Prologue

We analyzed why it’s important to research the competition in order to gain insights into our niche.

Then, we discussed content creation and distribution.

We examined various ways you can utilize to bring traffic to your offers and affiliate websites, such as:

• Website content in various formats (blogging, pages, visual content, audio, video).
• SEO techniques and best practices
• Email marketing
• Article marketing
• Video marketing and channels, vlogging
• Social media marketing
• Podcasts and interviews
• Free services, memberships, lead magnets
• Relationships/Connections (online/offline)
• Influencer marketing
• Guest blogging
• Paid advertising
• Product creation
• Outbound/Guerilla marketing

We know what the affiliate business model is, we’ve chosen a profitable niche based on our interests, and we know how to generate traffic by connecting effectively with people.

 

Now, it’s time to discuss how affiliates are making money. It’s the MONEY part.

How Affiliates Are Making Money

The final price remains the same, the retail customer enjoys the same quality.

Affiliates only have to tie promotions into their websites’ content.

• Digital content creation: blogging (articles, news, lists, best of’s, conversational, personal stories, discussions, answering questions, reviews, comparisons, guides, pillar articles, tutorials, controversial), pages (research, case studies, landing pages, members’ area, eCommerce, products, store, interactive, quizzes, polls, testimonials, datafeed, coupons, deals, directories), visual content (galleries, infographics, bars, charts, mini graphs, maps, gif’s), audio (lessons, audiobooks, narrating, interviews, podcasts, commercials), video (webinars, presentations, interviews, reviews, clips, trailers, vlogging)
• Generating leads and referrals for companies (people that signup with their email addresses and become prospects or perform specific predefined actions, such as registering, completing forms, creating accounts, downloading software, taking surveys, and other) – PPL (Pay per Lead), CPA (Cost per Action), PPCall (Pay per Call), PPI (Pay per Install), PPD (Pay per Download) and others.
• Generating referrals on affiliate networks, forums, PTC/GPT/Survey sites, companies that use one-tier or two-tier or even multi-tier structures
• Selling advertising space – displaying ads on their sites and receive commissions for ad impressions or ad clicks – PPC (Pay per Click), CPI (Cost per Impression) and others.
• Writing sponsored posts and articles for companies that pay for having their brands listed on external properties
• Email Marketing – sending out email campaigns promoting companies products, product launches, or any other offer
• Video Marketing – promoting products and services (like branded merchandising) using videos and by vlogging,
• Social media campaigns and advertising
• Utilizing podcasting shows as hosts and as guests
• Paid advertising – utilizing PPC (Pay per Click) marketing on search engine listings, display networks, and social media
• Utilizing cold tactics, guerilla marketing

and other methods such as

• Freelancing
• Dropshipping
• eCommerce Stores
• Accepting donations

• Creating membership sites
• Selling services
• Offering online courses
• Organising workshops, webinars, seminars
• Offering training (1-1/team), consulting, coaching
• Speaking on stages, organizing live events
• Selling websites for profit
• Promoting MLM companies
• Offering local marketing services
• Creating business pages for clients
• Marketing services and campaigns for clients and companies (SEO, website creation, website development, content creation, advertising, managing social media accounts, business pages/profiles…)
• Writing their own books
• Creating digital products

and more…

But in this guide, we’ll focus only on affiliate marketing techniques.

Affiliate Marketing Pricing Models –

Various Forms of Affiliate Commissions

PPS – Pay per Sale – You get paid when your visitors complete a purchase on the merchant’s website

PPL – Pay per Lead – You get paid from merchants for visitors you send that sign up with their email addresses. Pay per lead is a form of CPA (cost per action) and counts only for leads (when a visitor signs up and becomes a subscriber)

CPI – Cost per impressions – You get paid for impressions on merchants’ ads displayed on your site (banners, images, calls to action). An impression is when an ad or banner is been seen by visitors to your site. It doesn’t matter if the visitors don’t click on the advertisement.

CPM – Cost per Thousand Impressions – This is the CPI model with the only difference, is that the CPI model refers to the cost per one impression and the CPM model refers to the cost per one thousand impressions

CPA – Cost per Action – You get paid from merchants when your visitors complete an action on their pages (form completions, downloads, signups, registrations, purchases)

Revenue Sharing – is, in essence, the same model with Pay-Per-Sale (PPS) with the only difference being in the way that advertisers do not compensate publishers based on the product’s price that’s been sold, instead, they share revenue that’s generated from the ad campaigns.

VPA – Value per Action – is very similar to the Cost-Per-Action (CPA) model, extending that model to add revenue sharing with the consumer. 

Shared CPM – Shared Cost per Mille – This is the case where two or multiple advertisers share the same ad space for ad impressions or page views in order to save CPM costs. Usually, the publishers offering shared CPM offer discounts to the advertised merchants.

vCPM – Viewable Cost Per Mille – This pricing model came up as a response to the ineffectiveness of banner ads. vCPM lets advertisers pay only for those ads which really appear on the recipients’ screens.

CPV – Cost per View – Unlike the CPM, it’s a cost for just a single view, and hence, it’s not used for traditional banner ads.

CPE – Cost per Engagement – The CPE model is used for specific formats, like expandable hover ads. The engagement is complete when a user hovers over an ad, so it expands to a larger size of a banner

PPCall – Pay per Call – Pay-Per-Call campaigns are in essence Pay-Per-Lead campaigns where the publishers use phone calls as the medium to reach potential leads. The advertiser that sets the PPCall campaigns will pay for the number of phone calls generated. The PPCall providers may charge their services per call, per duration, per impression, or per conversion.

