Of course it would be great to soar to the dizzy heights of ’super affiliate marketing’, there is nothing wrong with being inspired by other people’s success and wanting a slice of that particular pie but it’s more important to remain focused on doing well for yourself rather than trying to run and keep up with the big boys for the sake of it.

There are a number of schools of thought as to what makes an affiliate marketer ’super’. The official definition is that they are an “affiliate capable of generating a significant percentage of an affiliate program’s activity”. In reality this means that they have the ability, or the networks in place that are going to make them a lot of money; literally into hundreds and thousands of pounds and in some cases millions. When it’s put like that it’s no wonder many newbies want to get to that stage, and get there immediately. The merchant demand for access to super affiliates certainly gives them a lot more leverage than the rest of us and they can be selective as to merchant programmes. They also tend to receive special treatment from the affiliate networks who recognise the importance of attracting and retaining high throughput affiliates.

But there’s a reason why there are only a handful of truly ’super’ affiliate marketers out there. To become one you need to find a niche market or angle that isn’t so niche it won’t sell but is niche enough to attract a large chunk of the online consumer market. With new affiliate programmes being set up by the minute this is tricky. Similarly, you need to have the time and resources to put the work in. Although affiliate marketing is a career choice open to everyone, only a select few will ultimately become super.

‘Super affiliates’ aren’t just simply good at putting the right links in the right places, to become super you need to take on some or all of a number of roles. You need to be a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) whizz to drive traffic from natural search; you need to know what you’re doing with PPC marketing and how best to use to get the most for your money. You need to become advertisers in your own right and you need to be able to drive traffic through social media, viral marketing, opt-in mailing and other forms of incentivisation. This is no mean feat and a job that only the select few can take on.

Some super affiliates start out with a pile of cash having perhaps sold another business and enter the market pre-armed with knowledge of at least some of the above areas. Others start the hard way whilst keeping the ‘day job’ going and working through the night. For those entering with deep pockets, it is of course possible to follow the increasingly popular maxim of ‘automate everything you can and outsource the rest’ which whilst it makes perfect business sense implies a fair degree of financial risk, particularly in the early days when revenues are lower. Even if you are a developer and can handle the automation side of things, outsourcing to quality firms (no point in doing things badly) comes at a price — and requires a solid enough understanding of each discipline to ensure that you are outsourcing to the right people in the first place!

Becoming a good, never mind super, affiliate marketer takes time, commitment and a bit of savvy. Other people don’t like the term ’super’ affiliate marketers and prefer the term successful. And success can be judged very differently. Some affiliates believe that making £500 a month on top of their salary is successful, others think that being able to work from anywhere in the world or the comfort of their own home is a measure of success whereas others are just grateful to making ANY money through a website that is based around a hobby they love or a product they truly believe in.

And there is nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong at all.

Unless you find that winning idea or angle that will make you a ’super affiliate’ then all you’d be doing is copying them, and being second-rate copies at that. Business is all about competition and diversity and if everyone did the same thing that particular niche would be bled dry, then what? There are a lot of benefits to being just a run-of-the-mill affiliate marketer, by all means continue to strive to make more money and get those clicks but with the number of affiliate marketers failing to gain any real traction, any success should be classed as just that, success.

Ultimately, as with any business, success in affiliate marketing will be determined by wider business skills and a deep understanding of your target market place and upcoming trends, together with your own passion and commitment to the cause. There are no artificial limits in the world of affiliate marketing. No boss. No exams. Your ultimate success is determined by only one factor - you!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

What’s a Super Affiliate, and how do I become one?

Online casinos have been flourishing in the UK, with 3% of the country participating in some form of online gambling. With millions being wagered each month, it is a very profitable and popular industry that offers some generous and promising affiliate programs.

One of the largest and best known online casinos in the UK is the almighty “888.com”. They cater for more than 25 million active members across the world. The website is effectively split into five different sections, each relating to one area of play; Casino, Poker, Sport, Backgammon and Bingo. The wide variety of games are played using software installed on the user’s computer, allowing them to play all the games you would expect from a genuine casino — from their desktop. New games are continually introduced around current themes, for instance, new slot machine games have been designed around various super heroes found in recently released movies. The graphical user interface is attractive, and the site also offers 24/7 help and support services.

The program offers a commission system split into 3 different streams; the online casino and poker site, the online sports betting site and the bingo site (888ladies.com). Each stream offers a different rate of commission based on your referee’s level of deposit. Commission levels range from 10-30% depending on the stream, and the amount of commission paid can increase by up to 150% by hitting incentive targets. All streams offer a 120 day cookie and a good range of advertising material. The main draw to 888.com as an affiliate is the website’s prominent reputation in the UK. They have run advertisements across a variety of different media, with their most prominent being their sponsorship of the UK Snooker Championship.

