The obvious choice would be to put that effort into your website and content.  You can achieve the same results by simply refreshing the content of your website.  You can add to its archives and additional resources sections (without muddying the primary pages we established before), and still give current information and additional value to your customers and to the search engines.

Not only can you add additional content, but you can test and tweak and change the content you have and test it against past versions.  As you'll learn, even very small, seemingly insignificant changes can really make a big difference to traffic and conversions.  Spend the time you would spend posting on a blog to look for ways that you can tweak or enhance your website.

And don't forget-you've got that master site to build.  Instead of devoting time to a minimal-return blog, why not get started on your big catch-all so that you can dominate your niche traffic?

Articles, Articles and More Articles

All the articles you write, or hire out to a freelance writer to have written, do not need to be posted on your website.  In fact, they shouldn't be.  Use those primary articles and tutorials on your site, add some new stuff now and again to keep everyone happy, and then submit to article directories.  Utilize profile and link capabilities to link back to your website, the authority on Widgets.  (You might know this method by other popular names, like "Bum Marketing" or "Article Marketing.")

Subscriber Lists and Mailings

This is something you need to take some care with.  Subscriber lists are not recommended for all types of products; leastwise, building your list through squeeze pages isn't recommended for everyone.  For many sites, the presence of a squeeze page between the website and merchant offer will only turn the visitor of, and send them packing to the next, less demanding provider.

Still, there are ways to make subscriber lists work.  If your product lends itself to this type of sales, then spend time crafting great emails and marketing campaigns instead.

Social Marketing

Social marketing is what's driving web 2.0.  Instead of spending your time on a new blog people may or may not eventually find, spend it on the blogs of others who've already captured your audience.  Become a contributing member of the community, make some friends, and use your wit and wisdom to get people to click on your name, link, or profile and visit your website.  Do the same by creating pages on social websites like Squidoo and MySpace; frequent forums and other places where potential buyers may gather.

By engaging in social marketing, you're bringing your products to the masses, rather than waiting for them to find you.  It's a much more active approach, and one that can be tailored to offer that all-important focus your affiliate plan needs.  Not only that, but it's a lot more fun than talking to yourself on your blog, too, and you won't have to worry about maintaining it when you're off on vacation enjoying all that Big Dog affiliate cash!

Now that we've addressed the question of blogging, let's move on and talk about the one thing that dominates the internet-playing the web game to pull in the traffic.  In the next few chapters, we'll talk about how to run with the Big Dogs that run the whole show-Google and its peers (if Google has a true peer..).  Next, we'll get into the issue of search engines and optimizing to make them your friends.  It's crucial to affiliate marketing, so don't miss these next few episodes.

There are many ways to increase your earnings in the world of affiliate marketing, and most of them can be learned with relative ease. However, one of the more challenging, yet effective ways you can increase your affiliate marketing bottom line is through the recommendation of products.

If customers or visitors to your site trust you, they are more likely to trust your recommendations as well. This can also be a hindrance to your business however. It's important to be sure not to start promoting everything by recommendation, or to promote without merit. Your credibility will soon wear thin.

When making recommendations, be honest about what you liked as well as disliked about a product or service. Your honesty is what your visitors will appreciate the most, as they want to learn as much as they can about the product in question. This will show them how the product will be of benefit to them.

Another point to consider is making yourself seem a true expert in the field of your choosing. The more confidence your visitors have that you know are an expert, the more inclined they will be to purchase from you. It's quite simple to exude this type of confidence, and thereby establish your own aura of expertise. Make available unique solutions and key tips they can't get from anyone else. Show them what you're saying is actually true by presenting them with testimonials and even famous personalities if possible.

Also, it definitely helps to have hands-on knowledge of a product. You need to try it for yourself, testing the actual product as well as the support that comes with it (if any). The last thing you want to do is promote a product that turns out to be a flop. All of that time and effort you put into your credibility will very quickly find itself destroyed.

Your primary goal is ideally recommending only products you have complete confidence in. By testing and trying every possibly situation you can, you will then be able to honestly recommend the products which you are sure won't leave your customers with unnecessary headaches to deal with.

Take some time to really look at your affiliate market, and compare it to the present strategies you are using. It's quite possible your focus isn't being placed in the proper locations. Your business action plan may need to be revamped to allow you either a broader range of products to fit your recommendations, or to cut down in order to provide a more pinpointed expertise.

We can't be clearer.  Without search engine traffic, you have no traffic at all; none worth mentioning and certainly not enough to sustain your affiliate business.

Ninety percent or more of the traffic to your website(s) will be from search engines, primarily the big-names like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.  These search engines are what will deliver hundreds or thousands of people to your virtual doorstep searching for products and information such as that you've provided.

