Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways of earning some money online.. Since  affiliate marketing programs are easy to join and pay a commission on a regular basis, more and more people are now becoming affiliates.

However, like all businesses, there are lots of pitfalls in the affiliate marketing business. Committing some of the most common mistakes will cost the marketers a large portion taken from the profit they are making everyday. I’m about to reveal the 3 most common affiliate mistakes to avoid.

Mistake number 1: Choosing the wrong affiliate.

Many people want to earn from affiliate marketing as fast as possible. In their rush to be part of one, they tend to choose a bandwagon product. This is the kind of products that the program thinks is “hot”. They choose the product that is in demand without actually considering if the product appeals to them. This is not a very wise move obviously.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, try top choose a product in which you are truly interested in. For any endeavor to succeed, you should take some time to plan and figure out your actions.

Pick a product that appeals to you. Then do some research about that product to see if they are in demand. Promoting a product you are more passionate about is easier than promoting one for the sake of the earnings only.

Mistake number 2: Joining too many affiliate programs.

Since affiliate programs are very easy to join, you might be tempted to join multiples of affiliate programs to try and maximize the earnings you will be getting. Besides you may think that there is nothing wrong and nothing to lose by being part of many affiliate programs.

True, that is a great way to have multiple sources of income. However, joining multiple programs and attempting to promote them all at the same time will prevent you from concentrating on each one of them.

The result? The maximum potential of your affiliate program is not realized and the income generated will not exactly be as huge as you were thinking initially it would. The best way to get excellent result is by joining just one program that pays a 40% commission at least. Then give it your best effort by promoting your products enthusiastically. As soon as you see that it is already making a reasonable profit, then maybe you can now join another affiliate program.

The technique is to do it slowly but surely. There is really no need to rush into things, especially with affiliate marketing. With the way things are going, the future is looking real bright and it seems affiliate marketing will be staying for a long time too.

Mistake number 3: Not buying the product or using the service.

As an affiliate, you main purpose is to effectively and convincingly promote a product or service and to find customers. For you to achieve this purpose, you must be able to relay to the customers that certain product and service. It is therefore difficult for you to do this when you yourself have not tried these things out. Thus, you will fail to promote and recommend them convincingly. You will also fail to create a desire in your customers to avail any of what you are offering.

Try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate to see if it is really delivering what it promises. If you have done so, then you are one of the credible and living testaments aware of its advantages and disadvantages. Your customers will then feel the sincerity and truthfulness in you and this will trigger them to try them out for themselves.

Many affiliate marketers makes these mistakes and are paying dearly for their actions. To not fall into the same situation they have been in, try to do everything to avoid making the same mistakes.

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Popularity: 34% [?]

The easiest way to make more affiliate profits is to simply generate more traffic.

I generally use pay-per-click traffic for almost all the affiliate products I promote simply because you can control exactly how much money is going out- and once you figure out how many visitors it takes to make a sale with whatever you are promoting, then you will know exactly how much money will come in.

PPC advertising just makes affiliate marketing easier if you ask me!

First off, pay per click (PPC) does NOT mean Google Adwords. Adwords is just the most popular form of PPC advertising, but it is definitely not the only one. On that note, PPC search engine advertising is also not the only form of PPC.

You can pay per click on a variety of different advertising vehicles including banner ads, text ads, flash ads, email ads, etc.. So don’t limit yourself to just Google Adwords, or just search engines.

If you want to find more sources where you can pay per click, just go to Google.com and search for “pay per click advertising”.

Before you do any PPC advertising (or any advertising for that matter), you need a good tracking system to track your results. If you are doing search engine PPC, you need to know which keywords are producing sales and which aren’t. This will help fine tune your marketing system.

Included in this product is a software program which is perfect for tracking search engine pay-per-click ads. It allows you to use “trackers” for each keyword and will then display how much traffic that keyword is getting. Although most systems like Googe.com, MSN.com will have their own tracking that you can look at as well, it is best to have all of your tracking for all of your affiliate products in one place.

So what works in PPC advertising? Well, the truth is, 90% of the money you make from PPC ads will come from 10% of your keywords- The same keywords that produce results for you in the organic search most of the time.

Be very specific. “Golf” is going to be way too expensive, but “Golf swing instruction” may be much cheaper per click and will certainly produce more sales if you are selling golf instruction.

This isn’t really rocket science, it has just been made to be more difficult than it really is. The fact is, if you want to get big traffic from PPC keyword ads, then you will be spending some big money.

The more competitive keywords are going to cost more, so your sales ratio will have to pick up the slack.

Here is a formula I follow..

