Affiliate Marketing Getting Traffic For Free
October 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Thousands of people do this because they can start making money almost immediately without the expense and time needed to produce a product themselves. Having a website is not necessary and there is no interaction with your potential customers beyond getting them to the sales page.
Getting involved in affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to make a lot of money on the Internet, but one should not go into it blindly. As an affiliate you must invest some time in research, this is absolutely necessary. Know what products you want to promote, how much you will make on each sale and the return rate of the product. If possible itfs a good idea to buy or request a sample so you know the product inside and out.
As a first time affiliate itfs a good idea to start with reasonably priced products making at least 50% commission. The most critical part of affiliate marketing is of course marketing. The issue of traffic is one of the most central and fundamental issues in making any money online. You can separate your marketing campaign into two distinct groups, paid and non-paid. Free marketing can be quite effective if you know how itfs done. Here is a list of the most popular methods for getting traffic for free.
Article marketing ? A great way to increase your ranking with search engines and direct targeted traffic to your sites. You should write about what you know. If you do not have more information on your topic than does the average reader you should probably choose another topic. Write your article in a conversational tone so that itfs easy to read. Donft make your article too long, remember itfs an article youfre writing not a book. A length of 450-750 words should be ideal. Your article should be informative and about your website topic. If its just useless information your readers will expect the same from your website.
Blogging ? Writing a blog is also a good way to drive traffic to your site and increase your search engine rankings. Blogs were originally used as online diaries but have recently taken on a business dimension. Your blog should be focused on your particular niche. You should have several blogs with different providers and include your links in your blogs and profile. This is a good technique for increasing traffic and search engine rankings.
Forums ? Participating in forum discussions is another great way to meet people and get your URL out there on every post you make. You should join forums related to the niche you are targeting or the product you are selling. When you sign up for a forum you have the option of adding a gsignatureh. This signature will show up at the bottom of every post you make in the forum and should be used to promote your website links and products. Whenever you make posts you will then be creating links back to your site, while attracting the attention of the forum readers.
Social Bookmarking ? This is a valuable and reliable way to get traffic and backlinks to your site. There are many social bookmarking sites such as Furl and del.icio.us. These sites allow you to share your bookmarks along with a description with the public hence the term social bookmarking. The main purpose is to put your links in front of people who would hopefully also bookmark your site giving you more backlinks.
MySpace ? MySpace is one of the largest online communities with over 100 million members. It is a great place for networking with other people who hold the same interests and marketing. Another great benefit of MySpace is that it has dozens of different forums and groups related to specific niches. Be sparing with your use of music bites, videos and other media clips, you should create an attractive profile that is easy to load. Forget the animation and other bells and whistles, make it easy to navigate your profile and organize your information logically. Color schemes are important, use colors that enhance the look of your text and images not draw attention away from them. You should also use a recent photo as you are now. For help on designing a MySpace profile consult the tutorials on the site.
There are Only Three Ways to Grow Any Business
October 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Raise price, frequency of purchase, quantity of purchase!
To make your business prosper and grow, it is necessary to understand the principles on which your business growth will be based. Raising prices, frequency of purchase and quantity of purchase are critical to your business survival and growth. Business is based on principles. The best ways to expand and grow your business is to follow these 3 basic principles.
Raise Price: Inflation forces retailers to raise the price of goods. There is no such thing as static price and businesses everywhere are forced to raise prices on goods in order to stay in profit. The problem facing businesses is the fact that consumers see price raises in a different light. They see it as price gauging, and feel that the business is taking advantage of them.
You must be careful when you raise prices to be sure that the sales do not go down. Here are some points to help pacify customers when price raises confront them:
1. Try to add value: this will help to justify price raises in the consumer’s eyes
2. Raise prices gradually: buyers can tolerate 50c or a dollar, but if you do bigger price hikes you will lose sales.
3. Make sure the items are popular items, so that customers will still feel compelled to buy despite the raise in price.
Frequency of purchase: Frequency of purchase is necessary for your business survival. If customers are not buying with reasonable frequency then you cannot make enough profit for your survival. In order to make this happen you will need to do 2 things.
Retain customers and keep them purchasing from you: You can do this by over delivering to your customers and building good customer relationships with them. This will help to make them your loyal customers. You can also achieve this by selling them back end products. These will be related products that will be offered as bounce back offers when they purchase from you. Much of your profit will be gained this way. In fact it is estimated that 20% of company profits are from the primary product and 80% will be from back end products.
