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In this short article, you’re about to discover 3 of the most important web design secrets you can use to get the far more affiliate sales out of your current website visitors!

Let’s get started:

1. Create fast loading web pages.

The faster your site loads, the better. Often people have expensive flash sites that look good, but they’re causing a lot of your visitors to leave before they get to know you.

If you do want to use flash, DON’T have it be the page your visitors first see (an exception might be a corporate site or one for the sole purpose of putting on your business card).

A large amount of visitors will NOT be patient and wait for it to load. You’ve got to keep in mind that the web is a place where people can quickly click away.

If they don’t see what they’re looking for, they’ll leave because there are many more sites for them to look at.

You must capture your visitors’ interest quickly. Let them know you have what they’re looking for.

If you have flash because you want to show your music or work, then have it within your site. Pull people in first.

Otherwise you’re going to be throwing away your time and money spent getting people to your sites.

2. Use the power of words to grab your readers’ attention, not just images.

Creating headlines are a powerful way to pull right visitors into your site and let them know you have what they’re looking for.

For great headline ideas, go to the bookstore or Amazon.com and check-out magazines that your visitors might read. What headlines do they use to grab people’s attention and get them to buy?

You can then adapt the headlines to fit what your site has to offer.

Images then compliment the text by helping to convey a story your text tells them.

This is why you’ll notice all of our sites to sell the products are low on images and heavy on sales copy. The images alone don’t sell any of the products, but they do HELP sell it by making the sales copy more effective.

A good way to explain this is if you were hiring somebody to mix your music. If all they had was an image of the mixing engineer hard at work and you knew nothing else about him, is that enough to sell you?

It helps, but the answer is most likely no way! You still have a million questions about the engineer. Who has he worked with before? How much does he cost? Why is he or she worth that amount? Is he or she easy to work with? And the list goes on and on.

Simply put, “The more you tell, the more you sell.” Answer your visitors’ questions and concerns. Don’t be concerned about having too much text, as long as what you’re saying is of actual concern to your visitors.

3. Decide what action(s) you want your visitor to take.

Remember this and repeat it as you design your sites, “The confused mind takes no action!”

This simply means you need to spell-out and make clear exactly what you want your visitor to do.

* Do you want them to check-out a recommended product?

* Do you want them to sign-up for your newsletter?

* Do you want them to buy your product or service?

* Do you want them to read your articles on your website?

If so, make it easy for them to do so… and make it clear exactly what they should do.

Don’t hesitate to directly tell them to sign-up for your newsletter, read your articles, or take a specific action.

You may think it’s obvious. But, a reader that stumbles across your website and does not know you may not.

An example of the power of this advice is if you have a link that says “Click here to see articles” you will usually dramatically increase the amount of people clicking on that link than if it only said, “Articles.”

All you’re doing is spelling out exactly what your visitor should do.

When designing your sites, think through where your visitors are coming from (search engines, articles, press releases, etc..) and then give them what they’re looking for.

The bottom line is this… keep your site straight forward and simple (the less options, the better) and have it focus on the visitor. Give him or her exactly what he or she is looking for.

As a result, you skyrocket the amount site visitors, affiliate commissions, or customers for your primary venture!

Ty Cohen, owner of Platinum Millennium publishing, former record label owner & national music industry seminar speaker/panelist. Author & creator of best-selling music biz books, courses, audio products & “How to” resources that helped 1000s. Go to http://www.PlatinumMillennium.com/affiliates.html.

Between 1924 and 1967, nightclubs dominated the American landscape. It was possible back then to walk out of one club and have ten more in one block staring you in the face. Each one claiming to have the best entertainment, best food and drink or best anything else a patron desired. Today that analogy perfectly fits affiliate marketing online.

Many affiliate programs will have you believing the hype. All you have to do is put a link back to their main web page and presto instant bling flows into your bank account. NOT!

Now to be fair this does apply to some affiliates but in the case of the overwhelming majority of affiliate marketers it is a totally different story but it does not have to be so one sided.

According to a recent study of online users

–100% use email
–88% use text messaging and SMS
–71% use message boards and forums
–63% use blogs
–36% use podcasting
–28% subscribe to RSS feeds

This is why it is important to build your own list (and website). Even with spam complaints and new spam filters coming out almost daily, all of us still communicate by email. For you and your affiliate marketing business this is a chance to break away from the group of Ninety Five. That is the percentage of affiliate marketers who make little or no money with their programs.

Your potential customers do not know you. Therefore it is important that you establish your integrity. Offer quality, whether it is in the form of a gift, or more importantly your own content rich website. Also make it easy for them to contact you. There are few things worse than a customer trying to contact you, only to find out they are now trapped in a Kafka novel.

