How to Sell with Amazon

In our last blog article we explained the basics Affiliate Marketing. In today's blog we're going to take it a step further. We're going to teach you how to add links to your site in a step by step process. Today's lesson is based on using the Amazon Associates program to monetize your site.

Step One: Go to the Amazon Associates website to create an account.

Step Two: Fill out the information to create your account. This includes name, address, email, payment information, etc.

Step Three: Learn How to Find Products: There are many elements to this step. As technology improves Amazon has created many platforms for adding products to your blog or website. You can add specific products, products within a defined group or category, products based on certain "keywords", products recommended by Amazon, etc., etc. For example, let's say you want to offer books on the Best Selling Movie "The Secret". You can link specifically to the Movie itself or you can link to products which are generally related to the movie and/or the concepts of the Laws of Attraction made so popular through this inspirational movie.

When you're logged into your Associates Account you will find a link in the left margin named "Build Links". Clicking on this link opens several options for adding links to your site. You can add banners, text links within your blog, coupons, products related to the content of your site, product 'clouds'...basically you can add links in just about any way conceivable.

Step Four: Learn How to Copy and Paste Code on Your Site. Once you've found your product or "widget" you would like to add to your site you'll need to generate and copy the code provided by Amazon which you can add to your site. When you find this code you need to copy this code. The easiest way is to click on the code and type [Ctrl+A]. This highlights all of the code. Next, right click the highlighted code and choose "copy" from the dropdown of options. Next you'll need to go to your blog or site admin. panel. You'll need to convert your content into an HTML format. With blogspot your click the "Edit HTML" tab on the top of the toolbar for your post. With other sites using SQL you'll need to access the area you would like to transfer this add code. In HTML format click on the area you want your Amazon links or banners to appear. Next, right click and choose "paste". The HTML code will be added to your site at this point. Next you'll want to check to see if your code was inputted correctly. Go to your site or blog to see if your ads appear. If so, congratulations...you have taken a big step towards being able to monetize your site.

Here's a list of some categories of products you'll be able to offer through Amazon's Affiliate Marketing Program. This just scratches the surface of ways to promote their products.

Electronics

Magazine Subscriptions

Books

Cameras & Photo

Fragrances

Jewelry & Watches

Sports and Outdoors

Musical Instruments

Toys & Games

MP3 Downloads



Step Five: Track your sales and clicks from your Site.


Congratulations and good luck. Your comments and suggestions are welcome. With so many people using Affiliate marketing I'm sure many of you know "tricks of the trade" which could benefit all of us in our efforts to Make Money Online.

Affiliate Marketing: Finding Products to Sell on Your Site.

One of the easiest, no risk ways to generate sales on your website is to offer products to your visitors through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing gives you the opportunity to find products which relate to the content of your website/blog so you can offer these products to your readers.

The best part of affiliate marketing is you don't have do all the hard work associated with retail sales. You don't need a store, you don't need to speculate and buy inventory to sell, you don't have to deal with shipping and handling, and you don't have to handle returns. All of these activities are performed by the company who has signed you up as an affiliate. As an affiliate marketer all you have to do is drive your traffic to these products or services and the rest is up to them.

When you sign up as an affiliate marketer you are given several types of "ads" to choose from which you can put on your website or blog. Some ads are full ads with pictures and all the bells and whistles. Some are simple text links. An example of a full ad is shown here.

These ads are a nice way to ad a little color and pizazz to your site and they are good at catching the eye of your site visitor. Other ads are less conspicuous and are easy to embed in your content. They are called text ads. Text ads are a good way to offer products without "in your face" selling. For example, let's say you are blogging about the latest cellular phone technology. In your blog you start to review the Palm Handhelds. If your visitors click on the words Palm Handhelds in the previous sentence they are taken to the Palm Store to browse the various products Palm has to offer. If they make a purchase...you get a commission. In many cases these affiliate marketers have cookie based programs which basically means, if a customer visits their website from your link and then comes back up to 45 days later and makes a purchase you still get credit for the sale! This is nice because many consumers don't purchase items without doing their research and price comparison. You don't have to coax them to buy now; you just have to get them interested in the product and get them to the retail site of your affiliated producer. The items you can cell are almost limitless. Electronics, Books, Movies, DVD's, MP3 downloads, Dating Services, Greeting Card Companies, Website Hosts, and Contest entries are just a few. When you sign up as an affiliate marketer you'll need to read the terms of each affiliate to see how their system pays out.

