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Affiliate Marketing
5 Effective Affiliate Marketing Strategies
There are a plethora of affiliate marketing strategies and tactics employed by many successful affiliate marketers to ramp up their sales and commissions.
While some strategies may seem advanced, they are all usually based on the fundamentals of affiliate marketing.
You need content. You need traffic… and you need to position the right offer in front of the right audience. The goal is to help and also gently guide the reader towards a purchase.
As an affiliate marketer your job is to be a ‘conduit’ that takes an interested visitor to the sales page which will go on to sell the product.
That’s really all there is to it. All other intricacies can be boiled down to this goal. Let’s look at a few highly effective strategies employed by thousands of affiliate marketers all over the world.
Niche Sites
This is without a doubt the most popular strategy. To promote a variety of products you need a niche site. The content that’s interspersed with your affiliate links will make you sales if you do it right.
You’ll need to learn the basics of setting up a site, optimizing it, creating content that converts and a few other things. Once you get a grasp of the fundamentals, the sky is the limit.
As long as you grow your site, your earnings will increase exponentially. Some of the large authority sites make 5 to 6 figures a month in affiliate commissions. That’s how powerful this method is.
Facebook Groups/Pinterest Boards
Everyone is on social media these days. Having Facebook groups and Pinterest boards dedicated to your niche, will allow you to tap into existing hotbeds of traffic while targeting and audience that is interested in your niche.
Through the links in your posts and pictures, traffic will trickle to your site and you’ll get sales. Some affiliates prefer to direct link the pictures in Pinterest to the affiliate products.
That’s fine too. What matters is that you hang out where your audience hangs out.
YouTube Channels
If you’re shy to be on camera, you can still do unboxing videos or PowerPoint presentations with a voiceover. YouTube is an excellent source of free traffic.
You just need to invest your time in creating interesting videos that are optimized to rank well.
Links in your video descriptions can either go to a landing page or your website. While some affiliates prefer to directly link to the product, it’s wiser to try and capture the lead.
BTW, for an excellent course on video marketing, I highly recommend Video Marketing Insider
Email Lists
As mentioned earlier, always strive to build your list. Have a pop up on your site with a freebie that encourages the visitor to opt in.
Have your links in your social media sites pointing to your landing pages. Do whatever you can to build your list.
Once you have a list and you build a relationship with them, you can promote products that will be well-received. A list will be your greatest asset.
Paid Ads
Many marketers stay away from paid advertising because it’s almost inevitable that you lose money during the testing phase. However, you should give it a try when your budget allows for it. You’re not losing money – you’re buying data.
Once you make this mindset shift, you’ll be encouraged to keep trying till you find a few winning ad campaigns. A winning campaign can restore your losses within days and yield you an attractive profit. Such is the power of paid advertising.
Give these 5 strategies a try and watch your affiliate commissions soar. They will take you some time to do, but if you’re consistent and stick to the plan, your future self will thank you for it. These strategies will work wonders for your affiliate marketing.
Of course, a major part of affiliate marketing is knowing which products to promote, so how do you decide which to promote and which to leave aside?
What Should You Look For When Choosing Products To Promote?
As an affiliate marketer, when you choose a niche to market in, ideally it should have a wide variety of products to promote. There should be a mix of tangible and digital products to cater to a wide variety of customers within the same niche.
There are several pointers you should bear in mind when choosing products to promote to your niche. Sometimes, things can get tricky and what may be snapped up quickly by some people within the niche may be ignored by others.
So, it’s important to put right product in front of the right person at the right time to get maximum sales. Below you will find a few tips to guide you.
Does It Fit Your Niche?
This is a very important point. You need to know what your audience is looking for. If you’re in the golf niche, promoting bodybuilding supplements such as mass gainers might be a flop. However, an eBook about improving one’s shoulder strength may be a hit for people hoping to improve their golf swing.
You must be aware of the needs and problems your audience is facing. A busy mom looking to lose weight will quickly buy a guide that shows how one can shed the fat with 15-minute interval workouts.
