Why Chitika Is a Must Try for Affiliates

Affiliate marketing is a tough business to be involved in, especially if you are looking to make more than a few quick bucks in the industry. The industry is very competitive and not everybody plays by the same rules. So your earnings per month could be affected by what your competitors decide to do. You can always introduce Adsense to your landing pages to make more money, but that could be a bit problematic as Adsense ads are always there, and they do take away from your conversions.

That’s where Chitika ads are useful. These ads are contextual, so your visitors see ads about what they are searching for. The service is designed to help you monetize your SEO ads. It’s true that a lot of affiliates keep their PPC and SEO landing pages separate. Whether you are doing that or not, Chitika provides you with another source of revenue.

Chitika is not currently topping my Adsense revenue but there are a lot of people who have had more success with their Chitika ads than their Adsense ones. It’s certainly worth testing and is much more flexible than Adsense. For starters, your visitors won’t see your ads unless they have searched for a keyword phrase and have found your website through a third party web service. So your landing page would look smooth all the time, and your organic traffic gets to see targeted ads.

Should you try Chitika? For me, it’s been more than worth it. It’s not going to be the right solution for everyone. But it certainly beats using Adsense if you don’t want your paid search visitors to see your ads. It never hurts to test, and you can always get rid of these ads if they don’t perform.

Should You Use Adsense Next To Your Affiliate Offers?

Google Adsense is an easy way to make a few bucks here or there. If you happen to have the right strategy going with your affiliate portal, you may actually be able to make a decent amount of money per month and make a living off of Google. At first, publishers and bloggers were the ones using Google Adsense to monetize their work. But recently affiliate marketers and product makers have also added Adsense to their landing pages. After all, if you are not going to get a conversion from your visitors, you may as well get paid for them to leave, right?

The issue of Adsense on affiliate landing pages is very controversial. As an affiliate, your goal is to drive traffic to your landing pages and optimize them in a way that helps your bottom line. If you are driving paid traffic to your website, the last thing you want is give your visitors an easy way to get out of your website. Google Adsense ads are a big exit sign. There is return mechanism to get back the visitors who have clicked on your ads. So you are at their mercy. In most cases, these people don’t come back to your website.

Many super affiliates who are using their own sales-letters to make money online are using their Google Adsense units at the very end of their newsletters. That is an interesting practice, as you give your visitors enough chance to take advantage of your offer. But in case they have read the whole newsletter and still are not ready to take you upon your offer, you may as well make a buck or two when they leave. The more controversial practice is using sidebar Adsense units and putting ads in a prominent position on your website. Can that possibly work?

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Affiliates on Twitter: The Next Battle Ground

There are many affiliate marketers who take advantage of the latest technologies to make more money online. There is such a thing as early mover, and the sooner you position yourself to take advantage of the latest developments all around you, the better you can position yourself to start dominating your market. Twitter has quickly become one of those battlegrounds for affiliates. Twitter is one of the best services to drive traffic to any website. It’s not just about the quantity of traffic but rather the quality of it as well. Let’s say you have a website about credit cards, and you have 10,000 people following you on Twitter. If you have truly put the time in to gain your followers trust, there is no reason you can’t make money from your efforts.

Just like any other technology, there is a right way and wrong way to use it. There are many affiliates who are using black hat tactics to create bogus accounts on Twitter and use them to bombard the community with their affiliate offers. You can almost tell an automated account for a real one these days. But the scripts and bots are becoming more sophisticated. That practice is going to get a bit more difficult to execute with the latest FTC ruling. And let’s not forget about the community backlash against spammers. If you are dubbed as a spammer, it’s going to get you ignored or banned on twitter. You’ll lose all your followers in the process.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with using automated tools such as Humming Bird or TweetAdder. You can have all the followers in the world, but I personally don’t see any problem with that practice as long as you are not spamming your followers. Having lots of followers is a big responsibility. If you can’t gain their trust and provide them with valuable content, you are going to lose them eventually. So while having them can be a big boost for your business, it will keep you honest as well (unless you don’t mind getting banned on Twitter).

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Pushing The Envelop with Affiliate Videos?

Recently, I talked about tools that you need to get started with making your own killer affiliate videos. Videos are the present and the future of this business. Every-time you are planning to promote an affiliate product, you can get more attention from your leads if you provide them with a video demonstration or review. Think about it. If you are hoping to sell that $1000 guitar on Amazon to your leads, wouldn’t it be better if you could find a video that show how it works? If you can afford to buy the guitar or convince the guitar manufacturer to sponsor your business. You’d be surprised how many of these manufacturers would give you the opportunity to at least test drive their products for a while to create a review or produce tips videos around their products.