PPI – Pay per Install – advertisers will pay publishers commissions based on software or applications installs by referred visitors. The visitors are being asked if they want to download and install the software on their computer. Usually, the advertisers offer free applications that come with adware apps.

PPD – Pay per Download – advertisers will pay publishers commissions based on referred users downloads (files, software, e-books, applications, images, videos, digital media, PDFs), in essence, anything that can be downloaded in digital format.

Tenancy – merchants pay a flat, fixed fee per month regardless of the number of impressions, clicks or leads. Although the results are very hard to measure, and there are no guarantees, the tenancy model can offer large exposure for big companies and brands.

Hybrid –  is the combination of 2 or more models. It’s used when merchants want to track and focus on the whole purchase or funnel of the offer. Offering different models across one process can benefit publishers and merchants.

Single-tier – In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, you get paid based on your direct referral sales or direct referral traffic to the merchants.

Two-tier – In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, you get paid not only for the sales occurred by your referrals on the merchants’ websites but for sales made by the referrals of your referrals who signed up and became affiliates of the merchants under your link

Multi-tier – In this type of affiliate marketing you get paid commissions for affiliates and referrals in various tiers in the affiliate network. Multi-level marketing (MLM) is used for the sale of products or services where the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce (also called partners, salespeople, distributors, independent business owners…) selling the company’s products/services, while the earnings of the participants is derived from a pyramid-shaped commission system.

Although each MLM company dictates its own specific “compensation plan” for the payout of any earnings to their respective participants, the common feature which is found across all MLMs is that the compensation plans theoretically payout to participants only from two potential revenue streams.

The first stream of compensation can be paid out from commissions of sales made by the participants directly to their own retail customers. The second stream of compensation can be paid out from commissions based on the sales made by other distributors referred by the participant, who had recruited other participants into the MLM company; in the organizational hierarchy of MLMs, these participants are referred to as one’s “downline” distributors

Types of Affiliate Websites

How Do We Find Affiliate Products to Promote?

Every affiliate network, every company has its own rules and conditions. Before we apply for a co-operation it is crucial to read carefully their terms and policies.

In order to participate in affiliate programs, you must have a website with content that is useful for visitors and therefore some traffic. When you apply to participate in a specific affiliate program they will examine your website to track down its activity. I suggest staying focused on bringing decent traffic to your website first and engage with your visitors so that your applications will be approved.

But even if an application fails with a certain company or network, you can always resubmit one in the future. They will re-examine your website and they will respond.

Regardless the niche and the content of your website there are affiliate programs you can participate and earn revenue. There are different conditions and terms from program to program but the main process is the same.

Best Practices

My best advice on that matter is this: First, test out the products you want to promote, if you’re satisfied, then begin promoting them

As a beginner, I suggest that you check out Affiliate Programs sponsored by well known trustworthy websites that provide high-quality products and superior customer support. People don’t trust easily unknown brands, they need to feel secure.

Another key advice: Do not use affiliate links on every post and page. You need to publish free information as well and provide value to the market. Keep a ratio of 1/9 (1 affiliate links – 9 useful content). This strategy will get you higher rankings as well.

Affiliate Networks

ShareASale: Home & garden, fashion, green products, business, marketing, arts & music, family & kids, food & drink, education, health, sports, wedding

CJ Affiliate: Accessories, arts, photo, music, automotive, beauty, books, business, careers, clothing, apparel…

Rakuten: Electronics, clothing, shoes, accessories, home, outdoor, beauty, health, sports, fitness, bags, toys, pet supplies, media, food, office supplies, automotive…

Clickbank: Arts, entertainment, business, investing, computers, internet, e-business, e-marketing, education, employment, fiction, food, wine, cooking, games, green products, health, home, languages…

Avangate: Solutions for software companies, SaaS, startups, internet, utilities, audio, video, multimedia, design, business, finance

JVZoo: Business, finance, cooking, food, education, employment, foreign languages, entertainment, game systems/guides, health, fitness, gambling, internet marketing, e-commerce, green solutions, home, family, mobile, parenting, publishing, writing, software, sports…

• LinkConnector
• AffiliateWindow
• AvantLink
• eBay Partner Network
• Amazon Associates
• Performance Horizon
• Impact Radius
• One Network Direct
• WebGains
• RevenueWire

Independent Affiliate Programs

• Your niche + affiliate programs
• Your product/service + affiliate programs
• Company X + affiliate program

Alternatively, you can search manually on websites and if you can’t spot the page you’re looking for you can consider contacting the companies directly.

Digital Content Creation

You are someone with experience and specific knowledge in your niche, and you share valuable information, insights, and tips. You help people with their questions and you keep on practicing and researching the topics you cover with your blogs. You provide new solutions, review new products, write articles, and interact with people.

As we mentioned in the previous part of this guide, there are various content formats that can help you reach out to the right audience and bring traffic to your website and affiliate offers.