For the more competitive keywords that cost $0.50-$2.00, I just try to break even with my initial product while building a list. I will gladly spend $1+ per visitor and just break even because I know that a good percentage of those visitors will subscribe to my list, and/or buy my upsell (profit), and/or buy a backend product from me (more profit).

Most people just look at trying to make a bunch of money with their 50% commission of one $27 product that converts at 1% and are finding it incredibly hard, especially with highly competitive advertising vehicles like Google Adwords.

But if you just look at breaking even on the first sale, it becomes so much easier. Marketing in general becomes so much easier when the initial sale doesn’t have to produce a profit.

So let’s say that you are doing the “Insider’s View” video idea with a PPC advertising campaign. You set it up to where they have to subscribe to your list for the inside view video. You build your list this way by just breaking even on all of the sales that are generated from that video.

So for the very competitive words that generate a lot of traffic, just break even.

For the low hanging fruit, the words that aren’t competitive, don’t cost too much per click, and don’t generate as much traffic- these are the ones that can make you money up front. The problem is, they are not searched for as often and just don’t bring in the clicks that the expensive ones do.

It is also very important to be on the front page when you are advertising via search engine PPC. This not only generates the most traffic, but also the more hungry visitors who seem to buy much more often.

So whenever possible, get on the front page, spend the extra money to test it out and see how profitable it is for you and your product.

You might just be breaking even on the initial product, but your follow ups may make you a fortune. Getting the most of each visitor is what marketing is all about!

The more you get out of each visitor, the easier it is to generate tons of traffic to your web site. Why? Because you can spend more.

Put it this way, if your web site generates $3 per unique visitor, do you think it would be hard to generate traffic from say Google Adwords? You could spend $2 per click and still make money.

The biggest search engine PPC advertising vehicles are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, And MSN Ad Center.  There are others, but I never found the others to be worth the effort.

However, there are a lot of sites that offer PPC advertising that isn’t search engine keywords. Like I said above, go to Google.com an do a search for it and you will get plenty of ideas.

It is a good idea to set specific days to do certain tasks that will build traffic.

For instance:

• On Mondays and Thursdays, check all PPC advertising and tweak the campaigns to make them profitable.
• Go to the discussion forums that are in your market at the end of everyday (after your to do list is completed) and make relevant post about the topic and leave your link in your sig file (don’t spend too much time at the forums, just get in and get out).
• Pick a day each week to brainstorm new ideas to generate traffic (I don’t work on Fridays or the weekend, so my brainstorm day is Thursday so that the ideas are in my head all weekend. I find this helps to come up with new ideas while I’m out and about enjoying life.)
• Whenever you find something that works well, outsource it. If you have found that it works, and are done with all of your testing or experimenting with that concept, then you can outsource it and move on to finding other traffic generation methods that work well for your business.

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Popularity: 36% [?]

Teleseminars can be big big affiliate sales for you if you can get the owner of the product on the phone for an interview.

That’s where the real money is when it comes to generating sales through teleseminars. You basically do it like an interview.

But, you can also do teleseminars yourself as long as you can give good content.

The whole point of a teleseminar is to give the people calling in good content. That is the main priority.

Too many teleseminars these days are just crap content and sales pitches wrapped into one.

The ones that make big money are the ones that give good solid content for 90% of the call, and then have the last 10% talk about the product they are offering (which of course goes directly along with the content they just gave)..

It is much easier to make this work when you can interview the creator of the product. Some will agree to this, some will not. There isn’t any one foolproof way to do this. Some people are just good salesmen and can get people on the phone and sell hundreds of products, others can’t.

The main thing about any kind of teleseminar is giving good quality content and not trying to shove a product in their faces.

Some things that will help:

• If you are doing the call alone, then come up with a passionate speech about how you had XYZ problem and how bad it was (relating to the customers) and then the product (the one you are going to promote after you have related to them) solved it for you…
• Don’t be afraid to get a friend on the phone to help you along, or to even ask you questions. Listening to a teleseminar with two people is much better then just one. It kind of balances things out and almost always produces more sales.
• Try to get an interview with the creator of the product so he can talk about some ideas in the product itself. This will be a much better sales generator for you.

Other then that, it’s all about promoting the teleseminar which is as easy as telling your list/previous customers about a free teleseminar that will teach them all about _______.

As I said earlier, give good content in the seminar for free and your sales ratio will be high.

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Popularity: 37% [?]

The Subscriber Simple Secret is a simple plan that you can follow and set up to start building a list for free, and make money with affiliate programs.

