10 Concerns Affiliates Pose To Your Business!

Affiliate marketing can be particularly risky in terms of liability exposure. There are a number of concerns, ranging from liability for affiliate spam under the CAN-SPAM Act, violations of disclosure responsibilities under the FTC Act and even affiliate trademark infringement. In fact, this list is quite expansive.

However, it is possible for businesses to manage this risk by taking simple steps and by always using a comprehensive affiliate marketing agreement. The legal issues surrounding affiliate marketing can and should be addressed through the use of a comprehensive affiliate agreement. Of course, I recommend that every business consult its Internet attorney to draft this since the laws are constantly changing and the nature of affiliates may present some unique issues. But, the following discussion is a basic laundry list of some of the issues that any business using affiliates should specifically address.

1. Affiliate CAN-SPAM Act & Anti-Spam laws Compliance

The penalties for violating the CAN-SPAM act are stiff and businesses will want to comply with the Act. This means your business should absolutely address email marketing in its affiliate agreement and, specifically, the CAN-SPAM Act. Your business can get into trouble for affiliate emails under the CAN-SPAM Act if your business is actually considered to be the original "sender". The easiest way to limit liability is to completely restrict any affiliates from sending commercial emails. But, since this is not really practical, businesses should be certain to include a detailed clause in the affiliate agreement forcing the affiliate to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act and applicable state laws related to deception and fraud at all times.

TIP! A list of all the CAN-SPAM requirements along with other state law requirements should be included in an affiliate Anti-Spam Policy. Businesses should provide the policy to each of its affiliates and require them to comply with it by incorporating the policy in the affiliate agreement.

2. Failure to Disclose Material Connections

Also, affiliates can get your business in trouble for not disclosing their affiliate status and the fact they are being paid to promote or endorse products or services. Affiliates must do so in conjunction with any endorsements or positive reviews they make, including in any emails they send. Both your business and the affiliate can be liable since the affiliate will be considered as a "sponsored endorser" and a material connection with your business, which must be disclosed.

An affiliate who receives any type of compensation or consideration and provides a review or endorsement of any of your business's products or services will be considered to have a "material connection" to your business. All material connections must be disclosed by the affiliate. It should absolutely be stated in writing that affiliates must disclose the fact they are receiving some form of compensation whenever someone clicks on the affiliate link to purchase one of your business's products or services.

TIP! Businesses should always include an indemnification provision in the affiliate agreement. This type of provision will require the affiliate to reimburse and more or less be responsible for all costs your business incurs for their actions. They could even be required to defend the business in such case. Of course, this isn't something your business can really fall back on if it incurs liability since it will be liable. But, at least a contractual right will be created causing the affiliate to have to cover any damages your business incurs as a result of their actions. This is far better than not having such a provision at all.

3. Restrict the Use of Adware

Business's should also restrict affiliates from using any type of adware in the affiliate agreement. Adware usually supplies a user's computer with advertisements, or monitors the user's internet shopping and consumer activities. It is a privacy violation to download these types of applications on a user's computer without permission. If one of your business's affiliates uses unauthorized adware, the fines and penalties will be extremely stiff. Affiliate marketing agreements should include a provision stating that the affiliate will not install or use any type of application or program that delivers ads to a user's computer or monitor's a user's activities. The customer can only agree to such an installation on his or her computer after a conspicuous and clear explanation of the application's purpose is provided first.

4. Keyword advertising Concerns

Keyword advertising is essentially bidding upon certain targeted buyer related "keywords" to use in an affiliate's Google AdSense or other pay-per-click search engine campaigns. However, for affiliate marketing purposes, an affiliate marketing agreement should state that affiliates are liable for all claims of infringement, including trademark and copyright violations, arising from the content they use to market your business's products or services. The content to be specifically worried about here is keywords they use that actually infringe upon some third-party intellectual property rights-specifically trademark rights.

