billing cycle. If Affiliate defrauds the system, then payment is revoked as determined solely by PCSecurityShield.

15. You guarantee that all content, products, and services on your website are legal to distribute and that you own or have the legal right to use any and all copyrighted material.

16. Affiliate irrevocably covenants, promises and agrees to indemnify PCSecurityShield and to hold harmless from and against any and all losses, claims, expenses, suits, damages, costs, demands or liabilities, arising from any and all claims and lawsuits for copyright, slander , libel, and trademark violation as well as ll other claims resulting from member's web pages.

17. If any Affiliate violates or refuses to take part in their responsibilities, or commits fraudulent activity against us, PCSecurityShield reserves the right to withhold payment and take appropriate legal action to cover its damages.

18. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to change any conditions of this contract at any time. Change notices are sent to Affiliates by email, and Affiliates are responsible for complying with any changes to the contract within 10 calendar days from the date of change. Failure of the Affiliate

to terminate the agreement within those 10 calendar days will constitute acceptance of the changes to this contract.

19. PCSecurityShield gives no warranty, express or implied, for any and all services and products provided, including, but not limited to, warranty of merchantability and warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. This statement expressly includes any reimbursement for losses of income due to disruption of service by PCSecurityShield or its upstream providers.

20. You agree to settle any dispute under this agreement under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Any litigation arising under this Agreement will be brought in the federal or state courts of Western Pennsylvania.

21. Any legal action taken by an advertiser, agency, client, person, or entity against PCSecurityShield for actions of you (the affiliate) that violate these terms and conditions, you accept that PCSecurityShield will work with the advertiser, agency, client, person , or entity to divulge your personal information. You also agree that PCSecurityShield is not liable for your actions, and you will bear all costs (legal or otherwise) that PCSecurityShield incurs if PCSecurityShield is sued by advertiser, client, agency, person, or entity.

22. If any provision of this agreement shall be held or made invalid or unenforceable by a court decision, statute, rule or otherwise, the remaining provisions of this agreement shall not be affected thereby.

23. You must be 18 years or older to sign up as a PCSecurityShield affiliate.
24. Your traffic must come from relevant countries to the campaigns. We monitor IP source and will remove credit for non-country relevant traffic. This means English related campaigns must be delivered to English speaking countries. USA based campaigns must be delivered to USA based citizens, and so forth. (i.e Clicks coming from China for USA based campaigns may not result in credit).

Nowadays, you can get millions of different goods and services on the Internet, advertisers look to individuals and companies to help them sell their products by using webmasters and others to spread the word. These advertisements can come in the form of banner advertising on affiliate sites, text links, reviews written by affiliates, direct email, blogs etc.

How it works is that the advertisers pay webmasters for displaying the ads, or for click throughs that are sent to them, (Called pay per click) which is a commission that is paid on any sales that happen as a direct result of a referral from their web site or email message or during each visit. I will explain more on this in a later section. The fact of the matter is that you will likely not need to be bothered with a merchant at all if it weren't for the money involved. The fact that affiliations can be used as a mass promotional opportunity for both sides that results in more money for both just adds icing to the cake. That is why the next section is about mass promotion through affiliation.

Using Affiliation as a Mass Promotion Tool

There are Hundreds of thousa

 

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Email Advertising as Marketing Tool

 

Email Advertising as Marketing Tool

Direct promotion that are using email has boomed over recent years, but has brought with it mountains of spam. If you intend on using email as a method of advertising products and services, you have to be sure that you stand behind the products you're promoting and make yourself available to answer any questions that may be asked. If you hide from people, they will wonder what you are hiding.

An effective promotion technique that I have found is to combine email with the ad article strategy. This generally means creating an ezine or newsletter promotion that visitors can sign up for that goes directly to their email inboxes. You can occasionally put a summary of a product or service, however, you should include just enough information to stir the curiosity of your readers in an ezine. The summary then contains a link to the ad article on our site. The benefit of this is not only that you have a good opportunity to promote the product or service, but while visitors are on your site they may also look at other sections at the same time This way you as the advertiser benefits through having highly targeted potential clients visit their site.

Getting Started As an Affiliate Marketer

If you are a beginning Internet Marketer and you do not actually have any money to work with the best way to start marketing is by using the payperclick search engines. The truth is, when you are a marketer products are not the things that actually sell, it is the traffic that sells. However true this is you still want to promote the programs that meet certain criteria. If you are wondering what the criteria are they are listed below and are as follows:

1. Look for programs that offer to pay you over $10.00 per sale. If not that then at least search for programs that pay you $50.00 per month or more in residual income because just one customer can be worth $1,200.00 to you in 10 years.

2. Look for products to promote that don't have more than one or two external links to that connect to other programs. If you're going to pay good money to send people to a web site, you should at least make sure that you're sending them to a good money resource and not a resource that has with 50 holes in it.

3. Look for products that have limited ordering options because you don't want to send people to a site if you only get credit when they pay by credit card. The result will be that you will lose people because the site also accepts payment via PayPal and the average person doesn't know how to integrate PayPal with their current affiliate software or some other more complicated payment method like direct checking.

4. Try to find sales sites. You can check out associateprograms.com and find five programs that meet the criteria. It will take some digging, but they are there if you look for them. Let's say you're promoting sneakers, for example. What you are going to want to do now is find as many applicable keywords as you can that are directly relating to sneakers. You can find lists of keyword variations for any products or services by going to jimtools.com and clicking the 'keywords' button at the top.

How this works is that you can do keyword searches and find every variation of the word sneakers that you can think of. If you save all your keywords in a text file you can place bids at all the major payperclick search engines. Here is a list of some of them:

http://www.overture.com They are very critical and will bring you the most leads.

http://www.findwhat.com delivers pretty good traffic

http://www.bay9.com

http://www.ahha.com

http://www.kanoodle.com

http://www.sprinks.com

http://www.searchandconquer.com This one is Free

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com

There is a trick to making huge profits with payperclick search engines and one of them is to bid on as many keywords as possible. How it works is that you bid on a 100 keywords and it is the exact same thing as getting 100 links back to your web site. When you are submitting your listings, you must always be sure to put the price there as well. The key factor here is that you want everyone who clicks through your site to be prepared to divvy up some cash.

If you don't do this, you'll loose a lot of money from the people who are always seeking freebies every single time. With this in mind, say you submitted 350 keywords that are relating to sneakers to each and every one of the search engines above. If all of them are totaled together they will give you a combined total of 150 clicks per day. This is assuming of course that only one out of every 300 people make their purchases because this is a particularly popular item.

If you sell one pair of sneakers and make $10.00 per sale that's one sale every two days. If your average bid is 10 cents per lead, it's costing you $3.00 in advertising costs just so that you can make $10.00. So each month you could average $800.00 from just this one product in net profit per month. That is pretty good, but if you are pushing 5 different products you will have $4000 in one month's profit.

The next thing that you have to do is try to find five products that are just like the first one. If a company/website doesn't have an affiliate program setup, try calling them and asking if you could strike a special deal with them. The best part of using this marketing technique is that after you set up one income stream using this method, and you've tested it and it's working, you can start on another one right away.

