Digital Marketing for Startups - Benefits Beyond Sales

It is heartening to note that Startups are growing rapidly in India, which has fueled India's economic growth also. So today we are going to discuss everything you need to know about Startups and the Importance of Digital Marketing for Startups.

Digital Marketing for Startups

Today there are many successful startups in India that are making a better change in people's lives from their products and services and making their life easier than before.

When anyone starts their job with a new concept, it is called a startup. Even, if you open the tea selling shop with a new concept, then it also will be called a startup. There are many successful businesses that have started as a startup and today they have reached new heights of success such as Snapdeal, Flipkart, Paytm etc.

Related: List of Free Website Hosting Websites of 2018

Benefits Beyond Sales

When we hear the name of Startup in India, our mind also thinks about Make My Trip, Paytm, Ola Cabs etc. Are they all startups?

Yes, absolutely! These are all examples of Startup because they started with a product or service which was not already in the market i.e. they started with a new concept. And now, all these are included in the list of Top Startup Businesses of India.

It is not necessary that only the startup based on technology is growing. However, the proportion of their growth is higher than the other startups. So to discuss it further we had an interview with the expert digital marketer and trainer Mr. Parmveer Singh of Quibus Trainings, which is a renowned name in the training for digital marketing for startups and entrepreneurs.

What is the Growth of Startup in India?

According to Nasscom's 2015 report, India has reached on 3rd Number in the world after the US and UK in the startup criteria as the number of New Startup Business has taken a tremendous growth in India.

If we see the data, In the year 2010, 480 startups were started. After this, it grew rapidly to 525 in 2011, while in 2012, 590 startups began. In 2013, 680 and 805 startups started in 2014.
From 2015 to 2017, these figures were able to cross four thousand startups, and this year, there is the highest number of startups.

According to a report, there are more than 8000 startups in India, and there is the immense potential of setting up more than 10 thousand startups in the country, five years from Startup India, which is implemented by the government by 2020.

Related Posts: Top 6 Ad networks

Top Startups Of India

There are some Top India's Startups, which are making our life simpler and better with their product and their Unique Business Ideas such as -

• Flipkart -Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal
• Paytm -Vijay Shekhar Sharma
• Snapdeal -Kunal Behl & Rohit Bansal
• Ola Cabs -Bhavish Agarwal
• OYO Rooms -Ritesh Agarwal

Challenges of Startups

The risk is another name for Business! There is no business that does not have a risk, and if so, then it is not business. But the question is whether there is more risk in a startup?

So the answer is yes! A startup has a higher risk than traditional business.

About 90% of startups in India are failed badly in a few days.

Here are some factors for Startups which are the cause of failure of many startups. Let's know about them in brief:

#1 Startups Don't Meet to Market Needs

There may be many reasons for this, but the main reason is that those who are new Startup sometimes cannot meet their Product's and Services market needs. It is one of the biggest challenges of any Startups.

And when a new Startup cannot meet the needs of the market and people, then it fails. Stayzilla, Taskbob, Fabfurnish, Hotels are just a few examples of failed Startups.

#2 Lack of Money

The second reason for startup failure is a lack of money. It is also topmost challenges of any new venture. Startups usually don't have their own money and also, as there is more risk in the startups so no big investor would like to invest there, where it is more harm than profit.

Due to the high risk, many investors do not invest in these small and new startups, so most of the Startups struggle with deficiency of money and it eventually becomes a major reason for the closure or failure of that Startup.

#3 Effective Online/ Social Media Presence

Nowadays one of the most important task for any organization is to keep their audience engage with their latest and attractive offers, or for other interesting and relevant content for the user. As Social Media or online platforms are one of the most cost-effective tools to get in touch with your consumers and even consumers believe in you because of that, it is most important to create your presence there.

If your startup is not online, you are avoiding a great potential traffic and trust of your customer. No one will notice your business as a traditional marketing strategy won't work for you every time.

#4 Innovation and Creativity

Your Business needs creativity and innovation all the time. You must ensure that people are not getting bored with your business and they are taking interest whatever you are talking. That is why innovation is always important for your business.

According to a study written in Forbes

 90% Indian Startups, Fail Because Of Lack Of Innovation

Most of the startup start well but fail to match their pace with people’s mind and they just fail in their initiation only because of Innovation and creativity in their Business.

Also Read: Top 10 Anime Ranked by Number of Views

How and Why Digital Marketing for Startups is Important?

Now, after knowing all about the Startups, You must be thinking how Digital Marketing can be a solution of all these challenges and failures of Startups and how it can be helpful in doing that. So, here we have explained it. However, if you are not aware of Digital Marketing at all, let me tell you about it in brief:

Digital Marketing or Online Marketing is a type of Marketing in which all the Digital media are used for Marketing a product or service.

Or we can say,

Digital marketing is the art that helps you get your customer through online and digital mediums.

There is a lot of functions inside Digital Marketing which is implemented to grow your business online, such as social media, search engine, email marketing, content marketing, mobile marketing, and this list continues.

