I saw the first sign of Christmas decor in a shop last weekend -  there was no surprise, in fact I’d imagine it’ll start kicking off after Easter soon but it got me thinking about the need to prepare for this massive online shopping bonanza!

We started ramping up our xmas strategy in July by adding websites and blogs to our expanding network focusing on popular products. By researching keyword phrases, checking Google trends and buying certain domains we increase our chance of success from the beginning.

So what could you be doing?

A really good place to start is Craig Kaye’s IPK (aff: http://www.nichecontentmachine.com/ipkiller)

- it is a solid strategy for building an affiliate network of product sites whilst making use of free traffic to cash in on the online buying frenzy leading up to Christmas.

You want to update any sites you already have and update any references to Christmas 2010 as well as add new (effective) content to freshen up the pages. (Google looks at updated content as a ranking factor)

Another highly effective way to help your network of blogs and sites to rank highly on Google is to have a backlinking strategy – here’s a good place to start:
aff: http://budurl.com/backlinkbp

We’ve helped many of our own sites and those of our clients scale the heights of Google just through effective backlinking.

You can see a previous video blog post about our christmas affiliate strategy – If you’re going to do it – now’s the time!!

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Planning Your Christmas Affiliate Strategy originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on August 17, 2010.

I’ve mentioned the RAPS (Rapid Action Profits) script before on this blog as a great way for delivering your info products. If you don’t know, RAPS is an all-in-one sales and reseller management solution.

On the flipside however, if you’re still shying away from product creation or you just want to focus on building an income stream from instant affiliate commissions then the recently launched Rapbank (aff) offers a ton of possibilities on earning instant payments into your Paypal account.

Here’s an example. You choose a RAPS based product to promote from the RapBank marketplace and grab your unique link. The RAPS system alternates in sales so a 50% commission will give you, as an affiliate 100% of every other sale paid directly into your PayPal account. The other payments go to the vendor of course. This should give you an idea of the possibilities for making quick money, rather than having to wait weeks or months to get your affiliate commissions paid such as on Clickbank.

The RapBank marketplace is set to grow and attract a TON of product creators and affiliates who want to harness this instant income stream.

RapBank allows you to promote 100′s of products not just uniquely but by categories, keywords, RSS feeds, your unique favourite pages and other doorways. There’s even a wordpress plugin for sidebar or blog post widget advertising.

This is a HUGE make money NOW opportunity and I highly recommend Rob Toths Free 87 page report which laser focuses on every aspect of the RapBank possibilities >> Make  Money Now Report

To quote from the report:
“This isn’t some biz opp or “get in on the ground floor” nonsense either… it’s an online business trend that you can position yourself in front.”

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Use Rapbank for Instant Affiliate Commissions originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on May 1, 2010.

Clickbank have added a nifty new tool for publishers and affiliate promoters (about time really) that gives you an ‘adsense style’ ad box or widget style tabbed box for full commission clickbank products displaying just ad headlines.

Below is an example of a working tabbed widget.

You can specify keywords to control the types of ads that appear and these of course can be any clickbank products and specify different keywords. It’s a straight forward process to set up, just log in and then go to this page:
https://www.clickbank.com/account/hopAdBuilder.htm

Basic Ad block set up:

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Clickbank Hop Builder originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on April 3, 2009.

Whilst the ‘crunch’ bites, online sales of Christmas Gifts will rise this year. We’ve been looking at the Christmas gifts market by building a combination of static and blog websites focusing on certain products and toys. Specifically chosen products that we want to target get their own product page, and where possible their own mini-site. Blogs are just too powerful to ignore, so we will be putting a few of those out there too and pushing the feeds to remote content sites using the strategy in our new new media reports.

Specifically focusing on Amazon products works nicely and there is an excellent product Info Product Killer – discount code SPL777 – (although we have nothing against info products!) featuring videos and templates to build this strategy to focus on affiliate marketing of real products and not just for Christmas

A very handy wordpress plugin came to our attention called MultiFeedSnap which easily brings in RSS Feeds to your blog by encasing them in a [feedsnap, 10] tag, so naturally we used Amazon’s product feeds with our affiliate associate ID slapped on there..

Grabbing the Feed:

Most of the main categories on Amazon have their own RSS Feeds which you’ll see on your browser if available.

You can also grab the main RSS feeds from Amazon.com from here. Just copy the URL after choosing your category and don’t forget your associates ID.

You can also get the feeds manually by copying the RSS url and tagging on your associates tag.

