Can you make money at home with affiliate programs?

Simply put, an Affiliate Program is an agreement between a
merchant and an individual (Affiliate) where the Merchant agrees
to pay the Affiliate for advertising and gaining leads or sales
for the Merchants product!

An affiliate program (also an Associate, Partner, Referral, or
Revenue Sharing Program) is just a way for companies to sell
products via regular people like you and me all over the world.
When you start generating clicks, leads, or sales, the company
you are affiliated with pays you a commission.

What are Two-tier affiliate programs?

In many cases, it's possible to make money from the efforts of
people that you introduce to the affiliate program. These would
be called Two-tier affiliate programs. This is just a term used
to identify affiliates who earn commissions on their conversions
as well as conversions of other webmasters they refer to the
program.

For example, you could earn a residual income of up to 5%+ from
the sales that your sub-affiliates bring in. This can really add
up when you have a large base of sub-affiliates.

With that said, you could see by combining the power of the
Internet and Affiliate Programs you can very easily generate
massive profits. The more people you can get the Affiliate
Programs you have joined in front of the better your chances are
of earning money!

Affiliate Programs come in all shapes and sizes. There are
programs,which pay you per lead or per click,and there are those
which pay you a percentage of the sale amount.

Affiliate programs are an ideal way to make money from home.
There is such a huge range of web affiliate programs now
available, that there is almost certainly something out there
that will suit you and or your site. And did I mention they are
FREE to join?

So if you are serious about making money with affiliate programs
then listen up. You will have your best chance for success if
you do the following:

1. You must have a goal.

Goal setting is the term commonly given for the process of
setting and working towards specific, defined goals. Pretty
simple really. However, setting unrealistic goals is not what
I'm talking about here. It should be something small. Maybe
start off with something like earning an extra $300 a month.
Remember you can always set more goals once you achieve the
first. The harder you make the goal the more you may find
yourself feeling defeated.

2. What do you enjoy? What are your hobbies? What is
something you enjoy talking about?

The next 2 steps are really important. The best way I have found
to make money using affiliate programs is to create web sites
around a topic that you like or are comfortable with. Next, find
affiliate programs you can blend into your site. What I mean is,
say you like fishing and you decide to build a web community
about fishing. You should only join affiliate programs that
relate to the topic fishing. The chances of someone clicking on
your affiliate link are much greater this way. You will also
find it much easier to update and add content to your site on a
topic you are familiar with. (We will get into this later.)

3. Is the topic you decided on popular?

Now that you know what your topic is. How will your web site
appeal to the masses? What I mean by this is how many times were
the keyword phrases (you would like to target) searched for? By
having a subject that nobody searches for, you're not going to
make much money. Your web site not only needs to be about
something you are comfortable with, but also searched for often.
The idea is to find a topic that the public searches for. Then
once you build a site that focuses on that information, getting
your visitors to click on your links will be a breeze.

There are many tools available for you search popular key
phrases:

http://pixelfast.com/overture/

http://www.nichebot.com/

http://www.wordtracker.com/

To name a few, and I'm sure you could do a google and find many
more.

Once you visit these sites, type in your topic and look at what
combinations of keywords are getting the best results. These are
the types of keyword phrases you should focus on. The idea is to
make a site with lots of good quality content about this topic.
The more content you have the more likely the search engines
will index your web site and its pages. Thus increasing your
chances of making money off the affiliate programs you join.
Affiliate programs work just like sales, and in sales the more
people you talk to the more chances you have to sell your
product. It's just a numbers game. The more visitors you have
the more money you can make.

Be careful on your topic though. If you plan to use google
adsense ads on your site there are topics that they won't allow
their ads on. For a full list of topics they wont allow go here:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US

Repeat steps 2 & 3 until you are certain you have the topic you
would like to build your web site on.

