You probably already know that an affiliate network is a group of individuals who market your products on your behalf, and in return receives a commission on each sale they send your way. Commissions in the information marketing world can range from 50-75 percent, and sometimes can be as much as 100 percent.

Many information marketers forego the affiliate network tactic for two main reasons:

1. They think they will earn more money if they sell themselves.
2. They think it takes too much time or is too difficult to set up an affiliate program.

Let’s look at these one at a time:

Myth: Affiliates cost you money.

Now, agreed, 50 percent of your revenue may seems like a lot of clams to shell out for your affiliates… but think of it this way:

100 percent of nothing is… NOTHING.

50 percent of something is… MORE THAN NOTHING.

In other words, affiliates drive customers to you that may never have heard of your product, thereby ADDING to your bottom line, not taking away your hard-earned revenues. Each and every sale by an affiliate should be viewed as added revenue that you would not have otherwise earned.

Myth: It takes a lot of time to set up and manage an affiliate program.

Affiliate programs can be as complex as you want them to be. You can take a completely hands-off approach and use a system like Clickbank or Shareasale that will put you in touch with a database of affiliates looking for products to promote (the site takes a share of your revenues in exchange for managing your program). Or you can create your own affiliate program using a service like e-Junkie for as little as $5 a month. It’s up to you.

And while you can spend hours creating materials for your affiliates and training them about your products, that’s time invested in selling. Remember: Each sale an affiliate makes adds to your bottom line.

To find all the articles in this series, look for the tag Marketers Mistakes.

Marketers Mistakes: Mistake Number Seven – Not Having an Affiliate Network from Xavier Media®

Today, I’m sitting at my computer, about to launch a new site and I’m going through Clickbank, looking for potential affiliate programs to promote.

Not only am I considering personally promoting the products that I find, but I may recommend that customers who purchase my PLR articles at EasyPLR.com promote them, too.

Time and time again, I’m shaking my head, wondering if these Internet Marketers realize how many potential affiliates they are losing, as I click the red “x” and go to the next product. And, of course, this isn’t only a problem with the products listed at places like Clickbank (and it certainly isn’t a reflection of the quality of Clickbank, itself).

Affiliate Programs everywhere are lacking in their professionalism and respect for their affiliates.

It’s pretty obvious that many people don’t realize what turns off a potential affiliate. Could it be, perhaps, that the people writing and marketing these ebooks have not been successful at Affiliate Marketing themselves?

After much frustration, I’ve decided to run through my list of reasons I did not choose your product to promote, and, instead chose your competition.

1. Your page is gaudy and unappealing.
Now, we all know the saying that ‘Ugly sites sell’. That’s absolutely true. A plain blue or white background with Arial text can make millions. However, a site that looks like a sparkly, flashy mess and gives your visitors a seizure is not cool. Leave the cursors alone. Don’t stick animation on there. And, for goodness sakes, stick with only one or two fonts, please.

2. Typos and spelling errors.
This one is actually kind of frightening. If the product you’re selling is an e-BOOK then please act like you know how to write. Have a friend or even an enemy read and reread your sales letter for you. If you don’t have any friends or enemies, then pay someone. Just don’t try to sell an e-book on a sales page that looks like a third grader wrote it. It’s not going to sell. At least I’m not going to sell it.

3. You offer sales options that I won’t get affiliate credit for on the sales page.
For instance, you list an electronic and a hard-cover version of your book through amazon. Tacky! Why should I send you traffic through Clickbank so that you can make a commission on amazon? Not a chance. Or even worse, you have both a Clickbank button and a paypal button.

And, my #1 biggest irritant –

4. You’ve got google ads or actually have the guts to sell advertising on your page. (And, no, I’m not joking here.) I don’t even need to go there. Anyone who’s a successful affiliate knows that this is the sign of death for any affiliate program.

So, there you have it. Four reasons why your competition is getting my business and you are not.

Are you ready to attract affiliates to promote your products? And, would you like to have an affiliate program that doesn’t stink? Nicole Dean is on a mission to help you. Check out her program at www.IncomeCPR.com – where she’s helping Infoproduct sellers just like you to have more profits and more LIFE.