With your affiliate programs you are also able to buy your own products and receive commission for your own purchases. When I buy Christmas cards I buy them here:
Spread some cheer this Christmas with the new "Elfis" eCard from AmericanGreetings.com. It's simple, I don't have to leave the house, and I get paid a commission for making the purchase.

As an affiliate marketer you don't have to view yourself as a pushy salesperson. You are offering a multitude of products to the entire internet community. Many of your readers may come from small towns with no shopping mall. In essence you are bringing the malls to their computer. It is one of the best opportunities for retailers. They can reach any consumer with an internet connection regardless of where they live. It is also equally beneficial for the consumers. If you live 40 minutes from the mall you have to plan a special trip to go shopping. Even then you may not find the product you want. Shopping on the 'net opens up thousands of stores with a simple mouse click. With affiliate marketing you can lead these consumers to products and make money by doing so.

So where are these affiliate marketing companies? I'll show you a few of the most popular companies who make millions of dollars through their programs. You've probably heard of Amazon.com. They started out as a book retailer but now they sell hundreds of products. By becoming an Amazon Associate you are able to sell their products for a commission. They do all the work; all you do is lead your visitors to their site or specific product. All you do is create an account and find the products you want to offer. Once you find a product to offer all you have to do is get the HTML code for their ad and place it on your website or blog. Copying and pasting code is not as difficult as you may believe. There are many free software programs which interpret the code into "layman's terms". In other blogs we'll offer some basic code lessons to simplify these tasks. I like Amazon because you can offer specific products, products relating to a topic, or all products they have available.

Here's a few examples. Let's say you want to offer Camera & Photo Links. You go to your Amazon Associates account and find which type of link you would like to add to your site for this specific product type. You click on Get HTML, you copy the code, and you paste it on your website or blog. Now your readers can buy the Bestselling Camera & Photography Equipment by clicking on the link on your site. Now your visitors have an opportunity to browse Amazon's site for all of the latest technology to find the product which they desire.

As you can see affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your website or blog. All you do is write the content and paste the code. That's ALL the work you have to do. As long as you are an active member of these affiliate programs your "sales pitch" is already done. People can find your site 24/7 and you don't have to be available when the customer arrives to help sell them the product. You don't have to feel the rejection of a customer saying no, and you don't have to feel the guilt of pushing a product on your customers. Additionally, your customers are able to shop at their convenience without being pressured by a salesmen, without having to drive to the store, and without having to buy "on the spot".

I highly recommend that you take advantage of this simple way to monetize your website. You shouldn't expect to get rich off this technique but you can make good money on the side through affiliate marketing. At the very least you can pay for your website. With a lot of work (posting a lot of content or creating several websites) you can make substantial income for a long time.

Using Stumble Upon to Bring Traffic to Your Site

So you've built a nice site with good content. Now you've got to find a way to get people to your site. After all, this isn't like the movie Field of Dreams. If you build it....they won't necessarily come. You've got to help them find your site.

Fortunately it's not as difficult and costly as traditional advertising. You don't have to buy a 1/4 page ad in a news publication and you don't have to buy a 30 second spot on the TV network. You can do these things if you've got a large advertising budget. Of course if you've got that kind of money you could probably hire someone to teach you the things we'll share in this blog!

With the internet you have several ways to get traffic. We've already mentioned traditional forms of advertising. You also purchase advertising from Search Engine's such as Google's Adwords. With search engine advertising you pay for your ads when internet users click on your ads when they are shown during a Search Engine Search. Another way to get traffic is to share links with other sites, post on other website forums (including your links), or posting your content on news aggregator sites.