However, that same guide will not be as eagerly bought by women looking to lose weight with an easier program like yoga.
As you can see, even though the problem is the same, the products that’ll interest your audience will be different. So, you must really understand your niche and expect a period of testing.
Vendor
Another factor that you should look at is the vendor. If you’re promoting products on Amazon, you don’t have to worry too much.
Everybody trusts Amazon and they do a great job at selling.
However, if you’re promoting a weight loss guide from another site, the credentials of the author will be important. An overweight person selling a weight loss eBook, or a bald guy selling a hair restoration formula will not inspire confidence in anyone.
Always check the vendor’s credibility.
Sales Page
Is the sales copy for the product convincing?
This is applicable to both tangible and intangible items. Does the gadget on Amazon come in different colors?
Is the description accurate and convincing? Read the sales copy and ask yourself if you’d buy the item. If you would, your site visitor or subscriber might probably buy it too.
Does It Solve A Problem?
Products that solve problems will always sell better than those that are just for satisfying wants.
Nobody thinks twice about buying aspirin when they have a splitting headache… but the cool pair of sunglasses that cost $180 may require much more persuasion on your part.
You need to supply people with what they want, not necessarily what they need. This is just the way of business and marketing; hopefully they will eventually find what they need through you.
Reviews
Look at the testimonials and customer reviews on the site. Amazon makes this easy by providing ratings and reviews from verified customers. Promote products with a high rating and many positive reviews.
The same applies to digital products. You may even wish to ask the vendor to email you a review copy.
Send them a link to your site and mention that you’d like to promote their product, but you wish to review it first.
Many vendors will gladly accede to your request. If they don’t, just move on and find another product.
Trends
Last but not least, check on Google Trends to see if the product is in demand. Sometimes, products are very popular because of a craze, but then it all suddenly dies down.
Think fidget spinners and Pokemon Go… now you get an idea of how fast crazes can start and end. Stick to promoting evergreen products which are popular but have stable trends.
These are the pointers to look out for when choosing products to promote. Exercise due diligence in your research and only recommend proven and profitable products to your audience. This will ensure that they trust you and your reputation remains intact.
If you want to know more about affiliate marketing then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download it read it and take action 🙂
Affiliate Marketing 101: Know Your Audience
One of the secrets to successful affiliate marketing is knowing your audience so well that you can instinctively predict what products they’ll like and what they’ll avoid. To get to this stage, will require some effort and research on your part.
In fact, it’s crucial that you do it before you even start marketing to your niche. One reason so many affiliates struggle to convert readers into buyers is because they don’t know their audience.
Follow the pointers below and you will be better prepared.
Do You Have A Customer Avatar?
When targeting a niche, whom will you be speaking to? If you’re targeting the women’s weight loss niche, how old will your reader be? Is she a mother or single? How much time do you think she’ll have a day to exercise? Is she a career woman or a stay-at-home mom?
There are so many questions that you need to ask yourself so that you have a clear picture of whom you’re targeting. If you’re writing for a woman who is in her fifties, she may be a career woman or a housewife. In most cases, she’ll not be trying to lose weight after a pregnancy.
Generally, she’ll be trying to lose weight with gentler exercise programs like Pilates or Yoga. So, you can leave out hardcore interval training programs and focus more on promoting yoga DVDs, yoga mats, etc.
While some questions will overlap and you don’t need to get too specific, you must have a general idea of whom you’re speaking to. This will enable you to tailor your message accordingly.
Where Do They Hang Out?
Finding your target audience will be your next task.
Just by scanning the forums they hang out in, you’ll be able to learn a lot about the niche and where there are gaps that are not being filled by the market.
You can then target these areas with your marketing.
Over and above that, knowing where your audience hangs out will be helpful when it comes to traffic generation later on.
What Are Their Problems?
The forums, Facebook groups and other places where your audience congregates will often have questions and problems being mentioned by those in need of help. This is a goldmine of information.
Find out what common problems your market has and address them effectively. You’ll get a lot more sales and a very loyal audience.
