6 Essential Tips for Boosting Your Affiliate Commissions
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| Affiliate Marketing in 2018 |
1. Find the right products to promote. Obviously you’ll want
to find one which offers generous compensation. You’ll want to earn enough to
make promoting the project worth your time and effort. You’ll also want a
product that pays their affiliates on time.
2. If you do have a website, write a free eBook or report
you can give away. When visitors sign up for the free item, be sure to collect
and save their email address with a double opt-in sign-up. This will let them
know to expect to get other emails from you.
3. Create an online newsletter or e-zine, and be sure to
recommend the products you’re promoting within the newsletter. You’ll be able
to develop a relationship with your readers, which may potentially translate
into them taking your recommendation and purchasing the affiliate product.
4. Choose an autoresponder for your website which will send
emails, newsletters, e-zines, or other correspondence with very little effort.
5. Write articles and submit them to article directories.
These will provide a link back to your website where your affiliate products
are advertised. People won’t know how to obtain the products or services you
promote if they never see your website.
6. Conserve a portion of your commission payment to put back
into your affiliate marketing business. These funds can be used to purchase
pay-per-click ads and to track how effective those ad campaigns are.
Spend some time on forums where affiliate marketers gather.
You may also pick up other ideas besides these six tips for boosting your
affiliate commissions. The important thing to remember is to continue promoting
as much as you can. Without any promotion at all, these six tips won’t help in
the slightest.
Affiliate Marketing What sells and what doesn't
Sometimes these statistics are things that you can find
through the marketplace tools on affiliate lead sites. Not always, though, and some sites are better
at it than others, so you need to look at the proven factors that are more
likely to result in sales. The trick to
this is really in knowing a bit about the psychology of buyers, and then using
that to guide your efforts at SEO and marketing (but more on that later…).
First off understand that there are basically only two types
of buyers of interest to you; they are
• Buyers
who are researching products, and
• Buyers
who need a product (or feel they need a product) because they need a solution
to a problem (or think buying solves a problem—sometimes the problem is simple
want)
Are there other types of traffic-generators out there? Sure.
But most of them are not buyers who are ready or nearly ready to
buy. So that kind of traffic is
essentially fluff. It looks good on your
site meter, but it doesn't make you money.
So it's not worth your time and effort.
This is where keyword research really comes into play. Effective keyword research will target those
buyers ready to buy, rather than those just looking around. We'll break that down in later chapters.
It may seem as though we've gotten a bit away from the issue
of niche selection. Really, though, it's
all intertwined. To choose your
niche—since you're not choosing on interest alone—you will need to know how to
choose the niches that can perform. You
need to know how to spot the moneymakers, using your market tools.
Now that you know your niche, we can start setting up your
business. We can go on to formulating a
game plan and carving out your piece of the market action.
Affiliate Marketing Within Your Niche Fact Or Fiction
One of the absolute most prolific pieces of advice for
prospective affiliates is to work within their passions-to find their niche
market in an area of personal interest and stay with it. While there is a place for niche marketing in
affiliate marketing, it is not what you have been led to believe that it
is. For sure, "work within your
personal niche" is one of the worst pieces of advice given to new entrepreneurs,
and the cause of multitudes of affiliate failures.
Do what interests you
Do what interests you; find your niche; do what you are
passionate about; sell the products that interest you the most…
These are the pieces of advice that entrepreneurs are told
time and again. And there is some basis
to this thought, some method behind this madness.
The overall belief is that if you choose to do business in
an area or 'niche' that you are deeply interested in, that passion will shine
through and you will make sales almost accidentally. The feeling is that by selling products or
working within your most favorite niche you will have a built-in sense of
urgency and desire that will compel you to work on your business and to
succeed.
Moreover, by working within a niche category of personal
interest you will come prepared. That
is, you will come armed with bucket loads of knowledge and experiences with
various products so that you don't have to 'waste time' getting up to
speed. You'll already know the products
that deserve promotion. And you'll know
all the promotional background information almost off the top of your head.
The belief is that if you focus on promoting products that
are in some way of interest to you, you can easily take care of business. You can construct websites that will sell the
products; you can write articles to submit to directories and gain links back
to you, the niche expert; you can build blog upon blog and never run out of
something great to say about your favorite little widget that so transformed
your life as a widget collector (whether you should or not, is another matter,
and we'll discuss that later).
