What is Affiliate Marketing? Learn The Basics of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of best option to make money on internet but still there are lots of people who want to make money online does not have idea ‘what is affiliate marketing’.

I used to receive number of emails from different people who wants to earn some extra income online by doing some simple online jobs but very few people say they are ready for hard work but need some big & stable income.

There is no better way than affiliate marketing after Google AdSense to earn big income but that is no so simple like PTC sites or online surveys.

You need to get the complete idea of affiliate marketing & you should by ready for to work very hard until you cross $1000 earning from affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way of promoting the products & services of other companies & websites on internet. You will earn commission for each & every sale or successful lead.

E.g. you can become an affiliate of Amazon & then promote & advertise any of the product from the Amazon website through a special link known as “affiliate or referral link”.

Whenever any visitor clicks your Amazon affiliate link and buy something from Amazon then you can earn 4% to 15% commission depending on the products he purchases.

There are number of merchants who pays for inquiry or signup too. You can promote such merchants so that whenever they makes an inquiry or signup on the website, you get paid.

It means, if you want to earn money through affiliate marketing then just follow these 4 simple points-

1. Find the best affiliate programs.
2. Join its affiliate program and receive a unique affiliate link
3. Promote the merchant’s product through that affiliate link.
4. Collect cash

There are thousands of online stores & ecommerce sites like Amazon, eBay, Clickbank, Commission Junction, Flipkart, vCommission etc. that provide the affiliate programs. But I will recommend these 20+ best affiliate programs for beginners.

You can start with an individual affiliate programs from the merchants website itself or join an affiliate network  where you can promote dozens of big merchants from a single platform.

What is an Affiliate Marketing Network?

There are thousands of online merchants who has the best products and services but does not have an affiliate programs because of number of reasons like-

• they can’t afford this.
• they don’t have perfect tracking system of sale done through affiliate
• they don’t have time to handle the system and want to outsource the whole process

And because of that, affiliate network plays an important role for such merchants.

They have the state of the art software to monitor the activity of affiliate, can handle their account and directly pay to the affiliates on behalf of the merchants.

So its always better to start affiliate marketing with an affiliate marketing network than a single merchant because you have the option of choosing the product and advertiser of your choice.

You can test, analyze & compare the return on investment (ROI) with different merchants & then focus more on the websites which are giving you more returns.

How to promote an affiliate program & when do you get paid?

It’s important to understand the meaning of promotion and marketing here. There are number of ways to promote an affiliate product & one of the most widely used way is through a blog or website.

You can create a blog & then write the reviews or tips related to the products you are promoting. You can insert your affiliate links in the post where you are asking your blog readers to buy the product from the merchant website.

People come to your website, read the tips & reviews you have written, click your affiliate link & then visit the merchant site. You will get the commission every time a blog reader buy something from the merchant site.

But creating a website & writing about the product is not enough. You need the targeted traffic on your website.

There are number of ways to promote a website like doing SEO, through PPC programs like AdWords, social media promotion, guest blogging, classified sites etc.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the most lucrative business on internet because of the advantages it carries. The biggest advantage is you don’t have your own product but still you can make money by selling other merchant’s products.

This is like you are the owner of these products.

You don’t need to maintain any stock, no need to worry about the shipment after someone purchases or even don’t need to track your customer lists.

Everything is taken care by the merchant. Other advantage is the income potential. You can earn up to 70% commission by selling the products or in some cases you can earn even 90%.

Yes, that is absolutely true. There are even merchants like hosting providers, membership sites which if you sell can earn you lifetime commission till the customer has the membership with the site. That is the gold mine!!

What else you want if you setup a promotional campaign and that is giving you automatic income even if you are enjoying a great vacation on a beautiful beach of Goa with your girlfriend.

So don’t get delayed, no more thoughts, create an action plan as provided below-

Create an Action Plan

Join an affiliate program

If you plan to make money through an affiliate marketing then its better you start with one of the best affiliate programs from this list. Join one of them and spend at least 3-4 days understanding everything about the site and the concept.

