Affiliate Software - Tracking External Campaigns Made Easy

By Maros Fric

Many people don't realise that affiliate software has more uses than just "simple" affiliate management. It can be used to track activity (including conversions and ROI) of campaigns running on AdWords, Overture, or anywhere else.

First question is - why should you do it?

Most of the advertising systems do have some kind of sale conversion tracking.

This is true, but there are some benefits when you use your affiliate system to do the work:

# You can compare the results of different campaigns

Affiliate software (if it's good one) will allow you to easily view reports of clicks, sales and conversions for given campaign. You can easily find out what pays of and what not.

Moreover, by comparing conversion ratio of different campaigns you can identify the weak points and try to improve them.

What if you'll find out that your Overture campaign converts much less visitors into buyers than AdWords?

If you know this, you can try to improve it. And when you make a change, the affiliate system will tell you again if your sale conversion increased or not, and how it compares to others.

# No need to include multiple sale tracking codes

It is simply less work. When you have affiliate software installed, it already contains the sale-tracking snippet.

So you don't need to edit your pages and place the sale conversion codes for every new advertising system you plan to use, you'll simply use the affiliate's system build-in sale tracking capability.

# It allows you to track also systems that don't implicitly offer sale conversion tracking

Google AdWords and Overture do have sale conversion tracking, but what if you buy campaign somewhere else? Or banner placement, sponsored listing, etc.?

You can even track free listing or text link included in some web directory or your friend's web page.

My company uses multiple marketing channels, for example we pay for sponsored listing on HotScripts. If we don't track it with affiliate system, we would have no idea how many visitors HotScripts sends to our page, and how many of them actually made a purchase.

Now, if I persuaded you that tracking ROI and conversions using affiliate system is a good idea, let's move to the next step - how to set it up.

It depends on the affiliate software you use, but most of them will have this functionality.

First of all, what can be tracked?

* pay-per-click campaigns on Google AdWords, Yahoo Marketing and similar
* your own link exchanges with another website
* your paid advertisements on another web sites
* etc.

The principle is simple - you should create a special "virtual" affiliate for every system or campaign you want to track. Then use its affiliate link instead of your website URL in the campaign destination.

Because the advertisement on external website points to your site through affiliate link, affiliate system will track the clicks and purchases originating from this source as if it is your affiliate.

You can easily control how many clicks they are really sending to you, get the conversion ratio, etc.

Exact measurement of campaign results will enable you to effectively plan your marketing campaigns and improve your marketing techniques.

Example - Tracking Google AdWords step by step

1. Create "virtual" affiliate for Google - go to admin panel of your affiliate program and manually create new affiliate called Google 'Adwords'.

You can specify any affiliate details, it is not a real affiliate and only you can access it.

2. Get the affiliate link - log in to affiliate control panel of new affiliate and get the affiliate's link. You can use link from code of any banner, or you could have created special banner for this before.

Affiliate link usually looks like http://www.yoursite.com/?ref=affiliateid

3. Use affiliate link in AdWords campaign - open your Google control panel, and rewrite the ad destination URL with the affiliate's link.

That's all. Now the traffic and conversions coming from Google AdWords will be tracked. Because you used affiliate link as a destination URL, the traffic from Google AdWords will be sent to this link.

Google acts as your affiliate, but because it is virtual account for your own use, you don't need to pay it any commission from affiliate system.

CONCLUSION

Affiliate software can simplify your life by tracking your ROI and conversions from multiple different external systems and/or campaigns (like AdWords, Overture, HotScripts, etc.), and providing reports and comparison of the results.

Maros Fric is CTO and co-owner of Quality Unit, a software company specialising in consulting & development for web marketing and web data mining. He is behind the creation of http://www.qualityunit.com/postaffiliatepro/, one of the most powerful affiliate tracking software available on the market.

Affiliate Marketing - A Business Without Hassle?

by: Ove Nordkvist

Do you look for a small business idea, which allow you to make money without the hassle of selling products, packing and shipping? Take a look at affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing can be a very good opportunity for you. Instead of sales pages you load your web site with information. In that change, you make your site more attractive for the search engines, your site will draw more traffic.

here are some basics of how to get going as an affiliate marketer

It all start with your web site. People search the Net for information. There are different ways to provide information.It can be Articles, product reviews, videos or chat rooms. You have to choose a theme for your site, and stick to that theme.