Blogging:

• Articles that examine the industry (your niche) or a part of it in general
• News to announce something concerning your brand or the industry, or anything else
• Lists
• Best of’s
• Articles to spark a conversation or to make people interested in your industry
• Sharing personal stories
• Discuss a movie, a book you recently read, something that has to do with your specific niche
• Answering a question people have (the resource can be anything, search engines, social media, on the streets where you listen to other people talking)
• Reviews
• Comparisons
• Guides/Pillar Articles (A pillar article can also be described as epic, monumental and comprehensive. Usually a longer tutorial-style post, a pillar article goes above and beyond to provide the best and most detailed information about how to accomplish something)
• Tutorials
• Controversial Topics

Pages:

• Research/Case studies
• Landing pages/optin pages
• Member’s area/dashboards
• eCommerce/products/store
• Interactive pages (polls, quizzes, testimonials)
• Datafeed
• Coupons
• Deals
• Directories

Visual Content:

• Galleries
• Infographics
• Bars, charts, mini graphs
• Maps
• GIFs

Audio:

• Lessons
• Audiobooks
• Article narrating
• Interviews
• Podcasts
• Commercials

Video:

• Webinars
• Presentations
• Interviews
• Reviews
• Clips
• Trailers
• Vlogging

Can I Advertise my Affiliate Links Anywhere Else?

You can utilize email campaigns, social media platforms, forums, communities, article directories, business pages, video platforms (streaming, hosting, webinars, branded merchandising, promotions), audio platforms (podcast hosting and distribution, interviews, promotions).

Best Practices: it’s highly recommended to use external platforms in order to hook people into your mailing list and redirect traffic to your website where you promote the affiliate offers. However, you can promote affiliate offers directly on external platforms but you have to be cautious.

Because not every email service provider, social, or external network allows affiliate promotions. Make sure you read every platform’s rules and terms.

For example, the majority of email providers don’t allow affiliate promotions, Google+ is not allowing, on Facebook is risky, but you can use Twitter and Pinterest. On forums, communities, and article directories affiliate promotions are generally, not allowed, but there are always exceptions and you can always link people to your website.

Video and audio platforms have their own rules as well, so make sure you follow their guidelines.

The best practice is not placing affiliate links on external platforms, only redirect people to your website where you have placed those links.

The same principles apply everywhere, so use those links wisely, and don’t overdo it

How to Monetize Digital Content

People are interested in personal reviews of products they want to buy. They are looking for lists, best of’s, guides, and information that can help them with their queries, problems, needs, and desires.

They want to read the news, discuss, interact with website owners and other people on forums and communities, they want to have fun. They’re looking for tutorials, instructions, and advice. They’re searching for directories, product comparisons, coupons, special deals, discounts, and rewards.

They want to make money, save money and they’re looking for investment solutions. They want to improve their lives and their current situation.

They consume written content, audios, and videos.

And people get exposed to new products, services, and advertisements all the time. And they buy stuff.

When you publish content regularly and interact with your visitors by responding to their questions, people begin to trust you, and eventually, they will buy what you’re promoting and recommending.

Your website is like a magazine/newspaper where you advertise other companies and products along with the digital content you create.

How magazines and newspapers are making money? Mainly with Advertising. Additionally, they make money by selling the printed material and subscriptions. But these are methods you can implement, too (at later stages).

Affiliate Commissions

Pay-Per-Sale (PPS)/Cost-Per-Sale (CPS)

In this model, the commissions are the most rewarding for the affiliates, in contrast to the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model. For the merchants, this is the pricing model that has the lower cost and ensures pure profit as advertised companies payoff commissions only for sales and purchases.

There are commissions as low as 1% and as high as 50% or more depending on the product, the company, or the occasion. Digital products usually payoff higher commissions than physical products. The higher commission rate I’ve ever received was 70% (special commissions for specific digital products during a company’s anniversary).

This is the most common pricing model and Wikipedia mentions that around 80% of affiliate programs are using this method.

Revenue Sharing

This is often used when a customer spends money on a specific product or service multiple times.

Summary

This is the most rewarding affiliate model and the most popular, but it requires that you work hard in order to pre-qualify visitors in order to become customers.

Generating leads and referrals for other companies

Pay-Per-Performance (PPP)/Cost-Per-Action (CPA)/Pay-Per-Acquisition (PPA)

Pay-Per-Lead (PPL)/Cost-Per-Lead (CPL)

The advertised companies need leads to expand their reach in order to communicate with their potential customers on an ongoing basis usually by sending out email campaigns or SMS messages or social media messages and campaigns or other ways, so that leads can finally become customers.

The affiliates (publishers) may choose to acquire leads via phone calls, online traffic to websites/properties/landing pages, emails, SMS, or other methods. The potential customer will have to provide an email address or to create a profile by filling out data or by answering specific questions.

The commissions vary from company to company, from industry to industry, and according to the competition

Cost-Per-Impression (CPI)

One impression occurs when an online visitor views the content of a webpage that contains advertisements. A webpage might contain more than one ads.

This model involves risk for the advertisers as visitors might not click the ads and no conversions will be generated. For the affiliates is a handy model because they don’t care about conversions, they only need as much traffic as possible.

Pay-Per-Call (PPCall)/Cost-Per-Call (CPCall)

The advertiser that sets the PPCall campaigns will pay for the number of phone calls generated. The PPCall providers may charge their services per call, per duration, per impression, or per conversion.

This certain type of ad campaigns is popular for local companies trying to reach local customers although it can be used to reach leads all over the globe depending on the certain needs of the advertised company.

The customers benefit because they discuss with the seller (advertiser) before having to buy the product or service.

The growth of smartphones market may be responsible for the growth and popularity of this model in the near future.

Pay-Per-Install (PPI)

This model is becoming popular due to the rise of the mobile market.

Pay-Per-Download (PPD)/Cost-Per-Download (CPD)

There are PPD networks that offer downloads and publishers upload their digital media on these networks and each time a visitor downloads material publishers are getting paid. This way publishers have the chance to offer online visitors their downloads for free and earn money by taking advantage of this model.

