Swag refers to the gifts you receive when you do business with a large company or other group. The Academy Awards are famous for their decadent swag boxes, and if you do any affiliate marketing you may have already received a swag box delivered to your door. I have received, to date, 10 iPads, an Amazon Kindle DX, an Amazon Fire, a Macbook Air, a Bose home entertainment center, a 50″ Sony flat screen television, a box of organic buffalo steaks, and much, much more.

Marlon Sanders decided to create a product about how you can get on the swag gravy train, and asked me to contribute a bonus for it. If you’ve taken a look at the Marlon Sanders’ Swagbox 7 training then you already know that it is chock full of valuable information. But you may have already discovered that it’s not the information that makes you money online or helps you to create a profitable Internet business for years to come. It’s the consuming and implementation of the ideas contained in the products that makes all of the difference.

I will use Marlon’s Swagbox 7 as an example. This in depth training includes 7 parts, hence the name Swagbox 7. These parts include:

* How to Score Big Swag & Tidy Commissions
* Earning Online Income Without a List
* The ‘Bread and Butter’ Routine
* Passive Income “42″ Strategy
* My Special Report on ‘How To Create Killer Affiliate Bonus Packages’
* 7 weeks of Core Content training
* Bonuses – including scripts for Johnson boxes and more

The idea here is to actually read and put into action everything that is taught within this course, instead of simply buying it and downloading it to your hard drive. Just think how much you would accomplish if you would simply implement the techniques and strategies taught by Marlon and I in this product. Think of each product you purchase as a gift that can change your life, today and in the future. Consume your gifts and see just what is possible with online marketing.

Amazon was one of the first companies to offer an affiliate program where people could earn commission when they recommended a product, whether it was a book, DVD, shoes, toys, or anything else Amazon sells, and the buyer went through an affiliate link to get there. This is called being an ‘Amazon Associate’, and it was very convenient to set up sites where you recommended related products and made some extra money each month. I had been an Amazon affiliate since 2007.

Unfortunately, the states in the U.S. decided that it wasn’t fair for Amazon not to have to charge taxes in the states where they do not have a presence, and slowly they began pulling their affiliate program from first one state and then another. They pulled out of California at the beginning of July.

The lesson to be learned here is that we must always stay on top of the issues surrounding our business. Also, look at the alternatives. There was talk of California being affected by this decision at least a year ago. That was the time to take a look at the Barnes and Noble affiliate program for books and related products, and at many other companies that represent major retailers with similar affiliate programs.

Were you affected by this? What did you do to protect yourself in advance? How will you change what you do in the future?

The 5^th prong of my 5 Pronged Approach™ is affiliate marketing. This is the way to have an instant inventory of products and services to recommend to the people you are connecting with in your business. I only recommend what I have used and benefitted from, so I describe this as ‘recommending what you love’. These affiliate marketing tips work, as long as you take the time to implement them.

Search your hard drive to see what you have bought in the past year that you would be glad to recommend to someone else. Also, look at your monthly billings to see which services you are using that others could use as well.

The fastest way to get started with affiliate marketing is to take action on the first four prongs I have detailed in this report. Get into the habit of writing articles, blogging, hosting your own teleseminars, and utilizing social media for the purpose of building an online empire. Your visibility will increase, and people will be much more likely to take you seriously when you recommend a product or service to them.

Don’t be afraid to promote something that is expensive. It is not up to us to decide how much someone else should spend; it is only our place to be the reporter and describe what is available.

Affiliate marketing cannot be mastered in one day, so make sure you are continuing to learn from me and others who consistently earn five figures a month from this part of our online businesses. Once you begin to create your own products and services you will do even better as an affiliate, so learn as much as you can and then take action with what you are learning.

This is a guest post from online marketing expert Nicole Dean.

Today, I’m sitting at my computer, about to launch a new site and I’m going through Clickbank, looking for potential affiliate programs to promote.

Not only am I considering personally promoting the products that I find, but I may recommend that customers who purchase my PLR articles at EasyPLR.com promote them, too.

Time and time again, I’m shaking my head, wondering if these Internet Marketers realize how many potential affiliates they are losing, as I click the red “x” and go to the next product. And, of course, this isn’t only a problem with the products listed at places like Clickbank (and it certainly isn’t a reflection of the quality of Clickbank, itself).

Affiliate Programs everywhere are lacking in their professionalism and respect for their affiliates.

It’s pretty obvious that many people don’t realize what turns off a potential affiliate. Could it be, perhaps, that the people writing and marketing these ebooks have not been successful at Affiliate Marketing themselves?

After much frustration, I’ve decided to run through my list of reasons I did not choose your product to promote, and, instead chose your competition.

1. Your page is gaudy and unappealing. Now, we all know the saying that ‘Ugly sites sell’. That’s absolutely true. A plain blue or white background with Arial text can make millions. However, a site that looks like a sparkly, flashy mess and gives your visitors a seizure is not cool. Leave the cursors alone. Don’t stick animation on there. And, for goodness sakes, stick with only one or two fonts, please.

2. Typos and spelling errors. This one is actually kind of frightening. If the product you’re selling is an e-BOOK then please act like you know how to write. Have a friend or even an enemy read and reread your sales letter for you. If you don’t have any friends or enemies, then pay someone. Just don’t try to sell an e-book on a sales page that looks like a third grader wrote it. It’s not going to sell. At least I’m not going to sell it.