Very often, during your research you’ll see similar products being mentioned that have helped people with their issues, and some other products will not be looked upon favorably.
Take notes here and promote the popular products and avoid the stinkers.
Are There Any Other Issues That They May Have?
Some niches can be related without you even realizing it. For example, the man who wishes to lose weight and get ripped, may also be doing it to attract more women. He’ll probably also be interested in guides that show him how to pick up women, etc.
This is actually a very popular industry online with tons of sales. You may wish to experiment and try promoting a pickup artist guide and see how that works for you. If it’s well-received, you know that you can start planning to market it more frequently. If it falls flat, you can ditch it and move on.
By following the tips above, you’ll become a better affiliate marketer and your content will be devoured by your readers. You’ll be the Pied Piper in your niche and your loyal readers will follow you wherever you lead them. Once you get to this stage, you’ll be an excellent affiliate marketer.
But it doesn’t end there! In affiliate marketing there are many skills you need to master to be effective and once you have found and know your audience, you will need to try to sell them on your affiliate offers but you need to be careful and not turn them away and this is where subtlety comes in…
How to Be Subtle In Affiliate Marketing
There’s a marketing saying that goes, “People hate being sold to, but they love to buy.”
This maxim pretty much hits the nail on the head. Many marketers fail to realize that you say more when you say less. When a blog post hypes up a product or you send an email that praises a product in a way that’s over the top, you actually repel potential buyers.
It’s obvious that you have a vested interest in getting them to buy the product just so that you earn an affiliate commission. One the reader detects that you have an ulterior motive, they’ll feel that you’re biased towards the product because you’re affiliated with it.
Your motives become suspect and you lose credibility and trust. Once those go, getting the sale can be very difficult. That’s exactly why you must be subtle in your marketing.
One of the best ways to do that will be to show how the product helped you and how you benefitted from it. While it may not be possible to do this for all the products you’re promoting, you can still be subtle in other ways.
For example, if you have a site showing how to build chicken coops, casually mentioning that ‘circular saws are much better than miter saws because they’re easy to use’ will get you more sales. You just need to hyperlink the words circular saws to the product you’re promoting.
Curious visitors will click on the link. After all, everyone wants to make things faster and easier for themselves.
However, if you say, ‘you need to buy a circular saw model XXX to do this job effectively. It is the best saw that we found for the job and only costs $YYY’, you’ve probably set off the reader’s Spidey senses. They can sense that you’re pushing the saw on to them because you were too obvious.
The goal is to use curiosity and strategically placed anchor text to get the clicks. They must feel like it was their choice. That is the key. When the reader is doing things on his or her own volition, they’ll not be in a guarded state and will be much more receptive to the sales copy, etc.
As an affiliate, your job is to get the click. The sales page should do the selling. While your content can gently pre-sell the reader, it should mostly be ‘benefits oriented’. You want to sell the solution to the problem and not the product. The best way to do this is by showing how the product solves the most common problems that your audience faces.
You’ll not even need to mention where the product is sold or the positive reviews it has. If your content convinces the reader that the product is the solution that they’ve been looking for – without blatantly telling them, the reader WILL click on the links to see how they can solve their problems.
Everybody is looking for solutions. You’re just the middleman who gently guides them down the right path. That’s all there is to it. Be subtle.
If you want to know more about affiliate marketing then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download it read it and take action 🙂
Expand Your Online Business With A Complementary Business Model
If you are like most entrepreneurs, one business simply isn’t enough! Many entrepreneurial business owners have so many ideas that they want to start a dozen businesses all at once; unfortunately, if they do the likelihood result is one of failure.
The savvy entrepreneur will start with a single idea and build a business around that before even thinking about expanding or creating another business. This is just common sense!
If you’ve already grown a successful business and have now made the decision to expand your business into another branch, rather than simply expanding the current branch that you’re in, then you want to choose something that you would be able to leverage off each other.
Going in two completely different directions may be personally satisfying for you, but to maximize your success, it’s best if you choose something that fits seamlessly with your current business branch and it will make things much easier to manage.
