Seven Ways to Set Yourself Apart From Other Affiliate Marketers

Okay so you've read (fill in the blank with internet guru's name here)'s book and decided that affiliate marketing is the way for you to earn some extra money online. I mean after all, all you have to do is plug in your name and run their ads and collect your commission check and ride off into the sunset, right? Not quite. With so many people promoting the exact same program as you, in the exact same ezines or on the exact same websites, you need some ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack of affiliate marketers. Here are seven ways for you to do this.

1. Host Your Own Website.

I know I sound like a broken record, but it is absolutely essential for you to have your own website. For starters you can have a domain name that is easy to remember. I mean can you remember http://www.areallylongaffiliatemarketersurl.com/?pid=123/r=4(My apologies if that url actually belongs to someone, I just made it up on the spot for an illustration)? I didn't think so.

So if you can't remember it and it's your url, what makes you think your potential customer is going to remember it. Do you know what they are going to do? They are going to just chop off the stuff at the end and type in the main domain name and purchase the product from the main site. However if you have your own url, you could have a url like http://www.yourdomain.com which is much easier to remember and you can just point your visitors to your affiliate page in your website.

2. Write Your Own Ads

Email the owner of your affiliate program and ask if you can write your own ads. Most of the time they will not have a problem with this, but you need to check with them first. A lot of times when I publish my ezine, I have published the same ad two or three times and I wanted to email the advertisers and say if only you had used your own ad. People become immune to ads after a while and if they see the same ads over and over again, they may just skip over it altogether. Your objective is to get people to click on your link and if your wording is different they just might stop and read your ad and be curious enough to click through to your website.

3. Have some products of your own that are only available through your website.

Once you have your website going, it is important to have some products or services that your customers can't find at your affiliate site. You want your customers to keep coming to your site and the best way to do that is to have something on your site that they can't find on the affiliate site.

4. Cultivate your own list.

It's much easier to sell to people that you have already built a relationship with. That's one reason why it is important to build your own list. You may also be able to earn some money from your list in the form of advertising.

5. Buy the product you are marketing.

When you buy the product you are marketing, you can sell it better. You can tell the potential customer what a great experience you had with the product. This will make them interested enough to buy the product. You will also be able to provide support if necessary or write a tutorial on how to use the product that you are marketing.

6. Be totally honest

If you find out that the program you were promoting is a scam, stop promoting it and inform your readers about it. This will help you build credibility with your lists. We all make mistakes and admitting your mistake will boost your readers confidence in you.

7. Don't try to market everything you see.

With services such as clickbank, it is easy to become overwhelmed and try to market everything in the clickbank marketplace. That is not a good idea. It's better to focus on one market and market products that they would want. This is called niche marketing. The last thing you want to do is to bombard your subscribers with pitches for products. That is one surefire way to lose subscribers.

Affiliate marketing is definitely here to stay and it can become a great way to earn extra or even part time income. However, it won't happen overnight. Like everything else in life, you're going to have to put a lot of hard work into it. Good luck to you in your new venture.

DeAnna Spencer is the webmaster for Learn Small Business, a site that teaches how to run a small business for free. Visit today at http://www.learnsmallbusiness.com

Affiliate Program Marketing: 10 Significant Sharp Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commissions

Millions of people sign up for affiliate programs, but have no clue on how to promote and market them effectively to generate piles of cash.

Below are 10 significant sharp ways to start generating a lot of sales and commissions, starting now:

1. Participate in chat rooms related to the product you're reselling. Start a conversation with a person without trying to sell to them. Later on, while you are chatting, mention the product you're reselling.

2. Create a free ebook with the advertisement and link of your affiliate web site. The subject of the free ebook should draw your target audience to down- load it. Also submit it to some ebook directories.

3. Start your own affiliate program directory. Join a large number of affiliate programs and list them all in a directory format on your web site. Then just advertise your free affiliate program directory.

4. Write your own affiliate program ads. If all the other affiliates use the same ads you do, that does not give you an edge over your competition. Use a different ad to give yourself an advantage over all the other affiliates.

5. Use a personal endorsement ad. Only use one if you've actually bought the product or service for the affiliate program. Tell people what kind of benefits and results you've received using the product.

