Sneaky Affiliate Tricks

Yes affiliate marketing rocks, but it’s really hard to get started. The reason is because there is a lot of competition. What you need to do is come up with methods no one else is using. It’s also hard to figure out what to do because there’s a lot of information out there. Here’s one trick that almost no one else is using.

Affiliate videos

No one would deny the power and popularity of video. Video online is everywhere because people love it. About the only thing that keeps people’s attention anymore is video. So using it in your is a no-brainer!

Examples of how to use video for affiliate marketing:

• Do a testimonial video
• Do a video walk-through
• Ordering
• Do a preview video

Record your testimonial

This is probably the easiest of all. Just click record on your web cam and start talking. It doesn’t have to be professional or polished. Listening to your honest endorsement makes your viewers feel comfortable buying. And the mess-ups or mistakes just make the video more real. So serious, just turn on the camera and talk. Use one of the other ideas if you’re feeling shy.

Record a walk-through

This is a great way to promote something without selling it. Basically you’re doing a tutorial on how to use the product. And while they watch you use it, they think, “I should buy that.” As long as the product is good, the tutorial makes them want it. So pick some really helpful aspect of the product and show how to use that.

Record the order process

This could be the most powerful method of all. Record yourself placing an order. There is nothing more motivating than watching someone buy something live. First of all it’s what’s called “social proof”. People will feel more comfortable buying after seeing you do it. This also makes your viewers trust you. Your advice is easier to trust if they can see you’re doing what you tell them to do. And finally, it creates envy. It’s simple – you have it. Now they want it. To really cap this one off, end your video with: If you want to see the inside, you’ll have to order it yourself.

Record a preview of the members area

This one is perfect for building up the value of what you’re promoting. What you do is record a tour of the back end. You show them the entire contents of what they get. It also reduces the reservations of skeptics. Once they’ve seen the back-end, they know it’s real.

You can do this!

No special skills are required. Anyone can create stunning videos with some easy-to-use software. All the work is done by the program. So please don’t let technical worries slow you down. Keep focused on the rewards:

• Increase sales You will increase your affiliate sales when you start using videos. People love video, so please use them.
• Reduce refunds Less of your commissions will be clawed back, too. Your customers will know what they’re getting into ahead of time. So they’ll be less likely to refund.
• Beat your competition! This is such a simple technique. But only a very small percentage do it. This puts you out in front of the rest.

Take your affiliate promotions to a higher level and getting started with this now. Not using video is detrimental to you business. So do it!

Email List Building Strategies

You need a list. That’s a given. It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. Once you have a list built, you can market to it again and again. It’s like a renewable resource that allows you to make money on demand.

 

OK, but how?

Here are the three components of list building:

• The Squeeze Page
• Your Bribe
• The Opt-in Success Page

The Squeeze Page – Your opt-in page is the page you send visitors to to build your list. It’s the page where you ask them for their email address. So, obviously it has to be well designed. It’s also got to be free from distractions. And have a clear call to action.

Failure to include a great “call to action” will result in failure. This is a definitive message that tells your visitor what 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.

One way to really spice up your squeeze page is to make it a video squeeze page. Adding video will help keep your visitors attention. Plus it give you a chance to tell them to opt in multiple times. Then at the end of the video you can print “sign up now” on the video.

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. Or you can get email list tools that include video squeeze pages.

Your Bribe – The second component is the reason they are opting into your list. You have to give people a compelling reason to give your their email. Email privacy is very important to most people. This means your bribe needs to be very attractive.

You have to provide value in your bribe for it to be good. That means you make it something people would actually want to receive. And can benefit from. A few ideas:

• A free report
• Software
• Training videos
• A multi-part email series

It all boils down to content. It’s got to be something helpful for your new subscribers. And of course it has to be free. Bottom line is it’s got to be worth more to them than their email address.

If you’re worried about creating this content, don’t be. It’s super easy to hire someone to create it for you. You just pick the topic and they create the training. For example, you could have them write a 5-part email course. Each email will cost between $20 and $25. So, a great premium will cost you around $100 – $150.

There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. Two things to keep in mind when writing (or buying) and email training 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 is such a simple solution because you don’t have to create the product. And you can earn some commissions immediately from your emails.

The Opt-in Success Page – The “thank you” page is the final piece of the puzzle. This is the page your subscriber sees after they opt in. It’s nice to give them some great content right away. That way, they feel glad that they gave you their email address. And it helps you establish the relationship. So when they get your email, they’re happy to hear from you.

