Hello!

Alan Allard here?

You have my respect for taking action to learn how to improve your overall health. You can discover and learn how to do just that?change and improve your health?and enjoy the new levels of energy and vitality that will simply come your way.

You might want to know why I believe you are capable of changing and improving your health, regardless of the past. I am a former psychotherapist, now in private practice coaching others for rapid personal change, accelerated performance enhancement, and creating and nurturing outstanding levels of well-being. I am also the founder of GeniusDynamics, a Training and Coaching firm that specializes in accelerating the process of reaching levels of "unconscious competency," what many call "being in the zone." And, as I have worked one on one with clients for over twenty- two years now, I have identified seven keys that can and will improve your health and energy.

The seven keys that I share with you are not meant to be understood in a literal, "This is the most important key, and this is the second most important key," manner, or practiced in a linear fashion. Rather, these are dynamic principles, beliefs, values, behaviors, etc that work together simultaneously and synergistically.

With that said, here are the seven keys!

Health And Energy Key # 1:

Begin With A Well-Formed Outcome

Simply put, your brain and your mind (conscious and unconscious) are "outcome focused," by nature. You will always be using your brain and your mind to be moving toward an end target, a goal, a desired outcome?so choose each one wisely.

Now, when you think of something, anything, such as your health, keep your mind on what you desire, and off of what you do not desire. And the key to keeping your mind off of what you do not desire is to?keep it on what you do desire! Period. See, hear and feel that which reflects what you desire. If you get off track, away from what you desire, to what you do not desire, simply bring your mind (your pictures, sounds and feelings-more on this later) back to what you desire.

Some individuals might find it challenging at times to craft a well-formed outcome because of conflicting beliefs that need to be "cleaned up." More on that later.

Health And Energy Key # 2:

Create and Maintain A Useful State

You are always creating and entering into, and operating out of, a "state?" a mental, emotional, spiritual, physical state. You have no doubt heard someone say, "I am in a really good mood." Or, "She is in a really good frame of mind today!" When I use the word "state," I am describing what is going on with you on mental, emotional, spiritual and physical levels?your total being.

Now, if you get anything out of this article, get this, and you will be ahead of the game: Never plan your future, or begin to solve a problem, or do anything, without first ensuring that you are in a useful, appropriate state for the outcome you are going for. Period.

Remember at time when you were in a conflict with someone you love, perhaps even with yourself! Did it help matters if you were in a less than useful state? By "less than useful state" I mean, one that is composed of, say, impatience, irritability, cynicism, lack of empathy, "I want to be right," etc? What might have been the difference if instead, you had created and entered into a state that is composed of perhaps patience, caring about the best interest of the other person, curiosity, flexibility, creativity, genuine self-regard, etc?

Now, this article cannot fully coach you how to do that. You might want to have one individual coaching session to learn how to easily do what I am describing. You can also practice doing the following so you can enjoy learning how to create a useful state for yourself.: Imagine that your desired outcome is to persuade someone to your point of view on a matter. Now, remember a time when you communicated very effectively and got your outcome of someone being persuaded to your perspective. Imagine seeing a movie of that experience, and then "step into" the movie you are watching, and relive that experience for 30 seconds or more.

Now, step out of that movie, and remember a time when you were communicating with someone and you were very patient with that person, taking the time to really hear them out and to understand them on a superb level. Make a movie of that, and step into that! Then step out of it and remember a time when you were communicating with someone or a group of people and you demonstrated great flexibility to the point of reaching your outcome! Whatever "obstacle" came up, you were flexible in responding resourcefully to it. Now step into that movie?

You get the idea, right? This is one easy way to build a useful state for reaching any desired outcome.

Again, always make sure that you are in a useful state, one that is appropriate for easily and enjoyable reaching your desired outcome.

Health And Energy Key # 3:

Invest Yourself In Healthy And Rewarding Relationships

The people that you surround yourself with, those you let into your space, will affect you on all levels. It is as simple as that. Choose wisely. Perhaps it is time for you to let go of some relationships and to begin some new relationships. You are not doing anyone a favor by allowing them to adversely affect you over a period of time. That is not love, it is something else.

Know what you want from your relationships. Learn how to communicate with those around you, especially your loved ones, in such a manner that you effectively enhance the quality of your relationships, for all concerned. Learn to master the states you are in! When it comes to powerfully effective communication, the state you are in will be paramount. In your communication, be clear and be effective. Communicating effectively with yourself and others is the greatest single skill you can learn and develop. Invest your time, money and energy in doing so and you will be rewarded beyond what you are capable of currently imagining.

Health And Energy Key # 4:

Be Flexible

"Flexibility is the key!" The key to what? The key to achieving your outcome, the key to persuasive communication, the key to rewarding relationships. Flexibility is being able to do something different if what you are doing is not getting you the results you desire. Flexibility will get you to where you want to go with your health and energy. If what you have been doing has not gotten you the health and energy you want yet, do something else! You might be aware that there is no one "diet" or exercise program that is useful for everybody. You can find and use what will work for you?for now. And you can be flexible and change what you are doing as you find what works even better for you, moment by moment.

