Global Premises

The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job seeker, but also presents several possible challenges. It also adds great complexities, and a lot more things to think about…and be careful of.

Job search needs to be thought of as a highly personal, very directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an ad. Your extended network is your lead generating machine.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got over 650 responses in a week. For one job. That’s increased competition for jobs.

Had a suitable candidate contacted us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have landed the job before having all that competition. How? By finding an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 9 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be careful to check your application materials thoroughly before submitting them. When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily eliminated with a fast-paced triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our position description. By eliminating prospects whose cover letters gave us grounds not to hire them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating candidates whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by eliminating candidates who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job sites give you a sense of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well written resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another thing to be aware of is how easily you can be looked up on the net. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing illegal, but enough to tilt our thinking about who to choose.

AA-Careers provides a comprehensive set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

This type of marketing is a lot like an auction site. You push the merchandise on your site and for all your effort, each sale or enquiry gets you money. There isn’t as much time and effort required, few operating costs, it sells while you rest, and it is easy to learn.

The very first step you must take is to decide exactly which area most suits you. A way of doing this is, you need to find out solutions to problems a particular group of people are going through, and then determine a way to address those issues. A good way of achieving this is searching for unique long tail keywords; generally people look for these less, nevertheless greater proportion of these convert to a sale.

If you want to find these profitable words or phrases, it’s recommended that you use Micro Niche Finder. The info generated by Micro Niche Finder or analogous applications or software packages results in a listing of related terminology which you should target in order to earn top ranking on the internet search engines.

Micro Niche Finder data will in addition recount how many searches each keyword or phrase gets, precisely how many other sites who use them, and how good that competitor is. Lastly, Micro Niche Finder data can help in finding the right domain, content for your internet site, and also identify the greatest sales opportunities.

Putting together a website is next on the list; but you’ll obviously have to do more than just that. Search engine optimization is absolutely fundamental. This is where Seo Elite information become useful. This computer program automatically examines competing sites and can provide you with advice on what you must do to have good rankings in the search engine results.

With SEO Elite the info supplied by the software package indicates where you should look for pertinent links, the best keywords, and even information on how to submit articles. In a nutshell, the data obtained are the same kind of data you might get when you confer with an experienced SEO professional.

When you know which target market you want to sell in, have your product advertisements, and your web site is ready to go, then it’s time to decidedly upgrade your search engine rankings. You will collect a regular paycheck and you’ll wonder why you ever doubted that affiliate marketing would work for you!

We’ve all seen the news: joblessness is at an all time high. People from every industry, from every walk of life in the United States have been affected. You’ve been to every help wanted site from Monster.com to your local newspaper, but still can’t find a job. You know that you need to be innovative, but how?

Believe it or not, you can find a job using Twitter. With hundreds of thousands of people already signed up, and truckloads more signing up every day, Twitter has one of the largest communities of professionals online today.

Isn’t Twitter just another social networking site? In so many words… No. Twitter is different in that it allows its members to send information to multiple users at once, making your efforts go farther. Many other sites also link to Twitter, so items that you have posted on one site will automatically transmit through Twitter to your followers, allowing you to reach the most people with the least amount of effort, making the most efficient use of your time.

Not only do individuals sign up, but so do companies. It’s tough in today’s market for human resource departments and recruiters to find the talent they are looking for through traditional means. Recruiters are beleaguered with stacks of resumes and applications to read through. They even have specialized recruiting software to help them sort through the piles. Many times, they turn to Twitter to find their next shining star. Recruiters are logged in everyday, scouring thousands of posts, looking for people who demonstrate the skills they are looking for. They even have notification searches that email them whenever someone posts with certain keywords that indicate they might be a good match for a position. This is a huge opportunity to pat yourself on the back and let others know what you can do. Don’t be humble and miss your chance to be seen. List as many of your accomplishments as you can so that recruiters can find you.

Don’t forget to add Twitter to your arsenal of job seeking tools. You might be pleasantly surprised with your results.

