Building Your Affiliate Funnel

While a lot of affiliate marketers can operate without setting up a website, the benefits of doing so will become immediately apparent. First, having your own website establishes your credibility on the subject, and further lends authority to the product you are promoting.

While you can strictly use AdWords and other contextual advertising methods, having your own website is a way to add other income streams, organize and consolidate your affiliate product offerings and add other types of advertising and monetization schemes to your site.

Setting up a website is not that difficult nor is it very expensive any more. If you decide to go with your own website, there are a few things you should know in order to get started.

Get your own domain name. A domain name is a unique name that identifies your website. It transforms an IP address (100.99.103.44) to something memorable – www.yourdomain.com.

Having your own domain name adds to the authority of what you’re writing, should be easy to remember and gives you a platform from which to write. Registering a domain name nowadays costs only about $8 to $10. Some of the best registrars include:

 Godaddy.com

 Namecheap.com

  Internic.com

Next, you will want to get webhosting. This is also very inexpensive. A full featured webhosting plan will cost you only about $5.00 to $10.00 per month.

 Godaddy.com

 Hostgator.com

 Dreamhost.com

Get an easy to use website platform. You don’t need to be an HTML or Dreamweaver expert to set up a really nice site.

The platform of choice these days is WordPress, which is very simple to setup by using Fantastico and Cpanel, and there are tons of very nice themes out there for you to use. Two other easy to use content systems are Drupal and Joomla.

All three of these will build out a full site for you that has an admin interface that is easy to learn and use. Through the use of one of these platforms, you can accomplish a number of essential things to the success of your affiliate sales:

Affiliate link cloaking: It would be nice to think that everybody is honest. However, this is not the case. As a result, you need to cloak your affiliate link so that when a person clicks through your link and buys the product, the commission goes to you.

Especially with an affiliate network like Clickbank, it is very important to cloak your original link with an ironclad decoy link that keeps the commission protected.

It will take a link that looks like a mish-mash of letters and dots and like this: http://AFFILIATE.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net and turn it into something like this: 

http://yourdomain.com/product.html. It makes it both easier to read and keeps your affiliate information secret and intact.

Pre-selling: This affords you the opportunity to write or have written articles that are keyword optimized (which means that they are designed to rank highly in the search engines for specific words), traffic magnets that affords visitors the opportunity to learn more about a specific product and get more exposure that leads to eventual conversion. Pre-selling is an art that happens over time.

Ad Tracking & Analytics: While Google AdWords offers excellent ad tracking features, having a person visit your website further refines the analytics you can look at.

As a visitor explores your entire website, you are gaining valuable information about what pages they visited how long they stayed on specific pages, what links they clicked and the like. All of this information can help you refine what is on your website.

For instance, say a person arrives at your home page, goes to a page on a specific product and then goes through a link on that page to another page on your site and stays there for a long time.

If this happens over and over, you have just gained valuable information about what has caught people’s interest. In that way, you can offer more of the same that is on the second page so that people are likely to return and be re-exposed to you, your products and your site.

Blogging About Specific Topics Related To Your Affiliate Product: With a website built on the WordPress platform, you can set up certain programs called plug-ins that automatically optimize your website.

What this means is that Google and the other search engine spiders will love to stop by your site and add pages to their search index.

As you get more pages into the search engines, you will rank higher. What this means is that you will have more and more visibility and in turn more traffic will visit your site over time.

Learning about keyword research and search engine optimization or SEO is one of the things that every affiliate should learn.

The more you know, the better your site will become, and the better your site, the more sales you will make.

URL Display and URL Actual

One nice thing to remember is that you can put your Clickbank ID and URL in the Destination URL section of the advertisement. In the Display URL, you place the actual website URL of the affiliate products vendor.

Example:

 Display URL: www.maverickmoneymakers.com

  Destination URL: http://xxxxxx.maverick66.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=MAVERICK

That word “?tid=MAVERICK” on the end of the Clickbank ID is called a traffic tracking device which allows you to track how your campaigns are going. Both Clickbank and AdWords will allow you to track your advertising campaigns so that you can make a decision about what’s working and what needs to be changed.

To track within AdWords, you will need to choose a keyword that you want to track in AdWords. Click on Edit Keyword Settings. Then you have a URL that you can add a tracking ID to which in this case would be “?tid=MavAd1” for Maverick, Ad #1. You only have 8 letters that you can use, so whatever you decide, it should be easy to understand and decipher.

