Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing Program’ Category
Affiliate Marketing Coaching: Google’s New Structure
A lot of affiliate marketing coaching courses give you information as it was at one static point in time. It’s extremely rare to find a course that gives you information that will help you make money in the future, or make money on the latest changes in how things are done. Of course, we all know that these are some of the best opportunities, given that other affiliates haven’t always jumped on board yet. That’s why I’d like to take a moment to talk about how Google’s new search results format could help you make more money.
Have you noticed that they added a new lefthand panel to the search results? You don’t always see it, but it’s definitely there often enough to make a difference in how we use search engines. With these options, you can decide whether you want the basic results you’ve already been given, or whether you want to narrow down your results to a specific type of entries (like books or shopping items).
What’s interesting is that very few sites are optimizing for these new options, and there is surprisingly little competition in certain categories (like blogs). When you’re looking at a keyword now, don’t just look at the main results. You should also look at the different categories and see if there are any specific opportunities in one or more categories. These opportunities won’t be around and wide open forever, but it’s worth looking at now to see what you can do.
Learning Affiliate Marketing: Link Building Tips
Learning affiliate marketing is never easy. That’s why it’s crucial that you learn to focus on small skills in a specific area. In this case, we’ll talk about link building. Admittedly, this is a complex topic of its own, but we’re going to focus on the most basic elements that every affiliate should know.
- Check out your competitors’ links. Use the Yahoo! Site Explorer or the link: command at Yahoo.com and you can get a great list of up to 1000 of each competitors’ inbound links. From there, just contact the relevant sites and ask for a link, too.
- Create content that would be highly linkable. Reference materials are especially good for this. Just add a useful reference section on another part of your site, then contact quality sites that would be interested in that material. For example, a section of kid-friendly history resources would be of interest to many schools and libraries.
- Submit to quality directories. Don’t waste your time on submitting to thousands of directories. Instead, submit to the quality, human-edited directories and then get on with your life.
- Comment or create content on social media and blog sites with dofollow links. Use the SearchStatus plugin to figure out which links are followed and which links are nofollow, then focus your efforts on the sites that do not use nofollow tags.
Any other good linking tips? It’s a complex area, and there’s always room for more ideas!
Advertising in the Internet Age
For any business, one of the best things you can do to increase your visibility and boost your clientele is to advertise yourself effectively. While this used to be very difficult or expensive for people, the digital age has made it a bit easier. With the prevalence of the internet, it’s not only easier for people to start a business, but it’s also easier to market that business. While radio spots and television ads garner unprecedented exposure, they are usually far too expensive for the average startup.
That’s why so many people who are looking to generate an internet income turn right back to the internet for marketing. If you are trying to find out what is affiliate marketing or how to utilize social networks, there is a plethora of free advice to be had. There are so many forums where you can post videos or promotions for your business at no cost. Maybe you’ve created a funny and creative ad campaign touting your business. If that’s the case, post it on YouTube or other forums where videos can be posted and shared for free. Or you could even place an ad on Craigslist. Whatever the venue, if it doesn’t cost you can any money, all you are out is your time. And if it garners you any interest, you can count it as a success.
Affiliate Marketing Coaching: Hot Niches for 2010
What kind of affiliate marketing coaching blog would this be without the occasional niche recommendation? Anyone who’s in the affiliate marketing industry is probably well aware of the niches that went down late last year and early this year. Almost overnight, offers for acai products and other rebill schemes started drying up. Those that didn’t disappear became considerably less profitable as they started listing the billing terms more prominently. Credit report offers also stopped converting as well because of a new required disclosure on the pages.
So what’s working now? There are plenty of good offers out there if you know where to look. Let’s take a look at some of the top offers for the remainder of 2010.
- Dating offers – Dating has always been hot, and this year it will be even hotter with so many affiliates and companies getting away from the “sketchy” side of the industry.
- Auto insurance and warranty offers - These perennial offers will rise again because of their reputation for stability.
- Mobile offers – Most people aren’t quite sure what to do with it yet, but everyone knows it will be hot at some point in the near future.