4. Build a useful, interesting web site on your topic.

Hopefully, you have identified the audience you want to reach.
Now its time to create a profile of your target audience and
design a site that's useful to their needs and interests. What
is the content going to be on your site? How often will you
update your site? Are there other sites out there like the one
you want to build? If so how can you be different, better? In
what formats will your content be delivered? Will you just use
text and graphics or will you need forms for user input? How
much time will it take to keep up with your site? If you don't
know how to build sites who will you hire to help you? First and
foremost make sure you create a useful, interesting, content
ridden, interactive, keyword-rich website.

5. Research, join and add affiliate links to your site.

Before you run out and join every affiliate program, take a
minute to think about the web site you have built and its
visitors. What types of products and information will your
visitors be interested in? Will the programs you choose appeal
to your site's visitors. (If not your conversions will suffer.)
You may want to rush out and join all the affiliate programs you
can. I know it sounds really good, but it really isn't a good
idea. Having too many programs creates a lot of clutter on your
site. To many affiliate links will only confuse your visitors.
It will also hurt your web sites ranking when search engines
start crawling your site. Its best to just focus on a few and
worry more about making your site easy to read, informative
(full of content), easy to navigate, interactive, and as
visually appealing as possible. If you do these five things to
your web site visitors will not only come, they will come back!
OFTEN, maybe even bringing a few friends each time they return!
If you
Click Here and you can view a list of companies, I
think, are some of the best moneymakers out there.

6. Write articles

One of the best, FREE, ways to promote your website is to write
articles about the topic you have chosen. At the end of your
article you can add an author byline. In this byline you should
add links to your site. Let them know who you are and where your
internet home is. This will help build credibility for you and
your site. With time, it will also build a very loyal following.
And lots and lots of FREE traffic to your site! And if you add
one little line in your articles saying, "that your article can
be used for reprint on someone else's site", (as long as they
keep the links in your article active - very important) you have
just made the next step (#7) in making money from home using
affiliate programs so much easier! Now after you have written a
few articles, added your author byline, and the reprint rights.
The next thing you need to do is find places you can submit them
to! Start looking for e-zines, sites that accept articles
(similar to the content on yours), message boards, anything that
will allow you to post your article. Post it! Let me tell you
there are tons of these places out there. Most of them are free
to submit to. The only thing needed from you now is the time to
submit them.

7. Add more content to your site. Then get more links to your
site.

The best way to ensure that search engines find your site is to
have pages on other relevant sites link to yours. Search engine
robots jump from page to page and site to site via these links,
so the more sites that link to the pages of your site, the more
likely it is that they will find and index your site quicker.
Also, the more pages and content you have will increase your
chances of another site hyperlinking to yours. Webmasters love
good quality content! Not to mention these links can provide
lots of free traffic to your site as well. At first you will
probably see more traffic coming to your site from these links
than you will from the major search engines. As time goes on,
and the as more sites start linking to your content, the more
weight a search engine will give your site. Raising your
pagerank and rankings in their indexes, and that's a good
thing.

**Complete steps 6 & 7 over and over and over. Your JOB now is
to promote your site as much as possible.**

8. Most of all be patient

If you are looking for a way to earn lots of money in a short
time, you need to skip affiliate programs and find some other
way to make money at home. Making money with affiliate programs
can be a very slow process. I didn't start making really decent
money with affiliate programs for about a year. It takes time
and a little bit of work. You will get tired of posting and
writing your articles, but don't quit. The more you get your
name and web site out there, the more people you will see
visiting your site.

I hope this article has helped explain how the internet,
combined with affiliate programs, can be a very lucrative and
legitimate way to make money, enough money to, maybe just maybe,
allow you to quit your job. I did! And I can't even begin to
describe to you the rewards that have come along with me being
able to do so. Again, I'm going to say this: This did NOT happen
overnight, but it did happen! It took many hours sitting in
front of the computer. In fact I still spend 20-30 hours a week
working on my site, trying to better my conversions. Keeping up
with the ever changing algorithms of the major search engines.
Finding and creating fresh, new, content for my site and its
visitors is neverending.

But in the end, it's all worth it!!

Should you have any questions about this article, or would like
to have Gary help you build an affiliate web site, contact him
Here

This article is available for reprint with author's resource box
intact and all links active. Author reserves copyright.

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