Digital Marketing for Startup Growth

Now here's how it can help a startup to grow-

#1 It Targets Your Ideal Customers

After the increased Internet invasion, India had more than 331.77 million internet users in 2017. Now, this number is estimated to grow up to 511.89 million internet users in 2022.

As we know, it is much easier and feasible to target the ideal customers online using Digital Media than the traditional media which cost a lot more than this Digital Media does.

No one can deny the fact, why it's the best approach to have digital marketing for Startups.

#2 Most Impactful Advertisement through Video Marketing

We all are easily convinced by video ads as videos are the most satisfactory and impactful content marketing mechanism than any other media. Earlier it was really hard to get your ads on TV or radio and had to spend a very high amount to do that which is not at all required nowadays. Video Marketing has turned out to be the most impactful vertical of digital marketing for startups. There are lots of facts which give proofs for it

• According to a new study from Cisco, by 2019 Video will represent over 80% of all Internet traffic. 
• According to YouTube, through mobile videos, 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it. Even the consumption rises 100% every year.
• 36% of online consumers trust video ads
• It has been estimated that Video Marketing will account for more than 80% all Internet traffic by 2018.

#3 Easy Measurement and Analysis

It is very important to measure your outcome and predetermined goals as you can leverage your Startup to its maximum height if you know and how and what is there in your strategy which didn't work out.

Digital Marketing gives you this opportunity through web analytics and other online metric's tools that help you measure each and every detail about your startup strategy or campaigns.

#4 It lets you Leverage your Startups through Pull Marketing

Users are now not bonded to watch any entertainment source with the advertisement. Today user has so many platforms of entertainment which are advertisement free, you cannot push your messages and ads to the user any longer.

If your business or startup is small, you cannot apply Push marketing there as it is not applicable here and it also weakens a brand sometimes. While Pull marketing uses digital marketing methods that attract the target customers i.e. the consumers who are ideal for your business and that is why digital marketing for startup becomes so much importance.



Related: Snapchat growth slowed 82% after Instagram Stories launched

Benefits of Digital Marketing for Startups Other than Sales

#1 Healthy Customer Relationship

Digital Marketing helps your Business or Startup creating a healthy relationship with your target customers. As a majority of people spend their time on Social Media channels, companies target these platforms for their business' or startup's enrichment. These platforms are not only used for building Customer Relationship but they are also helpful in driving traffic to your business or startup.

#2 Branding

Digital Marketing is one of the most intelligent and cost-effective ways to reach your target customer and make your presence online as a Brand. It is a necessity for a company to establish itself as a brand seeing the competitive market of today. Digital Marketing gives you this opportunity as well. It takes a few minutes for a post or video getting viral. It is quite comfortable to create Brand Awareness through Digital Marketing than other methods.

#3 Expanding Beyond Boundaries

You can expand your business or Startup beyond your circle. As Digital Marketing provides you this opportunity to expand your business beyond your physical location. From North to south, from East to West, whenever you want your business to reach out, it can reach with the help of Digital Marketing.

Hope this Article helped you understand the need for Digital Marketing for Startups. If you have got any query regarding this topic, you can write to us in the comment section below. We would love to answer your question!

Don't forget to follow the blog AKBlogs on facebook and Twitter. 

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The Best Blogging Platforms For Bloggers 2019

The best blogging platforms for bloggers of 2019 are here. I've compiled the list. But first let's have a look at what a blog is first. Blog is a place where people share their valuable ideas and thoughts with millions of people of the same interest. Blogging is still popular despite the domination of social media sites, which have ruined the beauty of sharing thoughts and ideas with others and interacting and make contacts.



Almost 10 years back, blogging was something which was not done by everyone because at that time for creating a blog you would have needed programming knowledge, so it was not everyone’s cup of tea. But today many technologies have made blogging easy and it has changed the internet world completely.

What if I tell you that you can have your own blog free of cost without any coding knowledge. Want to know how, then stick till the end.

Today many blogging platforms have emerged and it is quite confusing to decide which platform is best for blog. So here we present the best blogging platforms for bloggers 2019.

What is a Blogging Platform? 

First you need to know what is a blogging platform. Blogging platform is a content management system for creating and publishing your content on websites like WordPress, Blogger and many more.

The Best Blogging Platforms For Bloggers 2019

Here is the complete list of blogging platforms you should know if you are planning to start your own blog.

Before you actually start a blog, you will need to purchase web hosting and the most reliable webhost that I’d recommend is HostGator. HostGator is providing the most cheap hosting plan which is the shared hosting plan. Even if you will choose the Yearly Shared Hosting plan, you will be able to save a huge 75% of your total hosting cost. Click here to get 75% off on hostgator hosting plan 

1) Blogger.com - Create a unique and beautiful blog. It's easy and free.

Whenever it comes to blogging the word blogger strike through everyone’s mind. Blogger is a free blogging platform from google and is very easy to setup if you are just starting to step in blogging world. Many big bloggers have once used blogger because blogger is free and doesn’t charge you for anything. Using Google Adsense with Blogger can enhance your income alot because Google Adsense revenue share with Blogger is 0%.