One of the best news aggregator sites is called StumbleUpon. This is an awesome site with millions of users. Stumble Upon works like this. Registered Users submit websites to Stumble Upon with URL of the site along with a brief description and a few tags (search keywords or categories) which these websites belong in. Members of Stumble Upon click on a button which brings up various websites in the category they have selected. If the user likes the site they give it a "thumbs up". If they don't like the site they give it a "thumbs down".

The beauty of Stumble Upon is that there are millions of users who browse this site regularly. In other words, if you're site is "posted" on Stumble Upon, you have access to this large base of consumers. If your site gets recommended by a Stumble Upon User it gets higher ranking by the StumbleUpon site. This means your site will be displayed more often when users search for sites relating to your tags.

This is one of the BEST ways to bring traffic to your site. Go to StumbleUpon, register, and start Stumbling sites of interest. If you add StumbleUpon to your web browser toolbar (The Toolbar on the top of your Internet browser) you can go to your site or blog and click on the "Thumbs Up" icon. If your site has not been submitted before you will be prompted to add the URL (web address) of your site and a title/description of the site you've 'Stumbled Upon'. Congratulations, you'll see traffic increase immediately if your site has an value. When you get a good feel for how the site works you can also find other sites which could be of benefit to your own website users. Stumble Upon is a great resource for finding sites of interest in categories you desire.

This is just one way of getting traffic. It works. On our site our traffic increased 30% in the first month we discovered StumbleUpon. We quickly realized the importance of using sites like StumbleUpon, MySpace, Facebook, etc. to reach an established audience with relative ease. The best part is....this is free!!!

It's quite gratifying to view your website statistics and see where visitors came to your site as a result of your efforts to reach out to these established networks. Why not use a free portal to "get the word out" on your site or blog? It's a win, win. They get good content and you get traffic.

6 Most Basic Steps in Creating Your Own Website

6 Easy Steps to Get Started Building Your Own WebSite

I'll start out by saying I built a website with absolutely NO knowledge of how to do it. I took and idea and turned it into a website. It wasn't easy for me but after spending close to one year building my first website ImaNicePerson.com I've found that there is a lot of good information relevant to having a successful online business available if you know where to find it. The problem is finding this information in it's simplest form and then utilizing this information to increase traffic, revenue, and sustainability.

With this blog I'm going to share a lot of the information that took me months to discover. Hopefully this information will speed up your quest for obtaining income online.

If you want to have a successful blog or website you have a few basic rules you need to follow to get started. Today's blog covers the absolute basics. They are as follows:

1. Create a Theme for your site. It can be anything from "Popular cat doors" to "How to braid your hair" to "How to Build a House". Believe me...there are sites for just about anything these days.

2. Find a place to create your site. The cheapest and simplest way is to use Blogger.com. It's free and easy to use. If you want a basic blog with areas for advertising and/or affiliate marketing you can start here without any initial expense.

If you want to create your own website which does specific functions utilizing various software programs such as online polls, forums, shopping carts, blogging, etc., I recommend using iPower Web Hosting. IPowerWeb is a Web Hosting Company or a company who "rents" their server/computer space for your site. I like IPowerWeb because it's inexpensive ($80 a year or less), you usually get your domain name for free, and it offers tons of Plugins (widget type stuff) to make your site user friendly, interactive, and professional. The iPower Web Hosting
service has Php forums, Word Press (for blogging), Stats Counters, Multiple Email account setup, Marketing Information, E-Commerce capability, Website submission to Search Engine capability, shopping Carts, Polls, etc. All you have to do is upload the files you want to use and they become part of your site. When you go to IPowerWeb you can check for the availability of domain names (website names) and choose the best hosting solution for your site. I believe the smaller shared server package is better if you are a startup. As you increase your traffic and content you may need to look at the larger plans.

3. Build Your Site: The parts or elements of your site are all stored in your index file. The index file is like your factory building and the applications are like the working parts and machinery inside your factory which create you finished product. With IPowerweb the applications are already built into the database. All you have to do is click on them and upload them into your index file. They have several templates or sample layouts to choose from to simplify the process. Most hosting companies have some types of software included in their packages to help you build your site. There is also an unlimited supply of free software available on the internet which can handle most of the the functions you need on your site.

