Tuesday, August 01, 2006

12 Free SEO Tools you Must Use

Effective SEO strategies require a lot of effort and time. Although in the search engines market exist very advanced tools that cost a lot, there are many free SEO tools which can help the novice and advanced SEO marketer to save valuable time.

Here is a list of free and proven for their effectiveness SEO online instruments:

1) Alexa Ranking . It displays multiple domains instead of one. Therefore, you can have instant traffic results from Alexa Rankings instead of typing and search each time separately.

2) XML Sitemaps . Sitemaps are extremely important for websites because they help search engines crawl and index them. This is a free xml sitemap generator.

3) Directory Manager . You can track your submissions to various web directories and you can also visit regularly to see new directories added to the list. You just tick the appropriate submission boxes when you submitted your website. It's very easy to use it.

4) 123 Promotion Keyword Research Tool. This is a very powerful tool. It displays, based on the Overture and Wordtracker keyword search tools, similar data, including search figures from the previous month. It also adds statistics for average searches per hour, day, week, projected figures for the next 12 months and then also a figure to see how searches may look in 3 years from now.

5) Keyword Density Checker . This keyword density tool is useful for helping webmasters/SEO's achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms/keywords. This tool will analyze your chosen URL and return a table of keyword density values for one, two, or three word key terms.

6) McDar Pagerank and Backlink Checker . This is another Excellent Resource. When you enter the appropriate URL and keyword, it will display Pagerank and Back links pages for the Top 10 websites.

7) Robots.txt Generator You can create a free robots.txt file with this resource. So, you will be able to direct the search engines to follow the pages structure of your website and also direct the search engines not to follow and crawl specific web pages of your website you don't want to be crawled.
All you have to do is filling the fields and when the robots.txt file is created you upload it to your root of your web server.


8) Nichebot . This website displays keyword data using Wordtracker and Google search results. You just enter the keyword and press the button.

9) Domain Stats . You Enter the domain and get: domain age, number of pages indexed, and number of backlinks. The statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc.
It will help you figure out why some of your competitors are ranking better than you.

10) Compare Search Engines . Shows top results from 3 search engines. This tool helps you get all kind of statistics of your competitor's domains.

11) Verify Result . This verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword. You enter your URL/Keyword and it displays top 30 for 11 Search Engines.

12) Related Keywords. This tool generates a list of possible keyword combinations based on lists of keywords that you provide.
You enter a list of terms, one per line or separated by commas. This is very effective for Google Adwords and Overture.

CSS - Maximum benefits

What is CSS?

CSS is a simple file which controls the visual appearance of a Web page without compromising its structure. Using CSS we can control our font size, font color, link color and many other attributes on our web page. This will make our HTML code much more readable and the page size will be reduced.


Why to use it and how to use it properly

If you don’t use CSS on your web pages and you have many tables and content on them, chances are that your HTML file size will be quite big. Fact is that we live in a busy world, and people are not will to wait more than 5 seconds web page to load.


From the other side some web developers implement the CSS on wrong way. They write their CSS in HTML code of the page, like this:


<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<style>
A
{
font-family: Verdana;
font-size:8pt;
color:black;
text-decoration:none
}
</style>



What is wrong with this technique? Well, imagine that you have site with more than 50 pages. One day, you decide that you want to change font color and colors of the links on your site. You will have to edit ALL the pages on your site, and do to that you will need time, because you place your CSS in your web page.


Better way is to save your visual attributes in separate, external CSS file, and to link that file with your page like this:



<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">



Using this technique, you can change the look of your site within minutes, regardless of the number of pages, because your visual attributes are saved in ONE external CSS file. Edit that file, and you are done.


Benefits

Which are the benefits of using CSS? List is quite long and I will list here only the most important.

• Your web page will load faster
• Web page will become more search engine friendly
• You can change you site appearance within minutes
• You can write separate CSS file for handheld devices which will be called up instead of the regular CSS file
• You can forget about creating printer friendly version of your site using separate CSS file when user chooses to print the web page.

Avoiding standard HTML commands like:


<font color=”#0000ff”><font size=2>Product</font></font></font>


will help us to reduce file size, but that is not the only benefit. Using CSS word product in this example will be moved more close on the top of the document. Search engine will pick up more content and less code.


Imagine that you have 3 columns table on your page. When you see the code, you will notice that first come code for your table, and after that it come your content. Positioning your 3 columns using CSS instead of standard inline elements:



<table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="381" height="150" valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4">
My Product
</td>
<td height="150" valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4">



When CSS is used, your code might look like this:


<div id="leftcontent">
My Product
</div>



Again your code is much more clear, and your content is moved on the top of your document, making your HTML page search engine friendly, and reducing your file size.


