The Best Method For Finding Affiliate Opportunities

Posted by on April 15th, 2008 filed in Affiliate Opportunities

Copyright © Rami Doleh
http://www.BusinessFountains.com

When a conscious decision is made to enter the field of affiliate marketing, the next step is to decide on which niche you are most interested in to find affiliate opportunities within. We have to be very careful here. People are divided into two categories here:

1- Those who are attracted to those niches that they hear that they bring a lot of money.
2- Those who are attracted to those niches that they are interested in and could have some knowledge about.

The best niche for you would be one that you are interested in and one that there are still some keywords that you can still target. This means that existing competition did not attack all the keywords within that niche.

Once you choose your niche, its time now to search for those products and services within that niche that offer affiliate opportunities. Many people start with going to a search engine and typing the words for that niche to search for such products and services.

While there is nothing wrong with that method and there are actually a couple of e-books that advise this methodology for finding affiliate opportunities, but we are going to advise here a more structured method so that your search will enable you to make better choices. This does not mean in any way that we are leaving this resource, on the contrary, this is a valuable resource and you will see how in a moment.

The first thing you will need to do is begin your search for affiliate opportunities at the following resources:

1- associateprograms.com and
2- affiliateguide.com

Scan those two resources by searching for words related to your niche. Most of the directories that we are going to mention here can be searched by words or are divided into categories so that you can search them with ease.

What you will do now is select those products and services that you think you are interested in. You will create a list of those affiliate opportunities that you are selecting. It is preferable if you create this list in a notepad file including all the information necessary for comparison and also their location information which is necessary for you if you need to find them again.

The next step to expanding your list of affiliate opportunities is searching affiliate networks. We are going to list the best ones here:

1- clickbank.com
2- linkshare.com
3- commissionjunction.com
4- affiliateprograms.com
5- shareasale.com

Before starting your search, some of these networks require you to register with them. Also some of them have country limitations. Some of these networks are not available for residents of all countries. So you will need to make a little research first before getting your hands dirty with finding affiliate opportunities within these networks.

Your final step is the search engines and namely Google. There are a lot of products and services that run powerful affiliate opportunities and are not listed in any of the above directories and networks. Their view would be is that they are strong enough to run their own affiliate programs without the help of those resources.

What you will do here is simply search Google for the term of your niche accompanied with “affiliate program,” “affiliate,” or even “partnership.” The list that you collect from this final step should be marked as the stars of your search.

Our final advice here is that you will need to take your time in searching for the affiliate opportunities that you intend to market. At the end it is these opportunities that will make your income. Don’t expect to finalize this step in one day. If it will take you a week or two then so be it.

About the Author:
———————————————————————-
Rami Doleh has dedicated all available resources to put people on the
right track and help them establish their affiliate business through
affiliate opportunities.
———————————————————————-

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Who Provides Training On Affiliate Marketing?

Posted by on April 14th, 2008 filed in Affiliate Opportunities

Copyright © Rami Doleh
http://www.BusinessFountains.com

The first condition for searching for affiliate opportunities is to know consciously that this is what you are searching for. The second condition is to know how to market these opportunities.

The greatest product in the world is worth nothing to you if you don’t know how to market it. Therefore, it is crucial that when you are in the process of establishing yourself as an affiliate, to know affiliate marketing techniques.

Many people who search the internet for online business opportunities are actually looking for affiliate opportunities without them know it. With that in mind we can hardly find anybody looking for resources to learn that art and science of affiliate marketing or online business in general.

Now comes the question where do we find resources to train ourselves on affiliate marketing? Let us first discuss the training methodologies. There are two main training methodology:

1- Get all the knowledge and training that you need then get involved in the business.
2- Find affiliate opportunities that include a well structured training that will show you step and step and with considerable detail so that you can learn by doing. Meaning to apply what you learned on the affiliate opportunity that you became part of.

For the first methodology we recommend that the potential affiliate search for free information that is widely available online. Do not start buying e-books and paid courses until you feel that you have enough knowledge that will enable you to choose the right paid material. What are those free training resources?

