Sunday, June 21, 2009

Franchises for the eCommerce World -Affiliate Programs

One big way to start a business that can help bring in more income for you and your family is a franchise.

It's basically a business in a box!

You buy into a system and they train you and your team. They help you with branding the product or service, help with the best location (they can even make you the exclusive franchise in your area) and they teach you all the aspect of the business.

In return all they ask from you is to follow their system like it's the holy book and apiece of your profits for life!

Most of them like McDonald's cost huge amounts of money. I believe you can't even get a McDonald's franchise anymore.

Let's understand they have done all the leg for you and all you have to do is follow their golden rules.

A business in a box is a great idea. Just add water and watch it grow!

Most of us out there don't have access to that kind of money either!

-But-

Once again the world wide web opens another door for us small time people.

Affiliate opportunities!

You can become an affiliate with numerous companies. the basic idea here is that you look for products and services that you like or use and see if they offer on there website an affiliate program. If they do, you can be in business with them.

Here is our business in a box for the little guy!

Most companies with affiliate programs offer you a small commision for helping to sell their products. You sign-up and get a affiliiate I.D. from them. You can either use one of their neat and tidy ads that they have put together for you with you I.D. inbeded in it or you can make your own. Make sure you follow all their rules so you get credt for your referrals.

Most people out there using affiliate programs as an income stream will just drop the ads around their website for the traffic to see and HOPE that someone bites and that they make money hand-over-fist.

-OR-

Others will have a storefront page on their website and just drop ads all there, with HOPES of getting income from the traffic again.

All of this is called "HOPE MARKETING". Throw up a website and drop some ads on it and HOPE someone passes by...

I have done this "HOPE MARKETING" myself. I still do it when I'm to lazy to do it the right way and I still get the same results to little or no sales at all!

The secret to making affiliate programs work for you and your website is no secret at all!

IT'S CONTENT!

You need to tell your traffic why they need to look at this product, what you benefited from it and how they can benefit from it!

In other words don't just drop the ads on your website. Give them a little commercial, give it life and give it some love!

People need and want reasons to buy things. They like it when friends tell them about product and when friends make a recommendation other friends will buy!

How do we make friends on the internet?

By good rich content!

It always comes down to content.

You may not even buy some of these products, but you can explain what you like about it, how it makes you feel and how you would love to use it.

All I ask of you is "NOT" to just drop the ads onto your website.

Now, go out there and start looking for affiliate programs that are a good fit with you and your website.

Remember to think about how you are going to tell your friends (your site traffic) about these products.

Happy hunting!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Content is King - Now I have Content, where can a put it?

You can write content if you can write a list. Go quick and grab a pen and some paper... Now list 5 things about your passion, product or service.

That list is going to be the the first page of your website or blog, those 5 things that you have listed will be the next 5 pages of your site!

See, now you have written content!

Where do you put all this content for the world to find and read?

You have quite a few free places to upload your content on to the super information highway. Here are a few of these free areas that I have used:

  1. Google's Blogger - A great place to share your content, artwork, and so much more with your friends and the world. They have made it so easy to post text, photos, and videos from the web or your cell phones right to the super information highway. You can even use Google Adsense to monetize your blog.
  2. Google Sites - A great free and easy way to build your kingdom on the web and share your passion. You can start your website and see how it plays out and you don't even have to fork over money!
  3. Ezinearticles.com - Upload your high quality unique articles to EzineArticles.com in exchange for traffic & exposure back to your website or blog!
You can also take the big step and buy a domain name, that's where you get www.yourcontent.com or .net or .org or any of the new ones out there.

This does give you more credibility out there, but it will cost you money for the domain name and a monthly fee to get a host for the your site. You will need to learn html coding. There are many free site to help you with this coding.

-or-

If your really game you could pay for the biggest step and join a site building program! They have a system that helps you set-up, build and maintain your website. These run anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousands depending on how little of the work you want to do!

As you can see there is a lot out there to choose from. The web is just teaming with content, it's your turn to join the super information highway and make your content kingdom!