You can promote one or 100 companies if you want to it is really up to you. You can literally set your own desired income this way. Plus, by doing this, you get the chance to build long lasting working relationships with the owners of these programs most of the time. It is like out of nowhere, you suddenly have a network of people you're working with.

If you follow this article closely you'll be drawing more targeted traffic to programs that you promote than most of the high traffic sites that just have a simple link to the product in question. You can do all of this with little to no money at all in the beginning.

Once you start making enough money with the payperclick search engines, you can start investing some of your money in your own idea or business on the Internet that you want to start; which when you think about it just makes sense. You can simply take the easy way out and make more and more money promoting other people's programs. As Internet marketing gets more sophisticated in the next few years, there will be more and more companies that are offering solid moneymaking opportunities to experienced resellers, so it is best that you do your homework and learn this stuff while you can because eventually everyone will be trying to cash in on this then ancient method.

The Craft of Listing
Owning a list is the most profitable online marketing tool out there today. As an affiliate marketer, you are going to have to get used to listing. In fact, there's not a time when you can send out your mailing to the A+ Marketplace where you won't make $300.00. You can build your list with little to no effort to over 6,800 subscribers within five months and have over 35,000 subscribers by using some highly effective tactics. Let's take a look at some of those tactics now.

Popup Emails:

This method is 10x as easy to get once you visit the Opt In Lightning site or any other site that Opt In Lightning is installed on. When you do this, you'll notice that it captures the visitor's email address without the visitor having to fill out a form when they sign on for it. They just have to click ?OK.? Instead. This is commonly known as Auto Info Capture, and makes it 10x easier for people to subscribe to your mailing list. The basic principle here is that the easier you make it for people to subscribe the quicker your list grows.

When you use Optin Lightning programs, you can nab any email address from the visitor's client browser. The number of Hotmail and Yahoo addresses is that you can pick up is practically zero. The few Hotmail or Yahoo addresses you do capture are those that they configured in their browser, and will go right into their main inbox anyway instead of them having to retrieve them over the 'net. This is commonly referred to as your "Pull Ratio."

When you use a regular or "traditional" subscribe box, what you are doing is subject your list to what can be called pollution. What I mean by this is that, nothing is stopping people from populating your list with FFA confirmation email addresses, Auto Responders etc. If you ever decide to sell ads, your advertising clients are going to get very angry as your list grows because they will expect that their own ads that they paid good money for to pull more.

Using the old method over an extended period of time will eventually hurt your business. This is why Internet Marketing experts all agree that Ezines that get larger lose all or most of their pull. Now you know why. Someone using the traditional subscribe method can put all their friends etc. on your list, and force you to deal with spam complaints. This is called "List Bombing" and by using Popup Email Capture only, you will be able to avoid this completely.

If you can avoid these problems from the start, you'll slowly and steadily grow a solid clientele hungry for your products and services.

Personalizing email

You should always personalize each and every email that you send out because this gives people who are on the list a feeling that you're not just another newsletter editor, but their friend and that you truly care about their success. Doing this can increase your sales by at least 200%. You have to think like a marketer as well as a consumer. If you start to think like a salesman, you will loose customers. The competition here is fierce but if you work on it, you will succeed. You want to shoot for the feeling where you actually become one with your list. By personalizing your emails, I mean that you can write as if you were sending a note to your friend. That's when you know for a fact that you will have a following.

Send Emails on Friday
I always send my newsletter on Friday at noon because it reaches the East Coast at 3:00 p.m. This way your readers will have the entire weekend to read it, when they are relaxed and comfortable. During the week, your consumers have to work, deal with family and home matters etc. They simply do not have the time to really give your emails much thought. When you wait till the weekend to send the mails, you can take the weekend off and come back Monday to find a stack of orders just waiting for you.

Offer Incentives
Offering incentives like free bonuses just for subscribing with no obligation to remain a subscriber can really boost your orders. Doing this builds a level of trust with new people who don't know you. You see when you start by offering freebies, you will attract a whole new crowd of consumers.

Follow up your Emails
By using an AutoResponder you can deliver your follow-ups without effort. Each follow up should be a sales letter to a residual income product you're selling, an MLM program you're promoting or a product you're selling. There should not be any free content and these sales letters don't beat around the bush. I make thousands per month using email follow up alone. You can get an occasional flame and some unsubscribes, but this is exactly what you should want.

You want to be building up your client list and the follow-ups actually WEED OUT people who aren't ready to make some kind of monetary commitment which will make your job a great deal easier.

No free content
Do not offer any free content because this gives the reader nowhere to go. They either get involved with what you're doing or they get off the list. Besides when you are offering free content, all that you are really accomplishing is you owing more money and having less bandwidth to work with.

Don't accept any form of paid advertising
By accepting paid advertising, you only succeed in polluting your list and this takes attention away from whatever your newsletter's main theme is. You want to keep your readers informed of MLM and Residual Income Programs because this just another way of building and keeping their trust in you.

Don't put copyright on it
Some lists add copyright information and I really don't know why. It is best to simply forward this information to anyone that might be interested. It's a lot easier than using a script and it's been working for me. In any case, most people generally don't care anyway.

Purchase Subscribers
Every email address that you could possibly get is like potential gold to you so if you are going to purchase any email addresses from the many lists that are available for purchase, however, you have to be very specific in who you choose to buy from so watch out. You can purchase 1,000 subscribers for as little as $197.00 with some companies. It helps to be on the lookout.

Talk about yourself a bit
This may sound a bit strange, but people like to do business with people they know and trust. When you include SOME personal information about yourself, people will get to know you as a person. This helps break the ice and makes it a lot easier to do business with people. I don't know about you, but I always respond better to a business person that is willing to be a bit more friendly and personal with me.

Make Money with Pop-Under Ads
I told you that I would explain more about this later on, and here we are. While pop-under ads would appear not to pay as much as say emails do, they actually provide better dividends. Most Internet users have become quite accustomed to closing pop ups before they load. Because of this, you will not be able to make money on an ad that doesn't appear. Pop under ads load in the background, so you'll receive higher payouts with minimum interference while giving the advertiser a decent "show" here are a few reasons why this works.

1. Technology in advertising delivery: Some banner networks now have the delivery of pop under ads down to a "T". What they do is load quickly which allows your visitor is only shown a popunder ad once per visit and that is why some networks allow you to specify that the particular visitor only sees the popunders once every few days.

2. Read the fine print: Remember that you will probably not be paid for every pop up/pop under ad that is displayed so you have to read the fine print in the terms and conditions area that is always in the network you are applying to and you will find that no matter how many ads that are presented to a particular visitor in a single day, you will only be credited with one notice. A good Internet advertising agency will also target popunder ads to your audience and just like every other banner ad campaign you will also have to be allowed to choose which pop under advertising you wish to display

3. Putting pop under ads to use: Pop under code from the networks is easy to use than it ever was before. The code that is supplied by the agency is usually pasted between the tags in the HTML of the web pages where you want the ad to be triggered. Popunder ads can usually be run in tandem with a banner ad campaign, depending on the agency's own set of guidelines.

AGAIN, Be sure to review the "terms and conditions" of ad networks before you sign up.

