Online Marketing Business

How To Make Affiliate Sales With No Website Or Money!

Every single day, droves of people get on the internet hoping to make money online. Very often, they have a plethora of reasons for wanting to do so – ranging from wanting to quit their day job to having more money for the finer things in life.

One common thread that binds most of them is that they’re often on a tight budget… and is also probably the reason why they want to get into online marketing to boost their income.

And if they are looking to get up and running fast, they will probably want to try affiliate marketing first as you don’t even need your own product to get started.

However, they’re often told that they’ll need to purchase their own domain, pay for hosting, fork out more cash for autoresponder fees and so on. It’s almost as if they need money to make money.

While motivational gurus may spout motherhood statements such as, “It’s not about your resources, but your resourcefulness…”, the truth of the matter is that you can’t multiply by zero.

You’ll need money to pay for different fixed and recurring costs in your business. That’s a given.

If that means getting a second job to earn extra to pay for your business, you may have to do it – and that is resourcefulness, but ultimately you still need cold, hard cash.

However, if you’re financially strapped and can’t possibly get a second job because your first one is almost working you into an early grave, there are a couple of ways you can make affiliate marketing work, for free.

You Need A Free Website

There are several platforms that will allow you to have a free website. The catch here is that you’ll have no control over the advertising that appears on your site.

Another risk is that you’ll need to conform to the rules of the platform however inane they may seem.

If they feel like you’ve flouted their rules, they could boot you out unceremoniously without giving you any notice.

Countless beginner marketers have lost their businesses overnight by ‘building their houses on rented land’.

So, your goal is to build a free website and once you’re generating sales, you should immediately buy your own domain and hosting so that you’re in control of your business.

Here are 2 free platforms you can use:

WordPress.com – https://wordpress.com/

*Medium – https://medium.com/

*While Medium doesn’t allow you to build your own site, it allows you to post articles on their platform. That’s really all you need for now.

The site gets a lot of traffic and has potential when it comes to ranking for low hanging keywords that you may wish to target. From there, it’s just a matter of publishing more targeted articles and getting affiliate sales.

Getting Your Affiliate Links

It should be free to join most affiliate programs on places like ClickBank, Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, ShareASale, Rakuten Marketing and so on. Go ahead and sign up and get your links.

Forget programs that require you to ‘pay to play’ – where you need to have a monthly paid subscription to the software/service/etc. before they bestow upon you the dubious honor of being able to promote their products.

There are tons of excellent affiliate products that you can promote for free without having to jump through hoops.

Free Traffic

Since money is tight, paid ads are definitely not an option here. The next best way to generate traffic to your pages will be to siphon it from high traffic social media sites and platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google.

It’s important to know that free traffic takes time. You’ll not generate massive traffic overnight. You’ll need to create content consistently and almost daily to get reach and traction.

If your content is valuable and top-notch, you’ll build a following and have people clicking on your affiliate links or article links. So, go ahead and create accounts in the different social media platforms and…

Start making videos with your mobile phone and post them on YouTube
Set up a Facebook group and a fan page and start posting content
Write articles on your niche and post them on Medium
Start tweeting your articles/videos/etc.
Use Canva.com to come up with attractive creatives you can use. (It’s free!)

Once again, it’s important to remember that social media sites are not your web properties, so you’re never totally safe with them. The goal is to always generate sales until you have enough money to build your own website and list. These are YOUR assets.

Putting It All Together

One way to start will be to write and start posting useful articles on Medium (you’ll embed your affiliate links in the posts). Just remember to disclose affiliate links and DO NOT overdo it. Moderation is key here.

As long as your content is good, you’ll have curious readers clicking on your links and reaching the sales page of the product you’re promoting… which is your main objective.

Point your YouTube videos, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. to your Medium article so that you can pre-sell the reader by providing more information and value. Once you build trust with your audience, your chances of getting the sale will be much higher.

Your Medium account with all your content will act as a hub-site for your affiliate marketing business. The free traffic methods you employ will siphon traffic from different platforms and point them all to your hub site’s content… just like how all roads lead to Rome.

Then it’s just a matter of time for the traffic to convert into sales (if your content is valuable and persuasive).

What Next?

Keep on keeping on until you start seeing sales trickle in. Give yourself 6 to 12 months to see your efforts yield fruit. This is a slow process, but a rewarding one.

Once you see the commissions coming in, do invest in your business by getting your own domain, hosting and an autoresponder.

Being able to build your own mailing list will help to elevate your marketing to the next level and skyrocket your commissions.

