Allan Gardyne is the founder and CEO of http://AssociatePrograms.com and a bunch of other affiliate-driven websites, including http://PayPerClickSearchEngines.com, http://KeywordWorkshop.com and http://LifetimeCommissions.com. A full-time affiliate marketer since 1998, he spends winters in Queensland, Australia, and summers in New Zealand. No vague theory, no complex rating system - this is my top 10 - a list of the top 10 affiliate programs which are earning the most money for AssociatePrograms.com.
These are the best affiliate programs for me. They have superb products, pay very good commissions and provide reliable online reporting of affiliates' sales. They work well for me.
If you have a site aimed at website owners, or a section of your site aimed at them, these affiliate products should sell well for you, too.
(My sales are helped by the free Associate Programs Newsletter, which examines affiliate marketing and reviews the best and worst affiliate programs. It has more than 33,000 subscribers.)
Ken Evoy's Site Build It! is right up at Number 1, where it belongs.
I earn four-figure commissions (and sometimes five-figure commissions) from Ken's affiliate program now, with only minimal maintenance.
Ken is a truly amazing, multi-talented individual. Among his achievements, he has taught medicine, designed toys and games which earn millions of dollars in royalties, and invented a "virtually impossible to sell" niche software product - which he sold on the Net, earning $1,000 to $5,000 a day.
SiteSell's fast-selling Site Build It! (SBI) has been my top money-earner for years.
It makes it easy for you to create your own website simply and easily, even if you have no technical knowledge at all. It analyzes which themes will be profitable.
Even better, it helps you optimize the pages for the main search engines and teaches you how to promote your site effectively. This remarkable tool also generates your Google and Yahoo! Sitemaps and automatically submits them when necessary so you don't have to!
Site Build It! doesn't just teach you search engine optimization. It teaches you Internet marketing.
Most important of all, it teaches you how to be successful. No wonder SBI! has thousands of happy users.
Ken Evoy explains how SBI changes lives
Ken Evoy was the first to introduce the concept of PREselling to affiliates. This is the process of building relationships with your visitors and putting them into a warm, willing-to-buy mood so they are much more likely to make purchases based on your recommendations.
The Site Build It! Action Guide and videos show you how to master this technique to drive your affiliate conversions through the roof. You won't just be building a website, you'll be building a long-term web business.
There's an incredible private SBI forum where SBI owners and users share tips and help each other. There's nothing else like it on the Internet.
I use Site Build It! for several websites and highly recommend it.
SBI! sites succeed. 61% of SBIers end up in the Top 3%. And only SBI! sites prove success. You'd think that others would if they could, wouldn't you?
As well as offering fantastic value for money, SiteSell President Ken Evoy works extremely hard to help his affiliates earn money. I've spent many hours chatting with him and learning about his products and plans. You can trust him to OVER-deliver on his promises.
The SiteSell program offers:
- Outstanding value for money. You can feel comfortable promoting excellent products.
- Lifetime commissions. You don't just earn a commission on the first sale. You earn a commission on every purchase by that customer - for life. Think about that. You sell once, earn indefinitely!
- Two-tier commission structure. You earn revenue on the sales made by the people you refer to Ken.
- Limited number of affiliates. Your efforts are protected.
- A fair contract, which has non-terminatable/non-modifiable features. Ken looks after YOUR interests.
- The BEST manual for affiliates - 224 pages packed with useful ideas - totally FREE. You receive excellent advice to get you started earning money.
- A site that SELLS!
Ken's site makes the sale for you.
All these features ensure this program is a long-term winner.
SiteSell's lifetime commissions are for active salespeople only. You stop receiving lifetime commissions if you stop generating new sales.
Ken writes THREE newsletters which consistently offer the most detailed, helpful, step-by-step advice for affiliates I've seen.
Click here to see a sample of the single best affiliate-support e-zine on the Net.
Chris McNeeney surprised few with the runaway success of his third ebook, Day Job Killer. After all, his first two books had already been hugely successful.
Day Job Killer has been a really big seller for me.
His first two books both described how to promote affiliate products on pay-per-click AdWords. In Day Job Killer, Chris makes no secret of the fact that he learned many of his methods by studying super affiliates' AdWords tactics. In many cases, he figured out ways to improve on their techniques and beat the super affiliates' at their own game.
Day Job Killer (brilliant title for achieving sales) is not for the faint-hearted. It describes ruthless techniques which lure potential customers away from your competitors' links and entice them to click on yours.