Have a flow of new customers: Every business needs a steady stream of new customers. These buyers will be gained by advertising and market promotions. This will be your most expensive marketing effort but you will gain returns in the long run.
Working your current market will bring in new customers. Establish yourself as the expert and the leader in your market. In this way you will build customer loyalty and gain new customers. Added to this you should expand into new markets with new products to gather more buyers.
Quantity of purchase: This is the principle that will determine not only survival but also the growth of your company. In order for your business to keep on growing, quantity of purchase must increase. This can be done in the following ways:
1. Start an affiliate program: This can be done by starting your own company website and developing a program for people to sell your product. It is just like a sales force in the offline world. The only difference is that your affiliates will be driving warm ready to buy visitors to the sales page on your website, not necessarily to your store or business. This can generate a lot of business and take care of online sales.
2. Froogle: List your business with Froogle. The shopping listing with Google. You can even put your location in this listing and draw more people to your business. You can also make local listings in the search engine and Google maps. This will increase the quantity of purchase.
3. Get a website presence to expand your marketing: These days you cannot really afford to be without a website presence. This is a powerful way to get ahead of your competition. You can draw new customers from the Internet community. As stated you can have a local listing in Google search engine. Plus you can have a local listing with Google Adwords.
4. Focus on multiple niche markets: Do not just stop at one niche market. Expand into other related markets or even completely different ones. This will increase your new customers and quantity of purchase.
5. Up selling: Train all your sales staff to up sell products. This will increase product awareness with your customers and make more sales.
When you pay attention to these 3 principles, you will be able to take your company to new heights. So remember the 3 principles, raising prices, frequency of purchase and quantity of purchase and your company will not stay stagnant. You will continue to grow and expand your business and make your company the leader in your industry.
Good vs Bad Blogger
October 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
There are two general types of bloggers. The one that makes money with the site and the one that does it just for fun and money doesn’t matter. In the past years I saw several people changing from the “just for fun” to the “money matters” type of bloggers. One thing people have to realize is that it is not bad to make money with your blog. In fact if you choose relevant advertising readers benefit from it.
The common mistake people make is that they start to care more about the money than their readers. They focus on picking the highest paying ads and don’t care if they are in line with the topic of their blog. Have you ever seen dating ads on a gardening blog? This kind of behavior disappoints your loyal readers and scares new readers away.
Studies show that people evaluate the credibility of a site in the first 8 seconds. If your blog is covered with advertising people will think you are just here to sell them something and won’t bother spending time on your site. It is no surprise that blending advertising with content is so successful. It increases the credibility of your site, readers are more likely to spend more time on your site and when they see an ad - they are more likely to click because they don’t think you just do this to sell them something. A good idea is to start thinking about your readers as your friends. Would you try so hard to sell stuff to your friends? Probably not.
Good blogger…
- have the passion to write about their topic
- think about benefits for their readers
- don’t sell their soul and just recommend things or place advertising that they believe is worth it
- have long term success because they have loyal readers
Bad blogger…
- have nothing but profit on their mind
- think about how to make their their readers click on ads or affiliate links
- recommend everything with a high pay-out
- have short term success because people are sent away for a couple of cents or because people realize this blog is just about selling them something
If you approach your topic from an unique angle and your blog offers real benefits for your readers you will have success. Not over night because like everywhere else it also takes time and dedication to built something online. Making money online is easier than you think and with more and more people online every day an investment in the future.
Why Viral Marketing is Sooo Important!
October 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Leverage On Other People’s List
Internet marketing gurus always talk about building your mailing list. Mailing lists are important because it is true that the money is always in the list.
Most of the time, some Internet marketers will beg other marketers (especially those with a bigger list size) to promote their products, do an ad swap or help them to build their own lists in general.
But what if, instead of relying on YOUR OWN LIST, you can LEVERAGE on other people’s list?
You see, in Internet marketing, there is always someone who has a bigger list size than you. These people will always want to sell products.
If you can create products (such as master resell rights or no restriction private label rights products) and give them the rights to sell YOUR products with YOUR ads in it, you will be getting constant advertising for FREE and people are doing it WILLINGLY for you!
After all, when you promote a product to your list, it is still limited in the sense that you can only mail your list once or twice, but having your products being promoted all over the Internet, will take the burden off the lists and give you additional streams of income.