Here's the thing about this-none of it is untrue. It is easier to put yourself behind a product
you already know. It is easier to hit
the ground running when you are already well-versed in matters. It is easier to connect with visitors and
readers who are more like you. So why,
then, is it a myth to believe that you should focus first and foremost on your
personal-interest niche as an affiliate marketers? Why can't that mean virtually automatic sales
and commissions?
What's wrong with passion?
The reasoning against personal niche concentration is more
simplistic than you might think. And in
point of fact, there are some exceptions to the rule, which we can touch upon
after you understand why the myth in general is a myth.
Then cut to the chase already, right? What's wrong with doing something you are
passionate about?
There is nothing truly wrong with it. But there is something unprofitable about it
in an overwhelmingly large percentage of cases.
What is unprofitable about this mindset is that it is just too limiting.
By choosing your business and products based on one personal preference, you
lose the freedom of choice. And that
freedom is important, because it is what allows you to give buyers what they
want, and saddles you with a limited number of affiliate product options, most
of the time in a niche that isn't seeing very high demand.
Very simply, unless your niche interest happens to be in
products or subject areas that coincide with what people are ready to buy, it
does not come with the most essential element of affiliate marketing
success-built-in customers.
Affiliate Websites & Content That Pay Off
The obvious choice would be to put that effort into your
website and content. You can achieve the
same results by simply refreshing the content of your website. You can add to its archives and additional
resources sections (without muddying the primary pages we established before),
and still give current information and additional value to your customers and
to the search engines.
Not only can you add additional content, but you can test
and tweak and change the content you have and test it against past
versions. As you'll learn, even very
small, seemingly insignificant changes can really make a big difference to
traffic and conversions. Spend the time
you would spend posting on a blog to look for ways that you can tweak or
enhance your website.
And don't forget-you've got that master site to build. Instead of devoting time to a minimal-return
blog, why not get started on your big catch-all so that you can dominate your
niche traffic?
Articles, Articles and More Articles
All the articles you write, or hire out to a freelance
writer to have written, do not need to be posted on your website. In fact, they shouldn't be. Use those primary articles and tutorials on
your site, add some new stuff now and again to keep everyone happy, and then
submit to article directories. Utilize
profile and link capabilities to link back to your website, the authority on
Widgets. (You might know this method by
other popular names, like "Bum Marketing" or "Article
Marketing.")
Subscriber Lists and Mailings
This is something you need to take some care with. Subscriber lists are not recommended for all
types of products; leastwise, building your list through squeeze pages isn't
recommended for everyone. For many
sites, the presence of a squeeze page between the website and merchant offer
will only turn the visitor of, and send them packing to the next, less
demanding provider.
Still, there are ways to make subscriber lists work. If your product lends itself to this type of
sales, then spend time crafting great emails and marketing campaigns instead.
Social Marketing
Social marketing is what is driving web 2.0. Instead of spending your time on a new blog
people may or may not eventually find, spend it on the blogs of others who've
already captured your audience. Become a
contributing member of the community, make some friends, and use your wit and
wisdom to get people to click on your name, link, or profile and visit your
website. Do the same by creating pages
on social websites like Squidoo and MySpace; frequent forums and other places
where potential buyers may gather.
By engaging in social marketing, you're bringing your
products to the masses, rather than waiting for them to find you. It's a much more active approach, and one
that can be tailored to offer that all-important focus your affiliate plan
needs. Not only that, but it's a lot
more fun than talking to yourself on your blog, too, and you won't have to
worry about maintaining it when you're off on vacation enjoying all that Big
Dog affiliate cash!
Now that we've addressed the question of blogging, let's
move on and talk about the one thing that dominates the internet-playing the
web game to pull in the traffic. In the
next few chapters, we'll talk about how to run with the Big Dogs that run the
whole show-Google and its peers (if Google has a true peer….). Next, we'll get into the issue of search
engines and optimizing to make them your friends. It's crucial to affiliate marketing, so don't
miss these next few episodes.
Boost Your Bottom Line to Increase Profits
There are many ways to increase your earnings in the world
of affiliate marketing, and most of them can be learned with relative ease.
However, one of the more challenging, yet effective ways you can increase your
affiliate marketing bottom line is through the recommendation of products.
If customers or visitors to your site trust you, they are
more likely to trust your recommendations as well. This can also be a hindrance
to your business however. It’s important to be sure not to start promoting
everything by recommendation, or to promote without merit. Your credibility
will soon wear thin.