Your main task as an affiliate marketer is to get visitors to your web site. You don't have to worry about the sales pitch.Concentrate at get high traffic to your site.

Once people start to find your web site, and your interesting content. It's time to choose a good affiliate program.

How to choose the right affiliate program?

First, of course it has to be in the same theme as your web site content. If your site is about computers, your visitors are more likely to click at a link regarding computers, than a link regarding how to breed birds.

Second, you have to be sure that your merchant deliver as promised. Whether it's a product or a service, you must promote high quality stuff. If you wouldn't by from your merchant, so wont your visitors.

Third, choose one program, learn how it works, concentrate on this until you're satisfied with the outcome. Only then you choose the next one. You must master one program at the time, if you try to master 100 programs at one time, you'll not master any of them.

They way to succeed a an affiliate marketer is to implement one program at the time. Keep it to a handful of affiliate marketing programs. Affiliate marketing is an ongoing learning process. To be able to keep up with this process, you must restrict yourself to a few top notch programs.

weave in your affiliate links in your content. One or two links per page is enough. If you have to many links your visitors will feel that you only want to sell something to them.

This is a cornerstone for your success, your job is to provide useful information. You don't sell anything. After you have provided information, you make a recommendation, your visitor click at the link and your MERCHANT do the actual selling.

About The Author
Ove Nordkvist's web site http://www.small-biz-ideas.net is all about small business ideas, and how to get them up and running. Visit

Affiliate Marketing Assets - Things You Need In This Business

by: Jason Gazaway

There are millions of ways to make money, particularly in the internet. But with the new internet marketing technologies developing daily, sometimes the choices may seem confusing. Many people find themselves what type of business is best and right for me?

Affiliate marketing is one example of making money online; it is a large business part on the internet. Affiliate marketing is composed of people working together to promote a product. An affiliate acts as an independent “middle man” between a merchant customer by simply introducing new prospects and customers to the merchant. In return, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales which results from his or her overture.

It is the most popular, the most convenient and the easiest way to make money. In fact, there are many reasons why this kind of business is so popular. Number one, you don’t have to hire employees, meaning there is no need to employ people to do the work for you. Another is that most affiliate programs are free to join; you don’t have to buy the product to sell it.

The good thing is that some programs have an upgrade option to build which makes your earning capacity larger. No storage, the merchant is responsible for the storage of product, so there is nothing to worry about space or storage costs. In affiliate marketing, there is no shipping and handling, it is also the merchant who takes the responsibility fro the product arrival; you need not to worry about running around.

In affiliate marketing, you don’t have to deal with customer service, again, the merchant deals with it. The next reason is that it doesn’t require account keeping, which means you don’t have to store customer information such as credit card details, addresses and phone numbers, this is another merchant responsibility. The last thing is you can spend as little or as much as you want in selling your product. It depends on you if how much money you want to make it.

Now that you have an idea of what affiliate marketing is, is it now the time to know what are the things you need in this kind of business. Hard work is the number one factor you should have if you want to go into affiliate marketing. Next in line is patience and perseverance, making money online is not that easy, the pay-offs aren’t instant and can take a few months before you are even making enough to even cover your costs. It takes perseverance, dedication and patience to succeed.

But what are the other things you need? Well, choosing a topic you know is the best way to start in affiliate marketing. Doing this may not be the best idea in providing you with the highest possible commission, or even the best managed program. However if you start with an area you know well, it is easy for you to build a site. Plus, you can add your own personal touch and opinions to the site.

Have a multiple merchants in the same niche. It is best to choose a merchant based on what you like, or better yet select a few. Promoting 3-4 merchants on the same site will give your site visitors an array of choices to select from. it will provide you with data on what your visitors want to see, and can give you important information on how well the different merchants do against each other. The next thing you have to do is to make your network selection based on the tools it provides for you. You also have to consider if the network has the merchants you want to work with. See what works for you and then focus your time accordingly.

