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Sneaky Affiliate Tricks

By Paul on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 | No Comments

Affiliate marketing can be very difficult to break into. And that’s because you have a lot of other affiliates to compete with. The challenge is to try and outdo other affiliates and think of ways to do a better job promoting. And the sea of information about this doesn’t make it any easier. Here’s one trick that almost no one else is using.

Affiliate videos

No one would deny the power and popularity of video. The reason it’s so pervasive is because everyone loves it. Keeping people’s attention is so much easier using videos. So you can put this to great advantage in your affiliate marketing.

Here are a few ideas for creating affiliate videos:

  • Record your testimonial
  • Do a video walk-through
  • Do an ordering video
  • Sneak peak

Do a testimonial video

It doesn’t get any easier than this. Just turn on your web cam and talk. It does not need to be polished or pro. Just seeing another real person endorsing a product helps your viewers decide to buy. And the mess-ups or mistakes just make the video more real. You really can just click record and start talking. And if you don’t want to show your face, use one of the next ideas.

Walk-throughs

This technique works slightly more subconsciously. Make this more like a tutorial helping them use the product. And in the process you’re actually selling the product. As long as the product is good, the tutorial makes them want it. So just make sure you’re demoing a good product.

Do an ordering video

This one is killer! Record yourself placing an order. Watching you make a live purchase will inspire your viewer like nothing else. First of all it’s what’s called “social proof”. People will feel more comfortable buying after seeing you do it. It also build your viewers trust. They are much more likely to take your advice to buy when you’ve taken it yourself. And finally, it creates envy. It’s simple – you have it. Now they want it. You can add additional juice to this one with: In order to get to see the inside, you gotta buy the product.

Record a preview of the members area

This is a great way to build value. You do a tour of the members area. They get to see everything they’ll receive when they order. And it helps soften the skeptics. Once they’ve seen the back-end, they know it’s real.

You can do this!

You don’t need any special training for this. There are simple software programs that make it easy to create videos. All the work is done by the program. So there’s no need to even think about the technical side. Just focus on the benefits:

  • Increase sales You will increase your affiliate sales when you start using videos. Start using videos because people love them.
  • Lower refund rates You’ll lose less of the commission your earn. Now they know what they get before they purchase. So less of them will ask for refunds.
  • Outdo your competitors! This is such a simple technique. And almost no one is doing it. That puts you ahead of the pack.

So get serious about your affiliate business and add video in now. Not using video is detrimental to you business. So do it!

Email List Building Strategies

By Paul on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 | No Comments

You need a list. That’s a given. It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. Because you can market to your list whenever you want. Just push a button and print money – literally.

So, how do you build a list?

Here are the three components of list building:

  • The Squeeze Page
  • The Incentive
  • The Thank You Page

The Squeeze Page – The squeeze page is the first thing your visitor is going to see. This is where they will enter their email address. That’s why it needs to look like a professionally designed page. And it needs to be simple to see how to opt in. And your call to action must be clear!

Failure to include a great “call to action” will result in failure. This “close” tells your visitors what you want them to do. And if you don’t include it, they won’t opt in. It’s strange, but if you don’t tell people what to do, they won’t do it.

You can take your opt-in page to the next level if you make it a video squeeze page. Adding video will help keep your visitors attention. It also allows you to tell them what to do several times. And after the video, you can make it just say “fill in the form now”.

Now, don’t worry if you have no idea how to make videos. You can hire freelancers to do this for you for a few hundred dollars. There are also list building systems that include video squeeze pages.

The Bribe – Next, you’ve got to figure out what your bribe is. People won’t give you their email for nothing. Most people are very protective of their email address. So you have to give them a good reason to do it.

You have to provide value in your bribe for it to be good. It has to be something that people actually want. And will be able to actually benefit from it. Here’s some examples:

  • A free report
  • Software
  • A video tutorial
  • A multi-part email series

You’ve got to create some great content. And make it both helpful and informative. And nothing sells like “free”. But to get the email, it’s got to be a good offer.

Once again, don’t worry if you don’t know how to create the freebie. It’s super easy to hire someone to create it for you. You just pick the topic and they create the training. One easy and effective bribe is a 5-part email training series. You can have ghost writers create emails for under $25 an email. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.

Or again, you can find complete list building packages for sale online that include an email series. There are two important things about the email series. First, it must provide value to your subscribers. And it’s nice if it earns you some money, too. ;-) The easiest way to do this is to market affiliate products in the emails. This allows you to get started with no products of your own. And it enables you to generate cash right away from your new list.

Your Confirmation Page – Finally, you need to consider your opt-in confirmation page. After subscribing to your list, your visitor is redirected to this page. A great thing to do here is provide some immediate value. This helps them feel they’ve made the right decision giving you their email. It also helps to build the relationship. Then they’re more receptive when you email them.

