Tutorial

Affiliate Marketing: Which Niche?

If you are just starting online, then one of the quickest ways to start making money is to get into affiliate marketing.

This business model doesn’t rely on you having your own products to sell, but rather you are promoting other people’s products and you get a commission for each sale made.

This way you can quickly send traffic to an affiliate offer and start making money.

Of course, the first thing you need to do is to decide on the niche that you are wanting to operate in.

The Best Way For Affiliate Marketers To Choose A Niche

When it comes to affiliate marketing, there are many ways for affiliate marketers to choose a niche. It’s important that you put some thought and research into your niche before you put your time and effort into it.

The first thing you should consider is choosing a niche that you feel passionate about.

With affiliate marketing it’s best to be writing and working in an area daily. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, chances are slim that you’ll stick to it for very long.

If you choose something that isn’t going to make you happy to wake up and work each morning, then you’re in a bad position before you even get started. Over time, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll get bored.

Eventually you may even feel depressed and hate what you’re doing. This is the exact opposite of what you want to experience in your work life. Make sure you have the ability to dig in to your niche forever.

Next, you need to look at the longevity of the niche. You’ll want to avoid something that’s considered a fad and will be obsolete before you start making any money.

With affiliate marketing, it will take some time to begin making substantial income, even though initial commissions can be seen right away.

Once you’ve built up a niche, you want to be able to keep it going for a long period of time. So, make sure your choice isn’t something that will be here today and gone tomorrow. You want your hard work to pay off long-term.

It’s also important to think about profitability. Is what you want to promote going to make money? After all, you’re turning to affiliate marketing to make a steady (and rising) income.

Do your homework and find out how many people will be interested in what you’re promoting.

You also need to consider promotion options. In your niche, what kinds of products can you promote? Can you promote a book that will sell in your niche? Can you promote tangible items or digital products?

A membership site related to your niche is also a possibility to consider. These are all things to think about as you’re choosing your niche before you put in a lot of time and energy.

When you choose a niche that interests you and has a wide variety of products that you can promote, you’ll have more success in the long run.

Now, once you’ve considered all the above and decided on a niche, there is another consideration to think about: do you decide to stay in a broad niche with a larger target audience or do you drill down into a sub-niche which will be narrower and have a smaller audience but thy will be much more targeted. There are pros and cons for both so let’s dive in…

Should Affiliate Marketers Choose A Broad Or Narrow Niche?

Whenever affiliates are just starting out, or questioning the direction they already took, they start wondering if a broad or narrow niche is the best way to go.

There’s actually no right or wrong answer, but you have to know how to tackle the two different strategies.

If you go with a broad niche, it means you have to have fantastic organization of the sub-niches. It’s very possible to do, but it will take time to rank well in the search engines for the broad spectrum of topics.

So, let’s say you decided to tackle the children’s toy niche. You could have a general toy site, but you’d still need to organize the content into things like toys based on age, gender, materials, brands, indoor versus outdoor, etc.

Or you could go with a narrow approach in your niche. This makes it really easy for you to rank quicker with an authority site.

For example, TopToysfor1YearOldGirls.com that was fully focused on toys for this age and gender would probably become an authority site rapidly for those searching for that topic.

Either way you choose – broad or narrow – you can work your way back over time. So, if you choose a broad niche, you can work over time to dig into the narrow levels and provide expertise there for your affiliate income.

If you choose a narrow niche, like the one listed above, you could branch out and create a bunch of narrow sites and then eventually link them to a main site.

For example, you could create a TopToysFor2YearOldGirls.com, 7-year olds, 13-year olds, etc. Once complete, you could then create a main “TopToysForGirls.com” site that linked them all together.

Don’t worry if you’ve started out the wrong way because eventually, your goal is to have complete domination in a niche. You have to look at this from a long-term perspective, not what will help you make the most amount of money in 30 days.

The great thing about both niches is that you can search for keywords that will help guide you in the type of content that you want to create.

Over time, you may want to move from free keyword tools to the paid versions that give you more information about the kind of edge you can expect to have over the competition if you rank well for them.

