I had an e-mail from Steve the other day. He like many others wanting to get a start into affiliate marketing was wondering how you got your site approved for a merchant without actually having a merchant to build site content around. Here’s his question: -

Hi Kirsty.

Ah, yes! The age old internet marketing conundrum. How does one create a website without anything to put on it?

Well, I guess you have to make your own egg and take it from there, lol. Being serious, you really do just have to get into things and make your first site about the niche you think is going to help you earn your first affiliate commission.

I know it’s difficult to create a site without merchants whose products you will promote. However, I’m usually inclined just to pick out the merchants I will be hoping to promote and then proceed as if they had already accepted me. OK, in some networks that means you cant get creatives, but there’s nothing to stop you copying a merchant’s banner image without affiliate code behind it just so you can demonstrate to the merchant how their brand will be featured on their site.

Honestly, 4.5 out of 5 merchants would accept your site if you’d done a tidy job putting it all together and weren’t doing anything naughty on the site, like putting their name beside pictures of nude women.

One alternative to building a whole site that often works for me is to create one mock-up landing page showing the site look and feel, and demonstrating its basic structure and content. That way, the affiliate manager should be able to make a judgement about the suitability of your site.

Merchants really want to accept as many affiliates as possible and take advantage of the exposure they can bring. Putting in an application to a merchant for the first time can be a bit daunting, but it really doesn’t have to be. Even if you get declined, most merchants will be happy to tell you why and what they need you to do to bring the site up to speed. I’ve reviewed many affiliate sites during my time as an affiliate programme manager, and I declined very few for the reasons I’ve talked about above.

Seriously, just jump on in and get cracking on the site front. Once you have some form of site the next one will be 1000% easier to get up and running. If you want an opinion on a site, please do feel free to ask me to look at it. I’ll give you my opinion on how merchants would view it.

Hope this helps you along a bit, and don’t forget to link to your favourite blog when you get your first site finished! I’ll give your first site a link from the post too and get the spidering of your site kicked off.

Alrighty. Another one for the internet marketing newbies.

One of the most frequently asked questions I see from people looking to get into the industry is “How much can I earn from affiliate marketing?” or “What are the average earnings from affiliate marketing?”.

Now, here’s the thing. In affiliate marketing your earnings are determined by your knowledge, natural abilities, and most importantly: – the amount of work you are prepared to put in. Every affiliate marketer is an individual approaching the medium from a different direction, and with a different idea of what they are going to promote. Your earnings are determined by your own efforts, not an industry standard.

So What Does Kirsty Earn?
Well, there’s little point in me telling you what I personally earn. Why? Firstly, I don’t want to talk about it. Secondly, and more importantly, an exact figure won’t automatically mean that’s what you can earn. You’re not me!

However, I do know that an idea of income levels is a great motivator for many people. With that in mind I can tell you I’ve earned enough to buy two houses, and go on two year-long travel experiences. Not good enough? Well. I’ll give you a phenomenal example of affiliate earnings I know for a fact to be entirely accurate.

Kieron of UK Offer made a hugely inspirational forum post over at sitepoint a while ago. His earnings are quite literally unbelievable, and his success is a standard huge numbers of affiliates aspire to. If I reckon I eat, sleep, and breathe the industry this talented chap IS affiliate marketing personified! Wow. I haven’t seen so many zeros since the launch of Big Brother 8! His post should show any budding affiliateer that there is literally no limit to what you can do if you put the time, energy and flair into this game.

However, none of this helps you work out how much you personally can earn.

So…..

How Do I Reach My Target?

Righto. Simple answer to this question. How much DO YOU WANT / NEED TO EARN?

That’s what affiliate marketing is. You can earn as much as you want to if you put the time in. First off, a decent income is not a distant ivory tower. If you treat it as such, that’s what it will be. Unreachable.

The best advice I can give to you on this is to compartmentalise your target. It works beautifully for me. £1000 a month can seem a lot to aim for if you have never earned a penny at affiliate marketing. So… break it down into manageable amounts over a set period. Lets say you have 6 months in which to bring your moolah up to £1000.

– £1000 a month requires an average of £32 profit per day in a 31 day month.

– So over 6 months that equates to you finding or doing something every day that will earn you £5.33 every day on an ongoing basis.

That may seem a big ask, and not everyone can pull something that will sell out of thin air. But if you break your targets down in this fashion they will no longer seem as daunting or unattainable. Have a target. Have a timescale. Do one thing each day to reach it, and you WILL succeed. Don’t waste time on fantasing about what you could do “if only…”. A decent income is within reach. But YOU have to stand up and grab it. You won’t get it by reading this or any other article.

Your success is inside, so pull it out and get on with it!

I got an e-mail from a blog reader recently. He really wanted to get some advice on getting a start in affiliate marketing. Like many people who are strongly interested in giving things a go, he’s been having real difficulty working out just what you have to do to get that first precarious toe hold on the affiliate marketing ladder.

I replied to his initial e-mail and asked for more information on what he was trying to achieve and asked if I could publish my reply to help other newbie affiliate marketers.

Here’s what Mark wanted to know: –

Well I have often wondered whether it still is possible to do ok in this field, people say so many different things it’s hard to know what to do, but deep down Im dying to give it a go and see what happens.

