Archive for February, 2010
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.
Affiliate Marketing Spy Tips
When it comes to affiliate marketing, spy skills can be extremely valuable. That’s not to say you should be tracking down fellow affiliates and tailing them in their car. Rather, you should be looking for their online activities and figuring out how you can duplicate their successful efforts.
Whenever you decide to enter a new niche, you should take a look around to see what other affiliates are doing. To ignore that is to practically ask for failure.
- For PPC, search related keywords and see what ads come up.
- For SEO, search related keywords and see which pages are in the natural results.
- For social media, pick the sites you want to focus on (like Twitter or Squidoo) and search your keywords there.
Other types of marketing can be harder to spy on, but the same concepts apply. You need to look around the market before you dive in.
Just seeing someone around doesn’t mean they’re doing well, though - and you don’t want to copy unsuccessful campaigns. To help weed out the bad ones, try the following tactics:
- For PPC, watch the advertiser for a while to see if they continue running their ads. If they keep things running for a few weeks, there’s a good chance that what they’re doing is working for them.
- For SEO, watch to see if there is continued development on the site. If it’s not working out, they’ll probably let the site die. SEO is harder than PPC, though, because it’s much slower. Often, it’s best to simply see if the terms they rank for are high traffic terms, then build on their efforts.
- With social media, watch to see if the users you’re spying on continue to create new content. That’s a great determination of whether things are working.
Do You Need Affiliate Marketing Coaching?
A lot of new affiliates want to know if they need affiliate marketing coaching, or if they can get by with just a standard self-study course. The answer is that it depends on the student. Some new affiliates need very little help, taking to marketing like fish take to water. Others, on the other hand, may enter the field with fewer technical skills or less of a marketing mindset, and those students can benefit greatly from extra coaching.
But how do you know which one you are? Consider these questions - honestly - when you’re trying to decide if you should seek out coaching help.
- Do you work well independently, or do you have a tendency to procrastinate? A coach can keep you on track if you need an extra push.
- Do you have a solid technical background, or do you pick up on computer tasks easily? If you have trouble figuring out your DVD player, a coach can significantly cut down your time and frustration in the early learning stages.
- Do you find yourself reading through courses with a lot of unanswered questions? If so, a coach may be able to save you a lot of time.
- Do you have a lot of implementation questions that you can’t seem to get answered through simple Google searches? An experienced affiliate marketing coach will probably have the answers or be able to help you get them much quicker than you could find them on your own.
- Do you have room in your budget for a coach? If hiring a coach is going to cut into your household or advertising budgets, it might be better to try to befriend other marketers on forums. If you have room in your budget, though, a coach can be a huge asset for any new affiliate.
Coaching is an extremely effective way to cut down the amount of time you need to learn affiliate marketing and start making money. Have you worked with a coach? What was your experience like? Leave comments!
Affiliate Marketing Training That Works
I’m going to let you in on a little secret about affiliate marketing training. It’s one you won’t hear often, but it’s also one that anyone who’s been in affiliate marketing very long knows to be true. Here it is: There is no single magical program that will make you a millionaire.
“What??!” you’re thinking, “But what about all the sales letters and their promises??”
I’m not saying that sales letters are lying, or that you can’t find a system that will teach you things that can make you rich. Actually, what I’m saying is just the opposite. Virtually any recent, reputable training program out there can teach you the skills that you can use to create a solid income or even get wealthy online. What matters is that you follow the training, apply what it teaches, and continually work to improve and refine your skills.
It also matters that you choose a training program that teaches promotional methods that suit YOUR skills. If you can’t make a landing page to save your life, a course on PPC marketing with Google may involve too many new skills for you to have success in a reasonable amount of time. On the other hand, if you can barely put together sentences in your chosen language, a course on article marketing probably isn’t the best use of your money.
Basically, I want to encourage you to stop buying every product on the market and to stop worrying so much about finding THE system. You may not find the right one on your first try, but ultimately, the system that is going to work is the one that suits your skillset and the one you actually follow through on.
Getting Approved for CPA Marketing Networks
Many affiliates start out with networks like Shareasale and Clickbank, which are relatively easy to get approved to. What’s harder, though, is getting approved to a CPA Marketing network like Azoogle or Clickbooth. These networks often run lead-based offers that are prone to fraud, so they have to be especially cautious about who they approve. That lets them ensure that their advertisers receive the highest quality of leads possible, and it makes the payouts higher for everyone.
Still, the process can be intimidating for a newbie. Even worse, a lot of networks are starting to become more strict about the type of legitimate affiliates that they approve. Some are starting to recognize that it takes a lot of manpower to help newbies and that the bulk of their volume comes from established affiliates, anyway. So, what’s a new affiliate marketer to do? We’ve created a handy list of tips that can help you get approved.
- Make sure your application is in order. Don’t list any fake information, and make sure that you list a phone number that you answer regularly. They WILL call.
- Make a sample landing page, even if it’s only a landing page template. This helps them to see that you know what you’re doing.
- Get a referral. Often, it helps if a more experienced affiliate is willing to vouch for you. Some training programs will even do this through special arrangements they have with affiliate networks.
- Be professional when they call. Don’t talk about how you’re just getting started or how you want to quit your job. They don’t need to know your life history, and it won’t help your application. Just tell them how you promote products and what kind of traffic you use.
- Attend industry events. If networks meet you in person, they see that you’re real and that you’re serious about what you do.
Above all, you just want to make sure that the network gets the impression that they can trust you and that you won’t need so much help that you’re a drain on their staff. You may not have success with the first network you try, but if you persist, you will be successful.
Don’t Get Discouraged: Learning Affiliate Marketing Can Be Tough
When you start learning affiliate marketing, everything looks great. The idea of making money from home without a boss is incredible, and the earning potential can make it seem like the answer to all your problems. You start out feeling excitement about the new life you’re beginning.
Then you hit your first speed bump. Maybe you start paying for traffic and you don’t see any conversions. Maybe you create a page that you feel is perfectly optimized and Google never gets around to sending you any traffic. Or, you might be doing social media and getting all your accounts banned. These things happen, and when they do, they can be very discouraging.
You have to understand, though, that affiliate marketing is like anything else worth doing. It takes time and effort to get to where you need to be. Unless you are exceptionally lucky, you will have setbacks and discouraging days. Just know that if you keep working at it, you will get past those moments.
If you’re the kind of person who gets discouraged easily, it can be very helpful to have other friends who are doing the same thing you’re doing. Many online marketing training courses offer forums where you can talk to other members learning the exact same types of marketing, and there are also quite a few free forums with more general affiliate crowds where you can meet others.
It can also help if you try to think of each small failure as a necessary step in getting to success. Each time something doesn’t work, you’ve actually learned more about what you’re trying to do. If you’re careful, you can avoid the problems in the future, or use what you’ve learned to further refine your efforts.
Nobody is perfect, and nothing good comes too easily. Keep working and you’ll find the success you’re aiming for!