Clickbank is one of the best affiliate networks around. The majority of products in this network are informational products. The commission for such products are much higher. Most newbie affiliates promote these products through pay per click and reviews on their websites. Those tactics can pay off but it never hurts to pit Clickbank ads against Adsense (or other types of ads) to see how they perform. You want your Clickbank ads to be as relevant to your website’s theme as possible. That’s what WP ClickBank Ad Display WordPress plugin offers.

ClickBank Ad Display is an easy to use plugin that lets you enter your Clickbank information and keywords you want to target on your website. You are also in control of the size of your ads.Of course, Clickbank is a tad bit different from Adsense considering that you get paid only when someone makes a purchase.

You will have to figure out your effective EPC and put it against your Adsense earnings to see which type of ad is performing the best on your site. But thanks to this plugin, you will save time doing it. More customization options would be nice though.

The best way to get started as an affiliate marketer is by studying what others have done and try to learn from them. Many newbies make the mistake of exactly cloning everything others are doing. That may work in the short term, but that is not how to build a business in the long term. Spying on other affiliates can help you identify new products, find out about new potential partners, and figure out tools that can help you take your business to the next level.

Here are just 5 things you can learn by spying on other affiliates:

• what are their affiliate promotions: new affiliates sometimes struggle to find new products to promote on their websites. By looking at what others are doing on their sites, newbies can figure out how they can expand their business and who they can work with to make more money online.
• what ads are converting for them: top affiliates do not leave ads on their website that do not perform. If an ad is showing up on their site for a few months, there has to be a good reason for that. You want to make sure your distinguish between affiliate, sponsor, and direct ads. That way, you can get a better sense of what is working for your competitors.
• find out their tools: the tools used by your affiliate competitors may not work for you. But it never hurts to be aware of them. Sites such as BuiltWith.com can tell you a lot about a website and the technologies used on it. You should also lookout for plugins, social tools, and analytics software packages use by your competitors.
• identify good website designers: see an affiliate portal that you like? Many affiliate marketers link back to their site’s designer. That’s your chance to identify top designers you can work with to create your killer affiliate portal. Some of these designers won’t be cheap, but it’s always good to have a list of them handy.
• analyze your competitor’s affiliate campaigns: by spying on your competitors, you can figure out some of the things they are doing to make money online. Don’t forget to search Google for their affiliate ID to see how they are promoting their affiliate offers. As long as you are willing to put some time in researching, the sky’s the limit.

Spying on others is fair game in the affiliate marketing business. Almost all top affiliates pay attention to what their competitors are doing. There is no reason you should sit in the sidelines.

We have all been there before. You pick up a product that is very popular and is performing very well according affiliate networks but fails to generate good enough results for your business. Sometimes, you can blame that on inaccurate information provided to you by your affiliate partner. But that is not always the case. In most cases, there are things you can do to improve your affiliate campaigns before dropping them. Here are 5 ways how:

• Reach out to affiliate manager: starting an affiliate business is not about putting yourself in a room and just building websites (or promoting offers). There is a lot of value to reaching out to your affiliate manager to find out about ways you can improve your campaigns. How much value you get out of your conversation with your affiliate manager depends on how much are you willing to listen and whether there is someone decent on the other side. In most cases, affiliate managers want to help you become more successful. There is no reason not too. You’ll never know if you don’t reach out.
• Ask for latest creative: relying on creative and banners offered through affiliate networks can slow down your testing process. Not all affiliate programs have the time to upload their new banners to their networks as they come up with them. Never hesitate to ask for specific banners if you want to test your partner’s offers more effectively.
• Spy on other players: you want to learn how others are making money from the same product you intend to sell? See what they are doing on Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Tools such as SpyFu can give you a wealth off information on how to promote certain products.
• Test different offers: don’t just put a bunch of banners on your website and hope for the best. Test different offers. Let’s say you are working with a cell phone company. Don’t just promote their most popular phone. Test different things out and make decisions accordingly.
• Pounce on opportunities: merchants often send limited time coupons and promotions to their affiliates. Just get those offers out before it’s too late. Experienced affiliates have mastered this art. At first, you may make some mistakes pushing offers you get right-away. But once you do this enough times, you’ll learn how you can take advantage of these offers before it is too late.

