In the current economic downturn, some businesses are downsizing. I’m doing the exact opposite.

It’s amazing what can be possible when you set your mind on achieving the “impossible” goals you’ve set for yourself. There will always be the naysayers who say it can’t be done. They’re right – they can’t do it because they say they can’t, so they don’t even try.

I say I can – and so I try. In so doing, whole new worlds of possibilities open up to me when they never did before (or they did, but I didn’t notice). This is my RAS (short for Reticular Activation System) at work.

And lo and behold – I could achieve my goals, just like I said I would.

Like magic.

So go ahead. Say you can’t do it. And you’ll be proven right just by doing nothing. Easy.

But that’s nothing to be proud of.

But go ahead and say you can do it – and find the ways to get it done. And you’ll be proven right again.

Except it’ll take some time and effort. But it’ll be well worth it.

There’s much to tell…

But right now I have much to do. And you have much to gain.

For now, I’ve having the time of my life becoming much more efficient AND much more effective. The two are not the same.

Things get done faster, with less effort, and at a lower cost. Most of all, everybody’s happy – and soon, YOU will be very happy too as I roll out my new suite of products and services that WILL make you money.

Faster, Simpler and More Effective Than Ever.

In the meantime, if you’re a Twitter fan (I’m slowly becoming one, although it’s a long process to get totally immersed with it with so many things happening around me), you need to check out this top-quality video below.

It provoked an almost violent reaction in my gut, resulting in a long fit of uncontrolled laughter. The more you understand what Twitter is and what it can do for you – the louder will be your laughter.

If you don’t quite get it – I highly recommend you get going with Twitter now, by following me there –> http://twitter.com/senze. Get an account, “follow me” and whoever you wish, so that you can be notified via Twitter.com on our updates.

Play around with it for a while, post your updates to it for your own followers to be notified. Twitter is like a mini-blog, except that you only have 140 characters to say your piece, and you’ll get it sooner or later.

Then re-visit this video once more – and your uncontrolled laughing fit will come as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.

Trust me on this.

And oh – the “creators” of this video also managed to market their web site at the same time…

Sen Ze

Technorati Tags: twitter, video marketing, marketing with videos, business downsizing, business upsizing, downsizing, upsizing

You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/twitter/downsize-or-upsize-your-business.htm

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Top Feature #9:
Supports payouts through PayPal!
========================

You can easily export a file to use PayPal’s “Mass Pay” payment system to pay your Affiliates through PayPal.

With PayPal’s “Mass Pay” system, you can pay multiple Affiliates at the same time by just uploading a .csv file containing the e-mail address of the Affiliate, the amount you’re paying him as his commissions, and the currency you’re paying him in.

AffiliteRising can create that .csv file for you within a few seconds, properly formatted, for you to upload to PayPal’s Mass Pay system for your commissions payout. Neat!

Major Benefits For Your Affiliates:
=======================

1. Your Affiliates get paid as soon as you’ve completed your “Mass Pay” activities
They save on a trip to the bank to bank in their commission checks from you.

2. There will be no “lost checks” in the mail
The money is transferred electronically directly into their PayPal account.

Major Benefits For You:
================

1. You eliminate paperwork and time
You don’t have to issue paper checks and then send them to your Affiliates by post (unless you want to, of course).

2. You will have more time to look for more Affiliates
Your Affiliate force will grow and grow!

There are many more top features that you must look at (you wouldn’t believe what else there is) – so make your trip there now by clicking on the link below – and setting it up for your own web site quickly!

Best Affiliate Program Software <=== Click on this link

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/affiliate-program/best-affiliate-software-program-4.htm

Technorati Tags: affiliate program software, affiliate program, viral marketing, mass pay, paypal

Top Feature #5:
==============

Affiliates Need Only Lead Their Prospects To ONE Web Page On Any One Of Your Domains Via Their Affiliate Links And They Will Get Credited For Any Purchases Made By Their Prospects On Any Of Your Domains Thereafter!

All your Affiliates need to do to have their Prospects tracked across your multiple domains selling different products is to get their Prospects to land on just ONE of your web pages set up with the AffiliateRising tracking codes.

This sets a cookie on their Prospects’ computers that will be activated when the Prospects later go directly to your other web pages on the other domains (for example, he types in the URL of your 2nd web site directly).