You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. And write it all yourself. Or hire ghost writers to write them for you.

Summing it up

It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or go with a complete package. It’s just important that you start today building your opt-in list. Once you’ve got it built. You’re free to make money at the push of a button.

Affiliate Business Tips

By Paul on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | No Comments

Presell like a pro

The most important thing you can do to increase your affiliate commissions is to presell properly.

Before we begin, we need to first define what preselling is. Well, it is an art. And it’s also a science. The goal is to get your reader prepped to make a purchase. Then sending them to the product sales page to make the purchase. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.

In a nutshell, you provide value. And give them a link to the product you’re preselling. We’ll get into how to do it correctly in a minute. But before we do, you need to know why it’s so important. Some major benefits of this process:

  • It builds trust – Once you have your readers’ trust, they will click your links more readily. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
  • Preselling is disarming – When you’re preselling vs. pitching, you’re reader doesn’t feel the need to be guarded. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. So your message gets across.
  • It puts them in a buying mood – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. Being open means, they are open to everything you give them. For example, the sales message on the page you’re linking to. Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
  • It increases your sales – Now your reader arrives at the sales page in a buying mood. Open to the sales message and feeling safe. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
  • It increases customer satisfaction – People like to make their own buying decisions. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this leads to greater satisfaction with the product.
  • It boosts your profits – Satisfied customers are less like to refund. Which means you keep more of your affiliate commissions.

Obviously, it’s important to presell. You increase your profits. And increase your customer satisfaction. Everybody wins!

OK, so how do you do it?

Now you know whey preselling is critical. And hopefully you’re convinced you need to start doing it. So, let’s talk about how to make it work. As I mentioned earlier, it’s both an art and a science.

Part 1 – The art of it

The first step is in getting your readers to trust you and open up. This can only be accomplished by providing actual value in the information you’re presenting. But you can’t give them so much that they think they have everything they could need, and that’s what makes it an art. The idea is that they want more and the sales page you send them to gives them more. And because you’ve gained trust, they’re more receptive to the sales message and more likely to buy.

Part 2 – the Science

You also have to include some very specific things.

First of all, it’s important HOW you present your information. You have to have your end in mind. In the end, you want to sell a specific product. How can providing information accomplish this goal? One way is to give them enough info to whet the appetite, but not enough to satisfy it. The other method is to explain all the details and expose how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining. Either way, the product sales page solves the problem.

You also have to link to the product you’re promoting discretely. Instead, you use a direct link to the product website. That’s because nobody likes to click on affiliate links. But how are you going to get credit for the sale, if you don’t include your affiliate link? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You “pre-cookie” your reader before sending them to the sales page.

The next trick is to hyperlink specific words and phrases inside the content of the article you’re providing. Hyperlinked words are clicked more than anything else. Plus, if you link on relevant words, it only makes sense to click on there.

What you have now is a super powerful system for affiliate marketing success.

Now for the bad news…

Doing all of this right is really hard! Think about everything that goes into crafting an effective preselling article: Awesome content. First of all, you actually have to write great articles and give value to your readers. Which means you need to be both knowledgable on the subject and capable of writing a high-quality article. Strategic writing. Yes, you must providing useful content. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And somehow also make them want to learn more. Or make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.

Choosing your products. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. Even if you get the article written. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

The technical know-how To be most effective you have to use the “covert cookie” method. This is actually pretty simple – just embed a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image and set your affiliate link as the “source” of the image. (Just don’t mess it up. Otherwise, you won’t get credit for your sales.)

Summary:

Now you know exactly how to presell effectively. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! It’s absolutely critical to do this every time – and to do it correctly. Don’t wait another minute. Make the extra effort required to propel your affiliate business to the next level.

Traffic Generation Tips

By Paul on Monday, July 26th, 2010 | No Comments

Everyone knows the number one thing you need to be successful online is traffic to your website. The other 1% is what you do with that traffic, but if you have to traffic – you can figure out the rest. Once the visitors arrive you can have them join your mailing list, purchase a product or subscribe to your RSS feed. The important thing is getting the traffic and sustaining it.

