I recognize the importance of affiliates in today's market and instead of competing against you like many others I focus on helping you to make as much money as you possibly can. 

I am constantly studying the best affiliate methods and it is my aim to provide you with as much useful knowledge as I can. I have included quite a few free options to get you started as well as some more advanced techniques for the more experienced and brave.

I do split testing on my landing page and I am always trying to create a better conversion rate which simply means the percentage of people who buy lawntricks after seeing it. This converts to more money for you. I am genuinely interested in any questions or advice that you may have in regards to the book, landing page or your affiliate program and look forward to a rewarding partnership with you.

Simon Purcill
simon@lawntricks.com

Step 1
If you are not already a member you will need to join ClickBank.com. This is completely free and will only take 2 minutes. Remember you are signing up as an affiliate and you can use this link to do so Click bank.com.

Step 2
Once you are a member just type in "lawntricks" in the market place search and click on create hoplink. your link will look like this http://xxxx.spurcill.hop.clickbank.net/ you can replace the (xxxx) with your clickbank nickname or the hoplink generator found in the clickbank marketplace will do this for you.

Step 3
Use this link in PPC, emails, or blogging and when a sale is made 50 % of the commision goes to you. ClickBank tracks all of your sales and sends you a check twice a month depending on the minimum amount you decide on in the sign up process.

Here are some great ways to get started with affiliate sales

1. Create a link to your web site
This is the cheapest and easiest way to make sales. The top left hand corner attracts the most clicks. Having a website that is also related to lawns in some way guarantees better results also. This is what it will look like:-

<a href="http://xxxx.spurcill.hop.clickbank.net/">ENTER THE LINK TEXT HERE</a>

The hoplink generateor makes one of these links for you also but if not you simply enter your clickbank nickname where the (xxxx) is and change the text to something like:-
How to transform your worn-out lawn, guaranteed!
Discover your lawns true potential
Some links are much more appealing than others. Finding the bset text for your link can make a big difference - you can literally go from 1 click out of 1000 visitors to 100 clicks. Experiment and try to find something that works best for your site.

2. Email your subscribers or friends
If you have a mailing list or newsletter than this is a great way to go. You already have a relation ship with friends and subscribers and sales come much easier. Just write a small review of the book and include your text link so that you get the credit for your sales.
Do Not Spam! If you do not have your own list or friends to email this is not for you, Clickbank, ISPs and hosts take spam very seriously and it can get you in a lot of trouble.

3. Make contributions to forums
Forums are free and can generate many sales. Find a forum on a related topic such as (lawn care, water practices, mowing, grass...), join and make your contributions to the discussions. Give advice and share what you have learned from Lawn Tricks. The better your advice the more trust people have in you and the more likely that they follow your link and earn you commisions.

When you have joined go to your profile and edit your "signature" and include your affiliate clickbank link to Lawn Tricks.

Try to find the most popular forums and threads, the more forums the better. You can use your signature in any forum related or unrelated to lawn care and still make sales.
Do Not Spam! Just putting your affiliate link in a thread will get you banned.

4. Write a small article and submit it to free article directories
This is a great fun way to make a lot of money. A good article can get picked up by Google and other large search engines and really increase your sales. You don't have to be a professional writer to do this, just write a simple review about Lawn Tricks or your personal experience with your lawn and your results results.

The main goal is for search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, Msn…) to find these articles and link to them. Because of that you will want your articles to include as many ‘keywords’ and ‘key phrases’ as possible. These are words and phrases that people use when searching on the web.

Here are some ideas for key words and phrases:

"lawn help"
"perfect lawn"
"lawn maintenance"
"healthy lawn"
"grass care tips"
"how to lawn care"
"lawn advice"

Choose one or two phrases and then include it as many times as possible in your article/review (remember to always use it in a headline as well).

After you’re done, go to at least one of the pages listed below to submit your article. If you do it right, you will get a lot of traffic and make a lot of sales (the traffic usually starts coming in after 7-10 days)..

www.ezinearticles.com
www.goarticles.com
www.usfreeads.com
www.articlecity.com
www.a1articles.com
www.articlealley.com
www.searchwarp.com
www.IdeaMarketers.com
www.associatedcontent.com
www.iwantcontent.com
www.articledashboard.com

5. Create a blog
Blogging is a great free way to make sales and is gaining in popularity, just create a signature with your affiliate clickbank link and include it in your web log posts. You can use some of the links below to get started.

www.blog.com
www.blogger.com
www.feedster.com
www.weblogs.com
www.wordpress.com
www.blogrolling.com
www.blogdex.net
www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm
www.toprankresults.com/blog-submit-list.htm

Submit your blog to sites such as www.pingomatic.com or www.pingoat.com to get more readers to your web log.

6. Write a press release
Writing a good press release is more or less the same as writing an article. For some more advice on writing an effective press release, visit the sites listed below. Remember to include a favorable review of Lawn Tricks and your own affiliate link. You can write new press releases every few weeks and submit them to the following sites:

Free Press Releases:

www.pr.com
www.pr9.net
www.prleap.com
www.ukprwire.com
www.usprwire.com
www.i-newswire.com
www.searchwarp.com
www.searchsight.com
www.transworldnews.com
www.mediasyndicate.com
www.1888pressrelease.com
www.free-press-release.com
www.freepressreleases.co.uk

Paid Press Releases:

www.prfree.com
www.webwire.com

7. Pay Per Click (PPC)
The three main players are Google Adwords, Yahoo, MSN as well as many others. This is the quickest way to make sales on the net but as you have to pay for it, it comes with some risks. You decide on keywords and phrases to bid on that will display your ad and in the destination address section you put your affiliate link. For example lets say you are using google and your ad looked like this:-

Complete Lawn Care Guide
Pro tips revealed, if you want a
better lawn heres the answers
www.lawntricks.com

Whenever someone searches for "lawn care" on google, depending on your bid price they will see your ad. You only pay when some one clicks on the ad, so more specific key words keep your costs down. So lets say you bid $0.10 and you get 50 clicks and make one sale it would equal $10.93 - $0.10*50 ($5.00) so you made $5.93

It doesnt sound to hard does it, but there are many tricks to these PPC strategies and you should start with a small budget while you are learning the tricks, here are few points that might help get better results

• Write compelling specific ads. (Make sure you get people interested in lawn care
• Have two ads running and keep the best and try to improve on it
• Bid a little more than others to get better ad position
• Find different or little known keywords, keep in mind spelling mistakes as well

• Use other search engines, Google may be the biggest but it is the most expensive and there are some other great search engines that will provide better ROI

Another popular option is to create your own review site. The link would then take people to that site where you had a review of LawnTricks and some other lawn related affiliate programs. These reviews increase your credibility and increase sales but are a little bit more work. A great idea if you choose to start your own site is to create an opt-in list and send people informative emails with a text link to an affiliate program. 3rd party autoresponders are the best for this and a good one is www.getresponse.com

In conclusion
I am currently investing a lot of time in refining a good easy to use affiliate program with as much inforamation as possible. I will soon be providing an ebook at my expense on all 7 stratagies to help you increase your profits. I will also have a newsletter to let you know what ads and stratagies are work best so stay posted.

Till then I have found a good forum that is really speeding up my learning which you may want to have a look at www.associateprograms.com/ or there is an affiliate program tutorial from the same site which is great for beginers.

If you have any question or comments please email me
Cheers and good luck

Simon Purcill
simon@lawntricks.com