The best link cloaking method
If you create a new web page that contains the following HTML code in it and save it this link cloaking method works. This example was provided by MerchantABC


Now, rather than using your personal link with your cookie ID as you can see below:

http://www.merchantabc.com/app/aftrack.php?afid=12345

you should have a link that looks like the example below:

http://www.yoursite.com/offer.htm (link to the page you created)

As soon as someone clicks on the new link, the page would automatically redirect to your affiliate URL. You just have to make sure that you set the link to your cloaked page in a new window so that you don't lose visitors from your site.

Unavoidable Search Engine Issues
The Robots line in the cloaking page is there specifically to prevent Search Engines such as Google from trying to index the page. Google hates meta refresh pages because it thinks that they are a spamming technique. It's safer for them to keep search engine robots out of the page, and since the page will have no content, there's no point in it being indexed anyway.

You must not be tempted to have search engines index the cloaking page in the hope that your affiliate URL page will be listed highly because the penalty that is imposed by some search engines if you are caught is not worth the risk. You could loose everything this way.

You can play it even safer by having all of these special pages in one directory and then introducing a robots exclusion statement for that directory in your robots.txt file. I would highly recommend that you begin by cloaking your affiliate links. You will definitely experienced higher conversions and therefore commission revenue when you begin implementing cloaking strategies. There's nothing unethical about it; and like many other site owners, you have to work hard on our site and have poured thousands of hours into it over the years there's nothing wrong with receiving a few bucks for this effort.

Getting Started-How to Find Good Affiliation Programs to Promote
When you are ready to get started with affiliate marketing it can seem overwhelming at first, but this should not be a problem now since I have given you the basics of what you need to know. It is often hard to know where to start and how to begin to market products online. With thousands of affiliate programs, different marketing strategies and countless people trying to pull you into their program how do you know where to start, or how you could go about it, you might wonder. Well, let me tell you.

With this getting started section, you can be up and running in as little as 6 months and seeing some results. Here is how you can get started in some quick and easy steps.

  

1 - Don't look for Get Rich Quick Method
If you have been alive for the last few decades, chances are you have come across the "get rich quick" schemes that are plastered everywhere. If you are going to succeed as an internet marketer you will want to get that thinking out of your head first.

Think about it; do you know anyone to ever make 10 grand in there first three months in a business, especially one that anyone can get started with for less than $50 bucks? Probably not, so do not think that this is how affiliation will work for you. Instead, you need to understand that anyone that makes serious money in this industry has been at it for a while, and they realize that they have to work for a business to make it work for them. By understanding that your going to have to learn the ropes so that you will not be setting yourself up for disappointment weeks later as your wondering why your not seeing any revenue. So let's get started!

Basic Skills you will need To Do Well Online

Ability to Create and Maintain Your Own Site(s)

Hosting Of Your Own Websites

Get Proficient with Email

Grasp Basic SEO Strategies & Online Marketing Ideas

At Least Basic HTML code understanding

Motivation and Patience
Chances are that if you are hoping to be a master affiliate, you already have these skills and you will have an easier time during your fist few months. If you don't, I would suggest that you do get these skills before you even try. You should begin by creating what is known in the industry as a "content site" this type of a site is also known as a hobby site. This practice project is meant to get you familiar with the process using the techniques in this manual.

How you do this is that you choose any topic that appeals to you, such as fishing, boating, hot rods etc. it can be anything you enjoy to do you can create a website about. This is meant to be your guinea site that you can learn on. During this time your goal with this site over the next three months is to find your target visitors and learn how to get their attention and keep it:

Increase you site traffic weekly
Create a Memorable Site that has no pop up, hard navigation, crazy flashing banners or anything related to making money.

Understand How People Use Search Engines & Learn Which Terms People Are Finding Your Site For and Increase Those Numbers by Monitoring them Regularly

If you follow those basic skills over the next several months you will learn the most important aspect of online marketing which will drive targeted traffic to ANY site you create. Most people get it wrong with online marketing because they think HUGE NUMBERS of visitors to there sites will generate income. That is just not true. I mean; have you ever searched Google for a particular topic and ended up on some unrelated site? If you did I bet you were off that site faster that you can count to three.

However, that is how many people try to drive traffic to there site and then hope those people will in some way do something, weather it is by subscribing to a newsletter or buy a product or service. Until these people learn that sear numbers do not equal dollars they will always be scratching there head.

The "trick" here is to drive as many "targeted" visitors to any site that you ever create. Weather your website is a hobby site about your favorite hobbies and music, or a commercial site that sells high end real estate, targeted visitors will be the visitors that will make you your money in the end, so these are naturally the visitors that you want coming to you.

Now that you understand about targeted visitors and just what type of visitor you want at your site you can spend your first several months of your "online affiliate marketing career" in designing a site that will have them coming back for more and telling their friends about you. It will be much easier to learn about keyword optimization while you are creating a site about outdoor fishing than creating a sales site about "selling Trim Spa" while prescription drugs are incredibly profitable you need to practice and perfect your craft before you jump into a highly competitive arena like prescription drugs, credit card or loans.

Things to Watch out For As Your Traffic & Site Grow

1. Site Traffic & Referral Logs

2. Visitor Feedback

The Importance of Traffic & Referral Logs
You will want to be able to monitor very closely any site that you ever build because you should be able to know how many visitors visit your site daily, where they came from, if they have ever visited before and most importantly what keywords they searched for when finding your site (this only works when they came from a search engine). All of this information has to be logged so that you can know who to approach when you are researching who your target audience is and what they want from you.

Getting Visitor Feedback
You have to keep track of what types of feedback are your visitors giving you, and whether or not people enjoy the site and the content. Do they find the navigation is tricky and hard to understand? Take this information and use it to your advantage. If you can offer a suggestion or rating section in your site that allows visitors to tell you directly what they like and what they don't like. This feedback is going to be invaluable to you when it is time for you to build your marketing website and track your feedback information for gaining partnerships with merchants in the future.

Your Money Making Commercial Site
Once you have spent some time working on your hobby site and you begin to feel that you have learned some of the skills that I talked about above you will be much more prepared to jump into the competitive affiliate marketing field.

Now you are ready to take the knowledge you have learned and apply it to a commercial site that requires you to sell some sort of product or service. Again the most important thing to consider is "how will you drive targeted visitors to your site.

You would be doing yourself a favor if you think before you choose your commercial site topic before you choose your next program to promote or site to create. Take a look at the supply and demand. Try to find a product or service online that has an existing consumer base and little or no competition.

The best thing that you can do to get started with choosing the right commercial products to endorse on your website.

You should study the various programs that look appealing to you and then make a list of your top 10 programs. From here you can take your list and run a handful of searches on Google to get an idea just how many other websites are catering to this program. Take a look at the Google results below which helps you get an idea of what you can expect to see when you type in keyword queries:

1. Searched the Google for fishing:

Results 1 - 10 of about 46,200,000

2. Searched the Google for Trim Spa:

Results 1 - 10 of about 16,800,000

3. Searched the Google for car parts:

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,850,000

4. Searched the Google for tank parts:

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,080,000

From the information that is gathered from the keyword query, you can get an idea of the amount of competition among those websites and pages that are selling any of those things mentioned above. Form this it should be easy to see that tractor parts has the least amount of competition and would be easier to get a higher ranking on the popular search engines simply because there are less sites than a Trim Spa or fishing site.