Pick whichever strategy you feel more comfortable with right now – broad or narrow – and then if you want to move into a new direction, you can do that without any problems down the road.

7 Ways To Increase Your Conversion Rate NOW

1000 prospects come to your site or sales page. 1% of them buy a $50 product. You’ve made $500.

You invest 2 days trying a few different ways to increase your conversions, and 3 are successful. You only increased your conversions by 1%, yet you’ve doubled your income, selling 2% of the prospects who come to your sales page.

Now for every 1000 prospects, you make $1,000.

And you send 1000 prospects a day, meaning…

Well, I’ll let you play with the numbers. The point is, even a 1% bump in conversions can mean a significant pay raise for you.

Yet so many marketers never bother to do any of the things I’m about to suggest.

Why? I suppose it’s one of those things they’ll “get around to” but they never do.

So here’s what I recommend: If you don’t want to do any of the following, then OUTSOURCE it. We wrote an entire article on the importance of outsourcing elsewhere in this edition, so I won’t harp on it here.

Let’s get started on boosting your conversions:

1: Create A Compelling And Clear Value Proposition

Your value proposition can be the number 1 element that determines if people will bother to read more on your page.

And it’s also the main thing you need to test.

The less known your company is, the better your value proposition needs to be.

In a nutshell, your value proposition clearly states:

How your product solves the customers’ problem or improves their situation (relevancy)
Delivers specific benefits (quantified value)
Tell why they should buy from you instead of your competition (unique differentiation)

Here’s an example from Prey: https://www.preyproject.com/

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I could do an entire article on creating a compelling value proposition – and I’ll do exactly that in a future post for you.

2: Perform A/B Testing

You create two alternative versions of your page, each with a different headline / color scheme / call to action etc.

You do a split test to see which one works better. When you find out what converts better, then you test something else.

Generally you only want to test one element at a time – otherwise, it just get confusing.

The more elements you test, the higher you can boost your conversions.

Things to test: Headline, page layout and navigation, the offer itself, using different media (such as a video) and even a radical change if you think you might want to start over.

You can use Google Optimize if you’re looking for a free A/B tester, or Optimizely if you want more options.

3: Set Up A Proper Sales Funnel

Sometimes your conversions are taking a hit because you’re asking for the signup or the sale too soon in the process.

If people are still in ‘browsing’ mode, they might not be psychologically ready to subscribe or buy.

The general rule is, the more expensive or complicated the product is, the more time people need before they are ready to commit.

If you’re looking to improve conversions on a squeeze page that only asks for their email address, your focus should be on improving the reason why they would want to sign up. Making your offer more compelling – something that will immediately spark their desire – should do it.

But if you’re selling a product, it’s possible that you need to do more to build trust, develop a relationship and prove your expertise.

Remember, the longer and deeper the relationship with the prospect, the more likely they are to buy from you.

4: Address Objections Before They Arise

No matter what you’re selling or how much you’re selling it for, there will be objections.

If I tried to sell $100 bills for $1, there would be objections (and you know what they are.)

Of course, since you can’t hear prospects speak their objections, you’ve got to know in advance what can kill your sale so you can make what you might call, ‘preemptive strikes’ on the objections.

Make a list of all the possible concerns your prospects might have.

And then address each one of those in your presentation / webpage / sales funnel.

5: Build Trust

People won’t buy from you if they have no need for your product, if they have no money to buy your product, if they’re not in a hurry, and if they don’t trust you.

There’s not a lot you can do about the first 2 items on that list.

You can create urgency by limiting the number of products to be sold or the duration of your sale.

But trust is a big factor you can definitely use to increase conversions.

So what makes people trust your website?

Several things:

You’ve got citations and testimonials clearly visible.
You’re endorsed by well-known people in your niche.
You’ve got a physical address and maybe even a photo of your office.
If you or your business has relevant credentials, you’ve got them displayed.
You’ve got clear, easy to find contact information that includes a phone number.
Your site looks professional – not something a kid whipped up on his Intel 486 in the 1990’s.
Your site contains plenty of useful information.
You update your site’s content often. If your latest blogpost is from 2016, you’ve got a problem.
You show restraint with hype, blinking banners (please don’t!) ads, popups and such.
You have zero or nearly zero errors (when it comes to trustworthiness, one error is forgivable, two aren’t.)

