Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing Program’ Category
Learning Affiliate Marketing for Free – Part 2
We’ve discussed learning affiliate marketing for free before, but it’s a topic that never really gets old. Today, I wanted to talk about how easy it is to get free copies of internet marketing and affiliate marketing training materials. Instead of repurposing other content for IM, you’ll be getting the core materials and classes for free.
- First, recognize that you can’t be as picky. Not all courses are available for free unless you consider yourself a thief.
- Become an active member of the affiliate marketing community. For example, if you are a frequent poster on Warrior Forum, you can frequently get sample copies of new and popular affiliate marketing courses in exchange for a review.
- Check affiliate marketing blogs for free materials. Many bloggers build email lists, and they offer outstanding mini-ebooks and reports in exchange for joining their lists. You can either create a “junk mail” account, or simply unregister as soon as you get each free bonus.
- Use forums and build your own courses. Often, you’ll find incredibly generous bloggers or forum members who write long, detailed posts on specific affiliate marketing topics. Gather a few together for the topic you’re interested in, and you won’t even need any fancy products to learn the material.
Although there are plenty of affiliates who have spent many thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of dollars on different products, there’s no need to buy a huge number of affiliate marketing courses. Limit yourself to those which seem truly useful, and get as much information as you can for free. It’s all out there for the taking.
What Everyone in Affiliate Marketing Should Know About New Twitter URLs
Most of us in social media affiliate marketing are aware of Twitter’s plans to change the way their links work. In short, their new plan means that it’s going to get much, much harder for the people who use bulk follower tools and spam complete garbage to anyone who will click on it. They realize that those types of promotions provide an extremely negative user experience, and they’re hoping to minimize that.
In the future, all links are going to be routed through t.co links (Twitter’s own shortener) and also through the Promoted Tweets platform. This means that they’re going to get significantly more data on what’s going on, and they will ultimately be able to cut off the traffic to a URL if they find that it contains malware or negatively affects the user experience. They’ll also be adding a feature where users can hover over the URL to get a bit of information about it before clicking. To anyone who has ever clicked on a compelling Tweet’s link, only to be greeted with some junky site, this is no doubt a welcome change.
A final added benefit of the changes is that the URLs will be even shorter than in the past, with sites like tinyurl.com or bit.ly. It just doesn’t get much shorter than t.co. For users who have a tough time keeping their Tweets short enough, this will be a great addition.
The main takeaway for us affiliates, though, is that we’re going to need to add more value to stay alive on Twitter. If you Tweet out relevant links that your followers enjoy, you will see nothing but positive changes with this new format. On the other hand, if you spew out as much spam as possible as quickly as possible, you’re going to find your profits hampered.
Any tips or ideas for dealing with the changes? Feel free to share in the comments!
Good News: Opportunities Are Out There
If you’ve been keeping up with newspapers or online sources, chances are you’ve read about mass layoffs and corporate downsizing. These admittedly harsh financial realities have drawn attention for good reason, but they’ve also overshadowed the flood of new Internet business opportunities. People need to rebound from this blow and avoid sinking into a state of despair. After all, this is still America; hard work and determination often seem to pay off in the end.
No matter their precise financial standing or tax bracket, most people want to earn extra income. Some are just trying to put their kids through college in the hope that they can live a successful life in the future. Others seek dispensable income – they desire the frills and luxury that come along with a successful business venture. Either way, the Internet is rife with ideas to help people get ahead and stay there. If you don’t know where to start, you might want to learn affiliate marketing. With little few barriers to entry and virtually no startup costs, you can begin earning supplemental income in no time.
The New Affiliate: Internet Marketing Beginnings
To the new affiliate, internet marketing is a hugely daunting new undertaking. You have to learn about the industry itself. You have to learn the technical side of things. You have to be business owner, marketer, copywriter, and tech experts (in most cases, anyway). It can be hard to know where to start and what to focus on, but the tips below should help you get started.
- Avoid the technical as much as possible. If possible, start out by creating your website on a free service like Blogger.com or Squidoo. You have less ability to customize, but it will also help you avoid the technical roadblocks that stop so many new affiliates. You don’t have to own a website to make money. If you DO decide that you want a website, go with a simple shared hosting plan and use WordPress or another template-based site manager to keep things easy. You can always make it more complex later once you’re already making money.
