MoreNiche Affiliate Tutorials

MoreNiche give their affiliate members free resources, tools and advice to help their affiliate program operate to the best of it's ability. This guide introduces MoreNiche and provides information on how their affiliate program benifits it's members.

Join free today to gain full access to the webmaster area and start making your website work for You.

Affiliate Guide: Getting Started

Introduction

Welcome and congratulations on taking your first step to becoming a MN affiliate! Our goal is to make you the most profitable you can be, starting with our tutorial.

During this program you will find everything you need to get out there and start making money.

And it’s all here. The following introduction will answer most, if not all, your questions about who we are, how our system works and in turn how everything we teach you here can be utilised to your benefit.

Now first before we go any further we must stress the value of the MN Forum. Here in one location you can find the answer to any lingering queries you may have. Go on and give it a try. No matter your query or question there will always be someone online to give you the advice you deserve.

So from asking us more about MN, to asking for a review of your site or even to telling us how we can make MN better for you. Any post you put here will be more than welcome. Plus you won’t be waiting long to get a reply. Our forum is visited daily by experienced webmasters and one of our MN partners to ensure all our affiliates get the feedback they need.

It is truly an affiliate's paradise!

MN – The Story so far….

Since broadening our affiliate company from mensniche.com into MoreNiche just 5 years ago we are proud of what our company has become.

Having been affiliates ourselves, we understood how support could make a real difference to your success, and at the time, there was no such support available.

That is when we decided to take action, and since then, even though the affiliate market has broadened, we have still never found a company who can match our level of commitment to our affiliates.

And it shows. In the 5+ years MN has been in business, our affiliates have made A LOT of money. And the reason? Through our unique program and dedicated team members.

You see compared to many companies who will give out 10 banners, a guide and then leave their affiliates to fend for themselves, at MoreNiche we genuinely care about how your business is performing.

This is why we have always constantly striven to add new features to help your conversions; have sought out new content to fully promote your site, and are always on hand to give advice to webmasters whenever they need us. We are sincerely dedicated to your success and are all available by both email and ICQ to answer your questions. Important MN Areas:

This area allows us to get to know you. Plus enables us to pay you for all your hard work. All you need to do is keep this page up to date with all your personal and payment information, and if anything ever changes i.e. your contact details or account, just change it here and we will instantly be updated.

Want to know how well your affiliate sites are tracking and converting? You can find it all here in one area. From your day to day sales, to one particular conversion, you can view all your sales from any day you wish. Simply click the link at the bottom to change the dates. And the rest? Is fairly straight forward.

Now this is one point to remember. Everything has a start and the foundation of our affiliate system, begins here with these very same Linking Codes.

For every site you create we will embed these codes into your buttons, so every sale or conversion you make will be instantly tracked, ensuring you always get credited for the work you do. For more on this, read below.

You'll find that once your sites are set up you’ll be spending a lot of time here. Why? Because is has got everything you need to properly promote your merchants products: content, banners, press releases and ads. Another good source for your sites is our promotional feeder sites. Which we will explain in more detail later.

If there is anything you need at all – and we mean anything - simple queries, site critiques or the chance to share your experience or ideas with other webmasters, it can all be done here. And we have to admit this is a valuable networking tool. You’ll be surprised by how often one comment can trigger an idea that will take your affiliate site to new levels.

IP statistics are pretty important. In this area you will be able to see all the IP addresses – and their locations – on every sale you've made. And this is a tool we recommend you check regularly. Through these statistics you’ll be able to see which of your sites are producing the best results, and use these figures to make them even better.

If you are interested in keeping track of all the webmasters you have referred to the MN affiliate program. Here is the place to look.

You see as well as receiving a cash bonus for their referral you will also receive 5% on every sale they make. So if you want to keep an eye on how their sales are doing and how much you have made, just follow this link.

Referring other webmasters can be extraordinarily lucrative, especially if you can find good ones.

