So what are back-end products? They are products/services you offer to existing customers, i.e. to people who have already bought a first product (front-end product. lead product) from you.
Most online marketers make much more money selling customers the second, third, fourth etc. product than selling their first product. The reason is that people who’ve already bought from you once are much more likely to buy again.

Strategies like back-end offers shifts the focus from the short sighted “take the money and run” strategy that is so much in use on the internet today. You’ve seen these sites all over. The focus is on getting a massive amount of traffic and then selling visitors an over-priced product that doesn’t deliver what was promised. They might make money in the short run but they will only sell to each customer once and will have to continue spending a lot of money on advertising to get new suckers to visit their site.

More successful sites focus on building a strong relationship with their customers. Your main goal shouldn’t be to just make sure your customers are somewhat satisfied…you want them to be extremely satisfied. If you deliver the goods, your customers will trust you more. If you have their trust, you can sell them anything. When you send your very satisfied customers an email offering another product that they would be interested in, they will flock to your site to buy it because they trust you. Trust is everything.

·    Is it light and easy to ship?
·    Is it a digital good that is downloaded (e-book or software)?
·    Is it perishable or fragile?
·    Does it have to be seen and held (designer fabrics, perhaps)
·    Is there enough demand to make your venture profitable?
·    Does it have little competition from large online companies (niche products)?

The last two characteristics are the ones that can be hard to pin down. Here is a generally accepted method of arriving at an idea of how heavy the demand and competition is for a product.

If you have a special interest in some products that meet the above criteria, great, but don’t limit your investigation just to items you like. You are looking for a niche product with relatively good demand (enough to make it profitable), but without heavy competition.

One way to see what the demand is for products you are interested in is to look at search engines to see how frequently people search for the product you are considering.

The result of all this research should be that one or more products will fit into a niche market – products with some demand, and relatively little supply. For the best results, focus on one niche product category, and offer a wide selection. That way, you can become the best online source for that particular category. For example, instead of offering general craft supplies, offer the widest possible selection of needlepoint kits. This strategy will also allow you to rank higher in search engines because you can optimize your pages for fewer, more specific, keywords.

One of the most notable affiliate marketing mistakes is to think that all you have to do is find the ones that pay the most, sign up, drive traffic to that site through your affiliate link and you’re all set right? Not exactly.

It’s great to choose an affiliate program that pays a high percentage, but that’s not most important thing to consider. It’s much more important to find a quality affiliate program that meets certain criteria. Here are three mistakes you don’t have to make:

1.    You want to make sure the product is a proven seller. You don’t want to waste your time and money driving traffic to a site that doesn’t convert. Find one with a good conversion rate.

2.    Make sure the site you become an affiliate for protects its affiliates, and has your best interest at heart. Look for one that provides banners, e-mails, and other tools you can use to promote the site. Also, make sure that there is only one payment option. As an affiliate marketer, you need to be sure that you will get credit for your referral. If there is more than one payment method, you can get shortchanged.

3.    Do not choose an affiliate program that promotes an e-mail course. Nothing is worse than becoming an affiliate to a site that’s first goal is to capture e-mail addresses, and then tries to make the sale second. As an affiliate marketer, you need to capture e-mail addresses, then to convert that prospect into a sale. Stick with affiliate programs that aren’t focused on capturing leads because it’s simply not in your best interest. Build your own list, not someone else’s.

An affiliate program is really not as difficult to set up as you may think. Thanks to the high demand for affiliate systems recently, there are now lots of ways to set up your own program.

Here’s what you need to set one up:

1. A web site with your own domain name.

2. At least one product or service that you own completely.

3. A system to handle commission tracking and payment.
That sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? Well, actually it is! And it’s getting easier all the time.

The first two items listed above are self-explanatory. Of course, you need your own website and your own product or service. You can’t very well set up an associate program if you don’t own the site or the product(s) you will be promoting. If you have not taken these two steps, you’ll need to do them first. Once you’ve managed to get by these two steps, you can move right to step three, setting up your program.

You will need to search the Internet for a system that will handle commission tracking and payment. You can try to do this yourself but you will most likely miss some and missed ones are missed income. There are free ones, as well as, paid ones.