You can easily create your own blog in few minutes with a free sub-domain which is great for newbies to start. However, blogger has some limitations like you can only create a simple blog ,but if you want to create attractive and responsive blogs then you lack this feature here.

However, new responsive themes are now present to download and use. Some are external while some are available as default blogger themes.

2) WordPress.com: Create a Free Website or Blog

After blogger the second name the comes in the list is WordPress which is free platform for blogging and has all the tools for creating beautiful blogs. You can unleash your creativity with WordPress. You can signup for free plans and you will get plenty of tools to work with and learn new stuff.

However there are some limitations in the free plan and for some features to use you will need to purchase their business plan where you get a custom domain also. WordPress is very popular among many blogger because its functionality is great and offers a huge number of plugins for various works.

3) Wix.com: Free Website Builder | Create a Free Website

Well in terms of creating attractive and beautiful web pages, you should take a look at wix which is an amazing platform. The best part of Wix is that it gives drag and drop features with which you can have fun and also make quick changes.

Wix is very easy to use and an amazing platform for bloggers to work on. Starting with wix is free and you can easily setup you blog in few clicks. But every free thing has a hidden catch, here is the catch with Wix. In free plan you have limited resources and limited designs so to unlock all the extras you have to purchase the premium plans.

In free plan you will get 500MB disk space and 1GB bandwidth which I think is not good for blogs with good traffic.

4) Yola - Make a Free Website

Yola is similar platform to wix. It also gives drag and drop features. Starting with yola is easy. Yola offers a free plan in which you will get some limitations like you can host 2 blogs and each blog have 3 pages.

It offers many cool features like great site-builder to put all the things together and choose from hundreds of customizable themes. You also get the feature of editing its CSS properties if you have skillful knowledge of CSS.

5) Hubpages

Hubpages is a bit different platform from the others as hubpages is a huge network of bloggers,who can share their stories and can communicate with each other through their blogs. It offers some cool features like arts and design section where you can become more creative and show off your design skills to others. Hubpages helps every blogger to connect with each other and earn revenue from ads and affiliate ad networks.

6) Tumblr

Tumblr basically looks like a mixture of WordPress and twitter. It is easy to share you blog content and it also has a huge community.

7) Edublogs – free blogs for education

Edublogs is a education blogs for students, teacher and other education related personnel. Here, if you are fond of design and creation then this is your place to hangout. Edublogs is powered by WordPress and is free.

Here you can share educational related things with your college friends and teachers for free. They give you a lot of benefits and features to interact with each others. The free plan comes with 250 premium themes and 1 GB of storage space. However for extras you have to buy pro plan, if you want to get serious with your blog.

8) Jekyll - Simple, blog-aware, static sites

Jekyll is an amazing platform to host your blog as you will need to put raw text files and then it will turn it into a robust static site to host. It is the engine behind GitHub pages which means you can host your blog for free here. Making your blog with Jekyll takes away the hassle of managing databases and storage.

9) Ghost

In ghost something is different. Unlike others on this list. How much you pay for ghost is depending on the size of the traffic and although it is free for 14 days because of trial. Ghost platform is slightly different from others as it is an open source. The most unique feature of ghost is that it gives preview of your post, how is it going to look while you are writing it down.

So, here are the best blogging platforms for bloggers 2019. You should choose you blogging platform wisely and don’t end up wasting your time on completely useless sites.

Also Read: What is Contextual Advertising?

Don't forget to follow the blog AKBlogs on facebook and Twitter.

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Is ClickBank a Scam?

I have seen many people writing posts and reviews about the topic, "Is ClickBank a scam" just because they don't know some basics of being a Clickbank affiliate. The phrase "Is Clickbank a scam" has become more popular in google search than expected.

Mainly due to some reasons which I have mentioned below. Clickbank has a little system through which it deducts money earned by its affiliates in a manner the affiliate has agreed to, but does not realise it.

But first let me tell you:

Over 90% of Clickbank's affiliates are inactive mostly during a year

This is the biggest reason why people start leaving Clickbank, their own inactivity. The affiliates after working on Clickbank products and even getting sales don't go back to their account for a long period of time and eventually loose their income because of their inactivity from Clickbank.You may know about Dormant accounts:

Dormant accounts are those which have a positive balance but without any earnings for an extended period of time

Dormant accounts are subjected to pay a 1$ fine per day after 90 days of inactivity. 5$ fine a day after 180 days of inactivity. 50$ fine a day after 365 days of inactivity, this also goes for not earning for the same time period.

This results in a loose of trust from Clickbank by its users (affiliates mainly) just because they don't know some simple rules of using Clickbank, which the affiliate has already agreed to by tick marking the statement that he has read their program policy.

The other main reason that people find annoying and then start calling clickbank a scam is that a person needs to get atleast five sales before he gets paid by Clickbank. Even if you have made about 200$ commission by getting 4 sales and you have given Clickbank a minimum of 100$ to send you your cheque.

Even than you can't get you money because you still haven't got 5 sales yet. This is a bit annoying but you have already agreed to that by agreeing to the Clickbank Client Contract. A visitor commented under this post that this is because the user may not buy his own product and get commissions for it, I agree with this reason too.

