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There are already a lot of people using affiliate marketing as their way to
make money on the Internet. The challenge is to out do the other
affiliate’s marketing efforts and make that affiliate commission for
yourself!

It is a proven fact; giving your customers something they can actually see
and hear can explode your online sales instantly. What better way to
“wow” your prospects than to record and publish top notch, full motion,
promotional or screen-capture tutorial video?

The finished screen capture tutorial video is like having your customers
seated next to you and looking at your desktop, as you show them how
the product you are recommending looks, works, and / or includes.

The finished promotional video is like having your own personal
salesperson right there on your web page pointing out all of the benefits of
the recommended product and why the viewer should buy it right now.

After watching your videos your customers will be pre-sold on purchasing
your recommended product right then and there!

The best part is that you don’t need to have training or special education to be
able to use Camtasia as part of your affiliate marketing program. Anyone
can easily create stunning videos, such as multimedia sales presentations,
live tutorials, and step-by-step presentations with this easy to use
software.

Read on to find out how you too can use Camtasia to shoot your affiliate
commissions through the roof!

1. Camtasia can record your desktop activity in a single click. What better
way to show how the product you are recommending will benefit your
visitor than by showing them what it can do?

There is now no need to have a hundred screen shots and write out long
product descriptions or how-tos since you can show your recommended
product live in action.

You can also give a preview of your recommended products contents if it
is an informational product to entice your visitor to follow your affiliate
link to the product’s sales page.

2. Camtasia can easily convert your affiliate promotional videos into web
pages. Once the web page including your video is published send your
potential referral customers to the newly created page.

You want to get their information before sending them off to your
affiliate product’s sales page so you know who they are. A good way to
accomplish this is to offer additional information or something free
relating to the same topic.

However, your visitor can only have the freebie by filling out a
subscription form on the page. This is commonly called a “squeeze page”
and is one of the best uses for your Camtasia video web page.

Once you have their email address and name send them the freebie’s
download link in the autoresponder’s first message. Don’t use the thank
you page because you want to make sure they confirm their subscription
before you give them the goodie.

VERY important!
Don’t forget to make sure your affiliate links are in the freebie’s content so
you get a commission when they go to the product’s sales page. Make
sure that the links in the freebie can’t be changed or you will lose that
commission in a flash!

Using a sign up form and a freebie to build a list is also an excellent way
to get followup comissions from the same visitors by offering more
products to them on the same topic by additional follow-up email.

TECHIE TERI BONUS TIP:
Add links to additional products or affiliate products on the same topic on
the thank you, confirmation, freebie download pages AND in the
autoresponder messages!

3. Publish your affiliate videos through your blogs, including your RSS
feeds and podcasts. Also upload your videos to video sharing communities
like YouTube and Google Video. Your Camtasia videos will quickly get
around and reach out to people that who are potential customers.

Being visible on many web sites, advertising yourself, and getting your
product recommendations through to potential purchasers who will use
your affiliate link is what affiliate marketing is all about.

4. Multimedia presentations are proven to increase sales, or in your case
referrals. When all the senses are engaged a viewer remembers up to 80%
of what they see and hear. This is a much higher retention rate than can
be achieved by using written content alone.

You want your visitor to remember all of the great benefits you show
them when they continue on to the product’s sales page in case the sales
page doesn’t itself have video.

Video also has the tendency to reduce skepticism among hard-to-please
customers. You can answer those mental questions your potential buyer
has, like quality, guarantee, and benefits questions, by showing the
answers in the video tour of your affiliate products.

Both of these will increase the purchase rate even though the video isn’t
even on the actual sales page!

5. Promote affiliate products and services using visual presentations
without squeeze pages. Redirect your viewers straight to your affiliate
web site after they are finished with the video for more information.

You can do this by either including your squeeze page’s web url on the
last screen (Image) of the presentation, or by using Camtasia’s ability to
render your video into a flash presentation. When you use a flash video
format turn the “Redirect after video” setting to “ON” and then your
viewer will automatically go to your squeeze (Or other) page without
having to do anything.

If you are sending the viewer straight to the sales page for the affiliate
product you are promoting don’t forget to use your affiliate link as the re-
direct link and not just the sales page link or you won’t make any
commission!

6. Publish infoproducts that you can give as a bonus for purchasers of a
product through your affiliate link. Audio and video products are much
more valuable than text only products.

If the product you are promoting is an ebook or software and has no
multimedia component, create a video on the same topic and give it away
as a bonus - but only for those who purchase from YOUR
recommendation or referral.