A powerfully appealing feature of this book is that it promises to revive the old Google Cash method of sending customers directly from AdWords to an affiliate merchant - there's no need to build your own website.
The book's powerful salesletter appeals strongly to the get-rich-quick mentality. If you're promoting it, you may want to warn your readers that they'll have the highest chance of success if they concentrate on the techniques which Chris describes which DO require you to have your own website.
For long-term revenue generation, it makes sense to use techniques which build your own business and build your own database of email addresses. That's what I do. If you watch how Chris is running HIS business, it's easy to see he's doing it, too.
Successful affiliate marketing is nearly always about building relationships and earning trust. People like buying from people they know, like and trust. My strong recommendation is that you concentrate on the techniques in the book which allow you to do this.
Chris's first two books were AdWords Miracle (updated in 2006) and Affiliate Project X - both BIG sellers.
In AdWords Miracle, Chris makes the bold claim that he can train anyone so they can get to the stage where they can quit their day job - purely by using pay-pay-click (PPC) traffic. He has a heap of testimonials from people who have done just that, some of them within weeks.
Affiliate Project X follows the same theme, but discusses more advanced techniques.
Day Job Killer goes even further. It describes promoting not just ClickBank products, but your choice of millions of affiliate products, again using PPC traffic.
These books have had a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry.
If you're building a string of websites, writing a blog or distributing articles to article libraries, you need a lot of articles. It's time-consuming and tedious trying to research and write all those articles yourself.
You can hire writers at places such as elance and RentaCoder, but if you've tried that, you'll know it can be done but it's not as easy as it sounds. So you need a workable shortcut.
Stefan Everaet has come up with a good shortcut for you. He's creating ready made niche content packages. He makes at least three new packages available each month.
Niches covered include financial, gardening, pets, health, sports, travel and a whole lot more. Stefan even encourages you to let him know which topics you prefer and he'll do his best to provide content on those niches.
Each package includes about well written articles and beautiful graphics. I'm a subscriber, so I've had a good look at the quality of the content. I was pleasantly surprised how well written the articles are.
You'll want to tweak and optimize the articles to help search engines find them. This is a good thing. It means your articles will be unique. You can also add your own tone and personality.
UPDATE: Stefan's service is now hugely improved. You can choose between several monthly subscription levels. For example, if you're interested only in travel, you can spend your credits only on travel-related content.
Check it out here but DON'T buy it through this link:
http://www.niche-content-packages.com
I've arranged a special discount price and a valuable special bonus.
Corey Rudl's home-study Internet marketing course is a proven moneymaker that has spent several years on my Top 10 list.
This #1 best-selling course sells for $197 - and you get a generous $65 commission for every sale you refer - plus another $20 commission for every sale that your sub-affiliates refer.
The "Insider Secrets" course is a breeze to promote because Corey's company gives you real meat to work with. It consists of 2 binders and 2 resource CDs that collectively contain 1,000+ pages of the exact information you need to start, promote, and grow a highly successful, extremely profitable Internet business.
In fact, you may not know this, but this is who I learned most of my success secrets from.
Tips and techniques I learned from Corey's course and his free newsletter have helped me enormously, playing a major role in turning AssociatePrograms.com from a hobby into a rapidly growing, full-time Internet business which now employs six people. (Thanks, Corey!)
And that's why I highly recommend it ... both as a tool for learning how to increase your affiliate sales... and as an affiliate product you can promote to earn sizeable commission checks!
My monthly commissions fluctuate but are usually about $1,000. I quadrupled them when I bought the course and started putting some of Corey's methods to work.
Corey died in a car crash in June 2005 but his well managed company has continued to go from strength to strength, producing useful new products.
Corey's company has also launched fabulous new products.
One is a private membership site of monthly success stories, Secrets to Their Success. For a very small monthly fee, you get in-depth case studies of ordinary people who have figured out how to generate fantastic incomes on the Net.
They tell you how they do it, the mistakes they've made, the tools they use, and so on. I've been a subscriber since the first issue. It's an absolute must-have.
Here's a good bit of advice from Robert Clark, a former floor installer who new nothing about computers and who is now earning $250,000 a year from his Internet business:
"Learn from those who can prove their success. Don't waste your time or money on those who cannot substantiate their level of success. It just sickens me when I see sites out there trying to sell Internet marketing secrets when they are only making peanuts or claim to be successful and get virtually no traffic to their sites."
Robert tells his success story in Secrets to Their Success.
