Affiliate Marketing Training: Questions to Ask
Before you buy any kind of affiliate marketing training, there are a number of questions you should ask. Too often, we let ourselves be swayed by a fancy sales letter or a cool promotional video, but with so much at stake, it’s important to be cool and rational. Next time you’re thinking about a big training investment, go through these questions first. You won’t always be able to get precise answers, but the responses you get can also tell you a lot.
- Do you offer a money back guarantee? What do I have to do to get it?
- What is the average affiliate income of your students? What percentage of your students are profitable? They probably won’t have exact answers, but you will learn a lot by how they respond.
- What is your background? How long have you been in the industry?
- What does your course teach? What does it leave out?
- Do students need any tools to follow your strategies? If so, how much do they cost?
Depending on the nature of the product, you may be able to come up with other questions that are relevant. The main thing here is to examine each product with an objective eye. By having a checklist, you encourage yourself to really examine things before jumping in headfirst, full of optimism. Dare to be a little skeptical. Questioning someone else’s product or system doesn’t mean that you’re questioning your own ability to succeed. It’s just good business.
CPA Marketing Tactics for High Payout Offers
A lot of affiliates starting out in CPA marketing like to focus on small payout offers like zip and email submits. Those offers are frequently very easy to convert, but they can also pose a lot of challenges. Because they pay out so little, they are very difficult to pair with paid advertising.
Promoting offers with higher payouts can be very profitable, but few affiliates have what it takes to make them convert. To get started, consider these tips.
- Expensive decisions need trust. Don’t expect to throw up a short, unprofessional landing page and rake in the cash.
- Expensive decisions frequently need time. Make sure the offer you’re promoting has a long enough cookie, or that you have a plan in place for staying in touch with your prospect (such as email capture).
- High payout offers need more testing dollars. In general, 2-3 times the offer payout is a good testing budget. There are exceptions, such as cases where a single keyword or traffic source eats the entire budget - but it’s a good average metric. For that reason, a $100 payout offer needs a much larger testing budget than a $1 email submit offer.
It’s not impossible to promote high payout offers. In fact, it can be a great long-term strategy if you put in the needed time and effort. Just make sure you’re delivering quality and professionalism before you expect to see results.
Learning Affiliate Marketing From Blogs
When you’re learning affiliate marketing, there’s a temptation for many of us to stick with guides or ebooks. Unfortunately, that’s like getting all of your education from textbooks. It just doesn’t do a good job of providing a comprehensive education. Just as with anything else, you need to combine your textbook education with real world experience and current news on your topic. That’s where blogs come in.
Now, before I go any further, let me emphasize that I am not trying to encourage you to overindulge in blogs. Too much is just as bad as too little. Action is vital.
Most affiliate blogs can be categorized into a few groups:
- General Affiliate Talk - These blogs are typically very broad, and they include a combination of personal performance reports, industry drama, and occasional news. Although they’re usually run by a single affiliate and they’re not always very regular, these can be a great source of sneaky tactics and general updates when something huge happens.
- Industry News - These blogs are usually written by multiple authors, and they tend to be updated more reliably than more general affiliate blogs. Often, these blogs are related to industry conferences or magazines with the funding to pay writers.
- Niche Blogs - These blogs are typically like the more general affiliate blogs, but with a narrower focus. Often, you can find blogs focusing on SEO, PPV, PPC, or social media.
To maximize your learning without spending too much time, try to choose a mix of blog types. If you notice a lot of overlap, there’s a good chance that you’re reading too many blogs. You can also try using an aggregator like AffBuzz.com, where popular posts rise to the top and the remainder can be scanned quickly on a single page.
Learn Affiliate Marketing Everywhere
Although a lot of people think you need expensive courses and memberships to learn affiliate marketing, there’s a lot to be learned everywhere you look. Have you ever heard that statistic about how many hundreds or thousands of ads we all see in a given day? Take a moment to think about that as a budding affiliate marketer. That means that every day, you have hundreds, if not thousands of opportunities to learn about marketing from some of the top companies in the business.
Even better, you can learn from sources that aren’t ads. It may not seem immediately obvious, but consider these methods for thinking critically about the way advertisers and marketers connect with their audiences.
