Affiliate Marketing Blog

As an affiliate marketer your affiliate commission is your life blood. Whether you are in it as a part time business or full time, your time is money.

When you mention affiliate commission theft, the normal response would be to blame zango.com, spyware, scumware, other affiliates and even anti spyware programs. No one seems to notice that there is an ongoing trend by some merchants that is costing you money. While the merchants may not be doing things to purposely steal your commission, the popular tactics below are costing you money and should be avoided.

• Phone Numbers On Banner Ads – Your visitor ends up calling and places the order over the phone. Unless there is a way to track the phone order, your money is gone.
• Live Chat - this seems harmless, but this can be a huge problem. If you drive a visitor to the merchant and a chat window pops up offering coupons or discount codes, you have lost the sale. While most of the live chat programs offer outstanding tracking, if there is not a tracking code in place to track affiliates the sale goes to the merchant.
• Squeeze Pages – these are extremely popular among Click Bank merchants. When your visitor arrives at the merchants site, they are directed to enter their name and email to get a free report or e-book. Once the lead is captured, you have lost the commission and the merchant has built their mailing list and possibly sold a product. Either way, your sale is gone.
• Newsletters – Another popular tactic by Click Bank merchants. You send the visitor and a few seconds after they hit the landing page, a slide in offer for a newsletter comes across the screen. Your visitor signs up for the news letter and they are immediately taken to another page or the landing page refreshes. Once the lead has been captured by the merchant, your commission is gone and the merchant has built their mailing list and possibly sold a product.

The list above is not all inclusive and there are other tactics that are being used. Before promoting a merchant, visit their site. Do you notice anything that is a leak? Do they have live chat? Do they have an phone number displayed on their site? After the visit, send an email to the merchants affiliate manager and ask about the problems you have noticed. Do they have a way to track sales that are directed to chat? Do they have a way to track phone orders? If they have procedures in place, you are good to go. If not, simply move on! I am not a big fan of Click Bank, but if you are promoting Click Bank products you need to make sure that you are not sending visitors to a squeeze page or a page that is immediately shown a newsletter offer. Remember that once the lead is captured by the merchant, your sale is gone.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best home business opportunities available and one of the few legitimate ways to make money online. One of the most important features of affiliate marketing is the ability to get started on a shoe string budget. I am going to show you how to get started for less than $20. (All links open in a new window)

The first step is to identify your niche. Choose a niche that you are familiar with so that you have no problem creating content. It is easy to get excited about something that you are passionate about and this excitement will show through in your web copy.

Get A Domain – Once you have identified your niche, get a domain. There are varying thoughts on choosing a domain name, but I tend to pick keyword rich domains to help with organic search results. I recommend NameCheap for domain purchases. They offer domains with free privacy for only $10 per year. I have over 100 domains registered with NameCheap and have never had any issues.

Get Hosting – Next you need to get a hosting account. I recommend a hosting plan that allows for you to host unlimited domains (for growth). There are tons of hosting companies online and very few are worthwhile and reliable. I recommend using HostGator. They are affordable ($9.95 per month), do not require years of prepayment to get a good deal, and allow monthly billing. The Baby hosting plan provides you with unlimited disk space and bandwith, Fantastico and an easy to use cpanel for only $9.95 per month. Get more information here.

Create your site – NVU provides one of the top free WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editors. Download here, get templates here, and take a look at the tutorial here. The next option is to use the Fantastico option in your HostGator account and create a WordPress blog. Once the blog is created, find and upload a theme and the appropriate plugins for your blog.

Affiliate Programs – the last step is to sign up for your affiliate programs. You want to make sure you have plenty of content and a professional looking site before applying for any affiliate programs. I recommend opening affiliate accounts with Neverblue,  Commission Junction and Link Share. Another option is to monetize your site with Adsense. Once again, before applying make sure your site has plenty of content and looks professional.

There you go! An easy out line to help you get started for less than $20 and your monthly cost will be only $9.95 to continue with the hosting.