Outside of search engines, websites generate traffic in only a few ways.  These include

?          Links from other websites or articles

?          Links and addresses from traditional marketing

?          The occasional word of mouth exposure

All of these combined, however, only equate to about 10% of visitor traffic.  And while ten percent is certainly something worth grabbing, the absolute best expenditure of your resources is optimizing for search engine traffic.  (Incidentally, your efforts to optimize will put more links and exposure out there for your site to be found through the above-mentioned means, making search engine-centered development even more important.)

More importantly, the traffic that you get from a search engine is organic.  That simply means that the traffic that search engines generate for you is traffic from real, live human beings out searching for a site like yours.  They search for information and products to serve a need.  That need may be buying, it may be learning, business promotion, problem-solving or what have you, but it all comes down to one thing?these are the people that are going online with the express purpose of finding someone like you.

Whereas those who click on links or enter your web address from a business card or some such means may just be curiosity seekers, the people coming from search engines started with a purpose, a goal in mind.  And if you're good, even if that primary goal wasn't buying, you just might convince them that that's really what they were after all along, and you just might get that sale!

Many people who consider starting an online business often don't know where to begin. Chances are you've already signed up for at least one affiliate program. Having your own website will make the process of boosting your affiliate commissions easier.

1. Find the right products to promote. Obviously you'll want to find one which offers generous compensation. You'll want to earn enough to make promoting the project worth your time and effort. You'll also want a product that pays their affiliates on time.

2. If you do have a website, write a free eBook or report you can give away. When visitors sign up for the free item, be sure to collect and save their email address with a double opt-in sign-up. This will let them know to expect to get other emails from you.

3. Create an online newsletter or e-zine, and be sure to recommend the products you're promoting within the newsletter. You'll be able to develop a relationship with your readers, which may potentially translate into them taking your recommendation and purchasing the affiliate product.

4. Choose an autoresponder for your website which will send emails, newsletters, e-zines, or other correspondence with very little effort.

5. Write articles and submit them to article directories. These will provide a link back to your website where your affiliate products are advertised. People won't know how to obtain the products or services you promote if they never see your website.

6. Conserve a portion of your commission payment to put back into your affiliate marketing business. These funds can be used to purchase pay-per-click ads and to track how effective those ad campaigns are.

Spend some time on forums where affiliate marketers gather. You may also pick up other ideas besides these six tips for boosting your affiliate commissions. The important thing to remember is to continue promoting as much as you can. Without any promotion at all, these six tips won't help in the slightest.

It's a simple, very logical concept-if you can make big money as an affiliate, how big could your revenue stream be if you were the producer of the product instead?

You know that as an affiliate you make x percent of each product sold.  Let's say you're earning a commission of say 50%.  That means that you are not making 50% of the revenue generated from that sale.  Someone is making just as much as much as you are!  Now yes, we'll give you this one point-that someone is also paying the expenses of development and production and other overhead, but you can bet they've set their price at well above expenses!

To be clear, we are not recommending that you endeavor to create your own products rather than become an affiliate.  What we are recommending is that after you have established your business as an effective internet marketer, that you then leverage your influence to promote products of your own and cash in by netting the biggest part of your sales.  Let's talk a bit about how this can be done. 

Those affiliate product producers or developers you have been selling for may well be affiliate big dogs themselves.  It that is the case, and your sales have been substantial for them, they will most likely be open to the idea of a joint venture or becoming an affiliate reseller of yours.

The Back-End Sales Effect

What this private product creation strategy relies on your having already established a foothold in the market, inside your niche.  You've done this by employing the strategies outlined in this book, by creating product-focused websites and then linking them together with the parent site which captures the rest of the general internet traffic looking for your niche content.  And now that you have everyone's attention, you can use it to up sell your returning visitors to your own products.

What Might You Sell?

Much like the freeware products that boosted your traffic, you need to sell something that correlates with what you've been selling all along.  But you do need to realize that your buyers will not go back in time.  You can't just sell them on something simpler that they might have bought before; you have to sell them on something that serves them in their next phase of life, or that enhances that which they've already bought.

Generally speaking, this will be something that is digitally-generated.  For instance, if you previously sold bodybuilding supplements, your next product might be an eBook or bodybuilding program that the buyer follows to make those big-muscle gains.  If it's the crunch-time workout video, maybe the product that you build is a nutritional plan or for the time-impaired.

It is worth noting, too, while we have this conversation, that you can harness the power of back-end (as in dedicated, trusting, return buyers) sales with other affiliate products as well.  For instance, supposing you decide that being a product developer is just not for you, you can group and up sell complimentary products. 

Likewise, you can also reverse the strategy a bit so that you are first selling your product-an eBook or something similarly easy to create-and then up-sell an affiliate product.  But no matter how you decide to go about this, remember that it is all based on your established sales foundation.  Becoming a Big Dog affiliate is still your first order of business, then.