Related: Best Ad Networks 2018

Don't forget to follow my blog AKBlogs on facebook at Akblogspk.

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Top 6 Ad Networks for Publishers

Hey there this is Ali Khan here, in this article I am going to mention some of those ad networks that are going to help bloggers and website developers, mainly newbies, to earn from their blogs and websites sitting in their home.

Note that every blog has its own way of making money, some of the websites I will write about below will work for some blogs while they won't for other blogs. It also depends on the content of the blog and the ads provided by the ad networks.

But in the end its all about the targeted traffic. If the content helps, it will sing.

Top 6 Ad Networks for Publishers

The best way to earn through blogs and websites is by advertising on them using ads. Once you get acquainted with the layout of your website, the best thing is for you to do is to create ad spaces. Once you do that you can start looking for ad networks that will give you ads to serve on your website.

The list of the ad networks I was talking is as follows:

1# Google AdSense - Make Money Online through Website Monetization

Google Adsense is, by far, the best in contextual advertising on the web. You can search any ad networks recommendations on the web, you will see Google Adsense at the top of the list, every time.

Google Adsense publishers have too many success stories, even now there are publishers who earn upto 40,000$ per year from Google Adsense.

Google Adsense has the largest variety of ad networks due to which every keyword gets some ads behind it. They have the second largest variety of ad unit sizes. The best is Chitika though in ad unit sizes, the reason is below in the Chitika section. Google adsense gives ad units not only to its users for websites and blogs, it also gives ad units for feeds, domains and search engine's search results.

They have opted out of ads for feeds since July 26th, 2012. But they have started different other features like responsive ads.

Responsive ads

Responsive ads are ads that can be placed anywhere within a website. These ads check the available width and display the biggest ad unit that can be placed within these limits. These type of ads are quite useful as they are useful for responsive websites, that have different page sizes for different pages. Also they display appropriate ad sizes for mobile users.

eCPM for Adsense ads is between 0.01-3.2$, this is just a value that I calculated from serving ads on different sites.

Site Details:

Category: Search Engines & Portals
Domain Authority: 98
Page Authority: 87
Website Rank Global: ~1st
Website Rank USA: ~1st
Monthly Traffic: ~3.5 Billion Unique Visitors
Biggest Traffic Referrer: Youtube (~7% of Traffic Share)
Backlinks: ~3.3 million
Percentage of Traffic from USA: ~27%

2# Chitika | Online Advertising Network

Chitika is also a contextual advertising ad network like Google Adsense, but it doesn't offer income from clicking ads, it supports giving revenue only for impressions on ads. Chitika is a CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) based ad network.

Since a lot of people have been complaining about their google adsense accounts been closed down and their money not being given back to them. Chitika is more recommended then Google Adsense.

However the eCPM for Chitika is quite low. Almost 0.0001$-0.5$ for most ad units. This is only helpful if you have thousands of pageviews. However, it also depends on the niche of your website. The content decides a lot about the ads you get. And the revenue that follows with it.

Also getting an account in Chitika is much more easier then in Google Adsense. The best part of it is that Chitika gives ads relevant not only to the context of the web page, the ad is placed in, but also relevant to the search keywords used by the visitor for coming to that website.

It also has a unique profile for every visitor, with the help of which it displays ads related to the interest of the user itself, apart from the ads given by the context of the webpage or blog post.

Chitika has a huge variety of ad units, even more then Google Adsense since ad networks tend to prefer it as compared to adsense because it allows lower budgets. It was my second best option to try Chitika which eventually turned out to be the best for me and my blog.

Chitika's ad unit size can be adjusted, if you use Chitika Premium, you can choose any number of ads to display along with the width of the ad unit.

Recently chitika has become strict with publishers who do not own a custom domain. Custom domain (like www.yourwebsite.com) is necessary now to apply for the chitika publisher program.

Category: Business
Domain Authority: 74
Page Authority: 61
Website Rank Global: ~65,000th
Website Rank USA: ~68,000th
Monthly Traffic: ~120 thousand Unique Visitors
Biggest Traffic Referrer: Google (~15% of Traffic Share)
Backlinks: ~7000
Percentage of Traffic from USA: ~13%

India is the biggest traffic referrer to Chitika with 29% of traffic coming from India. Chitika is ranked ~11,500th in India.

3# BidVertiser - Direct Advertising Network

Bidvertiser is also a contextual advertising company that has been in this business for a long time. Bidvertiser is somewhat customizable as compared to other ad serving websites. You have to supply the keywords and category of your website yourself to Bidvertiser. Unlike Google Adsense and Chitika, who get these things themselves. Bidvertiser is actually an affiliate ad marketing website.

You don't get paid for a click, instead you get paid for people clicking and then doing some particular task on the opening ad which is termed as "interacting". This is a bit difficult as it sounds but it becomes easy as your websites get more targeted traffic.

Bidvertiser gives payouts of even 10$ through Paypal.