6: Stop Trying To Sound Smart

If I were to give you a value proposition that reads like this…

“Revenue-focused sales automation and marketing effectiveness solutions unleash collaboration throughout the revenue cycle,”

…would you have a clue what I was talking about?

Because I sure don’t. It’s not useful to the person reading it, unless your goal is chase them off of your page. Then I suspect it’s highly effective.

Don’t use fancy or complicated language – instead, write the way people speak.

Just remember, clarity if key. If they don’t understand exactly what you’re saying, they’re not going to convert.

7: Remove All Distractions

Your goal is to get people to focus solely on the action you want them to take and nothing else. Take a look at your page for anything that might divert the visitor away from what you want them to do. Minimize distraction, unnecessary product options, links and extraneous information.

Get rid of sidebars and big headers if they’re not helping your prospect take the desired action. Remove irrelevant images, or replace them with images that help you make the sale.

And ask yourself if there is anything else you can remove that is not contributing to the conversion.

Increasing your conversion rate isn’t hard, but it does take effort…

Effort that will be well-rewarded in increased sales and revenues long after you’re done making the necessary changes.

The Most Important Goal To Set To Achieve Success

If you want to be successful in life, whether that be in business, relationships or anything else, I’m sure that you know about the importance of setting goals to help you achieve the results you desire.

But can I ask you a question?

Do you know what the most important kind of goal is for your life?

We all have goals that we set and we know the importance of goal setting and it’s one of those topics that gets beaten to death and a lot of us don’t want to hear about goal setting anymore.

We’re sick and tired of goal setting. But we know they’re necessary as well, and that’s why we always come back to them.

You do, I do, we all do goal setting at one level or another. Maybe you just do it mentally and you think about them from time to time.

Other people like me, I’m very, very strict about my goals. I’m always writing them down and refining them.

But there are different kinds, and this is a very, very critical aspect.

There is a type of goal where you define what you want to do, there is a type of goal where you define what you want to have and there’s also a kind of goal where you define who you want to be.

The kind of person you want to be.

It’s the third one, the goals you set on the type of person you want to be, that are the most pivotal, most important and most influential in your life.

Your material wants or even bigger wants than that, the things you would like to acquire, the things you would like to eventually achieve in your life, some you’ll hit and some you’ll won’t.

Some will take longer than planned, some you’ll maybe get shorter than you planned. They’re going to be all over the map.

As an example, you may be at a certain financial position right now. Let’s say you’re earning $50,000 a year and you want to take that to $100,000.

There are a number of different ways you could do that. You could set a goal to do that within the next year, the next six months or the next three years and you go after it.

You may or may not hit the goal, and you may or may not try as hard as you can, although the whole point of goal setting is you do try and you go for it.

But this is a measurable, specific thing that you’re shooting for and you may or may not get there.

There’s all kinds of circumstances, things that could come up that could prevent it from happening.

But think about the type of goal where you decide who you want to be, and the exercise of writing down your goals on a daily basis and reviewing them.

Sure, you can have a plan that says I want to get from 50k to 100k and I’m going to do this, this, this and this over the next X amount of months or years and you do those things and that plan may or may not work.

But what if you started asking yourself or writing a goal down to say, here’s who I want to be.

I want to be a positive and uplifting person. I want to be loving towards my family. Every time I see my family I want them to feel excited in my presence. I want them to feel uplifted.

I want them to feel inspired. When I meet new people I want them to feel like they just met somebody really interesting, and they want to get to know me at a deeper level.

I want to set a goal to be the kind of person that follows through on every commitment I make to myself.

I’m going to achieve XYZ by a certain date, such as I’m going to lose 20 pounds by March 30^th is very results driven. It’s very achievement driven, and the timeline for that may change.