4. Add Content To Your Site: Once you've set up your initial layout for your site you'll need to start generating good quality content which relates to the theme of your site. You can create your own content (articles), link to other sites or blogs with content appropriate for your site, add pictures, polls, widgets, news feeds, etc. It's up to you to decide how you want to lay out your site and what you want it to do. If you're new to computer technology you need to use a hosting company with WYSIWYG capabilites. This stands for "What You See Is What You Get". In other words, WYSIWYG allows you to click on words or icons to set up your site instead of having to learn complicated code needed to set up a website (HTML or XML are a couple of examples). In future blogs we'll show you ways to get around the code problem with free software available which translates "common man" language into computer code. We may even share some of the code we learned during our first year as a website rookie.

5. Find Traffic For Your Site: This is the fun part. There are many ways to get traffic to your site. The easiest way is to spend money with the professional Search Engine Optimization companies or to advertise with major Search Engines such as Google Adwords. With ImaNicePerson.com we were not 100% sure that the idea would work so we were hesitant to spend a lot of front end $$ to get started. If you have tons of money to throw into marketing this may be a good route for you. You should be careful as there are hundreds to thousands of companies who sell Search Engine Optimization (SEO) products to "guarantee" you traffic so it's hard to determine the scammers from the pros. If you want to start out for pocket change then you can read through this blog to learn more. I'll post several articles on how to get web traffic without spending a lot of money. I started ImaNicePerson.com with $150 and I spent $100 more than I should have to get started. At some time on this blog I'll show you where I could've saved this hundy.

6. Find Ways to Monetize Your Site: You've got the layout, you've got the content, you've got the traffic; now how do you turn this hard work into money? There are several opportunities for monetizing your site. The simplest form is advertising and affiliate marketing. With these forms you put targeted ads on your site and you get paid in one of two ways. Some advertisers pay on a CPM (cost per thousand clicks) and some pay based on commission for a sale made through your link/ad. The largest and most well know CPM advertiser is Google. I'm sure you've heard of them. Google has a program called Adsense where you sign up for an account and they give you code to put on your site which enables Google to place targeted ads on your site. When visitors to your site click on these Ads you get paid a portion of the advertising expense by Google. It's free to sign up! They do have very strict Terms of Service which you need to read carefully in order to prevent being dropped by Google without notice or explanation. Affiliate Marketers represent a multitude of companies who are willing to pay a commission for sales of their products made because visitors to your site clicked on these ads and made a purchase. Some of the larger Affiliate Marketing Companies are Amazon.com, Commission Junction, and LinkShare. These companies represent a wide variety of products and services which could compliment your sites content. Commissions range from small percentages up to over $100 per sale for bigger ticket items. We made several hundred dollars right out of the chute with ImaNicePerson.com. It was nice to know our site had paid for itself before we really started figuring out what we were doing. Another way to monetize your site is to sell products which relate to your site or blog. This can be done where you promote specific products through affiliates like AmazonAffiliates who pay commission or you can buy and sell items online through dropshipping. Dropshipping occurs when a person buys your product on your site, then you purchase the product from another company at a discount to create a profit. You can find a lot of dropshippers on Ebay. The bottom line is... you can sell products, services, and advertising on your website to the entire internet community. Your market is unlimited and you "brick and mortar" expense is basically nonexistent. This is the best way to start a business for those of you who want to own your own business but don't have enough money or
time to build a large store with expensive inventory.


This blog is just the very basics of the opportunities available in creating your own website(s). We'll add many articles in the future which will simplify the process and get you on the fast track to making money on your blog or website. In the meantime, visit some of these links in this article and start working towards your goal of creating your own website! If you find a good domain name you should go ahead and figure out a domain name (website name) and purchase the name. It's only about $5-$10 per year...and it's usually free when you sign up for a year of hosting on many host companies such as iPower Web Hosting
.
Well do our best to provide you many useful articles and ideas on creating a profitable web business.

Remember, the key is to Have Fun in what you do and the learning and experience will come! Your comments are welcome and appreciated.