The Power Of Exponential Growth
Many people neglect the power of viral marketing because they have this misconception that it yields very little at the start. They feel that they would rather promote their products by themselves rather than share the product with other resellers.
The same applies with blog posts. (See the chapter on blogs and themes below).
Let’s do a little math.
Would you rather make $100,000 a month or make build a campaign that doubles in revenue starting at $0.01 a day for every next day?
1 à2 à4 à8 à16 àà64 à128 à256 à……… MILLIONS!
The power of exponential growth tells us that you will become a millionaire after almost 30 days! (2 to the power of 30!!!)
Do you see the power of viral marketing?
Whether you are getting one new subscriber a day or one sale a day, you will be able to generate lots of traffic just by viral marketing alone!
Now to be realistic, even with the UNLIMITED growth potential on the Internet, there will come a time where there is a saturation point. But it still doesn’t dispute the fact that there are millions of customers (and many resellers) that will market for you and expand your efforts FOR YOU!
It is always a good idea to build several viral marketing channels. That way, even when your viral campaign starts to slow down (due to saturation), you will still be able to leverage on many channels and build your list or your affiliate commissions.
In future articles , i will explore a few tools, both free and paid that will enable you to build several viral campaigns and watch as traffic beats a path to your virtual doorstep!
Affiliate Marketing Means Take Action Now
October 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Internet marketing is really possible for anyone to do. The cost of having your own website is about $10 a month, after you buy a domain name for about $15. So, the first month is about $25, then $10 each month thereafter. The only output that is required of you is your time. And that is where most first time affiliate marketers make their biggest mistakes. They do not really appreciate that old, time is money, adage. Most new marketers are hell bent on being able to say that they spend only $10/month and they want to insert $10,000/month as profit. That would be great, of course, and it can happen, but it’s going to take a lot longer to do if you don’t invest a little bit to get started in the right direction.
There are $100 guides and tutorials that can get you started in the right direction much faster than if you floundered around forums for months trying a little bit of this and that. This is not an article that attempts to sell you anyone of these things. This article is selling the concept of time is money. Would you rather spend $100 on a set of video tutorials that taught you how to how to make $100/day in a month, or spend $0, and search and search forums for a year before you were able to make $100/day? The answer is pretty clear to me, I would spend the $100 immediately so I could become profitable in a much smaller time frame. However, many people say that they know they can find the information for free on the Internet, and there is no need to spend money on information that can be found for free. And they are told that this mindset is correct by forum owners. Forum owners who stand to profit more when beginners stay searching their threads hopelessly for hours on end.
The information is probably in these forums somewhere, but it will take you months to piece together everything to become profitable. And the harsh reality is that the most successful marketers don’t sit in forums giving away all their best secrets. The only way you get one on one advice and coaching is by paying for it. This is not necessarily a bad thing at all. It saves you tons of time with minimal financial outlay. Time is money, so the sooner you learn the right information, the sooner you will start to profit. Of course, you are going to want to ask around or do your homework about programs that are worth the money. But do this research and just buy something good. Forums will waste your time all day long. No one is going to answer all of the 5,000 questions that must be answered to get started for free. You need to pay for that, but the cost is in the hundreds of dollars, not 10s of thousands or 100s of thousands like a college education. Take action. Just don’t sit in forums, it’s death.
Advertising your services or products on the Internet
October 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 2,500 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. The consumer is an invaluable resource. You just bid and you’re up and running.
Next, we come to the issue of link popularity. They also offer suggestions for key words after you enter a description of your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation. Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer.
And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source. Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called Overture provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL. The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it.
The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself.
If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other popular search engines. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better.
Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood is that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. However, you company specializes in bodywork only.
If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less.
This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits. This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page. Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website. Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city.
A product, service or program to sell
October 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
There are a lot of ways to make money from a home business. Many of the entrepreneurs have first been working for an employer to obtain the necessary skills into a home based business. However there are also people that make an impulsive decision and start a home based business on advice by someone, were attracted to an advertisement or are pushed that way for their current financial situation. You can make money online but as said in my previous article you need to develop a plan or system to benefit from an online business.
If you are starting an online business then you have many opportunities. Although don’t think yourself rich. It may be possible that your business is lifting off immediately but in most cases it needs hard work. I started out online by filling out surveys, reading emails and clicking on advertisements. This was not paying a lot. You need hundreds of sites to earn a couple of hundred pounds. You start earning if you refer other people to do the same as you do. At that time I was introduced to network marketing and learnt a system.
