Taking care of your affiliates is as important as taking care of your customers. They promote your products and bring the customers in, so they deserve to stay informed and have their concerns addressed. Conducting affiliate question and answer sessions is a great way to keep your affiliates in the know.

Q&A sessions are a convenient way for you to answer any questions your affiliates may have. Several affiliates may have similar questions, and a group question and answer session allows you to answer it once instead of several times. Affiliates can also learn from questions of other affiliates that they may have never thought about asking. The result is affiliates who are better informed and feel good about your company.

There are a few ways that Q&A sessions can be held. There are:

• Conference Calls – There are lots of conference call services out there. Some are free for small groups, only requiring each participant to pay long distance charges. Those that cater to larger groups may charge a monthly fee or a certain price per caller or conference.
• Online Chats – Chat rooms are inexpensive for everyone involved. Webmasters of other sites may let you use their chat rooms for free or for a small fee. You could set up your own. Prices vary, but if you don’t mind some advertisements you may be able to get one inexpensively.
• Webcasts – If you have the equipment to broadcast over the Internet, a webcast or video chat is a great way to have a Q&A session. It lets participants put faces with names, and that makes some people more comfortable asking questions. Those who prefer to remain anonymous could send their questions in via email or instant message.

If your group is fairly small you could start the session by having everyone introduce themself. It will help break the ice and make people more comfortable asking questions. Then you could answer questions that you’ve been asked individually before taking questions from participants.

How Often Should I Have Q&A Sessions?

How often you should have question and answer sessions depends on how many questions you’re getting. You could choose to have them once every month or two. If you are making changes in your affiliate program, a Q&A session might be in order shortly before or shortly after those changes go into affect. If they are big changes or you are introducing a new affiliate interface you could have sessions every couple of weeks until everyone is comfortable with the changes.

Answering your affiliates’ questions is essential to their success and yours. Having organized Q&A sessions allows you to address questions without going over the same ones over and over. It also builds a rapport between you and your affiliates, leading to greater loyalty and potentially higher profits.

More and more entrepreneurs are starting businesses as sole proprietorships. Many of them begin with no employees, leaving every aspect of the business on their own shoulders. While this is certainly an inexpensive way to start a business, it’s not always the most efficient way to make money online.

Fortunately, there is a way to get around hiring full-time employees. It’s called outsourcing. That simply means hiring a third party to perform work for you on a contractual basis, not as an employee. By outsourcing, you get the benefits of not having to do everything yourself without hiring an employee you may not need all the time.

How Do I Know When I Need to Outsource?

As long as you have the means to pay an independent contractor to do the work you need done, it’s never too early to outsource. But many business owners prefer to go it on their own until they absolutely have to let go of some of the work. Here are some signs that you might do well to consider outsourcing:

• You run into something that your business needs but you can’t provide. Maybe your accounting has become more complicated than you’re comfortable with, or maybe you need a custom computer program written. If there’s something you’ve been doing without because you can’t do it yourself, outsourcing may be in order.
• Everyday tasks are becoming more than you can handle. If your emails and phone calls are going unanswered, your customer service is suffering, and you can’t even make time to empty the trash, it’s time to get help. Depending on your needs, you could hire a virtual assistant or a temporary in-house assistant.
• Your workload is getting overwhelming. You might be taking on too much work. Then again, if you had someone to handle certain aspects of projects, you might be able to handle everything you have and more. If you design websites, for example, you could outsource the content writing to a writer and the graphics to a graphic designer.
• You have no time to spend with family or participate in leisure activities. Everyone has things they enjoy doing outside of work, and just because you own a small business doesn’t mean you should give that up. Outsourcing can take some of the burden off of you and allow you to do more of the things you enjoy.

Outsourcing is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you know how to handle your workload efficiently. It can allow you to take on more work than you could on your own, and that means greater profits. Whether it’s everyday tasks or projects requiring great expertise, outsourcing as needed is good for your business.

