Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Recruitment Tactics

When you sell products online, a great way to get the word out about your offerings is to have an army of people behind you. These people will represent your brand, refer your brand, and encourage people to buy your brand.

You can end up with loyal customers, who will eventually do that for free. But if you want to hurry it along incentivizing people by recruiting affiliates who will make a percentage of sales to help you promote is the best way to accomplish that.

What Are Affiliates?

An affiliate is someone who is a salesperson for you. The great thing about an affiliate is that you do not have to pay them unless they make a sale.

The way it works is that by using specialized software, that keeps track of sales for each individual affiliate, the affiliate posts links to your sales pages, and when a sale is made via their link, they get the percentage promised for that individual sale.

For example, if you’re selling a 250-dollar product such as an information product, the seller (affiliate) will make commissions, which you’ve set up in your affiliate software to pay. Percentages range from 5 percent to even 100 percent depending on the goals of the campaign and the type of product you’re selling.

If you are selling something that causes you to use personal time, you may want to lower the percentage. If you’re selling something that is a digital product that has already used time, you can give a larger percentage.

So, in short, an affiliate is a salesperson who earns a percentage of the price from every single sale that they make using their special link.

Why You Need Affiliates

The best way to make a profit on anything is to sell a lot of it and being that you’re only one person you can only tell so many people about your offerings.

But imagine if you could double, triple, or quadruple yourself by getting other people to spread the word about your offerings? Wouldn’t you do it? The cost of having an affiliate program is minimal.

It’s also less expensive than other types of marketing such as placing ads, and what’s most important, if you plan it right, it really works.

Increase Your Reach – If you know there are other audience members out there who have not heard of your products and services finding affiliates to help promote your products to their audience will definitely increase your reach and enable you to help more people.
Make More Money with Less Effort – While it may seem expensive to pay for a sale when you’re dealing with digital products, remember that your costs do not go up with each additional sale, as they do with physical products. You can give a larger percentage of the price and still end up making more money, with less effort on your part.
Grow Your List – Encouraging affiliates to promote you not only increases sales but once someone buys from you, they’re now part of your audience and are on your list. Now that they’re on your list, you can market directly to them the rest of the items in your funnel.
Build Relationships – Once your affiliate program gets momentum, you’re going to notice some true movers and shakers. These people make the most sales and the most noise about your products. When you notice that, reach out to that affiliate and offer them a special deal such doing a joint webinar, or offering them a larger percentage of sales to encourage them to do even better. You can become quite close to your affiliate people and even get ideas for new products from them if you’re open to it.
Grow Bigger Than You – You’re only one person, working from your home office, or your kitchen table. But with affiliates, you can grow a literal army of salespeople to promote your products and services making your job one of management and creation rather than just sales. Eventually, you can grow a business that earns multiple six figures for yourself and others.

These reasons are great reasons to find affiliates to promote your products. The main point to take away is that you can sell more products with other people doing the work for you than you can sell on your own.

While giving out a percentage of profits might seem painful at first, it’s really one of the least expensive options to improve sales.

How To Find Affiliates

Now that you know you want an affiliate program, you need to find affiliates. Finding affiliates is a combination of simply asking people and letting interested parties know about your program.

In addition, you can encourage people to be an affiliate by offering excellent products, top-notch customer service, and a by offering generous commission.