Now that I have pointed that out so subtly, it is also important that you try to understand just how large of a consumer base each industry actually has. I think everyone would agree that car parts outsell tank parts because more people own cars than tanks.

When it comes to your method of tracking the data, you can use a service called wordtracker which will do this automatically. I use wordtracker myself to find niche areas, it won best affiliate tool on abestweb.com in 2002. I use it because it is reliable and takes much of the leg work out for me.

You have to work for any results that you are expecting to get. Don't expect to be able to put four of five hours into a site and have that site generate thousands of dollars worth of commissions for you because that is just not realistic. Like anything worth while it does take work, If you know that going in and are prepared to put in the time that it takes to make a great site chances are much better that you will see hundreds to thousands of dollars worth in commissions monthly at your leisure.

If you make it this far you will be past the affiliate newbie stage and ready to take on the affiliation world. With the popularity of the market ever rising it can be at the stage of collecting so much money that you can live on this income alone. If you just follow your dreams and be willing to put in the effort to see them become a reality. When your ready to choose you second sales site stop by my top programs, you might find a winner that makes sense to you!

Read more ...

what is affiliate marketing and how does it work

what is affiliate marketing and how does it work

If you currently own a business or are thinking of starting one up, chances are, you are going to need some information about how to get the word out about your product or service. That is when you need to think about marketing and building a marketing strategy.

With the World Wide Web being the major source of information sharing and communications in the world, it is natural that you would want to use this as a major focus for building your marketing strategy. That is what this website is

for; to teach you how to become a major player in the field of business that you choose by taking advantage of the internet and using affiliation as your marketing strategy's foundation.

Of course, before I can show you how to become a master affiliate, I think it would be best to begin with a basic introduction to marketing in general. So in this introduction to becoming a master affiliate, I will give you a basic explanation into marketing because this will help you to better understand how an affiliation can be done with expert precision.

Most people are aware of what marketing is, but most do not realize everything that is involved in marketing. Marketing is not a temporary thing. Marketing is more than sales. Marketing is actually an entire process of activities that is used to:

 1. Get your potential customer's attention

 2. Motivate them to buy

 3. Get them to actually buy
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 4. Get them to keep buying

Marketing is how you define your product, promote your product, distribute your product, and to maintain a relationship with your customers. All of this is important if you want to run a successful business. When you become an affiliate, you are just gaining access to a world of

customers instead of just being available for a local customer base. It simply allows you to reach millions of potential customers instead of hundreds. With this kind of potential, is it a wonder that so many people are relying on the web as their marketing hub.

In order to get the consumer's attention, you will need to know who they are and where they are. When you use affiliation, you can cut some of that work in half. When you are an affiliate, a lot of your customers will find you. This is a business feat that is just too good to be true, and if you know what you are doing, the benefits are simply awesome!

Read more ...

what is online marketing

what is online marketing

Your first interest in any type of marketing campaign is to start developing a marketing strategy that is going to be focused on who you will need to determine your target market is. This is exactly who you think will be your consumers. For starters, you need to know how to break down your consumers.

Target market is the group of potential customers that will be selected for the reception of your marketing strategy. It certainly makes it easier to develop your strategy if you know exactly who/how old/where people live when trying to sell things to them. If you are looking to segment the market, you need to determine the different target markets for each segment. For example, if you are selling tires, (which everyone needs) you will need to divide your market by knowing how people shop for tires, and who they are.

If you are selling high cost/quality tires, you have to market to a market that is likely to buy them such as middle aged and established consumers as opposed to teens and twenty-something's who may not be able to afford them.

There are different means that are used by professional marketers that help you to find your target audience. You can use both of them that are within your means. Some of these methods include:

1. Researching the market through surveys, interviews, and setting up shop in a mall to see who questions you the most etc. to see who would benefit the most from your product and be most likely to buy.

2. Host experimental sessions for people to try out your product and give their opinions for improvements etc. so that you can ensure that you giving the people what they want or need.

3. Host trial websites that are geared toward finding the market by letting the market come to you. You can best do this by utilizing keyword centered articles that will let you know who is coming toy our website.

It really doesn't matter if you stand on your front porch and just ask people what they want in a product or service like yours or not, as long as you get a good handle on who your market audience is. If you are selling T-shirts, you will likely want to appeal to younger people who are more likely to wear them; which means that you should market your wares to those people. To do this, you will have to begin your strategy where you know you will find them, on the internet.

When you are using the internet to market any product or service, you must understand the basics of what internet marketing is. When you are marketing on the internet, you are looking to reach a larger audience and therefore, you need something that will catch their attention and bring them to you. In order to do this, you will have to bring these people to your website.

Once you have your website built, you have to work on getting people to visit not just once, but over and over again. You can start this by using your website to do more than just sell stuff. You should always try to host a website that is also informational. It is generally the website's that offer up to date information as well as sell wares.

It is through the information that you establish yourself as a trustworthy authority to your consumers. Doing this establishes trust with your consumers and brings them back again all of the time. Nobody wants to visit a website that is profiling outdated information in a month. It is the up to date website's that get and keep clients. These are also the website that the search engines find relevant during a query.

A nice tip for keeping your information up to date; especially if you are selling a product or service that is rarely updated is to keep a weather program or stock ticker program running on your website because the search engine spiders and robots will view this as new content and still return to your site on a regular basis .

If you are running a website that can sell things directly or order services and make payments there etc. you will want to generate as much sales as possible.

What this means is that you need to make search engines come to your site for a particular product or service before others. It is because of this need that search engines have to become your best friend, which I will explain what these are below.

Search Engine Basics

Search engines are computer programs that are used to explore the internet in search of web pages. They do this by using "spiders," "crawlers," or "robots" which are used to search for the most up to date information on any given search request. This may seem like an odd place to introduce you to the search engines, but I can assure that this section is well placed. Giving you the basics here will help you to understand what I am saying in the later sections.

Anyways, back to the basics and explanation of search engine spiders.
These spiders (like those that are used by Google) are able to follow the links present on web pages that are located by specific keywords. When spiders are searching for a new webpage, they copy all or parts of the text present on the

page into their search engine database. Other spiders revisit these pages on a regular basis so that they can register changes or dead links. The wait time varies greatly from search engine to search engine. It is for this reason that your website should stay current.

The search engine will have hundreds of millions of web pages in its database. In order to deliver relevant results, the search engine companies have developed special ranking algorithms that calculate the order of search requirement results. The keyword or keyword phrase the visitor enters into the search form of the search engine will determine which web sites get picked up by the query. The pages the search engine find most relevant will be listed first. This will determine where you will be listed upon search requests.

 For instance, if you are searching for "Beethoven," and the search engine finds a main headline on that page containing the phrase "Ludwig van Beethoven," it will assume that this page is fairly relevant to your needs. If, on the other hand, it finds the phrase only once, and it is buried in a long text, it will ignore it because it will assume that this is not important. That is why so many websites use special keywords more than once in a particular article or webpage, because that is how the spiders pick them up and place them higher in the results of a search.