This is also a good way to get your referral’s information if you haven’t
captured it already. Use a form to have purchasers of your recommended
product request their multimendia bonus.

Make sure to include a place on the form for them to include their receipt
number or a text area to copy and paste their receipt into for your
confirmation of their purchase.

Remember, this method is only effective if only the people who purchase
through you are getting the bonus.

7. Minimize miscommunication with your potential referral customers by
instantly showing visitors what to do next. Add video to your squeeze
pages to show your referrals who are opting in for your free branded gift
or additional information how to fill out the sign up form.

You can also add video to your freebie download pages showing how to
download and save your (Affiliate branded) products and to thank you
pages with sign up confirmation instructions.

These are just some of the things you can do with Camtasia to out-sell
your competitors, impress your visitors, and increase the amount of
affiliate commission you make promoting your chosen affiliate programs.

I am sure by using your imagination you can come up with many more
ways to use Camtasia to increase your affiliate marketing commissions.

What are you waiting for - give it a try right now!

Techie Teri

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 Affiliate Marketing - 15 Questions to Ask Before Signing Up!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Part three…

11. What is the Business’s Sales Page’s Conversion Percent?

Know the average amount of sales (Or sign ups) per visitor they have. This will tell you how much traffic you must generate before you can earn a commission from the sale.

If it takes 100 visitors to make a sale (1 conversion) then you have to send 500 people on average to the sales page to make 5 sales.

If there is a 10% conversion rate then you only have to send 50 people to the sales page to make the same number of sales.

You don’t want to promote a bad sales page for a pay per sale affiliate program. Why advertise for an affiliate program that doesn’t convert visitors into buyers once the referral has reached the sales page! You are wasting your time and your valuable advertising space and not making any money to boot!

12. What is the Percentage Rate of Refunds and Cancellations?

It doesn’t do you any good to make a sale if the product or customer service is inferior and the refund or cancellation percent is high. In my opinion 2-3% is great, 5-9% is iffy and 10% or higher probably not a product you want to be recommending.

There is one exception and that is membership sites. Almost all subscribers eventually cancel their subscription. In this case, you want to know the average number of months a subscriber stays signed up to the site. Six months or so is good, eight months to a year is great, and more than a year is awesome!

13. How Long After a Sale is the Sale Considered One That Will Earn You a Commission?

Usually you can just look on the sales page to find this out. The length of the warranty, or guarantee, is usually the amount of time that has to pass without a refund request that has to pass before your referral is considered a sale.

Some companies will pay you right away for all of your sales - usually the month after a sale - and then refund back the commission if a cancellation is paid to a customer. For these Affiliate programs you really need to keep track of what your “real” commission will be after refunds are taken out of your
current commission amount.

Some companies don’t pay you your commission until the sale is considered final. In that case, you need to keep track of your sales and then compare that number with the number of sales credited to you the month the sale is counted as an earned commission.

Keep this in mind when promoting a product. If you need money next month, don’t promote a program with a 90 day guarantee! You won’t get paid for 120 days - 90 days until the sale is good, and another month until you receive payment for the sale.

NOTE: ALL product sales that use PayPal cannot have longer than a 90 day guarantee as of the writing of this article.

Either way, it is up to the affiliate program to make sure their system runs as smoothly and accurately as possible, but it is up to YOU to keep track of YOUR money!

14. Are You Competing Against the Products Owners for Sales?

Is the owner of the product you are promoting advertising the product too? If the company has a huge advertising program, then you may not ever make enough sales through your efforts to make joining the affiliate program worth your while. If they are listed number one in Google and you are on page 500… who do you think will get more sales?

However, if the company rotates or divides their referrals, and by that I mean referrals created by means other than their affiliate’s promotions, then you could find that the program is in your favor.

Especially if the program is a 2 tier program. You have a great chance of getting a “Super” affiliate credited to you even if they didn’t sign up through your ads. You could make a ton of commissions just from your sub-affiliate’s sales!

15. How Much Does the Product Cost?

Do you really want to put all of you advertising effort behind a $5 product? Think about this… it only takes 1 product that costs $1000 at 50% commission to make $500, but it takes 200 sales of a $5 product to make $500!

Which would you rather do?

These are the important questions that need to be answered before you sign up for an affiliate program. Don’t make rash decisions or sign up without knowing all of the affiliate program’s details and waste your time, effort, and possibly even your motivation to be an affiliate promoter!

Good luck and good sales!

“Techie” Teri
“Use What You Learn to Increase What You Earn!”