When you are putting together your email, focus on wetting the appetite of the customer. How? Give them a snippet of your product. A short summary (include a photo of the product if possible) or just add the first few sentences of your sales copy. The point is to provide just enough of a teaser to get your customer to click the link over to the complete offer. The added benefit of this is your customer is now at your website where they can also check out any other offers and information you provide.

Many affiliate marketers use the exact same main affiliate sign up page in an attempt to get customers. Notice I said attempt. Promoting the same webpage as everyone else is like gambling on the roulette wheel in Vegas. You might have a system but it really comes down to pure luck. Having your own website puts some of those odds in your favor. This is where you can stretch out a little bit since you are not confined to the exact copy of the main affiliate page. Not only can you show additional information related or semi related to your product, it also gives you a chance to really introduce yourself to your potential customers. Dare to be original.

Think you can generate big time sales? Contact the affiliate company and see if you can negotiate an arrangement more to your liking. If they are paying on average 30 percent commission, see if you can get 50 percent. Now understand that in all likelihood, you are going to have to show them the money first. That means you are going to have to produce before they decide to negotiate a new agreement with you. Would be affiliates brag to these companies on a regular basis that they can make it rain customers and sales. As you can imagine most do not. If you want to go this route (and truthfully if you can produce there is no reason why you should not) be prepared to go the extra mile. Study different affiliate marketing techniques and apply them. Once you prove yourself, the company will definitely give you a second look.

Now do not expect overnight success. If you do and it does not come to pass, then it can really take the wind out of your momentum, to the point you might want to quit one month after you put up the link. Most advertising will not give you instant results. Just do some tracking to find out what is working and what is not. Do not hesitate to contact your affiliate company when you need help. It is a major plus if they have a forum you can go to and ask questions. Many affiliates have been there and done that so they can be very valuable in giving you feedback and suggestions.

It all comes down to hanging in there. You are going to encounter many disappointments. That is all part of the game. If customers bought from an affiliate the first time around, we would all be gazillionaires before the final round of American Idol was broadcast. Affiliate marketing is a challenge. Face up to it and always expect success.

Daryl Campbell is an online business owner. So what do you do if you get lost in the jungle of internet marketing? Get yourself an Internet Marketing Guide. Free tips, tools,coaching, video and up to the minute information to help you get out of the jungle. Get started now at http://winthemarket.com

From a website owner’s point of view, affiliate marketing programs can add to your income as well as improve your credibility among your visitors. Signing up for affiliate programs should involve as much thought as the types of information you offer on your site, whether you sell products or services or simply have a blog site.

If you have a personal blog concerning dogs or cats and you place affiliate links for a pet products company on your blog, you are more likely to earn sales commissions than of your blog site promotes vitamin sales and you are linking to pet companies.

The products offered by affiliate companies should be related to the primary focus of your site.

With the number of affiliate marketing programs available, there is no doubt you can find an appropriate site with which to be affiliated. You will want to know ahead of time the commission structure and when payments can be expected. This eliminates future frustrations and disappointments.

Most companies will also keep you informed of any program changes, which would include changes to commission structure or other payment details that may affect your continued affiliation with them.

When you are working with companies as an affiliate, simply placing their link on your page does not end your involvement. Many offer seasonal merchandise or services and keeping your links up to date can make your website more credible to your visitors. The web is a dynamic marketplace and people notice if your site is static, or worse, out of date. If someone visits your site in March or April and you are still promoting free Christmas delivery, many will believe your site is no long active and may ignore your other links.

Many times companies will have sales offering coupons you can place on your site as links, but you need to constantly monitor the coupons for going out of date or for offering products or services that maybe you do not want to promote on your site. For example, if the focus of your site is for children’s education, you may not want to promote an adult-oriented site or a gambling site. This can happen when some of the smaller sites lose their domain name and another company picks it up and promotes products other than what you were used to seeing.

It has happened where a company will go out of business and their name is bought by a gambling or a dating site and all links to that name now are pointed at the new site. If you are not keeping track of your affiliated sites you could unknowingly be promoting a site that goes against your primary business focus.

If you are going through an affiliate marketing corporation that manages the programs for many companies and one goes out of business, the links on your page will typically disappear. However, if you are affiliated with a company and their own program that goes out of business, the link may remain but will give your visitors an error message. Another indication that your site may be out of date.

Jennifer Lavoie is a home-based business coach. Using Robert Kiyosaki’s teaching, she helping others to build passive income businesses and retire early and free. http://www.retirefree.ws

There are several companies in the Internet marketplace that are capturing a piece of the affiliate pie by bringing affiliate marketers together with companies offering commissions for sales. Their role is to manage the affiliate programs for the companies while ensuring the sites offering referral links are paid commissions in a timely manner.

