The Ingredients From Going From Newbie To Making Money With Affiliate Marketing
A new year and a new day, but I bet you’re thinking now that there is a different formula to becoming a successful Affiliate Marketer? Well I can tell you that you are absolutely WRONG. Yes fair enough the FTC have placed new rules here and there but the thing is all you need to do is tweak your doing for Affiliate Marketing and you still will be successful.
So what does it takes to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? The strange thing is that you have to remember the majority of people who are involved with affiliate marketing are actually not making money from it which is very hard to believe as many Guru’s and Marketers say that Affiliate Marketing is the easiest way to get started. Personally I fully agree, as there is no better way to get started than getting started for free in my eyes!
What happens though is those who are just starting out within Affiliate Marketing get all excited about making millions and are already planning out there new house etc etc. But the true fact in front of them is they actually do not know where to begin! Yes fair enough affiliate marketing is free to start but that just gives you the basics of signing up for Clickbank and then where do you go from there? So it’s all good stating the facts that Affiliate Marketing is FREE but if you do not know where to begin you are going to end up been the majority who fail within Affiliate Marketing.
So this is what you have to know with Affiliate Marketing, once you get started with it these three words will start to make more sense, I call them the three E’s of Affiliate Marketing:
Easy
Effective
Effortless
So we need to shift ourselves from thinking “It’s easy but I don’t have a clue!” and actually find a winning formula to start raking in them affiliate checks.
So what I have here is some needs for you and your affiliate marketing journey which will make the three E’s seem so true and believable to you.
Your Own Website
If you are involved with any form of Internet Marketing then having your own website with your own domain is very important. With your own website it shows you are professional and credible. The most easiest and effective way is to start your own website is by creating a Blog. Blogs are so easy to create and look very professional which is the starting point of marketing. Once you have your blog up and running and you start to get some traffic to your blog it will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.
Quality Content
One of the most powerful tools for building quality content for your website is writing relevant and informative articles. Consider this, almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, on the Internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more-trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation on the net is a good step in building loyal customers and articles help establish credibility.
Auto Responder
If you want to be successful within Affiliate Marketing you need to be in it for long term success not short term. The old fashioned way of promoting affiliate products would be to send the prospect straight to the product page you get a slice of commission and then you never see that you keep on doing this. With that process in mind you are only going to achieve short term success. For long term success what you need to be doing is not sending your prospects straight to the product. But what you need to do is get them to your website first so you can capture their email address. This is where long term success comes into play because once you have their email address instead of sending them to the product page letting them buy and never having contact with them again, in this case what you can do is go onto offering them products over and over again so instead of making commission once of a buyer you can now go and make even more money of just one customer.
Incentives
Competition is extremely tight in the Internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects which is why I spoke about having an auto-responder. Offering a free report or a free gift encourages your prospects them to give you their email address so you can then promote products to them again and again. You can present free software, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.
You can make Affiliate Marketing as easy as you want to or as hard as you want to but with these basics in place you are on the right track to figuring out why so many people rave about Affiliate Marketing and within time you can be one of those people.
How Affiliates can become Article Marketer
If you’re at all familiar with Article Marketing, then you know that the main thrust behind your articles is the bio box or resource box which is located at the bottom of all articles. This is where you put a link to a significant website that you’re trying to promote.
But that can be a real problem when you’re attempting to promote a product that isn’t your own.
Affiliate links can be long and very ugly, not to mention obvious. So it becomes pretty difficult to get your readers to see you as an expert when your links have all those “=”, “?” and long arrays of numbers and codes in it.
To add to the problem, most of the article directories now strip out html coding in both the article body and the bio box and hyperlink your URL instead.
So hiding your long affiliate link behind some coded text is pretty much out of the question too. Which leaves you to post your articles with your affiliate link hyperlinked in your bio box. And as you probably know, it’s awfully hard to hide something that’s neon blue against a background of black and white.
There are, however,a few things you can do to hide the fact that you’re promoting an affiliate product. Some of them have some potential drawbacks, but when you’re desperate, anything is better than nothing.
1. URL Shrinkers:
Pros: These are usually free to use and can quickly change any link to a much smaller, cloaked link. You just have to paste your long affiliate link in the box and click one button to get a mini link that will take visitors to the same site.