- Just do it. You’re going to screw up – many times, actually. We all do. The point is to get started and not let yourself get weighed down by reading and deliberating. If you’re using paid traffic, set a low daily budget and keep an eye on what’s happening. If you’re using free traffic, you don’t have to worry nearly as much.
- Sign up with just one or two networks. Don’t worry if you can’t get accepted at every network under the sun. You only need one network to make money. There’s no sense in wasting a lot of time learning the interfaces of every network at this point in time.
It’s tough getting started, but the key is not to get too discouraged or scared. If you can conquer your own personal issues, chances are good that you’ll be successful.
The 30-Minute Affiliate Marketing System
A lot of us pay thousands of dollars for affiliate marketing help, especially those of us who have day jobs and don’t shy away at the idea of an expensive affiliate marketing system that can help us quit our jobs. The truth is, though, you don’t usually need that. To be certain, a good course can cut the learning curve down – but it’s not a requirement for success.
The 30-Minute Marketing System is incredibly simple and costs little or no money to implement. Each day, regardless of whatever else you do, spend 30 minutes actually DOING something. Not reading. Not thinking of ideas. Not idly typing in potential domain names. Spend 30 minutes each day creating content, building campaigns, tweaking your landing pages, or doing social media for one of your sites. Set a timer if you have to.
30 minutes is not a huge amount of time, and it puts pressure on you to accomplish a lot quickly before the time is up. It leaves much less time to sit around worrying about whether something will work or wondering if it’s possible to do something. Instead, you’ll just try it.
Now, if you’re already doing just fine with productivity, don’t switch to this system. 30 minutes will probably result in less total work accomplished. However, if you find that you’re never getting anything done, consider trying this for just a couple of weeks. As you start to break through your own productivity blocks, you may find that you don’t need the 30 minute timer any more. Or, you may find that you’re ready to move it up to 60 minutes, 90 minutes, or even longer. The points of this affiliate marketing system is to start taking action. 30 minutes is enough to get something real done, but not so much that you are going to be intimidated.
What do you think? Have you ever tried anything like this? Would you?
How Do You Explain, “What is Affiliate Marketing?”
Anyone who spends any amount of time in affiliate marketing will eventually have to answer the question, “What is affiliate marketing?” For those who aren’t highly computer literate, it can take a while to grasp the concept. For others, the field is synonymous with scammers and multi-level marketers who pollute otherwise enjoyable websites with their promotions. Either way, you’re likely to encounter both confusion and stereotypes when you venture out into the world of non-affiliates.
One of the best ways to explain affiliate marketing to strangers is to invoke examples of traditional sales reps or commissioned sales people. You can point out the examples of manufacturer’s reps who go to stores, or door-to-door salesmen who go around marketing their wares. They don’t earn the entire sale. Instead, they get paid a percentage of the total sales that come through them.
Of course, people will then wonder how anyone knows you sent the sales, not to mention how you do your promotions. You can explain that you have special web addresses (most people will glaze over if you start talking about URLs) that contain a piece of code that lets the original merchant know who you are. When people click on those links and end up making purchases, you make money.
And how do you get those clicks? Well, you make websites about related topics and build a following, or you purchase advertising through other sites that already have many visitors.
In most cases, this simplified explanation will eventually sink in. It may take a little longer with, say, your grandmother, but have patience – she’ll get it someday.
How to Choose a Good Affiliate Marketing Program on Shareasale
The methods for choosing an affiliate marketing program to promote will vary from network to network. CJ has performance bars, Clickbank has gravity, and others are a bit more nebulous. Sure, you could look at the EPC or CPC (depending on the network), but that doesn’t always tell you much. There’s a HUGE different in EPC when you have a few capable affiliates promoting something with PPC and using a landing page vs. when you have a couple of newbies submitting direct links to their favorite “get paid to click” networks.
With Shareasale, there are a few things you want to look at with any program. First, even though it’s not always useful, take a look at the EPC. If it’s zero, that’s a good sign that no one is promoting the program. Depending on how the site looks, that could be either a fantastic opportunity or a good warning sign. You’ll have to use your judgment on that one. If the average commission is high and the EPC is low, it could be a sign that either it doesn’t convert well, or that a lot of bad marketers are sending way too much untargeted traffic. It’s tough to make a judgment here, so just make a mental note and consider it in light of the other things you’ll uncover later.