Once done, write all your interest and hobbies on a paper.

Choose a product

Its better you promote a product which matches your interest. Find the merchants which has those products and services. e.g if you are fitness freak, you can find a product related to fitness, if you are a gadget lover, you can find the mobiles, tablets and other gadgets to promote.

Research the demand

After choosing 2-3 products, find its demands whether its a hot product or not and if people are searching online for this. You can check in AdWords Planner Tool, YouTube, Google Trends etc.

You need to spend more time here because you have to take your decision based on this. After doing the research, choose the one with the highest potential.

Promote the product

There are number of better ways, you can use to promote an affiliate marketing product and the easiest one is by creating a review site.

A review site is something which is created by a user of the product and providing the review of the product by writing advantages and disadvantages as an experienced user.

If you thought of creating a review site, always buy the product first, use this for sometime and then write the review.

Review site is something which gives you the best conversion as this is the last stage a buyer is searching before taking a final decision for purchase.

You can use SEO technqiues so that you get the traffic from Google or other search engines. You can also promote through Google AdWords.

Other ways to promote is through social media sites like Facebook advertising, YouTube, Pinterest, article submission sites, guest posting, banners ads on other blogs, classified sites etc.

Conclusion-

Affiliate marketing is a business of focus and Patience. Don’t get demotivated if you don’t find the results in the initial phase. Even the biggest gurus made so many mistakes & got failures.

But they learn from the failure, keep working and finally become millionaires. The key to success is accept failures as a next step to success. Who knows out of 100 attempts in affiliate marketing, only 1 attempt can make you earn, you never thought of earning.

                                                                         - source by moneyconnexion

How to Create a Website in Just 30 Minutes

If internet has changed something dramatically in the last decade, then it’s the simplicity of how to create a website or a blog. There are number of ways, you can make your website online. One of the easiest way is through WordPress.

Just like you create a notepad or word file and save it in your PC, you can create a website or a blog with the help of WordPress. Whether you want to start a website for your small business, an ecommerce website, a commercial blog to monetize with AdSense or affiliate marketing  or even a personal blog, WordPress is your answer.

In this guide, you will learn how easy is to create a website through WordPress and how to make any website or blog with WordPress in just 30 minutes.

How to create a website

If you are really interested in making your own website then first thing you need to find the purpose of creating your site. Different people have different purpose, so if you are clear about your goal then it will be easy to move forward.

You may want to create your site or a blog –

1. for making some money through AdSense or other ad network.
2. for selling your own products.
3. or as a hobby of sharing your passion with the world.
4. create a membership site.

You can create the best websites or blog with WordPress in all the above situations & that too in less than 30 minutes.

Before I begin with creating a site, I will give you a brief idea of WordPress.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a very powerful blogging tool & content management system (CMS). WordPress is used by more than 17.5% of all the websites. The market share of WordPress CMS is 55%. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system.

WordPress is a free software but you need your own hosting to install. Once installed, you can create very beautiful sites with ease.

Why WordPress?

• WordPress is very powerful CMS.
• Creating a website or blog using WordPress is like child’s play. You don’t need any programming or technical knowledge to create a WordPress site.
• You can easily enhance the design, look & feel & the capabilities of your WordPress site using hundreds of best & free themes & plugins.
• You can save your thousands of dollars by designing WordPress blogs on your own, which otherwise you would have to pay to the web developers.
• WordPress is very search engine friendly and will play an important role in search engine ranking.
• Once setup which hardly takes 30 minutes to 1 hr, you just need to copy & paste your article and publish. It’s that easy.

Setup a WordPress website or blog

The first step in setting up a WordPress site is buying a domain name & hosting. There are many famous companies you can buy your domain & hosting from.

Buying a domain name

You can buy a domain name either from GoDaddy, NameCheap.com, BigRock.in or other domain registrar. I prefer to buy most of my domains from GoDaddy.

For hosting either, you can buy from any of the company above or from Hostgator.com, the largest hosting service provider in the world. Hostgator does not deal in Domain selling.

