Affiliate Marketing

For eight years I tried everything under the sun to make money online, with no success.

I finally began making money online after I came across an overly hyped guide. At the time I wasn't sure if the information in the guide was a scam or not. But since I had tried tons of other supposed internet marketing programs I figured one more couldn't hurt.

In less than two weeks I finally started earning affiliate commissions. Was a big surprise. I only wish I had found that information back in the 80's. I'd be super rich today. Anyhow, that was how I began to making money from affiliate marketing.

Not As Easy As People Claim

It takes money or serious amounts of creativity (and sometimes both) to promote affiliate programs.

Social networks, Squidoo, and video sites are great places to promote for 'free' -- when there's no competition and if you can get there first or stand out the best. Others will eventually try to knock you out of popularity by flooding the networks with their own real or fabricated 'experiences' though.

HOW TO NEUTER COMPETITION

When there's lots of affiliate competition in free areas it's usually best to promote on your own sites. That way no one can directly compete against you in the same space.

If possible use a blog. There's less hassle setting up and monetizing a blog than it takes to setup and manage a bunch of separate web pages.

With a blog you just type in your comments, click to save, and instantly you have a website with great content and a great appearance online.

If you need help with this see my video on how to setup blogs at niche blogging extreme.

What do you put in your blog? A product review. Writing reviews online WILL give you affiliate commissions.

Plus, Google LOVES product reviews posted on blogs more so than in static web pages. (I've seen this firsthand).

To learn more about writing product reviews to promote affiliate products I recommend you grab a copy of this report: writing product reviews

...then write a few product reviews yourself. I'm convinced this will help you earn your first affiliate commission too.

THE WHOLE TRUTH

After I learned how to make money with affiliate marketing by writing reviews I "cheated" a bit...

I used a software program I had a programmer create called, Clickbank Commander. The software was able to create over 30,000 computer generated "reviews" instantly.

Basically the software filled in the blanks of a standard 'review' template for thousands of products automatically. And I eventually added some RSS feeds and other elements to try to make each page seem somewhat unique, to avoid getting penalized by Google for duplicate content.

Currently this is method within the scope of the terms of services agreement of most affiliate marketing programs. A few programs might close your account for doing this though. So don't create computer generated reviews unless you don't mind the risk or unless you have multiple accounts and are willing to test doing the same on a 'throw away' account. I no longer create computer-generated reviews. I guess for me, it's more of a matter of been-there-done-that. I tested it. It works. Now to move to something else. Oh. In case you're wondering if this really works or not, there's a dude who's made over $100,000 online in a single month. This is exactly what he is doing right now. It works.

But to each his own...

Anyhow, my computer generated reviews DID get indexed by Google. But they did NOT rank high in search engine results. But the combined results of having over 30,000 affiliate product reviews out there generated some cool commissions I never did any real work to get. Was like getting free money in the mail every two weeks.

Well, I figured I'd better come clean about that so you have a complete picture of what I did to make money with affiliate programs. And so no one can later claim I was holding back some 'secret' details.

What should you do?

If you have no money at all:

If you don't have money to register a domain name and to host the domain, write quality reviews here on Squidoo, on free blog sites, etc. And follow the steps in this guide to writing reviews.

You will get passive income from the search engines and from folks searching for the topic or product you are writing about. Honestly though, writing reviews on free sites will NOT work well if you are dealing with internet marketing products or other high interest niches.

Unfortunately experienced internet marketers 'steal' commissions of products they buy. They remove affiliate links and replace those links with their own. That way they earn a commission off their own purchases instead of you :-(

I once dropped the price of one of my own products all the way down to $3 just to make a special offer to folks on a particular site. The product sold for way more to everyone else. Well, some slime bag on that forum took my $3 link and inserted his affiliate id and got the product for 70% commission paid to himself.

Come on. What kind of a loser rips you off on a three dollar sale?!!!

I was pissed. Though there was no real loss to me (other than my damaged pride when he emailed me bragging he did it 'for my own good'), I just couldn't believe anyone would be that cheap.

Lesson is, there are crooks out there who will rob you for no reason other than that they are crooks. The amount doesn't matter. So conceal your affiliate links or better yet, stick with product niches where the average buyer knows nothing about affiliate marketing. That's pretty much all other categories of products being sold or promoted online.

Less than 1% of internet surfers are involved in some form of internet marketing. So you are pretty safe using this review strategy with non-internet marketing niches.

You might still get ripped off here and there by some scum bag and never know about it. But not to the same high degree as if you were promoting internet marketing programs.

If you have a little money:

a) setup your own websites and domains and post product reviews to the sites.

b) beg, trade, or buy HIGH QUALITY resell rights products. Then write reviews for those products instead of affiliate products. That way you keep 100% of the commissions. Don't bother trying to write a sales letter of your own for those products. Stick to reviews.

Online sales letters seldom get the same free attention from search engines that product reviews get. Also, independent product reviews usually convert into sales better than sales pitches.

Think about it. What do people go online for? To get hammered at with sales messages or to get information? For the most part people are looking for free information. Give it to them in the form of product reviews.

How to keep 70% of all sales

Oh. If you're still looking for your first affiliate product to promote and don't want to risk buying reseller stuffs, check out my new SEO software

The affiliate program pays out 70% commission for each sale. Basically it's free money to you.

Anyhow, the affiliate signup link is below.

Ok. That's pretty much everything I wanted to say about promoting affiliate products online.

I hope something in here proves profitable to you.

Yours in success,

Andre Bell

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Resources

How To Write Reviews

Hosting: I highly recommend hostgator if you plan to host your own websites. Hostgator currently allows an unlimited number of domains on each account. That is really smart option if you are on a budget and plan to do your own promotions. It can be a bad idea if you plan to primarily do SEO to drive traffic to your site though.

Answering why that is is beyond the scope of this report. Just keep in mind when Google sees 'clusters' of sites grouped together, you lose a little credibility.

Long term, you are better off using several different hosts for your sites. Otherwise every site you build gets grouped together in Google's eyes. Good or bad.

To get started though, this isn't much of an issue. I doubt you plan to build lots of sites right away. But as time continues though, you might be better off to switch to your own dedicated servers.

Ok, all that was technical gobbly-gook. I had to mention it though because you will hear conflicting stories as you continue growing. Well, I said my piece on the subject, so no one can ever say I didn't speak up beforehand.

Really, what you choose to do later down the line for hosting is your choice. It's all on you.

MY Affiliate Programs:

SEO Client Prospecting Robot. Software for SEO pros.

SEO Client Prospecting Robot - affiliate signup page

Niche Blogging Training Video

Niche Blogging affiliate signup page

I sold an exclusive license to resell ClickBank Commander to a UK company. No clue what they are now doing with it. The site I originally hosted the software on is no longer online. Here's something comparable if automated product reviews is the route you want to experiment with: create automated product reviews