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AHBBO Home Based Business Information Return to AHBBO Archives
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_______________________________________________________________ A Home-Based Business Online _______________________________________________________________ Issue 152 : September 30, 2017 Sent to 13,629 Opt-In Subscribers Editor: Elena Fawkner Publisher: AHBBO Publishing http://www.ahbbo.com Contact By Email _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ IN THIS ISSUE _______________________________________________________________ 1. Welcome and Update from Elena 2. Home Business Idea of the Week 3. Feature Article - Making Money With Affiliate Programs 4. Surveys and Trends 5. Success Quote of the Week 7. Subscription Management 9. Contact Information _______________________________________________________________ 1. Welcome from Elena _______________________________________________________________ Hello again and a warm welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined us since the last issue. This week's article is about affiliate programs (also known as associate programs). For the unitiated, they're a way of generating revenue by promoting someone else's product or service. Often you're provided with a website to which you're instructed to drive traffic. Easier said than done and there's a much more effective way. "Making Money With Affiliate Programs" shows you how. It's at segment 3. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this week's issue. Remember, AHBBO is for YOU! If you have comments or suggestions for topics you would like to see addressed, or would just like to share your experiences with other subscribers, I want to hear from you. Please send comments, questions and stories to Contact By Email . _______________________________________________________________ 2. Home Business Idea of the Week - Furniture Refurbishing and Refinishing _______________________________________________________________ If you have a garage or work building and are willing to learn a craft, upholstering, re-upholstering and/or furniture refinishing would make an excellent home business. The investment is comparatively small and there is always a market for these skills and the products they yield. If you do not already know how to upholster or refinish wood, the first priority is to learn how. If you are experienced, you can begin with small projects and work your way up to the more complex and better paying jobs. Otherwise, there are schools, courses and hundreds of books covering every possible aspect of furniture upholstery and refinishing. During your preparation, you may decide to specialize --modern, antiques or just chairs and sofas for example. When you are ready for customers, have a sign made and place an ad that announces your services (be specific). Put signs on your car or truck too, so people can see them when you pick up or deliver furniture. When you bring in jobs that are badly in need of repair, take "before" pictures of them -- to compare with "after" pictures when they are finished. Post the best of these in a photo album to show prospective customers and for possible future use in ads or brochures (you may need well contrasting black and white photos for these.) Arrange your album with good examples of each major type of work that you do and include a short (no more than 3 line) title and explanation for each. This way, if you are busy, customers can browse through them while waiting. These pictures will not only show what fine work you do-- they will also suggest other jobs to the customer. Use a good camera for these pictures (hire a photographer if necessary), so the pictures will accomplish their mission. ----- This is just one of over 130 ideas from the new "Practical Home Business Ideas From AHBBO" e-book. Find out more at Unique Home Business Ideas . _______________________________________________________________ 3. Feature Article: Making Money With Affiliate Programs _______________________________________________________________ © 2017 Elena Fawkner Affiliate programs are a great way to generate income if you don't have a product of your own to promote yet. You know that already. But it's NOT, despite what you've heard, just a simple matter of signing up for this or that affiliate program and placing free and paid classified ads all over the place to generate traffic to the website they give you or to get people to click on your autoresponder link. There's more to it than that. Much more. When I started out in this business in May 2017, I signed up for Cookie Cutter. Like many of you I thought that I could simply absorb the information provided and then resell it to others. I followed all the advice about advertising in other people's ezines and all of that. I looked forward to some very round numbers. Well, I got one alright. A big fat ZERO. And that's how it stayed until I realized the truth. That if I was going to make any money in this business I had to start from scratch. In saying that, I don't want to take anything away from Cookie Cutter. It was a marvellous product in terms of what it could teach you in a very short period of time if you were, like me, starting from ground zero. (Its merits as a business opportunity were debatable but that's another story.) In this article, I tell you what worked for me. It's nothing earth- shattering or particularly profound. It's simply reality and common sense. Here's what you need to do to make any significant income from promoting other people's products. YOU NEED A WEBSITE Sorry, but yes, you do. A lot of people pushing their affiliate program will tell you, if you ask the question "Do I need my own website?", "No, you get this beautiful 25 page website for free!" Great. How are you going to get people to visit it? And how are you going to get people to visit YOUR YouBeaut.com website in preference to everyone else's YouBeaut.com website (all 50,000 of them)? Well, let me tell you, the time, effort and expense you would have to spend would be MUCH better invested in your OWN unique and interesting website that will attract traffic simply because it is unique and interesting. That said, you pick your affiliate programs to fit in with and complement your website. Not the other way around. You do NOT create your website to fit in with and complement your affiliate programs. So, start with what you know, what interests you, what you're passionate about. THAT should be the subject matter of your website. Then, and only then, should you start researching which affiliate programs out there fit in with the website