Dear Mark,

You are facing what is probably the biggest barrier to entry in this area of marketing, so you’re not alone!

It is still possible for newbies to enter and do well in this field. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, come on now. You surely didn’t fall for that did you?

And yet people do. Every day.

To be honest, it irritates me that people fall for straplines like that. Now, I’m not saying that the people selling affiliate marketing books / online income books are all fraudsters preying on desperate newbies who want to make quick money. But the ones who offer “iron clad” earnings guarantees most definately are. To my mind, this does two things. First, it gives the whole affiliate marketing industry a spammy sheen that it most definately does not deserve. Second, it disappoints people and adds a burden of failure to their aspirations to improve their financial situation.

So. What I’m trying to say is that if you’re someone looking for more information on affiliate marketing remember this: – If it sounds easy or too good to be true… it is. Save your money. Here’s what I think the biggest secret to success in affiliate marketing: Its hard bloody work, a lot of research, and a few failures before you get that first golden paycheque.

Another secret: – All the information you need to succeed is available for free on the internet.

So with that in mind, I’m going to chuck up a handful of places you can get good free information. If anyone has any additions to my list, drop me a line in the comment field and I’ll get them added. Purveyors of spam need not apply

I absolutely do not make any kind of guarantee as to your earning potential once you have read these information sources. That’s entirely up to you and your own entrepreurial flair… which is something no crappy e-book can give you (and something nobody else can copy from you and resell either).

This is intended as a starting point, not a comprehensive list. Good luck!

Affiliate Marketing Forums: –

There’s also a great series of podcasts for newbies over at Frasers Affiliate Blog.

Oh, and lets not forget my very own beginners guide to adwords PPC and the Setting up your first affiliate site guide by Steven Marwick of Virtual Cards!

Both of these have newbie sections, and seem to be pretty friendly places. Any question you might have is likely to have been asked already, so there’s great information in forum archives.

SEO: –

I love affiliate marketing. I eat, sleep, and breathe it. Why? I could go on forever, but here are my main reasons.

Every day I wake up, and it feels a bit like Christmas. I have a funny little feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach and a great feeling of optimism. The cause? My one true passion in life, affiliate marketing. As soon as I open my eyes, that’s me… I have to get up, grab a quick tea and get straight onto the internet to assess what happened yesterday and plan my day ahead.

The other great thing about affiliate marketing, is that you don’t need to stay in one place to do it. You can take time off whenever you like and generally your earnings don’t suffer from it (within reason!). I’ve been travelling for the last 7 months and running my affiliate business on the road. So far I’ve been to Thailand, New Zealand, and half way round Australia whilst still earning 5 times my salary when I worked for an online marketing agency.

I feel blessed each and every day. Whenever I’m doing something amazing on my trip like swimming on a beautiful reef in Thailand, or sitting on an impossibly beautiful beach, I think about affiliate marketing… because it’s the real vehicle that has brought me to all the wonderful places I’m seeing right now. I do have to work part time on my trip… here’s a picture of me in my mobile office complete with internet connection from a 3G datacard.

Finally, I love affiliate marketing for its wonderful economy of scale. One person can run a business with virtually limitless turnover and profit. Once you have something set up and bringing in an income stream, you can move onto your next project again, and again, and again, and watch the turnover slowly build into something truly special. This is a simplification; but if I really told you guys how I do things, this post would be encyclopaedic in nature!

Affiliate marketing… I love you!!

Affiliate marketing seems to be ridden with bits of jargon that are almost certainly designed to confuse and bewilder the unwary newcomer. We just LOVE our abbreviations… SEO, PPC, CPM, EPC, CTR, CPC… the list goes on! Combine this with the many industry terms that we need to get to grips with just to hold a conversation with another affiliate marketer, and we’ve got a proper recipie for confusion.

With the pain of this particular learning curve in mind, I’ve compiled a reasonably comprehensive list of all the different buzz words we tend to get thrown at us on a daily basis. So if you don’t know your EPC from your elbow, this is the guide for you.

Check out my Affiliate Glossary now, and it will all become clear!

I see many new affiliates asking questions about bringing in revenue from PPC campaigns. Understandably, many new affiliates are completely daunted by the prospect of putting money into something they may not fully comprehend. When I was managing the PPC and affiliate programme for Greenfingers.com I saw affiliates sitting on terms that I couldn’t nearly make work within the margins available for the merchant.

I even once got an extremely annoyed e-mail from one affiliate demanding to know why he hadn’t made the money the programme’s EPC rating suggested he would when he’d “uploaded all your suggested search terms from Commission Junction”. I had to gently explain to the poor chap that the suggestions were extremely generalised and that it was up to him to find his own niche (I’m not completely heartless, I gave him some suggestions about how he could do this!).

With those kind of early mistakes in mind, I’ve compiled a newbies guide to PPC via Google Adwords. I’ve written this without going into detail about any of the current issues with Googles landing page algo as pertains to affiliate sites. The guide is purely about identifying merchants, and the way affiliates should think when working on their first campaigns.

Check out my Beginners Guide To Google Adwords!