Make Money Online

What is EPC?
The EPC (Average Earnings per One Hundred Clicks) is a relative rating that illustrates the ability to convert clicks into commissions. These ratings put all merchants on the same ‘playing field’ so it is easier for affiliates to compare and choose the most profitable merchants to work with. EPC reports basically shows affiliates where they can make the most money from their traffic by showing which merchants have paid out the most money per click during the given period. There are two time periods that CJ calculates EPC for: 3-month EPC and 7-day EPC.

What is the 3-month EPC?
3-month EPC values are calculated and updated daily, using data beginning five months previous through three months previous. On the first of each month the “five months previous through three months previous” timeframe changes to accommodate the month change.

For example, an EPC rating in July is calculated using data from February, March, and April. It is necessary to use data beginning five months previous to give accurate EPC ratings that may include extended or reversed transactions. (If a merchant has not received 1000 clicks during that time period a N/A will display for the EPC.)

How is 3-month EPC Calculated?
The EPC is calculated by taking each affiliate’s total commissions earned and then that number is divided by the number of clicks received for 3 months and then times by 100.

How is the 7-day EPC Calculated?
7-day EPC is calculated by taking the sum of all commissions earned for 7 days and then they divide by the sum of all clicks for the same 7 days and multiply this by 100. There must be at least 100 clicks for the 7-day period to calculate a merchant’s EPC. (If less than 100 clicks occurred, N/A will display for the EPC.)

By comparing EPC values, affiliates can easily detect high performing programs and optimize their links to direct traffic to those top-paying and converting merchants. If you are not yet using CJ (Commission Junction) to sign up for affiliate programs you are missing out on valuable tools like their EPC report. View the link below to learn more about CJ’s affiliate network.

Amazon Associates Program

Amazon Affiliate Program is perhaps one of the most popular ones especially for bloggers because it is quite simple to use and contains wide range of products in their system anywhere from books to electronics, cameras, computers, jewelry, CDs and DVDs etc. It’s also excellent because there are quite a lot of tools which can be used to integrate it in one’s blog. Some bloggers also integrate A-Stores - Amazon stores (something I need to get set up as well).

Another beauty of the Amazon program is the various ways they provide you to link to their excellent list of products. Even on just their basic tools on the Associates page you have the option to link to products using text links, pictures, buttons and various other keyword triggered techniques. I personally use Amazon’s program quite a bit on some of my blogs and find it quite effective. While my earnings from Amazon are far less than my Adsense income it’s a nice bonus each quarter (they pay every three months). This quarter (just over half way) my total is just over $650 (USD). Amazon’s affiliate program pays out in either gift vouchers (to be spent in the store), cheque (check) or direct deposit (if you’re in the US).

Amazon Associates Program Pros:

• massive array of products to choose from
• reliable payment system
• options for different payment types
• reasonably easy to use
• variety of linking tools
• Amazon are fairly well regarded and trusted by consumers

Amazon Associates Program Cons:

• only quarterly payments (many other programs are monthly)
• commissions can be lower than some other programs (although they have an incentive/bonus program that increases the % when you sell certain targets)
• incentive program can be a little complicated to understand
• some of their buttons and link methods are a little dated
• not great on some products internationally (ie while Amazon will send books and some products internationally some of the bigger ticket items will not be sent overseas. So if you have a non US readership you might have to also sign up for other Amazon affiliate programs (ie they also have a UK, Canadian, Japanese one etc this can get a little messy)).

I’ll share more tips to help maximise Amazon earnings later in this series - but in the mean time I’m sure others have a variety of experiences with Amazon and can provide some light on it as a program for us. Please share your thoughts on the Amazon Affiliate program.

Sign up for the Amazon Affiliate Program here

eBay Partner Network

Let’s start discussing about eBay’s affiliation program. eBay has one of the most successful and high paying affiliation network on web. It pays for traffic generation which leads to transaction or new registration. Below are main steps you need to follow to start eBay partnership and start making money!

