Building an Opt In List and Your Business: An Ideal Business Partnership

In any kind of business, marketing is such an important tool in the growth and development of a business or any kind of financial venture.

For this reason, even with the technology that covers online businesses, still, it need highly revolutionized and very effective marketing strategy in order to boost their productivity and sales.

Basically, since the advent of the Internet, people started to flock this new medium of information without even knowing its fundamental principles, how it works, things that are needed to survive in it, etc. Many people literally bombarded the Internet thinking that life would be a lot easier if they will invest on online businesses.

Indeed, it is a well-known fact that you can find money online, but only for those who know their way around and employ the best marketing strategy there is online.

What people do not know is that online marketing does not have to be very complicated. It just needs the right stuff to keep you going.

Take for example the use of mailing list, particularly opt in list. Before, no one ever dare to use opt in list thinking that it will not do any good for their business. Most entrepreneurs think that building an opt in list is just a waste of time and money. What they do not know is that, according to the “golden rule of the Internet,” money is in the list.

It has probably been mentioned before, and is worth mentioning again, money is really in the list.

Why? Because with opt in lists, you get to keep your readers on the hook by providing them with information, promotion, and other campaigns in order to entice them to buy again from you.

Basically, opt in lists are lists of email addresses of customers with their consent. This means that after the customer had closed the transaction in a particular web site, there is an option on whether or not they wish to subscribe to the mailing list of the online business for any future promotions, newsletters, or campaigns that they would like to be informed of.

And because it is an option, the customers are not compelled to provide their email addresses to the web site. Plus, the web site owners will not be accused of spamming because emails that will be sent to the customers have the consent of the customer.

Creating an opt in list can be very beneficial to your site. In fact, it has been proven that in the two-step concept of selling, follow-ups are important to sustain the interest of the consumers. The other step is to obtain the interest of the buyer.

Hence, in order to sustain the interest of your buying public, it is best to create an opt in list so that you can always give your buyers the chance to remember your products, your business, and your services, in which they have been satisfied with.

To know more of the advantages of creating an opt in list for your business; here is a list that would tell you the reasons why it is beneficial.

1. Opt in lists are the business’ most valuable asset

If you were to ask the owners of some online business about their most valuable asset, they will tell you that it is their opt in list. This is because opt in lists are customers’ lists that can provide higher probability sales in a more consistent and stable condition. Because with opt in lists, all you have to do is to follow up orders or sales through promotions and ad campaigns.

2. It is always available

The best thing about opt in list is that it never grows old. As long as your customer needs something to survive, your contact with them will never grow old. This means that you can always have a fresh, new transaction wit them every time you inform them that you have new products or services. Every transaction is a new way of increasing your sales. Simply put, no opt in list = no sales (at the most).

3. Bigger opt in list would mean bigger profits

The more customer’s names and email addresses you have on your list, the more chances you have in increasing your online sales. Every name, every email address can be worth a hundred dollars that can be accumulated with each transaction

Hence, the bigger your list, the more money you will have.

Boiled down, opt in lists are not just ordinary mailing lists. It is the very core of an online business’ existence and survival. That is why for people who value most their businesses, they extend the same value they give to their opt in list. No wonder why most people regard it as the best partnership available online.

This free report is brought to you by Christopher Bankole

https://digitalproductsstore.selz.com

https://gumroad.com/bankychris

Blog Software For All Your Blogging Needs.

Today anyone who has writing ability or is dreaming to be a writer has written a blog in the net. There are blog soft wares that are simple and easy to use and a technically inclined and challenged individuals can easily acquire a blog online.

For some individuals, blogs are their projects of every day living, as they talk about their daily episodes as well as make tribute to friends and family. Furthermore, blogs assume a profound meaning written to compose and assemble political statements, endorse a product, supply information on research, and even offer tutorials. Any subject that are of your interests, you can be sure that someone has written a blog about it.

Blogs are now being written by musicians, politicians, sports figures, novelists, newscasters as well as other known figures. It is this blog fever that has raised controversy. The fact that anyone can compose and regarding any subject matter under the sun, complaints about certain write-ups are an issue. In a lot of blogs, names are being mentioned; do bear in mind that although you are entitled to write anything that interests you in a blog, you have to be very careful and take in a lot of responsibility. Do not make any statements which can become controversial; or else, be very prepared.

Why a Blog?

1. For personal acquaintances, relationships and hobby. A person can write a blog about his daily activities, what’s going on with his life as his way of telling his family and friends the things that goes on in his life. Likewise, one may also write a blog just so he can express what he feels about himself, or about a certain subject matter that is of interest to him.