If you buy the domain & hosting from different companies then you have to set the name servers in your domain which is provided by your hosting provider.

But if you are new in this field, its better to buy the hosting from the same company, you are buying the domain from.

Setup WordPress on GoDaddy Hosting

If you plan to buy both domain & hosting from GoDaddy then its better to buy the WordPress hosting as WordPress will be pre-installed on your hosting.

Tip – If you want to buy domain or hosting from any company then don’t buy them without applying a discount coupon on your billing. It will save you 10% to 50% on your total amount.

Just make a search in Google for ‘Godaddy promo code’ & you will find fresh discount coupon on many websites.

Once you buy your domain name & hosting, just login to your Godaddy account & follow the steps below.

1. Click on ‘My account’ link from ‘All products’ category available on the top left corner.
2. Then click on ‘+’ sign available before Web Hosting.
3. If you have more than 1 hosting, click the ‘Launch’ link next to the hosting account you want to setup.
4. Fill up the following fields, and then click Finish:
   • Enter domain — Choose the domain name from the list.
   • FTP username — Use the suggested username, or click Change, and then enter the desired FTP username.
   • Password & Confirm password — Enter the strong password that you can remember. It will be used to use to access your WordPress a panel and your hosting account with FTP.
   • (Optional) SSL credits — You can leave this as it is.
   • Contact email — Enter your email address.
   • Blog title — Enter the title for your website or blog.

After you click ‘Finish’ button, it will display a message to wait for sometime. Usually it takes 30 minutes to setup your WordPress website. Check the image for reference-

Setup WordPress on Hostgator Hosting

This video will explain you how to install WordPress. You can also refer the easy instructions given below.

After you purchase hosting from Hostgator, you will receive an email containing all the account info (login ID, password, name servers etc.).

Then first thing you have to do is changing the name servers of your domain name provided by hostgator in the email.

After changing the name servers, login to your Hostgator control panel & then add your domain name through ‘add-on domain’ icon. You don’t need to add the first domain because it will already be added when you buy the hosting.

After adding the domain name, you need to install the WordPress. Its just one click install. Search the icon ‘Fantastico De luxe’ & click on this. It will show you the list of all applications you can install on your hosting.

Click WordPress from the left column. Then on the right, it will show you different options. Click New installation. Leave the blog directory field blank & enter the details in other fields. Click Install & then ‘Finish Installation’. Within 30 minutes, your WordPress setup will be ready.

How to design your WordPress website

Designing a WordPress website is damn easy. You need to login to your WordPress account in order to design your website. Your WordPress admin URL will be http://SiteName.com/wp-admin. Remove Sitename.com with the name of your domain. Suppose your domain name is http:hdfcBankNetbanking.org then your admin URL will be http:hdfcBankNetbanking.org/wp-admin.

Just watch this video which explains you how to design your WordPress site.

Login to your WordPress account with your username & password & you will see your WordPress dashboard.

Let me explain you some of the basic things & some basic settings in WordPress so that you can immediately start posting on your blog.

There are 2 main things in WordPress. The first one is Themes & the second Plugins.

Themes

A Theme is the overall design of a site and encompasses color, graphics, and text. A Theme is sometimes called the skin. WordPress Themes can provide much more control over the look and presentation of the material on your website.

A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files.

You can change your default WordPress theme anytime from the WordPress dashboard. You will find different options in different themes which you can use to change the look & feel of your website.

There are thousands of WordPress themes available which are developed by hundreds of web developers around the world. Some are free and some are paid.

There are thousands of free themes available. Just click on Appearance & then themes & then install themes to check the themes. You will select different options to find different themes.

You can click on Preview to preview the themes, check Details & if you like one of the theme click ‘Install Now’ option. You can further customize your theme from ‘Theme options’ link.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to add new features to your WordPress websites that don’t come standard with the default installation. There are a rich variety of Available Plugins for WordPress. You can add, remove or check installed plugins from the ‘Plugins’ link on the left side in your WordPress dashboard.