Thus it doesn’t matter if your Prospects do not follow a link to your second domain when he’s at your first. By going directly to the second domain, they’ll still be tracked at the second domain to the respective referring Affiliates who brought them to the first domain!

Major Benefits For Your Affiliates:
=====================

1. Your Affiliates will get credited for the sale of any of your products with just a one-time effort in getting their Prospects to one page on one web site of yours
This could be a Blog post on your site, which is easy enough to lead Prospects to! Your Affiliate Program is now in a class of its own, compared to your competitors’ – and if your Affiliates know about it, you’ll get more Affiliates!

2. Your Affiliates can now choose which of your web pages on which of your domains to promote to their Prospects based on what your Affiliates think are suitable for their Prospects
This will increase the number of Prospects visiting your web pages and result in more sales for you, and more commissions for your Affiliates!

Major Benefits For You:
===============

1. You’ll have happier Affiliates
They can refer more Prospects to any of your web pages without needing to track all of the products that you’re selling.

2. This will result in more sales for you over time!
This is due to increased Affiliate activity because they can link to any web page on your web site. If you put up Blog posts, and your Affiliates can link to individual posts, you’re creating many opportunities for your Affiliates to link to your site. And of course your Blog will be promoting your products that your Affiliates will be credited for if a purchase is made by their referrals.

Top Feature #8:
==============
Pay on more than 1 Tier!

One way to quickly grow your Affiliate force is to have your existing Affiliates promote your Affiliate Program in addition to promoting your products.

You will be rewarding your Affiliates for their efforts in finding other Affiliates for you, by giving them an additional commission when the Affiliates they found made a sale of your products.

This makes your Affiliate Program grow on its own since every Affiliate has the incentive to look for other Affiliates as the Affiliate will be able to leverage on other people’s efforts (the Affiliates they’ve found) as well, just like you are.

Your Affiliate Program effectively becomes a 2-tier Affiliate Program. If you have enough commissions to give away, you may even create a 3 or more tier Affiliate Program!

AffiliateRising enables you to an Affiliate Program of up to 10 tiers based on a forced matrix system!

Major Benefits For Your Affiliates:
=====================

They will be rewarded for finding other Affiliates for you, when the latter make referred customers to you
This is in addition to earning a commission for every sale due to the Affiliate’s own efforts, so they’ll be making more money overall.

Major Benefits For You:
================

1. Your Affiliate force can grow automatically
This happens through your Affiliates’ efforts in looking for other Affiliates for you

2. You will get more sales from a bigger Affiliate force!
More Affiliates means more of them going out to spread the word about your products and services. This inevitably means more sales for you!

Stay tuned for more top features in my next post!

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/affiliate-program/affiliate-program-software-3.htm

Technorati Tags: afffiliate program, affiliate program software, affiliate links

With SOLOBIS’s AffiliateRising Affiliate Program software:

Top Feature #3:

You can track ANY web page on your web site linked to by your Affiliates!

Now your Affiliates can link to an article of yours, or your Blog posts, or your forums, instead of directly to your product page!

Major Benefits For Your Affiliates:
=====================

1. They don’t have to link only to your products’ sales letter
Your Affiliates will have more flexibility with more web pages on your web site that they can link to.

2. They’re not seen as overly “commercial”
This is because not every page they link to is a sales page – like when they link to your Blog posts, for example. There are times when this is desirable, and your Affiliates can decide for themselves.

3. They don’t have to run out of excuses to link to your web sites
All they need to do is to just link to your interesting Blog posts. You Blog either links to your product page, or to another Blog post that talks about your product, with an order button – and any sales that eventually result will be credited to them!

Best of all, since you’ll be blogging on your own web site anyway (if not, you MUST start blogging for the huge benefits this will bring), why not have your Affiliates ride on your efforts, and have them become actively involved with your site by making it easy to do so? Their Affiliate Links can modified to easily link to ANY page on your site – which takes only a few seconds to do!

Major Benefits For You:
===============

1. Your Affiliates don’t have to link to your products’ sales pages only, because they can link to your Blog posts
They have more reasons to link to your web site now and still earn a commission should their referred Prospects buy from you at any time in the future.