There are many different ways you can do this.
For example, let’s say you have a thriving digital affiliate marketing business. You’re making money recommending courses that are delivered in the form of videos or text downloads.
This could be in any niche, not just online marketing. For example, you might be recommending fitness courses for your audience. A great way to expand your business would be to begin offering promotions for tangible items as well—such as dumbbells, yoga mats and so on.
This is a similar business branch, because it’s still affiliate marketing, but it’s just slightly different. You can go one step further and create an entirely different business branch that also pairs well with affiliate marketing.
One good way to do this would be to begin creating your own information products. As a product creator, you would develop your own courses and present them to your customers so that you could keep 100% of the revenue.
You’ll also be able to expand your profits by recruiting people who are in the affiliate marketing business to promote your info products.
Another example might be someone who is currently publishing fiction on Kindle.
As a self-publisher, you’re aware of the ins and outs of all of the technical tasks as well as the strategic ones that allow an author to publish their work on Amazon or a variety of platforms and make money from it.
So how can you expand on this business model in a new direction?
One way is to begin developing your own info product courses that teach other would-be authors how to do what you’re doing. This is essentially a non-fiction creation. However, instead of only making a few dollars or cents publishing a book about it on Amazon, you would be able to charge much more selling a digital course on your own website.
What about someone who started their online business as an info product creator? Maybe your first endeavor online was to create a course teaching people how to set up a blog.
One thing you can do is expand your business into becoming a service provider, where are you are charging people to handle the task for them. You could make money installing their blog and setting it all up for them.
As someone who is familiar with creating your own info products, you may also want to offer services creating info products for other online marketers. These would be people who don’t know how to brainstorm, research, and write or record their own lessons, but they would like a product of their own to sell.
If you started out as a service provider, you can also pair that business model with something your clients might like. For example, let’s say you started off as a ghostwriter. Your clients may be people who don’t have the time or knowledge on how to set up their own blog with the content you’ve created for them.
That could be an info product that you create and sell to those same clients. You may also want to spend some time creating content that you put on a private label rights store.
While your current ghostwriting clients may be able to afford your services for exclusive content to some degree, they may love to have the opportunity to buy your PLR in bulk to beef up their site, emails, and other needs.
Anytime you’re doing something online and succeeding with it, there is an opportunity for you to sell the information about how you’re doing it. So whether you’re currently an info product creator or not, think of everything you know that a newbie may not.
Use this as an opportunity to develop courses that could help others learn the ropes. Look at your current business model and see if there are affiliate marketing opportunities in your niche.
If you’re creating products or providing services, you may be able to add a business branch where you’re simply promoting others who do the same – your competitors! Of course, you don’t have to start a new branch that pairs well with your existing one.
There’s always the possibility that you would like a complete break from what you currently do so that you have something exciting and new to pursue online. You might be able to do this with a new niche, or a completely different business model that has nothing to do with what you’re currently in.
The only reason you may want to consider pairing things together is because it makes it much easier to use the momentum of your existing successful business branch to get the other one off the ground. For example, as a service provider selling ghostwriting services, it would be very easy for you to get those same clients to purchase your PLR.
By the way, if you want to learn about 5 lucrative online business models you can try, from affiliate marketing, to FBA/eBay and more, check out the featured resource below for a free report that covers 5 online business models that you can choose from. Pick one and get started today… 😊
Which Online Business Model Should I Choose?
This sounds like a simple question to ask yourself before venturing into any type of business endeavour and online business is no different.
It is true that online businesses are less risky as they don’t require a lot of capital to get started, but you still need to see which ones are viable and a good fit for your personal circumstances and likes.
So, before you leap into a new business venture, you want to make sure that this will be sustainable for you in the beginning and for the long run. You don’t want to get started with something, only to discover there is a missing piece of the puzzle that will prevent you from achieving success with your efforts.
Analyze
You first need to analyze each business model to see if it’s viable in several different ways. The first thing most internet marketers will want to know is whether or not a particular business model will be lucrative for them.
