Ethical Internet Marketer – Make More Money Online… Ethically!

The landscape of search engines have went through
some drastic changes over the years. Not only with
technology, but also with various partnerships
between the many different search companies as well.

You might be running your search engine queries on
a particular search engine, although who is actually
supplying the results – it could be a different
company altogether.

Below, is a list of the search engines that feed your
precious keywords:

Yahoo
Yahoo provides the primary search results for Yahoo
search, Alta Vista, and AllTheWeb, and receives paid
listings from Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known
as Overture).

Google
Google provides the primary search engine results
to Google AOL Search and also Netscape. Google also
supplies paid listings to Lycos, Ask, Netscape, AOL
Search, and HotBot. It also supplies secondary
results to HotBot and receives it’s directory data
from DMOZ.

Lycos
Lycos receives the directory search results from
DMOZ, primary results from Ask, and paid listings
from Google Adwords.

Hotbot
Hotbot receives directory search results from DMOZ,
primary search results from Ask, and paid/secondary
results from Google Adwords.

Ask
Ask provides primary results to Ask, Hotbot, and
Lycos. It receives secondary search results from
Teoma and the directory results from DMOZ, with
paid listings from Google Adwords.

In relations to marketing, search engines can
provide anything you want to know. If someone is
looking for something, they normally refer to the
search engines. When they type it in, the highest
sites on the engines will show – which is normally
where the visitor will go.

By keeping good position on the search engines,
you’ll be near the first for visitors who are looking
for a certain product. You can make a lot of money
with search engines as well, if you know what you
are doing.

There are numerous software products on the market
that range from 15 – 50 dollars for special types
of software that’ll assist you in protecting your
affiliate marketing commissions. The effectiveness
and ease of use for the programs range greatly, so
before you buy one, you should always learn as
much as you possibly can.

Banner servers
Banner servers not only serve banners, as many of
the more recent servers will also display text
links as well. The link coding that’s associated
with served ads is normally long, so that the
visitor won’t be able to see on the status bar
where the redirect is heading.

Click tracking software
Click counting software will not show the target
URL as the links point inwards to the software,
which is normally installed on your own website.

Once someone has clicked on the link, the click
tracking application will then redirect the
visitor to the URL that you have specified within
the script. The click tracking software will also
provide a great way to monitor the usefulness of
your ads and not just relying on the reports
that merchants will provide.

Protecting your commissions is extremely important,
as you want to get paid for what you do. Even
though fraud is possible with affiliate marketing,
you can protect yourself. Fraudsters have certain
techniques and tactics they use, which you can
protect yourself from.

If you own your own business, the last thing you
want to experience is either credit card fraud or
affiliate fraud. They do happen on a regular
basis, simply because those who have it happen
haven’t taken the necessary steps they should
have to protect themselves.

Affiliate marketing is all about getting paid for
selling products you don’t own and not going to
jail for it. Someone else goes through all of the
trouble to develop software programs, service, or
digital content products. They’ll do all the work
then you collect the money!

Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing arrangement
between the product developer, known as the affiliate
merchant, and the affiliate marketer who is anyone
that’s willing to promote the sale of product by
advertising the product using any type of legal
means available.

The relationship will allow the affiliate merchant
to grow their revenue by paying only for the
advertising that results in a sale. The affiliate
marketer will profit by making a percentage on a
sale that he does not have to manage after the
sale.

Getting paid
Getting paid all depends upon how the affiliate
program is set up. Some merchants will run their
own affiliate program. They’ll have special types
of software that assigns each affiliate marketer
a special link that’s used in promoting the product.
The software will track sales of every marketer
and the merchant will pay the commission on a
periodic basis using either PayPal or another
method of payment.

Selecting products or services
Your income is directly tied to how well your
selected product or service sells, and the size of
the commission you earn, which makes it very
important that you choose carefully when it comes
to choosing the affiliate merchant you’ll be
partnering with.