You don’t know how quickly you can lose that weight and you want to be able to do it in a healthy way, so you may have to adjust that plan.

But who do you have to be to reach that weight?

You have to be the kind of person who commits to their goals, who does whatever it takes, who when they say they’re going to do something they do it and follow through and hold themselves accountable.

So here’s my challenge to you, or even call it a suggestion or tip.

Begin journaling on a daily basis, writing down where you’re at but more importantly where you want to go, goals.

It’s very fun to set goals like the type of income you want to earn, the type of business you want to run, the trips you want to take, the material possessions you want to own. All those things are cool.

If you want to go to a conference next year to learn something new, write that down. That’s a great goal to have. You need to know how much money it’s going to take you to get there and all that.

But I also want you to start thinking about two or three or even four who do I want to be type of goals.

What I found is when I started doing this, I started writing things down like I want to be an inspiring person to be around for my family.

I want my family to feel loved and excited when I’m around. I want my family to run and give me a huge hug when I walk in the door after being gone for a long time. That’s the kind of person I want to be.

When I write that down and remind myself this is who I want to be, all those other goals I find come to me a little bit more naturally. They come to me easier.

It’s because I’m acting and behaving in a way that’s congruent with those goals.

If I say I want to be a committed, dedicated person who follows through on his commitments and then I set a really, really aggressive goal like doubling my income in what some may deem an unrealistic period of time, I’m way more likely to hit that goal if I’m the kind of person who sticks to his commitments and then goes above and beyond the call of duty and does whatever it takes in any situation to create whatever I envision.

So that’s the difference. That’s the key. You may not have done this before. I know it was a relatively new concept for me.

I was always writing down my materials wants. I was always writing down the achievement-based goals and not the who do I want to be kind of goals.

When I started doing that, it had such a deep impact on a daily basis.

It literally, in those moments of weakness where I wanted to break a commitment and go back into an old habit that would have prevented those cool goals from coming into my life, these being goals would remind me of the kind of person I need to be and I want to be and intend to do.

I want to live this way every single day, and so I write those goals down on a daily basis and it keeps me in check. It keeps me on track for where I want to go.

So do this. Have some fun with it. Think about the kind of person you want to be, write it down, explain it in as much detail and then do it daily and repeat it to yourself and start living this way.

All those material goals and wants are going to come to you.

self-discipline

3 Marketing Lessons That Will Transform Your Business

You can take an awful lot of those “how to market online” courses and sometimes still not learn the truly ground-breaking stuff.

I’m talking about the seemingly unimportant things that turn out to be so important, it’s like a scene in one of those adventure movies:

The hero fights through obstacle after obstacle to get to this secret cave that hasn’t been entered in a century.

He pries open the heavy door, sweeps away several inches of cobwebs, and by the light of his torch he sees something shiny. He picks it up… it’s a gold coin! Nice, but not that earth-shattering, right? It’s just one coin…

Taking a set forward, he sees a small chest. Opening it, he sees a couple hundred gold coins. Yeah! This is pretty cool.

But then he catches just a glimmer of something deeper in the cave. Opening the door wider to let light in, he sees more gold. And priceless statues. And gemstones. And… the treasures go back as far as the eye can see.

Holy cow. That one gold coin turned out to be the beginning of more wealth than the GPA of most countries.

Well that’s how I feel about what you are going to learn here. To the uninitiated eye, these three lessons might seem small, like a single coin.

And they might almost appear trivial. But I promise you, if you follow this advice, your online income can become almost limitless.

And by the way, some people have paid literally thousands of dollars to discover what I’m about to show you:

Marketing Lesson 1: Make An Irresistible Offer

You’ve heard the term irresistible offer before, but what does it mean?

First, it’s an offer that’s better than anything your competition has.

Second, it’s so good that’s it’s truly hard to pass up.

For example, if I were to sell you a brand new car for $1,000, that’s an irresistible offer.

Most marketers have trouble getting their marketing to covert because they’re offering the same stuff as everyone else. Yes, they try to make it sexy, but it isn’t.

