How can I make money as an individual from affiliate marketing

To start as an affiliate you must have links or banners from the merchants or advertisers. These links can be gotten in any of the following ways

i.                    From the advertisers directly

This method is direct. You as an affiliate will have to search for companies offering affiliate programs, contact them  and get your link without passing through any other person. Hostgator  and karatbars  are examples of affiliate programs which  provides links and banners to publishers directly. Thousands  of websites offers links directly to affiliates, however, Affiliate marketers must do  research before contacting companies as there are hundreds of scam websites that will not reward you . I can remember the traffic I sent to Megatoon and Global share just to earn zero. This can be done by reading reviews about the company.

ii.                  Through Affiliate network websites

To prevent affiliates from missing out their commissions form fraudulent companies, The fourth party has to come into the affiliate marketing see know as an affiliate network. You might have read this in some sentences above. An affiliate networkacts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs.

Here are some 5 affiliate networks where you can fine thousands of credible companies offering affiliate programs.

1.       Amazon affiliate program(affiliate-program.amazon.com)  offered by amazon.com a leading e-commerce and cloud computing company in USA.

2.       Avangate (avangate.com), an affiliate network specialized in softwares.

3.       Commision junction (cj.com) affiliate network.

Commission junction an online advertising and internet marketing company that specializes in affiliate, media and tracking services. This is one of the most popular affiliate networks in the world.

4.       Ad media (admedia.com)  Affiliate network brought to you by Ad Media a company which offers online advertising services to advertisers.

5.       The fifth is Click Bank (clickbank.com) affiliate programs offering a variety of products to affiliates.

There are other big names like eBay and others I have left out. Just do your research and chose the right ones. Even though I want the best for you, what might be best for me might not be the best to you.

To be on a safe side, if you are a newbie who wants to earn money from affiliate marketing then, you should consider joining a An affiliate network as a publisher. After understanding the whole show, you can now contact companies directly (taking a greater risk)

Things needed to start an affiliate Business

Now that you have you know how to have your affiliate links, banners and other promotional tools, how will make use of them? :

     A Blog/Website

Many starters always feel bad whenever I tell them to get a blog for their  business. A website is just like a shop where you store and market you goods. It is very important for you to have a website. On this website you can paste banners, write post related to the product to improve SEO (avoid black hat SEO), write reviews among others. You can also show case your own personal services on your website while benefiting form you affiliate program.  With a website you will be able to manage you HTML codes with ease thus increasing your chances of making money.

What if I don’t have money to start a website?

Try free hosting services like wordpress.com,wix.com  among others. While doing this consider getting your own personal website. Free things have a lot of limitations. If you don’t have the knowledge or seem scared to manipulate the codes/menus, then consider getting the services of a blogger. About 50-100 dollars can get you something nice. The higher the price the better the website. Avoid screaming when a designer gives you a higher price that you expected. Some affiliate networks give you a free website where you can manage your products .

Sir, I will not like to have a website, Can I still do affiliate marketing?

 After talking to a client one day, he probably did his personal research and came out with the conclusion that he will not need a website for his program. He asked the questions above.

Here was my reply

Dear friend,

      Thank you for writing back.  A website is my number one recommendation to start you affiliates business but not the only requirement. When you join an affiliate program, you main focus is to drive traffic to you landing page and this can be done in any of the following ways;

i.                    Email/Article Marketing

By this method, you will need to have some emails which you have. If you don’t have as much then you can consider using article directories. When you have your emails ready, then you can start writing interesting article about you niche. You can send emails or articles weekly.  Also make sure that you include links to your landing pages where in your articles.

ii.                  Use of Forums

This is a great way to promote your products. Make sure you don’t just join a forum because you want to promote your product or service. It is in your part of your plan. The first thing you should do is to ensure that you are an active member, responds to topics as well as create interesting discussions. This is the only mean by which you can achieve you ‘’Plan B’’. At this juncture you are free to include links in your discussions or responses. Also ensure you don’t spam. Note that you can also comment on blogs as a way to drive traffic to your affiliate page.

iii.                Make Videos

Sites like vmeo, YouTube,metacafe,veoh,flickr, photobucket among others are great places to share your videos. Just make as short video of about 3-7 minutes with your link (shortened) as the first comment under the video. If you have a URL that can easily be recopied, include it at the end of your video.

