The affiliate program market is also referred to as a cost-per-action (CPA) market.  These websites pay other site owners for a variety of actions such as buying, clicking, filling out a form or sending them a lead.

Before using any of these firms, you should ask for references so you can talk with other site owners to learn whether they are happy with the services these businesses offer. You might also want to ask your accountant and/or lawyer to review their terms and conditions and explain all the information listed in the “fine print.” When you use an affiliate marketing firm to bring revenue to your business, that firm becomes your business partner. You need to know as much as you can about them.

Many credit card companies and online colleges or universities will pay you an affiliate commission of $5 to $25 for each referral that completes an application. These commissions can possibly double if the company approves the application.

There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for your website:

1.  Consult affiliate sites like clickbank.com or cj.com.

2.  Work with a large affiliate network that provides the platform for dozens or even hundreds of  advertisers.

3.  Research individual merchants to see if they offer an affiliate program

Through these companies, you can market the whole merchant site or a specific product from the central site. The activity you generate is tied to your personal affiliate code, and the respective merchant sends you a commission check.

My friend Adrian Morrison makes a great living in the affiliate marketing world.  He has over 70 different campaigns running at the same time, and they’re all bringing in revenue.

Here’s one example:  Adrian was buying traffic  from Facebook for $.02 per click and selling those leads to an advertiser who wanted to build an e-mail list. The advertiser was giving away two tickets to the movies – at a wholesale cost of $2.00 — and paid Adrian $1.35 for every lead that signed up.  It took about five clicks for every sign up, which works out to the following:

•  Advertiser pays $2.00 for wholesale movie tickets

•  Advertiser pays out $1.35 to Adrian

•  Adrian pays Facebook $.02 per click, or $.10 for every five clicks

•  Adrian nets $1.25 per e-mail sign up

This cycle occurs 400 times per day — which means $15,000 per month profit on this single campaign.

There are thousands of ways to make money in the affiliate business. The trick knowing what traffic is out there to be purchased, at what cost, and what type of traffic the affiliates want. Then you put those pieces together — and keep the profit for yourself.

There are two popular variations of the basic affiliate model:

• Two-tier programs. These programs offer commissions based on sales and sales recruitment; they are similar to the old “Amway” business model — now called Quixtar. Not only can you, as the affiliate, generate income from sales, clicks or leads, you can also get paid for the activity from other affiliate sites you have referred to the merchant.
• Residual or Lifetime programs. You may find merchants with a subscription business model offering residual programs. For every visitor you send who becomes a client, you receive a regular commission for as long as that client keeps purchasing the merchant’s goods or services.

Businesses can create affiliate programs around actions that are important to them — not all businesses sell products, but they all have sales goals. Perhaps a business wants to encourage newsletter subscriptions or promote registrations for a conference. If you understand how affiliate programs work and the accounting technology behind them to monitor the activity of affiliates, you can help businesses create the affiliate marketing programs that meet their needs.

I found this piece of Harvey Mackay’s (here is his website: http://www.harveymackay.com) and I found it to be very insightful. Any entrepreneur should always be growing his/her network.

The alphabet is a great place to start as you build your network — organize your contacts from A to Z. The ABCs of networking:

A is for antennae, which should be up every waking moment. Never pass up an opportunity to meet new people.
B is for birthdays. It’s always advantageous to know the birthdays of your contacts. You wouldn’t believe how much
business our sales reps write up
when they call on their customers’ birthdays.
C is for contact management system. Have your data organized so that you can cross reference entries and find the
information you need quickly.
D is for Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty, my networking book.
E is for exchange and expand. When two people exchange dollar bills, each still has only one dollar. But when two people
exchange networks, they each
have access to two networks.
F is for Facebook and all other social media. These sites open unlimited possibilities for networking. Use them wisely.
G is for gatekeeper. There usually is a trusted assistant trained to block or grant your access. Don’t waste their time,
and make sure you acknowledge
their significant role in reaching the boss.
H is for hearing. Make note of news you hear affecting someone in your network so you can reference it at the appropriate
time.
I is for information. You can’t (and shouldn’t) talk about business all the time. Learn everything you can about your
contacts’ families, pets, hobbies and interests. Humanize your approach.
J is for job security, which you will always have if you develop a good network.
K is for keeping in touch. If your network is going to work, you have to stay plugged in and keep the wires humming.
L is for lessons. The first real networking school I signed up for after I graduated from college was Toastmasters. Dale
Carnegie schools are designed to achieve similar goals.
M is for mentors. In the best of all possible worlds, your role models can become your mentors, helping you, advising you,
guiding you, even lending you their network as you build your own.
N is for a network of contacts. A network can enrich your life.
O is for outgoing. Be the first to introduce yourself, lend a hand, or send congratulations for a job well done.
P is for people. You have to love people to be a good networker.
Q is for quality. A large network is worthless unless the people in it can be counted on to answer in an emergency at 2 a.m.
R is for Reciprocity. You give; you get. You no give; you no get. If you only do business with people you know and like,
you won’t be in business very long.
S is for six degrees of separation, the thought that there is a chain of no more than six people that link every person.
Someone you know know someone who knows someone you want to know.
T is for telephone. Landline, cell, internet — this is a critical tool for staying in touch with your network.
U is for urgency. Don’t be slow to answer the call, even if you never expect to have your effort repaid.
V is for visibility. You’ve got to get involved in organizations and groups to get connected, but don’t confuse visibility
with credibility. You have to give in order to get.
W is not only for whom you know, but also for who knows you?
X is for the extra mile. Your network contacts will go the extra mile for you, and you must be willing to do the same for
them.
Y is for yearly check-in. Find a way, even if it’s just a holiday card, to stay in touch.
Z is for zip code — do you have plenty represented in your network?

Mackay’s Moral: You don’t have to know everything as long as you know the people who do.

more at http://www.harveymackay.com

1. Buy a domain name that includes the specific Keyword for the product.

2. Set up an affiliate relationship with one or more firms in that field.

3. Create a simple website for the products.

4. You can obtain the photos you need from the firm for which you are selling, but be sure to ask permission first.

5. Create new copy for your website. Don’t use the same copy your partner uses; it can hurt your search engine rankings as well as other firms that have this copy on their sites.

6. Submit your website to the search engines.

7. Build links to and from your site with other related sites.

8. Create links to your new site from your Facebook and MySpace accounts. Consider asking your friends to list your site on their Facebook and MySpace accounts.

9. Write about your products on other sites, blogs, social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to get more traffic.

10. Optimize your site to improve your search engine rankings and increase traffic.

There is no exact right or wrong way to optimize website content for Search Engine Optimization. One of the best ways to rank organically is to make sure the search engines determine that your content is relevant to the topic that a user searches. It all comes down to understanding how search engines read your website’s content and how they rank your website based on how well your web site provides this information.

1) When it comes to using keywords, utilizing them properly can greatly increase your organic traffic. It all comes down to how you use the right keywords in order to make your content relevant.

2) Emphasize your keywords through the webpage titles and headers. These carry greater weight when it comes to keyword usage than the body of your content. Search engines read these labels as the “outline” for your entire content. Make sure to include your keywords in the page title and headers to let search engines and your searchers know what your site is all about. Use title and header tags sparingly though. The over use of keywords is called keyword spamming. If the search engine crawlers determine that you are keyword spamming, your website may lose ranking in the search results.

3) Accentuate the relevance of your content with internet searches by highlighting important terms and phrases in your content’s body through the use of italicized, bold, or underlined text. This would allow key phrases in your webpage to stand out. Having your keywords stand out helps readers quickly narrow in on the parts of the page that they are looking for.

4) Keywords have to relate to your page’s content. You can’t put keywords relating to cars on a web page about bicycles and expect either the reader or the search engines to respond favorably. Effective use of keywords truly depends on making your web page useful. If you try to “game” the system, eventually the search engines and the users will start to ignore you.

5) One of the best ways to research what keywords users are searching for is with online tools. Here at Get Rich Click, we use a tool called KeywordSpy, you can search for websites relevant to your industry, go through their keywords, and collect useful terms you can focus on at your website.  Along with keywords, you can find out how popular a keyword is with metrics like Search Volume and Search Results analysis. Having access to known keywords with quality searches will help with your site content.

6) Avoid overdoing it. The idea of keyword research and on page optimization is to make your website relevant with online searches in order to establish credible rankings. However, overdoing the usage of keywords and techniques can also cause a backlash effect. As much as it is a task to make your website appropriate it is also important to make the content coherent.