You can dress a pig up in a lovely, low-cut evening gown, or even a tiny bikini and high heels. But it’s still a pig.

(Not trying to pick on pigs here, btw – I think they’re kinda cute and definitely smart.)

You can have weak marketing and a great offer and make it work.

But great marketing will never compensate for a weak offer.

If you don’t have the right offer, then it doesn’t matter how great the copy is, what the headline is, who is promoting it and so forth.

If you want to make sales, you’ve got to have an absolutely superior, irresistible offer that the prospect simply cannot turn down.

And you’ve got to back the offer up with a product that delivers, too. I’ve seen offers that blew me away, but once I got into the product, I realized it was 80% hype and 20% substance.

As you might have guessed, I asked for a refund – as did close to 50% of their purchasers.

So make them an offer they cannot refuse, and then deliver on every promise you make.

Do this and you cannot help but make a fortune.

Marketing Lesson 2: You Need A Big Marketing Idea

Just having a bigger promise or using a hyped headline isn’t going to work anymore.

If you’re going to be seen and heard by your prospects, you’ve got to cut right through all the shouting online and present something brand new.

Think of it this way: A regular marketing idea is doing what’s already been done, expect maybe it’s 10% bigger or 10% better.

That used to work, but these days it just blends with everything else.

But a big marketing idea is something new, something revolutionary. It could be an entirely new approach, a new way of looking at something or a new way of doing something.

Take cars for example. A regular marketing idea is to make a car 10% more gas efficient, or 10% sleeker/bigger/smaller/curvier/boxier etc.

If you think about it, most of the cars today just sort of blend. They look a lot alike, work a lot alike… it’s always been like that.

Then there’s Tesla. Put a Tesla side by side with any other car, and you’ll notice a difference. Talk about how a Tesla runs, and it’s revolutionary.

Don’t let your idea be the latest model of Ford or Chevy.

Make it a Tesla.

Give your prospects a feeling of discovery, of something completely new that gives them an AHA! Moment.

Offer them hope that this is finally THE solution they have been searching for.

It’s powerful, indeed.

Marketing Lesson 3: Customer Acquisition Is All About The Math

$marketing strategy$

I know you keep hearing about free traffic. But free traffic isn’t free; it costs you time and work. And more time. And more work.

If you want to make serious money, then you’ve got to learn some math and be willing to invest some money to make that money.

Online marketing in the six and seven figure range is all about buying new customers – not hoping they eventually find you on their own.

Buying new customers is how you grow big and fast.

Think of customer acquisition as an investment.

You’re investing in the acquisition of assets — customers.

And to do this wisely… like the best marketers in the world… you need to know some numbers.

For example, one of the absolute most valuable marketing numbers for you to understand and use is the Maximum Allowable Acquisition Cost (MAAC).

MAAC tells you the most you can pay to get a new customer.

And to know your MAAC, you also need to know the lifetime value of your customer. Which in the beginning is hard, so do this instead – know the 3 month value of your customers.

How much do they spend with you in 3 months? Whatever that number is, you need to spend less than that to get a new customer.

Most entrepreneurs and marketers don’t know their MAAC or their customers’ lifetime value.

Of if they do know the numbers, they don’t use them to determine their traffic generation budgets.

But if you want to earn six or seven figures a year, you’ve got to know and USE this stuff.

Once you know these numbers, you’ve got to focus on increasing the value of your customer, so you can increase your MAAC, so you can get more customers.

Very few average entrepreneurs and marketers understand this, but now you do.

So, did I just hand you three gold coins?

Or a vast and unending treasure trove?

That’s up to you and what you do with this information.

Turning Refunds Into Customers For Life

When you get that dreaded email that says, “I don’t like this, please refund my money…” what do you do?

Most marketers make the refund and forget about it.

But what you might not realize is that a refund request can be the perfect opportunity to create a customer for life, if you handle it correctly

Remember, your objective is to save the customer, not necessarily to save the sale. If you can do both, then that’s terrific.

And your goal is to fix the problem, not the blame. That is, don’t blame your customer or yourself. These things happen for a myriad of reasons. And you want people to speak positively about your products, not ‘win’ arguments.

