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So it’s time to announce the winner of “Affiliate Marketing Tips” Contest - Win iPod or Flip Mino

We received a wonderful response and lots of entries from people all round the world. Some were one liners (you can see the comments on that contest post), some were usual known tricks, some were lengthy & informative while some were short & sweet. It was tough to decide the winning entry, but after going through each entry, I found the below entry a clear winner.

And the winner is Hetal (mailfast****yahoo dot com ) Congratulations Hetal for winning the “Secret Is out” contest sponsored by MarketLeverage. Please contact me with your prize option ( Ipod nano 8GB or Flip MinoHD ) and shipping details.

Also winning entries will go for nomination into the final step where every participating blog will vote for their favorite 3 winning entries (not including their own blog’s winning entry). And top 3 entries with maximum votes will win Amazon Kindle, $100 reward card and $50 iTunes card –>

Ok, below is the winning entry and you will some really helpful tips. I will post the other entries too one by one after few days so that everyone can learn those affiliate marketing tips and secrets.

Making Money from Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing programs are a great way to make money from your websites, but to maximize on their earning potential you will need to spend of bit of time and effort on making them work, and learning all of the little affiliate tricks to choosing the right programs, and integrating them into your website successfully. Most of the people who claim that they know all about affiliate marketing actually do not even know the initials well.

No matter how hard you try, sometimes your website fails to drive the required amount of traffic. The same thing is applicable in the case of marketing as well. It is here where the affiliate marketing business tips act as a savior.

Here are a few tips to help you cash in on affiliate programs:

1. Integration – there is nothing worse then following a link to a website you think sounds interesting, only to find it has a lot of blatant and overwhelming advertising that has nothing to do with the topics being discussed. To avoid annoying your visitors you will need to take a bit of time to choose affiliate marketing programs that can blend in easily into your existing website theme, and choosing programs that are advertising products/services that are relevant is a good start. For example if you have a website all about pets, then you need to select affiliate programs that are advertising pet related products like dog food, kennels, animal treatments or pet insurance. There is no point running affiliate programs for beauty products or the latest gadgets as it is unlikely that these will be of much interest to your visitors, and you will be just wasting time and resources.

So first and foremost analyze your landing page. Make sure it looks well as this would determine your future profits. People never tend to buy from a site which is clumsy in appearance. Never even dare to copy the landing page of someone else as this can ruin your chances of attracting visitors who might also turn out to be probable customers. Also, place the affiliate links/banner above the fold and at the end of the landing page. Make them stick out of the page and keep some space around them.

2. Keywords – keywords are important to attaining high rankings on search engine results (which is vital for attracting visitors), so sit down and write a good keyword list that is relevant to your website theme and chosen affiliate programs, and make sure you incorporate them often throughout the content of your website, ensuring they are included in titles and HTML tags (yes, you can gain some direct FREE search engine traffic if your site ranks well ) . Start with lower bids and increase the bid in small succession to know what brings the best ROI. Try campaigns with different ad groups and different keywords. Keep working and keep researching into this. Make sure that you are not bidding on trademarks or other objectionable keywords.

Various keyword suggestion tools are available on net – including free and paid ones. Long tailed keywords are better converting and costs less CPC – but requires lot of research regarding this.. It’s not a one day task.

Here are few Free keyword tools
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

3. Offers - First question by every newbie – which offers to promote, which offers work best ? This depends on various factors and your interested field. Zip/email submit offers can be easy to start with but don’t bring much in a short time. Free trial offers would be a next step, but you will find lots of competition here. Also, some are masters in incentive based programs. Promote what is hot and also which have less competition. Remember, there are millions of people like you who are sitting there to make money online. Don’t forget to take advantage of seasonal and festive promotions.

4. Direct linking is another essential tip which can help you strike the chord of success in affiliate marketing. It often happens that your visitors move away from your site even before they glance through the offers listed down there. It is here that the direct links work wonder and eliminating them might purge your future prospects completely. Though Google and yahoo don’t allow direct linking, but I have ran many email/zip submit offers via direct link on Yahoo Search Network without any problems.

