How to Move Past ‘Newbie’ Status to Full-Fledged Affiliate Marketer

Every day there’s at least one person who discovers ‘affiliate marketing‘ for the first time. And, every day, there’s at least one person, maybe that person is you, who goes back to the drawing board trying to figure out why they haven’t yet succeeded as wildly as they’d hoped. No matter which category you fall into, I’d like to share some concepts with you that might make all the difference in the world to your future success. In fact, you just might learn from this article the one thing that helps you start earning real money. It really all comes down these two mistakes that beginner’s make:

1. Promoting to many products at once (lack of focus), and..

2. Giving up too soon.

These two mistakes are related, and are actually self-reinforcing. It sounds obvious enough, but let me explain exactly how this scenario plays out.

Lack of Focus:

Experienced affiliate marketers do have the ability to promote several products, sometimes far afield from each other, at the same time. The reason they can do this is because they’d already learned and applied certain fundamental skills, and have developed a system for themselves which works to bring in sales consistently. As a beginner, however, you’re still learning what works and what doesn’t. For that reason alone, you need a clearly defined testing ground – and this means limiting your promotion to just one product when you first start out.

Just imagine for a moment if you were in a laboratory. You’re working with a new chemical and need to determine its boiling point, solubility, molecular weight and so on. Would it be quicker and easier for you to accomplish this by working with just that one chemical, or by juggling multiple, other chemicals all at the same time…starting one experiment and then rushing over to another one midway through?

Obviously, it would be easier to work with just the one chemical, right? Well, the same is true for marketing. Just like the variables in your lab experiment, you’ve also got variables in every product promotion you undertake. The variables include things like traffic generation, conversion rates, advertising response rates and so on. So, how much data do you want to juggle? Do you want to keep track of, say, Google adwords performance for ONE e-book…or for a dozen of them spread across more than one niche? This is where a lot beginners get themselves into a rut. They try to juggle all of this information at once, get overwhelmed by it and simply give up.

Giving Up Too Soon:

Ok, so, information overload hits, and you throw your hands in the air in surrender. There’s no need to despair! You can turn the situation around completely if you’ll just make a commitment to do the following three things:

1. Pick ONE niche market

2. Pick ONE product from that market

3. Use just that one niche product as your testing ground, in order to solidify your skills as an affiliate marketer. You see, its a lot like learning to ride a bicycle as a kid. You start off with a tricycle, then move up to regular bike with training wheels and from there onto riding any bike you choose. The same is true for learning how to promote products as an affiliate.

*Learn how to generate traffic on just one product

*Learn how to capture subscribers to your opt-in list for just one product

*Learn how to write advertisements and promotional copy for just one product

*Learn how to track your advertising links and conversion rates for just that one product….

….and THEN, you’ll be able to turn around and apply that knowledge to additional products, in different niches. The key is to get some real results established in one place, and only then start building on that incrementally. If you’ll follow even just this one simple rule, I promise you’ll see an increase in your commissions – and you can drop that ‘newbie’ label for the title of: Successful Affiliate Marketer!

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5 Simple Steps to Improve Your Affiliate Offer

As affiliate marketers, we’re fortunate in that we don’t have as many ‘Achilles heels’ as the merchants who own and deliver the products we promote for them. Both our investments and our risks tend to be lower.

However, we do have one significant ‘weak’ spot, and that’s in how far we can go in improving ‘the offer’. There are certain things we simply can’t do.

For example, we don’t have the authority to offer discounts or deliver upgrades. But, this ‘weakness’ doesn’t mean we’re stuck with ‘weak offers’! In fact, I can think of at least 5 ways to improve any offer, and really send our sales soaring:

1. Increase The PERCEPTION of Value - The real value of any product is always in the customer’s mind, and you can increase that perception in dozens of ways. For example, you guide the customer through a comparison of similar products, while pointing out why the one you’re promoting is really the best deal for the money.

