photo: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=1108069

If you are an affiliate marketer, or, want to be one, it’s quite possible to get started without any money. In fact, if you visit http://www.thewebreviewer.com and opt in to receiving the free ELMO (Earn Lots of Money Online) starter kit, you’ll get a book written by myself and Matthew Bredel about how to go about doing it.  But there comes a time when most online entrepreneurs know that to grow, they need to invest in their business.  Sweat equity can take you far, but the boost you can get from a few calculated investments could help you get to the next level.

What would be the next level for you? For some, it’s making a payment with affiliate networks and Google Adsense each and every month.  For some, it’s getting ready to invest in pay per click advertising to complement their organic SEO strategies.  For some, they want to learn how to use SMO (social media optimization) tools and for others, it’s about moving from part-time to full-time and waltzing into their boss’s office to say, “Take this job and shove it!” Or, to be more diplomatic, “Thanks for the opportunities; thanks for the memories.”

How do you know if you’re ready to take the plunge and go from your No Money Marketing technique to investing in your business?

Here are some signs:

-     Your earnings have hit a plateau and are stagnant, or worse, are starting to shrink.

-     You want to expand into new areas but don’t have the time to do everything you want to do manually.

-     You want to learn a new online marketing skill and are willing to pay to learn it.

-     You can afford it. Maybe you got into internet marketing without investing but now that you’re making cash, you want to see what doing ‘more’ than sweat equity can do.

There are plenty of low cost ways to invest in your business. Sure, you could take the plunge and  invest in highly reviewed effective $97/month programs like Truguru or more budget-friendly programs like Wealthy Affiliate.   If you’re not quite ready or aren’t too sure, you can also learn more about various programs and read affiliate program reviews at http://www.thewebreviewer.com where you could also download the No Money Marketing book and see if there are areas you haven’t yet tried out.  Whether you’re ready to invest $1, $39, or $3900, moving forward to expand your business is a very good thing.

Next week we’ll talk about investing in your online business and what you may want to invest in first. Stop back by or better yet, subscribe and get an email or an update in your feed reader when we’ve got new posts!

Finding Time for Social Media

It can be tricky to keep up with a bunch of different tools, different followers, etcetera. If you ignore tools, they start to be less effective. But who has time to “socialize” (as productive as it can sometimes be for your SEO) all day? There are a lot of things you can do to automate it  a bit, without taking away too much of the personal attention that helps you build relationships.

Many free and low-cost but high yield social marketing tools exist. Here’s a look at a few:

Ping.Fm. This is a free tool that you feed several accounts into. You update once and it updates your other accounts for you. No need to manually update every social site you’re on when you post a new blog entry, for instance.

Onlywire. Onlywire has a free and fee-based tool that bookmarks on multiple sites for you as well.

Spacebankers. Spacebankers helps you capitalize on social media traffic. Matt Bredel has written an extensive SpaceBankers review on TheWebReviewer.

Time is something that’s even more valuable than money and in the world of online money making, it’s something that is valuable and brings you MORE money. Timesaving tools can help you continually build your brand, drive traffic to your sites, and increase the chances of people buying something you’re promoting as an affiliate. If you’re not spending much time now on social media, take time to test drive some tools that will help you save time AND maximize productivity.

By tracking activities on your website, you can figure out what people do once they arrive. You can figure out: which keywords brought them to you, which page they entered on and exited from, how long they stayed, what they clicked. This info can help you establish info about your visitor’s activities that could help you increase the positive elements of that customer’s experience.  That positive customer experience could translate to an opt- in, a referral, a social bookmark, and even a sale.

Tracking can be done via free internet marketing tools, via paid statistical tools, and via most hosting control panels. You may want to try utilizing the free tools at first but a quick look at traffic reporting reviews can show you that there are some products on the market that are positively reviewed as helpful and necessary for taking your business from hobby to full- time earning potential. Utilizing advanced tracking tools might be the ideal way for you to increase your affiliate marketing commission.

Above and beyond tracking what your customers do, you may want some helpful tools to help you track your commission and your results, especially if you are participating in multiple affiliate programs. StatsJunky is a tool that helps you track all your affiliate and pay per click (PPC) commissions from a central location.  Tracking202 also integrates with affiliate programs and networks to provide you with advanced info that can help you track your earnings and the success of various campaigns you have in place.

A lot of internet marketers toil over management, research, and gathering data that can help them decide how to proceed to grow their commissions.  As the number of programs and people looking to make an online income increases, more programs will continue to become available to help you have all the advantages possible. You don’t have to fall victim to scams that promise to help you make quick money,either. There are a lot of valuable programs out there that can help you grow your business. A bit of research can quickly reveal the best options for your business model.