Direct Contact – Find competitors and others who market to your audience who do not offer exact products or services as you and approach them directly. Work first to build relationships with these people in online groups, via joint ventures, events, and more and you’ll be certain to get a percentage of these people to sign up for your affiliate program and promote your products and services.
Customers – Your best affiliates can come from people who have purchased from you. Definitely run an email series for your customers to encourage them to earn money by recommending your products to their friends and family. This is a great way to end up with a true fan as an affiliate.
Colleagues – Even if you work from home, you are likely part of a group of like-minded individuals online and / or offline. Ensure that you let these people know that you have an affiliate program so that they can choose to join if they want to. You can also if you’ve used the right type of software, give special commission amounts to people you know.
Movers & Shakers – You’ve seen them on Twitter, Facebook groups, and probably on numerous webinars and other places. These big earners shake things up. Work toward building a relationship with them, then make it super simple for them to promote by giving them a free copy, graphics, and more. Offer to set it all up for them so that all they have to do is collect the money when they make sales.
Conferences – You can also meet potential affiliates at live events and conferences. Whether you’re a speaker or an attendee, you may meet people who need to offer your products to their audience. Make it worth their while to promote you, by also promoting them.
Print Publications – You can place ads in relevant print publicans such as work at home magazines and other magazines devoted to people who are interested in this type of income opportunity.
Social Media – If you join groups and friend people online, ensure that you also connect with potential affiliates. Take the time to get to know them. When it’s appropriate, let them know about your affiliate program. You can use social media also to talk about how excited you are about your affiliate program. The more enthusiastic you are about the program, the more they will want to join to earn money.
Blogging – Use your blog part of the time, to speak to potential affiliates. Your blog provides your audience with solutions to their problems. But, once you have an affiliate program, you can also mention how you want to help as many people as possible and your readers can help by becoming an affiliate.
Forums/Groups – Any groups you’re part of, online or offline, can be great places to find affiliates. The best thing to do is to build relationships with people you think would like and promote your products. Offer to do things for them, make your program so inviting that they can’t resist.
Online Ads – Another way to attract affiliates is to advertise the program and its benefits. You can use Facebook, Twitter, or even Ad Words to market the program. This works very well, if you have a good product funnel, offer excellent commissions, and a wide range of products for your niche.
Your Website – Don’t forget that your website is the hub of your business. Keep reminder info and an affiliate program link in a prominent place on your site. This can be short and link to further information about the program details.
Word-of-Mouth – People like to talk, so if you do a good job taking care of your affiliates plus offering really great products then super affiliates will notice you and talk about you. Plus, when they start promoting your products, other people in their circle will notice and join too.
Cold Calls – If you know people already that promote other people’s products and you’re sure that your product fits in with their niche, go ahead and drop them an email, or even get them on the phone. Be ready to explain what is so great about your product and how it benefits their audience. Plus, explain how you’re going to make it super easy for them to be part of your program.
Hire an Affiliate Manager – Even if you’re just starting your program, hiring an affiliate manager can help you grow your affiliate program faster. Hire someone who is familiar with your niche, who has connections to promote to super affiliates and who understands the software you use.
Directories – There are directories, such as affilitesseeking.com, where you can list your affiliate program. They do require a link back, but it’s free. More than likely, you won’t find as many affiliates this way since building relationships is very important. However, it does help direct potential affiliates to your opportunity.
Affiliate Networks – Another great way to find affiliates is to list your products in affiliate networks such as Clickbank.com or JVZOO.com. Marketers who are looking for a product to promote often go there to search for products. Make sure you offer a great program, and a lucrative commission. Include tools to make promoting easy. These could be articles, graphics, emails, etc.

Finding and recruiting affiliates is only part of starting an affiliate program. Now you need to make your affiliate offer worthy, appealing and timely. Plus, the more unique your offer is, the more affiliates you’ll recruit.

Making Affiliate Worthy Offers

If you really want to get the best affiliates, then you need to make affiliate worthy offers. Make smart affiliates want to promote everything you have because they know that you provide a great product, good customer service, and amazing creatives for them to use to market your programs.

In order to attract the right affiliates, it’s important to share certain types of stats with them so that they know what to expect with your program.

Keep in mind, you will not have any stats to show, but as time progresses, you will. As soon as you have this information, start sharing it.

Important Stats, Information & Figures To Share

Some statistics are more important to share than others. If you just consider what’s important to you about your affiliate program it’ll be easy to see what you need to share.

Conversion Rate: They like to know how often a visitor to the sales page converts to a buyer.
Commissions: They want to know how much they’ll make per product and whether or not there is potential to make more due to your deep funnel.
Upsell: Let them know if you offer an upsell or not and what the commission is on that as well as the conversion rate for that too.
Recurring Commissions: If any of your products offer
Incentives: Let them know what type of enticements you offer for successful sales.
Product Reviews: Do you allow affiliates to review your product free? Hint: Once you have stand out affiliates it’ll pay off to let them have a free copy.
Visitor Value: Let them know the target market for the product and the value it offers.
Training: While affiliates aren’t your employees and aren’t on your staff, you can still offer a lot of training to help them make more money promoting your products.
Collateral: Ensure that you have plenty of professional graphics, copy, and information that enable your affiliates to promote your product.
Program Description: Ensure that you’re very succinct and inclusive in the description for your program.

Anything you can let them know at a glance is important to share. You can offer more in-depth information as well, but the information right up front should include what they need to know to figure out if your product is what they want to promote to their audience.

Keeping Affiliates Happy

Once you recruit affiliates, it’s also important to keep them happy. Happy affiliates will be more likely to promote your products.

They may even tell other people about you too.

That’s why developing relationships, communicating, and following up with your affiliates is so important.

Developing Relationships

In business one of the most important things you’re going to do aside from creating amazing products that your audience needs, is building mutually beneficial relationships with other people.

In order to build relationships with affiliates, you need to understand them as a separate audience. They have different needs from the people that buy or get your products.