6. Advertise the product you're reselling in your signature file. Use an attention getting headline and a good reason for them to visit your affiliate site. Make sure your sig file doesn't go over 5 lines.

7. Join a web ring. It should attract the same type of people that would be interested in buying the product you're reselling. You could also trade links on your own with other related web sites.

8. Participate on web discussion boards. Post your comments, answer other people's questions, and ask your own questions. Include your affiliate text link under each message you post.

9. Create a free ezine. Use your ezine to advertise the affiliate programs you've joined. Submit your ezine to online ezine directories and promote it on your web site.

10. Start a private web site. Use it as a free bonus if people buy the product you resell. You could also allow people to join for free and you could advertise the affiliate program you've joined.

May these affiliate program marketing secrets help you to make a lot of money.

Warmly,

I-key Benney, CEO

I-key, a Millionaire CEO from New York City is the creator of "Mscsrrr: Millionaire Secret Cash System", (Day Trading, Online Trading) which has helped thousands of ordinary people from all over the world to attain financial security and shining success during the past 2 yrs.

Mscsrrr Millionaire Cash System helps you to generate $1,500+/Week for life, from home or office, part time or full time. No large investment or hassles. Win $1000-$2000 free "cash"?

7 Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commissions

Suppose you could launch an online business in the next ten minutes? Suppose that this business did not require your own website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development or maintenance? This is the ideal world of affiliate marketing.

Made popular on the internet by Amazon.com, marketers can now earn a referral fee for directing visitors to countless merchants' website. According to Forrester Research, affiliate program earnings will represent $53 BILLION of all e-commerce sales by 2005. How could you earn a sizeable piece of this pie? Here are some powerful tips that would get you rolling in those big commission checks and laughing all the way to the bank.

1. Know what programs and products to promote.

Of course you will want to promote those programs that will bring you the greatest profits in the shortest time. There are several factors that play into selecting such a program. Choose programs that have a generous commission structure, products that fit in with your target audience and a solid track record of paying their affiliates on time. If you cannot recoup your investment, then prune such programs and keep looking for better ones. There are tens of thousands of affiliate programs online so you can afford to be picky. This is a case where you will want to choose just the cream of the crop and so reduce the risk of losing your advertising dollars.

2. Write free reports or short ebooks to distribute from your website.

Most likely you will be competing with other affiliate marketers who are promoting the same program. If you write a short report on a related topic to the product that you are promoting, then you can distinguish yourself from all other affiliates. In this report you can provide valuable information for free with a "recommendation" of the product. This is often referred to as a 'soft sell'.

The report or ebook allows you to develop credibility with your audience and your readers are more likely to follow your recommendation. There is less resistance to this type of selling because the prospect doesn't feel 'sold', just informed. The next step is to make this ebook 'viral' by allowing those who bought the product through your link to 'brand' the ebook for their own promotional use.

3. Collect the email addresses of those who download your free ebook.

Research has shown that over 60% of the sales of any product are made after the fifth exposure to the sales message. In other words, most people do not make a purchase on the first solicitation. You may need to send your marketing message over six times before a sale is made. This is the reason why you should collect the contact information of those who download your report. You can then follow up on these contacts to gently remind them to make the purchase.

4. Never send prospect directly to a vendor's website without collecting their contact info first.

Affiliate marketing is ideal but not perfect. You must keep in mind that you are providing free advertisement for the product owners. The merchants only pay you when you make the sale. If you send prospect directly to their website then these prospect are lost to you forever. If you collect these names instead, then you can always send other marketing messages to them and earn an ongoing commission instead of making a one-time sale.

5. Publish an online newsletter or Ezine.

It is always easier to recommend a product to a friend than to sell to a stranger. This is the philosophy behind publishing your own newsletter. A newsletter allows you to build a subscriber list and develop a relationship of trust with this list. Your subscribers will then trust you to recommend products that will benefit them.

This strategy requires a delicate balance of providing useful information along with a 'sales pitch'. In other words, if you send out frequent advertisement to your list and little valuable information you are likely to lose credibility with your audience. But if you write informative editorials you will build a sense of reciprocity in your readers that will lead them to 'support' you by purchasing your affiliate products.