Health And Energy Key # 5:

Place Your "Health And Energy" As One Of Your Top "Life Values"

Tragically, "health and energy" is rarely a top value with most people. And I say "tragically" because of the fact that your values will drive your behaviors, and your behaviors will drive the results you create. So, it follows, that to engage in healthier behaviors, you will need to make sure that your health and energy is one of your top values. If you want to learn how to easily change your values, to actually choose which ones you want to drive your behaviors, you can do so in one coaching session. You will then have the ability and the tools to prioritize your values as you move through life. Remembering that your values will drive your behaviors. What is that worth?

Health And Energy Key #6:

Personal Congruency

"Congruency" is when your beliefs, values, behaviors, emotions and states are all lined up? and going in the same direction! You can easily understand how important this is. If for example, on one hand, you believe that you can greatly improve your health and energy, and on the other hand, you believe that doing so is not really possible, or that it would be quite difficult and unpleasant?well you can see the conflict, and you probably would feel the conflict as well. The stress that these two conflicting beliefs generate is unnecessary and can be eliminated with the appropriate tools and skill set.

Much energy is dissipated because of incongruent values and beliefs, not to mention incongruent behaviors! And when you learn how to "clean things up" and develop more congruency, you will immediately enjoy the results in your health and energy. Doing so is worth your investment, whatever that might be for you.

Health And Energy Key #7:

Design Your Life With Wisdom

And what is wisdom? It is contemplating and understanding the consequences of your choices and behaviors, not just for the immediate future, but for the distant future as well!

Now, my experience as a psychotherapist and Life and Business Coach has taught me that consistent improvement is more reliable than the so called overnight successes that you hear about from time to time.

Your health and energy?your overall well being, are all worth your patience! Because it is far better to take small and incremental steps into increased vigor, health and energy, than to take on too much, too soon. Your body and mind will thank you for exercising wisdom. An effective personal trainer said in an interview that "Most people try to do too much, too soon, get discouraged and then throw in the towel."

It can be different for you. Be flexible enough to find out what works for you, in what increments, and then move forward with patience. Your patience and persistence will take you to your desired outcome of greater health and energy. Period. Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? Enough said. And if it isn’t? remember that Rome was not built in a day. Or a month for that matter. And yet progress began with the first action taken, and continued with each step after that. Each step brings more of what was desired.

An Easier And Enjoyable Way To Learn The Seven Keys:

Now that you have the Seven Keys To Improving Your Health And Energy?Now!?use them… experiment with them. If you desire some assistance beyond this article, give Alan Allard a call or drop him an e-mail by calling 630-355-2111 or emailing at: alan@geniusdynamics.com. His coaching experience can make it easier for you to implement the Seven Keys For Improving Your Health And Energy… Now! Drop Alan an e-mail or call him and let him know what you thought of this article and what is on your mind. He would love to hear from you.

Copyright 2003-2004, Alan Allard

Alan Allard is president of GeniusDynamics, offering life and business coaching. He is certified in Human Performance Engineering ™ and offers seminars and training as well as private coaching. Free Coaching e-Letter at: http://www.geniusdynamics.com

The gallbladder is a small pear-shaped organ that sits on the right side of our bodies just beneath the liver. Its primary function is to store and secrete bile. Bile is a yellow-brown fluid produced by the liver, which helps us digest fats. Our liver produces up to three cups of bile a day. Our gallbladder can store up to a cup of bile as it awaits a fatty meal.

When we eat, our gallbladder contracts and pushes bile into the small intestines where it helps with the digestion of fats. Bile is made up of water, cholesterol, fats, bile salts, proteins and bilirubin. Under certain conditions, substances in the bile, especially the cholesterol or bile pigment (bilirubin) can harden into stones ? gallstones.

Gallstones can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball. We can develop one large stone or a multitude of smaller ones. Many people with gallstones have no symptoms at all. Others go through life relatively symptom free, experiencing minor symptoms such as abdominal bloating, intolerance to fatty foods, belching, intestinal gas and indigestion. For others, however they may suffer what is called a gallstone "attack". Gallstone attacks often follow a fatty meal. Symptoms of an attack include steady, sever pain in the upper abdomen that can last from 30 minutes to several hours. Sufferers may also experience pain in the back between the shoulder blades or under the right shoulder. A gallstone attack is often accompanied by nausea or vomiting. If symptoms such as sweating, chills, a fever or a yellowish color to the skin or whites of the eyes occur, it is important to seek medical assistance.

There are a number of factors that increase your risk of having gallstones. Those at a higher risk include women, especially women who are pregnant, on hormone therapy or taking birth control pills, people over 60 years of age, Native and Mexican Americans, overweight individuals and individuals who fast or go on crash diets and lose a lot of weight quickly.

It is important to recognize that if the gallbladder is loaded with stones, there is very little room to store bile and fat digestion may become impaired. In turn, the unused bile can back up into the liver causing liver congestion. If this is the case, it is important to evaluate your liver’s health prior to cleansing on your gallbladder.