You’ve posted your website on the internet with appropriate keywords and every detail. But that doesn’t mean you can relax and forget all about it now. You want to check Internet results frequently to understand the contest eventuality and the highest rankers among sites.

There are three things you must look after in order to guarantee a large profit thru Adsense program. You want to add a dash of creativity to draw in visitors. Besides this, the content should be the newest and applicable. A scrap site can never make a single $ thru Adsense. The worst place to put adverts is the lower right part. If your internet site is about printers, have photos of the different types available in the market, the advantages and downsides of having one at home, the pricetag factor for example. It’s also great to have links of pages with topical content pasted on your page which will supply additional information to the reader. Many folks get an idea about the page primarily based on its content. It’s also thought that meta outline does not add any additional price to your website. You can even paste links to lead you to other net pages in your text page. This may help the person browse the entire internet site.

The link phrases can be employed as a header or as footer on your webpage. These phrases used may be good enough to draw in shoppers to that link. You can truly achieve success in your business by making good use of link building and SEO. Your target should be to set your website in the top few pages of the search engine and this could be done with good amount of information, effort and time. Check this http://www.free-secrets.info/adsense

Home-makers can also find a helpful way to spend their time whilst still making time for their family and additional earnings for themselves. However, not all sites listed online are genuine. You have flexible work hours, you can work at your convenience, no deadlines set are by anyone and most significantly you’re your own MD.

All this is probable with completely no stress or tension. There is barely any investment you make with this business. Folks are prepared to make a change in their business style to try to lead a stress free life. With business roaring online, you’ll be able to find a lot of them providing coaching, tips and concepts on different methods to make money on the web.

It is easy communication with folks from all around the globe and simply needs your effort and time to achieve success. With so very little investment, regardless of the fiscal situation, their background, their country of residence, it is likely for anybody to make their dreams come true. There could be a lot of reasons to make money on the web. The exigency for working from home is to have a P. C. With web connection, patience, effort and time to strike it big.

Yes, preventing intrusions from the web, keeping files safe and ensuring the secure transactions of online banking can be done using free applications. And I mean not demo versions of software, not trial editions, but fully functional tools that many PC users either have never heard about or just don’t trust anything that goes with a 4-letter word. They think that keylogging their children’ online activity equals to spying and that such harsh supervision in not required for their beloved ones.

In April Panda Software warned Internet users of a new particularly brazen scam aimed at stealing confidential information. The technique used here looks like a hybrid between phishing and a fraudulent website. Panda Software identified several websites offering cheap airline tickets which in fact weren’t selling anything; the aim was to cheat users out of credit card details. Data loggers, key loggers are just a few programs which harvest info from your computer. Winclear is the only program created specially to auto remove such spywares. asp. That is why every computer owner needs winclear.

Protect With Winclear :Clear History From Search Bar
Some keyloggers or computer spy software can be used as an Internet police or firewall. Thus, you will be able to block web sites that you think are in appropriate for young people or are not needed in the office. There are also a number of spy programs that can operate stealthily. Thus, your partner will not know that you are watching his every keystroke, enabling you to easily find out if he or she is in an illicit relationship. Winclear is the only software which is capable of removing keylogger programs. In addition bulky information such as IP addresses and browser preferences for a website can be stored in a cookie saving time when loading a website you often visit. Winclear has been the industry leader in fighting keyloggers for the last 8 years.

Winclear:
I called around to find out how people keep their data secure only to find out that real security experts are only for large companies with 100 or more computers. That is the reason why you need Winclear installed onto your computer. There are many companies that are offering computer spy software via the Internet so you will not find it hard to find a monitoring program that will suit your needs. Protect your computer security by using Winclear! More about Winclear here: Winclear.

1. Start a private web site. Use it as a free bonus if people
buy the product you resell. You could also allow people
to join for free and you could advertise the affiliate
program you’ve joined.

2. Participate in chat rooms related to the product
you’re reselling. Start a conversation with a person without
trying to sell to them. Later on, while you are chatting,
mention the product you’re reselling.

3. Do not drive all your visitors directly to affiliate website,
instead send your visitors to your opt-in page mechanism
first before going to your main affiliate website.
That way, you can make follow-up later on and build your own lists so that you can offer another related products or
services another day.