Yahoo and MSN’s Contextual Advertising

While not much is said about the contextual advertising that is available through Yahoo and MSN, it does exist. As an alternative, you might want to consider advertising through them. The same rules apply, the competition is less and you may wind up spending a lot less for the same amount of advertising.

In order to figure out if it’s worth the money, you can sign up for accounts with both MSN and Yahoo pretty easily and try it out. They also run a lot of specials and give away coupons worth various amounts of money just to get you to try their service.

Yahoo PPC Service:

http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/

MSN Adcenter: https://adcenter.microsoft.com

While these are lesser advertised, contextual advertising outlets, you can get a lot of mileage from them, and all kinds of traffic you might have missed if you focused on Google alone. Remember, being successful as an affiliate means thinking outside of the box.

Facebook and Myspace Advertising

Often overlooked and very good places to advertise are Facebook and Myspace. While I wouldn’t advertise the How To Make Money Online e-books, they are great places to advertise other digital products.

If, for instance, one of your products is Jamorama from Clickbank, it is a “learn to play guitar online” service that is made for young people, is done totally online and would make a great Myspace advertisement.

Squidoo and Hubpages

If you don’t have a website and you want to have an intermediary page that gives more information and pre-sells the product more, you can use either Squidoo or Hubpages. They are free to build, takes about 60 seconds and requires no HTML ability to use.

Tons of people build Squidoo lenses using articles that expand on the products and services that they are promoting.

In this way, a person doesn’t click through your link straight to the pitch page of the vendor and only think that you are trying to sell them something.

Through the use of these intermediary sites, you can add value to the product or service with a personalized set of information that is tailored to make the product more understandable.

If you decide to build a Squidoo page for your affiliate product, most people will do a review of the product or write an article outlining the benefits of using/reading/listening to the product. In this way, it is more personal and less salesman-like.

 

Web 2.0 Social Networking

By using Web 2.0 social networking, you can announce and spread the word about your affiliate product. Instead of sending them directly to the vendor’s site, you can use Squidoo, Hubpages and other social networking sites like Ning and Scribd.com to Pre sell the product through writing articles and converting them into mini websites.

Instead of advertising the vendor site, you will advertise your intermediary site and use it to list build and follow up through an autoresponder.

The easy way to list build is take a picture of one of the aWeber or Get Response forms using a program like Snagit, and upload the picture and make it a clickable link to a squeeze page.

You can build a squeeze page using Weebly.com which has a drag and drop interface that makes it extremely easy to build web pages with autoresponder forms embedded in them.

You then have people click, go to your landing or squeeze page and fill out the form. On the landing page, you can further outline the benefits of the product you are promoting.

10 Natural Ways To Clear Stroke Causing Plaque From Your Arteries

There is no doubt that both arteries and veins have very important roles to play. Veins carry blood to the heart. The blood is then transported to the various parts of the body with the help of the arteries.

Hence, there is no doubt that arteries have a very important role to play. When we are born and as we are young our arteries are clean and oxygenated blood flows very easily to all parts of the body.

However, as we age and we as we become very undisciplined in our lifestyle habits, our arteries get choked with plaque which gradually creates lot of problems and at times even causing death.

That’s why it is very important to find out ways by which we can keep the arteries clean and free from plaque using some proven and natural methods.

What Exactly Is Arterial Plaque

When we talk about arterial plaque we are talking about a dangerous combination of dead cells, cholesterol, calcium and fibrous tissues. This happens only after the smooth interior lining of the arteries are damaged.

Once it is injured, the smooth lining becomes rough and rugged and it starts attracting cholesterol and other elements as mentioned above. The problem is more serious than we had thought as even young children of eight to ten years suffer from this problem.

It’s a problem that needs to be nipped in the bud to prevent heart attacks, strokes and other such dangerous conditions. So what can we do natural to help change the course!

1. Look For Foods Low in Cholesterol & Saturated Fat 

The World Health Organization and American Heart Association states that one should restrict saturated fat to only around 16 grams and cholesterol should never exceed 25 percent. Only then would it be possible to reduce arterial obstructions.

This would call for reducing meat serving to less than 4 ounces each meal. The rest should be filled up by beans, fruits and vegetables.

2. Increase Soluble Fiber Intake

It is also very important to increase intake of soluble fiber which is found in plenty in oatmeal, whole grains, oat bran, pears and apples. This is important because if you want to remove the clogged arteries and reduce the quantity of blood fats or lipids, then these soluble fibers could be very useful.