Here’s what you need to be able to say, regardless of who is ‘at fault:’

You’re sorry it wasn’t a good fit
You want to do what you can to help, because that’s what you’re there for – to help the customer

There are two variations of communications to send out to customers seeking a refund, based on whether or not they are eligible for a refund according to your refund policy.

Throughout the process, keep in mind that your customer is likely in ‘fight or flight’ mode.

Think back to when you wanted a refund and you’ll understand the feeling: You’re ready to fight to get that refund if you have to.

But nothing defuses that fight or flight response faster than…

“I’m sorry. How can I help?”

Now then, let’s say you’ve received a refund request, and you’ve determined your customer is eligible for a refund based on your policy and the timeframe of when they ordered.

Here are the key points to keep in mind to keep your customer:

You’re going to acknowledge that they are eligible for a refund

Until you say this, your customer isn’t going to hear anything else you say.

So lead with this, and they’ll relax enough to read the rest of your email or listen to you if you’re on the phone.

You’re going to reinforce their desired result

Your customer bought your product for a reason – likely a problem they need solved.

They still have the problem, and they still need a solution.

You’re going to offer an alternative solution

You’re now teaming up with the customer to find an effective solution to their problem.

You’ve gone from being adversaries to working side by side as partners to fix their problem.

Lastly, you’re going to set a timer for an automatic refund

This emphasizes that you are sincere about that refund, and that you are more interested in helping them find a solution than holding on to their money.

Here’s an email template you can use. Be sure to thoroughly modify it to fit your situation:

Hi [First Name], I’m really sorry to hear that [product name] wasn’t a fit for you.

Don’t worry, you are well within our refund period [or you have x days left in our refund period] and I’ll be happy to process that for you.

But first, I want you to know that I care about my customers and I want to be certain you’re not only happy, but that I help you reach your [business / personal] goals.

So no matter what, I’m going to take care of you.

[First name], I’m guessing you purchased [product name] because you wanted to [solve ‘x’ problem or get ‘y’ result].

And since you are requesting a refund, you probably still need a solution to that problem, right?

So with your permission I’d like to suggest something a little different.

As I said, it’s my job to help you reach YOUR goals, and I think we can both agree that a refund isn’t going to do that (no worries, if you don’t like what I’m about to suggest, I’ll still refund your money ASAP, just please hear me out first.)

Instead of a refund, I’d like to offer you one of our other courses that I think will help you [insert goal here].

Here is a list of products that might be a better fit for you.

List products with descriptions – if prices are larger than what the customer paid, list the prices, too.

Remember [first name], I promised to take care of you and I mean it. So please reply with any questions you might have, or take a day to think it over. Either way, I am here for you.

If I don’t hear back from you by [date, time] I will issue you a full refund instead.

And if you want to talk, please call me and I can activate one of the above courses for you right now, or issue you a refund, your choice.

You can reach me at [phone number].

Talk to you soon,

Kindest,

[Your name]

Now let’s say you’ve received a refund request, but you’ve determined your customer is not eligible for a refund based on your policy and the timeframe of when they ordered.

Here’s the email you might send:

Hi [First Name], I’m truly sorry to hear that [product name] wasn’t a fit for you.

Unfortunately, you are beyond our [XX day] refund period which means I can’t issue you a refund today.

BUT I still want to help you and I think I may have a solution.

I’m guessing that you purchased [product name] because you needed to [achieve ‘x’ goal or solve ‘y’ problem].

Is that a fair assumption? … and you likely still need a solution to that problem, correct?

Since I am unable to issue you a refund, I’d like to “exchange” [product name] for one of our other courses that might be a better solution for you.

Here are a list of options for you to choose from: [Enter product names, descriptions and prices]

Please let me know which of these trainings you’d like to have and I’ll get you access as quickly as possible.

If you’re not sure which one you would like, please feel free to reply with any questions or take a day or so to think it over.

Either way, I’m here if you need me.

And if you would like to talk, you can give me a call and

I can activate your new course right now