6. Ask merchants for a higher than normal commission.

If you are very successful with a particular promotion you should approach the merchant and negotiate a higher percentage commission for your sales. If the merchant is smart he or she will likely grant your request rather than lose you. Keep in mind again that you are a zero-risk investment to the merchant, so don't be shy in your requests. Just be reasonable.

7. Learn to write strong Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. One of the most effective means of advertising online is through PPC search engines. As an affiliate, you can make a sizeable income by just managing PPC campaigns on services such as Google Adwords and Overture. Monitor your campaigns to see which ads are pulling their weight and trim those that are not.

You can use the ClickBank? Market Place, for example, and just choose a hot-selling product and start promoting. Once you are earning a decent return on your investment then you are in profit! Just this strategy alone can make all the difference to your commission checks.

Affiliate marketing is an entrepreneur's dream come true. Minimum investment, zero inventory, no employees, no product development-just BIG checks!

Author Bio: Subscribe to Net Marketing Weekly today and receive free enrollment to the entire 27 lesson Internet Marketing Success Course!

http://www.netmarketingweekly.com

5 Ways to Start And Promote Your Affiliate Program

"What's the Buzz About?"

"I made $5,000 in one week"

"I quit my job and spend more time with my kids"

It sounds too good to be true, but if you're serious about working from home and you don't have a lot of money to start than keep reading?

"What IS an Affiliate?"

Basically, an Affiliate is an individual that is willing to market and promote another company in exchange for a commission.

An affiliate is NOT an employee of the company. There are no guarantees of earnings in most cases, and there are various methods of determining payments.

In most cases, the company presents the affiliate with a link to its site that has a special code. When this link is promoted and customers click on that link, the company can trace any sales or leads back to the affiliate. Commissions can be made either way depending on the nature of the business. Good affiliate programs will offer a period of time in which, if the customer does not purchase the first time, but comes back within that period (even through another link) the original affiliate gets the credit.

"How Do I Choose a Program?"

Typing "affiliate program" or "affiliate program directory" into a search engine will give you millions of suggestions. Some directories can give you advice or recommendations. If you are new to affiliate programs, it may be wise to stick with the free applications. Don't worry, many, if not most, are free to join.

Select a program you are interested in yourself. If feasible, try the product or service personally. It always makes for a better sale if you can give personal testimony to the offer. Try testing its popularity by checking the 'keywords' at Overture, http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. By typing the words you think a person interested in your product or service would use when searching, you can see how many people have actually searched for it.

"How Do I Promote It?"

Easily!

1) List your company (being sure to use your affiliate link) in free classifieds. Again, these are easily found in the search engines. Try for 20 and keep adding on.

2) Determine who your market is?business people? Mothers? Car enthusiasts? Or those interested in health and fitness? Look for forums (public chat areas) or sites that cater to these individuals. Forums are great for connecting with people and building rapport, but be very cautious. Read some of the posts before making one of your own. In many cases there are strict rules about advertising, and you should respect that. View it as a social gathering and keep it light. This is where a personal recommendation would go over much better.

3) Write an article about the topic. A brief article 500-1000 words is perfect. Avoid advertising too blatantly. Some ezine (Electionic Magazine) submission directories will not allow articles that are too obvious. Creating a 'How To' or '10 Ways to?' would be a good way to start. You can then either incorporate your affiliate link in the article, or more likely, at the end when you create your author's credits. Submit your article to ezine directories (try for at least 50). For more information on writing ezines go to http://affiliate-start.com/ezine1.htm.

4) Join a traffic exchange program like TrafficSwarm. You can join for free and create a classified style add with a link to your site. By clicking other people's links you will collect points. Your points will mean your ad is being shown to others in the program who will view it. To see how it works go to http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?287887.

5) Search for newsletters catering to your market (see #2). Search for "business newsletter" etc. Subscribe to several and if you feel they are appropriate, contact them offering either your article for their use, or to check out the process for advertising in their newsletter. This method can reach thousands of people that have enough interest to subscribe and read a newsletter about that topic.

"A Word To the Wise"

Be very careful to avoid 'spamming'. This means advertising to individuals through their email when they have not given permission. This includes email 'blasting' and safelists. This can potentially include newsletters too, so verify their methods of getting subscribers before advertising.