If it’s not a profitable venture, then you’ll want to focus your efforts elsewhere. For many, it’s not just about the amount of money that they can make, but also the speed in which they can make it.
If you’re only making a few pennies every month, that won’t be enough to sustain your efforts. You have to think in terms of exchanging your time for money. Take a look at what other marketers are earning with that business model.
If you’re adding this branch to another business, then you don’t want to take away your time and effort on a very lucrative business model only to funnel it into one that won’t earn you as much money.
This may or may not be important to you. If you’re adding a second business model on specifically for personal satisfaction reasons, then the financial slant of it may not be as important to you.
But this is rarely the case, because people like to see a return on their efforts. Don’t forget, when you’re determining the profitability of a business model, you’re not just looking at what comes into your bank account.
Upfront Cost
You’re also looking at the expenses you were required to pay ahead of time to get that business model off the ground and operating functionally.
Also, make sure you take a look at any alternate approaches to implementing this particular business model.
For example, let’s say you decided to go into affiliate marketing. If you promoted information products that either had recurring income or a higher ticket cost, you would earn more than someone who was simply recommending books on Amazon, where you would only earn a few cents for every sale.
Implementation
The next thing you want to do when determining whether or not a business model is viable for you at this time is to think about how easy it will be for you to implement. No one wants to engage in a frustrating activity, but if something is difficult, it can severely impact the amount of time, money, and effort that you have to put forth in making it work.
When you first start thinking about adding a second business model, make a list of all of the skills it requires to implement this particular plan. You might find that you have a number of the skills readily available to you.
However, you may also discover that you are incapable of handling one or more of the tasks. If this happens, you will need to look at one of two options.
Your first is to simply delegate the task to someone who does have the knowledge and skill to handle it. This will undoubtedly add to the financial burden that will be required to get this business off the ground.
Another way you can approach it is to simply adopt the realization that you will need to learn the skill in order to implement the business plan.
Some skills are easy to learn and cost-effective for your budget. Others take more time and discipline to understand, and may come at a high cost due to the learning process. Think about all of the tools that you will need in order to pursue a specific business plan.
Sometimes, marketers will teach a method and say no special tools are required. But without them, it makes the process much harder to achieve. You’ll have to decide whether or not you’re capable of handling it without special tools to help you along.
Enjoyment
The final way you want to analyze this business model to see if it’s viable for you is to think about how much you will enjoy working in this business branch over time. There are many people who start out pursuing a particular business branch simply because it looks profitable and easy.
Then they get started with it and discover that it doesn’t bring them a great deal of personal satisfaction. They begin to dread having to work on this business branch, and then it withers and dies.
One of the biggest perks in working for yourself online and at home is that you get to choose what you work on. Instead of being forced to handle projects that bring you grief, you’re able to selectively decide which projects, niches, and path you want to take in your business.
The last thing you want to do is abandon that freedom of choice only to suffer because you added a business branch you thought you would enjoy, but don’t. Before you commit to this particular new business branch, think about what it would be like to engage in this topic or concept every single day.
In fact, you might give yourself a test to do something in the niche for an hour or two each day for a few weeks. This trial run will enable you to gather enough information to see if this is a business branch that will keep you enthusiastic over time, or cause you to quickly avoid and abandon it and waste all of the time, effort, and money that you have put into it.
So, there you have it. A quick insight into how you can pick the best online business model(s) to suit you.
By the way, if you want to learn about 5 lucrative online business models you can try, from affiliate marketing, to FBA/eBay and more, check out the featured resource below for a free report that covers 5 online business models that you can choose from. Pick one and get started today… 😊
2 Questions You Need To Answer As An Affiliate Marketer
As you are reading this post, you must already realise that affiliate marketing is a great way to start an online business quickly.
But it isn’t always as straightforward as it seems and you may have some questions such as “Do I need to build an email list as an affiliate marketer?” or Do I need my own website to do affiliate marketing?”
In this article we are going to take a look at these two important questions.