1- Article directories.
2- Blogs
3- Forums

For the second methodology we admit that finding such opportunities with such structured training as we are describing is not easy. Yet with the scarcity of such affiliate opportunities they do exist.

Unfortunately the affiliate opportunities that offer a well structured training is only available in one niche which is the online business niche. In previous articles we have talked how affiliate opportunities gained a bad name as most – if not all – the scams are available in this online business model. Within the affiliate opportunities model it is the online business niche of affiliate opportunities that most of these scamp programs are available. But also if anyone wants to get a good training about affiliate marketing we can safely say that such structured training is only offered through the online business niche within the affiliate business model.

Knowing how difficult it is to find an affiliate opportunities that has a structured training offered within their program, we recommend that anyone who is interested in establishing an affiliate business, is to start with the free resources until one of the following happens:

1- Find such an affiliate opportunity that includes a structured training.
2- Feel that he/she go enough knowledge and ready to establish a business on their own with the knowledge that they gained.

What if I found an affiliate opportunity within the online business niche but I am not interested in marketing products and services within that niche. Our recommendation to this question comes as follows:

1- Get enrolled in this program as a learning experience and treat it as the business that you want to establish until you get enough knowledge.
2- Then you can either expand into other niches of your liking or interest, or simply drop that online business niche altogether and search for affiliate opportunities with the niche of your liking and interest.

What we need to say in this article, is that finding a well structured training within affiliate opportunities is the best thing that you can do, but bear in mind that they are extremely rare and available only within the online business niche of affiliate opportunities.

About the Author:
———————————————————————
Rami Doleh has dedicated all available resources to put people on the
right track and help them establish their affiliate business through
affiliate opportunities.
———————————————————————

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Three Major Mistakes By New Online Business Entrants

Posted by on April 3rd, 2008 filed in Affiliate Opportunities

Copyright © Rami Doleh
http://www.BusinessFountains.com

People who are starting their journey to establish their own online business, usually commit fatal mistakes that will result in the usual disappointments that we often see in this marketplace.

In this article we will list the usual mistakes committed by new entrants into the online business marketplace hoping that we will be able to help them avoid such mistakes from the very beginning.

Mistake No. 1: New entrants, or as the market calls them “newbies,” usually start with excessive energy and the first thing they do is to search for online opportunities. This is the first huge mistake.

Mistake No. 2: A huge percentage of the opportunities that will come out of the search conducted in Mistake No. 1 are affiliate opportunities. A newbie would become more excited here after reading the hyped up sales letters that he/she is getting. Eventually the newbie will do the inevitable and take out the credit card to join one of those opportunities that promise income in no time. Even if the idea was legit and in many cases it will be, the prospect still does not know anything about online business, let alone affiliate marketing.

Mistake No. 3: After few days the newbie will discover that the opportunity that he/she joined is not making any money, so now its time to quit and search for something else. The newbie does not know that the problem is not really in the affiliate opportunity. Actually the newbie most probably still does not know that he/she is involved in affiliate marketing. After few trials with different affiliate opportunities the newbie realizes that this online business thing is crap and waste of time and money.

The above three mistakes can very easily be joined into one. The huge mistake that is conducted here is getting into online business head first without knowing anything about it.

The first step in anything in life is learning. Before thinking of establishing an online business, a newbie needs to know the following:

1- What is online business and its different models?

2- What is online marketing and how does it differ from one model to another?

3- What are the different tools of online marketing?

These three questions are not easy to answer and online gurus have written a lost of e-books and articles trying to answer one or more of those questions. A newbie needs to search and read as much as possible about the above three issues so that he/she can create a personal opinion and then a decision.

The main resources a newbie should concentrate on to gather such information are the free Resources. Don’t go on buying e-books at the beginning, there is a lot of free information on the net. After you have exhausted this aspect you will have better knowledge to be able to decide which material to buy and which to avoid.

What are those free resources?:

1- Articles Directories

2- Blogs

3- Forums

After getting the appropriate knowledge a newbie is able to do take the following decisions consciously:

1- Which online business model he/she going to adopt.

