Tutorial

Discover Why Content Will Make Or Break Your Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing and content marketing are joined at the hip. If you want to be a good affiliate marketer, you need to put out good content. There’s no other way around that.

Even if you’re using paid advertising, you’ll be trying to get people on your email list. The emails that you send are content. There may be links to your blogs, reviews, etc.

The crux of the matter is that most people online come looking for either information or entertainment. Only a small percentage are ready to buy. This applies to anything from booking hotel rooms in a foreign country to buying a gun safe.

Before the purchase, these potential buyers will do their research online. They’ll want to know if the hotel they’re staying in has all the amenities they need. They’ll want to see reviews, etc.

If you have a website that shows up when they search for the hotel reviews and you mention how the proximity of the hotel to the local watering holes is a plus point, or you show all the different activities they can engage in that’s just a stone’s throw away from the hotel – the visitor will read the content on your site eagerly because it pertains to them.

In most cases, they’ll click on your affiliate links and book the rooms. Now you’d have made an affiliate commission by providing content that the visitor was looking for. That’s how it works.

There are 5 pointers to note when creating content. Failure to adhere to the tips below will mean that your content marketing falls flat, and you’ll not see much affiliate sales.

Must Be Relevant

Your content must be relevant to the products you’re promoting. If you’re promoting an outdoor grill, you may wish to have content on what to look out for when purchasing grills.

Or how to clean grills… or even easy grilling techniques to prevent a mess. Whatever the content may be, it must be relevant.

When writing content and thinking about SEO, try to think like a buyer and the sort of things that they will be typing into Google.

What do they need help with? Write an article helping them and then link to the appropriate affiliate product you are promoting.

By targeting longtail keywords, you know that whoever comes to your content is a red-hot lead. Yes, the amount of traffic you will get will be less but it is highly targeted and much more likely to buy something you recommend if your content is informative and helpful.

Must Be Interesting

Your content must be interesting enough to hook the readers by the eyeballs and keep them reading to the last word. If your content is vapid and dull, the reader will yawn and click off the page. There goes your sale.

Nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse. When visitors leave your site quickly, Google will notice this, and you’ll rank poorly in the search engines because your site has a high bounce rate and is deemed not ‘user-friendly’… So, have interesting content.

And, don’t be too formal and stuffy unless your niche expects that. Most niches don’t and readers will appreciate you trying to make the content interesting as well as useful.

Must Be Engaging

Facebook posts on your fan page are content too. So are the videos on your YouTube channel. But here’s what makes them so powerful – the engagement in the comments section.

Look at the comments and engage with your audience. The more you get to know them and respond to them, the more they’ll like and trust you. Engagement counts too.

Ask questions that encourage people to comment. Believe me, people are much more likely to comment if you simply ask them to.

Inject humour and your own personality into your social media content and don’t be afraid to be a little controversial now and again.

You ultimately want to attract the people that “get” you and repel those that don’t.

This way you will be much more likely to see visitors to your blog content click through your links as they like what you have to say and trust you and your recommendations; just don’t let them down!

Must Be New

Your content needs to be new. You’ll have to keep publishing content to stay up-to-date.

There’s no point in having a hotel review on your website that’s 8 years old when the hotel has already been torn down to make way for a shopping mall.

Always have a content publishing strategy and stay relevant with the times.

Yes, there are types of content which are classed as evergreen but even though they are evergreen, some of the details may change so you need to keep up to date with your market.

You can either update existing content which means you won’t lose any of the SEO juice for that particular post, or you can write a completely new post; both options have pros and cons so choose which way you want to go and do it.

Must Be Reliable

Whatever content you publish must be reliable too. The term ‘fake news’ is being tossed about everywhere these days. You want content that is trustworthy.

Readers can sense hype and drivel. So, make your content useful and it will help to sell your affiliate products too.

If you are teaching strategies and/or tactics, make sure that you know what you are talking about. It is a good idea to always practice what you preach because at least you know what you are talking about works.

