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When a newcomer tries to make money online, they often are told affiliate marketing is easy, you do not need to have your own website nor creating a product to sell online! Well to me, it is half true. Yes 10 years ago, perhaps affiliate marketer doesn’t need a website to promote the merchants product, but today, if you are planning to use pay per click or PPC advertising and promote your affiliate programs, I can tell you definitely will get a hard time. Why?

1.) According to Google Adword policies, there only can be one keyword bids per website. E,g your merchant site is xyz.com and they are selling a weight loss program for instance. If they have placed their bids using the keyword weight loss program, then you can’t bid it using the name of their websites.

2.) Some may argue to use a free affiliate cloaker such as TinyURL, ViralURL to “change” the name of the websites and advertise the programs using PPC but by doing that, you are not building your own prospects database. So is a website really needed to successfully promote any affiliate products?

There are short and long answer, in short, I would say a “yes’ , ‘no”. A “no” is because building a website definitely increases your chance of success when promoting affiliate program, but we do NOT for sure, if it worths our time and energy on promoting until we test it with marketing data. Once we confirmed this program generate a descent sales and commissions, then we can start to concentrate in building a website.

Why a ‘yes’ then? It depends on the program “buzz”. If many people start talking about it before the official product launch, it is more likely that we can generate lots of sales on the market, so by building a website, it helps to separate yourself to other marketers which hence gives your more benefits around it.

So back to my question “is affiliate marketing really that easy?” Well when it compares to creating your own products or services, it definitely a yes but if you compare it to a person that have little computer knowledge and funds and tries to make some money using the Internet, then I would say it NOT that easy after all. However, there are some good programs on the Internet that provides easy step by step guide and help you to set up the your first affiliate promotion pretty easily without you to know the in depth technical know how which doesn’t stop a total newbie to earn their first buck off the Internet. Such a program does exists but you have to do your research and find which ones suits your need.

Later in this affiliate marketing series post, I will talk about how to choose a profitable click bank products, so stay tuned!

Another “turnkey affiliate business” found on the market recently is called Ready Made Internet Business. The best things I like about this system after looking at their sales letter are they preselect some profitable affiliate programs, pre designed some high conversion opt-in pages and lots of other things that made easy for a person who is not technical. However, they charge quite a bit amount of $697 one time, plus they didn’t mention if you have problems who to find etc. Personally I will join some 1-1 coaching programs rather than this online package. That way you can contact your coach on a regular basis to sort out your questions or difficulties that you are facing and learn your way through. I think it is the most important factor to succeed online, Learn it yourself rather than depends upon other hands. Anyway, you can check on this system here ReadyMadeBusiness.com.

Finally I want to introduce you a more affiliate turnkey programs which contains several affiliate programs that you can promote completely autopilot. That is you don’t have to worry getting your own a sales letter, prepare your autoresponder and opt in form, and advertise using whatever methods that you can think of. For Affiliate Silver Bullet, they are using the most popular method to sales your prospect – Videos! yes videos again. Think about it, successful people continues using the same technique over and over again, that mean they are really works! Also you have the option to set up your own Aweber autoresponder where you can build your list and reuse them to promote your other products later on. For more information, click here.

That’s about it for today, next time we will talk about probably the most easy way to make money online – web publishing.

so be sure to come back later.

Affiliate Managers / Networks

Affiliate managers are companies that let merchants to set up an affiliate programs for an amount of management fees. They often have sophisticated sales(commission), leads, clicks tracking system for both sellers and resellers (or affiliates). It is a ready made system that save sellers administration cost and time to promote their own affiliate programs since well-known affiliate networks already got thousand of resellers and they can promote your products when you offered them generous commission and banners to use.
Depends on the managers, setup, management fees or account deposit may apply. Please check their FAQ, merchants, advertisers TOS or ask them if there is a question before signing up.

The benefits on affiliate networks

While there are software on the market that assist you to track affiliate sales, refund, and pay your resellers commission, but you have to promote your own affiliate programs through relevant forums posting, online classified ads, search engines ads, banner ads etc. Whats more, you may need to hire extra staffs to track commission payment, refund, charge back etc. On the other hand affiliate networks,

1. usually have already thousands of resellers working for them which reduce your effort and time to promote your own affiliate programs.
2. always pay the products commission on time.
3. have sophisticated system to track sales, refund, charge back issues,
4. affiliates never have to worry about if they would receive their commissions.
5. you just have to login your account to see if everything’s fine and that is. These alone with save you dozen of time. Therefore it is better to list your products through a well-known reliable network. A list of such a network can be found here.

There are a lots of affiliates managers on the market. Depends on your niche, you may consider to sign up with the followings:

1. Click bank – for digital products such as ebooks, web hosting, computer software, cell phones ring tones, games etc. For merchants $49.95 upon accounts activation, $1 + 7.5% for each product sale. Free sign up for affiliates.
2. CJ.com - specialize in financial, travel and retail. Offers pay per lead or sale solution, Free sign up for affiliates.
3. linkshare.com – many fortune 500 companies such as AT&T, American Express, WalMart, and so on are using their services, so you are big enough, this one is for you. Free sign up for affiliates.
4. shareAsale.com – offers pay per leads, pay per sale or pays per hits solutions to merchants and resellers. You may sell both digital or physical products. However, they have account deposit, registration fees and transaction fees for each sale made, more information here. Free for affiliates to sign up.
5. clixGalore.com – No setup fees or activation fees for merchants or vendors. However, you are required to deposit the sum of $75 for affiliate commission payment and 25% management fee for each commission payment. For example if you are willing to pay for $10 to affiliates for successful sign up, purchase, or click, clixGalore will charge you extra, $2.5 for each transaction. More information here. Free sign up for affiliates.
6. payDotCom.com – No products pre-approval, merchants activation fees, account keeping fees, payment directly to your paypal accounts. Fees are charged per product sale split 50/50 among merchants and affiliates, Details: http://www.paydotcom.com/fees.php
   you can sell both digital or physical products. Free sign up for affiliates.

1. dealDotCom.com – an internet marketing niche affiliate programs. Everyday they have a draw to win a deal. Free sign up for affiliatesor submit product here.