2- Which marketing strategy and tools he/she is going to use.

This means if the newbie is going to search for affiliate opportunities, he/she is going to do it consciously knowing exactly what to look for.

In this article we have followed the steps approach, which means get the knowledge first and then have the business. We admit that there is another approach which is learning by doing. This means getting involved in a business and then applying what you learn to that business. This is a good approach only if you know which online business model you want to adopt.

Affiliate opportunities have started creating training resources and courses to enable their affiliates do a better job marketing their products and services.

The problem that I find here is that only a few affiliate opportunities have constructed a structured training that would train affiliates with zero background on the ins and outs of affiliate marketing. The majority have opted on collecting e-books and other resources and put them in one place for their members to read.

About the Author:
———————————————————————-
Rami Doleh has dedicated all available resources to put people on the
right track and help them establish their affiliate business through
affiliate opportunities.
———————————————————————-

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Four Factors When Studying Affiliate Opportunities

Posted by on March 18th, 2008 filed in Affiliate Opportunities

Copyright © Rami Doleh
http://www.BusinessFountains.com

In this article we will tackle the four essential non financial factors that we should look at when studying affiliate opportunities if you are new to the online business. In a previous article we have listed and discussed the financial factors.

Since you are reading this article then most probably you have already started your search for ideas to establish your online business. If you did, this means that you must have come across a few sales letters that are trying to convince you of various affiliate opportunities.

Within those sales letters you will find that most of the authors are doing the following:

1- Describing your pain
2- Telling you their life story on how they were at some point in your current situation or even worse.
3- How their programs helped them become the millionaires they are today.
4- What their programs are about. Here is where they start their promises.
5- Few bonuses if you subscribe now
6- The real price and the discounted price which will last only for a limited time or some kind of time or product limitation.
7- The last section you either find two fields where you need to fill you name and e-mail to get more information, or the payment section.

There is nothing wrong here. The problem with many of the sales letters is that they are filled with very exciting language that the reader is lost in emotional turmoil rather than in rational information processing. To Further complicate the problem, both bad and good affiliate opportunities use the same hyped language. So how can we differentiate between the bad and the good?

The only way is to know exactly what we are looking for and dig it up from the pile of words within those sales letters. Any person who is new to online business and who is searching for affiliate opportunities should look for the following:

1- Training: The affiliate opportunity should have a structured and detailed training that will enable the participant to learn online marketing. Be careful here as many affiliate opportunities provide training resources which are full of e-books and articles. There is nothing wrong with that, but that is not a structured training and you can get lost within the information easily.

2- Support: Affiliate opportunities differ in their structure:

a. With some you would be an affiliate who is signing under another affiliate who is your sponsor. What if your sponsor is just as new as you are? There is nothing wrong with that, but the problem is that he/she will not be able to help you if you are stuck.

b. Others are flat and therefore, who ever signed you up, you will be supported by the owning person. Usually that person is very busy with creating other ideas or simply cannot handle all the affiliate questions in good time. If it was a company its better, but they must be setup for such support.

Therefore, the ideal support structure should be of two layers:

i- Help Desk: Either in form of the ability of submitting trouble tickets or a simple e-mail contact.

ii- Forum: The affiliate opportunity should have a forum or a section within a forum. This way all affiliates will be able to ask questions and all affiliates will be able to contribute with their answers. This way all the experiences of the affiliates are pooled in one place.

3- Your own website with your own domain: Now this is a tricky one. Many affiliate opportunities give you a dedicated website page with your own affiliate code extension so that you can promote as your own. Yet that is not your own domain. It will normally be the affiliate program own domain with an extension that will include your affiliate code.

To have your own website with your own domain is an exercise that requires a good amount of research, effort and some technical skills. Being new on the online business world you would normally have no idea were to start from. This is what you would normally need to do:

a) Research for a hosting company that would suit your needs. The problem is that you still don’t know what your needs are.

b) Design, build and create content for your website. Each of those requires different sets of skills and/or tools, which at this moment you still don’t have.