2. Demonstrate the Immediate Benefits - Show the customer how they can put the product to use from the moment they buy it. You should already own your own copy of most of the products you promote. So, create a tutorial or some way of showcasing the results you’ve gotten from the product.

3. Give More of Yourself On a Personal Level — Similar to Step 2 – There’s always added value in social proof. Discuss your own experience surrounding the questions, problems and ultimate solutions in regards to the product at hand. Empathize with the customer’s position and point out the things you share in common.

4. Put Them At Ease — Your relationship to the merchant should enable you to give the customer a sense of security in making the purchase. Let them know about the product’s guarantee and/or refund policy. Let them know the transaction is secure. You want to remove as much of the risk as possible from the purchase.

5. Provide Additional Incentives – Check with the merchant first to make sure you’re allowed to do this. Its usually no problem when you’re promoting things like e-books, membership sites, etc.. You can really sweeten up an offer when you add your own products to the mix. E.g., “order this e-book, and I’ll throw in a free copy of this other product over here..”

So, you see, all it takes is a little creativity to add value to any affiliate offer. Use the 5 steps and you may even blow the merchant’s offer clear out of the water!

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A Missing Piece of the Profit Puzzle: Applying Leverage in Your Affiliate Business

We all want fatter commission checks. What affiliate doesn’t, right? If you’re like the average affiliate marketer – let’s say you’d class your experience at the “intermediate level” — then you’re probably wondering how move up the next rung of the ladder, and really start skyrocketing your income to super-affiliate levels. I’ve got one word for you: LEVERAGE.

Forget all the latest ’sure thing’ tactics for a moment. They’re not what you really need. This isn’t to say they won’t be useful additions to your arsenal, but its not a new bag of tricks you need at this level. What you need is leverage, and the type of leverage we’re talking about here is financial leverage. It is time to start re-investing your profits. If you’re already doing this, I commend you.

If not, then read on. Its really important that you appreciate the power of this concept. Think for a moment about how you got to where you are today. If you’re likemost affiliates at this level, you started on shoe-string budget, and have worked your way up to about $1,000-$3,000 in commissions per month, max. You’re no doubt supplementing your regular income quite nicely, but probably haven’t quit your day job on this income unless you’re single and have very little in the way of debt. For a lot of affiliates, this is the point where apathy (or even fear) comes into play. Its so rewarding to finally have this kind of extra income, you’re tempted to spend most of it on yourself or start squirreling it away for a rainy day. After all, everything is running fine just the way you have it set up. Now, hear this: This is exactly what’s stopping you from earning more money!

You’ve settled on the advertising budget that’s working to bring in a few grand. Maybe you do re-invest some of your profit, so that advertising is essentially free now. But what if, by spending a bit more, you could earn twice or even three times as much? Well, you CAN, and here’s how: Starting this month, commit to leveraging 50% of your affiliate income towards the following two areas:

1. Paid advertising.
2. Getting your own product created

Here’s what to do with your paid advertising. First, pull out all the performance data you have for current advertising programs. Determine which campaigns would benefit from an extra investment of cash. This is not limited just to the top performers. You’ve probably got at least one campaign that’s promising, but could use a little boost. Some of the areas you might look at include: *Increasing the overall daily budget in your pay-per-click campaigns

*Text or banner link advertising on a new site
*Running some solo ads in e-zines you haven’t advertised in before

The key here is to devote some cash to both the old and the new. Inject some life into your current advertising, but also try out a new venue or a new method (like offline advertising). Finally, its time for you to invest in getting your own product created. Choose just one of your current niche products, and have someone create a related, complementary product for you. Why? Because its going to help you boost your sales by improving your offers. Once you’ve got your own product, you can leverage it as ‘bait’ to persuade prospects to take you up on the affiliate product offer. You’ve probably seen this tactic employed in the past. Marketer X sends out the promo email to his list, and says, “If you buy product x through me, I’m going to sweeten the deal by giving you all these additional bonus products of mine for free….”