"Enjoy Your Success"

If you follow these five steps, you should be certain to draw a handsome commission from your chosen program. We wish you success!

Cyprian and Shannon Emmanuel run several online business and share valuable tips and recommendations on starting a home business at http://www.Affiliate-Start.com.

Preparation - the Way to Success

I have two questions to ask you. One. How much time do you spend marketing your affiliate programs? Two. How much time do you spend preparing to market your affiliate programs?

Which of those two questions do you think is the most important? I say the second. Without doing your preparation "homework," you will lose your focus.

The affiliate programs that you promote are "your" products. Take the time to learn everything you can about that product. Even though you are not actually selling the product (you should be PRE-selling), you still must know what you are talking about.

The best way to do that, of course, is to own the product yourself. But whether you own the product or not, study the sales copy that was written by the owner of the product. You'll be able to lead your prospects toward "the click" much easier if you know why you want them to click on that link.

When preparing an advertising campaign, ask yourself what you want to achieve. That is your goal.

Now write down the steps that you need to take to get to that goal. Don't forget that there can be more than one way to get there. Use your imagination!

Let's say you want to use ezine advertising. There are several options that you can choose. You can use free ads, purchase ads through ezine co-ops, buy top sponsor and solo ads directly from each newsletter publisher, or write articles and send to the publishers.

Choose one of the options and follow through with it. Then choose the next option, then the next. Don't forget to track your ads to see which advertising method is working best for you.

Try other avenues of advertising as well. Explore new ones that you find and track the results. The more you have - that are working for you - the more commissions you will make.

By preparing the framework for an advertising campaign, you can use that framework for later advertising - with minor changes to accommodate the new information. I use it as a "task list" to follow. This helps to keep me focused on what I have to do.

Don't get me wrong. Advertising or marketing is important. But you MUST know what you want your prospect to do. Take your prospect by the hand and lead him or her to the click. The time it takes to prepare for an advertising campaign will be well worth it.

Jude Wright has been marketing on the Internet for three years. Her speciality is providing information to new affiliate marketers who want to become a success online. She has a free online newsletter, About Affiliates Ezine, which was rated A1 by Best Ezines. Subscribe at: http://www.aboutaffiliates.com/subscribe.htm

11 Awesome Ways To Explode Your Affiliate Commission

1. Start your own affiliate program directory. Join a large number of affiliate programs that go with the theme of your web site and list them all in a directory format on your web site. Then just advertise your free affiliate program directory. You will earn commissions and gain sub-affiliates. Plus you could start an affiliate-related e-zine too.

2. Do not drive all your visitors directly to affiliate website, instead send your visitors to your opt-in page mechanism first before going to your main affiliate website. That way, you can make follow-up later on and build your own list so that you can offer another related products or services another day.

3. Sell to the people who join your affiliate program. They are more likely to buy your products because they are interested in selling them for the commission. It's important to train and support your affiliates so they will know you will be there to help them. Tell them it's good to write ads about their personal experiences with your product so that it will persuade customers to buy.

4. Participate on web discussion boards. Post your comments, answer other people's questions, and ask your own questions. Include your affiliate text link under each message you post. If they read your message and like it, they may click to see what else you have to offer them.

5. Recruit lots of sub-affiliates and make it easy for your them to make sales. Give them proven ads to use, make it easy for prospects to order, provide helpful affiliate statistics, notification of sales, lifetime income, residual income, add their commission by giving part of your commission to them, provide a good tracking system and professional training.

6. Persuade e-zine publishers or webmasters to run your ad for free. Just allow them to join your affiliate program and earn commission on the sales. You could also offer them a freebie, such as the product you're selling for free, an advertisement in your e-zine in return, etc. It also helps to compliment the publishers as well as praising their e-zines.

7. Use referral strategies to get lots of order yourself or sub-affiliates order. Referral system can also be a good way to increase your affiliate commissions if you can give incentives to motivate people to refer and tap deep into people's network of friends, family, and associates. They don't just stop at the occasional, one-off referral.

8. Write your own affiliate program ads. If all the other affiliates use the same ads you do, that does not give you an edge over your competition. Use a different ad to give yourself an advantage over all the other affiliates.

