In order to attract affiliates to your website, you need to place ads on the relevant websites that are attractive enough to draw people who are interested to become affiliates. But… Among a lot of good affiliates, there are a huge number of affiliate scammers on the net who are lying around and waiting to trap you when you start looking for a real affiliate to do deal with. Believe it or not, there is an entire niche industry of these scammers. So, in order to avoid being trapped by these affiliate scammers, you need to follow these simple steps while recruiting an affiliate:

1.First of all, you must make sure that the affiliates recruited by you have your web links on their website. May be you will have to remind them a few times through monthly newsletters and monthly progress reports.

2.Always track your affiliates – where do they get the traffic from – websites, search engines, pay per click campaigns, etc. Check if the affiliates are placing your ads on some of the most popular sites.

3.Check if they are submitting articles or any content about your products to some of the most reputed article directories.

4.In order to get away from the affiliate scammers, do a lot of research of the affiliates when they join your affiliate program. Track where do they get their traffic from, track if that traffic converts. You should definitely check for fraud that affiliates might bring. E.g. if an affiliate joins and starts making a lot of sales in a very short period of time, you should better check where does he/she gets the traffic from, if it’s a legit traffic, etc.

5.Join some good web-master forums and read their posts and threads. Try to search for posts about affiliate’s scamming. This way you will definitely find some user experiences and tips on how to avoid such affiliates.

6.Once an affiliate signs up on your program and starts making sales, you should definitely contact him/her. Why? This way you could develop a relationship with your partner, ask if he/she needs anything more to promote. This way you could also check out if your affiliate responds to your messages.

7.You need to have a good affiliate management system like Click2Sell.EU (http://www.click2sell.eu) in order to completely track all your own and your affiliates sales, track your affiliate’s performance and if you find the bad ones – you can easily ban them. This way you can keep a record of your sales drawn through the affiliate’s efforts and develop a good partnership with your affiliates.

If you have started your own affiliate program and want to recruit some affiliates for your program then the above mentioned tips can provide you with the best possible affiliates in the market and also avoid you from getting involved in undesirable affiliate scammers.

Driving traffic to your blog is the most important thing you can do to make sure your site is a success. If no one reads your blog there’s no way for you to make money from the site.

Let’s cover 4 ways to drive traffic that involve social networking.

Forums

This is one of the most basic ideas to drive traffic to your site, luckily it’s also works really well.

Find a related forum by searching for forum + your niche. This should bring up a good list of places people are talking about your topic.

Go to the site, fill in a simple signature that includes your site in a link using keyword anchor text.

Now go into community and contribute. That means get into conversation, ask questions, answer questions. Each time you contribute to the forum you signature will show at the bottom of your post, giving you a backlink to your site, as well as community members a way to check out your site.

Blog Directories

Two of the biggest blog directories are blogcatalog and mybloglog. These sites are basically directories of blogs. You can go and add your blog, in fact, you can add as many blogs as you have.

To get the best return on this type of site you need to get involved in the community aspect of these sites. Look at other blogs, comment on other people’s pages, add friends to your profile. The more you put yourself out there in these communities the more people will stop by your page, and your blog.

Stumble Upon

Stumble Upon is basically a bookmarking site. This site is very powerful however because of the way it is built. You can quickly and easily gain a LOT of traffic by using Stumble Upon.

This site was not created to market your site, so remember that when you are stumbling. Make sure you take some time to stumble through other people’s sites as well. Id’ say it is wise to stumble at least 5 pages for every one of your pages you give the thumbs up to.

Claim Your Blog at Technorati

Technorati is a power house of a site. It is a large index of blogs. People go there to find blogs about a specific topic. Often times the tag pages from technorati will show up in the Google search results for any given keyword.

It’s a pretty simple process, just go in and claim your blog. You will be asked to put a bit of code on your site, the instructions are given when you claim your blog.

Once your blog has been claimed you will begin to gain status in the community by driving traffic to your blog. The higher your technorati score the better, and the more people who will see your blog.

There are so many ways you can drive traffic to your blog. If you are using web marketing to sell products or make money you are going to have to know how to drive traffic to your site.

If you take action on any one of these techniques on a consistent basis you will begin to see an increase in your traffic levels. With more traffic generally comes more sales.

