How to Find a Top Rated Affiliate Program

Submitted By: Jay Jayesser

I want to help you find a decent and honest program that you can make money from without been scammed.

If you're reading this, then more than likely you want to find out about affiliate marketing and want to make money online. Well, that's the idea of joining a quality rated affiliate marketing network because the only way such a program can do well is to provide affiliates with the tools and resources they need to make money.

So what are the ideal features of a good income affiliate marketing program?

Well firstly, such a program will normally offer good affiliate commission. The affiliate company are aware that the product is popular and will sell well so they don’t mind foregoing a larger part of their profits to encourage potential affiliates to join. If you take a couple of hours a day researching, improving your website, and using SEO techniques then you are more likely to earn good commissions. And if your conversion rate is high enough, you will be making a lot of money in a short time.

Secondly the program should offer quality support such as free website templates, content, articles, tutorials, guides, forums and lots of information and advice on the niche market you are going to be operating in. There is nothing worse than joining a program that promises a lot but doesn’t deliver due to poor support. If you get access to keywords and traffic tracking that’s a bonus.

You should also look at how the products are sold. If the managers of the program expect you to buy the products then sell them on their behalf chances are you have been duped.

You should also do research on the affiliate program. Don’t take their word for it – search the net for independent reviews then you will know if its for you or not.

Make sure you will be able to devote the time to do affiliate marketing. Unfortunately you won’t become a super affiliate overnight. You will have a lot to learn to be able to become a good affiliate that can market products. Keyword research, article writing, SEO, affiliate id tracking and more. But joining a top rated affiliate program goes a long way to making your dreams come true as fast as humanly possible because the sad alternative is to do the same amount of work for less money. And that runs contrary to the fact that you deserve to get as much as possible for your efforts.

Poor commission and tiny percentages on low priced items are not the way to go for you. Instead of wasting your time with such programs (and lets face it there are many), start off the right way by joining a program that can launch your potential a top rated affiliate program? Why should you invest your own money in a business that is unlikely to bring a little if any advantage to you the affiliate? Avoid the may scams ou there - believe me I have been a victim of many in my time. They just take your money and thats that end of the matter.

Economy Driven by Internet Sales

Submitted By: John Zuro

With 401k's diminishing, the stock market rapidly falling, layoff's on the rise, the housing market crashing, and the borrowing in the ball park of around a trillion, where is our financial security going? Most would say, out the window but, I would say for the time the Internet is driving what's left of our financial institution. Perhaps in the future this will change, however for the time it is a fact that Internet sales are still holding up in the tens of billions per year.

If there was a time to wait, I wouldn't have investigated like I did to find out how to stay alive and well in this crisis.

Get a hold of as much knowledge as you can about Internet marketing as you can. Avoid spending money on turnkey programs that lure you in by saying FREE. You will end up spending around $300.00 and only end up with one website and no knowledge of the way to actually build your own. There will be nothing but the bottom of the barrel site with very little gain shown. Don't fall for that as I did, many of times. They were alright with a lot of time on my end tweaking and adding but, in the long run the time spent and the money made were pretty even so, not really worth my time.

Since I joined the club I'm currently in I've discovered multiple streams on income. From the most advanced techniques on E-bay trading to perfecting keyword mastery. With this club you will learn how to find your niche, reverse engineer it, get it search engine optimized, get it to the press, and start profiting from it. Even without a niche you can take the affiliate route and make money according to your time and investment. From profitable blogging to intense social marketing, there are still options to the rising unemployment in our Nation.

Time is getting short but not completely out. Your choice, get in get out or, stay in till the end. I'm cautious but not going anywhere for a while. The nominal investment to this club is worth it's weight ten times over in gold.

When your in you will see nothing but full HD videos on everything to making money online that you ever wondered about. Updates are done every month and new tutorials are added. Carbon copy others or institute your own creativity into the game. The most I've waited for a reply about a question I had was 18hrs. That is what I have never been able to find, anywhere. I-thrive is an online school for this and runs around $5000.00. The only difference is that you can talk to someone on the phone. A great program if you have the money but, if not this club is the best for you.

Take the time to check out the Internets #1 coach and get started with the affiliate program without even joining. No loss to you, whatsoever. You will not be disappointed in the least.