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Continuing the article “Joining an Affiliate Program - 15 Important Questions to Ask Yourself First!”

Here are the affiliate marketing programs research questions 5-10…

6. How are Your Referrals Tracked?

You need to be confident enough in the program to track the people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you can get credit for a sale. If the affiliate program’s system misses referrals, or the sales page goes down a lot, or has problems, then you won’t get paid for your sales. This is not a
good thing.

7. What Kinds of Affiliate Statistics Available?

Your choice of affiliate program should be capable of offering detailed stats. They should be available online anytime you decide to check them out. Constantly checking your individual stats is important to know how many impressions, hits, and sales are already generated from your site.

Remember, impressions are the number of times the banner or text link was viewed by a visitor of your site. Each hit is one click on the banner or text links by a visitor to your site.

8. How Long Do Your Referrals Remain in the Affiliate Program’s System?

The period of time that those people stay in the system is also important. This is because some visitors do not buy initially but may want to return later to make the purchase. A visitor is credited to you as a referral by the affiliate program placing a “cookie” on the visitor’s computer.

A cookie is just a small text file that tells the sales page that the customer has been there before, how long ago they were there, and if anyone referred them to the page, and who that affiliate is.

Know if you will still get credit for the sale if the purchase is made some months from the original day you referred the client to the sales page. If so, how many months you will still get credit?

Some programs only pay the first time the customer visits, some pay if the sale is within 30 days of a customers initial visit, and some affiliate programs will pay you as much as 10 years after the customer’s first visit!

That is a big difference and you need to be aware of how long you will still be credited with a purchase made by a customer you referred.

In addition, some affiliate programs will only pay if you are the last person to refer the customer to the sales page. If for example, a customer goes to the sales page from your site (or link) but doesn’t buy at that time, then returns a second time to the sales page but not through your original (Or a 2nd) recommendation but by a second affiliate’s link, you may not get paid even though you were the initial referrer.

9. When are Commission Checks Issued?

Every program is different. Some issue their checks once a month, every quarter, etc. Select the one that is suited to your cash flow needs. If you can’t wait 90 days to get your first check, you may want to look at a program that pays every 30 days instead of every 90 days.

Many affiliate programs are setting a minimum earned commission amount that an affiliate must meet or exceed in order for their checks to be issued. If you are able to change the minimum amount to what you need, then don’t worry about that restriction.

If not, and you need to get paid say, every 30 days as mentioned in the above example, you better make sure you can earn that set minimum amount promoting the affiliate program’s products so you
can get paid on a monthly basis.

You also want to check if the affiliate program is set up to only issue a payment check when you submit a request to be paid. Some companies will do this knowing that a certain percentage
of affiliates will forget to ask for their commissions since most systems are set up to auto pay their affiliates without the affiliate doing anything extra.

First you have to decide if a company that thinks that way is one you want to work for, and secondly you have to decide if that type of system will work for you. If it does, don’t forget to set up some sort of reminder so you don’t forget to request your affiliate earnings.

Believe it or not, I have heard stories first hand, about some affiliate marketers make so much money they lose track of who they advertised for, who owes them money, how much they are owed, and even forget to request the affiliate program manager to send their check! Don’t you wish that was your main problem!?

10. How is Your Commission Sent to You?

Are you going to get a check, a payment through PayPal or other online money system, or an electronic payment directly to your bank account?

If the company pays with PayPal but you don’t have a PayPal (Or other online money account) this could be a problem. If you already have a PayPal account or get one, make sure you set up
your account information in the affiliates area or you won’t get paid. Payments by PayPal are delivered immediately to your PayPal account.

However, don’t forget that systems like PayPal charge a fee per transaction, so you actually lose a little bit or a lot of money, depending on the amount of your commission, every time you get paid!

Electronic transfers are usually free, quick, and unlike a check can’t get lost in the mail. Again, make sure to enter your bank information in your affiliate area so you can receive your payment.

If you elect to get paid by check, most companies will charge a small service fee to cover the cost of mailing your check, paying someone to write out the check, and any other costs associated with having to “Use Paper”. Again, just like with PayPal you are going to lose some of your affiliate commission to fees.

NOTE: ClickBank and PayDotCom.com are two programs that pay by check as the default type of affiliate commission payment.

Affiliate marketing can be an important part of your Internet marketing strategy. It is important to know you have selected the correct affiliate program for both you and your visitors.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of “Affiliate Marketing 4: Joining an Affiliate Program - 15 Important Questions to Ask Yourself First! Pt. 2″

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