9. Give free e-mail consultations or services to your customers who buy or will buy the product or services through your affiliate link. When you e-mail them back your advice include a small ad or distribute branded affiliates viral marketing tools to use like e-books or articles for the affiliate products your are selling. Just include your ad somewhere inside them.

10. E-mail targeted e-zines and ask them to do a joint venture with you. Ask them to run your ad and in exchange they would get a percentage of the profits. You would just have to get them to join your affiliate program to be your sub-affiliates. To give them better incentive, you could offer them a higher commission than the rest of your normal affiliates by giving part of your affiliate commissions for 2 years.

11. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your affiliate web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price, cut from your own commission. This will turn one sale into three sales. You could also offer them other things in return for referrals like free e-books, free software, coupons, discounts, etc.

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Finally! Everything you need to make a whole lot more than $100,000 a year with affiliate programs at Affiliate Boot Camp
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Kusuma Widjaja is President of Yahoo Cyber Technology, CV., based in Surabaya. He has over 2 years experience in Internet Marketing Arena, Custom Web Site Design and Graphic Design Services. For more information go to http://www.whycity.net or you can reach us at +62-8315-838474.

13 Killer Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commissions

1. Start a private web site. Use it as a free bonus if people buy the product you resell. You could also allow people to join for free and you could advertise the affiliate program you've joined.

2. Participate in chat rooms related to the product you're reselling. Start a conversation with a person without trying to sell to them. Later on, while you are chatting, mention the product you're reselling.

3. Do not drive all your visitors directly to affiliate website, instead send your visitors to your opt-in page mechanism first before going to your main affiliate website. That way, you can make follow-up later on and build your own lists so that you can offer another related products or services another day.

4. Start your own affiliate program directory. Join a large number of affiliate programs and list them all in a directory format on your web site. Then just advertise your free affiliate program directory.

5. Write your own affiliate program ads. If all the other affiliates use the same ads you do, that does not give you an edge over your competition. Use a different ad to give yourself an advantage over all the other affiliates.

6. Use a personal endorsement ad. Only use one if you've actually bought the product or service for the affiliate program. Tell people what kind of benefits and results you've received using the product.

7. Advertise the product you're reselling in your signature file. Use an attention getting headline and a good reason for them to visit your affiliate site. Make sure your sig file doesn't go over 5 lines.

8. Recruit lots of sub-affiliates and make it easy for your them to make sales. Give them proven ads to use, make it easy for prospects to order, provide helpful affiliate statistics, notification of sales, lifetime income, residual income, add their commission by giving part of your commission to them, provide a good tracking system and professional training.

9. Join a web ring. It should attract the same type of people that would be interested in buying the product you're reselling. You could also trade links on your own with other related web sites.

10. Participate on web discussion boards. Post your comments, answer other people's questions, and ask your own questions. Include your affiliate text link under each message you post.

11. Create a free ezine. Use your ezine to advertise the affiliate programs you've joined. Submit your ezine to online ezine directories and promote it on your web site.

12. Use referral strategies to get lots of order yourself or sub-affiliates order. Referral system can also be a good way to increase your affiliate commissions if you can give incentives to motivate people to refer and tap deep into people's network of friends, family, and associates. They don't just stop at the occasional, one-off referral.

13. Create a free e-book with the advertisement and link of your affiliate web site. The subject of the free e-book should draw your target audience to down- load it. Also submit it to some e-book directories. The more exposure your free e-book gets, the more your ad will be seen.

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For the first time ever! You can receive one-on-one, personalized coaching, from a team of top earning affiliates - who force you to succeed at Affiliate Classroom
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Kusuma Widjaja is President of Yahoo Cyber Technology, CV., based in Surabaya. He has over 2 years experience in Internet Marketing Arena, Custom Web Site Design and Graphic Design Services. For more information go to http://www.whycity.net or you can reach us at +62-8315-838474.

10 Hot Ways To Sell Your Products Like Crazy

1. Turn your ad copy into a story or article. Your visitors won't be as hesitant to read your ad and will become more interested in your product.

2. Give visitors a freebie for filling out your online survey or they usually won't. Surveys will give your business valuable intelligence for your business

3. Enhance the power of your ad copy benefits by using attention getting words, highlighting keywords, using color, bolding key phrases, underlining, etc.

