Affiliate Marketing : Highly Efficient And Profitable

Affiliate Marketing can be traced to the simple concept of revenue sharing, which has existed long before the internet even existed. However, in it's form today, Affiliate Marketing began just about four years after the internet was born, when CDNOW launched their “BuyWeb” program. This was basically a way of doing click-through purchasing at independent storefronts. It was a very successful model and business venture, launching e-commerce into the business mainstream. In fact, e-commerce companies like Amazon.com owe their success to Affiliate Marketing, and many businesses today include it in their business plans.

Basically, there are three types of systems used in Affiliate Marketing. The first is the classic CPC system (cost-per-click) which, due to click fraud, spamming and other unethical techniques, has become the less favorable model. CPC is when the affiliate is paid for every visit to the merchant's website that has come through the affiliate's website or efforts. It mostly takes the form of banner advertising, but can also be done through e-mail and other means.

Google's AdSense can serve as an example of the CPC model although, strictly speaking, because Google uses contextual advertising (the banners or adverts are related to the affiliate's website and content) it isn't really classified as CPC. Only 1% of the market use this model these days.

80% of the market use the CPS model, while 19% use the CPA model. These two are basically the same, as the affiliate is only paid a commission based on actual SALES (CPS) or ACTION (CPA) based on their efforts. For instance, if a visitor clicks on a banner on the affiliate's website that takes them to the merchant's website, the affiliate receives no commission unless the site visitor buys something, subscribes or gets involved in some way.

For this reason, many people confuse CPA and CPS for Multi-level marketing (MLM.) While many multi-tier programs within Multi-level marketing do use Affiliate Marketing, MLM is a type of business model whereas Affiliate Marketing is a type of marketing model. They are mutually exclusive.

Web 2.0 has brought a lot of influence into the way business is run, since it has made communication much easier. Word-of-mouth has always been the strongest form of advertising, and Affiliate Marketing is basically a word-of-mouth sort of system. This is one of the reasons why so many types of business and e-commerce use Affiliate Marketing – such as blogs, RSS feeds, comparison shopping sites, directories, loyalty sites, registration sites, rebate and promotion sites etc. There are also large CPA networks on the net, and many sites that use registration paths; in other words, if you register on one site, you automatically register on other sites too, and each site pays the other a form of commission.

Affiliate Marketing is low-risk, especially for the merchant but also for the affiliate. In fact, the CPA and CPS models can be classified as 'no-risk' if set up correctly. For this, and the reasons mentioned above, Affiliate Marketing has become an incredibly efficient and favorable way of doing marketing, and can be incredibly profitable for both the merchant and the affiliate.

Google Adwords For Laser Targeted Traffic

Driving loads of traffic to your website is perhaps one of the worst kept secrets that any successful Internet businessman has. I don’t know if it’s such a big secret anymore, although sometimes I still see e-books being sold to unsuspecting newbies, trying to convince everyone that it really is a secret to online business success.

Any successful website must have lots of traffic, period. It doesn’t matter if it looks great; you won’t make a dime off of your site if nobody visits it or buys your product. You will only earn money from your site if those two things happen. That’s why after publishing your site online, you need to go after traffic.

If you have a regular and sizeable flow of traffic to your site, there will be a percentage among your visitors that will buy your products or pay for your services. Therefore, it’s a logical conclusion that the more visitors your website gets, the greater the chance of people buying something, which also means more profits rolling in.

You don’t have to build a huge site for it to be a success. I have seen countless one-page websites that are making more money that their multi-page competitors. Of course, there are also large sites with several pages that don’t even get a hundred visits in a day. That’s why it’s always a good idea to target a specific group of users, in order to get hits from people that are actually interested in your services or products. Sometimes you can get a few sales from untargeted traffic, but it’s erratic at best. If you want to maximize your earnings, you need targeted traffic.

I believe that in certain situations, you have to spend some money to earn money. Some businesses even take it to the next level, where your earnings can depend on how much money you spent. Does this sound like nonsense to you? If you can bear with me for a short while, I can easily explain this concept to you.

One of the best ways to find people and bring them to your site involves advertising. Yes, of course there are several ways to promote your website for free, but you can get better targeted traffic by using paid advertising. And right now, one of the best ad programs offering this kind of service is Google Adwords. You have to pay a small fee for every keyword you use, but it’s worth it.

If you didn’t know it yet, several businesses are already using Google Adwords to send their pre-qualified and targeted visitors to their websites. Targeted traffic and pre-qualifications improves your chances of selling something, since the visitors are already interested in what your site has to offer. Adwords is effective since you can use the keywords that are most relevant to your site. When a user searches for certain keywords that you’re using, the ads with your keywords appear on the search results page.

When one ad gets clicked by a search engine user, the advertiser is automatically charged a set amount. This fee was set beforehand by the advertiser himself, reflecting the amount he is willing to pay to Google for the use of that keyword. With all that’s been said, Google Adwords remain a great option for online entrepreneurs.