Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

Researching a topic can be frustrating sometimes. You search
the web for information only to find much of it not exactly
related to the topic you are searching for. This has prompted
our experts to help provide better information for people like
you. This article will try to help you by providing information
that you can actually use.

Let’s be honest. Profit is what Business is all about. And
profit can be derived from the payments we secure from our
customers. How then do we boost the receipt of payments? An
efficient payment processing system should provide the answer.
Payment processing is what converts sales into realized profits.
Without payment processing, your business could not collect
payments, and thus will most likely fail. Without efficient
payment processing, your business would needlessly suffer.

The importance of an efficient payment processing system cannot
be underestimated. Payment processing, as many business owners
will attest to, is the heart of your enterprise. It goes with
saying then, that payment processing is an essential requirement
for any kind of venture, online or offline.

The more you discuss this subject, the more you will learn.
There is much information available that is perhaps just waiting
to be discovered. By reading the rest of this article, you will
be on your way to learning all you need to know about this.

Let Payment Processing Expand Your Market

Your products aren’t the only things that would determine your
market. Payment processing can certainly help you expand such an
audience. By being able to accept the various credit cards and
other payment alternatives, for example, you could boost your
customer base by more than 400%. It’s no secret that most people
these days prefer to use those payment options, and having those
options available would certainly entice more people to purchase
your product.

Payment processing of payment methods other than cash is doubly
important for online businesses. Money mails and checks are just
too inconvenient for online transactions, so payment processing
of credit cards and similar options would be a necessity for
Internet trading. Almost all merchant accounts offering payment
processing services offer secured networks that would ensure the
security of each compensative settlement.

Payment Processing Can Increase The Efficiency Of Your Operations

Every business strives for automation of most tasks, and payment
processing systems are no exception. Automation would allow you
to collect payments 24 hours a day with minimal supervision, and
an efficient payment processing system can help you achieve such
a task. Payment processing systems can automatically handle
every payment made to your business. This leaves you free to
concentrate on other essentials such as the marketing of your
site.

Your decision to invest in a proper and reliable payment
processing system is most likely the single most important task
relating to the success of your business. Having said this, and
given all the benefits owing to various payment processing
systems, it is in every business’s best interests to investigate
the many systems available and implement the most suitable one
for your business.

Please check back regularly, as this site updates infomation on
a periodic basis and we wouldn’t want you to miss out.

Planning an ecommerce website is like building a house - architecture and budget need to be agreed before the decoration.

AN AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION MUST BE DRAWN UP AS THE FIRST STAGE BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE IS DONE - ANY OTHER APPROACH WILL ONLY LEAD TO CONFUSION AND WORSE.

Once an AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION has been agreed then solutions need to be evaluated and costed against that specification are:

- Project management
- Hardware
- Web design and software
- Site marketing
- Project management:

All aspects of the project need to be managed. Decide who is going to do it and properly plan the requirements, activities, outcomes, milestones and timings.

Hardware:

Your choices here are a managed service or your own server. The security and disaster recovery aspect that is achieved by hosting with a major provider is very important. Only go with your own server if you have the experience and facilities.

Design and Software:

Site design

Develop site templates and test them with real people. They have to be easy to use and navigate. Don’t let “design” drive the site; let ease of use and sales drive the “design”. Think how the customer thinks.

Software

At least 5 solutions need to be considered.

- Updating
- Shopping cart
- Forum
- Email
- Statistics

Updating

There are 2 realistic routes here. Either an online or an offline, PC based content management system (CMS). The online CMS can be either an Open Source CMS (Open Source means any application that has been made available, generally free, to developers to view and modify freely. Examples of Open Source applications are MySQL and PHP) or commercial.

There are pros and cons to both routes. An online system is available to anyone with relevant security clearance anywhere any time. A PC based system is, obviously, limited to the PCs running the licenses. An example of a PC based system is Macromedia Contribute which integrates with Dreamweaver. There are a whole range of online Commercial and Open Source options such as SuiteWise, Drupal, Joomla, and Website Baker etc. However, even this is complicated by the fact that some of the shopping cart solutions also contain CMS that may be sufficient for many companies’ requirements.

Shopping cart and CRM

There are also 2 realistic routes for the shopping cart - Open Source or commercial.