3. You offer sales options that I won’t get affiliate credit for on the sales page. For instance, you list an electronic and a hard-cover version of your book through Amazon. Tacky! Why should I send you traffic through Clickbank so that you can make a commission on amazon? Not a chance. Or even worse, you have both a Clickbank button and a paypal button.

And, my #1 biggest irritant –

4. You’ve got Google ads or actually have the guts to sell advertising on your page. (And, no, I’m not joking here.) I don’t even need to go there. Anyone who’s a successful affiliate knows that this is the sign of death for any affiliate program.

So, there you have it. Four reasons why your competition is getting my business and you are not.

Are you ready to attract affiliates to promote your products? And, would you like to have an affiliate program that doesn’t stink? Nicole Dean is on a mission to help you. Check out her program at IncomeCPR.com – where she’s helping Infoproduct sellers just like you to have more profits and more LIFE.

I have written several posts giving you affiliate marketing tips, and now Jim Edwards is interviewing me on this topic. You can get started online with affiliate marketing by making the decision to recommend the products and services you love to others who are interested in your topic. It all begins with taking a look at what you are using personally and benefitting from the most to see how you can best serve others. You can find out more about the training with Jim Edwards by going here to read about ‘How to Be a Super Affiliate’.

Affiliate marketing gives you the opportunity to make money while you are still learning. By partnering with some of the most experienced people working online today you will see exactly how a successful business is run, which types of products do best, and how the entire process takes place from start to finish.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to get started with an online business. By promoting and recommending a variety of products, services, and trainings offered by more established and experienced marketers you will be able to learn exactly how the entire process works from start to finish. This is done by only recommending what you have purchased yourself, learning from the process, and then creating your own complimentary product after you understand what you are doing.

It just makes sense to only recommend what you are using yourself. In the offline world you would never dream of suggesting a restaurant, dentist, or movie to someone else unless you could give a personal recommendation. Do the same thing with your business on the Internet for best results. Your experiences will make for a more honest approach to what you are learning, and will help to improve the nature of this business as a whole. It all begins with those who are willing to do the right thing and stay in integrity at all times.

Become a keen observer as you learn how

In order to connect with someone you would like to be an affiliate for, you will want to build your relationship in the right way. I have done this successfully many times now, and I can tell you that it makes a huge difference in the level of success you achieve.

The first step is to identify someone who you respect and want to know better. Join their list and see what type of interaction they have with their prospects. Purchase one of their products that is in alignment with what you want and need to learn, and what you would like to recommend to others in the future. Observe each step of the process as you move from prospect to customer with them.

At some point you will want to begin interacting with them, but make sure it is

Setting up a WordPress blog is a crucial step in the process of becoming an affiliate marketer online. The reason we use the WordPress blogging platform is that this is the industry standard. The thousands of plug-ins that are available make it possible to customize your site in order to attract the exact prospects that will be interested in your topic. When setting up this blog, think about the branding you will use, the features you will take advantage of, and how you will position yourself to reach as many people as possible.

I always tell my students that your blog is your home on the Internet, and this holds true whether you are blogging about your main niche or writing about a variety of affiliate products, services, and programs. The most important thing to remember with this strategy is that, just like your physical home, you want to make your blog personally inviting to everyone who visits. Treat your readers like visitors instead of traffic, and give them a reason to opt in to your list right there in the upper right-hand corner of your home page.

Be aware of the colors and design you use, as well as the font and any pictures. Include a picture of yourself above the fold, which refers to the area that it visible to visitors before they scroll down to read more. Include a sticky post at the top where you can share who you are and what your blog is about. This can also be done on the

I recommend starting with affiliate marketing if you are new to working on the Internet. There are several reasons for this. You will not have any of your own products when you first begin online, and marketing other people’s products gives you an instant inventory of products and services that you can recommend. It also gives you the opportunity to see the sales process from start to finish, which is something you must fully understand before you can create and market products of your own. It is much easier to talk about someone else’s products that to brag about yourself and what you have to offer, so that is another benefit of using this business model. It is truly the earn while you learn formula.

You will hear that you must have at least twenty products before you can make any real money in your online business. Even if you understand the entire process of running an online business this will take you some time and effort to put into place. But being able to choose from the hundreds of products and services that you have already encountered gives you as many as you will need to start earning money very quickly. You can be extremely picky and only promote what you have used and benefitted from.

Learning from experienced marketers will give you a definite advantage when it comes to monetizing your business. These are the people who have been selling their products online successfully for many years, and watching how they go through each step of the process will be invaluable to you as you build your own business and eventually create your own products.

To sell effectively you absolutely must

Making money as an affiliate is an excellent way to build your business on the Internet. We start with the affiliate marketing model because most people do not have their own product when they are just getting started online. It also enables you to learn from people who have been working online for several years. You will get some of your best product ideas by seeing what is already available and then looking for the gap between what is being offered in your niche and what the market would still like to know. I will explain this in further detail.

When you are just getting started online, you may not even have an idea of what type of product you will want to create. At the end of 2005, when I first saw that people were selling products and making money on the Internet, every product looked like a huge production to me. I wanted to start making money quickly, so being an affiliate for others seemed like the smartest thing I could do.

As I began purchasing information on Internet marketing, I would become an affiliate for that person and their products. Soon I was signed up with more than twenty programs, but I still needed to understand what to do next.

Finally, I chose a product on Clickbank about training small dogs. That was the product I used to learn how to market online, and how to make money with affiliate marketing. I still earn money from that product every month, and it is a reminder to be of how far I have come with my online business.