- Physical products – Many of the affiliates who left networks like CJ and Sharesale will be headed back that way as CPA networks struggle to find new, diverse offers to fill the void left by rebills.
Overall, the theme for this year is a return to long-term, stable offers. If you keep your eye on what’s reputable and delivers value to the customer, you’ll do just fine.
Preparing for Learning Affiliate Marketing
There’s plenty of information out there about learning affiliate marketing – probably too much, in fact. What you rarely hear about, though, is the preparation for getting into affiliate marketing. Too many people enter the field with insanely high expectations and a huge amount of stress from personal situations – they’re going broke, they can’t pay their bills, they have sick kids, etc. It’s definitely less than ideal. While life is never perfect and the ideal never seems to happen, there are steps that you can take prior to throwing yourself into affiliate marketing, and they will make your life much easier.
- Figure out where you’re wasting time. We all do it. Whether it’s watching TV that doesn’t really satisfy us, or playing mindless games on the computer, or just spending too much time on the phone, there’s always a way to cut back on wasted time and make life more efficient. This isn’t about cutting out all the fun or ruining your relationships; it’s about being conscious of what you’re doing with your time and only using it for things that (a) must be done, (b) get you closer to your goals, or (c) make you deeply and truly happy. Ask yourself if each activity falls into one of those categories, and if the items that MUST be done can be done any more effectively.
- Simplify your life. Affiliate marketing takes money before you make money (in most cases, anyway). Sell off what you don’t need, eliminate as many monthly payments as you can, and cut back expenses wherever possible. Make sure your entire family is on board. When you’re not worrying so much about debt, it’s much easier to focus on doing things the right way.
- Explain what you’re doing. Make sure your family or spouse knows your plan, and understands why you’re doing what you’re doing. There are enough negative thoughts and influences without your family adding to it.
By actively preparing your life for the challenge of affiliate marketing, you will have a much better chance of succeeding. Learning affiliate marketing does depend on acquiring knowledge, but it also depends on defeating your own demons.
Learn Affiliate Marketing: Tricks for Enticing Blog Posts
When you start to learn affiliate marketing, a lot of people focus on the nuts and bolts of it. They focus on learning how the networks work, how advertising works, and how to set up the technical side of things. What a lot of people don’t focus on, though, is the actual marketing. The simple tips below can go a long way towards improving your copywriting and blog posts.
- Use words like “top secret”, “never before revealed”, “important”, “amazing”, and “incredible”. These power words draw in viewers and make them curious about what you have to say.
- Pose a question. Instead of declaring what you have to say, rephrase it as a question. Get people to start mentally reaching for an answer. Once they start thinking about it, they’ll want to read on to see if their thoughts are the same as yours.
- Know your purpose. Are you going for SEO traffic? If not, don’t make a keyword heavy title. Instead, go for maximum intrigue. It’s possible to do both at the same time, but it’s rare.
- Use pictures. Pictures liven up the page and keep people interested.
Is blogging part of your affiliate marketing business plan? If not, it should be. I’m not saying that you need to start up a “how to make money online” blog, but nearly all of us could be diversifying our efforts with a good niche blog. Feel free to share your comments and experiences in the comments!
Conferences – Highly Effective Internet Marketing Tools
If you’ve never been to an affiliate conference, you probably don’t realize what effective internet marketing tools they can be. Shows like ad:tech, PubCon, LeadsCon, and Affiliate Summit draw thousands of attendees, all of which play some role in the internet marketing industry. In fact, it’s virtually impossible to find industry leaders who haven’t been to quite a few of these kinds of conferences.
Even if you’re not earning a lot just yet, it’s a good idea to get to a conference as soon as possible. Consider the benefits:
- You get to mingle with others who are in the position you want to be in.
- Networks host great parties.
- You find new tools and traffic sources before other affiliates.
- You get out of the house.
- You get inspired.
- You can ask for clarification on things that confused you before.
- People take you more seriously because they see you in person.