Recommendations For Wellness

The traditional treatment for gallstones is to have your gallbladder removed. There are, however, a number of things you can do to reduce your risk of producing gallstones or experiencing a gallstone attack.

• Reduce your consumption of saturated fats typically found in red meat and pork, while increasing the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables you consume.
• Start a diet and exercise program, but avoid crash dieting which can increase your risk of gallstones. Both diet and exercise can help you reduce your risk of producing gallstones.
• If you are taking birth control pills or are on hormone replacement therapy, speak with your doctor regarding your risk of forming stones or have them check your gallbladder for the presence of gallstones regularly.
• Studies indicate that coffee increase the flow of bile and may help to decrease the risk of gallstones. If you decide to add a little coffee to your health plan for this reason, make sure you only consume organically grown coffee beans.
• Supplement with vitamin C. Vitamin C is needed by the body to convert cholesterol to bile acids in the body.
• Lecithin has been shown to help break down and transport fat molecules and may help dissolve gallstones. Studies indicate that it is helpful in protecting us from gallstone formation.
• Safflowers can be used to thin body fluids as well as aid in the digestion of oils.
• Nature’s Sunshine Gall Bladder Formula can be used to help stimulate circulation, improve liver function & aid in the production of digestive fluids.
• Do a gallbladder flush. During a gallbladder flush, 1-2 cups of olive oil are consumed to simulate the gallbladder into releasing bile. This increased demand on the gallbladder to release bile works to push the stones out.
• If you think your liver is congested, or if you have been having minor symptoms of gallstones for a long period of time, it is important to support and cleanse your liver for a period of time before doing a gallbladder flush. Try taking herbs such as milk thistle, dandelion or a liver cleanse formula.

Dr. Rita Louise, Ph.D. is a Naturopathic Physician and a 20-year veteran in the Human Potential Field, but it is her unique gift as a medical intuitive and clairvoyant that illuminates and enlivens her work. Author of the books "Avoiding the Cosmic 2×4" and "The Power Within: A Psychic Healing Primer", her unique insights bridge the worlds of science, spirit and culture and are changing the way the world views physical, mental and emotional health.

To schedule a session and experience Dr. Louise in action, visit http://www.soulhealer.com or call 972-475-3393.

One of the most unanswered questions online today is, how to perform keyword research that gets free traffic from the search engines. Many SEO experts recommends using one keyword or keyword phrase per page, while others recommends using secondary keywords with your main keyword.

My philosophy is simple, you simply use both methods and check to see which method works best. You will also have to draw the line and recognize which is working best and continue with that method.

For me, I love to use one keyword phrase for review pages and for content pages I use secondary keywords with my main keyword, making the theme of that page much more search engine friendly. Our job is to please the spiders as well as our visitors.

My advice for newcomers is to build our first page using only a free tool such as GoodKeywords. I did the same with my first site, which ranked very highly for my choosen keyword phrases, due to the fact that the competition wasn’t very high and I also didn’t use the highly targeted keywords found in the search results.

Now, I must admit that I wanted to take my keyword research to higher heights and even discover a niche of my own with very little competition, and that is where free keyword research tools fails. They don’t supply enough data for you to analyze if your keywords are actually worth while or highly competitive.

That is where, wordtracker and KRA comes into play. Wordtracker is the number one keyword research tool online, has been for many years and still is. Those who generate five figure monthly commission checks with affiliate programs knows the importance of wordtracker and just can’t live without it.

KRA, is a tool by SEO expert Andy Williams that you can use to filter out secondary keywords and related phrases. If your into optimizing your pages for better search engines result, then I highly recommend you get yourself a copy.

You can reap the benefits of online keyword research by using these tools, and stop fiddling around with free tools. Free tools are for beginners who are testing the waters. It is now time for you to join the rank of professional marketers and stop hoping for success.

The best feeling you can get from your online marketing is when you make that first sale, and it doesn’t matter how big it is. Stop targeting the wrong keywords and start building much more profitable content pages that only the smart marketers are targeting.

My final words: If a keyword research tool is so good, then why would you create a tool with an import possibility for wordtracker data?

About the author:

Alexander Marlin, Ebenezer St. Maarten A.N. Has been actively marketing on the Internet for over 3 years. One of his many keyword research websites can be found at http://how-to-build-website.com/keyword-research.html

A vast majority of successful online entrepreneurs are affiliates of successful websites on the net. This is what has continuously attracted many people into joining the ranks of affiliates.

Still most of the folks involved in affiliate programs are unsuccessful and hardly earning anything from it. Here are some common mistakes made by most people joining affiliate programs. Anybody who can try and avoid them will have a higher chance of being successful as an online affiliate.

a) Expecting to do no work and still make money

This has to be the number one reason for failure amongst new affiliates. And the blame for his has to be shared by hype peddlers on the net who make wild claims to attract interest. This seems to be rather infectious because even promoters of some respected affiliate programs end up giving this impression to folks in their promotion material. Matters are made worse by the fact that really successful affiliates seem like they hardly get any work done, which may be true to a certain extent.