Article Marketing Facts

• Article marketing is free and provides huge ROI for the time spent doing it. You can submit articles to websites for free and most of these sites will let you link back to your when you post an article. Top sites include: Ezinearticles, GoArticles, Articlesbase, and others.
• Article sites allow syndication. Syndication can result in your article going viral. It could be published on many other websites, increasing the number of incoming links to your site and increasing the potential number of readers who could click that link and perhaps buy your product.
• People reading articles may buy from you. They may also social bookmark your article…allowing it to be read by more people.
• People researching you will find well-written articles by you, adding to your credibility.
• Your search engine optimization efforts will bear more fruit. Backlinks for strong keywords relating to the affiliate marketing product you are promoting will improve the rankings of your website and / or landing page — resulting in more organic traffic.

Tips for Successful Article Marketing

When doing article marketing, write a pre-sales article about the product you’re promoting but don’t fill it with hype. Think of solving a problem and aim the article at people who might solve their problem by buying the product you’re promoting. Think valuable and interesting.  Write a great resource box as well. Resource boxes provide SEO value but they can also help you compel people to click to visit your site where you can buy the product.

Article marketing is a really effective way to advertise, get traffic, and demonstrate your expertise to potential customers. This is a subject we’ll likely visit often here so subscribe and get article marketing tips and other affiliate marketing advice delivered to your inbox or RSS reader.

Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Below are some suggested strategies for trying to make commission:

• Article Marketing. Articles can lead people and search engines to a landing page that has your affiliate code built in.  Using well-researched keyword phrases can help you maximize these efforts.
• Landing pages. You can create your own landing pages and drive traffic through various approaches, such as social networking, article marketing, and pay per click advertising. You can write your own copy or link to an affiliate landing page that utilizes your affiliate code.
• Content sites. Create or participate on existing content sites around a niche that’s related to your product and monetize those sites with banner advertising, contextual ads, or in-text links to other pages that contain your affiliate code. Don’t forget to use SEO and social media to help you drive targeted traffic to those content sites.

How do you learn to do the above things? There are many resources available that will help new affiliate marketers learn techniques to help them connect consumers and make commissions.

1. Learn the ropes through research. You’ll find a lot of info online to help you learn how to do various internet marketing techniques that could help you earn commission. YouTube videos, in particular, can help you assimilate information quickly. Subscribe to Matt Bredel’s YouTube channel for great affiliate marketing instructional videos on making money from home and affiliate marketing in particular)
2. Join an online learning program, such as Wealthy Affiliate or TruGuru, which will charge you a membership fee but will provide you with ongoing learning opportunities to help you learn all facets of affiliate marketing.

Whatever you choose to do, know that you can succeed through getting educated. Most affiliate marketers who take the time to learn the techniques of successful marketers are able to create an income stream.

Why go through months of trial, error, and frustration when you can learn from pros who have been down the road before? Some people hesitate to spend money on their internet marketing education but those who do tend to report that it makes a massive difference. With a mentoring program, you an learn about blogging, pay per click, SEO, content creation, web design, article marketing, and more and you can learn how to create a strategy that will help you launch a home-based business that could be very profitable.

The Skinny on The Wealthy Affiliate

Who: It’s geared to all levels of internet marketers: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

What: This membership program offers you a monthly membership fee to teach you various aspects of learning how to be a successful affiliate.

Where: The courseware is online with various plans, such as the 8 week success plan. You get guides, courses, and there’s info for download as well. Quite comprehensive!

When: Access material as and when you need it for as long as you pay your membership fee. Some members have been following the program for years because it continually provides new information.

Why:  Save time; learn from the pros! The community aspect is also phenomenal. You can even get paid to help other affiliates with a job board. If you have a strength in one area, it could pay off. If you want expertise in another area, you can find someone to help you. New features are added regularly to keep people interested and provide them with helpful information to enable the growth of their affiliate marketing business. They also offer Site Rubix, a very well-received web hosting option as well as the Rapid Writer System to help you with your content creation needs.

How: How do you learn more? Go to: http://gofollow.me/wealthyaffiliate.

Specials: Depending on when you read this post, there may be deals available as well.

A lot of people have great things to say about Wealthy Affiliate University. TheWebReviewer Matthew Bredel has been a member of TheWealthyAffiliate since 2006!

Twitter is one tool that a lot of people are using for a lot of different things. The realm of possibilities for using social media tools to sell more products online is expansive! Twitter may just give you 140 characters to share a message but within those 140 characters there can be links — links to your website or your landing page that points people to a sale.

Here are some tips for using Twitter to help you sell more:

• Use it for the backlink. Even if no one clicks your link, search engine optimization is vital for getting found and links can help in this regard.  Every link pointing to your website, blog, or landing page increases the potential of that page being indexed in search engines. There are social search tools that help people find information that they seek and if you position yourself well, people can find your posts.
• Don’t forget your profile! Your profile on Twitter allows you to put a website URL on your Twitter page. If you’re interesting and follow-worthy enough, people may click your profile link to learn more about you. Once they click, they’re a potential customer for the taking.
• Follow people by data mining. Use Twitter Search to help you find people talking about the topic you are focused on. By following them, you could have them follow you back and that makes them a potential customer.
• Direct Messaging. This is a feature on Twitter that lets you send private messages. Do be careful with this, though. People will ‘un-follow’ you in a heart beat if they consider your messages to be spammy.
• Be helpful. Answer questions, get in on the conversation. Being a good online citizen can help you make friends and connections who could later on re-tweet your tweets, opt-in to your newsletter, click your links, and maybe even buy your products.