A lot of people look at conferences and they see the insanely high price tags of buying the top conference pass. Ignore that. Unless you have a lot of money to blow, you’re going to be better off with the free (or almost free) conference/expo pass that lets you get out onto the exhibit floor but not attend most of the sessions. The real value is going to be in your casual interactions, not the corporate-dominated speeches that people are paying for.
So next time you see a conference advertisement, consider going. Find out where the parties are being held, brush up on your social skills, and have a great time with it!
Why Affiliate Marketing Tools Are a Good Buy
First off, let me just clarify that not all affiliate marketing tools are a good buy, and not all are a good buy for all affiliates. What I want to emphasize here is that, for an affiliate who is making any money at all, a tool can often take that income to the next level. Unlike courses, which fail to be useful after a certain point (in most cases, anyway), tools are designed to simplify tasks and improve efficiency.
Just as there are a lot of gurus who know what they’re talking about, there are also a TON who have never made a dime online. Unfortunately, those guys have made people skeptical of affiliate marketing products in general, and it makes a lot of new and established affiliates avoid products that could save them huge amounts of time and money.
The key is to be sensible, and to focus more on tools that streamline your processes as opposed to courses that will teach you something you already know. If you really need to get education on a specific area, there is nothing wrong with a course – but in most cases, you’ll find tools to be much more useful over the long-run.
Affiliate Marketing Training Seminars – Should You Go?
If you’re on any affiliate marketing newsletter lists, you’ve probably been invited to pay for an affiliate marketing training seminar at some point. They’re often held in exotic locales or on cruise ships, and they’re almost always very expensive. Still, the prospect of getting face time with a known expert is always enticing. So – should you go? Consider this a good checklist for making the decision.
- Can you afford it? I don’t mean, “Can you scrape together enough by using 4 credit cards and selling your motorcycle?” If you can’t pay for it without too much pain, you’re better off staying home or waiting for a cheap conference like ad:tech or Affilaite Summit where you can do after hours networking for the cost of a few drinks or dinner.
- Are you already actively running campaigns? Not just one, but have you tested at least a dozen or more campaigns? If not, you’re not going to have a lot to show your instructor. Lack of previously tested campaigns can also indicate that you just don’t have the drive that it takes to make the most of an expensive seminar.
- Will you have testing money left over afterwards? If the seminar is going to blow your new campaign testing budget, don’t go. You’ll learn a lot more (in most cases) from actively testing campaigns.
- Are you expecting to become friends with the instructor? Don’t count on it. Teaching students has a tendency to make even the nicest instructors a bit jaded and sick of newbie questions. If you want to befriend someone, you’re better off getting successful and then approaching. They’re not going to view you as an equal if you’re their student.
- Will you have time to take action? If you don’t have time to run campaigns, don’t expect an event to magically energize you and help you find more free time.
If you can pass through this checklist without any issues, it’s definitely worth considering an affiliate marketing training seminar. Otherwise, stay at home for now and revisit the idea when you’re ready.
Learning Affiliate Marketing From EBooks
Learning affiliate marketing with ebooks is always a controversial topic. If you go to any affiliate marketing forum, you’ll see a vocal group of people who think that all ebooks are a rip-off and that no one should buy them. You’ll also find those who have purchased almost every book on the market. What you won’t find in most cases, though, is a sane middle ground.
It’s definitely true that most people who buy an ebook will fail to make money based on what they’ve read. You’ll also find, though, that most people who have taken Algebra at some point will fail to be able to do much more than basic Algebra as an adult. That doesn’t mean that Algebra is a scam, or that it doesn’t work – it just means that some people like it more, some people are more motivated than others, and some people will just decide that it’s not right for them. And of course, some people won’t be good enough to succeed at it. That is true of basically anything.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t study Algebra, or that you shouldn’t buy ebooks. Take a balanced, rational approach to things and only buy those books which seem very likely to help you. And remember, also, that most ebooks have a 60-day guarantee. If you’re terribly dissatisfied with one, you can always ask for your money back.
In short, don’t let the naysayers deter you from buying ebooks to learn affiliate marketing, but don’t become overly addicted, either. There’s a time to study and a time to put plans into action, and it’s important that you do both if you want to succeed.