Where to Find Affiliate Programs

Where to Find Affiliate Programs & How To Choose An Affiliate Program

You can find a list of affiliate programs and affiliate networks on thefreecountry.com's Affiliate Program page at http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/affiliate.shtml
To join an affiliate network or program, simply go to the site and complete their online application form. Some programs will give you instant approval while others require a human to check out your application before it is approved. Once it is approved, you'll be given some HTML code which you can cut and paste into your web page. Note that some affiliate networks and programs will not accept you unless you have your own domain name. If you are planning to earn from your site, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name.

How To Choose An Affiliate Program

How should you choose an affiliate program? My suggestion is not to choose a program according to the payment scheme, but rather according to the kind of people who are likely to visit your website. For example, if you are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience.

Another point to consider is whether you really want to join every single affiliate program that comes your way. Some studies suggest that sites that make the most money from affiliate programs are affiliates of only a small handful of programs. Furthermore, concentrating your advertisements from one network may allow you to be paid faster. If you advertise for hundreds of different affiliate networks on your site, you may wind up earning only (say) a few dollars per month from each network. If your advertiser's minimum payment amount is higher than what you can earn each month, it may take you a long time before you accrue enough to be paid.

On the other hand, that formula does not necessarily hold true for every site (or every page on your site, for that matter). For example, if your site has a particular theme, and an affiliate network only supports one or two suitable advertisers, you might want to sign up for a few affiliate networks so as to get a greater number of relevant advertisers. After all, advertisements that are relevant to your audience are more likely to be taken up than general advertisements. (What's the point of putting banners from only one affiliate if nobody is going to click them?)
Automated Context-Sensitive Advertising.

One of the latest trends in website sponsorship is to sign up with an advertising network like Google AdSense The advertising network automatically checks your web page and determines the most relevant advertisement for the page. As a result, without much additional effort from you, you get advertisements targeted at the interests of your visitors. As mentioned earlier, targeted ads tend to result in better performance and returns.

Get Started

Advertising revenue is one of the most effortless way to earn money from your site. You merely have to put the banner there and wait for the money to roll in. (Well, okay, not quite. You will still need to have some visitors first before you can make anything.)
Why wait? If you already have a website, let it earn even while you sleep (literally). Every day you let your site "idle" without advertising is a day of lost opportunity.
All the best in your endeavour! Remember also to check out our other article, Increasing Your Affiliate Program Income.

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Make Money From Your Website

How to Make Money From Your Website

Now that you've created a website, how do you make money from it? There are at least two ways in which sites can make money:

1.Advertising Revenue

2.Selling Goods and Services

I shall deal with the second case, "Selling goods and services", in another article. In this article, I will address the issue of how your site can actually make money from advertising.

Making Money From Advertising

If you look at many websites, you will probably notice that there are banner advertisements displayed on most pages. If you are a newcomer to the scene, you might think that you must either be a company or that your site must be famous before you can get advertisers, just as it is the case in hardcopy publications.

In reality, anyone with a website can get advertisers. While it is true that if your site is well-known, you may get companies contacting you to offer to advertise on your site, you can get advertising revenue even if you are just starting out and your site is relatively unknown.

The way to do this is to join as an "affiliate" of various sites, either directly, or through an affiliate network. An affiliate network is simply an intermediary where you can select from a variety of advertisers.

Payment Schemes

Before joining any program, you should probably be aware of the different payment schemes available.

1.Pay Per Impression (CPM)

Here, you are paid according to the number of times the advertiser's banner is displayed on your site. The amount you earn is typically calculated based on the number of thousand impressions of the banner (impressions = number of times the banner is displayed), often abbreviated CPM (cost per thousand, with the M being the Latin numeral for thousand). That is, $5 CPM means that you get paid $5 for 1,000 displays of the banner. In general, the amount paid is usually small, but it is easy to earn since everytime a visitor loads the page, you earn. This is known as a "high conversion rate". Needless to say, this method will allow you to automatically earn more if your site attracts a lot of visitors.