5. Tracking & Research - Make sure your check out your traffic and conversion rates from time to time. Sometimes it happens that the users are not at all interested in the products listed on your site. In this case use Google Analytics and examine the keywords which are drawing traffic to your site and then proceed to place relevant ads. You will also find sub id tracking in MarketLeverage campaigns which will help you in researching the top performing keywords.

6. Free Traffic – Here free traffic means, traffic outside PPC campaigns. Keep participating in various social networking sites, forums, blogs and so on. Viral Marketing, link baiting, Facebook Ads, Youtube video marketing, Craigslist/classified posting, SEO etc are some more cost effective ways for a massive affiliate marketing. Though singly they will not bring a lot of traffic, but collectively they can surpass PPC traffic.

7. Website publications – newsletters and special competitions/giveaways are a great way to advertise your website, and get visitors to leave valuable contact details to help push future advertising campaigns. A newsletter only needs to include two or three main articles of around 300 -600 words each, and can be sent out either every fortnight or once a month, so they should be easy to fit into a busy schedule. Try and think of a theme for each newsletter, and include articles that refer back to content on your website, to encourage people to visit there for more information. Competitions and giveaways also create a good ‘lure’ to get people to visit and sign up on your website, and they are simple and easy to set up, with small prizes and offers working well as long as you make it straightforward for people to apply. Once you have a good list of member contact details you can also send out emails regarding new items on your website or upcoming promotions and offers.

8. Content – if an affiliate program is to be successful you need to have sufficient site traffic, and the key to this is providing interesting and constantly updated (at least three times a week if possible) content. Think about the sort of visitors you hope to attract, and write articles with them in mind. For example if you have a website that is all about herbal supplements and over the counter medicines, then visitors will expect well written, concise articles that include plenty of facts and figures. However if you are running a website that is about arts and crafts then visitors will expect plenty of demonstration articles and pictures, and personal, friendly anecdotes about crafts projects. The key is to target your audience and cater to their needs, providing relevant, easy to read content that will interest them and encourage them to return, and also recommend your site to friends.

9. Keep Learning – Yes, keep learning what’s new in the internet and affiliate marketing world. Participate in various affiliate marketing forums and learn/share with the fellow members. Keep reading tips and updates on various blogs and sites. Know what’s hot, what is in demand, promotional methods, new networks and so on. Here are some helpful resources:

• http://forums.digitalpoint.com
• http://www.sitepoint.com
• http://www.wickedfire.com
• http://www.associateprograms.com
• http://www.5staraffiliateprograms.com
• http://blog.affiliatetip.com/
• http://www.shoemoney.com
• http://www.zacjohnson.com
• http://www.here.org.uk/
• http://uberaffiliate.com/
• http://www.johnchow.com

If you are a beginner at running affiliate marketing programs that it is best if you stick to just two or three to start with, and work at maximizing these before you move on. It is important that you devote enough time to each of your affiliate schemes, in order to maximize their potential, and successful affiliate users can make more money from one good scheme that is run efficiently, than some users can from six or seven schemes that are poorly managed.

10 – Friendship with the network - Last but not the least, create a friendship with your affiliate network and affiliate managers. Ask them for various promotional offers, marketing tactics, special commission, banners/landing pages, keywords and so on. Ask them which offers are converting best. There are various dedicated AM’s out there on Market Leverage to help you out.

I think I have written a lot and would have made an e-book of this, lol. Hope you will find these tips interesting and useful. Happy Money Making from affiliate marketing on Market Leverage.

Hetal Bidasaria

Popularity: 1% [?]

Email marketing is a powerful promotional tool, and can be used to communicate with new and existing customers quickly and easily, with very little overall costs. Industry studies have shown that the response rates from email marketing campaigns are higher than other direct marketing methods, such as paper based postal schemes, and a strong email campaign can expect to have an effective 5% response rate.

To help you build and manage a successful email marketing campaign it is recommended that webmasters utilize one of the many online email marketing services, who can provide you with the necessary software to enable you to create, send and track all of your campaigns. One of the leading email marketing software companies is Interspire, who cater to over 15,000 different businesses needs, from individual webmasters to global digital advertising agencies.