You also have to educate yourself. It is a very important part of affiliate marketing. There are a lot of things to learn and affiliate forums are certainly one of the best places to start to be educated. The next step is for you to expand, use what you have learned with your first site, then move on to a new project. These useful tips are easy to follow, it can help you a lot to enhance and promote your website while making your business easier to manage.

About The Author

Jason Gazaway

Discover how you can create a turnkey internet marketing system that builds massive downlines for you,attracts hungry prospects automatically, and generates income non-stop, 24 hours a day!

Find out how, here: http://www.HowToBecomeSuccessful.com

Tips For Marketing Your Affiliate Business

by: Janice Sharman

Not all Home Business Entrepreneurs are experienced enough to produce their own product, so most of us 'would-be-entrepreneurs' become affiliates, marketing someone else's products and opportunities. That is nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people make a really great living doing it, and so can you.

Being a Work at Home Business Entrepreneur is not as easy as it first appears. Don't get me wrong, it is not that difficult either. As the saying goes "anything is easy if you know how". The BIG secret is learning "how to market" on the Internet.

Internet Marketing is a little different to marketing offline. You sell your online products and opportunities from an electronic store called a website. When you open a store in a Mall or in a busy town you can rely on walk-in trade who see your goods through the shop window and want to buy. With a website store, the concept is a little different. You have to take your store or its products and place it where the people are likely to be - traffic exchanges, safelists, search engines, electronic magazines etc.

Selling your affiliate products should begin even before the customer clicks on your affiliate link or the banner on your web site. Don't only rely on placing a banner on your web site with the hope that someone will click on. It may work a few times but it is not the best way to produce good results. The best results are achieved when the customer is already sold on your product before he clicks on your affiliate link. Write a good ad copy that does not obviously seem like you are selling your product. Entice the customer to click on your link with words that would make you want to buy the product, or join the opportunity yourself.

Use the products you plan to promote yourself so you can market them enthusiastically and do not be afraid to use testimonials from enthusiastic customers. They work wonders!

Concentrate your efforts on choosing a few good affiliate programs and marketing them effectively. Choose a program with products or services that interest you. Do not be lured into signing up for numerous affiliate programs in the hope that one of them will make money. Choose wisely and try not to get involved in selling things you know nothing about. Don't try to sell heavy duty equipment if you know what HGV stands for. Go with your passion, your enthusiasm will grab your client by the nose and lead him/her to your affiliate link.

When you have chosen your affiliate company, build a site to market the products and programs you've chosen. Choose a name that is relevant to your affiliate program and the products you plan to sell. If your site is built to sell craft items then selling car parts on it is not a good idea. It would be far better to include a short course on how to make craft items. Keep your site relevant!

Read everything you can about your products and research them thoroughly so you can answer all the questions you get asked either by the people signing up under you or your customers. Look around for other items to sell or give away that will enhance the products or services you sell. If your main focus is affiliate marketing you could include products and free gifts and e-books that will help with marketing the products you sell.

Create a catchy signature to use each time you send out your mail, you never know whose interest it might stimulate. Don't forget to include your affiliate links in all your outgoing mail. Market, market and market your products some more. Think about what your target audience is looking for and keep it in mind always.

About The Author

Janice Sharman currently runs the Sure Profits Center. Get ALL the Home Business Internet Marketing Information and Resources You'll Ever Need to Profit on the Internet! Subscribe to her 'Secrets To Sure Profits' Newsletter at http://www.profits4sure.com.

Reputable Affiliate Programs

By Seth Miller

Reputable affiliate programs are affiliates with good navigation properties, which can inspire a level of trust. Affiliates are websites which promote the advertisers with pop-ups and other kinds of advertising. They are an excellent way for the new internet entrepreneur to start an online business, and earn revenue from the owner of a product or service that they promote. Affiliates are rewarded according to the compensation pattern such as pay per click, pay per lead, or any combination, for the visitors originating from their site. However, it requires much effort, passion and commitment to succeed in this business. There are many traps and pitfalls present in this business, which may result in loss of commissions. Doing business with reputable affiliate programs is the only way to avoid such constraints.