The concept is based on my Profit Funnel Secret that I released a few years ago. The Internet moves fast and in 2 years some strategies lose their effectiveness. Although the Profit Funnel system still works great, and I still use it everyday, I wanted to see if I could better it, and I did…

So I have modified and added to the Profit Funnel Secret to make it better and more effective..

With the Profit Funnel Secret, you use a squeeze page to capture subscribers. All you need with your squeeze page to make this work is about a 40% conversion, meaning for every 100 people that go to your site, 40 will subscribe
to your list.

Although the more the merrier, 40% will work fine. I have had some Profit Funnels generating 60% conversions, but 40% is all you really need.

When somebody subscribes, they are taken to either a product of yours (best option) or if you do not have one, you will be an affiliate for somebody else’s product and promote that. All your product or affiliate product needs to do is convert at about 1% (1-2% is the industry average and easily obtained) to make this strategy work.

Since this report is about promoting affiliate products, let’s just stick with that!

Then you use pay-per-click advertising to advertise your squeeze page (although most traffic generation strategies will work, I have been using PPC for it’s simplicity and effectiveness).

That is the pure basis of it, and I know it sounds basic at first glance, but there are some very important factors in this system that makes this work like crazy.

After you have it setup, you only need about $10-15 in funds to start with the PPC engines and then everything after that is virtually free. Free subscribers after the initial $10-15 forever!!!

Of course the whole point is to build up a big list so that you can make money promoting other people’s products for years to come.

Not only will you be generating free subscribers, but also you will be making sales left and right.

And you can set this up as many times as you want in any market.

Here is the formula to get this to work properly.

Let’s say that once you have your squeeze page set up, it converts at 40%. So every 100 visitors that come to your site, you get 40 subscribers.

So let’s say you start with $15.

You spend $15 at Google Adsense or Overture.com to advertise your squeeze page at $0.05 per click.

That means that once you have exhausted your $15, you will have received 300 visitors to your squeeze page, and 40% will subscribe.

That means 120 people will be redirected to the sales letter of whatever affiliate product you are promoting.

So you go to clickbank.com and find a product that has to do with the PPC keywords that you bid $0.05 on and that clickbank.com product cost $37 and pays you 50% commission as an affiliate. This is just an example of course, you may find one that you like that is better, etc.. Like I said earlier, lots of clickbank.com products that you can promote are now paying 60-75% which is a fantastic commission!

So, back to our visitors, 120 people will subscribe and be redirected through your affiliate link to a product that costs $37.

All that affiliate site needs to do is sell at 1%, that’s it! Some will sell at 2-4% which is where you want to be, but 1% is all you really need. The higher the sales ratio for the product you are promoting, the more subscribers you will be able to generate.

So out of the 120 people that subscribed to your list and saw the affiliate product’s sales letter, 1 of them buys, making you $18.50 in commission. You just made back the initial $15 you put in and made $3.50 in profit.

BUT, the real reason you are doing this is the 120 subscribers that you just got for free!

This is incredibly powerful! Do not dismiss this whatsoever!

Now, the way to really make this work is that when you setup your squeeze page, you set up an autoresponder that they are subscribing to. This is where even more affiliate profits will show up.

Your squeeze page has to give something away for free for maximum conversion. A free report, a free 5 day series by email, etc.. This is why they are subscribing in the first place. Although it isn’t 100% necessary to give something away for free, you can get them to subscribe just by using good copy that gets them curious.

The way to make this very profitable is in your follow up messages. This is where you can setup a whole years worth of follow ups (You don’t have to do this all at once either! I use a system for this as well.)

Let’s say you have 50 follow ups promoting 25 different affiliate programs that are all selling products that are related to the keywords you bid on with the PPC campaigns- 2 followup emails for each affiliate program.

This is ’set it and forget it’ at its best. Once you have this setup and working to where your first product that you promote when people subscribe to your list is paying for your PPC advertising, all of your subscribers are basically free, and anything that your list makes by promoting those affiliate programs is pure profit and automatically generated! You don’t even have to answer customer emails or do any support, none of that!

Now, here’s how to avoid doing the work of finding 25-50 different affiliate programs all at once. I start with 5 and setup about 2 months worth of  autoresponder messages promoting those 5. Your first 5 are quick and easy.

Then one day a week (just pick a day) I check my PPC listings to make sure they are still running, add more money to them if needed, and find another 5 affiliate programs to promote and then add follow up messages for those 5.

After a few weeks, your whole system is completely done and no more work is required, except for the few minutes per week it takes to login to your PPC account and make sure your ads are running.

So think if you had 20 of these sites building lists for you, and promoting affiliate programs for you all on auto-pilot?