What does this mean to you as a business person? Well... this means that in order for you to even consider affiliation; you must first have a website. If you want your website to get attention, you have to appeal to search engines first. Many potential affiliates will not want to associate with just anyone prefer a site that gets traffic. Knowing about search engines and how to appeal to them will get you this traffic. I will offer more on traffic in another section later. Right now I would like to get you started with website affiliation because that is what this book is about and I have already given the basics about marketing in general.

The Fundamentals of Affiliate Marketing

As you can imagine from the above section that spends a great of time focusing on the basics of internet marketing, you must realize that it was all just an informed lead in to the affiliation, which is the whole reason that we are here. The first thing that you have to think about when getting into the affiliation game is how to go about it. In order to understand this, you will need to know exactly what it is and get basic knowledge about it.

Affiliate programs are an excellent way to generate income for your site or someone else's, and it is a pretty good introduction into ecommerce, however but it's a numbers game. Basically, the more people who visit your site, the greater your chances become for creating a good income, especially if the programs you participate in are related to your site topic. Chances are you have probably come across many commercial sites that claim to offer the best affiliate program. What you will often learn is that this is simply not true.

So what exactly is an affiliate program, you might ask? An affiliate program is where a company offers to pay you a certain amount of money for either a click through from your site, or a fixed amount for a lead (where the visitor signs up for a newsletter, etc.) or a percentage of a purchase made by a visitor as a result of a click through. Even if the visitor does not make a purchase on the advertiser's site right away, most programs will offer "cookie duration" of usually around 30-90 days.

What this really means is that as long as the visitor has the cookie in their cache; even if they return to the advertisers site one month later, you will still receive the commission from the sale however, as in all things that are business related, cookie duration is not a guarantee when you sign up for an affiliation program and is something that you need to check for before signing on.

Looking for the Best Affiliate Programs
The best way to try to explain this to you is to give you some of my personal experiences when looking for an affiliation program.

When I first started searching for and implementing affiliations with various companies; it was one of the largest parts of time wasted during my day when it came to managing my website. I spent a disgusting amount of hours searching for suitable affiliate programs, implementing the links and then keeping track of what they did.

If you are hoping that marketing a website affiliation is going to get you rich quickly, forget about it. You will have to spend a lot of time in your project if you want to make it work for you. Then again, all money making ventures do, just ask Donald Trump.

Of course, the income that was generated from each program was actually pretty low at that time because at that time the number of visitors to my site was not high either. With this in mind, it was not particularly uncommon for companies to disappear on me without warning me about it and since most affiliate programs only pay out at around the $25 mark, I would lose a lot of revenue in the end.

The other part of affiliation that I was not happy with was the idea of another companies banner's being plastered all over my site, if you place too many of them on any given page it only serves to confuse and irritate your visitors. think about it; how do you like it when you visit a site. Any more than one animated element on a web page can be very distracting which leaves you with nothing gained at all, and many affiliate programs insist upon this type of bargain when signing on. By now, you must realize that I learned a lot just by trial and error. Affiliate tracking can also a problem.

   

After you have successfully applied to become an affiliate for a company, they will usually supply you with some personalized code or link. It is very important that this code is implemented correctly into your page; because otherwise you may be sending the company visitors without being reimbursed. Most snippets of code contain a unique user id; which is used by the company to distinguish which site sent traffic. Even if you do implement this code in the right way, it has been my experience on occasion for it not to function correctly.

Having heard of my experiences, you can see why I would not really recommend that you hunt around and sign up without much research and thought first when finding a good affiliate program. Your time is too valuable and could be better spent creating content and updating your site. But there are some excellent individual companies offering affiliate programs out there.

What I have discovered to be very successful is to take advantage of companies like Offers Quest or Google for text link advertising. Text links are a great resource as they are bandwidth friendly, and when they are implemented properly add valuable content to your site which can also assist in search engine rankings.

When it comes to website affiliation, you will also need to know how to conduct a market study because this is how you will find your target audience. Without a targeted audience, your marketing campaign will not be effective. Below I have begun to give you an outline of what you should include in your market study. It is best to write it down; especially if you are hoping to entice someone else into investing in your marketing venture. That and it is a good way to keep track of your objective and provides a good guideline of what needs to be done.

Marketing Study Outline - What you need to know
In order to be able to conduct a decent targeting and marketing campaign, you must first understand the fundamentals of finding out who they are. They only way to do this is to follow a specific guideline for you to follow. Check out the guideline below.

1. Your Objective to the Research
Explain in one paragraph why the research is being done, what you hope to learn and for what purpose the information that you attain may be used

2. Description of the Market

This should be general like one paragraph

Who is your Target Market(s)

Why you chose this particular market


Get a complete profile of your market (e.g., demographics, psychographics, behaviors)
What benefits does your market seek (i.e., what points-of-pain or problems are being solved)

What factors can affect their decision to purchase or use your product/service
What attitudes do they have about the products/services that are currently not on the market

How is the product used
Products and Services that appeal to the target market

In general terms, what is currently so appealing to this market

If there are no current providers, what types of products/services may appeal to this market in the future (i.e., what is used now to solve the problem).

3. Market Metrics
Get many Size estimates (current and future) for all of the following:

Overall market

Current size as it stands

Potential size for the future

Actual penetration of current products/service within the entire market

Individual market segments

Current size

Potential size

Actual penetration of current products/service within the total market

 Usage rates

Frequency of product purchases

Growth estimates (current and in the future) for:

Overall market

Individual market segments

Competitive Analysis

You must include a Summary of who your Current Competitors are

Listing the competition by market share ranking (by each target market if possible) is a good way to size them up. You can also be more specific by searching for individual points listed below.

Current Competitors - full analysis of top competitors including:

Products & Services (e.g., description, uniqueness, pricing, etc.)

Their Market share at current
 Current customers (targeted audience)

Positioning and promotion strategies

Partnerships/Alliances/Distributors

Recent news

SWOT Analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats

It is extremely important to focus attention on the SWOT section of this report. While most other information in this report can be gleaned from company and secondary materials, much of what appears in the SWOT section is based on the researcher's own opinions of the competitor based on the information that is collected. Consequently, this is often one of the hardest areas of the report to write as well.

Potential Competitors (any competition in the future)

You will need to get an explanation (though it need not be as detailed as Current Competitors) on who they are or maybe and why they are seen as potential competitors

5. Additional Extra Variables
Discuss factors that may affect this market (e.g., technological, social, governmental, competitive, etc.)

Market Trends and what is expected to happen in the future

If you can follow these basic tips for finding and selecting your target market, you should be ready to search online and check out the competition and their rankings in the search engines. Below are some general guidelines for you to follow in creating your competitive analysis which is the most important factor in being an affiliate marketer. Knowing your competition just as well as your audience is the key point which is going to keep you on top of the competition.

