Posts Tagged ‘learn online marketing’
Learn Affiliate Marketing From Your Competitors
When people are trying to learn affiliate marketing, they often look to expensive courses and end up spending thousands and thousands of dollars trying to get started. This a huge mistake.
Don’t get me wrong - affiliate marketing courses can be tremendously helpful when you’re just getting started. A good course can lay the foundation for everything you will learn as you progress. Once you have the basics down, though, you need to step away from the courses unless there is a very good reason to purchase another (such as learning about an entirely new discipline within the field). What a lot of people don’t realize is that they can save thousands of dollars by using their competitors to learn affiliate marketing.
Regardless of what kind of affiliate marketing you want to do, there’s a way to spy on your competitors.
- If you want to learn more about email marketing that works, sign up for newsletters in the niches you hope to promote.
- If you want to do SEO, search the phrases you want to rank for, then use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see the backlinks of the people who are already ranking for those phrases.
- If you want to do PPC, search the phrases you want to bid on and see who is bidding on them and what kind of landing page they’re using.
- If you want to do PPV marketing, install popular toolbars on your computer and check out what the other marketers are doing.
Keen observation goes a long way. The next time you’re thinking about purchasing an expensive course, ask yourself if you could learn much of the same simply by observing your peers. If the answer is no, then by all means, buy the course. If it’s yes, see what you can dig up before you pull out your wallet.
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.