Affiliate marketing is a relatively new profession, as online affiliate marketing only began in 1995 or 1996. Yet already a condition I call TAMBORINE is starting to afflict affiliate marketers by the thousands. An insidious affliction affecting the affiliate marketing efforts of tens of thousands of affiliate marketers, TAMBORINE sneaks into the psyche of affiliate marketing practitioners and slowly robs them of their effectives, and eventually of their affiliate marketing profits as well…

So just what is it that causes these declining affiliate earnings, reduced affiliate marketing motivation and general malaise amongst the affiliate marketing crowd? How does this condition ‘infect’ the efforts of even those affiliate marketing superstars - the Super-Affiliates?

TAMBORINE - Traumatic Affiliate Marketing Burn-Out Resulting In No (online) Energy!

In a sense, it’s a combination of boredom and a sense of deja-vu, as hardcore affiliate marketing practitioners are usually Type-A personalities craving new, exciting opportunites, rapid results and an ever-increasing stream of affiliate marketing commissions as rewards for their hard work. Deprived of any of those areas of stimulation, their affiliate marketing soon stales, driving their overall affiliate marketing career into a spiraling nosedive.

Yet the fault for this lies not with the person DOING the affiliate marketing, but rather with those PROVIDING the affiliate marketing opportunities to them. With no real affiliate marketing mentoring, new affiliates flounder around, pushing too many different products at once, diluting any real effect their affiliate marketing efforts might have had. Even those well experienced at affiliate marketing and the super-affiliates fall victim, usually due to a lack of new and innovative affiliate marketing technologies being provided for them to take advantage of - with no new affiliate marketing technologies, the shine is soon off the affiliate marketing apple, as it were.

But fear not, affiliates - there ARE remedies to TAMBORINE and it’s de-commissioning effects… Presented here are various potential cures, since only YOU know which of the TAMBORINE symptoms are afflicting your affiliate marketing headspace:

1. For Those New To Affiliate Marketing: Frustrated by affiliate marketing efforts that just aren’t working? By affiliate marketing advice that’s never quite complete? By affiliate marketing advice that leaves you with more questions than answers? And especially, by affiliate marketing programs and affiliate managers that are hard to reach and/or offer no solutions to your difficulties? No wonder you’re suffering from traumatic burn-out - it’s far too complicated an industry to figure out quickly, and you DESERVE support from those benefiting from your affiliate marketing activities, right?Enter Jeff Levesque, called the ‘World’s Best Affiliate Manager‘ - Jeff holds a free affiliate training teleseminar every Thursday, accessible by phone or by Skype from anywhere in the world. Jeff is affiliate marketing manager for Team Champigny, and his mandate there is to ensure the success of EVERY affiliate in the Team Champigny affiliate program. As a result, Levesque STAYS on the call each Thursday to ensure every single affiliate marketing question has been answered for EVERY affiliate on the call. Since these affiliate marketing training sessions are open-ended, there’s no reason for you to ever have unanswered affiliate marketing questions again - as long as you’re an active part of the Team Champigny Affiliate Force. Join the force, then watch for your weekly e-mail detailing the time and numbers for your Free Affiliate Marketing Training Sessions.

   And after you’ve joined the Team Champigny Affiliate Force, while you’re waiting for your first call, pick up these free brandable e-books to help you shake off the after-effects of your bout with TAMBORINE.

2. For Intermediate and Advanced Affiliate Marketing Practitioners: Your affiliate marketing level creates a more advanced form of TAMBORINE, as you already know how to practice the revered art of Professional Affiliate Marketing and have enjoyed regular affiliate commission payments in the past, making your current symptoms that much more confusing, depressing and dangerous to your financial health. What you need are new products worthy of promotion by one posessing your elevated affiliate marketing prowess, and innovative new Web 2.0 affiliate marketing technologies to add to your magical bag of affiliate marketing tricks.While new and worthy products to promote are not difficult to come by if you’re on Jeff Levesque’s Affiliate Marketing Teleseminars detailed above, finding new technologies worthy of your status is much rarer - yet fortunately I’ve been able to find your solution to that too. Yes, there’s a new site online masquerading as an article directory that’s actually an innovative new affiliate marketing opportunity! You earn affiliate comissions through the people you refer to the site who take out a free membership - as any of them purchase anything through the site, your share is pared off and placed in your earnings folder. That much is normal - but what if you were to receive credits for each person you refer, credits that can be exchanged for banner advertising on the site?