TIP! Affiliates should be required to carry errors and omissions insurance where practical. Without this type of insurance, your business is taking a risk that any of its affiliates will have sufficient assets that you will able to liquidate to satisfy any judgment you should obtain against them. More often than not, they won't have very many assets and you'll be stuck without any real recourse. An affiliate marketing agreement should still cover this type of risk though, at a minimum.

5. Click Fraud

Click fraud is a great concern in dealings with affiliates. Click fraud basically occurs when affiliates cause clicks to occur to the link being promoted, other than by genuine search engine generated traffic.

Some basic activities that are generally considered to constitute click fraud and that should be avoided are as follows:

Using only "click programs" that generate clicks to an affiliate link with insufficient or no site traffic that could possibly indicate that the affiliate website could produce the clicks reported;

Providing fraudulent leads;

Using fake redirects, automated software, and/or fraud to generate clicks on an affiliate link;

Typically, you see click fraud where click-through rates are much higher than industry averages and where the website traffic does not justify such high conversion rates. This practice usually come down to whether a breach of the affiliate marketing has agreement occurred. So, if you are a merchant or advertiser, it is very important that the affiliate marketing agreement you use specifies the payment mechanism, prohibits fraud and deception, and details a remedy for a violation.

6. Steal Ware

Any type of software that modifies affiliate tracking codes or replaces affiliate cookies on a user's computer and that diverts advertising commissions to another is known as "steal ware." Your business should always describe these activities in detail and restrict them in your affiliate marketing agreement. Of course, be sure to provide a remedy for any violations of this provision in the affiliate agreement.

7. Avoiding Brand Dilution

Businesses should be concerned with affiliates potentially diluting its brand identity. New or growing businesses should be interested in building a brand for its goods or services. Like any other brand, it takes time to build an identity and have it resonate in the minds of customers. Any type of dilution of the brand will undoubtedly slow down this process.

With that in mind, business's should never allow affiliates to purchase keywords with an existing brand name for any of their marketing (PPC) campaigns. The goal is to have affiliates promote your business brand in previously un-chartered territory. But, if any affiliate obtains a conversion from your business's brand name in a PPC campaign, they are essentially doing what the business could have done without an affiliate. Businesses want affiliates to drive traffic (and sales) through their own separate efforts. This means affiliates are supposed to create and monetize their own content.

If your business allows its affiliates to bid and use keywords that reflect its brand identity, your business will essentially be paying them for the work previously done by the business. Affiliate marketing agreements should restrict affiliates from bidding on brand names in any of their PPC campaigns. Additionally, affiliates should not be allowed to operate country-specific TLDs that include any business brand names. The customers who find you on country-specific TLDs and domains with typographical errors should be considered customers of the business anyways. Your business shouldn't pay someone else for the work the business has already performed to brand itself!

TIP! Businesses should always claim business profiles and prohibit affiliates from marketing on all local search engine directories. Some affiliates practice what amounts to "spamming" Yahoo local search directories and Google Maps by embedding their affiliate links in those directories. Any potential customer who finds your business via local search engine directories was a customer of your business from the beginning. This is another form of brand dilution and should be prohibited in an affiliate agreement.

8. Using Sub-affiliates

If your business is going to allow affiliates to subcontract out some work, it is important to require that affiliates identify in writing any and all sub-affiliates. Businesses may be held liable for the sub-affiliate's conduct, so your business should incorporate a way to identify any sub affiliates in the affiliate agreement. I also recommend that businesses include a provision in the agreement where affiliates indemnify the business and hold it harmless from any liabilities it may incur due to the actions of any sub-affiliates.

9. Unique Content

Affiliates should generate their own content! There are at least two reasons for this: (1) businesses are paying them to expand their brand into new space and enhance brand presence by identifying and expanding into new markets. Businesses don't pay affiliates to regurgitate pre-packaged material into old markets and attract the same clients; (2) restricting affiliates from copying existing content will help minimize any duplicate content issues. Provide samples for affiliates to view, but insist that the marketers add value to the products or services being promoted by creating their own marketing content.