While a few companies manage their own affiliate-marketing program, the use of affiliate marketing corporations is growing with the trend becoming more popular, freeing company resources to concentrate on customer service. It also allows the companies to use the information from referred visitors for lead generation.

The landing page for most companies contains requirements to register to use the site. Minimum, information is requested (as opposed to mandated), enabling companies to gather visitor information. This works well for companies offering items or services, which are not considered renewable. For example, shoppers for music, food items and other disposable items will be shopping for them frequently, while those seeking mortgage information or for re-mortgaging their homes will generally do so only once or twice in their lifetime.

By using affiliate marketing, these companies have thousands of other websites sending visitors their way instead of relying on expensive advertising and marketing, possibly limiting their exposure to potential customers specifically searching for that specific type of information. It can tap into additional markets where they may have been missing the boat.

Affiliate marketing corporations can also help review websites applying to be affiliates, reducing the possibility of a website offering services that is not in the company’s best interests from displaying their ads. For instance, a website that sells religious materials may not want to be affiliated with websites for gambling or adult oriented materials. Of course, this goes both ways, as a church may not want to place ads for gambling on their site.

Generally, a company signed with an affiliate marketing corporation will supply a variety of link styles, including text links, graphics links, banners, and even search box links for affiliates to choose from. These links rest on the corporation’s website and are gleaned by the affiliate for the best fit for their sites. The corporation will then track the activity for the link including the number of impressions, the number of clicks as well as the amount of purchases and commissions due the affiliate site.

Affiliate marketing corporations however, do not work for free. They often receive a cut of the sale in addition to the affiliates. While this adds to the cost of making a sale, the companies realize that without the additional exposure the sales probably would not happen, and they get the additional benefit of customer information for potential future sales.

Jennifer Lavoie is a home-based business coach. Using Robert Kiyosaki’s teaching, she helping others to build passive income businesses and retire early and free. http://www.retirefree.ws

In February, Carsten Cumbrowski of Internet Marketing and Web Development Resources Portal wrote the following in The ReveNews, “It is good to report about success stories in affiliate marketing. It shows not only the possibilities and potential, but also encourages newbie’s to the industry to work hard and become successful as well. I am personally not a fan of Idols, but I recognize the power and usefulness of poster child’s and heroes.”

Indeed affiliate marketing is one of the most effective ways of making a full time income online. But as affiliate marketing grows the competition increases. You must keep up on the latest trends and be flexible enough to adapt to the ever changing ways of getting visitors to take a chance on your offer.

The problem is rough ninety five percent of all affiliate marketers do not make any money. Why? Because affiliate marketing is more than sending visitors to your main affiliate sign up page. It requires a lot of work to promote your services and/or products.

Failing to make money as an affiliate usually starts with poor planning. Planning a business, any business means researching. Many affiliate marketers do not learn enough about their target market or for that matter the product they are selling. Be very careful in choosing an affiliate program, likewise on picking a merchant. Find one with a reputation for integrity and paying on time.

The products and services should be something you want to promote. To get a sense if there is a hot market (including small niche markets with potential), type some keywords into your browse and explore the search engines. Use blogs, forums, rss feeds and social bookmarking to find the sites related to your product.

Get your own website or blog. I cannot stress this enough. I have seen many affiliate marketers use the main affiliate sign up page of a product or service in different traffic exchanges. That is leaving it toooooo much to chance. If thirty pages are exactly alike (and I have seen more in different exchanges) than why necessarily would a visitor pick yours?

Send visitors to the main affiliate page ONLY AFTER they have been to your site first. Include a sign up form so people can opt in to your email list. Your website is a very important tool in the whole affiliate program. Plan your site from the domain name to the content; especially the content. Affiliate marketers with content rich web sites are usually the ones who make the big money. Good content along with the right keywords increases your website traffic.

Before you decide on the domain name, do some keyword research. Many affiliate marketers fail because when they do get a domain, they choose a name not relevant to the market or product they are offering. Even when they provide the customer exactly what they are looking for, the chances are their website will not be found. If content is king on the internet than keywords are queen. Choosing the right keywords are the difference between success and obscurity.

I mentioned earlier being flexible enough to adapt. That means a willingness to constantly educate yourself and put into action any new internet marketing strategies. Many affiliate marketers do not grow their business because they are too busy focusing on the quick buck. Avoid that and go for long term success. Whether it is refreshing your understanding on the basics of affiliate marketing or figuring out how to use web 2.0., building a business takes time, so be ready to learn the ins and outs on a regular basis.