Another high profile gambling website based in the UK is King Jackpot (to be found at kingjackpot.co.uk and their affiliate program is at Affiliate Window). The website offers a dazzling variety of games, from a good selection of different bingo games through to more traditional casino options. They offer guaranteed prizes of more than £1,000 on an almost daily basis throughout most of their bingo games, and also provide branded games such as Monopoly and Cluedo. The website also runs a variety of different promotions for new members including a free £10 credit to your account without the necessity to deposit. They also guarantee a 100% match on your first deposit.

The program simply offers a £60 payment for any player that makes a cash deposit. There is a 30 day cookie: a decent amount of time for a referee to convert from playing the free £10 bonus for new members, to depositing their own money. King Jackpot is still growing as a casino site, but seems to offer promise as an affiliate option.

A further example of an upcoming casino affiliate program is that provided by VIP Casino Club (website is vipcasinoclub.co.uk; affiliate program to be found at Affiliate Future). VIP Casino is one of the smaller online Casinos in the UK, however, it still offers all the perks and features that you would expect. There is a good selection of games on offer with an emphasis on providing a suitable game for most online players. For instance, they offer more serious table games such as blackjack, through to lighter football themed slot machines. The website also offers a loyalty points scheme, whereby you earn £0.01 per every £1 played. It is worth noting that a VIP member’s area is currently in development, and promises to add something a little different to that seen at other casino websites.

As far as commission is concerned, the program offers a three tier system depending on how many referrals you provide. For less than 10 referrals (of cash depositing players), you currently receive £40 commission per referral, for 11-20 £60 and for 21 or more, £80. In order to be counted as a referral, the players need to place a bet within 3 days of sign up. It is worth noting that PPC campaigning for the program has no restrictions, meaning that this could be a good option for those affiliates who use predominately PPC advertising and who are finding themselves subject to ever greater bidding constraints from other quarters.

Casino affiliate programs on the whole offer good commission and convert well. With such a broad range to choose from, it is important to find the right one for you as an affiliate. But providing you have the right sort of traffic, the money to be made from online casino referrals is very significant.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Casino Affiliate Programs

One of the largest and most active dating communities on the internet is “Mate1.com” (their affiliate program can be found at cj.com). They are rapidly growing and have an online membership of more than 19 million people. The site features all of the standard elements associated with dating communities, with profile pages being the main source of contact between members. Participants from most English speaking countries are welcome including the UK, America and Australia.

The program offers $2 per sign up from anyone living in one of the website’s specified countries and over the age of 21. Sign up is completely free, and unlike many other programs, the referee does not have to provide any identification when registering (such as a credit card). They prefer male dominated traffic, and so this program is ideal for those who target English speaking males.

Another big player in the online dating industry is the established brand “Datingdirect.com” (their affiliate program can also be found at cj.com). They operate across all English and Spanish speaking countries and offer a “find love or money back” guarantee. The logistics of the site are very similar to that of “1mate.com”, in that the community is based around profile pages designed for each individual person. Sign up is completed free of charge by filling out a registration form found on the homepage.

The affiliate program offers £2 per free sign up, which increases incrementally to £3.50 for more than 1,000 leads. £30 is offered if a lead develops into a sale (within a 30 day time period) and again this increases incrementally to £45 if you develop more than 1,000 instances. They offer a large array of advertising material in a variety of sizes and also provide an email advertisement template to help generate leads.

One of the most active areas of online dating is the male homosexual community. The market leaders in this industry are “gay.com” (their affiliate program can again be found at cj.com). The website provides a dating community along with chat, news stories from the gay community, a photo gallery and live video talk. The site has more than 3 million active members from across the world and is continually growing.

Their affiliate program offers $1 per free trial sign up, and a generous 60% commission on all their site subscriptions. They also offer good performance incentives, with a commission increase of 20% being offered for more than 150 leads over a calendar month. There is a 45 day period for your referees to convert to paying customers.

Another popular area of the dating industry is speed dating. The website “speeddater.co.uk” (the affiliate program can be found at Affiliate Window) is dedicated to organising and running such events throughout 40 cities in the UK. They offer a dazzling array of speed dating events, often based around some kind of activity. Examples include wine tasting, large parties and bowling. Average prices are around £20, and you can gain a discount if you book in advance. All events are searchable by time, place and category.

The program offers a very generous 25% commission level on all sales with a 30 day cookie. They claim that this is the highest pay out in the online speed dating community. The program also offers a good selection of advertising material.

One other program worth noting is “diamondlounge.com” (their affiliate program can be found on Affiliate Window). They have received considerable media interest recently, with the BBC, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal all running stories on the website. They claim to offer a more “sophisticated” online dating experience, with the site targeting business professionals. The website offers text chat, video chat and members forums along side the profile page system. They also offer private events to members and plan to develop this feature more in future.

