OK, I admit it! I ignored the best advice I ever got about internet marketing and affiliate marketing for well over a year!

What was it? That I should have an autoresponder, and send follow-up messages to people who signed up at my site. Why did I do that? Well, it all seemed too complicated, too many follow-up letters to write, to difficult to set up the form on the web page…. and I did not want to spend $20 a month in case it did not work.

Serious problem I had didn’t I? Do you have that problem? Well, if you do here’s the deal with autoresponders. You type in a series of messages at the autoresponder service, and put in how often they should go out. Something like, one day after they sign up, and then at two or three day intervals for maybe seven or eight messages.

Not all these messages sell something. Some just give information, and all should just get the prospect to go to the link in the email. When the prospect gets a series of seven messages he or she is at least ten times more likely to sign up for your product. Why? Marketing studies show that people need to be exposed to an idea or person or firm five, to seven times before they purchase.

So you can see that sending someone straight to the merchant’s site is doomed to failure most times - unless the prospect is desperate, and has a deadline of some sort, either real or imaginary. This is why we need autoresponders.

What’s so good about autoresponders?

To start with, when you send out a message from your own server using a mailer system, you can expect one in three of those not to reach the person you sent it to. It was not like three or four years ago, but following the Can Spam laws in the US and elsewhere, the ISPs and even Outlook Express consider all sorts of messages to be spam. Overkill, and that overkill is hitting your affiliate business.

50 per cent more messages get through

The top autoresponder systems get well over 90 per cent of their messages delivered, partly because they measure your message and tell you whether it will get through or not. Straight off, this means that if you use an autoresponder system, you are likely to get 50 per cent more messages delivered than if you do it yourself. Yes, 95 per cent delivery is 50 per cent more than 65 per cent.

That is if you have some sort of page where people can sign up at your site. Don’t have a form there? Well, you are wasting so much money, it isn’t true. Not sure how to put a form on your site? The autoresponder service will do it for you - well they give you a template in which you put your data.

Most important of all, once you start sending people direct to your autoresponder series, they become your client, and you will be able to sell other products to them later.

Get a ton of FREE information on how to make money as an affiliate and how to avoid deadly mistakes at jrhmarketing.wordpress.com.

Here, we are going to assess the value of giveaway items in affiliate marketing programs and why you should make them a part of your own marketing plan. You can easily figure out from the first sentence that I do believe that using giveaways is a good idea and I’ll tell you why. Also, I’ll tell you what to look for and what not to do in your own marketing efforts.

The first and most important reason the most successful marketing programs use giveaways is to “beef up” the value of the purchase. Most people love to receive a little extra bonus when buying something and people respond especially well to unexpected bonuses. In affiliate marketing, the free downloads offered before or after a purchase can really boost the affiliate’s chance of marketing that product if the giveaway is of value to them and their business. In particular, if the giveaway helps to facilitate the marketing of that product or service, it can really improve the chances that the affiliate will stay with it long enough to get some good results from their efforts.

Examples of those kinds of giveaway items are advertising tips, pre-written emails, HTML codes for affiliates to use on their websites to promote the product or service. In addition, the top product creators will give items with product resale rights called PRR or master resale rights referred to as MRR. These can be valuable as it provides the affiliate with a giveaway item to use in their own marketing efforts.

Another effective giveaway item on a purchase can be a free download of another product that they would ordinarily have to pay money to get. This gives the buyer a sense of getting a 2-for-1 deal and is a very effective method used to get potential buyers to take action.

Many marketers will use a giveaway just for having a person provide their name and email address. As anyone in this business knows, the money is in the list, so this can be a very profitable trade-off for the marketer if he gives something of value.

When choosing which affiliate marketing program to sign up for you, arguably, can use the value of the giveaways for the affiliates as one criteria in making your decision. The giveaways for the new affiliates can include creating custom squeeze pages and sales pages to facilitate the advertising and marketing efforts for that particular program.

All other aspects aside, it’s hard to argue against the idea that making it easier for potential affiliates to promote a program as being anything other than a good thing.