GUIDELINES FOR DOING A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
The competitive analysis section works best when it follows a format like the one that is shown below. In general, I would recommend that this report would be made about each of the major competitors. While most of this report is intended to focus on the overall analysis of the competitor, you should recognize that you are primarily interested in how this information may impact your company and, specifically, a product or product line to you affiliates

For this reason, you should make sure, where possible, to focus your information on how it impacts the markets in which your products will compete with theirs. That is how your report will stand out among the other marketing

affiliates in a merchant's eye. It should be included in your proposal whenever it is possible. I have listed the guidelines in sections to make it easier for you to read and then furthered the report guidelines for you as well for easier reading. Please note each sub-section within a section will contain 1-5 sentences that explain the sub-section.

General Company Information which includes name, location (headquarters, other locations of importance), website address

Summary of the Business which includes a section that will summarize the company, business units and the general nature of the business

Business Overview should include sections on the history, ownership structure, types of businesses, mission, strategy/objectives, and key executives

Recent News/Developments such as important company developments within last 6-12 months (e.g., reports from news sources, press releases, financial statements)

Financial and Market Share Analysis - includes sections on corporate performance, trends, market share for product

Marketing in general should include sections on products and services that are offered, target markets, positioning, customers/users, pricing model, promotional efforts, sales force, and distribution

Other miscellaneous Issues like adding sections on technology capability, partnership arrangements, and intangible issues

A list of your competitors where you will list key competitors facing this company

SWOT - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

Below, I am going to actually pin point what should be included in the market study like I did above, however in more detail and with explanation on how to write it. I am listing them in steps rather than points to make it easier.

1. The information that is provided in a market study should be based on the research that you have collected AND NOT on one's own perceptions, guesstimates or other unsupported statements. This information should be based on fat alone! The only exception to this may be within the SWOT analysis; however, even most of this should be supported with some evidence.

2. If you are unable to find any specific bit of information it is probably a good idea to make this known so that the person reading the report would know of this potential limitation of the market study and be ready for it. Obviously you need to collect good research so you do not end up having too many of these statements.

3. It is generally a good idea to define the most important terms and concepts when you first introduce them so as not to confuse the reader. This will benefit those reading the report who may not already possess knowledge in this area. Alternatively, you can create a glossary or definition section in the Endnotes area of the report.

4. Wherever it is necessary you should explain how the research was conducted or how data was collected (e.g., explaining how survey was done). This just helps the reader to understand your methodology so that they can decide how trustworthy the information is.

5. Make note of any limitations of secondary research (research you obtained from other sources) that you used. Unless there are very any significant limitations you can generally include this as an endnote.

6. If you are investigating a new/different way of doing something with present customers, then you will need to provide a discussion of the cost/benefit of alternative options. That is, what will customer give up to use something new versus what they will get from using the new product?

7. Remember to reference as much stuff as you have to in order to get the best information. I would suggest using endnotes instead of footnotes of texts because this gives you the most accurate account. Endnotes appear next to the sentence, word, quote, number, etc. but usually not as a superscript and usually in parenthesis like this (1). The full reference would appear at the back of the report in an Endnotes section.

Once you have completed your market analysis and target audience, you will want to present it to the companies that you are looking to affiliate with. That is what the next section deals with. It is going to show you how to create partnerships with the merchants.

How to Deal with Online Merchants - Creating Partnerships

When you decide to become an affiliate marketer, you are basically just asking another web host to add a link to your website to theirs which will bring your website more traffic and hopefully generate more sales for them, which gives you a commission sale. Of course, there are some things that affiliates look for in a website before they will sign you on as an affiliate. Before you even consider signing on as an affiliate, you should make sure that your website has something to offer that theirs doesn't.

To be more specific, even if you are going to a "like" website as an affiliate, you don't want to approach a site that is selling the exact same thing as you because that makes you direct competition with you. For example, if you are selling designer clothing of a particular label, you do not want to try to go to a site that is selling the exact same items as you, but a like site that may offer the same brand, but not the same items. That way, both sites are selling the same label, but can push each other's sites for the items that they don't carry.

Once you know exactly what type of website you want to run and which web companies are actually offering you the right revenue sharing opportunities for products and services that complement your web site genre, you can't just offer to put up banners and buttons on their behalf. It is best to begin by writing up a review page of the product or service and how it will definitely help boost sales, especially if you are recognized as being knowledgeable in your field.

One of the best ways to show that you know what you are doing is to offer articles and reviews on your website about your items for sale. Keyword articles are best for getting search engine to come calling. You can also put in a brief history of the product's inception etc. Basically just put in as much information as you can about your product or service so that visitors and merchants will know that you are on top of things and know what you are doing. Here are some more things that you should do when dealing with potential affiliates that you are trying to get in with.

Talk to People
Talking to people could not only increase your sales, but also save you some heartache in the long run. It is very easy to talk to an affiliate company, and you can start by contacting the merchant, let them know what you are doing to promote their product and ask their advice as to how you could improve your marketing technique. Think about it, it is always best to approach a potential affiliate with a standing technique in mind as well as an outline of what you plan to do to help them. If you have the means, try it out for a while so that you can approach a merchant with solid facts backing you up.

When you ask the merchant for advice you are setting yourself in great standing with them and showing them that you understand their knowledge. After all, the merchant knows their product best right? They would also have a

very good idea of the strategies that are used by other affiliates to boost sales. Don't bother checking for this information on an affiliate site because you will not be getting to the nitty gritty of it.

By contacting the merchant yourself, you are also showing your enthusiasm for marketing their products and services and that you are working to become known as a "power" or "super" affiliate! Any merchant who understands affiliate marketing knows that over 90% of sales are generated by less than 5% of their affiliates. A good merchant will see your efforts and give you further information and resources and may even boost your commission fees as a result of your efforts and success. All of this means more money for you both!

Dealing with merchants directly:
When you are dealing directly with a merchant, there are some things that you have to realize. You need to know how to deal with them but also what to expect to encounter from the as well. That is what this section is going to help you with. Let's take a look at some of the various things that you can expect to hear and deal with when going through a merchant.

a) If you are going to go to the trouble of emailing a merchant and they don't respond the first time, do not worry about it, be persistent because many merchants receive countless numbers of emails daily and take time to sift through them and weed out the spam. If they still fail to respond to your, think twice about continuing promotion on their behalf because a lack of communication can also be indicative of other problems such as payment or just plain disinterest. You should also bear in mind that some merchants work on the shotgun principle. What this means is that they make big

promises, set a high payouts knowing full well that few affiliates will ever reach it. Next thing you know, they get as many affiliates promoting their products and services as possible which will give them the maximum exposure, with the minimum cost and effort on their part. It's not a good business model for them to use in the long term and after a while affiliates drop away, but not before the company has raked in thousands. Many MLM (multi-level marketing) programs also work on this principle and only the guys at the top generate any serious revenue so you need to expect this and watch out for it.

A good way to protect your payments from merchants is to sign up for affiliate programs that are extremely well established ad networks such as Offers Quest or FastClick if you want to get paid for your work. When you are working with a major ad network means that even if you only make a few dollars from each program, those dollars that are generated will all feed a common account, accumulate rapidly which will allow you to reach the payout threshold in a shorter time period. Most ad networks work with merchants on a "money up front" or monthly "pay as you go" basis because this decreases the risk of those merchants who are suddenly disappearing with your hard earned commissions.