Soluble fibers are known to bind well with these lipids in the intestines and help to flush out the same and prevent it from entering the blood stream.

3. Give Up Smoking

There is no doubt that smoking is very damaging and could play a big role in increasing LDL (bad cholesterol) and also in reducing HDL (good cholesterol).

When one smokes regularly they increase the early stages of fat known as triglycerides. Hence staying away from cigarettes is not a choice but a compelling compulsion so to say.

4. Exercise Regularly

Regular exercise helps burning of excess calories and keeps the arteries neat and clean. You should however take the doctor’s advice and go for an exercise program that has been recommended and cleared your doctor.

Moderate exercising for a period of 30 minutes works wonders but even exercise for 10 minutes a day can be very helpful. You need to consult with your doctor regarding this.

5. The Importance Of Omega 3 Fatty Acids

Omega-3 fatty acid is often called the wonder nutrient. It is found in Tuna, Salmon, Mackerel, and Hoki. They play a big role in lowering cholesterol levels that cause plaque in your arteries.

They also help reduce inflammation of the arteries and also help to repair the damaged arteries especially the interior linings. They also play the role of a blood thinning agent and which helps in reducing formation of blood clot.

  

6. Keep A Watch On Waistline 

Extra inches in your abdomen are clearly a sign that all is not well as far as non-essential fatty substances are concerned. It could be a precursor to deposit of plaque in your arteries.

Trimming one’s waistline is extremely important to say the least.

7. Supplements Are Too Important To Ignore 

It is very important to understand the importance of food supplements. They are slowly becoming a necessity rather than a choice – a well balanced diet will minimize their use.

It has been proven that well-chosen and quality supplements can play a big role in keeping the arteries clean and sweep the plaque and other harmful deposits away. There are a range of Vitamin Supplements that could help. They have been proven to reduce cholesterol buildup in the arteries.

8. Avoid Processed Food

In today’s fast paced world there is no doubt, a lack of time is a big problem and most of us have forgotten the virtues of home cooked food. Processed food is rich in saturated fatty acids, preservatives and all other things which do nothing but damaged our system.

They play a big role in clogging the arteries and make us obese and unfit. Making the one change of staying away from processed foods to the maximum extent possible with pay big dividends reducing artery plaque. It is a small price to pay for maintaining a healthy and good lifestyle

9. Limit Alcohol

Though limited quantities of alcohol could be good for the body, when one overshoots the limit set by doctors and by others who set such standards, it is bound to create problem. Beer, sweet wine and other such drinks could lead to obesity and increased sugar levels. This certainly could be the foundation for the arteries being clogged.

10. Reduce Stress Levels And Have Required Sleep

Stress is a bad thing and it is known to cause hormonal imbalances which eventually lead to fat accumulation in the arteries. One should learn how to de-stress and get into exercises such as yoga and meditation which could help a lot.

Regular sleep of at least 8 hours per day (at the right time) is also something that should be always be kept in mind.

In closing, taking the steps to reduce plaque in your arteries is a process. But quick gains can be realized with dietary changes and exercise like walking.

Here are some techniques so that you can use the AdWords system and make money.

The site is located at: http://adwords.google.com

You can sign up for an AdWords account by clicking the Start Now button and filling in your information. Sign up for a standard and not a starter account.  AdWords is pretty easy to use. Many people will want to start out with 100's of keywords and will take everything suggested by AdWords keyword tool.

Avoid this method and stick with a few terms that are laser-focused on your product or service.

Use the AdWords keyword suggestion tool or other keyword tool like MicroNiche Finder, Nichebot and Keyword Elite to find about five or six terms that are tightly related to your product.

You will want these keywords/key phrases to be low competition, high traffic words. The software just mentioned are designed to find keywords like this for your product.

You will want to drill down on your keywords. For instance, if your product is about dog health, don’t just look at the keywords “dog health” and dogs.

Look for things like “relief for dogs from fleas”, “best dog food” or go into a specific breed like “cocker spaniel health”, or “best dog food for beagles”.

While you will get fewer visitors based on these keywords, the ones that will arrive will be very interested in your product. When you look at products, you will want to take this into consideration as well.

List your key phrases and base your advertisement around these key phrases. You will ideally want to get them into the title of your advertisement as well as in the listing for AdWords to use when listing when your ad will appear in the search results and on people’s websites.

