Think of banner ads as the spice in your affiliate diet. Sprinkle them around, but for a heartier helping of sales, you’ll need something more solid! Learn to give your visitors longer, more descriptive pre-sales text. Revamp your affiliate advertising using these simple steps:

1. Pull the Reader in
2. Introduce the Product
3. Explain the Product’s Significance
4. Tell the Reader to Make a Purchase

To convince your audience that your text is worth reading, make your first sentence or two very interesting. Make a bold statement, say something seemingly ridiculous, or appeal to your prospect’s emotional side. Then, tie this grabber in with the rest of your copy.

What is the product you’re advertising? What does it do? Directly after your grabber, give a compact explanation of your product. Keep this explanation short, while still being very clear. This should still be a very short section of your text.

What will it do for me?

By writing your own copy, you can directly target your unique audience. Make the most of this opportunity! Clearly explain how your readers will benefit from this product.

No one knows your audience like you do. Suggest a variety of product uses just for them, and give examples. This is the time for details – make this section long and rich.

You’ve come so far – you’ve laid out exactly what the product is and how it will help your unique audience. Now, seal the deal – tell your readers to purchase the product! Include your affiliate link in this section.

This step may sound strange, but it’s necessary. Often, people hear about a product and are genuinely interested, but fail to actually make a purchase. A clear call to a simple action cuts down on buyer ambivalence. Don’t be pushy – just change your verb tenses to the imperative. Instead of:

“If you think that you fit this profile, you might want to think about buying this product.”

Say: “Click here to order an account today.”

Drive Sales – Use Long Copy

If you don’t feel ready to write long copy yourself, ask your affiliate program manager for help. Many companies release well-written articles by respected authors that you can reprint free of charge.

The novelty of the Web is wearing off. People online now are busy. Surfers won’t make a purchase unless you make a great case for what they’ll get out of it. And you’re not going to do that with just a banner ad.

Meat & Potatoes For Your Affiliate Diet is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective & easy ways of making money online. It gives everyone a chance to make a profit from the sales generated of other people’s products, by various promotional efforts. Affiliate marketing programs are aplenty & more and more people have found it to be an easy way to make money online.

But despite all its advantages, there are people who tested the waters of affiliate marketing never to return. Why? Because they feel that it’s not worth the work involved. What these people don’t know, however, is that they are doing the no-no’s in affiliate marketing. Thus, they give up and lose the chance to earn a passive income for a long time.

In order for you to avoid being one of the many unsuccessful affiliate marketers, it pays to know what the common pitfalls are in this business. Below is a short list of affiliate marketing mistakes you should know of.

1. Choosing the Wrong Product to Promote

This is the number one mistake affiliate marketers commit because they want to earn from a program as fast as possible. They immediately sign up for what’s hot at present and eventually promote the same product everyone else is promoting. The downside with this, aside from competition, is that you may not be even slightly interested in the product to begin with. Affiliate marketing is still work and you have to be interested in what you are promoting so that you will be motivated to accomplish things.

Therefore, do your research and pick a product that you are interested in. For sure, you’ll have an easier time promoting it.

2. Joining Too Many Affiliate Programs Too Soon

Because joining an affiliate program is easy, you may be tempted to join as many as you can to bring in more income streams. Besides, there is nothing to lose by joining as many as you can, right? Wrong. While there is nothing wrong with joining as many affiliate programs as you can, promoting all these offers together will stop you from concentrating on each one. This means lesser profits for you because the full potential of the program is not realized.

Instead, choose a program that pays at least 40% commission and give it your best by promoting the product as much as you can. When you start seeing profits come in, you can now move on to the next product in line. Affiliate marketing is not a race. In time, you will see a steady stream of profit coming in for you.

3. Not Having First-Hand Experience

As an affiliate, you have to convincingly promote products and services to earn customers. Therefore, you have to know first hand the pros and cons of buying such product or service. It is very hard for you to ‘imagine’ how a product or service can help people with what they need. You may end up misleading customers which can ruin your reputation in the long run.