- Watch the magazine and newspaper covers. A huge amount of thought goes into covers. What topics resonate with each magazine’s audience? What are the hopes and fears conveyed on the cover? What is the demographic for that publication? And of course, focus on the copy they use to make people pick up the magazine and actually buy. Words can be powerful.
- The next time you’re in a restaurant, take a look at the clientele. Is it a certain demographic? What kind of decor is used? Is it typical of the decor for restaurants that appeal to that type of clientele? Don’t be afraid to start generalizing and picking up on trends.
- Look at packaging. Your landing pages are a lot like packaging. If you notice certain trends for certain types of products or demographics, keep that in mind when you’re making landing pages for those demographics.
The moral of the story is that you should never stop learning. Everything you do is an affiliate marketing learning opportunity if you’re thinking.
Learn to Spread the Word
Although the idea of inventing a valuable new product or service from scratch is certainly a glamorous one, it’s not necessarily realistic. Most inventors these days hold numerous degrees in the sciences, and they make their discoveries at the microscopic level. In truth, one of the best ways to make money online is to take preexisting ideas and give them a slightly new spin. In some cases, it’s as easy as finding an untapped demographic and making them interested in what you’re selling.
Just like with brick-and-mortar stores, market research plays heavily into the development and spread of franchises. The originator of the product or service will trust the company’s branding and reputation to a few select franchise owners, who will in turn spread the word to new customers. Online, this process is known as affiliate marketing. For an upstart business owner, learning affiliate marketing can be a smart, fool-proof way of getting ahead on the Internet.
For the New Affiliate: Online Marketing Guidance for Free
For the new affiliate, online marketing can be a cold field. Luckily, though, there are sources that can help. I do my best to provide quality content here, and other affiliates have also been kind enough to put their tips out there for free, too. Recently, noted affiliate Jonathan Volk created an affiliate marketing guide that he offers for free at his website, JonathanVolk.com.
As with anything, the key to being successful with what you learn in the ebook is putting it down at some point and actually implementing the tips. Any good, working affiliate can give you great advice, but if you don’t try it, you’ll never find out if it works for you.
Also, as you’re getting advice from different sources, remember that each and every expert is going to have slightly different opinions on different issues. That doesn’t mean that one or the other is wrong, just that there are different ways of getting to the same goal - and that each one can be a great method for that person. In fact, you may find that the methods which ultimately work for you are slightly different from what anyone you’ve learned from does.
Have you come across other great free resources or reports on affiliate marketing? Where did you find them? Did they help you, or do you find that the quality of free information is usually lower than what you pay for?
New Affiliate? Internet Marketing Doesn’t Have to Be Intimidating
To a new affiliate, internet marketing can seem incredibly complicated or even impossible to learn. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. Unless you’re already very familiar with computers and marketing, it will still be a little tough, but there are ways to make the entire process much easier.
- Choose a specialty and stick with it. Until you have a very solid understanding of your specialization, don’t try to branch out and learn everything. If you want to do SEO and build free traffic, focus on that. If you want to do social media, pick a couple of sites and really learn what it takes to succeed there. Even if you’re not successful, you’ll be simplifying the process of finding what you’re good at.
- Find a mentor. If you can afford to pay for help from a successful mentor, that’s ideal. Remember, too, that you’re probably going to need to pay that person for his or her time, not some “percentage of your success after coaching”. People want to know that you’re serious and successful affiliate get those kinds of offers all the time. If you don’t have the funds to hire help, get active in a forum of affiliates or find a good coaching forum. People don’t necessarily have to be successful to help out with a few questions and keep you motivated.
- Purchase a course in your specialization. Note that I didn’t say you should buy 20 courses on all different types of internet marketing. Just figure out the top 1 or 2 courses or ebooks in your chosen area and then read them.
- Learn to spy on your competition. Spying on competitors can give you a great idea of what’s working. Just make sure that you don’t end up spending all your time looking and not enough time actually taking action.
Above all, try not to get discouraged. It can be extremely frustrating to teach yourself affiliate marketing, especially when your friends and family have no idea what you’re doing on the computer. It’s all worth it, though, when the checks start showing up in your mailbox.