Interspire provides one of the industries most robust and dynamic web based email marketing software solutions, which can offer you access either through the host services, or installation on your own private servers.

Interspire Email Marketer Benefits

The Interspire email marketing packages include many features to help you contact your customers such as newsletters, welcome and promotional emails and autoresponders. The software is straightforward and easy to use, with plenty of excellent customer support to help guide you through setting up and managing successful marketing campaigns.

The installation takes only 10 -20 minutes to complete from start to finish, giving you immediate access to over 35 industry specific templates to begin setting up your campaigns, which enables you to get started quickly without the additional task of designing the layout of your campaigns from scratch. You can also customize each template to create a more individual look, including logos, colors and basic layout and the Interspire email marketing software also has some other excellent features including:

• Multiple user accounts to run target specific campaigns, with separate contact lists and statistical reports.
• Easy integration with existing ecommerce billing systems.
• Straightforward, browser-based contact management.
• Personalized auto-responders and emails.
• Split test software to run small sample email campaigns before selecting the most successful to issue to your main contact list.
• Bulk email marketing to save time and costs.

Another key benefit of Interspire email marketing is that you only pay an initial one-time set up fee, which means you will not have to pay any further costs like monthly or ‘per email’ charges. This enables you to reduce overall costs on your email marketing campaigns and is ideal for those webmasters new to this type of advertising. There is also a 100% money back guarantee offered just in case you are unsatisfied with Interspire’s software, which can be claimed up to 60 days after the initial purchase.

You will also find various tutorials related to this product on their blog. For example, checkout this tutorial on “How You Can Quickly Design an HTML Email Using Interspire Email Marketer 5.5″

Interspire have an excellent security reputation, and only the account holder has access to subscriber lists and details of email campaigns via the secure log in procedure. To find out more about Interspire’s email marketing software you can visit the official website and watch this helpful online demo (with some restricted features).

Popularity: 1% [?]

Yeh, Merry Christmas And Happy Holidays to the blogosphere and the whole world out there. Enjoy each and every moment of this auspicious occasion and spread the message of love and friendship everywhere.

I am too enjoying these holidays with my friends and family.  And so you will find me not updating this blog daily. But don’t worry, I will be more regular in the coming new year 2009.

Don’t forget to wish me here or at twitter @meethere .

Popularity: 3% [?]

Time comes for which the participants are waiting eagerly - Results of ProBlogineer Xmas Blog Contest

I got lots of entries which made the contest more competitive (Without competition there is no fun in the contest ). Also I made 3 more updates on “How you can collect more points and increase your winning changes.” Good response with the updates too.:)

Took me around 3 hours to sort the things out. Some people collected as low as 1 point, while some (e.g. akira07) collected as high as 40 points.:eek:

Ok, without much talking, lets go to the winners. Here how the winners were selected :

• Used http://random.org/lists/
• Added all the participants name in the list multiplied by their points. So if you had 5 points, your name was added 5 times in the list. So you can earn more than 1 prize also.
• Clicked Randomize only once.
• And wooha, here is a top 20 list!!

So the top 8 participants from the above list wins :

1. Lifetime Free PPC-Coach Membership !! (Remember $50/month is the regular price ) - Gunjan
2. 125×125 banner ad on Problogineer.com - Sensei
3. EntreCard Credits 1500 ECs - Blogger Templates
4. 125×125 on Networking Blogger - abegail libot
5. 1 month Text advertisement on Technica Magazine - indocontest
6. Lifetime Free Regular Listing on Wicked Web Directory - Dhyarga
7. $20 Cash paid via paypal - Gunjan
8. $10 Cash paid via paypal - akira07

Congrats to all the winners. Hope you enjoyed the contest. “Affiliate Marketing Tips” Contest is still going on - 9 days left.

More contests coming soon in the coming new year - contest ideas, suggestions, sponsors are welcome.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hi Participants, here is a 3rd and probably final update to the ProBlogineer Xmas Blog Contest

The contest is going well and there are more than 50 participants now. That makes the contest more competitive. To increase your chances of winning the awesome Lifetime PPC-Coach membership, gather as many points as possible.