   And let’s take that one step further - what if you also earned credits for every article that your referrals submitted to the site? You’re earning advertising credits on an ongoing basis from the efforts of others - every affiliate marketer’s dream! See? Even thinking about all those credits, the targeted traffic and affiliate commissions they’d generate for you is lifting your spirits already, isn’t it? Your affiliate marketing multiplied by their article marketing can equal long-term residual profits from your affiliate marketing efforts - just the way it’s supposed to be. After all, why SHOULDN’T they be toiling to increase your profits? Seems only fair to me… And nothing fights off the effects of TAMBORINE like increasing flows of liquidity through other people’s actions…

3. For The Super-Affiliates: While yours is the most severe strain of TAMBORINE, your cure is the easiest, most effective of all… You already know that being a super-affiliate comes down to having great products, great pre-selling abilities and getting your affiliate marketing promos out in front of as many targeted eyeballs as possible, and then multiplying those efforts through the efforts of others who will do the work without eating into your profits, right? So obviously your cure is the combination of the above, coupled with investing a bit of time and money in your affiliate marketing activities.Start by joining the Team Champigny Affiliate Force (although as a true super-affiliate you’re probably already in the program and using Jeff Levesque’s considerable experience and talents to your advantage!) so that you have great products to promote, a wide selection of high-quality products, and an affiliate marketing program that cookies your referrals for any other products they buy from the Team Champigny websites.

   Next, join the affiliate program for the new affiliate marketing article directory and start your comissions and advertising credits flowing in by sending out a few e-mails about it and doing some PPC promoting it.

   Then pick 2 or 3 products from the 20 or 30 in the Team Champigny affiliate program and outsource 20 or 25 articles relating to the fields addressed by each those 2 or 3 products. That gives you 40-75 articles relating to those products - have your virtual assistant tailor your Author’s Box on each to maximize sales of those products and submit them to the directory. (By submitting them there you get exposure for your links, earn ad credits from the submissions, and brand yourself much more widely online - a win-win-win proposition for you!)

So there you have it - no need for you to suffer from TAMBORINE any longer - your cure has been spelled out above. And if you feel too far gone to spike up your affiliate marketing efforts any longer, just start envisioning all those drool-inspiring commission payments you deserve, the envy of those online and in your neighborhood and, most impotantly, the shock on your mother-in-law’s face when you’re truly successful as an affiliate marketing big dog - priceless!

And please - don’t ignore your affiliate marketing buddies, leaving them needlessly suffering from TAMBORINE any longer than necessary. Send them a link to this article so they too can enjoy these miraculous cures and get back into the affiliate marketing fast lane. After all, they’ll owe you forever for this one!

To your full recovery and super-success in affiliate marketing…

Doug Champigny.
Follow me: on Technorati • on MyBlogLog • on Bebo • on Twitter • To the Bank!

Affiliate Marketing - Affiliates, Suffering From TAMBORINE? is © 2008 Doug Champigny. All Rights Reserved. Trackbacks encouraged and appreciated.

Disclaimer: No medical, psychological or research fellow has yet discovered TAMBORINE, meaning that it’s not a medically recognized condition and, as such, no information in this article or on this site may be construed as offering any form of medical, health or mental health advice - for those, go see your registered, recognized and licensed expert. This report was written by Doug Champigny, a recognized affiliate marketing expert, for those in the affiliate marketing industry and those intending to join it, and the only advice being offered, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek manner, could be pure affiliate marketing ‘gold’ to those taking the advice and acting effectively upon it. No warranties, predictions or promises of potential affiliate marketing earnings is being suggested - after all, how could it be with TAMBORINE still afflicting so many unfortunates in the affiliate marketing industry?

