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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 🙂

What Is A Success Mindset And How Can You Have One?

If you’re interested in achieving more with your life, then you have probably read your fair share of self-help books. And if you’ve done that, then there’s a good chance you will have come across the phrase ‘success mindset’.

But what exactly does this mean? And is it really possible to start achieving more in your life, simply by changing your mindset?

The answer is a resounding “Yes!” and many people have done so and gone on to achieve great things in their lives.

So, with that being said, let’s take a closer look…

What Does A Success Mindset Entail?

The success mindset, as the name suggests, is the type of mindset and set of beliefs that will set you on track to accomplish more.

This is the set of beliefs, the attitude and the conviction that is required to really go out there and get what you want in life.

And yes, it really is the mindset that is the most important factor here.

Think about those people in your life and in the media who are highly successful and effective. What is different about them compared with everyone else? There are possibly a few factors but the most important things are:

A) They know exactly what they want out of life, exactly where their passions are and exactly who they are
B) They have the unstoppable energy and determination to go out there and make it happen

Let’s take a look at Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson for example. This is a guy who has accomplished incredible things in multiple fields and what is it that helped him get there? The fact that he is willing to put in absolutely insane amounts of work.

If you follow him on Instagram, you’ll constantly be greeted by pictures of him training in the gym at 4am before full days of shooting. Where does he get that energy? He gets it from his passion.

Can you ever imagine a sullen Rock? And can you imagine that a sullen version of his persona would have gotten to where he is today?

So, the first step to building a mindset for success is to define what it means to succeed, for you.

Setting goals for yourself makes it easier to come up with a plan of action to achieve your ambitions and will motivate you to carry out that plan.

You also need to maintain a positive attitude to life. Never underestimate the power of focusing on the positive in any given situation (and there is always something positive you can focus on).

Positivity and having a plan will help you to develop a success mindset but it isn’t the full story because you also have to take action on your plan and this is where many people fail because they don’t actually put their plan into action.

You must take responsibility for your own destiny; nobody else can do it for you, so make you plan, take action and stay positive if and when you come across any obstacles. Do this and you can have a real success mindset.

So that is basically what it means to have a ‘success mindset’ and hopefully, it has also given you a big clue as to what you need to do to get there. In order to have a successful mindset, you need to find your passion and know yourself.

When you can do that, then suddenly everything is going to fall seamlessly into place. You’ll find you have plenty of energy when you truly love whatever it is you do!

Of course, not everything always goes to plan and if or when things do go wrong you need to be able to turn any kind of negative experience into a positive one so let’s take a deeper look at that now…

How To Turn Negative Feedback Into Positive Results

Having a success mindset means taking risks and it means putting yourself out there. It means taking chances and being willing to fail.

And when you do all that, you’ll find that sometimes you do fail. Sometimes people laugh at you. Sometimes you lose a lot of money.

And this can hurt a lot. Sometimes, it feels as though you will never be successful, and that other people seem to have it all figured out. But let’s take a step back for a moment.

Because most of the successful people you know and most of the successful people in the media were unsuccessful at some point. And they have been in exactly the same position as you – having tried and failed.

The only difference between those people and the ones you never hear about, is that they got back up, they shrugged off the criticisms and they went for it anyway.

And if you dig a little deeper, nearly every ‘success story’ is actually made up of a thousand little failures, rejections and humiliations.

Look at JK Rowling who had her book rejected countless times before it made her into one of the richest people on the planet.

Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger who was told that he could never be a movie star with his thick accent and physique.

And yet, look at them now…

The key to remember is that you’re at a point in your story where there’s challenge and upheaval but if you take this in your stride, it will actually make you stronger.

When you receive criticisms from others, what do you do? Do you curl up in a ball and cry about it? Or do you decide that you’re going to learn from their critique and take it on board. Next time, they won’t be able to make that same criticism!

And when you fail and lose your money, do you give up on starting your own business? Or do you make a note of everything that you did wrong and then endeavour not to make those same mistakes again?

This is the difference between successful people and the rest of us. And look at it this way: if you treat every single failure as a chance to get better, then every single time you try, you will slightly increase your chances of winning big.

And that means that if you continue trying, the odds will eventually be stacked in your favor!

If you want to know more about this topic, please read this post here, plus you can also click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 🙂

Is Convertri A Good Choice For New Marketers?

Selling products online can seem like a formidable challenge, and it often seems like creating the product is the easiest task. It’s the sales pages, funnels, linking them all together and making sure everything functions smoothly that’s the most intimidating and difficult part of the process.

So many new marketers get stuck on the technical aspects of online marketing, but it is now easier than ever to get up and running, even with limited technical skills.

And the good news is that it doesn’t have to be a painstaking grind. There are a plethora of page builders and funnel builders on the market to help you out.