Here are some of the plugins you must use while making your website. They do wonderful job for your blog.

Akismet:

Already Installed – just need to activate it. Search for this plugin & click on activate plugin. Don’t forget to add ‘Akismet API Key’ which you can get free from the link available in the Akismet Configuration.

All in One SEO:

Search for this, install and activate. This is one of the best plugin for SEO benefits. Just refer this image to understand how I installed ‘All in One SEO Pack’ plugin.

Contact Form 7:

This is the standard plugin for creating a quick and easy contact page. Just go into the plugin settings, copy the auto generated short code and paste into a new page (doesn’t have to be in HTML mode).

Code looks like this (where x is the form ID): [contact-form-7 id=”XXXX” title=”Contact form 1″]

JetPack Plugin:

JetPack can do the job of many plugins alone. You need to create a free account at WordPress.com in order to activate this plugin after installation. Click on ‘Connect to WordPress.com’ once you install & after authorizing you can start using this plugin.

Important Settings in Creating a WordPress site

You may have any reason to create your website but all reasons have the common interest of getting traffic on their website. When we talk about traffic, we only focus on Big Boss ‘Google’.

So its very important to write original & valuable contents on regular basis on your website. The updated contents will be published on your blog page. Either you can use the blog on the home page or create a separate blog page where all your new contents will be published.

You need to do some simple settings in your WordPress dashboard for this.

• Click on Settings –>Readings
• You will see there 2 options. First ‘Your Latest Posts’ & Second ‘A static page’.
• If you like to publish all your contents on the home page then choose the first option.
• If you want to publish a different static page on home page & your new content on separate page then choose second option.
• You need to create a new blank page from Pages –>Add New. Name this page as ‘Blog’ & click publish.
• Now choose the page you want for front page (homepage) as the one you created for homepage & posts page as the Blog page.

Just refer this image for more clarification

Another important setting is the permalink structure. By default, WordPress uses question mark (?) & numbers in the URL for all the contents you publish. This is not good for users & for search engines.

You can create your own custom structures of your URL. Click ‘Settings’ & then ‘Permalinks’.  You will many options there. Check the last option ‘Custom Structure’.

Now write /%postname%/ in the box & click ‘Save Changes’ & you are done.

What Next

Experiment with your blog. Try different themes, plugins & settings so that you will know how it affects your WordPress blog with some changes in your settings.

Check the WordPress sites & blogs of other people. Read more about WordPress, themes & simple designing tweaks on other blogs. Come to a final WordPress site of yours.

I am sure, once you become an expert, it won’t take more than 30 minutes to create any of your website or blog.

                                                                 -source by moneyconnexion

A Guide to Make Money from YouTube Partner Program

Today we will give you a complete guide to make money from YouTube Partner Program. Many of us might be heard about people making money from YouTube.Yes! It is quite true that a lot of young vloggers (video bloggers) are making money with YouTube partner program.

Even you could make money with the program if you know how to do it. Let me warn you in the beginning that YouTube Partner program is not for everyone. You need to have talent before you could imagine of making money with it. It is a fact that only small percentage of people are successful in making money with YouTube.

Therefore, don’t expect any easy money here. If you have passion for video blogging then continue reading this article.

What is YouTube Partner Program?

YouTube partner program is nothing but you could make some money with your videos you upload, it is that simple.

Google gives you an opportunity to make some money if you upload your videos on YouTube. The videos that you create for your family and friends could be monetized in order to reach a wider audience.

YouTube program would help you in exactly doing that. Once you have a great audience then you could start making money with it. YouTube’s vibrant partner network is full of creativity and mentors that could help you creating high quality videos.

YouTube would give you full support for creating videos and reaching out to a wider audience.

Moreover, Google also allows you to monetize your videos to an array of non-YouTube networks also. Hence, you can widen your platform.

How Your Casual Videos Can Earn You Money

If you have been creating and uploading videos on YouTube for a while now, then you would not have any problem in making money with those videos.

If you love to create videos which are very informative, fun and useful for the audiences then you have a great chance for making money with it.