Thus, it is recommended that you try out the product or service first before signing up as an affiliate. This will enable you to truthfully convey to potential buyers what they can or cannot get with the product. Your sincerity plays a big role when they actually click your affiliate link to get to the product’s sales page.

These are the three mistakes affiliate marketers often commit and are paying dearly for. By knowing these mistakes, you can easily avoid falling into the same trap and be on your way to becoming a super affiliate. As with any other kind of business, patience is the key. Plan well and implement consistently. In no time at all, you will be able to benefit from the long term profits of a well run affiliate program.

Thanks to Jan C. De Joya for this article.

3 Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Are you a budding photographer? If you like to snap pictures at family events or at friends’ parties as a hobby, put your photography skills to good use in ways that will earn you money for your efforts.

Here are seven ways that you can make money with digital photography.

Photography has changed since the instant camera was developed. With a digital camera, you can take a not so good picture and make it perfect using a variety of software options, such as Photoshop. Best of all, pictures can be printed on high-quality glossy photo paper on your home printer or at a kiosk for just a few pence per picture.

There are lots of opportunities for both amateur & professional photographers to make extra money with their pictures online. Here are just a few:

1. Stock photography. For website newsletters, magazines, blogs & articles, authors & publishers look for photos that capture the essence of their articles. It is not always convenient to go out and snap some pictures every time you need one for a new blog or article. Selling stock photographs of generic images to businesses and individuals is convenient for them and lucrative for you. You don’t have to sell directly to businesses either, you can list your photos on stock image websites such as Fotolia and earn a commission everytime somebody buys your image.

2. Newspaper pictures. If you are in the right place at the right time, you might capture photos that are worthy of being published with an article in the newspaper. When news happens, a newspaper photographer might not be on the scene at the right time. If you can capture the newsworthy moments and sell them to newspapers, you could be rewarded with a token payment. Pictures of celebrities usually attract the biggest payouts, although that does verge on being labelled as a paparazzi!

3. Magazine photographer. Create a portfolio of photos that you’ve taken and submit them to magazines.  Looking at your work, they may hire you for assignments or photo shoots. Magazines are a tough market to break into so cut your teeth on other smaller assignments for local newspapers first to build your portfolio.

4. Local photography for businesses & classified ads. Ever seen an ad that shows cars for sale or houses for sale? Someone had to take those photographs. It could be you. Hire yourself out to local businesses to do these photographs for them.

5. Event photographer. Family reunions, christenings, bar mitzvahs and birthday parties are perfect – the event organisers don’t always want to pay for a professional photographer but may be willing to pay you a small amount to cover the photos for their own memories. You can be the eyes in the room catching candid shots.

6. Photography website. If you know a lot about digital cameras and photography, create a website or blog to review photography products. Keep visitors and customers coming back with engaging content on various aspects of photography. You can then easily monetise your website using affiliate links to the products that you are reviewing.

7. Teach a photography class. Those cameras look easy to use but some of those symbols can mix people up. Teach others to use their digital camera and create great pictures that they, too, can market as a business.

7 Ways You Can Earn Money with Your Digital Photography is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

Affiliate marketing is a big part of my Internet business and the way that I make money online. This blog is monetized using affiliate schemes that I am a member of and I get a small commission if a visitor or reader of this blog buys a product through one of my links. Can’t get much more honest than that.

Affiliate marketing is probably one of the more well-documented areas of Internet marketing, yet so many people don’t make any money through this model.

Do you “know somebody” who uses affiliate schemes to make money online but doesn’t actually make any money at all? If so, read on…

Here are some of my tried and tested tactics for having success with affiliate marketing. What you are about to read is no rocket science and probably has been ‘revealed’ elsewhere online…infact i’m sure somebody has created an eBook about this called ‘Affiliate Marketing Secrets Revealed’ and sells it for $47 from their squeeze page. Infact, i’d put money on that!

