So what is an affiliate network and how do they operate?
An affiliate network is a third party facilitator, which brings affiliates and suppliers together. It connects companies with products or services to sell together with those who intend display and promote these products or services on their websites, blog sites and through other advertising mediums like pay-per-click and eBay classifieds.

Affiliate programs are the ideal way to make your website and blog sites profitable and, one of the few ways of making money on the Internet that has managed to stand the test of time. Affiliate programs form an online marketing strategy for companies and suppliers that provides substantially lower up front costs for advertising.

Affiliate programs are very much like commission based sales job. The major differences being you are not limited to one company or range of products you can promote. Nor are you constrained by sales quotes to keep your job and, you can pick your hours to work.

Affiliates place special referral links on their site, driving traffic to your site, all of which is tracked via a tracking link. The affiliate network does all the tracking, accounting and payment of commissions. This is normally when the sales commission reaches a threshold (normally $100).

Most affiliate networks do not charge anything to set up as they get their remuneration via a percentage cut from the supplier. The affiliate networks usually list products that you can promote along with the amount you can expect for each sale plus information on how popular that particular product is in the marketplace.

There are a few different ways affiliate programs work:
1-Tier: One-tier affiliate programs pay commissions on one level only. Lets say a company offers their affiliates a 20% commission and their product sells for $100. This means that for every person that you refer that buys the product, you would receive a onetime $20 commission.

2-Tier: The 2-tier affiliate program is designed so if you are making money and you refer others to the product, they essentially become your sub-affiliate and, because you referred them, the company wants to reward you for that referral.

Two-tier affiliate programs divide the commission made on each sale into two parts. Lets use the example above where a company offers their affiliates a 20% commission and their product sells for $100. In a 2-tier program the first level sale would receive 15% commission and the second level would receive 5%.

Binary System: In a binary system not only do you get paid on your own sales (1-tier) and on those you refer (2-tier) but also you get paid on everyone that they refer and so on to infinity. These are often mistaken for pyramid schemes but are a legitimate way for companies to distribute their products quickly into the marketplace. Click here for an example of how a binary system works: Fit Body Fat Wallet

One of the best affiliate programs worth promoting is binary programs or residual income programs. This type of affiliate program allows you to build your own down-line “sales team”. You receive continual residual income on every sale your sales team makes.

Your sales team in a binary system can really grow quickly and everyone has the same opportunity to build a sales team of his or her own.

With many popular affiliate programs to choose from, look for products and services that will match your websites and blog sites. If your ads are tailored to suit your website or blog, there is more chance of your visitors clicking on one of your affiliate network ads.

Attention Blog Site Owners!
You can now ad an new plug in that will drag products of your choice directly from Amazon, Clickbank, Wal-Mart, Online Shopping Network, Target and many other online giants directly into your bog with all your affiliate links embedded. This is totally awesome! Take a look here: AzonSnatcher

So now that you know what an affiliate network is, here are a few of the bigger affiliate networks you might like to join. Just click on each link and they will take you each of the affiliate network’s home page.

JVZoo
This one is pretty cool as they have a plug in too and it will automatically draw ads to your blogs based on the keywords you insert all with your affiliate links already embedded… pretty cool plug in.

Clickbank Founded in 1998, ClickBank is a secure online retail outlet for more than 50,000 digital products and 100,000 active affiliate marketers.

Commission Junction Commission Junction facilitates and supports equitable, lucrative relationships between advertisers and publishers.

Make Earning Affiliate Cash a Breeze

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliates’ marketing efforts. This can be in the form of cash, prizes or free products.

The principle is like referring a friend or acquaintance to a good restaurant you have eaten at or a movie you have recently seen… only you get paid for recommending it. The idea is that if you like a particular product and you recommend it to a friend and they like it and buy it, you will receive a referral commission.

Many affiliates use affiliate marketing aggregators who offer millions of affiliate products that you can offer through your websites and blogs. The key is to find products that are viable and that suit your particular websites and blogs.

In this video we show how to quickly and easily assess the commercial viability of different market niches using the Market Samurai Software.