You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. Or you can go the DIY route. And do your own writing for this content. Or pay a freelancer to write the content for you.

Summing it up

Whether you decide to build your email funnel yourself. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or go with a complete package. The important thing is that you build your own list starting now. Because once its built… You’re free to make money at the push of a button.

Affiliate Business Tips

If you’re not preselling, you’re losing money

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. There are two components to it – art science. It’s a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. Then when they’re ready, refer them to the product website so they can buy it. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.

In a nutshell, you provide value. And then refer them to the product website. In a second we’ll talk about how to do actually it. Before we get into that, you should understand what’s in it for you. Here are a few benefits of preselling:

• builds trust – And gaining the trust of your readers helps them want to click your links. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
• It disarms your reader – Nobody likes to be sold something. By not doing that to them, your reader is less defensive. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
• It puts them in a buying mood – Your readers are now receiving your message. And in turn, they’re open to other messages, as well. 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.
• You make more money – You’ve prepped them and referred them in the right state of mind. Open to the sales message and feeling safe. The only thing that can result is increased sales!
• It boosts customer loyalty – Plus, they feel they’ve made the buying decision on their own. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this makes them feel better about the product they purchased.
• It boosts your profits – A satisfied customer doesn’t ask for a refund. And that translates to more commission staying in your affiliate business.

The need to presell is clear. You increase your profits. And increase your customer satisfaction. Everybody wins!

How does it work?

Now you know whey preselling is critical. And hopefully you’re convinced you need to start doing it. You’re ready to learn how to do it properly. Like we talked about before, it’s an art. And it’s a science.

Mastering the art

First, you have to gain the trust of your reader, so they let their guard down. Honestly, the only way to do this is to provide real value in you content. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. The idea is that they want more and the sales page you send them to gives them more. Plus they’re not guarded, so they’re more open and likely to purchase the product.

It’s also a science

There are also several key elements that need to be included.

One of these key elements is the presentation of the information. You need to know where you’re going before you begin. Your end goal is to make a sale of the product you’re preselling. There are two ways to accomplish this with great content. One way is to give them enough info to whet the appetite, but not enough to satisfy it. Or you can give them so much information that it feels overwhelming to do what you’re talking about. In either case, the product you’re referring them to solves the problem for them.

Next, you have to use “convert linking” methods. You have directly to the home page of the product. When you do this, you’re click-throughs go way up. 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. It’s habitual to click on words and phrases that are hyperlinked. And if the words you hyperlink relate, your reader will naturally click them for more information.

Putting all of this together creates a powerful affiliate marketing formula for success.

Unfortunately…

It’s extremely difficult to do this correctly. Let’s talk about everything required to put this plan into action: Great content. The entire process depends on your being able to provide useful information to your readers. To do that you have to have enough information to be valuable and be able to present it in a useful way. Preselling skills. First, you have to give good information. You also have to present the info in a way that provides real value. 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. After that you have to figure out which products you want to promote. If you can manage to get the article written well. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

Technical skills. One of the keys to this system is using “covert cookies” for the tracking. 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.)

Wrapping it up:

Now you know what it takes to be a Presell Pro. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! The important thing is to use these techniques for everything you promote as an affiliate. Please don’t be lazy. Make the extra effort required to propel your affiliate business to the next level.

