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Published by Peggy Champlin, Success with Ease is devoted to helping professionals and small businesses build their businesses, particularly in the area of passive income.

Message from Peggy
What is the Best Type of Affiliate Tracking Program for You?
Resources - The Netwriting Masters Course
Final Note
Contact Information

Hello <$firstname$>!

OK, I've had enough! Snow, that is. We've had twice as much snow during January as is normal for us here in Rochester - over 50 inches! And yours truly has shovelled every inch of it off her driveway. Including two times yesterday for a total of 2 1/2 hours and about 7 inches.

And what did I see this morning when I got up after finishing the last clearance at 11:45 last night? More snow on the driveway and it's still coming down! I don't usually mind our weather, but it's getting a little old. Onthe other hand, I'me lucky that I don't need to commute to work and I'm getting a lot of exercise!

We continue our affiliate program series this week by starting to talk about affiliate tracking programs and what type you may want to look for.

Ken Evoy has a new Netwriting Masters course available - for free! You can find the details in the Resources section.

The Final Note is from a book my daughter and I are reading right now. I hope you like it.

Enjoy the rest of this issue and make it a good week!

Peggy

If you've decided to setup your own affiliate program, you'll want to automate tracking your affiliates' commissions so that when a customers buys something from you based on an affiliate's recommendation, that affiliate will automatically get credit. And so you can generate a report periodically that tells you how much commission to pay each affiliate.

Before we start talking about the various systems and features available, let me offer a word of caution. Since you will be giving out referral links to potentially large numbers of affiliates who will use them in email, ezines, on websites, etc., you really don't want to change affiliate systems once you've gotten one up and running.

Of course, it IS possible to change systems, but it's incredibly disruptive and could even hurt your business. How would a potential customer feel about an affiliate and your business if he clicked through an affiliate link and it didn't work? And how eager would your affiliates be to retrace their steps and update any and all references to your referral link because you changed tracking systems?

So, carefully consider your options. Make sure the system you choose will not only work for you now, but have the features and cost structure to work for you for years to come. Unlike many of the other systems and vendors you use for your online business, this one usually can't be transparently changed.

OK, on to the good stuff!

What types of affiliate tracking systems are there?

There two categories of affiliates programs, software you install on the server your web site is hosted on, and systems that run on 3rd party servers.

Aside from any particular feature differences, the advantage to having your software installed is that you pay once for the software, rather than monthly as with 3rd party systems. Also, the referral links you give your affliates to use will use your own domain name rather than the 3rd party's domain name.

For instance, the affiliate referral links for my own program, which is hosted on a 3rd party server, look like this: http://www.profcs.com/app/aftrack.asp?AFID=112345. The domain name is www.profcs.com. If I had my own software installed on my webhost, the affiliate link would start with my domain: www.successwithease.com.

Having said that, some affiliate tracking systems, including mine, have a way to use your own domain name instead of theirs.

A benefit to using 3rd party systems is that you don't need to install, maintain, or upgrade any software. It's all done for you by the 3rd party.

One other potential benefit with a 3rd party system comes if it's associated with the shopping cart or payment gateway you're using to make sales. In this case, the affiliate program and shooping cart are automatically linked and there's nothing you need to do to connect them. In other words, when you make a sale, the affiliate tracking system will know about it without you having to set anything up.

Neither of these choices are absolutely right for everyone. Having done some research, I've found that at this point, there are more sophisticated and fully featured solutions available as 3rd party systems than are available as software options. But that could change with the next new or upgraded software solution that comes out!

Additionally, for most people, the ease of use of a 3rd party solution outweighs the benefits of installing your own software.

Next week, we'll start looking at specific affiliate tracking program features and which ones might be important for you.

In last week's article, I suggested helping your affiliates effectively pre-sell your products and services.

Ken Evoy, of Site Build It! fame, has just rewritten his excellent Netwriting Masters Course as an ebook. And it emphasizes the need to pre-sell before trying to sell.

Effective Netwriting is really a two-step process... PREsell, then SELL. And that requires two different kinds of writing...

1) Write to PREsell.

2) Then, and only then, write to SELL.

Now for the good news... you can do this. How? Take The Netwriting Masters Course. It is the only book about Netwriting that covers both PREselling and selling (every other book on Netwriting focuses only on writing to sell).

And now for the best news of all...The Netwriting Masters Course is free.

Effective Netwriting (i.e., the kind that generates income) is indeed something that anyone can accomplish. There is nothing magical or complicated about it. And you don't need an English degree or literary genius to do it.

You just need to follow the right process, the correct steps. Write to deliver what humans want... information. And write for two audiences, the Search Engine spiders and the humans. That's what effective PREselling is all about!

To date, all the attention about writing-for-the-Net focuses on sales copy. Yes, that's important (it can literally triple sales... or destroy all your good efforts if you write terrible sales copy).

But sales copy only gets a chance to shine after your PREselling content gets your visitors ready to "listen".

The Netwriting Masters Course is the first and only course that shows you how to get the whole process correct... and it's free. It would be a great resource to pass along to your affiliates!

You are about to download a zipped file ("netwritingmasters.zip"). Save it to your desktop. After you have downloaded, unzip it.

If you are a Windows user and need a Zip utility, download a free trial for WinZip.
If you are a Mac user and need a Zip utility, download the free utility, Stuffit Expander (need v5.5 or greater).

This will unzip a folder called "MYNAS! Masters Course" on your desktop (if you do not change the default location). The folder contains two files...

1) ReadMeFirst.txt
Its name says it all -- start with this file.

2) NetwritingMasters.pdf
The goal of The Netwriting Masters Course is to help you write better so that you can sell more! It shows you how to use the right words with the right process... how to pull targeted visitors into your site, PREsell them... then, and only then, sell.

Start building your traffic and income today by reading this book and passing it along to your affiliates.

The Secret To Life

What about making happiness your main issue? Nothing is more important than that you feel good.

People often believe that things have to be a certain way before they can feel good. And then, when they discover that they don't have the power, or the votes, or the strength to make things the way they want - they resign themselves to powerless, unhappy lives.

Understand that your power lies in your ability to see things in a way that keeps you feeling good, and when you are able to do that - you have the power to achieve anything that you desire.

Everything that you desire is trying to make its way to you, but you must find the way to let it in - and only in feeling good, can you let in those things you desire.

You live in a big world, with many other people who may want things to be different than you want them to be. You cannot convince or coerce them all to agree with you; you cannot destroy all of them who do not agree with you. Your only path to a joyous, powerful life experience, is to decide once and for all, that no matter what - you intend to feel good. And as you practice turning your thoughts to things that do feel good - now you have discovered the secret to life.

-- From Sara, Book 3: A Talking Owl Is Worth A Thousand Words by Esther and Jerry Hicks (Abraham-Hicks Publishing)

This ezine is published by Peggy Champlin, a small business coach who specializes in helping you convert 'what you know' into passive income.

To send me email, mailto:Peggy@SuccessWithEase.com.

To learn more about my coaching and program offerings, go to http://www.SuccessWithEase.com.

You are free to use the material from my articles in whole or in part on your web site or ezine (email newsletter) as long as you include the attribution below and also let me know where the article will appear.

"This article is by Peggy Champlin of Success with Ease. Peggy's web site is a comprehensive resource devoted to helping professionals and small businesses build their businesses, particularly in the area of passive income. For free marketing resources and valuable marketing tools visit http://www.SuccessWithEase.com."

Copyright Peggy Champlin, 2004. All rights reserved.