Use the AdWords keyword suggestion tool here: 

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Select key phrases that are relevant but not very competitive. Remember, that although you may only get 100 visits a day from a keyword, conversion rates are 1-2%, so that will usually equal a sale.

This is why you don’t want to promote a product that is much cheaper than $30. If your commission is 50% to 75% of $30, that is $15.00 to $22.50 on each sale.

It has been shown that affiliates will convert on average 1% to 2% per 100 visitors if they have done adequate keyword/keyphrase research.

It will generally convert the same on a $30+ item as it does on a $15.00 product. The amount of money you earn will only change due to the commission level and price of product.

Ad Variations

When you have your keywords in hand, go to Google and search on those keywords. Put the keywords between quotation marks and watch what comes up on the right hand side. This will give you great ideas on how to word your own advertisement.

Look at what ad is in the top spot 3 spots. Look at the titles they are using and see how you can word your advertisement similarly so that you get good click through.

Then when you put together your initial ad, make some variations and track how many clicks each ad is getting. Keep the ad that performs the best.

When you are just starting out with AdWords, keep your bids low. Bid as little as $0.05 cents per click where you can, and just make sure that you get on page one of the search results.

Look towards doing advertising on websites only and forego the search results, because it is counted in 1000 impressions at a price and your money can go a longer way.

Getting Traffic To Your Site

Video Promotion

While most people will tell you to use pay-per-click advertising, article marketing and building a website, here’s a shortcut method to get your started and quickly. Videos can get you into search engines fast.

Use one of these tools to get started:

  Camtasia Studio has a 30 day free trial.

  CamStudio which is free and located at http://camstudio.org

  Jing that works on the Mac or PC.

 Web Cam.

 Sony Movie Studio.

  Movie Studio 9.

Now that you have a selection of products, a website or direct links to a vendor’s website, it’s time to promote. First, you will want to get into the video arena.

I know you probably weren’t expecting that. But, people are video junkies, and if you want to get people engaged, you will need to go where the traffic goes.

Creating videos is one sure-fire way to get traffic to your site. Creating a video is not as hard as you think. It’s easy and fun, and will get you into the Working with Camtasia can be a little daunting, but it will pay for itself in spades if you take the time to learn how to use it.

If you need to go free Jing is the second easiest way to record from screen to video. If you’re good with PowerPoint, you can create a slide show, narrate it about your site and simply read from a script. These are the easiest type of video to create, and when used correctly, they are traffic bringers.

Set your monitor resolution to 800 x 600 for recording. Record your videos at 800 x 600, resized to 480 x 360 with Smart Focus. You want them to be quick, and talk about the product you are promoting.

The bottom third is very important in videos. You want to tell them about your domain name or the domain of the affiliate site. If you don’t have a site of your own, go to Snip Url where you can put in your affiliate link and it will give you an output.

For instance, if your affiliate product is for Maverick Money Makers, and your affiliate link is -

http://XXXXX.PUBLISHER.hop.clickbank.net, your Snip Url will be www.snipurl/MaverickMoney.

The Snip URL can go in the lower left part of your video, and remain there for the duration. As you talk about your website, all you need to do is use Snag. It to capture pictures, which you put in your PowerPoint presentation and capture as video.

Add a couple of transitions, and you are in the video arena. These short video reviews are what you upload to all of the video sites.

Things to remember:

 Make sure that the name of the video is your long tail key phrase or product name plus a word like deals. (ie. Salmon deals, Rolex watch deals).

 Make sure that the keywords and key phrases are submitted and enclosed in quotes as well as without quotes.

 Make sure that you submit them with the URL leading back to your website.

 In the information section, be sure and put your website, or Snip URL if you don’t have a website that leads back to the affiliate product.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

If you don’t have a website, landing page or place to send prospective traffic, pay per click or PPC advertising is an excellent method to drive sales via your affiliate link.

Again, you will want to use discretion so that you don’t wind up losing more money than you gain in sales.

The largest PPC outfit is Google. Those little advertisements that you see on people’s websites, plus on the side of the search results are called PPC advertising.

Advertisers pay a set amount per click in order to appear on sites. It is considered contextual advertising, because the advertising is related to the information being presented either in the search results or on the website. For instance, you won’t get an advertisement for ice cream on a site about auto parts.

AdWords & Contextual Advertising

Advertising with Google is easy and deceptive to newcomers. Easy, in the fact that it is very easy to use; deceptive because if you aren’t very careful you could lose a lot of money trying to get advertising that makes you money. 