2.Pay Per Click (PPC)

When you are paid per click, you are only paid when visitors click the advertiser's banner on your site. The amount paid is usually higher than the pay per impression scheme. Whether you get a high conversion rate here depends on the banner (whether it attracts people to click it), although in general, it has a higher conversion rate than the pay per sale method. A high traffic site will probably enjoy a higher click rate than a lower traffic site, although you will probably get better results if your banners are carefully selected to suit the target audience of your site.


3.Pay Per Sale or Lead

While you will probably get the highest payment rates with this method, it has the lowest conversion rate of the three schemes. You will only earn if your visitors click through the banner and either purchase an item from the advertiser or take some other prescribed action (eg, sign up for a service). Like the Pay Per Click method, you get much better results if you carefully select your advertisers to suit the target audience of your site.

In general, to avoid wasting resources in issuing cheques for very small amounts, advertisers will usually accrue the amount owing to you until it reaches a certain level (such as $25) before they pay you.

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Have you bought a $9.99 report - Make $10000/month automated ?

Have you bought a $9.99 report - Make $10000/month automated ?



Have you bought a $9.99 report - Make $10000/month automated ? or something similar ? found it useful ? I highly doubt the possibility.They all are the same. first they talk about how they product will change the way you live then they will show you some payments proof which can be easily created using photoshop. Then comes the readers comments and all of them will say that this product made them thousands within days or even hours and they cant thank the author enough and in the end comes the best part - buy it now and you get massive discounts !! So how are they profiting from you ?? Lets take a look.

The first benefit is that they will ask you to become a member and ask for your email id which later will either be sold or will be used by them for the sole purpose of spamming. Then before they move on to the actual product that you are so much looking forward to they will ask to verify yourself using credit cards which again will either be sold or misused. I have been hearing of so many cases of ID theft nowadays. Then they will offer you some more products that ONLY YOU are going to get just because you just conveyed your credit cards details and email id !!!
In the end when you actually reach the product you find that it is a complete waste of time, money and valuable personal information. And half of them never even try the product or method that they have bought. LAZY…

A lot bloggers are of the opinion that while you should share some secrets with your readers while aiming to create that perfect blog with lots of readers and subscribers you must never share your real secrets of making a fortune online.This is according to me not the correct perception however my saying so is not going to bring about a change in the blogging world. There are already a lot bloggers who have understood the importance of great and quality content and how it can actually help in increasing their earning potential, there are still a lot of bloggers who believe that sharing all your secrets can bring in competition and reduce your potential.

What they fail to realise is that in the webmasters world, the more the better. The entire industry benefits from it. You get fresh ideas and better resources. Many of them develop new products and offer services that actually help us in reducing our work pressure. A lot of bloggers are actually making all the money in the world just because they are sharing all their secrets and their readers are loving them for it. In a way this is increasing their traffic by leaps and bounds and traffic is the real key to success specially one that actually converts. So how are they able to convert them ?

Thats very easy to answer, since they are actually providing useful content to their readers which are tried and tested there is a level of trust and confidence that is built which is most important in any kind of business whether online or offline. People really believe in what they have to say and have faith that they will not deceive them as a result of which they readily accepts their proposals and are willing to buy the product/services that they have to offer.

Trust is the basic ingredient that builds their entire network and business model. And in order to gain the trust of your readers it is important that you never deceive them in any way. Making false claims like I can help you to make thousands of dollars doing nothing and everything will be automated is nothing but crab.

If there is actually a system like that which is making you thousands of $$ automated then why the hell are you selling it for $9.99 or $39.99 or something similar ?? It really beats me how so many people actually fall for them and because of which they are motivated to rinse and repeat the entire process. How many of you have actually bought them and have them found useful ? Please answer with a link in the comment so I can buy it too but no $9.99 offers please.

