Affiliate Program Articles
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19-Year-Old College Student, Earning Extra Income from Home GotDot.com profiles Samantha Morris a 19 year old business major at the University of Victoria in Canada, who’s earning extra income for college saying goodbye to the starving student days. Going hungry as a student is practically synonymous with the college experience. Many students live in cramped quarters, cutting mold off cheese and eating it with day old bread the coffee shop gave away, feeling lucky at discovering an uneaten Snickers Bar, calling it a meal, which sure beats the packaged macaroni and cheese, which has been the only staple in the cabinet for months. It gets so bad some students sell their blood just to pay for classes and books. Samantha’s not starving. As fellow students like to say, “She’s been there, done that,” proving to be quite a role model too. In the past this gal worked part time jobs. The money barely paid for books, let alone the apartment, food and college tuition. Like many college kids Samantha surfed the Internet, instead of finding the latest rock and roll song she discovered a way to end her starving college days for good. She found affiliate marketing, earning extra income from home, on her hours, around school work, and an active social life. As Samantha says, “No more going hungry before class, thanks to affiliate marketing I have enough money for living expenses and school and I’m saying money too. Maybe I’ll study in Europe. Anything is possible now.” Samantha mentions that most students aren’t prepared for the future. In the class room the learning is passive. Samantha says, “With affiliate marketing, its active learning and real world experience. And experience is everything.” Samantha’s learning marketing, finance, design, and the sweet joy of financial independence at a young age. Sometimes it’s the young ones that show the way. Anyone can make a success with affiliate marketing. Listen to Samantha’s story and you’ll learn how. What is affiliate marketing? By now most people have heard all about the success of Amazon.com. What they may not know is that Amazon spawned an Internet industry in 1996, by allowing independent website owners to earn commissions by referring paying customers to them. This is known as pay-for-performance-advertising or affiliate programs. With affiliate marketing it’s important to remember, that there are three primary roles consisting of the merchant, the affiliate (publisher) and the third party (Commission Junction). The merchants (advertisers) pay a commission on sales generated by customers, which the affiliate (publisher) sends to their sites. Commission Junction (third party) pays affiliates on behalf of the merchants and provides a tracking system. The merchant handles all order processing, shipping, and customer service. Visit Commission Junction, to see a partial listing of their top-notch merchants offering affiliate programs. How Samantha got started in affiliate marketing Samantha’s says with the enthusiasm and bubble of youth, “It’s cause of Jamie.” She’s referring to her mentor, James Martell, an entrepreneur, and successful affiliate marketer of over 70 specialty shopping sites and author of James Martell’s Affiliate Marketers Handbook. Samantha says, “Jamie’s system is very straight forward, it’s inspiring, really gives you confidence, that you can have financial independence on your terms, not the bosses.” Got Dot: How did you choose your market niche? Samantha says, “Oh! That was easy. My friends love decking out their cars, I know the lingo and how fanatical it can get. And it’s great, a real money maker! Down the road I’d like to have a fashion and cosmetic site, that one will be more girly of course.” Each website Samantha builds follows the proven, 8-step system™ developed by James Martell for web site construction. These principals are incorporated into Samantha’s successful specialty shopping sites. Keywords are the search engine building blocks. Marketing on the Internet is all about placement and being seen. To be successful you need keywords that people use for queries on the search engines. That’s how your site will be found. James provides a proven formula for choosing keywords and producing keyword focused content. Got-Dot: How did you discover that Ground Effects are associated with cars? Samantha says, “That one surprised me. It didn’t sound like a car accessory word at all, but on key word tracking it proved otherwise. The buyers know it’s specifically about cars. Just, goes to show you, you should never assume you know a market really well, before researching the key words.” Got Dot: Can you give another example how this keyword driven content works? Samantha says, “Type ’Honda body kits’ as a query on a search engine. What you’ll find is an article on my website with the exact keyword ‘Honda body kits’. By following Jamie’s system you get top positioning on the search engines and the traffic to prove it!” Got Dot: How do you measure the success of your efforts? You need traffic and conversion to make affiliate marketing work and to make money. With Commission Junction’s tracking system you can check merchant activity, monitor which site is getting sales, and where the sales are coming from. Say for example, if a keyword isn’t driving the orders, you know where to tweak it, so it can perform like the high rollers. Got Dot: How about the money? Initially, Samantha set a goal of earning the equivalent of her part time job working at a grocery store. Now she’s making enough money to pay for tuition, books, and living expenses. And the University of Victoria is not cheap! Her next major goal is earning $10,000/month. Got Dot: What’s your favorite part of the business? Samantha likes writing the articles and the visual aspect of building a website, making sure the colors are aesthetically pleasing. When asked what else is there, she laughed and coyly said, “Watching the money roll in.” Got Dot: What advice would you give another student?
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