Starting and building a successful affiliate business takes work. But make sure you use all the resources made available to you by your partners before dropping your under-performing campaigns.

We all hate spam e-mails, comments, and everything in between. Nobody likes dealing with nonsense and garbage when trying to do work. But website spammers can give you a few ideas about markets you can enter and try to dominate. Bloggers are well familiar with spam comments. Anyone who has a blog has gotten those automated comments. Many of us tend to discard those spam comments without even looking at them. But sometimes, it does help to see where these guys are linking to.

Here are just a few comments that I have received on this blog. Some of them may sound harmless but just take a look at the products some of these guys are pushing. HDMI Cables may not sound like a lucrative market to you, but those cables are very affordable, meaning that you can sell more of them and generate more hits for your merchants.

Plenty of affiliates push work from home products online. In these tough economic times, people would do anything to be able to make money from the comfort of their home. Language products could also be pretty popular (as you can see in the below picture).

Spammers may be the lowest of lows in the marketing world, but they can actually help you find new niches to target. I do not recommend using the same approach these folks are using. But if you are out of ideas about the new markets you want to enter, spammers could help you do just that.

Credit: stock.xchng

When you start an affiliate business, you may want to do everything yourself to save money and learn a few new things. There is nothing wrong about learning every aspect of the affiliate business. You just don’t want to do it in the long term. If you look at all the top affiliates who have made it, they rarely do the basic things themselves. They spend most of their time focusing on their core activities and developing strategies for their business. Doing everything yourself may save you a bit of money in the short-term, but it’ll come back to bite you in the long run.

Here are just 5 reasons why you should not do everything yourself:

• You won’t have the time: unfortunately, there are only 24 hours each day. Even if you work 24 hours each day, you won’t be able to get everything done yourself. Hiring virtual assistants and outsourcing parts of your business can help you pull off more everyday that you ever could all by yourself.
• You can’t be good at everything: there is a difference between knowing something and being very good at it. Lots of people know SEO. Not everyone can be considered very good at it. Trying to be perfect in everything is only going to take away from your business.
• Focus on core activities:  everything that is not core to your business needs to be outsourced. It’s as simple as that. As a business owner, you want to spend your time on more important activities of your business. Your virtual assistant or outsourcing partner can do the rest.
• Focus on growing your business: if you are spending time learning things that you shouldn’t be learning (things that can be outsourced), then you won’t have time to find ways to grow your business. You may have a great affiliate business now. If you don’t innovate, it will disappear on you quick.
• Spending money is not such a bad thing: many affiliates are terrified of spending money. They don’t want to spend money on a better web hosts or multiple domain names. In a perfect world, you’d be making money without spending money on anything. In the real world, that attitude holds you back.

Even if you find the time to do everything yourself, that is only going to kill your business in the long run. No successful affiliate does everything him/herself.

Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative, but from time to time you may find yourself struggling to grab the money you have earned from your affiliate partner. If you happen to deal with networks such as CJ and LinkShare, you have more leverage to put pressure on your partner. Unfortunately, that is not the case if you are a part of one of those smaller networks. A lot of times, those smaller networks only cover software issues and give your affiliate partner the final say on payments. That can be dangerous if your partner turns out to be a greedy business that’s willing to rob its affiliates out of their commissions.

Trying to get your commission from your affiliate partner can be difficult if you don’t have too much leverage. Once a company decides to go rogue and steal from its affiliates, then all rules are out of the window. That is actually very rare. Most companies that I have personally had issues with have not been rogue. Sometimes there are misunderstandings. It is essential for all affiliates to try their best to reach out their merchants before doing something drastic.