Beware though, because there are many fraudulent PPD networks that don’t compensate their affiliates.

This model is becoming very popular due to the rise of mobile advertising and applications.

Summary

Only the CPI (Cost per Impression) model gives you the opportunity to make money without having to worry about conversions. But even in this case, you’ll have to generate traffic to your pages.

You can track CPA (PPD) offers on CPA/Advertising/Affiliate networks.

CPA Networks

• MaxBounty
• PeerFly
• GlobalWideMedia
• Matomy
• AdscendMedia
• Clickbooth
• Panthera Network
• Admitad
• AdPerio
• Convert2Media
• Glispa
• ClickDealer
• AboveAllOffers
• CPAmatica
• CrakRevenue
• CPAlead
• MundoMedia
• W4
• AdWorkMedia
• MadRivo
• Mobidea

Generating Referrals (Extended)

Just like the lead generation models we discovered earlier, you can expand this model to generate referrals for affiliate networks, forums, PTC (Paid to Click) sites, GPT (Get paid to) sites, survey sites, companies that use 1-tier, 2-tier, or even multi-tier structures.

Not every affiliate network gives you the opportunity to generate referrals. The majority of them only offer you the opportunity to participate in the affiliate programs of the advertised companies. But there are exceptions, like ShareaSale or JVzoo.

There are also forums that beyond the free services, they offer premium products or other services. Some of them give you the opportunity to generate referrals.

All the PTC/GPT sites give you the opportunity to build a downline, with many of them offering multi-tier structures. Have in mind though, that only 2% of them are legitimate. The vast majority are scams and you won’t get paid. Here’s a list of the Paying Sites.

There are also survey sites offering the same opportunity but not all of them.

You can additionally, build a downline for companies that offer tiers on their affiliate programs, like MLM companies. In every niche, in every industry, there are companies where you can take advantage of this model. But keep in mind that not all of them are legitimate.

Generating referrals can be proved a very lucrative approach as you build a downline that can bring in recurring income for years. If a company offers this model do it, don’t leave money on the table.

Selling Advertising Space

It’s a very effective way to take advantage of online traffic and monetize your content. You make deals with advertising companies, and you place their code on your pages. They pay whenever someone clicks on the ads or banners, or even they pay for impressions, PPC (Pay-per-Click), CPI (Cost-per-Impression).

In that case, Google needs quality, unique content, and make sure you have already published the primary pages for your website (about page, privacy policy, terms and conditions, disclaimer). Moreover, provide a user-friendly navigation experience, and optimize your website for mobile (all the modern themes are responsive).

Once our application is approved the formula is plain simple. We place Ads using a special code that Google provides on our website and get paid a proportion of the clicked Ads. Google place advertisements related to our website content and niche, so that the visitor feels comfortable with relevant and not highly intruding ads.

The most popular method is pay-per-click (PPC) in which the merchant (Google) pays website owners utilizing the pay-for-performance structure. It’s very similar to the affiliate marketing model as payments are only accounted when the Ads are clicked by online visitors.

Other methods of Adsense is the pay-per-impression and the cost-per-action that tested as beta but dismissed by Google back in 2008.

There are many other Ad programs and networks you can utilize besides Google

As long as you find relevant Ads to your website’s content you can use them to test things out. If the ads from a network are not converting you can change them. Every ad network gives you access to full analytics and reports so that you know how much you make on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis.

Key advice: Do not place ads on every blog post and page on your website, it hurts rankings and user experience. You should place this special code only on a portion of your website. And one more thing, do not place ads on pages where there are affiliate links as you want visitors to click through these links

ie…Google AdSense rules:

Valuable inventory: Advertising and other paid promotional material added to your pages should not exceed your content. Furthermore, the content you provide should add value and be the focal point for users visiting your page. For this reason, we may limit or disable ad serving on pages with little to no value and/or excessive advertising until changes are made.

• Media.net
• Mobidea
• Admitad
• AdBuff
• Chitika
• Infolinks

Selling Ad Space directly to other companies (and vice versa)

Before you approach other sites, blogs, and companies to inform them about your intentions you have to set the prices. How much are you going to charge? This depends on many factors, in the niche, and how much the competition is charging, but the most important factor is the traffic your website receives on a daily basis.

Some entrepreneurs place a fixed price for banners that the other sites will place on their sites and they choose to get paid upfront.

ie…Homepage banners cost $3 per day, or per month, or Sidebar banners cost $2 per day.

Try to close deals only with relative to your niche websites, so that the user experience is not interrupted.

Additionally, you can try this method in reverse, to place your banners on other sites, either using those AdBuying/Selling sites mentioned above or by contacting the sites you want your ads placed directly. In that case, you pay, they place your banners.

You can alternatively sell ad space to other website owners, bloggers, or entrepreneurs. When your site gains popularity you will receive related requests, or you can hunt down potential partners on your own. You can display your banners on other sites and let them display their banners on your site for exchange.

Sponsored Posts/Articles

If these products and services align with your content’s theme, it’s a great opportunity to monetize it.

The majority of those startups will approach you without saying it’s about getting their content advertised. They, for example, might say something like that…

Hi, you have a wonderful site and we just released a free software that blah, blah, blah. Take a look at it, and tell me what you think. And by the way, if you find it helpful you can consider sharing it with your audience and we’ll be grateful for it.

I’m being approached by companies all the time, but I reject many of these proposals as they want to get advertised for free. I carefully select only the serious proposals that are in total alignment with my content.