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What would Seth Godin Do ?

What would Seth Godin Do ??


So i believe a lot of you came here wondering that this is something to do with Seth Godin… Well you can say upto a certain extent it is. So what is it that Seth Godin is going to do and about what ?

Actually this is a wordpress plugin which uses cookies to distinguish between your old and new visitors coming to your site and displays them a custom message that can be altered at will. So why is it names so ? Thats because it is the brainchild of none other than Seth Godin himself however the pluginhas been designed by Richard K. Miller who rightfully named it after him.

So what this plugin exactly do is show a new custom message each time a visitor visits your blog/site for the first time which gives you a great opportunity to tell them about what your blog/site is all about and how it is going to benefit them. The default message box shows the following message “If you are new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting”which can be altered to anything you like. i think it will be much better to use this opportunity to tell your visitors what your blog is all about and how is it going to benefit them, tell them something about yourself and try to connect with them in a more personal way. the message is displayed only times and you can easily change the location and time span both to suit your needs. i think 5 times is a bit more than necessary and hence you should reduce it to 3 times and choose a location that dosent irritates them. you know some visitors feel really angry with such dialogue boxes and hence it should be non-intrusive.

There is also a new version of the plugin which also allows you to show a message for returning visitors. the plugin works with cookies enabled and hence those who without this support will continuously see this message - new visitor - and it might piss them off !!

All in all this is a great plugin as it opens a new gate for communicating with your readers and gives you a chance to make them understand what exactly it is that you are trying to do or prove with your blog. It can also help in increasing your rss count giving you more exposure.

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Craving for Attention ? You are not Alone !!

Craving for Attention ? You are not Alone !!


Lets face it - everyone likes attention and it matters little how they get it. There are some like the famously infamous socialite Paris Hilton who seems to be making the headlines for doing nothing but what she does best !! Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame and are willing to do just about anything to get what they want - ATTENTION.

So we as bloggers need it too. We want more webmasters to join rss feeds, more readers, more subscribers and more webmasters joining the affiliate programs that we promote !! So let us today ponder on some of the ways of how we can create the buzz and get what we want..

- If you are not in a hurry and like to follow the footsteps of the tortoise who won the race against the hare then all you have to do is to write quality content and submit to social bookmarking sites. If you are good enough then you will get noticed.

- If you are in a bit of a hurry and cant wait for success to come to you then you must go to it. The most popular way of getting attention is writing controversial articles igniting sparks in the minds of people and compelling them to talk about it. Sort of wild fire which spreads on its own with no help of anyone. All you need is a hot topic and even hotter content.

If you are nice guy and dont like getting into controversies then there a lot of others ways to like -
- the first and the most important part of your blog is the title / heading of your post. If that is not compelling enough then half of the readers will never visit the page in the first page, so work on it well and create a heading thats makes them ask questions like what is he talking about or what is that or something similar. you must raise their curiosity and then satisfy it with the content in your post. Trust me they will come back for more in future.

- using images in your post is another great way of keeping the interest of the reader intact. The moment they visit your page the first thing that they notice is a descriptive image that matches the theme of your post and further increases their hunger for reading. A lot of bloggers are using them successfully and I am myself thinking of starting on it.

- Its of no use if the readers visits the blog and leaves within minutes so you must make them to stay. Breaking your posts and articles into sub points always works because people really dont have enough time these days to go through the entire entry before realising that it does not contain what they were expecting. Small points will reduce their burden and they will continue to read.

- Another good way of raising the curiosity of your readers is asking questions in the heading like the one I have used in my heading and then answer it yourself. They love it when someone answer their queries. So if they dont have any queries then raise them and then answer them.
Old philosophy - something on the lines of ” In order to sell your product you must first create the demand for it and then sell it ”

Same rule applies here. So what are you waiting for.. Go find yourself some interesting topics and start writing..