Affiliate marketing increases sales. That’s the bottom line isn’t it? That’s the real reason to consider adding an affiliate marketing program to your marketing plan – more sales and more profits. So what is needed to set up an affiliate program?

Step 1. Who will run the program? The first step is to decide if you want to handle the program yourself, if you want to hire an affiliate manager or if joining an affiliate network will be best. Each has their pros and cons.

Step 2. Software. If you decide to handle the management of your affiliate program there will be a need to purchase software. There is an abundance of software products available and a quick Google search will generate tons of results.

Step 3. If the way to go is to hire an affiliate manager, here are some of the tasks they will manage:

• Recruit new affiliates
• Maintain affiliate relationships
• Develop and track affiliate programs
• Tracking and reporting statistics
• Tracking sales and paying commissions

Affiliate managers can be paid by the hour when outsourced. It is important to determine ahead of time how much time an affiliate manager will devote to your program this will help when including them in a budget. Remember when profits increase the budget is likely to change.

Step 4. Affiliate networks. An affiliate network is a mediator that connects people that want to sell products or services. An affiliate network or ASP, Affiliate Solution Provider, manages the program, tracks the sales, delivers
affiliate marketing tools and basically eliminates the need to purchase software and hire an affiliate manager. ComissionJunction, ClickBank
and LinkShare are just a few of the many notable ASPs available.

Step 5. Commissions. How to pay affiliates and for how long to pay them is strongly determined by your type of business.

Affiliate commissions generally range anywhere from 2% to 50% and much of that is determined by the price of the product or services and the profit margin on them. If a book sells for $14.95 and the profits are $10.00 then a 50% commission generates a final profit of $2.52 for you. Not much but it is a sale that wouldn’t have been made without the affiliate.

So what happens if that customer comes back and makes another purchase? Is another commission paid to the affiliate or do you earn all of the profit? This is a decision that you have to make. How long does an affiliate earn a commission on a customer that they’ve sent?

Step 6. This is where cookies come into play. No not the hot from the oven chocolate chip kind, the kind that record and track a customer. Those small text files that tag a customer sent from an affiliate. You can set a cookie to last for 30 days, which means that every purchase that customer makes for 30 days generates a commission for the affiliate. 60 days means that every purchase made during the first 60-day period generates a commission for the affiliate. However, if the person makes a purchase 65 days after their initial purchase or visit to the website no commission is generated.

Cookies generally last for 30, 60 or 90 days or for life. A lifetime cookie means that any purchase made by that customer at any time whether it is 10 days from now or 10 years from now, generates a commission to the affiliate.

In the event of a returned product, then decide is whether or not to pay a commission. Generally, businesses only pay a commission on confirmed sales. That means if a product is returned, no commission is paid. All of these details, returned products, commission percentages and cookie life need to be spelled out in your affiliate agreement.

Step 7. Marketing tools. The more tools that are given to affiliates the better they’ll be able to do their jobs. In today’s market, banners are still the most common tool given affiliates however banners are less and less effective. In fact, recent studies have shown that people actually avert their eyes when they see a banner ad.

What is generally more affective is to provide a coded link to your affiliate. This link tells your program that the customer that clicked on it came from them. Text links and links used in web copy generate significantly more click-throughs than a simple banner ad. Here are some more tools to provide your affiliates:

• Ad Copy
• Keywords
• Email templates
• Sales copy/sales letters
• Articles
• Coupons
• Special deals or promotions

Step 8. Recruit affiliates. Here’s the big question. How and where to find quality affiliates?

• Affiliate networks.
• Online forums.
• Satisfied customers.
• Get listed in affiliate program directories.
• Post an affiliate program on your website.

Step 9. Motivate and Communicate. Make it worth your affiliate’s while. You need good products, services and a high conversion rate or they’re wasting their time sending customers to you. There’s nothing more frustrating for an affiliate than sending you 100 customers and not having any of them make a purchase. Make sure your sales page converts!

