Well I should be sleeping now or so my body says, but my brain is in “share knowledge” mode. You need to be in the writing mood to blog at your best!

I’d like to go over a very effective marketing technique, forum marketing. I’ll introduce it briefly, but the meat of this post will be in describing my many techniques in choosing the right forum to post in, the tone to “speak” in and a few other little tidbits.

When I speak of forum marketing, I’m talking about the act of getting your link up on forums. That’s vague enough!

You’re going to want your link on forums to get some extra visitors to your website and so that you can add to your backlinks. A backlink is “site A” linking to “site B” where “site B” is yours. You can then say “site A” backlinks to “site B”. Backlinks can help you get listed on search engines and if done effectively can greatly increase your position on them.

Here’s what I do for effective backlinks. I focus on my main keywords for my site. Let’s say “affiliate marketing”. I then Google or Scour (I’ll write about Scour some other time) those keywords, maybe add ” forum” to it, and look at the results. I’ll check out all the forums in the results and find a topic that I feel I can reply to with some helpful information. (This is important! If your post sounds like a sales-pitch it’s as effective as a turtle sprinting!). Try to lead someone to your link, where the link would be helpful to them or relevant to their case/issue.

Add a personal touch to your message. Here’s two examples of someone trying to link their Costume store on a forum that had a topic created by someone who needed a Halloween outfit.

Ex. 1) For some great prices and costumes check out “link to store”.
Ex. 2) I’ve been looking around for a costume too and found a great selection over at “store link here”

If you haven’t figured it out yet, example 2 is much more effective because it has a more personal touch and feels like it’s coming from an equal not from someone who is desperate for a sale.

So follow the above and here’s what you’ll have:

• a link to your site coming from a relevant forum
• the gratitude from the person you helped out or informed in the forum
• credibility in the eyes of the readers
• higher sale or interest potential
• search engine love! They like when a link to your “halloween store” is coming from a “halloween topic”. Even better if it was coming from a Halloween site, but that can’t always be achieved. You must make due with what you can get.

So go out there already and start getting linked up! What!… still reading? Go!

As always if you have any questions please leave a comment. It’s way too quiet in here. Cause a stir!

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Part of affiliate marketing is knowing who your users are. If you own a website or a blog or any content online I bet you’d want to know who’s viewing it, from where, when, with what browser, and on what platform.

There’s an easy and FREE way to getting that information, and that is by using Google Analytics. Google analytics gives you detailed statistics of the users browsing your site and reports that information with graphs, charts, detailed lists and awesome stats. There’s so much you can do with Google Analytics that there are tons of books written to try and expose all its functionality. Once again this is all free. It’s the best free tool around and is a must for any website or blog owner. You can sign up here. It is a free tool, it will never cost you a penny. Use it!

Here’s a few good tips once you start getting used to the tool, 8 Stupid Things Webmasters do to Mess Up Their Analytics.

If you have any questions on signing up or using analytics leave a comment and I’ll help you out.

This is partly a continuation to my last post. Basically I spoke about the initial conceptual steps of making money online; finding that one idea that you’ll run with and follow through with until it succeeds.

Depending on your idea, you can probably use the help of an Affiliate Network.

Here’s a great definition of Affiliate Network defined by my  best-friend Wikipedia

An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and (merchant) affiliate programs. It allows publishers to find affiliate programs, which are suitable for their website and it helps websites offering affiliate programs reach its target audience.^[1]

For merchants, services can include providing tracking technology, reporting tools, payment processing, and access to a large base of publishers. For affiliates, services can include providing one-click application to new merchants, reporting tools, and payment aggregation.