you have created. More about that later. YOU NEED AN EZINE You should support your website by publishing an ezine at least on a monthly basis but preferably weekly. Why? A few reasons: First, it reminds your readers that your site exists (assuming they signed up at your site in the first place) and hopefully prompts them to visit again. Second, you develop a targeted mailing list of subscribers interested in the subject matter of your ezine and subscribers that you can direct mail to (judiciously, of course). Third, you can accept paid advertising in your ezine once it hits 1000 subscribers or so and fourth, you can use it to advertise your affiliate programs. In addition, assuming you take your ezine publishing duties seriously and it's not a mere regurgitation of other people's articles without any purpose other than to keep your name in front of an audience (and an ever-decreasing one it will be if that's all you do), you can use it to develop your reputation as an expert in your field by making the original articles you write for your ezine available to a wider audience by submitting them to other ezine publishers. Believe me, there's no shortage of ezine publishers out there who rely exclusively on other people's work! Establishing your own website and ezine takes serious time and work. You can't build either in a weekend. It will take you several weeks of effort to get it into good enough shape to take it public (and even then you won't be satisfied but you have to start at some point). And it will take several more weeks of time and effort publicizing the fact that your website and ezine exist and to start seeing some traffic trickling in. SELECTING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS Once you have an established website and ezine, you can start using them to promote your affiliate programs in a serious way. You can, of course, start promoting affiliate programs from day one, it's just that you won't see any results until you reach what I think of as the "established" stage. By this I mean you have a few hundred subscribers to your ezine and maybe a hundred unique daily visitors to your website. These numbers are on the very low end and your sales will reflect that but you'll at least be on your way by this point. Once you reach the "established" stage, you need to be very selective about the affiliate programs you choose because you are only going to select a very few of them and they need to be good performers. Some internet marketing so-called experts will tell you to pick one or two programs and market them exclusively for big returns. That's good advice on one level - it keeps you focused, and that's important - but on the other hand you're at the mercy of the owner of the affiliate program. If they go out of business so do you. So, pick a small handful of programs to promote but make sure they complement each other (so that someone who is interested in one program is likely to be equally interested in the others). It should be obvious but it bears stating - don't pick programs that have no relevance to the subject matter of your site! Your chances of selling to your website visitors are much higher if what you sell is closely related to the subject matter of your site. It was the subject matter of your site that attracted them in the first place. They are already a qualified prospect if what you sell from your site is relevant to that subject matter. COMMISSION STRUCTURES If you have a mega traffic site, then you can make up for in volume what a particular program's commission structure may lack in terms of straight dollars. But if you have a lower traffic site, then you need to make sure your traffic is very targeted, but go for higher commission programs. In other words, if you're a mega traffic site, by all means sign up with Amazon.com and make maybe three bucks a sale. If you make a hundred sales this week you've got three hundred bucks you didn't have before. But if you're a lower traffic site, focus on making just three sales a week of a product that pays a hundred bucks a pop and you're even with your mega traffic brethren in the commission stakes. Contrary to what many believe, it is no harder to sell a $247 product than it is to sell a $50 product. Don't prejudge your audience. Make sure you offer programs that are relevant to their interests (and which you're proud to promote - that should go without saying but just in case ...) and the mere fact that you're bringing targeted buyers and highly relevant products together will do the rest, statistically speaking. Never, never forget - making money in an online business is a numbers game, pure and simple. Generate enough traffic and you'll generate sales. But if you generate traffic that doesn't match your product line, forget about it. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS To finish off, here are a few miscellaneous considerations to take into account when selecting your affiliate programs. => How Long Do the Cookies Last? Only go for programs that will credit you with the sale even if the customer doesn't buy on the first visit. In most cases, 90% of your sales will come from the follow-up messages sent by the owner of the program once you give them the lead. You've heard that it takes an average of seven exposures to a message before a prospect will buy, right? Well, what happens to your commissions if you only get paid for direct sales (i.e. where the customer buys on the first visit following a direct link from your site)? Right. You get maybe 10% of the commissions you would have earned from the program if the customer was tagged as yours for a period of time (and preferably for life). Always read the terms and conditions of the affiliate program carefully before investing your time and effort. If it says anything like "if customer later makes a purchase on a repeat visit that does not originate from your link, you will not qualify for a commission on such sale" keep looking. Some programs will place a cookie on the customer's hard disk for 45 days or so which means that if that customer returns in three weeks to eventually make a purchase, that customer will be identified as "yours" and you will get the commission. Some programs even offer "lifetime customers", that is, the customer is yours for life even if they come back in three years time and buy a completely different product. => Stats Reporting Look for real-time reporting of statistics including hits and sales. Then check to make sure that the hits the affiliate program records are in line with your own stats tracking. This is easy to do. I use Roibot to track all clicks I'm interested in monitoring