10. Uniform Quality Control

Another measure I recommend to businesses is to create uniform guidance and provide accurate information about their products. A single, uniform standard setting forth expectations in terms of affiliate's quality of delivery and presentation and providing a single source of information about your business's products (or services) will minimize issues. Every business should ensure some means of quality control over the sale and promotion of its products.

This article was written by Philip A. Nicolosi, J.D. Mr. Nicolosi provides legal services through his law firm, Phil Nicolosi Law, P.C., focusing on startup and small business law, Internet & technology law and commercial transactions.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Philip_A._Nicolosi,_J.D./167462

How To Choose The Best ClickBank Health Niche Blog Posts

First of all there are a number of areas that I want to cover before we get to How To Choose The Best ClickBank Health Niche Blog Posts.

The reason for this is that you will need to understand these areas first before you even touch your computer keyboard otherwise you will simply be wasting your time. The areas I will cover include:

• Why you should be using a Blog to promote ClickBank products
• Other methods to promote your health product
• Why you should identify a niche market
• Factors to consider when choosing which health product to promote
• Top Tips for choosing the health product to Blog about
• How To Choose The Best ClickBank Health Niche Blog Posts

Why you should be using a Blog to promote ClickBank products

One of the best ways to promote your product is to build a blog or website to advertise your product. A blog is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your affiliate link as you are effectively creating a new website each time you blog which, if done correctly, will get people who are interested in your health product or service to buy your product.

Unlike paid traffic methods advertising on Google a blog is effectively free other than hosting charges and a good blog post will bring you traffic for years to come without you having to do much more at all to the blog other than the odd update.

There are many methods for setting up your blog including WordPress and Google Blogger.

The most important thing about your blogs is that they are relevant to the area of the health niche that you are promoting and that you get seen - in other words that you obtain a ranking on the top pages of Google.

Other ways to promote your health products

• Write a sales letter that accurately describes the product and what it can do for the buyer.
• Create a capture page (for email).
• Create a sales page for the product.
• Create a series of emails that offer info about the niche then promote the product to your email list.
• Find new ways to market your item. Post information about it in forums and on related websites

Why you should identify a niche market

In order to make money from ClickBank the first thing you need to do is identify a niche market. Try to market too general and you will basically be lost amidst the competitors.

The best example I can think of is that of a 'Mom and Pop' store which sells pretty much anything you can think of. If the store is in a small town in the middle of nowhere then the store will do OK. There will be little or no competition other than the nearest gas station so cost won't be much of an issue, there will be no problem with anybody finding the store as it is the only one around and people will appreciate the fact that they can buy pretty much whatever they need.

If you now put that same store in the middle of a huge city and what is going to happen? Well first of all there will be huge stores nearby such as Costco, Walgreens, Target etc all of which will out sell and out price anything offered by our Mom and Pops store as there is now huge competition and even the convenience factor won't help it as there will almost certainly be a 7-11 nearby.

You also won't be able to find the store in a directory as there will be thousands of stores selling the same thing so our Mon and Pops store is now out-matched, out-priced and out of sight.

The only way that a store such as this can survive is to specialise - the narrower the specialisation the better and aim to be the best store that is available in that niche.

Let's say that they specialised in samurai swords, there would more likely than not be little competition and in a city of millions there will always be enough people who are interested in Samurai Swords to keep the store in business.

Also, if those people looked up 'Samarai Sword specialists' in a business directory the chances are there will be little or no competition for our Mom and Pop store so the business there is out there will head straight to our store.

Now on the internet there are billions of customers so the need to go niche is even greater. You are not Amazon or eBay so don't try to compete with them, instead specialise - the more niche the better.

The health niche is a great specialisation to go for as there is a lot of interest in this area and a lot of money to be made but you need to specialise within this niche even further and your blog posts need to reflects this specialisation.

Factors to consider when choosing which health product to promote

Choose a product with a High Gravity Rating

The ClickBank gravity rating is based on the number of different affiliates that have made a sale during the week. A high gravity rating means that lots of affiliates are making sales and, in general, this means that the product is in hot demand and has a good chance of being profitable for you.