If, let’s say, your idea was to make commisions off of selling televisions online, an Affiliate Network can help you tap into tons of merchants that provide many TV’s, each merchant giving you a percentage of the sale. Some merchants will not only give you a commission for one purchase, but they may also reward you, normally with a lower percentage, with a commission on all purchases that the user you referred makes in his/her lifetime, regardless if the rest of the purchases were made from your affiliate links or not. You plant the seed and watch it grow. Although not always the case, it’s a good idea to look for “Recurring Commissions/Sales”

Another great thing about Affiliate Networks is that they help you manage many merchants that you are affiliated with under one big view. So you are not only able to see the sales you made with one store, but all stores. Depending on the Affiliate Network you choose you’ll have a large range of statistics about your commissions, merchants and performance.

Our Affiliate Networks section has a few different networks listed. More will be added over time, along with tips, tricks and advice for using each specific network.

The alternative to an Affiliate Network is a single Affiliate Program offered directly by a merchant. If all you need to promote is the products of one merchant than that’s great, but I guarantee you that over some time you will be dealing with many affiliate programs and you’ll soon see that they become quite a handful to manage. It is inevitable though, even with Affiliate Networks, you may be forced to manage multiple Affiliate Programs because not all merchants join these networks. There are many great affilliate programs out there that have solid products that you won’t find in any affiliate network and they’re quite worth the management. We will be opening up a category listing Affiliate Programs, reviews on them, tips and strategies using them and much more soon.

Stay tuned and of course feedback is always welcome!

Clickbank is an affiliate network for electronic goods, such as ebooks and software. They have loads and loads of products that you can help sell for a nice commission, and I’m talking very nice. The range in commission can go as high as 75% and at odd times even higher.

I’ll write a post about this in the near future, but you can make alot of money also selling your own eBook or Software or even selling others’ eBooks if they give you Reseller Rights. It really takes marketing your own product to a whole new level.

Take a read over at Clickbank’s website and stay tuned for a more detailed post on making Clickbank work for you.

Hello fellow affiliates!

So I’ve come across a really interesting read in a very suprising format; a free eBook written by Harvey Segal, a big name in the industry. I always thought of those free eBooks and “find the secret to online success for 97$” eBooks as pure SCAMS that offer nothing more than childs play information. I was surprised how well it caught my attention, and as a seasoned affiliate marketer I was also happy to see some good techniques that I’ve used before as well as adding some great ideas to my marketing artillery. And I say this only to point out that not one source has all the marketing strategies. There’s always different, creative ways to market a product or service and keeping an open mind will equip you well when trying to find a solution to reaching your objective.

Here’s a few good points that are covered in the eBook:

• A few methods to generating traffic to your product or service/referral signup (or someone elses)
• Preselling your product or service or referral signup
• Autoresponders and follow up campaigns
• ClickBank and how it can work for you
• Viral marketing
• Creating niche sites
• Resale rights

Check out the full affiliate marketing free eBook.

Who is this man and should he be famed or shamed?
Verdict: Famed

Here’s a little background check using the good ‘ol internet for computers as quoted from Harvey Segal!

Harvey Segal makes his living advising internet businesses. He has made the web his office for over a decade. He has been influential with websites and ebooks.

Before he ventured into web-based business, Segal worked in information technology. He had worked as a programmer, then as a manager before seeing the commercial potential of the internet. That was back in 1997, when the internet was in its infancy. He started by providing a wide range of tips for up and coming internet businesses, then decided to focus on niches when information sites became more common.

He believes that today’s internet businesses have a great advantage over yesterday’s. This is because of fast internet access, an overload of available knowledge, and a great number of software tools.

Segal runs two highly respected marketing websites: The Complete Guide to Ad Tracking Programs and The Complete Guide to ClickBank. Using his knowledge of pay-per-click advertisements, Segal provides great information to help affiliate marketers succeed at internet business.

He also convinced over 35 top internet marketers to reveal their secrets. He compiled these into his first ebook, Guru Magic. This went on to become an affiliate marketing must-read.

Segal is the mind behind the Supertips series of ebooks. Supertips are a resource available from Segal’s websites.  They cover topics ranging from ad tracking and viral marketing to click bank and forum marketing. Many of his ebooks are free, though the information in them is no less valuable than paid ebooks. Even the free ebooks have a viral element, meaning that they can be re-branded with affiliate links.

