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If you've been around the Internet long enough, you've most likely read stories about affiliate marketers making obscene amounts of cash. So, you rush to their web site, find out which program they are promoting and sign up. But, you usually don't make anywhere near the amount of cash that you thought you would.
See, it's not the product that makes you a successful affiliate. It's how you promote the product. You have to learn the five crucial marketing tactics that highly successful affiliates use to make thousands of dollars every month.
Following is your blueprint for marketing any affiliate program on the Internet and making more money than ever before!
1. Define a primary product and your most wanted response.
This is where most affiliates fail right off the bat. They sign up for multiple programs and create a banner farm or some resource site full of affiliate links. Then, they direct untargeted traffic to a web site with no focus.
Instead, choose one product that is a proven seller and pays 25%-50% commission. Create a clean, fast-loading mini-site with one to three pages and drive targeted traffic to that site. Then, sell related products to your customers and prospects who didn't buy your primary product.
Usually, your most wanted response is a click-through directly to a sales letter for the product you are promoting. Nothing should distract your visitors from taking that action. You need to get your visitors to click through and buy the product while they are still hot and ready to make a purchase.
Note: never link to the main page of an affiliate site and make your prospect find the product. Link directly to the product page.
You may decide that your most wanted response is to have your prospect subscribe to your newsletter or request a free report first. If that is the case, then everything you write should focus on that one response.
2. Develop a follow-up system and sell back-end products.
Depending on the product, for every 100 targeted visitors you send to your site, 1-10 of them will buy. But, what about the other 90 or so who didn't buy? If you don't funnel them into your follow-up system, you could be losing thousands of dollars every month!
You can follow up with these prospects and claim your lost sales by using timed autoresponders and/or adding them to your mailing list. A recent study conducted by Sales and Marketing Executives International concluded that 81% of major sales are closed after the fifth contact.
Timed autoresponders are a great way to educate prospects and help them make a decision. You could offer a mini-course about how you used the product to better your life. Include the research that you did and explain how the product helped you.
If you don't have a mailing list now, you need to start right away. Your list will become the "bread and butter" of your business. If you provide quality information and recommend quality products, your subscribers will buy through you again and again.
Your back-end products should always be related to the primary product you sell. Again, buy the product, do the research, and make a recommendation based on your personal experience. If a back-end product turns out to be a good seller, you can create a web site just for that product and sell your original product as the back-end product!
To recap, your most wanted response is a click through to the product's sales letter. Your second most wanted response is to funnel your prospects into your follow-up system. The single most effective method is to add a popup window that only opens if the customer leaves the site. In this window, you will make an offer in exchange for an email address. Click here for an example.
Here are some ideas for your offer:
Offer a free report, ebook, or mini-course related to the product you sell. This is very effective because it educates the prospect on the very thing they were looking for in the first place.
Tell them they won a free advertisement in your ezine (new subscribers only). Depending on the product, this can be a good "foot in the door."
Offer a contest for some prize related to the product your promote.
The content that you send to these new prospects should always be related to the product/s you sell. If your content is too broad, you can not keep your prospects focused on the information you provide.
3. Buy the product and learn everything there is to know about it.
In some cases, it may not be necessary to buy the product. For example, if the it is software and there is a demo you can try. But, in most cases, you will be better off if you buy the product and prove to yourself that it works. There's nothing better than a personal testimonial from the heart when it comes to promoting a product.
Do your research. Learn everything you can about the product, the company the industry, and the competition. Read everything available on the companies web site. Subscribe to ezines that cover material related to the product. Hang out in forums and see what others are saying about the industry. Find quotes from well-know experts who endorse the product or industry. Use the search engines to find competitors. Stay informed!
4. Write copy that pre-sells your visitors and calls them to act now.
Do not try to sell your prospect directly at your site. Instead, give them your personal recommendation. Nobody wants to be sold on a product just to be sold again when they go to buy it. Here are some ideas for effective pre-selling:
Write a review of the product with a testimonial and personal recommendation. That will make them more responsive to the sales letter when they click through for more information.
Include a third-party survey that supports the product. Always include a link to the source (open in a new window).
Include a price and features comparison of the product against competitors. Tell how you did the research and found it to be the best deal in price and value. Write it from a third-party perspective. Don't try to sell.
Include quotes from well-know experts in the industry. For example, Declan Dunn says "Affiliate programs are the wave of the future." This shows that you did the research and found that "experts agree."