2. When they link to your Blog posts, or articles on your web site, you will start building a relationship with your Affiliates’ Prospects over time
This can result in more sales from them since you’re not taking the one-shot approach of trying to make the sale from them the first time, every time.

But that’s not all.

Are You Ready For This?
================

Top Feature #4:

Track Affiliate Links On ANY Web Page On ANY Web Site On ANY Number Of Domains You Own With ONE AffiliateRising Account!

With AffiliateRising, you can track your Affiliates’ links across multiple web pages on multiple domains!

Best of all, you can do this with just ONE AffiliateRising account!

Major Benefits For Your Affiliates:
====================

1. They don’t have to join more than one Affiliate Program for all of your products sitting on different domains
This means that they can start promoting all of your other products immediately.

2. The reporting of all clicks and sales of all your different products are found in one Affiliate Program Control Panel
This is convenient for all of your Affiliates.

Major Benefits For You:
===================

1. There’s no need to for you to set up different Affiliate Program software or accounts for different products on different domains
You save lots of money, time and effort.

2. You’ll have more effective Affiliates who can focus on their marketing of your products
They don’t have to think about which Control Panel to log into to get their marketing materials for different products on different domains.

Stay tuned for more Top Features found in AffiliateRising, the best Affiliate Program software, in my next post.

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/affiliate-program/best-affiliate-program-software-2.htm

Technorati Tags: best affiliate program software, affiliate program, clicks tracking

It operates on just one simple principle that will help you the Merchant to achieve the most number of sales from your Affiliates.

That principle is as follows:

Go all out to put your Affiliates’ best interests first.

Yes, your Affiliates’ best interests first – not your own.

The reason is simple.

When your Affiliates are happy with your Affiliate Program and the way you’re treating them, they’ll promote your products far more than your competitors who don’t care much for them. And there are more merchants that don’t really care too much for their Affiliates than you think!

SOLOBIS’s AffiliateRising Affiliate Program software helps you achieve this goal with the following top features:

Top Feature #1:
Use Your Own Domain Name In Your Affiliate’s Affiliate Links!

With most hosted Affiliate Program software, you’ll have to rely on the provider’s own domain name for your Affiliate tracking links.

For example, your Affiliates could be forced to use the following long Affiliate Link:

http://www.AffiliateTrckSystem.com/s/t.php?aff_id=9330

Not only does it look odd, your Affiliate’s Prospects will be wondering why he is linking to a 3rd party when he’s recommending YOUR product at your own domain at, say, GreatStuff.com.

However, if your domain is GreatStuff.com, SOLOBIS’s AffiliateRising Affiliate Program software allows your Affiliates to use the following type of Affiliate Link to link to your web site and still get tracked for their sales:

http://www.GreatStuff.com?z=9ecd

See the huge difference in appearance when you have your own domain in your Affiliates’ Affiliate Links?

Major Benefits For Your Affiliates:

1. They link DIRECTLY to your domain, not to AffiliateRising!
Their Prospects’ minds don’t raise any “flags” before they get a chance to visit your web site.

2. Sales will likely increase from your Affiliates’ referrals
Since the Affiliate Link doesn’t raise any “flags”, the referred Prospect may be more open to see what’s being sold to him. When the product page views increase, the product sales will naturally increase!

Major Benefits For You:

1. Increase in Web Page Ranking In The Search Engines
Affiliate Links with the proper anchor text linking directly to your web site’s domain will help your web pages achieve a better ranking in the Search Engines over time – which will then bring you more and more free Search Engine traffic! You won’t get this benefit with a 3rd party Affiliate Link that re-directs to your domain, since all the Affiliate Links point to that 3rd party’s domain first – increasing that domain’s ranking instead!

2. Brand your site to the max
With your domain in your Affiliates’ respective Affiliate Links, your brand is displayed everywhere it’s seen. It’s one of the easiest and best branding methods available anywhere that also increases your traffic and sales at the same time!

3. You’ll look really professional
Your Affiliates will love their Affiliate Links since it’s made with their interests at heart.

Top Feature #2:
Affiliate Links Don’t Look Like Affiliate Links!

A link that looks like this

http://www.AffiliateTrckSystem.com/s/t.php?aff_id=9330

is obviously an Affiliate Link.

