Affiliate marketing has long promised the ideal of bringing home lots of cash without having to actually put in that much effort. But is this the truth?
When you become an affiliate for a product or service all you have to do is paste a link to their site and watch the commission from orders gained through your site come flooding in, right? Well, not quite. It's vital to understand that affiliate marketing is like any other form of marketing - there are no shortcuts and your site still needs to be marketed in the usual ways or you will see zero rewards.
Successful affiliates in any affiliate program simply don't sit there and wait for money to come. Why? Because there is no money in simply sitting and waiting. If you really want to get hold of large affiliate checks then you have to be constantly thinking of ways to make your visitors click on those affiliate links.
Here are a few brief guidelines that should get you off on the right track.
Become an expert in your chosen field or affiliate product.
You can promote your merchant's product better if you know a lot of things about it. To become an expert, the best thing you can do is purchase your merchant's product yourself. Use the product inside out. That way you will get to know all the pros and cons of the product and this may enable you to write a testimonial on your site! Remember sometimes revealing the flaws (as long as they are minor) as well as the good points can make a review seem more believable and encourage your visitors to click on that link!
Write your own affiliate ads.
Many vendors won't mind if you get a little "creative" in your promotion of their products and this can be a great way to make your ads stand out from all the other people who are promoting the same product.
Participate in chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums related to your product.
If you used to ignore them before, then it is time for you to start focusing your attention on them. You can start your own chat room or join an existing chat room related to your product. It's a good idea not to promote your product straight away. Instead, build trust with your forum colleagues by giving out advice, then, over time, mention your affiliate product. Otherwise you just look like a spammer, not a good thing!
Create a free ezine or newsletter.
Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim is to inform a group of people about a certain subject. In your ezines and newsletters, you don't always have to promote your merchant's product for this may greatly annoy your subscribers.
Rather, find a way to insert your affiliate ads and links on some portions of the letter. Also, don't forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.
These are but a few guidelines on how you can increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks.
What's important is that you are able to find a way to: attract more traffic to your site, induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site, and be able to promote your merchant's products even outside the boundary of your website. If you can do this, there's no reason for you to fail in affiliate marketing.
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Master Affiliate Marketing - 7 Ways To Take Your Earnings To The Next Level
It's a fact that affiliate marketing is one of the quickest ways to get a web business up and running. After all, you don't need a website, you don't need a list and you can start advertising someone else's product just 5 minutes from now.
And the great thing is you really can make money by doing it. But the truth is, if you are making money from a particular product you're promoting in this fashion, you're almost certainly leaving money on the table.
To explain why, we need to look at your average affiliate marketing strategy:
-- Pick a product to promote with a high affiliate payout ($50 or more)
-- Set up a pay-per-click campaign to promote your affiliate link
That's it! Those two steps are what the vast majority of affiliate marketers do. And that's why 95% of all affiliate payouts are made to just 5% of the people doing the marketing... because those top 5% are doing far more to earn their commissions than just a simple PPC campaign.
You need to understand that if you're fortunate enough to be making money from the product you're promoting just by doing those 2 basic steps, then it's almost a racing certainty that you're missing out on a mass of additional income.
Let's look at how you could increase your commissions and future related sales on just one product you're already making money from:
1. Build a 'name squeeze' page to capture your prospect's name and email address. It's a fact that virtually all product sales are made after the customer's fifth visit to the website.
If you're not capturing your prospect's details, how are you going to make sure they go back to the sales page using your affiliate link? To greatly improve the chances of this you can set up a 7-series autoresponder to automatically send your lead additional information and reminders about the product they're interested in. This approach will keep the product fresh in their mind.
2. Build a website reviewing the product you're promoting, including a newsletter to catch your prospect's details. You can give full details about how the product will solve your prospect's problems, giving an impartial review of the features and benefits with some real-life results.
The newsletter will allow you to keep in touch with your prospects in the same way as the name squeeze page method.
3. Offer additional bonuses for buying through your affiliate link. This gives your prospect a reason to buy from you, especially if they know you're going to make a commission from the sale.
The important thing here is that your bonus products are related to the product you're selling. I mean, there's no point advertising a bonus book on 'how to make your parrot talk' if your initial product is about training dogs to perform tricks.
4. Create video tutorials on how to use the product you're promoting. This works especially well when you're promoting a software product. You can show people how to get started as quickly as possible without them having to read the manual.