You probably will not become a super affiliate overnight but do not give up. It sounds simple but impatience has made quitters of many an affiliate marketer. They sign up to a program put up a link and expect instant bling-bling. And then reality kicks in. End of affiliate. Be patient, keep working your plan and pretty soon you will be one of those affiliate marketing success stories.

Daryl Campbell is an online business owner and affiliate marketer. Get more free tips as well as video updates and coaching, tools and up to the minute internet marketing information at http://winthemarket.com

While work at home moms are often the favorite target for Internet scammers, website owners are a close second.

You own a website and are possibly paying a bit of money to keep the site running. Do you not wish you could make some money with the website you work so hard to maintain?

Imagine how wonderful it would be if you could you’re your hobby into a real business that would not only pay for itself, but even offer you a few extras that could be put to good use for the kids, or your family.

To a webmaster, affiliate marketing is almost always the answer to this dilemma.

In and of itself, affiliate marketing is a wonderful opportunity share in the profits of a reputable company by displaying their links and banners, and allowing interested parties to visit those sites and perhaps purchase a product. When they do so, the company will often offer you a small percentage of the sale as a finder’s fee.

But, there is a seedy underbelly to the affiliate marketing industry that will actually jeopardize your good name as a webmaster and will also result in payouts that are pennies on the dollar.

For example, have you ever been surfing the web only to suddenly stumble across a website that touts an amazing nutritional supplement that does it all?

Weight loss for the overweight, hair growth for the bald, an increased sexual stamina for those lacking it and a host of other items are cured or corrected with a pill after breakfast, lunch and dinner. These miracle cures are touted on the website via a long list of testimonials, and you can almost always recognize the feel of these sites simply by the long list of text they sport, the varying fonts employed, and also the different colors these words are written in.

You may simply shrug your shoulders at such a site until, about halfway down, you see a copy of a commission check the webmaster has posted and suddenly he or she has your undivided attention. The check is small enough to be realistic yet big enough to have you consider what you could to with the money and how it could ease the tension at home from lack of disposable income.

When you are hooked, the spiel usually involves a site owner who is so successful that he or she has decided to take on two or three qualified novices and train them to do the business as well. This involves selling the miracle product to your friends and neighbors and then just sitting back and waiting for the money to roll in. Additionally, you will need to post banners on your website. What has just happened, in a nutshell, is an affiliate scam that ties your success directly into a multi-level marketing scheme.

While your links will attract more interested parties to the originator’s website, you might end up meanwhile alienating your friends and families.

Let’s be clear: This is not what affiliate marketing is all about, and it is important that you understand the implications of your putting links or banners of any business on your website before you get started.

There are some very good affiliate programs out there. By doing your homework and picking good solid companies, you can see some positive revenues and good results coming your way.

Jennifer Lavoie is a home-based business coach. Using Robert Kiyosaki’s teaching, she helping others to build passive income businesses and retire early and free. http://www.retirefree.ws

Having a successful affiliate marketing program for your company requires more than offering up your site as a link destination. It requires constant updating of your links, listening to those sites affiliated with your company and being open to feedback from other sites on how to improve the appearance and functionality of your links. Depending on the type of product or service you provide, you can choose the types of sites to allow to link to you.

You can also control the types of links that you allow, which can be important to protecting your branded appearance. By developing your own graphic links, you can control the color being used and the graphic based text that appears on other sites. While you may control the color and content of provided links, many websites will want some control over the sizes you make available.

Whether it is a small 88×30 button, a text link or a half page banner, the affiliate should be able to place your link on their page so that it fits into their marketing efforts. They are helping you as well by placing your ad on their site and being able to maintain their own branding and appearance is important to them as well. If they are unable to find a banner ad or text ad that fits into their page view, they will most likely not place the ad.

An affiliate marketing works to the benefit of both parties as the company receives additional exposure and sales while the affiliating site receives commissions on sales or referrals, however it is agreed. Affiliates also rely on the companies with which they offer their promotion to provide the customer service their visitors expect along with a secure shopping experience.

Companies that cannot provide this will eventually be dropped by their affiliates and also have the potential to being dropped by any third party affiliate marketing provider. Failure to pay earned commissions to your affiliates is another way to sully your reputation and affiliates do communicate through forums and online discussions. Once you have earned a reputation among affiliate sites of not paying for the referrals, it will take a long time to recover.

While many may not believe it is a big deal, most understand the importance that affiliate marketing plays in their future. Some of the larger sites on the internet use affiliate marketing and credit affiliates with up to 40 or even 50 percent of theirsales. Additionally, having quality websites linking to your website can have a positive impact on your ranking on search engines. This is especially true if the affiliate site offers quality text information in line with the type of information available on your site.

Obinna Heche:

Delivering the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home successfully..

http://www.homeincomeportal.com/obhmy365/