But wait, this gets much better!

Once you have a list, or a few lists built up- You can send broadcast messages to these lists and really see the traffic flow to wherever you want to send them (a new product, affiliate program, whatever!)

You can cross promote, do joint ventures to your list, run subscriber specials, etc.. Once you have your list built up, the income opportunities are enormous. I have been running opt-in lists for 9 years now. It’s like my own money printing machine!

This is still one of the easiest ways to generate multiple income streams, build your list, and generate traffic all on autopilot that I have tried, and I have tried a lot!

That’s my Profit Funnel system, and a good one to work that is quick and easy and actually does build you a list!

The only change I have made is to get rid of the squeeze page.

Squeeze pages, although they still work, are becoming less effective lately.

The main reason is because everybody is using them. You have to fill in your name and email to do anything online now and people are getting sick of it.

The majority of stuff that you get for free for filling out the squeeze page forms is junk and the visitors know it.

But like I said, they do still work, but I think they are only going to keep losing steam as more and more people set up more squeeze pages.

Another problem with using a squeeze page is the advertising. Google.com already frowns upon using their Pay-per-click advertising to advertise your squeeze page and often times won’t even let you.

More advertising vehicles are following suit as well.

This will make advertising your squeeze page quite difficult.

So what’s the solution?

I have been using low cost reports to build my lists and using different variations of this system to promote my products and affiliate program products.

For instance, instead of a squeeze page that is simply there to generate a subscriber, I sell a report for $1-$5.

That is the change, the rest of the system works exactly the same way.

So where do you get the short reports to sell?

Private label of course.

Here is what I do with private label content to make it much better.  I get all kinds of private label reports, articles and ebooks on one topic, read them all, take out the best stuff from each private label item and make one “best of” report.

So this means I get the best information from various different sources as oppose to one source where some of it is good information, and some of it is bland/outdated/rehashed…

I suggest you do the same. This way, you do not have to write anything, you just copy and paste most of it into one great report!

Finding PLR products to make your “best of” report will come quite easy as they are literally everywhere. Just go to google.com and type in “private label ebooks”, “private label resell rights”, etc.. and you will see what I mean.

You are looking for private label ebooks/reports that come with sales letters.

No software! Software is way too much work.

If they come with sales letters, then you do the same when writing your sales letter by making a “best of” sales letter to sell your report.

The best places I have found are the memberships that give you two new ebooks per month with sales letters for like $30. That’s a product with PLR with a sales letter for 15 bucks that you can make money with for years to come.

Plus, you usually get access to all of the previous months products! I am not going to give you a list because these sites go up and down often and the list will be outdated quick. Just go to google.com and do the search and you will find plenty.

You can even do this with just one PLR book. Let’s say you just want to create a 20-30 page report and you got the private label rights to a 100 page ebook.

You can edit it down to a “best of” 25 page report by cutting out the 75 least helpful pages.

That way your customer gets just the guts, the best parts of that 100 page book.

Then set your report up using the sales letter provided, advertise it using PPC and build your list for big affiliate profits!

I know this kind of takes away from the whole appeal of affiliate marketing because this is selling your own product, when affiliate marketing is about selling somebody elses.

But remember, if you truly do not want to sell your own, you can still use the squeeze page idea above and not sell anything of your own. It does work still and should not be dismissed.

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Popularity: 34% [?]

Videos have come a long way online and are now starting to show up in just about every promotion you see, and for good reason, they produce big sales!

You can certainly use them to promote your affiliate products with great success.

Here is an idea that I have been testing with great results. It is creating a video of the actual members area or the product itself.

By video I mean a screen capture video using a program like www.camtasia.com. Camtasia is only one screen
capture program out there so do some research to see which would be best for you. There are others much cheaper with less features.

Also, when it comes to video editing, make sure you check your own computer to see if you already have some video editing software installed. A lot of computers come with video editing software now for home movies and such. You can use this exact same software to edit your screen capture marketing videos.

Once you get some screen capture software you create a “Here is what you can have in minutes” style of video. You call it a “tour of our product”.

You then add this video to your affiliate product promotion and boom, increase sales!

It is very simple to do and hasn’t failed yet to work for me!

Here is how you can do this:

Step 1) Start up the screen cam software, and welcome the viewer to the product tour video.

This can be a simple greeting where you introduce yourself as a user of the product and give a quick introduction to what will be in the actual video.

Step 2) Login to your members area where the product will be downloaded. Or, if the product is an actual downloadable file like a .PDF report/ebook, you can just open the file.