2. Topical. Some blogs are committed to a precise topic, like computer hardware or politics. These are frequently read like magazines.

3. For marketing.  Corporations are too, into blogging; when well written and implemented, this kind of blog can be a powerful instrument for business communications, forming eagerness and anticipation regarding their products and services offered, or used as tool within the company, keeping employees well informed about company issues and news.

Why someone else's software?

A lot of Web designer and creators will laugh at the belief and idea of utilizing the software of someone else. This is can be correct especially when each software greatly differs from the particular requirements that a client may have. Yet on the other hand, when it refers to a Weblog software, there is no reason for apprehension in the use of a package that is pre-written, as most packages were developed through years of study; not just knocked together over a couple of days.

In addition, one may study its feature set. For a developer, it would take a lot of time and effort to write and compose from “nothing at all” every single feature in the Weblog software packages of today. For most people, a blog is there for the main reason that chooses to publish or make known your literature and texts on the Web, so you want to spend your time more on writing than coding.

Hosted Services

If one wishes to start broadcasting on the Web, yet does not have web hosting, one can consider looking into a hosted service, which includes Blogger, TypePad, Live Journal, and more.

These services are operated or handled for an individual, so there is no need to concern one about technical upkeep of one’s Weblog; instead, one can concentrate on his blog's appearance and content. In just minutes, after signing for an account, one can readily start his own blog.  Many such services are offered free, such as blogger.  TypePad charges a minimal amount for monthly service fee.

Self-Hosted

When one has Web hosting on hand, or is eager to buy hosting, in which one feels that the advantage will prevail over the problems of keeping up your own blog connection and installation, then you may want to take into account a package that is self-hosted, which includes Movable Type, Textpattern and WordPress.

Other hosting companies did construct the process of installation easier, permitting installation with just a click from a control panel that is browser-based. It is important that you check with a hosting company so you can view if this function is offered. Similar to hosted services, some self hosted packages are made available either for free or for a certain fee which is dependent on the type of package that you choose as well as the basis why you are using it.


This information is brought to you by Christopher Bankole
https://digitalproductsstore.selz.com
http://chrisban.savingshighway.com

The craft of Listing

Owning a list is the most profitable online marketing tool out there today.
As an affiliate marketer, you are going to have to get used to listing. In fact, there's
not a time when you can send out your mailing to the A+ Marketplace where you
won’t make $300.00. You can build your list with little to no effort to over 6,800
subscribers within five months and have over 35,000 subscribers by using some highly
effective tactics. Let’s take a look at some of those tactics now.


This method is 10x as easy to get once you visit the Opt In Lightning site or any other
site that Opt In Lightning is installed on. When you do this, you'll notice that it
captures the visitor's email address without the visitor having to fill out a form when
they sign on for it. They just have to click “OK.” Instead. This is commonly known as
Auto Info Capture, and makes it 10x easier for people to subscribe to your mailing list.
The basic principle here is that the easier you make it for people to subscribe the
quicker your list grows.

When you use Optin Lightning programs, you can nab any email address from the
visitor's client browser. The number of Hotmail and Yahoo addresses is that you can
pick up is practically zero. The few Hotmail or Yahoo addresses you do capture are
those that they configured in their browser, and will go right into their main inbox
anyway instead of them having to retrieve them over the 'net.
This is commonly referred to as your "Pull Ratio."

When you use a regular or "traditional" subscribe box, what you are doing is subject
your list to what can be called pollution. What I mean by this is that, nothing is
stopping people from populating your list with FFA confirmation email addresses, Auto
Responders etc. If you ever decide to sell ads, your advertising clients are going to get
very angry as your list grows because they will expect that their own ads that they
paid good money for to pull more.

Using the old method over an extended period of time will eventually hurt your
business. This is why Internet Marketing experts all agree that Ezines that get larger
lose all or most of their pull. Now you know why. Someone using the traditional
subscribe method can put all their friends etc. on your list, and force you to deal with
spam complaints. This is called "List Bombing" and by using Popup Email Capture only,
you will be able to avoid this completely.
If you can avoid these problems from the start, you'll slowly and steadily grow a solid
clientele hungry for your products and services.

Personalizing email
You should always personalize each and every email that you send out because this
gives people who are on the list a feeling that you’re not just another newsletter
editor, but their friend and that you truly care about their success. Doing this can
increase your sales by at least 200%. You have to think like a marketer as well as a
consumer. If you start to think like a salesman, you will loose customers. The
competition here is fierce but if you work on it, you will succeed. You want to shoot
for the feeling where you actually become one with your list. By personalizing your
emails, I mean that you can write as if you were sending a note to your friend. That's
when you know for a fact that you will have a following.