For this to work, you need to demonstrate your web marketing prowess
b) Unless you have a web site that already generates high traffic, don't ask the merchant for higher commissions in the first communication. So many affiliates do this and end up being totally ignored because most affiliates probably can't deliver on their promises due to the fact that too many of their claims are unachievable. If you don't have a solid sales record for the product or service you are promoting, you'll need to prove yourself to merchants off the bat and put some thought into your promotion and rack up a few sales before attempting to secure higher payout rates. Be professional in your communications

c) When you are communicating with merchants, you have to make sure that you use a professional manner not the laid back style that you use when talking toy our friends. If you have suggestions of how a merchant could improve an offer that would convert into more sales, let them know, but be very polite and constructive in your feedback - not insulting by saying things like: "Your banners suck" because this will alienate them .

d) You have to remember that the Internet as a trading place is still very new in comparison to the business platforms of the last few millennia like regular advertising through television or newspaper ads. Some of the quality companies that are offering an affiliate program may be just breaking into this side of marketing and will appreciate any feedback you can give them.

e) A smart merchant understands that good affiliates can't be found everywhere as is often assumed and hoped. Merchants need someone that acts business like and treats them with respect, assists with resources and provides prompt payments. Smarter affiliates understand that a merchant wants quality promotion and sales performance for minimum outlay. Successful merchant/affiliate partnerships happen when both parties understand these points and work together because that is when the money starts rolling in.

Here is a sample of the type of contract that you can expect to see from a merchant and/or some of the listings that will be in it.

Sample Affiliation Contract was located at and provided by: http://partners.pcsecurityshield.com/agreement.html?CLIENT_NAME=nextaisle

PUBLISHER TERMS OF AGREEMENT
PCSecurityShield ACTIVELY monitors traffic for Fraud. If we detect Fraud, your account will be made inactive pending further investigation.

1. All websites, newsletters, companies, or individuals need official approval from PCSecurityShield, Inc. ("PCSecurityShield") http://www.pcsecurityshield.com before they can become an Affiliate Partner ("Affiliate"). Only websites and newsletters that have been reviewed and approved are permitted to use the programs. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to withhold or refuse approval on any website, newsletter, company, or individual for any reason, whatsoever.

2. In order to be eligible for Affiliate approval, all websites and newsletters must meet the following criteria:

1. Be content-based, not simply a list of links or advertisements, nor can the site be centered around making money off of our Advertisers

2. Be written in English and contain only English language content

3. Receive a minimum of 1,000 unique page views per month

4. Have a top-level domain name

5. Cannot offer incentives to users to click on ads; incentives include but are not limited to awarding them cash, points, prizes, contest entries, etc.

6. Be fully functional at all levels; no "under construction" sites or sections

7. Spawning process pop-ups and exit pop-ups are prohibited for click approved affiliates

3. The content of the website and/or newsletter cannot contain any adult content nor link from, or to, any adult materials including but not limited to:

1. Explicit, vulgar or obscene language

2. Posting or referencing of sexually explicit images or other offensive content

3. Promotion of adult services, such as phone sex or escort services

4. The content of the website and/or newsletter cannot infringe on any personal, intellectual property or copyrights including but not limited to:

1. Racial, ethnic, political, hate-mongering or otherwise objectionable content

2. Investment, money-making opportunities or advice not permitted under law

3. Gratuitous violence or profanity

4. Material that defames, abuses, or threatens physical harm to others or to you

5. Promotion of illegal substances or activities such as illegal online gambling, how to build a bomb, counterfeiting money, etc.

6. Software Pirating (e.g., Warez, Hotline)

7. Hacking or Phreaking.

8. Any illegal activity whatsoever

9. Any questionable or controversial subject matter

10. Any spoofing, redirecting, or trafficking from adult-related websites in an effort to gain traffic

5. You cannot place our advertisements into your framed environment, unless approved by PCSecurityShield in writing.

6. Unless expressly approved in writing by PCSecurityShield, Inc., YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED to provide compensation, benefits, or incentives of any kind whatsoever, including, but not limited to, points, cash, contest entries, or rewards, to encourage a user to click on an advertisement or to complete a form.

7. In order to be approved as a "Click Program" Affiliate, all websites and newsletters must meet the following criteria:

1. Be approved as a "Leads Program" Affiliate

2. Be content-based, not simply a list of links or advertisements, nor can the site be centered around making money off of our Advertisers

3. Cannot offer incentives to users to click on ads; incentives include but are not limited to awarding them cash, points, prizes, contest entries, etc.

4. Spawning process pop-ups and exit pop-ups are prohibited

8. You cannot send Unsolicited Commercial Email (i.e., SPAM). You cannot post any specific messages to newsgroups, chat rooms, bulletin boards or any other places unless expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. You can post messages which are generic in nature and do not mention any specific client or offer, which are expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. You must be in compliance with our Policies and Guidelines posted at 

9. If you fraudulently add leads or clicks or inflate leads or clicks by fraudulent traffic generation (as determined solely by PCSecurityShield,

such as pre-population of forms or mechanisms not approved by PCSecurityShield), you will forfeit your entire commission for all programs and your account will be terminated. PCSecurityShield reserves sole judgment in determining fraud, and you agree to this clause.

10. It is the OBLIGATION of the Affiliate to prove to PCSecurityShield that they are NOT committing fraud. PCSecurityShield will hold your payment in 'Pending Status' until you have satisfactorily provided evidence that you are not defrauding the system. We flag accounts that:

1. Have click-through rates that are much higher than industry averages and where solid justification is not evident

2. Have ONLY click programs generating clicks with no indication by site traffic that it can sustain the clicks reported

3. Have shown fraudulent leads as determined by our clients

4. Use fake redirects, automated software, and/or fraud to generate clicks or leads from our programs

11. Filling out this form constitutes an agreement between PCSecurityShield and the Affiliate. The commission payment that is generated to the Affiliate varies per registered subscriber to the programs offered and/or per clicks. This commission payment is made approximately 60 days after the end of the month and after receiving payment from the Advertiser. Delinquent Advertiser payments received by PCSecurityShield will be credited to the

Affiliate in the month that they are received. PCSecurityShield does not guarantee payment to the Affiliate if the Advertiser does not pay PCSecurityShield. Commission payment totals must exceed $25.00, otherwise this payment will not be made until the $20.00 minimum is reached. International Affiliates (outside of the United States & Canada) agree to a minimum $50.00 to be reached.

12. Affiliate agrees not to carry objectionable materials on their website which would revoke their affiliation as determined by PCSecurityShield. Affiliate will only run approved banners and text in their advertising of our programs and will NOT create their own banners or advertising text, unless expressly approved in writing from PCSecurityShield. Violation of this forfeits your commissions. Affiliate WILL NOT spam or send

unsolicited email mentioning or promoting the Affiliate programs. Any violation of this will result in the Affiliate being liable for damages of $1.00 per email sent and other damages as deemed by a court of law.

13. Editing of an Advertiser's program images or copy is strictly prohibited. Affiliate will only use approved banners and text to link to an Advertiser's sign-up pages. Affiliates will not mislead people to make it seem that they are signing up for an offer that is offered by the Affiliate site. Affiliate can ONLY use banners and approved text, any other use of link and sign-up processes will result in the loss of all sign ups/leads accrued for the Affiliate.

14. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to terminate any Affiliate's contract for any reason whatsoever. Termination notice will be provided via e-mail and will be effective immediately. All legitimate moneys due to Affiliate will be paid during the next billing cycle. If Affiliate defrauds the system, then payment is revoked as determined solely by PCSecurityShield.

15. You guarantee that all content, products, and services on your website are legal to distribute and that you own or have the legal right to use any and all copyrighted material.

16. Affiliate irrevocably covenants, promises and agrees to indemnify PCSecurityShield and to hold harmless from and against any and all losses, claims, expenses, suits, damages, costs, demands or liabilities, arising from any and all claims and lawsuits for copyright, slander, libel, and trademark violation
 as well as ll other claims resulting from member's web pages.

17. If any Affiliate violates or refuses to take part in their responsibilities, or commits fraudulent activity against us, PCSecurityShield reserves the right to withhold payment and take appropriate legal action to cover its damages.

18. PCSecurityShield reserves the right to change any conditions of this contract at any time. Change notices are sent to Affiliates by email, and Affiliates are responsible for complying with any changes to the contract within 10 calendar days from the date of change. Failure of the Affiliate to terminate the agreement within those 10 calendar days will constitute acceptance of the changes to this contract.

19. PCSecurityShield gives no warranty, express or implied, for any and all services and products provided, including, but not limited to, warranty of merchantability and warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. This statement expressly includes any reimbursement for losses of income due to disruption of service by PCSecurityShield or its upstream providers.

20. You agree to settle any dispute under this agreement under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Any litigation arising under this Agreement will be brought in the federal or state courts of Western Pennsylvania.

21. Any legal action taken by an advertiser, agency, client, person, or entity against PCSecurityShield for actions of you (the affiliate) that violate these terms and conditions, you accept that PCSecurityShield will work with the advertiser, agency, client, person, or entity to divulge your personal information. You also agree that PCSecurityShield is not liable for your actions, and you will bear all costs (legal or otherwise) that PCSecurityShield incurs if PCSecurityShield is sued by advertiser, client, agency, person, or entity.

22. If any provision of this agreement shall be held or made invalid or unenforceable by a court decision, statute, rule or otherwise, the remaining provisions of this agreement shall not be affected thereby.

23. You must be 18 years or older to sign up as a PCSecurityShield affiliate.

24. Your traffic must come from relevant countries to the campaigns. We monitor IP source and will remove credit for non-country relevant traffic. This means English related campaigns must be delivered to English speaking countries. USA based campaigns must be delivered to USA based citizens, and so forth. (i.e Clicks coming from China for USA based campaigns may not result in credit).

Nowadays, you can get millions of different goods and services on the Internet, advertisers look to individuals and companies to help them sell their products by using webmasters and others to spread the word. These advertisements can come in the form of banner advertising on affiliate sites, text links, reviews written by affiliates, direct email, blogs etc.

How it works is that the advertisers pay webmasters for displaying the ads, or for click throughs that are sent to them, (Called pay per click) which is a commission that is paid on any sales that happen as a direct result of a referral from their web site or email message or during each visit. I will explain more on this in a later section.

The fact of the matter is that you will likely not need to be bothered with a merchant at all if it weren't for the money involved. The fact that affiliations can be used as a mass promotional opportunity for both sides that results in more money for both just adds icing to the cake. That is why the next section is about mass promotion through affiliation.

Using Affiliation as Mass Promotion Tool
There are Hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there that you can choose from and all of them are claiming to be the best. Some of them will give you the impression that all you have to do is implement their banners and links and wait for the money to start rolling in. This CAN be the case at times, but this scenario usually only applies to very large sites that have massive web traffic already. For most of us, being a successful affiliate requires a little more work than that!

When you are selling your wares through a website, you will be needing as much help as you can get and that is why affiliation is such a good deal. It gives you and like companies the chance to market your wares in more than one spot. As the marketing affiliate, it is your job to get you and other companies together to do it. Most affiliates use their own sites and combine marketing strategies with others. Your website is likely not geared toward one thing in particular so affiliates who come in will gain a lot more from your services.

As the variety of goods and online services offered over the Internet has grown at an incredible rate over the last few years, and in response, so has the competition. Web site visitors need to have a very good reason for clicking on a link or banner. In most affiliate programs, you are offered a wide variety of banners that you can place on your site; all of them will be effective in getting attention from your target audience.

If you can gather a click through rate of at least 2%, then you are doing very well. It has been my experience, that highly colorful and picture filled banners do not perform as successfully as their simpler counterparts. The main reason for this is the time it takes to download it. If a banner is the last thing to load on your page and the banner ad is excessively byte "heavy", by the time it has loaded your visitor may already have scrolled down the page already and miss it entirely.

Heavy banner ads can also slow down the loading of your pages, or even some of the critical elements of your page and you can lose your visitors altogether. This is why A graphically rich banner can also confuse the actual message because the artwork and marketing blurb can be imbalanced. For these reasons, I would recommend that banners you implement be no more that 15kb wherever you possibly can.

Banners that have a lot of animation in them, such as rapid flashing, are also something to consider very carefully before setting them up. While these do achieve high click rates, they are also highly annoying to the average visitor. If you do decide to implement this form of banner advertising, you have to use it very sparingly.

Whenever you begin selecting any form of advertising that requires graphics you should try and keep the theme of your site in mind. In general, while graphical ads are meant to stand out and catch a visitor's eye, it shouldn't be to the point that everything else on the page is ignored. Whenever you can, you have to make sure that all banner ads or advertising that you use uses a link that opens in a new window. That way, if a visitor does choose to visit one of your advertisers it is easy for them to return to your page and review what they actually came to your site for.

A lot of companies are now offering their affiliates the options of using pop up and pop under ads. However, the fact is they annoy most visitors and are usually closed before they even have a chance to load by automatic program blockers. It is for this reason that you should use pop-unders instead and preferably those that only display once per visit. I will talk more about pop-unders in a later section

Successful affiliate marketing requires patience
If you are sure that your web site can get a lot of traffic and generate fantastic sales for a certain company, you have to contact them to negotiate a tailored arrangement. If they aren't too enthusiastic to begin with, be patient because companies are approached every day by affiliates wanting to cut a "better deal".

The reality of it is that many affiliates cannot deliver what they promise, and the companies are extremely aware of this. For you as a potential affiliate marketer, you need to implement their links and banners, go the extra mile with ad articles and other unique strategies, generate some sales and then approach them again better prepared. You'll probably find that they'll have a change of heart. Finding good affiliates is very difficult and if you are performing for these companies they will keep you.

Most forms of advertising take some time to kick into gear. Putting a link up for a couple of days and then pulling it down because it is not generating any interest may not be a reflection on the product, but just in the way that it is being presented to your web site visitors. You know how fickle they can be.

If you have run successful campaigns before, try to remember the elements that made it a success and implement them again. Of course, you need to remember that what works for one product may not necessarily for another, but it's worth a try. Again, if you are having problems with promotion, contact the company. They will more than likely have thousands of affiliates and will know what strategies are working. A good advertiser may even go to the trouble of reviewing your site and provide you with some tips and hints based on their observations.

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