Subscribe to Internet Affiliate Review and we’ll regularly share affiliate marketing tips and tips for using social media to your affiliate marketing advantage. If you want to fast track your affiliate marketing education, there are a great number of tools that you can use to help you learn more about using social media.

TruGuru and TheWealthyAffiliate are tools that can help you quickly learn how to unleash the power of social media to create wealth.

There are all kinds of types of affiliate marketing programs out there to choose from.  You can find CPA (cost per action) networks, physical products you can sell through dropship and wholesaling programs, and you can find information products that pay a commission up to 75% or more.  It can be tempting to pick a dozen different programs to work on and just ‘hope’ that they start to make money. But  you should know that most successful affiliate marketing professionals tend to focus on one program at a time, learn how it works, and perfect their methods for making money at it.  Read on for some tips for beginners to choose affiliate marketing products so that you can then approaching a workable marketing plan:

1. Look for a popular program to start with that sells a product that is in high demand. Choose a program that offers plenty of affiliate resources, such as banners, e-mails, articles, and other material to help you market.
2. Read affiliate marketing reviews so that you know whether other people have had success with the program or not. You can find information on affiliate marketing blogs, on internet marketing forums, and if the affiliate program has a member’s forum, you can gage a lot of info from that area as well.
3. Read everything you can about effective online marketing strategies. If you’re willing to invest in your own success, programs like The Wealthy Affiliate offer training programs that can help you learn various techniques.
4. Buy the product yourself. Too many who approach internet marketing aren’t fully aware of what they are selling. Many affiliate marketers make the mistake of basing their marketing campaign on information on the sales page. Intimately familiarizing yourself with what you plan to sell is a much better approach. If the product has a money-back guarantee, you know that you can use this to sell to potential customers  and the risk for you is eliminated as well. Isn’t it better to see first hand if it’s really worthwhile before you put time, effort, your reputation, and money into promoting it?

Finding a great home based business earning program isn’t always easy.

You should start with:

• Something you’re interested in. It’s easier to focus on promoting a product you believe in.
• A program with a reasonable payment structure. You don’t want to look for something with too high a payout level.
• Something that appears to be a great affiliate program. If there are others talking about making money with it through affiliate marketing reviews, for instance, there’s a good chance that it is worth pursuing.

Once you’ve found a program to start with, you can work at trying to promote it. Once you’re getting steady sales, you can put it on autopilot and then focus on finding additional affiliate products to promote.

(photo credit:www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001)

Basics of being an affiliate marketer

1. Find products that will pay you a fee for referring sales
2. Drive traffic to a link that is attached to your profile
3. When people buy the product at the link, your account is credited.

A pretty simple concept.  This type of set-up is a pretty symbiotic relationship for the affiliate marketer and a company offering to share their commission.

The Company

Gets their brand and products promoted but they don’t have to pay a sales rep a salary. They pay only for performance.

The Internet Marketer

The person doing the promoting makes money without having to touch product or do direct sales. There are many ways of doing affiliate marketing that don’t involve actual selling. In many ways, the company that you are promoting for does all that for you.

Affiliate marketing isn’t a get rich quick scheme. There are things you’ll need to learn in order for you to be able to do it effectively and profitably. A lot of people try and many abandon their efforts when they don’t pay off instantly. Many factors come in to play in terms of your profitability, such as:

• Picking the right product
• The competitiveness of the product you are selling
• The demand for the product
• Your knowledge about online marketing methods
• Your search engine optimization skills
• etc

Learn how to make affiliate commissions and you could create a great part-time or even full-time business. The great thing about affiliate marketing is that efforts you take today could pay off indefinitely. It is a great way to create passive income streams. Most people have to work for an hourly wage and won’t get paid if they don’t work. While affiliate product marketing doesn’t work out for everyone who attempts it, if you come up with a winning strategy, you can replicate it far and wide to create passive income streams so that work you do today could pay you dividends for several years to come.

How do you learn affiliate marketing?

There are many courses, books, and membership programs that will teach you various marketing methods.  Choose the right ones by:

-Reading affiliate marketing program reviews

-Following blogs and newsletters of successful mentoring marketers who can help you learn how to pick products and how to market them effectively

You’ll find countless free books, video tutorials, and newsletters that promise to help you learn more. Take advantage of this!

This blog is designed to help you on your journey to becoming a wealthy affiliate marketer. Subscribe to receive spoon-fed updates to your e-mail or feed reader.