For example…If a marketing agency wants their new software advertised, I would publish an article mentioning the ” Top 50 marketing tools for SEO), with the agency’s product featured in the first 5 spots.

You can advertise those products and services as part of lists, like the example above, you can write separate reviews of their products, you can create interviews, videos, any kind of digital material you want.

What you charge is totally up to you. You can even charge more for a sponsored article that gets your #1 sidebar spot for a certain period of time.

Only one key advice here: You have to be proud of the product you are promoting and test it out yourself. You want your audience satisfied, that matters the most.

There’s a dedicated page, here on WMS, about sponsored content. You can check my services and prices.

Email Marketing

To hook people to our mailing list we need first to offer something valuable in return. Just like I do with the DBR training, people get access to the material by signing up.

You can utilize email marketing to engage with your audience, to answer questions, and give advice. Imagine email as a way of educating your prospects about your brand and about the benefits that they get if they purchase from you.

You can use email to conduct surveys, polls, and quizzes. You can collect those data and opinions in order to create your next big product or service. You can additionally send email messages to promote your new blog posts, or to announce the launch of a new membership section. You can advertise your products, and promote other companies products, or you can share any other marketing material like newsletters, big announcements, promos, coupons, discounts.

With email marketing, you stay connected with loyal fans and customers, and often times you can sell repeatedly to those people. In business, there is a saying…”It’s far less expensive to keep current customers than to acquire new customers”…or maybe you’ve heard the quote … “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver, the other gold”.

Monetization Techniques

• Promote products, services, other companies products
• Promos, special offers, seasonal offers, coupons, discounts, bonuses
• Memberships, online courses
• Workshops, webinars, seminars
• Training, consulting, coaching
• Marketing services and campaigns (locally & globally)
• Sponsored posts
• Promote your new book, a product launch, a new service
• Email campaigns for clients

Video Marketing

You can use videos as a lead magnet (subscribers, registrations), for vlogging, to promote your website, to promote other companies products, to co-operate with ad networks in order to display ads in your videos, you can make money with branded merchandising and sponsorships, or to create videos for clients (trailers, footage, clips, advertising campaigns).

Types of Marketing Videos

• Demo videos of products, releases, and launches

You have a new product coming up, or you’re about to re-launch a new version of a product, let the market know

• Brand videos, commercials, mini-films, trailers

Short mini trailers that last 1-2 minutes are great if you want to catch your visitors’ attention. Place them in the background of your homepage above the fold, and let the ‘Loop’ playing

• Live Events
• Workshops
• Webinars
• Seminars
• Presentations
• Educational, How-Tos

Be social, entertaining, and don’t forget to educate and add value.

Not every webinar should contain sales messages. Ideally, you should consider a ratio 1:9 (non-sales/sales). There are many companies that never sell during their webinars and workshops. They only educate people on why their products are important, teach people how to use them, and they just build trust and authority.

But there are other companies charging for such services.

• Live streaming, live shows

If you’re an energetic person and you enjoy social relationships go for the live streaming option. Mistakes will do happen, so be prepared, laugh, and self-criticize.

• Interviews
• Explainer videos
• Animated
• Case studies
• Product reviews
• Customer testimonials
• 360-degree or VR (virtual reality) videos
• Augmented reality
• Personalized messages
• Thank you videos
• Behind the scenes
• Vlogs

Vlogging

• Choose a direction (niche)
• Identify your audience and ideal viewers by putting yourself in their shoes. What content would they expect to watch from a video channel in your respective niche?
• Buy quality equipment. Have in mind that audio and lighting are very important factors as well. The higher the quality of the production, the higher the potential. So, beyond a good camera, you might need a microphone, audio and video production software/hardware, a few basic lights to shoot video at nights, indoors, and outdoors.
• It’s OK to experiment with free software and or a webcam at the beginning, to get the hang of it.
• Practice before you publish (in front of the mirror, try different angles, speaking) to get the hang of it and become faster
• Edit your videos and adjust the audio volume, add images and text if needed, add music background (optional), add your logo
• Publish videos. Popular video content is best of type (ie…Best Cameras under $100), comparisons, lists (ie…10 places to visit in Australia), compilations, tutorials, how-to’s, reviews, traveling, hotels, funny, fails, street fights, supercars.
• Start marketing your video brand (social media, your website or blog, communities, forums, on other sites)
• When you got traction and following you can start monetizing your video content (depending on the platform you host them)

• YouTube
• DailyMotion
• Vimeo
• TheVault
• FameBit
• RitualNetwork
• Envul
• MetaCafe
• Brightcove

• VidCon
• Filmora
• Patreon

Vlogging – Final Words

But once you get the hang of it, nothing can stop you.

Videos can be monetized in various ways and if you manage to gain popularity you’ll be able to make money with ad network co-operation, branded merchandising, sponsorships, and by selling subscriptions.

Of course, you need to market your brand name effectively if you want to attract traffic.

Videos for Clients

Now, creating videos for clients is a method that could take your online business to the next level. Trailers, clips, footages, advertising campaigns, reviews, sponsored commercials, interviews. Many marketers charge thousands of dollars for 2-3 minutes videos.

This model is very flexible as you set your own prices, and you can outsource video production if you can’t produce it yourself.

Social Media Campaigns/Advertising

Your ultimate goal is to create a fan base, loyal followers that will share your content with their network, most of the times with no other incentive than they love what you do.

In order to achieve that, you have to offer value first, just like you do on your website. You need to entertain people, interact with them, and answer questions, solve problems, showcase your expertise.

