Online Marketing Guru asked:


There’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing. This is true, however, only to those are seriously and zealously working on his affiliate program. Success in affiliate marketing varies in every individual affiliate and for the most part, it depends on his will and perseverance. No matter how good an affiliate program is, it will not prosper if the affiliate marketer does not pay the price of hard work. One must exert extra effort especially on the aspect of promotion. Nothing will happen if the links or banners would just lie idle in a web page, an affiliate must be able to convince the visitor to click it and proceed to the business site to buy the products. No click-throughs means no income for an affiliate marketer.

You can actually generate a full-time income by means of affiliate marketing and you can do it at home, and yes, even while you sleep. You must have a good web site to begin with. It must have good promotional and informative contents, pleasing design, inviting banner ads and all other important elements in an affiliate marketer’s web site. It would be great if you have exhausted other means of advertising such as newsletters, email marketing, message boards and ad listings such as Google AdWords. You just have to go online once in a while to check your site and update it and to watch over the development of your marketing program. Does this sound so easy?

It can be this easy if you have planned your affiliate program well and have taken all the steps towards success carefully and diligently. Now, there’s a tool you can use to help you go through the program with ease and confidence, the Ad Tracker. For many experienced and successful affiliate marketers, the Ad Tracker is a key to a successful affiliate marketing program.

What precisely is an ad tracker? It is a marketing tracking software or program that allows you to trace and take note of every click-through made by visitors of your site and by other customers who got your referral link. There are ad tracking service providers as well, so you will just have to pay them to do the tracking for you. With the ad tracker, you can keep an eye on the progress of your marketing campaigns even offline. This tool or program is especially helpful if you are engaged in several affiliate and pay-per-click programs and have placed ads in emails, pop-ups and pop-unders, message boards, auto responders, Ezines, forums, several web sites, surveys and various ad service providers.

Of course, you don’t want all your efforts to be put to waste so you want to make sure you are getting paid for your hard work. Likewise, you want to make sure every dollar or cent you disburse in your advertising campaigns is wisely spent. With the help of the ad tracker, you will know accurately how many and which of your links where clicked on, how many clicked on your links, how many of your emails were opened and how many of those who opened your email clicked through the business site and purchased a product, how many products were purchased, which of your banner ads or links brought the most leads and sales and many other pertinent facts and figures you need.

Sales records and all data stated are necessary in any business as this could determine if your affiliate program is still worth continuing. This would also help you determine which of your marketing strategies is most effective and which is most beneficial for each product or service you are promoting.

Every decision and plan you make must be well grounded on facts. That decision or plan of action may not be the best, but it is something not to regret about when you had valid reasons for coming up with such decision or plan. You cannot just decide to terminate your affiliate program, just because you don’t earn big in an instant.

If you are serious with affiliate marketing, again and again, keep in mind that your success lies mainly on promotion and your hard work. If you don’t seem lucky enough to convince many of your site users to buy the products, don’t be disheartened and jump into a conclusion that your affiliate program is a failure. If it works for others, it could work for you, too. Know whether your advertising techniques are effective or not, which works best for your program and which doesn’t. Get an ad tracker to help you know all these and you’d surely be on the right track towards success!

Lucien Bechard asked:


There is a lot of buzz going around the network marketing industry lately about online vs. offline marketing and which concept is better. The top leaders from each industry have been strongly stating their case as to why their concept is better. Both sides have strong and valid points that make it very tough to decide which one is better. But what if you didn’t have to choose a side? What if you could become involved with both of them?

Before we delve into this further let’s take more of a look into both industries.

Offline marketing & Direct Selling companies have been around since the beginning of time. It all started back in the day with people going door to door to pitch and sell their products. Companies such as Amway, and Mary Kay created a massive boom in the industry using the techniques of door to door selling. People in the 80’s and 90’s started learning the concepts of residual income and became really excited about the income potential this could bring to their lives. They started jumping on the bandwagon and began pitching their products and companies to everyone they came in contact with. There were a select few that made a tremendous amount of income from the direct selling craze, but most people ended up with nothing. A lot of people not only lost a lot of money, but they also had their dreams shattered along with it.

That’s when people started having a negative taste in their mouth about the direct selling industry. Terms such as “pyramid scheme” and “scam” began to surface.

The trends started to shift in the late 90’s. People started to become turned off to the concept of direct selling. They didn’t like bothering their friends and family. They weren’t interested in going to seminars and buying products they didn’t need. The direct selling industry now had a bad rap.

But here’s the key thing to remember. The concept and idea of residual income still stayed strong. Residual income wasn’t the “pyramid scheme” and it wasn’t a “scam.” Despite what people thought about the direct selling industry, no one could ever say anything negative about residual income. People still desired to have the lifestyle that residual income produced. They just didn’t like the way they had to go about achieving it.

