All About My First List

The race for supremacy in the internet based businesses has been really heating up and many sites have been put up to help others to get ahead for a small fee. But there are also ways in which you don’t have to pay so much to make yourself a good list of loyal followers. Having a satisfied web traffic and visitors allows you to put up a foundation wherein you can build an opt-in list and make it grow from there.

An opt-in list allows you to provide newsletters to your subscribers with their consent. When people sign up, they know that they will be receiving updates and news from your site and the industry your represent via an e-mail. But that doesn’t mean that all of those who subscribe read them at all.  Many lists have been built due to an attachment with free software or for a promotional discount and such. Some are not really interested in receiving e-mails from companies and just treat them as waste of cyberspace and delete or trash them without so mush as opening the e-mail and scanning them.

You can change all that. While forwarding an email message is relatively after producing your newsletter. Getting people to open them is not as easy. You don’t want to waste all the time and effort used in making the newsletters, you want people to read them and have their interests piqued. Interested enough to go to your website and look around and most especially purchased and acquire your products or services.

One of the numerous ways you can tempt or persuade your subscriber is by providing a well thought out and well written subject. The subject of an email is what is often referred to when a person or a recipient of an email decides whether he or she wants to open or read an e-mail. The subject could easily be regarded as one of the most important aspect of your  promotional e-mail.

Your subject must be short and concise. They should provide a summary for the content of the e-mail so that the recipient will have basic knowledge of the content. This is really vital in grabbing the attention of your readers and subscribers. You want your subject to instantly grab the attention of your subscriber and get them to be intrigued to open up your mail. Remember, it is not necessarily true that a subscriber opens up subscribed mails.

A good subject must always be tickling the curiosity of your recipient. It must literally force the recipient to open the mail. A certain emotion must be ignited and get them to open the mail. It is essential to use specific words to get the reaction you need. Keep in mind that the recipient or subscribers spends only a few seconds looking over each subject of the e-mails he receives. You must grab your reader’s attention right away.

There are many forms you can use for your subject. You can provide a subject that says your e-mail contains content that teaches them tips and methods on certain topics. An example of this is using keywords and keyword phrases such as, “How to” , “tips”, “Guides to”, Methods in and others like that.

You can also put your subject in a question form. These may include questions like, “Are you sick and tired of your job?” Or “Is your boss always on your case?” Try to stay on the topic that pertains to your site so that you’ll know that your subscribers have signed up because they are interested in that topic.  This form of subject is very effective because they reach out to your recipients emotions. When they have read the question on your subject, their mind starts answering the question already.

You can also use a subject that commands your reader. Statements such as “Act now and get this once in a lifetime opportunity”, or “Double, triple and even quadruple what you are earning in one year”. This type of subject deals with the benefits  your company provides with your product and services.

You may also use breaking news as your subject to intrigue your subscriber. For example, if you deal with car engine parts you can write in your subject, “Announcing the new engine that uses no gasoline, It runs on water”. This creates curiosity with the reader and will lead them to open the mail and read on.

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner. The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant’s products by linking to the merchant’s website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate because of the pay-for-performance scheme. Both the merchant and the affiliate enjoy some benefits in affiliate marketing. There are many benefits on the merchant’s side. It gives the merchant a wider market in which to advertise a product or service. Affiliate marketing will give the product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques. The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, which can convert to sales. Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who will do the advertising and will only get a commission if a customer purchases.

Meanwhile, since an affiliate marketing relationship is a win-win situation, the affiliate also enjoys many benefits. Foremost among these is the easy way to make a profit. The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant’s website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase. As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate’s site, is redirected to the merchant’s website and goes on to buy that particular product, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals there are the more profit for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn money while at home. There are virtually no production costs. The product is already developed and proven by the merchant, and all you have to do to find, as many prospects as you can that will bring in the profit for both the merchant and the affiliate. Affiliate programs are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs. There are thousands of products and services you can choose from. You can find affiliate programs for every product under the sun. Surely, there is a product or service out there that is relevant to your website.

When it comes to making a sell using your autoresponder, follow up messages are very important. Most website visitors won’t buy something on the first visit; it normally takes more than 6 or 7 visits before they decide to make a purchase. To keep them interested and eventually make the sale, you’ll need to come up with some innovative yet captivating follow up messages.

