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Affiliate Shakedown: Complete Guide
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Table of Contents
Introduction
6
Why Become An Affiliate Marketer?
8
Getting Started: Focus & Fortunes
One more thing…
10
13
Choosing High Profit Markets & Products
14
Keyword Research Simplified
28
Creating Your Money Pages
36
Building A Quick Squeeze Page
39
Building A Profitable Mailing List
43
Traffic Generation Strategies
48
Pay Per Click Marketing
48
Article Marketing
48
Forum marketing
60
Social marketing
62
Video marketing
64
Conclusion: Final Words
65
Also make sure you test!
65
Getting Accepted Into Affiliate Networks
67
Winning Campaigns: Formula
69
Affiliate Resources
75
Affiliate Resources: Other Marketplaces
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75
LEGAL NOTICE:
This book is © 2021 Don Corgilo, All Rights Reserved. You may
not sell this book, give it away, display it publicly, nor may you
distribute it in any form whatsoever.
While reasonable attempts have been made to ensure the
accuracy of the information provided in this publication, the
author does not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions or
contrary interpretation of this information and any damages or
costs incurred by that.
The author does not warrant or represent at any time that the
contents within are completely accurate due to the rapidly
changing nature of the Internet.
This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business,
accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek
services of competent professionals in legal, business, accounting,
and finance fields.
While examples of past results may be used occasionally in this
work, they are intended to be for purposes of example only. No
representation is made or implied that the reader will do as well
from using the techniques.
The author does not assume any responsibility or liability
whatsoever for what you choose to do with this information. Use
your own judgment.
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Any perceived slight of specific people or organizations, and any
resemblance to characters living, dead or otherwise, real or
fictitious, is purely unintentional.
In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no
guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to rely on
their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act
accordingly.
You are encouraged to print this book for easy reading.
COMPENSATION DISCLOSURE: Unless otherwise expressly stated, you should
assume that the links contained in this book may be affiliate links and either the
author/publisher/reseller will earn commission if you click on them and buy the
product/service mentioned in this book. However, the author/publisher/reseller
disclaims any liability that may result from your involvement with any such
websites/products. You should perform due diligence before buying mentioned
products or services.
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Introduction
Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative, fast-paced,
profitable industries online. With just a single domain name and a
hosting account, you can start to build your online income with
very little time and costs involved.
Better
yet,
getting
involved in affiliate marketing requires
absolutely no previous experience, and just by integrating a
handful of proven techniques that will help you choose the best
products to promote while setting up an entire system that is
designed to pull in targeted traffic, you can be up and running in
just a few short days.
Within this ebook we will cover both the basic steps involved in
becoming an affiliate marketer, but I will also take you behind the
scenes by revealing the exact formula that successful affiliate
marketers
use
to
build
powerful
campaigns that drive in
unstoppable commissions, 24 hours a day - 7 days a week.
As an affiliate marketer, you first need to understand (and apply)
the fundamental strategies used to build your springboard, and
then once you have begun to generate payments and understand
how the system works, you can easily expand your efforts to
include additional methods of traffic generation and of course,
new campaigns.
My goal is to teach you the basic techniques so that you can
quickly cut your teeth on some of the most profitable strategies
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ever revealed. By the time you finish reading this guide, I'm
confident that you will be equipped with the knowledge and tools
you need to build a successful career in this business.
Another thing to keep in mind is that these strategies can be
applied to multiple campaigns, including both promoting digital
and physical goods and services.
Regardless of the niche market you choose, the very core remains
the same. You first need to learn how to research products and
markets, how to build traffic sucking content pages, and how to
seamlessly integrate your affiliate links into every page you
create.
What you actually promote doesn't matter in terms of how the
system works. You can promote a combination of ebooks, audio
programs, video tutorials as well as tangible items that add value
to your campaigns and in many cases, drive in higher commission
payments.
Don't let this guide sit collecting digital dust after you've finished
reading it - you HAVE to take action if you want to get anywhere…
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step."
Lao-tzu
So without further delay, let's start building your very first affiliate
campaign!
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Why Become An Affiliate Marketer?
Have you ever thought about what your ULTIMATE, “dream”
business would be? The one that you'd happily wake up in the
morning and jump out of bed, anxious to get to work?
Well for the majority of us, affiliate marketing provides the
greatest learning experience possible because not only can you
begin to make money instantly, but you never need a product of
your own, don’t have to deal with customer support issues, or
worry about payment processing or refund requests! You don’t
need a merchant account, and there’s very little set up time
involved.
In other words, YOU make money and let the developers and
other businesses do the heavy lifting! You can set up your entire
business in a matter of a few days and by following the strategies
revealed in this guide, you can begin generating targeted traffic to
your affiliate campaigns absolutely free.(and nothing beats free
traffic!)
As an affiliate marketer you are also not restricted by the number
of niche markets that you get involved in, and rather than being
committed to a single product and trying to make that as
profitable as possible, you can just find the best converting offers
already available, create campaigns around them and make
money!
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No massive, time consuming and exhausting testing, tweaking
and “trial and error”. You can simply promote the products and
services that are ALREADY proven to sell!
Plus, as an affiliate marketer you are given 100% FREEDOM. You
aren’t strapped to a customer support desk or having to spend
hours updating your products. You can leave when you want to,
take time off when you want to and your affiliate campaigns will
continue chugging along like a well oiled machine, pulling in
affiliate commissions 24 hours a day!
Sounds good?
You’re about to start living the ultimate dream of being your own
boss, with no limits on what you can earn. You will be in FULL
control of your own financial destiny and with a bit of grit and
hard work, you CAN be successful.
Interested in becoming an info product developer and making
money from direct sales? Great! But I strongly recommend
starting off as an affiliate marketer FIRST and then develop your
own products later.
Why? Well, the experience you’ll gain as an affiliate will provide
you with the tools and resources you need to create a successful
launch whenever you are ready to develop your own product.
Better yet, since you have already discovered what markets are
profitable from your affiliate campaigns, you will a) have a much
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better understanding of the kind of products you should create,
and b) have earned the money needed to reinvest into getting it
all going!
So think of affiliate marketing as the entryway into the world of
online business, where you can cut your teeth on the proven
marketing strategies that have turned ordinary folks like you and
me, into absolute success stories.
It’s your “premier” education, your portal into the world of making
money online and by starting your career off from the ground
floor up in affiliate marketing, you will be head and shoulders
above the competition when it comes time for you to develop your
own product!
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Getting Started: Focus & Fortunes
There are so many different strategies to make money with
affiliate marketing that it is often quite difficult to figure out what
your very first step should be.
Should you choose products? Research keywords? Develop
websites? Focus on traditional affiliate programs or try your hand
out with CPA offers?
Above and beyond, before you can even make that very first
decision, there are two things you need to pay attention to:
Assets and Reputation:
Assets
You need to think about your future business. I mean REALLY
think about your overall objective.
You want to build a growing business that consists of valuable
assets, not a fly by night, short-term business that doesn’t have
the staying power to last longer than a few months.
Long-term sellable assets are products, websites and domain
names, brands are also assets but just make sure that brand is
not you, because if the brand relies on you and your name you
can't really sell it!
