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Jun 04

Sneaky Affiliate Tricks

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Ron

Affiliate marketing can be very difficult to break into.

And that’s because you have a lot of other affiliates to compete with. The challenge is to try and outdo other affiliates and think of ways to do a better job promoting. There’s also a lot of information out there about how to do affiliate marketing, so it can be confusing. Here’s one trick that almost no one else is using.

Video in affiliate marketing

No one would deny the power and popularity of video. People love watching videos and that’s why they’re everywhere. It’s so much easier to keep people’s attention with video. So why wouldn’t you use it in your affiliate business?

Here’s how to use videos for affiliate marketing:

  • Record your testimonial
  • Walk-throughs
  • Ordering
  • Record a preview of the members area

Testimonials

It doesn’t get any easier than this. Just click record on your web cam and start talking. It doesn’t have to be professional or polished. Seeing a real person on the other end helps your viewers make a buying decision. And the mess-ups or mistakes just make the video more real. You can literally just press record and talk. And if you don’t want to show your face, use one of the next ideas.

Record a walk-through

This one is a little more subtle. Make this more like a tutorial helping them use the product. And in the process you’re actually selling the product. As long as the product is good, the tutorial makes them want it. So, obviously, pick a good product to demo.

Record the order process

This one is killer! Record a video of yourself actually buying the product. There is nothing more motivating than watching someone buy something live. First, it’s social proof. People will feel more comfortable buying after seeing you do it. Second, it builds trust. People believe you’re giving them good advice if you take that advice yourself. And let’s not forget about good old fashioned envy. People want what they see you getting. You can add additional juice to this one with: You’re gonna have to place your own order if you want to see the members area.

Record a preview of the members area

This one is perfect for building up the value of what you’re promoting. You do a tour of the members area. They get to see everything they’ll receive when they order. And it helps soften the skeptics. It’s much easier to trust they’re getting something if they actually seen it.

Affiliate marketing, it’s easy!

No special skills are required. Some very easy to use programs make the videos for you. Really, the software does all the work. So you don’t have to worry about the technical part of this at all. Just focus on the benefits:

  • Increase sales You’ll earn more affiliate commissions when you add video. Start using videos because people love them.
  • Lower refund rates You’ll lose less of the commission your earn. Now they know what they get before they purchase. So, very few of them will cancel their order.
  • Rise above the competition! Adding video is so simple. But only a very small percentage do it. This puts you out in front of the rest.

Take your affiliate marketing to a higher level and getting started with this now. The bottom line is that if you’re not using video, you’re losing money with affiliate marketing.

affiliate marketing

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Jun 04

Email List Building Strategies

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Ron

Honestly, everyone making money online has an email list.

It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. After it’s built, it’s yours to use any time you want. It’s like a renewable resource that allows you to make money on demand.

So, how do you build an email list?

Here’s what you need to build your email list:

  • The Squeeze Page
  • The Incentive
  • The Thank You Page

The Squeeze Page – The squeeze page is the first thing your visitor is going to see. This is where they will enter their email address. So, obviously it has to be well designed. And have an easy to understand opt-in form. And have a clear call to action.

If you fail to make a strong close, you’re wasting your efforts. This “close” tells your visitors what you want them to do. And if you don’t include it, they won’t opt in. It’s strange, but if you don’t tell people what to do, they won’t do it.

You can take your opt-in page to the next level if you make it a video squeeze page. You only have a few seconds to get your visitors attention – video helps! It also allows you to tell them what to do several times. And you can have the video just tell them to fill in your form after it’s done playing.

It’s OK, if you’ve never made a video before. You can hire freelancers to do this for you for a few hundred dollars. You can also find ready-made list building tools that give you squeeze page templates.

Your Bribe – The next thing you need is an incentive to subscribe to your list. People need a good reason to part with their email address. Most people are very protective of their email address. So make your “bribe” a good one!

The only way to make this work is to provide real value. That means you make it something people would actually want to receive. And can benefit from. A few ideas:

  • A free report
  • A piece of software
  • Videos
  • An email series

It all boils down to content. Something that’s useful and helpful to your visitors. And nothing sells like “free”. If you make it good enough, they will give you their email in exchange.

If you’re worried about creating this content, don’t be. You can just pay someone else to make it for you. You just pick the topic and they create the training. For example, you could have them write a 5-part email course. You can have ghost writers create emails for under $25 an email. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.

You can also get email list building tools that include the premium. There are two important things about the email series. First, it must provide value to your subscribers. And second, it needs to make you money. The easiest way to do this is to market affiliate products in the emails. Affiliate products are easy because you don’t have to do anything at all. And make money right away from your list.