4. Give your visitors tons of choices so they don't get the feeling of being controlled. Offer them a variety of ways to order, contact you, navigate, etc.

5. Put yourself in your visitors shoes. Design your site for them, not for yourself. Create your product around your visitors not because you would buy it.

6. Get free advice from successful online business owners. Participate in business chat rooms and message boards to chat with them.

7. Use your free bonuses to create an urgency for your visitors to buy. Only offer them for a limited time with your main product.

8. Offer your customers extra add-on products at the point of purchase. For example, if they are buying an electronic toy try to sell batteries with it.

9. Make your visitors feel good about themselves by giving them compliments. If they feel good they will also feel good about buying from your web site.

10. Add multiple profits to your web site. If you're selling business books try to sell business services, courses and supplies too.

Steve Li is the webmaster of http://pushbuttonincomes.com You can read more articles like this by subscribing to his twice-weekly Newsletter. Send a blank email to: mailto:pushbutton@pushbuttonincomes.com?subject=push button incomes and get a free course "Online Advertising for the Completely Clueless!"

8 Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commission

Here are 8 easy ways to boost your affiliate income:

1) Collect your visitor email addresses by providing free reports.

Offer a free report to your visitor. This report should provide helpful and valuable information. This will enable you to collect your visitors email address and follow up with them. Use an autoresponder to automate this work for you.

2) Publish your own newsletter

Publishing your own ezine and building up your subscriber base. Most of the successful Marketing Gurus have a large subscriber base. The reason is simple, "The Gold Is In The List". Successful Marketers like Terry Dean, Jim Daniels etc have been successful in using this technique.

3) Write your own endorsement or review the product you're promoting.

A heartfelt honest testimonial is hands down the best way to get a prospect to buy. Your prospect wants to know how this product has ben helping you. This will help them to make the decision to buy.

4) Use your web site 404 (Error) page.

Even though we try to build a perfect web site, sometimes something may be missing without our being aware of it. That's why the software may still have bugs even after being tested a few times. Check with your web hosting company to see if you can customise the error page. In my case, I use my error page to promote some affiliate product's. I put up the ebook cover and the ad on the error page. Whenever someone is looking for a page that is missing or mistypes the name, this page will help me to promote Marlon's products .

5) Fully utilize your thank you page.

After the visitor opts in to your mailing list, redirect them to a thank you page where you can recommend your affiliate product. Yanik Silver is using this technique; After the visitor submits their email for the report, they will be redirected to the thank you page. In the thank you page, Yanik will recommend a few products to his prospect. However, Marlon and some other Marketers prefer to sell 1 product at one time, which they believe it is more effective and less confusing. You can test these 2 methods by using a simple java script so that the thank you page will be rotated. One is with a single product recommendation and the other page will be for multiple product recommendations. Test it out to see which one gives you a higher conversion rate.

6) Track your ad and advertising.

You have to track your ad copy and advertising campaigns. This will enable you to know the conversion rate and then your ROI (Return On Investment). Some of the tracking tools you can use are Adminder and Clickalyzer

7) Let your affiliate program presell for you

Some of the affiliate programs have prepared valuable reports, newsletters, or courses to help you to presell. Some of them are Ken's Site Sell products, Marlon's Weekly Marketing Tips and Sumatra's Search Engine reports etc.

What you need to do is try to get your visitors to opt in to these mailing lists and let their information do the presell work for you. I was able to secure 2 sales for Marlon's product for this months through this method. What I do is put the opt in form of Marlon's Marketing Tips into the bonus page where my subscribers go to download the bonus ebooks that I have set up for them. In addition, I also put the opt in form into the thank you and error page, right at the bottom of the product recommendation.

8) Give bonuses when someone buys from you

Everyone on the web is selling almost the same products as you. By offering additional bonuses like software, ebooks or information, your prospect may feel that the added value to your product tips the scale in your favor over the same product being offered by the others.

This does make you different from the others and puts you in "A Unique Selling Position".

(c) ToonChooi Tan

Webmaster of Hot Niche Keywords which you'll receive 75-100's of Niches Keyword Lists Every single Month. Visit Free Niche Marketing Tips now to for various niche marketing tips. You may subscribe to his 6 part Niche Marketing Course which will reveal the insider tips and tactics that will show you how to find Hot and Untapped Niche Markets with Ease.