[tags]affiliate marketing, advanced affiliate marketing, free affiliate marketing training, TAMBORINE, effects of TAMBORINE, TAMBORINE cures, Jeffrey Levesque, Team Champigny, making money online, Doug Champigny [tags]

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Affiliate marketing is the first step for most people trying to make money online through Internet marketing. This isn’t surprising, considering affilaite marketing can be started with no investment, no product of your own and even no website. As long as you have a computer and an Internet connection, you can start making money online through affiliate marketing. 

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Put simply, affiliate marketing is the online version of the offline world’s commissioned agents. Just as a real estate agent earns a commission for selling a house they neither built nor own, with affiliate marketing a person earns affiliate commissions by referring buyers to a web site’s salespage. When those referrals buy the product on that visit, the affiliate has earned a percentage of that sale.

Depending on how the affiliate marketing program is structured, that commission may be paid instantly, through an online service like PayPal, in 2 - 4 weeks, or most commonly, on the 15th of the following month to allow time for any refunds that must be removed from the sales and affiliate commissions before payout.

Various types of affiliate programs exist, including those run through major affiliate marketing management companies like ClickBank and PayDotCom and those run by the site owners, such as our own Team Champigny Affiliate Program. In general, affiliate programs for physical goods pay 2% - 15%, while affiliates promoting digital downloads like e-books and software should expect to be paid between 35% and 75% of each sale.

How Do I Start Affiliate Marketing?

I’m often asked why I recommend people new to Internet Marketing start their online businesses through affiliate marketing. There are a myriad of reasons, the most impotant few being a) One can start affiliate marketing investing only their time, not money, b) The affiliate marketing world provides the greatest variety of free training resources for learning the basics of all Internet marketing, and c) One can begin right now, today - no need to create or buy products, design or purchase a website, etc.

The simplest formula for starting your afrfiliate marketing business involves blogging, writing and submitting articles and using the Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites. Step one is to decide what area, or niche, you want to promote products to. It may be the Internet marketing arena, pets, children, sports enthusiasts, gardeners, the home improvement crowd, etc. While each of these areas is too broad to attack in whole, each has sub-niches with plenty of products for affiliates to promote. Once you settle on a major niche, look through the available affiliate marketing opportunities to see which sub-niche appeals to you AND has plenty of products for affiliates to promote. Chosen sports? Maybe you’ll go after the golfing niche first, or tennis, or even skiing - each has plenty of products with affiliate marketing programs.

Next, set up a blog - either on your own domain or through Blogger or Wordpress.  The content of your blog is up to you - just make sure every post is relevant to your niche. If you’re a little more advanced and want to go after two or three niches, use a separate blog for each. Don’t dilute the power of your blog by cross-posting articles appealing to different niches. There is a rising trend among affiliate marketing and Internet marketing bloggers to simply write reviews of the products they’re promoting, providing an ample supply of affiliate links to the products in the process. While this is perfectly acceptable and does work, remember that you want to appear as an authority on the topic, and want to promote other related affiliate marketing opportunities to this same crowd down the line, so the more info you can bring to your blog on the subject the better, instead of simply reviewing/promoting the products directly.

Once you have the first 3 or 4 blog posts written and posted to your blog, set up free accounts at Technorati and MyBlogLog and notify them of your blog. Each of these two sites will help you attract more traffic over time, which will often convert to a larger number of buyers, making you more from your affiliate marketing blogging efforts. Similarly, use a service like Pingoat or Ping-O-Matic to notify the various blogging directories of each new post. Set up a free account at Twitter, and announce each new blog posting there too.

Next, write two or three articles on the topic - they can be brand new articles or modifications of the posts you made to your blog. Do not include any links in the article, as most directories will not accept articles with links in them. Instead, your affiliate marketing links go in your signature or Author’s Box at the end of the article. Since most directories allow two or three links in that area, use one directly to your affiliate link and one to the blog you’re writing for your affiliate marketing in that niche.

With a bit of practice it becomes a lot easier to research and write articles and blog posts on any subject, and your affiliate marketing efforts will kick it up a notch. Don’t expect results from Day One, nor even to make any money in your first month at it - although it does happen sometimes. Instead, think of the growing collection of blog posts and articles you’ve submitted a ‘paying it forward’ - each of these affiliate marketing efforts will remain online for some time and provide a growing empire of online materials with your affiliate links in them, being seen by an ever-increasing number of people. It takes time for your writing to be indexed in major search engines like Google, and even longer for some of your posts to work their way further up the results pages.