Your Confirmation Page – The last bit is the thank you page. After subscribing to your list, your visitor is redirected to this page. It’s a great idea to give them some valuable information right on the thank you page. That way, they feel glad that they gave you their email address. It also sets the foundation for your relationship with them. It also makes them more likely to open your emails.

You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. You can either write the content pages on your own. Or hire ghost writers to write them for you.

Summary on email list building

It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or go with a complete package. The important thing is that you build your own email list starting now. Once you’ve got your email list built, you’ve got a license to print money!

email list

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Jun 04

Affiliate Business Tips

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Ron

The importance of preselling

The most important thing you can do to increase your affiliate commissions is to presell properly.

First, what is preselling? Well, it is an art. And it’s also a science. It’s a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. Then when they’re ready, refer them to the product website so they can buy it. And if it’s done properly, the process is completely sub-conscious.

Basically, you give them some content. Then send them to the sales page. In just a minute, I’ll explain exactly how to presell. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Some major benefits of this process:

  • Preselling creates trust – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. And the more clicks you get the more sales you’ll make.
  • It disarms your reader – Nobody likes to be sold something. By not doing that to them, your reader is less defensive. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. So your content get absorbed.
  • It puts them in a buying mood – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. So they become more receptive to other messages. This includes the sales website you send them to! And being open to the information there means they are much more likely to buy.
  • Your commissions go up – You’ve prepped them and referred them in the right state of mind. Open to the sales message and feeling safe. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
  • It boosts customer loyalty – Your referral now feels like they decided to buy. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this makes them feel better about the product they purchased.
  • It boosts your profits – Satisfied customers are less like to refund. Which means you keep more of your affiliate commissions.

Clearly preselling makes sense. You earn more commissions. And produce happier customers. It’s a win-win-win!

Now, here’s how preselling works:

Now you know whey preselling is critical. And hopefully you’re convinced you need to start doing it. You’re ready to learn how to do it properly. As I mentioned earlier, it’s both an art and a science.

Mastering the art

Effective preselling requires gaining your readers trust in order for them to let down their guard. Honestly, the only way to do this is to provide real value in you content. But you can’t give them so much that they think they have everything they could need, and that’s what makes it an art. So you send them to the product website with a hunger for more of what the product provides. And since they’re more open, they are more likely to make a purchase.

The science component

There are also several key elements that need to be included.

The first is how you present the information. You’ve got to map out your strategy before you start writing. In the end, you want to sell a specific product. How can providing information accomplish this goal? First, you can provide useful but incomplete information. Or you can give them so much information that it feels overwhelming to do what you’re talking about. In either case, the product you’re referring them to solves the problem for them.

Next, you have to use “convert linking” methods. Instead you link directly to the product sales page. When you do this, you’re click-throughs go way up. But, without your affiliate link, how do you get credit? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You “pre-cookie” your reader before sending them to the sales page.

The next trick is to hyperlink specific words and phrases inside the content of the article you’re providing. Hyperlinked words are clicked more than anything else. Plus, if you link on relevant words, it only makes sense to click on there.

Putting all of this together creates a powerful affiliate marketing formula for success.

Unfortunately…

This process is not easy – at all! Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Good content. The entire process depends on your being able to provide useful information to your readers. This means you have to be able to write well, and have enough knowledge to be useful.
Strategic writing. Yes, you must providing useful content. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And somehow also make them want to learn more. Or provide so much information that they see how hard it will be to implement.

Choosing your products. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. Even if you get the article written. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

Techy stuff. And finally, you need the technical know-how to embed your image tag and make sure you get credit for the sale. This is pretty easy – you just make a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image with no border and make the “source” of the image your affiliate link. (Just don’t mess it up. Otherwise, you won’t get credit for your sales.)

Wrapping up Preselling:

Now you’re armed with the information needed to effectively presell. Preselling properly will boost your affiliate profits up to 500%! So, start now and develop preselling content for all your affiliate promotions. Don’t wait another minute. Put the effort into preselling to reap the greater rewards.

preselling content

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May 22

Traffic Generation Tips

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Ron

When you’ve got traffic coming to your site, you’re 99% there.

Of course you also need to have a valuable offer for your visitors – a reason for them to transact with you. Once the visitors arrive you can have them join your mailing list, purchase a product or subscribe to your RSS feed. The most crucial aspect of this process is getting the visitors to your site.

Let’s talk about how to generate traffic…

These are the best and fastest ways to get free visitors coming to your site:

  • Web 2.0 Methods
  • Article Marketing
  • Video Marketing

And here’s how to use each method…

Web 2.0 Sites

Web 2.0 simply means the new family of websites that have user-generated content. What this means for you is that you can join into the community and add your own content. And because of the highly interactive and popular nature of these sites, Google and other search engines “index” their content regularly. The benefit of this to you is that your content is now considered as part of these sites. By placing links to your websites in this content you’ve created, you get traffic from the site and search engine ranking for the keywords you choose. The direct traffic from the Web 2.0 sites themselves is only part of the benefit. Getting free web 2.0 traffic is a big topic that we’ll discuss more later. This is good overview of the reason to get into it, though.