Choose a product with a High Sale Price

Very simply, the higher the sale price the more money you will make so providing the gravity is good it is better to sell higher priced items.

Choose Products that pay high commission

Choose products paying at least 60% commission It isn't worth the time and effort to promote a product unless your commission is at least 60% for lower ticket items of say around $30-$70; abiding by this rule means that you earn a minimum of $18 per sale. There are dozens of products in ClickBank that pay out 60% or more - the very best often pay out 75%. Only accept less than 60% commission if the selling price is above $70 and the gravity is good.

The only exception is for items that include Recurring billing. These are subscription-based ClickBank products often enable you to continue earning a commission every time the customer pays their subscription. In this case, you can lower your commission to 40%.

Check out the sales page

A lower gravity product is not necessarily unprofitable and new products in particular may well be very profitable and of course the competition will be less as fewer people will be selling the same product. Ways to find newer products which may sell well include clicking through to the sales page and checking for lengthy sales copy as this will convert much better than short copy.

You can then compare the copy with competing products. Is it convincing? If competitors have better looking and better-sounding sales copy, then the product probably won't sell well. Equally if you can find a new high cost product that has a detailed and well written sales page which is on a par with or superior to comparable products which have sold well in the past and provides an excellent commission percentage this may well be a great product to sell.

Search your product on the Internet

Check for Internet searches on the primary search term for your product in the form of lots of PPC ads.

You can take this as a sign that there is money to be made in the market. A highly profitable product should reveal dozens of PPC ads which is a sign of a healthy market.

On the other hand, if a search brings up only a handful of ads and only one of these appears to be an affiliate. This suggests that the market is either undiscovered, or unprofitable - and the likelihood is it will be the latter!

Top Tips for choosing the health product to Blog about

Promote high quality health products that you would personally enjoy and buy. If you personally like the products, you will find it easier to sell them. You will also share a similar understanding and passion of other potential customers. It adds to your credibility.

Review the tools and tips that the product owners offer on the Affiliates descriptions of their programs web page. Many offer helpful advice on how to best promote their product, and also banners and marketing collateral that you could use.

Test the affiliate links (Hoplinks) periodically to make sure that they are still working correctly. If something is wrong, you won't be making any money.

Check out your competition. Are there other affiliates who are already promoting these products. How are they doing it?

Read their sales copy, and ask yourself whether it's convincing, true, and believable. Copy what you think works and leave out what does not.

How to choose the best ClickBank health niche blog posts

OK so I am now going to go through the process of choosing one of the best possible ClickBank Health Niche Blog Posts using the information given so far.

So first of all let's choose a good product; I am going to choose one that provides a cure for Hemorrhoids.

OK not a very sexy product but great gravity and commission and the fact that it Pays Up To $417.85 Per Sign Up is very sexy!

Now you will need to find a list of keywords which are the best words to promote people to the page.

As far as I am concerned you absolutely need to be using a Keyword Tool in order to make the next step in the process work; I use Jaaxy but you can choose any of the tools out there.

Let's take what should be a great keyword which is 'Cure for Hemorrhoids.'

Jaaxy shows us the average amount of traffic that each word receives per month, the number of visits you can expect to receive each month to your website assuming you obtain a page 1 ranking on Google, the number of competing websites for your Keyword and a Keyword score out 100 showing how good the Keyword is.

'Cure for Hemorrhoids' has only an average score mainly due to the fact that there is so much competition for this word and you would be better off writing blog post entitled 'Cure for Hemorrhoids Naturally' as this has much less competition and although the page views are less you are much more likely to achieve them using this Keyword.

Therefore, for this ClickBank health niche I blog post I would suggest a title such as 'How To Find A Cure For Hemorrhoids Naturally' and then either research the article myself or pay someone $5 on Fiverr to write it.