Here are 5 ways I would try to get my commission from my merchants:

• Contact and ask for explanation: mistakes happen. Assuming the worst is not going to help anyone. Affiliates should never do anything drastic without trying to contact their partner. Most ethical merchants will try to work with you and provide you with an explanation why your commission check has been held. Of course, from time to time, you may end up with a non-responsive partner.
• Do not sound desperate: acting desperate and begging for your commission check is not going to help. Staying professional is the way to go with dealing with a rogue partner. If they don’t respond to you, contact them again. Just don’t write graphic e-mails as that won’t solve anything.
• Search the Web for other forms of communication: affiliate partners that ignore their affiliates’ emails are very problematic. Sometimes, your e-mail could be filtered by your partners’ filters. So try to figure out if there is any other way you can communicate with your partner. Don’t assume the worst without trying other ways to reach out to your partner.
• Don’t burn your bridges unless you have to: don’t burn bridges with a partner if you disagree on one or two payments. I have had issues with many major affiliate programs in the past. Minor problems I can live with. As long as your partner is willing to communicate with you and try to work with you, there is no reason to burn your bridges with them.
• Use your channels to your advantage: if all has failed, you can use your social media presence and forums to put pressure on a non-paying affiliate partner. This is not an ideal solution, but if your partner does not respond to your e-mails, then you’ve got no choice (especially if we are talking about a significant amount of commission). Try to reach out to your partners on Twitter or Facebook if they are there. If they still don’t respond, it may be time to make your episode public. Not the best solution out there, but there is no harm in letting other affiliates know about your rogue merchant (staying professional here is a must).

There is no right way to deal with rogue affiliate programs. Every situation is different. What you don’t want to do as an affiliate is getting into a name calling contest with someone. Thankfully, there are not too many of these affiliate programs around. Doing your research before partnering up with someone can reduce the chances of you having to deal with this issue.

If you have been taking advantage of Twitter, you have probably used URL shorteners to keep your status updates under 140 characters. Third party URL shorteners do make it easy to make your URLs more clean and keep track of clicks and shares of each link. Services such as TinyURL, Bit.ly, and BudURL have all been around for a while and provide a lot of value to those who choose to use them.

There are many reasons why one would want to use these services to track affiliate links. In fact, a lot of gurus suggest that without really thinking about the ramifications. For starters, if you have long term plans for your affiliate portal, you want to brand everything you can, including your link. Using solutions such as Redirection will allow you to create your very own URL shortener without relying on any other company. Even if you do not want to brand your web assets, you still have to come terms with the reality that these companies won’t stick around forever. Not all of them anyway. Unless you can read the future, there is no way to assume which URL shortener will survive. If you build your affiliate portal using their links, you are going to spend some time changing your links when these companies go out of business. That may be easy to do if you have only 2 pages on your site. But once you have thousands of pages on your site, things become much more complicated.

Bit.ly and similar services offer great value to their users. Some are being used by top companies around the globe (pro editions). If you don’t plan on using a pro level plan (with your own domain), then you are probably better off using Redirection plugin to keep control of your links. When something changes, you’ll be able to react without relying on any third-party company. Who wouldn’t like that?

We all want to assume that affiliate programs will honor their agreements and pay up when their affiliates deliver sales for them. There are plenty of affiliate programs that do everything possible to reduce their affiliates’ commissions and avoid paying up. You certainly do not want to work with those programs. At the same time, sometimes even the largest affiliate programs fail to fully pay their affiliates. It’s easy to get stressed out and freak out over these incidents. But if you want to get paid, you want to keep a cool head.

Reputable affiliate programs are often easier to work with in these situations. They care about their reputation, so they do respond if you file your claim. Some large networks do take some time to get back to you, but if your case is valid, you are going to get paid. What you don’t want to do is pick a fight with your merchant. That could have terrible ramifications for your business.

If you have not been paid by your affiliate company, it does not mean that you won’t get paid. You just have to approach things calmly. Here are just a few steps you need to take to solve your non-payment issues:

1. Don’t panic: no matter how much money you have lost, losing it is not going to help you solve your issues. You may need your commission check to stay afloat, but you do not want to make rash decisions without thinking through your strategy first.

2. Be polite: always, and I mean always, be polite with your affiliate manager. A lot of people assume that if they raise their voice on the phone or write a nasty e-mail, they are going to get more attention from their partner. Nobody likes a nasty person. You are more likely to get the help and attention you need by being polite and nice.

3. Explain & follow up: clearly explain what has gone wrong and why you believe you should be paid for your efforts. Do not assume the worst case. Put all the facts on the table and follow up with your merchant.

4. Stay professional: your affiliate relationship is not some sort of information friendship. Remember, you are running a business. If you treat your business like a business, others will treat you more seriously. Write and speak like a professional when communicating with your partners.