Anyone who has been trying online marketing for more than two seconds would have heard of brands like ClickFunnels, OptimizePress, Leadpages and so on.

You’re spoiled for choice and this too becomes a challenge. You’re spoiled for choice. Which do you choose?

Some are plugins that you install, while others have pages which are hosted for you. Some are one-time payments while others are recurring. There’s a ton of decisions to consider before making your choice.

In this article, you’ll discover why Convertri is probably the best option for beginners who are new to online marketing and wish to profit from product creation.

Unlike many of the bigger brands such as ClickFunnels, Convertri has been flying under the radar for a number of years now and is used by many experienced marketers. It’s gaining popularity and will soon rival the rest of the big guys.

Now let’s see why Convertri is ideal for beginners…

Intuitive And Flexible

One of the strongest points of Convertri is that it’s easy to use. The interface is almost intuitive. Most beginners hate going through the learning curve. Since Convertri uses a ‘drag and drop’ editor, it’s perfect for beginners.

Seniors who are trying to make money online will find it very easy to use. Unlike HTML, there is no complicated code to deal with and pages can be replicated easily with the cloning feature in the software.

While OptimizePress and ClickFunnels are block-based editors, with Convertri, you can drag and drop your elements anywhere on the page and make your page look exactly the way you want it to.

Convertri was the first real fully freeform page builder, and while there are some others now available, Convertri is streets ahead in way of functionality and ease of use.

No fiddling with CSS code or any such hassle. There’s even an editor to get your mobile responsive version to look perfect. The mobile version does not affect how your page looks like on a computer. They’re separate from each other and that gives you maximum flexibility and creative license.

Plus, the level of support is incredible; you normally only find out how good a company is when things go wrong, and you have to contact support and there Convertri has you really well covered. And they also have an active Facebook group where you can get peer support and ideas too.

Speed And Convenience

Since Convertri hosts the sales pages, download pages, etc. for you, there’s really no need for you to build your own website yet. Just create a few products, put them out into the marketplace and make sales.

Once you’re rolling in the green, you’ll be motivated to have your own site, etc. Let’s get you making some cash first before doing the more mundane tasks.

Money loves speed, and speed comes from convenient processes – and that’s exactly what Convertri is all about. Speed and convenience which makes marketers’ lives much easier.

Improves Conversions

Tests have shown that pages built on Convertri load faster than pages built on other more popular platforms. People have the attention span of a housefly these days.

You want your pages to load as fast as possible so that you can hook their eyeballs, grab their attention quickly and get the sale. Slow pages WILL cost you sales. Period.

Most novice marketers neither have the technical know-how to fiddle around with caching plugins and coding nor the time to spend two months trying to speed up their load times by half a microsecond.

Using Convertri makes things a breeze while the pages are blazing fast. It doesn’t get better than that.

Simple Split Testing

‘Split testing’ is another term that strikes fear into the hearts of most newbies and even intermediate marketers.

Convertri makes it all much easier and even provides you the conversion stats so that you know which pages are working better with just one glance.

This may not be a sexy thing, but it is important to know how well your pages are performing.

This is especially important if you are thinking of spending money on any sort of advertising to get traffic to your sales pages. If they aren’t converting well, you are wasting money. And if you have a page that is seriously outperforming the rest, then it makes sense to direct more traffic to that one to maximize your conversions.

Amazing Features

The page importer feature in Convertri will allow you to replicate any page on the internet. See a page you like? Go ahead and import it. Now all you need to do is make the necessary modifications to make the page unique and attractive.

(Do note that you should get permission from the site owner if you’re replicating a page that’s not yours… OR… you may model it but make enough changes so that the content on your page is completely different from the page you imported. Don’t plagiarize or rip off someone else’s hard work.)

Another feature that marketers seem to love about Convertri is the ‘undo button’. Apparently, ClickFunnels does not have that feature and it’s something that is sorely needed… and beginner marketers who constantly need to make changes and improve will find that the Convertri undo button becomes their new best friend.

Affordable

Last but not least, Convertri is much more affordable than ClickFunnels. Currently, at half the price, it’s a much better deal and provides most of the same features that you’ll need to create high-converting sales pages, etc.

While plugins like OptimizePress are one-time payments, they tend to be clunkier and the pages load slower. They also have a yearly support fee that you’ll need to fork out money for if you need support.

Leadpages costs slightly less, but the pages don’t load quite as fast as Convertri. The editor is also not as easy to use as Convertri’s drag and drop page builder and is very limited compared to the other options available to you.

To conclude, Convertri is one of the best investments a beginner marketer could make in their business. It will increase your sales, make your marketing processes much easier and if you ever have problems, they have excellent support too.

It may not be the cheapest option but is the best and if used well, it will become an investment rather than an expense and will more than pay for itself.

Do check it out and leverage this powerful platform to launch your own successful online business.