This is the best way to bootstrap your way from scratch to affiliate marketing success.

“Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once you have started to make progress you should consider taking the next step and investing in your business to take your affiliate marketing to the next level. If you want to know more about this then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download it and take action 🙂

5 Ways To Make Your Email List Know, Like And Trust You

There is absolutely no doubt that having a huge email list can be very profitable, but building a list of subscribers is not the be-all and end-all of email marketing. In fact, if you do not establish a relationship with your list or make them feel like they have an intangible connection with you, your list will become unresponsive and die off.

You’ll notice that your emails get less opens and your unsubscribes will start increasing. Most marketers have no clue why this happens and usually there is only one reason. The people on the list just don’t like them or trust them.

It’s really just human nature at work here. If you get a phone call from someone you like, you immediately answer it. What happens if it’s someone you don’t care much for? In most cases, you’ll ignore the call and in some cases, you’ll even block the number.

That’s exactly what happens with emails too. People quickly and eagerly open emails that come from marketers whom they like… and for those they don’t…. it’s off to the trash or spam folder.

Your job as an online marketer is to make your list like and trust you. They’ll then look forward to your emails and be loyal subscribers. This article will give you 5 ways to achieve this goal. Adopt them and you’ll see a marked improvement in the response from your list.

Infotainment

People love to be entertained. Even if you’re in a niche that’s serious like diabetes, you can always include interesting stories in your emails to keep your readers hooked.

Too many marketers focus on conversions instead of rapport. They keep their emails brief with a call to action so that readers will click on the link and buy what they’re promoting. While this may work now and then, over time, your subscribers will get tired of your salesy emails and it’ll turn them off.

This is especially true if you’re in the make money online niche. Most list subscribers in this niche are inundated with emails and overwhelmed to the point where they just stop opening the emails.

You need to be entertaining and keep your emails helpful but lighthearted so that it’s not all about the selling.

Get Personal

It is a fact that the most visited page on most blogs is the ‘About Me’ page. The reason for this is that people are curious to know who the person behind the blog is. The same applies to your list. Your subscribers want to know who you are.

Share with them a few personal stories or incidents that may have happened to you. Do not worry about seeming irrelevant. You want to become a ‘friend’ to your subscribers… and people know personal stuff about their friends.

So, bring down your wall and be human. Share what makes you laugh and what annoys you… and whatever you think may be interesting.

Be Truthful

Above all else, be truthful to your list. Do not lie or resort to leaving out pertinent details just to get sales.

This is rampant in the online marketing industry today. Marketers recommend and praise products that they don’t have a clue about.

By making a mediocre product look like the next best thing since sliced bread, you may get the sale. However, once your subscriber purchases the product and sees what a letdown it is, they will not trust you in future.

Polarize

It is a fact that you cannot please everyone. No matter how good you are, there will be people on your list who ‘just don’t get you.’ Many marketers try to be politically correct and toe the line just so that their subscribers don’t leave.

This is wrong and it’s better to just be yourself and let your subscribers like you for who you really are. Say what you want to say without worry. Those who like you will stay on and those who don’t, will leave.

At the end of it all, what you will have is a list of people who truly want to be on your list. This is a ‘tribe’… and over time, there will be immense loyalty and you will truly enjoy interacting with your list.

Do note that it’s best to avoid discussing politics and religion unless you’re really good at being impartial in your writing… and even then, it’s a gamble. Anything else is fair game.

Be Generous

Generosity is so rare these days and it’s especially rare among marketers. The majority of marketers only send emails promoting products with very little else to go along with their promotions.

People like to buy but they don’t like being sold to. Most people join your list for information and value. They want information that helps them. They didn’t join your list to keep buying products so that you make sales and commissions.

So, provide value to your list often. Be generous and give them tools, tips and your time if you can. Answer all emails that come from your people on your list. Go out of your way to help them.

When you do this well, just intimating that you have a great product on offer will be enough to get their attention and they’ll buy what you recommend. You will not need to send 10 emails a day or hard sell them the product.

You attract flies with honey and not vinegar. Use these 5 tips and make your list like you like a friend they’ve always known.

If you want to know more about nurturing your list after they have opted in, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊

Using Upsells And Backend Sales To Increase Profits

Once you have managed to persuade someone to buy one of your products or services, you should have a good sales funnel in place to try to increase the minimum order value (MOV) as this will make it much easier to be profitable if you are going to use paid traffic.

Your front-end offer should allow you to break even with any ad spend; this means that you are acquiring customers for free.

Then your sales funnels work to add profit to your business.