A good website is a must for any organisation and their marketing mix, so here are 5 ways that you can maximise its success:

1. Make sure you are getting the best that you can afford when recruiting an individual or agency to design and build your website. For the best results, use a digital designer that specialises in website design to create the HTML combined with a programmer to build the back end of your website.

2. Become THE authority in your area of expertise (e.g. mortgages, swimming pools or travel) by providing lots of meaningful content on your website, blogs, articles and press releases that actually point to your site. This will keep Google coming back to your site and help to improve your organic search ranking (SEO).

3. Once your site is looking good and the content is regularly updated you can then utilise many online tools to start sharing it with others. Post news on Facebook and Twitter for example, bookmark your content on Digg.com or del.icio.us and add an RSS feed to your site that will send content directly to people as you post it.

4. Start marketing your website via a host of online methods:

-Organic search through search engine optimisation (SEO).
-Paid search using Google Adwords, for example.
-Email marketing.
-Social media.

5.  Google Analytics can tell you how many visitors are coming to your website – but you can also work out how many callers are originating from there by using a memorable non-geographic telephone number (e.g. an 0800 number) on your site and/or in your paid search marketing. For example, 0800 numbers (www.windsor-telecom.co.uk/0800-freephone-numbers.php) are free to call from UK landlines which means that you are highly likely to receive more sales and enquiries if you use them. In fact, research by the Institute of Direct Marketing has found that using an 0800 number can increase response rates by up to 185%. You can also see exactly how many calls you are receiving via your website if you combine an 0800 number with online call statistics (www.windsor-telecom.co.uk/call-statistics.php) which are easily added to your number. Additionally if you employ the same strategy with your PPC advertising you can see how many calls you are receiving via your ad and whether it’s a worthwhile ROI.

In all, there are a variety of successful techniques that companies can employ to maximise their websites’ potential. The above 5 tips offer a good starting point as to achieving that aim; generating more online visitors and seeing precisely how successful your efforts actually are by combining your web marketing with a memorable 0800 number (www.windsor-telecom.co.uk/0800-freephone-numbers.php)

Affiliate marketing is the most versatile business model on the Internet. How else can you have a ready made online business without spending a dime, or very little, to get it started?

There has been a question asked frequently, most recently at Lynn Terry’s Self Starters Weekly Forum, www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum, “Can I promote affiliate programs without a website?”

It’s an easy answer, but there are some conditions.

Yes, you can build a very strong and profitable affiliate business without a website. In fact, I think that for most people just “testing the waters”, this is the way to go. However, you will not be able to sustain your affiliate business, nor build it stronger, unless you have a website.

So, yes, it’s very possible and people do it all the time. Here’s six ways to make it happen.

Write informative articles

By far, the most productive way to promote anything on the Internet, especially affiliate products, is by writing high-quality, informative articles, attaching a short author’s resource box at the end, and submitting them to every article directory you can find.

Articles will do a few things right off the bat that makes this the best way to promote affiliate products.

Drive quality, targeted traffic to the merchant’s site. # Establish an “expert” status for you.

When you write articles, and submit them to article directories like EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com they list them on their sites (thus you don’t need one) and bring in traffic through the search engines.

This targeted traffic will read your article and click on your affiliate link, either within the article or in your resource box, and be at the merchant’s site to browse and buy. You then earn the commission.

Participating in forums

Forums are networking communities online where people go and can either ask questions or answer them. A fantastic way to build connections with other people and promote the products you’re affiliated with.

Of course every forum has a guideline as to how you can reply and how you can promote products. Most generally it’s through your signature at the end of your post.

You will also want to make sure that you provide relevant information. You wouldn’t want to reply to a question asking what’s the best car wax to use for long lasting sun protection by pointing them to your pet food supply store. Not only will your post most likely be deleted, but it wouldn’t do any good.

Use other people’s websites by being viral

Viral marketing is getting other people to promote your affiliate products for you. But, this is where one of the conditions I mentioned at the beginning kicks in.

You must create something; a report, short ebook, video, audio interview, etc., and allow other people to give it away free from their website.

For example, Harvey Segal of SuperTips.com has several ebooks that he has written, one especially on viral marketing, and gives them away to other people. Inside these ebooks are links to his site and his products. He doesn’t have to do nearly as much advertising because he has other people doing it for him.