4 Reasons Why I’m Promoting your Competition and Not You from Xavier Media®

Every now and then we see new or highly marketed Top Level Domains (TLDs) to get really hyped. The three big (.com, .net and .org) will always be the most popular TLDs, but which small TLD will become the most hyped one in 2010?

We've seen it before and we will see it many times before.

.NU

At the end of the 90's (ten years ago!!!) .NU became popular in the Scandinavian countries since the word "nu" means "now" in both Swedish and Danish. At that time the price of $25 was really cheap compared to a .COM domain name and .SE had too many restrictions on what could be registered so it was almost impossible to get a cool .SE domain. Since then the .NU has lost it's importance and Nunames are almost seen as a clown company by some people . Some domains still use it as domain for it's primary site, but it's not seen as the obvious choice for your primary domain.

.CC

About the same time as .NU (or at least shortly there after) the .CC TLD became heavily promoted by Verisign via it's subsidiary eNIC as "the next .com" domain. Verisign and eNIC did a good job since .CC TLD became the "second largest TLD registry in the United States second only to Verisign"[1] in 2001. Today I've seen the site used for "credit card" sites and maybe one or another Clickbank affiliate directory, but not any big web sites.

.WS

Some registrars started promoting .WS as a Web Site domain a couple of years ago while it's in fact the TLD for Samoa. I heard a lot of buzz about it, but never saw any big web sites using .WS as domain for it's primary web site. Today the site is a little bit like a big MLM program since all unregistered domains promote a "income for life" program.

.EU

In 2005 we got to see the new European TLD for the first time, but I guess only European Union and the registrars wanted this domain. A lot of people registered this domains anyway mainly to prevent cyber squatters to hijack their trademarks. Many new trademarks where registered before the release of this domain just to join the sunrise period. One example is the trademark #S#E#X# which would give the trademark owner a chance to register sex.eu…..

.ME

I guess this year has been all about .ME (the Montenegro TLD). This domain is great for domain hacks (domains where the full domain name spell out a word or a phrase), like for example find.me or havefunwith.me. Godaddy has promoted this TLD heavily, but I don' think it will be that popular next year.

So which TLD will become the hype during 2010? Maybe the new .ASIA, or something else. What  do you think?

Which Top Level Domain will be the most hyped one during 2010? from Xavier Media®

In part one of this series I showed you how to mask your Clickbank affiliate hoplinks using Clickbanks built in link masking. This is however not an optimal solution since the links still say clickbank.net in the URL. Therefore we're going to have a look at  Javascripts to mask links instead.If you've never worked with Javascript before this may seem extremely technical, but we'll start with an easy example.

The simple Javascript redirection

This code works great if you only have one link per page you need to protect. Add this code somewhere between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags in your code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!–

function Redirect(){
window.location = "http://www.sampleaddress.com";
}
// –>
</SCRIPT>

Just fill in the URL you want your visitor redirected to instead of http://www.sampleaddress.com and you're almost ready to test the script. Now you need to create a link somewhere in your page. The link need to look like this:

<A HREF="javascript:Redirect();">Test link</A>

As you can see we're using some code instead of filling in the URL to the page in the code above. This is because when this link is clicked on by the visitor the script will be executed redirecting the visitor to http://www.sampleaddress.com or whatever link you filled in instead.

The advantage with this code is that the user can't see where the link is going by just holding the mouse pointer over the link. In the browsers status bar they will just see this:

In next part of this series I will show you how to setup a Javascript for multiple links and also how to move the script to a separate file to hide the links even more.

How to hide your affiliate links – part 2 from Xavier Media®

There are several reasons why you should want to hide a link. If you for example are promoting an affiliate program you don't want your visitors to see your affiliate code before they click on the link since that could cost you not just only a few bucks but actually alot of money.Most people are so smart today that they understand that if they click on an affiliate link you will earn money from their purchase, money they could have received themselves by signing up for the same affiliate program and clicking on their own link.

This is even more important if you sell using Clickbank since you don't have to sign up for a specific product, just have an account with Clickbank. There are of course also other reasons for wanting to hide where your links are going.

To get around this problem (it's not a perfect solution but it will save you a couple of bucks) you can mask your links in various ways. Some ways better than others, but it's better then nothing at all.