Let’s out the record straight. There is a lot of very hard work at the beginning if you want to be a successful affiliate. However, once you’ve gotten your business going, things become a lot easier and the amount of work you have to put in decreases dramatically.

It is like putting up a block of apartments. The initial work is killing but once the building is complete and you get tenants in, the work reduces substantially to just getting the rent collected.

b) Always looking for the better deal

Some affiliates spend most of their time looking for a better deal when it would be better spent promoting their current program. We all tend to procrastinate things as much as possible and there may be a tendency to do anything but not get on with the work. Resist it, stop looking for a better deal and get down to promoting you current program.

c) Joining a program where you do not earn money from affiliates you introduce

It is important that you ensure your program pays you for affiliates you introduce and not just for the business that you bring in yourself. This will impact on your future earnings and is a way of maximizing on all your efforts.

d) Joining programs where you do not have any interest or expertise.

It makes a lot of sense to start with what you know before you move to the unknown and unfamiliar territory. This is why the first affiliate programs that you join are very important, choose them carefully. Later when you start making something, you can get adventurous.

e) Not having your own independent website

Most good affiliate programs will provide you with your own site to help you promote the program. However successful affiliates usually have their own site which they use to promote their affiliate programs. There are several advantages of doing this. The most important is that you are able to build an opt-in email list from some of the visitors you will attract to your site. This list can be used again and again to promote your current affiliate program and others that you may join in the future.

Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways to earn a living online. Affiliate programs give everybody a chance to make a profit through the internet. Since these affiliate-marketing programs are relatively easy to join, implement and pays a commission on a regular basis, more and more people are now willing to join in this lucrative business.

However, there are also pitfalls in the Affiliate Marketing business. These common mistakes may cost affiliate marketers a large chunk of their profit everyday unless they are avoided or rectified. Here, we will enumerate the five most common mistakes that Affiliate Marketers make. We will also discuss how they can be avoided.

Mistake #1: Choosing the wrong affiliate products

Most people want to earn from affiliate marketing as soon as possible. In their haste to earn much in a short span of time, they tend to choose a bandwagon product; one that they think is a ‘hot’ item. They will choose a product that is in demand without considering if that product appeals to them. However, this is not a wise move.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, you should choose a product in which you are truly interested. For any venture to succeed, you should take the time to plan and map out your actions. Pick a product that appeals to you. Do some research about that product and determine if they are in demand. Choose a product that you will promote passionately.

Mistake #2: Joining too many affiliate programs

Since affiliate-marketing programs are so easy to join, you might find that you have nothing to lose if you join multiple affiliate programs. For many, this may seem a great option as it may provide you with multiple sources of income. However, joining multiple programs and attempting to promote them all at once may prevent you from giving the full attention that each of your programs deserve.

Thus, the maximum potential of your affiliate program will not be realized and the income produced will be disappointing. The best way to get excellent results is by joining one program that pays at least 40% commission. Then, give it your best effort by promoting it enthusiastically. As soon as it is making a reasonable profit then you can now join another program.

Mistake #3: Not buying the product or using the service

As an affiliate, your job is to promote a product or service effectively and convincingly and find customers. For you to effectively promote and recommend any product or service, you must be able to relay to the customers its benefits. One common mistake that affiliate marketers do is failing to try the product and service. Thus, they are not able to promote and recommend the product or service convincingly and fail to create a desire in the customer to buy or avail of the product or service.

Try the product or service personally, before you sign up as an affiliate and see if it delivers what it promises. If you are using the product or service personally then you can credibly promote its advantages and benefits. Your prospects will feel the sincerity in your copy and will likely purchase.

Mistake #4: Signing up for low-paying commissions

Although affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make some profit online, not all affiliate programs pay high commissions. There are programs that can pay as low as 1-2%. You should not short change yourself. Avoid these low paying affiliate programs. Look for an affiliate program that have a 30% or higher commission payouts. Another way to create income in affiliate marketing is looking for programs that give residual payouts.

Mistake #4: Limiting your strategies to Non-viral marketing only

Viral marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase awareness for a product or service. It is very useful in rapidly relaying the message to a large number of people. Most affiliate marketers do not use viral marketing to the detriment of their sales results. If you want to promote a product then you should really make an effort in promoting it. Even though you are only an affiliate promoting the product of another, you should exploit all means to find customers as this will translate to more profit for you too. Use viral marketing to build a larger consumer base and bring in the profit.

Mistake #5: Disposable Customers

As an affiliate, you work hard to find prospects and convince them to purchase or avail of the product or service. However, what happens after that customer purchases the product? Should you dispose of that customer and find a new prospect?

That would be a critical error. The best thing to do is to keep that customer available for you to expose your other offers. Do not throw them away as soon as the make a purchase. Find a way to capture their email addresses so that you can promote you offers to them again. Building a good customer list is one of the effective strategies to increase your profit.