The program offers an impressive 55% commission on all membership deals. This means that a 6 month membership (costing £93.99) would provide £51.69 of commission. They also offer a 30 day cookie and a wide range of advertising material.

With such a wide variety of different programs on offer within the dating sector, there is a great deal of choice for an affiliate. Providing you choose a program well suited to your website’s demographic, then there are substantial potential returns from such a popular online industry.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Dating Affiliate Programs

Choose Ethically
Carefully consider which diets to choose. By choosing a recognisable and popular product you’ll achieve far better results than packing your site with endorsements for unrecognisable, tacky looking businesses. The more credible the diets you endorse, the more credible your site will seem and the more chance you stand of really helping people achieve their diet dreams. By becoming a diet affiliate, you not only make yourself money but you could genuinely help your audience improve their lives and become healthier more active people. That’s quite satisfying to know. Think about how many women you could help fit in to their dream wedding dress and how many men you could help to feel young and fit again.

Forget about tacky diet pills and the darker side of weight loss promotion. They might offer you tasty seeming commissions, but they’ll eat away at your integrity. Only endorse things which you personally would use. That’s a good rule of thumb. Search the networks for diet programmes that you would actually use and join those.

Some Good Programmes
Consider going for weight loss affiliate programs which are already hugely popular. Tesco eDiets is a good example of a high quality diet service that can earn you good money. They can be found on WebGains and you can earn £15 - £24 per sign-up. The strength of the Tesco brand alone should ensure consumer confidence.

Then there are other popular diet plans such as Weight Watchers. This again benefits from extensive TV advertising and wide brand awareness. Don’t be afraid to promote both the UK and US Weight Watchers programs simultaneously and earn commissions on both. The US and UK affiliate programs for Weight Watchers are both ran by Commission Junction and they offer comparable commissions, with the US programme offering $10 per sign up and the UK giving affiliates £15 per sale.

The Diet Tracking Revolution
A lot of websites have sprung up over the past 5 years which promote good health for life and encourage people to lose weight gradually by maintaining an online diet journal. This is often available for free, with extra services tacked on to each site for premium members. One of the better known sites in this genre is thedailyplate.com. However, they don’t seem to presently run an affiliate program. Instead they offer ordinary fans of the website resources to promote them through social networking sites for free. However, plenty of equally popular websites which operate in precisely the same way do offer affiliates the opportunity to promote them. Fitday is one such website and it operates through the ShareASale network. It is one of the leaders in this style of weight loss program and it is used by those wanting to lose weight, gain weight and even maintain their current weight. Some body builders even use Fitday, so it has a broad appeal.

These websites also allow people to track calorie consumption over a set period and even log the vitamin and mineral content of their daily diet. You can also log exercise and subtract the burned calories from those eaten. Calorie Counter.com offers a similar service, as does FoodCount.com. FoodCount.com also runs on the ShareASale network as with Fitday but is not quite as well known just yet.

e-Book Diet Plans
Tom Vento’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program has taken the internet by storm and as such a lot of people on the aforementioned diet tracking websites are using his advice. This advice, which is actually very healthy and sound, is usually bought online as an E-book from Tom’s website. Most e-books are trash, but this is a rare example of an e-book with integrity. It even reached the number one spot for ‘e-book bestseller’. Clickbank are the network running Venuto’s Affiliate Program. This is a program which looks somewhat tacky at face value but is genuinely very good it’s difficult to find out the commission you’ll earn on sales. However, they must be reasonable commission rates judging from search results on the product. Contact Clickbank for more info, if you’re interested. A word of advice though: If you decide to research Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, go to forums and body building sites for accurate public opinion rather than reading the cringe-worthy marketing spiel!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Weight Loss Affiliate Programs

For those looking for a cheap getaway abroad, “Lowcostholidays.com” (their affiliate program can be found at Affiliate Window) offers cut price and affordable holidays to a variety of different locations. They run a series of different promotions, including trips to Egypt from £9 per person per night, and heavy discounted breaks in Florida. In total, there are over 30,000 different hotels on offer on the site, all of which are at very low prices. Through the online booking system, you can create your own package holiday - selecting from various options that are applicable to the specific needs of the traveller or group.

The program offers a 5% commission rate, a 60 day cookie and considerable cash bonuses for achieving a certain number of sales within a month. Some of the more luxurious holidays available within the site could result in some very high basket values, and the site offers a good range of destinations that should cater for the vast majority of needs. However, there is a limited range of advertising material available and you may not display any links on a site targeted at an audience of children.

An incredibly popular choice with affiliates is Sunshine.co.uk (who are with Affiliate Future) - as former affiliates themselves, the team behind Sunshine have built a fantastic business backed up with some brilliant tools and their showcase product Sunpress, a wordpress plugin.

