While we have often spoken about the need to bring in more income, bring in more business lines, have you ever considered setting up your own Affiliate Program? Too difficult? To expensive? You might like to look again…..

We have seen some major changes in the affiliate program industry over the last 10 years, where once the industry was dominated by the majors of the business world, now we are seeing more niche players setting up their own programs.  You might also be surprised to learn that the increased competition from affiliate program administration companies has seen many of the initial costs reduced.  More and more of them are prepared to give up some of their set-up costs in order to tempt you in, and take a slice of your sales.

So whether you are offering a service or a product you really should be looking at your own affiliate program.  First you need to work out your profit margin, how much you can afford to give away to affiliates as well as taking into account the share which the affiliate program administrator will take.  If after reviewing these figures there is still scope to make a profit for yourself, you may have the potential to make some big money by getting others to do your hard work.

Do not forget that while you will be looking to bring in as many affiliate as possible, you will also be selling products and services yourself – without anyone taking their cut.  The truth is that if you are confident in the products and services you are providing then you could save yourself an awful lot of money – by building up your affiliate membership, you should be able to save a fortune in advertising costs!

If after reading this post you want would like more information about setting up your own affiliate program, the following sites will make interesting reading Webgains, Buy.at, ClickBank and Commission Junction.  Today could be the start of something big – check it out and see!

While there are many different aspects to consider when setting up a new site, one of the main problems which webmasters may have will be when and how to monetize their sites. When to chase the traffic and when to chase the income, while bearing in mind that you are running a long term online business.

So what comes first?

The first factor to consider is that if you expect your site to cover its own marketing and promotional costs from day one, then you will probably be very disappointed. While there are many sites which are “profitable” from day one, in reality these are very few and far between. So what element do you chase first?

While in all honesty the two factors go very much hand in hand, in the early days of your site, income should not be foremost in your mind. You are starting a business which you expect to be around for years to come, hopefully offering you a very lucrative income stream, so at this stage you should resist the urge to push headlong in and monetize your site instantly.

Instead it is vital that you concentrate on getting your site out there, noticed and building up your customer / fan base for the future. Obviously if you are offering a service or products for sale you need to have these available from day one, but you do not need to fill your website with Adsense and other forms of peripheral income streams. If you are a information site, it may be an idea to hold back on the adverts until you are more recognised and well known – there is nothing worse than landing on a site to be hit by a barrage of adverts screaming “click me, click me”.

The truth of the matter is that if you attract the right kind of traffic in the early days you will create a reputation for yourself which will hopefully continue for some time to come. Once you have a user base you can then shift up the Monetization of your site and move to the next level, ensuring that you are not overselling yourself with the possibility of scaring some visitors off.

In summary, if you go for the right traffic from day one the income will surely follow with even the simplest of monetization programs. Short terms bucks are great, but a steady long term income stream is much better!

Now it’s time for a new contest and this time it’s really easy. Just post a comment about this blog below (more then a two-three word comment) and you’re in. On the 14th of March a randomly selected winner will get all the 700 Entrecard credits

Winner of the recommendation contest

The winner of the recommendation contest we had is Soul Meets World. Congratulations you won 100 Entrecard credits for the recommendation you wrote:

A resourceful blog on finding what you need to make your internet experience more pleasurable. ~Alexys Fairfield

Winner of the $50 contest

Unfortunately we didn’t get any sales from any of our affiliates during the contest period, so we can’t randomly select a winner among “all” those sales You can of course still join our affiliate program and earn commission on all sales you send us.

This week we’re running the same contest as last week: write a recommendation for this blog at Entrecard and get 50 EC. You’ll also be included in the random draw next Friday (the 29th) for another 100 EC to one lucky winner.

The winner

In last weeks contest Yimto Affiliate Marketing Blog won 100 EC for writing a recommendation. Congratulations!

A big thanks to random.org for helping in the random draw

More contests

Don’t forget that you still have a chance of winning 700 Entrecard credits by writing about CreateBanner.com in your blog. See this page for more information about this contest.

You can also still win $50 by writing about our affiliate program. See this page for more information.

For those of you who have tried affiliate marketing you may well have found it to be difficult to make ANY money, but with so many people trying to introduce new income streams why are so many people failing? Why are the top 10% of the industry snatching more than 90% of ALL affiliate income?

There are a number of reasons why it is proving so difficult for many people to make a success of affiliate marketing (even with sufficient internet traffic), but among the main reasons are :-

Focus

Too many people think it is easy to make money from affiliate marketing, whether you are planting a one page sales site, adding links to your current site or using the mailing list option.  You really need to ensure that the items which you are trying to sell actually fit the profile of your visitors.  Do you actually know your visitors?

There is no point trying to sell cars to a teenage market, just like there is no point trying to sell the latest children’s gadgets to the over 30s.  Sell what your market will buy, not what you want them to buy – there is a big difference.

Sales Strategy

If your sale strategy does not work do not give up, just try a different strategy or even a different affiliate program.  Do you really think the top affiliate marketers of today made their money over night? Do you not think that they also had some set backs and failures along the way?

You will learn a lot by your mistakes, but more importantly you will learn to appreciate your market and what makes them tick.  If you do not learn by your mistakes and move on then you are dead in the water and you will never succeed.

Determination

Are you the kind of person who wants success on a plate? Are you prepared to do your home work, learn off your mistakes and wade through a mass of reading material? If you are not prepared to be patient and work at your goal then affiliate marketing is probably not for you, because as much as the headlines point to $1 million incomes, it can take some time to set up, and you will not earn money from day one.

Affiliate marketing is not a short cut to the top, it requires work, it requires a steep learning curve and it requires you to know when you are wrong and move onto another sales strategy.  Take each set back as another step on the ladder to the top, a ladder where jumping ahead to quickly can cause you to slip and push you back down to the bottom!