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Short-term techniques are fine when you are just starting out, to
help you learn the ropes and get your foot in the door, but you
need to switch your strategy so that you are building profitable
websites (assets) as soon as you have enough experience.
Reputation
There are eyes everywhere - and people are very vocal online,
watch out that you keep a good reputation in your niche and just
in general.
If you email a bad customer to give them a piece of your mind
then it could end up on forums and all sorts, destroying both your
chances of getting customers from there, and JV partners to help
you sell any products you create.
Bad news travels fast, so if you do anything like that, or even
promote bad products, give bad information etc then people will
find out about it and it will come back to haunt you sooner or
later.
But having a good reputation can open all sorts of doors! Good
news also travels, maybe not as fast and far (that's the way of the
world), but it does travel.
Imagine if you have a website in a certain niche and someone
likes what they see so much they post about it in a forum - free
traffic! Or you give such good customer service to someone that
they go and post about it on their blog or in a forum - free traffic
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again! Meanwhile you could gain a powerful JV partner or just a
loyal customer.
You never know what is round the corner on the internet, or what
the person emailing you can do to help or hinder you, so treat
everyone like gold and you should always come out on top!
Also - every time you do something to promote an affiliate
program stop and think, "If I sat down with the product owner
and told them what I was doing would they be ok with it?" - that
will stop you from promoting in ways that might get you into
trouble or again ruin your reputation (like spamming craigslist
repeatedly which seems to be popular with people teaching CPA
methods).
When in doubt, don’t do it!
One more thing…
Don't forget to treat this like an actual BUSINESS!
You need to put in the time and effort into growing your business
online as you would any offline venture.
A successful business needs to be nurtured, and the more focused
you are on your main objective, while being careful to steer clear
of the many distractions that you will ultimately face, the faster
and easier it will be to develop a profitable business as an affiliate
marketer and a future product developer.
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Choosing High Profit Markets & Products
In order to make money in affiliate marketing you need to learn
how to evaluate products from within the online marketplaces, so
that you can set up winning campaigns that are based on existing
demand.
Knowing how to choose potential products will set you head and
shoulders above other new affiliate marketers who focus only on
top commission payments or in promoting only new releases and
launches.
While the commission percentage or payment being offered is
important, it's even more important to build campaigns around
products
that
are
in proven markets, where there is an
ever-growing demand for products or services and are shown to
be evergreen.
Evergreen markets are niches where the demand never fades or
isn't based on a fad or trend.
Think of markets that have stood the test of time and are likely to
still be in demand many years from now, such as weight loss,
relationship support, health niches, gaming niches, family or
parenting niche markets and even pets such as dog training, or
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specialized niches that focus on smaller markets, that are still
extremely lucrative.
There are many different ways to first research markets and then
to hand select products from those niches that you can build your
campaigns around.
marketplace
You can begin by browsing through the
giants
including
www.Amazon.com
and
www.EBay.com to see what is consistently selling.
Tip: Check out the best selling list on Amazon or Ebay for hot
selling products and markets:
https://www.goofbid.com/
http://www.Amazon.com
With Amazon Best Sellers you will be able to quickly pinpoint a
handful of markets where products are constantly in demand, and
with their "top 10" lists you are given an even greater insight into
what titles and genres are doing well.
With Ebay Pulse, and the popular research tool available at
https://www.goofbid.com/ , you will be able to generate a quick
snapshot of the different types of auctions that are consistently
selling.
This is an incredibly easy method of conducting niche
research to determine just how popular specific products are
quickly and easily.
With digital items, the most popular marketplace is found at
http://www.ClickBank.com
where you can browse through
dozens of categories and sub-categories, building a collective list
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of potential products.
At this point you are only interested in researching markets and
products, and should be writing down every product or market
idea that you uncover during the research process. You can later
drill down into the market and select specific products to build
your pages around, but for now, all you need is a general idea as
to your overall focus and niche.
You can also choose markets based on personal preferences and
interests.
For example, are you interested in specific hobbies?
What about
parenting issues? Health topics?
If you can match high paying, in demand products with topics that
interest you, you'll find it even easier to build high yielding
campaigns around those topics as you will be far more personally
invested in promoting the websites you build and in developing
quality content around those niches.
ClickBank is easy to join, no approval process, you just enter your
details and confirm your email and you can be up and running.
Plus they have a lot of products in different niches so you can
start to test out different promotion methods and find niches you
like working in.
Finally, they are easy to use, you just grab a link and promote
that and all commissions get paid straight into your account as
soon as someone buys, you can see as soon as you go in how
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much you have or haven't made. Oh and the products are all
digital so you can get as much as 75% commission on the
products!
So to start with, head over to Clickbank.com and sign up, you'll
find a 'sign up' link at the top of their homepage that takes you to
the form you need to fill out.
Make sure your 'affiliate nickname' is something sensible as it will
be visible both to product owners and the public when they click
through your link (it appears at the top of the page and the
bottom of the payment page), take it from someone who used a
silly nickname at first that it just doesn't look professional!
You'll need to confirm your email address, but after that is done
then that's it, log into your account and you'll find 4 tabs at the
top to navigate by:
Select account settings and look towards the bottom of the page,
you'll see it asks you what your payment threshold is, how much
you want to accumulate before they pay you, and the payment
method, you can see below what mine is set at:
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Now at first you will have to be paid by check, until you have
received about 3 checks then you can't change that option, after
that you should be able to select direct deposit to have it go
straight into your bank account. I still like receiving checks in the
mail so I keep it on that!
Please note that when you first open your account you
have to get 3 people with unique credit cards to purchase
through your link before they will pay anything out to you.
This is to stop people signing up just to buy things through their
own affiliate links and effectively get a discount on everything
they buy from people who use Clickbank to process payments. If
you see this on the 'Reporting' tab:
That CDR stands for Customer Distribution Requirements and
means you need more unique transactions.
To check if you have made any commissions (which you'll do a lot
at first! I check once in the morning and once at night now) then
just login to the account, with your brand new account you'll see
something like this:
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That is where your commissions will show, grey and green bars
will come across representing how much you have earned
compared to other days and the amount will show up on the left
of the bar. At the end of the week the top part will update to give
you a weekly total.
Now you need an affiliate link to get people to click-through so
you can make a commission, the basic affiliate marketing process
works something like this:
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With the ClickBank marketplace, you are given detailed statistics
that really help to pinpoint the kinds of products that other
affiliate marketers are successfully promoting.
When you conduct a search in the marketplace, you will notice a
stat box assigned to each product that includes things like
"gravity" and the commission being rewarded.
The gravity number is important because it shows the popularity
of the product over time.
Every time the product is sold or a new affiliate joins and uses the
link the gravity of the program will change. For example, a gravity
score of 100 means a product is potentially selling better than one
with a gravity score of 20.
Here are other product related information that you should pay
attention to:
● $/sale - is the amount per sale that you would make
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● Future $ - lets you know any future commissions you can
get if the product bills them on a recurring basis
● Total
$/sale
-
totals
the
immediate
and
future
commissions to give you an idea of what the average sale
can get you in commissions
● %/sale - the percentage of every sale you make that you
get as commission
● %refd - the percentage of the total sales for this product
that affiliates have made
● Grav - this is the important one, the basic idea of this is
that it represents the amount of affiliates that have made a
sale of this product in the last 30 days.
