Cash and Pay-per-click Affiliate Programs

Affiliate Marketing July 1st, 2008 Say Something (0)

Millions are paying to get a ride on the Information Super Highway everyday. Now, it is widely known that the Internet is an accessible resource of many income-generating activities. Whether you belong to a private sales company or you are just interested in internet marketing, PPC affiliate programs can be a powerful venue to make money from the Internet. Yipee…

To make things much simpler: the affiliate merchant provides a strip of advertisement and pays you when someone clicks on the ad’s link. You can get a commission of $0.10 to $0.30 for every click, but it sometimes it can go higher depending on your merchant affiliate. Sometimes, merchants require a quota ($1.4 for every 1000 clicks). Plus, you can get discounts from your merchant affiliates if you happen to like their products too. You can just kick back and relax while your website is generating cash. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Whatever.

What is PCC Affiliate Program?

PPC means pay-per-click, wherein you get in partnership with an affiliate company that literally pays you for every click. There are actually two types of PCC affiliate programs – those who pay a commission based on the number of clicks and the other based on the sales. The pay-per-click scheme is much more popular than pay-per-lead because the affiliate gets paid by just clicking the ad, regardless of whether the visitor buys from the affiliate merchant or not. Plus the chances of a visitor purchasing something from the affiliate merchant are not really that high.

In choosing an affiliate program, read the fine print carefully – some pay-per-click programs get the ratio of the number of people who went to your site and the actual people who clicked on the ad. If you have a heavily targeted website, this can hurt your earnings.

How do I start?

Of course, you need to have a website. Depending on your target audience, choose the best affiliate merchant that is most related to your topic. For example, your website is about Carpentry then you can search for affiliate programs that sell tools used in carpentry.

However, if you don’t have a website, that’s not a problem. You can put up a content site about absolutely anything under the sun like ‘Taking Care of Dogs’ or ‘Decorating your own Home.’ But wait, its not over yet. We are faced by a dilemma – on how to increase traffic! You first need to get internet surfers to see your website, then the ad.

How do I increase my traffic?

First, design your website in such a way that it will attract internet users. A user-friendly site is always recommended so that the customers will know which one to click. Take into consideration the look and feel of the advertisement. If it doesn’t look professional, most likely, users will just ignore it. Place the ad on a strategic location – one where users can see it clearly. Visibility of the ad is always important.

Another way is to post a link to your website in forums, web communities, ezine articles or bulletin boards. However, this method requires a lot of effort – that defeats your purpose of getting easy money in the first place! The key is to do something once and forget about it. It’s like putting your business on autopilot. To maintain you pay-per-click business, be sure to track down site activity, so you are updated on how much money you are making.

Can I make more money?

If you think you can go to the next level, you can try a two-tier affiliate program. This gives you the power to recruit affiliates. Other than the money you get from your website’s clicks, you will also get a percentage of what your affiliate generates. Some companies give 30% to a soaring 50% commission on all referral sales.

Remember, you should be able to manage and monitor your affiliate program. If you can recruit more affiliates, then you can get paid more without even moving a finger! Choose affiliates that can most likely attract more internet users and bring more traffic. You just have to know the right people. This is just some crap that I learned along the way…

Affiliate Guide from ClickConsultants

Affiliate Marketing June 2nd, 2008 Say Something (2)

Ok, so I gave in and paid the thirty bucks to see what the ClickConsultants forum was all about. I decided to give it a try due to that fact that “sup3rnova”, the uberaffiliate, was one of the moderators and I think creators.(not sure though) His blog is what has taught me the most and has motivated to get started in the learning process of AM. So, I got access to the forum and the first thing I noticed was the inactivity. Most sections were from months ago and some were not, some post questions were unanswered and such. So I had a few hours to kill and decided to peruse the different areas of the forum they had to offer. There is a lot of information packed all over the place there and some of it is useful. The thing I like most about forums, is asking a question and getting it answered fairly quickly with different point of views… well, I figured I should not knock the thing before checking out the content it had to offer and the potential. Now, I am a complete newb at this and I consider any money towards affiliate marketing training an investment.<sarcasm> (an excuse of course.)
I will say the “learning center” had a few good tips. They have their own tool box for you to use that has a few keyword tools ( ok at best) and if you want to gain access to a free tool that normally charges a monthly rate, you will have to join to find out which one that is. Seriously, just that one tool makes it worthwhile to stay aboard <sarcasm> despite the minute inactivity. There are also beginner video tutorials on how to set up a campaign and look for offers. That is hugely useful for someone that is a visual learner. Plus, they give you six landing pages for free every month… which is cool but not cuz of the fact that everyone will use it and not change it up. Just make sure you make it your own! Lastly, they have an array of article tutorials from beginner to advanced which basically are posts from the forum itself. If you want to get a quick jump start from knowing nothing to knowing the basics only, give up the gas money and check it out for a month. If you don’t like it then wait out the month and cancel. Simple as that. For me, I am going to cancel to put that money towards my first ppc campaign. Yahoo does offer the $100 credit still so thats where I will start.

for the most part the forum is dead.

Different Affiliate Marketing Styles

Affiliate Marketing May 22nd, 2008 Say Something (0)

A year ago, I got started into internet marketing. Of course, we all know that there are just way too many sub niches to that industry. One being affiliate marketing. Even with AM, there are also many sub niches that people can get into and master. I started with the major style of the “clickbank craze”.  This style was the one that was thrown in my face for a long time and I never really had much luck with it. I was making sales here and there but nothing ever really concrete. No matter all the damn ebooks or reports that I found, those mostly taught what wasn’t working anymore, hence making a ebook or free report. So attending many seminars and realizing that the “IM” or “MMO” industry was a lot of hype and I really didn’t want to work like that. You know, trying to come up with some new mmo idea or trying to rehash what was there and throwing some angle on it to sell. Personally, I didn’t want to do that.

Some Types ( in a non-specific way of saying…)

So we have affiliate marketing that you do from making review sites on blogs or lens, building a opt-in page to offer a OTO aff sell, creating your own product, building a list to email aff products etc…

Now I was attending Affiliate Incubator a while back and a speaker started talking about PPL, CPA, PPC etc… He spoke that this is the real AM and where bigger checks can be made from yada yada… I know that was hype talk but it did get my attention. That was my first introduction to ppc affiliate marketing. This was a whole other ball of wax that was completely different from what I was learning before. There were landing pages, learning ppc,  finding offers from networks other than CB, or linkshare. This, to me, sounded like something that I wanted to get into. Although, my IM friends say that it is too complicated, cost a lot of money, takes up tons of time and it’s just better to find a niche, build your list and live happily ever after… ya whatever.

I’m stickin’ with this and will eventually make it work… I will probably be making a guide of some sort of the steps, tools and what not to do’s of this journey. If you want to stayed updated with me then subscribe by email to my RSS feed up top.

Interview With Paul Bourque - affspy.com

Affiliate Marketing March 13th, 2008 Say Something (0)

I came across UberAffiliate.com some time ago and really found the information he presented very useful. He does the work to be a super affiliate and has uses his blog to help others. I think just recently affspy.com came out, actually it is in beta right now and does a whole lot for being a free tool. All I could do was sign up and wait. After you sign up, there is a link to check out the blog (of course) and I found this interview done by Wes Mahler with Tracking202.com, which is a company based in San Francisco, Ca (like 45 min from my home town) that does PPC affiliate marketing analytics. Well check out the quick interview below, it has great tips for people just starting out…
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