Category: Advertisement and Pop-ups
Domain Authority: 88
Page Authority: 71
Website Rank Global: ~50,500th
Website Rank USA: ~57,500th
Monthly Traffic: ~105 thousand Unique Visitors
Biggest Traffic Referrer: Google (~19% of Traffic Share)
Backlinks: ~40,000
Percentage of Traffic from USA: ~13%

India is the biggest traffic referrer to Bidvertiser with 20% of traffic coming from India. Bidvertiser is ranked ~11,500th in India.

4# BuySellAds: Advertising Solutions for Publishers and Marketers

Buy Sell ads is a relatively new ad publishing website, founded in 2008, as many new bloggers have rushed to it because of its new features. Buy Sell Ads (BSA) turned out to be great for bloggers that were not earning great amounts from Google Adsense and Chitika, because Buy Sell Ads is simply about selling and buying specific ad space, either that may be a 125*125 ad unit, or bigger.

However, now they have new policies which includes that websites having less than 500,000 pageviews monthly are less likely to get approval.

Category: Business
Domain Authority: 67
Page Authority: 44
Website Rank Global: ~49,000th
Website Rank USA: ~23,500th
Monthly Traffic: ~137 thousand Unique Visitors
Biggest Traffic Referrer: Google (~14% of Traffic Share)
Backlinks: ~2,000
Percentage of Traffic from USA: ~33%

5# AdRecover - Monetize your Adblocked Inventory!

AdRecover is also relatively new and gained much popularity after it make ads show up for users using the adblock app. AdRecover not only disabled adblock for its ads but also continues to do so. See the picture below:

This helped AdRecover to get a lot of initial publishers after which they had to change their policies. Now AdRecover requires its publishers to have atleast 500,000-1,000,000 pageviews monthly to get approval.

Category: Business
Domain Authority: 27
Page Authority: 31
Website Rank Global: ~230,000th
Website Rank India: ~30,500th
Monthly Traffic: ~74 thousand Unique Visitors
Biggest Traffic Referrer: Google (~16% of Traffic Share)
Backlinks: ~40
Percentage of Traffic from India: ~37%

Adrecover is not well ranked in the US. Most of Adrecover traffic is from countries like India(37%), France(15%), Romania(15%), Pakistan(5%), Indonesia(1.7%), etc.

6# Propeller Ads – Display and Mobile Advertising Network

Propeller ads is UK based ad network. They don't have any prerequisites for new publishers. Websites with any amount of traffic can apply and be ready for ad serving.

They have high eCPM rates from 1-8$ but this is different for sub-continental publishers where eCPM has even dropped to 0.01$.

Recently they have stopped giving banner ads and are concentrating on popunders. Popunders are quite popular now a days because of their high eCPM rates. Also one popunder per page does give a high CTR.

Category: Business
Domain Authority: 66
Page Authority: 54
Website Rank Global: ~8,000th
Website Rank USA: ~30,000th
Monthly Traffic: ~900 thousand Unique Visitors
Biggest Traffic Referrer: Google (~11% of Traffic Share)
Backlinks: ~4,000
Percentage of Traffic from USA: ~7%

India is the biggest traffic referrer to Propeller ads with 19% of traffic coming from India. Propeller ads is ranked ~4,500th in India.

These are all the ad networks that I am recommending.

Conclusion

I also would like your opinion on other blog posts on my blog. I update them regularly.  Remember that the success of a blog mostly lies on the number of posts and the content that is in the blog posts. These factors make up the traffic circle of a blog.

I hope this article helps you, these are the top 6 ad networks for publishers.

Don't forget to follow my blog Ali Khan Blogs on facebook & Twitter.

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An Unbiased Review of the Wealthy Affiliate University

Because I am not a member of Wealthy Affiliate anymore and their affiliate program is open to members only, rest assured that this review can not be biased in nature. I will not be promoting them. Since I can’t, just reviewing them.

OK, here it comes.

An Unbiased Review of the Wealthy Affiliate University

After conducting a lot of research and hearing dozens of great feedback about Wealthy Affiliate, I decided to join them about one year ago. I was just at the beginning of learning the internet marketing stuff and I was a bit confused. That’s why I looked for a step by step action plan that I could follow easily. Fortunately, I found what I was looking for and more than that at the Wealthy Affiliate University. Kyle and Carson, the founders, had explanatory articles, video tutorials, an 8-week action plan, many useful software to help you get started and speed up the process, a forum full with success stories, they even had a hosting plan included. Great start for a beginner.

Also Read: What is Affiliate Marketing? 

I stayed three months as a member at the Wealthy Affiliate University. I had to cancel my membership because of launching a new affiliate technology buyer’s guide brand called saim deals. So that I was not going to give time to wealthy affiliate for a long term.

In that three months time, I learned much about internet marketing, especially affiliate marketing, those are not the same thing, you know. Using one strategy discussed on their forum, I made my first sale ever with a Clickbank product and others came after that.

I never managed to complete the first week of the 8-week action plan. I don’t know what would have been if I could follow that. I am not good at sticking to plans, you see. But I am sure if I had followed that plan I would have been at a different point today.

I established the core of my internet marketing knowledge in those three months. Nevertheless, as time passed I left Wealthy Affiliate and continued the journey on my own.

