Understanding Affiliate Programs: The Basics

Years ago before the internet was born, starting your own business was like taking a leap into the unknown. It involved MONEY, TIME, and lots of worry. If you were one of the lucky ones your business was a success, but many were doomed to failure.

Now the Internet has evolved, and though many businesses fail possibly through lack of understanding! no one loses a fortune.

When someone begins the search for a business on which to make money, it is almost always an affiliate program that catches their eye, probably because most of them say Free To Join.
Yes they are free to join, but if you are looking to work and make money it is almost certain that you will have to upgrade and pay a monthly fee.

Understanding the program. Any good affiliate programs will have a learning process and you will be told to read and read again until you understand what is required of you. You should also have a mentor, that is someone that is there to help you. He or she will reply to you by email or by messenger, they will help you through any problems to the best of their ability as your success means success for them.

The main task of most affiliate programs is to refer others who will sign up and create your down line. Only those that upgrade will be of use to you. Once you begin to receive commission your monthly payment should be taken out automatically thus leaving you free to build up on your commissions.

How to refer others to your program ! This is where many affiliates fail, the ability to refer is not always easy. If you can build your own website and work to get it on the searches it is a great help as this is almost free advertising. Another way is to traverse other websites and place your ads for the program on them.

There are many free ad sites which you will find by placing Free Ad Sites in the search box. Always use a different email box for this project as you are sure to get lots of spam emails back, you do not want to fill your usual inbox with spam.

Another way to refer is by using PPC, (pay per click) this can work out expensive but it does work, you will need a certain amount of paid sign ups to cover costs. Google is the most expensive but you can find many cheaper search engines out there, Overture is good and less expensive.

Once you start getting paid signups you yourself will have to learn to be a mentor as they are almost certain to require help of some kind. Do your home work and read up on your program in between your other jobs, it is surprising how quickly you learn and find yourself able to answer their questions confidently.

You should now be on the road to earning an adequate income, you must give your self at least 12 months before expecting high earnings, it is a slow road but a steady one, usually with residual income that does come in very handy in your retirement.

Author Sylvia White
Owner of http://www.sylviawh.co.uk

http://www.u-want-money.com

http://www.geocities.com/sylviaworkathome

Make Money Online Opportunity Websites.

Where Do I Make My Money Online

I am asked all the time: Where do you make your money with internet marketing? My business is still young and growing but I’ve discovered several sources of income that work well. Most people are familiar with Adsense and Chitika eminimalls, and both advertising services are quite profitable.

My affiliate income is the most profitable part of my business, and it’s broken into two components: Information products (eBooks, lessons, Clickbank), and hard good sales. I am an affiliate for a number of companies including Amazon, Best Buys, Ace Hardware, and several more. My volume with the hard goods is considerably higher than with Clickbank, but since my commission rate is low (3% - 5%) my earning per sale are low. To be successful I’ve broken each one of these affiliate program into small product groups, and developed specialized sites to promote and sell just these groups. I have one site that sells just DVD’s and CD’s from Amazon, and another that sells hardware from ACE and so on. I like this business because it seems more legitimate to me, and I come from a hard goods background.

Information products such as those offered by Clickbank are not as easy to sell, but they can be extremely profitable due to the high commission rates. In many cases I am making a 50% to 75% commission. A few sales a day can add up to a nice little income stream.

Now take all these income streams and add them together. For me 25 sites making $15 a day adds up to a nice income. But who has the time to set up so many sites? I know people that have way more sites than I do and it is possible to create and maintain a number of sites if you do it properly. I am using Wordpress Blogs to market many products because they are easy to set up, and easier to maintain. I just post a new item everyday at each blog and I use RSS feeds and Technorati tags to let people know I’m posting new stuff. When someone comes to the blog from one of these sources I have an opportunity to redirect them to the main store. My products are held in this store, so it’s just a matter to setting up multiple storefronts on one site and directing people to the appropriate storefront from the blog for more information.

For selling information products I do the same thing, but CBMall is my storefront. CBMall makes it easy to manage over 10,000 information products.

Work smart, be diversified and maintain. A little bit every day from a multitude of sources adds up to a nice little internet business.

Bill McRea is the publisher of Free Marketing Information Free marking information from a successful marketer that has created a wide range of legitimate and profitable businesses on the interent.

The Saga of an Affiliate That Did Not Work

The saga of an affiliate program that did not work

I came across the idea to *own* a casino in March. I looked at the
various offers, carefully researched, checked for bad references and
finally made a selection.