Also, be sure to read the more recent case study on super affiliate Rosalind Gardner, who generates $30,000 to $50,000 a month in affiliate commissions.
Get Secrets to Their Success here
Get the home-study course here
Join the two-tier affiliate program here
You probably know about Marlon Sanders' Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy - it's the only Internet marketing manual which has more than 100 pages of testimonials.
If you want to sell lots of products, this the book you must get.
Create Your Own Products! - the name says it all - is another very popular ebook by Marlon.
Marlon's affiliate program has been very successful for many affiliates, including me.
He has a master's degree in psychology. He knows exactly which buttons to push to make people buy. He really DOES know how to make products fast and sell them like crazy.
Marlon is a zany, highly innovative marketer with a crazy sense of humor. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, grab it.
In recent years he has launched a bunch of new products and new tools which make things easy for affiliates and other Internet marketers, including highly innovative stuff I haven't seen anywhere else.
Check out Marlon's products here:
Associate Program Handbook
Automate Your Web Business
Cash Like Clockwork System
Create Your Own Products!
Gimme My Money Now!
Marlon's Marketing Dashboard
Marlon Sanders MILCERS Club
Video Blogging Secrets Revealed
If you're building a serious, long-term affiliate business, Yanik Silver's superb products are a perfect match for you.
Yanik is a brilliant copywriter and marketer, so his products sell very strongly. You earn up to 45% for every sale you refer. But what makes this affiliate program specially attractive is Yanik's "customer for life" system. (Actually, I think it's for 10 years, but I'm not complaining.)
I've been one of Yanik's affiliates since 2001, so I've seen first-hand what can happen. His follow-up systems help create "lifetime" commissions for you.
Let's say you promote one of his reasonably priced introductory products, such as 33 Days to Online Profits. Yanik provides great value, so a few months or a year later, when the customer buys another product, for example, Instant Sales Letters, you earn a healthy commission for that follow-up sale.
A year or so later, when the customer's business is growing, she might buy another product, for example Instant Internet Profits, and again you receive a nice commission. As Yanik says, you get paid even if the customer comes back and buys 10 years from now.
I love this. It means you can earn commissions on products you haven't even promoted. This happens to me just about every month.
Yanik provides a variety of top-notch products for affiliates to promote, and keeps adding more products at a variety of price points. For several years he has been running hugely popular Underground Seminars, which pay VERY generous commissions. He also sells videos of these seminars - yet another opportunity for large commissions.
(Yanik's Underground Seminars are SO good, attracting high caliber speakers you don't see anywhere else. Our Special Projects Manager, Jay Stockwell, flew halfway round the world to attend one and immediately signed up for the next one. If you want to rub shoulders and learn tips with marketing millionaires, this is THE seminar to go to.)
It's a two-tier program. You also earn 5% commissions on the sales of affiliates you refer. It's not the highest second-tier commission I've seen, but that doesn't bother me because I concentrate on making sales myself, not hoping for other people to make them for me.
There's a reliable tracking system and dozens of promotional tools are provided for affiliates, such as ezine ads.
Yanik's fast-selling products include:
33 Days to Online Profits
The step-by-step, day-by-day guide to finally making real money online in 33 days or less for almost any product or service you sell.
Instant Sales Letters
Instant Sales Letter templates are a valuable and effective marketing tool for nearly any business owner who wants to increase their profits. You can create your own powerful sales letter in just minutes - without writing.
Ultimate "At-Home" Internet Copywriting Workshop
The massive home study course is taken from a recent $4,000/person workshop taught exclusively by Yanik for 2 1/2 days. You can sneak away with every single trick, tactic, formula, shortcut, strategy and jealously-guarded secret the Internet's #1 most-celebrated copywriter uses to create huge piles of cash at will.
Instant Internet Profits
This six-week course shows you how a completely different approach to Internet marketing took Yanik from zero to making $51,351.94 in his first 6 ? months online, working from home. This the ultimate resource for anyone who wants to sell information products online.
What does it take to be a super affiliate?
You'll find the answer to that question and hundreds more in Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 In One Year Selling Other People's Stuff.
Rosalind's success as a genuine super affiliate and the success of her Handbook is all in the details. She writes in a clear and concise style and presents the facts in a down-to-earth, no-hype manner that enables an absolute beginner or a seasoned veteran of affiliate marketing to learn what it takes to become a super affiliate.
She knows her stuff because she's been there herself.