Some affiliate opportunities save you all that from the very beginning and would do all that for you. All what you need to do is choose your domain name and they will do the rest for you. I must admit that there aren’t a lot of affiliate programs that offer this, but there is a couple of them out there.

4- Building a list: Almost in every online marketing course you would find a section talking about the importance of building a list that you can e-mail your offers to. To be able to describe the details of this one for you, I would need another article. In short there are affiliate opportunities that write your e-mail campaign for you and show you step by step how to set up your autoresponder. Some programs go to the extreme of setting up the autoresponder for you.

Now what you need to do is see which of the above areas your lacking skills for, or you simply don’t know how to do, and find affiliate opportunities that fill the gap for you. These are the facts that you will need to look at when studying which program(s) to join.

About the Author:
———————————————————————
Rami Doleh has dedicated all available resources to put people on the
right track and help them establish their affiliate business through
affiliate opportunities.
———————————————————————

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Financial Factors In Studying Affiliate Opportunities

Posted by on March 13th, 2008 filed in Affiliate Opportunities

Copyright © Rami Doleh
http://www.BusinessFountains.com

Many people, especially those who are new to the online business, are blinded by the hyped language within the affiliate opportunities sales letters and they cannot see the facts that are laid within those lines.

Unfortunately it seems that online marketers cannot but hype up their sales letters language. Therefore, we cannot just discard affiliate opportunities for the mere fact that their sales letters used hyped language. Accordingly we need to train ourselves to discard that hype and look for the facts.

In this article we will try to list and explain things that we need to look at when we are studying affiliate opportunities. Before we get to that we need to clear out the basic thing that needs to happen before such studying takes place.

Before we start our search for affiliate opportunities we should make sure of the following:

1- That we are making a conscious decision that we are searching for affiliate opportunities. We are stressing this fact in most of our articles. Many beginners fall into this trap without knowing that there are other models in the online marketplace.

2- To choose an industry that you feel comfortable promoting. The word comfortable could mean any one or combination of the following statements:

a. Its an industry that you are passionate about
b. Its an industry that you can relate to
c. Its an industry that you have some information about.
d. Its an industry that is exciting although you know nothing about.

Let us now look at the main areas that we need to look at when we are studying affiliate opportunities after making sure that we have taken care of the above two points.

In this article we will look at the financial factors. There are additional factors that we will look at in the next article. For ease of reference we will note the title of this article while discussing the additional factors.

The Financial Factors:

a. Costs associated: Some affiliate opportunities require a monthly subscription or a one time fee to join the affiliate program. Be extra careful when you are looking at such programs. I am not saying to go away from them, because some of them are reputable and worth the investment. If you decided that the costs are justified then compare them to the budget that you have set for yourself. Also you need to see the method you need to use for payment if it secured and smooth and when not jeopardize security of the funds and your status with the program.

b. Retail Price: This is the price that the end user will pay. You will need to ask yourself whether it is something that you would buy if you had the money for it. Try to research the industry and look at the different prices being offered. This should give you an idea on whether the product that you are evaluating is able to compete when a customer compares value of money.

c. Your Commission: When searching for affiliate opportunities you will not be evaluating only one program. You should be evaluating different opportunities within the same industry. Accordingly you will be able to decide which program pays the best commission while keeping the Retail Price into consideration. A high commission of a product that does not sell will not bring you any earnings.

d. Method of Payment: Affiliate programs differ in their payment methods. Some pay by check, others pay through an online payment processor. Some use a combination of methods or multiple options of the same method. You will need to choose an affiliate opportunity that pays you through a method that is suitable for you.

e. Minimum Payout: Some affiliate opportunities set a minimum payment amount. An affiliate must earn through his/her commissions a minimum amount of money before the program owner sends the earnings to the affiliate. You need to see of those minimum amounts are suitable for you. If the payment is through check and you live a different country then the minimum amount might not be good for you as the check clearing fees could be higher than that minimum amount. You might want to ask the owner of the affiliate program to increase the minimum amount for you. Affiliate program owners would have a problem with decreasing that amount, but most will not have a problem with increasing it.

f. Payment Intervals: When are the payments made? Monthly, weekly, on the spot or at the time the minimum amount is reached? You will need to choose the affiliate opportunity that suits your conditions.