If you want to benefit online you’ll have to learn a system and afterwards implement a system that will work for you. If you start an online business in network marketing then you have to build up trust. The only way you can gain trust on the internet is to advertise yourself and stand firmly behind the product that you want to market.
Although we recognize the fact that some people starting in network marketing didn’t receive any support, I certainly would like to succeed in this business and if I don’t get the information I want then I ask for it.
If you join a network program, and you don’t ask a thing or don’t introduce yourself to a sponsor then there is no willpower to succeed in this business. A network marketing system is designed to work for you as well as for your sponsor. If you have a good upline than they are very willing to introduce you to possibilities to get you going. Your upline is benefitting from the work you put in.
When you have established a network then you can also think of selling affiliate programs or affiliate advertising (on your website). These affiliate programs will pay you a commission on click throughs and/or sales generated from your site. Think about Yahoo, Google, Clickbank or Amazon.
Once you are convinced that you have mastered the right opportunity, then it is time to do business.
It is from significant importance not only to choose a product or service to sell but also to target your market. Who are your customers?
For a business that is service oriented a industry market is clear. A plumber will most probably target private home owners than people who rent or in the other case deliver its services to a council or building society.
For an online business it is extremely important who your customers are and whom to target.
Keep this in mind when you are stepping into the online businesses. There are programs out there that promise you the world. If you don’t feel good about the product or services than stay away from it rather then trying things out and see what is going to happen.
Every business will try to find or create other products in time to target other prospects. Profits of your business always need to increase.
Starting out online doesn’t mean you have to sign-up for every program that is out there. If you follow this strategy you’ll end up broke or you fail to establish your company in about two years.
Lots of people make the mistake to sell more programs at one time because they feel one program isn’t earning them enough. If you have a good product then the revenue will come and after that it is time to expand your product line with another.
After you have figured out what your target market is you need to figure out why would this product be valuable for my target prospects.
You definitely can’t say: my product is so good that everyone wants to have it because it isn’t working. A DIYer will not buy a hammer if he needs to drill a hole. A person will not buy a car because he just has money to spent.
If you have the perfect drill and a DIYer needs to drill a hole then you are able to sell him your product. If a person is looking to buy a car because he needs it to commute then you can sell a car.
So it is wise to understand what the reasons are for your prospects to buy your products and to implement a strategy to sell your product.
How To Generate Cash From Promoting Affiliate Programs
September 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Advertising is the only task you need to do to get RICH from affiliate programs. With huge traffic flowing to your site everyday, chances of visitor or potential customer will buy your product is definitely higher!
Research had been made and shows that normal affiliates seems to make a sale with a percentage ratio of 0.5% - 1% (Sometime lower, depending on the products/service). With appropriate advertising method and correct niche market, it is possible to increase the ratio to 5% - 10%. So what actually is advertising? Read on to find out how to utilize advertising to your advantage below.
Online advertising, also known as internet marketing, is a form of communication to apprise potential customer about your products and services, either by text or graphic base. Many of you already know what advertisement is, but many advertisements copy often short of 2 important element. Without these 2 elements, putting your advertisement blindly in the internet/website is just a waste of time, as well as money.
First, you need to target your niche market. You must know very well where are the most potential customer located. Research has also proven that placing advertisement in the right market with lesser traffic flow EARNS more profit than those who advertise in a site where millions of non-relevant traffic flows everyday. Second, you need marketing techniques. There are many types of advertising and I will go through some of the effective ones below.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click). This type of advertising should be your top list of market techniques. There are basically 2 major companies in the PPC industries, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. How do they work? You might ask. PPC is one of the advertising methods where you bid for the keywords. Your desired keywords might have a higher or lower bidding depending on the competition. Advertising in Google Adwords is more effective because Google is the number one search engine used by surfers, especially online shoppers. You ads will appear on Google, Google Directory, Google Groups, Google’s partner sites, etc. The procedure of advertising in Google Adwords is very easy as well.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality traffic to a web site from search engine. Usually, a site that has a better ranking will attract more searchers to the site through search engines.
There are a lot of e-books that teaches how to make use of SEO and improve your ranking in the search engines. Once you have optimized your pages for the search engines, you will start seeing huge traffic flowing to your site everyday.