The vast majority of people learn visually, so they're much more likely to use your videos than read the manual supplied with the software. You can even tie this in with option 3; give your prospect free training videos if they buy through your affiliate link.
5. Make your own product to cross-promote. It can be an add-on to the product you're promoting as an affiliate. Again, you could easily offer it for free or at a discounted price if they buy through your affiliate link.
6. Promote related products via email. This works by creating an 'A ' Grade list out of your newsletter and squeeze page sign-ups, i.e. the people who have actually gone on to buy the product you're promoting.
It's a known fact that people who have a proven track record of buying online are more likely to buy from you again. You can easily recommend to them a related product that will further enhance their original purchase, resulting in more affiliate commissions for you.
7. Tie all of the above together. You don't have to use just one of the methods above. Use all of them.
Create a name squeeze page, build a review website with newsletter, add some bonuses to your affiliate link, make some video tutorials, develop your own related product and promote other affiliate products via email to the lists you've built with your name squeeze page and newsletter.
But before you do any of this, make sure you're promoting a product that sells. After all, spending your time doing all of the above for a product that is poorly supported, doesn't work properly or has a high refund rate is going to be time wasted.
And the great thing is you really can make money by doing it. But the truth is, if you are making money from a particular product you're promoting in this fashion, you're almost certainly leaving money on the table.
To explain why, we need to look at your average affiliate marketing strategy:
-- Pick a product to promote with a high affiliate payout ($50 or more)
-- Set up a pay-per-click campaign to promote your affiliate link
That's it! Those two steps are what the vast majority of affiliate marketers do. And that's why 95% of all affiliate payouts are made to just 5% of the people doing the marketing... because those top 5% are doing far more to earn their commissions than just a simple PPC campaign.
You need to understand that if you're fortunate enough to be making money from the product you're promoting just by doing those 2 basic steps, then it's almost a racing certainty that you're missing out on a mass of additional income.
Let's look at how you could increase your commissions and future related sales on just one product you're already making money from:
1. Build a 'name squeeze' page to capture your prospect's name and email address. It's a fact that virtually all product sales are made after the customer's fifth visit to the website.
If you're not capturing your prospect's details, how are you going to make sure they go back to the sales page using your affiliate link? To greatly improve the chances of this you can set up a 7-series autoresponder to automatically send your lead additional information and reminders about the product they're interested in. This approach will keep the product fresh in their mind.
2. Build a website reviewing the product you're promoting, including a newsletter to catch your prospect's details. You can give full details about how the product will solve your prospect's problems, giving an impartial review of the features and benefits with some real-life results.
The newsletter will allow you to keep in touch with your prospects in the same way as the name squeeze page method.
3. Offer additional bonuses for buying through your affiliate link. This gives your prospect a reason to buy from you, especially if they know you're going to make a commission from the sale.
The important thing here is that your bonus products are related to the product you're selling. I mean, there's no point advertising a bonus book on 'how to make your parrot talk' if your initial product is about training dogs to perform tricks.
4. Create video tutorials on how to use the product you're promoting. This works especially well when you're promoting a software product. You can show people how to get started as quickly as possible without them having to read the manual.
The vast majority of people learn visually, so they're much more likely to use your videos than read the manual supplied with the software. You can even tie this in with option 3; give your prospect free training videos if they buy through your affiliate link.
5. Make your own product to cross-promote. It can be an add-on to the product you're promoting as an affiliate. Again, you could easily offer it for free or at a discounted price if they buy through your affiliate link.
6. Promote related products via email. This works by creating an 'A ' Grade list out of your newsletter and squeeze page sign-ups, i.e. the people who have actually gone on to buy the product you're promoting.
It's a known fact that people who have a proven track record of buying online are more likely to buy from you again. You can easily recommend to them a related product that will further enhance their original purchase, resulting in more affiliate commissions for you.
7. Tie all of the above together. You don't have to use just one of the methods above. Use all of them.
Create a name squeeze page, build a review website with newsletter, add some bonuses to your affiliate link, make some video tutorials, develop your own related product and promote other affiliate products via email to the lists you've built with your name squeeze page and newsletter.
But before you do any of this, make sure you're promoting a product that sells. After all, spending your time doing all of the above for a product that is poorly supported, doesn't work properly or has a high refund rate is going to be time wasted.
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