The positive aspects of an associate management system are many:

1. You can sign on associates more rapidly and grow a larger force of resellers.

2. You’ll enjoy the automation and online management of affiliates.

3. These systems provide full sales statistics for both you and your associates.

1.    Use Meta Refresh: A meta refresh is a simple bit of HTML code which automatically redirects your visitor to another page (your affiliate URL). It provides a neat way of presenting affiliate links in newsletters. It probably helps reduce commission bypassing and commission hijacking. A big advantage of using meta refreshes is that if merchants change their affiliate links, you can change links on dozens of pages quickly and easily by altering only one file.

One problem is that some search engines don’t like meta refreshes because they’re frequently used for unsavory purposes. So if you use this technique, use it with caution.

2.    Use a URL redirection service. You can use free services or buy a unique domain name for each affiliate program you join. URL redirection makes affiliate links less obvious, so this will reduce some commission thefts.

3.    Use a web-based ad tracking service. The ad tracking link initially hides the affiliate link, reducing thefts.

4.    Use an ad tracking script. Good ad tracking scripts hide the affiliate link as well as being useful for tracking. It has the advantage that it doesn’t promote someone else’s domain.

5.    Use JavaScript redirect. Because this initially hides the affiliate link, it should reduce commission thefts.

Be aware that thievery is a problem for online businesses and take the necessary steps to protect your commissions.

There is, however, some fairly new technology that every small or home business owner needs. It can answer questions like; how can small businesses identify noteworthy trends, Identify an existing hot demand and make better decisions faster? Answer: business intelligence software. Business intelligence is the crystal ball of the 21st century.

Purchasing business intelligence (BI) software is one of the most strategic investments that a business can make. Using data mining, reporting and querying, BI helps businesses understand, monitor, manage and respond to specified situations. This software empowers decision-makers — and staff — to connect the dots around key business numbers in a way previously unimaginable. BI helps you figure out:

·    Which customers are profitable?
·    Which customers appear profitable but aren’t?
·    Are you close to — or far from — reaching critical milestones?
·    When is the best time to launch a marketing campaign?
·    What was the best performing product or service last quarter?

Business Intelligence software may be more of an investment than small businesses can bear. It can certainly be pricy. Small business or home business owners, however, can subscribe to BI services on the Internet at a fairly reasonable cost. There are several to choose from.

eBay also published a “Hot Items” list the first week of each month. It gives valuable information to eBay sellers who use drop shippers.

This is a simple, straight-forward agreement between a merchant and an affiliate. Budding affiliate marketers run into a problem when they try to reverse the success process. Instead of starting at the beginning, they try to start at the end.

Making money is the end of the process. The beginning of the process is education and there are several steps in between. Too many people, who are just getting started in affiliate marketing, fail to take the steps necessary to get to the end of the process and actually make money.

Step #1: Educate yourself. This is the key, opening the door of opportunity. It’s also the common thread connecting successful affiliate marketers. Education lays the foundation – the building blocks to success. Start by gathering the best information you can find about affiliate marketing and absorbing it.

Step #2: Turn that information into usable knowledge. Even the best information remains kind of worthless, however, until after you discover how to use it – how to make it serve your purpose.

Step #3: Start applying the knowledge … take action …start building your affiliate business. Will you make mistakes, even though you’ve invested all that time educating yourself? Yes, you most likely will make mistakes.

Step #4: Test and tweak, test and tweak. This one never ends. And it’s often the dividing line between succeeding and failing. Attention to small details often returns big rewards.

Following these steps will define you as a successful affiliate marketer.

Simply put, affiliate marketing is selling products on a commission basis. You own a business that advertises and sells products for other companies. You may have a product of your own to begin with or not. The things that a successful affiliate marketer must have are:

1.    Your website is the jumping off point of all your marketing efforts. So the first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. You must build a user-friendly website, which will attract your prospects and motivate them to click on the links to the products and services you are promoting and make a purchase. There are companies whose business is building websites that you can hire to build one for you.

2.    You must find products to sell, you must be able to determine whether there is a demand for those products and if people will actually buy them.  You may either have your own original product or products that are made by others. Which ever way you go, you must believe in the products.

3.    It will be necessary for you to become an adept advertiser and be able to tell whether the advertising you are paying for is producing more income for you than the advertising is costing you.

4.    It is necessary that you have good mathematical skills. You will need to be able to track your sales and determine profit, as well as, see to it that your suppliers are paid in full and on time.

5.    You need the full and unwavering support of your family so that you can devote the time and energy necessary to launch your affiliate marketing business.