Internet Affiliate Business: 5 Ways to Grow It Organically

Growing your internet home business organically means there are similarities to organic farming. An organic farmer knows that if he develops healthy soil, he will have healthy plants. He also knows that "to every thing there is a time and a season." You can't harvest in the spring, or plant in the winter.

1. Nourishing the soil in preparation for planting your business means identifying your expertise and passion, and researching to find out what's "hot". What is it you want to grow? What seeds do you already have? What affiliate program suits you best? Find the product or products you can endorse, the company with a history that also offers the best commission rate, the experienced team that will support and help you all the way.

Next research your competition. Who are they? Why would a customer rather buy from you? Study their websites and find your niche. What makes your site special? The beauty of the internet is that the "playing field" is level. Big biz competes side by side with small.

2. Promoting your business is like irrigating and cultivating. How and where will you place ads? Keep exact records of where you advertise and what results you achieve. Prune back what doesn't work. Link to like sites with good content.

3. Nourishment is adding articles, maybe a blog, tweak that website! Search engines love changes. Nourish your mind, too. Read the success stories of those who have gone before, join a business organization and connect with mentors, form partnerships. There is nothing to keep you from joining your local Chamber of Commerce. Swap ads with webmasters whose sites complement yours.

4. Before you know it, you may be swamped and need some help. The "organic" way to grow is to ask family members to pitch in. They're already expecting to share the wealth once it's harvest time anyways, they'll probably be willing to help get you there.

5. After you've harvested, at some point you will think about planting new seeds. Once your website is getting lots of hits and your business is blooming, your articles are out there and your name is being recognized, you can capitalize on your success by developing a product of your own. It will seem natural to turn your articles into a book, or develop an internet business course or newsletter.

There's nothing easy or effortless about developing your own business, but also nothing quite as exciting or rewarding.

Time to start nourishing that soil.

Glenn Beach is a poet, writer and home business entrepreneur in Nova Scotia, Canada. Free newsletter, more articles, and business start-up info at: http://www.work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com

Two Quick Ways to Make Your Copy of Merchants Data Feed Different From All Other Affiliates

Product data feeds are really popular among affiliates because they can help produce thousands of product pages quickly and easily. Such pages can be used to drive highly targeted search engine traffic looking specifically for those products. But there is a big problem.

The problem with data feeds is the fact that a lot of affiliates use the same copies of feeds in the same exact ways. Most data feed affiliates put just the product names in HTML titles, so they all end up with a bunch of similar pages that have identical titles. And since the search engines give a lot of weight to the titles of HTML pages, those affiliates end up competing with each other for the same highly specific keywords.

Luckily, this problem has a quick and dirty solution. It's worse than going over the feed by hand, but much better than doing nothing. What I get from affiliates is that manually modifying feed simply defeats the purpose. But being able to do it automatically can help one differentiate his site from other affiliates without losing the benefits of using data feeds.

There are two basic ways to automatically make your site a little bit different from other affiliates of the same merchant.

The first way is to add some keywords before and/or after the product name in the HTML title. For example, let's say you pick a phrase "On Sale" to add after the product name. So instead of "Blue Widget #MN-3143" you have in the original data feed, you would now have "Blue Widget #MN-3143 On Sale" in the HTML title of that product page. You simply add that phrase to the titles of all products in the feed. That lets you specifically target people who would search for "blue widget on sale" or "mn-3143 on sale."

You can also use some arbitrary keywords like "Cheap" or "Discounted" or "Quality" before the product name to have something like "Cheap Blue Widget #MN-3143." The keywords you pick largely depend on the merchant's product line.

Another variation of this technique is to randomize the keywords that are displayed before and after product names in the titles. You can use a sever-side technology of your choice to pick a random keyword out of some predefined list and append it to the name of a product to form the title for the page. Your scripts would pick a new keyword for each request for the product page. Of course, that would only work if you are using a database, and do not generate static HTML using Webmerge or a similar program. That way, even though you don't control the exact keyword that is displayed for any particular page, with enough product pages you can cover a wider market of people searching with different modifiers. You should be able to cover different shopper types -- the ones looking for bargains as well as the ones looking for quality.