Pay attention to the resources provided by the merchants whose affiliate marketing programs you’re part of, and learn as much as you can about both the products you’re promoting and about affiliate marketing in general. Team Champigny Affiliate Manager Jeff Levesque, for example, holds weekly teleseminars offering free training for our affiliates, and makes sure to stay on the call til every question has been answered - both about our products and affiliate program and about affiliate marketing in general. While most affiliate program managers don’t go that far, be sure to find out just what training is available from the companies whose products you’re promoting. If you’re targeting the Internet marketing or affiliate marketing crowds, by all means join our Team Champigny affiliate program and make the most of our free affiliate training sessions.

As the first few weeks go by, start marketing your blog through the social bookmarking sites as well. Set up pages at FaceBook, MySpace and Squidoo, and be sure to link all 3 to your blog, your Twitter account, your Technorati & MyBlogLog pages, and to each other, of course. Try to post to your blog once a day or more, and to write and submit at least 3 articles a week to the directories. All of this can be accomplished in about an hour a day, but on days when time is tight settle for just a blog post and a tweet (a Twitter post).

If you’re not starting to see notices of affiliate commissions earned by the third month, however, it’s time to review your affiliate marketing efforts. Start by auditing your own affiliate marketing efforts. Have you been diligent and consistent? After two months you should have at least 50 blog posts, at least the same number of tweets, 20 or more articles in the various directories, and have kept your MySpace and FaceBook sites updated. If you’ve been lax in your affiliate marketing efforts, by now you’ll be realizing you only get out of it what you put in - so redouble your resolve to put in the required time EACH DAY on your affiliate marketing. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time online, and would be further ahead looking outside the house for a part-time job instead.

If you HAVE put in the time on your affiliate marketing and still aren’t seeing any results yet, contact the affiliate managers for the products you’re promoting and ask them to evaluate what you’ve done so far and what suggestions they can offer to improve your results. Affiliate managers LOVE affiliates who have demonstrated they’ll put in the required time and effort, and will be happy to help out. If you run into one who won’t, simply drop their product and find another affiliate marketing opportunity to replace it with - immediately! If they don’t treat their affiliates right chances are they don’t treat their customers right either, so they aren’t a company or product you want your name attached to.

Advanced Affiliate Marketing

Once you have some affiliate commissions rolling in, it’s time to take your affiliate marketing business to the next level. Set up an account with a company like Hosting4Marketers.com that provide you with your own web space, unlimited autoresponders, etc. The low investment in these tools will repay itself many times over once you start building your own double opt-in lists for each niche you’re promoting products to. One of the most valuable tools you’ll build in your affiliate marketing arsenal is your e-mail list of interested buyers, since you’ll be able to provide them with ongoing information, and have them prepped and ready for the next product you want to promote.

Along the line you’ll probably also run into related products in your niche that offer resell rights; now you can add to your affiliate marketing revenue by moving into your own Internet marketing as well, setting up these resell rights products on your new web space and marketing them right alongside the affiliate products you promote. Since both appeal to the same niche, no doubt some of your existing clientel will opt to buy both, while others will buy your products even though they may not be interested in the affiliate products you’re promoting. On your new sites, as on your blogs, be sure to provide an easy way for interested people to opt into your e-mail list as well.

By this point you’ll be making money with your affiliate marketing, and starting to see revenue from your own Internet marketing as well, and you can chart your own course from that point on. You may decide to continue to focus on affiliate marketing, may want to keep growing both areas of your online business, or may want to start creating your own information products to sell online. Once you’ve chosen your direction, the fastest route to growth is to hire a professional coach or mentor in that field, but that can be a very expensive option, usually ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars a month. If that’s within your means at that point, by all means do so; if not, follow your instincts and what you see successful super-affiliates doing in their affiliate marketing practices, along with following what the mainstream Internet marketing ‘Big Dogs’ are doing in their area of operation until you ARE making enough to hire a mentor.