Send Emails on Friday
I always send my newsletter on Friday at noon because it reaches the
East Coast at 3:00 p.m. This way your readers will have the entire weekend
to read it, when they are relaxed and comfortable. During the week, your consumers
have to work, deal with family and home matters etc. They simply do not have the
time to really give your emails much thought. When you wait till the weekend to send
the mails, you can take the weekend off and come back Monday to find a stack of
orders just waiting for you.

Offer Incentives
Offering incentives like free bonuses just for subscribing with no obligation to remain
a subscriber can really boost your orders. Doing this builds a level of trust with new
people who don't know you. You see when you start by offering freebies, you will
attract a whole new crowd of consumers.

Follow up your Emails
By using an AutoResponder you can deliver your follow-ups without effort. Each follow
up should be a sales letter to a residual income product you’re selling, an MLM
program you’re promoting or a product you’re selling. There should not be any free
content and these sales letters don't beat around the bush. I make thousands per
month using email follow up alone. You can get an occasional flame and some
unsubscribes, but this is exactly what you should want.
You want to be building up your client list and the follow-ups actually WEED OUT
people who aren't ready to make some kind of monetary commitment which will make
your job a great deal easier.

No free content
Do not offer any free content because this gives the reader nowhere to go. They
either get involved with what you’re doing or they get off the list. Besides when you
are offering free content, all that you are really accomplishing is you owing more
money and having less bandwidth to work with.

Don't accept any form of paid advertising
By accepting paid advertising, you only succeed in polluting your list and
This takes attention away from whatever your newsletter's main theme is. You want
to keep your readers informed of MLM and Residual Income
Programs because this just another way of building and keeping their trust in you.

Don't put copyright on it
Some lists add copyright information and I really don't know why. It is best to simply
forward this information to anyone that might be interested. It's a lot easier than
using a script and it's been working for me. In any case, most people generally don’t
care anyway.

Purchase Subscribers
Every email address that you could possibly get is like potential gold to you so if you
are going to purchase any email addresses from the many lists that are available for
purchase, however, you have to be very specific in who you choose to buy from so
watch out. You can purchase 1,000 subscribers for as little as $197.00 with some
companies. It helps to be on the lookout.

Talk about yourself a bit
This may sound a bit strange, but people like to do business with people
they know and trust. When you include SOME personal information about yourself,
people will get to know you as a person. This helps break the ice and makes it a lot
easier to do business with people. I don’t know about you, but I always respond better
to a business person that is willing to be a bit more friendly and personal with me.


Courtesy:  Christopher Bankole
https://digitalproductsstore.selz.com
http://chrisban.savingshighway.com

Getting Started As an Affiliate Marketer

If you are a beginning Internet Marketer and you do not actually have any money to
work with the best way to start marketing is by using the payperclick
search engines. The truth is, when you are a marketer products are not the things
that actually sell, it is the traffic that sells. However true this is you still want to
promote the programs that meet certain criteria. If you are wondering what the
criteria are they are listed below and are as follows:

1. Look for programs that offer to pay you over $10.00 per sale. If not that then at
least search for programs that pay you $50.00 per month or more in residual income
because just one customer can be worth $1,200.00 to you in 10 years.

2. Look for products to promote that don't have more than one or two external
links to that connect to other programs. If you're going to pay good money to send
people to a web site, you should at least make sure that you're sending them to a
good money resource and not a resource that has with 50 holes in it.

3. Look for products that have limited ordering options because you don't want to
send people to a site if you only get credit when they pay by credit card. The result
will be that you will lose people because the site also accepts payment via PayPal and
the average person doesn’t know how to integrate PayPal with their current affiliate
software or some other more complicated payment method like direct checking.

4. Try to find sales sites. You can check out associateprograms.com and find five
programs that meet the criteria. It will take some digging, but they are there if you
look for them. Let's say you're promoting sneakers, for example. What you are going
to want to do now is find as many applicable keywords as you can that are directly
relating to sneakers. You can find lists of keyword variations for any products or
services by going to jimtools.com and clicking the 'keywords' button at the top.