There are excellent Open Source shopping carts such as OSCommerce and Zen, but also excellent commercial solutions such as Actinic and Customer Focus Quick Order Portal (which comes with a complete CMS).

There are other factors to consider with the shopping cart:

- Does it have its own or does it easily integrate with your exiting stock control systems?

- Does it integrate easily with accounting systems (e.g. Sage, QuickBooks)?

- Does it have or integrate easily with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that may be proposed in future?

Forum

Many CMS have good integrated forums but if they do not our recommendation would be to use a good Open Source package such as PunBB or phpBB. They are free, robust and easy to integrate and customise into any site.

Email

Most CMS, shopping carts and forums have email solutions. However, some solutions are very basic. If the chosen shopping cart solution that best meets the ecommerce and other requirements does not have an effective integrated email solution and if the same be true of the CMS and forum solutions then stand alone Open Source applications such as PHPlist are one alternative solution and the other is an online solution such as Constant Contact or many others.

Statistics

This is arguably the most important part of the package. If you do not know how visitors to your website and in the shop are behaving, what turns them on and what turns them off then it is far, far harder to improve sales and site profitability. Commercial applications such as WebTrends and ClickTracks need to be evaluated for best fit.

SITE MARKETING

There are 4 major areas to consider here.

- Offline marketing - e.g. in-store. What works most cost effectively to drive traffic and orders via the web from non-web activities.

- Site optimisation - how to make sure technical structure, copy, content, back-links and a range of other factors are initially and remain optimised so that as many high search engine placements on relevant searches are obtained.

- Pay per click and other online marketing - how to get traffic from advertising against key words and phrases used in search engines and from adverts on other sites.

- Email - how to grow the email list and use it to grow profitable sales.

In summary:

- Manage the project
- Think how the customer thinks
- Get excellent software to make finding product and price easy
- Make terms clear and payment simple
- Ensure you are in stock and and have achievable delivery timescales
- Make sure you have a good CRM system and clear communications - mail, phone, emai
- Market the site appropriately
- Know what’s going on - use your stats to test, track and try

Cost ………… well how long is a pice of string, but you could be up and running for far less than the cost of new premises!!!

Richard Hill is a director of E-CRM Solutions and has spent many years in senior direct and interactive marketing roles. E-CRM - www.e-crm.co.uk - helps you to grow by getting you more customers that stay with you longer. We provide practical solutions that pay for themselves. We help you to make sure that your marketing works.

Copyright 2006 Joe McVoy

The key to success is to start with a group of people who are
proven buyers of what you want to sell (the market), not with
the product. If you make sure there is a “starving crowd” of
people wanting to buy a certain category of information, then
you know there’s a market for it BEFORE you create the product.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

1. FIND A HOT MARKET - METHOD # 1:

Go to a store that has hundreds of magazines and look for niche
magazines that have direct response ads in them (direct response
means they are asking for an order). Then look to see if the ads
are good or not. If all the ads are good, that means it’s a hot
market but also that a lot of savvy marketers are already in it.

Not good. We want an easier way.

So, keep looking and find magazines with direct response ads
that suck. Then look at a year’s worth of back issues to see if
their ads continually run. If they do, you have a winner. If any
ad is run in many issues that means it’s working. If you find
bad ads getting run over and over, that’s a great opportunity to
do a good ad and take over the market

So how do you know if an ad is good or not? If you have no
experience in direct marketing, you want to look for ads with a
good headline that catches your attention and then a long letter
format with a lot of copy. The copy should have subheads and
flow easily from one paragraph to the next. Lastly, there should
be an easy way to order and a compelling reason to act now, not
later.

2. FIND A HOT MARKET - METHOD # 2:

Go to a major city library and get a copy of Standard Rate &
Data’s “Direct Mail List Source”. This book has something like
50,000 different direct mail lists. This means lists where
people have bought something by mail. The info on each list
tells you what they are selling, how many customers they have
and what the average order is. Pretty handy.

>From the information given on each list, take the number of
customers for the last 30 or 90 days (”hot line” customers),
multiply that number by the average order size and then multiply
that number to get annualized sales.

This tells you how much sales the list you are looking at did in
the last year. Do this for each list and you’ll know how big the
total market is.

