As we all know there are several ways for you to build an affiliate website, you can hand code it, build in in a CMS (content management system) like Joomla or WordPress or use a built for purpose affiliate builder such as BANS, Storestacker, Multiprofit Websites, Blog profitz etc. When you are considering building an affiliate site which promotes Amazon products you need to consider the tools available to enable you to fully utilize the Amazon affiliate program.

Whilst I've used Joomla and a lot of the built for purpose site builders my favorite tool always has been WordPress and it's the tools which integrate into WordPress that I want to briefly cover today. It's important to point out that a tool is a tool, they won't research, build or promote your website for you and they certainly won't be the deciding factor in allowing you to succeed or fail. For this very reason I currently only use 2 WordPress based tools which enable me to promote Amazon products. But after some research I did find a lot more which will also allow you to integrate Amazon products into WordPress.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned in my previous post, Amazon Associates has remained overshadowed for a while now by eBay's larger and more popular affiliate program, however due to many changes over the last 12 months all of this is likely to change.

The new QCP structure from eBay has alienated A LOT of affiliates and if you read around the internet on the large networks, blogs and forums (eBay's being one of them) you can get some idea of what a lot of affiliates are currently thinking. At present around 30% of affiliates are reporting that they are seeing increases in their earnings but a large percentage of affiliates are seeing a significant drop in earnings, to the point that many of them have vowed to drop eBay as an income stream other than for their 'no work' sites. Whilst I'm not one of these affiliates I have significantly reduced the amount of sites I am building targeted purely at ePN. The fact is though that these affiliates will look for the next best thing, whilst Adsense or Chitika can provide a steady stream, neither exactly lend themselves to the product based niche affiliate website model. This is where Amazon comes in. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the next few weeks I want to write a series of posts concentrated around the Amazon affiliate program. Originally I was going to cover this in a separate blog because it's so focused around Amazon but I have since changed my mind and opted to cover it here, I hope this doesn't alienate any of my readers.

I have spent the last 3 out of the 5 years I have been working online building and developing product based niche affiliate websites in conjunction with one affiliate program or another. Like many people I used eBay for around 25% of these sites and have made a lot of money utilizing their affiliate program as a monetization method. But one program for me which I still feel is underutilized is the Amazon affiliate program and there have been several reasons for this Read the rest of this entry »

As many of you will notice I have been quite quiet lately on the blog front, there are several reasons for that. The main one is that I've been spending quite a lot of time working on my own sites and re-developing the phpOStock sales page as well as moving the member database to my new members area to accommodate for the move of phpOStock over to the Clickbank marketplace. But now all of that is complete I will be able to post here more often, that is when I come back from my well earned week away next week :). Kate and I are heading off to Spain for a week away from everything, it'll be a nice break and I'll be able to return home refreshed before starting my new job online full time from the 5th of October. In that time my support desk will be fully monitored so questions won't go unanswered.

So, now onto the title of the post! I have received many emails over the last few weeks from people expressing their concern over the new commission structure from ePN which is due to come into force in less than a week. The main trend I have found from the emails is that people are wondering what to do IF their sites are not earning well under the new ePN structure Read the rest of this entry »

Today I wanted to write a very quick and simple post to cover a subject which I tend to get asked by a lot of people and that is how do you get approved for the Overstock.com Affiliate program? I know from experience that this is something which can be notoriously difficult to achieve, however after speaking to one of Overstock's affiliate managers I have a few do's and don't which you should adhere to when applying for their affiliate program. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most common things I see, and I have made this mistake myself in the past, is people putting ads on their affiliate sites in prime locations such as at the very top of the website page in the header or above their content before affiliate listings. Many people don't think about this when they are putting a site together but just imagine for a second you are not that familiar with the internet and you're doing a basic search for a product you want to buy. You click on a link from Google which brings you through to an eBay affiliate website which lists auctions of the product you are looking for but instead of staying on that website and browsing the content and the listings you see a nice big advertising banner or adsense listing at the top of the site and you click on it, immediately you are taken away from the site.

You would be surprised how many people show me sites which have this kind of scenario going on. Their stats show their site visitors leave almost immediately after entering but their adsense account is making some money from the site. Read the rest of this entry »

As a quick note, I'm sorry for my lack of posting recently, I have been away again for a few days for a break in a country castle around 2 hours from my home. Here’s a sneaky picture if anyone's interested.

Anyway, back to work.

One of the things I hear quite commonly is the phrase 'don't put all of your eggs in one basket'. It's a phrase which is thrown about the forums and the internet quite loosely and I think that when people read it they don't take much notice of it, but in all honesty it's really quite correct.