Example:

Step 1.
Go to the relevant category on Amazon and copy the URL:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/videogames/ref=pd_ts_h?pf_rd_p=103981591&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=2101&pf_rd_i=home&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0M4DFHDP3P4JFGKKQRC2

http://affiliate-blog.amazon.co.uk/2008/07/create-associat.html

Step 2.
Delete everything in yellow above until you just have:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/videogames/

Step 3: Replace gp with rss and add ?tag=AssocID-21 on the end giving you:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/rss/bestsellers/videogames/?tag=AssocID-21

Warning: This will not work if there is no RSS feed available. You can pick out most categories and there is an excellent post on the UK Amazon affiliate blog which gives you a good idea on how it works.

This feed just goes within your [feedsnap, 10] tags in the html tab of your wordpress post:

[feedsnap, 10]http://www.amazon.co.uk/rss/bestsellers/videogames/?tag=AssocID-21[/feedsnap]

It works pretty well, except occasionally there’s an error instead of a list of lovely products which is usually fixed by a hit on the refresh button. There are many many ways to pull in the feeds to your blog, so if there are any other great plug ins for that, let us know.

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Affiliate Christmas Cash Strategy originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on November 26, 2008.

It’s no secret that having an army of affiliates promoting your product or service can seriously ramp up the traffic and sales! Hordes of people driving traffic for you via GoogleAds, Articles, Blogs and the rest. So it’s important to keep them sweet with lots of goodies that they can use to promote your stuff.

• Consider Banners of all sizes
• Pre-written Emails
• Articles
• Pre-written Press Releases
• Pre-written Forum Signatures
• Google Ads (with Keywords) – trust me they’ll love you for it
• Their own Landing Pages (so they can build their list)
• Viral Reports
• Videos they can brand
• Give them their own domain

It is a bit of work but the results are going to carry on producing for you long after the work done.

Creating Banners
Ok if you don’t do this kind of stuff, it’s probably something you want to include when you have all your product graphics done. There are plenty of internet graphics services out there here are a few:

http://www.ecovermedia.com
http://www.pulpminisites.com

Pre written emails
Well written, bringing in story elements and call to action. Study the emails you’ve received that made you click through. Remember this is not the sales page..that has its own job..you just need to get your readers to click through to it.

Articles
Laser focused on your niche with a strong call to action for the resource box. Articles are low cost to get written! Check out the warriorforum.com and go to Warrior Special Offers (be warned, you may never leave)

Press Releases
OK these are powerful and you should be doing them for your own products for certain. But how about one or two rewritten for your affiliates to use? – Give them a video explaining the submission process to free PR sites such as:

pr-insider.com
pressreleasemonkey.com

Forum signatures need to be snappy and to the point, you’ve got a sentence or two to play with.
Google Ads – make sure they are the right character account that actually fit into the different fields in Google Adwords and a list of well researched keywords will go a long way to giivng you streams of traffic.

Domain name. Give your best affiliates a domain name to forward to your site with their affiliate link. This motivates a stronger campaign on their behalf.

Landing Pages – Ties in with giving them a domain name, giving affiliates the option to host their list building landing page.

Report – OK may as well give them something they can give away and build their list with – so rebrandable viral report.

Use:
http://www.viraldocumenttoolkit.com

Videos
Create a video for your affiliates to distribute check out
http://www.vivaviralvideo.com/
http://www.webvideozone.com/public/department52.cfm

Good luck with your Affiliate Army!

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Giving Your Affiliates Ammo originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on August 2, 2008.

The world of internet commerce has created more opportunities for affiliate marketers than any other program ever has – the opportunity to have an entire ecommerce online storefront, full of products you can make commissions off of, all based in whatever niche you choose!

I remember manually building affiliate websites taking links and pictures and building the page for every category..I hear you cry ‘fool’ but this was quite a few years ago. Of course now many merchants supply updating feeds, but even then you will have quite a job building a store and outsourcing such a task would take a lot of cash!

Building Your Own eCommerce Online Store

Data feeds are similar to the RSS feeds used by blogs – an ecommerce store set up by a traditional offline business will place descriptions, pictures, and prices of their products into these feeds, and then affiliate marketers can incorporate these feeds into their own ecommerce store and make a commission off of each product sold.

Well I came across Datafeedr which streams ecommerce feeds into your wordpress blog in any niche you choose from merchants such as commission junction, clickbank, shareasale and linkshare.

If you’re looking for the easiest way possible to build multiple affiliate stores in any niche market then I urge you to have a look at this:

>> WordPress affiliate ecommerce feeds

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WordPress ecommerce affiliate program feeds originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on April 18, 2008.