If you are teaching erroneous tactics you will get found out and this can completely ruin your reputation in that niche, so always ensure that whatever content you create is accurate and as reliable as possible.

Stick to the 5 content creation and marketing tips above and you should see your content work better for you and increase clicks and ultimately, sales.

Many marketers are so focused on sales, traffic, and conversions that they neglect the content… which can make or break them. Don’t make this mistake.

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” – Andrew Davis, Author

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 🙂

Monetize Your Blog Using These 5 Proven Strategies

If there’s one mantra that every beginner marketer needs to repeat every single day, it’s this – “I only make money when I sell!”

It’s a simple truth, and yet, it’s often forgotten by marketers who miss the point as they bog themselves down with a myriad of inane details which are part and parcel of running an online business – but are not the MAIN THING.

They do their best to overdeliver insane value in an attempt to build trust and credibility with their audience. They’re in a constant content creation race as they try to outdo the competition.

They check off all the required boxes except the one which puts money in their pockets – selling.

They fail to keep ‘selling’ at the forefront of their minds and end up failing miserably at it. Now what they have are blogs with lots of content, but which are about as useful as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Why are blogs an effective way to get started online anyway? Well, they are easy to set up and cheap. All you need is a domain name (use Namecheap) and hosting (use A2 or Siteground)

The secret to avoiding this problem will be to monetize your blog effectively. You have to sell, sell and sell some more to be profitable. How else will you make money?

Even if you’re displaying sponsored content on your blog, you’re still selling space on it for ads to appear.

Now, there are many monetization methods with varying degrees of efficacy. But ultimately, someone has to buy something (or click on an ad) for you to actually see money landing in your bank account.

And that’s what this article is all about. You’re going to learn 5 ways to transform your blog into a money-making machine with traffic pulling content that works round the clock for you.

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.

Selling Products As An Affiliate

This is probably the easiest monetization method of the lot because all you’ll be doing is selling other people’s products and collecting commissions from the sales you generate.

You don’t need to worry about the tech details or customer service. Your focus is only on pre-selling and creating persuasive reviews.

There are several platforms that allow affiliates to promote products. The most common ones are Amazon, ClickBank, ShareASale, Rakuten and so on.

Once you’re registered with these platforms, it’s just a matter of adding your affiliate links (on your blog) to RELEVANT products in your niche.

There must be congruence with your niche and the products you’re recommending. You wouldn’t want to promote a herpes cream on a toy blog just because the cream has a high pay-out.

Ideally, you should promote a mix of both tangible and digital products. It’ll also be wise to promote products on different platforms. This will ensure that all your eggs are not in one basket.

Far too many bloggers rely entirely on Amazon Associates (with its paltry commission rates). Then they see their earnings dry up overnight if Amazon bans them from the platform.

Unfortunately, this happens all the time and the affiliates are not even given a reason as to why they were banned. The sheer indignity of it all.

Your takeaway?

Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Sell Your Own Digital Products

This is a highly lucrative way to generate an income from your blog. It’s more technical because you’ll need to set up a sales page, funnel, etc. You’ll also need to create a product and have good sales copy so that your sales conversions are high.

All this may seem like a lot of work… and it is… but the rewards are great.

You could do a lot of it yourself by using page/funnel builders such as Thrive Themes (now part of Thrive Suite), ClickFunnels, Optimizepress, Convertri etc. These types of software will help you immensely because they’re relatively simple and intuitive to use.

The truth is that you don’t need to do it all. The good news is that you can outsource the different parts of the process to freelancers on sites like Fiverr and/or Freelancer… while you only focus on what you’re good at…

… and when it’s all completed, you just put the moving parts together and VOILA! Your very own Frankenproduct that you can sell on your blog.

After all, with all the content you’re posting and the credibility/authority you’ve built, it’ll be much easier to sell a product created by you than by someone else, because your audience likes and trusts you.