Step 3) If there is a download page, it is a good idea to show the download page, discuss the bonuses, etc..

Talk about everything they receive when they order and show them in the download page. You can even show them
the order process and how it works. A lot of people online are still a bit scared to give their credit card numbers over the Internet. They do not want their credit card to get stolen by some hacker, and are also concerned with the people they are ordering from scamming them.

So if you show how easy and safe the order process is, this can surely helps sales by reassuring customers that they will not get scammed out of their money and that the product is safe to buy.

Step 4) Show them the chapters in the book while reading some of it. This is a big part, it shows the viewer that the product is real, shows how it is presented, and they get a quick taste of exactly what is inside.

You can go by each chapter to show them the headlines/titles of the product. This can produce big sales as it really taps into people’s instant gratification trigger button.

You basically are saying “You can be reading this right now!”…

You should get permission from the owner of the product before you show the inside of their product to the public, but this shouldn’t be a problem.

Just explain what you are doing and let them know that the viewers of the video would only be able to read a few pages in the video and that you aren’t showing the whole entire book in the video.

Also, this works the same way if you are promoting a software program. Show how the programs works, the features, etc..

Step 5) Thank the viewer for watching the video and remind them that they can have this within minutes from now.

Also, if you have an affiliate program, you could give them a quick glance at that and tell them they could recoup their investment by just referring 2 friends. This is also very powerful as it makes the product seem even less risk.

Something else that I have used in a few videos is showing the guarantee of the product to make sure the visitor knows that if he is not happy with the product, he can get a full no questions asked refund.

I have also used these videos to build lists. You can say something like:

“Subscribe today and receive a video tour of XYZ product free!”

People subscribe and get the video of the product you are promoting sent to their email.

Something else I have been testing with great results is what I call an “Insiders view”.

If you go to Google.com and search for a heavily promoted affiliate product you will see lots of people have set up web pages and use Google.com’s Adwords program to advertise it.

They use ads that say things like:

“XYZ Product Reviews”

or

“Don’t Buy XYZ Product Until You Read This”

etc..

They are using these ads to generate traffic to their page which then links to the actual product through their affiliate link so that they get credit for the sale.

This is a simple tactic that people have used for years.

What I have been testing is ads that start like:

“Get An Insider’s View Of XYZ Product”

This ad links to my page which then has my video automatically start. The video is of course all about the product, shows it chapter by chapter, shows the download area and order process, etc..

This works well, and of course you can even get them to subscribe to your list first before they can get the “Insider’s View” video.

Something else you can do with this video is to submit it to the video directories like YouTube.com and Google video. You could even use a service like TubeMogul to mass submit to many more for free.

Make sure to link back to your site in the description area to generate traffic back to your site.
This can be a quick and easy traffic generator. Search engines love video and if you do this idea you will have one to submit to the video web sites. It’s quick and easy, give it a shot!

Limited Bonuses

One more thing you will definitely want to mention in your video is if you have included any of your own bonuses if they order the affiliate product.

Something like “If you order XYZ report, I will throw in my own ABC report as a bonus, but only if your one of the next 50 orders” etc..

This of course will also add value to the product you are promoting and easily boost sales.

Generally the better the bonus, the more sales, but do not overshadow or devalue the main product you are promoting with your bonus.

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Popularity: 32% [?]

Discover how YOU can create an unfair advantage over all other 
affiliates, even if you don’t have a large mailing list, high-traffic 
website or industry-wide influence, by using exclusive free 
incentives to pull in profits like never before!

The average affiliate is desperate for some serious training in affiliate marketing. This series is for all affiliates who want more than a couple of banners, a handful of classified ads and an occasional rah-rah speech.

This series of blog posts is for you…

Let’s get started with a question that is going to define what you’re about to learn
Why do some affiliates sell more than others?

It’s not a trick question.  Go ahead and think about it just for a second.  In fact, grab a pen and some paper and jot down a few ideas.  I’ll wait.

<5 Minute Break — Seriously, make your list>

OK, so you’ve got your list, right?

If nothing else, you made a mental list.  And what are some reasons that you came up with for that question “why do some affiliates sell more than others?”

Did you respond with any of these answers…

Some affiliates sell more because they have a
…large mailing list.

Some affiliates sell more because they have a
…high traffic website.

Some affiliates sell more because they have a 

…well known reputation.

Some affiliates sell more because they have a
…large advertising budget.

Some affiliates sell more because they have an
…influential network.

Some affiliates sell more because they have an
…unfair advantage.

Your list probably includes one or more of those answers.
And you’re not alone.

And you’re also not incorrect.