Use sentences like’’ thanks for watching more at  www.example.com

If you already have a website , you can embed your videos on your websites. Make sure you explore the various video posting sites . the tendency is that most starter will focus on you tube.

if you want to know more about affiliate programs and other online marketing strategy. Request my Online marketing by contacting me via email

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Why you should start Making Your Own YouTube Videos as a Business

Cameroonians like people from other part of the world like watching videos you tube. However very few Cameroonians fall among most of the internet users who do more of the watching than posting. Here are some reasons you should create your own you tube videos. Promoting on YouTube is just another great way of improving your online presence be it a business or a public figure.

YouTube is website that allows you to post, watch, and share video content. Owned by Google, the website allows videos of different variety. Today, popular videos on YouTube include how TO videos, comedy skits, music and movies. You might not like the videos you have watched, if this is the case then consider making your own videos and making it be the way you want. Your YouTube name probably will be your brand name, people will watch , subscribe and some will like to know more about your brand, and thus more sales. I did made a promotion of a weight loss product on you tube. The experience was a wonderful one.

Making a YouTube video is relatively easy. You don’t need to be a professional photographer to do so .Camcorders, webcams, mobile phones, I pads, tablets and cameras are some of the devices you can use to make a YouTube video. After making your video, you might consider removing or adding something to it. This too is very easy. Gets a movie editing software like windows movie maker and the job will be wonderfully done. Using editing soft wares greatly improve your videos. However, if you think this is time consuming, then consider meeting a professional to get the job done for you. 

Another  striking reason why Businesses should consider posting a video on YouTube is comes from the comment-like-rate feature of YouTube. This serve as a feedback that you can use to improve on your business, thanks to the positive and negative comments you will get from your viewers worldwide.

The ability to select tags also helps to promote your business/video to those watching related content. This might possibly be a start for making your YouTube sales. Consider uploading a YouTube video and selecting the right tags.

The last thing you should consider posting a video on YouTube is that, your video can be a second source of income in addition to what you get for your business. You can enable content monetization for quality content or join the YouTube partnership program. Mind you with the type of video you post on YouTube. You can get a terrible experience for posting abusive or illegal content on YouTube. So before making your YouTube videos make sure your read the YouTube Privacy policy. Quality videos get quality views.

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What are the Challenges you will face as a blogger Things to know when starting a blog

      

Usually many are full of excitement when starting a blog.  After reading the reasons to start a blog, above you might think it is time for you  to blog. No, you have to know the challenges that are at hand before getting started. Here we go:

1.       Blogging needs a lot of patience. It is important to know that you have to exercise patience. Most people want to blog for money. But after one to two years they are not seeing a dollar, others want to be famous but your post get 5 views or none per day. If you want to adventure with your career as a blogger, then you need to know that the key to blogging is ‘’patience’’.

People will not comment on your post as you think; people will not share your post as you might think, your post will not get thousands of views as you thought.  Finally the last thing you will have to exercise patience is SEO results

2.      One of the most challenging problem bloggers is getting traffic or growing traffic.

You can imagine how frustrating things might look like when you are not getting visitors for your post or comments on your blog post. That’s just a challenge. Remember I mentioned above that blogging is taking a challenge. Many people start blogging without taking into consideration things like website design, key words and focus on content. We might just find a free template somewhere and start up. It is very important to use an SEO optimized template or know if your template is optimized or not. If not then consider doing some work on it. 

Consider using social media and other SEO techniques to improve your traffic. Avoid black hat SEO techniques. Just work harder and you will get results.

