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A Woman's Heart Earning
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The truth about Affiliate Marketing - From the affiliate's point of viewI've had my web site up for almost 2 years. My only source of income from my site is through affiliate programs as an affiliate. My site www.womanht.com was built as a hobby. Mainly to boost my morale as I was in an unpleasant situation at work, but needed to work to pay the bills. My site was an escape. Into the fantasy world of the internet. Where I could publish my experiments in the kitchen, summarize good books I've read and write. I love to write. It is a creative part of me that is suppressed in my day job. I don't have much time to spend on the computer after work. Only on my off days, when my kids are sleeping, can I find time to write and publish my site. This is like web therapy for me. Keeps me sane, so I did not expect to earn a living out of it. I was attracted to affiliate programs primarily because they cost nothing to set up. I get to display some really cool products and sell them on my site, and get a commission from whatever sales come through. The commissions are accumulated and sent to me in a cheque when I reach a certain amount. The main draw for me is that I get to use free graphics that do not violate any copyright laws. Best of all, I get to sell goods without having to worry about credit card scams, or product delivery or carrying any stock. There are all sorts of affiliate programs in the market. Some pay you for sales from customer even if the customer leaves the site, and then returns days later to purchase the product. Some pay you only if the customer buys immediately in that visit when you sent him to the merchant's site. The dark side of affiliate marketingIn affiliate marketing, we affiliates lose out. It is up to the merchant to pay up. Some people have joined programs which terminated their account just before the payout amount is reached. They get nothing for their efforts. I heard of rumours of a scam going on where people download a toolbar from some website. That website joined most of the affiliate programs around. When the people with that toolbar visit another site that promotes a merchant's products, and subsequently buy from that site, the site that gave out the toolbar gets the commission and not the site that actually sold the products. That affiliate gets cheated of his commission. Many merchants pay for sales from the first time customer only. Lets say a customer buys a $2 widget from a merchant some time back. Then he sees an article from your site sends him to the merchant where he buys $200 of goods. You get nothing from that sale. Get the picture?
My statsI've tried linkshare. In the first place, I get 0 sales from the merchants most months. Then they changed the affiliate agreement, to the affiliate's disadvantage. I stopped selling for their merchants altogether. My favourite is commission junction. I get a cheque for about $200 from them each month. Some extra cash does come in handy. I tried befree (nothing so far), megafriends (no payout yet), Amazon.com ($25 after a year) and lots of others to no avail. Working at turning my web site aroundNow, I just signed up for the affiliate program. They are giving out a lot of free training materials for their affiliates, which I am now studying. I have nothing to lose from it. I stand to gain the following
To join, just go to make your site sell You'll see a pop up window where you can sign up for their affiliate program. I just started so I can't say much about the program yet. It sounds really promising and I really really like their products. I'm kicking myself about not getting their Site Build It product when I first started because I spent far more on my site than the cost of their product. The Easy Way To Build an ecommerce web site I subscribed to the free email newsletter to find out what I'm doing wrong. They sometimes have case studies which show you what other sites are doing wrong, and how to correct the mistakes. Free ezine to make your web site sell I also bought their book MYSS. (unfortunately, affiliates don't get a discount on that either). I will start reading that next and applying that to my web site www.womanht.com a little at a time. Book mark this page as over time, I will be able to tell you whether this program is effective or not. For more tips, try our free newsletter for webpreneurs |