These are all plausible answers that explain why some affiliates sell more than others.

I want you to review that list again.  And I want you to examine it, because there is an important common denominator in there that I want to point out.

Do you see it?

In EACH of the above listed reasons, the affiliate has a competitive edge over the average affiliate.  Whether it is a large list or a high traffic website, the fact remains that many top affiliates aren’t competing on a LEVEL playing field.

They have something that the majority of affiliates do not have…

…an advantage.

Now, here’s the deal, my friend.  I can’t wave a magic wand and get you a large mailing list.  I can’t say “Abracadabra” and create a traffic jam at your website.  And I can’t suddenly catapult your reputation to an exclusive “Who’s Who” status.

But, I can help you create an advantage.

And that’s what I want to share with you in Super Affiliate Strategies Volume 1.  I want to teach YOU (yep, you!) how to create an advantage over other affiliates.  I’m going to show you how to create an exclusive offer that is ONLY AVAILABLE THROUGH YOU.

That’s an advantage.

It’s an advantage because it can’t be found anywhere else.  It’s an advantage because, if someone wants to take you up on your offer, then they MUST BUY THROUGH YOU.

We’ll get to that.

Offline marketers have been doing it for years — and it works great!
 o, why not follow their lead and use the same techniques online?
 A handful of folks are doing it, and sales are coming in like crazy…

Let me give you an example from the real world.  Suppose you are looking to purchase a new car and you visit several different dealerships.

All of them have the EXACT same car that you are interested in purchasing.  All are priced at the EXACT same price.  Every factor is the same…

…except for one.

One of the dealerships offers you an incentive.  If you purchase the vehicle from him, he will throw in a year’s supply of gasoline!

Now I ask you, which of the dealerships are you going to make your purchase from?
If you chose anyone but the dealer offering the free gasoline…

…you probably shouldn’t be on the road driving! :o)

Obviously, with all factors the same, you would want to make your purchase from the dealer who offered you MORE value for your money.

Affiliate programs are kind of like car dealerships - at least in one regard.  Every affiliate in a particular program offers the EXACT same product at the EXACT same price.  All factors concerning the affiliate program are basically the same for every affiliate.

So, who’s going to make the sale?

The one who offers the added incentive, that’s who!

The one who creates the advantage, the exclusive offer.

Why should anyone buy through YOUR affiliate link when there are potentially thousands of other affiliates promoting the same offer? Do you think it’s because you promoted the offer FIRST?  You might be surprised…

Just a couple of days ago I received an email from one of my regular customers.  He thanked me for sending him an email about a new product that I had begun promoting.

He explained that he was just about to buy the same product from someone else when he received my email.

Of course, I offered an INCENTIVE - a product of my own valued at the same amount of the product I was promoting.

He excitedly reported to me that he was going to purchase from ME instead of the other guy, SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE I had the extra bonus included in my offer.

A few minutes later his order came in.

Want to outsell other affiliates?

Want to outsell them even though you are all promoting the EXACT same product at the EXACT same price?

Want to create an advantage that levels the playing field with the “big boys” who have the large lists and large budgets?

Offer MORE!

You need to create an incentive.  Some unique and exclusive reason why folks should order through YOUR affiliate link and not one of your competitors.

Folks tend to think that that whoever gets the word out FIRST about a new product will make the sale.

That isn’t always the case.

In fact, it could be just the opposite.

Research shows that it takes, on average, 7 exposures to an offer before someone actually makes a purchase.

Most folks receive the same, tired old “product announcement” email from a half dozen or more affiliates in the exact same 24 hour period.

They get home from work and find a slew of affiliates all wanting to make the sale on the new product.
Who will they buy from? (If they buy at all from this first batch of offers)

If 5 affiliates send out the standard email that their affiliate program manager gave them to send out as one of the “marketing materials” for the product, and 1 affiliate sent an email with a free high-quality offer attached for the same product…

..I’m guessing they’d go with the 1 affiliate who did things differently.

What do you think?

You’re probably thinking “give me that year’s supply of free gas for my new car!”  Right?

You need to create an incentive, an unfair advantage over your competition.  You need something that convinces folks to buy from you.

SIDEBAR:  Here’s an interesting twist on things that I wanted to let you know. The idea of “incentive marketing” not only applies to NEW offers, but can even work to produce sales for older products.

For example:  Jimmy D. Brown of  http://www.InfoProfitShare.com put together a free eBook entitled “Killer Marketing Secrets Revealed” in order to produce sales for Ken Silver’s eBook Secrets manual that he had purchased reprint rights to sell.  He offered it as a free bonus to anyone who ordered from him.