So, let’s look at a couple of components of a sales funnel which can have a big impact on your profit margins; upsells and backend offers.

Giving More Value with One Time Offers

One time offers are a great way to increase the money you make from each offer. You can get people to agree to purchase a product from you at a lower price that’s only available right that second, making the sale a bit easier.

This is a good way to increase the amount of your sale since they’re already in buying mode. A One Time Offer is shown right after the customer clicks the Buy button. But before they checkout, the OTO is presented for them to consider.

One time offers are a very good way to give customers more value. It’s less expensive than the product would normally be, giving your customers the opportunity to grab another great deal from you while they already have their credit card out.

Another great way to offer additional value is to trade OTOs with other marketers. For example, if you have a product that complements another marketer’s product (and vice versa), then each of you would present the other’s products to your customers as the OTOs, either sharing the revenue or giving the owner 100% in exchange for a reciprocal arrangement.

If you can’t find someone who will JV with you on an OTO offer, you can try to find someone with an affiliate program who will allow you to offer their product as an OTO at a discount. Simply tell them you expect a good volume of sales and you’d like to offer their product at a slight discount.

You probably won’t be able to land a deal like this unless you can prove you can do a large volume of business, because it would mean setting up a special sales page (or at least setting up a coupon code that could be easily tracked with your affiliate ID).

The best OTOs are usually very difficult to say no to. They offer exceptional value at a very special price. There are three separate types of one time offers. One is usually an upgrade to the first product, such as a more comprehensive version of it.

The second could be a coaching program that takes the ideas of the product and offers them in a one-on-one coaching system. And the third could be a turnkey solution that goes along with the product you sold. For example, if you’ve sold an eBook about making money with AdSense, you could offer a package of AdSense templates as the OTO.

Membership sites can also have OTOs. When someone joins your membership site, you could offer them an upgrade to a higher access level. Let’s say you have two access levels – silver and gold.

The silver level typically costs $50 per month, and the gold level costs $100 per month. You could offer anyone who joins at the silver level an upgrade to gold for only $25 more, at $75 per month – a $25 savings from the normal gold level price. You can also offer one-on-one coaching as an OTO for membership sites. Since memberships are already a monthly fee, coaching is a perfect complement to many membership sites.

Make sure you test your one time offers just like you test any part of your sales copy or site performance. Replace the offers and see which ones convert better and then tweak that offer until it performs as well as it can.

Have A Plan for Your Backend Sales

Every good marketer knows how important it is to increase the lifetime value of the customer. It’s much cheaper to make a sale to a previous customer than it is to get a new one onboard. The cost of acquiring new customers can be high but getting more money out of existing customers won’t cost you a penny.

Building a backend to your business isn’t hard but without one, you’re limiting your financial potential. A backend is how you continue selling to an existing customer. Let’s say you sell an eBook on how to make money blogging.

Your eBook could discuss what a blog is, how to set one up, and how to make money from it. Your backend sales could come from affiliate items (if you don’t feel like taking the product creation route again) or a new eBook, membership site, or video/audio package you sell.

Whenever you first start selling online, always think of complementary topics you can tack on as a backend. For our example, your backend sales could be about social networking on other networks like Instagram, Twitter etc..

After they’ve begun seeing success, your backend sales could focus on more paid methods of marketing, such as AdWords. You progress your offers with your audience like steppingstones, moving from the first logical starting point to a more advanced stage.

Plop your offers right into your autoresponder system and it’ll automatically cater to the needs of your subscribers the longer they stay on your list. Another common way to add a backend onto a product is to offer personal coaching.

Personal coaching can be expensive, sometimes costing thousands of dollars per month. A lot of marketers offer this as a backend strategy, giving them the potential to significantly increase the return on their investment (ROI) of acquiring the prospect.

If you take care to create backend offers that add value to their needs and which are of top quality, they’ll continue buying from you. If you promote anything and everything just for the sake of cashing in, they’ll lose trust in you.

Your backend sales strategy isn’t all done just through your autoresponders. You can put links to backend products on your “thank you” pages. And don’t forget that each product can act as a backend item for another one. So, you might start with an eBook about WordPress and then use a blogging eBook as your backend item for the customer.

Just make sure you don’t set yourself up for limited profits by using a single product without implementing a backend strategy that will work to increase your ROI repeatedly. You’re building a business, not dabbling in a few hit or miss sales.

Niche Marketing

Which Type Of Blog Should You Create To Make A Profit?

So, you have decided that you want to make money online and want to start with blogging. That’s great but do you know what type of blog you should be creating if you want to monetise it?