Because your domain is GreatStuff.com, what’s another URL with certain keywords like “Affiliate” and “Track” being used here, with something else called “aff_id” (which stands for “affiliate ID”), to refer to your web site?

Your Affiliates’ Prospects aren’t dumb – and in any case, this type of link practically spells it out for them.

With AffiliateRising’s style of Affiliate Links that look like the following:

http://www.GreatStuff.com?z=9ecd

there’s no obvious connection with an Affiliate Program! It could well be a product web page, or even a Blog posting. There’s also no “aff_id” tags anywhere in that link to immediately give the game away to your Affiliates’ Prospects.

Major Benefits For Your Affiliates:

1. Their Affiliate Links don’t look like Affiliates Links
And so they’ll get more visits to your web site, and consequently, more sales.

2. Because they don’t look like Affiliate Links, there’s less Affiliate Link Hijacking
Affiliate Link Hijacking occurs where a Prospect immediately signs up as your Affiliate once he knows that he’s following an Affiliate Link, and then buys from himself to deprive the referring Affiliate of his commissions.

Major Benefits For You:

1. Your Affiliates get more sales for their efforts
They’ll be happy that you’re protecting their interests with their unique Affiliate Links.

2. Your Affiliates will be more likely to sign up as your Affiliates
You get more Affiliates because you put their interests first.

Notice The Difference?
==================

Can you see the HUGE difference in the above approaches to 3rd party Affiliate Program software’s Affiliate Links? Your Affiliates will be some of the happiest puppies on earth – and consequently, you will be too.

But you can do much more.

Stay tuned!

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this URL with the following:

http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/affiliate-program/best-affiliate-program-software.htm

Technorati Tags: Best Affiliate Program software, Affiliate Program, Affiliate Program software

It’s SOO much easier this time around, now that we know just what to expect and do with him.

I remember being exhausted every single day when we were taking care of our first baby but that hardship’s a distant memory now…

Ok – I was discussing Affiliate Programs for Merchants and Affiliate Program software in my previous posts…

Here’s a recap, to bring you up to speed for the next discussion:

1. Affiliate Program For Merchants <--- Click for full story
In this post I talked about the Merchant’s limited ability to reach out to his target market on his own or even with a team of marketers on his payroll, since they all have only 24 hours in a day. He would be far better off if he has a team of “Affiliates” all over the world working hard marketing his products with him, and pay only for performance. This way, he can have thousands of Affiliates helping him out and he needn’t worry about paying them until his products are sold from their marketing efforts.

Thus an Affiliate Program should be considered by every Merchant with products that have good margins for commissions to be paid out from. This is particularly so in the case of digital products where his profit is over 90% of the selling price, but it can also apply to physical products as long as the profit margin is enough to make commission payouts attractive to the Affiliate.

2. Affiliate Program Software Essentials <--- Click for full story
In this post I talked a bit about the imporance of an Affiliate Program software in tracking the sales of the Merchant’s Affiliate. Some of the most essential features of an Affiliate Program software were discussed.

An Affiliate Program that is available on the Internet for anybody to join needs to have a robust and good Affiliate Program software running it. This post also highlights certain important features of such a piece of software, which can also act as an automatic Affiliate recruiting tool.

3. Software For Your Internet Business <--- Click for full story
This post discusses the 2 different types of software available for the Merchant to use. He can install the software on his own server and run it from there (and pay a one-off fee), or he can be a client of a 3rd party Affiliate Program software provider and run his Affiliate Program off the 3rd party’s Affiliate Program software on the latter’s own server instead (and pay a monthly fee).

The better option for the Merchant is for him to run his Affiliate Program off a 3rd party’s Affiliate Program software since he needn’t worry about upgrading, maintaining or fixing the software (when bugs occur) and just focus on his business. The minimal monthly fee shouldn’t be considered as an expense but more of an investment for the marketing of his product.

4. Clickbank <--- Click for full story
This post then introduces Clickbank, a retailer who will buy your digital product from you and resell it to their Customers using their own credit card merchant account. This arrangement is great if you have difficulty getting your own credit card merchant account from your bank and have it linked to an online payment gateway so that your Customers can key in their credit card details at their computers anywhere in the world.