Readymade casinos, linked to windows casino looked to be the best
option. It was the right type of casino,good games, fast download
and it would not cripple the payment, even in weak South African Rand,
converting to US Dollar.

I made the payment with baited breath after selecting the relevant
name and skin, looking forward to some financial return,
although being realistic enough not to expect to become *rich* overnight.

Little did I realize what horror and frustration was waiting ahead…

My first email received thanked me for joining them. So far so good.
I checked that the various lists worked, and asked some friends
to download the game, in order to see if the *real time* stats worked.

These friends had never heard of Windows casino, Never gambled
on line, so no cookie could prevent them downloading via *my*
casino, to be assigned to someone else.

Or so I thought. After all, every email told me not to *hesitate*
asking if they could be of assistance.

The stats did not change. I sent off an email to Anna and asked
about this as assured that my number would work if people played
for real money. I was told to uninstall any version of Windows casino
I had, reboot, refresh, download and check again.
The stats did not change as they should.

On the 9th of August,I mailed my helpful person who prepared *my*
casino, and told him that I wanted to run a competition, to
spice up the local interest in the new site. He told me to speak to Anna.

She was very nice when she replied one week later and even suggested
that she would keep a list of anyone who enrolled via my site,
so that the draw could benefit real players.

I was mailing, writing, marketing the site in real life and on the
Internet, using all the books I got via the purchase and buying
various others.

The stats did not change as they should.

I mailed Readymade and Windows casinos on the 17th of August and voiced
my concern about the sites. I received an email back, saying all is well
and not to worry.

The stats did not change.

I mailed again on the 19th of August, apologizing to being a pest. The stats
were not reflecting any change. Again I was assured everything was was tested.
Windows massive casino would not harm me.

The competition started on the 22 nd of August and I mailed Anna to ask
her opinion. She liked the idea.

Writing more articles, marketing the site via email and the Internet,
I decided to try and trust to some extent. I asked a very brilliant
web designer ( he wins international awards for his work),
to set up a mirror site for me in order to see what traffic
we drove to Windows casino on a daily basis, as I didn’t
want to trouble Anna daily.

The stats on my page did not change, even though it showed hundreds
of people clicking the site, answering the competition question.
We could trace them to the point of clicking *download*.

The Windows casino stats did not change.

I decided to wait until the 15th of September before checking the stats
again. After all, twice before I was assured everything was fine.

The stats had not changed at all. I spoke to my web master who mirrored
the traffic up to the point of customers clicking to download the Windows
casino game. He said it was IMPOSSIBLE. I mailed Anna.

Hi Anna

I have waited until after the 15 th of September before I checked your
records for any people downloading the casino software via my affiliate page.

As you know we running a competition and with my web master’s skill
I can actually keep track of exactly how many people , that is UNIQUE
links or people I sent to the door of where they download the
software from your page.

At first I questioned the counting of correct clicks.
Now I am very concerned.

I am going to quote you figures and then I would like you to go the
the page where I check my records at your casino and see that something
very serious is wrong.

*297 distinct links to the download page up to date.
and distinct could be more than 1 person on the same IP
*according to our script that records every click to the download -
*we sent you 1389 who was on the site.*

You honestly want to tell me only 9 of those people , of which 8 are friends
of mine downloaded the games not one single person played even for ten dollars?

I find that impossible to believe.

I would appreciate if you can get back to me on this at your earliest
convenience, or call me

I also know for a fact of at least ONE person who played at the live poker
room for real money ( that is Party poker)
Thanking you in advance.

I mailed Readymade casinos too.

Dear Mark

I need your help here please

Please read the letter below and see how you can help me. I am after all
linked to windows casino because I purchased a ready made casino from you.

The figures just does not add up ;/

Regards

Readymade replied:

I would ignore the click though stats. The click through
stats is a general issue for the new affiliates of
Windows who promote through a long unique link not for
Ready Made Casino owners. The players that visit a
Ready Made Casino web site do not need to
click through, they can download and play directly from
the web site.

Since your affiliates are using the smart download
links on your web site and bypassing the main Windows
website the “number of click through s” are irrelevant
and would normally show ‘0′. Click throughs also do not
reflect clicks to your web site.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Things WOULD be alright.

The stats did not change.

I mailed Readymade again.. ( Windows casino didn’t respond to my e-mail)

I am still not happy about this. I don’t get replies from windows casino,
I know Anna is very busy. Are you telling me that if someone searched the
web, have a cookie on their computer, and didn’t delete it, and then after
that click on to windows casino link VIA my website, that it will not
show and therefore I wont be given the affiliate benefit?

