Thursday, February 28, 2008

Affiliate Programs How to Use Commission Junction

The affiliate program is probably the best return for your effort with the least demand on your time. This has an appeal to the Boomer Entrepreneur since we want to run the business and not have it run us. We want to have time to kick back and smell the roses.

The attraction to this model is that it is virtually risk free except for your time. It costs you nothing to sign up as an affiliate. You recommend the product and send your visitors to the website where the product is sold and if the customer purchases the product, you are paid a commission. Amazon.com is credited with being the first businesses on the Net to fully develop the affiliate concept and now all the major companies have affiliate programs.

When you sign up as an affiliate, you will be given an affiliate number, and a special link to use for linking to the affiliate website. This link will send your visitor to the business site and at the same time tell the business that you sent the visitor so you will receive the commission in the case of a sale.

There are companies that do the accounting and act as the coordinator between affiliates and the companies they represent. These are called affiliate program providers (APPs). One of the major sites for handling affiliate accounting is called Commission Junction. It handles eBay and others. The major site for electronic products is ClickBank. Other sites are BeFree, Linkshare, and Performics. A German APP is Affili.net.

Commission Junction is the largest APP and handles many great companies. To fully explore what is available, you need to sign up at CJ and look for affiliates there. You will be able to see who the companies are and the commission structure of each. You can then join the program right in CJ without having to go to each company and apply.

I suggest that you join CJ and study the many companies that are represented. Take note of a few that you feel might be ones that you would like to represent. Dont join the affiliate program yet, but go to Google and research the company website. See if they sell themselves well and will support the sales effort that you are going to expend to sell their products or services. Also, from CJ, you can link to the landing page in the company website. Go there and check it out to see if it sells well.

Step by Step Start

The following will lead you through the sign up process as a Commission Junction publisher. This process is longer than most that you have previously completed. Be prepared to complete two pages of information. The second page is long and detailed.

First page: Select your language, country, and currency. Click NEXT.

Second page: After swearing to abide by the rules and regs, you will be asked for information about your newsletter or website (URL). If you have a website, you can enter it. If not, make up a name for the eZine that you may plan to publish. For this application, you must make up a newsletter name if you do not have a website (URL). Be creative!

You will then be asked about your promotional methods. Click the Website/Content and Search Engine Marketing buttons. Next click NO on the radio button that asks if you donate any proceeds to charity (unless you want to do so).

Next you will be asked to enter all the information needed for setting up your account. You might have to attempt this page a couple of times since you might not have all the info you might need the first time. A key item you will need is social security number or tax ID if you are registering as a business. If you want to have your payments direct deposited, get a blank check so you will have the info to set up the banking information.

When you finish giving CJ your entire pedigree, click Accept Terms and you are on your way. Check your Inbox for an email from CJ with your acceptance message and password.

Sign up for Commission Junction at

https://signup.cj.com/member/publisherSignUp.do

Once you have received your acceptance email from Commission Junction, log in to www.cj.com and use your password to enter. When you are logged in, you will be on your Commission Junction Home Page. It shows your account status and basic accounting info. It also shows the new advertisers on CJ. You might see if any of these look appealing since you can jump right on them and get a head start.

Near the top of the page click on Account. This is where you can update the information that you entered on your application.

Now down to business. Click on the Get Links tab near the top and you will be presented the page where you can find advertisers. There are several ways to view it: By category, by advertiser name, by Smart Zone, and by relationship which will list all the accounts with which you have an established relationship.

As an example, to find a company with which you are familiar (eBay), select the Category view and in the left column under Commerce, click Auctions. The page that is presented will contain various auction sites, but you will recognize most of them as the various eBay sites for the USA and other countries.

To join an affiliate, click on the View Links in the box with the affiliate name. You will be presented with the various banner ads and links for the affiliate. Pick one and click on it. If you are not a member of the affiliate program, you will be presented a page describing the program and at the bottom of the page is a button Join Program. Click this and see the response. Sometimes you will be accepted immediately and sometimes you will get a message that you will be notified after your application has been reviewed. Go ahead and join eBay USA since you should be accepted immediately by it.

The sequence of Get Links and Join Program is how you sign up for the affiliate programs that you want to represent. It is all in Commission Junction and it makes it very easy for you to grow an affiliate program as your online job.

Note: Some affiliates require that you have a website when you sign up with them. You can build a website later and reapply if this affiliate program is one you want to pursue as an online job.

A word of caution: Becoming an affiliate does not automatically make you rich. Becoming an affiliate establishes the relationship to let you promote a product and get paid for successful promotion. It is up to you to do the work of driving traffic to the affiliate site. If you do your job well, a percentage of the traffic will purchase from the site and you will be paid a commission for those purchases.

This concludes your education about Commission Junction. It is a powerful website and is a must join if you are going to create an affiliate program.