The other reason is that Clickbank has an Affiliate Program software installed on its own server. Thus if Clickbank accepts you as its Supplier (with some exceptions), you’re in fact riding on Clickbank’s Affiliate Program software – which is what I recommend that you do.

5. Clickbank Issues <--- Click for full story
However, Clickbank comes with its own issues, chief among them is the fact that its Affiliates really aren’t your Affiliates, but Clickbank’s. Thus if you were to promote your product linked up with Clickbank to your list, they’ll become Clickbank’s Affiliates instead of yours.

On top of that, its Affiliates are also not linking to your web site to promote your product, but to Clickbank’s using Clickbank’s Affiliate Link format. This does not help your web site gain better positioning in the Search Engines from the Affiliates’ linking activities, which is a major benefit of having an Affiliate Program.

6. The MOACA <--- Click for full story
This post discusses the “Mother Of All Clickbank Alternatives” (MOACA) where you can get the benefit of your Affiliates linking directly to your domain for Search Engine ranking advantage and have the same Affiliate Program software running off a 3rd party’s server for the benefits of such an arrangement.

You become your own Merchant, and you will pay your own Affiliates. However, you can dispense with payment by paper checks completely using an inexpensive electronic transfer facility that is available online in most countries in the world. You will only spend a few minutes on a particular day each month doing commissions payout – thus just about matching the advantages offered by Clickbank in paying its Affiliates for promoting your product (where you are not a part of this payment process at all since they’re not your Affiliates).

You’re Up To Speed!
==============

The above brings us up to date with the discussion on Affiliate Programs, their issues and their solutions. Make sure you click on those links to have a deeper understanding of the discussion – because they’re important to your profits.

In my next post, you’ll discover the best Affiliate Program software ever created that will enable you to have the “MOACA Experience“.

Its benefits are so mind-blogging, it’s unreal. But it is real – as you’ll soon see.

Stay tuned!

Sen Ze

You don’t have to apply to your bank for a credit card merchant account and integrate it with an online payment gateway on your own, in order to accept credit card payment from your customers. You simply become Clickbank’s Supplier or “Publisher”.

You can also tap into Clickbank’s existing Affiliate Program and Affiliate Program software to have Affiliates market your product for you without you having to set up your own Affiliate Program software for this purpose.

However, the following are some issues you may want to think about if you want to tap into Clickbank’s setup:

1. Clickbank doesn’t allow its Affiliates to route their Prospects directly to your different products’ sales pages
While Clickbank allows you to supply up to 50 different digital products to it per Clickbank account, it doesn’t provide its Affiliates with more than one URL to use for Clickbank to track the sales of your different products.

Assuming your registered Clickbank nickname is “jeremy” (you’re Clickbank’s Supplier), and one of Clickbank’s registered Affiliates’ nickname is “susan”, then all “susan” needs to do to link to your product sales page (and still be tracked for her referral should a sales occur for the purpose of calculating her commission) is to use the following URL:

http://susan.jeremy.hop.clickbank.net

This URL will then re-direct to your web page selling your product, which is usually “http://www.YourDomain.com” as you would have specified that URL as your “Home Page” in the Clickbank Control Panel.

Because Clickbank doesn’t allow you to specify more than one “Home Page” for each Supplier Clickbank account, if you have 2 different products to sell, this one Home Page must necessarily contain 2 different links to your 2 different products’ respective sales letters at your domain.

When this is the case, Clickbank’s Affiliates can’t really link from their advertisement for Product 1 directly to its sales page, but to your Home Page which contains 2 different links to 2 different products.

This can result in some confusion for the Affiliates’ Prospects who clicked through the ad for Product 1 only to see a choice of 2 different products to look at – the link for Product 1 and another link for Product 2.

If the Prospects aren’t confused, they now have a choice of 2 different products to buy – and may well end up not being able to decide which one to buy.

It gets worse when you have more products to sell, as your Home Page will be filled with up to 50 different links to your many different products.

When your Prospects’ attention is diluted, or they’re confused, they will be less likely to buy from you – and Clickbank’s Affiliates will soon stop marketing your products and instead look at your competitors’ products instead.

One solution is to open another Clickbank account for the 2nd product, but you’ll have to pay for a new Clickbank account every time you do this.