When you start writing your message, you’ll need to come up with compelling headlines. Compelling headlines will draw attention from readers, making them feel excited to read the rest of your message. If you send a message with a shoddy headline, chances are that your readers will just glance over the email and not pay much attention to it at all.

You can also grab attention from your readers by sending them personalized messages with their names and other details. There are several autoresponders that personalize messages through the insertion of codes. When you send a message out, the code is replaced with the personal information of the subscriber. When receiving the email, the reader will see his or her personal information instead of the code.

The first message that you send out is normally an introduction message. This message should be geared towards giving readers what to expect from your messages. You can also mention information about your company and your products as well. Your introduction message is very important, as it sets the pace for the messages that follow.

When you send out your second message, you should inform readers about your products and services. Make sure that you explain what your products do and how your readers can benefit from using them. Then, in the messages that follow, you should put added emphasis on your services and products. You should be trying to convince readers that they simply must have your products and that your products are a cut above the rest.

To ensure that you get a sale, you should include comparisons between what you offer and what competitors offer. This way, you’ll show potential customers that you are indeed the best, with the best features and the best prices. Once you have a few satisfied customers, you’ll start to build up your credibility. If a customer is satisfied, he will let you and others know. Once a customer has praised your products, you can add it to a testimonial and send it out in a future follow up message.

When you end a message, make sure that you leave a teaser for the next message. This way, your customers will look forward to receiving your next message. You should also carefully weave in messages regarding your contact and order information as well, so readers can place an order without any problems. If you put some time and thought into your follow up messages – you’ll start racking up customers and sales in no time at all.

Affiliate programs will enable a business to generate a lot of traffic and therefore boost sales through promotion by third party sales or sites.  It’s also a cost effective way to advertise your products and services as you pay only for the efforts that
actually turn into sales.

Setting up your own affiliate system can be either easy or overwhelming, all depending on how many affiliates you want to recruit, as well as your payment policy and the type of product that you are offering.

As for your affiliate systems, there are two options for your business – outsource the entire system or run your own affiliate system through your own web host.  Each one boasts its own advantages as well as disadvantages.

If you have a small amount of affiliates, then you can run your own affiliate software.  If you plan  to recruit a large number of affiliates, then you  will probably need to outsource.  The reason for  this, is because you’ll find it easy to deal with a large number of sign ups, track payments, monitor clicks, etc.

Types of affiliates
There are numerous types of affiliates out there to choose from.  There’s the pay per sale, there an individual is paid only if a sale is generated from the affiliate’s link.  It’s the least attractive to people, unless the product is in high demand  and the most profitable for business.

Another type is the pay per lead, where you pay only for traffic.  With this type, the affiliate is paid only if a visitor is generated from the site of the affiliate.  It’s attractive to affiliates although costly to web site owners due to the possibility of non sale visits.

Considerations
When setting up an affiliate, something to consider is whether or not you’ll approve affiliates manually or automatically.  It’s normally recommended to start affiliate programs with your established
customer sites then progress to new ones.

If you are dealing with pay per clicks, you may have to control the affiliates as the quality of visitors will be a huge factor when it comes to the generation of sales.  By manually reviewing, you’ll
also be able to judge the website or individual affiliates to see if it’s in the best interest of your company.

If you decide to use your own affiliate system, one of your biggest challenges will be how to pay affiliates a percentage of what you end up receiving from customers.  To do this, you can rely on software such as Affiliate shop to help you track and manage commissions.

You finally realize that you need a good opt-in list. After reading countless articles and sought expert advices and have read many success stories of people creating a small fortune with opt-in lists you finally decide to have one of your own. Then it happens, you think you have known everything there is to know about opt-in lists and have followed their advices to the T and you still weren’t able to make a profit.

In fact, you may be losing money. You maybe hiring writers to help you out, or there are some expenses incurred, even if you have a big list, but only a very small percentage actually buys from you, your still losing profit. You’ll realize that after a few months when you see your statistics and sales figures.

So what could have gone wrong? Why have others succeeded where you have failed? The most common mistake is that you dived straight right in. You chose a topic where you think could be quite popular and would earn you money. This just not the case. Just because you wrote people from the list doesn’t mean they are going to buy instantly.