So not only have we found a ClickBank product that works well in our niche but we have found an article with high scoring keywords which will be highly likely to rank on page 1 of Google and will bring around 72 targeted visitors to your blog per month all highly likely to click on your affiliate link and buy your product.

All you need to do now is replicate this in your own healthcare niche and crush it on ClickBank!


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8865095

eBook Writing And Publishing: How to Make Money As an eBook Writer

Prolific writers love writing eBooks for several reasons. eBooks are big writing projects that writers love to get their writing 'teeth' into, they're easy to format because there are no paper page issues to worry about, and they're quick to publish which leaves more time for writing.

But if you want to make a lot of money as an eBook writer then you need to be able to write fast. The faster you can produce an eBook the quicker you can start selling it, and you can go on selling it for years as long as the content is up to date. Even fiction books can get out-dated sometimes.

So you need to create eBooks fast if you want to earn your living this way.

The first thing you have to do with any eBook is research your subject. Even fiction books sometimes need a bit of research to make sure they are factually correct.

Research can be done quickly on the internet. These days most libraries now have their reference books online too. Just make sure that you don't get distracted by websites that look interesting but have no relevance to your research. Stay focused. Set aside an amount of time for research and that way, you'll be less distracted by 'pretty' things you find on the internet because your time will be limited.

Next you need to outline your eBook thoroughly so that you know exactly what information you're going to be including and in what order. Then it's time to start writing. If you've researched enough and outlined properly, the actual writing should be easy and fast to do because you'll have so many notes and outlines to refer to, plus all the information will be fresh in your mind.

Next you need to make money from your eBook.

eBooks are written for different reasons. The most obvious reason is to sell it and make money. And while this is an excellent way to make money writing eBooks, there are other ways too.

PLR eBooks 

You can sell your eBooks as PLR products. PLR stands for Private Label Rights. This means that you are actually selling the copyright of your eBook with each sale. When someone buys a PLR eBook it becomes theirs to do with as they please. Many eBook writers sell only a certain amount of each PLR eBook so as not to flood the market with the same product and reduce its value.

Some eBook writers package their eBooks with promotional articles and a sales page to attract more buyers. The only problem with PLR eBooks is that if you're selling a limited number of each one, your income is finite, but you can charge a high price per copy.

Promotional eBooks 

It's common for writers to write a small promotional eBook to give away for free and use it to advertise their bigger eBook. These smaller eBooks can be used by others to give away too. This is known as viral marketing because everyone loves a freebie so chances are your free eBook will be downloaded thousands of times with people passing it along to others via their own websites. This can work really well as a promotional tool.

Promotional eBooks are also a great way to market not just your eBooks, but your websites too and get you known as a leader in your niche.

Re-sale rights 

This is similar to PLR except that your eBook cannot be changed in any way. People who buy your eBook with re-sale rights, get the right to sell it themselves. Selling an eBook this way means you need to place strict terms for re-selling such as not under-cutting you on price and not changing the eBook in any way. Selling an eBook with resale rights, unlike PLR, means you can go on selling it for years.

Ghost writing 

If you find that you love writing eBooks and are good at it, you could hire yourself out as an eBook ghost writer. Writing eBooks this way means that you'll never get recognition for your work but you will be paid for everything you write. It's not unusual for eBook ghost writers to charge several thousand dollars to write an eBook. I know of one author who was paid $1,600 for writing a 10-page eBook.

Get Affiliates 

You can use affiliates to help drive sales of your eBooks. It's usual to pay affiliates 50% commission or more. If you are lucky enough to get a super affiliate selling your eBook and generating hundreds or even thousands of sales, it's wise to increase their commission to motivate them to sell even more eBooks for you. And because they're selling so many, even if you pay them more you'll still earn more.

So as you can see, there are ways to write eBooks quickly and different ways to make money from them.