This is really powerful. Before, all you had to rely on was the combined power of your copy writing skills and the copy on the merchant’s site; but, with your own product tossed into the mix, you’re able to create an even better offer. This is the beauty of leverage.

You needn’t worry about parting with some extra money. You’ll probably feel a little bit uneasy about it at first, and that’s only natural.

However, once you see the results of using leverage, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start using it sooner!

Affiliate Marketing - How To Get Started In 6 Easy Steps

affiliate marketing is probably the simplest business model you can choose to build a business. Of course the devil is in the details, as they say, but the overall model can really be broken down into six steps.

Before we get to the steps, I want you to ask yourself a question. What do you hope to accomplish with affiliate marketing? This is an easier question to answer than it might seem. There are really only two basic choices here.

The first is what I call the “quick buck” choice. In other words, you want to make a few dollars quickly, and you are not interested in building a business. If this is you, all you need to do is learn how to write exceptionally good ads, and then use them to promote your affiliate product. Many people will say I am wrong, but there is nothing wrong with doing this, as long as you are honestly not trying to build a long term business this way.

On the other hand, if you are looking to build a business with income potential for the long term, then you will have a longer road ahead of you. It will take you longer before you see any profit from your efforts, but it will be worth it when you are able to take a day off, or even a week off, and still have sales in your absence.

These steps should be followed in order. If you try to go out of sequence, you will not get the results you are after.

1. Pick a Market

Why pick a market and not pick a product? Because you will eventually want to add additional products into your pipeline. You should pick a market that interests you, and maybe something you already know something about. Don’t forget that you are building for the long term.

2. Pick a Product

Once you have your market chosen, you should pick just one product to begin with. It will be very tempting to try to add all kinds of related products at first, but don’t. Having just one product will help you focus on the important tasks. You will want to pick a product that converts well. What this means is that the product sells to a high percentage of visitors. This will help keep your cost per visitor down and increase your profits.

3. Build a follow-up series

Also called an autoresponder series, you should build one based on the topic and the contents of the product you are promoting. If it is a physical product you are promoting, you will have to create or locate content that is directly related to the product. As an example, if you are selling golf clubs, you could create a series about how to buy golf clubs that fit, or the benefits of custom clubs, or even something about the club preferences of famous professional golfers. Be as creative as you can, and do not stray off topic. It has been said that most sales are not made in the initial contact, they are made on the seventh. If you are not following up with your prospects, the bottom line is you are losing sales.

4. Build an email capture page

This is where you will capture information about your prospects so you can send your follow-up series. If you are building a business, having your own web site is a necessity, if only because you will control the content, and be able to capture email addresses for yourself. You might be able to get by for a while without this, but it just isn’t worth it.

5. Drive traffic to your squeeze page

Until you are finished with step four, you shouldn’t even think about traffic techniques. If you don’t have anywhere to send the traffic, why worry about how to generate it in the first place. Depending on the traffic generation techniques you choose, it may take some time for you to start seeing sales in your program. You should spend this time developing one or two streams of traffic, and refining these techniques to help you drive more traffic with less effort.

6. Find additional related products

Once your business is making some money, it is time to start adding to your list of products. I don’t mean you should go out and sign up for every affiliate program that is even remotely related. What I do mean is that you should carefully choose an additional product or two, and add them into your pipeline. Because you have been building a list of qualified prospects, you will be able to market these new products to them. This is the really long term money maker for your business. As long as you continue to recommend good products to your customer list, you can continue to make money off of them, even the ones who have already bought your last product recommendation.

So these six steps are all you need to go from nothing to having a profitable business selling other peoples products. It can be easy to loose focus if you are not seeing immediate results, so keep your sights on the end goal of having a profitable business. You may also find it hard finding your initial market and product. Take your time and choose the best product you can. If the product you choose to promote is not good, your prospects will not continue to listen to your recommendations.