For something a little bit closer to home, many families choose to holiday in Britain instead of venturing abroad, particularly in the current financial climate. Although cheaper than going overseas, the average cost of a holiday in Britain still stands at £1,103, and so high basket values are still realistic throughout British programs. One of the leading companies offering British breaks is “Park Holidays UK” (their affiliate program can be found at Affiliate Window).

Park Holidays UK offer a good range of caravan holidays in the South of England, including beach breaks and more park based locations. An average 4 night break for a family of four costs around £100, and the site displays various special offers including 7 days from just £180. A section is also available to buy your own holiday home, which is also included in the affiliate program. The standard commission rate is good, standing at 8%. The program also offers a generous cookie length of 120 days. There’s an impressive range of advertising material available and the program allows you to bid on competitor brand names.

For those who have already booked their hotel and simply need the flights, many programs are available which cater for buying air travel. One of these is “Cheapflightseats.com” (their affiliate program can be found at Affiliate Future). The site boasts one of the widest choices of destination on the internet, whilst also offering good prices. With flights costing in many cases more than £200, large basket values are again a good possibility. This is furthered by the option to book up to 23 tickets in one transaction.

The program offers £3.00 per flight booked, which increases to £4.20 if you manage to refer over 1,000 customers. They offer a fair amount of advertising material; however, you may not bid on the brand name in any PPC campaigns.

One aspect of traveling that is becoming increasingly important in the current market is travel insurance. Especially when going abroad, travel insurance is becoming a prerequisite when booking a holiday, and so it stands to reason that online providers are booming. One such provider is “Flexicover.net” (their affiliate program can be found at Affiliate Future). Their site boasts an easy to use interface with a range of different categories and options (for instance, gap year travel insurance). Standard cover for a single adult in Europe for a week is £7.20. The options to include Winter Sports coverage and the option to purchase annual coverage increase the possible basket value. It is also easy to buy insurance for multiple people through one transaction.

The program offers a straight 15% commission on all sales made, and a broad range of advertising material. The nature of the services on offer means that the website would fit well if advertised along with other travel websites.

Travel websites certainly offer an affiliate the opportunity to make good returns. The high basket values and strong commission rates found across many of the programs give rise to good average earnings if managed correctly. However, conversion rates are notoriously low across the industry, and so many of the programs would only be relevant for a heavily travel focused website.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Travel Affiliate Programs

Google was first founded in 1996. It was, at that time entirely home-grown and the brain child of two incredibly clever Stanford PHD students. These students were called Larry and Sergei and they had a project nicknamed ‘BackRub’. It quickly revolutionised ‘internet search’ and the ‘PageRank algorithm’ was born.

PageRank assigned importance to websites based on how many other pages linked to them and this was the theory that, together with some advanced mathematical indexing techniques, first propelled Google to commercial success. At first the company ran from a hub on the Stanford website, but it was soon clear it needed to grow on stronger servers and have its own incubation tank. The Google domain name was registered on the 4th of September in 1998 and the rest, as they say, is history.

Well, not really. There’s much more to it than that because unlike competitors at the time (Lycos, Yahoo! Search, etc) Google sparked something, it set something off. A type of competition emerged that the internet probably wasn’t ready for; - we all wanted to rank higher and be more visible, to shout louder than the rest and we had to understand how Google worked to ‘beat it’ and get noticed. It was a fun new game.

Google in 1998
Humour me here. Imagine it’s 1998. You’ve just discovered the funniest thing in the world - a dancing hamster, and you’ve probably just played Resident Evil on your brand new Dreamcast. Run DMC had the only decent Number One Single of the year, with the rest being made up of Boy Bands, Girls Bands, Euro Pop and bloody Cher… Those on the forefront of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in 1998 quickly realised that the way to please Google was to do several simple things. Later that year you threw away your Dreamcast.

Anyway, you packed your website’s meta-tags with junk which is regularly searched for, hid text on the page by making it the same colour as the background (sophisticated?) and stuffed the rest of the text with keywords so that it read like a somewhat shonky broken robot. You traded links with anything with a pulse (the name BackRub is a less than subtle hint the large elements of Google’s ranking algorithm looked at link popularity - some things never change!). You may even have cloaked - presenting one version of the site to the IP addresses known to be search engine spiders and another to the everyday user. You probably spent a lot of time creating doorway pages and hosted a ton of these on different domains, all pointing (with the right link anchor text of course) to your main site. You interlinked between your own site network in a frenzy. Sound familiar?

These days, all of these techniques are deservedly considered to be bad practice and spammy but back then they were the height of cool. There were fewer websites on the net than there are now, so there was less competition but it was the dot.com revolution baby! So we had to get noticed and we did it by shouting nonsense.

Now jump into my time machine and accompany me to the present day… Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!

Google in 2008
It’s 2008, and Kings of Leon are the only decent Number One single of the year, the rest being made up of X factor winners, X Factor losers and X Factor wannabes. You have a Wii, a PS3 or an Xbox 360 and a progressive world view. President Elect Obama was just voted in to office by a landslide. These days, you don’t need to cram your website with cloaked content or add items to your meta-tags which have nothing to do with your products or services. This is a beautiful era.