However, I would like to warn you that not everyone who uploads videos could make money. It is because your videos have to have some content that people would love watching it.

Causal videos are only good enough if they can relate to people who are watching it. So, try to make your videos more interesting.

If you think you have a talent then you could step up and create videos that could pay you some money.

I have written one of the very useful post on 25 Video Ideas for YouTube Partner Program. This post will help you to find some of best topics that you can use to create videos.

How to Join the YouTube Partner Program

I don’t think joining the program is any difficult. You could go into your YouTube account setting and click on the Monetization Tab. Click on Enable My Account and follow the subsequent steps one by one and join the program.

Now if your account has been enabled for monetization then complete following things.

1. Enable and Disable ads on Your Videos: As your video uploads, in Monetization tab click on “Monetize my Video” check box. You have to choose ad formats which are best for maximizing your earnings. Click save

After reviewing your video, ads would start appearing on it.

After you have uploaded the video, click Edit and locate “$” button next to your video. Again click on the Monetize my video check box and select the ad format and your ads would start showing.

2. Familiarizing with Monetization Icon Next to Your Video: You need to understand different kinds of monetization icon. At least there are five different buttons and you needed to know every one of them.

3. If Monetization is Disabled for Your Channel then What Next? : Well it could happen that the monetization function itself is disabled for your account. This might be because of various reasons like copyright issues, account status and Adsense status.

How to Professionally Create Videos?

For creating a professional video you need to have certain tools at your disposal.

First one is a high quality camera. Always choose a camera with 1080 pixels. It would give you very high quality videos that your audience would love it.

Then you have to focus on the sound quality. You could use external microphones because they are better at capturing good sound videos.

You need to stabilize your camera and it should not be shaking. Otherwise your videos would look completely amateurish. You could use tripod and steadycam to stabilize your videos.

Always learn better shooting techniques and Google could help you in doing that.

Next very important tool is the editing software. Good quality software always allows you to give full control over your videos. You can use special effects to make your videos more professional.

You need to ads logos, animated titles and other special effects to make your videos standout.

For more you could visit the “creators” page of YouTube and know more about tools.

Can You Earn Money from Copied Videos?

Well, you must know that you cannot make money with any kind of copied content. The content that you create must be original and there is no chance of making money with copied videos.

You might have seen many channels on YouTube that uploads videos containing content of some other media groups. Like videos uploaded that has content from news channels like Fox News, ABC, MSNBC, ESPN etc. You cannot make money with those videos because it is copyright violation.

Similarly you cannot upload movie clips or songs and expect to make money with it.

You can only make money if videos are original and created by you.

How Google Pays You: Clicks or Visits?

According to the Google you could earn revenue in following ways

1. Ads served through the Adsense Auction
2. Ads that are sold on a reservation basis via DoubleClick and other YouTube Sources
3. Transactions on YouTube Rentals

For a common video blogger that has joined the YouTube program you could make money depending upon the views that your video receives.

Usually they pay you 1 cent or less than that for a single view. Then if you get a million views for a particular video then you could make anywhere $3000 to $4000 for that video.

Hence, you better start focusing on creating good videos and getting as many as views.

How Much Money could You make from YouTube Partner Program?

Well as I said earlier you get paid 1/3 cent to 1 cent per view. If you get 1000,000 views X .0033 = $3300 for one video.

So similarly if you create more such videos then you could make up to $10,000 every month. However, you have to be very popular and create some awesome videos.

For me, it is not only about the money but the fame that you get. Even if you don’t make enough money but you are famous then you may get noticed by other popular networks like MTV and mainstream media.

If you reach their then your audience would grow naturally. Hence, you have to focus on creating videos that stands out from the rest.

Tips to Maximize Your Earnings in YouTube Partner Program

Some of the tips to maximize your YouTube Earnings

1. Quality of Your Videos:

Use best editing software and recording cameras. Never compromise on that.

2. Choose New Topics for Creating Content:

Your every video must be inspired by something that is happening around you and audience could relate to it very easily.