Now for an affiliate it is a matter of creating a relevant infoproduct (one that deals with the niche of your product), putting your affiliate links throughout the product, and emailing website owners if they would give it away on their site.

If the topic is similar they will jump at the chance because it adds even more content to their site, or they can use it as a free bonus for subscribing to their newsletter.

Place ads in other people’s ezine

The first three tips have all been freebies. You can use them without spending any of your own money to advertise the products you’re affiliated with. This one actually costs some money, but if you do it right you will still earn a great deal of profit.

Advertising in

ezines is still a major strategy in creating traffic to your site. However, it does carry a warning. Research and find the ezine that best fits the product. Ezine co-op’s do not help you generate good, quality, targeted traffic to the merchant’s site. Yes, your ad will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, but the majority will have no desire, need, want, or tingle for the product the ad is for. A waste of good money.

On the other hand, if you research and find the right ezine to place and ad with, the people reading it will already have a desire for it.

For example, you wouldn’t advertise fishing tackle in an internet marketing ezine. But, if you found camping, fishing, sports, or other mens related ezines… you’d have found a great match.

A few years ago, when everyone was advertising in ezines, the costs were sky high. But, now with blogs and a content focus the prices have come back down to earth and it’s now reasonable. You can profit by placing very good quality ads in ezines.

Do the joint venture thing

Joint ventures are a funny animal. Most people think it’s a “I’ll put your link on my site if you put my link on your site” type of thing. Sometimes it is. But, what if you don’t have a site?

Then you have to be a lot more creative.

Here’s something I did recently with a client that I could not, after much pleading, convince they needed a site so I set out to develop an advertising campaign for them, without a website. First, I found a few other website owners who were in the same niche. In this case it was pet supplies. I offered each of them a deal where both sides would win out.

I offered the site owners good, quality, original web content if they would put my clients affiliate text links and a few banners on these pages. They were all very good traffic sites and I knew that my client would receive excellent exposure.

Out of the 15 sites I contacted, 11 said yes. Why not… everyone loves fresh content. After the initial run of new articles for each site and my client’s links were on those pages, he made a little over $500 in commissions that first two weeks. Now that there are even more articles with his links on them, he is making more.

You can do that too. Just ask people if they need fresh content, for free, and in return you can place your affiliate links on those pages. It doesn’t hurt to ask for a good position on the home page either.

Google it with Adwords

This one takes a lot more research and very focused common sense. Google Adwords is a way to get your affiliate links on Google’s first page, without having a site, but it does cost. And if not done right, and constantly monitored… a lot of money.

However, there are people, like Chris Carpenter of Google Cash that have made an incredible amount of money, a fortune really, just from listing affiliate products on Google Adwords.

But…

Yes, you can successfully promote affiliate products with the above six strategies, but, like I said, there are conditions.

You must be extremely diligent in your efforts, constantly monitoring results, and keeping a sharp eye on your costs to ensure profitability. It takes work, a lot of it, to promote affiliate programs.

Also, at some point, you will have to break down and create a website. Your long term success greatly relies on you developing a prominent and tangible “storefront”.

Until then, promote your affiliate programs without a website using these six strategies

For example, if you are an affiliate of an online florist which sells flowers in Singapore. You decide to use Google Adwords to start driving traffic to your landing page. However, not all keywords related to flowers will be useful. People typing in “Singapore Flower” may wish to know the flower that represents Singapore. On the other hand, people typing in “Online Florists Singapore” will be more likely to buy flowers online. So even though there will be people clicking through your ads that bid on the keyword “Singapore Flower”, they may not be the targeted traffic that you are looking for.

Now, let me share with you 4 ways whereby you can start driving targeted traffic to promote your affiliate products:

1. Google Adwords. Google Adwords allows you to place advertisements on Google, by bidding on selected keywords or key phrases that you think your target consumers may type as search queries. If you bid on the keyword “online florist”, when searchers type in “online florist” in Google, your advertisement will appear on the right hand side of the search result page of Google. Adwords can be the most effective way to drive targeted traffic to promote affiliate products, as long as you choose the right keywords to bid on.