Articles Sites

Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. Article directories fall under the category of web 2.0 sites. Just like web 2.0 sites, article websites allow you to upload your own content – as articles. And because they are also considered authority sites by the search engines you get all the benefits of other web 2.0 sites just by putting your articles on them. And in addition to this, other users can take your article and place it on their own website. And along with your article, they have to include your author information and a link back to you – so you get more free traffic and SEO benefits. Here are a couple article marketing traffic tips:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Tailor the content of your article for the keywords
  • Be sure to link to your site on the keywords you’ve chosen. Do this inside the article itself and in your author’s bio.

Video Sites

The last of this group is video marketing. Once again, this is really a sub-set of web 2.0. And just as article directories give you great SEO benefits and allow others to redistribute your content on their sites. video sharing sites give you all these same benefits. And if all that wasn’t enough, you also stand a much stronger chance of getting a high search engine ranking for the keywords you want with video than you do with text-based content.

OK, so how do you do effective video marketing?

  • Get a YouTube account
  • When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
  • Use the tags in your profile to enter the keywords you want to rank for
  • Include a link to your main site in your profile
  • Add at least one video to your profile
  • In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Putting your traffic generation all together.

If you take action on the items listed here you’ll have free traffic in no time.

free traffic

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May 22

Membership Niche Selection Tips

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Ron

First – Look for Fanatics who’ll join your membership business

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership business. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you’re looking for because they are so enthusiastic they’re willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. Now that we know what we’re looking for, let’s talk about how to find them…

  • Look at magazine racks. This is an often overlooked, yet extremely simple way to find niches that people are interested in. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to run a print magazine. So if you see one on the shelves you know they are making money, which means that there are enough people interested in what they’re saying to make it profitable. If they can make money in a print version, you can probably make money with a membership website.
  • Watch and listen for fanatics in your daily life. Pay attention to conversations, social events, TV, restaurants, public places to see what people are talking about. If people are talking about it, they are interested in it. And this means there may be a market for information about it.
  • Again, looking in the physical world for clues you can tell there are lots of people interested in something if there are clubs and organizations around the topic. Conventions are expensive to hold and attend, so if one if going on that’s another strong indication of a good niche to go into with your membership website.
  • And of course there are all the things you have an interest in, too! If you’re interested in something, it’s highly likely others are, too. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a membership business doing something you love.
  • Another fantastic way to discover what people are interest in is Google Trends. This service shows you the current most popular search terms. The reason people are searching Google for info on these topics is because they are interested. And the fact that it’s made it into Google Trends tells you LOTS of people are interested. These are the niches you want to be in – lots of people actively searching means lots of opportunity.

Step 2 – Determine the financial feasibility of your membership business

OK, so you’ve got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

Here’s a punch list for figuring out if anyone’s making money in your niche:

  • Are there blogs or forums in this niche? Take the name of your niche and search for “niche name blog” & “niche name forum” in Google to see if there is an active group of people talking about and interested in the niche. This means there is a large group of people already assembled for you to market to.
  • See if other people are creating and selling product in this niche by searching in Google Shopping, eBay and Amazon. What you’re trying to figure out is if anyone is making money in this niche, and if people are selling products it means they are making money.
  • Look at Google Adwords for the same ads are running over time. If people are running the same ad over time it means they are making money in the niche. They would not continue to spend money on the ads if there were not making a return from them.

Finally – Figure out your barrier to entry

OK, so you found a hot topic and you know other people are making money on it. Will you be able to get involved and do the same? How do you gauge the ease of entry?

  • Product types. What kind of products are being sold in the niche? You’re looking for a niche that sells info products. That’s because it’s much easier to build a membership business around information vs. any other kind of product.
  • Competition. How many other people are trying to sell to this market? You want to start in a market that’s not completely saturated with competitors.
  • Size vs. Competition. Some competition is good. It means that this is a profitable market. And as long as the size of the market is large enough to support the competition, you’re fine.
  • How quickly do people in this market make buying decisions and are the ready to buy? Depending on the market it can be anywhere from a couple minutes to a many months between when someone starts the investigation process to when they actually make a purchase.

Summing up your membership business

At this point you’ve figured out what niche you’re going into. You found your fanatics, you know they spend money and you’re confident there’s room in the market for your membership business. If you’ve followed along with these steps you’re success in practically guaranteed. The only thing left to cover is exactly how to run your membership business…

membership business

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