Cons: Your new URL will have the link shrinker’s domain name. If they are a popular service you might find your links timing out when their servers get over worked.
Seasoned marketers usually know what a shrunken URL means (affiliate link).
2. PHP Script Rerouters:
Pros: Allows you to create alternate links directly on your own domain. Good for Article Marketing because they usually have you place the script in a folder named “recommends” or something similar. So your link looks like . . .
“yourdomain.com/recommends/theirproduct”
Cons: You have to manually tweak php files and upload them to your server. Then you have to have a system where you can keep track of all your real affiliate links, what you’ve renamed them and where they are on your server.
3. Desktop Link Management Programs:
Pros: You fill in a few lines on a form, click a couple buttons and your new links are created and uploaded to your server for you. Your real affiliate links are stored in the system along with the name and location of your rerouted links. Plus you’re able to easily modify the whole process.
You can create hundreds of links for one product, which is a big plus for article marketing because if you use an article submission program you can load all your different links into different bio boxes, which solves the html code stripping problem in the directories.
Cons: They don’t come free. There’s a price to pay for ease, speed and efficiency. Prices vary, but expect to pay at the lowest around $30.
In any event, there are ways to successfully turn an Affiliate Marketer into a high powered Article Marketer. Affiliate links don’t have to look like affiliate links anymore, which opens things up for Affiliate Marketers to use this highly effective marketing venue.
3 Simple Steps For Newbies To Start In Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an arrangement between an online merchant and affiliate, in which the affiliate earns a commission for generating sales, leads and/or clicks for the merchant’s web site. The main affiliate sites are Clickbank, Paydotcom and Commission Junction
Affiliate marketing works in a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant gains opportunities to advertise his products for free to a larger market which will increase his sales. The more hard-working affiliates he gets, the more sales he can expect. By getting affiliates to market his products and services, he is saving himself time, effort and money in looking for possible markets and customers. When a client clicks on the link in the affiliate website and purchases the product, recommends it to others who look for the same item or buys it again, this way the merchant leverage his chances of earning. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer benefits from each customer who clicks on the link in his website and who actually purchases the product or avails of the service provided by the merchant. Usually the affiliate gets commission per sale, which can be fixed percentage or fixed amount. The best is that it won’t cost a single dime to join an affiliate program.
If you want to be an affiliate marketer and make money out of the Internet, you may follow these three most basic steps to start your effective affiliate marketing campaign.
Your first step is to identify a particular niche you are interested in or passionate about so you won’t be bored and forced to develop your affiliate web site later on. Focusing on a specific area you known well, it will help you bring out your best. Here are a few places you can research on – ClickBank Paydotcom, Marketplace, AssociatePrograms.com, LinkShare.com, CJ.com etc
Secondly is to look for good paying merchants and high converting products .Make a list of good paying and high converting affiliate programs for your chosen niche and create a website. In choosing the products, you must also consider the support they are giving – Marketing materials may include articles, text links, banner ads, classified ads, reports, etc.
There are many affiliate networks and affiliate solution providers that can give you info on the most profitable products and best paying merchants. So be wise enough to choose the right affiliate program.
Now that you have decided which products to promote and the merchant you are supporting and have created your own web site with a domain name and reliable hosting, you are ready to promote. This is the toughest part, since it is through this that you would be able to increase traffic to the business website, sales and of course, profit. In affiliate marketing, it is possible to earn large sums of money in a short span of time if you use the right strategies and methods.
On how to promote the products would need a separate discussion. You must continue to educate yourself by reading books, courses or other articles online about the best and proven advertising techniques.
Remember, there is no quick path towards success. Affiliate marketing may seem very tempting due to numerous encouraging testimonies of merchants and affiliate marketers alike who have benefited from it, but it really involves in a great deal of hard work and persistence. You also need to be creative and flexible.
Most affiliate marketers don’t understand this, so when they don’t make sales, they quit, look for other programs and carry on the same mistake. In the end, they said that affiliate marketing is just one of those scams in the Internet. You can work your way to great success if you employ the right strategies in affiliate marketing. You can make money as an affiliate marketer if you willing to do what it takes.
