Home Work Business Opportunities | Affiliate Marketing
I make my living in affiliate marketing. It was my way of taking advantage of home work business opportunities. I am asked all the time by people I know and meet on what exactly does affiliate marketing mean.
The easiest way to explain it is to give you an example. Amazon.com is the biggest affiliate marketing network. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of products that that can be purchased through their website. If you join Amazon.com and become an affiliate for them, all you have to do to make a commission with them is to drive traffic to their website and if a purchase is made, you earn a commission.
That’s it! To be an affiliate marketer all you need is a computer and internet access.
It doesn’t cost you anything to be an affiliate for Amazon.com – joining is free. And, their are hundreds of other affiliate marketing networks that you can join and they are also free to join. Among the largest and busiest are Clickbank, Commission Junction, and PayDotCom.
The key to being successful at affiliate marketing is driving hungry traffic to your affiliate sites. The three usual ways of doing this are by:
1. Blogging – You can create your own free website at Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. Once you have these set up, you can write postings in your blog and link them to your affiliate sites. Or, you can post banners on your blog and if clicked, it will take your visitors to your affiliate links. All of this, including the banners, are free.
2. Article Writing – You can write articles that have links to your affiliate networks and post these articles on article directories. Your article should be written around a subject related to what you are trying to sell so that the traffic you drive to your links are focused and targeted. Some of the more popular article directories are Ezinearticles, Squidoo, Hubpages, and GoArticles. All of these are free to use.
3. PPC Advertising – PPC advertising is known as pay per click advertising. Now, this is not free, but it is a very effective way to drive targeted customers directly to the products you are trying to sell. This method involves placing ads on Google Adwords, Yahoo, or MSN. Joining these advertising sites is free, but one you place an ad, you will have to pay a predetermined amount each time someone clicks on your ad. It doesn’t cost anything for your ad to show, but it does when someone clicks on it (for some tips on PPC advertising, read my article on this internet income opportunity).
Affiliate marketing is a terrific internet income opportunity. It is not a get rich quick scheme. It does take some time to learn the ropes, but there is income to be made and the longer you are in it, the more you will make. Remember, all those links you put out there to products you are selling, will stay on the internet for years to come.
Here is another tip. If you have interest in affiliate marketing, but would like to learn more about it, go to the Google Cash 4 Home Study Course. It will cost you one cent for a processing fee, but you can get this Home Study Course for free. Not only that, you will also get another free course called the No Money System (30 video lessons on how to market at no cost). A third thing that you will get for that 1 cent processing fee is a 7 Day Free Trial to the Google Cash Detective – an extremely valuable tool to use if your doing PPC advertising.
Don’t hesitate to get these free courses and don’t hesitate to drop the Google Cash Detective after 7 days if you don’t like it. The free courses are still yours to keep.
Home work business opportunities are out there. I hope this article on affiliate marketing has helped you find one.
While You’re Unemployed, Find A Legitimate Business Opportunity On The Internet
If you’re unemployed, use a lot of that extra time that you have to find a legitimate business opportunity on the internet. There are not many regular jobs out there. With unemployment hovering around 10% (and much higher in many states), employers are reluctant to do much hiring. Many experts are forecasting that it will be 3-4 years before we see much of a drop in unemployment. So, don’t give up, use this time to create your own internet income opportunity. Make your own business. It’s not as hard as you may think.
First thing you need to do before you decide which legitimate business opportunity it is that you want to tackle, is to determine how much money you need to make on a daily basis to sustain your way of living. If you’re working from home, it will be less than you think.
For example, if your rent or house payment is $900/month, that’s about $30/day (based on 30 days/month). Groceries about $10/day (if you spend about $70/week). Electricity $6/day, water and sewage $3/day, cable TV $2/day, telephone $2/day, high speed internet $1.50/day, automobile payment $8.50/day, auto insurance $3/day, and miscellaneous expenses $4/day. That’s a total of $70/day in total expenses. Now, you need to find a legitimate business opportunity on the internet that will provide you with an income of at least $70/day.
Keep in mind that making money on the internet is not a get rich quick scheme. Sure, there have been those that have immediately made thousands of dollars. But, that’s like winning the lottery. It can be done, but it’s not likely to happen.
The important thing about finding a legitimate business opportunity on the internet is to find an opportunity that is consistently and regularly providing you an income. You will likely have to take advantage of a number of different opportunities, with each one providing you a chunk of income that is covering different parts of your expenses.
For example, you may have a blog on weight loss that is linking to different weight loss programs that is providing you with an average income of $12/day. Well, that’s covering groceries and telephone expenses.
Start another blog, say on exercise equipment. Build it up and after a while the income from it may be covering your automobile payment and its insurance.