Videos that are informative or provide unique value to your visitors can be especially helpful. If you are building a portal about a specific product, it always helps to have videos about it on your website. Besides, if you put your videos on YouTube and other video sites, there is a good chance you can drive a significant amount of traffic back to your website  (as long as your video is decent enough to catch fire on YouTube). The search engine part of the equation shouldn’t be ignored either. YouTube videos can rank high on Google if you play your cards the right way. If you tag your videos the right way and use the right keywords, there is no reason you can’t get a boost in traffic from your videos.

As you can tell, there is a right way to produce affiliate videos. But there is a wrong way to do just that as well. Blackhat affiliates know no bound, so it is not a surprise that some of them are using copyrighted material to push traffic to their website. Here is how it really works. These folks will steal and submit a copyrighted video to YouTube but stick comments all over videos so you can only see a part of the video. Then, they ask you to support them by clicking on their link and in return watch your video without those annoying comments. Of course, they never actually send you to the right location. They always send you to a CPA offer page or squeeze page. You don’t have to be a genius to realize that this approach is very wrong and unethical. (more…)

How To Get Started With Affiliate Videos

Affiliate marketing has changed forever with the introduction of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and … These social networking sites have made it easy for folks to reach out to others. They have also changed the dynamics of affiliate marketing, opening new doors for marketers to take advantage of to promote products. Affiliate videos can not only help a lot of traffic, but they give you an additional promotional tool that you can use to make money online. A lot of affiliates are still not using videos to promote products. Whether they are afraid of the technology or don’t now where to start, nobody knows. But if you are an affiliate business owner and want to grow your business fast, you’ve got to make your own videos.

If you are interested in making money with affiliate videos but don’t know where to start, here are the tools you can use to take a crack at it:

Camcorder: you don’t have to spend a fortune to get a camcorder for your online videos. You can always manage with one of these mini camcorders. I personally use Flip Ultra. It doesn’t set the world on fire but gets the job done.

Software: having a cool video editor software to help you create your videos is a must. It could be the case that you want to capture your screen or maybe you want to build a hybrid video. Either way, you need a software such as Camtasia to get you started. I personally use Adobe Captivate and couldn’t be happier with it.

Accessories: to build professional looking videos, you are going to need lights and other accessories the get the lighting and background right. If you want to take high quality videos, you shouldn’t cut corners here.

Books: there are many affiliates among us who are technical enough to know how to create their own videos and go about editing them. If you are not, you are going to need to take a look at a book that teaches you what types of videos can work, and how you can build a following with your work. Here is a good book to get you started.

Services: creating your video is only one part of the equation. You are going to need to host it somewhere. You can always use YouTube or go a bit more advanced with Viddler.

Creating videos may sound daunting but believe or not, creating high quality ones is more challenging. The above tools help get started with your journey in video blogging. The list doesn’t contain everything but it’s enough to get you started with vlogging. Remember, the quality matters the most when it comes to making videos.

How To Use Twitter To Promote Affiliate Products

You don’t have to be a genius to realize the amazing opportunity that Twitter provides for businesses and online marketers to promote their offers and gain more exposure. Twitter is a fast growing community, and it’s only going to get bigger. While a lot of people used to underestimate the power of Twitter just a few months ago, you don’t see them doing it now. But a lot of people still use Twitter the wrong way for their business. Not only you can use Twitter to build new relationships, you can use it to come up with new product ideas and even drive leads directly to your affiliate offers. So if you are using Twitter to talk about what you are having for lunch, you are better off not using Twitter at all.

Promoting products on Twitter is not that hard. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to get working on Twitter. You just have to get to the right audience and strike the right balance when it comes to providing value to others and promoting your affiliate offers. Here is how to do it:

• Identify Audience: find out who would be interested in products that you intend to promote. You wouldn’t promote gadgets to people who are looking for weight loss solutions, would you? They may buy those gadgets but your conversion rate would be atrocious.
• Track trends: find out what people are talking about and what affiliate products you can promote to address their needs.
• Right keywords: don’t just focus on the most obvious keywords. Do a bit of research to find those long-tail keywords as well.
• Follow The Right People: you should not only follow the superstars in your niche, but also people who are talking about your niche (product, market,…). And if you provide enough value, these folks may follow you back as well.
• Use hash tags (#): don’t forget to use the right hash tags to let others find out about your discussions. People who use hash tags have a better chance of getting more followers on Twitter. Just make sure you hashes are relevant.
• Your profile: make sure you profile explains what you do and what you are about. I know a lot of affiliates actually promote affiliate URLs as their profile URL. I am not a big fan of this approach, but it does work.
• Your welcome message: when people decide to follow you, you can send them a message welcoming them. You can easily automate it with TweetLater.
• Twitter Search: twitter search lets you find what people are talking about in your niche fast. Search for the right terms, and you’d be surprised how many prospects you can find for your offers.
• Promotion: you can tweet affiliate offers on Twitter but make sure it’s not too blatant. Let people know why they should try your product.