Reputable affiliate programs are recommended affiliates that satisfy most of the requirements for a smooth business deal. Affiliate programs paying a good commission and having high conversion rates are attractive. There are many other factors which decide the reputation and reliability of a program. Cookies that can offer referral duration of 60 days are necessary for a good program. Apart from regular commissions, reputable programs offer second tier commission and residual commissions. Payments must be prompt, preferably once a month, with reasonable minimum. Any reputable company will have full contact details readily available.

The information about reputable affiliate programs can be gathered from testimonials and references from other affiliates. The reliability and attitude of recommended reputable programs can be judged using some simple techniques such as emailing to the affiliate manager or webmaster. The lack of a friendly response within forty-eight hours denotes their reserved attitude in the business.

Affiliate provides detailed information on Affiliate, Affiliate Programs, Affiliate Marketing, Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs and more.

4 Tips How To Success On Affiliate Program

By Erny Setyawati

John Foppe is popular motivator at Zig Ziglar Corporation is born without forearm. He has been beginning many activities, cooking, eating, and going to school since eight years old. He succeeded to get degree in communication when he was 21 years. He is also the man that can drive a car without forearm.

We make conclusion, why he can success to gain his dream, but we cannot. Difference between John and us. John has a passion, but we have not. Now we talk about internet marketer. As internet marketer, we should have passion and think breakthrough how to gain target. Without action and passion, we never get target of selling product. Passion makes someone aggressive and never feels desperate to try, or to run away from many problems. People are so interested in joining affiliate program on the net, but almost 75 % fail to run it. They fail on this business because of many factors. Let us describe to you.

1. We are not ready to be leader. We should have leadership when join affiliate program. You should improve networking by gaining leads, face difficulties to get leads, spend much money for promotions, and have many problems to motivate your leads. We need leadership here. You success, the teamwork can duplicate program.

2. We never implement and not do any think. We say affiliate program fail; because of the network never improve. Not has down line (lead), and never gets benefits from this program. Consider first, perhaps you never do any think. Affiliates never stop to read and learn. Trying to learn whenever you go, knowledge become improves, and makes many strategies.

3. Less promotion. Campaigning is important role to run affiliate program. Without promotion, people never knew that you sell products or programs. Many strategies to promote, like spread flyer, writing article, publish Ezine, give presentation and others action. We spent much money to promote, therefore, be wiser to campaign.

4. Do not have persistent and passion. Some one has not persistent and passion tends to be easy desperate, easy to give up and quit. We face many problems usual, keep on your passion and persistent.

We make conclusion that running affiliate program depend on action and passion. Successful people keep moving. They make mistake no matter, but they never quit.

Erny Setyawati is the Web Master of www.baliglobalmarket.com

Affiliate Marketing Tips

By Ernest Kent

Affiliate Marketing can be a great business to start. For one you can work from home and do not have to have a huge amount of money to start it. Normally just a website will start it off for you. However, you really do not even need a website; there are other ways to get into Affiliate Marketing. This article will give you some Affiliate Marketing tips.

1. Learn to use keywords. Find out what people want. Google and Overture can be your best friend when it comes to this. It can be hard work to get your website on the first page of a search engine but if you learn to use Google and Overture, you can make it to the first page or even the second page.

2. Learn about email lists. If you have a webpage, put a newsletter subscription form on your site. That is a great why to make an email list.

3. Find the right affiliate program for your site. People do not want to go to a website for cars and see a “how to make money from home” affiliate link or banner on the page. If you have a car site, try using a car affiliate banner.

4. Learn to pre-sell. This is one of the things most Affiliate Marketers do not do. They make a site to get people to buy the programs but they know nothing about the program to pre-sell them.

Following these Affiliate Marketing tips will help you make some money. Just remember, making money online is not always easy to do. You will have to work at it.

Do you need some more help in Affiliate Marketing? Just cannot make any money with Affiliate Marketing. Visit Becoming an Affiliate Marketer

Ernest Kent has been an Internet Marketer for a year and a half