Powerful "New" Marketing Strategy: Setting Expectations

Submitted By: Hamilton Wallace

Sometimes the most profound “new” marketing strategies strike you at first as not new at all. “Hey, I knew that already” doesn’t disqualify something from dramatically changing your business.

Enter setting expectations. Or more accurately, setting the right expectations. Or even more accurately, NOT not setting expectations. As a small business marketing consultant I pay a lot of attention to this stuff!

Problem: When you install an enterprise software system, the vendor must convert all the user company’s data to conform to the new system. This is normally cumbersome and takes lots of fine-tuning to get right. Meanwhile, the decision-makers at the user company start thinking, “Wait a second, this new expensive software can’t even handle the data our crappy current software handles just fine. What are we getting ourselves into.” And eveything about the installation after that seems to go a bit rockier. Why? Everything is seen through what-are-we-getting-ourselves-into eyes.

Solution: Let me tell you about one part of the installation process that can be frustrating. Data conversion takes a lot of fine-tuning. In fact, you may wonder at times why the new software can’t handle data your old system handles just fine. Don’t worry. This is a natural part of every installation and nothing to worry about.

Setting the right or more realistic expectations can improve the customer experience even though what actually happens to the customer doesn’t necessarily change. You’ve experienced this. You “get off on the wrong foot” with a vendor or customer and then notice every time there is a small glitch in the relationship. And the glitches reinforce your growing concern about their reliability. Your frame of reference: the customer or vendor is unreliable. You “get off on the right foot” and those same small glitches don’t reinforce anything. Your frame of reference: they can be trusted and a little glitch here or there doesn’t matter.

I don’t mean setting high expectations.

Problem: When a landscaping contractor remodels your back yard, the place looks awful (all torn up) for about 80% of the time. During that time the homeowner starts to question whether the contractor knows what he’s doing. After the homeowner arrives at that conclusion or level of discomfort, they notice every little imperfection.

Solution: Let me tell you how you’re going to feel throughout some of the project. Your back yard is going to look completely torn up for a long time. You’ll be thinking hey, they’re supposed to be done is three days and it looks like World War Three out there. Don’t worry. Everything comes together during the last few days of the project. I know it’s hard to imagine, but that’s just the way these projects work.

My experience is that most companies don’t set too high an expectation going into new customer relationships, it’s that they don’t set any expectations.

Problem: When a new patient comes into an Oncology practice (after they’ve been diagnosed with cancer) the first two contacts they have are with a scheduler (appointment setting, forms to fill out, medical information to bring) and a financial counselor (insurance, reimbursement). Patients can start to feel like the practice is more interested in getting paid than curing them. This can lead to the patient questioning their quality of care when they experience the little bumps that are part of any healthcare process.

Solution: All of us in the practice are here to help you beat your cancer. As you come into the practice, you’ll find there will be a lot of paperwork to get past at first. That’s just part of the system so please bare with us. We like to get all that handled up front so you and your care team can focus on one thing, your healing.

Without an attempt by the practice to set expectations, the cancer patient is left on his or her own to make sense out of what happens.

Look at the customer experience through the customers’ eyes. There are typically small “interventions” you can make early in the relationship that can help set realistic expectations. Realistic expectations foster comfort and a comfortable prospect or customer is a much happier prospect or customer.

MLM Fear

Submitted By: Karl Auerbach

Ever wake up with the MLM Fear? You know, those feelings that come over you all of a sudden and scream “YOU’RE GOING TO FAIL!” It happened to me this morning, and it was wicked. That sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was so intense I almost couldn’t get out of bed. The feeling stayed with me until I reached for my wrist (more on that later).

Jerry Clarke calls this phenomenon part of Murphy’s Committee’s attacks to make sure we don’t succeed. We could even go back to the sixties (1960s) and use the phrase immortalized by Spiro Agnew: Nattering Nabobs of Negativity (N-cubed!). Whatever you call the feeling, the MLM Fear is nothing more than an expression of the fear emotion from within.

Tony Robbins in his Lessons in Mastery series talks about emotions identifying them as action signals. Emotions tell us something is occurring in our lives and if we want to avoid pain and maximize pleasure, we need to take some sort of action.