At MN it is important to us that you always feel supported. We truly do care about your success and will do virtually anything to help you out. So if you have ever got a question, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be more than happy to help, and with our numerous contact methods: email, fax, phone or forum, you won’t be waiting long for an answer.

Link Basics

Remember those link codes we mentioned before? Here is a quick breakdown for you:

To get a surfer to move from your site to ours, you need to incorporate a link into your website which they can then follow. And you can do this using one of two methods: a text link or an image.

Take this code for example:

<a href="http://www.proactol.com"> About Proactol </a>

This will create a text link that says “About Proactol” and take the surfer to the page: “http://www.proactol.com”.

Now we know your first thought: how does this link, link back to you? Simple. Using our specialised tracking software we will give you a special link that enables our software to “see” your surfer. This way, when surfers come through from your website - with your special link - we will be able to see where they came from and give you the credit you deserve. And this not just a one time thing either. If that one surfer comes back to re-order through your link, you will be credited again. So when we say our codes will track each and every sale, we mean it - you’ll never be at a loss.

Making these links is simpler than you think. Take a look at this example to see how it works:

<a href=” http://track.lativio.com/hit.php?w=101688&s=24&p=1” > About Proactol</a>

It essentionally works the exact same way as when you want to link a banner or image, except it looks a little different:

<a href="http://www.proactol.com"> <img src="THE NAME OF THE FILE WHERE YOUR IMG IS"> </a>

Business Philosophy

The purpose of affiliate marketing is simple. By promoting an outside company’s product through PPC campaigns, reviews and websites, an affiliate will get paid for every sale or conversion they make. And in a Pay-Per-Sale setting like ours, every time a surfer comes from your site to ours and buys a product, we will give you a monetary kickback. Just remember there are 2 major features that go into affiliate marketing: Internet Traffic + Product Promotion = A Paycheck for You. Fantastic!

The first part of the equation… ‘Internet traffic’. This is possibly the most fought over and hardest part of affiliate marketing. It’s true. Get the traffic, you get the conversions.

Now the best way to summarise this is to view it as a quest. A quest to get those elusive surfers to your site, viewing your product/ service and investing in what you have got to offer.

Traffic is the foundation of e-commerce. There is no way around it. If a website has not got the capabilities to send traffic it cannot be successful. The question is how can you find these sites? And in turn how can people find you? Fundamentally there are two different ways, but lets start with the most popular: search engines.

If you were looking to find a product or a service online what is the first thing you do? Use a search engine. And this is the same for everyone. Google, Yahoo and MSN, if surfers are looking for a product/ service, the internet is the first place they will turn to, to get some answers…

And once they have found that ‘key word’ - which has led them to you and many other websites - consumers will at most look at one maybe two of those pages before making a decision on who to pick and use.

Now when you consider that there are possibly hundreds of pages to every product, it is vital for you to get your website ranked on page one or two to be seen. Because logically surfers won't go 10 pages deep to see what is available. No. They will opt for a site that has got the ranking; that falls on one of these pages and has proven itself to be above its competition.

Now here is where things get a little more complicated. You see there are two ways to get ranked with a search engine. The first is referred to as SEO (search engine optimization).

And we have to admit, this is by far the most competitive (and most profitable) route to take. Take Google for example. They place a great amount of emphasis on the quality of your website's links. If the quality is low, then your site will fall with it, so it is important to get the links - both coming to and from your site.

Get them, and your site will be become more relative in searches, and will rise amongst its competitors.

There are also numerous other ways to optimise your site for SEO. Ways which our team will be more than happy to give you.

This method you will probably be less familiar with, but it is incredibly versatile once you get to know it: pay-per click (PPC) campaign.

PPC’s are different from your usual listing. They are not competing to be on the page, but are paid to be there which is why they are positioned to the right of the page. Take a look at Google. Their PPC’s are firmly placed to the right to make them distinctively different from the other listings on the page.

They are incredibly beneficial too. Why? Because the owner of the ad ONLY pays when someone clicks on their listing. So you're only paying for surfers to come to your site whose interests were sparked by your ad.