Powerful Ad Writer Creates Ads in Minutes
In this video we show how writing a compelling ad in minutes is a breeze using the Market Samurai Software.

Publish Affiliate Banners in Minutes
In this video we discuss how to monetize your website and publish your ad to your website quickly and easily with a few clicks of your mouse using the Market Samurai Software.

So now you know how to source and research the viability your affiliate products using the Market Samurai Software. If you have not already done so, make sure you view the other videos in this series:

How To Find The Right Keywords For Your Websites, Blogs, and Affiliate Offers

How To Effortlessly Increase Your Website and Page Rankings

Step 2: Research Your Competition (Keyword & SEO
Analysis)

Before you even consider starting your online marketing efforts you need to do some research.

>>>Click Here For More About Market Samurai Keyword Research<<<

You need to find out what people want, source a supply of that product and provide to your hungry audience. This is extremely important in affiliate marketing (selling other people’s products)

And, if you already have your own product, you need to find out whether your product is in demand. Do people want or need what you have to offer? It doesn’t matter that YOU think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, if nobody else thinks so; you are dead in the water. There must be a demand for what you are offering.

So how do we find out if our product is in demand? You need to do some research. You need to identify whether there is a demand for your product or service. The easiest way is to jump onto a search engine like Google and type in the type of product or service you are offering into the search bar and see what comes up.

Do not get caught in the trap of “our products are unique and no-one else in the marketplace has what we have got” syndrome. The truth is, there are millions of websites out there and you can bet there is someone else selling your product or something very similar competing for your customers. Do your due diligence and find out who they are.

Getting to know your competition is power. If you know who and what
else is in your marketplace, you will be easily able to identify your USP (unique selling point), and focus your marketing around that. So type into the search box what you think people would type to find your product.

Now if you look to the right at the top of the page you will see the total amount of websites vying for that phrase you typed in. For example, if I typed in the phrase “help with stress” it says: Results 1 – 10 of about 107,000,000 for help with stress. If there is no websites vying for your phrase, then there is no or very little demand for your product because no one is searching for it.

Now look at the top three websites listed in your search; read their headlines, sub-heads and first few paragraphs in the body text. What need, want or solution are they offering their readers? What keywords are they using?

Hot Tip: Find a blank spot of the home page and right click with your mouse and select ‘view page source’ and you will be presented with the HTML code. Near the top of the page you will see the keywords they are using. Now don’t just copy and use them because some are probably useless. Just make a note of them.

Now you utilize a keyword research tool like Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool to find related keywords to the keyword you have selected. When searching for keywords you are initially looking for two things; supply and demand.

1. Supply pertains to your competition, which is, how many websites are using the keywords you are targeting in their pages? Less is better here (30,000 or less)

2. Demand pertains to how many people are typing in those keywords when searching on Google and other search engines. How many people are searching for that keyword? More is better here (min. 80 searches per day)

This will allow us to get an accurate estimate on how many people search for these keywords and how many websites exist around these keywords. So what you are looking for are keywords with high traffic and low competition.

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before you can determine whether your keyword has a marketing edge over your competition such as:

• What is the SEO potential of your keywords?
• What is the phrase-to-broad match of your keywords?
• What is the monthly trends of keywords?
• Adwords traffic your keywords might attract
• How many people would likely click on your page with that
  keyword?
• How much would you expect to pay for the keyword in PPC
  campaigns?
• How many websites are competing for that keyword?
• How many people use that keyword in PPC ad campaigns?
• What is the potential value of that keyword (how much could
  it make you)?

Now before you start pulling your hair out screaming ‘I thought he said this was simple’, these are tactics that will give you an unfair advantage over your competition because 90% just are not doing this sort of research.

Yes, this is very time consuming stuff however, there is a solution. For a small investment into your business you can get access to software that will do all the above and more for you with a click of a few buttons… now that’s simple! Check Out The Software Here!

So now you have your high-traffic, low-competition keywords for your product. Now we need to look at how to get online… bookmark this page by adding to your favourites or subscribe to my RSS Feed (its free of course) to receive each instalment as it is posted. Not sure what an RSS Feed is or how to subscribe? Check out this cool YouTube video. Which shows you how.