Today is Day 2 of the Super Affiliate Challenge (click that link if you want to see what it’s all about).

Affiliate Marketing – In simplest terms it means marketing products for other people or companies on the internet and getting paid once a sale is made.

There are different types of affiliate programs that can also include getting paid when you send a lead, click or even a phone call to the merchant.

Every day for the next 13 days I will be going through a Chapter of the Super Affiliate Handbook and giving you my insights into what I’ve learned and what action I’ve taken.

Today’s Chapter is Affiliate Marketing Basics

This chapter covers in detail the benefits of working as an affiliate marketer. It is literally one of the quickest ways to start making a real profit on the internet and one of the easiest.

Now, when I say ‘easy’ I don’t mean as in you don’t have to work (not at all).

It’s still work but there are just a lot LESS pieces of the puzzle to put together in affiliate marketing versus creating your own product or starting up your own service based business.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Here are just a few of the advantages covered in this chapter:
1. No Products to Create
2. No Employees to Hire
3. No Deliveries or Fulfillment
4. No Customer Service
5. Work Anywhere
6. Income Potential Unlimited
7. Work Anywhere in the World

This is just 7 of the 17 Benefits of being an affiliate as Rosalind Gardner lists them in the handbook. The book also gives some real examples of affiliates making amazing incomes online.

Another thing covered in this chapter in great detail are the types of affiliate programs you can promote as an affiliate. The most common of course being Pay Per Sale. In the case of Pay Per Sale you refer your website traffic, newsletter subscribers, etc, over to the merchant’s website and once a sale is made you get a commission.

Types of Affiliate Programs

There are also Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Click, Pay Per Post, Pay Per Call and Broker Programs (where you get paid for referring another affiliate to their program). To find out more about all of these you’ll have to grab yourself a copy of the Super Affiliate Handbook because I just can’t cover it all here and of course I can’t give away all of the information or I might get in trouble with the author .

ACTION TAKEN

So I promised you I was going to be taking massive action daily with this Handbook and putting as much as I possibly can into practice as I go. I’d love to have you join me, ask your questions or just follow along and do as much as you can.

Here is what I did today:
1. Looked at my past affiliate commissions to determine what has been making me the most money and made a plan to promote that program more.

2. Studied my Affiliate Programs Spreadsheet to determine what programs I’m signed up for that have potential to promote.

3. Took an inventory of all the programs that I use in my business and then went searching for affiliate programs associated with them.

What I found out:

1. One of my most consistent earners has been WAHMCart. I’ve also made good money with Traffic Geyser, Bluehost & 1ShoppingCart. These are all business tools. What I love is finding great tools to make my life easier and I know I do a great job of showing others how to use them to their best advantage. This is what I will continue to do as I really ramp up my affiliate marketing efforts.

2. According to my spreadsheet I’m signed up for 29 affiliate programs which actually doesn’t seem right so I need to update the sheet, I’m sure I’ve signed up for more than that. Of those 29 I’m only promoting about three on any kind of consistent basis. I found some programs I no longer have a real interest in promoting and others I haven’t promoted that I could really benefit from doing so. I think my list is also missing some programs I am actually signed up for so I intend to do some updating on this tonight after the kiddo is in bed.

3. There are programs I definitely need to sign up for and tell my peeps about. Here is a short list and I know as I focus on this more I’ll find others:
- Camtasia
- Freshbooks
- Snagit
- Viral PDF
- Mozy
- WpRemix WordPress theme

I’m also very interested in doing reviews of products that I think my readers might want to buy but want an outside opinion on first. So if you think of any products you might like to hear a review of, give me a shout out ok?

Keeping Track of Affiliate Programs

I use a simple spreadsheet to keep track of my affiliate programs as well as using my gmail. I put the welcome email from every program I register for into a separate gmail label so I can easily find it later.

Here’s the spreadsheet I use, feel free to download it and use it yourself:
AfffiliateProgramsSummary-blank

Another thing I do for each program I promote is create an affiliate redirect. This is important to do so that you still have control of the links you put out even if the affiliate program goes under or gets moved to another location. When you use a redirect you can just change one link and all your affiliate links will still work.

Here is a link to a video I did on how to set up a redirect:
How to Redirect Affiliate Links

That’s it for my report for today. Like I said I’ve got a little more to do tonight and maybe I’ll come back and leave a comment with another update.

What are you doing with your affiliate marketing? Is it time to ramp it up? Got any advice for me? Have any questions? Let’s chat!

Want to learn to become a super affiliate with me and join in this 14-Day Super Affiliate Challenge and Super Affiliate Handbook case study? Just click here to go grab your copy for only $47.

p.s. Make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking here even if you’re unsure about the challenge – I’ll be sharing much info that will help keep you motivated and moving in your own affiliate marketing!