How this works is that you can do keyword searches and find every variation of the
word sneakers that you can think of. If you save all your keywords in a text file you
can place bids at all the major payperclick search engines. Here is a list of some of
them:
http://www.overture.com They are very critical and will bring you the most leads.
http://www.findwhat.com delivers pretty good traffic
http://www.bay9.com
http://www.ahha.com
http://www.kanoodle.com
http://www.sprinks.com
http://www.searchandconquer.com This one is Free
http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com

There is a trick to making huge profits with payperclick search engines and one of
them is to bid on as many keywords as possible. How it works is that you bid on a 100
keywords and it is the exact same thing as getting 100 links back to your web site.
When you are submitting your listings, you must always be sure to put the price there
as well. The key factor here is that you want everyone who clicks through your site to
be prepared to divvy up some cash.

If you don't do this, you'll loose a lot of money from the people who are always
seeking freebies every single time. With this in mind, say you submitted 350 keywords
that are relating to sneakers to each and every one of the search engines above. If all
of them are totaled together they will give you a combined total of 150 clicks per
day. This is assuming of course that only one out of every 300 people make their
purchases because this is a particularly popular item.

If you sell one pair of sneakers and make $10.00 per sale that's one sale every two
days. If your average bid is 10 cents per lead, it's costing you $3.00 in
advertising costs just so that you can make $10.00. So each month you could average
$800.00 from just this one product in net profit per month. That is pretty good, but if
you are pushing 5 different products you will have $4000 in one month’s profit.

The next thing that you have to do is try to find five products that are just like the
first one. If a company/website doesn't have an affiliate program setup, try calling
them and asking if you could strike a special deal with them. The best part of using
this marketing technique is that after you set up one income stream using this
method, and you've tested it and it's working, you can start on another one right
away.

You can promote one or 100 companies if you want to it is really up to you. You can
literally set your own desired income this way. Plus, by doing this, you get the chance
to build long lasting working relationships with the owners of these programs most of
the time. It is like out of nowhere, you suddenly have a network of people you're
working with.

If you follow this article closely you'll be drawing more targeted traffic to programs
that you promote than most of the high traffic sites that just have a simple link to the
product in question. You can do all of this with little to no money at all in the
beginning.

Once you start making enough money with the payperclick search engines, you can
start investing some of your money in your own idea or business on the Internet that
you want to start; which when you think about it just makes sense. You can simply
take the easy way out and make more and more money promoting other people's
programs. As Internet marketing gets more sophisticated in the next few years, there
will be more and more companies that are offering solid moneymaking opportunities
to experienced resellers, so it is best that you do your homework and learn this stuff
while you can because eventually everyone will be trying to cash in on this ‘then
ancient’ method.


This report is made available by Christopher Bankole
https;//digitalproductsstore.selz.com
http://chrisban.savingshighway.com

Email advertising as an affiliate marketing tool

Direct promotion that are using email has boomed over recent years, but has brought
with it mountains of spam. If you intend on using email as a method of advertising
products and services, you have to be sure that you stand behind the products you're
promoting and make yourself available to answer any questions that may be asked. If
you hide from people, they will wonder what you are hiding.

An effective promotion technique that I have found is to combine email with the ad
article strategy. This generally means creating an ezine or newsletter promotion that
visitors can sign up for that goes directly to their email inboxes. You can occasionally
put a summary of a product or service, however, you should include just enough
information to stir the curiosity of your readers in an ezine. The summary then
contains a link to the ad article on our site. The benefit of this is not only that you
have a good opportunity to promote the product or service, but while visitors are on
your site they may also look at other sections at the same time This way you as the
advertiser benefits through having highly targeted potential clients visit their site.


Yours Sincerely
Christopher Bankole
https://digitalproductsstore.selz.om
http://chrisban.savingshighway.com

Successful affiliate marketing requires patience

If you are sure that your web site can get a lot of traffic and generate fantastic sales
for a certain company, you have to contact them to negotiate a tailored arrangement.
If they aren't too enthusiastic to begin with, be patient because companies are
approached every day by affiliates wanting to cut a "better deal".

The reality of it is that many affiliates cannot deliver what they promise, and the
companies are extremely aware of this. For you as a potential affiliate marketer, you
need to implement their links and banners, go the extra mile with ad articles and
other unique strategies, generate some sales and then approach them again better
prepared. You'll probably find that they'll have a change of heart. Finding good
affiliates is very difficult and if you are performing for these companies they will keep
you.

Most forms of advertising take some time to kick into gear. Putting a link up for a
couple of days and then pulling it down because it is not generating any interest may
not be a reflection on the product, but just in the way that it is being presented to
your web site visitors. You know how fickle they can be.