The gravity is more involved than that and makes allowances for
the time that has elapsed since an affiliate last made a sale etc,
but just thinking of it as the amount of affiliates successfully
selling the product is enough for what we need.
So in Clickbank you need to look at the amount that you make
per sale, and the gravity, if the gravity is over 30 then you know
that the product is selling well so when you drive quality traffic to
it then it should convert and make you some money.
The products with a lower gravity are either new or they might
not have a good sales letter or offer to actually convert visitors to
sales.
Don't forget that the products with extremely high gravities may
look like the best ones to go for - but they will also be the ones
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with the highest competition due to all those other affiliates out
there trying to make sales too.
In order to find out if a product is good to add to your affiliate
arsenal,
you
will
want
to
check
it
out
at
CB
Trends
(www.cbtrends.com) which is a free service that shows visual
representation of what is on the Clickbank marketplace site
making it easier to understand.
There are some useful tracking tools that give you an easy way to
see what is happening with the products you choose including:
Popularity of the product
Earning per sale
Percent per sale
Gravity
Referrals
Commission
If you take the visual representation, combine it with what you
see on Clickbank’s Marketplace, you will have a good idea of
whether the product you’re thinking about promoting is a good
one.
Out of the 10 products that you pick to promote over time, you
will want at least 6 of them to be popular. You want to mix it up
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so that at least half of what you’re promoting is more competitive.
The rest of the products should be up and comers, those products
that are newer and building in the Marketplace.
CB Engine
CB engine shows you the new products and is an excellent tool to
use if you want to focus on the new product releases. If you are
going to work with Clickbank, which is a good first step into the
affiliate arena, CB Engine should be one of the sites you
bookmark and use.
It has a Brand New Products list, re-listed products with a ton of
information to help you make an informed choice about the
products you want to promote. Each product, new and re-listed,
has graphs and visual representations about the health and
viability of the products.
There are a couple of ways to go about finding out more about
the product or service you are about to promote. First, you can
buy the product.
Whether it’s digital or tangible, buying and experiencing the
product will usually make you a better promoter.
However, with 10 products, that can become a bit pricey, so you
may want to buy a couple products that you can afford, and look
over the sales pages only of the remainder.
When looking over the sales or pitch page, you will want to think
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in terms of being a prospective buyer. Ask yourself some basic
questions:
Does the page, headline and opening paragraph grab your
attention?
Is the page easy to read in terms of colors, graphics and layout
of the site?
Is the message being presented clear and concise and
easy-to-understand?
Are there highlights of important facts, headlines to break up
content and pictures that are relevant to the topic matter?
Does the page lead you to the logical conclusion where you
want to buy the product?
All of these things are important and will make or break you when
people come through your referral link. Having a page where you
want to buy the product will generally translate to high sales
conversions.
In that way, the traffic you drive to the product site stands a
higher chance of buying in the end. If the page left you with a
ho-hum, whatever feeling, it is probably quite possible that
visitors arriving at the site will have the same reaction.
As you go about promoting your affiliate products, make sure that
you keep track of the products that are converting well, and the
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ones that are not.
When you have a hot product that begins to taper off in
popularity, you need to be ready to quickly replace it with an
alternative product that will yield better results.
It's also important to keep a pulse on your affiliate campaigns so
that you can determine whether it's possible to create additional
pages and websites around sub niches of the main topics you are
promoting.
For example, if you find that a weight loss product that you are
promoting is converting well, you may want to consider diving
into a subsection of the market as well, such as "weight training"
or product specific titles like "how to get flat abs after pregnancy".
You always want to be on the lookout for methods of expanding
your business and maximizing your online income with additional
campaigns catering to other segments of a profitable market.
Don't get stuck with just a primary niche!
There are many hidden gems to be found and by keeping an eye
on how well your campaigns are performing, including your
overall conversion rates you will be able to create more targeted
campaigns that are bound to be winners!
Recap:
1) Choose a niche that you are personally interested
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2) Make sure that niche has existing demand
If you focus on creating a niche swipe file of products that you are
interested in, you will find keeping up with your campaigns,
generating traffic and creating content such as articles or bonus
material enjoyable which will make your job a lot easier and help
sustain the content creation process.
Note: When you begin to scout out good, solid affiliate products to
promote you want to pay attention to a few factors, including the
commission percentage you are being offered, the price of the
product, the demand of the product, and ultimately how well the
product converts a visitor into a buyer.
For example, conversion rates are usually determined based on
every 100 visitors to a site.
If 1 person out of every 100 visitors buys a product, it means that
the product converts at an estimated rate of 1%. If a product
converts 2 out of every 200 visitors, it has a 2% conversion rate
and so on.
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Keyword Research Simplified
Once you have an idea as to the niche markets and products you
are going to build campaigns around, the next step is to create
keyword swipe files that consist of highly targeted keywords and
phrases that are entered into the major search engines by people
looking for information on the niches you are promoting.
Type in (organic) traffic is not only far more targeted, but it's
absolutely free and it's important that you define your keywords
so that you can build high quality, targeted content pages that will
pull in traffic and funnel them through your affiliate link to the
merchants page.
The more targeted your content is, the far more likely people will
be to click on your affiliate links, which will result in you making
more money!
When you have a keyword swipe file, creating content that is of
interest to your target audience becomes a lot easier.
You will know what type of keywords, phrases and even questions
they are entering in the search engines when looking for products
similar to the ones you are promoting.
That means that you can create different types of content tailored
exclusively for each target base, such as product reviews that
answer the most commonly asked questions, or article content
that integrates popular keyword phrases into the title and content
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body, as to attract more traffic from the search engines.
So, how can you begin to create these all important keyword
swipe files?
We turn to Google's free keyword tool for that! Not only is it very
easy to use but it will provide you with enough information on
every single niche market that you are even considering.
And apart from using keyword swipe files in order to create highly
targeted content, by conducting keyword research prior to
promoting any niche or product, you will be able to verify that
there really is a growing demand for these products, just based
on the global search volume alone!
To start, visit AdWords Keyword Tool
Now, the first step is to enter in a broad keyword phrase that
describes your overall niche market.
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For example, if you were conducting keyword research on "how to
eliminate insomnia", that could be your keyword.
The Adwords Google Keyword suggestion tool allows you to
enter in a keyword or phrase from a possible niche that you
are considering so that you can evaluate existing
competition, active keywords based on popularity and overall
use.
When you enter keywords into the Google Keyword tool, you will
be able to generate extended listings that feature various
keywords associated with the main keyword that you entered into
the search box.
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The first column provides you with alternative keyword phrases
that you could use within your content as well as with search
engine optimization or promoting your product within PPC
marketplaces.
The second column indicates the level of competition, and in our
example above, nearly all of the featured keyword phrases appear
to be heavily targeted by existing competitors, including Adwords
(PPC) marketers.
The third column indicates the estimated number of searches
for each particular keyword, based on monthly volume.
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Keyword research can take a bit of time when you are first
starting out, but as you become more experienced with
choosing relevant keyword phrases and weeding out the
ones that are likely to be ineffective, you will be able to
create entire keyword swipe files quickly and easily, each
time you develop your article marketing campaign.