5. Don’t burn bridges: in some cases, you may not get your way. I suppose it’s OK to lose it in that situation, especially if you never intend to work with that partner ever again. Sharing your experiences with the world and publicizing your situation with a company may help other affiliates avoid the same mistakes. If you intend to work with that partner ever again, you may want to think twice before burning all your bridges.

6. Further Action: if you happen to have been wronged and lost lots of money in the process, you can always consider a lawsuit or legal action against your merchant. You want to make sure you have tried everything before taking this approach as this is a costly approach. Don’t forget, your partnership could be dead as soon as you in this route.

I have had many non-payment issues in the past. Except in one case, every partner that I have worked with has paid up. You’d be surprised what you can achieve by being nice to your partners.

Most newbie affiliate marketers start with large affiliate networks such as Amazon, CJ, and LinkShare. All these networks have their advantages and disadvantages. But one thing is for certain. You do not want to cut corners when managing your affiliate campaigns, no matter which network you are partnering with. Many newbie affiliates start a host of new sites and use the same tracking ID on all of them. While that may save you time when grabbing links from these networks, it does mean that you are going to have a more difficult time figuring out which campaign or website is bringing you the most cash.

Creating multiple tracking IDs are not that difficult as long as you are working with a credible network. Amazon makes it so easy by putting the option on the same page where you can view your payment history. Since all Amazon affiliates are hooked on this page for obvious reasons, they’ll have an easier time creating multiple IDs and tracking their campaigns in a more professional manner. Tracking your campaigns with CJ is easy as well. All you have to do is define a SID:

http://www.dpbolvw.net/click-xxxxxx-xxxxxx?sid=[YourTrackingID]&url=xxxx

Tracking is not the only reason why you need to need to have multiple IDs. Let’s say one of your sites is penalized for some reason. If you are not using an exclusive tracking ID on that site, you are going to have a tough time getting compensated for all your other leads. While many top networks can somewhat tell where your leads are coming from, the best way to protect yourself is by using multiple IDs.

You do want to make sure your IDs are not something obvious to others. It’s so easy for copycats to search and find your ID if you are using the name of your website in it. So keep it something that makes sense to you. Having multiple affiliate IDs can be a hassle and can slow you down a bit, but it does help you track things more effectively. It can protect your commissions too.

Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative business if you are in the right niche at the right time with the right strategy. Those who have mastered the art of affiliate marketing easily pull in 6 figures. Of course, things are more complicated that that. So the stories about people who sleep all day and make a fortune from affiliate marketing is simply not true. Affiliate marketing can be a great field to be involved in. But it can be quite volatile too. That’s why affiliate superstars not only rely on affiliate products to make money, but they come up with a product of their own as well. If you have revenue coming in from multiple sources, you are not going to be affected by Internet tax and other affiliate marketing nonsense as badly as those who solely focus on affiliate marketing.

Starting your very own store and selling your own products is not that hard. There are plenty of templates and plugins that you can pick up to start an online store. You are going to need products to sell, but you shouldn’t have to worry about how you are going to get them listed online. E-commerce theme by Templatic is a very interesting solution if you want to use WordPress to start your own store. Not only it is clean and looks decent, it also allows you to start your own affiliate program. Talk about going from an affiliate to an affiliate manager overnight.

When it comes to starting an online store, you want to make sure your theme has everything you would need to handle your customers, process payments and orders, and give your customers some flexibility in the process. E-commerce store does that and more. It makes it easy to integrate multiple payment options in your theme. You also get to define multiple shipping options (if you have a physical product) for your customers. You can even set up coupons for your store.

Your store would not be complete without its own affiliate program, and that’s exactly what this theme offers. You can easily manage your affiliates and get them to work for your store while you focus on more important things. If you are selling an informational product, it’s almost possible to just set it up and let your affiliates do the rest while you take a long vacation (almost!).

There are many other themes and plugins that you can use to set up your store. The moral of story is one should not focus only on affiliate products to make a living. It’s just too risky. You want to manage your risk and reduce the uncertainty of doing business online as much as possible. That’s why you should sell your own products in addition to promoting other people’s affiliate products.