When you’re creating and selling your own products, you’ll have a lot more flexibility and be in control of:

Product pricing
If it’s a one-time fee or a recurring monthly/yearly membership
The depth of the sales funnel (upgrades, downsells, etc.)
What the product will be about
Customer service

It’s more work, but it’s also more freedom from a business standpoint… and exponentially more profit, if you’re good at it.

Selling Physical Products

This is similar to the earlier point, but now you’re selling physical products. You’ll need a store with a shopping cart that calculates shipping and so on. This is slightly more complicated because you’ll need to fulfil the orders.

You’ll have to decide if you’re selling print-on-demand products or dropshipping which are relatively hands-off processes… or will you be maintaining inventory and mailing the products yourself? Or will you use Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA).

There are several options here and you’ll need to do your research and see which method is best for your business. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you’re making lots of sales but the post office has become your second home.

Email Marketing

It looks like no online marketing article can ever be complete without paying homage to email marketing – and that’s because it really does work. Unlike social media marketing which can be blocked by your audience, most people check their emails – and you want to show up there… to sell!

Yes! Don’t forget the selling… but always remember to deliver value in your emails. You’ll have to find the right balance here.

But first things first – you need to build a list from your blog.

The easiest way to do this will be to use software like Thrive Leads (now part of Thrive Suite) or Conversion Gorilla to display opt in forms, pop ups, scroll mats and so on. This is a fantastic software that most marketers will benefit from.

Another excellent plugin is Post Gopher. It allows your site visitors to download your blog posts as PDFs which they can read later – in exchange for their emails.

Now it’s just a matter of connecting your opt in form to a reliable autoresponder platform like Active Campaign and you’re good to go.

Active Campaign is one of the best autoresponders in the business and is one of the most powerful autoresponders out there for the price, and has powerful tagging and automation tools. As an alternative you could also check out Aweber.

All tech talk aside, just ensure that you have a way to collect emails on your blog and you have an autoresponder sequence in place to nurture the audience on your list.

Do remember to promote your own products (if you have any) or affiliate products in your emails.

Why?

Because you need to sell, sell, sell! That’s why!

Sell Your Own Skills As A Service

This point was saved for last because it has one downside.

As long as you’re providing a service which requires your direct involvement, you’ll be trading your time for money… which in itself places an invisible ceiling on your earnings, unless you have special royalty/commission arrangements in place with those who hire you.

Common examples of services are content writing, copywriting, graphic design, video creation and so on. These are time-consuming tasks. You could make top dollar, but ultimately, it’s still a job and not passive. But it’s your call.

You could also provide software as a service and still make a hefty chunk of change without much involvement.

Alternatively, you could be a middleman and use service arbitrage to sell services that others deliver. You’ll charge a higher rate and hire a cheaper freelancer to do the job for you.

You’ll then deliver that job to the person who hired you and you’ll pocket the difference. Of course, you’ll need to ensure that the freelancer did a good job before delivering the work, so that your reputation is intact.

Arbitrage is perfectly legal and people do it all the time.

In conclusion, the 5 methods above are really ALL you need to make six or even seven figures with your blog/s. You can apply 2 or 3 of the methods above and skyrocket your income in a couple of months.

Start working on them today… and remember to… SELL SELL SELL!

How To Get Good Reviews For Your Kindle Book

Reviews are very important on Kindle. Of course a good or bad rating can have a big impact when it comes to influencing the buying decisions of your readers – most of us are considerably more likely to buy a book if we think it sounds good according to the previous buyers. Likewise, if a book is often described negatively then we will often be put off (by the way, if you want to learn how to write a 5 star Kindle book, check out this post here.

Actually though, this isn’t the biggest way that a review impacts sales. Ultimately, most of us will at least read the free sample of a book on Kindle if we are sufficiently interested in the topic.

The bigger problem then, is that reviews can impact rankings. If your book has bad reviews, then it won’t rank as highly on the Kindle Store and this will mean that far fewer people are able to discover it and thus spend money on it.

So the question becomes: how do you ensure you get the best reviews? Let’s take a look…

Write A Great Book

This should go without saying but it’s incredibly important to write a good book if you want to get the best reviews.

