Monday 16 January 2012

How to Acquire Free Web Site Promotion

You have finished making your own website. You have introduced your company and presented your products and services. You have added propositions and promos to catch your target audience’s attention. You have achieved the dos and don’ts of building a company web site. But why isn’t your website a major success? 


Maybe you’re not planning the key to the best promotion of your web site. Here are some guidelines on how to acquire free web site promotions for your company’s success.


If you have started to promote your web site, keep it constant. If you promote your site with persistence, it will catch your audience’s attention.


Be patient. Try each method in promotion until you acquire the best, free promotion there is. You have to accept trial and error for your web site to reach the top. 


There are many ways for your web site to be seen. Here are some free web site promotions you could try until you find the most effective.


*Free promotions such as search engines and directories would give your web site the deserved traffic you always wanted.  Make sure to check your web site’s ranking to know whether or not this type of free promotion is right for you.


*Make a deal with other web sites on trading links which could help both web sites.  Make sure to use words that could easily interest the audience. 


*Find free classified ads that could boost the promotion of your web site. These ads could be seen by other people who you are not targeting for, but may as well be interested in your services.


*Free and low-cost internet banners are spread all through out the World Wide Web.  Banners that pop-up at the top of a page or in a separate window would automatically catch your target audience’s attention.


If your web site and its free promotion did not work even after accomplishing these methods, analyze your web site. Track down all visitors, advertisements, and transactions. Then locate errors in your web site. Upload new files to your web site continuously for audience to return for new products and services. Monitor your own web site if it’s up in the market or down.


Then be ready to try the methods again and surely it will work. 


It has always been said that the best things in life are free. Yes they are. And as soon as your free web site promotion proves to the audience its worth, then you’ll believe it’s true. 

What's LinkShare, And Do I Need To Use It?

What's LinkShare, And Do I Need To Use It?




Online affiliate marketing is one of the most effective, cheapest and fastest ways to promote merchandise. With millions of people getting access to the Internet everyday, there’s a great chance for a merchant to introduce his products and services to a wider market, thereby, maximizing his revenue.


Likewise, affiliate marketing is an excellent way to generate full-time income for a home-based affiliate marketer. For someone who is jaded of going through a grueling eight-hour work routine, affiliate marketing offers a great opportunity to earn big without wearing himself out—physically, mentally and emotionally.


In affiliate marketing, both parties are benefited since as the merchant earns from each item sold, the marketer likewise earns a commission. 


If you are interested in affiliate marketing but are finding it hard to look for affiliate programs, affiliates or merchants, you can start by checking sites of various affiliate networks. Many affiliate programs in the Internet are being offered through an affiliate program network, which acts as a link between the merchants and individual affiliates.


Among the most popular is LinkShare, it is through it that merchants and affiliates meet. LinkShare maintains and manages affiliate marketing programs for a great number of merchants with various kinds of businesses, products and services. It also has over 6,000 affiliate site members in its network. It gains profit from the set-up fees, monthly account maintenance fees and commissions. 


Joining networks like LinkShare can be of great help in establishing your online marketing business. Whether you are a merchant or an affiliate marketer, you need to research well on your partners in order to choose the best for you.


LinkShare provides the facility of acquiring access to a large network of advertisers (merchants) who offer their affiliate programs to publishers (affiliates) who are willing to promote their products. In the same manner, it gives the merchants access to a large network of affiliates who are searching for affiliate marketing opportunities.


LinkShare is especially beneficial for an affiliate in choosing his partners since he can find his options all in one location. It would be easier for him to compare products, commission rates and other benefits given by the merchant. The merchant usually just waits for interested affiliates to sign up in his affiliate marketing program but being in the network increases his chance to promote his products to a larger market, thus, maximizing his potential to gain huge profit.


To help you decide whether to use large affiliate networks such as LinkShare or not, let us try to look deeper into its positive and negative sides. The primary advantage of LinkShare to you as an affiliate is convenience.


As earlier mentioned, you find different pieces of information about your choices simultaneously all in a single location, so you save time and effort looking for affiliate programs or merchants.


It’s also easier to track your business partner’s performance through monthly reports and statements, as well as its sales and commission rates, so you know whether the affiliate program is still worth continuing. If you have signed up for several affiliate programs, you can check all your statistics for each merchandiser you are affiliated with by logging in just once. 


LinkShare helps you manage and maintain all records of your visitors’ click-throughs and sales transaction. It takes care of your commissions and gives it to you monthly in lump sum. Especially when you have more than one merchant partner, it would be easier for you to manage your accounts and track your earnings when you are affiliated through a marketing program network. 
Furthermore, every information you get is accurate and secured, so you are protected from all the risk you might encounter. Above all, you can enjoy LinkShare’s benefits for free. You just have to go to their site and register your website. Instantly, you get access to a great variety of affiliate programs available for you. 


So, what’s on the negative side? Although, it is indeed helpful to join affiliate marketing networks such as LinkShare, there are some disadvantages, too.