Content is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization, and you will benefit with removing the unnecessary code in your HTML and create search engine friendly web page.

Validate it

Browser war is far behind us. Reality is that most of the people today use Internet Explorer, but you should try to be on safe side and ensure that your CSS code is valid. Not all browsers interpret the CSS on same way. You can validate your CSS here:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Effective Search Engine Use

The Internet is a wonderful place full of resources that can be really helpful for us.

The best way for finding information is through a virtual search engine. A search engine explores the resources on the Internet and gives results relating to your queries. Search engines allow keyword searches and use crawlers to locate sites or pages that match requests.

However, finding the information that is relevant for you is a challenge. Everyday more sites come into existence. A simple query like "web hosting" on Google returns 15,100,000 results. Now how does the user know which site is useful for them, thus creating an "Information Overload" of sorts. How is the user assured of the quality of the information?

The thing about search engines is that they generally display all the web pages that contain any or both of the words contained in the search query.

So comes the question: how do we find the information we are looking for?

There are various techniques that you can use to make your search query better which will then help to achieve more relevant results.

For instance if you use the "+" operator and restructure your query to "web hosting" + Windows it will show only those sites that offer Windows hosting. You can also use the "AND" Boolean operator, depending on what you are comfortable with.

You can use the "-" operator and key in "web hosting" - Linux thereby telling Google to make sure that it does not display Linux related hosts. This is the same as using the "NOT" Boolean operator.


There are also keywords like ADJ, NEAR etc. that are used by some of the search engines. The NEAR operator looks for keywords specified in the query within certain proximity of each other i.e. it makes sure that both the keywords "web" & "hosting" are present on the same page and are placed nearby to each other in the text.

The ADJ operator is a stricter filter and returns only those pages where the keywords are next to each other i.e. it will only return pages where the keywords "web" and "hosting" are mentioned together.

Another technique to make sure you get better results is to use a sensible query. Make use of words that you think will be contained on the site you are looking for: "web hosting" is better then "I want web hosting".

Also remember that search engines normally ignore certain words like "a', "for", "of", "in", "at" etc.

Another important thing to remember is that most search engines have a 'tips' page that specifically contains information on how to make better searches on the search engine. It is always good to read these tips.

Most search engines have an advanced search option that is really useful if you are not proficient at using operators while searching.

Searching and finding what you are looking for is easy if you are armed with the know-how of how to do it.

How I Increased Website Traffic Ten-Fold with Quality Backlinks

Having a goodly number of quality backlinks is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that result in high Search Engine Results Pages.

It’s not enough to just have a high number of (incoming) backlinks. Rather, it is the quantity and quality of backlinks that allows your site to rank better in the search engines than your competition.

Simply, a backlink could be considered as a quality link if

1. it links to your website with the keyword(s) or keyphrase(s) for which you are trying to optimize,

2. the theme of the backlinking website is the same as (or similar to) your site.

There are a few free tools that will help you in determining the quality of existing and potential backlinks to your website (search on ‘free seo backlink tools’).

But, how do you really know that a link can be considered a quality link before agreeing to exchanging links with a particular web site? After all, the whole point of exchanging a link with another site is to benefit from the ranking of that web site.

It is therefore important that, before the link exchange is affected, that we investigate as to whether exchanging links with another site is to our advantage.

Google’s Index

The first and most important factor to check is if the site is listed in Google’s index. This can be determined by entering “http://www.sitename.com” in the Google search box. If there is no result displayed, then stop there and affect no link exchange.

To save your valuable time, do the same for the URL of the page which the site owner says will display your backlink. No Google index means that the spider will not find your backlink.

View the Home Page

The second step is to examine these three items:

the linking site’s home page,
the site’s HTML and Google sitemaps,
the site’s backlink page.

The home page will determine the suitability of the linking site thematically; that is, does the site’s content match (or closely match) that of your own. With the site’s home page displayed in your browser window, using your mouse, right-click and select “View Source”. Observe the site’s tags. Does the text match your expectations of site relevancy?

Next, open a www.google.com screen in your browser and enter the sitename without the http://www descriptor. For example, without the descriptor, http://www.msn.com would be entered as msn.com.

Press enter and Google will present something akin to

MSN.com Microsoft's newly renamed portal entry. Features personalization, channels of content sites like Carpoint... www.msn.com/

Google can show you the following information for this URL:

* Show Google's cache of msn.com
* Find web pages that are similar to msn.com
* Find web pages that link to msn.com
* Find web pages from the site msn.com
* Find web pages that contain the term "msn.com".