Ken’s product had been available for several years and was offered for FREE at several big sites like the Warriors.

Despite the fact that THOUSANDS of copies had been in circulation prior to him offering this deal, he sold hundreds of extra copies within just a few months.

MANY of those customers told him this:  “I already had a copy of eBook Secrets, but it was worth buying again just to get the free copy of Killer Marketing Secrets Revealed.”
See how this works?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to come up with the idea on your own.  I’m going to provide you with some *real* examples that you can use yourself.  There are only a handful of folks out there who are using this information — so you’ll be getting in on the ground floor.

I can tell you this — don’t waste any time.  This blog post will soon be on the screens of thousands of folks.  And some of them will be your competition.

Don’t wait for them to beat you to the punch.

Put this plan into action. There are only 4 easy steps.  Let’s get ‘em rolling with the next BigSellingAffiliates blog post…

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Popularity: 65% [?]

This is likely the one area where most new affiliates get confused, and there are several reasons for that confusion:

1. It is possible to do affiliate marketing without your own site or lead capture system.
2. Setting up a website and lead capture system requires technical knowledge that some people don’t have.

Let’s talk about the technical angle, first. Just how computer savvy do you need to be? If you are going the do-it-yourself route, you need to learn the following:

1. How to register a domain name
2. How to sign up for web hosting
3. How to make your domain name point to your web host
4. How to create a basic web page
5. How to set up an ‘autoresponder’

While there’s not quite enough room in the report to explain each of these steps in depth, I can assure you that they are quite easy once you’ve seen how to do them.

Creating a web page, for example, is a lot easier these days because most web hosts offer a “what you see is what you get” type of site design software that looks and functions a lot like a word processing program.
Also, you’ve always got the option of finding someone more technically savvy to help you - maybe a neighbor, relative, friend or even a freelancer that you hire to do the whole set up for you.

Now, let’s talk about this idea of doing affiliate marketing without a website.

The thing to understand is that your affiliate is your key to earning commissions. That link needs to be somewhere on a website, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be your website.

For instance, let’s say you created a promotional video and uploaded it to you YouTube. There’s a ‘description’ area that you can fill in for the video, and this information appears on the page YouTube creates to serve your video.

If you want to do so, you could drop your affiliate link into that description area.

Any traffic going through your affiliate link there would be YouTube traffic. You’re basically ’stealing’ both their traffic and their website capabilities. Make sense?

Some affiliate marketers love doing this sort of thing, but there is a definite purpose to having your own website, and to capturing targeted leads.

Why We Use Websites and Lead Capture

The two primary reasons for having your own website are as follows:

1. You can send whatever traffic to it you want, and control what that traffic sees when it arrives.
2. You need a web site in order to put up your “lead capture form” for collecting the names and email addresses of your visitors.

Again, let’s look at why you’d want to do things this way. First, why do you want total control over your traffic? It is quite simple: if you control what your visitor sees, then you control what he thinks.

That sounds more Orwellian than intended, but it is an important truth.

First impressions are very important, and you’ll be a lot more successful in your affiliate business when you control what information your prospects see about the affiliate product you’re promoting, and when they see it.

Second, there’s the matter of “following up” with your visitors. If someone comes to your website, looks around for a few seconds and then leaves, you’ve lost a potential sale.

A certain percentage of your visitors are going to leave, but many of them would be happy to receive more information (follow ups) from you.

In order to send them that information, you have to have a way of contact them. That’s why you collect their names and email addresses.

By giving you that information, they indicate their interest in your information, and you can follow up on that via email.

Instead of losing the visitor (a potential customer), you can ’slow drip’ information to him in order to ‘pre-sell’ or persuade him towards buying a particular product.

This method works because people like to be sold to, when you do it right. Give them free information. Show them the benefits of the product you’re promoting. Make them focus on the solution or end result of owning the product.

The ability to follow up is the number one reason for an affiliate to own a website and lead capture system. You can prep your customer to be in a buying frame of mind before he reaches the merchant’s web site!

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Popularity: 70% [?]

Many people first learn of affiliate marketing during the course of absorbing all the information they can about Internet marketing and home-based businesses.

The people selling you the information are, of course, Internet marketers.

Hence, many people decide to start their affiliate marketing journey by promoting Internet marketing related products.

Some ‘gurus’ will tell you not to do this, and to focus on an unrelated niche, instead.

There’s wisdom in this advice, but getting your feet wet as a newbie affiliate by promoting the products you know best is also a great way to start.

Is it competitive? Yes! Can you learn a lot from promoting Internet marketing products?  The answer: most definitely!