2. Clickbank’s Affiliates don’t link directly to your web site
Clickbank’s Affiliates use the following URL to link to promote your products:

http://susan.jeremy.hop.clickbank.net

This URL then re-directs to your domain.

Note how the above URL isn’t linking to your domain, but to clickbank.net instead?

This is necessary since the Affiliates are really Clickbank’s Affiliates (not yours), and the Affiliate Program software resides at www.Clickbank.net.

When this happens, Clickbank’s Affiliates are not building up any links to your own domain, but to Clickbank.net instead. Search Engines like Google look at the number of links to your sales page to decide whether to rank it higher than your competitor’s web pages on keywords related to it – so your sales page will get no help from Clickbank’s Affiliates here!

3. You’re building up Clickbank’s Affiliate force for free
Clickbank will list your product in its marketplace for its other Affiliates to check out and make the decision to market, but you really do need to market your own product to your own list of Prospects to start off since nobody knows what your product name is or which category it is in when you’re launching – not to mention the hundreds of competitors you have who are already populating Clickbank’s Marketplace even if they do know.

Now your sales page for your product will usually contain a link to your Affiliate Program details since not everybody who sees your sales page will become customers, but some will become Affiliates since it costs nothing them to join your Affiliate Program for them to be able to earn commissions for their referral efforts.

However, what you’re really doing is building up Clickbank’s own Affiliate force, as they’ll have to sign up at Clickbank’s web site as an Affiliate (you’ll have to link to Clickbank’s Affiliate sign up form) and for Clickbank to be able to track their Clickbank Affiliate Links that re-direct to your domain for calculating any sales that result from their efforts.

4. Clickbank isn’t available to Merchants, Affiliates and Customers in some countries
This is due to various considerations, and one of them is the higher risk of credit card fraud in certain locations according to Clickbank’s own “findings”.

Thus if you’re a potential Clickbank Supplier, know that you’ll either be unable to be its Supplier because of where you are, or you’ll be selling a lot fewer of your products than with another retailer like Clickbank without its restrictions.

The MOACA
=========

While Clickbank can be a great help for you to get up and running in the quickest possible time, and is the retailer of choice for many Suppliers, the above factors may be important to you and make you decide not to go with Clickbank.

But is there a better alternative with practically the same benefits as Clickbank without the disadvantages listed above?

I’ve hunted high and low for a solution and I couldn’t find it.

Until now.

Stay tuned for it because you’re about to discover the Mother of All Clickbank Alternatives (MOACA) – with benefits that far surpass Clickbank’s!

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/clickbank/clickbank-issues.htm

Technorati Tags: Clickbank, Clickbank issues, Affiliate Program, Affiliate Program software, digital product

The availability of such a piece of software instantly enables Merchants from all over the world to duplicate their marketing efforts through their Affiliates’ efforts in return for a commission for a defined result (like a “sale”, for example).

And since there is no short supply of Affiliates who themselves come from all over the world, the Merchant with an Affiliate Program can get hundreds or thousands of Affiliates to market for him.

This is extremely powerful leverage and well worth the Merchant’s time and effort to create an Affiliate Program for his products.

Tracking for each Affiliate’s effort is done by a unique Affiliate Link for each Affiliate.

Using the Life Changing Party event as an example, Affiliate A’s Affiliate Link can look like the following:

http://www.LifeChangingParty.com?z=323ef5

Affiliate B’s Affiliate Link can look like the following:

http://www.LifeChangingParty.com?z=545wq32

The difference between the 2 links are in the alphanumeric characters after the “z=” characters. Affiliate A’s ID is “323ef5″, and Affiliate B’s ID is “545wq32″.

However both Affiliate Links will lead back to the page at http://www.LifeChangingParty.com no matter what the Affiliate ID is.

The Affiliate Program software takes note of any clicks on those different Affiliate Links and checks if a sale has resulted for any of them. If so, the commission as set by the Merchant will be credited to the Affiliate’s account.

That’s how an Affiliate Program software works, in a nutshell.

There are many Affiliate Program software out there that you can either buy off the shelf and install on your own host, or operate on a monthly access model where it’s hosted on a 3rd party’s server and you pay a monthly fee to use it.

Before we get into the merits of either approach, let’s discuss about what else needs to be present in an Affiliate Program software for both parties to get more value out of this simple but powerful marketing concept.