whether it's a program I'm promoting or whether I'm just interested in how many people click on a particular link to an article, for example. (To check out the Roibot suite of marketing tools, click this (Roibot) link: ). => Frequency (and Amount) of Payments Some programs will only pay once you accumulate a certain amount of commission dollars. That's OK ... it keeps admin costs down and therefore makes more of the profit available for payment of generous commissions ... but if it's disproportionately high compared to the amount of the base commission, consider another program. If it takes you a year to accumulate $50 in commissions, ask yourself how likely is it that this particular company will still be around in one year? Even if you have no concerns on that score, if it's taking you a year to accumulate $50 worth of commissions, this is not a program that's giving a particularly good return on your investment of time and effort. Look for something more productive. => How Long Established? Related to the previous discussion, think twice before investing too much time and effort on newly established programs. Add these to your portfolio by all means, but make your staple programs the tried and trues. => What is Their Policy on Spam? Very few things irritate me more than to receive spam from someone promoting one of the programs that I promote. Not because I get into a tizz about spam per se (yes, it's a nuisance but unlike apparently 98% of the internet population I actually do have more important things to worry about), but such tactics bring the program into disrepute because it suggests that the owner of the program condones spam and if the owner of the program condones it, how much value does he or she place on the program? Not much. So look for programs with strict anti-spam policies. SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE Finally, a word about patience. This is a slow and steady wins the race game as well as a numbers game. Don't spit the dummy just because you don't make a single sale in your first month with a new program. By all means take a closer look at how well the product fits in with the demographics of your audience (website and ezine) but if it's a good fit, don't throw in the towel, instead, refine your marketing approach, tweak your ads, brainstorm for more creative ways of promoting the program. Don't write the program off as bad until you're sure it's not going to work for you. There may be some peculiar demographic factor common to your group that you're not aware of but until you've given it a good try, don't assume that's the case. As a general rule, so long as you're sure that the product is a good fit, work with it for a year to give it a real chance of performing for you. The internet landscape is strewn with the carcasses of would-be successful entrepreneurs whose only mistake was giving up too soon. Don't be one of them. ------ include the following resource box; and (2) you only mail to a ------ practical business ideas, opportunities and solutions for the work-from-home entrepreneur. http://www.ahbbo.com _______________________________________________________________ TURN $2.50 A DAY INTO $1,500 or MORE A MONTH. I didn't know how either until I was introduced to a business that has a system that works. Now turning $2.50 a day into $1,500+ to $4,500+ a month is a snap! A low stress, simple, legal, clean business THAT WORKS. Details at _______________________________________________________________ 4. Surveys and Trends _______________________________________________________________ © 2017 Ryanna's Hope The following is an extract from the current issue of Larry Wack's excellent weekly ezine, "Surveys and Trends". Follow the link at the end of the segment to subscribe for the full version. ------------------------------------------------------------ CONSUMER TRENDS TOWARD MESSAGE FILTERING ------------------------------------------------------------ Email volume will continue to explode as person-to-person emails are joined by rapidly-growing numbers of spam and email alerts and notifications, according to IDC. In 2017, the total number of email messages sent daily is expected to exceed 60 billion worldwide, up from 31 billion in 2017, and slightly more than half of these messages will be person-to-person emails. According to IDC, email users will demand greater access to message filtering technology to quickly distinguish between high and low priority messages and to delete spam. Additionally, Web browsers will remain the primary access method for all emailboxes worldwide through 2017. ------------------------------------------------------------ CONSUMER CONCERNS FOR VIRAL WARFARE! ------------------------------------------------------------ A September 2017 survey from computer security firm Central Command, Inc. found that average Internet users were concerned about attack susceptibility, with almost three-quarters (74 percent) of the 66,296 respondents indicating that some form of cyberwarfare is likely to occur in the near future. Among the respondents, most were from North America (42 percent), followed by Europe (27 percent), Australia (14 percent), South America (10 percent), Asia (5 percent), and Africa (2 percent), and 67 percent strongly feel that their respective country is not yet prepared to combat against such a major threat. The results displayed a significant increase in virus awareness — a marked improvement from responses a year prior. When asked about the handling of e-mail attachments from an unknown source, the results showed that 58 percent of the respondents would delete the attachment immediately and 41 percent expressed they practiced extreme caution when viewing any attachment regardless of the sender. However, 61 percent claimed to have been infected with a virus at one time or another, and 53 percent were victims of an intrusion attack. _______________________________________________________________ 5. Success Quote of the Week _______________________________________________________________ Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it. -- Henry David Thoreau _______________________________________________________________ A home business should be fun and exciting- and Joonipers is all that and more! More items to sell, better price structure for your customers, and NEW.. YOU can be the first in your area. Owned and run by women! Visit Joonipers.com today! _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 7. Subscription Management _______________________________________________________________ To SUBSCRIBE to this Newsletter:
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