The one thing I can say about Wealthy Affiliate is that I feel myself lucky that I met them at that time, when I was desperately looking for a step by step course. To conclude my review, I will talk about who will mostly benefit from the course and it is up to you to decide if it is for you or not.

Wealthy Affiliate is for you, if you are

• A complete beginner, e.g. just heard about internet marketing.
• A beginner, have some basic knowledge about this stuff but do not know which direction to go.
• An intermediate, but in need of a step by step action plan.

Wealthy Affiliate is not for you, if you are*

• An advanced internet marketer and know what you are doing.
• A pro that can write the book of internet marketing.
• Looking for a fast action blueprint that will show you some tactics to make money right away.

Also Read: What is Affiliate Marketing? 

* Note that I am not saying that you will not benefit from WA, if you fall into this group. I saw some guys who have been there for 2-3 years and they were very comfortable about what they were doing. Besides, I am considering to join them in the near future too, to catch up with the latest news and trends going on there.

Don't forget to follow my blog Ali Khan Blogs on facebook & Twitter.

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What is Affiliate Marketing? Step by Step Guide

Affiliate marketing has helped hundreds and thousands of ordinary people to become millionaires. It has been one of the very successful businesses of modern day. The successful marketers who have mastered the art of affiliate Marketing have earned a lot. But the question remains, what is affiliate marketing? And what are the terms you should know about affiliate marketing before starting your own business as an affiliate marketer, either as an affiliate or a merchant.

What is Affiliate Marketing? Step by Step Guide

It is the process of promoting someone’s products or services by introducing them to the potential customers, generating big sales for organization and earning commission on these promoted products. 

In this article I am going to discuss with you a step by step guide to Affiliate Marketing. For an online affiliate marketer, mainly four things combine to make a cycle of affiliate marketing.

A Website

A website containing products and their reviews called an affiliate website is the first requirement for an affiliate marketer. The website doesn't really have to have product reviews in it but does have to be product related so you can generate sales.

If your product placement is not good you might not generate sales. Also, if your placed product and website genre, you might not get sales and leads. Don't know what these advertising terms mean? Read this.

Related: Beginner's Guide: Define Ad terms and Ads definitions

Ad Suppliers

Firstly what are Suppliers in Affiliate Marketing? Suppliers are people who supply these product to you so that you may sell them. In online affiliate marketing, ad suppliers are websites that give away ad code for a certain product that you place on your website.

These websites maintain a track record of ad activity through cookies. They are basically called an affiliate network.

Related: Websites to help you earn from your Blog

The Affiliate Networks are the one that drop cookies on buyer’s browser to keep track of products sales and purchases. When any client clicks on any advertisement published on the affiliate's website, it sends record of that customer's sales to the affiliate network. The affiliate network maintains a record of sales and clicks of every purchase made by that affiliate's website.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

Buyer

The one who buys the product called buyer. He does it by clicking the ad on your website and making a purchase on the subsequent link.

Affiliates

The commission receivers who receive commissions for sales generated are called Affiliates or Affiliate Marketers. The affiliate owns the website and allows different people from different affiliate networks to make sales by using that website.

Two main rules of affiliate marketing

• Only recommend that product to a buyer whose quality is best and you being an affiliate marketer, are aware of it. This will build a trust level between you and your client.
• Never force someone to buy the product, just give good recommendations based upon your experience.

The best way is to describe the product's use and write a few lines of reviews from different sources. However, writing your own review will help a lot. It builds trust among you and your client.

Affiliate Marketing is not about becoming an affiliate, you can even become a merchant and make your own products and sell it through your own sources or different affiliates. Here's a step by step guide for you to become an Affiliate Merchant.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

Step by step guide for becoming an Affiliate Merchant

An affiliate merchant is a person who creates a product and sells it online. They are usually called merchants. As affiliates get a commission for each sale made, merchant get a bulky sum for each sale. For a merchant there is always a pool of affiliates waiting to sell his product.

If you want to become an affiliate merchant, you must make a nice and worthy product to sell. To create a worthy product follow these steps:

You must possess whole knowledge about your product

Having little know-how or incomplete know-how of a product you are making and selling online will not only be a major let down but it will also damage your reputation as a merchant. Having complete knowledge of a product will give you a better chance of selling it to the right type of audience.

You must validate your idea among people

You must validate your idea among people, make the concept about your idea in peoples mind crystal clear, so that they can support your idea. Get reviews for your product from your close ones and make appropriate changes so your product becomes worthy of selling online.

A physical product must exist

A physical product must exist against your idea. Either it is something physical or a coded file which you programmed. In online market usually it is a software which consists of a series of codes that are executed to perform a specific task or something physical like a lighting lamp or a table, etc.

Selling fake products will get you into trouble and make a problem for you if you want to become a long time affiliate merchant.

You need to promote it among people

Once you have created your physical idea now you need to promote it among people. You can do it using an affiliate network but you should also use your own networks to get more sales. Here is a list of biggest ad networks to sell your product.

Tips for becoming an Affiliate Market Success

Becoming an affiliate marketing success requires hard work and a lot of technical know-how. These are some basic tips for becoming an affiliate market success for both as an affiliate and a merchant.