Affiliate marketers make these five common mistakes; and you should do everything to avoid making the same pitfalls. Take the time to analyze your affiliate marketing efforts and see if you are on the right track. With the right strategies and techniques, you can maximize the potential of your affiliate-marketing program and earn higher profit.

This article was authored by Jason Gazaway. This 22 year old, ‘regular’ college kid was able to quit his 7-4 “job” because of his affiliate marketing business. He now wants to help others and show you how he did it!

For more FREE information, please go to: Affiliate Students

Customer referrals are vital to small and home-based service businesses. When you need to increase sales but can’t afford a salesperson and have limited selling time, focus on existing clients and let them do the selling for you. Most business owners understand the value of referrals, but not many are doing what it takes to get them.

Providing excellent service is important, but don’t always generate referrals. To get all your clients to recommend you, you’ll need to give them an incentive to do so.

And you can do that with a referral program. Referral programs are often refer to as affiliate programs. It’s just an agreement in which you pay your affiliates a commission for each client they refer to you. Many web businesses use them as a low cost way to acquire new customers. Even large companies like Amazon and Yahoo have one. But what if you’re not selling on the web?

Don’t worry, with just a little more time and effort, you can create an offline referral program as well.

How do you track referrals?

Referral tracking is your biggest challenge in setting up a referral program. On the web, referrals can be track by software automatically. For your offline program, you’ll need a database to keep all your affiliates’ information and their referral history. To track referrals, you can simply ask your new clients if any one referred them. Usually, they’ll tell you without asking.

You can also use a coupon referral method. Assign your affiliates a unique referrer ID and create coupons for them. Each coupon will contain their unique ID. They can then distribute the coupon to prospects. When new client comes in with a coupon, you can easily identify the affiliate using the ID.

If you have good selling skills, consider also accepting lead referrals. Lead referrals are much easier to get since your affiliates don’t have to do any selling. They just provide you with the contact information of a prospect that needs your service.

Where do you recruit affiliates from?

Without affiliates, your program is useless. A good source of affiliates would be your current clients. If you don’t have any yet, sign up a few friends. But be sure to choose a good incentive.

Cash commission is the most common incentive, but not always the most effective. Your customers may value a discount on future purchases more than a percentage of the sale. Find out what motivates your affiliates the best. Using the right rewards can increase your referrals dramatically.

How much will it cost to run a referral program?

That depends on your commission and the distribution method. Offering an item as reward and mailing them out will obviously be more costly than making payments on paypal. But the cost should be very small compare to the profit you will be earning.

As long as your commission is below your profit margin, you’ll be making money. If your affiliates are not referring any clients, it doesn’t cost you anything.

Measuring the effectiveness of your program

Once your program is up and running, it’s important to measure its effectiveness. There are several areas you should examine to make sure your program is at maximum efficiency.

Check the number of active affiliates. Not all your affiliates will send at least one referral per pay period. But if you have very low number of active affiliates constantly, make some adjustments. Try creating a different sales message or use another coupon.

You can also talk to your most profitable affiliates for their effective referral methods and publish them to your other affiliates. Provide them with all the sales materials they’ll need.

When you make their job as easy as possible, they will send you more referrals.

Ben Wong is the founder of Repher.com, a web based management platform for offline referral and affiliate programs. For more information, please visit http://www.repher.com

The great strides made in the development of the Internet in the recent past has enabled information to be transmitted thousands of miles away with such ease and clarity that time and space are hardly of any consequence to the Internet Marketer today.

Marketing Programs have literally taken over the Internet and riding high, is Affiliate Marketing.

According to the Computer Industry Almanac “The world-wide Internet population for 2004 was 934 million and the projection for 2006 is 1.21 billion.”

Sean Michael Kerner in an article in Click Z News quoting a spokesman for eBay states “According to eBay their largest affiliate earned over $1.3 million dollars in January commission, the largest amount yet in their affiliate program’s history. Their top 25 affiliates averaged over $100,000 per month each and the top 100 affiliates earn almost $25,000 each per month.”

With this sort of statistics around, is it any surprise that thousands of entrepreneurs especially those Home Based Business entrepreneurs with very small marketing budgets are jumping on to the Affiliate Marketing band-wagon!

Given below are some of the Popular reasons for this desire and urge to do Affiliate Marketing:

1. Cost Factor:
Most Entrepreneurs refrain from starting a brick and mortar business or for that matter a Home Based Business (non internet) because of the investment required. In Affiliate Marketing the set-up cost is negligible with most programs being free to join and the merchant even providing you with the tools, tips and websites.

2. Pick and Choose Products:
With dozens of Affiliate Program providers and thousands of merchants having their own affiliate programs, there are several thousands of products to choose from. You name it they have it! In fact there are even Fortune 500 companies to choose from. The idea is to pick and choose your niche products and promote them.

3. No need for an Inventory.
The hassle of purchasing, stocking of items and storing of finished items (in a production unit) and dispatching them are not there. There is no need to maintain an inventory. It is all handled by the merchant.