Here are some tips for generating website visitors:

Here are a few of the most popular way to get traffic to your site – for free:

  • Web 2.0
  • Articles Directories
  • Video Marketing

And here’s how to use each method…

Web 2.0

A Web 2.0 site gives its users the ability to interact with each other and create the site’s content together. These are great sites to work with because they allow you to participate in this content creation. The other interesting thing about these sites is that all the search engines (including Google) treat them as “authority sites”. And that’s important to you because it means that Google and the other search engines treat links from these sites as more meaningful than links from other sites. So, if you place links to your own site inside your content, you get a search engine ranking benefit from those links. This is the hidden benefit of using Web 2.0 sites. How to generate web 2.0 traffic is something we’ve only scratched the surface on. I don’t want to be exhaustive – I want to give you an overview of all the methods…

Articles Sites

The next thing we want to talk about is article marketing. This is because article websites are really web 2.0 site. Article directories are sites where users (including you) can upload articles they have written. And just like other web 2.0 sites, you get all the SEO benefits from having your content on them. And the hidden benefit here is that your reach grows as other people take your articles and put them on their blogs and sites. And in return for getting to use your content, these other users include links back to your website that gives you further search engine ranking and more free traffic. In order to get the most free traffic make sure you:

  • First, spend the time to determine your keywords
  • Write specifically to target these keywords
  • Use anchor text links in the article and the “resource box”

Video Marketing

The last of this group is video marketing. Once again, this is really a sub-set of web 2.0. So, just like article marketing, video marketing enables you to add content to authority sites. And in addition to this, because Google and the others love video so much, you can get listed for highly competitive keywords much more easily.

OK, so how do you do effective video marketing?

  • Sign up for YouTube
  • When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
  • Use the tags in your profile to enter the keywords you want to rank for
  • Include a link to your main site in your profile
  • Add at least one video to your profile
  • In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Putting it all together.

If you take action on the items listed here you’ll have free traffic in no time.

Membership Niche Selection Tips

By Paul on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 | No Comments

In order to make sure your membership business is profitable, you have to select the right market. Here’s how.

First – Look for Fanatics

If you want your membership business to be profitable, you have to find a marketing with fanatics in it. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you’re looking for because they are so enthusiastic they’re willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. OK, so we know what a fanatic is, but how do we find them?

  • One simple idea that’s easily forgotten is to scan the magazine racks when you’re out and about. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to run a print magazine. So if you see one on the shelves you know they are making money, which means that there are enough people interested in what they’re saying to make it profitable. This is a very good indication that it’s a good niche for you to go into.
  • Pay attention throughout the day in your regular activities. See what people are talking about on the radio, TV, at parties, in public, etc. People generally talk about things they are interested in. Which means you can start a membership business providing information on it.
  • Conventions, clubs, and organizations. Once again, if there are enough people interested in a topic to create a club or organization, then there are enough people to build a membership business around it. Conventions are expensive to hold and attend, so if one if going on that’s another strong indication of a good niche to go into with your membership website.
  • Think about the things that you are interested in. Chances are that if you like a certain topic or hobby, other people do, too. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
  • Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. The reason people are searching Google for info on these topics is because they are interested. And the fact that it’s made it into Google Trends tells you LOTS of people are interested. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.

Second – Analyze the “commerciality”

Once you found a potential niche or topic to center your membership site around, you need to figure out if you can actually make any money in it. One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

Here’s how to determine if you can make money in your chosen niche

  • Find out if there are blogs or forums related to it. Just search Google for “YourNiche blog” & “YourNiche forum” and see what comes up. This lets you know there is a market (a group of people actively interested in the niche.)
  • See if other people are creating and selling product in this niche by searching in Google Shopping, ebay and Amazon. What you’re trying to figure out is if anyone is making money in this niche, and if people are selling products it means they are making money.
  • Monitor Google Adwords to determine if people are running the same ads for weeks in a row. If they are, this means they’re making money on these ads – otherwise, they’d stop running them. Which means there is money to be made in your niche.

Last, but not least… How hard will it be to break into this niche?

After figuring out a good niche and determining that other people are making money in it, the last thing to do is decide if you will be able to enter the market. Here’s how to make this determination:

  • Figure out what kinds of products people are interested in. If it’s mostly physical products, coaching and live seminars, then it will be harder to break into this niche. Membership websites based on information are the easiest to start and maintain.
  • The next thing to look at is the competition. You don’t want to try to break into a saturated marketing, so figure out how many people are already selling in this niche.
  • Compare the size of the market versus the number of competitors. Some competition is a good sign – just make sure the market is big enough for you to join in.
  • How quickly do people in this market make buying decisions and are the ready to buy? Some niches are made up of people who require lots information and have a very long lead time, and some markets are filled with people who will spend lots of money right now.

Putting it all together

So far, we’ve talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you’ve determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. Now that you’ve prepared properly, you’re success is 99% guaranteed. How to actually run your membership website is the only thing left to talk about…

Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST

By Paul on Saturday, July 24th, 2010 | No Comments

Let’s talk about some powerful ways to get free and automated traffic coming to your website.