When I first started making money online through affiliate marketing I used eBay and the eBay affiliate program to generate the majority of my income and, as many of you will know, the mistakes in this are all too evident when you consider the changes which occurred during the changeover to eBay's in house affiliate program. When the changeover happened many people were expired, many people who were making some money online which they had begun from their niche affiliate websites. There was one glaring mistake which they had made and that was their online income was fuelled purely by eBay's affiliate program and so when they were expired they lost all of their online income. Now I have to say that eBay have a very lucrative affiliate program and I make a decent chunk of change each month through it using my affiliate websites as a platform for promoting products for sale. However what would happen if tomorrow eBay turned around and for some reason decided to suspend my account for whatever reason, it's happened before for no reason and it could happen again. Of course my income would halt......or would it?

The honest answer to the above question is no my income would not come to a grinding halt. I have made sure that I spread my interests across enough affiliate programs that I don't have to rely on one solely to generate my revenue. The main other affiliate programs I use are from Amazon, Clickbank, PayDotCom, Commission Junction, LinkShare & the Google affiliate network along with Google Adsense, from all of which I get some kind of income. In most cases the commission generation is through traffic on affiliate websites but in some cases it will be through my mailing list and through my blog, all in all it doesn't really matter as long as you're not relying on one affiliate program to bring in all of your online income.

Many people who promote products through affiliate programs only promote products from one particular affiliate program, for example if they are using a WordPress affiliate websites to generate an affiliate income then they will simply place products on there from eBay and use EPN to generate the income. There is no need to be so rigid, in most cases people like to have choice, they like to know that they are getting the right price for something so in showing them the same products from different merchants you are more likely to generate a sale through one of them.

I will give you an example; I recently built a WordPress affiliate site on which I placed product listings from eBay, Amazon and Overstock.com, and this site now consistently generates me income from all three of the above merchants. I could have placed listings on the site from just eBay but my customers would have had less choice and may not have bought an item through my site as a result.

So I'm going to say it one last time, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Yes you need to affiliate with those merchants who benefit you and if you want to read more on choosing the right affiliate program you can go here.

All in all though, give your customers more choice, more importantly if you build a site around several affiliate programs then the site is more likely to have a longer shelf life and bring you more financial rewards.

I just had an email today from eBay Partner Network which will interest those of you who are currently publishers of the EPN.

I know many of you are often stumped as to when your EPN payment will hit your bank or your paypal account and to be completely honest I never know either. Well now those times are hopefully over, they sent out an newsletter tonight which basically says that from the end of April the payment date will be set out and you will get paid 1 month behind on the 25th of each month. So for April you will be paid on the 25th of May unless this day falls on a weekend, in which case you will be paid on the next working day.

In my opinion its about time EPN implemented something concrete like this, the amount of confusion it causes as a result has been rediculous.

Also remember that at the end of a month when your account balance returns to 0.00 the payment you are owned may not show up in your pending payments for around 2 weeks. So don't panic it usually shows up around the 14th of the month.

Next Post: I will talk about how to use PLR content properly and I will be giving away a huge package of PLR content for you to use yourselves.

People often choose to promote affiliate programs with no prior research or consideration, you will often see internet marketers all jumping on the same bandwagon as soon as any old product comes out before they have actually even tried it themselves. For those of you who know me then you will know that when I talk about, promote or recommend any product it's because I've used it myself and had success with it or find it useful.

There are several things you need to ask yourself before joining and promoting any affiliate program. I use a ten step system when choosing who to affiliate with.

The 10 Step's to Choosing the Right Affiliate Program

1. Is the affiliate program FREE to join?
2. When will you recieve your payments?
3. How many click through's do you need before you get paid a commission?
4. What is the cookie life of the affiliate program?
5. Do you have a range of affiliate stats to monitor your statistics?
6. Will the affiliate program pay you for clicks and impressions along with the sales?
7. Who is the retailer or seller you are about to promote and do they have an online presence?
8. What tier system exists in their affiliate program
9. If the product is a system or piece of software, have you had any success or used it yourself before?
10. 10) How much commission will you earn?

Is the affiliate program FREE to join?

Most of the affiliate programs out there are completely FREE to join, if you are promoting someone's product for them why would you want to pay to join an affiliate program. I personally have never paid to join an affiliate program and I know that I never would.

When will you recieve your payments?

The majority of the affiliate programs tend to pay out at the end of the month and are usually 30 days behind, so if you earn a comission at the beginning of January then you will most likely get paid at the end of February. Of course this differs from program to program but its worth your time finding out. You should also find out how payment is issued to you, is it in the form of a check or direct deposit and do you have to have generated a minimum affiliate commission before you get paid?

How many click through's do you need before you get paid a commission?

This is something worth finding out, what is the hit per sale ratio? Basically all this means is how many hits on a particular link or banner does it take to generate a commission. Why is this important? This factor will give you an indication of how much traffic you may need in order to make a sale. This is particuarly relevant if you are promoting a product or program using any paid advertising such as google adwords. You will need to know an estimated cost of advertising before a sale is made to ensure that the product is going to be worth promoting financially.