Cover all of your expenses by bits and pieces. Besides blogs, you may want to do some pay per click advertising (for tips, read my article PPC Is A Legitimate Business Opportunity). Perhaps this will provide you enough income to cover your house payments. And, try article marketing on Ezinearticles and Squidoo (see Bum Marketing Is A Legitimate Business Opportunity). Article marketing may provide you enough income to cover the balance of your expenses and start providing you enough cash to put in your savings account.
Providing yourself an income by bits and pieces is insurance for you. Now, I’m not saying that you don’t want to land on a big money maker – we all want that. I’m just saying that you want to diversify your income. You never know when one of your sources of income may dry up. If you have diversified your income, you may get a little “thirsty” when one of your sources dries up, but you can survive until you have found another legitimate business opportunity.
SEO Assistance To Help You Take Advantage Of An Internet Income Opportunity
Do you need SEO assistance to help you take advantage of that internet income opportunity? As you know, there are thousands of websites created every day. Only a very small minority of them will ever get much free traffic. To get a lot of free traffic, you have to get your site ranked on page 1 of Google for the keywords that you are using. Most visitors to Google never go beyond the first page.
So, you may be wondering how do you do it. Do you have to sell your house and hire a SEO Specialist? Do you have to spend months or years learning SEO tactics from blogs or forums? You could do these things, or you could just take a few minutes and download for free the Traffic Travis Software.
Search engine optimization is not a complicated science. All it takes is some specific information that Traffic Travis can provide you. It can provide you information on what your website is missing and what you need to do yo improve it. Traffic Travis will tell you where you rank for each of your keywords. It can track your position on the search engines and it can provide you graphs to show you if your site is going up or down.
Traffic Travis can show you who your top 10 competitors are. It will take a peek inside your competitor’s websites and show you what keywords they are optimized for. Traffic Travis can show you who is linking to these sites and how many links they each have. All you have to do is copy their strategies and watch the rankings on your website go up. This tool will truely help you to create a legitimate business opportunity.
The other way to get traffic is through pay-per-click advertising. Traffic Bug can help here, too. The secret to all PPC advertising are the keywords that are used. Traffic Travis can show you what keywords a PPC ad is running on. Over time, watch these keywords and see if they remain the same. If they do, you can copy them and make your PPC ads successful. If the keywords change, stay away from them because they’re not profitable.
Beat the “Big Guy’s” at their own game. Once you have identified profitable ads, keywords, and strategies, just copy them. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel.
The free version of Traffic Travis is a wonderful piece of software and I would certainly encourage you to use it to take advantage of an internet income opportunity. There is, however, a paid Professional version of Traffic Travis that you may be interested in after trying the free version. The Professinal version has even more to offer.
In the free version of Traffic Travis, your Keyword Suggestion Tool is limited to 200 keywords while the Professional version will provide you 2000 keywords. The free version limits you to 5 Search Engine Projects and the Professional version is unlimited. Over time, the free version of Traffic Travis will not give you a Competitor Analysis based on time, but the Professional version will. You are limited to 5 PPC Analysis Projects with the free version and, of course, the Professional is unlimited. Most importantly, with the free version of Traffic Travis you don’t receive any product support or advice – because it’s free. But, with the paid version you receive unlimited professional help.
There’s much more that the Professional version of Traffic Travis will provide you that the free version does not. But, both versions are a big help for search engine optimization on your website. So, if you have not already done it, take a look at the free and paid versions of the Traffic Travis Software. If you have only one website, the free version may be enough for you. But, if you have multiple websites or do a lot of PPC advertising, the Professional version is what you will probably need. Traffic Travis will certainly help you take advantage of an internet income opportunity.
Internet Income Opportunity – Tips On PPC Advertising
If you are trying to create an internet income opportunity by using pay-per-click advertising, below I have listed some tips and pointers that you might want to use. I hope these are useful for you in building a legitimate business opportunity. Here are those tips:
1. If you are using Google Adwords, try to always use your main keyword in the title of your ad and in your URL. Google Adwords will give every ad a quality score which effects how well your ad will place as well as the price of your ad. Google likes to see your main keyword in the title and the URL.
2. Quite often Google Adwords will tell you that your bid on your keyword is not high enough for your ad to place on page one. Be cautious about immediately changing your bidding. I have received these messages even though my ad showed an average placement of 3.2 – just about exactly where I wanted it. Remember, Google is also trying to make money and they will send you all sorts of marketing messages. Watch your ad and make changes to your bidding only if you really need to.
3. Did you know that you can add a word or phrase after your URL? For example, if your URL address is www.QuickWeightLoss-Diet.com, you could make it www.QuickWeightLoss-Diet/Fast. Google permits this and it can add an extra boost to your ad.
4. Most advertisers try to get their ads to place at the #1 spot. I prefer getting my ads to rank at the #3 to #4 spot. The ads that place highest get too many “tire kickers”. Besides, placement at the the #3 or #4 spot is still highly visible, costs less, and has paved my way for this internet income opportunity.