Traffic Generation Tips

p The most important thing in any web business is traffic – lots and lots of traffic. The other 1% is what you do with that traffic, but if you have to traffic – you can figure out the rest. What you do with the traffic when it gets to your site could be any number of things. So, the critical step is to generate a steady flow of visitors. /p h2 How, then do you get traffic to your site? /h2 p Here are a few of the most popular way to get traffic to your site – for free: /p ul li Web 2.0 /li li Article Websites /li li Video /li /ul p OK, so how do they work? /p h2 Web 2.0 Methods /h2 p Web 2.0 is the name given to websites that get their content from their users. What this means for you is that you can join into the community and add your own content. The other interesting thing about these sites is that all the search engines (including Google) treat them as “authority sites”. Which means the content on them gets “indexed” faster and with more weight. By placing links to your websites in this content you’ve created, you get traffic from the site and search engine ranking for the keywords you choose. That’s the real benefit of adding content to this sites – search engine ranking means ongoing free traffic. a href=”http://massivetrafficexplosion.com/main.php”How to generate web 2.0 traffic/a 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… /p h2 Article Marketing /h2 p Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. Article directories fall under the category of web 2.0 sites. In typical web 2.0 fashion, article sites rely on user-generated content (i.e. your articles). And just like other web 2.0 sites, you get all the SEO benefits from having your content on them. And in addition to this, other users can take your article and place it on their own website. 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 a href=”http://massivetrafficexplosion.com/main.php”free traffic/a make sure you: /p ul li Do your keyword research /li li Tailor the content of your article for the keywords /li li Be sure to link to your site on the keywords you’ve chosen. Do this inside the article itself and in your author’s bio. /li /ul h2 Video /h2 p Our discussion would not be complete without talking about video. Just like article directories, video sharing sites also rely on user-generated content. And just as article directories give you great SEO benefits and allow others to redistribute your content on their sites. video sharing sites give you all these same benefits. And if all that wasn’t enough, you also stand a much stronger chance of getting a high search engine ranking for the keywords you want with video than you do with text-based content. /p p Here are just a few a href=”http://massivetrafficexplosion.com/main.php”video marketing tips/a: /p ul li Sign up for YouTube /li li Make your profile uncluttered by turning off all the modules /li li Use the tags in your profile to enter the keywords you want to rank for /li li Add a link to your website /li li Upload at least 1 video /li li For each video use your keywords in the tags, the descriptions and the title /li /ul h2 In closing… /h2 p This is a great overview to get your started generating a href=”http://massivetrafficexplosion.com/main.php”massive traffic to your site/a. /p p img src=’http://cbpirate.massivet.hop.clickbank.net’ height=’1′ width=’1′ border=’0′/ /p

Membership Niche Selection Tips

Let’s talk about niche selection. This is very important to ensuring the profitability of your membership website.

Number 1 – Discover Niches with Fanatics

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. Simply put, a fanatic is someone who’s willing to spend time and more importantly money on a topic they are interested in. OK, so we know what a fanatic is, but how do we find them?

• Here’s something you may not have considered – magazines! We’re so internet-based these days, it’s easy to forget about them. 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. If people are talking about it, they are interested in it. And that may also mean they’re willing to pay money to learn more about it.
• Again, looking in the physical world for clues you can tell there are lots of people interested in something if there are clubs and organizations around the topic. 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.
• And of course there are all the things you have an interest in, too! There’s a good chance that others are interested in these things, as well. Making money is fun and it’s even more fun if you can do it in a niche you’re excited about.
• One simple and easy way to find out what’s hot is Google Trends. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. These topics are the hottest topics because lots and lots of people want information about them. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.

Second – Analyze the “commerciality”

After selecting a possible niche to build your membership site around, the next step is to find out if it’s a profitable niche to be in. The quickest way to find out is to determine if others are profiting in your potential niche.

Here’s a punch list for figuring out if anyone’s making money in your niche:

• First go to Google and type in the name of your niche followed by “blog” and “forum”. If there are blogs and forums related to it, that’s a good sign. This means there is a large group of people already assembled for you to market to.
• Search Amazon, Google shopping and eBay to see if people are creating and selling products in the niche. It’s a good sign if there are because it tells you people are making money here.
• Look at Google Adwords for the same ads are running over time. If people are running the same ad over time it means they are making money in the niche. They would not continue to spend money on the ads if there were not making a return from them.

Finally – Figure out your barrier to entry

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. How do you gauge the ease of entry?

• Look at the product types in this niche. You want to find a niche where information products are being sold as the norm. 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.
• Size vs. Competition. Some competition is good. It means that this is a profitable market. And as long as the size of the market is large enough to support the competition, you’re fine.
• How quickly do people in this market make buying decisions and are the ready to buy? Every market is different. Sometimes people are looking for information and are ready to pay for it right now. And sometimes it takes weeks, months or even years for them to make the decision to purchase.

In Summary

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. If you’ve done your homework, your business will be a success because you already know your market is a profitable one with room for you. Learning how to run a membership website is a topic for another article…

Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST

p The best way to ensure your success is to build automated traffic sources to send you visitors day and night. /p h2 Traffic is useless . . . unless… /h2 p Keyword research is really the first step in getting traffic to your website. Why? Because you have to target these keywords if you are to have any hope of actually generating traffic for them. This means it’s critical to select your keywords properly. /p p A couple things to keep in mind when doing keyword research: /p ul li Are the keywords you’re interested in attainable? You’ll have to analyze the competition and see what’s out there for this. /li li Are these “buying” keywords? Some keywords will bring lots of traffic, but none of them will buy. This is not what you’re looking for. /li li Will these keywords bring affiliates? Nothing brings more buyers like an army of affiliates. So make sure you are also targeting keywords to attract affiliates. /li /ul p Of course, this all takes time if you plan to do it yourself. Hiring someone else to do it costs a lot of money. The upside is that these two factors keep most everyone from even doing their keyword research. The smartest marketers use a href=”http://automatedtraffic.com”website traffic software/a to automate this and other aspects of their business. Using tools like this speed up the process and improve your results, too! /p h2 Only then can you start getting traffic /h2 p Only after doing your keyword research correctly can you start targeting these keywords to get you traffic. /p p Here are a couple of clever ways to do this… /p ul li Something you may not have ever considered is Surveys /li li “Traffic Traps” /li li Video Websites /li /ul h2 Surveys /h2 p The truth is that people really enjoy taking surveys and finding out what other people think. And smart website owners know this, so they will include your survey on their site if you make a good one. It’s a win-win. They get a great perk on their site and you get a link back to yours. The beauty of this is that it generates a href=”http://automatedtraffic.com”website visitors/a for you with no work on your part. This is a sneaky little idea that most people never even think of. The only thing you have to do is think of a novel question for your survey. /p h2 “Help” Websites /h2 p These sites, like answers.yahoo.com are filled with people asking and answering questions for each other. But, like the surveys, that’s not why you’re going to pay attention to these sites. 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. The good news is that it’s easy to find a href=”http://automatedtraffic.com”website traffic software/a that can do this automatically. These tools put the whole thing on auto-pilot and just deliver the leads to you each day. /p h2 Video Websites /h2 p No doubt you’re aware of YouTube and other video websites. These sites generate massive traffic and people watch over 2 billion videos a day on YouTube alone . If used properly, video sites can get you a href=”http://automatedtraffic.com”more website traffic/a than you know what to do with. /p p And don’t worry if you don’t have any idea of how to make a video. You can even take a webpage or article that you’ve written. Then simply record yourself reading the text and you video the screen with a simple screen capture program. I’ve even seen software that will automatically convert an article to a video! /p h2 The Bottom Line… /h2 p Getting traffic is not that difficult. Use your noodle and come up with things other people aren’t doing. And today there are tons of options for software tools that can help with every part of this process. /p p So, start right now and: /p ul li Do your keyword research /li li Then create some surveys born to go viral /li li Make sure to use the “answer” sites /li li And don’t forget about video /li /ul p/p img src=’http://cbpirate.auttraffic.hop.clickbank.net’ height=’1′ width=’1′ border=’0′/

Affiliate Marketing Secrets

Winning Affiliate Marketing Strategies

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

Here’s just a few benefits

1. You’re able to start right now without having to create a product, set up a website and sales page, design the website, develop marketing materials, or get a merchant account and CRM.
2. It’s completely hands-freefor you because they handle the billing, support, maintenance, etc.
3. You have nearly zero risk because you already know the product sells, because the product owner has already made sure the product sells. So if you send visitors you will get paid.

Looking at these benefits, it’s clear that affiliate marketing is the way to go!

There is one major drawback…

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. Most of them will not buy on their first visit, which means you’re losing over 90% of the traffic right off the top. That’s fine for the product owner because she can sell to them again and again, but you can’t.

What’s the solution?

What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product 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’re really on top of your game, you’ll then send to a content mini-site in between.

Here are the benefits of doing affiliate marketing like this:

1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
2. By providing great content without a sales pitch, you put them in a buying mood. So when you do send them to the product website, they’re much more likely to buy.

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

You’ll use the squeeze page as the place to send your visitors instead of using the product website. 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.

The content pages provide valuable information for your visitors and make them more receptive to the sales message that you’ll link to from inside the content. 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.

Putting all of these pieces together will increase your sales by 500% or more, so it’s obviously worth the time and energy to do it. After setting it up, you simply send visitors to your squeeze page instead of the sales page. And the rest runs on auto-pilot.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. These kinds of services will build the whole system for you and then just give you a video squeeze page (with video), pre-written emails, content pages, etc. 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. One negative is that there will be other people using this same a href=”http://affiliatesilverbullet.com”affiliate marketing system/a. However, the odds of you and them both finding the same visitor are so small, that it doesn’t really matter.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to “outsource” each of these compnents. Whichever way you decided to go, it’s critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you’re at all serious about your business.