For one, merchants offer lower commissions to affiliates who partner with them through the third party program network. This because they still have to pay for the use of service and the technology provided by LinkShare.


Direct partnership with the merchant cuts costs of advertising through the network and so the affiliate has bigger potential to earn more. Moreover, it is possible that your payment may be delayed for a month or more since program networks would pay you only after the advertiser or the merchant has paid them. 

Do you need to use LinkShare or other networks? It depends, actually. You can opt for direct partnership with the merchant, but this choice is not applicable all the time. There are a lot of merchandisers who offer their affiliate program only through affiliate program networks and thus, you have no choice other than joining the network to get into the affiliate marketing program.


So you are faced with “take it or leave it” situation. But LinkShare and other program networks are not that disadvantageous. After all, whether you join it or not, earning big would depend more on your promotional strategies and persistence.

Making Money Selling Other People’s Products

Making Money Selling Other People’s Products




A lot of people are now getting into online businesses and online marketing either to supplement their “real world” income or for it to become their primary source of income.  Why?  Because online marketing just provides them a lot of benefits!


First, you can reach just about anybody in the world who has Internet access if you market your products online.  That means a wider market for you, which can translate to larger profits.  Second, setting up an online business requires only a fraction of the cost required to set up an actual business establishment, which means a lot of savings for the business owner.


Another aspect that has attracted a lot of people towards online marketing is the fact that one doesn’t have to have his own products to get started.  In online marketing, one can start making a lot of money just by selling, or even by just trying to sell, other people’s products.  And getting started with this kind of marketing strategy is actually quite easy.  All that one needs to do is to set up an agreement with an online retailer or merchant, and after everything is settled, one can immediately start making money by selling the merchant’s or the retailer’s products. 

Incidentally, the most popular and the fastest growing method of selling other people’s products online is affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing, in its simplest definition, is a relationship between an online merchant or retailer, who has products to sell, and his affiliates, who are willing to promote the merchant’s product on their website.


In a typical affiliate marketing set up, the merchant provides his affiliates with banners and text ads that links to his site.  The affiliates will then get these ads posted on their website and they get paid whenever traffic or sales is directed to the merchant’s website.  Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other online merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee for the affiliate’s compensation.

Starting to make money online with affiliate marketing is relatively quick and easy.  All that one has to do is to sign up as an affiliate for an online company that offers affiliate programs.  An alternative method, and usually an easier one, is to sign up as a member of an affiliate network—a network that hosts a variety of affiliate programs for different online merchants or retailers.  Signing up is usually free, although other companies and networks may require you to pay a particular fee.  Such fees, however, are made as payment for additional services that the company may render, like providing you with tools and assistance to jumpstart your online business.


When you sign up with an affiliate marketing program, you are usually required to fill out a form containing information about yourself.  Some affiliate programs may also require you to present the URL of your website and describe its contents.  This will allow the retailers to verify that you actually have a website with contents that are relevant to their products.  Some affiliate programs, however, won’t require you to have a website.  After filling out the form and all, you are then allowed to choose the affiliate programs you want to promote.


After signing up with an affiliate program and being an actual affiliate, you are now ready to start making a lot of money by selling other people’s product online.  How do you make money?  There are actually a number of ways for you to earn money as an affiliate, and most of these ways depends on the type of affiliate marketing program you’ve gotten into.


Many affiliate marketing programs compensate their affiliates in either of three ways: pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-sale (PPS), or pay-per-lead (PPL).  In pay-per-click affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever he directs traffic to the merchant’s site.  PPS and PPL affiliate marketing programs work rather differently.  In PPS, the affiliate only gets paid when his referral converts into an actual sale.  In typical PPS affiliate programs, the affiliate would usually get 15% to 20% commission for each conversion.  PPL affiliate programs work the same way, although affiliates are paid a fixed fee whenever his referral converts into a lead for the company.


Some affiliate marketing programs are two-tier programs, wherein the affiliate is also allowed to recommend other affiliates to the merchant.  In such affiliate programs, the affiliate would not only be paid for the traffic or sales that he would direct to the merchant’s site but also for the traffic or sales directed by the affiliates who signed up with the program through his recommendation.


Yet another way of earning more profits with affiliate marketing is through residual affiliate programs.  Residual affiliate programs are affiliate programs where the affiliate gets paid a number of times for as long as the merchant keeps the customer the affiliate has referred to his site.  One form of residual program gets the affiliate paid a commission every time the referred customer purchases something on the merchant’s site.  Another form of residual affiliate program gets the affiliate paid a percentage every month for as long as the company keeps the referred customer.


With a lot of options available and a lot of ways to earn money, affiliate marketing is undoubtedly the most popular and the easiest way to make money by selling other people’s products online.  As to how much money one can get from affiliate marketing actually depends on the affiliate.  A dedicated and hardworking affiliate would certainly get more from the program compared to those affiliates who would simply sign up and forget about the program later.