The Successful Affiliate Marketers Mindset

The successful affiliate marketers mindset is one of extreme determination, letting nothing stand in their way. They constantly without fail promote the most profitable and high paying commission products out there on the web. Why would you promote a $37 product expend tons of energy, time , and of course money ending up maybe for all your efforts making $500 a month, when you can just as easily go out and promote a $370 or $3,700 product earning higher commissions and making thousands a month.

Now let me finish off this thought before we move on. As I’ve said before results are going to differ from person to person. For the most part people are extremely lazy and will do absolutely the least amount of work possible and expect money to fall out of the sky and hit them right in the lap, Well time to wake up…

The successful mindset for the affiliate marketer knows that in order to promote high end products like that and earn great commissions there is going to have to be some very detailed planning and sharp marketing skills put into place.

Also the successful affiliate marketer will have a blueprint put into place so they can sell and sell quite frequently high ticket items, based on that blueprint.

Believe me its not that hard to sell big ticket items and earn a six figure income online quietly and quickly, once you have all the tools needed to get the job done.

The successful affiliate marketer and business owner also understands that to grow ones business to great levels, one must use every ounce of resources one can squeeze out of their business plan and affiliate promotion campaign before even considering selling or moving on to another business model or promotional campaign.

The biggest difference between the successful business owner/affiliate marketer and one that is unsuccessful is the extreme lack of focus and determination. Once you learn to use and then leverage your assets your business with grow exponentially with www.marktse.com/cb.php/peteravis/ multiple streams of income not only will your business take on a whole new level and a life of its own your traffic and sales will grow as a direct result.

Your advertising and promotional campaigns cost will be drastically lowered and your overhead will be very limited. Acquiring these skill sets over the course of your education, you’ll learn exactly how to set up, and position yourself with little “oil wells” and “affiliate money pits” that will make multiple streams of income for you for years to come.

The Key To Success In Your Internet Business Lies In Effective Internet Marketing

First off, let me put things in perspective.

I'll like to drive home the point that the fundamental marketing concepts are the same regardless of whether it is online or offline marketing. What differ are the marketing tactics, and the marketing strategies that drive those tactics.

Effective Internet Marketing is everything online. You can have the best product but if you can't get the word out, you simply don't stand a chance.

What then is Effective Internet Marketing?

Effective Internet Marketing is about maximizing your "Payoff" or Return On Investment (ROI) by targeting only those who are your potential customers, and/or those who will honestly hear what you have to say.

This entails identifying who these people are, where they are, and their financial ability to pay what you have to offer, and then creating and executing an actionable and effective internet marketing strategy.

Look... the difference between the results you're getting right now and the results you'll get in the future, hinge to a large extent on what you do differently.

To do so, you'll need to know where you are now, where you want to go, and how to get there.

To achieve this end, what you need is effective marketing knowledge, in particular, Marketing Skills, and a Slight Edge... the cumulative effect of which will grow your internet business to proportions you ever dreamed of...

It also takes passion, a willingness to learn, apply and test what you've learnt (from credible sources as a matter of course), commitment, hardwork, time, money, and last but not least, persistence and determination in order to succeed -- but it can be done...

Success In Your Internet Business Is A Journey

If you're just starting out and are new to internet marketing, I want to preempt you from expecting overnight success lest you become disillusioned, for reasons as delineated below.

What I meant by "success" is that the profits your internet business generate is sustainable and enduring, and not a one-shot temporary phenomena.

Let the following be a warning...

... if you subscribed to all the hype that's ever so prevalent all over the internet, and start off with the pre-conceived notion that just by putting up a website and submitting it to the search engines & other advertising media, you'll immediately strike it rich and become wildly successful overnight... you're sadly mistaken.

Think again...

I also want to emphasize that the Internet is not a level playing field. The Internet marketplace is extremely "noisy" and Internet Marketing itself, although isn't rocket science, is multi-faceted and dynamic.

There's a steep learning curve to successful internet marketing at both the strategic and tactical levels. What work today might not work tomorrow in light of the very nature of the internet marketplace.

Always remember, building a successful internet business is a process, not an isolated event. It's a gradual build-up, taking one-step at a time, and over a period of time.

