July 1, 2008

Ways to Make Your Affiliate Website Successful



An affiliate website is defined as a website that sells other's products or information for profit. This is one of the best types of investment sites simply because you do not have to product any of the products, just the website to market them.

Here are a few ways that you will maximize your profits from your affiliate website.

1) Join affiliate programs that offer high commissions. Each affiliate program is different, especially when it comes to the amount of money is paid for each referral. If you are only going to make a fraction of a penny each sale, why bother when they are thousands of other programs that offer much more?

2) Join 2 or 3 tier programs. A "tier" program allows you to not only sell their product or service for profit, but it also allows you to recruit others to do the same. Once you recruit others, you then gain profits for each of their sales as well. A 3 tier program allows you to collect profits for the people your recruit AND the people they recruit. Essentially, you make money off of their efforts.

3) Join affiliate programs that offer lifetime commissions. Lifetime commission means that you not only make money on the initial sale, but you will also earn commission each time that customer comes back and buys something additional.

4) Join Google Adsense. Google Adsense is by far one of the most profitable and well known affiliate program on the internet today. Instead of making money based on sales, you make money based on when someone clicks on the link. Perhaps one of the best features is the fact that the ad generated by Google Adsense is targeted towards the content on your website. This means that the customers that visit your website are more likely to click on the ads because they pertain to what they were looking for in the first place.

Alternatively, Google also allows you to place a search box on your site, and you will be paid each time someone uses it and visit a link.

Because Google Adsense changes its links to match the content on the page in which it is found, it can be used easily on every page of your website, including pages with other affiliate links on them.

5) Join affiliate networks. An affiliate network is a website that offers a wide variety of products and services to sell on your website. This allows you to easily search for affiliate program in which you want to market. It also will monitor all of your commissions from the various programs, add it to one account, and then send you one check once the amount in your account exceeded your specified amount. If you have ever tried to manage several affiliate programs at once, you will greatly appreciate this feature.

6) Optimize your website. You will want to make your page friendly for both search engines and your visitors.

Search engines use bots to scan and track your website in order to index it. You must provide these bots with easy to read code, keywords, and content. Use keywords and information that describes the product you are trying to sale.

More importantly, you will want to make your page friendly for your visitors. Make sure you have a clear, easy to read website that remain constant throughout.

Make sure that your pages load quick, as you may have some customers that are on dialup. Make sure you include a navigation menu on all pages of your website, which leads not only to the type of product that they are looking for, but also other categories as well. You never know if some may be looking for a specific item, but may also stumble on something they were technically looking for, but something they are still interested in none the less.
If you have a laptop and are looking to use the internet when you are away from your home or office, look into WIFI. WIFI is a way for your laptop computer to easily access the internet from any place that offers a wifi hot spot.

WIFI has been around for a few years, but since the technology has expanded and has become affordable, more and more people are using it. Wifi hot spots are popping up all over America and today, there are several cities that are making their entire area one huge wifi hot spot so that everyone can enjoy internet access whether they are at home, at the office or at the park.

Wifi usually only requires a wifi card to enable internet access. Most laptop computers today come with these wifi components already built in. A wifi hot spot is very easy to find and most cafs and restaurants set up their own wifi hot spots so that customers can bring in their computers and surf the web while purchasing coffee or lunch. Many hotels and airports are also adding wifi hotspots. Many of these hot spots charge for using the service. Usually the cost can be $5 to $10 an hour or a small fee for a day or months unlimited use. So if you are looking for a great way to access the internet no matter where you are, check out wifi.

June 25, 2008

Shipping Software



If you have an auction site business or ecommerce web site, you are probably dealing with many items each day that need to be shipped. Shipping items can take a lot of hard work and can be very time consuming. If you want to save valuable time each day while increasing your businesses organization, you should look into shipping software.

There are several types of shipping software available and most software is very easy to use and affordable. Many people love the convenience of shipping software. Most shipping software integrates with payment processors such as Paypal and can automatically print out shipping labels for items that were sold.

Another great shipping software feature is that you can buy postage online and print out shipping labels which include the postage fee. These shipping software options allow you to print out professional labels with postage already paid for the item. Many shipping software programs can even mask the amount of postage you pay on the label, so the sender doesn't know exactly how much you paid for shipping. This is a great feature for Ebay sellers that charge for handling and other services in their shipping fee. So if you are looking to automate your ecommerce or auction site business, use shipping software to save time and money.
One of the essential small business marketing tools lies in a marketing plan, although most small business owners do not relish planning. They would rather spend their time in trying to bring in a few more customers by doing much simpler things than planning big. In any case, most of them do not think that drawing up a plan for their small business will be of any use. The plan need not be elaborate, however. It involves taking just a few simple steps. Proactive small business owners focus on understanding what their customers need most by interacting with them and then they gear themselves to fulfill such needs. They notice changes in the market trends and recreate their marketing materials as well as website content periodically. They put emphasis on the core areas of their business that bring the most benefits. A lot many customers come in to buy when they know that they get the best value for their money. Small business marketing is also about establishing individual contacts with your prospects as well as existing customers.

Email marketing
This can best be done through email, which has now become a very important means of promoting the small business. Emails reach the target audience directly. Small business owners and their customers or prospective customers get to establish an informal and continuous relationship, which will be good for their business in the long run. Being inexpensive and fast, emails are a good tool for promoting their business, especially because they have a wide spread and can reach, at once, a large number of buyers looking for products or services offered online. Best of all, emails can be used to encourage customers to give feedback, for improving sales as well as for modifying email marketing strategies.

Other inexpensive marketing tools
Owners of small businesses, in general, can't afford to invest in pricey advertisements in the media. Consequently, they are always on the look out for ad opportunities that cost next to nothing. No doubt, emails offer such an opportunity. Blogs can also be used similarly, provided they reach those people that evince some interest in the goods or services of the small business concerned. A well-written press release is another tool that can profitably be exploited without expense.

If advertisements are all about catching people's attention to promote business, you can get it by spreading information that highlights the line of your small business by word of mouth. People are ready to listen to you if you talk about how the various aspects of their life will change for the better when they choose to become your customers. What you say, of course, must be convincing and interesting. Power point presentation of your projects and products to small manageable groups will serve your purpose, although to a limited extent. Ads using Google AdWords do not need any initial investment, but if they work for you, you will be able to afford the overall expense of the effort, particularly since you are allowed to wait to pay till you receive successful results.

Strategies to promote the small business may not be totally different from those that work for the big business, except that there will be a shift in the emphasis.