For the Merchant
============

1. An Affiliate registration form for new Affiliates to join the Merchant’s Affiliate Program
This makes it easy for any Affiliate to join. Here’s how LifeChangingParty.com’s Affiliate Sign-Up Form looks like:

2. A function to automatically generate unique Affiliate Links for each new Affiliate who joins the Affiliate Program

As soon as the Affiliate has signed up, he gets his own unique Affiliate Link that he can use immediately to promote the Merchants’ web site selling his products, if he’s approved.

The Merchant can set the software to automatically approve each Affiliate who signs up, or he can choose to approve each one manually.

If he sets it to approve automatically, his Affiliates get their unique Affiliate Links immediately, so the Merchant can be lazing around in his Pajamas while his Affiliate force is building up every single day!

3. Affiliates’ Commissions
The Merchant should know at a glance how much commissions he needs to pay out at any time. He should be happy to see a big amount, because the more commissions he pays out, the more sales he’s making!

4. Affiliates’ Details
This is to for the Merchant to send commission checks to his Affiliates. He can also dispense with checks and pay his Affiliates through PayPal, and so he’ll need to know his Affiliates’ PayPal e-mails.

Here’s a menu that the Merchant sees in his Affiliate Program software:

5. Top Performing Affiliates
The Merchant should also know who are his best Affiliates so that he can give them even more incentives to market better for him.

6. Fraud Control
The Affiliate Program software should be able to distinguish between fraudulent sales and genuine sales, so that the Merchant is paying out the right amount of commissions to the right Affiliate.

7. Marketing Materials section
To make it easy for the Merchant’s Affiliates to market the Merchant’s products, the Merchant will need to upload marketing materials for his Affiliates to use “out of the box” so that little thinking is required on their part.

The marketing materials include classified ads, solo ads, e-mail ads, letters and banners. There should be a “Marketing Materials” section within the Affiliate Program software that the Affiliate can check out.

For the Affiliate
============

The Affiliate would be interested in the following:

1. Commissions Made
This is the first thing he would be looking at. He needs to know how much he has made from his efforts.

2. Clicks, Sales Figures
He would be interested in the number of sales he has made. If the system has been set to track clicks as well, he would have another number to look at. This can help him improve his marketing efforts.

Here’s an example:

3. Banners, Ads, E-Mails that he can use
These have been prepared by the Merchant for his use. They’ll make the Affiliates get going faster with his marketing efforts.

Here are 3 banners from the Life Changing Party event, that the Affiliate can use immediately:

In Summary
============

The above are the essential features, and most basic Affiliate Program software would have them.

But there are a few extra important features that can be programmed into a piece of Affiliate Program software that can help the Merchant and the Affiliate better achieve their mutual goals.

Those extra features make the Affiliate stick their necks out to promote the Merchant’s products over his competitors’.

When this happens, the Affiliates make even more commissions, and yes, the Merchant makes even more sales, with a more loyal base of Affiliates marketing his products!

Stay tuned.

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/affiliate-program/affiliate-program-software-essentials.htm

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Program, Affiliate Program software, Affiliate Program software features

24 hours, of course.

How much effort can you put in a day to market your web site?

This can be a lot, depending on your attitude and knowledge – but it’s usually not enough.

So how do you multiply your time and effort in a way that will make you more money?

Easy – you find others who are willing to put in the time and effort with you.

And why would they want to help you here?

They’ll do it usually for money or compensation of some kind.

But usually for money.

Which is good for you, since it’s usually very easy to send money to them.

So you’ll have to hire them to help you out without knowing if they’re as good or better than you are?

Well, you can pay them ONLY if they show some results, which is a measure of their performance.

What sort of results should they show you?

This is up to you, but my favorite type of results is for them to show me some SALES of my products as a result of their efforts.

Thus if I’m selling something on my web site as a Merchant, and they want to help me promote that product – then I want to see sales coming from their efforts before I pay them.

Fair enough?

Why would they want to put in all the time and effort to do something that only rewards them when a sale occurs?

Because:

1. If they do it right, the money they make from this arrangement can be a HUGE amount
This can be a whole lot more than being paid whether a sale happens or not, working for you as your employee. They would be paid for the same effort, but with more money as your Affiliate (if they do it right). The commission to them can range from 5% all the way up to 70% or more of the purchase price of the product, depending on what the product is. And prices for those products can range from $10 – $20 to thousands of dollars – so the compensation can be pretty substantial for some Affiliates who know what they’re doing.