There you have it. There are many other ways to make money on Twitter. It just comes down to your creativity. The sky’s the limit with Twitter as long as you don’t get too greedy.

13 Outsourcing Sources For Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate marketing is more than just finding a great product and driving leads to it. If you have been making money online for a while now, you know that you’ll have to do a lot of little things to keep making money online. That’s why a lot of top affiliate marketers outsource their non-core activities. If you don’t know coding, outsource it. If you don’t know web design, out source it. If you don’t want to deal with the social media (which I recommend you do), you should outsource that as well.

Thankfully, there are many places that you can go to to find highly qualified outsourcing partners. You can find works in Asia, Europe, and even Africa on these sites. If you are looking to get more done in less time, you won’t go wrong with outsourcing.

Here is a list of outsourcing sites for affiliate tasks:

• Rent a Coder: RAC is a great place to find coders, writers, and everything in between. Anything that you want to do is covered here. There are hundreds of categories to choose from, and these guys take care of you. You won’t be robbed on this site.
• oDesk: oDesk is another one of those top outsourcing sites that is designed to gain you access to the global markets. They too provide you with tools to manage your projects more effectively.
• Guru.com: Guru.com is a great site to reach out to startups and smaller companies and get more sophisticated projects done. I have seen highly complicated projects posted there (e.g. Web 2.0 start-ups).
• LimeExchange: LimeExchange another decent site to hire freelancers from around the world.
• Elance: Elance is not only a great place to find work but also those who provide services.
• LivePerson: LivePerson a great place to outsource programming. If you are looking for coders, this is a decent place to look.
• PartnerUp: PartnerUp is a great place to find partners and service providers.
• Affordable Progammers: AP is another great way to reach out to cheap programmers.
• Virtual Employee: Virtual Employee helps you find virtual assistants and all kinds of help.
• Freelancer China: looking for Chinese employees? Freelancer China is the way to go.
• TheFreeLanceNation: TheFreeLanceNation is another place to look for programmers and elancers.
• HireMyMom: HMM is a great place to find professional moms.
• iFreeLance: if you are out of luck so far, you cna give iFreeLance another try.

There are many other places to look for freelancers, but I would stick with these as most top service providers are available on these sites. At the end of the day you want to spend more time doing work and less time window shopping.

Your take: which one is your favorite outsourcing service?

Why Joint Ventures Are No Brainers

I don’t know about, but I was always skeptical when it came to forming joint ventures with other affiliates. There were just too many unknown factors for me to try it out. And to be honest, I underestimated the power of forming JVs with other affiliates. Now if you listen to guys like Frank Kern or John Reese, they do talk about these stuff all the time. But who wouldn’t want to be a JV partner with these guys. But that’s not what you get when you get started in the affiliate marketing.

For me, it was really the matter of trusting the other side. I was always cynical about joining forces with other affiliates as I thought they may steal my idea. I also thought that I may somehow end up getting the bad end of the bargain. The trust issue was a big factor for me, but I was probably too proud for my own good. I always wanted to be the guy to do everything, and I thought I could do as well without JV partners as with them.

The truth is, a lot of folks think of list swapping or affiliate promotions as joint ventures. You may be able to call them that, but the real joint venture is more binding, and you are going to have to collaborate with the other side to get a product out. Real JVs can really open other doors. Once you do one successful joint venture, you are going to find other opportunities fast. The challenge is getting the first JV done, and that requires doing the proper due diligence to find the right partner.

In order to be successful in a joint venture, you need to be able to play as a team. You also need to delegate tasks. In other words, you shouldn’t lock horns over tasks after the project has started. Everybody should know what they bring to the table and what their responsibilities are. Now, you can have a flexible plan, but at the end of the day, you want to get things done fast, and you don’t want to stepping on others toes. These issues are real, and that is why some teams succeed, and some don’t. If you can’t build trust within the team and avoid stepping on others’ toes, you are not going to be successful. You also want to act in a way that will not come back to haunt you if your JV is not as successful as you expected it to be.

In the end, proper planning can solve most issues with JVs. You just need to avoid cutting any corners in finding the right partner, and you are going to have to play a team game. Once you do that, you are half way there. And once you have had your first successful JV, you’d be amazed how many doors will open for you.