To help you build your affiliate relationships, here are a few things you want to do.

Communicate – Use email, webinars, teleseminars, and other forms of communication with your affiliates. Some of them will prefer email and others will like the one-on-one feel of webinars. When you keep your affiliates abreast of new products to come, changes in old products, sales, and other information they’re going to be that much more likely to stick with you and promote you because of the trust that you develop.
Listen – Communication is a two-way street. Therefore, it’s imperative that you also open the lines of communication in reverse. Ask them questions, conduct surveys, and connect one on one with your highest sellers. For example, you can have a trigger number of sales that elevates your affiliates to your affiliate inner circle where you can help them with all kinds of things.
Ask for Feedback – When you send out new products to your affiliates, ask for feedback so you can make the product better before launch. You don’t have to send it to everyone who signs up for your program. Choose a few affiliates for feedback, based on your knowledge of them and their reputation in the business.
Show Your Personality – People do business with those that they like, know and trust. The more you can connect with your affiliates and find ways to show your character, the more you can enhance this effect. Add a little personal information in your emails, webinars, and live videos, and live events. Seeing and hearing you can make a huge impression.
Be a Helpful Resource – When you really want to have a real relationship with someone, you seek to be helpful. Even if the assistance has nothing to do with your business, being helpful and pointing people in the right direction will go far in helping you solidify your relationships.
While you may not be able to pay as close attention as you’d like to each individual affiliate, you can use the information and tools at your disposal to build relationships that will stand the test of time and encourage even more sales if you’re open to it. Use email automation, set up training series, host live webinars to talk about your new products and to get ideas, and otherwise be open to new ways to connect with your affiliates.
Keeping Track of People you talk To — When you are seeking to impress people, one way to do that is to remember who you’ve talked to and what you talked about. A good way to do this is to use some sort of customer relationship software or help ticket software. This is true even if you aren’t really providing customer service to your affiliates due to a product they bought. The help desk software will keep track of all your conversations so that you can easily stick to your promises.
Hosting Contests – A good way to kick off some relationship building is to plan and host a contest for your affiliates. Give away some iPads, cash, and depending upon your price range, perhaps a free trip. The more outrageous you can be with your contest the more attention it’ll get.
Do What Needs to Be Done – Affiliate’s needs depend on their audience too. Suppose an affiliate contacts you and asks you to do a live webinar with them. It is to be played “live” multiple times. This is a good promotional item to offer your top affiliates. It will help you develop relationships as you get to know each other as you work together on the webinar and get other people involved.

Finally, the most important thing of all is to follow up. Even if affiliates contact you infrequently, make sure that you do contact them. Connect, encourage, and connect more. Always deliver top-notch services, products, and tools.

Affiliate Software & Tools

A variety of tools and software can be used to recruit affiliates. Consider all the things you need to do – keep track of people, your products, affiliates’ commissions, and payouts. You also need to be able to give them marketing materials easily. Try these tools and you’ll do great.

Website Building Software – The best website building software right now, hands down, is self-hosted WordPress. You can learn a lot about WordPress by going to their website at WordPress.org. Look for premium WordPress themes or use a free one if you like.
Website Hosting – There are many different website hosts, but you need a good host that offers security, safety, and great customer service. Some good choices are A2 Hosting and Siteground.
Landing Pages – While you can use your regular WordPress installation to make a perfectly legitimate landing page if you want the bells and whistles consider getting good software like Convertri, OptimizePress or any other specific landing page software. It will make it a lot easier for you.
File Storage & Delivery – The best file storage and delivery software is Amazon S3. It’s very inexpensive and you only pay for what you use. It enables you to deliver your products easily and quickly.
Email Marketing Software – There are some standard programs, as well as newer options that look great. Try Active Campaign, Aweber, or GetResponse. It depends on what you think you need.
Affiliate Shopping Cart Software – Different programs have various features, but a few have everything you need. Try Amember.com if you want to be in complete charge of your products and affiliates. Try one of the networks like JVZOO.com if you don’t want to host or run the software yourself.
File Sharing & Storage – Even though you may use Amazon S3 for product delivery, Dropbox will work great as well to deliver information to others on a smaller scale and to keep track of your work.
Automation – If you want to connect your apps together and create some amazing automation, Zapier.com is great software to try.
Paying People – Right now PayPal.com is the standard. However, there are other options like Stripe.com. Most shoppers on the net are used to using PayPal now. PayPal lets you set up “mass pay” so that you can pay more than one affiliate at a time by uploading a spreadsheet.
Communication – There are many ways to communicate information to your affiliates. You can invite them to a private Facebook group, or you can create a sign in using software like Amember.com. This software has an affiliate area, which can house messages, graphics, and other promotional materials. Keep in mind a central place works better than using regular email.
Help Desk – There is also software that you can set up that both your customers and your affiliates can use to get help. Software like Manage Engine’s Service Desk Plus is one such option.
Graphics – You’re going to need plenty of graphics to help promote your products and make affiliates happy. Try using Canva to help you. What’s great is that if you get Canva for Work you can save your branding and upload new fonts. Alternatively, look at Stencil or Snappa.
Promotions – You will want to use different types of software to promote your business such as HootSuite to help you automate much of the work promoting on social media.
People – While people aren’t often thought of as tools, they are. They’re part of your resources that you need to consider. Think of hiring an affiliate manager who understands software and how everything works so that you can focus on product creation.