2. They don’t have to be a Merchant with products to sell
They can simply represent those Merchants as their Affiliates. There’s no need for Affiliates to pack and deliver products to customers, or deal with customer support issues. That’s the Merchant’s job.

3. There are more “opportunities” for Affiliates
Since no special qualifications are required of the Affiliate other than a willingness to give it a shot following certain rules and policies set by the Merchant, Affiliates have more advantages over a “job”. Affiliates qualify themselves, and can choose from thousands of Merchants to represent.

Awesome Leverage Provided By Affiliate Programs
==================================

The Merchant leverages on the time and effort of the Affiliates to reach out to more Prospects and only pays for performance. When a sale occurs, the Merchant has the money to pay the Affiliate off from the money collected from the Customer, so this is a risk-free arrangement for the Merchant in that he doesn’t have to gamble his money on a non-performing “employee” instead.

The Affiliates leverage off the time and effort of the Merchant in creating a product that others want to buy and in the Merchant dealing with support issues so that the Affiliates don’t have to. They simply focus on referring the Merchant’s products and services to interested Prospects, and they can get started right away.

Some Customers will only get to buy some really useful products and services when Affiliates are involved because the Merchant himself, even with a team of marketers on his payroll, cannot reach out to as many Prospects as compared to hundreds or thousands of Affiliates all doing their thing, being paid on performance. Customers will be thankful for products and services that add value to their lives in a way that they want which can be fulfilled by the Merchant – but they don’t necessarily know where to look for them without the Merchant’s Affiliates’ efforts.

This is a Win-Win-Win concept all the way, that involves the transfer of money from the Customer to the Merchant, and from the Merchant to the Affiliate.

Which is also the reason why many businesses use Affiliates to help market their products for them, and why there is no shortage of Affiliates willing to help out.

What’s Amazon’s role in Affiliate Programs?
=============================

Contrary to what you may think, Amazon.com didn’t invent the Affiliate Program.

Affiliate Programs have been in existence longer than you think.

That house you bought was probably sold to you by a Real Estate company, represented by its “Negotiator”. This company was an “Affiliate” for the previous houseowner as it was only rewarded for its efforts in selling the house to you. It will then pay its Negotiator from this commission earned, keeping the balance.

That stock you sold last week was executed by your stockbroker. The company that he works for, the stockbroking firm, is your “Affiliate”, earning a percentage of the stocks’ selling price, only when you sold it. A part of this commission goes to the stockbroker for helping the company execute its clients’ trades.

That insurance policy you have was sold to you by the insurance agent of an insurance company. This agent is the “Affiliate” of that company who pays him a percentage of the yearly premiums you pay to the insurance company to keep your insurance policy in force.

That car of yours was auctioned of by an auctioneer some time ago with the auctioneer’s company getting a percentage of the winning bid as its commission. The auctioneer’s company is your “Affiliate”, and pays the auctioneer from the commission earned for the work done, keeping the balance.

The damages won for you by your lawyer in court against the defendant who injured you in a Personal Injury case can be paid from a percentage of the damages due to you, on a “contigency fee” basis. He’s acting as your “Affiliate”, although you would still call him your “lawyer”.

There are many more examples, but you get the idea.

Affiliate Programs work for all parties very well – and what Amazon.com pioneered wasn’t an Affiliate Program, but an online tracking system for Affiliates who want to refer customers to them via the Internet for monetary reward.

Today, there are Affiliate Programs for all sorts of products and services, because of the leverage provided by an Affiliate Program software that tracks Affiliates’ efforts and sales that also doubles up as an “Affiliate Recruiting” software.

We’ll take a closer look at this powerful piece of software in my next post, that added tons of value to every party to a sales transaction.

You’ll discover how it can help the Affiliate and Merchant in ways you’ve never known – even if you currently run an Affiliate Program yourself.

As usual, I’ll serve up something surprising for you to devour.

Stay tuned.

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/affiliate-program/affiliate-program-for-merchants.htm

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Program, Leverage, Amazon, Amazon.com, Affiliate