MLM Fear is an action signal telling us that we’re not prepared for something that is happening or is about to happen. It could also be telling us that something we’re doing isn’t enough and we won’t achieve ours goals unless we change our approach.

This first MLM fear can result from inactivity. You signed up for this new business but aren’t taking an active role in promoting the business and duplicating your upline. In this case, the MLM fear is that the MLM “business” is going on around you, but your inaction will result in your failure. You’re simply not prepared for success.

The second MLM fear can result from taking action, for example, making cold calls, but not making any sales or signing up new members. Perhaps you’re only making a couple of calls a night or you could be a powerhouse making dozens of calls a night. If you’re doing all this action and not seeing any results, the mind eventually interprets this as inadequate and formulates the conscious message that you won’t achieve your goals.

So how do we deal with MLM fear? First, we need to identify the feeling we have as fear. Second, we need to interrupt the pattern of thought or actions that results in this fear. Third, we need to substitute a new, better way of thinking, of responding to the situations that result in MLM fear.

The first step is relatively easy. Whenever you have the sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, it’s probably MLM fear. If you have a sense or feeling of dread, of impending doom, it’s probably MLM fear.

Granted, it could be something other than MLM fear. If you’re being audited by the IRS, that sick feeling may be caused by the audit fear rather than the MLM fear. Perhaps you’re going through some personal crisis. This can also result in fear other than MLM fear. Or, like me, you could be cowering in fear because your wife insists on going out dancing. However, if you don’t want to be governed by fear even in these areas, the following may help overcoming even those fears.

The second step is breaking the pattern of thoughts or actions that lead to MLM fear (or other fears). Personally, my path to fear lies in my thoughts more than my actions or the way I hold or move my body. It’s usually results from my overlooking something I need to do to make my MLM business successful. It begins with guilt for not doing what is required and quickly moves to fear anticipating failure.

There are a number of mental ways to interrupt these thought patterns. But I happen to like a physical way to overcome this MLM fear: a sturdy, strong rubber band around the wrist. Whenever I felt the MLM fear coming on, even when I felt those first inklings of guilt, I reached down to my wrist, grabbed that rubber band, pulled it out almost to the breaking point, and then let go.

Talk about pain! The first days I tried this method my wrist was actually swollen from snapping the band so many times. But by day three, my mind would not let me even consider MLM fear, or any other fear. What I was doing was associating massive pain with MLM fear, and no pain with not feeling the fear.

The method isn’t perfect. There are still days/times when I feel the MLM fear like this morning. But all I have to do now is reach for my wrist and the fear goes away. I’ve reconditioned my mind.

The third step in overcoming MLM fear is to develop a new, better way of thinking and responding to MLM fear. This may seem simplistic but I found that repeating certain key words after snapping the band, or reaching for my wrist, seems to work for me.

Here’s how it works. Close your eyes and take deep breaths from the stomach (deep breathing). This calms the mind and body by lowering the heart rate and overall respiration. Then softly but firmly repeat the key words over and over in your mind, almost meditating on them. I’ve found the best words are “confidence,” “success,” and “courage” to deal with MLM fear.

But also realize that you may have to change your approach to overcoming MLM fear. For example, if you’re currently making cold calls trying to recruit people, making calls every night, and you’re still experiencing MLM fear, then perhaps you need to find a different way of achieving your goals. There are other methods of recruiting besides cold calling that work quite well. Do yourself a favor and explore other avenues to success, confidence, and courage.

MLM fear is not something you have to accept. You can take positive, active steps to manage your fear and overcome it. Try these techniques out the next time you feel fear crowding in on your plans for success. Your wrist may not like it, but the rest of you will.

Consumer Marketing Strategies: Sizing Your Market With Direct Mail Sites

Submitted By: Michele DeKinder-Smith

Think of how much time and energy it would take to find out exactly how many people in your city or region have a passion for sports and fitness. Or how many of those people are also pet owners, and with household incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 a year.

This kind of information is very valuable, and that's why direct mail websites want you to pay for targeted lists such as the one detailed above. But, what most people don't realize is that simply obtaining the number of people in a given area who fit a certain criteria is also extremely valuable, whether you choose to purchase their contact information or not.

In order to sell you a list, direct mail sites have to tell you the number of leads that will be included on that list. This means these sites can act, in essence, as a free online resource for savvy entrepreneurs looking to size their target market.