Over the past 10 years Google has evolved to be better, bigger, stronger, faster and more comprehensive ranking system than any competitor, securing it as the industry leader and turning it into a multi-million dollar business. The Google offices are some of the most desirable places to work in the world (although even Googleplex has seen some cost cutting exercises as a result of the dreaded credit crunch). HRH the Queen of England visited Google this year. When the Queen pops over, you’re probably doing something right. Anyway, ranking highly these days is still achievable but the mountain is a lot higher and the climb a lot tougher.

To rank highly in 2008, you need to create well written content (or get someone else to) which provides genuine, unique, high quality information. The sort of information that makes people want to read it again or forward it to friends on Social Media websites and ‘back’ you. In short, the more people that love your content, the higher your rankings. In 2008 you need to publish the sort of information that teaches people new skills, provides them with quantifiable knowledge on a subject or really makes them laugh. The trick is to build up a library of outstanding content which has keyword allusions (2-4% density seems to be the industry recommendation) but nothing unnatural. In this way, people admire you and they link to you; they effectively share you. Because in 2008 that’s what the internet is all about. Sharing.

But it doesn’t stop at content. Remember BackRub? Still true. Google remains sensitive to link equity but it has wised up. No more “friends and family” networks. No more doorway domains. No more reciprocal linking with anything with a pulse. In 2008, link equity is about hard-won relevant links from relevant sites using relevant anchor text. Reciprocal linking is fine but MUST be on-theme and MUST be accompanied by other inbound and outbound links as part of a “natural” link structure. Use a link building firm by all means - there are some really good ones out there (and even more dreadful ones!) but expect hard work. Win relevant links at a sensible pace - too many too quickly and you’re in OOP (over optimisation penalty) territory. Linking in 2008 is about exchange of value: offer affiliate revenues if you can. Offer content in return for a link. Offer a decent return link. Whatever you do, offer something!

And whilst we are on the subject of optimisation, the basics still matter: your site’s code needs to be properly constructed. Not too much Javascript or code at the top of the page. Judicious use of meta title and description tags. Non-spammy use of keyword tags (Google is held to use these as a negative ranking factor these days). Use the H1, H2 and H3 tags. Use ALT tags on images. If you can, consider using CSS divisional layers to create your site - all the benefits and none of the penalties of cloaking: the code you create is search engine friendly and optimised and the users see the site as you would wish them to. All perfectly legitimate.

So go forth, create mind-blowingly brilliant websites with rich content and hard-won link equity and get noticed! And stop looking at dancing hamsters all day!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

How to rank on Google - 1998 edition

People, regardless of their background, are making money, and in some cases lots of it, by becoming affiliate marketers. You don’t need any previous knowledge or experience of web design or marketing and you can even do it from the comfort of your own home or simply boost your income from your day job.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?
The concept is straightforward enough too. In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is when you take a service or product that’s available on the Internet and you promote it to someone else using a special trackable link. As an affiliate marketeer (also called an affiliate publisher — or simply affiliate) you put a link on your site or sell a product on behalf of another company (a merchant) and receive a share of the products. Or, as a merchant, you get other sites to include links to your products and then you give them a share of any revenue you make as a result of the traffic sent through their links to you.

The most common method is Pay Per Sale (PPS) or revenue sharing. In practise this means if your website features an article on fitness DVDs, for example, you can sign up to an affiliate program that sells them. You can then include a special link, with a URL specific to your account from your review to the product. Every time one of your users clicks through and buys the product you get a percentage of the sale.

Less commonly, some affiliate programs also offer Pay Per Click (PPC) so will give you commission for every visitor they receive, or Pay Per Lead (PPL) where the merchant will give you commission for every contact detail they get from a visitor who found them through your site.

Now, it’s not quite as simple as that in practise but it certainly isn’t as difficult as the acronyms and jargon would suggest. The fact that people from all walks of life: butchers, HGV drivers, call centre staff and ex-civil servants (present company included) are getting involved with it means it’s not just for a select group to reap all the rewards.

There’s a wealth of information throughout this site on learning all about affiliate marketing. Every day someone brings out an affiliate marketing book full of so called ’secrets’ that promise you the world yet charges you the earth but its pretty easy for you to teach yourself. All you need is a bit of patience and a lot of passion. Oh, and an Internet connection.

Getting Started
First and foremost if you’re starting from scratch you need to decide what you want your blog or website to be about. You can set up a blog pretty easily, websites take a little bit more work but both are relatively straightforward. If you buy web space and a domain name for a reliable host they can offer support all the way through and most web design programs that you’ll use will have prompts throughout to help you. And if you have a bit of capital you can even get someone to design and build your site for you.