Questions:

“How can I get more traffic to my affiliate link” by affiliate marketers

and …

“How do I get people to see my webpage” by subscribers

and on and on it goes…

Rob Toth’s new “How Can I Get Visitors To My Website: Traffic Generation Techniques Explained”
answers precisely those questions (in case the title wasn’t suggestive enough).

* 4 CDs (digital copies now available).

* Nearly 4 hours of traffic generation content from Rob Toth and his 2 panelists Doug Hudiburg
as well as Steve Roye.

* Resource PDF

* “Cheat sheet”

* A STUPID list of *useful* bonuses.

Again, it’s only $3.99 for the first 2000 copies.

http://www.nichecontentmachine.com/webvisitors

Affiliates:

Rob Toth’s new audio traffic course offers the first-ever 2-tier program that ALSO pays instant commissions.

Are you familiar with the 7 Dollar Script model? The affiliate earns 100% of the sale X% of the time …

So a 50% affiliate commission with the old 7 Dollar Script model meant the affiliate received the full
100% sales commission to their PayPal account immediately …but only on 50% of the sales.

It works out to the same earnings in the long run, but this setup allowed instant payments.

Well…

Now toss in 2-tier.

Rob’s affiliate program (for a traffic product that is selling quite well) allows the affiliate to also
build a sub-affiliate team and earn PASSIVE INCOME.

Here’s the power of this (and why I say it will likely be a trend):

–> not only does this 2-tier pay instantly but it also doesn’t require a separate “affiliate recruiting”
link as many 2-tier affiliate programs do.

So, let me explain that…

The visitors an affiliate sends to the sales page are automatically cookied for the affiliate program as well.

That visitor would still need to register as an affiliate (and then they get locked in for life as the referring
affiliate’s sub-affiliate) … but the point is, just by promoting the sales page and pushing for sales, it’s
quite possible to build a larger and larger sub-affiliate group.

THIS is going to get the attention of a LOT of marketers online. It’s very sharp.

Take a look at this first-of-its-kind affiliate compensation:

http://www.nichecontentmachine.com/webvisitorsaffiliates

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The $3.99 “How Can I Get Visitors To My Website” Course originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on February 27, 2008.

The affiliate-marketing concept is not very old, but the amazing success of some affiliate marketers has made it look simple and easy. Affiliate marketing is simple but becoming a successful affiliate marketer is no simple task.

Many wannabe affiliate marketers take the plunge in the business and without proper training and the right strategy give up early. The statistics of the successful affiliate marketer show that only 1 to 5% of thousands of marketers are able to rake in the highest commissions every month.

The reasons in the failure and success of the affiliate marketer are lack of training, bad strategy, and lack of the changing market conditions. The things that are needed in becoming the successful affiliate marketer are the same that are needed in any business. The most demanding things in becoming the successful affiliate marketer are patience, determination, and mentoring. These qualities must be combined with the other affiliate marketing strategies. Affiliate marketing is as competitive as any another business and the survival rate is also low in the business.

Fix the target market

Many new affiliate marketers try to have many different products marketed on the websites that makes them difficult to promote one single product. Instead of offering all the products, the affiliate must concentrate on just one single product and direct all the efforts on niche marketing. Concentrating on one single niche market will save time and will also enable the new affiliate to have effective strategies for the niche market.

Have the right marketing engine

The common practice with most of the new affiliate marketers is that they use the pay-per-click engines. The affiliate should learn how to achieve the best organic search engine results and for this purpose the help of a SEM company. The profits earned by the affiliate marketing are mostly eaten by the pay-per-clicks engines and the SEM consultant would help in saving the bucks earned.

Thorough knowledge of the product and the targeted audience

The new affiliate marketer must know everything about the products that he or she wants to promote. The complete information about the products and the consumer habits lends better credibility to the affiliate. The study about the product and the customers will help to have the effective website, which will convert visitors into buyers. The more the buyers the more is the income for the affiliate.

Diversification

The new affiliate should have a variety of products to sell through his affiliate marketing. The diversification will help to compensate the loss suffered due to the non-payment or the late payment by the merchant. It may also happen that certain products of the merchants do not have a good conversion rate and then diversification is the best way for the new affiliate.

Knowing which way the wind is blowing

New affiliates must get acquainted with the changing trends in internet marketing. A strategy used successfully months ago wound not be useful after the trend gets over. The new affiliate must keep him or her updated about the changes in the affiliate marketing. Sometime ago banners were useful in having the most traffic but then it turned to banner blindness and is no longer a very viable marketing tool.