The second way to make your site different from others is a bit more complex, but could yield much greater results. Instead of adding something to the product names, you can try changing the names on a large scale. As I said earlier, modifying feeds by hand would defeat the purpose of using them. But if you perform a find-and-replace operation on the whole file then you can get different content without spending much additional time.

The utility you might want to use for feed modification is called sed. You can search for that name using you favorite search engine. It's sed -- the stream editor. I'm going to skip much of the technical detail on how and why it does certain things in a certain way. Instead, I will concentrate on describing practical application of sed with product feeds.

At its core, sed takes input data, modifies it according to certain rules and outputs the result -- all done line-by-line. It uses regular expressions and can perform extremely complex operations, by for now I just want to concentrate on simple replacements.

The good thing about sed is it can use an external file with multiple commands and execute them one after another for the entire input file (in our case, it's a product feed). So you can replace as many words as you need. Also, once you define those commands, you can use them for many different feeds with different merchants.

Let's go over a few examples that should illustrate the true power of this approach.

I'll assume that the merchant we are working with sells widgets of various kinds. You looked over the feed and saw that the merchant has some porcelain widgets; red and blue, large and small. One of the synonyms for porcelain is ceramic, so first thing you would do is replace the word porcelain with ceramic in all product names and descriptions.

This can be done by adding the following commands to a sed script file before running it against the feed:

s/porcelain/ceramic/g s/Porcelain/Ceramic/g

Those commands will replace your keywords while preserving capitalization. So that a title like "Big Blue Porcelain Widget" becomes "Big Blue Ceramic Widget."

To make things more interesting, let's assume that the feed already has some ceramic widgets aside from the porcelain ones. So you do not want to end up with just one kind. Instead, you want to switch them around. Remember, your goal is to be as different from the original feed as possible.

You can achieve that with the following set of commands:

s/porcelain/MYTEMPKEYWORD/g s/ceramic/porcelain/g s/MYTEMPKEYWORD/ceramic/g

In the example above, I used MYTEMPKEYWORD as a place-holder. That let us make sure that we are not losing the original keywords.

What happens there is:

all "porcelain" is changed to "MYTEMPKEYWORD' then all "ceramic" is changed to "porcelain" then all "MYTEMPKEYWORD" (which used to be the original porcelain) is changed to "ceramic"

and then the same thing should be done for all capitalized keywords.

You can use anything in place of MYTEMPKEYWORD as long as it does not already appear in the feed. You want to use some unique keyword.

Once you are done with those keywords, you can change something like "Metallic" to "Shiny Metal Finish" -- assuming that makes sense for a given product line.

Adding that to a command file would give you:

s/porcelain/MYTEMPKEYWORD/g s/ceramic/porcelain/g s/MYTEMPKEYWORD/ceramic/g s/Porcelain/MYTEMPKEYWORD/g s/Ceramic/Porcelain/g s/MYTEMPKEYWORD/Ceramic/g s/Metallic/Shiny Metal Finish/g s/metallic/shiny metal finish/g

That would also change "Blue Metallic Widget" to "Blue Metal-Looking Finish Widget."

As I said earlier, you can add as many commands as you want for different words and phrases. And with enough such small changes, you will be able to reach traffic that is not already covered by your competing affiliates. While a few hundred affiliates with their data feed sites might be displayed for a keyword "blue porcelain widget" -- there might be just a few (if any) covering "blue ceramic widget" for the same merchant.

Even something like

s/TV Set/Television Set/g

along with diagonal sizes and brand names might help you stand apart from the rest of the affiliates who use the same feed. Any change is better than having the same exact content as others.

I encourage you to download a copy of sed and check it out. Once you get a hang of it, you will be able to automate the whole process. And if you are already using scripts to refresh merchants' feeds and rebuild sites automatically, then you can plug sed in the middle and modify feeds on the fly.

Also, if you are having a hard time coming up with words to replace, you might want to check out Princeton's WordNet. You can even download the word database and use it locally on your desktop.

Konstantin Goudkov manages an affiliate program with a merchant that carries 2500+ gifts. If you enjoy working with companies that treat affiliates like valued partners then be sure to check us out.

You can find more information about our program at: http://www.genericgifts.com/affiliate_program.jsp