When making recommendations, be honest about what you liked
as well as disliked about a product or service. Your honesty is what your
visitors will appreciate the most, as they want to learn as much as they can
about the product in question. This will show them how the product will be of
benefit to them.
Another point to consider is making yourself seem a true
expert in the field of your choosing. The more confidence your visitors have
that you know are an expert, the more inclined they will be to purchase from
you. It’s quite simple to exude this type of confidence, and thereby establish
your own aura of expertise. Make available unique solutions and key tips they
can’t get from anyone else. Show them what you’re saying is actually true by
presenting them with testimonials and even famous personalities if possible.
Also, it definitely helps to have hands-on knowledge of a
product. You need to try it for yourself, testing the actual product as well as
the support that comes with it (if any). The last thing you want to do is
promote a product that turns out to be a flop. All of that time and effort you
put into your credibility will very quickly find itself destroyed.
Your primary goal is ideally recommending only products you
have complete confidence in. By testing and trying every possibly situation you
can, you will then be able to honestly recommend the products which you are
sure won’t leave your customers with unnecessary headaches to deal with.
Take some time to really look at your affiliate market, and
compare it to the present strategies you are using. It’s quite possible your
focus isn’t being placed in the proper locations. Your business action plan may
need to be revamped to allow you either a broader range of products to fit your
recommendations, or to cut down in order to provide a more pinpointed
expertise.
How to Spot a Moneymaker When You See One
Fine. You can accept
that you can't make it big selling your widgets to the five other people who
love widgets. You accept that you have
to look for the product that is in demand, with buyers ready to click that
"buy" button. So how do you
know which products to choose?
This is where your affiliate tools come in. This is where targeted product research comes
in. This is also where SEO and keyword
research starts to come into the picture, but the details of each of those will
come in their due time, in their own, dedicated chapters.
Spotting the sellers
What you need to do to spot a moneymaker is find out what is
selling and what is not. Go to affiliate
sites like Click Bank and Commission Junction.
Utilize the marketplace tools there and find out what products are
performing-which products other affiliates are making money with. Start there, but go further. Consider the whole picture before you decide
on the right affiliate products for you.
Go to these sites, and look at the market reports. Don't just start with a top keyword search;
find out what is selling-not just what is getting traffic hits. Compare products in your chosen category
against each other. See which products
are outperforming the others, and then go from there. Build your website and your affiliate program
around that product. Then use your
keyword analysis in the most productive way (as we'll show you).
Here's the trick, though.
You don't want to just grab the first products you see with the highest
traffic generations. Traffic in and of
itself means very little. You want the
products that are actually converting-that are turning into sales. So even if a products gets thousands of hits
a day, but only a couple of those hits convert to purchases, it is probably not
the product that will generate the kind of easy, hands-off sales you want. A product with only a hundred (or fewer) hits
per day that converts at a much higher rate would actually do much better. It's the conversion and sales that you need
to know, not just the traffic generated by searches.
What sells and what doesn't
Sometimes these statistics are things that you can find
through the marketplace tools on affiliate lead sites. Not always, though, and some sites are better
at it than others, so you need to look at the proven factors that are more
likely to result in sales. The trick to
this is really in knowing a bit about the psychology of buyers, and then using that
to guide your efforts at SEO and marketing (but more on that later…).
First off understand that there are basically only two types
of buyers of interest to you; they are
" Buyers
who are researching products, and
" Buyers
who need a product (or feel they need a product) because they need a solution
to a problem (or think buying solves a problem-sometimes the problem is simple
want)
Are there other types of traffic-generators out there? Sure.
But most of them are not buyers who are ready or nearly ready to
buy. So that kind of traffic is
essentially fluff. It looks good on your
site meter, but it doesn't make you money.
So it's not worth your time and effort.
This is where keyword research really comes into play. Effective keyword research will target those
buyers ready to buy, rather than those just looking around. We'll break that down in later chapters.
It may seem as though we've gotten a bit away from the issue
of niche selection. Really, though, it's
all intertwined. To choose your
niche-since you're not choosing on interest alone-you will need to know how to
choose the niches that can perform. You
need to know how to spot the moneymakers, using your market tools.
Now that you know your niche, we can start setting up your
business. We can go on to formulating a
game plan and carving out your piece of the market action.
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