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I am not going to go on and on about what you should or shouldn’t do to get organized and get yourself focused to finish the year strong. This is just a simple reminder and thought that you need to forget those other distractions and finish off the year strong. Every year I have been in online and affiliate marketing, I have always finished stronger then the year before, which is obviously everyone’s goal at the start of the year. How are you doing towards your goal and what can you do to possibly nail that goal before the end of the year?

Sprint to the finish, work every spare moment you have and don’t let off the gas. I know you need some time to unwind every now and then, but it is almost winter and it is cold, so stay inside and get more and more work done and you will be happier come next year. It will give you a nice boost to start the new year and also help accomplish your old goals and then you will be able to set your new goals higher.

Good luck and don’t let off the gas. Finish strong in 20111!

Sure, there’s no such thing as a free lunch—but bloggers can make effortless money. Affiliate marketing is a simple and successful way bloggers (and those who have a site) can make recurring revenue. At present, not enough people are aware of the option or opportunity of being an affiliate.

For those who aren’t familiar with affiliate marketing, here is a beginner’s introduction.

What is all this affiliate marketing madness?

Affiliate marketing is easy; it is a way to make money online by promoting a company’s product or service on your site. There are different methods of affiliate marketing. The primary avenue is to earn commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site and buys something there. Alternatively, affiliate marketers earn money by referring people to online surveys or getting them to leave an email address.

These commission-based affiliate marketing options might pay you with a percentage of the sale or a fixed amount per conversion. A conversion is a clickthrough on a company’s ad that produces a sale.

Conversions are tracked by the company, so don’t sweat it. Sometimes the link you provide for the company on your blog will be embedded with a code that allows them to track your personal conversions. Another way a company can track your conversions is by providing you with a coupon code for your specific visitors. Either way, there really isn’t much you have to do.

Starting is simple

Selecting a company to affiliate with takes a little bit of consideration. You want to choose a product or service that resonates with your audience. As an example, being an affiliate with a company like Online Driving University would be a way to cater to parents of teenagers or teenagers themselves.

To show you how simple becoming and being an affiliate is, we’ll check out what partnering with ODU takes. If you visit the official Online Driving University website, you can find an entire section dedicated to helping you become an ODU affiliate; taking the guess work out of the process. Once you are there, you need to “apply” which requires creating a profile. Creating a profile includes providing some personal information as well as account information. These profiles are used to see banner statistics, orders, and payments.

After you have applied and registered to become an affiliate, you should receive an automated email welcoming you to the program. This email will have login information that gives you access to your account within their site. At this point, you get to pick from a variety of text links or banners that you would prefer posting on your blog. You can snatch the links and HTML banner codes right from this location and embed them into your post whenever you choose. What should you expect from here?

ODU’s specific program gives you commission when someone enrolls in a driving course after finding them through your site. If at any point you want to take a look at your status to see your sales, you can always login to your account and check. At the end of the month you should expect a check in the mail with your commission. ODU offers a 20 percent commission of the revenue generated from your referrals, which is actually around the average for the affiliate marketing industry.

Advertisers love affiliates

Advertisers appreciate affiliates because it is a great way to find a target audience. Advertisers also like affiliate marketing because they only have to pay for the advertisements when there is an actual conversion. Promoting a product or service on someone else’s site allows the company to increase exposure and overall sales levels without much work on their behalf.

Publishers prefer affiliates

It is logical for those who have a site or blog to make money off it. Choosing to be an affiliate is a good decision for both bloggers and those who own sites. Publishers that find a product or service that is relevant to their reader and audience can earn money without necessarily trying.

Why blogging is a good affiliate marketing base

Affiliate marketing may not be the only way to make money from blogging or owning a site, but there are good reasons why it is profitable route. One of the biggest reasons affiliate marketing works well on blogs is the relationship between the publisher and reader. Often with blogs, the reader has a decent level of trust with the author. With established trust, a reader is more likely to accept a recommendation for a product or service. To sum it up: the publisher recommends a product, the reader purchases a product, and you reap the benefits.