Clickbank Hoplinks

Since I've already mentioned Clickbank as an example, we'll continue down that road. In the Marketplace Clickbank got a way to create "masked" links by encrypting your Clickbank nickname and the sellers id. So instead of using a link like

http://zzzzz.bookdemon.hop.clickbank.net/

You get a link like this instead:

http://eba9255hwy0u7y0-rgo3mjpg5i.hop.clickbank.net/

This way it's impossible to see that your Clickbank nickname is zzzzz and the seller is bookdemon. By using the encrypted link you make it harder for anyone trying to earn the commission themselves by replacing zzzzz with their own nickname. It's still possible to get hands on your commission, but it's much harder.

The downside with this kind of links is that they still show you're promoting a Clickbank product and you need to make sure you copy the text exactly.

In next part I will show you how to mask your link using a simple Javascript.

How to hide your affiliate links – part 1 from Xavier Media®

For everyone in the affiliate marketing business the Affiliate Summit is the premier affiliate marketing event in the US. The Summit this year will cake place in New York in August (the9th to the 11th). If you're a Clickbank member you can apply for 5 free Gold-level passes (valued at $279 each).

The passes will be given to 5 happy users that have applied before the 8th of June in the Clickbank blog.

If you're already are planning to go to New York this could be a great way to save a few bucks on the entrance

A couple of rules from the blog:

To enter, simply fill out the form below. The deadline to enter is 11:59 p.m. on June 8. One entry is allowed per person, and all passes will be processed through ClickBank, so please only register if you can actually attend. Passes are non-transferable. Travel and other expenses are not included. Winners will be contacted directly.

Use the form in their blog to sign up: Clickbank blog.

Clickbank – Affiliate Summit from Xavier Media®

Clickbank is now accepting applications from Clickbank affiliates who would like to test their new ad platform. At their own blog they describe it like this:

Over the past few months, ClickBank has been developing an innovative advertising platform that will help ClickBank affiliates make more money from their Web site or blog traffic, while at the same time generating more exposure and sales for ClickBank publishers.

Sounds like Adsense similar ads with commission instead of a flat payment per click doesn't it? I like the idea because if you got a niche web site you should be able to earn a lot more from commission ads then you can on click-based ads.

I applied for this and I hope they accept Xavier Media as one of the testers since then I will let you know how it's working for us

If you too would like to be in this test you can apply for it in their blog. All you need is a free affiliate account which you can get here.

Clickbanks new ad platform from Xavier Media®

In this Sunday series we're continuing our trip back to 2001.

Payments

In 2001 Paypal had already seen the daylight, however they where so far not widely spread so not everyone used them. So to accept payments you would have to use a company to accept credit cards, receive a check for your monthly payments, cash it in and then use your own credit card to pay hosting fees etc. Today I can't even remember how we could live like that

I think Clickbank was the number 1 popular company to accept payments online and I got my first account with them in 2001. At that time they didn't accept multiple currencies, couldn't work with subscriptions and you had to wait for your pay-check to arrive by snail mail . Today they've evolved in a good way. They can work with several currencies, subscriptions are possible, you don't have to wait for a check any more since you can get paid by wire transfer. Since they also accept Paypal transfers today I have to say that they are prefect (not everyone like Paypal so by using Clickbank you can offer direct credit card payments with out going thru PayPal).

The best thing with Clickbank is that they actually offer wire transfers so you no longer have to wait for your check, since checks can get lost in the mail and you have to wait longer before you actually got the money in your hand. So I actually love the development where more and more companies are offering ACH or wire transfers to pay affiliate commissions etc.

PayPal existed, but they didn't have many of the features they got today . In the beginning they only accepted users from US, which meant that you couldn't send or receive money outside US. They didn't have that many currencies you could charge your customers in (only USD ). I got my PayPal account in 2002 so I guess they started accepting non-US account holders in the end 2001 or beginning 2002.

Did you by the way know that PayPal was actually called X.com in the beginning?

So the summary of 2001 is that it was hard to send payments online and it was almost completely impossible to send micro-payments.

Internet way back in 2001 – part 3 from Xavier Media®