Important! You don't want to just enter in a broad keyword like
"insomnia" as it won't give you a clear idea as to "targeted"
keywords that are being entered in by potential buyers. It's
simply too generic.
Instead, think of the keyword phrases that people who are on the
verge of buying a product would enter in if they were looking for
help or information on your niche.
To target people looking to
lose weight, some of my keywords might include:
Weight Loss Reviews
Weight Watchers Review (try to target specific products
within keywords)
Weight Loss Training
Weight Loss Help
Weight Loss Programs
Weight Loss Strategies
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Weight Loss Tips
Weight Loss Techniques
When you incorporate specific product titles into your keywords
used within content pages, you will be able to generate very
targeted traffic that consist of buyers who need some last minute
encouragement to purchase the product.
Review sites are especially targeted towards luring in buyers and
generating maximum commissions from all combined traffic,
because those visiting websites after entering in a keyword
phrase like "niche market reviews" are already interested in a
specific product or service, but are looking for some last minute
information before ordering.
Be sure to exclude words like 'free', 'trial' but rather focus on
keyword phrases that someone seeking out that specific product
would likely enter into search engines.
Just by entering in a 'seed' keyword, Google's keyword tool will go
to work creating a snapshot of commonly used keywords relating
to your main entry.
The next step is to go through those keywords, sorting them by
"global monthly search" so that you have a better idea of the
overall search volume each month.
Using the Google Keyword selection tool, you can click on the
drop down menu “Filter My Results” and choose to sort by “Search
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Volume” to see just how many searches are conducted using the
different keywords and phrases.
Here is what each of the filter options mean:
Advertiser Competition
The results under this column shows the number of advertisers
bidding on each keyword relative to all keywords across Google.
The shaded bar represents a general low-to-high guide to help
you determine how competitive the ads are for this particular
keyword.
This means that the more competition, the more costly it will be
to purchase paid sponsorship on the Google pay per click search
engine (AdWords).
Search Volume
This column shows the search volume for each specific keyword
used on Google in the previous month. The shaded bar represents
a general low-to-high guide to help you determine, once again,
how competitive ad placement is for that particular keyword.
Average Search Volume
Just like the search volume it shows you results from past
searches, however this column displays average results over the
course of a year, rather than just the previous month.
Another quick way to evaluate the level of competition for
various keywords is by using the major search engines and
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directly entering in your keyword phrase, as shown below:
The phrases you should target in the beginning should
ideally have fewer than 150,000 results in Google when you
search for them in quotes, like this. “Keyword phrase here”.
Create your keyword swipe file so that you have 20-40 keywords
for each product you intend to promote and then save your
research in a text file. You'll use it in the next chapter.
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Creating Your Money Pages
One of the easiest ways of building a website is by using the
Wordpress platform. Not only can you create an entire fully
functional, dynamic website with just a few clicks, but websites
created on the Wordpress software are also easy to optimize and
usually rank better within the major search engines.
Before you create your website however, you need a domain
name and a hosting account.
These are NOT required when just starting out in affiliate
marketing, however to be able to remain in full control of your
campaigns, it’s always wise to set up your own hosting account so
that you can create a self-hosted blog that is not at risk of being
removed by a third party.
You can get a domain name at many places online.
My favorite registrar is www.NameCheap.com, which is also one
of the more affordable domain registrars. You can get a domain
name for about $9.00 (or less using coupons).
Hosting is also affordable these days, and the list of available
providers is endless. One of the more common hosting providers
for new marketers is http://www.HostGator.com
In order to develop a website that offers value to your visitors you
want to set up your blog or site to offer informative content
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including articles, honest reviews (including the positive and
negative points), and relevant information based on your specific
niche market.
The more information you provide, the more genuine you are,
ultimately, the more your visitors will trust you and the
recommendations you suggest.
One of the easiest ways to create a review site is by purchasing a
copy of the Wordpress Review script at:
The script will generate a complete review site quickly and offers
extensive customization options.
All you’ll need to do is plug in a handful of reviews, inject your
affiliate links into the content and optimize each review so that
the product or developers name is included in the title and that
your keywords are sprinkled throughout the content and you’re
good to go!
Once you have the basic structure for your review site created,
you can then spend an hour a day creating new reviews and
article content in order to keep people (and the search engine
crawlers) returning to your website time and time again.
If you plan to create an affiliate landing page or article site that
features high quality content with your affiliate links integrated,
make sure that you start off with 4-5 articles that are anywhere
from 300-500 words in length and that the articles were written
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to really pre-sell website visitors.
You need your article content to be heavily targeted towards your
customer base, while providing exceptional content that will
motivate them to click on your affiliate links and purchase the
products and services that you are promoting.
It really doesn’t have to take a lot of time to create successful
affiliate based websites. You can simply write a few articles to
form the base of your site and then add new content every week
(or every day if you have time) until you’ve created enough
content to satisfy your website visitors.
With Wordpress, you can also create content that is scheduled to
be published in the future which is extremely handy for the times
where you just don’t feel like writing content or you’d prefer to
have enough content stored up so that your website is
consistently updated and fresh!
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Building A Quick Squeeze Page
In order to build an active list of eager buyers, you will need a
way to capture them and add their information to your
autoresponder.
One of the more popular ways of doing this is by creating a
squeeze page on your website. Squeeze pages focus exclusively
on lead capture and are simply designed to obtain names and
email addresses from your visitors.
In order to do this, you need to set up a squeeze page template
that includes information that would appeal to your niche market,
along with the code for your autoresponder account.
Typically squeeze pages follow a simple format:
1) Opt-in Form (autoresponder code, that produces a mailing list
sign up form)
2) Sales Prompt – An introduction as to what information they will
receive after subscribing.
3) Product image or author photo
4) Sign off signature (you can create your own at
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http://www.vletter.com )
5) Privacy Policy ensures that their information is safe and will not
be distributed or sold.
6) Call to action (Subscribe! Sign Up!, etc)
Just like a sales page, you need to inject urgency into your
squeeze page, motivating your visitor to hand over their name
and email address, and then confirm their subscription via email.
Most of the popular autoresponder services online require
double-opt in which means that your subscriber first fills out your
autoresponder form, and then checks their email for a verification
link. This link must be clicked on to confirm their request to be
added to your list.
This protects you from being accused of spamming or sending
unsolicited email to your list. Once they confirm they want to
receive your information, you are able to mail them with free
content, advertisements and of course, useful and valid
information that will help them in some way.
Once you have generated a good size list of subscribers, you need
to ensure that you retain these people, and keep them interested
in the products and services you are either offering yourself or
promoting as a third party (affiliate).
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In order to retain these subscribers, you will need to implement
an autoresponder campaign, which is a series of emails that will
go out on pre-determined days (every day, every week, etc).
If you are not a seasoned writer, you can hire a freelance writer to
create captivating email campaigns based on your niche market.
Many of the industry’s’ top marketers use sites like
www.elance.com or www.Guru.com to find affordable writers who
are experienced in creating autoresponder sequences that are
effective.
You want to make sure that you send out the first email right
away, so when you create your first email sequence in your
autoresponder account, set the “Date for Delivery” as “0” which
means that your message will be sent immediately after your
subscriber confirms their request for information.