Considerations prior to becoming an affiliate

Affiliate marketing can be lucrative. The success of affiliate marketing relies heavily on:

• Getting traffic (high traffic recommended)
• Finding a relevant product or service
• Finding a quality product or service
• Having a relationship with your readers

Being successful with affiliate marketing also relies on your reader’s mood and your ability to write decent sales copy, but you hardly have anything to lose. Overall, there isn’t much risk with affiliate marketing. If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate, select the right product for your blog’s purpose and be patient. Affiliate revenue builds with time.

Yes, this may not be the smartest thing for me to do, but you have to share when you get something like this. So enjoy as long as you can!

Credit goes to PotPieGirl.com, which is where I got it from. However, her site is down at the moment so go ahead and grab it from me while you can.

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First off, of course affiliate marketing isn’t dead. It never will be dead, whether it is online or offline. Affiliate marketing lives in every industry offline too, from kickbacks from car salesmen for referring a friend to getting a prize for sending people to your local insurance agent. It happens every day all over the world. So no, it is not going anywhere.

However, more and more people are realizing that they need to really learn how to diversify and branch out into other sources of income besides just PPC income from affiliate marketing. Trust me, I love affiliate marketing. It is my life and my passion. But unfortunately, many different factors have caused me to stray from traditional affiliate marketing and start doing my own thing. And it is a good thing, as I am becoming even more independent then before. Here are some ways that I have personally changed my methods.

Get Out and Sell

Now I know the thought of selling to people outside of your home is enough to freeze up a ton of you online guys. But it isn’t that bad. In fact, if you know how to do it, you don’t have to ever meet with clients. Just outsource your selling to a friend or family member. Pay them commission only. Or, just pay someone to get you in the door and then you come in and take care of the rest. That way, the cold calling part is taken care of and they are now a warm lead for you to talk with.

Invest in Another Industry

Try your hand at developing another business offline, one that requires you to get out and network a bit and build connections. Worse case scenario is that you build a ton of business connections and get some business for your offline marketing/web design firm. That is what I have done and it is going quite well so far (Check out Energy Reconsidered). I got involved in a green energy company in Philadelphia and we are going strong. We recently were awarded a grant for a building in the Philly Naval Yard, which is one of the largest green energy testing grounds in the nation. So that is just another way that I am branching out and making my income strong.

Buy Established Sites

Flippa is good for this, and while many sites on there are overpriced, you can find a gem if you know what you are looking for and have a clear, solid plan in place in order to make that site work. Just buying something because it looks good is not a smart business decision, so do your fact finding first.

Build Your Own Offers

This isn’t as tough as many people like to think, and I have built my offers all around the local business model that I am creating. Create and generate leads for your local business and you have a foot in the door for not only sales leads, but marketing and web design services too. Sell your leads to your local businesses, sell your out-of-state leads to buyers and profit. Not that hard really in the grand scheme of things. You just need to have a strong sales force in place.

Get Out of Your Box

Look outside Facebook, Google, PlentyOfFish or any other PPC platform to make real money. Whether we like to admit it or not, running PPC campaigns is not a stable business model for the majority. Setting up a stable business based off of your marketing skills is. Building a local or even national brand that people will come to is stable. With the way that affiliate marketing works, specifically PPC, it is always changing. Sure, most businesses do that, but in the PPC, it does so like lightening. And with more and more networks either paying late or not at all (stick to EWA!), it is essential to diversify your income even more.

I am by no means saying to stop affiliate marketing or PPC. I am still running campaigns, just not as strong as I did before. I have found more stable, longer lasting income generators, and this is not #1 on my list. But it still is in my list, because it makes me money. I will do anything (to an extent) that makes me money and is worth my time, and you need to start doing the same as well.

So, get out of your comfort zone and expand that business. Instead of being comfortable, make yourself rich by diversifying. Most successful millionaires have taken more then their share of risks to get where they are, and if you want to get to that level, you need to do the same as well.

As always, register any of these domain names for just $7.67 including the ICANN fee at GoDaddy by just clicking on the domain of your choice!

The niche of the day will be golf shoes. Yes, this list below is 25 .net & .org is all about golf shoes with a monthly search volume above 1,000 and a CPC over $1.00.

Register any of these domains below at GoDaddy for less then $8 by just clicking on the domain!

.NETs

.ORGs

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