Archive for April, 2010
What Affiliate Marketing Training Overlooks
Affiliate marketing training is generally designed based on the style of the teacher. That makes sense. What the training often ignores, though, is that we’re not all the same. There are three basic types of affiliate marketers, and your type plays a huge role in how you ultimately promote offers. Which one are you?
The Numbers Guy –
The numbers-based affiliate is a very logical, testing-oriented affiliate. Instead of using a lot of intuition, he or she will rely heavily on available data, then test and test while letting the numbers guide the way. These affiliates tend to be men, and they are usually very analytical in most aspects of their lives. This can be an extremely effective way to market, but it also means that you’ll typically have a higher rate of new campaigns failing, along with a bit more expense to get things going. The upside is that these guys can optimize the heck out of any campaign. Once they are onto something good, they make it great.
The Intuitive Marketer –
These are the affiliates who have a pretty good understanding of the way a certain market works, and they use that intuition to craft campaigns. What they’re not always good at is testing and tracking. Even still, it doesn’t always matter because when these affiliate marketers are good, they’re really good. They tend to have a much lower failure rate early on, but without a lot of work, they often lack the ability to really optimize and scale a campaign.
The Relationship Marketer –
These affiliates may share traits with either category, but the fundamental difference is that they’re audience builders. They don’t care as much about guessing demographics or optimizing campaigns because they’re building a following and marketing to those people specifically. When these affiliates are well-liked, they can be hugely successful on their limited follower base. The downside, of course, is that not all followers spend a lot of money, and marketing strictly to fans can be a big limitation on total income.
Which of these affiliate types are you most like? Are you a hybrid, or do you find that you have to work really hard on a particular skill? Share in the comments!
CPA Marketing Hit Again – Acai Lawsuits
CPA marketing is an incredibly exciting field, given the possibilities for overnight riches. However, what you don’t always see is the potential for immediate losses. That’s especially true if you don’t stay on the right side of the law.
For years, those of us who paid attention to ads watched as certain affiliates lied, cheated, and stole their way to millions. they suggested celebrity endorsements that didn’t exist, they used fake images to demonstrate weight loss that never happened, and they promoted the most questionable of companies. Today, some of those people are finding out exactly why it’s not a good idea to try to cheat the public in that way.
Oprah and Dr. Oz were frequently used as testimonials or endorsers of numerous acai berry products that affiliates promoted. Although it’s true that Dr. Oz and Oprah had discussed the potential of acai berries, they certainly didn’t endorse all the questionable products that flooded the market. Recently, they sued a number of affiliates and companies that were involved in this mass deception and abuse of their images.
The affected affiliates learned a hard lesson, but those of us who are smart will learn from their mistakes rather than repeating them. Make sure that you promote companies that actually deliver on their promises. Even a minimal amount of research can save you a lot of trouble down the road. You should also make sure that your advertising is in accordance with FTC guidelines and your own personal moral code. You’ll still make a good living, but you’ll sleep a lot better at night.
Make a Business Plan and Stick to It
As a highly motivated entrepreneur, you might be experiencing a sense of frustration. Instantaneous success just isn’t a realistic expectation; it takes savvy and patience to get ahead in business, especially on the Internet. Given the proper tools and strategies, you can excel. The real trick is to prioritize your time in an efficient manner. As your own sole employee, it’s up to you to sit down and hammer out a business plan.
If nothing else, be sure that website marketing is positioned near the top of your list of priorities. If no one knows about the products or services you are offering, it’s impossible to do any selling. By employing affiliate and CPA marketing, you can tap into proven expertise and help spread the word about your offerings. The world of e-commerce is competitive and congested, but you can still get the edge if you associate yourself with the right people.
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!
The Failed Affiliate: Online Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
To a failed affiliate, online marketing can seem completely impossible. Most of these people just need a little distance to get some perspective, though. There are a million ways to make money on the internet, but most affiliate marketing failures can be narrowed down to just a few mistakes. I’ve covered some of the most common ones below.
- Failure to act. Successful internet marketing is not about having a magical technique – it’s a series of actions that are taken over time, with the cumulative effect of earning money.
- Failure to persist. Too many affiliates quit just before the point where they would have found success. You must stick with it.
- Failure to consider the human element. It’s not just a matter of putting up ads and figuring out the mechanics. You have to have some basic understanding of your market and your product if you want to be truly successful. That’s why it’s such a good idea to start off with markets you already understand, such as a hobby you enjoy or a field you’ve worked in.