Apart from having an opt-in form on your squeeze page, there are
other important factors to consider:
Have a privacy policy
Make sure you write up a privacy policy and that it is displayed
where it can be red easily. This is a great way to get people to
trust you.
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Explain opt-in process
Explain the whole process of opting-in. Tell them what will happen
after they sign up. If you have a double opt-in process then
explain about them having to verify their email.
Keep everything simple
Do not make the opt-in process difficult. It really should be simple
to understand and simple to do.
Let them know what they will get
It may seem obvious, but tell them what they will be getting if
they sign up. Let them know exactly what it is and how often they
will be getting it.
Use email validation
Make sure you have them enter their email twice. This helps to
ensure that they do not incorrectly enter their email.
Have a confirmation or other security check
You should have some type of confirmation box where the person
enters a word, series of letters or numbers to verify that they are
a person who is filling in the form. This helps you to ensure that
you are not getting false signups.
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Building A Profitable Mailing List
One of the great things about being an affiliate marketer is that
we are able to focus on building and growing our own list while
having more time available since we are not required to develop
our own products.
Once you have developed a list of verified subscribers, and you
have developed a relationship with your list, you will find the
transition from being an affiliate marketer to focusing on your
own products all the easier since you will already have a network
of buyers and subscribers who know you, and what you have to
offer.
Depending on the subject you will want to create information
packs or a series that is offered for free.
Through your autoresponder, you will be able to set up
auto-responses that go out to your subscribers every few days.
These emails should NOT sell anything, but instead, focus on
offering free information, and tips on your subject.
For example, if you planned to promote a dog-training guide, your
email campaign should send out a minimum of five emails that
contain tips or tricks on dog obedience, or perhaps an article
about why it’s important to train your dog, as well as the benefits
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of doing so.
You want to get them worked up about your subject so that when
you do introduce your sales pitch, they already understand the
benefits that are available to them if they purchase.
Setting up an autoresponder sequence is simple and there are
many services online that will enable you to add an opt-in box to
your website and capture subscribers.
A few of the more popular options used by seasoned marketers
and beginners alike, are:
1) http://www.aweber.com
2) http://www.GetResponse.com
3) http://www.ProSender.com
When you sign up for an autoresponder account, you are able to
create unlimited campaigns (which is important when targeting
different niche markets).
You want to ensure that you create a different list for each subject
so you don’t confuse your subscribers with emails that don’t
pertain to their interests.
Imagine creating just a single list that consisted of people
interested in dog training as well as people interested in weight
loss.
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Sending out an email that included tips on trimming down your
waistline may not appeal (or make sense) to pet owners
expecting information on training their puppy.
In fact, if you can manage to grow a list of active subscribers,
your marketing efforts can be cut in half, literally.
You can generate an ongoing profit just from the campaigns you
mail to your list, as long as you work hard to offer value on a
consistent basis.
This means that your advertising expenses can be eliminated
completely, since if you take care of your list, they will, in turn,
tell other people about you who will, in turn, subscribe to your list
as well.
It’s a win-win situation if you play your cards right and you learn,
early on, that list building should always be the center point to
your business, regardless of what market you are in.
There are many ways to build a list of active subscribers
including:
Give It And They Will Come
Offer something free in exchange for their subscription. Be careful
to focus on offering something relevant to the niche that you are
focused on, instead of just giving any old thing away.
For example, if you are promoting a product in the wedding niche,
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you could offer a short report on “Ten Ways To Plan The
Ultimate Wedding on A Shoestring Budget”, and provide a
mini-report showcasing tips on saving money.
Of course, you will follow this up with a series of emails that
include your affiliate link where they can purchase the full ebook
or product.
Auto Responder Courses
If you are in a niche where offering training or ‘how to’ guides
would be effective, you can encourage sign ups to your
autoresponder by featuring an email-based training module, with
sequences going out once a day (or once a week) that include
instructions on how to accomplish a specific task.
Co-Registration
There are sites available online that will help you grow a list via
co-registration. With co-registration you are able to receive
confirmed subscribers that are ready to be imported into your
autoresponder service. These opt-in’s include all information such
as first and last name, IP address and even a date stamp.
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Newsletter Offer
If you have a lot of information to offer, or you just enjoy writing,
you could offer a newsletter that goes out on specific dates or
times (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc). If people like your
writing style, and you are working hard to offer high quality
information, you should find it easy to gather up a good size list in
no time at all.
Depending on your niche market, you should be able to come up
with a unique and profitable idea to focus a newsletter on.
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Traffic Generation Strategies
Pay Per Click Marketing
Once you have an offer and niche that you know how to convert;
and once you have studied how to use PPC effectively (buy a solid
training course and not just the latest 'trick'), then it can be a
great way to tap into a huge amount of traffic and possibly make
a lot more money.
One of the most underused aspects of PPC that you can try to
take advantage of is using the placement targeting option - this
means you are targeting specific sites to put your ads on rather
than placing them alongside the search results.
This can result in much lower costs per click and it also allows you
to tap into the hard work that a website has done to get the right
audience to visit the site.
But again, do not venture into the PPC world unprepared.
Article Marketing
Article marketing allows you to leverage the power and traffic of
the large article directories to get people to your site quickly and
cheaply, in fact often it can be cheaper than PPC!
There
are
a
few
important
ingredients
to
creating
high
performance Article Marketing campaigns that maximize the
overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts, while ensuring that
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you receive the most exposure possible from each article that you
submit into the online directories.
The closer you are able to target your prospective customer base
with well written articles that incorporate primary keywords, the
more traffic and exposure you will be able to generate.
All you have to do is dominate the market by creating great
articles and saturating the entire market with fresh, high quality
content.
For every product you find that you want to
promote, you should write 20 articles. You should
be able to get 20 articles out a day.
So in 5 days, a working week, you would have 100 articles written
and have 5 Clickbank.com products promoted and saturated.
Think about the possibilities if you carefully evaluated a niche
market, creating keyword swipe files of highly relevant terms and
phrases and incorporated them into your content. Not only will
this help you position yourself within the search engines, but your
visitors and readers will be exceptionally targeted!
It all begins in researching and evaluating potential markets prior
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to creating your content.
If you are planning on promoting a specific product, you should
also consider integrating both the product’s title and the author’s
name into some of the articles in your campaign, so that you can
pull in targeted leads from those searching for information on
these products.
Another added advantage is that the article is permanent,
potentially driving in fresh, targeted traffic for many years, while
that $10 on PPC would stop dead after the money ran out (yes I
do have an article still pulling in thousands of views a month even
though I don't touch them!).
Practice Increases Speed. The more you write, the
faster you will get.
There are basically two techniques to article marketing (and we'll
concentrate on EzineArticles.com for these as the other directories
just aren't that important), you either try to get ranked in the
search engines or try to leech off other people's traffic, let's look
at each in turn:
Leeching
This is a highly effective method to get some quick traffic to your
article, and if successful then it can grab you a load of traffic even
though you never appear in the search engines for any terms. The
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idea is that you leech off the traffic from the articles that are in
the search engines.
To do this takes a totally different approach, you need an
interesting title that grabs people's attention and demands a click
from them, also an intriguing introduction paragraph is needed
again to grab people's attention.
What you are trying to do is appear in the 'recently approved
articles' list on the front page of EzineArticles.com and the 'Other
recent articles' list that appears at the bottom of each article in
the same category as the one you submitted to.