Finding tools that will help you run your affiliate program will give you more time to create products that your affiliates can promote. Much of the work that you put in up front will pay off later when your affiliate program seems to run itself and you’re raking in the money.

What To Do Now

The best things to do are to figure out what affiliate software to use, get it setup, and then build relationships. Build relations with your own audience and with potential super affiliates.

Make your affiliate program the best you can. Offer great commissions, excellent marketing resources, and deliver an amazing product to become successful.

You can also start by using one of the affiliate networks instead, such as Clickbank.net and JVZOO.com. But consider building your own affiliate program using software that helps you build relationships with a self-hosted program or software.

The reason is that you own that, someone else owns the networks. But they are a good place to begin while you build up your affiliate army.

Follow these affiliate marketing tips, and you’ll be on the way to becoming a successful affiliate marketer in no time. And if you want to know more about affiliate marketing check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊

2 Simple Ways To Add Value To Your Affiliate Offers

Affiliate marketing as an online business opportunity is very attractive as it is low cost and low risk, but as an affiliate you’re always going to have a lot of competition.

Not only are you competing with others who are selling similar products, but there may be dozens, hundreds or even thousands of serious affiliates who are selling the EXACT same product as you are.

How do you beat your competition?

By adding value (bonuses) to any affiliate offer you promote. This means providing some sort of a bonus – a freebie – to anyone who buys an offer through your affiliate link.

You’re probably wondering what the simplest and most effective way of creating a bonus for your offer or service that you are promoting.

It can be overwhelming and quite frustrating as you want to give your audience and potential buyers a valid incentive to purchase from you or through your affiliate links.

Here are a couple of simple ideas for adding value to any affiliate offer.

Offer Buyers A Free Report

If you are not sure where to start then the most effective and simplest way would be to create a free report or detailed guide.

You can make it as simple or as detailed as you like but it must provide value. Another point to take into consideration is that the guide must have a unique flow that coincides and complements the original training or tutorials.

In other words, it must be structured in a way that acts as a reference that works in tandem alongside the original content as a supplementary alternative.

You can add images and additional text to help further expand on the training while providing more insights to allow users to better understand the topic and complete tasks etc.

To give an example of this, if you are a personal trainer and your clients need help with losing weight and correcting their dietary habits, you will create a detailed guide and structure it in a way that follows a simple step-by-step process.

To elaborate on this example to keep it as simple as possible you will focus the guide on 3 key areas which your clients must follow to help them get the required results.

You will start off with an estimated time period in which they must adhere to all the rules and complete the tasks as required for them to start seeing progress.

The next step will be to create a detailed day to day meal plan that covers the types of food they should eat at each meal. Making sure to provide information based on the number of calories, protein, and macronutrients they need to consume or restrict to allow them to work within any boundaries or limitations they may have.

The final step will be to incorporate a structured exercise plan that will provide information on the best warm-up routines and exercises to implement to increase stamina, build muscle or lose weight.

You can cater the information based on the client’s proprietary needs so they can follow the plan in a simplified manner.

One of the most important aspects of providing a free report or guide to your followers is to not call it an eBook or pdf.

For example:

You don’t want to use this phrase – You can download a free pdf or eBook using the link below.

Even though there is essentially nothing wrong with this call to action but as the words, eBook and pdf are so commonly used they are rarely seen as an incentive or valuable even though they could be packed with detailed information.

So, in your audience’s eyes, it is seen as less valuable, and they may be less likely to use it.

Instead, what you should do is give the eBook a different name such as:

Detailed Report
Proven System
Proven Formula
Structured Blueprint
Step-by-Step Process
Detailed Document

This small change will greatly help enhance the perceived value of your bonus.

It’s a great way to get people interested in your brand, and an even better way to introduce yourself as an expert.

It will also give you an extended reach as an authority figure on the subject or topic.