My Experience with Facebook Ads & Affiliate Marketing

A few months ago, I jumped on the Facebook Ads bandwagon. I was using Facebook on a regular basis, and I found the targeting features on Facebook Ads platform very attractive. But best of all, the clicks were coming cheap, and  I was getting a whole lot of traffic from Facebook. Sometimes, I even got lucky and my campaigns went viral, but for that you need creativity and some hard work After testing the platform for a few months, I am ready to wash my hands off of it. This isn’t to say that you can’t make money with Facebook Ads. But you may want to know the facts before putting money up with Facebook:

• Clicks: you’ll get clicks. You’ll get a lot of them as long as you pay the minimum or close to the minimum bid suggested by Facebook ads. But those folks are simply not ready to take action. They don’t even know where their credit cards are. Don’t expect to become the next millionaire in the affiliate marketing world with Facebook Ads.
• Targeting: the targeting capabilities of Facebook Ads are interesting but still leave something to be desired. I tried marketing credit cards to entrepreneurs and got a lot of clicks on that, but I wish I could get more specific with my targeting. Result? I made no money from that campaign.
• Quality of Clicks: going back to the first point, the conversion rates are often atrocious if you take the same approach you would on Google Adwords. Facebook crowd is a special bunch, and they don’t fall for the same tricks searchers do.
• Rules: I am all for having guidelines and rules when it comes to advertising online. But Facebook is too strict for me. I couldn’t even get my weight loss campaign to pass their filter. Sometimes you get lucky but in most cases they disapprove your ad as soon as you go near something profitable.
• More Rules: Even after setting my expectations low with Facebook, I still find them to be too strict when it comes to marketing. Acceptable but not for affiliate marketing.
• Platform: the Facebook Ads platform is very easy to use, but there is a lot that can be improved. One would expect Facebook to build more tools to help folks use their platform in a more effective way. Maybe in 2009.

Facebook Ads is a wonderful platform and can get your site exposure, but it’s not right for every campaign. In fact, only a small number of offers can really make money on the platform. Of course, I won’t tell you which ones are making me money, so don’t even ask

How to use Twitter to Generate Leads

Twitter is the talk of town these days. Actually, it has been for some time now. I remember the first time I saw Twitter. I thought to myself, “this is one useless service.” There, I said it. I was wrong, and there is nothing with being wrong. It’s so easy to make judgments based on a first impression. But now seeing folks who are driving thousands of visitors to their sites using Twitter, I realize that perhaps I should have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon sooner. I guess you can say it’s never too late.

But Twitter is not just about talking about what you are cooking right now, or how you are feeling (depressed, happy, …). You can actually have a profitable affiliate business with the help of Twitter. I guess if you have paid attention to the Twitter community, you have seen guys such as Joel Comm trying to encourage their affiliates to promote products on Twitter. What most marketers don’t understand about Twitter is that it’s different from the traditional channels that we are used to working with. Twitter is not Adwords, and it’s definitely not your newsletter. Twitter is an alive community that is very judgmental and always on the look out for real value. So, it’s essential to know your environment before actually jumping in and playing with the sharks.

Twitter is a goldmine but comes with numerous pitfalls. If you go in with a closed mind, trying to do what you have been doing for the past 5 years, you are going to mess up. And when you do, Twitter will be useless to you. Here are a few things that I have personally learned the hard way:

• Be Authentic: being authentic is usually the best way to get your business going on Twitter. There are so many marketers who go on Twitter and start playing around. Trust me, being authentic pays on Twitter.
• Be Yourself: going back to the previous point, be yourself. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Twitter is a big community, and you can’t just slide in a character on Twitter (unless that’s what you do for a living). I know guys like O’reilly or Hannity do their characters well on TV, and they have become their characters over time, but you can’t pull that off on Twitter.
• Be Unique: I have seen so many affiliates who just grab the copy provided by the merchants and post it to Twitter. Sounds funny but it’s true. Some merchants are trying to be “innovative,” so what they have done is they have created these Twitter snippets that you can grab and post to Twitter. But it’s a no no no! You should not post anything that you get from the merchant. Be unique or forget Twitter.
• Be Polite: Twitter is a public place. Sure. You can’t see folks’ faces, and you probably don’t know most of folks who are following you. But you should never act as a troll on Twitter. It’s just not worth it.
• Be Useful: Just posting affiliate links to your Twitter account is going to get you ignored by the community. Try being useful for a change. Post interesting articles. Use services such as Delicious or Digg to find good articles and share them on Twitter. Try to add something to the community.

Twitter has the potential to be a huge commission driver for affiliates. But you need to take an indirect approach with it. It’s not Adwords, it’s not your newsletter, and it’s certainly not a forum you can spam. So just do it right!