Here I will offer more advice, for those who have started an opt-in list and have failed, you can rejuvenate your failed venture. For those who are starting, here are three quick and easy ways to build a profitable opt-in list.
1) Get your customers to trust you and your products first. Just launching your opt-in list would not make you an expert and a believable seller. Put many articles first before you start an opt-in list. Write about the topic you know and have started and used for your site. Try to put forums first to gain knowledge about your customers about their wants and needs and target those wants and needs.

Join forums from other sites as well. Provide expert advices and recommendations. When you feel that people trust you already, you will be able to start your own opt-in list. You can build a base as well with other forum users. You can ask them to join your list. Friends are always good customers. Put up a link to your site so that they may be able to see what you’re business is all about.

The certain truth is, the money will only come in when the consumers and subscribers believe and trust in you. They want a product or service that could be a good exchange for their money. People are not going to buy something out of your recommendation if they don’t know you.

2) Find a product or service that people want and need. Although it may not be your forte, if you provide a service and product that you have researched and learned about well, you can carry it on forward. Invest your time, effort and money that you could sell as well as the buyers or subscribers of your opt-in list can use.

While it is true that it is best to sell something that you have interest in, there are not many people who have the same interest as you if you decide to sell something that is not entirely popular or profitable. Do your research well and you would see the profits come in. Also provide your subscribers with promotional material that they could actually use and spread around.

3) Make friends with other opt-in list users. This is basically beneficial especially if it is someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people that have the experience in this venture and experience is still the best teacher. While there are many articles available for you in the internet to use, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust.

Experienced opt-in list users will be able to tell you what to do and what not to do because they have gone through it. While different situations occur for different people, the general concept can still be very helpful. There are many things to avoid and these people will be able to tell you which ones.

Building a profitable opt-in list don’t just happen overnight. There are many preparations and effort to do. Opt-in lists are built from scratch, as your list grows, you should also maintain the quality of your list. Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you.

Every successful online marketer knows the importance of using squeeze pages! Whether you are marketing your own products, services, affiliate programs or an ezine, you need a squeeze page.

Squeeze pages can be used in many different ways!

The main purpose of having a squeeze page is not only to show your prospect the benefits of what you are offering, but to help you build your opt-in list. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying…the money is in your list!

You build your list by creating an opt-in web-form on your squeeze page or as some call it a landing page asking for their name and email address in return for something of value to them.

If your offer is enticing enough they will then enter their information and end up on your sales page. They may not buy right then, but now you have their information where you can follow up with them later, either by direct email from you or through your autoresponder program.

It’s a known fact that most customers do not buy the first time, it may take 5, 7 or more contacts from you before they do buy what you’re offering. First you need to gain their trust and build confidence with them.

This is the cheapest way to lower your advertising costs! Build a large list of opt-in subscribers/customers who trust you. It’s like money in the bank! One can never deny the fact that a squeeze page is very essential and crucial in this business; and that 98 of the marketers only ask for first name and email address. This of course depends on what you might need the other info for.

3. Squeeze pages can drive traffic to your site. To drive traffic to your site first you should flatter your visitors with perks and bonuses that are related to your product and their interests. Just make sure that the cost of your giveaways can fit in your budget and they must be a quality, deliverable product or service that your lead can use and benefit from.

4. A squeeze page is more likely to produce a 20 opt-in rate of the total number of net surfers who visit your site. You must provide a strong and juicy headline and show your visitors what’s in it for them to tempt your visitor to leave their name and email address so that they can’t wait to get to your website.

5. By creating a squeeze page, you can optimize your email marketing campaign. It has been proven that almost all visitors to your website won’t drag out their credit cards on their first visit. You’ll be able to follow up with your list of subscribers and gain their confidence in you and trust you. Then you can sell them other products (yours or affiliate) and services. If they trust you, they will be more likely to buy what you recommend.

6. With a good squeeze page program you can do split-testing with your headlines, offers and products to find out what is the most effective to bring in customers. If you do split test, then you can logically make more with the same amount of traffic and the same product. What you have to do is to continuously keep testing and to continuously run two versions so that you keep making your site better and better. With the right squeeze page program, it will automatically do the testing for you or there are several tracking products on the market that you can purchase.