Here is one more easy way to collect points. LifeBlue is holding a unique contest where the worst site design wins the competition. The winner gets a new redesign from them. Do you think Problogineer needs a new design ?

Just click the below vote now button and win 2 points. You just need to click it, no signup or anything required.

Post a comment when you have done. Let us hit their Wall of Shame . Contest ending soon, only 4 days to go.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Trying to make money from online publishing can take a lot of time and effort, and one way many people earn from their websites is by joining affiliate programs. This basically means providing leads for advertisers on your site, and earning commission every time a visitor clicks on these leads and purchases the product/services advertised.

There are many different types of affiliate marketing programs available such as Pay Per Click (PPC) and Pay Per Lead (PPL) but not all the programs out there bring in good money, so it is important to look carefully at each option before you commit to anything for your website.

PPL can earn you much more than PPC programs, as they pay out every time a visitor clicks through the advert and provides lead information on the related product or services. PPC programs often only pay out just a few pennies per click, whereas top product leads on PPL can pay up to $50 each click through (and lead form filled in). In this article we are going to look in more depth at the T3Leads affiliate program which I recently came across.

Functionality
You may not have a great deal of time to spend on setting up and maintaining your affiliate programs, so it is important to select a network that is easy and quick to use. The T3Leads website is bright, modern and straightforward, and there are only a few pages to navigate through so you don’t have to worry about getting lost in the site looking for the information you need. It is easy to sign up, and the contacts page has plenty of numbers and email information to connect you to a T3lead representative whenever you need one. There is also a very good FAQ page that presents clear and concise help with common set up and technical queries, which is very helpful for first timers. The member’s area is a little untidy and could do with a bit more work, but the payment screens are straightforward and you should have no trouble setting up and maintaining you programs.

T3leads does not resell generated leads. Their affiliate program directly cooperates with a large network of banks and other financial institutions. T3leads sell generated leads through a unique auction system that allows their affiliates to make maximum profits. They pay for each customer sent to us when they respond to your offers for qualified products and services.

Offers
T3Lead operates a little differently to some of the other affiliate sites in that instead of giving you the adverts to use on your website, it gives you a whole website and lets you market it as your own with the banners and adverts already in place. This is not really suitable for people who are already running a few websites, and don’t want to take on anymore, but can be good for novices as the websites come already set up with keywords in place. Websites are on a range of subjects such as loans and debt solutions and there is also the option to customise your own websites.

T3leads is currently accepting traffic/leads from US and UK only. The high quality of T3lead promo tools ensures high conversion rates in their affiliate network. At T3leads, they guarantee the highest conversion rates in the industry - ranging from 1:6 to 1:9., and high product leads can earn you as much as $45-$46 for every click through that fills out the lead form. Most other lead products pay up to $20 and if you run these websites well you can make some good money through PPL.

Also, they provide their affiliates with an arsenal of promo tools that are constantly being refreshed by T3leads’ creative team for maximum performance. You can work with both public web sites, and private web sites own by you.

Their new lead tracking/reporting system (version2) will be live by the end of the year, when they will be able to make changes fast, without loosing traffic OR a lot of traffic.

Payment
The payout is on Net15 basis and minimum payout is $100. They have various payment options like Check, Wire transfer, Paypal, Webmoney, Fethard etc. The affiliates can order free ePassporte cards for greater convenience. Major partners can get a VIP ePassporte card free of charge, with a total maximum transaction limit of 10K per day.

Support
Support and customer services is vital in affiliate schemes, so that you can get help quickly and avoid too much downtime. T3Lead has a good support base and you can contact reps either by phone or email, but unlike some of the other affiliate programs you do not get your own personal rep, which can be a bit frustrating as you speak to someone different each time (although they are always courteous and helpful in my experience). As already mentioned the FAQs are clear and informative, and on average the support is adequate for this sized marketing business.
Friendly affiliate support is always available, and ready with answers to any question. The support team can also help with technical problems. You can find answers to commonly asked questions on their forum:

Conclusion
T3Leads provide a good, functional system,some competitive offers, 6 methods of payment ( including paypal ) with biweekly payments and open for around-the-world webmasters - Worth signing up

Popularity: 4% [?]