3.      The feeling of     ‘’I can do it all alone’’ is what tend to kill most bloggers. Most newbies think they can provide all the blog content for their blog. Some don’t even want to interact with other bloggers. You main thing is to get up write you post and take a cup of coffee. Oh no! As a blogger you should engage with other bloggers. Remember even though you paid for the hosting and domain, the blog is not really ‘’your thing’’.  Interacting with other bloggers in the blogosphere will greatly improve your write ups and SEO. Guest posting is one the best free SEO technique. Consider writing to other blogs; accept quality articles about your niche from other bloggers, comment on blogs similar to yours, reply to questions you can answer. It is only by doing this that you will beat this killer factor and excel with your blogging career. Blogging alone is the fastest way to fail

4.      Once you start getting traffic on your blog readers will always be expecting more from you. As results, you feel you are not giving the best to readers in terms of quantity. This pressure to write continuously had been a source of encouragement to others while some bloggers don’t consider this even.  To avoid this pressure, you have to try to post averagely three articles per week.

5.      As a blogger, at one moment you might find yourself not focusing on providing content. You find yourself trying to sell products and signing up for various affiliates. Just make sure as a starter you don’t get yourself into this mess. You decided to blog because you can write, let your readers read from you. Your audience is the key and will give you the money just at the right time. It is very important to build traffic and a reputation first.

6.      When you start blogging, it is always exciting you put in more time and effort in updating your post and designing.  At one moment, you might just find yourself thinking that blogging is taking all your spare time.  Do you have something doing during your spare time?

You will discover that your spare time is being used for other stuff while your readers are eager waiting for new post from you.

If you are into blogging, then you need to create time to blog, you need to create time for research among others things to maintain quality. There is no such thing like lack of free time. You just want to quit.

7.      Choosing a niche is always a challenge to some people who want to start a blog. Once this is done another big challenge is getting the content for this niche. What are the topics you will write on, what about the next post or how many post you will be able to write? This always seems difficult. But handling this is very easy. We all need inspiration. Get a look at some blogs that write about your niche, read articles and e-books and who knows you might just find yourself back in the game ,saying ‘’I will lead the team’’ 

8.        I mentioned in the reasons to blog, that you should be confident. This is a very great point where bloggers use to fail. As a starter, you have to be flexible. Sometime you might just be providing low quality content, but because of your feeling of originality, you don’t feel something is wrong with it. Creating time to evaluate content is a very big challenge. Blogging is not all about providing content. It is about interaction, it is about keeping people with updated information, it is about writing.  Make sure you evaluate your blog post, add what should be added and remove what you think is irrelevant.

9.       Negative comments tend to send new bloggers packing. Hey, my friend this is not what you should do. People have freedom of opinions. The opinion of everyone counts even though it does not in all cases. Just be calm reply to every comment be it positive or negative. Even Jesus Christ was criticized so you cannot run away from them. Just use the negative comments as a tool to build and get on with the blogging race, you might just emerge the winner.

10.   What is your challenge as a blogger?    

also Read Reasons to blog here

C      Contact ransbiz@live.com for a free e-book

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How to Create a Mailing list as an Affiliate marketer

 To get people who are interested in your product or service, you need to enable subscription on your blog. Feed Burner is a cool way to gather your email list. You can get highly recommended subscription forms from aweber and others.  It is not something that is done in a second, but requires time. As you deliver quality, you get subscribers.

Another way to get email list is by buying or renting from a company you think can have your target audience. For example, if I want to promote back to school products, I will prefer to buy email list from  a school . With this you are sure the people you are sending emails are capable of buying your products. It is never easy to go about it. But you should consider trying.

Another way is to get emails from brokers such as etarget. You can as well get an email list by listing your news letters on e-zine directories. An  Enzine  is  newsletter that is delivered via email that you can subscribe or opt-in to it.

The last method is by getting email directly from friends or family directly. This will not really give you quality list. If you have any other way of doing this feel free to share.

To wrap thing up, you should consider using phone numbers to promote especially for those who operate businesses in Africa where majority have mobile phones. You have a chance to reach a high number of people using a mobile phone than using email.

 Email marketing is gradually getting out of place, given the fact that we have many social media and apps which allow us to communicate and share information with our love ones. Consider adventuring into mobile advertsisement/promotions. For more about mobile promotions, leave me an email.

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Why you are not making money as an Affiliate

Starting up as an affiliate is not a difficult task. It is very easy to set up a website and fine an affiliate opportunity to start with. The million dollar question is you able to make money from your website and this opportunity? There are some deadly mistakes most newbies make as they adventure into affiliate marketing. Here are some reasons why people don’t succeed as affiliate marketers.