4. No need for Employees.
In any business the wages of the employees is one of the major expenditures to contend with. Here the problem does not arise since the marketer himself will operate his home business and probably get the assistance of a family member to help him.

5. Necessity for Customer Service does not arise.
Customer service plays a major role in the success or failure of a business. The advantage here is that there is no direct dealing with the customers. The website will automatically direct the customers to the merchants.

6. Two Tier Affiliate Marketing:
An attractive feature of certain affiliate programs is that they have a Two tier system, whereby affiliates can sign up as sub-affiliates below them. When the sub-affiliate earns a commission, the affiliate above him too earns a commission.

7. Income without a limit.
In a paid job the salary structure has a vice-like grip over your monthly income. Here the possibilities are limitless. Though it is not every marketer who earns a big income, the fact remains that avenues are all there for the enterprising marketer to make it to the big time.

8. Global Market Place.
You no longer need to restrict your market to your home town or country. With your well chosen niche product you can sit in the comfort of your home and target the Global Market.

9. Low Risk Factor.
The risk factor in Affiliate Marketing is so small that it has become one of the major attractions for many Home Based Business entrepreneurs especially for those with low marketing budgets.

10. Business works Right Round the Clock.
One major asset of Internet marketing is that your Website, or in other words, your Home Based Business never sleeps. It works right round the clock (24/7) making money from home for you.

Having indicated the above reasons for the popularity of Affiliate Marketing, it has to be mentioned that statistics indicate that only 5% of the marketers do make big money. It is presumed that there are of course several thousands of marketers who make some money, thus giving them an additional income.

As long as the top marketers in the 5% slab, continue to make their millions and the latter continue to make reasonable amounts of money and have the urge to emulate the top marketers, Affiliate Marketing will continue to draw the attention and be popular with Home Based Business Entrepreneurs.

Copyright (c); 2005 Kanaga Siva

About Kanaga: Kanaga Siva has been a Marketing Manager and Business Manager and has a wealth of experience in Marketing. He now operates his own Home Based Business. For Articles, Resources, Tips and Ideas to start a Home Based Business from anywhere in the World, visit his website, http://www.business-fromhome.com

The biggest failure in affiliate marketing is not collecting prospects’ email addresses. If you only send your prospects to your affiliate website, you are promoting someone else’s business, not your own. Your goal should be not to sell affiliate products, but to grow your own business.

Here is how you build an affiliate business.

1. Use a lead-capture page.

Get your own website and build a home page. Don’t write a sales letter for your affiliate product. Instead, write an email course focusing on the strongest benefits of your product. Highlight these benefits in a short sales letter that is designed for one thing only-to get people to subscribe to your course. Then, in your course, promote your affiliate product. The value in this method is that you are actually building a direct marketing business and gaining your own customers.

2. Build your own list.

Spend your time, effort, and money driving targeted traffic to your website. The more visitors you get, the more subscribers you get, and hopefully the more money you make. You can never underestimate the long-term value in having your own customer list. Keep building it. Spend at least 65% of your time in building your list.

3. Reinvest in your business.

When you make a sale, congratulate yourself! Take some of the profits and spend them on yourself. Take your spouse to dinner, go to a movie, or buy another internet marketing ebook! But your goal should be to grow your business. You should take at least 60% of your profits and reinvest them back into your business. How? By buying more ezine ads, adding another pay-per-click campaign, or using some other kind of advertising. Perhaps you could buy an ebook with reprint rights instead of marketing affiliate products-that way you keep all of the profits.

4. Keep marketing to your list.

You should always be on the lookout for new products to promote. Whenever you find one, write another email series, add it to your autoresponder, and keep promoting to your list. Focus on adding at least one new product and series to your autoresponder every month. Some will get tired of the information you send and unsubscribe, but if you are focused on building your list you will always have many more subscribers for each unsubscribe you receive.

If you follow these steps, your affiliate business will grow into a very profitable direct marketing business.

Jeremy M. Hoover gives away a FREE marketing kit at his website. Go there NOW and get your free kit as a “thank you” gift for reading this article.

5 keys to you becoming a successful affiliate:

1) HAS THE OWNER OF THE PROGRAM DONE HIS OR HER RESEARCH?

Before you become an affiliate for someone, you want to know one major thing. You want to be very sure they’ve taken the time to test their whole sales process!

Have they invested some of their own time and money into fine-tuning and improving their sales letter until it really converts visitors into buyers? Is their ordering process simple for your prospects to navigate?

The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of your time and money to generate traffic to a sales letter that can’t sell its way out of a paper bag, right?

One way to figure this out is to use a little common sense. How does the sales letter affect you? Is it professional? Does it suck you in? Do you find you can’t stop reading it because you just need to know how this product can help solve the problem it’s saying it can?

Does it make you want to buy? One thing you don’t want to do to the lifeblood of your business (your prospects) is sell them “junky” stuff.