3. Humor in Your Videos:

Make your videos humorous. It should not be dull and boring. Get inspired from some of the famous sitcoms.

4. Title and description of Your Video:

Create title which are very catchy and write description that could justify your video.

5. Add Video Responses and Annotations:

You must add video responses and annotations, so that people could respond to it and you could engage them in a conversation. 

6. Create Follow Up Videos:

Always create follow up videos answering questions that people asked you in the comment section.

7. Choose Various Ad Formats:

You have to experiment with different ad formats.

8. Early bird catches the Worm:

Try to create and upload videos on a topic which is controversial as early as possible. If video goes viral then you get more views meaning more money.

Some of the Successful YouTube Channels

Now for inspiration you could take a look at some of the most successful YouTube channels. The creators of these channels create videos that are original and have more than a million subscribers & make millions of dollars every year.

1. Smosh – They started in the year 2006 with over 13 million subscribers.
2. Ray William Johnson – Started in 2007 with 11 million subscribers.
3. PewDiePie – Started in year 2010 with over 6 million subscribers.
4. Fred – It started in year 2009 with 2 to 3 million subscribers.

There are many more millionaires who are making money from YouTube partner program. This is one of the finest way to earn or make money and also to become famous on youtube & social media.

                                                             -source from moneyconnexion

How to Make Money With Amazon Associates Program

Amazon Associates program is very famous & one of the most popular and best affiliate program for bloggers & internet marketers. As Amazon is one of the best online shopping site & also a big collection of clothing & apparels and so many useful things so several bloggers are involved in this program promoting Amazon listed products through their blogs.

How Amazon Associates program works?

Basically, bloggers do write about Amazon products in their site/blog which tempt visitors to visit Amazon’s site from your blogging site to buy the product.

More number of visitors you  drive over, greater is the chance to turn prospective customer into actual customer buying products from Amazon.

You will make money in the form of commission with each product that you happen to sell on Amazon.

Amazon associate is very easy to use program with wide range of products to market and variety of tools like WordPress Plug Ins. to integrate them into your blog.

If you are good at writing skills then it may sound easy to make money blogging for Amazon.

However, it is not so simple. First, you need to own website/blog as platform to drive people to Amazon and next you need to give them reason to buy products from Amazon.

Example to drive potential customers to Amazon

John owns website dealing with pets dogs. He writes informative articles about variety of pet dogs, peculiarity of each pet dog, taking care of dogs, food to eat, etc.

John has niche website and membership of Amazon associates program. But he does not make any money. He requires making visitors visit your site writing interesting and informative blogs along with the direct links to Amazon showing related products.

So if he recommends some nutritive food for dogs then he should provide links that direct visitor to Amazon to know more nutritive food products. Remember, affiliate links that are described in the article should have relevance to Amazon products.

It is obvious that visitors who are interested in niche will be visiting your website. Once you drive visitors from your website to Amazon, he will find some interesting products on Amazon for same niche.

With wide range of products he may buy some good products for which you can make money in the form of commission.

How much money you can make with Amazon associates program?

Now, the next obvious question that will come to your mind is to know your earning capacity with Amazon associate program.

It is possible to predict your earning capacity as it depends on following parameters:

1. Price of the item. Higher is the cost of the item sold, greater will be your commission
2. Number of items that you sell on Amazon in particular quarter. This means once you reach to certain performance level, Amazon will entitle you under incentive program where percentage or commission will get increased.
3. Quality and quantity of potential customers that visit to your site/blog and out which how many of them follow affiliate links to Amazon.com.
4. Once you drive potential customer to Amazon their possibilities to actually buy something from Amazon, known as conversion rate.

Remember, terms and conditions of Amazon.com affiliate agreement under which customer that your refer must buy product in 24 hours to attain purchase credit. So if you refer someone but he/she takes two days to actually purchase the product then you will not get commission for that.

If you work with Amazon Associate Program, there are chances you can earn a good amount of money. It is really a good program.

                                                -source from moneyconnexion