Staying organized as an online marketer is something that many people have difficulty with. If you think about it, the reason that so many people decide to start their own internet marketing business is because they have had it with the “rules” and demands of working outside of the home on someone else’s schedule. It might seem counterintuitive to have to set your business up in an organized fashion, but it is definitely the right thing to do for a few reasons.

For one thing, you want to make as much money as possible. This will help to ensure your stability and make it so that you never have to work for anyone else again. If you are unorganized, you’re sadly destined for failure, in most cases.

That’s because you won’t be keeping proper track of your promotions, conversions, etc. You might even become overwhelmed with your business because you can’t figure out what you’ve already done and what you still have yet to do. It’s like that old saying goes; “failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Getting and staying organized is a huge part of becoming a more successful Internet marketer. The first step in doing this is to create file of each of your campaigns on your computer. Save every piece of information you can in these individual file folders. That includes all of the information for your hosting, domain names, affiliate networks and campaigns, as well as your promotional efforts. Keep note of where your backlinking efforts are coming from and save copies of every article you write — all in the individual promotion folders.

It’s also very important that you regularly back up your websites and other information. Having a backup outside of your computer is essential. They have web based versions these days that can make your life a lot easier.

By organizing this information, you are insuring your business, in a way. If anything happens (say, your hosting company goes kaput or an article directory suddenly loses all of your articles), you’re not out much because you can get up and running again nearly right away.

You are also going to be able to make more money if you stay organized! That’s because you can investigate your numbers more easily and know which pages, sites, or campaigns you need to promote more heavily in order to make sales. You’ll know where these sales are coming from so you can make even more of them!

Different types of organizational methods work for different people. You’ll be good to go as long as you have some kind of system in place. Develop a business plan and way of keeping track of all the data and files associated with your affiliate marketing, and you’ll find that you can become a lot more successful.

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As an affiliate marketer, you’ll want to become intimately familiar with numbers of all kinds. These numbers will tell you a great deal! They’ll tell you how successful your campaigns are, what you need to do to improve their success, and what is hindering your success or just plain not working. It’s important to pay as much attention as possible to these numbers since your goal is to make more money as an affiliate marketer.

You’ll find these telling numbers in a variety of places. Your basic web stats can be found in your cPanel and in the backend of the affiliate network you are promoting. Find Awstats in your cPanel. This will tell you what search terms you are being found for in the search engines. You’ll also be able to see how many visitors you are getting per day and per month. It will also tell you how often the search engines are visiting your site — a telling sign that can affect rankings.

If you want more detailed stats, you’ll do well to join a service like Google Analytics. This is completely free, and will give you access to many numbers that tell you how well your site is doing in the search engines. It will also clue you in to various aspects of your visitors’ behavior. All of this data can help you build up your website and focus on what is working for you.

In addition to knowing information about your visitors, you’ll want to pay careful attention to your conversion data as well. This number tells you how many people take the desired action (usually, making a purchase) versus how many people land on your website. You can find some generally detailed information in the backend of your affiliate network, in most cases. The biggest affiliate networks like Clickbank, Amazon, eBay, and others give you many numbers to work with in regards to improving your campaigns.

As was mentioned earlier, you can add tracking tags to your affiliate links to drill down into what pages and types of promotions are making the most sales. Use this information to ramp up your efforts in certain areas, and lessen your efforts in others areas.

The reason for doing all of this is simple — if you don’t pay attention to the numbers, then you’ll never know how well you are really doing! It’s not enough to just slap some affiliate links up on a website, you need to track them to know how well your efforts are going. You need to know your traffic numbers as well. All of this information put together will help to make you a better marketer all around.
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Setting up joint ventures (JV’s) is a great way to enhance your affiliate marketing! Internet marketers frequently come out with new products. They are generally happy to set up exclusive partnerships — that is where you come in! (Note: the JV’s discussed here are usually based around digital products rather than physical ones).

Hopefully, you have been spending time building your niche list. You can use this list as an enticement for product owners to JV with you. You have something they want — a fresh, targeted audience that can lead to many more sales.

You might be wondering what the difference between a joint venture and regular affiliate marketing is. Sometimes there is a fine line, but JV’s are usually arrangements made specifically between you and the product owner. You will generally get first access to promoting the product as well as increased commissions. It can be a very lucrative deal!

There are many different avenues where you might find the opportunity to JV. The best way to do this is to make contacts in your niche. Make it known that you have a list in this niche and that you are a “heavy hitter.” That way, people will think to come to you when they want to promote a new product. There are also certain forums set up with the sole purpose of connecting joint venture partners together. These are particularly prevalent in the internet marketing niche.

