Affiliate Marketing for the Beginners

Those who dabble with online marketing or want to get into this very lucrative industry might have come across the concept of affiliate marketing. Basically, affiliate marketing is a form of online promotion where the ads of one business is published on another site that enjoys good traffic inflow and is not related or owned by the business, the ads of which are being published.

Before we get on to more about affiliate marketing, let us clear some of the basic terminologies -

A Merchant is one whose ads are getting published. A merchant is usually one who owns a business or has something to sell or promote. He / she can place an ad for different reasons - for selling or promoting his goods or services, for collecting important data, for leads generation or for getting feedback on his services.

An Affiliate, on the other hand, is one who owns the site where the ads of the merchants get published. Usually an affiliate's site is one that enjoys a reasonably good number of visitors regularly.

Affiliate marketing is a performance driven concept where a merchant has to pay only when a defined goal is accomplished. This goal can be anything that a merchant has to get done, for example getting conversions, accumulating data, leads generation, getting feedback or anything at all. It is when this goal gets accomplished, the merchant pays the affiliate that has brought in the visitor from his site. The amount is fixed at the time of commencement of program.

Affiliate marketing has a lot of benefits for both the merchants as well as the affiliates. For merchants, this reduces the amount that has to be invested for promotion purposes and it also gives more returns on investment. It can also be fruitfully used to get qualified leads or for conversion of visitors into customers.

It is a good money making option for an affiliate since there is no investment or any cost involved. And the affiliate can simply earn by monetizing the web traffic that comes to the site owned by the affiliate. Each time a visitor clicks on an ad shown on his site, the visitor is taken to the destination site of the ad (the merchant's site) where the visitor may perform the activity that has been defined by the merchant. On successfully doing that, the affiliate gets paid a fixed amount by the merchant.

Hence, affiliate marketing is a win-win situation for both the affiliates as well as the merchants and therefore it has gained a lot of popularity from the time of its conceptualization.

About the Author- Naman Jain is an expert in Internet marketing, presently working with Rupiz Media, one of the leading internet marketing company, offering online marketing services, SEO services, web application development and search engine marketing over the globe.

Does Size Really Matter? Global Domains International Thinks So.

Need a web site? What kind? How big? What do you want to do with it? These are some of the questions you should consider and research before even setting a web site up. We'll give you a few tips here to help you make a more informed choice.

What's In a Domain Name and How Important Are They To You?

A domain name is a web site address and can be used only once. They are usually made up of words or letters so they are easier to remember and can be more relevant to a person or business. Extensions are the codes at the end of a domain name. The extensions signify which country the domain name belongs to, i.e., .ws belongs to Samoa and .us belongs to the United States.

Getting just the right domain name may be important to you if you need recognition for a product, service, event or your own name. In this case, you may want a web site name with a .ws extension, because you may more likely find just the name you're looking for. Dot com and dot net still have some names available, but many of them have been used up after the dot com boom of the late 1990's.

Domain names can also be more important to you if you want a domain name that relates to something you know is being searched for on the Internet and if you want to be found when people are searching for that name or keyword. Some of the larger search engines like MSN and Google still give a higher ranking faster to a web site that has the keyword being searched for - in the web site or domain name address. If a this is important to you, it might be a good idea to find out what is being searched for on the Internet that relates to the domain name you have in mind before you choose one.

Handy keyword tools that can help you do this can be found at http://inventory.overture.com and http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com . Just put a word or phrase related to the domain name you have in mind into the search box window. They will search all the related terms that were searched for last month on the Internet, and tell you how many times they were searched for. These tools can also identify related keywords you can use for your web site title and on your web site pages that will help you achieve higher rankings in the Internet search engines for those keywords, but this is a whole other topic reserved for a later discussion.

Think About How You Want To Use Your Web Site...

What would you do with a web site? Teach? Show and tell? Make money? Build an email list? Have fun? There are so many options on the Internet today, that it could be mind boggling to a newbie. Doing a little research on the Internet before setting a web site up is a very good idea. It will help you become familiar with all the different web site options and features available so you can make a better choice before you get started.

Some of the things you'll need to consider before setting up a web site are:

Q: What do you want the web site to accomplish?

A: Teach? Show and tell? Make money? Build an email list? Have fun?

Q: How many pages will you need - 3, 5, 10 or more pages?

A: Some web sites limit the number of pages or bandwidth available.

Q: How much should you pay per month?

A: This can vary from usually $3.95 to $100 or more, depending on available features.

Q: What is disk space?

A: How much space is available for your web site words, pictures, reviews, etc.

Q: What is bandwidth?

A: How many times and how many people can access your site during a period.

Q: What is down time?

A: How reliable is the server that your web site is on?

Q: What is security and do you need it?

A: Yes. Protection from hackers. Secure service available for your customers.

Does Size Really Matter?

As you can see, there are many things to consider before setting up a web site, but making the right choices up front can save you much time, effort and headache in the long run. If you set up a web site on a server that only allows 5 pages of space, and you find you need more down the road, you would need to move your web site and domain name to a new server, which could be quite involved. It may be easier for you to make a better choice up front if you have all the options available to you ahead of time. A suggestion would be to type into your search box window top 10 hosting or best hosting to get more information to help you make the right choice before setting up a web site.

Bottom line, investigate your options and be prepared. Size really does matter.

About the Author
Global Domains International is an online business opportunity that offers many unique features, including making the sales for you. You may read an in-depth article and learn more by going to http://globaldomainsint.ws . DMarie Holtz, the author, has a B.S. in business and 10 years experience marketing online.