7) Proofread your final content with your keywords, read it out loud to see if it makes sense or causes confusion.  Avoid redundancy.  Have someone else read it to see if it makes sense.  If you have used the same keyword more than twice within four sentences, you have gone overboard.

Remember, you have to work to get the keywords for your web page right. Don’t give up too soon, and make sure that you follow the steps above.

Try a free trial of Keyword Spy today, complements of Get Rich Click!

One of my favorite Get Rick Click stories is of Zachary and Nathan Doctor,
two brothers who started a business in their dad’s garage when Zachary
was 10 years old and Nathan was 12.

The Doctor boys were your average pre-teens. They went to school,
played sports and found all kinds of ways to have fun. They also lived in
an entrepreneurial family. Zachary and Nathan did the typical entrepreneurial
businesses kids do, from setting up lemonade stands to finding
other ways to make a few bucks. Their dad is Lou Doctor, a successful
executive living in Silicon Valley. He runs a boutique investment banking
firm called Arbor Advisors.

Lou Doctor enjoys cycling. His sons also adopted the sport early on.
All three learned that in the world of cycling, special bike tires are the
equipment of choice. You must have the right tires for the right application,
from paved road to mountain path.

One day in 2002 Lou and his bike club ordered tires online from a specialty
firm in the United Kingdom. To get the best price, they had to order
in quantities of ten tires per type. When they received their first order, Lou
and his bike club were not thrilled. The tires were an odd color. No one in
the bike club wanted them on their bikes.

Lou Doctor struck a deal with his sons. He gave the boys the tires and
suggested they try to sell them on eBay. They could sell them for whatever
price they wanted, but he needed $30 a tire to cover his costs. Above
that, the boys keep anything they got above that as profit. The sons went
into action. They snapped digital photos of the ugly-colored tires, posted
them for sale on eBay and waited.

Not only did the boys sell them in quick order, but they sold them for
$35 each. Lou got his $300 investment back and the boys pocketed $50
for their efforts. The boys asked their dad to order ten extra tires next
time. The same thing happened. The boys sold the ten extra tires and
again made a tidy profit.

Zachary and Nathan wanted more! They were making money and having
fun at the same time. Soon there were more orders, more sales, more
customers and more profits. They went from ordering 10 tires to ordering
50 and as many as 500 at a time from the retailer in the United Kingdom,
who eventually gave them discounts for large volume purchases.
Then the boys opened an eBay store. They got up each day at 5:00 a.m.
and pulled the items, packed the orders, filled out the shipping labels,
and got to school at 7:30 a.m. When they came home, they went to work
printing out the orders and getting them ready for fulfillment. Every day
at 6:00 P.M., they took the packages to the local post office, where they
became known for pulling bins of boxes and placing them directly on the
back of the post office truck before it left for the distribution center.
It wasn’t long before the brothers launched BikeTiresDirect.com, their
own e-commerce website. The business kept growing — and in the Get
Rich Click spirit, Zachary and Nathan pursued online marketing, learning
how to buy the right keyword combinations to get higher rankings in
the search engines. They attribute much of their success to buying traffic
via keywords … thousands of keywords and keyword combinations
which increases the number of “free” hits they get on Google, Yahoo and
other search engines.

Thanks to the Doctor family, their tire supplier became the largest supplier
of specialty bike tires in the United Kingdom. Today Zach is 17 and
Nathan is 19. They have less time to work at the company, but they still
help with buying keywords and work during the summers. The company,
with over $8 million in annual sales at last count, now sells everything for the serious
cyclist. And it’s still growing.

Order Delivery Time in Five Minutes
Customers in virtually every country in the world order from Bike-
TiresDirect. Occasionally an order comes from a Silicon Valley customer.
For fun, Lou Doctor would drive his kids to the customer’s home, ring the
bell and deliver the order — allowing the boys to meet and get to know
some of their customers.

One day, they received an order from someone who lived only a few
streets from their home. They quickly fulfilled the order, jumped in the
car and drove to the customer’s home, arriving five minutes after the order
had been placed. When the customer answered the door, ten-year-old
Zachary and twelve-year-old Nathan were standing there, order in hand.
Needless to say, the boys had a new customer for life. Word of mouth
referrals from the delighted customer generated even more business for
BikeTiresDirect.

(The above excerpt is from the book, Get Rich Click!, due out May 2nd, 2011.)