    ==>Looking for affiliate opportunities that pay high Commission.

We understand that every affiliate marker wants to make money. But thinking you can make money from a high paying affiliate program is a ‘’virus’’ that can suck away the few francs in your pocket. It is not all about driving traffic. Does the program meet certain criteria? Are you able to receive payments in your country? These are the question you should answer before making your choice. Quality matters.

             ==> Affiliate programs that send training and offer courses via email

It is vital to understand the functioning of some businesses through trainings and courses. But that should not be the primary goal of a business that offers an affiliate program. These are not the best programs to deal with.  Some of such programs use this means to build their email list . So you have to choose a program that is interested in marketing but not in capturing leads. Your target as an affiliate is to build your audience and convert sell your products.

==.> Affiliate Programs with no support

Most of those who venture into affiliate marketing know little or no coding, developing banners and other online marketing tools to help in making conversions. So choose affiliate programs that pay you for referring others, provide banners , links and sometime a customize website like amazon.

==> Getting the a product that converts. This goes with the first point. You have to get into a program that have a product which is a proven seller. Get products that are easy to sell, not too expensive and you are sure your audience will be interested in.

==>NOT WORKING

Some affiliate marketers focus on the money and not the business. Your role is to promote the product as an affiliate and the money will be deposited into your bank account. But sometimes you calculate how much you will make and just sit back relaxing and hoping you will get conversion. So get to work, promote your links, build your list and make the money.

To your success

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Start a Career in Cameroon as a Bulk SMS consultant Reseller

     Throughout my years in Cameroon I have seen only the big names making money in the digital technology world. I have been doing a research on how the public can also benefit from this wonderful digital world. How can technology help in unemployment in Cameroon? Everyone can tell how the call box business has grown in Cameroon and had been a major source of income to some families. Everyone cannot join this business. There are many ways we can start earning money ranging from Affiliate marketing, app development, blogging, MLMs and more. But all this require you to invest both time and money which most newbies rarely think about. I found out a great opportunity that can help you earn income while you help organization, companies, churches and individuals to pass on their information- advertise in a better way. All you need is time to promote and any money you invest yields you a profit. So if you are thinking about this then you can join the bulk SMS business .

 So how Can you start up as an SMS reseller?

If you are interested in starting up a bulk  SMS business, write an application to

And send to the email: ransbiz@live.com . If your application is approved you will get a free reseller account and  three day training after which you are ready to make money. For those who are in foreign countries or have a busy schedule, you will be offered training via e-mail newsletters for 4 days and Skype.

 So what is the Role of a Bulk sms Consultant?

   As a Bulk SMS consultant, you  help businesses, institutions, families, corporate, churches, NGOs, farmers  and others  reach out  to their customers or loved ones using BulkSMS services.

How does it function?

This technology involves computer programming. We are not interested in the programming part. You don’t need to be a computer wizard to join the business. We have several bulk sms softwares that can assist you in starting up.
With the bulk sms technology,you can  send SMS to mobile phones with a set name (I am sure you might have seen an sms from orange or MTN without a number).    The delivery depends on the gateway used, route of delivery and network coverage

More than ten  thousands of messages can be sent at ONCE with you choosing any DESIRED NAME  with our bulk sms service right here in Cameroon.This is the name that will display on the receivers phone as the SENDERS NAME (Single click on send tab)

It is a very sure way to promote your product in Cameroon compared to radio and television. It will replace banners and poster that are all over our streets today.

How can this be reliable?

Our bulk sms in Cameroon is one of the best in   Cameroon.
Just think of the following.

You just have received a message from 8081(express union)

You might have received a message from a bank informing you of your account details or salary availability with the banks name.

You should have seen ‘’EXPRESS EXCHANGE messages on your phone’’

You probably have received a message from ‘’PRC’’ with content

‘’The president and the first lady wishes you a happy and prosperous new year’’

 So those are the people who are using bulk sms services. Think of investing your time and energy in bulk sms marketing .,

For those who want group training, you can send your proposal to ransbiz@live.com and a schedule will be created for you. 

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