Now that I’ve sang praises of the value of giveaways it’s time to talk about potential negatives and that includes giveaways with little or no value. Giveaways to potential affiliates should be something that helps them to promote the product or service. They are the most effective. The better the affiliate can promote the product, the more likely it is all involved will profit.

For end user products or services, value of a giveaway is more subjective. It probably should be something that entertains or is something the buyer can be reasonably expected to put to use in their own lives. Otherwise that giveaway is fairly meaningless and will not likely help get you any sales.

So, whether you are an affiliate marketer looking for a program or you are looking for affiliates to market your product or service one, of the many, ways to judge the value of an affiliate program is to assess the value of the giveaways.

Tom Schaffer is an escapee from the corporate world and is pursuing a life of affiliate marketing at http://www.jerseyshoremarketing.com. For a good a giveaway of value go to:
http://www.jerseyshoremarketing.com/redirect55.html

Finding the affiliate marketing program can be a daunting task. There are hundreds if not thousands of products, services and marketing plans to choose from, so how does someone get started finding which is best for them. Choosing a program on profit or percentage may seem like a good thing to consider first but it is not the best place to start. Personality and interests or hobbies, should be the starting point in deciding which program is right for you.

Don’t underestimate the importance of choosing an affiliate marketing program that fits your personality type and here’s why.

There are a number of internet based plans that really are best suited being promoted all, or at least mostly, offline. In this case you would likely have telephone or in-person contact and these plans really are ideal for extroverted people. If you’re not an extrovert, you know the type. He or she is usually called a “people person”. Extroverts can often strike up a conversation with almost anyone in almost any setting and excel in an environment when they are looking someone directly in the eye.

Introverts are the opposite. If you are, like myself, an introvert the all-online plans are our best opportunity for success. Introverts are often far better at crafting a written sales pitch than speaking one. Most introverts do not necessary shun face-to-fact contact, but we do tend to excel better in an online setting.

The rest of the population is somewhere in the middle. They are comfortable with either face to face contact or online marketing and subsequently have more options.

The next aspect in choosing the right affiliate plan is matching your interests with the product or service you will be promoting.

Now, you may not think that selecting a plan based on your likes and dislikes makes sense but it can have a huge impact on your success. Why? You are likely to be more enthusiastic about a product or service that is complimentary to one of your hobbies or interests. For example, most people who are artistic are best suited for promoting products or services that would be marketed to other artistic people. They will have similar interests and already know what other artistic people like and dislike. They will also see an item that is perhaps designed for one use and be able to imagine different ways that item can be used in artistic pursuits.

People who are predominately analytical thinkers tend more to be drawn to plans with statistics, numbers and linear thinking. They will pick a plan that matches their thinking and then organize the various items, software, planning tools, etc. they will need to reach the goals in the projected time frame that they will almost certainly set for themselves.

It is important not just to know, but to understand which type you are. Then you can proceed to choose the affiliate marketing program best suited to you.

Tom Schaffer is an escapee from the corporate world and is pursuing a life of affiliate marketing at http://www.jerseyshoremarketing.com. You can see his current venture at: http://www.jerseyshoremarketing.com/redirect87.html

If you have ever given any thought to trying your hand at affiliate marketing, you have probably encountered some of the hyperbole that drives the industry. “Convert your car to run on water”, “get free satellite TV” or even “I made $3372.46 on my first day” are examples of the sorts of phrases that one might encounter in the world of marketing for information products online.

Hype aside, the market for such product is a thriving one. Consumers spend billions of dollars every year on information products online and there are a number of people who earn a handsome living promoting such products as affiliates. The downside comes when would-be marketers decide to join in and find themselves unable to earn their first dollar.

There are a number of reasons why more than 90% of people who try their hand at online marketing fail, but here are three significant examples:

Failure to get to work. When you make the decision to engage in online marketing, you are working for yourself. No one is going to give you orders or tell you what to do. It’s up to you to decide what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Many people who are accustomed to being part of the regular workforce are simply not used to being self-employed, which requires the discipline to actually get started on a project.