4. Start your own affiliate program directory. Join a large
number of affiliate programs and list them all in a directory
format on your web site. Then just advertise your free
affiliate program directory.

5. Write your own affiliate program ads. If all the other
affiliates use the same ads you do, that does not give you an
edge over your competition. Use a different ad to give yourself
an advantage over all the other affiliates.

6. Use a personal endorsement ad. Only use one if
you’ve actually bought the product or service for the
affiliate program. Tell people what kind of benefits and
results you’ve received using the product.

7. Advertise the product you’re reselling in your
signature file. Use an attention getting headline
and a good reason for them to visit your affiliate site.
Make sure your sig file doesn’t go over 5 lines.

8. Recruit lots of sub-affiliates and make it easy for your
them to make sales. Give them proven ads to use, make it easy
for prospects to order, provide helpful affiliate statistics,
notification of sales, lifetime income, residual income,
add their commission by giving part of your commission to them,
provide a good tracking system and professional training.

9. Join a web ring. It should attract the same type
of people that would be interested in buying the product
you’re reselling. You could also trade links on your own
with other related web sites.

10. Participate on web discussion boards. Post your comments,
answer other people’s questions, and ask your own questions.
Include your affiliate text link under each message you post.

11. Create a free ezine. Use your ezine to advertise
the affiliate programs you’ve joined. Submit your ezine
to online ezine directories and promote it on your web site.

12. Use referral strategies to get lots of order yourself or sub-affiliates order. Referral system can also be a good way to increase your affiliate commissions if you can give incentives to motivate people to refer and tap deep into people’s network of friends, family, and associates. They don’t just stop at the occasional, one-off referral.

13. Create a free e-book with the advertisement and
link of your affiliate web site. The subject of the free
e-book should draw your target audience to down-
load it. Also submit it to some e-book directories.
The more exposure your free e-book gets, the more
your ad will be seen.

==============================================================================
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Kusuma Widjaja is President of Yahoo Cyber Technology, CV., based in Surabaya. He has over 2 years experience in Internet Marketing Arena, Custom Web Site Design and Graphic Design Services. For more information go to http://www.whycity.net or you can reach us at +62-8315-838474.

Do you remember the last time you went into a shop and the person ’serving’ raced over to you, greeted you with a lovely smile, heaps of enthusiasm and said, “Welcome to our store, what can I help you with today?” And then listened attentively to what you had to say?

Doesn’t happen very often does it? In fact, while I was writing this, I couldn’t recall when I had experienced it. I’m sure I must have yet it would have been so long ago, I can’t remember.

Let me tell you what happened this week…

I belong to a well-known trade exchange which I have found very useful for my business. I wanted to purchase a suitcase from a particular store which usually takes trade dollars. From time-time the store will limit the use of trade dollars if they have reached their maximum for the month. Anyhow I quickly discovered this wasn’t going to be my lucky day.

I walked in and the assistant who was sitting down behind the counter (and remained there), didn’t smile. She barely acknowledged me with what looked like a scowl. I had interrupted her reading time. (She was so busy, there was no-one in the store). I then politely (yes I can be polite sometimes) asked her if they were accepting trade dollars as I wanted to purchase a suitcase. She turned around to the owner who was sitting behind her doing some bookwork and repeated my question. The owner stayed seated, didn’t look up and told her assistant “No”.

The assistant then relayed to me that “we are not accepting trade dollars at the moment, but we have good deals for cash”.

She remained seated all that time. I didn’t answer and walked straight out the front door with my cash sitting in my purse.

No matter how good their “cash” deals were going to be, if I was going to spend my hard-earned money anywhere, it definitely would not be with them!

The ‘Colour- blind to service’ Copy Centre

I had spent thousands of dollars with a printing company over a couple of years. A couple of times I was told by one of the staff, when they’ve been snowed under “Mary’s too busy to speak with you at the moment, I’ll have to get her to call you back when she’s got more time”.

It was the same company who sent me a Christmas card with an invoice inside it!