There are a lot of people on the internet buying new products everyday. You need to make marketing strategies for your product for it to perform outstandingly against other products of the same category. You need to follow the following steps for becoming an affiliate market success.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

Generating ideas for physical products

Ideas are always easy to generate because they are random. However, if you want your idea to be unique it must be validated among your clients. You need to ponder and think slightly hard and brainstorm ideas as much as you can before starting to make a product happen.

You can also ponder upon what products are already in market and how you can improve them and make something that helps users from all over the internet.

Validating your idea

With the help of the internet you can easily validate your idea about business products. You need to validate your idea before you start working on it.

You can use social media and other websites or make a youtube video to spread the idea of your product. Make a youtube video, SEO it and post it on your social media. This way you can spread your idea easily. Interested people will contact you. Just fix the product according to their requirements.

Don't forget to write terms and conditions with required amount before selling your product.

Creating the actual product

Now there are tons of ideas throughout the internet. Also there are so many tools which can help you generate your product. You can take crash courses that will guide you on how to create that product. Also its variations which will be accepted among people as a different version of your original product.

For example you can create e-books, write any research paper or make any software. It all depends upon your skill set.

Finding your affiliate partner

Now find your affiliate partner in market who can actually promote your product and fix his commission. You don't always have to go to a high profile affiliate network. You can use freelancing platforms and social media groups to find the ideal candidates for spreading your product among people of your product's niche.

Related: Biggest Ad networks for Publishers

However if you want to do it yourself and also have someone else spread your product. Follow these steps:

Steps for becoming an Affiliate Market Partner

If someone calls you personally on your freelancer gig or contacts you through your social media accounts asking for help regarding a product that isn't selling as well as it should. Here's how you can help him as an affiliate.

• You need to review all your products under the niche by using YouTube or your blog/website or any other source or even social media. 
• Prepare a list of emails of your contacts so that you can email product related information to them about the product.
• Once you start getting sales and start growing you can create links of your own “paying per click advertisements”.

Conclusion

I hope you know what is affiliate marketing now. I have written a lot of different post regarding affiliate marketing here on Ali Khan Blogs - SEO Blogger, you can search for them if you want to. I will be writing more on these sorts of articles and don't forget to follow my blog on facebook.

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Beginner's Guide: Define Ad terms and Ads definitions

If you are new to blogging, i.e. newbie blogger, and you want to earn a huge amount of money from your blog via monetizing it with some popular advertising or publishing agency. Then there is no solution to your problem that I know.

What you need is patience, if you remain patient and keep doing your job on your blog, i.e. writing content rich blog posts and giving relevant information about some topic, only then you can achieve success, which is every blogger's main target.

Beginner's Guide: Define Ad terms and Ads definitions

Earning from a blog is now a much profitable source of income as compared to what blogging was in the past due to the increased opportunities of earning given by different websites which mainly constitute advertising and ad publishing websites.

Although apps like AdBlocker have somewhat reduced the profit margin but that does not mean that bloggers can't earn. Also affiliate marketing tends to be a source of income for bloggers which have lots of pageviews.




Before telling you about those sites that tend to help to increase earning opportunities from your blog. I will tell you about the things that matter when you publish ads and how they are interpreted. You need to have an idea of these things, although you will cater them at one point or another in this field. But it would be better if you know about this stuff ahead of time.

Website Traffic

After entering the "blogging industry" your main goal becomes getting as much traffic as possible for your blog. The word "traffic" here describes the number of visitors your blog gets. With over 2 billion internet users in the world, internet traffic tends to grow more and more everyday. However, there are different ways to get taffic, one of them I mentioned in this article.

Website traffic is divided into two main categories. One is the valued one called targeted traffic, that visits the blog for information and service, spends some time, comments and/or share to social media, and eventually makes a purchase or clicks an ad (not every time though). The other category of visitors is the one that has no value for your site and is there because of a misclick.

Why you ask is website traffic important? Because some advertising companies don't give ad access to publishers so easily, you need to have a blog that gets at least the minimum amount of traffic required for approval. Different sites have different requirements.

Some have a requirement of five thousand pageviews a day, and some have more, to qualify for these websites. Check the picture below for reference from AdRecover. A popular advertising company:





Getting to 100,000 pageviews takes a lot of time and hardwork. However it gets easy as time passes by. The blogger in turn becomes the publisher for these advertising sites. And gives them ad space within his blog.

Pageviews

Pageviews is the number of times the browser has opened your website (including all its pages inside) it determines the quality of traffic on your website. If a visitor tends to stick around your website for long and also visits different pages before leaving, he is said to be quality traffic.

You can say someone interested in your content is quality traffic. On the other hand people who skim through your posts and leave as soon as possible are low quality traffic. Your blog's popularity determines the quality of traffic you get.

Related: Websites to help you earn from your Blog

Ad Clicks

If you place an ad of an advertising company on your blog and your blog's visitor is interested in that ad and he clicks on it, then you earn a small amount of money for that click from the advertising company. This earned income for a click is between 0.01$ to 3$. Some say that they earn about 15$ for a click, but those are different kind of ads and I don't want to get in that type of industry.