This is a very comprehensive manual, covering a LOT of detail. She teaches you a multitude of marketing methods including PPC, email and list building. She also makes good use of blogs. The Super Affiliate Handbook is as much about what NOT to do as it is about what to become a super super affiliate.
Her focus is on choosing affiliate programs carefully, building simple but professional sites, writing compelling text and earning trust.
Rosalind makes it very clear that you have to get the details right first time, every time - that's how she generates more than $1,000 a day in affiliate income.
She describes her systems and how she manages to achieve conversion rates of between 2.5% and 6% (and higher!), when the average affiliate often considers 1% a successful conversion rate acceptable.
Whether you are just starting out in Internet marketing or have been around for a while but are still trying to find the magic formula that is going to drive more traffic and more sales conversions, don't do another thing until you've read the Super Affiliate Handbook.
If you wanted just one book on affiliate marketing, it would be very hard to find a better choice than Rosalind's book. I strongly recommend it.
PLRPro, owned by Daniel Turner and Marc Lindsay, is a very professional source of articles for your websites.
I've had lunch with Daniel and quizzed him about their business, so I feel really comfortable promoting it. I know Daniel and Marc are highly committed to providing a top-notch service at an extremely competitive price.
Their articles and advice will save you a LOT of time.
They provide an amazing 440 articles a month, which works out at just 22 cents an article. Each group has only 200 members, which is a LOT less than most other PLR (private label rights) article sites.
You also get a Traffic System, VRE Handbook, videos, and access to real people who are actually doing this stuff.
I won't go into all the details. You'll either recognize this as a bargain or not. (Note: For best long-term results, rewrite the articles, adding your own personality and facts, to make them unique.)
You can now get a 14-day trial, with unrestricted access, for only $1. This is outstanding value.
Chris Rempel's ebook, Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate, is NOT for affiliate beginners. It's aimed at intermediate-level marketers and website owners.
In a cool, logical style, Chris describes how to build a super affiliate business in which all the pieces join together, so that each action you takes applies leverage and multiplies your sales and commissions.
He doesn't tell you how to use AdSense. Do things his way, and you can make far more from affiliate commissions. He doesn't discuss paid advertising. He prefers to attract free traffic from search engines.
Don't "follow your passion", he says. Identify markets that have desperate buyers, people that are ready to buy. He tells you how to identify and target streams of such people, who are desperate for a solution to their problem. They make excellent customers.
He provides a multi-step income plan.
The first section describes how to build a 20-page mini-site that is targeted at visitors who are on the verge of buying. That's how you make the real money, he says.
I like this "lazy" man's style. Instead of doing the hard work of convincing someone to buy something, he says you should simply be standing in front of the right crowd and and saying, "Oh - you're looking for XYZ? Yeah, I would be, too. It's over here..."
Ka-ching!
Your mini-site does NOT merely contain rewritten PLR articles or any old articles on your chosen topic. Remember, you don't just want to attract visitors - you want to attract BUYERS. So you have to follow a carefully considered, logical structure designed to achieve affiliate sales. He tells you how he does it.
This book is NOT about doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It's about building a BUSINESS in which all the pieces belong.
He takes you through a structured process he's using - all the way from research and testing, from one little 20-page mini-site, to multiple mini-sites, to creating related freeware (no, he's NOT a programmer), to viral software marketing, to creating your own little "feeder" products, to creating a huge Mother Site, to creating more feeder products, so that eventually you capture and dominate your market and you own rock solid assets.
Chris says he's used this exact process for 12 months and has created a six-figure "hands-off" income by doing so. Even if you get only as far as Step 1 and Step 2, this book could change your affiliate marketing forever - especially the sections on identifying and attracting desperate buyers.
"Confessions" is very moderately priced. It's excellent value.
Neil Durrant, Shawn Collins and Anik Singal have all written good books or courses on how to create and run an affiliate program. However, affiliate marketing has moved on and those products are all either out of date or off the market.
Now at last there's a really good, up-to-date course for affiliate managers which IS available.
It's Sales Army Secrets, in which Jimmy D. Brown, a highly successful affiliate vendor, describes how to recruit, motivate and manage affiliates. It includes a description of 20 ways to recruit affiliates, a heap of really good tips on how to help and motivate them, and an in-depth interview with Jimmy's affiliate manager. It's superb value, written by a guy who is really good at this stuff.
This is the new MUST-HAVE book for all affiliate managers.
If you're an affiliate manager, just get it. End of story.