Information overload. There are a lot of books out there about how one might go about promoting something via the Internet or by conventional means, such as direct mail marketing. A lot of well-meaning people load up on these books, read them all, nod knowingly as they read chapter after chapter about Websites, hoplinks, hosting plans, autoresponders and commission plans. After a while, there can be a tendency to become overwhelmed by all of the information to a point where a sort of paralysis sets in. Instead of getting to work, the would-be marketer simply sits at her desk, thinking “There is too much to do. I don’t know where to start.”

Failure to keep at it. Online marketing is an ongoing task. Every day, one needs to look for new products to promote, new ways to promote them, and ways to make current methods work better for increased profitability. It can, over time, become tedious work, and not everyone is well suited to constant research and Website tweaking,

It is possible to earn a living through affiliate or online marketing, but doing so is hard work that is not suited to everyone. The job requires diligence, patience, and a lot of time. The rewards are potentially great, but in order to succeed, it takes more effort than the industry’s ever-present hype would suggest.

Copyright 2008 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Make Money Online News, a blog about making money online, as well as SkyHighAuctions-Exposed.com, a site that reviews the product known as Sky High Auctions.

The explosive growth of the Internet over the past ten years has made it possible for thousands of people to work from home who previously might not have had that opportunity. The low costs associated with working online make it much easier to be self-employed than ever before. In fact, with an investment of only $20 or so, anyone can purchase a domain name and have a Website online in as little as a few hours.

There is more to Internet marketing than simply registering a domain name and uploading a Website, however. One needs a product to sell and more importantly, a way to sell that product. Unlike a traditional brick and mortar store, which might attract customers who randomly drive by, a Website is completely invisible to anyone who isn’t specifically looking for it.

How can one market products online? The following is a list of seven of the most popular methods of online marketing methods:

Business Website - If you are going to do business online, it helps to have a Website of your own. A site with information about the product you are selling is a vital tool, as the more the public knows about your product, the better off you will be.

Blogging - It seems that everyone has a blog these days, and why not? A blog, short for Weblog, is a small Website, often in the form of an online diary, that can be easily modified and updated using special software. Google has a free blogging program called Blogger, and there are literally hundreds of others available. Search engines like blogs a lot, and updated pages can often appear in the search engine databases in just a few hours, making a blog an effective marketing tool.

Search engine optimization (SEO) - There is no better way to get people to come to your Website than to have them do a simple search in Google, Yahoo! or MSN for your topic. Having a Website that is designed with the search engines in mind can bring lots of traffic to your site for free. SEO can be complicated, but tools and professional help are available.

E-mail marketing - Not to be confused with spam, e-mail marketing is the process of sending offers for products directly to customers who have chosen to sign up for your mailing list. Such lists are often obtained from specialized Web pages called “squeeze pages” that usually provide a free report or ebook in exchange for the customer’s name and e-mail address.

Pay per click advertising, or PPC as it is often known, is a form of advertising on a search engine’s results pages where the advertiser’s ad is shown when a customer searches for something relating to the advertiser’s product. The advertiser pays the search engine a small fee, ranging from several cents to several dollars, for each time a customer clicks on their ad.

Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have become very popular in the past two years, and a number of marketers have found ways to promote products to the millions of people who have memberships on those sites. Numerous books have been written on the topic; a simple Web search will find them.

Viral marketing - This is a process where information is passed from one Internet user to another, usually in the form of video, a report, or an ebook who are then encouraged to share it, give it away, or pass it on to someone who might be interested. Some advertising videos on YouTube’s site have generated hundreds of thousands of views.

Some businesses use one of these methods; others use them all. The greater the variety in your marketing methods, the greater the likelihood that you will succeed in making sales.

Copyright 2008 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier writes Make Money Online News, a blog about making money online, and AffiliateMarketingMall.com, a site with a review of JD Swanson’s Mafioso Marketing.