If you’ve already established your site and you want to get started with affiliate marketing check out the affiliate marketing networks that are out there and see if any of them and the merchant programmes they offer are a good fit for you. The benefits of signing up to a network include access to many more merchants than you’d be able to find on your own and they provide support and helpful advertising material, tips and even vouchers and offers, some of which are exclusive to a particular network. Some of the most popular UK networks include Affiliate Window, Tradedoubler, Commission Junction (CJ), DGM, Affiliate Future, Paid on Results and Webgains.

The best way to teach yourself about affiliate marketing is to do research, research . . .and more research. Don’t just take the advice of one source, get a full picture of the successes and more importantly, the failures other affiliate marketers have had. It is a lucrative way of making money online but it can also be easy to fail at it if you don’t do properly or you’re not willing to have a bit of patience and put in the hard graft in the early days.

There is a wealth of information on various search engine optimisation techniques including content writing and link building here at Lammo.net. We also cover paid search marketing (PPC) and explore various affiliate programmes and networks in greater detail. You should also be able to find everything you need online for free - just try searching for any of these areas in Google and you will find a range of helpful sites and forums.

In addition to this make sure you ask lots of questions. There are loads of affiliate marketing social networking sites and message boards that offer advice and support. The benefit of this is you’ll get honest advice (sometimes brutally so — but better to be a little battered than to waste months going down a blind alley) from people in the same boat as you. Believe me there are thousands of people sailing alongside you, all hoping to get a slice of the affiliate marketing pie.

Finally, don’t be deterred by the current gloom and doom with regard to the UK and global economy. In many senses, this is accelerating online spend as people move away from the high street and look to low cost online providers of goods and services. Whilst there is little doubt that growth rates will slow, the forecast in the affiliate marketing industry is generally buoyant.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Can you teach yourself Affiliate Marketing?

What is Wordpress?
Word Press is a publishing platform that has developed a strong reputation in the publishing/blog market. First launched in 2003, it has grown to be the biggest self-hosted blogging tool in the world. Hundreds of thousands of sites and web developers use it and it’s seen by tens of millions of users every day. It’s also classed as an Open Source project. This means that there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it, hence you are free to use it on any site imaginable and you don’t have to pay anyone a license fee.

This, coupled with the support network it offers, is one of the reasons it’s one of the most successful and popular blog technologies out there.

What’s so great about Wordpress?
Firstly, it’s super easy to get set up on. Wordpress claims that you need only take three easy steps and you’re ready to go. If you’re looking to place a Wordpress blog within your own site, then you obviously need your own site, but it needs to be hosted by a web host that meets a set of minimum requirements. If your host meets these requirements, listed on the Wordpress site, then you can download and install the software script.

The software can be completely customised to suit your site’s design or branding. They also offer a free service at WordPress.com which lets you set up a WordPress-based blog but it won’t be as flexible or as advanced as the software you download and install yourself.

Secondly, it’s completely designed and set up ready for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Many web editors end up with a content rich site and have managed to find that niche which could make them a lot of money through affiliate marketing — but consumers can’t find them! And if they’re not getting the page views then they are not generating the revenues. Getting a Wordpress blog may be ideal for situations like this, or for brand new site owners, who are just getting to grips with SEO and blogging.

How do I make money from my Word Press blog?
Once your blog is set up, you still need to make the effort to promote your site through natural search, social media and, potentially paid PPC search, discussed elsewhere in detail here at lammo.net. Once you have the traffic, you can monetise it through well chosen affiliate links. One of the best places to start is by signing up to Google’s AdSense marketing programme. The programme puts relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content, providing a revenue share for every visitor that clicks through on an advert.

Your Wordpress blog can also make money through other forms of advertising, such as RSS syndication and even sponsorship if you are able to drive sufficient traffic volumes. Always, however, be careful regards the way in which you promote paid advertising as the search engines, particularly Google, are notoriously hard on sites seen to be charging for links and advertising. Smaller sites may struggle to attract the kind of sponsors that make them a lot of money and many may not see a huge increase in their online revenue by using these. A further approach is through developing digital assets, namely e-books and course material being sold through peoples’ sites. if you’re offering advice; anything from relationships to business studies, by providing e-books you’re reaching another market and it’s another way of making money.

The Wordpress software lends itself well to incorporating all these elements, and it’s easy to add relevant, new content to your Wordpress blog which will not only help with your SEO but also provide you with more opportunities to place those links and adverts.

Are there any downsides?
Inevitably, with any technology designed for mass use, there are a few constraints as to formatting and the degree to which you can actually customise your site, particularly if you plan — as many do — to use Wordpress to construct the entire site. Historically there have been a few instances of penalties applied to Wordpress sites because the site structure has created some degree of duplicate content although Wordpress fixes are regularly released to deal with these issues. Similarly, there have been instances where a vulnerability in Wordpress has allowed unscrupulous low rent link building firms to post spammy hidden links, resulting in ranking penalties.