7. As with most websites you can add video, images, audio and other media at the push of a button. Again, this will depending on what you use to make squeeze pages as to whether you can add media. It’s been proven that by adding media to your squeeze page, you will get better conversions. I hope by now you can see the importance of squeeze pages in your internet business. They’re simple, easy to make with the right program and they will help you build your list and achieve your peak in online marketing.

“Mike Van Bergen, CEO of 5Star-iNetMarketing.com

Many of us dream of giving up our jobs and working for ourselves. Being your own boss can provide the responsibility level you want as well as the incentive to perform well. Running your own business usually mean lots of hard work but the rewards can be quite tremendous.

When it comes to starting a business, many people get scared. They worry about loosing that security that their job has provided. They also worry about the risk involved in starting your own business. The risk is worth considering being that anywhere from 70-90 % of all small businesses fail in the first year.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to work for yourself with minimal risk. When you work as an affiliate you usually sell a range of goods or services for profit. You will still have to work very hard to promote your business; however the financial risk to you is extremely low.

Many who have started their affiliate marketing businesses wonder about affiliate Software. They wonder if it is worth purchasing and what it can do for their particular business. The answer to theses questions lies entirely in the individual affiliate and the type of business that they have. However, there are some general things to try and consider before you shell out hundreds of dollars on affiliate software.

Before buying any software program, you need to apply some perspective. Software will not take a floundering company and get it into fortune 500. It is simply a tool to help you in various aspects of running a business. You will still have to do all of the hard work. The software will only help.

Once you have some perspective, then you need to list your companies needs. How are you at keeping accounts? Could you do better with software? Many people do purchase software to manage accounts for them. Especially when their businesses start to take off. Chances are you can do just as good of a job on your own but software will make it go much faster. You must keep in mind however, that software does take time to learn. However, once you have mastered it accounting software can help you keep track of your incoming money and outgoing at a much faster rate than if you were to do it yourself.

If you have a home based affiliate marketing business that is entirely internet based, you may want to consider website building software. Again, you may be able to do just as good of a job on your own. However, if you can’t this software can help. It will offer suggestions on how to make your pages more attractive and how to attract more internet traffic to your site. This can all translate into more sales or Ad revenue for you.

You should never purchase any software without previewing it first. This way you can tell if this particular style of software is what you need. Most places will give you a free trail, if not find someone who will. You could also find free software that you can download from the internet. It takes little time to put this onto your computer. It is certainly worth at least trying the free software. It doesn’t cost anything and could save you money if it does what you need it to do. If it doesn’t then you can always have it removed and purchase what you need.

If you have a knack for sales or marketing then perhaps you should consider the world of home based affiliate marketing programs. You can put your creativity, skills and expertise to work for you rather than someone who doesn’t appreciate them. When your business starts to pick up, you may want to consider the purchase of some affiliate software. It can help you manage your accounts and increase your website traffic. You could find it for free online or get a free trail from a software company. What ever you decide, remember keep some perspective of what it can do. Software is only a tool it won’t work miracles.

To help increase the flow of traffic to your website, nothing beats an autoresponder.  These programs can save you a lot of time by answering most of your emails automatically.  They can handle customer support questions, product related questions, or provide information about your company and services.  If you own an online business – an autoresponder is something you should definitely invest in.

Autoresponders can also be used to track your promotions and how effective they are.  These days, autoresponders are one of the best tools that you can get for your online business.  They are used by some of the biggest and most popular online companies, and for good reason.  They simplify your life with your business – and give you more time to dedicate to other things.

If you are planning to submit your website to search engines like Google or Yahoo, you should know that most search engines use autoresponders themselves.  Therefore, if you attempt to contact search engines using your autoresponder, theirs will contact yours and you’ll have a never ending reply of emails that will eventually flood both of your email boxes.

Under no circumstances, should you ever use your autoresponder to subscribe to forums or other discussion type subscriptions.  A majority of the time, these discussion groups and such will email you updates regarding new information.  If you joined with an autoresponder address, your autoresponder will send a response each and every time.  This can get very annoying very fast, and a majority of the time you will end up being unsubscribed.  In this event, it can be very hard for the administrator or webmaster to determine who is using the autoresponder.  Therefore, to make things easier, you should never use your autoresponder with any subscription.