As time permits, start to visit and participate in the affiliate marketing forums and Internet marketing forums as well - to find the best, do a quick search at Google and then visit the forums, paying attention to how busy they are and how many of the big names you recognize participating in them. Do a similar search for forums in the niches you’re targeting too, such as ‘dog forums’ or ‘golf forums’, and start participating in those, answering questions whenever you can to help establish yourself as an expert in that niche. Again, don’t blatantly advertise unless the forum rules specifically state that’s acceptable - most don’t allow it, and that’s not your main reason for being there anyway. But DO put your affiliate marketing links to relevant products in the signature file at the end of each of your posts.

Be honest in all you do online, be ethical in your dealings, and keep up the diligent efforts in your affiliate marketing, and this business can be very rewarding. Be greedy, dishonest or lazy and you’ll get nowhere fast - word of shady characters or garbage products spreads unbelievably fast online, and you’ll be burning bridges you’ll need to cross as time goes on. As stated much earlier, you will only get from affiliate marketing what you put in - but it can be a wonderful way to earn a living, and a very good living indeed if you have the patience, the tenacity and the integrity - and can keep yourself focused on moving forwards at all times.

Best of luck with it - I hope to see you at the top of the affiliate marketing leaderboards in no time! 

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, successful affiliate marketing, learning affiliate marketing, Team Champigny, Jeff Levesque, Doug Champigny, making money online, starting an online business, starting a business online, online business success

Tonight’s Free Affiliate Training Call with
Team Champigny Affiliate Manager Jeffrey Levesque:

Here are the details:

Day: Thursday, July 24rd
Time: 9:00pm Eastern/6:00pm Pacific

Calling from the US:
605-475-8590
Then enter conference room code:
5252863#

In Europe, call:
Austria- 0820 4000 1574
Belgium- 070 35 9989
France- 0826 100 277
Germany- 01805 00 7649
Ireland- 0818 270 034
Italy- 0848 390 175
Spain- 0902 886 051
Switzerland- 0848 560 195
UK- 0870 738 0763
Netherlands- 0870 001 932
Then enter conference room code:
5252863#

Last week’s call was a smashing success, going on for
almost 2 hours as Jeff answered every question from every
participant before ending the call - if you’re looking for
some serious help at any level of making money online with
your affiliate marketing, you don’t want to miss tonight’s
call…

Jeff is the best Affiliate Manager in the biz, a part
of some of the 7 and 8-figure sites online, and is able
to help you get going bigger and better - have no doubts
about that! And as an integral part of Team Champigny,
he’s giving you that one-on-one help for no outlay on
your part!

You don’t want to miss this call - or getting pro
help without it setting you back any. Congrats to
Steve Yakim, John Cussons and Charles Burleigh, all of
whom took immediate action right after last week’s call
amd made more money by following Jeff’s advice.

Who will be the one’s making more this week because
of tonight’s call - will YOU be one of them? Will
tomorrow find you making more commissions - or more excuses?

See you on the call…

Team Champigny.

Technorati Tags: Free affiliate marketing training, free affiliate training, free affiliate marketing help, free marketing help, free coaching, Jeffrey Levesque, Jeff Levesque, Team Champigny Affiliate Manager Jeff Levesque, Doug Champigny, Team Champigny

First off, let me start today with a big THANK YOU to
all of those who participated in last night’s first Team
Champigny affiliate training call. Done as an ‘open-mic’
call, we introduced Jeff Levesque and then let Jeff show
why he’s the best Affiliate Manager in the biz…

New resources and great info were provided on how to
make more with our most popular product, the PLR Tutorial
videos - if you missed out on participating on the call
you can listen to it now at our new Team Champigny
Affiliate Blog - be sure to bookmark that blog
for future reference!

Be sure to listen to the Affiliate Training Call - you can
hear it online or download it and put it on CD, your MP3
player, wherever you like to listen to great material!

Technorati Tags: Team Champigny affiliates, Team Champigny blog, Team Champigny affiliate training, affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing audio, Jeff Levesque, Doug Champigny