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Show Google's cache of msn.com

will display the Google cache for the site. If there is no cache, stop there, do not affect the link, why link to a site that Google is not visiting?

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Find web pages that are similar to msn.com

will display the Google “related” tag, listing the pages that are similar, the more the better,

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Find web pages that link to msn.com

displays how many backlinks Google report for the site, once again the more the better.

Clicking on the hyperlink in this line

* Find web pages from the site msn.com

and

* Find web pages that contain the term "msn.com".

displays the actual number of pages within the site and the number of pages that contain the website name, the more the better.

HTML Sitemap

If you are satisfied with the results of steps one and two, it is then instructive to view the site’s HTML sitemap as well as the site’s Google sitemap.

The HTML sitemap is simply another web page in the site but is important as it compiles and displays every page in the sites, making it easy for the search engines to “spider” the site (and find your link).

Google Sitemap

The Google sitemap (usually sitemap.xml) is a specialized form of the above and complies with the Google sitemap specifications shown at www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

While many say that the above is unnecessary, this author argues that since Google has gone to much expense to provide and maintain the function, to ignore such is at one’s own peril.

To view the Google sitemap, enter the site’s home page URL, then append “/sitemap.xml” on the end of the address. Caveat, the address may generate a “file not found” error. The site may have a Google sitemap but store it under a different file name than that suggested by Google.

Google Page Rank

Note that I have made no mention of Google Page Rank. It is the opinion of this author that if you have done most or all of the above that you have qualified the potential effectiveness of the link, just as does Google with it’s Page Rank algorithm.

Redirect Affiliate Program Links for Maximum Effectiveness

If you promote an affiliate program and are not redirecting your affiliate links, you may be missing out on traffic and commissions opportunities. Redirecting your affiliate program links helps to minimize spam filtering of your email campaigns, increase the acceptance of article submissions, build backlinks to your site, and reduce "click fear".

Minimize Spam Filtering

If you are promoting an affiliate program through email, other (unscrupulous) affiliates of the same company may be indirectly hurting the delivery rate of your messages. Email filters will block messages that contain content or links associated with spam. Even if you send your message only to subscribers who have double opted-in to your list, your messages may still be blocked if it contains a URL used by spammers.

Search Engine Optimization

Most affiliate program URLs look something like http://www.example.com/?id=123. Unfortunately, most search engines have limited or no ability to read these links.

Google(TM) warns, "If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few." Google goes on to tell us "Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index."

Furthermore, if you are publishing your affiliate link on other sites such as blogs, forums, etc., you are missing out on the opportunity to build valuable backlinks that could increase your search engine rankings.

Article Submissions

Submitting articles to web publishers and article directories is a powerful way to build backlinks to your site. Unfortunately, many publishers and directories do not accept articles that include affiliate links. However, virtually all will accept links to your own site. By replacing your affiliate link with a link to your own site, even one that redirects to your affiliate link, you will increase the number of article submissions accepted by publishers and directories.

Reduce "Click Fear"

Thanks to those few sites on the Web that distribute adware, spyware, viruses, etc., many web users are fearful of clicking on links, especially those that look "suspicious". To the average user who has no special knowledge of the internal workings of the Web, a link that has "unusual" characters such as those in dynamic URLs (e.g. http://www.example.com/?id=123&sub=456) will appear less trustworthy than a static link.

How to Redirect Your Affiliate Program URL

There are several ways to redirect your affiliate program links. The most "search engine friendly" method is the 301 Permanent redirect with the .htaccess file. You can use this method if your site is hosted on an Apache (Linux, Unix) based server.

To create a permanent redirect, open (or create) the .htaccess file. On a single line add the following code to the file:

redirect 301 /example.html http://www.example.com/?id=123&sub=456

This code tells the server to redirect "http://www.yoursite.com/example.html" to your affiliate link "http://www.example.com/?id=123&sub=456".

Other methods of redirecting include using PHP's header() function and HTML's meta refresh.

No matter what affiliate program you're promoting, you will benefit by redirecting your links. Redirecting your affiliate links can improve the delivery rate of your email campaigns as well as increase CTR. Your articles may be more readily accepted by article directories and web publishers. Furthermore, redirecting replaces links to your merchant with valuable backlinks to your own site.

Google Adsense Profits Mixed In With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner. The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Are you a webmaster who needs funds to keep your website running? Or is your website the only way for you to earn income? Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman’s products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer’s ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site’s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser’s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant’s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

All the same, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to increase your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business. With your own affiliate business, you can earn easily earn extra income, although you do have to exert effort and use your imagination to maximize your earning potential. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective business opportunities on the web today.