Traffic is useless . . . unless…

Before you begin trying to get traffic to your site, you need to do your keyword research first. Why? Because you have to target these keywords if you are to have any hope of actually generating traffic for them. So you need to make sure the keywords you’re targeting are worth targeting.

Here are the important considerations for your research:

  • Will you be able to rank for these keywords? You’ll have to analyze the competition and see what’s out there for this.
  • What kinds of visitors do these keywords bring? Certain keywords are good for generating a lot of visitors who don’t buy anything. This is not what you’re looking for.
  • Another thing to think about is affiliates. If you want to build a huge business, you’re going to need affiliates to help you. This means that some of your traffic focus should be on getting affiliates to your site.

This is critical to your business, but it takes a lot of time and effort. And hiring an expert is very expensive. And that’s why most people skip this step! What I recommend is using website traffic software to save the time of doing it yourself and the money of hiring someone else. Using tools like this speed up the process and improve your results, too!

OK, now we can talk about traffic…

Now that you’ve completed your keyword research, you can begin using these keywords to get traffic to your website.

Here’s a short list of sneaky traffic techniques:

  • Surveys
  • “Answer” Sites
  • Video Sharing Sites

Surveys

The truth is that people really enjoy taking surveys and finding out what other people think. You can use this fact to provide “sticky” content for other website owners. And when they put your survey on their site, they will include a link back to your website. Think about that – you get website traffic for free just for making a survey! Most people think surveys are just for collecting data, but in this case you don’t even care about the answers. So, get creative and make up a survey that’s wacky to get other people interested in putting it on their sites.

“Traffic Traps”

These sites, like answers.yahoo.com are filled with people asking and answering questions for each other. However, you’re interest in these sites is not to ask and answer questions. The other thing they can be used for is to get traffic to your site, leads for your business and sales! One thing you can do is to visit sites like Craigslist and Yahoo! Answers and manually extract contact info to contact other users. So, if you’re smart, you’ll use website traffic software to do it all for you. These tools put the whole thing on auto-pilot and just deliver the leads to you each day.

Video Sharing Sites

No doubt you’re aware of YouTube and other video websites. In fact, YouTube has over 2 billion videos watched per day! So don’t miss out of this incredible source of free website traffic.

Even if you don’t think you can make a good video. It’s really easy to just start with an article or something you’ve already written. And use free screen capture software to record yourself reading it. And like anything else, there is software available that will turn articles into videos for you automatically.

The Bottom Line…

Figuring out how to get some visitors to your site is not hard at all. Use your noodle and come up with things other people aren’t doing. You can even use software to automate most of what we’ve talked about.

So, start right now and:

  • Keyword research first is key
  • Set up some viral surveys
  • Make sure to use the “answer” sites
  • And definitely include video sharing sites

Affiliate Marketing Secrets

By Paul on Saturday, July 24th, 2010 | No Comments

Secrets of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. What “affiliate marketing” means is that you just refer visitors to someone else’s website, they handle the sales, support and billing, and you get paid 50% or more

These are a some of the benefits

  1. You can get started almost immediately because you don’t have to create a product, set up a website and sales page, design the website, come up with support tools, or set up the ordering, billing & delivery system.
  2. There’s zero time investment on your part because you don’t have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
  3. Your efforts are risk-free, because the product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So if you send visitors you will get paid.

There’s no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!

The downside is…

You work hard to send the traffic to the product owner’s website, but once you do that you will never see those visitors again. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

Is there are way around this?

It’s simple: You must get your visitors’ email addresses before you send them to the product owner’s website. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you want to do it like a pro, you’ll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

  1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
  2. You’ll be warming them up by providing valuable information and then casually linking to the product sales page in the context of this information.

In order to set a system like this up, you will need the following affiliate marketing tools:

  1. A lead capture page, preferably with video
  2. At least a few pages of great content
  3. A multi-part email series with at least 5 emails in it

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you’ll send them to your lead capture page first. It captures the name and email of your visitors and puts them into your autoresponder, which then begins sending out the 5-part email series. After subscribing them to your email list, it redirects them to your content mini-site.

These high-quality content pages provide value and build good will. This way your visitor is more likely to buy when they get to the product owner’s website. While they’re reading the content you’ve provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it’s well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it’s set up, it runs automatically – you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.

One option, if you’re not up to the challenge of setting this all up yourself, is to let someone like Affiliate Silver Bullet do it for you. With a service like that, you don’t have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. On the plus side, you’ll save a ton of time and money vs. trying to build this yourself. Plus you can get started instantly. The downside is that other people will be using the same affiliate tools as you. But the internet is pretty big, so this isn’t much of a concern.

Another way to accomplish this is to hire “outsourcers” through a website like Elance to build and put your system together for you. The important thing is that you start using affiliate tools like the ones described here right now! Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and money.

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