Anyway, this is how I use affiliate links. Obviously what works for me may not work for you, so don’t hold me to this…but just be aware that this is what works for me:

1. Use affiliate links to monetize blogs, email newsletters, email signatures, forum profiles, forum signatures

2. Write reviews and articles about products that you are an affiliate for

3. Keep affiliate links relevant to your newsletters/blogs, so that they add value to the readers & subscribers

4. Build a relationship with your affiliate account manager/host and negotiate better rates of commission

5. If you are an affiliate for products in different industries, use different blogs/accounts to promote each in order to keep the relevance

6. Offer a bonus product that you’ve created when people buy from your affiliate link (keep the bonus relevant to the actual product being sold)

7.  Promote your links through relevant social networking mediums such as Twitter and Facebook. Don’t just ‘sell’ to your followers, only offer a product if it’s relevant or somebody asks about a certain product that they are looking for

8. Use tracking codes in your affiliate links so that you know where the traffic & conversions are coming from. Then you can focus your attention where you know you are having success.

9. Try and cloak your affiliate links if you can, if you don’t want others knowing about or tracing your links back to the affiliate scheme

10. Choose your affiliate partners carefully and not just based on the highest commissions paid out. Choose to promote something that you use yourself or that is reliable and ethical. Remember, it’s your reputation at stake too to your subscribers and not only the actual merchant.

Affiliate Marketing Tactics for Success is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

At the time of writing this post, it is currently 2.43am in London, UK (proving that ‘internet people’ are nocturnal).

I couldn’t wait until normal hours to publish this so here goes:

James Schramko

James Schramko is one of the world’s most prolific underground Internet marketers, bringing in a 7-figure income from his Internet marketing lab in Sydney, Australia..which just happens to be on the beach (no, i’m not jealous at all…i love rainy London).

Anyway, James has an absolutely amazing forum which is where I learn all the ‘tricks of the trade’ along with many of the world’s leading Internet marketing experts who have had huge success online. The forum, if you don’t already know of it, is called SuperFastResults

The SuperFastResults forum is a private forum which is by invitation only.

The reason why I decided to get this post published immediately was because James just emailed me and told me that he is offering a limited time preview to the forum for anybody who is serious about learning how to ‘do’ Internet marketing properly.

>>>CLICK FOR YOUR PRIVATE INVITATION<<<

What Killer Internet Marketing Strategies are covered in the members area?

Currently we are teaching our members the following strategies:

• Affiliate Marketing (including bonus marketing, blogging, review sites and product launch marketing)
• Selling IM courses to offline businesses
• Running a paid membership site
• Selling IM services to offline businesses
• Promoting CPA offers (blueprint from a $2k course)
• Selling Your own products on Clickbank
• Selling PLR/Resale Rights
• Lead Generation business
• Coaching and Mentoring business
• Making your own hybrid deals
• Site Flipping
• Video marketing cash
• Authority Blogging

A brand new set of webpage creators (high converting Affiliate presells, Sell a product, Name Squeeze templates, Review page template, secret iFrame tool)  that will fully automate the whole process. The new page creator has

• Direct FTP uploading to your server
• PPC spy tool protection
• SEO optimization
• automated XML sitemap creation
• and much more including preview mode and Zip file export

Making high-converting Pre-sell Pages, Review Pages, Sales Pages and Squeeze/Name Capture pages will be superfast using these!

>>> GET YOUR PREVIEW ACCESS TODAY <<<

James Schramko offers preview access to SuperFastResults is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway

This one is going to be short and sweet – if you are interested in taking your products and creating an affiliate system so that Internet & affiliate marketers can take your product to market and drive traffic to your site, I highly recommend that you at least check out Nanacast. It’s by far the Internet’s best business automation tool.

I know my buddy James Schramko uses it for his own affiliate products and really loves the concept. So check it out here –http://nanacast.com/h/30250/

Nanacast – for creating affiliate schemes for your products is a post from: Internet Marketing Highway