These are the main financial factors that you will need to look at when studying affiliate opportunities. In our next article we will look at some additional factors that you will need to take into considerations when studying different affiliate programs.

About the Author:
———————————————————————
Rami Doleh has dedicated all available resources to put people on the
right track and help them establish their affiliate business through
affiliate opportunities
———————————————————————

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Affiliate Opportunities: The Starting point

Posted by on March 3rd, 2008 filed in Uncategorized

There is no doubt that the online market has welcomed people of all abilities, backgrounds and qualifications and has given them the chance to establish their own business when the offline market was getting creative in shutting doors. Yet the online market was misunderstood and miscommunicated and was treated as the easy money machine that can bring you wealth within hours.

In a previous article titled “Affiliate Opportunities: Is It What You Really Want?” we have discussed the different major online business models. One of those business models is affiliate marketing. Among all the business models it was the affiliate opportunities that got the most of this bad reputation. Many online marketers have used this model to lure the new kids on the block into unworthy schemes that brought nothing to the participants but disappointments and empty pockets.

Still we think that it was through affiliate opportunities that the online market offered regular people of no technical background the chance to establish a business of their own. Affiliate marketing offers the same chances of making money online the same as any other model, because the marketing rules are the same. The main difference lies at the business building stage and at the end of the cycle which is the percentage of money made.

In this article we will show that establishing a business through affiliate opportunities provides the easiest starting point for any person who wishes to have their own business.

First let us begin by reminding ourselves of the different online business models. We will just list them here:

1- To market your own product/service or have reseller rights.
2- To market other people’s products and services. This is affiliate marketing.
3- Creating advertising sites.

Now let us see why seeking affiliate opportunities are the best starting point. That said we must mention that some people have taken affiliate marketing as their bread and butter.

1- You don’t have to have your own product or service: Many business gurus advise that when establishing your own business choose something that you have a passion for. In many cases it would be very hard for you to produce or deliver that on your own. What you can do is look for companies who are already in the business and who offer affiliate opportunities.

2- You don’t have to stick to one industry: The affiliate marketing model offers much easier infrastructure for expansion. If you are developing and producing your own products/services, that would not be as easy. With affiliate marketing you can choose any combination of the following affiliate opportunities:

a. Different products from different owners from the same industry
b. Different products from different owners from different industries
c. Different products from the same owner from different industries
d. Etc…

3- You don’t have to have your own website: This is very true with many affiliate opportunities. Many online companies are now developing affiliate websites for you that you can market as your own. Although our sincere advise is to have your own site as this will open many marketing doors for you. Many people are turning into blogs as their first steps into having their own site. Some made creating blogs as their main sites. You can also find affiliate opportunities that would provide you with a free website design for your own domain as website design stands as the main obstacle for people to have their own websites and thus domains.

4- How to market online: most if not all people who venture into online business for the first time don’t know what is online marketing and how to do it. Many affiliate opportunities have online marketing education material and resources within their programs now. Quality of that material and those sources is a different issue as this would be one of the factors that distinguish one opportunity from another for a new online marketer.

Looking closely at the above points we will realize that these points actually compare affiliate marketing with marketing your own product/service. That is true to a certain point.

Advertising sites are selling their site spots for companies and their earning comes directly from these companies as prices for these spots. This model has a combination of features from the two other models. Yet in my point of view, this industry is full of competition within its own industry and from the affiliate marketing model. I am not very keen on this industry at all, especially for a new person to the market.

About the Author:
———————————————————————-
Rami Doleh has dedicated all available resources to put people on the
right track and help them establish their affiliate business through
affiliate opportunities.
———————————————————————-

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Affiliate Opportunities: The Starting point

Posted by on March 3rd, 2008 filed in Affiliate Opportunities