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Learn Affiliate Marketing: A Quick Start Guide for Affiliates

If you have little, or no idea about what an affiliate has to do or how they do it, then check out this quick guide to what it's all about. This article covers all the basics to help you understand the concepts of what's going on which will enable you to move forward and find out more.

How Do I Get Started?

This Quick Start Guide will answer many questions for you and point you in right direction for success! Remember - this is just a Quick Start, you'll want to take some time to talk with your merchant and learn about additional Affiliate resources and eBooks designed to help you make the most out of joining Affiliate Programs.

You've signed up for an Affiliate Program, you're ready to make money - but you may be stuck on a few important questions:

• What does all of this Affiliate-lingo mean?
• Getting Started - Where to Place Links
• Do I have to have a website? Where do I get one?
• Adding Banners and Links to your Website
• How do I get people to click on my Affiliate links?
• Using this Training Center

Learning the Lingo

Here are a few definitions that may help you better understand Affiliate Marketing and the information you'll be learning throughout this guide:

• Merchant - A merchant is a person or a company that markets their products and services on the web. Your merchant is the person/company whose program you joined.
• Affiliate - An Affiliate is a person or a company that assists the merchant in marketing products and services in return for a commission. This is you!
• Merchant-Affiliate Relationship - In the Merchant-Affiliate relationship, the Affiliate acts as an independent "salesperson" who promotes the merchants products and services. The merchant tracks the incoming visitors to determine which Affiliate sent them the sale - if any.
• Tracking and Management Solution - In order to track the incoming Affiliate-referred traffic to their sites, merchants need to purchase or create software to Track and Manage their Affiliates and their activities. Since you're here at The Affiliate Training Center, your merchant most likely chose My Affiliate Program Software or a custom program provided by KowaBunga! Technologies.
• Click-through - A click-through is the action that takes place when a visitor clicks on a banner or a link on your site to go to your merchant's site.
• Impression - An impression occurs when a page containing your Affiliate code is loaded on your site or in your HTML email messages. Impressions are also called page views.
• Two-Tier - A two-tier commission structure pays you commission on each sale (or lead or click-through) you refer and a commission on each sale referred by any Affiliates you have referred to the program.

  For example: If Bob comes to your site, clicks on your link, goes to your merchant's site and purchases, you earn a first tier commission.
  
  However, let's say Jane comes to your site, clicks on your link, goes to your merchant's site and signs up for the Affiliate Program. When Harry goes to Jane's site, clicks on the merchant's link, goes to the merchant's site and purchases, Jane earns a first tier commission (because she referred the sale) and you earn a second tier commission (because you referred Jane).
  
  You'll need to check with your merchant directly to see if they offer a two-tier program. You can do so by checking your administration screen and looking for a "Second Tier Commissions" stat or by contacting your merchant.

• Link - A link is a hyperlink (http://www.yourdomain.com) or an image or text that contains a hyperlink. A link is placed on one site and when clicked on leads the visitor to another. In the Affiliate Marketing industry, you, the Affiliate, place links on your site that points to the merchant's site.
• Entry Page - An entry page is the web page that you direct traffic to. Visitors coming from your site will "enter" merchant's site at this page. In most cases this is the "home" or "index" page. However, you may want to link to a specific page on a merchant's site - you can check with them for information on linking directly to a specific page.

Getting Started - Where to Place Links

Your main objective as an Affiliate is to send traffic to your merchant.

Once the visitors get to the merchant's site, the merchant takes over. It's up to you to "pre-sell" the visitor on what they will see, and what you'd like them to do once they get to the merchant's site (like Buy or Sign up).

You'll be sending traffic using your Affiliate-ID encoded links. These links can be placed virtually anywhere you can think of! This includes:

• On your site
• In your email messages
• In your online advertising efforts like ezine ads and newsgroup postings
• In your offline advertising efforts

On your administration page, you should see a banner code, text link and/or a link to your own self-replicated page. These links are encoded with your unique ID number. All you need to do is copy them from your administration page and paste them wherever you'd like to use them.

All banners and images must be placed on a website or in an email message formatted in HTML. Text links, on the other hand, can be placed anywhere online or offline.

Getting Your Own Website

You don't HAVE to have a website to promote your merchant's products and services. But - it is a great tool to have.

You have several options in getting started with your own website. We'll look at a few here:

Free Site
You can get your own website and have it hosted free of charge. The free webhosts usually offer some kind of template to start with.

Though "free" may sound good - there are some drawbacks to free sites. For one, the hosts will limit the amount of pages and page size you host with them.

You may also be limited to the templates they offer and not allowed to create your own look and feel.

In many cases, a free website hosts do not allow you to have your own domain name. So, instead of a URL like http://www.yourdomain.com, you'll end up with a URL like http://www.tripod.com/members/~yourdomain

Plus, you won't have an email address that matches your unique name or desired domain - which is important for branding. For starters, this is okay - but if you want visitors to take you seriously, getting your own domain name is a MUST.

You may already have a free website available to you. Many ISP's offer free websites with the purchase of an email account. Check with your ISP to see if this is something that you have and where to find instructions on using it. If you don't already have a free site, you can find a listing of free web hosts by going to Yahoo.com or Google.com.