Never give up

The new affiliate has to have patience, which is essential in any business. One failure does not mean that one cannot become a successful affiliate marketer. Check for the statistics; see what is working and what is not. The necessary changes must be made by the affiliate. Hard work, right strategy, and persistency will surely pay and one can become a successful affiliate marketer.

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How to become a successful affiliate marketer originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on September 10, 2007.

The World Wide Web has not only got the world closer but also has made available a vast amount of information! The internet has changed immensely since the new millennium and has created tremendous opportunities for marketing. Selling and earning using the World Wide Web has now steadily become the sunrise industry. The internet is the best medium for marketing, the reason being that it is 24×7 and 365 days a year presence before the potential consumer.

Affiliate marketing is the fast catching trend in online marketing and it serves many purposes not only for the manufacturers but also to the consumers. Manufacturers do not have to put in extra efforts in selling their products and services, which is done by the third party affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketing, is just getting someone else to sell your products on the internet.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is better known as marketing that is done through the World Wide Web and in this the affiliate marketer promotes the manufacturer’s or advertiser’s product and is paid for driving the buyers to the manufacturer’s or the merchant’s site. In order to become an affiliate marketer, the individual has to do research as to which is the hottest market on the net. Market for products like, health, pets, and golf is great and this is the first step in affiliate marketing. In the second step registering with a free affiliate program on the net and having an affiliate link gets the marketing started. The promotion of the affiliate links that features the products is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is also referred as revenue sharing.

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that both, the affiliate marketer and the merchant benefit, the manufacturer do not have to look for extra resources for advertising the products. The affiliate marketers work as distributors for the merchant and they promote his/ her products. To become a successful affiliate marketer one has to have some mentoring, passion, and patience.

The advantages of affiliate marketing

An affiliate marketer is only the promoter of a particular product and does not have to deal in all the processes of product creation, the market research and production is done by the manufacturer. What matters to the affiliate marketer is having the affiliate links to promote the product. The investment in affiliate marketing is negligible and one can start with or without any money. Affiliate marketing is easy because the manufacturer already does the hard part. The internet is available all the time to the visitors and the affiliate marketer doesn’t have to monitor every visitor to link. The affiliate marketing allows the individual to work from home and there are no additional expenses besides an internet connection and the computer. Free websites as well as blogs, article marketing, forum marketing promotes the affiliate links.

How to choose the best affiliate-marketing programme

Those seeking to promote their products through the affiliate marketing should look for certain things like affiliate marketing tools, which can be accessed on most of the online affiliate networks. The examples of affiliate marketing tools are web page banners and web advertisements. The advertiser or the merchant can compare the rates of the different affiliate programmes that are available on the net. The merchant can find the affiliates on the online affiliate networks platform. For the better promotion of the product, the merchant and the affiliate must work together and plan the right strategy for the promotion campaign.

In choosing the best and effective market affiliate, the advertiser or the merchants must follow the prevalent trends in affiliate marketing which will help in better understanding of the consumer’s choices in buying the products.

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Affiliate Marketing- Tapping the power of the Internet originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on August 19, 2007.

Making a healthy income from the Internet is not easy. You have to
approach it like a business because that’s what you want to be building, not a
hobby on the side.

One of the most rewarding yet straightforward ways is through Affiliate
marketing, which involves promoting other products and services.

Recurring affiliate income is probably one of the most rewarding types
of income as you can promote something once and get a percentage every
month as long as the customer who signed up through you retains their
payments.

These are a few of the markets which offer these types of affiliate program.

Hosting.
Everyone and anyone who wants a website needs hosting.
Furthermore, if they are happy with the service they’re likely to stay
with that hosting company as long as they have a website. Moving hosts isn’t
that difficult but a lot of people are put off by a preconcieved notion
that moving will be a nightmare.

All you have to do is choose a good hosting company and promote away
for recurring monthly income.

Dating.
Many dating websites offer a recurring affiliate program
enabling you to profit from the boom in internet dating. Often there is a choice
between a one off sign up commission or a recurring membership
percentage.
Read the affiliate offer carefully to make sure you will get the
commission structure you are looking for.

Membership sites
Many membership sites offer recurring affiliate commissions whether they in niche markets or internet marketing related.

Whether you are a beginner in Affiliate marketing or a seasoned professional, making recurring commissions part of your overall business strategy will stand you in good stead for future income.

Wealthy Affiliate offer one to one coaching from the owners Kyle and Carson, as well as a support structure of members, jobs, training, an affiliate program (recurring of course) to help you build your
affiliate empire starting today.

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Recurring Affiliate Strategies originally appeared on Online Marketing Intelligence on August 3, 2007.