If you have run successful campaigns before, try to remember the elements that made
it a success and implement them again. Of course, you need to remember that what
works for one product may not necessarily for another, but it's worth a try. Again, if
you are having problems with promotion, contact the company. They will more than
likely have thousands of affiliates and will know what strategies are working. A good
advertiser may even go to the trouble of reviewing your site and provide you with
some tips and hints based on their observations.


This report is brought to you by Christopher Bankole
https://digitalproductsstore.selz.com
http://chrisban.savingsway.com

Using Affiliation as a Mass Promotion Tool

There are Hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there that you can choose
from and all of them are claiming to be the best. Some of them will give you the
impression that all you have to do is implement their banners and links and wait for
the money to start rolling in. This CAN be the case at times, but this scenario usually
only applies to very large sites that have massive web traffic already. For most of us,
being a successful affiliate requires a little more work than that!

When you are selling your wares through a website, you will be needing as much help
as you can get and that is why affiliation is such a good deal. It gives you and like
companies the chance to market your wares in more than one spot. As the marketing
affiliate, it is your job to get you and other companies together to do it. Most
affiliates use their own sites and combine marketing strategies with others. Your
website is likely not geared toward one thing in particular so affiliate’s who come in
will gain a lot more from your services.

As the variety of goods and online services offered over the Internet has grown at an
incredible rate over the last few years, and in response, so has the competition. Web
site visitors need to have a very good reason for clicking on a link or banner. In most
affiliate programs, you are offered a wide variety of banners that you can place on
your site; all of them will be effective in getting attention from your target audience.

If you can gather a click through rate of at least 2%, then you are doing very well. It
has been my experience, that highly colorful and picture filled banners do not
perform as successfully as their simpler counterparts. The main reason for this is the
time it takes to download it. If a banner is the last thing to load on your page and the
banner ad is excessively byte "heavy", by the time it has loaded your visitor may
already have scrolled down the page already and miss it entirely.

Heavy banner ads can also slow down the loading of your pages, or even some of the
critical elements of your page and you can lose your visitors altogether. This is why A
graphically rich banner can also confuse the actual message because the artwork and
marketing blurb can be imbalanced. For these reasons, I would recommend that
banners you implement be no more that 15kb wherever you possibly can.

Banners that have a lot of animation in them, such as rapid flashing, are also
something to consider very carefully before setting them up. While these do achieve
high click rates, they are also highly annoying to the average visitor. If you do decide
to implement this form of banner advertising, you have to use it very sparingly.

Whenever you begin selecting any form of advertising that requires graphics you
should try and keep the theme of your site in mind. In general, while graphical ads
are meant to stand out and catch a visitor’s eye, it shouldn't be to the point that
everything else on the page is ignored. Whenever you can, you have to make sure that
all banner ads or advertising that you use uses a link that opens in a new window.
That way, if a visitor does choose to visit one of your advertisers it is easy for them to
return to your page and review what they actually came to your site for.


A lot of companies are now offering their affiliates the options of using pop up and
pop under ads. However, the fact is they annoy most visitors and are usually closed
before they even have a chance to load by automatic program blockers. It is for this
reason that you should use pop-unders instead and preferably those that only display
once per visit. I will talk more about pop-unders in a later section.
Successful affiliate marketing requires patience.

If you are sure that your web site can get a lot of traffic and generate fantastic sales
for a certain company, you have to contact them to negotiate a tailored arrangement.
If they aren't too enthusiastic to begin with, be patient because companies are
approached every day by affiliates wanting to cut a "better deal".

The reality of it is that many affiliates cannot deliver what they promise, and the
companies are extremely aware of this. For you as a potential affiliate marketer, you
need to implement their links and banners, go the extra mile with ad articles and
other unique strategies, generate some sales and then approach them again better
prepared. You'll probably find that they'll have a change of heart. Finding good
affiliates is very difficult and if you are performing for these companies they will keep
you.

Most forms of advertising take some time to kick into gear. Putting a link up for a
couple of days and then pulling it down because it is not generating any interest may
not be a reflection on the product, but just in the way that it is being presented to
your web site visitors. You know how fickle they can be.

If you have run successful campaigns before, try to remember the elements that made
it a success and implement them again. Of course, you need to remember that what
works for one product may not necessarily for another, but it's worth a try. Again, if
you are having problems with promotion, contact the company. They will more than
likely have thousands of affiliates and will know what strategies are working. A good
advertiser may even go to the trouble of reviewing your site and provide you with
some tips and hints based on their observations.