Whenever I had to pick up my order, the business owner would whinge about how hard business was…any wonder why?

Needless to say I didn’t remain with them.

The ‘Cant’ do that’ Café

We went to a local café which we hadn’t been to for a while and I was told by the waiter that “no, we can’t do that”. I wanted a particular type of sandwich which wasn’t on the set menu. I informed the abrasive young waiter that “yes, you can”. That got him scared and the order I requested turned up within 5 minutes.

Are Customers Important to Business?

Of course they are. No customers, no business. Yet why are businesses deliberately driving customers away? It’s ridiculous isn’t it?

It’s The Business Owner’s Fault

That’s right. The person who owns the business is the one who’s responsible for the way their clients/customers are treated.

They are usually too busy working in the business and have not allocated time to working on their business. They’re often very disorganised and have no idea what is really going on.

Call it what you want…personal productivity, time management, personal organisation are crucial skills everyone needs to know and apply to their daily lives. Otherwise you run around filling your day with activity, most of which doesn’t help you achieve your goals.

Five Ways to Improve Customer Service and Increase Profits

If you own or run a business, here’s what you can do:

Treat your prospects and clients like royalty. Make every contact they have with you an enjoyable and memorable experience. Be proactive with your clients. Stay in touch. It is up to you to contact them regularly. Not just wait and react when they have a problem.

Look after your own staff. If you look after your own people they in turn will look after the business. Praise, reward, and invest in their on-going development. Send them off to various courses and seminars on communicating, sales, time management etc. Even if you have your own internal people who do the training, it’s important that your team hear from outside experts who are specialists in their field. They know what they are talking about.

Continually invest time and energy into yourself. Lead from the front. Keep developing yourself.

Get regular feedback. Ask questions. Ask your clients/ customers what they like about your products, services and people. Find out what they dislike.

Get regular feedback internally from your people. Find out what works well, what doesn’t, how can things be improved.

The Final Word

Of course to take action on these ideas, you have to plan for it to happen. So pull out your diary now and plan to make sure that your business continues to stay in business and becomes more profitable.

About The Author

Lorraine specialises in working with businesspeople showing them how to dramatically boost their productivity, reduce the stress and the mess in their lives and have more time for enjoying their life.

lorraine@office-organiser.com.au

If you are an affiliate looking for a niche market, here’s an important piece of information to make note of:

In 2005 there were over 2 million personal bankruptcy filings in the United States.

Many of these individuals will be looking to rebuild their credit and financial future. This spells opportunity for you as an affiliate. You see, here are just a few products and services that an individual with past bankruptcy will need in order to rebuild their credit and financial future:

1) Credit repair
2) Loans
3) Credit cards

Let’s take a look at each one in more detail, and how you can help as an affiliate:

1) Credit repair

One of the first things someone with a discharged bankruptcy on their credit report will want to do is clean up their credit report and increase their credit score. The problem is that many people simply don’t know how.

As an affiliate, you can help by connecting them with various “credit repair” related resources. By the way, when referring to “credit repair” I mean the removal of any inaccurate or obsolete negative information from an individual’s credit report - not accurate, non-obsolete negative information.

So what type of credit repair resources can you refer them to? Credit repair books, services, and software programs are an example - but as an affiliate you only want to represent solid, reputable companies.

You don’t have to limit yourself to just one avenue when it comes to credit repair resources - for example, some of your visitors may want to take the “do it yourself” route and prefer a credit repair book. Others may want to do less work and opt for credit repair software. Finally, others may want to hire a
service to help them. Why not include affiliate links to all of these options?

If you can find services, with an affiliate program, that specialize in credit repair advice for those with a bankruptcy that’s even better. The same with books, for those visitors that want to take the “do it yourself” route to rebuild their credit. For example, my ebook “After Bankruptcy Credit Solutions” has such an affiliate program.

2) Loans

For a number of people, being able to qualify for a loan after bankruptcy is critical. Fortunately, there are a lot of lenders out there who work with individuals that have had a bankruptcy. Even better, many of these lenders have an affiliate program.