Tips To Choose Good Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs have become more popular nowadays, especially for sales people who want to make money easily and quickly. However, before you choose any affiliate program, make sure that you have answered all questions relating to a good affiliate program. Here are some questions you may ask:

1. Does the affiliate program offer high commission rates for products?

I know it is a tough question to answer. How much is high? Normally, commissions of 25%-30% of the product price are expected of a good affiliate program. You can have a look at this site for reference:

http://www.audio4fun.com/affiliate.htm

2. How much traffic does the vendor get to their site?

Before signing up to any affiliate program, remember to do some research on the vendor’s site, especially the site’s traffic. Alexa.com may be helpful in doing this research. If the site is ranked in the top 100,000 the merchant gets good daily traffic to his site. If the site is ranked below 500,000 it is not worth bothering. You should find another one. So remember to do the research before you want to invest anything.

3. Does the merchant use any tracking system?

All good affiliate programs provide excellent tracking systems. This system allows you to track visitors by using cookies, so that you can get accredited with sales that originate from your site. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer they last, the better chances are of getting paid.

4. Is the payment safe?

Be sure that you can get commission payment easily and safely, otherwise you’ll waste a lot of time and effort. A perfect affiliate program has a secure payment system so that you can check your balance any time or be informed shortly when you receive any credit. Moreover, you should ask about the payment time because different affiliate programs have various payment times. Some pay monthly, some quarterly. It is also vital to know the minimum balance you need to earn in order to get paid.

5. Does the affiliate program have any tool to help affiliates sell more?

A standard database with all kind of reports from sales to payment and other tools like ads, banners.. are very vital for affiliate management. Make sure that you can control all the sales, keep track of them and make good decisions. Moreover, the support system must be really good to help you solve some urgent situations you may encounter.

6. Does the affiliate program offer affiliate referral program or two tier affiliate program?

It means that you can get additional commission if you can recruit more affiliates into the affiliate program. The more they sell, the more referral commission you may get. Therefore, recruit as many affiliates for you as possible.

Conclusion:

Finding a good affiliate program is a tough work. The best advice for you is to do your own research, using these abovementioned questions as a guide that will lead you to the right merchant, to reach your financial goal. If you find one, tell me.

The Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing

Have you ever wondered if what you know about affiliate is
accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare
what you know to the latest info on affiliate.


Affiliate marketing programs has never been as popular
before as it is today. Why? There can be a number of reasons.
The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the
benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of
people now than they were before.

Today, both the merchants and the affiliates can see clearly
that affiliate marketing can work for both of them. The merchant
sees affiliate marketing today as the chance to advertise their
products at a lower cost. The affiliates, on the other hand, sees
affiliate marketing as an easy way of earning profits online by
doing what they like most, and that is by creating websites.

Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has shifted into
greater heights, so has the people's outlook about it changed.
No longer is affiliate marketing considered today as an alternative
method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a
source of additional income for the affiliates. For merchants
and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered as a
main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work
best for you? Are all affiliate marketing programs the same?
Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs
that work better than the others?

There are actually different types or classes of affiliate marketing,
and the number of types will depend on how one will classify them.
The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under
two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

-Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates
with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn
money. In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his
affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever
someone clicks through the merchant's banner or text ads.
The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he
referred does not purchase anything from the merchant's site.
However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually
not exceeding a dollar for every click.

-Pay Per Performance (PPP)

PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is
also the most lucrative type for the affiliates. In this type of
affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever
his referral translates into an action—that is whenever the visitor
he has referred actually buys something from the merchant's site or
when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of savings for
the merchant. On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type
for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate
marketing usually comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual
product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified
into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

-Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay
the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred
to the merchant's site actually buys something from the merchant's
site. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other
merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee. But no matter what the
basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to
affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

-Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation
of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies
and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow.
In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever
the visitor he referred to the merchant's site fills up an application
form or any similar form related to the business of the company.
Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed
fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Aside from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a lot
of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is
based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as
single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is
also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each
time the customer he has referred purchases something from the
merchant's site.

-Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels
or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made. In a
single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid
based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant.
All the previously mentioned affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS< PPL,
and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

-In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only
paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant's
site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other
affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation.
Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the
affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates
in different tiers in the affiliate network.

-Residual Income Affiliate Marketing

In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not
only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant's site.
Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has
referred returns to the site and purchase another product. Compensation
for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales
percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work
differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would
generally have their own list of benefits. Which type of affiliate
marketing will work best for you? It is not really for me to tell.
Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing
program will suit your needs and characteristics best.

The day will come when you can use something you read about here
to have a beneficial impact. Then you'll be glad you took the
time to learn more about affiliate.