This means that the writing style should be on-point with good use of language, correct spelling and good grammar.

Likewise though, it also means that the book should be interesting, unique and engaging. It needs to provide some kind of value and that means that you need to provide some kind of takeaway for the reader.

And if you are writing a non-fiction book, you need to ensure that your book is well researched and factually correct.

Write An Accurate Description

In a bid to make the most sales possible on their books, a lot of marketers and writers will write a highly persuasive and sales-y description for their books. The aim here is to make people want to read the book and to thereby over-sell it.

While this can help to give you an initial surge in sales though, it can also end up hurting you if what’s in the book doesn’t live up to the hype.

Make sure your description is accurate and that you don’t give away all the surprises inside. You want your readers to come away pleasantly surprised and not disappointed when they’ve finished the book.

And ideally you’ll have them wanting more; this is why creating a series of books can be highly lucrative if done correctly.

Charge Correctly

Ultimately, a review should tell people if a book is good value or not.

And the best way to make a book good value is to decrease the price – thereby meaning that the readers get more for less.

Actually, one of the very best things you can do for your book in terms of ranking is to lower the price for a while to drive sales and to increase the number of positive reviews.

Respond

Another tip is to respond to your negative reviews. Don’t be defensive or aggressive and respect your readers’ right to their opinion. At the same time though, you should be sure that you respond in order to apologise and to explain your point of view – you can even offer a refund.

This not only shows that you offer good customer service (thereby taking some of the sting out of a bad review) but if you’re lucky they may even change their rating once they feel heard!

Another way to increase the positive reviews for your Kindle book is to ensure you have great pictures in your book and there are a number of things to keep in mind concerning your pictures. So let’s look at that next…

How To Take Stunning Pictures For Your Kindle Book

Pictures can add a great deal to a Kindle title and really help it to sell. Not only is the cover one of the most important features when it comes to grabbing attention and drawing people in but the images inside the book will also help to illustrate your points and also make the pages pop more.

This is only even more true now that the Kindle Fire and other full color tablets are becoming more popular as many users’ preferred reading devices.

But the question is: how do you take great quality pictures for your book? It’s not enough just to add images: they need to look fantastic if they’re going to help you sell.

Of course you can use free stock images or you can buy images – but this will pale in comparison to the benefits that come from creating custom images that perfectly illustrate what the text is saying and that your readers aren’t going to accidentally find anywhere else!

So here’s how you do it…

Invest In A Good Camera

A good starting point is to invest in a high quality camera. This should have a decent number of mega pixels and should also have a good lens and lots of features.

A DSLR can help you to pull off more impressive and stylistic effects but it’s not necessary if you want to save money or you’re not sure about learning all the different settings.

A bridge camera is a camera that is much cheaper and that offers a good ‘half-way’ point between a DSLR and a decent superzoom.

Think About Lighting

When you take your photo, it’s not just enough to think about the object itself. At the same time, you also need to think about the lighting which will have a big impact on how it appears.

Avoid having glare (unless it’s intentional) and make sure the subject of the photo is well lit.

Ideally, try to have light hitting the object from the side.

Think About Composition

Also important is to compose your shot. This means thinking about the foreground, middle ground and background.

It also means deciding where you want your subject to be among these elements and how you’re going to lead the eye from one to the other.

Having an object out of focus in the foreground, or putting your subject to the left of center can make for a more interesting shot than just taking photos of everything head on.

Tell A Story

Perhaps most important of all is that your photos tell a story. That is to say that it’s not good enough for your photos to simply be of something: you need to make sure that they express emotion or suggest what has just happened or what is just about to happen.

Instead of taking a photo of a party for instance, you could take a photo of a glass that’s empty with lipstick marks around the top. This creates much more intrigue because it gets the user to think – which in turn increases engagement for your book.