Segal also encourages entrepreneurs to visit marketing forums and learn all they can. Forums will cover a range of topics, from new affiliate programs to software tools. By asking questions in a forum, a marketer can increase their knowledge exponentially.

Segal says that working from home has its advantages and disadvantages. One major disadvantage is information overload. As a business becomes more successful, a marketer needs some way to keep up with every new venture and customer. Segal stresses that automation is the answer to this problem. The more a site is automated, the easier the job becomes, especially when a business gets larger.

He recommends books by Tony Robbins, Jim Edwards, and Yanik Silver to keep motivated. He also praises the works of Phil Wiley, attributing his own success to one of Wiley’s books.

Segal lives in London with his wife and daughter. He enjoys watching football.

All the other sources on the net pretty much take excerpts of what’s written there. From what I’ve read of his work, he does sound like he knows what he’s doing and his products, at least the one I read was of value and I talk about it here.

If you know about Harvey Segal feel free to leave a comment, good or bad! The “Famed” title can change over time!

You can always suggest other names to add to the Hall of Fame or Shame.

Hey guys,

I have a great vision for this site. One that I believe will help many in their quest to becoming a successful, wealthy affiliate. Affiliate marketing information needs to be free, NOT in e-book format for the LOW LOW PRICE of not 1000000$, not 1000$, but some random number$.

I’m calling to all you good hearted folk that want to share their marketing tips, reviews and advice. Not only will you get the satisfaction of spreading knowledge to those who will be lost for months on end, but you will also be rewarded with a banner ad on aaaffiliates.com header banner rotation for 2 weeks for every 5 pieces submitted.

If you are interested in sharing the love, please create a comment with expressing your interest along with an e-mail I can reach you at. The comments will be moderated and deleted, they will not show up on here unless it is an actual comment and not a request to contribute. I will contact you right away. I will be writing as much as I could with the time I have, but to really flourish I need your help. A variety of insight is always important as well.

You can write about anything related to the affiliate marketing industry. This includes affiliate program reviews, tips, guides, marketing tips and anything else that is relevant.

So once again fill out a comment with your contact information and I will get back to you ASAP with more details. Your comment will not be displayed here.

Thanks in advance!

Today I’ll be giving  a quick review of one of the, if not THE, most popular and trusted affiliate networks Commission Junction(CJ).

CJ has been around since 1998 and grew to become leaders in the industry. They provide a giant network (we’re talking tens of thousands!) of affiliate programs, from web hosting services to baby clothing, all under one umbrella giving you a better management perspective when dealing with multiple affiliate programs. Imagine having to manage 100 affiliate programs individually; not fun!

What CJ does for you is let you pick and choose what products you want to sell. They list all the affiliate programs available for a product type or category giving you an immense amount of flexibility. On top of that they render tons of stats for each program so that you make better decisions. For example, let’s say you close target on the “Consumer Electronics” category. They will then list all the sites under that category and give you some performance stats, such as EPC which is the average earning per 100 clicks, total network earning, commission percentages, commission types, etc…

Once you start getting clicks and sales you are also able to run flexible reports to give you that birds eye view you need to succeed.

Whether or not you plan on using Commission Junction, they do have something that is beneficial to all and that is Commission Junction University (CJU). CJU is a great resource for affiliates (and advertisers). The information is free and insightful so do yourself a favor and check it out now!

Wishing you all the best in your affiliate growth!

Alright, this post is for those fairly new to affiliate marketing. I think it’s almost everyone’s dream to work from home, not to serve clients, but to be able to work on their own projects, which in all hopes will create sustainable automatic income with little effort so that they can ENJOY life!

The good news is it is very possible to live this dream. The bad news… well… it won’t happen over night! More good news though, I will be doing my best to inform you and give you all the advice I can give in one helpful site.