I didn’t get a reply about this..

And.. the stats did not reflect the traffic sent to Windows

casino via *my* casino.

Anna responded on the 22 nd of September. She apologized for taking so long.

I was told that my web master had made a mistake. All of a sudden the
cookie was not reflected in the mirror site. This should not have
mattered because most traffic came through the original site. He mailed,
I mailed. They responded. All the time : Not our fault.
I did not believe this. I asked him to check and he did.
The problem was not in his coding.

In all cases the redirect (TrackDownload.dll?) on THEIR server
does not include ANY affiliate ID.

My script passes the URL redirect through to the clients browser UNALTERED.
This is industry standard http 1.0 protocol!

This will not even affect a cookie or referer based tracking system as
the clients browser does all the talking.

I will change it back to the “official” link however I don’t see
this solving the problem. Even before the script was put in place
it was not counting downloads.

The windows stats did not change.

I was feeling panic. I had worked for 20 hours , for almost a month.
Was all of this in vain?

Again and again I asked for telephone details. I felt that a conference
call could resolve the problem. I was told that Anna does not take or
do telepohne calls by the support of Windows casino on 22 September..

Readymade casinos also wouldnt supply a telephone number, even though I
asked for one, and supplied my own number. I WAS PREPARED to pay for the call!

On the 22 nd of September.. one month and fourteen days after
I voiced concern about this problem ( and please take into consideration that the mirror site didn’t
EXIST at this time) my problem was forwarded to technical support.

The stats had changed slightly.

Again Readymade casinos and Anna blamed the mirror site.

I agreed to have the original site loaded again. We checked it.
My web master sent me a screen shot showing that whilst it LOOKS as if the cookie goes through,
it actually is blank. They didn’t seem to understand the makings of this.
I mailed it to Mark and Anna.. and again I was assured that the stats would be correct.

And then, I asked my boyfriend to log on via the site DESIGNED
by Readymade casinos,for me, and INSTALL the program.
And.. he signed up as a REAL player…

I mailed Anna his details, asking for PROOF, that this sign up was
assigned to me as STILL THE STATS did not change!

She couldn’t.

This is what I got.26th September:

“It’s not recommended to ask anyone to play for real money until you
are 100% sure that the stats work. If a cookie was set previously on
your player’s computer you may not be referred.”

They finally understood what I was ON about! All my work, frustration
because I could not deal with Windows casino OR Readymade, except
via email or icq if you lucky. down the drain. The competition was running.

No one showed as signing on for a real account through my affiliate.
Not even my boyfriend.

On the 28th of September RTG came back and acknowledged that
this account was not assigned to me.

Readymade casino now saidit was a windows problem. I realized with shock
and horror that I was not going to win this one. And.. I couldn’t even
phone anyone about it.

I decided to use my mirror site and use another casino to try and
regain some of my losses. I mailed some of the OPT in addresses
I had via a PHP server which my web master set up for me and mailed out an
invite to look at the new site.

At all times did I keep a close check that not ONE email was
mailed more than once. The invite was short, ten lines, with a
place to subscribe and unsubscribe according to e-mail Spam rules.

I commented about a strange intruder on my computer. The address was
triton.ws2900.net. I had a Trojan on my pc according to my firewall.
I went for a total REINSTALL of windows. It blocked this address since then.

I received no further email regarding the *cookie* problem from
Anna until the 30th. She offered me a new affiliate number and
I passed it on to Readymade casinos. They changed the cookie.
My mirror site was not linked to the original site since the 26 of September.

Yet..The stats remained zero after the slight change on the 26th.

I have to deliver a prize to some that had never made me any money
from all my effort.

Some person complained that I *spammed* them. I didn’t. NO email
was sent to me either from the server or via Readymade
casinos about this complaint.

My account was suspended. No reason. Just Suspended.
I didn’t even know on which server it was hosted until I called
the company I paid at initially.

Once again, my web master was blamed. Emails passed to and fro between
Readymade and the web master.. yes I do have the copies…

And in the end, all I got for a month of hard work, was a refund of a
few dollar for the remaining months, ( November, Dec and January) Even though we were
just barely in October.

I got an email from Anna, to say she is sorry, why was windows no
longer the download available on the website.Read the story Anna,
THAT is why your casino does not feature on my affiliate list anymore.
THAT is why both sites now refer customers somewhere else.

Even when you did not reply to this email..and the stats never changed.