Look in categories that interest you and see how many lists
there are of people buying things in that market. If, like with
golf, there are 100s of lists of buyers of golf products or info
- you know it’s a hot market. You can rent all these lists for
your own mailing.

3. DECIDE ON A THEME

for your information product. From looking at your market, what
do you think people might want to know that is not readily
available?

4. GO TO THE LIBRARY

Yes, the library. You are going to find and quickly read every
book in the library on your topic. Here’s how. For example, say
you are looking at golf and want to create a report on how to
hit a longer drive. Look at the table of contents in each book
and the index in the back for anything in the book about hitting
a drive further. Ignore everything else. Then, copy or take
notes on everything you find.

5. GO ONLINE

and do the same thing. Research your topic with as many key
words as you can think of and note everything you find on your
topic. After these two steps, you have the information to be a
world-class expert on your topic. This can be done in 1 day.

6. MAKE AN OUTLINE

of your information product from all the information you found
and group all your info into sections to make an outline. Make a
list of all the benefits this information will give someone and
group these benefits into logical sections or “chapters”. Write
down all the “proof” you find along with the benefits. By that I
mean what 3rd party evidence, testimonials or other data that
proves each item is true. You’ll need this for your sales letter.

7. WRITE YOUR SALES LETTER OR AD

to sell the product. Do not create the product yet; write the
letter to sell it first focusing on the benefits to the
purchaser. If you don’t know how, either learn from all the
books and courses available or find someone to do it for you for
a piece of the profits.

8. TEST YOUR LETTER

you can use Google ad words and do it in a few hours or rent a
email list of buyers or rent direct mail lists and send out your
letter to at least 3 lists to see if it sells. If it does,
great. Create the product. If not, return everyone’s money and
try another product.

There are FTC rules about selling something you don’t have, but
if you are just doing a test and refund 100% of whatever people
paid, I wouldn’t think there would be complaints but be sure to
check with your legal advisor first as I’m no lawyer.

9. REVISE YOUR OUTLINE

If it sells, or if you decide to do the product first, revise
your outline to deliver on all the promises you made in your
sales letter.

10. BREAK EACH CHAPTER DOWN INTO 4 - 5 SUBPOINTS

Then write 3 topics for each subpoint and then rephrase each of
them as questions.

11. GET A DIGITAL RECORDER THAT CAN MAKE MP3 FILES

If you’re creating an audio product have someone ask you all the
questions along with any others than come up during the
conversation. If you’re doing a printed product, ask the
questions to yourself and answer them.

12. PICK AN ONLINE SERVICE TO TRANSCRIBE YOUR AUDIO

and have it transcribed. You can get this done for 1 to 1 ½
cents/word.

13. EDIT IT & YOU’RE DONE!

Consider selling several versions of your information. A printed
report could be a $29 - $49 product and you could also offer a
$199 or $249 audio version. I did exactly this with one of my
products and included the transcript with the audio CD’s to add
even more value.

The key point to all this is that you started by finding a
proven market, picked a topic that is in demand in that market,
researched all the available information on it, and finally
prepared your information product from all this giving your
customer something better than what’s available now.

I like this business because your cost of goods can be as low as
0% to 10% of your selling price. If delivered electronically,
your cost of goods is 0. If sent by mail, costs are still very
low.

If you get past the testing phase and have a winner, there are
plenty of people who will finance the roll out for you. They
will handle all the execution and fund the project as well. I
can refer you to people to finance it for you once you get to
that point.

Take a second and imagine your shopping on a website, find the product you’ve been looking for, and as you go to the order form to purchase it, you find out that the company doesn’t accept payment online. Instead, you must mail a check. If you were like me, you would probably click off the site and search for another company that offers the same products and *does* accept payment online, whether it is by credit card or online check. It doesn’t take a super, intelligent person to realize that it is inconvenient, time consuming, and adds on lag time till you get your purchase when you must sit down, write out a check, and mail it. That is why it is extremely important that you offer some type of online payment solution for your e-business.

Accepting credit cards is the most well known way to accept payment on the Internet. Almost everyone has a credit card and by accepting his or hers, it makes customers’ ordering process much more convenient and time saving, not to mention it encourages them to purchase from you. Accepting credit cards has become a necessity to the survival of e-businesses.
In order to accept credit cards, you’re going to need a merchant account. To obtain one, just do a search on your favorite search engine. You will be provided with a list of many different merchant account providers to choose from. Merchant services contract with several merchant-processing banks that will actually accept and process your business transactions.