You need to be polite, to connect with other entrepreneurs, bloggers, influencers, and share other people’s content as well.

You can create both personal and business profiles/pages and join related to your niche groups and communities. At later stages, you can expand by creating your own business pages or groups (public or private) for your followers, partners, and other entrepreneurs.

The more you appear online the more people trust you. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, and so many other social channels offer you an opportunity to spread your message and add email subscribers to your lists.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Tumblr
• Reddit
• Stumble Upon
• Medium
• Flipboard
• LinkedIn
• Ghost

can be used to raise brand awareness.

• Instagram
• Vine
• QZone
• Sina Weibo
• Baidu Tieba
• Snapchat
• Line
• Telegram
• VK

• Pinterest
• Flipboard

#4 Answer questions on: 

• Quora 
• Yahoo answers  

showcase your expertise, share advice, participate in the communities, redirect people to your site

#6 Business pages: Google+, Twitter, and Facebook can be used to create pages strictly for business. Use lead magnets in the form of discounts, promos, and special offers that only members of your pages can enjoy

#7 Public or private groups and chatrooms

#8 Broadcast live/video streaming:

• Periscope
• Facebook live
• You-Tube
• Skype

#9 Messengers:

• Facebook
• WeChat
• QQ
• Viber
• BlackBerry
• KakaoTalk

You can publish any type of content you want on social media, just like you do on your site:

Posts, articles, news, lists, reviews, comparisons, guides, research, case studies, landing pages, polls, quizzes, contests, testimonials, galleries, infographics, charts, maps, audio, podcasts, interviews, videos, webinars, presentations

Monetization Techniques

• Independent campaigns/ads: Promote your products and services (memberships, courses, books…) and promotional offers of affiliated merchants (Pay per sale, CPM, CPA, Pay per lead)
• Discounts, promos, prizes, special offers, exclusive downloads
• eCommerce stores, shops hosted on social platforms like Facebook Store
• Sponsored content (interviews, testimonials, videos, articles)
• Digital content for clients strictly on social media (clips, promo videos, trailers, audio, graphics, ad campaigns)
• Create and manage social media accounts, business pages, profiles for clients (advanced)
• Paid advertising (advanced)

Best Practices

When promoting affiliate offers it’s better to redirect people to your website and landing pages. Do not send people directly to merchants. There are social mediums like Google+ where you are not allowed to use affiliate links. On Facebook they allow but there are also strict rules and Facebook might not allow affiliate links for certain merchants or sites in general. On Twitter and Pinterest they allow but in any case, do not overuse affiliate links.

In the case you use affiliate links on social media make it obvious by including a mini disclaimer:

Campaign Examples:

• The best insurance services in Washington [ADVERT]
• Do you want to lose weight fast tonight? Try this product #ad

Podcasting

Main benefits:

• Instant credibility
• Massive visibility
• Bond with listeners

When you manage to build a podcasting audience you can consider monetizing your content as well.

• Branded merchandising
• Affiliate offers
• Online courses
• Memberships
• Live events, speaking on stages
• Coaching, consulting

Consider joining other podcasting shows as a guest as well. Start with reaching out to low-volume shows and then scale up until you connect with top leaders and industry ‘Icons’.

Try to add value to their shows and to their audiences, and if the host agrees you can share your website URL, usually, at the end of the show.

Paid Advertising

We buy ads on search engines, social media platforms, and other sites/properties in order to get in front of the right people immediately.

Paid advertising is not for newbies, that is why when you are getting started you should focus on the free methods that we already analyzed. But with paid advertising, you can climb the business ladder very effectively and faster, if you know what you’re doing. Paid advertising brings immediate results, but if not done right it could mean a disaster.

Paid ads can be purchased everywhere. Search engines listings, social media ads, other advertising companies, and websites. You can even advertise on PTCs, traffic exchanges, forums, literally on any site.

The concept here involves the marketer’s imagination, energy, and ambitions. These tactics are usually applied in public, crowded places to get the attention of the masses. Guerrilla marketers hope to create a buzz around a company so that the message will spread with the word of mouth from people exposed to the campaign to their friends.

The media in this section could be anything from flyers you leave in a bus station, under doors, inside of mailboxes, and any idea you can come up with. You can even share your business cards with strangers, buy someone a coffee, print messages in public toilets.

Or even create graffiti on the walls, ads on taxis, buses, public transportation, posters on the streets, at stations, airports, and all this crazy stuff.

Main benefits:

• Although this type of marketing is interruptive and intruding, it’s the one method that makes you feel free and brings excitement.
• You can advertise any product you want, affiliate offers, there’s no limit.
• The only limit is your imagination.

Other Monetization Techniques

These methods are:

• Freelancing
• Dropshipping
• eCommerce Stores
• Accepting donations

I analyze in detail these methods in the Beginner’s Ultra Guide

• Creating membership sites
• Selling services
• Offering online courses
• Organising workshops, webinars, seminars
• Offering training (1-1/team), consulting, coaching
• Speaking on stages, organizing live events
• Selling websites for profit
• Promoting MLM companies
• Offering local marketing services
• Creating business pages for clients
• Marketing services and campaigns for clients and companies (SEO, website creation, website development, content creation, advertising, managing social media accounts, business pages/profiles…)
• Writing their own books
• Creating digital products

and more…

Where to Get Help with Affiliate Marketing?