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Important Tips

Taking Negative comments Positively


Lets face it, when we are talking about something and people oppose us none of us really like the guy opposing us and we call him names like moron or something similar (sometimes worse) When someone disagrees with our line of thoughts and is quite open about it ( sometimes way to open and even outrageous ) we really dont take it in a good spirits always, do we ?

I once read somewhere something on the lines of - when someone opposes you consider it as positive sign that you are on the right track !!

Talking about blogs and comments they have been together since the beginning of this world and are kinda inseparable. You must have seen a lot of blogposts with negative comments and readers disapproving of what the author has written but there are a lot of blogger who simply delete such comments almost instantly like they were waiting for this very moment and learn from it.

So how does negative comments help us and how can we take it in a more positive way or lets say in good spirits is what we will be discussing today.

New and Different Point of View

When someone disagrees with your thoughts they are usually based on some observation and thinking and most readers are kind enough to present their side of the story and thoughts in the comments. So now you have a new point of view to ponder over. Maybe they are right and you are wrong or vice versa but both of you should take it in a healthy way. If you are wrong then accept it - you wont get hurt. And if you are right and then try to convince them further with more details - they wont bite you for opposing.

So it is really the beginning of a healthy relationship between you and your reader and helps you improve your writing skills as well. Remember that each and every visitor is equally important.

Increases Involvement

Thats so true. When someone disagrees with your line of thoughts that means he has gone through the trouble of reading your post carefully and and has done his homework - its a positive sign that atleast there is one reader that is following up on your posts. It also increases involvement of other readers who start taking interest in the conversation and try to evaluate both of you trying to understand who is perhaps more correct in his approach.

It also increases your traffic :twisted:

Controversies increases publicity but fruits are short lived

Though it may sound like a good idea to purposefully create such posts and write up stories that are controversial and questionable just reap the benefits of more attention of other bloggers in the related community but many us forget that such traffic and attention is often short lived. Soon readers realize the story behind the scenes and frown upon such bloggers thinking that all he can do write crabs and take names providing no value to the community. There are alot of examples of such infamous personalities in Hollywood who are not doing anything good but still make it to the front page when they attend some party where no one can stand on properly !!

Value and purpose is all that can alone lead you to the heights of success where there are very few competitors.

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Visitors away from your blog

Headlines that drives Visitors away from your blog


A couple of days ago I read a post on copyblogger that is authored by Brian who is also behind teaching sells that talks about creating membership sites thats really do works. inspite of the challenging aspects of his demanding schedule I just dont know how he gets enough time to add such valuable content to his blog consistently !!

In this post he talks about how headlines that sound unreal can ave a negative impact on your traffic. How many times have we read headings like “how to get 10000 subscibers in a single day” or “how to make million dollars in a week automated”or something similar that is obviously almost impossible (considering there are exceptions everywhere :wink: )

So the point is that in our effort to atttract more visitors to out blog and write something that compels the readers to click on our link we sometimes overdo things and makes all the difference. A lot of visitors will simply frown upon such content and never visit your blog. The only readers that will visit your blog actually will be those who are unaware of the truth behind such claims and are quite new in their search for the ultimate guide to doing this until they reallise that its now a child’s play and everyone has to do it the hard way which takes time and effort and most important patience. Yes, one thing I have learnt from bogging that made a difference in my life is patience and I am proud to be a blogger.

Coming back to the point even if you are able to pull in traffic they will soon realise the truth behind all those false claims and will never ever come back to your blog even if you are actually right in your claims in your very next post. Now dont start thinking that there are so many people on the surface of earth and it really dosent matter if we lose some of it. Traffic once lost is lost forever and it works like grapewine. Similarly when you write good content and fulfill your promises it is appreciated and people talk about it in the blogosphere, in forums, social sites and through their own blogs.

Instead of making false claims try to be more realistic in your approach and only claim what you can achieve.

You can read the rest of the post right here in more detail as there are some more valuable tips that will surely make a difference in your appraoch towards blogging and how it works.

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