For each transaction the bank processes, you will be charged a discount rate, or percentage, of the face value of the amount charged, along with a per transaction fee (usually ranging from $0.20 to $0.30). When you perform your transaction, and receive an authorization number, the charged amount is immediately wire-transferred out of your customers’ credit card account into your merchant account. The merchant bank will then discount, or deduct, the percentage rate and per transaction fee, and wire-transfer the balance of the charge into the business checking account of your choice. At the end of the month, you will receive a statement, for your records, so that you can balance your account.

There are three ways to perform transactions:

1. Terminals/Hardware

2. Point of Sale Software

3. Real-Time (Automatic Online Transactions)

Since this article is focusing solely on online payment solutions for your e-business, I will focus on real-time. How real-time works is when your customer is finished shopping and is ready to pay, they simply go to the secure order form page where they type in their credit card information. In a few seconds, a message appears on their screen, showing whether their card was accepted or declined. A few days later, the money will appear in your business checking account. With real-time, you will be provided with an online database containing all of your credit card transactions so you can balance your account at the end of the month.

There’s a second, and probably more unfamiliar way, to accept payment online, and that is accepting checks by email. Until recently, service bureaus have been responsible for check drafting, but now any business can do it. Federal banking regulations and the Uniform Commercial Code permit this process.

How it works is: a customer submits his checking account information and authorization to draft their account; then the merchant takes the information and enters it into a check printing program on their computer. From that point, the merchant can print it on special check paper (available from the software provider) and take the check “draft” to their bank and deposit it as if the check was mailed directly to them. Not only can a merchant accept checks by email with the program; they can also accept them by phone and fax capabilities, also. This is a great alternate solution to credit cards as you will find some customers who aren’t interested in putting their credit card information on your site. If your interested in this type of payment solution many merchant account providers can help you get this solution along with a merchant account for credit card acceptance.

In summary, I would highly recommend obtaining a merchant account for your business. As the Internet continues to grow, more businesses come online and more people decide to make purchases on the Web, it will become essential that your business accept payment online (especially credit cards) in order to survive in today’s business world.

I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

David Bell
# 1 Internet Marketing Agency -Online Advertising Agency
Advertising research and development center

Super Tip #1

Article submission. This is truly a very very powerful free tool you can harness. I will give you a real life example. I had, prior to this, submitted ONE article with my link to my “Clickbank Profit Machine” ebook and had 2 sales from it a day later. Can you imagine that? One single article = 2 Sales. Perhaps it is a fluke, a one off incident but there is no denying that it works! An article just like this! The thing is you cannot submit your affiliate links directly in your resources box (xxxx.cbkprofit.hop.clickbank.net) but rather, you can sign up for a free website and set that site to redirect to your affiliate link. Problem solved! You would have no problems submitting your articles with that link.

Super Tip #2

Selecting the product to promote. You really have to take a myriad of factors into consideration. I suggest you do this, select 6 products that you deem are profitable to promote and wither it down to eventually 2. What criteria should you base this on? You should look into price, commission paid, sales copy, affiliates resource page and responsiveness of the vendor.

Super Tip #3

Buy the product, mail the vendor. Because only when you have bought the product and tried and tested it out could you know if it works! This will help greatly in writing those articles and promoting it to your friends and/or relatives. Sending a mail to the vendor is not only to test his responsiveness but also to ask him for some tips to promote his product. I am sure he or she will be more then happy to help and he or she will know best what kind of promotion techniques best converts.

“Clickbank Profit Machine” is just out and is put up only at an introductory rate only to a select few. Imagine this – Just using 6 simple steps and you can flood your clickbank account. Possible? You should really see the screenshots.

http://www.ClickbankProfitMachine.com

Whether you sell a product or merely sell time to your employer in your labor, your main product is you. You sell yourself with every move you make, every word you speak or write, every attitude you display. How far you go up the ladder depends largely on the image you project to others.

If you are sincere, dependable, knowledgeable, and confident, you will be accepted. You will not be trusted if you seem unsure of yourself. If you appear overconfident, you will be thought of as phoney.