Is It Still Possible to Make Money on the Internet?

Many people are saying that the internet is dead. So is there still money to be made on the Internet?

The answer is a definite YES.

Research shows, time and again, that consumers want to spend more online, and that the internet is fast becoming an integral part of their lifestyle and it'll continue to be so. Internet consumers are cautious and they want sites that are credible and worth shopping before they part with their money.

The traditional brick-and-mortar rules of business still apply to internet business. It's prudent to remember that the internet is not your business goal; it's a medium in helping you achieve your business goals.

Adhere to my following Rules and you'll be on your way to building a viable, sustainable and successful internet business.

1. Develop a viable business plan

The biggest reason why so many dotcoms failed is an inadequate business plan of how and when they will achieve profitability. To have a successful and sustainable internet business, developing a viable business plan from the outset is crucial.

Your plan must have a clear and sincere vision that has meaning to you and your business. Your main focus should be to 'plan to profit' within a set period of time and this would require you to allow time for thoughtful researching, planning, executing and testing. You'll need to test out your business model first and ensure that it's viable and sustainable.

Don't make the same mistakes that many dotcoms made - trying to build a global brand before their business model even worked as it'll lead you into receivership faster.

Regardless of how fanciful and good your website is, if your aim is not to make profit, you'll go out of business.

2. Model someone successful

It's always wise to learn from the mistakes of other people rather than to learn from your own mistakes as this can sometimes be very costly and painful.

Track and learn from benchmarked success stories, be they your competitors or otherwise. Why would you want to spend time re-inventing the wheel when you can learn from those who've already been there and done it successfully. Learn how they design their web site, create products, write salescopy, their sales process, etc.

3. Focus on a niche market

Don't be everything to everybody by trying to dominate a huge and general market because you just simply can't do it effectively.

Focus your internet business on a targetable portion of the market or a narrowly defined group of potential customers. Address the need for a product or service that's not being addressed by mainstream providers. The advantage of this is that it's less competitive in such a market as large businesses won't want to be in it.

For this to be effective, the market niche that you're targeting must be fast moving, its customers accessible and there mustn't already be a dominant player in that particular market niche.

The key here is to find a niche market, assess the needs of the market and then offer them your products and/or services that meet their needs.

4. Differentiate your business

To capture a larger market share and be viable, sustainable and profitable, you absolutely need to differentiate or distinguish your business from your competitors'; make your business special in the eyes of your customers and/or prospects.

You can do this by creating what's called a Unique Selling Propostion or USP and then effectively convey that USP to your target market via your marketing efforts and business performance.

This is particularly crucial if you're operating in a highly competitive market.

A USP is the one thing or idea that sets your business favourably apart from your competitors'. Think about these questions: "What's the one thing that makes your business unique and distinct? Why should people buy from you and not from your competitors? Do you promise great value, benefit or service?"

Your USP is the focal point around which the success and profitability of your business is built, and so you must be able to state it and fulfill it honourably and effectively.

5. Spent your funds wisely.

Costs is one of the major determinants of your internet business' survivability. You'll need to carefully track and control your costs from the outset and make sure you can start to show a profit soon, as unmindful spending with no thought given to incoming resources will bleed you to death.

Credible web sites not only require money to set up but also to maintain; advertisement costs money. Driving traffic to your website where you lose money on sales made is suicidal. Do your sums; consistently refer back to your vision to ascertain whether an expense is warranted or meaningful.

6. Superior customer service

In addition to a viable business plan, a superior customer service will be key to your success.

Superior customer service must be a high priority in your action plan. Build a trusting and long lasting relationship with your customers and prospects, send your staff for customer service training, fulfill your orders promptly, and constantly remind yourself the reason of your very existence.

This is crucial as it costs five times more to win a new customer than it costs to keep an existing customer. Moreover, a dissatisfied customer will tell, on average, five or six people about your bad service. The point I'm driving at here is that looking after your customers saves money and boosts profits.