TheAuthorsDesk.

If you are planning to take the path of the reseller in your Internet Business undertakings, you will do well touse these power tips I have laid out for you. I hope you will find them useful as they have beenfor me.

(more…)

Communication is Key!

(more…)

"What’s the Buzz About?"

(more…)

One of the biggest if not the leading problem for internet marketers is keeping your affiliates from quitting. The time andeffort that has been put forth to get your affiliates can seem like a waste of time if soon after joiningyour program they either opt-out or become inactive. Unless you are determined to succeed you may find yourself doing the same.Before we can hope to keep our affiliates active and motivated we must determine why they give up.

(more…)

It might have been Vince Lombardi or some other famous coach who said, “There is no I in team.” ( Iwas too lazy to look up the source of the quote;) I think that this is as true in business asit is in sports. Especially in a business like ours, where we recruit many affiliates who are new to the internet,new to business, new to computers……. You get the idea. And yet due to the nature of what we do, wemust rely heavily on these new folks, or our stay at home jobs will definitely fail.

(more…)

First, we must understand their point of view. Unlike some other search engines, Google is committed to providing the best qualitysearch results possible. That is an admirable effort, and they are certainly not setting out to do harm to their loyaladvertisers who bring them millions in ad revenue each month.

(more…)

Honestly, I’m not a big affiliate fan because in the past I haven’t gotten 90% of the money promised either becausethey disappear before they pay out or they have so many exceptions — paying out once a quarter, has to beover X dollars first, etc. Another negative side is that some of them think that 10% commission or some lowamount is worth the 20 hours it takes for us to sell it. Usually the 10% equal $10 and $10isn’t worth my reputation even $1000 actually.

Today’s article is not about the pros and cons of being an affiliate member. There are some good affiliate programs out there where you will get a check, their exceptions are small or nil,and the commission reasonable for the amount of time, risk, and reputation you place on the line for their product or program.

This articlefocuses on collecting their information before you give them the affiliate link so you can increase your mailing list numbers orresidual income.

Almost all affiliate referrals are handled by providing someone with the affiliate link. The reader then goesfrom your place to their place. If this is what you have been doing, take the “L” (for loser) offyour forehead, and read this to “get SMART quick.”

Stop LOOSING a valuable marketing opportunity — and stop it now!

Instead, setup a bridge page (also called a portal page or doorway page). Use the terms bridge and portal instead sincethe word doorway has a separate search engine meaning that can be confusing.

A bridge page works simply like this. You set up a bridge page on your web site. You send them to this page instead of to theaffiliate site, collect their information, and THEN send them to the affiliate site.

The objective is to offer them something forfr*e*e that they must register for on that bridge page so you collect their information. In fact, you can offerseveral things.

You set up two pages actually. One that is the bridge page and the other a thank youpage. After you collect their information THEN you send them to the thank you page. On the thank youpage, you thank them for whatever it is they did and then give them an option to NOW access the affiliate site.

Here area few ideas on items you can offer on the bridge page to collect their information:

* To subscribe toyour ezine. If you have more than one, list these all. * To register for an ecourse. * To receive an ebook. * Offer your opinion or testimonials on using the affiliate’s product/program.

Now, one of the mainthings most people do not think about is offering them something to purchase. And this is something affiliate offerers lookoutfor when you sign up to be an affiliate (at least the good ones do). They don’t want their competitionbecoming an affiliate and then snatching the customer on the way to their site. I am chuckling on this one– I think it is great actually. Most affiliates don’t even know this is happening to them.

Here is aduzie of a hint that I’ve only seen one affiliate program do. This will give you a head start andit’s kind of sneaky too.

You can offer something at a price on the bridge page that has to do withthat topic (you have a focused buyer here). Example: The affiliate item is a software product. You can writean ebook on the same topic. Yes, will this piss off some affiliates. You bet, but guess what –that’s business. And also guess what — it’s going to take them a while to figure it out what youare doing too. They are so busy trying to obtain more affiliates they don’t have the time to research each one.

Offering somethingfor a price isn’t as effective as something for fr*e*e. Then again, you have to decide what is your callto action for the bridge page. Is it to collect name and increase your mailing list or to make residualincome. Don’t get greedy and offer both. It will bite you in the “assets”. Too many choices andit confuses the visitor and so they don’t make any decision at all and leave without choosing anything — no freebie,no affiliate link.

When you set up your doorway page, set up the metatags and searchable keywords that you wouldn’t otherwisebe able to place on your site. Make sure that these same words are in the content.

Catherine Franz, a CertifiedProfessional Marketing & Writing Coach, specializes in product development, Internet writing and marketing, nonfiction, training. Newsletters and articlesavailable at: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com