5. The ad that will jump out most to someone searching for a term is the one that has the same exact search term used in the title of the ad. You can accomplish this on Google Adwords by putting brackets around your title, followed by “keyword:ads suggeted title”. For example, here is the way I make my titles for Google Adwords – {keyword:Quick Weight Loss}. Now, if someone is searching for “Fast Weight Loss”, my ad would show with it’s title showing “Fast Weight Loss”. The only time my add would appear as “Quick Weight Loss” is if the search term is too long for my ad or if that was the same search term that they were looking for. Pretty neat,huh?!
6. Most advertisers are going to lose money when they first start PPC advertising. Eight-to-nine out of every 10 ads will be a failure. My suggestion to those starting out at PPC advertising is to start out slow with only two or three ads. I stop an ad when I have spent half of what I would have made if the product had sold. Yes, I look for at least a 2-to-1 return. Once I have found a successful ad, I keep that ad and I start another ad. After a while, I had 10 successful ads and I was still only adverting with 12 ads. I started out losing money, but now I am making money. Money that will keep coming in for a long time.
7. You can cut down on how long it takes to find successful ads by spying on your competitors. I used Google Cash Detective to do that and you can read my article on that by reading PPC Is A Legitimate Business Opportunity. It’s a quick way to find an internet income opportunity.
8. Do pay-per-click advertising on search engines other than Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Yes, these are the big boys and they do get the most traffic. But, there are lots of other search engines and they also get a lot of traffic. The one I like most is 7Search.com and you can read my article Choose The Right Search Engine For Your Internet Income Opportunity to find out why.
9. Many ads that are successful on one search engine will also be successful on other search engines. But, not always. Every search engine has a slightly different set of unique users. For example, if you are promoting a product that would be most valuable to another business, Google Adwords would be the best place to market that product. Or, if what you are advertising is more family related or female related, Yahoo would be the best search engine. If you take a successful ad and start promoting it on another search engine, watch it closely.
Pay-per-click advertising can be tricky, but it is a huge market. Most people that are doing internet marketing try PPC and fail. Most jump in too quickly and lose a lot of money. Take my advice and go at it slowly. Don’t be surprised if you initially lose money. Find successful ads and build upon them. Eventually, you will create an internet income opportunity with a long lasting stream of income.
Choose The Right Search Engine for Your Internet Income Opportunity
If you are an affiliate and doing pay-per-click advertising, choose the right search engine to make your internet income opportunity a success. Most affiliates advertise on Google, Yahoo, or Bing!. After all, these are the big boys. But, did you know that there are many other search engines you can advertise on and that these search engines also have significant traffic. Well, there are and lots of them. The one I like best is called 7Search.
7Search.com helped to turn my efforts at PPC advertising into a legitimate business opportunity. While I still advertise on Google Adwords using the Google Cash Detective (see the article titled PPC Is A Legitimate Business Opportunity), I expanded my advertising business by using 7Search. It’s another search engine that is generating me lots of profits on a daily basis. It’s easy to use and you can get started using it with an initial advertising fee of only $25.
Unlike Google, 7Search makes you pay your adverting fee up front, before you start advertising. I like that! That way I don’t have to worry about the number of clicks my ad is getting and how much money I may have spent. When my advertising fee runs out, my ads stop. And, similar to Google, 7Search allows you to place a daily cap on how much you want to spend on an ad.
There are five other reasons why I like 7Search to promote my internet income opportunity:
1. Traffic – While not near the traffic that Google Adwords gets, the 7Search engine still gets over 1 billion searches per month. That’s a lot of searches. And, since many advertisers are unfamiliar with 7Search, I am competing against a lot fewer ads. So, my ads get plenty of clicks.
2. Cost – I decide how much the clicks will cost me. I can place an add for as low as 1 cent per click. Many of my high quality keywords are costing me penny’s to use. For example, one of the keywords on one of my ads is “art”. On 7Search, to get the numer one position I pay $.03/click. On Google Adwords, that word would cost me at least $.52/click to get the number 1 position. Need I say more? If you have a word you would like to check out, click here.
3. Quality Score – 7Search ads have no quality score! Gone are the days when Google would tell me my ad would not place on page 1 of their search engine due to a low quality score.
4.Title and Body Length – You can have a much longer title and ad length with 7Search. On Google Adwords, your title must be no longer than 25 characters and your ads body can be no longer than 70 characters – two lines of no more than 35 characters each. On 7Search, your title can have up to 40 characters and the ad’s text up to 190 characters. I don’t always use all of these characters, but it certainly enables me to be a bit more descriptive with the product or service that I am trying to sell.
5. Customer Service – 7Search’s cutomer support is known for being fast, responsive, and friendly. I normally get a response the same day I email them. Or, if I can’t wait a few hours, they have provided me with a phone number where I can call them. Google won’t do that!
7Search has allowed me to increase my pay-per-click advertising with an excellent ROI. Google is still the “Giant” and attracts most of the advertisers, but I will use this “slingshot” to build my internet income opportunity.