Are there any ‘SECRETS’ in online marketing or advertising? For me, I would say YES! Many top affiliate have their own source of advertising. They often hide their ’secrets’ so as to prevent the loss of profits. Different products or services play very well with various advertising techniques. You will have to try and find out from your experiments. In this way, you will eventually discover the legend of internet marketing!
Lastly, never ever QUIT on this industry! If things do not work out in the way that you want it to be, fine tune your marketing strategies. If it still fails, I would suggest changing to various affiliate program and try out something different. Sooner or later, you will find yourself on the track, without noticing.
Good Luck in promoting your affiliate programs!
The Top Three Main Tactics Affiliate Marketers Must Use
September 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Most all Affiliate Marketers are constantly looking for successful markets that give them the biggest and fattest paycheck, and the best ways to achieve that goal. Some think there is a magic formula that they can find if they look in just the right place. In truth, there is indeed a formula, but it’s not magic. It really just comes down to making good marketing decisions and following proven practices and tactics that have worked for others over the years. Methods that through hard work and dedication have shown to be the most effective in producing excellent results. Indeed, why re-invent the wheel when all of the “heavy lifting” has already been done for you?
Here are the top three affiliate marketing tips that have been proven and that you will be able to use to very effectively increase your sales and thrive in affiliate marketing online.
What are the three main tactics?
Tactic 1. You have to use a unique web page to promote each individual product you are marketing. You do not want to lump all of them together on one page just to save some web hosting costs. It really is better to have one page focusing on each and every product by themselves. This is a critical mistake many marketers make. If you have more than two items for sale on one page, the potential buyer can get overwhelmed and confused pretty quickly. By putting just one item per page, they have no choice but to focus on that item. This makes it much easier for them to make a decision. You can get away with having two items on one page if they are fairly similar in nature or content, but having just one works the best.
Along with the product description, you want to always include at least one product review on the website so your visitors will have a full understanding of what the product can do for them. It is also a great idea to include testimonials from actual customers who have already tried the product/service. You want to make sure that these customers are willing to let you use their names and photos on the page of each product you are marketing, so get permission from them first.
Be sure to make the pages attractive and compelling and include “calls to action” on the information/product. Every headline should attract the readers to read more of the page, or even to contact you for more information. Highlight the products “special points”. Give your readers as much information as possible to help them learn what the product is about, but leave some out so that they will want to find out more.
Tactic 2. A great way to help attract buyers is to offer free reports along with the product, or even for just their name and email address, and use great autoresponder messages. Whenever possible, try to position the “free report” option at the very top of the webpage at the left side, so that they cannot be missed. Studies show that people scan web pages from the top down and from left to right, so the upper left is usually the first thing they see. Always create a warm and welcoming autoresponder message that will be immediately emailed to whoever gives you their personal information through your opt-in box. According to very valid research, a sale is closed usually around the seventh contact with a new customer/prospect. The more personal you make each contact, the more likely the customer will purchase from you, even if the product is available from someone else. My personal experience is that I buy faster from people who reply to my emails and who genuinely want to help me. As for autoresponders, you can pay a monthly fee to one of the big name companies, or you can do what I did and get your own desktop autoresponder that you control every aspect of. I have a lot more peace of mind knowing that I have complete control over when and how my emails go out.
With the web page alone, there are only two things that can possibly happen: you will get a sale or the prospect will leave the page and possibly never return again. By giving them useful information in their inboxes at certain intervals, you are reminding them of the product they thought they might want later and it will keep you, your site and the product(s) fresh in their minds. You want to be sure that the content is directed toward the actual and specific reasons to buy the product. One thing you don’t want to do is make it sound like a sales pitch.
Instead, focus on the important points. For instance, show them how your product can make their life and working on-line easier and more enjoyable. Make sure to use compelling subject lines in each email. Try to avoid using the word “free” as much as possible, because there are plenty of spam filters out there that will dump that kind of content into the junk folder before anyone even reads them. Plus, using the typical disguises for these words, like “F*R_E_E” to avoid the spam filters just look terrible. I for one delete those immediately, as I know they are trying to “sell” me something. You want to use your autoresponder emails to convince those who have signed up for your newsletter/free reports that they will be missing out on something big if they don’t take advantage of your products and services, but do it without looking like your “selling” something to them. The more a person thinks it’s their decision to buy; the more likely they will buy right away.