Now most PPC campaigns will allow you to write your own ad and bid based on keywords of your choice.

So if for example who had chosen to a property investment review site and wanted to use “property investment” or “rental properties” or perhaps “property investor” as your main keywords. To use them you will need to make a bid. On average these are usually $0.20, so let’s just say that in this example you choose to specify that you will pay $0.20 for every click you get.

Once you have made this bid, all you need to do is submit your ad and watch as these key words increase you conversions. And that’s it. The PPC campaign takes care of itself, though we do recommend that you keep your campaign diversified and adapt your keywords regularly to keep your conversions high.

Otherwise PPC is a great tool. Just make sure that you read up first on PPC campaigns and learn as much as you can before you consider using them.

If we were to tell you that there is virtually no limit to where you can get traffic from for your websites, you’d properly think we are exaggerating. We’re not.

You can set up reciprocal links with other like websites and trade traffic (this also helps your SEO) which will link back to your site, and in turn the merchant you’re representing.

There are other methods too. Email campaigns (as long as they are targeted and are not spam); snail mail mailers, flyers, and traditional advertisements can also work for promoting and linking back to your site.

All you need to remember is to stay creative, and use the same flare and enthusiasm you put into building your own site.

With a little creativity, you could soon be standing out from the crowd, allowing more traffic to come to your site.

So once you have got the surfer on your site, what do you do with them? Well your task essentially as an affiliate is to get them to click on the links to our sites, but depending on the product/service you choose will depend on what technique you use.

Don’t worry though, at MN we have found a variety of ways to ease you into it which have all been very successful.

A big part of affiliate marketing is matching the products you promote to the site you run. If you can do this well, you'll convert.

The second and most successful way to market a product is to build your website around it. Make your themes, your reviews, EVERYTHING based around this one product and how it is beneficial.

One way to do this is through a review site. Through this website you can feed your surfer as much information as you like whilst providing them with an accurate review of other products that are competing against ours.

Traditionally these types of sites use this formula: picking a product (the product with the best website – namely OURS!) to be its number one pick, whilst making comparisons against others.

Once you have successfully got a surfer onto your site, you can use this style to educate them on this subject and move them through your link to buy the product. Simple and it works, for one of many reasons:

• People like to shop around. This site gives them the opportunity to shop around without ever having to leave.
• Information builds trust. The more information you have in your site, the more the surfer will perceive your site as an authority. Trust = conversions
• Property Investment, for example, is possible. However because of the current climate a lot of people don't believe it. They have their doubts. They have their concerns, yet they are still researching on sites like yours in the hope that it is still possible. So the more informative you can make your site, the more convinced they’ll be that they can begin building a property portfolio and start earning from the credit crunch.
• One of the common mistakes many sites make is slapping on an ad to their website that has no real relation to the product they are promoting. So instead of generating click-through’s of surfers who are interested in investing, the majority of these are surfers just satisfying their curiosity.

You will be different. You won’t be making this mistake as your website will be informative, original and on the ball. And your banners? They will be clearly linked to your product, producing consistent quality surfers, each and every time.

An informative site can be built for ANY product out there. It may take a little more time than throwing a banner up on your site, but your effort will be amply rewarded.

At MN we understand the importance of selling your products to surfers, so we have devised a range of tips to get you that pre-sell. To get surfers interested in the product you are reviewing and ready to go to the main site. And we guarantee, the more you can pre-sell them, the higher your conversions will be.

• Identify your audience Who are they? Why are they at your site? What are their fears and what are they hoping to accomplish? Knowing your surfers needs and desires will enable you to write your site for them. They will hear themselves within those words – all their thoughts, queries and concerns – and the more your site speaks to them and captures their attention… the more likely they are to buy.
• Identify your audience's problem and exploit it We know. This may sound bad, but it this feeling of insecurity and the desire to fix it, that you can use to promote the effectiveness of your product. You have to work it. Simply include a section on the problem and its hazards, and provide them with a simple, easy to access solution.
• Assure them that their problem is treatable Fairly self-explanatory, but let them know that help is on its way.
• Include as much info as you can get your hands on. The more in depth you be about the product, the more consumers will trust you as an authority and believe in the quality of what you are promoting.
  