If you want to know more about cracking Kindle, then check out the featured resource below and grab a free report showing you how to make money with Kindle books. Download, read it and take action 🙂

3 Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List

When you decide to start building your email list, it isn’t just a matter of sending your subscribers your promotional newsletters or bombarding them with affiliate links. There are many things to consider to help avoid upsetting your subscribers and to keep them opening your emails.

While there are many ways you can encourage people to subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to keep them on your list once you have them there!!

Apart from that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider or ISP. There are now many laws and rules that are applied to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails.

And this is especially important with the introduction of GDPR if you are collecting subscribers from the EU.

Email has always been a popular medium for marketing because of the low cost, and because of this, many companies have seized the opportunity and have flooded their subscribers email inboxes with promotional mail that offers very little in value to the reader.

This is a very big problem in the Internet Marketing and Make Money Online niches in particular.

The thing is, if people opt-in to your list it’s because something about you resonated with them and they want to receive your newsletters and promotional materials, just not to be bombarded with offer after offer.

They have consented to being on your list by signing up and giving you their valuable email address; just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe option in every email to make it easy for them to leave if they want to do so.

There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe, such as if the email account was hacked; it may be rare, but it does happen.

One thing to remember is that it is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. You can do this by using the many tools and technologies available within your autoresponder. For a great autoresponder, check out Active Campaign or Aweber.

Do not worry; your investment in any email marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales and profit. Plus, if you treat your subscribers well, they can become customers for life.

Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean.

Your reputation as a legitimate businessman and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist. To help guide you through all of this, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1: Take Notice Of Your Bounce Rate

These are e-mails that are basically undeliverable and for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.

There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at the time they were sent but these can still be delivered later, and you should be able to resend any email via your autoresponder service.

There may also be bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at the time.

Then there are those messages that will never be delivered. This could be because the subscriber has used an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or a dummy email address that was probably used just to try to get a freebie that you may have been giving away.

Manage your list by making a note on those email addresses that bounce. Remove these email addresses from your list regularly so that you have accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail.

You may also want to check the spellings of your email addresses in your list. One common mistake is when an N instead of an M is placed in the .com area.

Your bounce rate may affect your deliverability too, so it is doubly important to remove email addresses that are bouncing to ensure that your other emails aren’t being affected.

2: Make It Easy To Unsubscribe

Always provide an unsubscribe link in all of your mails. This is a legal requirement, especially nowadays with increased data protection laws. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously.

If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers.

You could also lose a lot of subscribers this way and if you earn a reputation as a spammer, this will definitely affect future potential subscribers as your name will get around the internet via social media etc. so always act with integrity and have your readers best interest at heart.

3: Keep It Clean

Do not provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. You probably have no idea of the real age of the recipient and you could get many complaints from this.

Of course, if you are in this type of niche, you would need to have safeguarding measures in place to ensure that anyone who does subscribe to this type of material is of a suitable age.

This is why personally I would avoid these types of niches because they are very difficult to police from your end and if you are found to be sending age-inappropriate content, you could end up in a lot of trouble.

Controversial issues should also be avoided by your business unless it is relevant to the nature of your business. Perhaps something controversial has happened in the news that you can use in an email, but this should definitely be the exception and not the norm.

If you keep these tips in mind, you should be able to maintain a healthy relationship with your subscribers. Always remember that you are there to serve your readers; they have come to you for your advice and guidance so don’t exploit them. It’s fine to promote offers to them, but it shouldn’t be the entire focus of your email marketing strategy.

Just think; “Would I be happy to receive this email in my inbox?”

If the answer is yes, then you are on the right track…

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 😊

How To Outsource Any Project In 4 Easy Steps

You’ve heard that outsourcing is a great way to grow your business (that’s true).

Because, let’s face it; you can’t do everything yourself.

While it may seem like common sense, it’s not always so easy for new entrepreneurs to acknowledge. They tell themselves that they’ll save money if they just do it all themselves.

Perhaps it’s the control freak in us who wants to stay in charge of every aspect of our business, or the frugal shopper who wants to save money by just working on projects ourselves.