On the other hand, this is the best way of earning from your blog. If you have a stream of visitors coming to your blog, your blog will start earning more and more steadily.

Ad clicks are very important as they determine the Cost Per Click (CPC) and Click Through Rate (CTR). Most blog revenue is generated by ad clicks and impressions.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Ad clicks generally have a Click Through Rate (CTR) which is the percentage of ratio of number of ad clicks to the number of ad impressions. i.e.,

CTR = Total no. of Clicks ÷ Total no. of impressions x 100%

Usually the CTR is very low, almost 0.1-2% because not all visitors tend to click on ads. Also the visitor doesn't just come to your site for ads. They surf around your website for interesting content until they finally finds the ad interesting.

Different ads have different rates but this does not effect the CTR. A high CTR is actually dangerous as it implies invalid clicks. Advertising agencies take the matter of invalid clicks quite seriously.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

As the name suggests cost per click is the cost of each ad click. It is the amount of revenue an ad earns you when it is clicked. Ads have different CPCs depending on the advertisers, the ad type and the visitor that clicks on it.

How do they effect the CPC you ask? Here's how:

• Advertisers determine the budget of an ad. So it is pretty much controlled by them. Their budget defines your earned CPC.
• The ad showing on your ad space also defines your CPC. Video ads tend to have higher CPCs as compared to text ads.
• If you are using contextual ad services, the visitor also determines your CPC. Visitors from western countries tend to give out higher CPC then from the subcontinent or any other place.

CPC is also referred to as EPC (Earning Per Click) in some websites.

Related: Websites to help you earn from your Blog

Invalid Clicks

Do not ever try to click on your own ads for money, because some advertising companies call these types of clicks as invalid clicks and your account of that advertising company gets taken away from you at the moment you make an invalid click.

Although, you can try to make a new account on that advertising website through some other ID, but companies like Google Adsense readily disapprove accounts like that and there remains no way that you can get back to that advertising company again. We can say that you get blacklisted for invalid clicks.

Ad Impressions

Ad impressions are the number of impressions your ad gets by a visitor when he opens your blog. For CPM ads, showing these ads determines your earned revenue. But now-a-days advertising agencies dont pay for all impressions. They have further divided these impressions into categories like:

Blocked Impressions

Ad impressions for which no auction was placed by the advertisers and ads were not served for these impressions.

No Bid

Ad impressions for which an auction was held but their were no advertisers who bid on it and ads were not served for these impressions.

Your blog's income is determined with ad impressions which are calculated by their average cost per thousand impressions (eCPM).

Average Cost per Thousand Impressions (eCPM)

eCPM is the average amount of money earned for a specific ad unit divided by the total number of impressions that ad gets times thousand. eCPM stands form "average Cost Per Mille," which means the total amount earned for thousand views of an ad. The word "mille" means thousand in Latin. It is calculated as follows:

eCPM = Total revenue ÷ Total impressions of ad * 1000

For example, if your ad unit earns you 5$ and gets 5000 views during that then your ad's eCPM is

eCPM = 5 ÷ 5000 * 1000 = 1$

Page Revenue per thousand impressions (RPM)

Page Revenue per thousand impressions is the revenue you earn for thousand impressions of ads. It is directly related to the number of ad impressions you have in a day. Usually the RPM is calculated as follows:

RPM = Revenue earned ÷ Total Ad Impressions * 1000

This is somewhat a new terminology, that has not been used by many ad networks except Google Adsense. 

Active viewable CPM

This is a type of CPM earning technique  for which publishers earn when an impression is recorded to be atleast 50% viewable for atleast one whole second. 


Related: Websites to help you earn from your Blog

Sales and Leads

Sales and leads are two terms that are related to affiliate marketing. These terms requires visitors to do more than just click ads, instead they have to perform specific tasks only then is the publisher paid for task.

Sale

In order to generate a sale revenue, the visitor must make a sale in the appropriate ad. The publisher then gets his commission from this sale.

Lead

In order to generate a lead revenue, the visitor must perform a specific task in the appropriate ad. This task may vary from advertiser to advertiser like making a download, getting a sign up on the website or newsletter, etc. The publisher then gets his commission for this lead. The advertisers that support this are called pay per lead. 

Related: Websites to help you earn from your Blog

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is another term used in affiliate marketing. It represents the number of sales you get to the total number of clicks. It can be represented as:

Conversion Rate = Total no. of Sales ÷ Total no. of  Clicks * 100

Conversion rates are usually low, almost 0.1-1.5%. But this doesn't mean people can't get sales with low traffic. This is just an average value. It totally depends upon the nature of traffic and visitors on your website.

That's all folks, these are almost all the general ad and affiliate marketing terms you could encounter within the future. However, it would not be wrong to say that these terms keep on changing with time and also some websites have some terms specific to them.

Hope you liked the article. I hope this article helps you, I will be writing more on these sorts of Articles. I have started a Beginner's Guide tag so as to help new Bloggers and Youtubers. Don't forget to follow my blog Ali Khan Blogs on facebook at Akblogspk.

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