With the size of the Wordpress developer community out there, however, none of these issues should prevent you from seriously considering this proven technology as, at least, an initial step to blogging and to a high quality web presence. There are numerous extensions or Wordpress “plug-ins” which, as an example, allow you to run PHP code on specific pages so you can effectively do what you like. We have used this to good effect in publishing reciprocal links managed by an outsourced link building partner. As with any blog, whilst user generated content (UGC) is vital, always ensure that it is policed and that inappropriate content isn’t automatically approved to become a live post.

There are many blogging hosts out there and it’s possible to monetise any blog but Wordpress’ success speaks for itself and if you’re going to put precious time into making your site and blog the best it can be, you can get a bit of a head start by using Wordpress.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

How to make money with Wordpress

Choosing Web Hosting
The first step, if you haven’t already done so, is to get a website. You’ll need to buy the web space, and there are hundreds of companies that can sell you space or in other words, host your site as well as support you as you get started. The price of web space can vary from as a little as £1 a year for a very limited, basic hosting package right up to hundreds of pounds a month for an all singing, all dancing service; it all depends on what your site will offer and what you actually need. The cost of the production of the site itself will of course be determined by what you want it to do. More on this in a moment.

You’ll also need to find and pay for a domain name. When sign up for your web space, the hosting provider may point you in the direction of where to get one or you can do some research and find one yourself. Many hosts will offer domain registration services but do be careful that in using these, you are not tied into the host in question for a protracted period — there are some sneaky tricks out there! Equally spend some time researching web hosting - offerings range from the good through to the bad and the cosmetically challenged.

Choosing a Domain Name
The choice of domain name can be a little trickier than choosing hosting services. Choosing the right domain name can assist in optimising your site and thus in developing your reputation. Google, in particular, still seems sensitive to the presence of keywords in the domain name which is why some sites of questionable value are still appearing high up in the rankings. In general terms, it’s a good idea to choose a name which is short and easy to remember. Don’t choose one that is too similar to another company, especially one that offers similar services to you. You can check Companies House online to ensure you are not registering a domain name that matches an existing company name. Similarly, don’t choose a name which contains words that people struggle to spell. Doing your research into your competitors’ services and domain names should, in the long term, greatly help in building the popularity of your site. When considering keywords, it is worth using the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool to identify terms the are both relevant and actually searched for — an essential activity in any search engine optimisation (SEO) exercise.

Creating the Site
The type of site you need and are able to produce will be determined by your budget and / or web development skills and of course the required functionality. There are endless templates out there, some of them are free. However, most are unlikely to be particularly search engine friendly so you may want to shop around for a developer to produce the site. Whatever you do, get several quotes and ALWAYS get references from happy clients. If you are tempted by off-shore developers, you need to accept that there will be a management overhead, time difference and language barrier - whatever you are told during the sales pitch! That said, many off-shore developers are of good quality and can provide significant savings.

Many successful sites also have a blog. Blogs are an extension of your site, providing you with yet another platform to sell from, post content and reach audiences who may not otherwise find you via the search engines, especially in the early days. Using a pre-built solution such as WordPress to create your site can help you get started and, with many plug-ins, the options are almost infinite. The more people who read your blog and click through to the sales areas of the website the more chance of making money via affiliate referrals. Furthermore, by pushing more clicks through your site the better your ranking on Google will be, and the higher up the list you go - a virtuous circle.

Choosing Affiliate Networks and Programmes
Once your site and blog is up and running the best route to take, especially when you’re starting out, is to join one or more affiliate networks such as Affiliate Window, Affiliate Future, Paid on Results or DGM. These established networks act as middlemen, connecting affiliate publishers with merchants and providing tracking, reporting and marketing support to both parties. Once you are established and are driving significant traffic, you may decide to enter into some direct merchant relationships but in the early days, the networks make it easy (ish!) to get the relevant code or indeed data feeds if you are set up for those, so that you can publish relevant products or services on your shiny new site which will monetise when visitors click through. Most affiliate programmes are pay per sale (PPS) although a few will still pay for leads and, far less frequently these days, clicks. The major affiliate networks provide plenty of statistics so you can work out the average earnings per hundred (EPC) or per thousand (EPM) click-throughs and thus determine which is likely to work best for you.

Content Content Content
Once all of this is set up you need to start filling your pages with relevant and unique content. The more relevant and unique your content the better your search engine ranking. Whilst other SEO factors such as links and the basic code optimisation of your site are also essential (see some of the other posts here at lammo.net for more on these subjects), content is absolutely essential. Product or service content from affiliate programmes doesn’t count as unique content (all of the affiliates and the merchant will have it for starters!). Content needs to be handwritten - if you can’t do this yourself, pay someone decent to do it and make sure you use Copyscape to check that the content they provide is indeed unique. Predictions are that content affiliates — i.e. affiliates with content-rich sites — will thrive over the next few years. Those with little or no unique content are likely to struggle. With the right content, your site should gradually feature ever higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and thus drive visitor numbers. This will in turn increase your chances of converting your carefully chosen affiliate links into real money.