Regardless of how hard we may try to convince ourselves not to outsource, the bottom line is that delegating important tasks to qualified professionals is simply the fastest way to grow your business and skyrocket your income.

There’s another reason why outsourcing is important: when you try to do it all, you’re taking 2 big risks.

The first is that some tasks and projects won’t be done as well as they well as they could be if you had more time, or the necessary training. This could lead to distributing inferior products or low-quality content that won’t help move the needle.

The second risk, and it’s a big one, is that you’ll simply burn out and not be able to stay on top of your market.

No matter how many skills are in your arsenal, or how many years of experience you have, there are always tasks that can (and should) be done by seasoned professionals. As the old saying goes, just because you can do it yourself doesn’t mean you should.

With an outsourced team, you can get the help you need to grow your business faster than ever before, and without worrying about human resources and employment taxes.

Better yet, if you stick with hiring professionals who are experts in their field, you won’t even have to train anyone to complete the tasks you assign to them because they’ll already be experienced and ready to take on all that you have to offer.

Outsourcing is the smart way of doing business, building an established presence in your industry quickly and developing a life-long brand that stands out and apart in your niche.

Connecting to seasoned professionals gives you the leg up, allowing you to compete, head on, with some of the biggest names in your niche.

In other words, it levels out the playing field.

And while you’d like to get started right away, maybe it all seems a little overwhelming.

You’re not sure where to start or what steps to take to get the process rolling.

Good news: You can get started with outsourcing in just four easy steps. Read on…

Step 1: Determine Your Needs

Your first step is to figure out what to outsource. Ask yourself these questions:

What jobs do you need done? Here you need to evaluate all areas of your business, including: Writing, copywriting, graphics, design, programming and other technical jobs, marketing and customer service. Then draw up a list of jobs you have in each of these areas.

Is it cost-effective to outsource? First attach a dollar figure to your time (such as $50, $75, $100 or whatever your time is worth).

Then figure out how long it would take you to do a particular task. Next, multiply the hours it takes you to a complete a task by your per-hour worth.

Example: Let’s say your time is worth $75 an hour and it would take you two hours to create a graphic – that’s $150 of your time. If you can find someone to do it for less, then it is indeed cost effective to outsource the task.

Step 2: Advertise Your Job

Once you’ve figured out what tasks you need to outsource, your next step is to advertise the job in order to attract as many qualified prospective freelancers as possible.

While there are a variety of ways to do this – and you should utilize as many of these methods as possible.

One great way to do it is to post your project on a freelancing board like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer or Craigslist. You’re bound to attract plenty of qualified candidates!

Step 3: Choose A Vendor

At this point you’ll get to choose from among a lot of vendors. But don’t make your choice based on price alone.

Instead, you need to do your due diligence to find the most reliable freelancer who’ll get the best results for you. That means checking the freelancer’s feedback rating, testimonials, business history and portfolio.

This step takes a bit of time upfront, but it will save you a lot of time, frustration and money in the long run.

Once you’ve researched all the candidates, select the best one and hire him or her. Then move on to the next step…

Step 4: Manage The Project

Whether you get mediocre or great results is largely going to depend on what you do at this step. That’s because you need to do the following.

Provide a clear brief and instructions. Your freelancer may have some amazing talents, but mind reading probably isn’t one of them. And that’s why you need to provide a clear and accurate “no guesswork required” brief for your freelancer.

Offer protocol checklists to help your freelancer produce the best results. Secondly, you need to continue to communicate your wishes and help your freelancer do great work for you. And one way to do this is by offering a protocol checklist for each project.

At this point you’re probably thinking at the whole four-step process sounds simple enough. And you’d be right. But you may also be looking to fill in the gaps.

Example: Where can you get sample briefs and protocol checklists? How, exactly, do you do your due diligence? And what are some of the other reliable ways to find freelancers?

Well, there is a lot more to be learnt about outsourcing; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report that covers this topic in more detail. Download it, read it and take action 🙂