Forums/Communities

There are forums exclusively for discussions, but there are forums that are part of communities or platforms. Other forums offer tools, resources, guides, case studies, tips. And there are platforms to help you build an affiliate marketing or online business from scratch offering exclusive education, web builders, web hosting services, management and monitoring tools, or you can even purchase domain names.

• Education never stops (the moment you stop learning, your business starts dying…Ray Edwards – copywriting legend)
• Networking
• Visibility
• Authority
• Receive and give help
• Feedback
• Support
• Get ideas
• Get inspiration
• Get motivated
• Find partners, investors, employees, freelancers
• Outsource projects

Quick Tips:

• Read each forum rules & guidelines, follow them, and don’t spam
• Participate in the discussions to add value and ask questions if you’re a newcomer
• Try helping others first before you advertise your brand
• Add your website link in your signature or in the profile (if allowed)
• Add a solid and clear profile description to help others understand your offers, products, and services
• Before posting a new topic do a research to find out if the topic was covered in the past

And remember, WebMarketSupport is a resource where you can get Affiliate Marketing help for free.

Epilogue

That’s it, I am waiting for your comments and thoughts. Till next time…

Management, tracking, organizing:

Asana – track your work, get results. Track projects from start to finish. Stay in sync, hit deadlines, reach your goals. Bring emails, files, tickets, and more into Asana with over 100 integrations to choose from, so you can see everything in one place

Evernote – Capture, organize and share notes from anywhere. Your best ideas are always with you and always in sync. Enhance your notes with links, checklists, tables, attachments, and audio recordings. Even handwritten notes are searchable.

Trello – Trello’s boards, lists, and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects in a fun, flexible and rewarding way. Dive into the details by adding comments, attachments, and more directly to Trello cards. Collaborate on projects from beginning to end. Integrate the apps your team already uses directly into your workflow. Power-Ups turn Trello boards into living applications to meet your team’s unique business needs. Trello stays in sync across all of your devices. Collaborate with your team anywhere, from sitting on the bus to sitting on the beach.

And.co – Send proposals, invoice, get paid and manage your time and tasks. Proposals & contracts, invoicing and payments, tasks, expense tracking, time tracking, reports. Over 250,000 businesses already use the app. It’s a project of Fiverr. 

Any.do – Get life under control with the ultimate app for getting things done. Keep your tasks, lists, and reminders in one place, always in-sync across all your devices. Plan your day, week, month, and life. Beautifully designed to help you rock your day, every day. Any.do Assistant takes care of your tasks, so you can spend time on the things that matter.

• Any.do full review

Timely – fully automatic time tracking. Manage your profitability, productivity, and efficiency from one place. It works on any device. 

Citrix Podio – Customizable work management. Components: web & mobile, automated workflows, meeting scheduling, data visualization, social collaboration, task management, granular access, calendar, unlimited storage, personal dashboards, connected CRM, project management, integrated chat, full customization.

LiquidPlanner – Eliminates outsourced plans, deadlines, and surprises so your team can get more done. They offer a free eBook: Introduction to dynamic project management.

Toggl – Hassle-free time tracking so your business runs like clockwork. Break down your hours by projects, clients, and tasks to see what’s making you money, and what’s holding you back. Export any report into any format you need, or use our public API to move the data. Start tracking in your browser, stop the timer on your phone – all your time entries are synced between the phone apps, desktop apps, the Toggl Chrome extension and the website.

Timr – Cloud-Based Time Tracking for Efficient Teams and Companies. Track: work hours, project time, mileage. Available via browser and mobile app. Centralized admin dashboard. Customizable reports.

Nusii – Professional proposal templates, open notifications, your own custom domain, proposal tracking, personal branding, automation, online signatures and more. They’ll let you know when your client opens the email that contains their proposal link, and again when they open their proposal.

SlideShare – Share what you know and love through presentations, infographics, documents and more. 

GetPocket – When you find something you want to view later, put it in Pocket. Put articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket. Save directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse, and Zite. If it’s in Pocket, it’s on your phone, tablet or computer. You don’t even need an Internet connection.

• GetPocket full review

Sales, payments, finances:

Proposify – streamlines your sales process and helps you close deals faster. Put proposals in front of your sales leads quickly before they go cold. Quickly access and collaborate on proposal content while you manage their activity with roles and permissions, commenting, and tracking through version history. Proposify notifies you every time your client interacts with your proposal, from opening the email to closing the deal. Stay on top of sales and your success.

Mint – Effortlessly manage your finances in one place. Easily create budgets, and see their suggestions based on your spending. Track and pay bills like never before. Get alerts and schedule payments on the spot. Receive alerts for unusual account charges, and get custom tips for reducing fees and saving money.

SquareUp – Accept credit cards anywhere. Sign up and get a free reader. With Square’s credit card processing, you can accept all major cards and get deposits as fast as the next business day. Connect a Square Reader to your device or slip an iPad into Square Stand to take payments at our standard rate. Or sell with Square Register, our first fully integrated point of sale, for 2.5% + 10¢ per tap, dip, or swipe.

PayPal – Secure transactions, PayPal Buyer Protection can cover your eligible purchases if they don’t show up or match their description. You can shop at millions of websites around the world, and pay friends back almost anywhere.

Xero – Online accounting software for small business. Use our mobile app to reconcile, send invoices, or create expense claims – from anywhere. Send online invoices to your customers – and get updated when they’re opened. Xero imports and categorizes your latest bank transactions. 