Next, take a look at the reversal rate – both 7 day and 30 day. Some merchants batch process merchandise returns once monthly, so if you see an extremely high 7 day reversal rate and a normal 30 day reversal rate (5% or lower), it’s a good sign that their program isn’t as bad as the 7 day reversal rate would seem. If the 30 day reversal rate is high, though, steer clear of the program.
You should also look at the merchant page itself. Is the page attractive and well-organized? Does it look amateurish? Does it have a phone number at the top encouraging users to call in their orders instead of placing them online (thereby cutting out your commissions).
Finally, take a look at the average commission. If the average commission is $1.00, you’re probably not going to have much luck promoting the program with PPC or PPV marketing. It might work, but it’s highly doubtful. On the other hand, if the average commission is $80, you have a lot of room for advertising expenditure. Again, look at both the 30 day and 7 day figures to get a clearer picture of things.
As you get more experience in affiliate marketing, you’ll eventually develop your own techniques for evaluating merchant programs. For now, though, this list should help you get started in evaluating affiliate marketing programs on Shareasale.
Affiliate Marketing Training: Simple Ways to Make Money on Twitter
When it comes to making money with social media, no affiliate marketing training is complete without a section on making money with Twitter. As marketing goes, Twitter is actually pretty straightforward. After all, there’s only so much you can do with 140 characters. Still, there are a few strategies that top users have in common.
- Follow thousands of users and unfollow those who don’t follow you back. This is the cornerstone of most Twitter building activity. The only caveat is that you must do it at a controlled pace in order to avoid getting your account banned. Don’t follow more than 50-100 people each day, and don’t unfollow in the same day that you follow.
- Encourage retweeting. It takes creativity, but eventually, you’ll get the hang of how to structure your tweets so that other people retweet more often.
- Tweet to famous people. If you can get people to reply, that’s a lot of eyeballs on your Twitter username – not to mention a subtle endorsement that you’re “cool enough” to get a celebrity’s attention for a few brief moments.
- Try Sponsored Tweeting. If you’re not having much luck promoting products, you may still be able to earn a tidy sum by accumulating followers and getting paid to tweet.
Have you had much luck with Twitter in the past? My hunch is that, while plenty of people are earning money there now, the numbers will only increase as we get better ideas about how to deal with this particular marketing channel.
You Do the Marketing, They Do the Rest
We’ve all heard the old saying that “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” But what about all of those success stories we hear and read about all the time – those people who go from working at an unsatisfying dead-end job one day and making vast sums of dispensable income the next? Spotting a potentially lucrative opportunity is the first and often the most important step toward financial success.
Affiliate marketing is a concept that has flourished online in recent years. As its name suggests, the work is all marketing-related. There’s no cause to worry about any other aspects of the business because they are handled by an affiliate. An affiliate marketing system is ideal for burgeoning entrepreneurs because it allows you to associate your business with a well-established company and their product line.
Affiliate Marketing Coaching: Improve Your AdWords CTR
Good affiliate marketing coaching should always be a combination of motivation, broad learning, and concrete tips that you can put into action right away. To that end, I wanted to pass along a quick tip that has served me extremely well over the years that I’ve been using Google AdWords to promote products.
As you probably know, click-through rate (or CTR) is an important factor in your cost per click, your quality score, and the overall success of your campaign. In most cases, a higher click-through rate is a good thing. The one exception would be if your high CTR comes at the expense of relevance or pre-qualification. Obviously, if your product is a paid product in a sea of free items, you will find that your click-through rate drops off when you include the price in your ad. In those cases, it’s usually smarter to keep the click-through rate lower to ensure that you’re only getting those viewers who might actually be willing to pay for your product. Sure, you may be a great copywriter, but it’s not easy to get people to pay for something when they’re thinking “free”.
So that example aside, let’s talk about how we can get a higher CTR for qualified viewers. Adding the keywords to your ad text helps, since Google highlights the keywords in ad copy. However, most people know about that and already do this. Bidding higher also helps, but we can’t all afford to do that.
Something you can do very easily, though, is to use an unusual symbol. This makes your ad stand out a bit more, thus increasing the number of people who read and click on your ad over the competition. You can use dollar signs, trademark symbols, copyright symbols, and almost anything else you can slip past the AdWords reviewers.
Do you have any other tips for improving the CTR of your AdWords ads? Feel free to share in the comments!