Is a PPV Affiliate Marketing System Right for You?
With Google on a rampage lately, it seems like PPV courses have become the affiliate marketing system of choice for many. Even still, a lot of people don’t understand what PPV is - and they don’t understand if it’s right for them. Before buying into an expensive system, ask yourself whether it suits you.
What is PPV Marketing?
PPV marketing is when advertisers serve ads through pop ups and pop unders, based on sites and keywords that they target. These ads are paid for on a per-view basis, and they are not considered spyware. The way they’re powered is that people download games and screensaves and other applications they want. When they install them, the company also lets them know that they will be installing a toolbar on their browser. Once installed, that toolbar can generate popups at any time on the user’s computer.
Who Should Do PPV Marketing?
Although PPV marketing doesn’t require the kind of writing skills or page building skills that might be required with article marketing or Google ads, it still requires some talent.
- Technical ability - users should be able to understand the multitude of tools that simplify the occasionally overwhelming task of choosing targets and implementing tracking.
- Good startup capital - PPV networks typically require initial deposits of anywhere from $50-1000. It can also take a significant amount of money to test out traffic sources and get something profitable. If you’re counting your pennies, it’s best to stick to cheaper forms of advertising until you get a steady income.
For those who are well-suited to it, PPV represents and enormous income opportunity right now. If you’re not, though, it can also be a great way to lose a lot of money. Always know yourself and know your weaknesses!
What is Affiliate Marketing Like As a Career?
A lot of people love the idea of working in their pajamas and making tons of money, but they don’t always stop to wonder, “What is affiliate marketing like as a career?” That’s a shame, too, because affiliate marketing as a hobby is very different from affiliate marketing as a career.
As an affiliate hobbyist, you can afford to work “when you feel like it”. When you are a full-time affiliate, you don’t have that luxury. In all likelihood, you’ll spend your first couple of years working especially hard to make sure that you have a comfortable cushion to your finances in case campaigns fall apart or some kind of disaster occurs.
As an affiliate hobbyist, you can afford to skip critical steps like market research or tracking. You’ve got a career to fall back on. As a full-time affiliate, every step you skip represents a blow to your income and security.
If you’re like most people, you almost definitely think you’re ready to work from home. Even if you’re making a bit of money, though, be sure that you’re truly ready before taking the leap. If at all possible, do a trial run where you take a week away from your normal job and see what it’s really like to spend an entire week working from home. It won’t be a perfect test (since the desire to quit your job adds to your motivation), but it will give you an idea of what distractions and issues you may need to deal with before going full-time.
You can also prepare yourself better by talking with other full-time affiliates. Be direct. Say, “What is affiliate marketing like as a full-time career? What is the hardest part? What worries you?” You alreay know the amazing upsides - so try to get more of the downsides to help balance your perspective before you put your entire lifestyle at risk.
None of this is to say you shouldn’t quit your job and become a full-time affiliate if you’re making a good living at it. The questions here are designed to help you make sure that you’re ready for the responsibility and difficulty of motivating yourself day after day in this challenging career.
The Elements of a Good PPC Affiliate Marketing Program
Because affiliate marketing is so technical and strange to many, the number of new marketers who seek out help in the form of training courses is huge. But what should a good affiliate marketing program include? It varies depending on the type of program, so we’ll start off by talking about what you should get in a PPC affiliate marketing program.
- Thorough details about the differences between advertising with Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (unless they specifically focus on one and that’s made clear up front).
- Lessons on optimizing your ads for maximum qualified clicks - not just click-through rate. You want a high click-through rate, but not at the expense of relevant traffic.
- Quality score insights. Quality score is more important every day as networks struggle to eliminate low quality advertisers, and advertisers become more competitive with one another.
- Landing page tips, including dynamic keyword insertion. If a course is telling you to make a simple 5 page site, it’s outdated. Those old school tactics don’t cut it anymore with reputable search engines.
- Tips on picking good offers and products to promote through PPC.
Although a good course will include much more than this, you should consider these elements the bare minimum. If you’ve started out in a course that doesn’t include something you see here, it’s probably time to move on to a new course.