Before you can sell a product, you have to sell yourself. Before you sell yourself, you must be sold on yourself. You must get your doubts and failures out of your mind and replace them with memories of your successes. You have to psych yourself up. I remember a pitcher who would turn his back on the batter and work himself into a frenzy. He would then blow the ball past the hitter.

Hang around with upbeat successful people. Avoid being around those who are always feeling sorry for themselves and giving excuses for failing. Sales organizations keep their employees psyched up. Build up yourself and others with positive material. You will develop a habit of feeling great about yourself. That will come across to your customers and they will buy.

You have to come across to others as a winner. No one wants to buy from a loser. I know a salesman that was driving a car that was old and beat up and his prospect told him he would not buy from him because he was obviously not successful. You must have the appearance of success and act like a winner.

Your chief competitor is you. You won’t succeed until you learn to play up to your potential. Many are not defeated by their opponent but beat themselves. Winners don’t shoot themselves in the foot with silly mistakes. Be aware of what’s going on and take advantage of your opportunities. The difference between wining and losing is in the execution. When you make the right moves, you will be successful.

Decide what image you want to portray. Everyone is unique. It should display your personality, values and what makes you stand out from the crowd. Decide what is important and have a plan to put it across to others. You must do what you have a passion for. If you are excited about what you are doing it will be evident to your customer.

When you sell in person, your prospect goes a lot by body language, tone and voice inflections. This is lost when you sell with the written word. You have to find ways to make up for it with your copy. Write so that he feels the emphases that your body and voice give. Show him that you can fulfill his need. He doesn’t care what you want. Tell him what’s in it for him.

You are thinking that you want him to buy now. He is thinking something entirely different. He is asking himself why he should buy now, from you, and not someone else. He is wondering if it will really do what you say it will. Learn to think like he does so that you can speak his language. You have to be on the same page with him to sell him. Anticipate his objections and give him answers before he reflects on them. Make him think that he is not being sold, but he is choosing the best. Give him something extra for buying now. A how to article for his field would show him you have his best interest at heart.

—

You have my permission to publish this article if you leave the resource box intact. It would be appreciated if you notify me when you do at lynn_b2@yahoo.com.

Lynn Bradley is also the author of the paperback book, “Climbing the Heavenly Stairs,” which includes a chapter on Jesus’ answer for overcoming your obstacles and becomingly successful. You were created for success. Learn his rules for being a winner. Click on the following link for more information or use the title for the URL. http://www.thelynnbradleybook.com

As a former Chief Executive Officer qualified in Human Resource
Management, Employee Relations and Accounting it has often been
my question as to what place the recruitment industry plays
today’s marketplace and to whether they give value for money or
not.

Releasing my companys hard earnt dollars I was recently parted
with $36,000 for two employees with salary packages of less than
$100,000 I reflected on the cheque I had just signed going out
the door. Who in their right mind would pay this extortionate
amount of money.

What has become increasingly apparent over the last 10 years is
the gap between what the recruitment industry espouses and their
ability to deliver.

While this may be perceived as personal bias, I speak from
experience having worked in a recruitment agency for a period of
time and have seen and heard what goes on.

It’s a jungle out there.

And their fees 10% to 25% of total package represents almost
madness.and amount was not lost on my superiors overseas who
were not amused.

A high profile Director in the recruitment industry recently
shared with me that most new starts last 18 months and either
burn out or move on to the next offer, firm or change careers.

Indeed many former senior recruiters are now leaving the
industry and setting up their own boutique company’s offering
attractive alternatives, These attractive alternatives include
experience, mobility, industry understanding and vast personal
networks, some globally.

However, there are some good operators operating within the
framework of the recruitment industry and I have come across
several really wonderful people in my business career. The
common denominator in all of these people was that they
previously held management positions and had personally run
businesses.

On one such occasion I requested that a recruitment agency
search out a paramedical sales person in Victoria and New South
Wales and have them on a very tight timeframe. The agency
delivered and the candidates were offered positions. But this is
rare in my experience and the manager had operated real world
businesses before recruiting.

Problems

Churn

There is a nasty little practise that goes often unnoticed in
the industry but is alive and well, I have observed it first
hand.

Its called CHURN. This is where an agency puts a very good
candidate into your business and some months later comes back
with a better offer in another company. The candidate moves on,
the agency gets it’s fee and gets to replace the person who
moved on, or should I say they encouraged to move on.