You’ll not only get instant credibility for yourself and your brand but also have a chance to reveal how the training is helping others deal with their specific problems or challenges.

Now that you have those small changes in place, you can now provide a simple CTA or Call to Action to encourage your followers to provide their email address in exchange for the free report.

OK, here’s another way to add value to your affiliate offers.

Offer Buyers A Checklist

Sharing a detailed checklist is another great way to add value to an offer, service, or promotion.

People love incentives and checklists are a great way to increase a viewer’s interest in a product.

It can help users to follow along with the content of the training etc in a step-by-step order as it also helps to keep them accountable as they progress.

It also helps to solidify more trust in your product so they can get more value.

They can just check off the tasks they have completed along the way allowing them to move on and focus on the next stage of whatever process they are involved in.

This can be useful not only for solo content creators but also for groups and teams that need to work closely together on specific tasks to complete projects etc.

For a lot of teams, sharing and checking off checklists helps everyone stay on track with projects. For instance, maybe you have a big project to take on, but you don’t know who is responsible for what steps in the process.

You can create a detailed checklist of events that can be designated to each team member so that everyone involved knows exactly where to focus their time and energy on.

This will help to avoid confusion while allowing the entire process to have a better flow and be more streamlined.

There are plenty of ways you can create a detailed checklist!

Create PDF files
Dynamic Online Templates
Printable Templates

You can use various design programs to build the files and convert them to pdf or different reading formats that can be made viewable online or made printable so that you can access a physical copy if needed.

Another alternative would be to create interactive checklists that have a more flexible dynamic as you can access them anywhere at any time as long as you have access to a computing or mobile device with a stable internet connection.

Everything involved with these interactive checklists is hosted online so you can view them through your internet browser window, but they can also be made printable if required.

There are so many benefits to creating detailed checklists as you can cater them to whatever area, interest, or niche where you have an established audience of loyal followers or as an incentive to entice new followers to join your group, offer or service.

You can create anything from holiday travel and packing checklists to remind people of all the specifics they need to take with them and be aware of when travelling abroad.

Even step-by-step health guides, cooking and diet plans to exercise plans etc, even how to set up an online business where they can check off each section to let them know which stage they are currently on their journey.

Checklists are a great way to summarize the content in a training course or program into individual tasks while also helping to increase engagement with the user.

You can sell checklists as an additional way to earn an extra income source, or you can give them away for free as an added bonus for an offer or product you plan to promote, you have the freedom to use or implement them how you wish.

If you like the 2 simple ways to add value to your affiliate offers in this article, you will surely like an extended and detailed report containing another 8 ways to boost your affiliate earnings.

So, check out the featured resource below for the free Simple Affiliate Strategies detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊

Why You Need To Start Building Your List Today

List Building is an amazing tool that can help your business stay in touch.

Below, are some amazing benefits, as well as some shocking facts that will help you get the most out of List Building on behalf of your business.

You Own Your List

One of the very best benefits of creating and building a mailing list is the freedom that it grants you to manage it.

It might happen that you manage communications with your clientele pretty well through social media sites, but what if one of those social media sites goes out of fashion?

Social media platforms come and go, but email is prevalent. You have to also consider that while not everybody is on Facebook or Instagram, everybody using the internet has an email address, so it will always be good to capitalize on it.

What’s the first thing people check in the morning? Email!

Email Is Simple To Use

One of the greatest advantages of using email to communicate with your customers is its straightforward nature. Just make sure you have great content to send, and you’re done.

As for your clients, they might not know what a “hashtag” is, why they should comment on a picture, or maybe they’re just not that interested in “liking” something on Facebook and will ignore your posts, but they sure do know how to click on an interesting piece of content that you just sent to them.

You also have the advantage of getting their focus. On blogs or social media sites, users can get distracted and lost among the amount of information that they are bombarded with… even stuff that is related to yours, which may even come from a competitor!

With email, they can read from top to bottom without turning their finger in another direction. They’ll get your information in a condensed format that will only take them to where you want them to go!

It Grants You Exclusivity

When you think about what kind of content you want in your email inbox, or when you think about what individuals or companies you give your email address to, you don’t think about it as a free for all, right?

You think about it as something sacred, since years and years of receiving email junk has taught you to not expose it willingly. You have to think that your customers think about their email inboxes exactly the same way.

It Is Great For Making Announcements And Selling Products

Mailing lists are very good for sending out information that you don’t want to be buried under lots and lots of other trivial pieces of content.

People check their emails daily, and you can reach them much more easily this way.

Reminders for events, offers, announcements, contests and miscellaneous news, like items back in stock, are best sent through email.

Chances are you’ll get an immediate response, especially if you get your customers used to looking for your emails!