You might even find that as your expertise and reach in a niche is established, that people regularly seek you out to promote their products as a special JV partner. Be sure to be very organized about what you do and do not promote. Remember that you want the people in your niche to trust and buy from you, so you need to evaluate each product you will be recommending.

Keep in mind that the JV is all about the relationship! You want your relationship with other product owners and affiliate marketers to be good — especially if they have a far reach in your niche. That’s because you may want to have them promote your own product in the future. If you have already promoted one of theirs successfully, the chances of even the busiest marketers promoting your product will be greatly increased.

The world of Joint Venture partnerships can be very exciting. Whereas your own affiliate marketing efforts through the standard network might be quite powerful, imagine what will happen when you are able to strike up special partnerships with the most respected people in your niche!



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Whether you plan on creating your own product or promoting one as an affiliate, you have to have a deep understanding of the audience you are trying to sell to. If you don’t have an understanding, your promotions will be a lot less effective than they would be otherwise. Surveying your audience is one of the best ways to improve your marketing efforts, make more money, and help people at the same time!

There are a variety of different ways you can survey your audience. Most logically, you can set up an actual survey! SurveyMonkey.com is very commonly used. You set up your own survey to ask your audience questions about what they are going through, and what would help them. Ask them what they are passionate about and why.

You want to get as deeply into their minds as possible — you want to find out where their pain is so you can market to emotions and offer them the solutions they are desperate for. This works best if you already have a steady stream of traffic coming into your website. Alternatively, you can set up a Pay Per Click campaign that entices people to take your survey after they click through to your site.

Of course, you have to consider that people are very busy these days. You can thank people for their time in a variety of ways. For example, giving them a free gift upon completion.

After you have a large enough pool of people you have surveyed, you can examine the date and make changes to your marketing from there. This works well for creating a product because you’ll be able to match the product with everything your survey revealed and more!

You can also do less formal surveys through market research. For instance, you can browse through niche forums where people in your niche regularly hang out. Take notes on what drives them. Examine what language they use to talk to one another and as they talk about their hobby, passion, or problem. Go deeply into their minds by examining topics that frequently come up (you can usually sort forums by threads that are most read or most replied to).

While this is not a “survey” per se, it’s still a good option for getting to the heart of the people in your niche if you don’t have the desire or time to set up a formal survey right now. Researching on forums is an awesome way to improve your affiliate sales or sales of your own product because it can give you a wealth of ideas and insight into the people of your niche in a way that you would not be able to get otherwise.

It’s very important that you start to survey your audience as soon as possible, because it can give you some insights you would never have gotten otherwise.



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As an affiliate marketer, it is absolutely important for you to really get into the mind of your niche. You need to know what they talk about, how they talk about it, what they are most concerned about, what type of products they want to buy. One of the best ways to do this is by visiting niche forums. This can also be a great way to get more traffic and sales and to establish your expertise. Understanding the different uses for forums is one of the best things you can do to improve your affiliate sales.

If you’re trying to research and get to know the people in your niche, you will want to join the most popular forums. Be sure to browse the top threads in the forum, as well as the recent ones that are getting a lot of responses. Immerse yourself into this niche several times per week so you are able to become a better affiliate marketer in this niche.

As you start to gain your confidence, you may want to start posting and answering questions as well. Since you’ve been doing so much research and work in this niche, the chances are good that you can answer at least the most basic of questions. This serves a good purpose because you’ll be able to start establishing yourself as an expert in the niche. The more people get to know you, the more comfortable they will be seeing what else you have to offer.

That is when you want to start offering something in your signature file. Be very careful to pay close attention to the rules of the forum you are participating in. Some of them allow you to use blatant affiliate links, others only allow you to link to personal websites, still others restrict commercial advertisement of any sort. Pay attention to how the other members act and what they do and position yourself accordingly.

Also, be sure to insert your site’s information in your profile link for that website. As people start to see you posting more with high-quality posts, they will want to learn more about you. When they visit your profile, information should be ready and waiting for them to hop on over to your website to join your list or read what you have to offer.

Note that there is usually more than one popular forum per niche. You don’t need to spend a lot of time on these forums, but you do want to expand your reach as much as possible. By joining all the most popular forms you will really be covering all of your bases.

Your list will grow larger, you can do some awesome research, you can establish yourself as an expert, you can drive traffic to your website, get backlinks to your website, and make more affiliate sales all around! The forums are definitely a great option for you as an affiliate marketer.