There are some high profile agencies known to engage regularly
in this nasty little practise. Certainly a very nice little
gravy train but totally without ethics or morality.

Fees

Who in their right mind would pay out 10% to 25% to place a
candidate in their business. There is no empirical evidence to
suggest a better outcome from an agency than throwing a dart at
a pile of resumes sent to you.

Ordinary businessmen and women are being taken to the cash flow
cleaners for the privilege. Money is burning and have you read
the fine print, pay our invoice in 14 days or no replacement
guarantee.

>From my experience many recruitment people are in fact not
service providers but sales people and have never run a business
or held a real job.

Ask the question and find out for yourself. Ask what companies
and entities have you managed.

Don’t get me wrong there are some good operators out there but
you need to know whom and what questions to ask.

How to protect yourself

1.If you wish to outsource ask the agency what business
management responsibilities have you held in other industries,

2. Ask, have you managed a business,

3. Can you give me a two-year replacement guarantee to get my
business without fine print. There are agencies that will
guarantee this to get your business and honour that request.
Ensure that this is placed in writing,

4. Negotiate the fee, if they don’t negotiate do not give them
your business. Of course they will use impressive sounding
words, but we all know words are cheap,

5. Pay no more than 10% unless it is for a specialised and
highly competitive field, eg nursing unit manager for adolescent
mental health,

6. Ask them about the CHURN practise and tell them you are aware
that it goes on,

7. Go with your gut instinct, why is it that women often tell
their partners, be wary of him or her and they are later found
to be right. Men learn from this,

FINALLY

There are some good operators in agencies but from my experience
in the marketplace they are in the minority. So do your sums and
ask the questions.

Caveat Emptor, let the buyer beware.

Copyright of author Philip Lye

Perhaps one of the complaints I have with most internet
marketing sites is that they all have a typical look. They say
the same things with a similar font, highlighter and crazy
claims. It’s almost like there is some mediocre web designer
somewhere who is making a killing!

At the height of the first internet craze while business
fundamentals where tossed to the wind, companies where certainly
innovative. Ideas were the currency, and a great idea - long
before execution, could make you millions. It wasn’t ok to
simply have a site, you had to stand out. Sure they had more
sizzle than substance but now we have some stuff under the hood
but little “Wow!” factor.

I challenge you to step away from the computer, quite trying to
duplicate someone’s success story. It’s great to know that such
success is possible and the methods and best practices of those
who did it, but chart your own path! I bet a few readers would
rather lead the pack than simply join it.

With so many sites and tons of content, simply being another
site hoping to share a part of the money pot is - boring. If you
are going to put in the effort - why not do something
outstanding. Let me take a few steps back. It’s important to
take baby steps when you are starting, and those steps may not
be innovative or ground breaking, but let your vision be out of
this world.

Walt Disney was very non-traditional in his thinking. Many
business geniuses are ridiculed early in their carets. The press
doubted the potential of Disneyland - they called it “Disney’s
Folly”.

If you have a crazy idea that you dare to share - expect some
ridicule. Imagine telling family and friends that you are going
to start an internet business where you give everything away
free. That’s right, free. That’s what a small company called
Hotmail set out to do with their email platform. They were
first, they were free and these isn’t anyone reading this
article who doesn’t know someone with a Hotmail account or at
least heard of it. Hotmail understood what would be outstanding
in the late nineties. Take a service that people pay for,
improve upon it and give it away free. They sell ads on the
site, so many that Microsoft decided to get in the action and
rather than compete, simply bought them out and repackaged it as
we now know it.

The “find what people are paying for on the Internet and give it
away free” concept is still good, but to be wildly successful
you may need something more. What would that be? That’s the
million dollar question, rather if you come up with the answer
you may stand a chance of turning that idea into a few zeros!

Having said all this, you have to start somewhere - even better,
start with someone who has show some success, so find a mentor
who has shown some success, so find a mentor and learn the
ropes. Then jump in the ring with the intention of scoring a
knockout!

Affiliate program is the starting place for a big majority of home entrepreneurs and beginners in Internet Marketing, because of the small amount of work involved. There is some elements that you must absolutely look for before you start promoting an affiliate product…

Tip #1. Promote a unique product to get better results.

