Daily Aid 101: Step by step affiliate marketing setup for Amazon.com
Daily Aid 101: Step by step affiliate marketing setup for Amazon.com
Student Financial Aid News
From the Chronicle:
Enrollment at many community colleges is rising so fast that the colleges have run out of space for classes. A number of the institutions have seen double-digit increases as the economy has imploded, and their administrators have converted conference rooms, lounges, and computer labs into classrooms, in addition to scheduling courses on Friday nights, on weekends, and as early as 6 a.m. Even so, thousands of students are being shut out of courses they had hoped to take.
Commentary
As we mentioned previously, the fastest way for any school dealing with capacity issues to address them is with an online degrees program. There’s less infrastructure to build, fewer staff to employ, and the technology scales well.
If you’re looking to go back to school but are facing classrooms bursting at the seams, inquire about an online degree program.
From NASFAA:
“Bob Andelman wasn’t just shocked that someone would steal the identity of his 80-year-old mother-in-law to get a loan,” the St. Petersburg Times reports. “What was more shocking to him was how poorly executed the fraud was and how easily everyone fell for it. ‘They put a picture of a young blond woman onto my mother-in-law’s photo ID,’ he said. ‘But they left all the other information the same. The birthday says 1928.’ And what kind of loan was 80-year-old Helga Holsten’s name used to obtain? A student loan, police said. The fraud was perpetrated by Risha Renee Shaw, according to St. Petersburg police, who arrested her Friday on two counts of exploitation of the elderly and two counts of identity theft. Shaw, 30, was being held at the Pinellas County Jail in lieu of $40,000 bail.”
Commentary
A reminder that with all federal student loans, if a loan is taken out fraudulently, the debt is considered unenforceable and should be dismissed by the lender. If for some reason you are not able to get a debt dismissed by the lender, contact the Ombudsman of Federal Student Aid for assistance. Be prepared to file a copy of your police report and any other documentation providing evidence of fraud.
You can also contact the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General as well.
Scholarship Update
The AARP Foundation’s Women’s Scholarship Program provides scholarship funds to women 40+ seeking new job skills, training, and educational opportunities to support themselves and their families. The AARP Foundation Women’s Scholarship Program is available to eligible individuals with moderate to lower incomes and limited financial resources. Who is eligible to apply? To be eligible for the scholarships, applicants must be: * Women * Age 40 or over by March 31, 2009 * Able to demonstrate financial need * Enrolled in an accredited school or technical program within 6 months of the scholarship award date.
Details at our free college scholarship search site.
Beer Money
A simple way to get started with an affiliate program – Amazon.com. Amazon pays between a small hill of beans and 15% of an item’s sale price to its affiliates, called Associates. Here’s how to get started. Take note that you don’t need anything other than a mailing address and basic financial information to sign up – no inventory to manage, no having to do anything other than recommend stuff you like.
Disclosure: if it isn’t obvious already, all the Amazon links will be through our Student Loan Network Amazon account, so anything you buy will in turn pay a nominal fee to us.
You’ll start by signing up for a free account. Once you’ve gone through the basic account process setup, it’s time to start putting together things you want to talk about.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, or any marketing for that matter, your best bet for long term success is to market things you already use, love, and want to talk about, things you’d recommend even if you weren’t getting paid. For example, I set up a page for the podcast especially for my favorite photography stuff, including the camera I own. Why? From time to time as an affiliate marketer, you’ll get customers of your affiliate program asking you about products – and if you own them, you can help them.
Once you’re signed up, create an aStore – one of my favorite ways to showcase the things you want to talk about and share.
Make sure you do the simple things like provide a link back to your web site and a logo. You’ll then create a new category page of stuff – in this example, I’m creating a digital photography page.
Add products one by one from Amazon’s catalog of stuff relevant to what you want to share.
Here’s my camera, some lenses, and some books.
Next, add coloring and theming appropriate to your personal web site (or wherever you’ll be marketing the stuff).
Publish your store, then decide how you want to share it – with a simple standalone link, or embedded on your web site/blog.
For this example, I chose standalone – and from this link, you can see what photography stuff I recommend:
Visit the Financial Aid Podcast Amazon store!
Obviously, this has tremendous potential, but this tutorial isn’t to get you deep down the rabbit hole of affiliate marketing – just a start. In this particular case, I’m at a 4% commission level, which means that I earn 4% of any purchase.
You’ll also find basic reporting in your Amazon associates portal – things that will detail just how much you’ve earned. As you can see, so far I’ve earned about $46. That’s why this segment is called Beer Money and not Pay Your Rent Money. Of course, I put practically no effort into this store beyond having it available for people to see, too. With more time and effort, you could obviously sell more stuff.
Affiliate programs are a great way to start earning some beer money, some extra cash, and if you find you have a knack for it, you can earn a lot more than beer money, but this tutorial and guide should help you get started with your first program and help you decide if you enjoy affiliate marketing.
Good luck, and please let me know your results in the comments.
Your scholarship points code is: AMAZONAFFILIATE
Related: Making money with affiliate marketing, December 2008
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Reminders
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidNews.com.
+ Free scholarship search secrets eBook at StudentScholarshipSearch.com/ebook
+ Online degrees programs and directories at Edvisors.com
+ Free college scholarships contests!
+ Stafford loans | Other federal student loans
+ Parent PLUS loans at ParentPLUSLoan.com
+ Graduate student loans
+ Private student loans
+ FAFSA tutorials and free help
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.
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Interesting- the financial aid podcast is full of useful information!
Great stuff! At a quick glance, this sounds like it may take time to set up initially, but once in place, it appears to be a fairly easy way to earn some cash with little to no ongoing effort. I’ll have to look at this again when I have more free time to get it going.
sounds interesting. I may even try it.
Hmmmm….good stuff
INFORMATIVE
Sounds like a good idea. I might look into it further
this is very informative and interesting, most of this stuff i never even thought about before
I buy books from Amazon all tne time. I had no idea about this, but might try it.
very important hope its all true. and thats for the 411
Interesting
These people know what they’re talking about.
this is so cool
I think I may try it :]
Interesting iformation, who knew1?
I might have to give it a try
Guess I need to check this out further.
this is pretty neat
This sounds interesting, I think I might try it out
cool!