>>> See Convertri In Action Here <<<

Of course, creating a great page is only part of the puzzle. If you want to have great results you need to be able to write highly converting copy which is difficult for many people as there are so many mistakes that can have a dramatic effect on conversions.

To help you avoid these mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be forewarned. Download, read it and take action 😊

4 Actions To Target Your Personal Growth

We all have areas where we want to improve; health, work, family, you name it. But reality sets in along with a busy schedule that doesn’t leave any space for quiet time, let alone individual development.

We also rarely have the willpower we need to see it through. Or maybe we just don’t know where or how to start.

Mindset plays a key part in our success in life and our personal growth but is often overlooked as it is mentioned so much it can appear a little cliched. But you overlook the power of a strong, success mindset at your peril.

If you want to know more about developing a strong mindset, download this free guide here.

Not being able to define your own long-term goals will end up in a life that’s devoid of meaning or direction. You start losing that spark and the motivation to get up each morning wanes.

If you start the day with a negative mindset, how do you think that will impact the rest of your day? You need to make a routine where waking u triggers positive emotions to ensure your day is great. It’s all about focus.

Experts define the personal growth plan as “the process of creating an action plan based on awareness, values, reflection, goal-setting and planning for personal development within the context of a career, education, relationship or for self-improvement.”

An individualized growth plan can help you achieve the vision you have of yourself. It’s something we need to consciously think about and strive toward. If you don’t plan your own development and growth, no one else will and we wonder why we aren’t getting anywhere in life.

We must be actively trying to improve ourselves and to grow or we will stagnate and achieve nothing.

Life is a participation sport; it isn’t a passive spectator sport!

So, get up and start taking control of your life and destiny and if you do, the sky is the limit.

And to help you along the way, here are 4 steps you can take to develop a well-rounded, easy-to-implement, personalized plan.

1. Know Yourself

In order to plan for the future, you have to reflect on your past experiences, your weaknesses and strengths; they’ve made you who you are today.

You also have to clarify your own unique values, such as integrity, respect for others, leadership, honesty. Your values define your stance whether it’s at the workplace, with family and friends, and in your romantic relationships.

Moreover, there are several important questions you have to ask yourself:

What do I want to become in life?
What are my achievements up until now?
What are my personal goals?
What are my career ambitions?
What steps have I taken to pursue these goals and ambitions?

These may look like simplistic questions to ask yourself, but the beauty is in their simplicity. And you can bet that the vast majority of people go through life never thinking that they can change their destiny so will never think to ask these questions of themselves.

Just by knowing about this stuff, you are way ahead of most people, but knowing isn’t enough; you need to act on what you are learning.

2. Develop Your Vision

Once you’ve asked and answered these questions, you’ll have a clear vision of who you are and what you want out of life. This takes us to the second step; developing your vision. A smart tip is to provide yourself with several options to reach your next goal.

That way, if something goes wrong or you face an obstacle, you can switch to another path. Be flexible in your planning because usually people tend to underestimate how long a certain project will take.

Another point people tend to not pay attention to is what they don’t want to do. If you’re at work, you can make a list of what-not-to-do, for example:

Check emails as soon as they come in
Keep too many tabs open at once
Keep cell phone on your desk
Check social media while you’re working

3. Assess Your Current Situation

Implementing your plan can be difficult at first. But with dedication and an eye on the prize, you’ll soon find that it becomes a daily habit. It was Jim Ryun who said, “Motivation is what get you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

Putting your strengths to good use will harness your energy levels so that it’s utilized efficiently. You can set up milestones along the way because smaller goals give you the motivation and drive you need to get to the big ones.

And each time you reach a milestone or achieve one of the small goals, reward yourself for your hard work.

4. Review Your Progress

Each project needs to be reviewed and assess, and your exclusive growth plan is no different. You can do it on a monthly basis, or every couple of months, whatever feels comfortable for you. But it’s crucial that you take a step back and look at all the hard work you’ve accomplished.

Check to see if you’ve left anything out or missed any deadlines. Or maybe the mini-goals you set up last time don’t fit your criteria any longer, they need tweaking or readjusting.

Reflect on your experience and consider everything you’ve learned. This will ensure that you keep moving forward according with your long-term plan and the vision you’ve set up for yourself.

On a final note, you can draw up the perfect plan but if you don’t follow through, you won’t get anywhere. Everyone needs practice to develop and grow, even if it means stepping out of your comfort zone. Having something to strive toward can renew your self-confidence and passion for life.

And remember, when following a plan, it isn’t just about the destination but the journey too. Too often we focus on the end result without enjoying the process and that is a shame because we are missing out.

If you want to know more about enjoying the journey, check out this training here as it will definitely help you to do just that.

And don’t forget to work on your mind during all this. If you want to develop a strong mindset, click on the featured resource below for a free report. Download, 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… 😊