Promoting a product which is already being sold by hundreds or affiliates will not give you the same results as if you have a unique proposition. A different product that only some affiliates distribute. That kind of program is a little bit difficult to find because it is not in the interest of the merchant to do so in the short term.

Tip #2. Powerful and effective affiliates tools.

When you are ready to promote, you may be lost if you are new to affiliates marketing. Actually, most of the beginners take months to make their first sale, because the merchant doesn’t help them in their hard work. So be sure to find a powerful and clear affiliates resource section. That will skyrocket your chances of success. Also, a good communication with the merchant is hard to find, but it is a must.
Try to find these resources, or some of them.

Tip #3. Example of effective resources:

* Brandable ebooks to give away or sell at a little price with your own affiliate ID links to generate leads… and sales.
* Sales letters provided.
* Templates of the emails to send to your list(s), pre-writen email or even better.
* Free promotional tips provided, to make money without spending thousands in the beginning (a must for beginners)
* Advices and tips for paid promotional techniques (don’t loose all your money in something that don’t bring results).
* Redirect links through your own website. For example: www.yoursite.com/theaffiliatesite/
* Banners

Tip #4. Good Tracking software.

It is a very important part. You must be able to monitor almost everything in your resources section:
you must be able to track your sales, how many visitors came to your site and to the merchant site, by which page they enter to the merchant site(here is the importance of the redirect links).
You must be able to view your payment history, and also how many people signed up underneath you if it is a two tiers affiliate program.

Tip #5. Cookies plus IP addresses.

Today, it is a common practice by Internet users to clear their cookies daily or weekly. So if you spend money on PPC or any other paid advertising to get a customer, you do not want to see another affiliate get the commission you should have received. So try to choose an affiliate program with a tracking software which take also the IP address of your future customer. By the way, recurring commissions are a must.

Last but not least, try to find associate programs with generous compensation plan, and give a preference to the two tiers affiliates programs because you will be paid on two levels. Good promotion, and enjoy your affiliate life.

Franck Silvestre is a professional Internet Marketer.
Finally!Discover a Lifetime of Amazing Tips Secrets and Strategies, For Affiliates here: Affiliate Success.
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If you are interested in selling online, it is quite easy to get started. First of all you must have a product or service to sell. The product or service can either be yours or someone else’s. If
you decide to sell someone’s product in an affiliate program, try to know as much about the product as possible.

To get an idea of the type of product you are interested in selling online, you should think about what sort of things you are interested in buying. If you are interested in cars, you can
sell anything from model cars to books on cars. You can even provide information on applying for car loans. If you choose a great enough product or service, you can find many ways to sell this product and would be only limited by your imagination.

After you have chosen a product you must create a website. If you have knowledge of website design, you can have your website up and running in a few hours, or less if you purchase and use pre-formatted website templates.. However, if you have no idea what to do to even get started with creating a website, you should hire someone to do this for you.

Depending on the city you live in, there will be local computer stores available that offer website design and hosting. Or if you have a family member or a friend that sells online, you can ask them to recommend someone to you. Your website is important because it will be the first thing your customers see before they buy what you are selling. If you retain the services of a design company, make sure you buy a web hosting package with enough storage and bandwidth to handle the traffic you will have. You can ask for feedback from other webmasters who have used the same design company or for feedback on ways to improve your website. Being able to allow customers to pay online and providing
customer support is essential as well.

When you have gotten your website uploaded, now is the time to market your website. This part is crucial to the success of your business. You are unable to sell online if no one visits your website. You can market your website through a number of ways. For example, placing ads in classified sections both offline and online. As well, you can make brochures and hand out business cards. Also using banner and link exchanges with other high traffic sites can provide quality traffic and increase your business.

Until The Next Time,

Dr. J. Elisha Burke

Copyright 2005 Burke Publications All Rights Reserved

Dr. J. Elisha Burke, an educator
and entrepreneur, has been involved in various business enterprises via his
business, Burke Publications for 11 years.
Dr. Burke is an educator, writer and motivational speaker on a variety
of topics. He is also known for his
expertise on nonprofit organizations and grant proposal writing. Dr. Burke can
be contacted at http://burkepublications.com
at http://news.burkepublications.com or jeb@burkepublications.com