It Is Cost Effective

Building and maintaining a mailing list is one of the cheapest ways to market across the board.

You can use a regular service and even keep it free, or you can use a paid mailing list service and make use of better and more advanced features for keeping up with your customers.

If you are serious, you need to invest in a good autoresponder service such as Active Campaign or Aweber

This, of course, will depend on how you are planning to reach your customers, and to make sure they get the most out of the service.

It’s Private And Can Be Targeted

One of the best things about a mailing list, and more specifically about using email, is the privacy aspect, which people care about a lot. It works both ways, because you can directly address somebody and he or she can do the same with you.

People prefer it this way, because they can ask you something or complain to you without it needing to be on a public wall or post. You can also create a channel that can be exclusively dedicated for this kind of communications, which customers will be thankful for!

You can also target emails to certain people or groups of people, hence knowing their preferences and habits will be crucial. This will enhance how you communicate with them, and in turn will also change how they perceive you.

Finding The Right Balance Between Delivering Value And Selling In Your Emails

Every email marketer has to find the right balance between delivering value and promoting products. That’s the only way to ensure the longevity of your list and the loyalty of your subscribers.

If you keep mailing out for offer after offer without giving any value, you’ll appear ‘spammy’ and many of your subscribers will get annoyed and leave.

If you keep providing value and giving out freebies, you’ll condition your list to only expect free gifts and they’ll not be inclined to purchase anything from you.

So, finding the right balance is of paramount importance to keeping you in the green. Most subscribers innately know that you’re running a business and will have to promote offers every now and then to cover your business costs and generate profits.

In fact, if you do your email marketing well, your list will be supportive of your business and will purchase your products or the products you recommend. Email marketing is all about having a relationship with your list… and just like every relationship, there must be give and take.

In this section, we’ll look at 3 methods that you can employ to strike the right balance between providing value and making money through promotions.

Provide Tools And Tips

Your subscribers are on your list to learn from you. They’re looking for information that can help them with whatever their goals are.

If you have a weight loss list, your subscribers will want to know tips and tricks to lose weight. If they’re on a gardening list, they’ll want to know the latest methods to grow healthier vegetables or have a better garden.

Your job as an email marketer is to share pertinent, useful and applicable information to them on a regular basis. It’s imperative that your knowledge be shared so that they can learn something from you.

Share with them what works for you. This will keep them hooked to your emails and they’ll be less likely to leave.

Giving Gifts Or Bonuses

If you’re an affiliate marketer, you may need to give attractive bonuses to woo your list so that they buy through your link. This is especially true if you’re in the make money online niche and the product launches are highly competitive. Potential buyers will look around for the best bonuses before they make a purchase.

So, you’ll want to set up a good bonus as and when you can. That said, you do not need to provide a bonus every single time. If you’ve been providing enough value, your subscribers should purchase from you just because they like you.

It is a delicate balancing act here to get the list to purchase without always expecting a bonus… but it can be done.

If you’re in other niches, you could give out gifts like free reports or discount coupons or get special deals for your list that isn’t available elsewhere.

Offer Help When You Can

One of the best ways to increase engagement in your list is to be contactable. If you’re a successful marketer, you may hire a virtual assistant to help out here. Ask your list to contact you if they have questions or need help… and when they do, help them out.

If you recommend a product, you can always help them with any issues they may face using it. Be proactive and do what you can to make your subscriber achieve their goals.

Finding the right balance is all about showing that you care. Overdeliver and help whenever you can… and when you have something to sell, your list will support you and not unsubscribe because they think that you’re only looking out for number one.

“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar

If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊

Discover How Using Honesty Will Boost Your Email Open Rates

You may have heard marketers say, “Email marketing is dead” … or email deliverability rates are low these days. The list of complaints is many and by all appearances, it seems like email marketing is getting tougher now because more and more subscribers are wary and jaded.

Marketing emails are viewed skeptically, and subscribers are much more discerning now. This is why some marketers have started using platforms like Facebook Messenger or bot services such as ManyChat or MobileMonkey because engagement is generally higher, but that doesn’t always convert into leads or sales.

Yet, there are a handful of marketers who excel at email marketing. They have high open rates, high click through rates and their emails get them a ton of sales and commissions.

So, how do they do it?

The answer is simple. They have a good relationship with their list, and they have a good sized list. The best way to build your list fast will be to retain your current subscribers as you add more to the list. If each email you send gets many unsubscribes, it will be an uphill task.

Ultimately, you need to be an honest and transparent marketer who is unique enough to stand above the noise. This is crucial to building trust and getting you noticed by your subscriber.