This report is made available by Christopher Bankole
https://digitalproductsstore.selz.com
http://chrisban.savingshighway.com

How to Deal with Online Merchants—Creating Partnerships

When you decide to become an affiliate marketer, you are basically just asking 

another web host to add a link to your website to theirs which will bring your website 

more traffic and hopefully generate more sales for them, which gives you a 

commission sale. Of course, there are some things that affiliates look for in a website 

before they will sign you on as an affiliate. Before you even consider signing on as an 

affiliate, you should make sure that your website has something to offer that theirs 

doesn’t. 

To be more specific, even if you are going to a “like” website as an affiliate, you 

don’t want to approach a site that is selling the exact same thing as you because that 

makes you direct competition with you. For example, if you are selling designer 

clothing of a particular label, you do not want to try to go to a site that is selling the 

exact same items as you, but a like site that may offer the same brand, but not the 

same items. That way, both sites are selling the same label, but can push each 

other’s sites for the items that they don’t carry. 

Once you know exactly what type of website you want to run and which web 

companies are actually offering you the right revenue sharing opportunities for 

products and services that complement your web site genre, you can’t just offer to 

put up banners and buttons on their behalf. It is best to begin by writing up a review 

page of the product or service and how it will definitely help boost sales, especially if 

you are recognized as being knowledgeable in your field. 

One of the best ways to show that you know what you are doing is to offer articles 

and reviews on your website about your items for sale. Keyword articles are best for 

getting search engine to come calling. You can also put in a brief history of the 

product’s inception etc. Basically just put in as much information as you can about 

your product or service so that visitors and merchants will know that you are on top of 

things and know what you are doing. Here are some more things that you should do 

when dealing with potential affiliates that you are trying to get in with. 

Talk to People 

Talking to people could not only increase your sales, but also save you some 

heartache in the long run. It is very easy to talk to an affiliate company, and you can 

start by contacting the merchant, let them know what you are doing to promote their 

product and ask their advice as to how you could improve your marketing technique. 

Think about it, it is always best to approach a potential affiliate with a standing 

technique in mind as well as an outline of what you plan to do to help them. If you 

have the means, try it out for a while so that you can approach a merchant with solid 

facts backing you up. 

When you ask the merchant for advice you are setting yourself in great standing with 

them and showing them that you understand their knowledge. After all, the merchant 

knows their product best right? They would also have a very good idea of the 

strategies that are used by other affiliates to boost sales. Don’t bother checking for 

this information on an affiliate site because you will not be getting to the nitty gritty 

of it. 

By contacting the merchant yourself, you are also showing your enthusiasm for 

marketing their products and services and that you are working to become known as a 

"power" or "super" affiliate! Any merchant who understands affiliate marketing knows 

that over 90% of sales are generated by less than 5% of their affiliates. A good 

merchant will see your efforts and give you further information and resources and 

may even boost your commission fees as a result of your efforts and success. All of 

this means more money for you both! 

Dealing with merchants directly: 

When you are dealing directly with a merchant, there are some things that you have 

to realize. You need to know how to deal with them but also what to expect to 

encounter from the as well. That is what this section is going to help you with. Let’s 

take a look at some of the various things that you can expect to hear and deal with 

when going through a merchant. 

a) If you are going to go to the trouble of emailing a merchant and they don't respond 

the first time, do not worry about it, be persistent because many merchants receive 

countless numbers of emails daily and take time to sift through them and weed out 

the spam. If they still fail to respond to your, think twice about continuing promotion 

on their behalf because a lack of communication can also be indicative of other 

problems such as payment or just plain disinterest. You should also bear in mind that 

some merchants work on the shotgun principle. What this means is that they make big 

promises, set a high payouts knowing full well that few affiliates will ever reach it. 

Next thing you know, they get as many affiliates promoting their products and 

services as possible which will give them the maximum exposure, with the minimum 

cost and effort on their part. It's not a good business model for them to use in the 

long term and after a while affiliates drop away, but not before the company has 

raked in thousands. Many MLM (multi-level marketing) programs also work on this 

principle and only the guys at the top generate any serious revenue so you need to 

expect this and watch out for it. 

A good way to protect your payments from merchants is to sign up for affiliate 

programs that are extremely well established ad networks such as Offers Quest or 

FastClick if you want to get paid for your work. When you are working with a major ad 

network means that even if you only make a few dollars from each program, those 

dollars that are generated will all feed a common account, accumulate rapidly which 

will allow you to reach the payout threshold in a shorter time period. Most ad 

networks work with merchants on a "money up front" or monthly "pay as you go" basis 

because this decreases the risk of those merchants who are suddenly disappearing 

with your hard earned commissions. 