Here is a just a sample of the types loans that individuals with a past bankruptcy may be looking for: Personal loans, home loans, auto loans, refinancing, etc. When researching a lenders affiliate program, see what type of loans they offer.

Just like credit repair, when it comes to loans, you can offer visitors a number of options: Links (with your affiliate ID#) to lenders, books on how to qualify for loans, and membership sites that provide a listing of “bad credit” lenders. Again, as an affiliate you have a lot of choices.

3) Credit Cards

There are a number of credit card affiliate programs out there - and many of the credit card programs target people with bad credit.

Your affiliate website could list a number of credit card programs for people with a past bankruptcy. Best of all, secured credit cards (those that require the customer to open a special savings account that acts as collateral for the line of credit) tend to have a high approval rate - which is good news for your visitors that have a bankruptcy on their credit report.

You’ll notice that I have been talking about giving your visitors options when it comes to each item we’ve covered - credit cards are no different. In addition to links to credit card issuers (with your affiliate ID#), you can also include affiliate links to related books and membership sites. As
mentioned before, research company and offer carefully before joining their affiliate program.

Okay, we’ve looked at the various products and services you can offer your visitors as an affiliate, but aren’t there a already lot of websites out there marketing to individuals with “bad credit”. Yes there are, but a lot fewer that specialize in marketing to those with a past bankruptcy - which means less
competition for you as an affiliate.

In this article we looked at the growing “after bankruptcy” niche market. Hopefully it has given you some ideas that you, as an affiliate, can use to build a new income stream - while helping those with a past bankruptcy in the process.

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Copyright © 2006 Innovative Solutions Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

DISCLAIMER:

This information is designed to provide only a general overview of the subject matter herein.

This information is provided with the understanding that neither the publisher nor author is engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional advice. If legal or other expert assistance is required, the services of a professional should be sought.

Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss or damages, including but not limited to special, consequential, incidental or other damages, caused by the information contained herein.

About the Author: R. Lawrence Anderson is author of After Bankruptcy Credit Solutions, which shows individuals how to qualify for credit and loans after bankruptcy. For details about the affiliate program, please visit: http://www.bankruptcy-credit-solutions.com/affiliate

There are many ways to promote your website and one of the most
efficient ways is to use search engines. Search engines are the
first stop for most people trying to find information, services,
and products online. Because of this, it is essential that your
website appears quickly in search results.

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which
offer what is known as “paid inclusion.” This means that you pay
the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be
included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program
commonly called a “spider” that indexes all the web pages it
locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or
not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet
search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your
page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra
spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that
have been paid for. The difference between the spider that
indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages
for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the
additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centers around the annual
fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would
eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a
renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages
in the search engine’s index. If you go the route of paid
inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay
period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from
their index for a certain amount of time.

It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from
paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will
eventually index your page without the additional cost. There
are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and
it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able
to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid
re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be
indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time
after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when
the regular spider will index your pages and when the paid
spider will is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion
usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you
have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will
never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages
often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you
can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which
they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider
will show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page
website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for
Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each
engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will
depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited
reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines,
Google, Yahoo, and AOL, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That
means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee
will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a
daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no
way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the
Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other
search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be
aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your
pages will show up in Google, Yahoo, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal
for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find
out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do
this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but
the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in
quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but
do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will
not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been
indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case,
your money would be better spent by updating your pages to
improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish
this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to
speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit
your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL
inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this
out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of
product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you
dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a
large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be
the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not
offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the
majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that
offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain
quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most
likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated
frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis,
paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often
and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and
then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the
search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee
that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages
are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often
difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to
include the most important pages of a dynamically generated
website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search
engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months.
There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using
paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL
inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they
are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the
lookout to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it
comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment
depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and
your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise
investment for your business goals.

One of the most popular methods of web site marketing is called Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is a method of paying “affiliates,” who are basically online sales people earning commissions based on sales from their referrals. Commissions are usually a percentage of the referred sale, but may include pay per click or a set dollar amount per referral. Once an affiliate signs up, they place some form of advertisement on their site. An example of this process follows.