There are many ways that sizing a target market can help entrepreneurs make informed business decisions, some of which have been discussed in previous Jane out of the Box articles. This article will focus specifically on how to use information obtainable from direct mail sites such as InfoUSA and MelissaData to minimize risk in terms of new ventures and expansion.

Say you're contemplating starting a new business. You have a concept for an upscale climbing gym in a town where you know there's no shortage of rock-climbing and fitness enthusiasts—but do enough of them make enough money to afford your proposed membership rates? You might want to check out the stats on one of the direct mail sites listed above, under the heading of Consumer Lists, creating a list based on household income $50,000+ and using 'health/diet/fitness' as a category under a tab that represents Hobbies and Interests/Lifestyle Indicators. When you visit MelissaData, for instance, you will find a "Lookup" tab, including a myriad of free lookups to represent certain data, perhaps even the specific target you are seeking. The number you get will give you a good idea of whether there are enough people in your target demographic to get your new business off the ground.

Or, say you own a pet-grooming business with a solid clientele, but have seen flat profits over the last few years. Your customers are always asking you if you know of a good all-natural dog biscuit, so you've considered expanding your business by creating your own dog treats, in-house. You've even had the idea of selling them at other local businesses around town.

Before you sink the time and resources into developing this new business venture, you might want to use InfoUSA to discover how many people in your area have Hobbies and Interests in both 'health/diet/fitness' and 'pets/animals.' After all, this is your target market. Most other pet-owners will just continue to purchase their dog-biscuits at the grocery store.

When you find your results, ask yourself: Is this potential market big enough to justify the funds I would need to float this new business venture? (It makes sense to find out before you move forward—especially if funds are already somewhat tight.)

Let's say you own a nightclub that's doing well in a certain metropolitan area, and you're looking to expand. Before you make a decision on where to locate your next club, it would probably make sense to do a basic demographic search on singles between the ages of 21 and 40 in each of the areas you're considering. The answers you get may confirm your intuition, and they may not. Either way, you'll have the information you need to move forward with seeking the right location to support the people in a given demographic to make your next nightclub equally successful as your first.

There are many more ways you can use direct mail searches to determine the size of your potential market. Once you become familiar with search parameters on each site and put them to work in whatever way best serves your needs, you can continue putting that information to use in making key business decisions.

And, if the time comes when you want to move forward with direct marking to your target demographic, either via phone or direct mail, go ahead and purchase that list from the direct mail site of your choice. It's a great way to thank them for providing such great information, free of charge!

The Basics of a Marketing Partnership

Marketing partnerships are getting more and more popular, and why not? They can be great money-saving, sales-producing relationships. Less costs + higher sales = marketing partnership. That’s an equation, which is a no-brainer!

Of course, a marketing partnership takes time to develop and you need to find a committed partner who wants the best for you as well as his company. Read on to find out what exactly entails a marketing partnership, what a marketing partnership can’t fix and some strategies to make a marketing partnership work.

What Exactly is a Marketing Partnership?

A marketing partnership is two (or more) professionals or two (or more) businesses that have similar prospects, common marketing needs and ideally, complementary products or services.

These people unite to combine marketing and sales tactics within a shared target market. Each business remains its own identity, and will continue to market and makes sales outside the partnership. The partnership is not two businesses merging together; it’s two businesses helping one another and sharing marketing resources.

The partners can share:

• Color printing costs, so that they both can create and market professional, four-color brochures, flyers, and other marketing materials they otherwise couldn’t afford

• Shipping costs of supplies that they both use

• Bulk discounts for marketing items they both use

• Sales calls

• Joint marketing materials, touting their complementary products or services

Partners can share any aspect of the marketing campaign they’d like. Partnerships work in every industry and can benefit any size company but work especially well for smaller companies or new companies who don’t yet have the marketing budget to do the more expensive marketing they’d like to do.

As mentioned earlier, the businesses in the partnership can have complementary products or services that they bundle together in sales or marketing materials. An injury attorney and a doctor, for instance can bundle their services together and market to the same target audience without competition – an injured person needs to see a doctor as well as consult a lawyer. Offering a discount for both services will win more clients for both professionals.