1) Register for eBay’s Affiliation program
2) Advertise through eBay
3) Get paid
4) Optimize your site

There are several tools available through eBay’s partner network site. You can get direct links, RSS feed generator and API’s for technological savvy folks. However, to build a website you need a platform which is flexible, customizable and scalable so you can build multiple website with different features quickly. BANS (Build a Niche Store) and PHPBayPro are two scripts which enables you to add ebay auctions listings through Commission Junction to your website/blog.

a) BANS - Build a Niche Store

BANS (Build-A-Niche-Store) is a complete website builder by itself. One can build a complete website just around the niche he or she prefers to choose. Just enter the niche related keywords and create a beautiful and clean template for your website and it is that simple. I have built 2 sites using BANS - http://www.usacrop.com and http://www.warmsuits.com. Already I made close to $200 from each. Each site is about 2 months old.

b) PHPBay Pro is actually a Wordpress plugin using which you can add ebay auctions listings to your blog entries via simple wordpress steps. There is also an API version which is equally powerful and what I like since it gives me flexibility. The website I built using PHPBayPro is http://www.buybidnow.com

Both of these offers various types of customizations. Below are the steps I have performed:

1. Registered two domains. I prefer to use godaddy since its the cheapest and has excellent customer service. However, I host on hostgator, which is fast, reliable and easy.
   
2. Installed BANS on 1st domain and PHPBayPro with wordpress on 2nd domain. Also install “All in One SEO Pack” and “Google XML Sitemap” plugins for Wordpress.
   
3. Created clean and beautiful themes for the sites.
4. Create at least 20 pages of content for each of your sites. This is extremely important.  I still need to perform this.
   
5. Keep doing link building until I get 200 uniques a day.

All this this should about 3 months to execute. I am hoping to make some money out of this. I will post my results after 3 months. Have any of you have used BANS or PHPBayPro for such projects? If yes, please comment about your findings?

Let’s start with our first internet business model - Affiliate Marketing!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing basically involves a merchant with a product and someone (the affiliate) who acts like a virtual salesperson for the product. The merchant will provide a unique affiliate link and the affiliate will promote this link on the Internet. Every time someone clicks on this link and proceeds to purchase the product, the affiliate who directed the buyer will get a commission out of it.

Affiliate Marketing basically involves a merchant who has a product and the virtual salesperson (the affiliate) who markets the merchant’s product on the internet. The affiliate will get all the product information and links from either merchant’s site or 3rd party online advertising channel (for e.g. Commission Junction) which typically manages relationship between 1000’s of merchants and the affiliates. Affiliates can market the merchant’s links on his own sites, blogs and/or various other channels.

Why is Affiliate Marketing so popular?

Affiliate marketing programs is so popular because it produces win-win relationship between the merchant and the affiliate! Both parties benefit from the partnership in their own way.

For a merchant, affiliate marketing is a way of advertising that will provide the product or service tremendous exposure which otherwise would require get amount of investment, time and effort. Merchant’s goal is have more and more affiliates and as a result hope to get higher chances of the product being seen by potential customers on the Internet. The merchant actually pays the commissions or “fees” if you will, only when the affiliate sends customers to the product which thereafter converts to a sale. This is similar to cost per acquisition model.

As an affiliate, all you need to do is to promote the product or service for a particular program you join. Your job is to simply find as many potential prospect as possible and to convince them to purchase the product! There are ample affiliate programs and options available to join. This is the probably the easiest way of embarking on the journey of making money online. The great advantage to this program is there are no startup costs.

What are different types of Affiliate Programs out there?

There are tons of affiliate programs available on the internet. Two of the most lucrative affiliate programs are
1) Ebay Partner Network
2) Amazon Partner Network

In my next post, we will review both the above programs and see how we can build real website using both the programs.

There are various ways to make money on the internet. Some of the most lucrative ways I can think of are:

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. Adsense Ready Websites
3. Blogging
4. Selling products online (ecommerce)
5. Other advertising networks (Kontera, TextLink Ads, BurstMedia, casale, med
6. Building online applications and selling it
7. Building and trading Facebook Apps
8. Domain trading
   

and many more…

Next couple of weeks, I will explore in-depth through each of the above business models and write about my findings. We will start with Affiliate Marketing. See you all soon

The main purpose behind creating this blog is two-fold:
1) Help people build online business empires by presenting serious business opportunities
2) Identify and present new online business models and ideas

This is my first post on “Make Money Online”. Hope I will keep this interesting and informative!

As always, comments are welcome!

-bizbond