A music review site applies for the Apple iTunes affiliate program, which pays a 5% commission on referred sales. Once approved, Apple gives the new affiliate a special URL to use that includes their affiliate code. The music review site places some text, maybe some graphics and banners, in their site that links to the iTunes site with their URL. Apple site uses the special URL/affiliate code to track sales that are referred by the music review site, and sends monthly checks to the affiliate for 5% of those sales.

Examples of highly successful affiliate programs to look at and learn from are amazon.com, landsend.com, buy.com, clubmom.com, allposters.com, and ehealthinsurance.com.

Becoming an affiliate is easy. There are thousands of programs available. Beginning your own affiliate program at your site is more difficult. Done right, your affiliate program can boost sales many times over, or even become your sole source of sales. Done poorly, and you can waste a lot of time. It is worth studying, preparing and even hiring help to do it right.

Affiliate Marketing requires a serious commitment. Affiliates are basically a sales staff that uses their site to sell your products and services. So, as sales people, they need ongoing sales management. This could be in the form of e-newsletters, personal e-mails, telephone contact, being available to answer questions, providing training and advice, creating incentives to keep them motivated, etc.

To set up an affiliate program, you must answer some questions:

1. How much are you able to pay in commissions? Keep in mind that you’ll probably want to have occasional short term incentive programs with increased payouts.
2. Do you want a few strong, committed affiliates who have the ability to bring a lot of traffic, or many affiliates who may each bring only a few referrals?
3. Will you set up your own affiliate tracking system (www.myaffiliateprogram.com, www.vikingcoders.com), or will you contract with an affiliate tracking company (www.ecomaccess.com, www.clixgalore.com, www.directtrack.com, www.cj.com, www.linkshare.com, www.performics.com, www.kowabunga.com)?
4. Will you manager your affiliates yourself, or hire a third party affiliate management company (www.team-affiliate.com, www.affiliatemanager.net, www.partnercentric.com)?

When setting up an affiliate program, keep in mind these items:

1. You need an affiliate agreement that protects your rights, especially your trademark rights, and provides affiliates with the confidence that they are protected, too. The affiliate agreement is highly important in attracting professional affiliates, so give it serious attention. Look at the agreements on other affiliate programs, and hire a professional and/or a lawyer to do it right the first time.
2. Affiliates will only promote high conversion sites that provide superior customer service. Is your site ready to respond to affiliate referrals? Some affiliates might send an e-mail to 50,000 people and your site could get hit hard and fast. Be prepared.
3. Affiliates expect fast and accurate payment and solid reporting of their results. Test your software for accuracy before beginning your program. With thousands of affiliate programs available, affiliates won’t stick around if they believe they are not being properly paid.
4. You need to provide the proper tools for your affiliates to succeed. These might be sample text to put into their sites, product graphics, logos, banner ads, and even customization of your site for each affiliate.

Once you commit to an affiliate program, and you have your program set up, it’s time to find and recruit affiliates. There are many methods:

1. Place a link, or even a banner ad, on your site promoting your affiliate program. Your best affiliates might be your customers.
2. Look for non-competitive, related sites, especially content sites, and invite them to join your affiliate program.
3. Public relations - press releases to news sites, content sites and blogs in your industry.
4. Go to abestweb.com and purchase an announcement for $50. Be sure to look through previous announcements, as well as the responses they’ve gotten, so your announcement gets the response you want.
5. Look for other announcement services, such as www.affiliate-announce.com/ and www.makelinks.com/.
6. Promote with Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing pay per click programs.

To learn more today about affiliate marketing, go to: www.abestweb.com, www.revenuetoday.com, and www.affiliatetip.com.

As an e-commerce consultant for over three years, and Web designer for over ten, Chuck Lasker has been helping individuals and organizations utilize the Internet in almost every arena. Chuck’s e-newsletter and blog, The MerchantHowTo.com Report, at http://www.MerchantHowTo.com, is free and popular amongst e-store owners.