Clickbank Marketplace, CB Trends, CB Engine

Clickbank Marketplace

1. Sale Price: ($/Sale) This is the amount that affiliates are earning for referring customers.    The amount earned is kept by Clickbank accounting and pays out every two weeks to the affiliate.

2. Percentage of Sale: (%/Sale) This is the average percentage commissions earned per affiliate per sale.

3. Referral %: This is the percentage of sales that people you refer

4. Gravity of Product: The gravity number is important because it shows the popularity of the product over time. Every time the product is sold or a new affiliate joins and uses the link the gravity of the program will change.

CB Trends

The popularity, price and commission paid of the product is very important.

When it comes to popularity or gravity, unless you are already a Super Affiliate avoid the products with very high gravity (125+), because it means that the market will be highly competitive and the chances of you making sales will be decreased accordingly.

This applies only to Clickbank and not the other commission driven organizations.

In order to find out if a product is good to add to your affiliate arsenal, you will want to check it out at CB Trends (www.cbtrends.com) which is a free service that shows visual representation of what is on the Clickbank marketplace site making it easier to understand. 

There are some useful tracking tools that give you an easy way to see what is happening with the products you choose including:

             Popularity of the product

             Earning per sale

             Percent per sale

             Gravity

             Referrals

             Commission

If you take the visual representation, combine it with what you see on Clickbank’s Marketplace, you will have a good idea of whether the product you’re thinking about promoting is a good one.

Out of the 10 products that you pick to promote over time, you will want at least 6 of them to be popular.

You want to mix it up so that at least half of what you’re promoting is more competitive. The rest of the products should be up and comers, those products that are newer and building in the Marketplace.

CB Engine

CB engine shows you the new products and is an excellent tool to use if you want to focus on the new product releases. If you are going to work with Clickbank, which is a good first step into the affiliate arena, CB Engine should be one of the sites you bookmark and use.

It has a Brand New Products list, re-listed products with a ton of information to help you make an informed choice about the products you want to promote.

Each product, new and re-listed, has graphs and visual representations about the health and viability of the products.

There are a couple of ways to go about finding out more about the product or service you are about to promote. First, you can buy the product.

Whether it’s digital or tangible, buying and experiencing the product will usually make you a better promoter. However, with 10 products, that can become a bit pricey, so you may want to buy a couple products that you can afford, and look over the sales pages only of the remainder.

When looking over the sales or pitch page, you will want to think in terms of being a prospective buyer. Ask yourself some basic questions:

 Does the page, headline and opening paragraph grab your attention.

 Is the page easy to read in terms of colours, graphics and layout of the site.

  Is the message being presented clear and concise and easy-to-understand.

Are there highlights of important facts, headlines to break up content and pictures that are relevant to the topic matter?

 Does the page lead you to the logical conclusion where you want to buy the product?

All of these things are important and will make or break you when people come through your referral link. Having a page where you want to buy the product will generally translate to high sales conversions.

In that way, the traffic you drive to the product site stand a higher chance of buying in the end. If the page left you with a ho-hum, whatever feeling, it is probably quite possible that visitors arriving at the site will have the same reaction.

As you go about promoting your affiliate products, make sure that you keep track of the products that are converting well, and the ones that are not. When you have a hot product that goes warm and then cold, you need to be ready to get rid of it.

Earlier I told you not to get attached to a product or service. This is why. You have to know when to get rid of it.

Look at the choices you first made on Clickbank and ask yourself the questions from above. Are there any products that you might want to get rid of now?

Information for Newbie

Newbie to Profitable Affiliate

Build Up To About 10 Products To Promote

As an affiliate, you will want to build up to about 10 products, so that you can mix up the top performing products and add the latest releases. While you should like what you’re selling, don’t be wed to it.

What may be a hot seller may cool off and if you follow trends, you need to be able to move on. You don’t want to add all these products at once, and build slowly as you get more experienced.

Because you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with products, pick your products carefully. Choose popular products because you want to have top performing products.

Here are some things to remember when you are selecting products.

When you search for new products to promote from Clickbank, there are certain things that you are looking for.

First and easiest is the selection of the category that you want to work with. For instance, each affiliate products has some information that will help you make a good decision.

The three sites you will want to use to ascertain if a product is a good seller and a possible product you will want to promote includes:

             Clickbank Marketplace – www.clickbank.com

             CB Trends – www.cbtrends.com

             CB Engine – www.cbengine.com