You also need to make sure that you’re paying your affiliates well. A commission of 2% on a high end product is fine, however if the product only costs $10 then it’s hardly worth the affiliates time.

Make sure to give them as many tools as you can to make pre-selling products or services easy. This means all of the things that we talked about earlier, banner ads are fine but text links, ad copy, coupons, promotions and even email templates or sales letters are great.

Communicate with your affiliates on a regular basis through a weekly or monthly newsletter. Be sure to offer contests, special promotions, coupons and the like to motivate them and make their jobs easier and more fun.

If you are looking for extra exposure for you website you have come to the right place. We have made two 125 by 125 ad blocks available on a first come first served basis.

The ad blocks are displayed above the fold so no needs to scroll before seeing your ad, it’s right there for all to see on the top right of our pages.

Currently each ad block sells for an affordable $20.00 per month, however the price will increase as the our site grows and the demand for these two ad blocks increases.

NOTE: Just to avoid any problems let it be known that I don’t allow gambling sites or porno sites, so if your site falls into these topics please don’t waste my time as you will just be denied.

I reserve the right to decline any request for an ad block.

Requesting your ad block placement is pretty straight-forward:

1. The first step is to check the top of our page, on the right, to see if an adblock is available. It will look like the graphic in the top left of this post.

2. Next you can email us at ebooks @ ebooks-with-reseller-rights.com – Just remove the spaces around the @ symbol to make the email address work correctly.

Be sure to specify the month you desire. I will respond with a message telling you what is available and when.

3. You must have a PayPal account you can send $20.00 advertising placement fee. Not to worry if you don’t have a PayPal account yet. Signup for free below.

For a PayPal account you can signup for free here.

3. Once you are approved by one of us you can send $20.00 USD to feedback @ 2ezguides.com – To make the email work you just need to remove the spaces before and after the @ symbol.

NOTE: For now each month these ad blocks become available again.

There are many choices for Wordpress themes meaning you don’t have to become a programmer to have your own search engine optimized and visually pleasing blog.

I have been struggling to learn more about WP themes. I make changes to my blogs once I have learned something new and that can end up looking pretty messy until I get it all ironed out. But I love a challenge.

For those that don’t want a challenge and just want to have a blog up and running I would suggest you purchase a WP blog theme that works without a major overhaul.

The Blogging Experiment Wordpress Theme is a clean looking blog template.

Image by infomatique via FlickrDo you have aging parents or perhaps you are the aging parents, as we are. Bettercaring is the site that will help you understand what the future holds and how to care for yourself or your loved ones. Bettercaring is a great place to find nursing homes.

I was looking through the bettercaring website and noticed that they have an option in the top right corner that increases the text size of the pages so I didn’t have to strain my eyes reading. Great idea.

At Bettercaring website you can look at the care options that are available to you locally, as well as search for nursing homes that fit special requirements.

When you are looking for answers to those important questions Bettercaring is the dedicated service with the answers.

With BetterCaring you can arrange the right kind of care, as well as read daily care news and receive tips on from care experts.

It was a stressful time when my wife’s parents were in their 80’s and we were more than 4 hours away. It was a feeling of helplessness and brought a high level of stress into our lives. That was 20 years ago but I still find myself wishing we had known about any services that would help us help them. I don’t want my son left in the same position.

Being prepared is a big part of caring for the elderly. Checkout the Care Search and Care Discussion areas and you will find all the help you need.

http://www.bettercaring.com

Product reviews are an exceptional tool to drive traffic to a desired website and to make money online. It is content that is both valuable and readers expect a link in the review so that they can see the product for themselves. As an affiliate marketer, product reviews are a great way to drive traffic to a website via click-throughs.

However, in order for a product review to be an effective traffic generation tool, it must be believable. No one is going to buy a product that has only pros, no cons and a lot of exclamation points! (Or at least they shouldn’t.)

Here are a few great tips to consider when writing your next product review:

Tip #1 Every review must answer these questions:

• What does the product promise?
• How well does it achieve those goals?
• Is it a good value?
• What are the drawbacks of the product?

