Affiliate marketing lesson 1
Each week for the next few weeks you will receive a lesson
that will help you learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing
and how you can use it to make more profits.
In this first lesson let’s talk a little about what affiliate marketing is
and some of the things that you can do to become a wildly
successful affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing basically means that you are marketing for
other people and businesses in exchange for a commission. The
typical commission runs between 30 and 75% with 50% being the
average.
When you first join an affiliate program you are given an affiliate
link that goes to the website of the product owner. This special link
is encoded with your unique affiliate id and when you send
someone to the product owners site through your special link and
they make a purchase you receive a commission. This works out
great for both you and the product owner, because you make a
nice paycheck and the product owner makes more sales and cuts
down on advertising costs at the same time.
One of the main things that makes affiliate marketing so great is
that having or creating your own product isn’t necessary. Along
with that there is the added perks like not having to deal with
customers support, complaints or refunds. The only thing an
affiliate needs to be successful is some basic internet marketing
skills and the desire to succeed. Don’t panic if you don’t know
anything about marketing online, because there is plenty of
fantastic information available on the subject all over the internet.
I am assuming that since you are taking this crash course that you
already have some basic knowledge under your belt, so we are
going to dive right in today and talk about some simple tactics that
affiliate marketers can use to increase their chances of success.
First, let’s talk about using unique web pages to promote each
separate product you are marketing. It’s very important not lump all
of your chosen affiliate programs together on one website just to
save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site or at the
very least a sub domain focusing on each and every product and
nothing more. This way you can streamline and target your
marketing efforts for better results.
Another thing you can do is to include product reviews on the
product webpages you set up, so visitors will have an initial
understanding of what the product can do for those that buy them.
When possible collect and include testimonials from users who
have already tried the product and add them to the webpages.
This really helps increase credibility and convert more visitors into
buyers.
Including articles that you write or with reprint rights that highlight
the uses of the product and posting them on the website as an
additional page will also help increase your free search engine
traffic and chances of success.
Be sure to make the pages attractive, compelling and include calls
to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers
to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special
points. This will help your readers to learn what the product is
about and will make them want to find out more. That is when they
will click on your affiliate and help you make more commissions.
Next let’s talk about collecting contact information by offering free
reports to your prospects. This does two important thing for your
affiliate business. It allows you to further educate your prospects
and follow up with them in the future with more information on the
products you offer.
For this to work you will need a good autoresponder service. You
will want to create a short report and series of seven to ten
autoresponder messages that will be mailed to people who sign
up to receive your free report.
Did you know that according to research, a sale is usually closed
on the seventh contact with a prospect? Hence the reason you will
want to create a series of follow up messages.
When you are creating your content focus on important points like
how the product can make things easier and more enjoyable for
people who purchase it. Include compelling subject lines in the
email. As much as possible, avoid using the word “free” because
there are still older spam filters that dumps those kind of contents
into the junk folder before anyone reads them.
Do your best to convince those who signed up for your free report
that they will be missing something big if they don’t take the time to
at least check out the product or service you’re recommending. Be
sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the
product. Don’t make it sound like a sales pitch. Keep in mind that
by providing useful information to your prospects you will increase
your chances of making a commission.
Before we end today’s lesson I want to touch on one more thing
that you can do to increase your chances of affiliate marketing
success.
That is getting traffic. The kind of traffic that is targeted to your
product. Just think about it this way, if the person who visited your
website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they
will be among those who move on and never come back.
One of the best ways to get this kind of traffic is by writing articles
for submission and publication. A good rule of thumb it to try to
write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600
words in length. By continuously writing and submitting these
articles to you can generate as many as 100 targeted prospects
to your site in a day.
That may not sound like much for all of the work you put in but
statistics show that 1 out of every 100 people are likely to make a
purchase. If you can generate a 1,000 targeted hits for your
website in a day, that means you can make 10 sales based on the
average statistic and the best thing is that the articles will continue
to work for you even after you have moved on to another product.
None of the tactics that we have discussed today are very difficult
to do, if you think about it, it just requires a little time and an action
plan on your part. Once you have completed the process for one
affiliate program you can move on to the next and you will end up
with a good source of income along with a thriving affiliate
marketing business.
We have a lot to go over in the next few weeks if you want to learn
how to make even more affiliate marketing profits, so make sure
you look for your next lesson. We will be talking about
things you should consider before you join an affiliate program, so
that you can choose the best ones for your business.