Residual income never has and never will be a negative concept. The way people go about achieving residual income has become what’s negative. It’s a solid concept that most people still desire to have.

Now let’s flash forward to Internet boom. Ever since the Internet craze has hit the industry people have become inundated with business opportunities everywhere they go. People are being pulled in every different direction and they don’t know which way to turn.

The social media craze is causing such a stir throughout the industry. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube are taking over the Internet. If you go on any one of those sites, you will see that they are just one big “pitch fest.” Everyone is selling something, no matter if they are involved in online or offline marketing. They have a message they want to tell and they want you to hear it.

Everywhere people go on these sites they are being sold on business opportunities to “work from home,” “no meetings involved,” “no bothering friends and family,” and “no lotions or pills to sell.” 90% of the work will be done for them they are told. Terms like “pre-launch,” “get rich quick,” ‘join now,” ‘reserve your spot” have taken the industry by storm. Every time people log into their email, they get spammed by every Internet marketer on the planet telling them how great their business is.

So here’s where the crazy cycle has begins. Offline & Direct Marketers vs. Online Marketers. The tug of war has become heated.

Offline marketers believe in the old school network marketing principles of “making a list of friends and family,” “contacting them,” “showing them their opportunity,” and then “following through.” They believe in the human touch approach. They still hold motivational seminars, dream building sessions, strategy meetings, and cold call sessions like they did in the 80’s and 90’s.

They do network a little bit on the social media sites but most people don’t know what they are doing. They aren’t receiving any training from their up lines on how to brand themselves and market their business online. Also, most of the top offline companies have restrictions about their distributors using online marketing methods to promote their business. The distributors hands are tied.

Here’s where the struggle is taking place with offline companies and why they are losing most of their distributors to online companies. Most of these companies are on the verge of being wiped out because they are still stuck in the olden days of running a business. They are not with the times. Their philosophies of running a business are sound, they even have strong moral principles, but they are being buried by the Internet. Internet marketers are stealing these distributors away in droves and the people that are left are stunned when their down lines are wiped out.

Online marketers have a laser targeted focus on playing to the emotions of offline marketers. Their goal is to target all offline marketers and play off of the negative emotions they are facing with their current business. “The grass is greener on the other side” is what they portray.

With online marketing everything is automated with very little human touch. Online marketers just want people to enter their information into their “capture” page and then proceed to blast peoples email addresses with auto-responder messages hoping to play the law of averages. They know that if they can get their message to enough people, the law of averages will end up working in their favor.

“The money is in the list!” That holds true in both online marketing and offline marketing. It’s all about “the list.”

After reading this and seeing both sides of the fence, neither side seems appealing does it?

That’s because they aren’t working together! There is no “Synergy” working against each other.

That’s why you should incorporate both online and offline marketing methods into your businesses.

First of all, human contact is still the most important element in both online and offline marketing. Human contact is the key to having long term and lasting success in the network marketing industry. People want to do business with other people, not with a computer.

Online marketers can only hide behind the Internet for so long before their businesses will crumble. If online marketers want to become true leaders and have huge businesses, they have to incorporate human touch into their business.

If online marketers want to truly become successful, they need to still fill their minds with positive information through motivational cd’s and seminars, dream building sessions, and strategic planning sessions with other mentors.

Offline marketers have been teaching these principles for years and they are even more relevant in today’s world. Today more than ever, people want to be in business with someone they can trust. People still need guidance and mentorship from other leaders. Online marketers can learn a lot from offline marketers on how they build a business. The principles offline marketers use to build a business are sound and are still the basis by which a business should be built.

Let’s talk about what offline marketers need to do to get with the times before it’s too late. There’s no denying that the Internet has changed how business is being done. The social media giants are not going away and neither is online marketing. It’s only going to get bigger. Offline marketers need to start learning how to brand themselves and their businesses on the Internet if they want to succeed in today’s world. If offline marketers don’t learn how to market their businesses and brand themselves using the major social media outlets, they are going to get eaten alive very quickly.

There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity that’s come with the social media boom, but there’s a very limited amount of time people have left to learn how to capitalize on it.

If people get the right training they need now and learn how to use the Internet to build and market their business, they will become very wealthy.

It’s important to catch and ride the Internet and Social Media wave now before it’s too late! If you incorporate human touch in the process you will be a top leader that everyone turns to.

If people learn to combine the personal human touch, strong moral principles and philosophies of offline marketing, along with the momentum of the social media giants and the power of online marketing, they will become a part of history.

To learn how to effectively combine both online and offline marketing strategies to create “The Perfect Synergy” visit