If you get this right you can grab hundreds of views and clicks
(depending on the quality of your title etc and the traffic to the
articles in that category).
The trick is to make sure your article gets submitted and
approved just before the weekend.
You will need to time this right based on how long your articles
usually take to get approved, but if you can do it then as they
don't approve any new articles over the weekend you'll be in
those recent article lists all weekend and grabbing free views and
clicks!
If you have a paid account with EZA this is a lot easier as they
often approve your article in hours rather than the days it takes
non-paid accounts.
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With your article and attention grabbing title in those lists then
you not only benefit from any homepage traffic they get as you
are on the front page, but more importantly then any article in
your category which is ranked in the search engines and is getting
traffic can drive you traffic as they finish reading that article and
come to the list of recent articles with yours in it! So you get to
profit off their hard work to get ranked in the search engines!
Just make sure you write an interesting and engaging article and
have a great bio box (we'll cover that later) and you can get some
good traffic. Now onto the harder option.
Getting ranked in the search engines
Even with the leeching method then an article you submit will
quickly fall into the directory black hole and be buried by all the
new articles, never to be seen by human eyes again!
Unless your leeching article manages to get enough views to
appear on the 'Most viewed' list in that category of course which
would keep it at the bottom of every article indefinitely, but I
would be surprised if it did unless you did some other promotion
of it to get the views up (Yahoo answers, social bookmarking etc).
So the only way to get long-term traffic to and from your article is
to have it rank in the search engines for a term that people use to
look for information or products in your niche, this means you
need to do a bit of SEO (search engine optimisation).
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The first and most important thing to do is to search for a good
keyword to target, this is the key to getting this right. Don't
forget you are going for consistent long term traffic with the
minimum amount of effort possible, so don't be disappointed we
are only targeting terms with very few searches a month!
I use the Google Keyword Tool for this - so head over to
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
And make sure you have US results or 'All countries and
territories' set near the top so you see what the majority of
people are searching for, then type in your keyword, select 'Exact'
from the drop down match type box (see picture) and then click
on the 'Global Monthly Search Volume' column header to sort it by
that column:
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You should now have a list in descending order of monthly
searches, you are looking for terms with roughly 300 - 1000
searches per month, that will give you between 10 and 30+
searches a day which you can try and get to click through your
article.
You can sometimes go higher, the important thing is how much
competition there is, and going for the lower search volumes
usually means there is less competition.
If you can't find anything with low enough search volume then
that usually means you aren't using a keyword that is targeted
enough, so maybe if you struggled with the term 'gardening' then
use 'rose gardening' as long as that is still relevant to your
offer/product, the more words you add to the keyword phrase
then the more targeted you get and the less searches there will
be.
Ok so grab a term, I had to change from 'rose gardening' to 'rose
care' to get some good search volume, so I chose 'how to take
care of roses' which has 390 global monthly searches (that just
means average search volume per month, rather than the other
column which refers to just the last month and might be affected
by news items etc).
Now we take that and to search for the competition you enter it
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into Google.com with speech marks around it, this finds the pages
that have that exact term in them, they are your direct
competition as anyone who doesn't have that exact term on their
page is probably not targeting it.
Then you check how many results show up, you can see mine has
1,060 results:
That is a great number, ideally you want less than 10,000 results,
although EzineArticles is powerful and you can rank with even up
to 20,000 results in some niches.
So you have your keyword, now you need to write an article for
that keyword, first off choose an article title that includes that
keyword and precious little else, you don't want to dilute the
density of the title, we want Google to see that keyword in the
title and know our page is relevant to that search term.
But don't forget it also needs to be readable as real people will
have to decide whether to click it or not!
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For my search term that is fine, but other keywords phrases you
may need a word or two just to help them make sense, if they
need them then add them, don't be afraid to add a few words.
So my title would just be 'How to Take Care of Roses'.
Then write an article with a keyword density of about 1 - 2%, this
means for every 100 words you would have that keyword phrase
in the article 1 - 2 times.
Now some people swear by higher percentages and it can work
well, but the article has to be readable and not seem to be stuffed
with keywords, if it looks odd it will get rejected and you'll have to
rewrite parts of it.
So don't go above 2% if it looks awful, mine is quite a long
keyword phrase so I will probably stick to 1% with it. I'll write a
400 word article, get the phrase in at the beginning, the end, and
once or twice in the middle.
Just add the phrase naturally, and again if you have a strange
phrase and need to add a word or two into the middle of it to get
it to make sense, then do it.
Once you article is complete then add a bio box to it, submit it,
and then if it is approved you need to build a few links to it, social
bookmarking is probably the easiest way, and try to make sure
you get some with the anchor text (the text in blue on the link)
the
same
as
the
keyword
phrase
you
are
(WLMarketing.com can do 30 social bookmarks for $4).
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targeting
If you do all that then hopefully you will get onto the front page
and/or the first position for that keyword.
It is not guaranteed, some will stick, some won't. Some that do
stick will have less traffic than you thought and some will have
considerably more, the keyword tools are sometimes misleading.
But the idea is to get lots out there and have some stick, if you
find you are at #5 and still getting some healthy traffic then
consider getting more links to the article so you can try and get it
up to #1, but otherwise just ignore the ones that don't make it
and move on and create a new one.
Writing a good author’s bio box
Your author's resource box is the ONLY element of your article
that allows for promotion, so it's vital that you create a compelling
resource box that invokes a call to action and entices every reader
to follow through by clicking on your links.
With sites like Ezine Articles, you are able to create multiple
resource boxes, choosing one that compliments each article that
you write. You can also create multiple author's accounts so that
you can cover a large number of topics, all within one account.
Use your resource boxes wisely, and make sure that you offer
your reader an incentive to click through.
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Lots of people like to introduce themselves in their bio box and
give their site link - WRONG! The bio box is not a friendly chat,
give them a reason to click through. Either more information on
the topic you covered in your article, or ideally a free report or
something free if they click through - get them to click!
Make it enticing and exciting, write and rewrite it if you have to
until you get something that is short and punchy, exciting and
gives them a great reason to click through, then TELL THEM to
click through your link and present the link. A call to action where
you tell them what to do ("click this link and go grab your free
report") is a great way to increase the click through rate.
If you can spend some time on this and come up with something
you are happy with then getting 30 - 40% of people who read
your article to clickthrough to your site is not unreasonable.
There are three parts to every article. Let’s take a look at what
these are, and how you can make sure yours are written in the
best possible way.
Article Title
The first thing your reader will see is your article title, so it’s an
exceptionally important part of your article and serves as a
headline on a sales page.
Your title needs to captivate them, get their attention and prompt
them to read further. You want your article title to be irresistible
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so they can’t help but click on the link and read the entire page.
Article Description
When article directories submit your content into their database,
typically your title shows and possibly your description, or the first
paragraph within your article content.
This is one of a few reasons why that first paragraph is so
important. It not only works to describe what your article is
about, but just like the title or header, it also needs to work to
motivate your reader to continue reading.
Article Body Content
The remainder of your article should carry the reader right to the
end. Don’t think that if your title and initial paragraph is good that
they will simply continue reading, you still need to bring them
along with you by weaving your article content so that it directly
addresses the topic of your article.