There are some companies out there that completely take advantage of autoresponders.  They will use their autoresponder to respond to automated messages, which will automatically subscribe the “from” address in their mailing list.  This is totally the wrong way to use and autoresponder, and those who use it in this manner are displaying a very negative image.  Using your auto responder this way will send a negative image rather than positive.  Instead of spreading good word about you and your company, people will become upset and spread the word that you should be avoided.

Whenever you use your autoresponder, you should always use courtesy towards your customers and your visitors.  Autoresponders are meant to help your company grow, and help you spread information about your services, products, and your company.  There are many creative and innovative ways that you can use this tool, providing you do it the right way.  Most customers know when they are receiving an autoresponder message, and if you don’t use it the right way they will know it.  Although you can always change or add to the preset messages; most contain a unique signature and address that will always be associated with autoresponders.

The Internet is one of the best ways to conduct business and promote your products.  Autoresponders can help you save a lot of time, although when you use them in the wrong ways, they will eventually get you a negative image.  If you know you are using it the wrong way and continue to do so, you will eventually lose a lot of business and your company will suffer a great deal.  On the other hand, if you always think in terms of courtesy towards your customers, your autoresponder can help you obtain a lot of business and establish relationships with customers who will always spread the word about your company.

If you are an affiliate marketer who wants to make a comfortable living from referring your prospects to other people’s product or service for decent commissions, then you must consider building your own mailing list.

Building your mailing list of hungry prospects can be one of the best investments you will ever make, as it is time and effort worth spending on. When you strike on a Joint Venture and have a new product or service to endorse, you can look no further than your own mailing list.

Granted, that most affiliates, as in more than 90 percent of them, are not making money from affiliate programs, but this often results from the same amount of effort focused on least effective methods.

While having your own mailing list is, by a long mile, not the only effective affiliate marketing method, you can make affiliate sales very quickly even in the next few hours after sending a sales message, provided that your mailing list is huge and responsive.

This is often true, because owning your own mailing list for you to endorse products and services to is one of the fastest-producing results, beating other affiliate marketing methods imaginable.

In a nutshell, the affiliate marketer who gets ahead of the pack is the one who owns a huge and responsive mailing list of prospects.

I’ve been receiving emails from people asking for my advice on which affiliate programs are the best, who pays the most and most often, and many other basic questions. I’d like to answer those questions on this forum, but I can only type so fast.

I went out this weekend looking for content that I could publish here temporarily while I got down to writing. I had a hard time finding unbiased content. Most of the so-called reviews out there are infomercials, and that’s not what I was looking for with this blog. So you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ve been looking and learning and reading and talking, and I’ve got a lot to say. I just need the time to write it down, and I will, starting tomorrow. No, really I will.

In the meantime, you need to ask yourself this — are you ready for an affiliate program, or Internet Advertising in general? I put together four questions you should ask before you embark on your affiliate program or any Internet advertising.

Before I get to the four questions you should ask before you enbark on your affiliate program, I am going to review two concepts that I use often here on Affiliateblog. The first is what I call the macro view of your Internet presence:

Incoming visitors -> Internet Presence < – Sales or Actions

You are really running two campaigns with your Internet presence — the first campaign is concerned with getting visitors to the site, and the campaign is ongoing. The second campaign is to get those visitors to do something. That something may be just to spend more time at your site, or it may be to sign up for something or buy something.

The other represents the process of Internet advertising:

Impression -> Click -> Action

Most affiliate programs pay publishers in the last part of the process, the Action. I’ll be using both of these concepts in my questions. So here we go…

1. Do you know enough about your visitors?

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. While some affiliate marketing hubs are experimenting with context-sensitive serving of affiliate banners and banner rotation on affiliate sites, YOU will be the one to decide what kind of products and services you want to offer your visitors. This seems like a minor detail, but it is a major factor in your success.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the stats for your web site over the past month or so. Where do your visitors come from? Have you paid for Google, Yahoo or other search engine traffic? What are the keywords that people used to get to you? More complex and specific search terms tend to result in more immediate conversions, while broader search terms may result in sales later. If people get to your site using what you believe to be broad search terms, you need to be sure that the cookie life (the amount of time that passes between someone from your site visiting the affiliate merchant’s site and the sale) is long.

Do you have textlinks or other advertising on other sites? Do you know the demographics of the visitors from those sites? Have you spoken to the webmaster, owner or manager of the sites on which you advertise and asked him or her about their visitors? Do you know the websites? Have you visited the sites that advertise on the same sites as you? When you investigate all of these things a profile of the visitors to your site should begin to emerge.