Paid WebHosting
Your other option is to pay for your own domain name and pay to have it hosted. Though it doesn't have the "Free" appeal, it does offer you the highest level of control and gives your visitors the impression that you care enough about the products you are promoting to actually pay for a website.

You can either start by finding a webhost or start by picking a domain. Since choosing a domain is kind of fun, try starting there.

You can purchase the rights to the domain name you find - or wait and have your webhost do it for you. I would suggest letting the webhost do it for you but BE SURE that you maintain ownership of the domain name. If you don't, you'll be stuck with a domain name that you've marketed and someone else owns.

Once again, Yahoo.com or Google.com has a huge listing of web hosts that will host your site for you. Many web hosts also offer help (both paid and free) on setting up your website. Check their literature and ask them if they offer templates, webpage creation software, website creation tutorials or other helpful information or tools for new web site owners.

Adding Banners and Links to your Website

If you have a website and you'd like to add banners and links to it, you'll need to do some editing. You have two options in editing: Hire a Pro or Do it Yourself.

Hire a Pro
You can hire a web design company to edit your webpages for you. If you're currently working with a web designer, this may be a viable option for you. However, if you're trying to go-it on your own, hiring a web designer to make a few small changes can be very costly.

Do-It Yourself
Doing it yourself is a great way to learn and to save money. If you already have a website, all you have to do is access it, edit it and upload the changes.

First, gain access to your webpages. You'll do this either by using a program like WSFTP to login to your site - or by using a web-based program that allows you to access and make changes to your pages.

If you're using a program like WSFTP to download your pages onto your hard drive, you can open them in Notepad, or in a web-editor like Dreamweaver, Homesite or FrontPage.

All of these programs will give you two "views". One will show you what the page will look like when you upload it - complete with colors and formatting. If you've heard of the term WYSIWYG (wiss-ee-wig), it comes from this "view" and is an acronym that simply stands for What You See Is What You Get. The other "view" will show you the HTML coding.

Using the WYSIWYG view, find the area where you'd like to add your banner. With most programs, you can paste the code in right there. A little grey box will appear denoting the image. The banner won't show until you view it online.

If you program doesn't allow you to paste the code in the WYSIWYG area, you can try "marking" the spot with something like "zzz". Then, go to the HTML view. Perform a search or find using the commands on the new window to find the "zzz" you inserted. Paste your banner code over the zzz and go back to the WYSIWYG area.

When you are finished, upload the updated page to your site. Test it to be sure that the banner shows and that the link to the merchant's site works.

Getting People to Click on Your Affiliate Links

Like it says above, your main objective is to get people to click on your links to create traffic for your merchant. This takes some clever planning, a persistent attitude and a little luck! Here are some tips to help generate traffic:

Post Several Links to your Merchant
Don't stop at banner advertising! Look to see if your merchant offers additional linking methods like articles, email ads, signature files, rotating images, product images, guest books and so on! The more links you post - the better your chances are of making a sale.

If you simply place a banner on one of your web pages and expect the commission checks to come rolling in - you're going to be disappointed! In order to earn commissions - you have to become an active Affiliate. Place a few banners on your site, an article and a guest book in your resource section, another article and an ad in your newsletter and a testimonial wherever you can fit one!

If your merchant doesn't offer extra linking methods -- tell them you want more. No merchant will argue with an Affiliate that wants more ways to promote their site!

Start Collecting Information from your Visitors
Study after study shows that following up with prospects is the best way to make the sale. As an Affiliate - it can mean the difference in getting a commission or not.

Do your best to get information from your visitors while they are at your site. Offer them a contest entry, a "FREE Report" or other information in exchange for their email address. Then, use their address to follow-up with them with information about your merchant's products and services. Ask your merchant - they may have just the right tools to help you get addresses.

You should also consider starting your own ezine. This will allow you to consistently get in touch with your contacts with any messages you choose. Ezines are easy to start, cheap to run and a GREAT way to get and keep prospects.

Don't Be Afraid to Pay
Being an Affiliate - even a successful Affiliate - doesn't have to cost a ton of money. But, it doesn't hurt to pay for a few targeted placements in ezines, on websites and so on. Figure out your costs for placing the ads and then estimate the amount you think you can make from the ad. Do a few test ads and compute your profits.

Using The Affiliate Training Center

The Affiliate Training Center has a wealth of information about Affiliate Marketing and Internet Marketing in general. You can browse through the site for tons of great information on promoting your site and your Affiliate links.

There are three main sections here: Articles and the FAQ's:

Articles
You'll find articles on every topic from search engine ranking to email marketing to site design. Search for the topic of your choice and read through the articles for great tips and how-to information.

Links and Resources
There's links to websites with information on web designing, affiliate marketing, online marketing in general and search engine marketing. Links to forums, news sites, information sites, directories, etc.

FAQ
The FAQ section is answered by our panel of experts. This is the place to ask questions about marketing your site, placing your links in the right areas and so on.

Though we'd like to be able to answer every question you have here - we unfortunately can't answer questions like "When will I be paid?", "What's my password?", "Do you have sales letters I can use?" and so on. These questions should be directed to your merchant.