Archive for the ‘affiliate marketing tips’ Category

How To Generate More Sales, Profits & Commissions For
 ANY Affiliate Program With
 Incentive Marketing

By Brian Terry on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

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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 “” 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…

Become a free Big Selling Affiliate Partner here
Get your Big Selling Affiliate links and stats here

Popularity: 1% [?]

Lead-Capture Systems that Present Your Affiliate Offer

By Brian Terry on Saturday, July 26th, 2008

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!

Become a free Big Selling Affiliate Partner here
Get your Big Selling Affiliate links and stats here

Popularity: 32% [?]

Internet Marketing Affiliate Program Success Tips

By Brian Terry on Friday, July 25th, 2008

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!

Become a free Big Selling Affiliate Partner here
Get your Big Selling Affiliate links and stats here

Popularity: 34% [?]

Top 3 Reasons for Affiliate Marketing Failure

By Brian Terry on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

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 . 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?

(more…)

Become a free Big Selling Affiliate Partner here
Get your Big Selling Affiliate links and stats here

Popularity: 32% [?]

Affiliate Marketing: 3 Tips for Increasing Traffic from Videos

By Brian Terry on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Affiliate videos are all the rage these days. The more personal, interactive ‘touch’ of video presentations adds up to more traffic and more sales when you execute the technique properly.

Getting traffic from videos requires more action than a simple video upload to YouTube. You’ve to couple together several parts into a strategic system before the ‘set it and forget it’ traffic starts to flow to your site.

Tip #1: Distribute widely

The secret to getting your video seen, then shared, is to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. This means submitting your video to as many sites as possible, not just the ‘bit three’ of YouTube, Google and Revver.

How about iFilm, Hello World, Vimeo and DailyMotion?

Did you know there are video channels on the social networking sites like Myspace and Friendster?
(more…)

Become a free Big Selling Affiliate Partner here
Get your Big Selling Affiliate links and stats here

Popularity: 28% [?]