Before we begin, it is important to note that building a business around a blog is a great way to start a business and it is also very cheap to do so; all you need to start is a domain name and some web hosting so it is well worth giving it a try.

And if you have an existing business, why not incorporate a blog into that too to boost your earnings 😊

There are several different types of blogs out there. Not all will earn you money… and even those that you think will generate an income, might not – if you commit a few cardinal errors.

This article will shed light on a few types of blogs and what you can do with them. Instead of pigeonholing the blogs into specific categories, it’s important that you view them based on their income-generating possibilities rather than the purpose for which they’re built.

By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.

OK, let’s crack on…

Personal Blogs

These types of blogs have very low income-generating potential. Generally, they’re nothing more than online ramblings where you write about your thoughts and feelings on what’s going on in your life, etc.

You may have a readership that’s comprised of your friends, family and the occasional curious onlooker. Monetizing such a blog will be difficult unless you specialize in one topic and make most of your upcoming content about it.

For example, a lady who has a personal blog may decide to write about make-up tips and so on and start promoting cosmetics, skin care products, etc. It’s possible – but difficult to make money with this type of blog.

Niche-Specific Blogs

These are the most common types of blogs which are created to target a specific audience. If you wish to do affiliate marketing or sell your own products, you’ll want to create these niche blogs.

It’s important to get an umbrella domain for the market while you niche down. What does that mean?

Let’s assume you wish to create a blog on ‘homemade dog food’, buying a domain that’s too closely related to the niche such as DogFoodZone.com will stifle your growth. What if you wish to blog about dog training in future?

Instead, you may buy a domain such as HealthyPaws101.com (this domain is probably taken, but you get the idea).

By having a domain that is like an umbrella for the niche, you’ll be able to blog about other topics in the niche. After you’ve written about 200 articles on homemade dog food and you’re ranking well, what then?

Well, with the HealthyPaws101 domain, you can start blogging about puppy training. It will be a new category on your blog. As time goes by and you start going deep into each different and related category, you’ll have an authority site.

This is how authority sites are built. They’re just a niche sites that grew big.

Journey-Type Sites

These sites are similar to personal blogs, but they have a purpose here. Let’s assume you’re overweight and decide to go on a weight loss journey. So, you start a blog to journal your progress and let people know what you’re doing.

When you have progress, you can share what tools and methods you’re using. If you’re following a program such as P90X, and losing weight, you can share your affiliate link to the Beachbody website and make commissions when others sign up.

You may also have links to products on Amazon. Maybe you’re using resistance bands, push up bars, yoga blocks, etc. Whatever you’re personally using, you can promote too – because it works for you.

Herein lies the crux of this type of blog – You MUST be making progress and succeeding for people to trust you.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an online marketing blog or a keto blog or even a calisthenics blog. You MUST have results for people to trust you. Your success and progress will spur them to trust your journey and do what you’re doing – and buy what you’re using.

Curation Blogs

These are blogs with different topics that you’ll curate content from different sites.

You won’t need to create much content yourself… and will make most of your money from ads and affiliates who promote your site.

Beginners would do well to steer clear of these types of sites. You’re better off targeting one niche and building a brand and an audience.

Guest Post Blogs

Similar to curation, but you’ll be vetting the different guest posts and only posting what’s relevant to your niche. This is more of a technique than a type of blog per se. Some blogs are totally made up of guest posts… while others have lots of content created by the blog owner and the guest posts are also thrown into the mix.

You’ll need to decide if you need guest posts to supplement your content marketing efforts or if you’d rather have a blog where all content is proprietary (with no need for outbound links).

Besides these types of blogs, there are blogs that are dedicated to teaching… or the pursuit of a certain lifestyle, etc.

At the end of the day, the fundamentals are the same when it comes to profitability. Your blog will need traffic… and once visitors reach the blog, it will need useful and entertaining content that promotes and sells products.

The profitability of a blog is dictated by its ability to sell. You’ll do that with affiliate links, product links, ads, and also build a list that you can re-market to in future.

While you don’t need all these components in place, you definitely need the list building and the links that translate to sales. Your blog only makes money when people buy from or through you.

Create a blog that people love because of its value… and they’ll trust you and buy whatever you recommend.

“Successful blogging is not about one time hits. It’s about building a loyal following over time.” – David Aston

4 Ways To Increase Sales Right NOW

Are things not going the way you’d like? Want more sales? Feeling kind of helpless?

You’re not alone. As marketers, sooner or later we’ve all been there.