Firstly, we’ll take a look at whether you do need to build your own email list when affiliate marketing and then we’ll look at whether you really do need your own website to really succeed as an affiliate marketer.
Ready? Let’s get started…
Do Affiliate Marketers Need To Build A List?
When embarking on an affiliate marketing career, you’ll need to determine if you want to build a list of emails from customers. Whether or not to build a list depends on the type of affiliate marketing you plan to pursue.
If you want to sell to the same people again and again in your niche, then building a list is essential to your business model. This allows you to have communication to share information about new products and specials.
Building a list works well for products in specific niches. For example, the weight loss, health, and parenting niches offer opportunities for you to promote multiple products over a period of time. You’ll find a wide variety of products that fit different needs of your customer base.
When you have a list, you can capture the names and email addresses of potential customers so that when a new product is available, you can share it quickly and easily. You’ll need a program specifically designed for email marketing – such as Active Campaign or Aweber.
Using Active Campaign or Aweber, you can create sign up forms that you can add to your blog and squeeze page where people can enter their name and email address. You can also add special categories to help you get to know your customer better, such as the top weight loss problem or parenting concern they have.
Once you’ve captured emails, you can use the program to send different types of messages. Broadcast messages are often used to announce specials or just generally communicate with your list. They’re sent one time to the current subscribers.
You can also set up automatic follow up messages that are delivered at a regular time interval with information that goes out to all new subscribers. A follow up email might give a tip on using a product or good informative news about the niche in general.
Building a list doesn’t happen instantly – it’s another area in affiliate marketing where you will grow over time. You’ll start with no one on your list and gradually begin to see it increase. The larger your list, the more people you can reach to promote products.
It’s important to treat your list with care and respect so that people will want to hear what you have to share with them. You’ll want to make sure not to share any of the information you gather or submit your list to constant spam type messages.
Another question you may have is about having your own website as an affiliate marketer; is it required?
Well, let’s take a look at that now 😊
Do You Need A Website To Be An Affiliate Marketer?
As an affiliate marketer, you may wonder if you need to have your own website in order to succeed in the business. While it’s certainly a good idea to have your own website, there are many options that don’t require you to do that.
For example, you can use third party platforms that allow you to promote products. Examples include HubPages and InfoBarrel. These sites are relatively easy to use and can help you make a profit in affiliate marketing. You can write articles with affiliate links in them and you can generate income from the links and from the articles themselves as these sites operate a revenue share scheme. You can also do a similar thing with Medium too.
You can also get hosting for a free blog. For example, BlogSpot allows you to create a free blog where you can promote products. The one thing you need to be aware of, though, before you use third party platforms – is that you’re subject to their rules.
At any time, the rules may change and your blog might disappear or your pages may become obsolete. You just don’t have much control over your business when you choose these options. In fact, you can have the business you’ve worked hard to build that gets deleted in an instant.
The best way to guarantee that you have control over your business is to have your own website. You can purchase a domain and hosting inexpensively and know that you’ll have control over your own blog.
If you are looking to buy a domain name Namecheap is a great place to look and if you are looking for hosting you won’t go wrong with either A2 or Siteground.
It’s very simple to set up a blog on your own site and you don’t have to worry about conforming to anyone else’s rules about what can and can’t be done on it. Then you can use third party platforms as a support mechanism and even to drive traffic to your blog.
These platforms can help supplement what you’re doing while allowing you to have more control over your business. If the bulk of your income comes from your own website, you won’t have to worry about what happens if the rules change on another site.
You’ll find that it doesn’t cost as much as you might think to have your own site in your chosen niche and truly be the master of your own affiliate marketing business. This small investment (of about $10 a year for a domain and less than $10 a month in hosting) can bring big payoffs and is worth your efforts.
As an affiliate marketer, you don’t have to have your own website. But depending on third party platforms alone can be a risky decision. The best option is to have your own website and take advantage of third party platforms to supplement what you’re doing on your own site.
This way you get the best of both worlds and have multiple streams of income to support your affiliate marketing career.
If you want to know more about affiliate marketing then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download it read it and take action 🙂