Tip #2 Reviews can be solitary or comparative. Sometimes it’s easier to compare products than to simply evaluate one single product. Remember when comparing products to compare the same types of products, apples to apples so to speak. A review comparing copywriting software with video production software won’t help anyone make a decision. Consider what features to
compare. If you talk about the cost of one product, be sure to talk about the cost of the other. If you have a bias toward one product, be honest and tell readers that you prefer one over the other but don’t leave out features or drawbacks simply because they place a preferred product in a darker light.

Tip #3 Be honest. Think about the reader. Think about the goal. You want visitors to respect your opinion and make a purchase. Talk to visitors and then write the review as if talking to a friend. This not only enhances the copy because it’s written conversationally, but it will ensure that the review feels genuine to its reader.

Tip #4 It isn’t always possible to try every product that is reviewed however, if you cannot try the product or service out personally, do as much as possible to learn about the product. Then the review not only sounds educated, you are able to actually provide quality advice and information to the reader.

Commission Junction is a way for business owners and affiliates to come together. For affiliates, it opens the door to many programs that you cannot find elsewhere.

Commission Junction can help you with your revenue by getting a relationship started with high up advertisers. This helps you to be paid for every lead you refer and every sale you make depending on the program.

As an affiliate you will be connected with some of the best affiliate programs out there. The network of business owners is unbelievable. There are tons of them.

CJ provides great reporting tools. They have set the standard for network quality. They have received awards for their business and continue to improve their business all the time.

With CJ, you have the option of being paid for your referrals by check or direct deposit into your bank account. No need to have a paypal account if you don’t want one. Right now I have my Commission Junction checks sent to my home address.

With their added services for customizing affiliate marketing and support for top publishers they can’t be beat. Plus they give you the best customer service available. Check them out. You’ll be glad you did.

I have affiliate programs that are not at Commission Junction and they don’t pay a lot so I end up waiting quite a while for a check or deposit. Commission Junction on the other hand has a lot of affiliate programs I use and they add up much quicker in one place than spread out over a number of companies.

Not everyone agrees but I say that a great place to start blogging for business is with a hobby. Create a blog and talk about what you are passionate about. Why not make money online doing something you love to talk about.

Joining blog directoires is going to help you find like minded individuals to share you thoughts with. BlogExplosion.com is as good as any place to begin.

I am guilty of not matching my blogs appearance with my theme or topic and that can just turn people off. If you are going to have a blog and you want to keep your visitors then don’t slack off on your blogs design.

Over the years I have found that I hit the brick wall of blogging ideas periodically but I am not stuck for content. When the brain is elsewhere and you need a post then take the time to review other people and their websites as long as they are related to your blog theme or topic. Be sure to give those you review a link back to their site.

People want information, good info that is, and they want it quickly so make your blog post short and to the point. You will find you will have more readers that return over and over.

Rather than use a ton of tags that may not be totally ontrack with your theme stay on track and just use a few good tags.

By giving people what they want you will find you do much better than you would if you just gave sales pitches. So make your business blog a resource about the main focus of your business, not just a sales tool.

An area that is important and one area I have a tough time with. Incorporating personal tidbits into your business blog, makes you more approachable and personable. Just don’t be fake about it.

I blog to make money online so I add appropriate shopping links(affiliate links) to the products I like and of course fall within my topic. I try not to go over board with links so that my blogs don’t become a big linked mess. Keep it clean looking.

Having a contest on your blog to promote your business and or products is a great way to attract new readers and when they see how good your content is you may just keep them. Be sure you have the link to your RSS feed in plan site.

I have started to use my blogs as a way to interact with my readers and customers. It’s important to keep them up to date. You can do this through emails or on your blog but the best way may just be by sending them a newsletter.

You want your blog to run like a business then get yourself some business cards and be sure to include a link to your blog on your business cards. Make it easy for people to get to your site.