Keep it interesting and on topic. Use short paragraphs rather
than lengthy ones and limit your article body content to 400
characters in total.
Remember, you don't need the best articles, you need the highest
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QUANTITY OF ARTICLES.
YOU DO NOT need to be the most prolific writer out there
to win.
YOU NEED TO WRITE THE MOST ARTICLES.
The more articles you have, the more articles people are going to
read. The more articles people read, the more click-through links
you will get, and the more money you will make.
When writing your articles, use simple, everyday words. That way
you won’t confuse your reader and you will encourage them to
read your entire document. Quite simply, you want to offer quality
information in as concise a way as possible.
No fluff. One or two pages of hard-hitting good information and
you will enter the winner’s circle before you know it.
Forum marketing
This can be powerful if done right, but it requires patience and
dedication. Most forums allow you to put a link in your signature
to your own website (double-check before you waste any time in
the forum). So what you want to do is to go in for an hour a day
and just talk to people in there, answer questions with good
information, post good questions, point them to good sites (that
you don't own) and in return the text and link in your signature is
visible under every post you make.
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If you come across as a friendly and knowledgeable person then
people are going to trust your link and site more and you should
get people clicking through and seeing what you have to offer.
Now most forums do not allow you to just stick an affiliate link in
your signature, so what you'd have to do is create a blog or
website, put a page on there which gives a bit of information
about the site or product you are trying to redirect them to with
your affiliate link at the bottom.
Now you can link to that from your signature and that should
work (double-check the rules again - some forums are tougher
than others).
Of course don't forget the forum signature is much like an article
bio box, you need to give people a good reason to click through.
This links into what you said about the offer and product on the
page you are directing them to, so why should they visit your site
and more importantly why should they visit the site you are an
affiliate for? Do they have the biggest range of products in that
niche? The best prices? A new method for something?
You could even have something as simple as 'I found a great
place to buy [products] from, click here to learn more…'
It is simple and doesn't look like advertising so you won't get
unwanted attention from moderators (if you put something too
hype-y they won't be happy!). Or, 'I found some of the cheapest
[products] around - click here to learn where I found them' - of
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course don't just say that, actually check and make sure they are
some of the cheapest!
Forum marketing is all about reputation and trust, so make sure
what you say about the site you want to direct people to is true,
and it is a good quality site with good quality products. Otherwise
someone who buys through your link may come back to the
forum and moan about you promoting crap products!
Social marketing
This is a touchy subject, technically unless you are using their
paid advertising services then you are not supposed to use places
like Myspace and Facebook to advertise, but if you still want to try
it then here is how to do it.
Most people think that all you do is build up a great big list of
friends on these networks and then send them messages to get
them to go through offers, or plaster your profile with links to
stuff - that is the wrong way to do it!
The power in these networks lies in the groups, there you can find
groups of people who are not only interested in the topic of the
group, but are interested enough to actually put their hand up
and take the time to sign up to a group on it.
This means they are interested in getting more information on it
and finding out how other people are getting on in that niche.
Now again, think long term, you are not there to go in, drop a few
spam messages saying 'Hey this is awesome check out this link'
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then get blocked and move on - how anybody thinks that will
make any money is beyond me! You need to provide value and
interact first!
So join the group and start to interact with them all, share your
experiences, share good sites you have found that are not yours.
Then in time you will have gained trust and be part of the group.
Now whenever you write an interesting article on the subject that
you submit to the directories then you can go to the group and
post a link to it and tell them you just wrote up 10 reasons not to
feed your cat chocolate or something which they can check out.
This means you are not spamming them, you are giving them
good information, but you also have a pool of eager people ready
to visit any article you want to send them to! And of course with
your new super bio boxes then you can expect some of those
visiting to go to your site and check out what you have to offer!
This works even better if you have your own blog as you can get
links and traffic from this technique as well as the chance for
anybody else in that group who has a site or blog to tell their
readers about it and maybe link to it too!
The same goes for Twitter, every time you publish a really good
article (not every single article!) you can head over there and
tweet about it and get some instant traffic to it!
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Video marketing
Video is taking over the Internet and the smart marketers are
finding all sorts of ways to incorporate it into their daily marketing
plans.
The key to video marketing is to brand your videos with your url,
make sure that your url is in the description for the video, and
preferably to give people an incentive for visiting your site that
you mention in the video.
Too many people rely on just having a url showing on the bottom
of the video - but unless you give people a good reason to visit
the site and actually tell people in the video to click through and
visit your site then most people are lazy and won't bother!
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Conclusion: Final Words
Affiliate marketing does not have to be complex, the plan that I
have outlined here can be used to build a business that makes
$1,000 a month or $100,000 a month, it just depends how many
sites you want, how big you make them, and how good you get at
bringing in traffic to the site.
Keep your site fresh, update it at least once a week - and make
sure you don't get lazy with marketing it, fresh links and visitors
are the lifeblood of a website and the more people you get the
more money you can make!
Also make sure you test!
Simply changing the offer you are promoting across the site
(using banners etc) could double your income if it converts to
clicks and/or sales better than the one you currently have.
Don't fall into the trap of constantly trying to increase your traffic
and not testing, a simple test might increase your revenue by
25% with a new banner or offer or a new bonus you offer people
to buy through your link etc, to get that kind of increase with just
more traffic means you'd need 25% more traffic every day which
is a lot of work!
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So that's it - get out there and start to learn the ropes, as you go
along you'll inevitably make mistakes, hey we all have, but things
will get easier, things you struggle with today will be second
nature soon, and then you can enjoy the real internet lifestyle
that all those people trying to sell you the 'magic bullets' are
promising you!
Good luck!
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Lost Chapters: Bonus
Getting Accepted Into Affiliate Networks
For a huge list of affiliate networks you can join then head over
here:
http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/228/1/Affiliate-netwo
rks-list/
But here are some of the top ones you will want to try and get
into:
http://www.cj.com
http://www.shareasale.com
http://www.linkshare.com
http://www.paydotcom.com
http://www.pepperjam.com
Ok so the main thing that trips people up on their affiliate network
applications is when they are asked how they are going to
promote the programs and what the URL of their website is…
Now it is not absolutely crucial to have a website, you can say you
promote using purely PPC and you'll buy a domain name that
suits the products you find in their network to use for that.
That has worked for me in the past, or you can build a dummy
website, buy a large pack of PLR articles (100), go and grab a
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professional free Wordpress theme (type 'free Wordpress theme'
into Google and you'll have a load of options) then install the
theme and load up all the articles and make sure it looks
professional.
Voila! You now have a 100 page blog you can submit on the form!
Heck you might even make money from that site from traffic the
search engines send your way!
If you get rejected from a network either move on and find
another (you only need one or two to get started, after you are
making money with a few then you really will have websites to
show other networks) or you can email or phone them and talk to
them about why your application was rejected - often that is
enough to get the decision reversed.
I have done it with a fitness site that rejected my application even
though I had a fully functioning fitness blog with content on it, I
emailed the affiliate manager after being rejected and said I was
disappointed as I was hoping to promote their products on my
blog (note - be professional, no moaning!) and within 30 minutes
they'd approved me and I was away!
