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8 Tips For Affiliate Marketing Success
By Titus Hoskins,
contact at bizwaremagic com
http://www.bizwaremagic.com
Become a member of TranslationDirectory.com at just
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It
always surprises me how much money you can make by selling
other people's stuff on the Internet. The real numbers never
truly hit you until you fill out your taxes. Eight years in
and the numbers still shock me. Always.
More than the numbers, what really amazes me the most is the
lifestyle one can achieve from online marketing. You can be
your own boss, work your own hours, carry out your business
from anywhere in the world you want to live. You can create
automatic marketing systems that work 24/7/365 days of the
year. Earn money even when you're sleeping, vacationing or
out enjoying a gourmet meal at your favorite restaurant. Total
freedom.
So is it any wonder then why I am constantly analyzing my
whole marketing structure to figure out what is working and
what is not working? Finding out just what strategies are
giving me the best returns on my efforts and time. And I am
constantly trying to discover just what I can do to increase
my affiliate sales and online traffic.
It basically means breaking down your online marketing into
its core elements and examining each one with close scrutiny.
What can be improved? What can be eliminated? What needs to
be redesigned? Any serious online marketer must be actively
working on these core elements to stay competitive in the
affiliate game.
With these thoughts in mind, here are some simple marketing
strategies that can affect and contribute to your success
for selling affiliate products on the web. Marketing factors
that should always be at the back of your mind, influencing
your every move.
1. Quality Content
People use the web to find quality content or information.
Always remember this fact and apply it to each step of your
marketing plan - give your visitors quality content and you
will succeed online. There are no ironclad guarantees, but
get this one step right and you will probably make money online.
Design your website and your webpages around quality content.
Useful, relevant content will give people a reason to come
to your site and also give them a reason to return. Provide
good information first and let the sale or selling be secondary.
People do not like a pushy salesperson, not in real life and
not on the web. Develop a friendly, helpful relationship with
your potential customer and you will succeed.
2. Keyword Driven
The Internet is keyword driven. These are words or phrases
people type into search engines to find what they're looking
for on the web. They are also your keys to online success
if you're going the SEO route, picking the right keywords
will be your main starting point.
Professional marketers use keyword software like Brad Callen's
Keyword Elite to research and find their profitable keywords,
but there are many free tools/sites which you can find online
to help you do your keyword research - Seobook.com is a good
one. Daily monitoring of your major keywords is also important
to keeping them in the top positions. Any movement downwards
should spark more link and/or content building immediately.
Keep in mind, Google, which controls 60 percent of the web's
search traffic, is also a great source of information on your
keywords. Use Google to search the sites in the top 10 spots
for your keywords; also check Google for the Paid Ads related
to your keywords and monitor these ads over a period of time
to see which ones are profitable. Do your keyword homework
and your affiliate marketing will be a lot easier.
3. Niche Focused
If you're into affiliate marketing, you must concentrate your
efforts on small niche markets where the competition is not
too stiff. Choosing the right niche markets is vital to your
affiliate success. Demand should be high and/or you're selling
a high-ticket custom item.
Once you have chosen your particular niches, concentrate on
dominating these in all the search engines. But don't forget
that the fastest and sometimes the most profitable way to
tackle a niche is through PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising
- especially if there is little or low bidding on your keywords.
Google Adwords, Yahoo Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter... should
be explored and tried.
4. List Building
The power is always in the list. Make sure you collect the
contact information of your site's visitors. Offer free ebooks,
guides, special deals or bonuses... to get your prospects
to opt-in to your AR follow-up systems. Studies have shown
that people usually don't buy until the six or seventh follow-up.
I like building hundreds of micro-lists for all my major promoted
affiliate products. These follow-ups with specialized information
and special deals, coupons and bonuses will increase your
sales.
5. Traffic
Obviously, traffic is one of the key elements to earning money
online mainly because without traffic you're dead in the water.
You must explore all avenues to generate quality traffic to
your affiliate links. These sources are always changing; blogging
and social bookmark sites are very important now. So too are
video and audio formats so make sure you use them in your
marketing.
Article marketing has worked extremely well for me and it
is, along with search traffic, the main reason I can earn
income online. A simple marketing technique that still works
because articles will bring targeted traffic to your site
or sites.
6. Conversion Rates Are Crucial
In affiliate marketing or in any kind of marketing, your conversion
rates are crucial to your success. You can get all the quality
traffic you want but if you can't turn those visitors into
a sale, it's game over.
Your sales pages or content must convert into a sale in order
for you to succeed. With affiliate marketing it is a little
trickier because not only do your pages have to "pre-sell"
the affiliate product but the landing page/site where you
send that traffic must also convert into a sale.
However, I have discovered one of the keys to high conversion
rates has nothing to do with landing pages, sales pitches,
etc., but has to do mainly with which products that you decide
to promote. You must thoroughly research your affiliate products
and ONLY promote the top quality brands in your niche and
you will have much better success. Also choosing products
that are only available online will increase your conversion
numbers; so too will promoting products that offer special
discount coupons and deals.
7. Multiple Streams and Residual Income
Any serious online marketer will leverage their traffic and
marketing by promoting many different products and services.
They will develop different sources of income from their sites
with affiliate links, Google Adsense, paid advertising, partnerships...
are all used to develop multiple streams of income. It one
should dry up, there are countless others still producing
income.
I have found the major third-party affiliate networks like
Commission Junction, LinkShare, Shareasale, Affiliate Window,
Amazon are really good for finding and promoting products
online. These sites will handle all the record keeping and
sales stats for you. Plus, they send your monthly checks to
you like clockwork. All you have to worry about is providing
quality traffic to your affiliate links.
However, like any professional marketer, I save my special
promotions and efforts to affiliate products or services that
will give me a high return on my marketing efforts. Mainly,
I only promote high-ticket items or products that will give
me residual income. Make one sale; get paid time and time
again. I also like forming partnerships with companies so
that I get a percentage of the sales for the life of any client
I refer. Those arrangements have special priority for the
obvious reason they give me long-term residual income.
8. Testing Will Show You The Money.
Perhaps, like in those multiple-choice exams, there is one
sticking point. You can check-off "None of the above" if you
don't apply one thing for all of the "success strategies"
listed above.
You Must TEST Everything.
You must constantly test and track what is working and what
is not? Which traffic is converting? Which keywords are converting?
Which products are converting? Which niches are profitable...
you simply must TEST and KNOW which factors are working in
your online marketing structure? Unless you test and track
everything you will be marketing blind, and that's no way
to run an online business.
I have found Google Analytics to be extremely helpful for
testing and improving your conversion rates. I am also a firm
believer in the daily reading of your traffic logs and stats...
these places will show you where the real money is hiding.
Use this information to improve your traffic and sales.
Like any endeavor, the more knowledge you have, the more successful
you will be in reaching your goals. This is especially true
for affiliate marketing on the web. And always remember, affiliate
marketing does take some work and time to set-up, but the
rewards are extremely rewarding. I hope you will use some
of the marketing tips I have given you so you can experience
these rewards for yourself.
About The Author:
The author is a full-time
web marketer who owns and runs numerous websites, including
two sites on Internet marketing. He contributes his
online affiliate success to using the best Internet
Marketing Tools and his proven strategies
at List
Building
Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be
freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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