Choose programs that you aren’t embarrassed to
promote and programs that you’ll feel comfortable
recommending to your family and friends if they
were to ask you about it.

You’ll do much better if you promote products
that you fully understand and are already familiar
with. This way, you’ll be able to write better
ads without having to strain yourself coming up
with the right things to say.

You should only promote products and services for
companies who have gone through the trouble to
provide you with training programs and sales aids
such as banners and other marketing materials that
you can either use directly or model the one you
own after.

Be on the lookout for programs with commission
rates no less than 50%. You should give preference
to programs that pay commission on multiple levels,
which means you’ll also have to earn commissions
on sales made by people who buy the products
through your link then go on and become affiliates
themselves later on.

Once affiliates begin to sign up, even if you are
automatically approving them, its in your best
interest to audit your network on a regular basis.
Now, the FTC is making marketers responsible for
the actions of their affiliates. If your affiliates
get out of control, it could cost you a lot of money.

You’ll have hundreds of affiliates sign up for your
program. Hobbyists, spammers, webmasters and even
marketers. It’s very important that you review
each one on a regular basis to ensure the way they
are promoting you is acceptable to your company and
above all – its legal.

Below, you’ll find some tips when screening:
1. All affiliates must have an active web
site. If not, they may be spammers.
2. The affiliate site content must relate
to your products or services.
3. The site should have appropriate levels
of content.
4. Misuse of content. Be very clear with
your affiliates and what content they can use from
your website.

Affiliate fraud
Fraud with affiliates has been increasing over the
last several years, which is another great reason
to screen your affiliates on a regular basis. With
fraud, there are two main types:

Malware – Some affiliates out there have developed
software that is installed on a machine, normally as
part of a free download. When someone clicks on the
affiliate link, the true affiliate ID is replaced
with the fraud.

Fake purchase – If you have a product of high value
that returns large commissions for affiliates, you
may notice some bad parties signing up, then using
stolen or fake credit card information to purchase
products via their links.

Communicating with affiliates
Good affiliates are normally busy, as they can
easily forget about your services and products.
As time goes by, your offers can wind up less in
less visited areas or accidentally deleted.

It’s extremely important to stay in contact with
your affiliates, even more so with the high performers.
Do not wait for them to contact you, as if you
do, it normally means they are reporting a problem.
By taking the time to contact them, you are showing
that you are interested in the partnership.

You don’t need a new product as an excuse to
contact your power affiliates. Even if it’s just
a quick note to ask if they need anything. You
can also use the opportunity for feedback on your
program as well.

Managing a successful affiliate program is not an
easy task you can fully automate, as you’ll have
to get involved. Happy affiliates are more
productive, and the more money they make – the
more money your company makes as well.

On the internet, keywords are terms or words that
relate to particular topics. Keyword research will
involve various aspects, such as finding sales
oriented keywords or driving maximum qualified
users to increase their online sales.

Keyword research is the first step towards a
successful search engine optimization campaign.
You have to be very careful when selecting keywords,
as it can be very tricky to select targeted keywords
for a website.

The selection of keywords should always be based on
various aspects such as product names, services,
brands, or general terms. Often times, people forget
about targeting geographical terms when they have
global presence.

When doing keyword research, it’s highly recommended
to do a very thorough market research analysis to
find the best keywords used by search engines to
find products and services online – and find out
what keywords are targeted by competitors who are
doing well in marketing on the internet.

The first step in finding the best keywords is to
make a list of the products, topics, and services
that you offer. You can also make good use of your
website logs to know which keywords have brought
you the traffic in the past.

Be sure to select keywords that clearly define your
business and products to drive traffic from the
search engines. There are some websites which get
high levels of traffic through general keywords
although they might not end up being sales.

Today, users of search engines are aware of how
they work, for searching products and services on
the net. Users always look for the better products,
locations, etc. Therefore, you should cover all
terms for each – products, locatins, etc.

There are numerous tools available which will help
you identify keywords that are suitable for search
engines. The challenge here, is to determine which
keyword is the best to generate traffic.