For this to work, you need to demonstrate your web marketing prowess 

b) Unless you have a web site that already generates high traffic, don't ask the 

merchant for higher commissions in the first communication. So many affiliates do 

this and end up being totally ignored because most affiliates probably can't deliver on 

their promises due to the fact that too many of their claims are unachievable. If you 

don't have a solid sales record for the product or service you are promoting, you'll 

need to prove yourself to merchants off the bat and put some thought into your 

promotion and rack up a few sales before attempting to secure higher payout rates. 

Be professional in your communications 

c) When you are communicating with merchants, you have to make sure that you use 

a professional manner not the laid back style that you use when talking toy our 

friends. If you have suggestions of how a merchant could improve an offer that would 

convert into more sales, let them know, but be very polite and constructive in your 

feedback –not insulting by saying things like: "Your banners suck" because this will 

alienate them. 

d) You have to remember that the Internet as a trading place is still very new in 

comparison to the business platforms of the last few millennia like regular advertising 

through television or newspaper ads. Some of the quality companies that are offering 

an affiliate program may be just breaking into this side of marketing and will 

appreciate any feedback you can give them. 

e) A smart merchant understands that good affiliates can’t be found everywhere as is 

often assumed and hoped. Merchants need someone that acts business like and treats 

them with respect, assists with resources and provides prompt payments. Smarter 

affiliates understand that a merchant wants quality promotion and sales performance 

for minimum outlay. Successful merchant/affiliate partnerships happen when both 

parties understand these points and work together because that is when the money 

starts rolling in. 

Nowadays, you can get millions of different goods and services on the Internet, 

advertisers look to individuals and companies to help them sell their products by using 

webmasters and others to spread the word. These advertisements can come in the 

form of banner advertising on affiliate sites, text links, reviews written by affiliates, 

direct email, blogs etc. 

How it works is that the advertisers pay webmasters for displaying the ads, or for click 

throughs that are sent to them, (Called pay per click) which is a commission that is 

paid on any sales that happen as a direct result of a referral from their web site or 

email message or during each visit. I will explain more on this in a later section. 

The fact of the matter is that you will likely not need to be bothered with a merchant 

at all if it weren’t for the money involved. The fact that affiliations can be used as a 

mass promotional opportunity for both sides that results in more money for both just 

adds icing to the cake. That is why the next section is about mass promotion through 

affiliation. 

This free report is brought to you by Christopher Bankole

https://digitalproductsstore.selz.com

http://chrisban.savingshighway.com

GUIDELINES FOR DOING A COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

The competitive analysis section works best when it follows a format like the one that
is shown below. In general, I would recommend that this report would be made about
each of the major competitors. While most of this report is intended to focus on the
overall analysis of the competitor, you should recognize that you are primarily
interested in how this information may impact your company and, specifically, a
product or product line to you affiliates.

For this reason, you should make sure, where possible, to focus your information on
how it impacts the markets in which your products will compete with theirs. That is
how your report will stand out among the other marketing affiliates in a merchant’s
eye. It should be included in your proposal whenever it is possible. I have listed the
guidelines in sections to make it easier for you to read and then furthered the report
guidelines for you as well for easier reading.

Please note each sub-section within a section will contain 1-5 sentences that
explain the sub-section.
•  General Company Information which includes name, location (headquarters,
other locations of importance), website address
•  Summary of the Business which includes a section that will summarize the
company, business units and the general nature of the business
•  Business Overview should include sections on the history, ownership structure,
types of businesses, mission, strategy/objectives, and key executives
•  Recent News/Developments such as important company developments within
last 6-12 months (e.g., reports from news sources, press releases, financial
statements)
•  Financial and Market Share Analysis – includes sections on corporate
performance, trends, market share for product
•  Marketing in general should include sections on products and services that are
offered, target markets, positioning, customers/users, pricing model,
promotional efforts, sales force, and distribution
•  Other Miscellaneous Issues like adding sections on technology capability,
partnership arrangements, and intangible issues
•  A list of your Competitors where you will list key competitors facing this
company
•  SWOT – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Below, I am going to actually pin point what should be included in the market study
like I did above, however in more detail and with explanation on how to write it. I am
listing them in steps rather than points to make it easier.

1.  The information that is provided in a market study should be based on the
research that you have collected AND NOT on one’s own perceptions,
guesstimates or other unsupported statements. This information should be
based on fat alone! The only exception to this may be within the SWOT
analysis; however, even most of this should be supported with some evidence.