However you write your pre-sales copy, make sure it is in the form of a third-party recommendation and give your visitor a reason to take action now. Ask for the click! Here are some ideas that will increase your click-through ratio:
Give them a deadline. Stay updated on any special offers your affiliate manager is running and deadlines that may apply. Then pass that information on to your prospects. For example, "They are having a special on the product right now. If you buy today, you will save $50.00 off the retail price. Click here!"
Offer a personal money-back guarantee. For example, "If you are not completely satisfied with the product, I will personally see that you get a full refund." You have to be careful with this approach because it can appear like you are trying to sell.
Offer a bonus for purchasing through your site. For example, "Purchase this product today (show the date) and I will give you a report that shows you, step-by-step, how I used this product to make $5,000 in two months ." Again, this can seem pushy.
Try different approaches until you find the one that results in the best click-through ratio and stick with it. Note: when you find something that works, don't change it!
5. Direct targeted traffic to your site and measure results.
This final step is probably the most misunderstood part of a successful marketing plan. Whether you sell your own product or someone else's, you have to have traffic to make money. However, generating untargeted traffic to an unfocused site is a waste of your time and money.
Don't even start promoting until you have completed the four steps above; especially if you are paying for traffic! It's an exercise in futility and will eventually result in the demise of your entrepreneurial spirit and possibly your online business.
Choose one form of promotion and perfect it. Most people try to do too much at once and never get good at anything. Focus on one thing at a time. Test, test, test, and then test some more until you create a system that can not fail to generate sales and put money in your pocket.
For example, choose a few ezines with large subscriber bases and place the same ad in each one. Develop a tracking system that will tell you, not only how many visitors you received, but how many of those visitors were converted into sales and how many of those visitors acted on your second most wanted response. Only then will you know the true value of the advertisement.
Next, change the variables and measure the difference in response. Change your headline or the content of your ad. Try a top sponsor ad instead of a classified. Try different ezines. Make adjustments in your system until you are satisfied with the results. Being satisfied means making a profit!
Once you perfect an advertising system, you can confidently "plug in" new products knowing that you will make a profit. Then, you can take those profits and invest in new promotion methods that will bring you more profits.
I can't tell you what type of promotion is best. That depends on the product you promote, your skills, and your aptitude. However, I will tell you what works and what doesn't.
Following are the only free advertising methods I recommend:
Write articles and get them published. Rick Beneteu wrote a great book called "The Ezine Money Machine" in which he describes his success as an online publisher. I highly recommend it. The basic idea is to write about what you know and tailor your articles for specific ezines. Submit your articles to ezines with large numbers of subscribers who are looking for what you sell.
Submit your articles with free reprint writes anywhere that will accept them. Submit to article directories. Create HTML pages from your articles and submit them to search engines. Link to your articles in newsgroups, forums, and ezines. Soon your articles and your resource box will spread throughout the Internet like a virus.
Create an ebook using the articles that you write. This is the ultimate viral marketing tool because you can slap an attractive book cover on it and offer it free to your subscribers with free give-away rights! Click here for an example.
Any kind of viral marketing tool. Use your imagination. If you can think of something related to the product you sell that people truly need, give it away for free and encourage them to give it away to others.
Include a signature in every email. Include links to the products you sell, articles and ebooks you have written, and anything else you promote. Don't be shy. Your not pushing it at anyone.
Following are the best paid advertising methods:
Ezine Advertising is going to give you the best bang for advertising buck if you target and test like I illustrated in the example I gave you earlier. In my experience, a top sponsor ad will bring you more visitors per dollar than a classified ad.
Pay-per-click search engines. While I personally think this method is a little over rated, it is still a low-cost and measurable way to advertise. Just make sure that every keyword you bid on is directly related to the product you sell. The top nine search engines of this type are Goto.com, Findwhat.com, Bay9.com, 7search.com, goClick.com, BrainFox.com, Kanoodle.com, SearchFeed.com, and Epilot.com.
Now let's move on to search engines...
There's been so much controversy over search engines in the past few years that I am not going to say much about them here. You can download my ebook "Search Engine Success" if you want to learn more. I will say that they can bring a tremendous amount of free traffic over time.
I've been playing the search engine game for more than four years now and today my advice is simple and direct: optimize, submit, and forget. Let the search engines do their job while you advertise, test, and perfect your marketing system.
Learn how to optimize your pages as you build them. Submit to the major search engines and directories and then get back to promoting your site with the measurable and predictable techniques outlined above. End of story!