2) $25 MINIMUM

You should pick a product that pays you at least $25 for each sale. Unless you become an affiliate for more than one product (we’ll touch on this point a little later), stick to the $25 as a minimum price point so you can take your advertising costs out and still make a profit.

3) FREE TO JOIN

It must be free to join an affiliate program. If they are charging you to join, or require you to buy their product first, it’s not an affiliate marketing program.

4) WHERE TO FIND GOOD AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

A great place to start is Clickbank. They have one of the largest affiliate marketing programs you can find. Just go to http://www.clickbank.com and get a clickbank ID.

At Clickbank’s home page, go to “Earn Commissions” and search for products that fit you and your site. They are even ranked in order of popularity. That’s another sign of whether it’s a program worth your time.

Another place you can go is http://www.lifetimecommissions.com.

Amazon has a good affiliate marketing program. Go to http://www.amazon.com and click on “Join Associates” near the bottom of the page. You won’t get as much of a commission for each sale as you will from Clickbank or Lifetime Commissions but it does accumulate over time.

5) USE A CONTENT SITE

The real key to being successful with affiliate marketing is to develop a good content based website and weave your affiliate links into all your content. You want to “pre-sell” your prospects rather than “sell” them.

Leave the job of “selling” to the sales letter page you are transferring them to. Your job is to provide your prospects with good, quality content regarding whatever they are interested in. Inside this information, when it’s relevant, just “recommend” that they click to an offer you honestly believe will be of immense help to them.

Wouldn’t you rather have a friend recommend you something of value and allow you the time to consider whether it’s right for you rather than be “sold”? Everyone who visits your site feels the same so remember this.

We mentioned earlier that we’d discuss becoming an affiliate for more than one product and how it affects the minimum commission you’re willing to accept. If you put together a content site as we’re recommending, the $25 minimum isn’t as critical.

Of course, you’d like the maximum, fair commission possible, but if you have 15 or so programs you’re recommending, you can offer quality products for less. If one of your products brings you $10-$15 in commission and you have some others paying you $25, $75 or more, you can see you’re averaging a good return over-all.

Why aren’t you making a ton of cash as an affiliate? Follow these 5 points and we see big profits in your future!

About The Author

David Huizar and Matthew Zavadil (http://www.zero2hero2day.com) have a combined 14 years experience in business building and coaching. They focus on empowering you to “Unleash the Wealth Inside You” and gaining freedom through the wonders of Internet business. For more FREE information on Affiliate Marketing, send a blank email to mailto:affiliatemaster@aweber.com

-copyright 2004-2005

Reproducing this article: Permission is granted to reproduce this article in an email newsletter or on a website provided that the article is reproduced in its entirety as shown here and the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your newsletter would be greatly appreciated.

contact@zero2hero2day.com

The ad tracker was originally developed to provide a record of all hits to a site resulting from ad placements. This article shows a host of different ways to utilise an ad tracker.

FOR AFFILIATES

#1. The Long Url Problem

Have you ever seen an ad where you are asked to click on an affiliate URL so long that it stretches over 2 lines, like this

http://www/anysite.com/cgi-bin/dir1/dir2/.cgi?code=123RT&type=102 35&subid=89715

Do you think your reader will bother to do the necessary cut and paste to put it in a browser?

Probably not.

And that’s probably one lost sale.

And even a one line affiliate link may exceed the permissible length for some ad posting requirements.

The solution: use a short tracking URL.

#2. Losing Your Affiliate Code

As an affiliate you may have your affiliate code embedded in a link something like this:

http://www.abc.com/123

Some customers will bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home URL http://www.abc.com (possibly because they think that they will be paying extra for an agent’s commission)

The solution: use a tracking URL – so that your affiliate code number is never seen.

#3. Make Your Ad Stand Out

You may have seen search engine results showing near identical listings for the same product, differing only in an affiliate code appended to the URL.

Your listing here will be just one of many unless you make it stand out. So bypass the standard affiliate URL and use a tracking URL.

#4. How Effective Are The Links

You can measure and compare the effectiveness of the different banners or text links the affiliate programs provide you by using a tracking URL.

#5. Changing Links

If an affiliate company change their links then your existing ads, wherever they are posted, become worthless. But if you use a tracking URL you simply revise the affiliate URL at the tracking control centre.

#6. Affiliate Program Discontinued

Similarly if an affiliate program is discontinued you just change your tracking URL to a new page where you explain the circumstances and point your visitor to your other promotions.

#7. Better Affiliate Stats

Not all affiliate programs provide you with stats about visitors. And if they do are they adequate ?

Compare a basic monthly figure say

- Jan: 39 hits

with a detailed analysis such as

- Jan 12: 10 hits

- Jan 13: 2 hits

- Jan 20: 21 hits

- Jan 21: 6 hits

where you can relate those dates to particular ad campaigns.

Tracking URLs will give you these improved figures.

#8. Checking Affiliate Stats

Even if you do receive good stats from your affiliate program it still makes sense to use tracking URLs so that you can compare your figures with theirs.