Which search engine brings you the most traffic? If it’s Google, the user is slightly more apt to be male, and in the middle (of MSN, Yahoo and Google) as far as propensity toward buying something (42% more likely than the average user). There’s a terrific article on marketingvox.com if you want to see more details. You can also find some interesting demographic info on the major search engines from AQABA.

You should pay particular attention to the domains of your visitors. If you have a lot of AOL traffic for example, you should consider that the profile of the average AOL user is 35 or older (77%) and married (62%).

If you have trouble with textual representation vs. graphical representation (as I do), there is a terrific product called VisitorVille that takes your web logs and animates them. The text is represented as pictures (buildings, people, buses for the search engines, etc). You can see it here. Disclaimer: I am a VisitorVille affiliate.

After all this you should be able to sit down and come up with the profile of a typical visitor. This profile should hopefully include estimates of age, country of origin, education and income.

Try to think like your visitors. Try to anticipate their interests and the products and services they might want to purchase. Affiliate programs raise the bar from PPC — your payment comes at the end of the Internet marketing process (the Action) rather than at the beginning (Impression or Click) like Google Adsense or Doubleclick. You need to apply more brainpower to the process, and you’ll make more money if you do it right.

2. Is your site perfect?

You’re asking someone to buy something from your site. If the pages have sloppy html code, broken links or instability from a bad Cascading Stylesheet, it makes you look cheesy. We’ve all been uncomfortable buying something off a cheesy website. You don’t want to be that website.

Let’s start with the html code. Are you sure there are no errors in it? Have you used an html checker like the one at W3C? I find mistakes in my code all the time. Unless you check your code on several browsers in several resolutions you might not catch an error. The validator will. If you use Cascading Stylesheets you should also visit the CSS Checker.

Speaking of validators, you should check your links often. W3.org also has a link validator.

The site should also be optimized for search engines, be easy to understand and navigate, and should have a sitemap for people (and spiders) to find their way around. You should have had ten of your closest friends take a look at the site and give you their feedback, and you should always listen to unsolicited comments from users with an open mind and place value on them. If someone takes the time from their busy day to send you an email about your site, they feel strongly about it and you should take a close look at what they’re talking about.

Understand that if your Incoming Visitors campaign is not working right, you’re wasting your time with your Sales or Action program.

3. Do you know what kind of ads you’re going to use, and where the ads are going to go?

People have been ignoring banners for ten years. That’s why they shake and make sounds (someday I’ll tell you about the screaming match I had with a creative director the day we put out the first talking banner ad) to try to get your attention. Where you put it on the page is going to make a huge difference. Briefly — banners need to go somewhere the eye naturally rests (next to the masthead, near the navigation, at the bottom of the page).

Placement of any ads is a huge part of getting them noticed or clicked.

A lot of people (including me) believe that text ads should be placed at natural breaks and be close to the same in text size and color as the text. You need to surf around and look at where people place their ads, and you need to figure out where you think they would work on your site.

If you plan to create pages for some of the products you endorse (a great idea), you need to figure out how prominently you want to place the advertising. Most people won’t buy something if they believe you’re shilling for a particular company. They will buy from someone they believe honestly endorses the product or service. You need to figure out how to keep the distinction.

4. What’s your hunch on the right kind of offers for your site?

I ask this question a lot. Now that you have a better idea of the demographics of your visitors, try to decide on which action you think they would be more apt to take — pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or even pay-per-click (hard to come by) on your site.

If you have a general interest website that gives away free stuff it’s probably going to be difficult to sell people products from that website. It might be smarter to try to get them to sign up for a free products newsletter from one of the affiliate programs, or you may want to look for offers that target the age group of your site rather than offers that target a specific interest. You might be looking for smaller-ticket sales or only leads. Leads get the user to the end of the advertising process chain, but require less of a commitment.

Try to come up with the four, five, six or fifty ways to slice this all up, by type of action, by type of sale or lead, or any other way you can come up with. Then you can go out and find the different offers that might appeal to your visitors. When it comes time to place the ads, try to put different ads in similar spaces on the same pages, and see how they do.

Get your questions answered and you’re ready to take the plunge into affiliate marketing.