2. Write articles. When you write articles about the topic that is related to the product that you are promoting, you are attracting readers who are interested in that subject to read your articles. If they like your content, they will visit the link in your Author Resource Box and find out more about the product that you are promoting.

3. Create a blog. You should create a blog with information related to the industry that you are in. For example, if you are into the forex niche, you can set up a blog and share your knowledge on forex with your readers. If you provide quality content and your readers start to trust your expertise, they will be more receptive to any forex products that you are promoting to them through your blog.

4. Forum marketing. This is another great way to drive traffic and promote affiliate products. However, do not ever think of registering to a forum and start posting a thread to promote your products directly. This is called forum spamming. You will not get any affiliate sale from this. Instead, join a forum that is related to the product or industry that you are in, and start to contribute valuable pointers to the forum. As your reputation starts to gain in the forum, members will visit the link that you place in your signature and you are now driving valuable traffic to your website.

There are still many other great methods to drive traffic when it comes to affiliate marketing. The 4 methods above are my favourite as they work very well for me. Hope that you will be able to see good results from these 4 methods too.

While many sites have collapsed in the past, many smaller sites have generated good money by concentrating on a certain niche and some sub niches. This is the reason why affiliate business laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site. Precision marketing is essential so that you could count all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

If you want to make money, you have to spend money. One way to spending money for business gain is through advertising. With the right type of advertising, you can see high number of traffic growth to your site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, the best advertising scheme that would be worth every cent is using Google Adwords. With Google Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword will generate ads in the right side of the search’s result.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. Using Google Adwords ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your products and company provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Make sure that your ad has the right keywords so that you can drive laser targeted traffic to your site. Using Google Adwords will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable.

resource box:

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed (yesterday) my brand new guide to affiliate marketing success, ‘Internet Marketing Success’.

Download it free here (limited-time) : Magic of Wealth

First off I can tell you there are some real pieces of crap out there and there are also some gems. Now I can’t mention the names of the ones that are crap. For one it is not ethical and secondly I am not giving them a chance to voice their rebuttal to my article. WHAT I WILL DO, is expose those characteristics that all these bad systems have in common. After reading this article you will be able to spot them and stay away from them.

OK, lets get into it…

Never sign up with a website that has you pay to market the websites products. You are paying to work for them. Most jobs that I know are the other way around. If you are doing the work, then you should get the paycheck. It would be similar to you working for a company and you paying them to be an employee. It does not make sense. Stay away from websites the do not disclose the products you will sell for them. Sure they give the products to sell, but are they in your niche? Will your readers or customers even care to look at your marketing material? The answer is NO. If you are putting product in front of customers that are looking for something totally different, then you will send zero traffic to these products. Stay far away from those websites that offer to do all the work for you. They provide you the emails, blog post, articles, banners, tweets and on and on and on… Guess what? They are giving the same rehashed crap out to everyone that joins. You end up with worthless material that will drive zero traffic to your squeeze pages. Watch out for those websites that show you a ClickBank page with $0 sales and then shows you a ClickBank page two weeks later with thousands of dollars in sales. For one, it is impossible to make that kind of money that quickly with ClickBank and secondly the amount of work that needs to be done to drive that kind of traffic and sales cannot be done in that short amount of time. You would need a large staff doing a lot of writing to drive that much traffic and sales to a site. It is not realistic and misleading. Most of the time these companies like to throw together some really old marketing material and pass it off as new. The system I recently reviewed, had typos and grammar mistakes in all the articles, blogs and emails.

So you may be wondering what is a good product to buy if you are interested in selling ClickBank products. There are a few really good products out there that are made to help you succeed. The owners of these websites have your best interest in check. They are not there to sell you product, they are there to teach you a method. They teach you a method that you can use over and over again. They offer support when you get yourself into a jam. They offer value to their product every step of the way.

These products are not easy to find, because the amount of crap out there floods the internet and usually takes up most of the top positions in Google. One day I hope Google creates code to rank these companies by customer satisfaction. Would it not be great to do a search on Google and find out that a company has a terrible rating. Even better the search engine would present the reason why the company did so poorly.  And would it not be great to also come across a company that stands by its customers and does a great job of following through and delivering what was promised? One day I think we will see something like this, but for now you have my article and a few tips to keep your hard earned money and efforts focused on what can move you forward in life.