Affiliate Marketing FAQ

Affiliate Marketing Realities

• You can make a lot of money through affiliate marketing.

o True. Around the globe, affiliates earn billions of dollars each year. Some affiliatestake home millions of dollars a year while others are happy pulling in $50 a month.

• This is a sales job with no doortodoorselling.

o True. Although you can promote your sites offline, you will only be credited throughthe sales that can be tracked online.

• I will need to create my own product.

o False. At some point in your Internet marketing career, you may be inspired orencouraged to create your own product. However, developing your own productcomes with its own list of risks and responsibilities, including customer service,packing, shipping and payment processing. An affiliate’s job is simply to sendprospective customers to a particular company or merchant – a less risky task.

• I can put up a site, load it with banners and the cash will start rolling in.

o False. Polluting your site with tons of banners will not work. You’ll lose that visitorforever. Instead you should stick to anywhere between one and three banners thatconvert well – a much better use of space than 20 ads thrown up on the site. You canalso use a banner rotation system to maximize the number of different relevantadvertisements being shown your site. Also, it is important that you plan out whereyour advertisements will go. Don’t create a site and toss up the ads as an afterthought.Isn’t this pretty important seeing as how this will be your means for making money?The contents of your site, however, should always be its main feature and focus.

• Monitoring and analyzing your statistics can triple your profits.

o True. Not only should you monitor your site’s affiliate links to make sure they are upto date, but you can also boost your conversion rate (your visitor to sales ratio) bysubtly experimenting with your site’s elements and analyzing the results. For instance,you could change the color of a button, the text in a headline or the placement of yourlinks. After at least 1,000 different visitors have seen the change, and check to seewhether your affiliate commissions have soared or slumped. If 1% of visitorsconverted into sales before, but now 3% of visitors convert – you’ve TRIPLED yourprofits.

• I will have to spam people.

o False. There are people out there who develop and launch tons of spammy scams andemails. And unfortunately, they are able to sucker people from time to time. However,this is not a tactic you will need to utilize. Affiliate marketing is a legitimate businessand you can earn great money with an honest, non robotic approach. Instead, you cancreate opt in newsletters where site visitors can choose to receive emails from you. Aquality list of people who actually want your message have high conversion rates.

• There are no magic overnight success formulas.

o True. There are successful people in anyindustry, on or offline – but 99% of the timetheir success is attributed to long hours, hardwork, dedication and a commitment tolearning. You need to put in the time tounderstand the basics, expand upon that andimplement the tactics that I show you. You needto learn from your failures and successes andrealize that there is no “system” you canpurchase that will do the work for you.

Affiliate Terms You Should Know

Affiliate Terms You Should Know

AD = Advertisement, Text, Banner, Flash, Video, anything

ASP = Application Service Provider

CPA = Cost per Action

CPC = Cost per Click

CPL = Cost per Lead

CPM = Cost per (Mil) Impression (1000 Impressions)

CPS = Cost per Sale

CR = Conversion Rate

CSS = Cascading Style Sheets

CTR = Click through rate/Click-Through Ratio

DH = Direct Hit

DRM = Dynamic Rich Media (type of Ad, technology)

DRM = Digital Rights Management

EPC = Earnings per Click / Earnings per 100 Clicks

FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions

FFA = Free-For-All Link List

IM = Instant Messaging

MFA = Made For AdSense (Site)

OPM = Outsourced (Affiliate) Program Management

PFI = Pay For Inclusion

PFP = Pay For Performance

PPA = Pay per Action

PPC = Pay per Click

PPCSE = Pay Per Click Search Engine

PPI = Pay Per Impression

PPL = Pay Per Lead

PPS = Pay Per Sale

PV = Page View

ROI = Return on Investment

RON = Run Of Network

ROS = Run Of Site (Display Advertising)

SB = Small Business

SE = Search Engine

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

SEP = Search Engine Positioning

SERP = Search Engine Result Page

SID = common (optional) URL Parameter Affiliates can use for their own tracking purposes

SMO = Social Media Optimization

SSI = Server Side Include

USP = Unique Selling Proposition

UV = Unique Visitor