So let’s get down to this situation; You want to live your dream, but you’re aware it won’t happen instantly and without effort and you’re prepared and psyched to get started. Your mind is racing with excitement, you may already have a slew of thoughts of what you want to do to make money online. What you want to do and what you DO are two different things. The fact is, there’s so many ways to make money online with affiliate marketing that it can be so daunting of a task to just choose one idea and run with it.

First things first, before I go on to giving you tips on how to choose that right idea that you so hope will bring you success, let me give you a good definition of what affiliate marketing is, as defined by wikipedia:

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, and in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.

So basically with affiliate marketing YOU are the affiliate, the middle man between the customer and the seller, and as such you will be rewarded for promoting the sellers’ products and services to the end user. I’m saying promoting and not selling specifically because there are cases where you can get paid to promote. Such an example would be getting paid to have links on your website.

Back on track now, where do you start? There are many ways to make money onlne, but for this post I will focus on getting commission from sales as I believe it is one of the easiest ways to begin. Now that that’s settled, what exactly do you want to sell?

You can get commission from selling a slew of products and services. Here are some examples:

• Web Hosting, Web Services such as Online Image Storaging, Financial Reporting Tools, Contact Managers, etc…
• Selling of e-books, screencasts, get rich quick ideas, marketing tips etc… (yes people charge for the basic information I and many others hand out for free on the web)
• And of course the most popular, products. If you can feel and touch it chances are someone is selling it and willing to give you money to get people to buy it. This can range from skates, keys, tea, movie tickets, cd’s, movies to blow up dolls! It’s really that vast!

There’s so much to choose from but here are few pointers in making your decision:

• Choose something that you’ll like to work on; an industry that interests you. Don’t try to sell skates if you hate them!
• Choose something that has a good sized market
• Check the latest trends, what’s selling like hot cakes nowadays?
• Balance! If you love the products you’d like to sell and there’s a huge market for it and it’s still trendy, then heck go for it! Unfortunately that’s not always the case so I would suggest finding a good balance between the last 3 points.
• Get specific! Depending if there’s already alot of competition in what you are selling I would highly suggest you be as specific and niched as possible. For example, there are tons of sports stores out there, but a sports store can be split down to many sports such as Tennis, Hockey, Golf, etc… So why not focus on Tennis Products or Hockey Product, or even more specific such as focusing on selling the best hiking shoes, or hockey skates, etc… Doing this will help narrow your market down and will make marketing in the future a whole lot easier.
• Make sure you can even sell the product and get commissions. You need to make sure at least one affiliate program exists for the product you want to sell. For example if Canadian Stamps is your main interest, there is a pretty good possibility there aren’t any affiliate programs that will give you commission on selling stamps.

Those are the main things to take into consideration.

If you don’t want to sell a product, but would rather make money off of ads on your very own websites, the above tips will still work in making a decision in what industry your site will evolve around.

I may have missed a few points, but please do not hesitate to ask me a question in the comments section below.You may have different dilemmas or ideas that may not directly relate to my examples, but I assure you if it has anything to do with online products and services, even personal services, i can sure give you some sound advice!

Stay tuned for posts about affiliate programs and networks. There are tons to choose from, some better than others. I’ll be going through and reviewing as many as possible in the near future so keep an eye on this site.

Much appreciated!

Hi everyone. Thanks for taking interest in my website AAAffiliate.com. What you have found will be a gem in the Affiliate marketing and online home business industry. I will be revealing many tips, tricks and sound advice that will help pave your road to success. I’ll also be reviewing and researching affiliate programs, marketing tools and strategies so that you get exposed to quality and working programs.

The tips I will be giving are geared towards every skill level, from Beginner to Advanced and such topics I will be touching range from:

• Setting up an effective Google Adwords campaign
• Free marketing. Ways to market your affiliates’ products or service without paying a penny.
• Campaign strategies
• Where to start marketing. “I just signed up as an affiliate at Joe’s Store. What do I do now?”
• and much more…

Stay tuned for some great articles!