- Losing focus. The fact that there are so many ways to make money means that there are a million ways to lose focus, too. When you add in online distractions to the real life distractions we all have, it becomes very easy to see why focus is a problem for so many failed affiliates.
Although just reading this list won’t help you get past the common problems that so many affiliates face, it will help you become more aware of them as issues in your own life.
Have you dealt with any of these issues? Feel free to share how you’ve gotten past them!
The Smart Affiliate: Internet Marketing for the Long Haul
To the average affiliate, internet marketing is about fast profits, regardless of how short-term the results may be. That’s exactly why the FTC has been jumping in to police flogs, and why Google and Facebook are making it increasingly difficult to use their advertising platforms. Most affiliates just aren’t in it to generate quality, long-term results.
That said, there’s a lot of money to be made (and gray hairs to be saved) in sticking with a long-term strategy in your affiliate marketing efforts. Next time you want to tackle a niche, don’t think of the fastest way to arbitrage traffic. Instead, think of how you could build a serious resource that would actually impress or help people. If you feel like you need to hide your site from human reviewers or resort to strange techniques to prevent bans, you’re doing it wrong. The point here is to STOP feeling like you’re earning on borrowed time.
But what if your site doesn’t make much money? What if you put in all that time and you’re still not earning much? Here’s the beauty of it – you can ask for help! With a lot of affiliate marketing, it’s scary to do that. Someone could rip off your landing page or steal your keywords. When you create a complex, valuable site, though, you put in a LOT of effort. Even if you show it to an entire forum and ask for suggestions, the odds of anyone copying you are extremely slim (especially since you’re saying it isn’t making money yet!) Even better, your first-mover advantage means that you’re already established in the niche, and competitors would have to work much harder to overtake your progress. You can’t say that about most forms of affiliate marketing. Building a quality site is so much more than just matching traffic to the advertiser.
I’m not saying you should never go for the quick money – but if you want a long-term, sustainable business, you should consider putting a couple of high quality projects on your to-do list.
Have you ever taken this approach? How did it work out for you? Let us know in the comments.
Affiliate Marketing Systems for Success: Have a Friend
A lot of us are very concerned with training courses and simple affiliate marketing systems, but there’s actually a better “affiliate marketing system” that anyone can take advantage of. It goes back to our days in school and the “buddy system”. Remember that? The teachers would pair off students so everyone would have a better chance of getting back to the classroom. The same thing applies with affiliate marketing. If you pair off with another affiliate, you’re going to have a much better chance of achieving profitability.
But why is it so much better to have a partner? There are a few reasons. First, a partner holds you accountable. If you don’t do any work on your affiliate campaigns, your partner is going to nag you. If you get frustrated, your partner can help you through it. If you have a question, you suddenly have two brains to pick instead of just your own. And of course, by providing those benefits to someone else, you’re diminishing the inherent loneliness in working on a computer by yourself all day.
Of course, an affiliate partner can also dramatically improve your networking. By having a close friend in the industry, you’ll gain access to their network, and you’ll be able to pair others in your network up with your partner as is appropriate. It makes you more of a “connector” and people tend to remember that kind of help.
In general, there’s no good reason to avoid meeting other affiliates and cultivating close relationships with those that fit you best. Whether you meet them on message boards, chat rooms, or real life events, the important thing is that you have someone to share the day-to-day grind with.
Building Your Internet Marketing System: What You Should Know About Gravity
I recently had the opportunity to discuss my personal internet marketing system with a Clickbank representative, and what she said completely rocked my world. But first, let me tell you a little about how I’ve been using Clickbank as an affiliate.
I do a lot of PPC and SEO to sell ebooks, and I’ve always had a very specific checklist for picking the ones I thought would have the best shot at being winners.
- Good landing page? If not, it’s not going on my to-do list.
- Good payout? 50% or higher commission is a necessity.
- Solid gravity? I usually looked for somewhere in the 30-100 range to avoid “duds” or saturated niches.
It turns out, I was ALL WRONG on the gravity. Although Clickbank tells us that gravity is determined by the success and volume of an offer, they leave out one key detail. Each separate affiliate promoting an offer is counted once. That means that an offer with 100 different affiliates who each make just 1 sale would actually have a higher gravity than an offer with 2 affiliates who make 1000 sales each month. As such, gravity is not all that useful to us affiliates.
Now that I’ve learned to take gravity out of my evaluation, life is much easier. I’m finding all kinds of untapped markets that I would have shied away from before. So, if you haven’t done Clickbank in a while, I’d encourage you to take a second look with this information in mind.
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!