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Winning Campaigns: Formula
One important thing that will help you decide is how well the
offer/product is selling currently, pretty much every affiliate
network has a way to show how well each product is selling, in
Commission Junction you'll get something like this:
The 3 month EPC is the average earnings for affiliates per 100
clicks on their affiliate link, the next is the same but for the last 7
days.
The network earnings is just a representation of how many sales
have been made for this site recently compared to others in the
network, then on the right it says how much they agree to pay
you for bringing them a sale (sometimes is per lead or click hence
the headings at the top of the other columns).
This means you can quickly compare programs and see which are
generating the highest commissions (EPC) and which are selling
lots and lots of their products (network earnings). You can then
decide which ones are best and whether the site or niche is worth
exploring (if all the sites in a niche have low stats then it might
not be a great niche to go into).
Now you need to choose the niche you want to work in.
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A niche is just a subset of a market, so in the pet market you
might go for dogs and then dog training for instance. But how do
you choose which one you want to enter?
Step 1: Well first you need to think about the kind of niches that
you have experience in, things are a lot easier when you actually
know something about the subject and the people you are trying
to connect with.
Writing articles, planning content, choosing the best offers, all of
that will be much easier in a niche you at least have some
experience in.
Yet you can't follow a niche blindly just because you like it or have
experience in it, you also need to check out the offers to see if
people in that niche are buying and there are things you can
make a commission on.
So if you find a niche you are comfortable with based on your
experiences and it looks like it will make money then perfect,
check that against the next steps to verify it and maybe move
forward with that.
If you can't find one that way, then move onto plan B, find all the
best niches based on what stuff is selling like hotcakes, then
make a list of them and choose the one you think you would be
most comfortable researching and writing about, then move onto
the next step.
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Step 2: Now you have to take things a step further and make
sure you can contact the people in that niche, the affiliates selling
lots of products in that niche might be big forum or website
owners which already get a ton of traffic, if you can't find a way to
get a foothold in that niche then you'll never start to make sales
and be able to crank things up.
The first thing you need to look for are the number of articles
being submitted in that kind of category at EzineArticles.com.
That is the biggest article directory and you can get both traffic
and links from there when you need it, but you can also get
content ideas.
The internet is driven by content so you are going to need to be in
a niche where you can write lots about it, a great indicator of this
is how many articles other people are submitting to EZA.
This also gives you a great source of ideas for your content, if
someone wrote an article on 'The Top 5 Ways to Groom Your Dog'
then you can write an article on the 'The Top Tips For Perfect
Grooming' or something like that, you can use their work to jump
start your own (no blatant copying though).
You will soon see when you start digging how many articles are
being submitted, and how popular those articles are (it tells you
at the bottom of each article how many views they have had).
That gives you a great indication of how easy it will be for you to
submit articles and get traffic.
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Pay close attention to the 'Most popular' articles list near the
bottom when you are looking into the articles, that shows the
most popular articles in that category and you can then scroll
down and see how many views they have received, if they are
only receiving a few thousand views to get to the top of that list
then there might not be that much traffic on offer.
Don't forget to check all the categories you could submit to, there
might be one obvious category - but think of all the others you
could submit articles to that are related to your niche, you might
find a great category that gets a load of views!
Check to see how active they are and when the last post was etc,
see if you can use that forum later to help you get some traffic to
the products you want to promote.
Then you want to check out the volume of searches in your niche
per month, that will help you to make sure that enough people
are searching for information and products in your niche to make
it worth your while.
So the two keyword tools I would recommend are:
Free Keyword Research Tool from Wordtracker
AdWords Keyword Tool
The top one is the free version of the Wordtracker keyword
research site, that gives you data that is believed to be collected
from all the really small search engines, which is then multiplied
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up to give you an idea of what the searches on the big search
engines would be.
Then the second one is the Google Keyword Tool which pulls data
straight from Google.
For free then Wordtracker limits itself to 100 results, in the paid
version you can get a lot more (of course you can just vary the
keyword you are using to dig deeper and get more from the free
tool). The Google tool is totally free but limits itself to 200 results.
So to use these just type in a keyword that you think people
would use in a search in your niche (like 'dog training' for the dog
training niche, or 'scuba' for scuba diving) and look at the results
that come up (if you are using the Google tool and you are not in
the US then make sure you select at the top that you want results
either from US searchers or worldwide searches).
There are no magic numbers, but if you have a few that you are
trying to choose between then you can get a great idea of which
have the best search volumes in your list and therefore the
biggest potential.
I'd say a good number is 100,000 searches a month for the main
keywords, then a lot of smaller keywords that you can target with
articles etc that maybe only get a few hundreds searches a
month.
One key thing to note - the Wordtracker results are searches per
DAY and the Google ones are searches per MONTH! Try to choose
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which tool you like best and stick to just the one so your figures
don't get messed up.
Ok so you understand what to look for now to make sure you
choose an offer that is actually selling well and a niche that is big
enough for you to work with - now you need to choose how to
proceed.
I said to keep the future in mind so make sure the niche you are
going to enter has enough scope to create a website about, you
don't want something that will be tricky to expand on if you start
making money with it.
I like to choose moderately popular products so you balance
moderate conversions with moderate competition from other
affiliates, then I like to have multiple products or sites I can
promote in that niche so I can test out different offers and find
which ones convert best for the traffic I am sending.
You never know what your target prospects are going to really
'connect' with so if you just put up one offer and leave it up as
you are making money off it then you could be leaving lots of
money on the table!
Once you have a niche you are happy with and some offers in
mind (or multiple niches if you want to test things out even more
and find which ones bring in the most cash) then you are ready to
start testing things out, so let's move onto how to promote those
offers.
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Affiliate Resources
Cloaking Your Link:
Smart affiliate marketers know that it’s important to cloak their
affiliate link in order to minimize the risks of affiliate links being
dropped.
There are a lot of people who will not click on links they feel are
affiliate ones for whatever reason, or they will remove part of
your link before visiting the site so that you do not receive credit.
Cloaking your link will prevent them from doing this.
There are many sites online that offer free link cloaking, and one
of the longest standing services is http://www.TinyURL.com
You simply enter in your affiliate link and click “Make Tiny URL!”
and your link will be modified to hide your affiliate link and make
it shorter.
Affiliate Resources: Other Marketplaces
Commission Junction enables their merchants to selectively
choose who is allowed to participate in each affiliate program, so
if you are new to affiliate marketing, you may end up a bit
frustrated when you are turned down due to your website not
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receiving enough traffic or being focused on specific topics.
http://www.CommissionJunction.com
Share A Sale
ShareASale.com started quite a few years ago, and back then
there were few merchants using their services which made it a
difficult job for an affiliate to choose high quality products, since
there were so few available.
https://www.ShareASale.com
Rakuten Advertising
Rakuten Advertising is an ever-growing affiliate marketplace, and
with it, comes a great variety of lucrative and high paying affiliate
opportunities.
You can create your Rakuten Advertising account at
https://www.rakutenadvertising.com
Evaluating CPA Offers (Resources)
https://www.OfferVault.com
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Keyword Research Tools:
There are a many keyword tools that you can use to perform
keyword research, including:
Adwords Keyword Tool
AdWords Keyword Tool
WordTracker (most popular)
https://www.WordTracker.com
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