Good luck with your future affiliate programs.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years and has recently started several web sites to assist Boomers (baby boomers) to become entrepreneurs when they retire. During his career, John has founded and managed several successful companies including computer services, plastic injection molding, and assembly operations. He is currently Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Kodiak Thermal Technologies, Inc. Johns websites are http://www.boomer-ezine.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com. His hobbies include raising and training English pointers, quail hunting, and fly fishing.

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How To Profit From PLR Articles

Private Label Rights (PLR) is the hottest thing to hit the Internet in years. A lot of very smart people are making a lot of money with them.

Do you want to be one of them?

Buying PLR articles is a dirt-cheap way to get your hands on quality content. They usually only cost about 50 cents to a dollar each, which is way less than paying a ghostwriter to write them for you. Ghostwriters charge anywhere from $5-$20 for each article.

Once you purchase PLR articles you can do just about anything you want with them. You should always read the 'terms of use' before buying them, but typically they allow you to edit them as much as you want and add your name as author.

So how do you make money from that?

That's really only limited by your own creativity, but I'll give you a few suggestions to get your juices flowing.

1. You can package a bunch of articles together, convert them into an ebook, and sell them online through sites like eBay or Clickbank.

2. Put a few articles together into a 'special report' and release it for free. You can use it to entice visitors to sign up for your newsletter. And if you embed your affiliate links in the report, you will get some backend commissions too.

3. Release the articles one at a time through an autoresponder like Aweber. Make it into an online lesson and weave a few affiliate links into it.

4. Or just add them to your current blog or website. Work in affiliate links or use Google AdSense to generate revenue from them.

The possibilities are endless, which is what makes PLR articles so powerful.

There is only one concern I hear from people who are hesitant to buy PLR articles online. They fear that since the article is being sold multiple times, others will be offering the exact same content.

But that's really nothing to worry about. All PLR sites I have seen limit the number of packages they sell so they do not lose their value.

And honestly, a lot of people who buy the packages get lazy and never do anything with them. So even if 500 copies of the package are sold, the true competition will be much lower.

The best way to distinguish yourself from other purchasers is to tweak the articles a bit and put your own spin on them. Add a short introduction and a summary at the end. Rearrange a few sentences and replace a few words with synonyms. It should only take a few minutes to do, and you'll eliminate any threat that someone else is offering duplicate content.

Mike Collins You can find out more about making money using PLR articles at http://www.fresh-niche-content.com.

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iPod Vs. Zune: Music and Video Download Sites

There are many folks that hate both Apple and Microsoft portable media products. Apple makes iPod and Microsoft makes Zune. Fortunately for the consumer, there are other good portable media players out there now but do not have the same visibility as Apple and Microsoft products. Discussion about these other portable media players like SanDisks Sansa series and Creatives Zen series devices are beyond the scope of this article. This article is about basic iPod and Zune similarities and differences. In addition, sources for purchasing music online for iPod and Zune will be briefly discussed.

The iPod is a portable media players designed and marketed by Apple and released to the public in 2001. Currently, as a digital audio player, the iPod is the best-selling music player in history. Zune is Microsoft's digital audio player, released in 2006, directly competing with Apples iPod. Each of these portable media players deliver what it was intended to do which is to play music or audio, display images, and play video. Each has their pros and cons.

There are many Zune and IPod similarities and I will list major ones. They each have the same starting price of around $249, disk storage, picture capacity, screen resolution, and aspect ratio. They play audio, pictures, and video. They have USB connection (to another device, typically a computer), battery, and similar battery life.

Both devices support MP3, MP4, M4A, M4B (for audio), and MOV (for video) file formats. The Zune favors Windows Media Audio (WMA) while iPod has its protected AAC format. When it comes to exchanging files, you will need software tools to convert your iTunes files to MP3 or convert Zune WMA files to MP3. Both systems support JPGs (for still images) and MPGs (for video).

There are advantages that Zune has over iPod. Approximately 60 hours more video can be stored in the 30GB version. Zune has a larger screen size and is capable of portrait mode display. Zune has wallpaper, FM radio, wireless connectivity, and faster battery charge. Zune Plays WMA audio formats and WMV video formats. It has one more standard case color: brown!

There are advantages that iPod has over Zune. iPod plays games, is compatible with the Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV audio formats. It plays H.264, M4V, MP4, MOV, MPEG-4 video formats. It is slightly smaller and lighter than Zune. The iPod software works on PC and Mac. Zune only works with PCs.

The primary websites for music downloads are iTunes Store for iPod and Zune Marketplace for Zune. Both sites offer music downloads of 0.99 cents per song. With Zune Marketplace, you can buy a monthly subscription for $14.99 a month for unlimited downloads as long as you have a subscription.

But there are other online music stores out there so you are not limited to Apple and Microsoft. Do an online search for online music stores and determine what works for you.

The stores that I recommend are offered here and have one time fees:

For iPod music and video downloads, click on http://argee.feedipods.hop.clickbank.net

For Zune music and video downloads, click on http://argee.zreactor.hop.clickbank.net

Have fun with what ever portable media player you choose!

Argee Gallamoza is committed to helping others by providing straight forward information about consumer electronics.

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