What is the cookie life of the affiliate program?

You need to find out how referrals from an affiliate's site are tracked and for how long. The cookie life basically inidicates how long an affiliate referral is tracked after the person clicks through your banner or link. This is important because not all people will buy straight away. For example if we take the Amazon affiliate program and the Overstock affiliate program as two examples, Amazon have a 1 day cookie meaning that click through's will only be tracked for 1 day, so you only have 1 day to generate a commission from that potential customer. In contrast, the Overstock affiliate program has a 14 day cookie and so you have 14 days to generate a sale from that potential customer after they have clicked through. This is one of the reasons people are so adept to promoting the Overstock & eBay affiliate programs over the Amazon program because of the potential commission you can generate from returning customers.

Do you have a range of affiliate stats to monitor your statistics?

Does the affilite program offer any kind of statistical tracking system whereby you can see number of impressions and clicks. Both of these will give you an idea of how many times your banner/link has been viewed and how many times you have generated a click through.

Who is the retailer or seller you are about to promote and do they have an online presence?

Find out who you are going to be promoting, don't just promote them for the sake of it. Get to know the products they are selling and if it's a peice of software or an information product use it yourself & find out if it works before promoting it to other people. The more you know about the retailer and the product you are promoting then the more you will know if this affiliate program is really for you.

What tier system exists in their affiliate program?

A tiering system is a great way of generating extra income with an affiliate program. A single tier system will only allow you to generate affiliate earnings from sales which you have generated whereas a two teir or multiple tier program will pay you for your own generated sales and will also pay you a commission based on the sales of another affiliate who you sponsor in the program. Some affiliate programs, like the eBay affiliate program, will pay you a 'new user commission', eBay for example will pay you anything up to $40-50 per signup depending on campaign quality.

If the product is a system or piece of software, have you had any success or used it yourself before?

One thing I hate seeing is all the big so called guru's promoting new products when they are released into the market just so they can earn a 50% or higher affiliate commission from it. They are all too quick to tell you how great the product is and how it can change your life, have they tried it themeselves? I very much doubt it. If you are going to start promoting a product yourself, particularly software and info products, make sure you have read it or tried it for yourself first. Ask yourself a few questions:

- Does it do what is says on the 'tin'?
- Does it give value for money?
- Does it work?'
- Would you or have you used it yourself? If you haven't then in my opinion you shouldn't be promoting it, simple as that.

Treat your potential affiliate customers with respect and generally you will find they will trust you more for it.

How much commission will you earn?

This is the final thing you want to know, how much are you going to earn by promoting this product? Is it going to be worth your time? Many affiliate programs will pay at least 20% per sale nowadays and some pay anything up to 100%. Jus bear in mind the above 9 things before you make your decisision. Don't just choose to promote a program because it gives you a 75% return, this will only loose you trust with your potential affiliate customers and in the long run it will do you no favours.

Keep these 10 things in mind when chooisng the affiliate program to promote and you won't go far wrong. One last thing to remember, if your going to promote it, would you buy it?

Affiliate marketing is a mutal agreement between the seller and the promoter, kind of a revenue sharing agreement. This agreement comes because the product developer wants to promote and sell his/her product and get a greater exposure, this is where the affiliate marketer comes in. The affiliate marketer is anyone who is willing to promote a product for sale by advertising it using their own legal methods.

The whole idea behind affiliate marketing is about being able to sell products that you don't actually own. The benefit being that someone else has gone to the effort of researching and developing a product for you to promote and earn money from. Essentially they are doing all the work and you come along and collect the money, but is it really that easy?
Choosing the right product

Its essential that you choose the right product, program or niche to promote, this is because your income is directly releated to how well your selected product or service sells. This makes it extremely important that you are very choosey when it comes to selecting the program you wish to promote or the merchant you are going to be partnering with.

There are several things you should keep in mind when you are choosing to promote new products. Some of these are listed below:

1. Always choose programs which you have some interest in, do not recommend programs/products/services which you know you would never want to buy yourself or would not want any of your friends or family to buy. DO NOT promote a product you don't believe in just because it gives a high commission. This will lead to mistrust and a loss of interest from any current or future buyers.
2. Try to understand the area around the program you want to promote. In the long run you will find it much easier to write much better ads/articles and will ultimately make more sales and more profit.
3. Look for those companies who provide you with materials from the start. Many companies will provide you with marketing materials such as articles, emails and graphics which you can use to promote their products. This will take a lot of work of your shoulders and give you more time to promote the product and make more profit.
4. Always remember to look at the commission they give you, ask yourself is this worth promoting?, is it worth the time and effort you are going to need to put in to make those all important sales. Its better to bail out after spending 30 minutes researching a product than spending weeks trying to sell it.

Try to keep the above points in mind, the list isn't exhaustive but if you consider these general points before getting down to the hard work you are likely to save yourself a lot of wasted time and money in the long run.