A large discrepancy could mean errors in their software or (hopefully not) fraudulent activity on their part.

An alternative reason is that their measurement takes place when their page is fully loaded rather than at the start, indicating that visitors are clicking away because it is taking too long to load.

FOR EZINE PUBLISHERS

#9. Win Advertisers With Tracking Reports

If you sell advertising space in your ezine you can offer to your advertisers to replace their URLs with your tracking URLs and Email them the results.

Tell your advertisers about these benefits in your advertising guidelines

- They will know the number of clickthroughs their ad has generated. They can then decide how to improve the ads for better performance

- If they use a tracker program with your own domain name in the tracking URL your ezine subscribers will be more inclined to click

- They can use your ezine as a test centre, modifying their ads until they are happy, before launching with other publishers

#10. Use Tracking Report Results

The tracking reports above will provide you with information on your subscribers’ interests, influencing your editorial content and helping you select which potential advertisers to approach

Also, once your advertisers have seen for themselves the benefits of an ad tracking program they will be inclined to purchase one. So set yourself up as an affiliate for a program and promote it to them.

#11. Measure Your Readership

You may know how many subscribers you have but how many actually open and read your ezine and which parts of it attract most attention ?

Here’s how to find out if you distribute your ezine in HTML Format: include an image on your page, e.g a banner or logo or a single pixel GIF. Then reference this image with a tracking URL.

For an ezine distributed as plain text it is not possible to see if it is actually opened or read. But what you can do is insert tracking URLs at the appropriate points, such as product offers or special articles, and get comparative figures for which items are being read.

AT YOUR WEB SITE

#12. The Problem Of Permanent URLs

Web sites are continually evolving and changing.

You may want to rename a page to make it more consistent and logical but there’s a huge problem. You have given out the URL in an ebook, or a directory submission, or an article or wherever. There’s no way you can undo this.

The solution ?

Never provide the actual URL, just a tracking URL. You can then just edit the link at the tracking centre whenever a page is moved or renamed.

The external links, in your ebook for example, stay the same but they will redirect to your new page.

#13. What Are Your Visitors Doing ?

You have text links all over your site, links to your other pages and links to recommended sites.

Where are your visitors clicking ?

Where are they leaving your site, why, how can you stop them ?

Which graphic do they click on the most ?

Do they click on the text link more than the graphic link?

Your log files may tell you at best which are the most popular pages at your site but it is vital to know how your visitors move through your site and what is tempting them.

Use tracking URLs to replace actual links wherever you need to monitor click activity.

#14. Sell Website Advertising Space

You can offer tracking reports to your advertisers in the same way as for ezine publishers (above).

#15. Stop Piracy

If you have invested man-months of time setting up a vital resource site involving a directory of links it’s very easy for a pirate to simply copy your page and provide useful content for his own site.

If you use tracking URLs for those directory links you can detect this copy – because the ad tracking program will record the referring URL.

At the same time of course you can measure the popularity of the directory links.

USING PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

#16. Better Click Activity Reporting

Pay per click search engines will report to you click activity on your URL. Engines vary in the frequency and format of the reporting so you can use tracking URLs instead to obtain better information.

#17. Prevent Fraudulent Activity

You can compare your figures with the engine’s and should query any large discrepancy.

If click activity is unusually high you may have a competitor clicking on just to incur costs against you. You may be able to detect this by comparing the figures for unique hits and actual hits (several hits per visitor).

OFFLINE MARKETING

#18. Check How Successful

If you have ever wondered whether it was worth advertising off line because of the supposed impossibility of measuring the response then ad tracking URLs will answer that problem. Just include them in your ads in

- newspapers

- magazines

- flyers

- billboards

- press releases

- shop notice boards

- and so on

#19. Use The Time Reports

The date and time when clicks are made will allow you to check the progress of your ads, for example

- has your newspaper ad been submitted yet ?

- has your billboard notice been removed ?

- how long does a magazine ad stay around ?

For a long running ad you can study the response and switch the link midstream if necessary to an improved web page.

EBOOKS

#20. Do Free Books Work ?

The main purpose of a free ebook is to get the reader back to your site. But how successful is it proving ?

Put tracking URLs in the book and you will find out.

#21. Maintain Control After Download

Once your ebook is downloaded it would appear that you no longer have any control over it. Not so. You can redirect the reader to other pages of your site by changing the tracking Url links.

OTHER WAYS

#22. Become An Ad Tracking Affiliate

Since ad tracking programs are high demand marketing tools you can profit by joining their affiliate program (if they have one).

Owning the product that you promote always gives that extra advantage e.g you can give an example of how you use it or a personal testimonial as to how it has benefited you.

#23. Privacy

You may want to post an URL somewhere and – for reasons of your own – not let it reveal your website. You can do this with an ad tracking program where the supplier domain name is used in the tracking URL.

For more details about the above tips and yet more ways to use an ad tracker see Harvey’s free ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips

http://www.ad-tracking.com/adbook.html

Publishers can reproduce this article and change the URL to point to their own rebranded version.