Expensify – From receipt scanning to reimbursement, Expensify automates every step of the expense reporting process. Expenses, travel, mobile, adult & compliance, and more…

Social Media (scheduling, planning, discovering ‘Hot’ trends):

Hootsuite – Get the most out of your social content. Scheduling, content curation, analytics, monitoring, team management, security. The Hootsuite academy offers training and certification. 265,000+ students, 35,000+ certified graduates, 880+ schools enrolled.

• Hootsuite full review

PostPlanner – Postplanner is not a simple post scheduler. The app delivers content that is already successful to guarantee social engagement boost. Get more engagement, clicks, and sales from Facebook and Twitter. 

• PostPlanner full review

Design:

PicMonkey – Photo editing, effects, filters, vectors, graphics, design maker, collages, magnifier, labels, overlays, textures, themes, frames, templates. An awesome photo editing app that transforms your computer into Photoshop.

BeFunky – BeFunky is a special photo editing online app with which you can apply unique effects to your images and create projects from scratch.High-quality results. Produce stunning photographs and captivating designs with fun, easy-to-use editing tools.

• BeFunky full review

Snappa – Create online graphics in a snap. Whip up graphics for social media, ads, blogs, and more without Photoshop or graphic designers. Over 3 million images have been created using Snappa. You can create banners, eBook covers, social media covers & headers, infographics, YouTube channel art & thumbnails, and more.

• Snappa full review

Riddle – create quizzes & polls, personality tests, lists, and more. Ideal for websites, facebook fan pages or other social networks. Engagement is guaranteed.

• Riddle full review

PowToon – a beautiful online application to create slide presentations or animated videos. It is easy to use with many features, effects, and other tools.

• PowToon full review

Canva – Create designs online for free, banners, headers, images for social media, blogs, websites.

• Canva full review

Fotojet – a free online app where you can edit your photos, create photo collages and other designs.Plenty of options and effects.

• Fotojet full review

BannerSnack – a professional and reliable banner maker. Extended settings dashboard, tracking ads feature and affordable prices. Start from a custom size or grab a standard-size layout from the gallery. Add a background, animate your text and shapes, experiment with different colors and push the banner creator to the limits.

• BannerSnack full review

Icon Finder – the leading search engine and marketplace for vector icons in SVG, PNG, CSH and AI format.

A list of free web design icons

Design resources to find free images and other tools

The ultimate list of free stock photo sites

StarWatermark – Image and PDF watermark tools on Mac and Windows

CSS Reference – a free visual guide to CSS

PageCrush – helping creatives become globally visible by showcasing the best websites, videos, and apps from Designers, Developers, and Multimedia

Tableau Public – free software that can allow anyone to connect to a spreadsheet or file and create interactive data visualizations for the web

Gliffy – diagramming software. Communicate and collaborate visually.

D3js – a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS. D3’s emphasis on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework, combining powerful visualization components and a data-driven approach to DOM manipulation.

Favicon & App Icon Generator 

Favicon generator

Adobe Creative Suite – It consists of:

• Creative Cloud: Quick desktop access to Creative Cloud apps and services
• Photoshop: Image editing and compositing.
• Lightroom: Edit, organize, store, and share photos from anywhere
• Illustrator: Vector graphics and illustration.
• InDesign: Page design and layout for print and digital publishing.
• AdobeXD: Design, prototype, and share user experiences.
• Adobe Premiere Pro: Video production and editing.
• After Effects: Cinematic visual effects and motion graphics.
• Dimension: Create photorealistic 3D images for branding, product shots, and package design
• Acrobat Pro: Create, edit, and sign PDF documents and forms.
• Dreamweaver: Design and develop modern, responsive websites.
• Animate: Interactive animations for multiple platforms (formerly Flash Professional).
• Adobe Audition: Audio recording, mixing, and restoration.
• and Lightroom Classic, Character Animator, Spark, Bridge, Media Encoder, InCopy, Prelude, Story Plus, Fuse.

Keyword, Market, and Competition Research:

BuzzSumo – Analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor. Find the key influencers to promote your content.

Jaaxy – Keyword & competition research, niche market research. With over 500 Million “brand new” search terms being searched every day, it is important that you have a keyword tool that can offer accurate traffic, competition, and domain insights into billions of keywords. Jaaxy is that tool. There are literally millions of niches online, many of which have little to no competition. Having access to the Brainstorm, Affiliate Search, and Alphabet Soup platforms within Jaaxy are going to give you true insights into brand new niches…without you having to do the dirty work.

• Jaaxy full review

200+

Business & Marketing Tools Collection

Work management, tracking, organizing, payments, accounting, Google, keyword, market, and competition research, SEO, analytics, and related, marketing & advertising, web development, website monitoring, domains & website hosting, coding, and related, design & multimedia, marketplaces, entrepreneurial communities, hiring & outsourcing.

Other free tools that can help you generate ideas, popular and trending hashtags, create catchy headlines and titles to promote yourself, find keywords, find free stock photos you can use on your blog/website/social media, track what people are discussing on social media, internet trends, create alerts and get notified for specific terms, search stories being told.

• Free Tools Mini Collection
• More apps and tools reviewed on WMS
• Free stock photos – The Ultimate List

• The Best Marketing/Business Related Training Programs
• A-Z List Free Online Marketing Trainings
• A-Z List Marketing/Business Forums
• A-Z List Advertising Networks
• Ultimate Guide – How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
• The Beginner’s Guide to Making Money Online
• TOP Recommended Web Building & Marketing Solution (builder, hosting, domains, keyword & niche market research, marketing training, security, 24/7 tech support, community, forum, live chat, marketing tools, website management & monitoring)