2.  If you are unable to find any specific bit of information it is probably a good
idea to make this known so that the person reading the report would know of
this potential limitation of the market study and be ready for it. Obviously you
need to collect good research so you do not end up having too many of these
statements.

3.  It is generally a good idea to define the most important terms and concepts
when you first introduce them so as not to confuse the reader. This will
benefit those reading the report who may not already possess knowledge in this
area. Alternatively, you can create a glossary or definition section in the
End notes area of the report.

4.  Wherever it is necessary you should explain how the research was conducted or
how data was collected (e.g., explaining how survey was done). This just helps
the reader to understand your methodology so that they can decide how
trustworthy the information is.

5.  Make note of any limitations of secondary research (research you obtained from
other sources) that you used. Unless there are very any significant limitations
you can generally include this as an end note.

6.  If you are investigating a new/different way of doing something with present
customers, then you will need to provide a discussion of the cost/benefit of
alternative options. That is, what will customer give up to use something new
versus what they will get from using the new product?

7.  Remember to reference as much stuff as you have to in order to get the best
information. I would suggest using end notes instead of footnotes of texts
because this gives you the most accurate account. End notes appear next to the
sentence, word, quote, number, etc. but usually not as a superscript and
usually in parenthesis like this (1). The full reference would appear at the back
of the report in an End notes section.

Once you have completed your market analysis and target audience, you will want to
present it to the companies that you are looking to affiliate with. That is what the
next section deals with. It is going to show you how to create partnerships with the
merchants.


Brought to you by Christopher Bankole
http://chrisban.savingshighway.com
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Marketing Study Outline—What you need to know

In order to be able to conduct a decent targeting and marketing campaign, you must
first understand the fundamentals of finding out who they are. They only way to do
this is to follow a specific guideline for you to follow. Check out the guideline below.

1. Your Objective to the Research
•  Explain in one paragraph why the research is being done, what you hope to
learn and for what purpose the information that you attain may be used
2. Description of the Market
This should be general like one paragraph
Who is your Target Market(s)
•  Why you chose this particular market
•  Get a complete profile of your market (e.g., demographics, psychographics,
behaviors)
•  What benefits does your market seek (i.e., what points-of-pain or problems are
being solved)
•  What factors can affect their decision to purchase or use your product/service
•  What attitudes do they have about the products/services that are currently not on
the market
•  How is the product used
•  Products and Services that appeal to the target market
•  In general terms, what is currently so appealing to this market
•  If there are no current providers, what types of products/services may appeal to
this market in the future (i.e., what is used now to solve the problem).
3. Market Metrics
Get many Size estimates (current and future) for all of the following:
•  Overall market
•  Current size as it stands
•  Potential size for the future
•  Actual penetration of current products/service within the entire market
Individual market segments
•  Current size
•  Potential size
•  Actual penetration of current products/service within the total market
•  Usage rates
•  Frequency of product purchases
•  Growth estimates (current and in the future) for:
•  Overall market
•  Individual market segments

Competitive Analysis
You must include a Summary of who your Current Competitors are
Listing the competition by market share ranking (by each target market if
possible) is a good way to size them up. You can also be more specific by searching
for individual points listed below.
Current Competitors - full analysis of top competitors including:
•  Products & Services (e.g., description, uniqueness, pricing, etc.)
•  Their Market share at current
•  Current customers (targeted audience)
•  Positioning and promotion strategies
•  Partnerships/Alliances/Distributors
•  Recent news

SWOT Analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats
It is extremely important to focus attention on the SWOT section of this report. While
most other information in this report can be gleaned from company and secondary
materials, much of what appears in the SWOT section is based on the researcher’s
own opinions of the competitor based on the information that is collected.
Consequently, this is often one of the hardest areas of the report to write as well.

Potential Competitors(any competition in the future)

•  You will need to get an explanation (though it need not be as detailed as
Current Competitors) on who they are or maybe and why they are seen as
potential competitors
5. Additional
•  Extraneous Variables
o  Discuss factors that may affect this market (e.g., technological, social,
governmental, competitive, etc.)
•  Market Trends and what is expected to happen in the future.

If you can follow these basic tips for finding and selecting your target market, you
should be ready to search online and check out the competition and their rankings in
the search engines. Below are some general guidelines for you to follow in creating
your competitive analysis which is the most important factor in being an affiliate
marketer. Knowing your competition just as well as your audience is the key point
which is going to keep you on top of the competition.

This free report is made available by Christopher Bankole
https://digitalproductsstore.selz.com
http://chrisban.savingshighway.com