The important thing is to DO something. Any action is better than paralysis, because it gets you moving. You can always course correct as you go.

I’m sure you have heard of the phrase “fail forward” and it is a good mantra to stick to when running an online business (in fact, any business really).

Don’t let fear of failure stop you from taking action because that is a sure fire way to fail.

OK, with that being said, here are 4 ways to increase sales and increase your income right now.

You might balk at one or two of them. All I can say is try them before you pass judgment.

1: Get More Affiliates

And I mean LOTS more affiliates. How much time do you spend creating products? Or getting new people onto your list? This is also how much time you should be spending on recruiting more affiliates, and especially GOOD affiliates.

If you can afford it, I highly recommend getting an affiliate manager. If you can’t yet afford it, then become your own affiliate manager. Watch launches and see which affiliates do well, as well as which product owners are building a list that’s perfect for your offer.

Recruit bloggers who are list building. Ask your list and especially your product buyers if they want to be affiliates.

Every where you go within your own niche, watch for people who might be your next affiliate, even if they’re not currently doing affiliate marketing.

Then cultivate relationships with these people. Don’t just approach them and forget them. Send them personal emails, comment on their blogposts and act as though you are friends, because that’s the best way to MAKE friends.

And don’t discount little affiliates, either. I once had a new affiliate who made exactly ONE sale. However, that sale was to a super affiliate who contacted me, asked to promote my product, and sold 420 copies in one week. You just never know.

2: Grow Your Lists

Yes, this is obvious, isn’t it? We all know that the money is in the list, right?

Well, I know marketers who aren’t aggressively list building, and they wonder why they’re not making sales.

On a typical list, you’ll have attrition. And I don’t just mean people unsubscribing, either. The person who is hot to buy your product today will have forgotten who you are in 6 months, or they moved on to another interest, or whatever. You have to be continuously building your lists – all of them.

This includes your email list, your Facebook group and any other list of potential prospects you’re building. Be continuously building, because if you’re not, then your list is shrinking.

Do more guest posting, more webinars for other people’s lists, more JV’s and anything else that will further fill your lists with prospects.

3: Increase The Number Of Marketing Messages You Send To Your Lists And Prospects

If you’re placing ads, place more and better ads. If you have a Facebook group, send them more marketing messages. If you’re doing webinars, do more webinars for your lists.

And by all means send more marketing messages to your lists. A lot of people are scared silly to email their list more than once or twice per week, but here’s what happens when your list doesn’t hear from you every single day:

They forget about you.

They even forget who you are and why they subscribed to your list.

Plus, just about no one on your list is going to open every email you send. It just isn’t going to happen. You might have to send 4 or 5 emails on the same offer before some folks will open even one of them.

Yes, you will get a few more unsubscribes from your list when you email daily, or even twice per day.

But that’s okay, because you will also keep the rest of your list engaged and interested, and you will likely double or perhaps even triple your sales.

Email daily. Email twice a day if you can keep it interesting. But only do this sparingly and if you are email marketing correctly i.e. you are providing value upfront before ever promoting anything to them.

And here’s an alternative if you don’t want to write two different emails in one day – send the same email twice. The second time you send it out, only send it to those who didn’t open your first email. Nearly every email program now gives you this option, so take it.

Some marketers take this to extremes during a launch and do a “crush campaign” which really hammers your poor subscribers when they get 5+ emails the same day about the same promotion. I don’t treat my list like this but there are those who do; I normally unsubscribe when I get hammered like this because I don’t think the marketer really cares about their subscribers by doing this.

4: Raise Your Prices

If your sales page is converting well, then raise your prices and see what happens.

Even if you wind up converting at a lower rate, you’ll likely still be making more money because your prices are higher. Consider a $20 product converting at 7%, versus that same product priced at $35 and converting at 5%. You’re looking at $140 versus $175 per 100 visitors, or a $350 increase for every 1,000 visitors. It adds up.

In addition, by raising your prices you automatically rebrand your product into a higher-perceived level of quality. This is why – oddly enough – there are times when an increase in price can actually result in an increase in sales.

When you raise your prices, some of your steady customers will stop buying. But you’ll also get new customers who want to pay for quality, and you will make more money.

When marketer Dan Kennedy advises any business owner on how to increase revenue, the first thing he tells the owner is to raise prices. Nearly every time the business owner will balk and tell Dan it’s a terrible idea. And nearly every time it results in a MAJOR boost in revenue.

And there you have it – 4 ways to increase your sales and revenue right now. These might not be for the timid, but I can tell you from experience that they work.