So, rather than try to persuade you away from promoting these types of products as an affiliate, I’d like to share with you some tips on how best to succeed at the game.

Success Tip #1: Promote What You Know
While it is tempting to promote the latest ‘big name’ Internet marketing product, I’d recommend avoiding that tactic unless you own a copy of it already and have studied it thoroughly.

The absolute best way to improve your copy writing skills, as well as build a trusting relationship between you and your potential customers, is to know a product inside and out. You should be able to provide a full review of a product’s ‘pros’ as well as ‘cons.’

Success Tip #2: Build Your List Relationship
You need to build a targeted opt-in list, and then focus on building the relationship with your list. This means you’ve got to send relationship-building material - such as free gifts, articles, etc - just as often as you send out promotional emails.

Your list can be a cash cow for you, but not if you treat them like a herd. Reach out and speak to your list’s interests and needs. Let them know you’re only one step ahead of them on the learning curve, and that you’re all in this Internet business together!

Success Tip #3: Brand Yourself
What do most of the top-name Internet marketers have in common?  They have visibility. The fact that you know their names points to how good a job they’ve done branding themselves. Each one has a ‘unique spin’ on the way he does business, too.

You’ve got marketers who brand themselves as ’super affiliates’, ‘expert copy writers’, ‘masters of traffic generation’ and so on. Many of them started out as affiliate marketers before they took the plunge into creating their own products.

So, ask yourself, what will separate you from the next affiliate promoting the exact same product?

If you’ll follow just these three tips starting today, I guarantee you’ll see a huge improvement in your results. You’ll convert more customers, earn more money and be well on your way to real affiliate success!

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Popularity: 80% [?]

One of the biggest mistakes made by novice affiliates is diving into their marketing campaign without a solid affiliate marketing strategy.

What does it mean to have a strategy, and why is it so important?  These are the questions we’ll examine in this article.

Any affiliate marketing strategy worth its salt will cover multiple levels of planning. In other words, your strategy should include things like: how you will present your offer to your market, how you will drive market traffic to your web site, how you will convert your customers.

Why?

Quite simply, you must learn to think of the entire sales chain from beginning to end. Conversion is crucial to each step in the process.

For example, getting someone to click on your pay-per-click advertisement should be considered a ‘conversion’ because the individual has taken the desired action of clicking an ad that leads to your site.
Once that visitor reaches your site, you must determine how you will convert them into ‘leads.’  Typically, you’ll capture the visitor’s name and email address to an opt-in list. In order to do this, you need a strategy for creating an attractive opt-in page offer.

Yet another strategy comes into play when you’ve gotten the lead onto your list. Your follow up email series must be designed to convert that lead into a customer.

However, conversions on new leads will not make up the bulk of your profits. If you desire serious affiliate income, you also need a post-sale follow up strategy.

What types of follow up offers will you send to your list of existing customers? This is important because the repeat customers are really your bread and butter.

Finally, think about how to expand your affiliate business.

Do you want to remain in the same market niche indefinitely? If not, consider your long-term strategy. You can replicate your current affiliate model into another niche.

This will add an additional stream of income to your bottom line, and is a great long-term strategy for building your own affiliate empire.

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Popularity: 67% [?]

Can’t seem to catch a break with your affiliate marketing efforts?

Spending too much money for too little return on investment?

Affiliate marketing can be as ‘easy’ as it looks from the outside, but you’ve got to focus on real, proven marketing tactics to make it work ‘big time’ for you.

Unfortunately, many people come to affiliate marketing with no idea what a truly successful affiliate marketing campaign should look like.

What you don’t know that you don’t know can hurt you!  So, let’s look at the top 3 reasons for affiliate marketing failure. If you’re having a rough time, I’ll bet you’re making at least one of these critical mistakes.

Mistake #1: Incomplete understanding of niche targeting
Have you ever asked yourself what it really means to target a niche? It’s not just about ‘widgets’ versus ‘blue cheap widgets’.  Key words can tell you a lot about the way a broad market breaks down into sub-markets, but they can’t give you the complete picture.

Niche targeting is as much about identifying the right *solutions* or products for the market as it is about identifying the market proper.

Any time you’re researching a niche, it is always a good idea to check out the top-selling books and magazines targeted towards that niche. What this will do is give you a better of idea about your market’s true needs and concerns.

Once you have this information, sit down and think about your ideal customer. What type of solution does he want?  Is your market looking for ‘fast’, ‘cheap’ and ‘easy’ solutions, or are they looking for something more comprehensive or of higher quality?

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Popularity: 80% [?]