• Include specific information about each product you review Again, in-depth quality information gains trust. Yes, you may essentially be providing details about other products on your site, but by creating these comparisons, consumers will be able to make an informed decision... namely on the product you are promoting.
• Build their confidence Once you have selected a product as your #1 pick, include information about its guarantee, the company's reputation, how it works and why it is unique. Highlight why it is the best product out there. Shout from the rooftops if you have to. Just remember to do one thing when you are creating these reviews - never bad-mouth any product. Never. It's negative, amateur and unprofessional, and will only work to make your site less authoritative.

Read “Website Development” for more website tips…

We have recently introduced “HUB technology”, a new system that enables our affiliates to link their PPC ad or website to one of our feeder sites and get credit from sales made through it. It is incredibly simple. You see a feeder site is nothing more that a HUGE informative site. A site that surfers can look around, gather information from and check out reviews.

More importantly this system will save you the time of having to build your own information site. We have done it all for you, and as soon as you join MN you can begin using it straight away, in any way you wish.

So if for example you have chosen to do a PPC campaign, surfers will be able to click on your ad, go to our feeder site, move on to our product site and make their purchase. And you will always get the credit, each and every time simply by plugging your affiliate code. Plus you can also use our feeder sites as supplements to your own. All you need to do is add a link or menu option to your site, which will then link back it to our feeder. And that's it. Our site will do all the work for you; will educate your surfer on our extensive range of products and give you all the credit. Fantastic!

Website Development

We have to admit... creating a quality website will be hard work, but it will be worth it.

To help make your site the best it can be, we have compiled a list of some “do's and some don'ts” to help you on your way.

• What is your mission? Every company has one and so should you. It doesn't have to be complex or complicated. You have just got to ask yourself: what do you want to accomplish through your site? If you want to promote ClearPores with an information site, your mission might look something like this – “Create a website that will inform consumers in a clear and concise format about how sleep works; the main causes of insomnia and how prolonged loss of sleep can affect the body. As well as providing consumers with accurate facts about the product include reviews and suggestions of products that are available that can help cure sleep disorders.”
• Plan – Develop a good idea of how you want your site to look, its layout, where you want buttons and images to go, and how you're going to organise your information. Once you have got a clear picture all laid out on paper, move onto doing the html.
• Make your information accessible – and usable so that when they visit your site everything will be easy to find.
• Check out your competition – who is doing well? You may be surprised what inspiration you may find simply by keeping your eyes open and seeing what works.
• Spend time on your text – content is everything. It is what will sell your product and enable surfers trust you and the products you recommend. So yes design and imagery may get their attention at first, but anyone who is interested in your website and wants to use it, will be looking to your content for all the information they need. So check your spelling and grammar, and use your words to your advantage. Use them right and they will be sold.
• Post your site on the MN forum – by letting others look at it, you could receive some great advice on what you could do better.

• Do not use too many colours - The more colours you use, the more amateur your website looks. Amateur = no trust = no conversions.
• Do not use too many fonts - same reason as above.
• Do not make a website that is one looooooooong page Again, amateur.
• Do not have HUGE blocks of text. Break up your text with key points. Use headers, bulleted points, etc. for the major statements you don't want your readers to miss. Surfers will skim through looking for your main points and will be more likely to read your text if you spice it up and make it look interesting. Besides that, breaking up your text makes your site look better.

See the Formatting Articles guide for detailed descriptions

Alright, now you've got the basics. There's a lot to know about this business and always something new to learn. It's a dynamic marketplace and those who survive, learn to roll with the punches. Learning, changing and adapting are the keys to making it. If you're trying something and it's not working for you, stop, get some advice and try something else. If you have an idea you're not sure will work or have a question, post it in the forum. The exchange of ideas is what leads to great advances and innovations. Now, go my children and use your knowledge to better your life and those around you!