A Marketing Partnership is Not a …

…quick fix. If you have sales problems or marketing problems, a partnership will oftentimes not be your answer for a quick fix. First of all, you’ll have a hard time finding a partner that wants to help you out, unless you can help them, and if you’re having sales problems, that’s not likely the case. Also, if you have a problem on your own, it’s likely something that your company isn’t doing right, not something that you can rely on another entity to fix. Remember, partnerships take time to develop and time to work.

… contract. Many partnerships are informal agreements that boost both parties’ bottom lines. They are two businesses combining efforts to meet prospects’ needs that they couldn’t otherwise do on their own. Partnerships should never be some kind of secret takeover of one company.

…free ride on your partner’s abilities. Both businesses need to pitch in to market successfully. If one partner is doing more than the other, that partnership will not last long. You can’t expect someone to offer to do all the work for you without getting something back in return.

How to Choose a Marketing Partner

Keep the following in mind when looking for a partner:

Choose a business with a good reputation. Whoever you partner with will impact your image, so make sure you find a business that the community and/or industry respects. More importantly, make sure you respect this business.

You’ll need to show the potential benefits of the partnership. When you initiate a partnership, you’ll need to convince businesses that the partnership will benefit them as well as you. Do some research and show them why the partnership will work and be profitable for both of you.

Be ready to do the majority of the work, at first. Whoever you partner with may be skeptical at first, so you’ll need to keep yourself involved and committed and take initiative in the first few marketing projects. A great way to attract a partner quickly is to have some clients or customers already lined up, just waiting for the partnership to happen. Producing new clients right away will most likely be enough to entice even the most skeptical partner!

The benefits of a marketing partnership can enhance business for both parties involved and is also a great way to get connected in the industry. If you’re ready to do the work to establish the partnership and keep it up, get out there and start scouting!

Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of the developments in the color printing industry and how these improvements benefit small to medium scale businesses.

Read more articles by: Kaye Marks

Ads Take a While to Start Working

Many factors affect how long it will take for an ad campaign to start working. In other words, people want to know when they’re going to start seeing money pour in from new customers and the answer is: there is no definitive answer.

What I can tell you though, is what factors go into affecting this time period before you start seeing results from your ad campaign, called the “ramping up period.”

Product purchase cycle

The product purchase cycle refers to how many times per week, per month or per year a consumer is looking to purchase your type of product. For instance, the purchase cycle for food items, like one week for milk, will be much shorter than the purchase cycle of five years for televisions. The longer your purchase cycle, the longer you’ll need to advertise before you reap the rewards.

A general rule to estimate your ramping up period is to calculate 20% to 40% of your product purchase cycle. So, if your purchase cycle is 12 months, you won’t feel the effects of your ads for about 2.5 to 5 months.

Your percentage of the total ads for your type of product

This is referred to as “share of voice.” For instance, if you sell digital cameras, when shoppers research digital cameras on Google’s Web site, how many online ads do you have on Google compared to your competitors? How many television ads do you have running in prime time compared to other digital camera manufacturers?

The larger your percentage of the total ads for your type of product, the shorter your ramping up period.

The persuasiveness of your ads

If your ads only give information and don’t persuade people to take action, your ramping up period will be longer. If you don’t include a call to action of some sort, like “Call now” or “Visit our Web site,” no customer is going to be motivated to contact you at all.

People are comparing your message to your competitors’ messages, and whoever convinces the consumer that they need this product is who wins. Your message should be informative and persuasive. Show your product’s benefits and try to get the consumer to realize that they need your product now.

Your choice of ad delivery

You basically have two options for ad delivery: visual and audio. Of course, you can also have a combination of both, as in a television commercial.

A common myth is that people remember more from seeing words, rather than hearing them, but the opposite is actually true. Think about it – how many songs can you sing compared to how many television commercials you can repeat?

So you can surmise that products with a shorter purchase cycle should go with visual ads and products with longer purchase cycles should choose auditory ads, which is definitely a possibility. It’s only a possibility though, because of the other factors that influence the ramping up period.

As you can see, there are so many always-changing factors that it’s hard to pin down a definite time period to judge the effectiveness of your ads by. Your best bet is to use the 20% to 40% estimate of your product cycle.

Read more articles by: Kaye Marks