Arguably the best part of becoming an affiliate publisher is that you don’t need any particular expertise or previous knowledge. Anyone from butchers to lorry drivers to call centre staff can make money online; all you need is a bit of patience and a lot of passion. You don’t even have to quit your day job to do it. By joining the right affiliate networks, choosing the right programmes, building a decent content-rich site under a well-chosen domain name and putting your back into learning and practising good SEO techniques (and avoiding the bad ones!), you really can start on the road to becoming master - or mistress - of your own destiny.

Just don’t expect it to happen overnight.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

How can I earn money with Affiliate Marketing?

Many small businesses are already feeling the effects; staff are being made redundant or, worse still, businesses are going under completely sometimes after years and years of trading. Even some larger businesses are going under too as the credit crunch (are you as sick of that expression as I am?) is well and truly paralysing them and their customers. This might seem like a worrying time for all involved but affiliate marketing may be one of the few professions that is able to withstand it. It is a little unclear how it will be affected, this is the first global recession since the Internet really took off and affiliate marketing came into being, but online business is looking like it’s the way forward — even more so at a time like this. There’s a theory that as petrol prices remain high, despite the drop in oil charges, many consumers simply can’t afford to fill their cars up to take a trip to the shops. This, coupled with the recent boom in online consumerism over the past few years anyway is actually good news for us online folk.

The fact that affiliate marketing is one of the rare revenue generating mechanisms that is ‘paid on performance’ is also a great benefit. It does exactly what it says on the tin, affiliates only get paid for the traffic they send that converts into sales so if they’re not performing very well then they don’t receive any money. This pushes affiliates to work harder on their conversion rates, which in the long run will make more money but it also means that merchants don’t have to pay affiliates a penny unless they make them money. Thus if a merchant is struggling it hasn’t got to worry about paying out to the affiiliates and similarly if the affiliates are doing well for them, the merchants will, by definition, have the funds to pay them

There are a couple of negative impacts, which are to be expected. Affiliate marketing isn’t entirely recession-proof understandably, although it’s closer to it than most sectors. Online sales may be better than high street sales but they will still be lower. Similarly, the demand for luxury goods generally drops during difficult financial times so if you sell products such as games consoles or perhaps top-of-the-range technology goods you may see a drop. This may be further compounded by market saturation — as anyone stocking or promoting Plasma and LCD TVs will probably testify. But if you have links with essential products such as food or toiletries, for obvious reasons, the demand will in all likelihood be higher. The affiliate marketing business also has very low overheads or staff costs which affords affiliate a degree of scalability during tougher times that merchants can only dream of.

There are a number of things you can do to minimise or pre-empt any drop in sales and offer people an incentive to still buy your products. The first being that where possible you should push merchants with strong guarantees on their products harder. Consumers prefer to make ‘no-risk’ purchases when times are particularly tight. It will also do wonders for your customer service rating and building that all important trust with your visitors. Secondly, promote merchants that provide discounts on bulk ordering, or certain goods as people can’t resist thinking they’re getting a bargain; they feel that they can justify spending money on such items. The explosive growth of the vouchers and offers space is a testament to this although do ensure that you adhere to the latest IAB guidelines when promoting voucher codes and offers (more on this soon!). Finally, make sure you stress how good the products you represent are. The most successful affiliate marketers will only sell products they think are high in quality or in which they believe wholeheartedly — so this shouldn’t be difficult and consumers are more likely to buy them again if they think there’s minimal risk involved.

For those of you promoting smaller merchants and merchants in notoriously ‘tough’ categories such as consumer electronics, mobile phones, brown goods and any sector related to DIY and home ownership, it is perhaps worth staying in close touch with the affiliate network account managers and also seeing what information you can gather from Companies House regards their financial status. Sadly, recession will drive some merchants to the wall and you need to be sure your vital Christmas traffic isn’t being sent in a direction that may not ultimately result in a cheque! Watch out for the warning signs: ridiculously high discounts; an over-the-top flurry of voucher codes and offers even by seasonal standards; forum postings on A4U and elsewhere that indicate prior or current payment issues. It is in everyones’ interests to keep the dialogues open in this area.

It’s inevitable that the market won’t see the kind of growth it’s seen over the past few years as the economy slows down but by keeping an eye on trends, putting in the extra work with your PPC campaigns and SEO work and riding the affiliate wave a little more cautiously there is no reason that you can’t continue to make money through affiliate marketing. And if your day job is looking a little fragile then upping your affiliate marketing game could see you coming through these difficult times with a smile on your face

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing: A recession proof business?