Don’t think of your email list as simply a cash cow to promote your (or affiliate) products or services, but rather think of them as your tribe.

Once you can achieve these 2 goals, getting people to open your emails and buy your products or the products you recommend will be a breeze.

You must treat them well and make them realise that you are simply trying to help them. The fact that you may make money by them buying your products or services is simply a byproduct of your helping them to succeed. Of course, this need to be a genuine desire to help them; you will NOT be able to fake this, so don’t even try!

Use the 5 pointers below to boost your open rates by winning your list over with your personality

Promote Only What You Believe In

This is a HUGE factor when it comes to building trust with your list. You should always promote or sell products that are of high-quality and will get the buyer their money’s worth.

Too many marketers these days tend to promote every product under the sun just so that they can get commissions.

In the short run, this may work… but over time, their list will stop trusting them and the sales will dry up faster than a wet towel in the Sahara desert.

Do your research on the product, the product creator, the price, the pros and cons, etc. This will allow you to give an honest review of the product and if it’s something that you wouldn’t buy… do NOT recommend it.

Show Them You’ve Purchased The Product

One of the best ways to inspire your list to buy the product you’re recommending. Even if you received a review copy or a complimentary gift in return for a promotion, go ahead and buy the product if you like it.

Take a screenshot of your purchase and display it in your email to show that you actually forked out money for it.

This will show that you too have skin in the game and you’re truly recommending something that you believe in.

Test Out The Product If You Can

Test the product out and see if it works. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfume or some ‘make money online’ (MMO) eBook that promises profits.

Make sure that you test the product out and see the results for yourself. Do you like it? Does it deliver on its promises? Is it worth the money?

If the answer is yes to all of the above questions, then you can promote it knowing full well that it’s good. Do not blindly pass off the claims on the sales copy as gospel when doing a review.

Don’t Contradict Yourself

This is very common among online marketers who promote products in the MMO niche. On one day they may be praising a particular YouTube video ranking software and saying that it’s the ‘last one you’ll ever need.’

A week later, when a new but similar video ranking software is released, they’ll promote this like it’s the best thing you’ll ever need.

Your subscribers can see through these shenanigans. Do not contradict yourself in your emails. If you’re promoting a software that is really good, then you should get a copy of it yourself and try it out.

You can then share your knowledge and tips with the list and show them the results you got from using the software.

You’re supposed to promote and also help your subscribers learn to use what they buy. You can create tutorial videos, blog posts. etc. to guide them. You are limited by your own imagination as far as delivering value goes. That’s what a wise marketer would do instead of pushing every piece of junk that hits the market.

Finding Your Voice

As a marketer, you’ll need to stand out from the rest. There are many ways to do this. You could use photos of yourself in your emails or have an attractive personality that comes across in your emails.

A sense of humor or brutal honesty or links to videos that you’ve made will help your readers get to know you better.

The key to being unique is to let your personality shine. Do not try to fake it till you make it or act like an authority who is pulling in six figures a month, if you’re not even close. The age old dating advice of just being yourself applies here too.

If you can practice these 5 tips and make them second nature to your email marketing, your open rates will skyrocket, and your subscribers will look forward to your emails.

If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊

Some Key Affiliate Marketing Tools

Knowing how affiliate marketing works is essential. So is being able to create content that attracts the right audience. But once you know the fundamentals of operating as an affiliate online, you’ll want to employ the use of a few tools that can help you do your job quicker, better and more efficiently. So, be sure to add these tools to your affiliate marketing plan.

WordPress themes are one type of tool that can help you increase sales. Each blog comes with free themes installed that you can choose from – but there are themes that have specifically been engineered to help affiliates make conversions.

One example is called Theme Forest and it’s very popular among professional bloggers. Their themes cost a bit of money, but they are highly customizable, so once you begin seeing some profits, you may want to advance your theme design to the next level.

Keyword tools are the best way to get an edge on the competition. You can dig down into your niche and compile a huge arsenal of longtail keyword phrases that will attract tons of traffic to your affiliate site.

There are both free and paid keyword tools. The free tools typically let you do a limited amount of research. They’ll return a list of keywords and phrases, tell you the global monthly volume, and give you a word like “low, medium or high” for competition levels.

Then there are the more advance keyword tools. These types of paid keyword tools help you get even more information, including the profit potential of the words and phrases.

Plugins are great for affiliates to put on their blog because they help your blog automate certain tasks. Or they provide others with the ability to do tasks. You can add a social bookmarking plugin so that your visitors can share your reviews with others on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or via email.

There are plugins that allow you to easily embed Amazon product listings into your blog post. Some help your site become mobile friendly in an instant. You can research all of the latest plugins for affiliate marketing online.