Just make sure that all your eBooks are great eBooks.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Ruth_Barringham/38265

A Guide To Getting The Most Out Of Network Marketing

With the economy the way it is right now, it makes more sense to work from your home, rather than searching for a second job. Although operating a small business can be difficult, network marketing offers the potential to earn extra money, connect with other people and improve your quality of life. This article includes powerful tips on starting and succeeding in this business.

Go into network marketing with an understanding that you are going to be extraordinarily busy for a while. You are starting this out alone, and you are going to have to allocate as much time as possible to get it off the ground in the early days and beyond. The time you put into it will pay off in the end so think of these hours as an investment in your future.

A new opportunity will always be more lucrative than a long-standing one, but the older one will be more stable and likely to stick around. You have to judge each opportunity as it comes along on whether or not it's financially viable, and what it's current reputation is, before you decide to join.

As it is with life in general, having a positive attitude towards your business will help it become a success. While you may have obstacles and problems along the way you should continue along because these setbacks, and how you deal with them, will help guide you towards your future success.

In the business of network marketing, it is extremely important that you have a lot of integrity. This is a legitimate business with the potential to make you a lot of money, so being a wise-guy and a dunderhead will ensure that no one wants to be on your team. They'll find a better leader out there.

When picking strategies for your business, don't negate anything that sounds kooky or "new age". For example, putting your hopes and dreams out to the universe will help you focus on what targets you wish to hit, giving you a clear goal. 

Doing this daily will remind you of what you want to achieve.

When starting a network marketing strategy, you must figure out what your driving motivation is. Is it how much profit you want to make? Is it an item you'd like to buy or maybe, it's success based on the number of profit-earning people you have in your downline? 

Sometimes, helping others is the greatest benefit of all.

Take your business online. Many people are not setting up an online marketing system, and this is hurting them badly. An easy way to set your business apart from others is to jump into the online world, where you can (with a little hard work) generate more leads than you know what to do with.

Network marketing can help large corporations get their audience via your network as a home business owner. Apply the tips from this article to get started as an independent agent and find success with network marketing.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9715629

How Do You Start An Online Store Without Any Products?

The shop keepers in your local high street don't produce everything they sell. They purchase products from a supplier, put them into stock and then mark-up the products to sell on to their customers.


When you start an online store, you don't have to purchase any products before you sell them. You can sell products that have been created by another people and when you make a sale, the product owner pays you a commission.
Welcome To The World Of Affiliate Marketing


This business model is called affiliate marketing and it's an easy route to starting your own online store. You can sell physical and digital products as an affiliate. Physical products are items that are delivered to your customer's front door. Digital products are items that your customer can download instantly to their computer after purchase.

Top Affiliate Marketing Products

The best products to sell via affiliate marketing are those that won't go out of style anytime soon. The big evergreen markets of health and fitness, money and love will never go out of fashion. People will always have problems and issues in those areas that they want solved and will be looking for someone or something to solve them. There are, of course, other affiliate niches that you could look at.

Start With Digital Products

The most profitable affiliate products are digital products, rather than physical products. People will buy digital products faster and get them as soon as they buy them. Plus, you're likely to earn more money per item when promoting and selling digital items. Digital products are generally informative. They can be eBooks, audio or video courses, newsletters, software or access to membership websites.

Solve Problems for Your Audience

You want to find products that solve problems for your audience. Search for products that you can sell as an affiliate that offer solutions for your audience. Take the time to do some research. Just because there is an affiliate product or service out there that you can sell, it doesn't mean that countless numbers of people will want to buy it.

Different Products Pay Different Commissions

Always know in advance how much commission you will get paid when you make a sale. Every affiliate program out there has a different payout process. Some pay out monthly, some make you wait until you reach a sales threshold and others have even more complicated rules. Read all the rules, and understand when and how you'll be paid.


Companies are happy to pay commissions to people just like you, in return for selling their products and services. You have the potential to make a great income when you choose the right niche, stay committed, and understand your audience. For a no-nonsense, kick-start guide to getting started, download my free checklist, Affiliate Marketing For Beginners at http://jonallo.com/affiliatechecklist


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jon_Allo/1079948