There is some software on the market that helps affiliates optimize their sites for search engines, or gain backlinks from other good resources. You’ll have to evaluate each one to ensure it’s not engaging in spammy behavior before you use it for your own site.

Using affiliate tools is something you should do gradually. Trying to automate too many elements at once can overwhelm you. You want to have a hands-on understanding about what makes you site grow and convert before you replace yourself with an automated system or tool.

Affiliate Marketing Growth

Once you learn the basics of affiliate marketing, you’ll begin wanting to know about exploding your profits. You’re going to hear a lot of people repeat the phrase, “wash, rinse, repeat” to you – and that can get frustrating if you don’t know exactly what that means.

It basically means that once you start seeing success with your current tactics, you’ll want to replicate them and make more money. There are a few ways you can do this as an affiliate marketer looking for growth, so apply these tips to your affiliate marketing strategy.

First, you can go into more niche markets. If you know that your strategies are working in the parenting niche, for example, you can expand into another niche like fitness. You want to make sure that you have time to manage the number of sites that you create.

You can also grow your profits by expanding on the products you’re promoting. You might have built a site about baby strollers, for example. You can build on that by creating similar niche sites, like baby car seats, baby clothes, baby swings, and so on.

Once you start promoting more products, you might want to build a home site that links to all of these mini topics. So for example, you could build a main parenting site that links to your other sites on strollers, baby bottles, car seats and more.

You can also look into other affiliate programs to boost your commissions. If you’re only promoting on Amazon, for example – check out Commission Junction, Share-a-Sale, and so on.

If you’re on ClickBank only right now, then see what’s on JVZoo, Warrior Plus, and even Amazon in the book or Kindle departments. Those can tack on extra commissions to your profits.

Another growth factor is obviously traffic. You should be studying various ways to boost traffic to your affiliate sites. More traffic means more conversions. Build a subscriber list so you can communicate with them repeatedly.

When you’re ready to make the leap, you can grow your affiliate income by becoming a product creator. Writing a book about your affiliate experiences allows you to promote the tools and courses that helped you along the way. Inside your course, you could link to a keyword tool, for example – and make a commission from that.

Affiliate Marketing Mobile Perk

Is your affiliate marketing site mobile-friendly? Not many are. If someone goes to your website from their iPad or iPhone, it should have a mobile option for them to see. This allows them to read the content easily so they don’t have to squint or manually expand the screen from section to section.

Many people are replacing the use of home PCs with mobile devices. The numbers are still in favor of home personal computers, but the use of mobile technology is growing at a fast rate.

If you’re promoting tangible items, it can increase sales. People want to shop and compare prices or find items for sale that they can’t find locally. So let’s say a mother wanted the latest Monster High doll for her little girl.

She is in her local Walmart or Target store, but they’re all sold out. She desperately wants this for her daughter, so right in the aisles, before she buys a substitute doll, she takes a chance on seeing if it’s for sale online.

She Googles the name of the Monster High doll and lands on your affiliate toy review site where you’ve just written a review about this doll, pointing her in the direction of Amazon and its free shipping option. She orders it instantly – thanks to your mobile-enabled site option.

Holiday shopping season means an increased mobile demand, too. This is the time of year when there is always a sold-out sign hovering where the most in-demand items were once shelved.

People can comparison shop for price bargains, get Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales on your mobile-friendly domain while also getting local bargains offline. But it’s not just tangible items that sell well on mobile devices.

As an affiliate, you might get into things that mobile users often buy on their devices. This includes things such as eBooks and ringtones. Sometimes they’ll buy a mobile app and you can earn a commission for it.

There are some free tools that help you take your site mobile in an instant. WP Touch is one plugin that’s free where you can instantly activate it and turn your site into a mobile-friendly entity.

Or you can invest in the specific design of a mobile-friendly option customized for your domain. These prices vary, but you want to make sure that it doesn’t create any errors for those wanting to use your site from a PC if they choose that option.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Recruitment Tactics

Affiliate Recruitment Tactics

What Are Affiliates?

Why You Need Affiliates

How To Find Affiliates

Making Affiliate Worthy Offers

Important Stats, Information & Figures To Share

Keeping Affiliates Happy

Developing Relationships

Affiliate Software & Tools

What To Do Now

2 Simple Ways To Add Value To Your Affiliate Offers

2 Simple Ways To Add Value To Your Affiliate Offers

Offer Buyers A Free Report

Offer Buyers A Checklist

Some Key Affiliate Marketing Tools

Some Key Affiliate Marketing Tools

Affiliate Marketing Growth

Affiliate Marketing Mobile Perk

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