Tactic 3. Now let’s talk about what is probably the most important item. Traffic. More to the point, traffic that brings in customers. And not just any customers; you want to get the kind of targeted traffic to your product that will be more than likely to buy what you are selling. Look at it like this, if the person who visits your website has zero interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be the first ones to hit the back button and move on, never to come back. How do you get this good, targeted traffic? Writing articles for e-zines, article sites and e-reports is a great method. This way you can find publications and article sites that are much more focused toward your target customers and what you have available might just grab their interest.
If you can write a minimum of 2 articles every week, with a minimum of 300-600 words in length, you will get a lot more attention and more focused traffic. By maintaining articles and writing continuously every week, these articles can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day. One thing to remember is that generally only 1 out of 100 people who visit your site are likely to buy your product or services. Once you can generate as many as 1,000 targeted traffic hits to your website a day, you can comfortably guesstimate that you will make 10 sales from that traffic, based on average statistics.
Another method that I have found to work very nicely is to use “traffic exchanges”. There are many free and paid exchanges around and the principle with all of them is basically the same. You sign up, look at other members’ web pages/ads and they in turn look at your ads and web sites. I belong to a few of these and my favorite is TrafficSwarm. It’s got a very simple interface; you can put up a bunch of short ads with links to your products and web sites within minutes of joining, your ads are targeted to the traffic you want and it’s free. Since signing up with TrafficSwarm, my “unique visitors” stats have jumped up 250%, my page views have had a similar increase and sales are steadily improving each day. You can’t ask for more than that.
The strategies given above are not really very difficult to do at all, if you think about it. They do require a little bit of your time, effort and an action plan on your part to insure success. Use these tips for all of your affiliate marketing products, and you will end up with a good source of steady income and make your way easily in this business.
Why Residual Affiliate Programs Is The Best To Promote
September 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Are you a webmaster in need of additional income? Or are you planning to set up an online business but you still don’t have any product to sell? If so, affiliate marketing may be the best solution for your problems. With affiliate marketing, you won’t need to worry about the products you have to sell. All you need to have is a website with sufficient contents that are related to the products of a certain online company offering affiliate programs. By becoming a member of the program, or by becoming an affiliate, you can start earning a certain amount of money right away!
Affiliate marketing is some sort of business relationship established between a merchant and his affiliates. In affiliate marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some traffic to a merchant’s website. If that traffic is converted into some kind of action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the merchant’s website or a visitor becoming a lead for the company, the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated. Compensation may take the form of either a percentage sales commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the application of the affiliate on the merchant’s affiliate program.
Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program that any one can join into. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of other benefits. But would all these affiliate programs bring off the same benefits?
Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought to the merchant’s website. Commissions for this kind of affiliate programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a high of about 60%. Other affiliate programs would pay you a fixed fee for every click through or traffic you send to the merchant’s site. Programs like this often pay a smaller fee for every click through, usually not getting any larger than half a dollar. The good thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor won’t have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to get compensated.
Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate program. Residual affiliate programs usually pay only a small percentage of sales commission for every sale directed by the affiliate to the merchant’s site. This commission often comes only in the range of 10% to 20% sales commission. Because of this, many people ignore residual affiliate program and would rather opt for the high paying one-time commission affiliate program. Are these people making a mistake, or are they making the right decision?
We can’t tell, for sure, if people are making a mistake by choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate program. But we can definitely say that they are making a large mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs would indeed pay at a lower rate, but merchants offering such kind of programs would generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions for a single affiliate initiated sale! That means, for the same effort you made in promoting a particular affiliate program, you get paid only once in a one-time commission program, and a regular and ongoing commission for a residual program!
So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? If they are still vague, then let’s make them a bit clearer with this example.
Suppose there are two online merchants both offering web hosting services on their sites. The first merchant offers a one-time commission type of affiliate program that pays $80 for every single affiliate initiated sale. The second merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time a residual affiliate program that pays only $10 for every single affiliate initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10. But by thinking things over before actually getting into them, one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering us more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.
Supposed you have directed traffic to the merchant and it converted into a sale, you’ll get paid once by the first merchant for the sale you have initiated. But with the second merchant, you’ll get paid monthly for as long as the customer you have referred to the merchant continues to avail of the web hosting service. That means that for the same effort of getting one customer to avail of the merchant’s service, you get paid monthly in residual affiliate programs while you only get paid once in a one-time commission type of affiliate programs.
So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting? Definitely yes, because you virtually get more money from these types of affiliate programs in the long run! And would residual affiliate programs work best for you? Probably not, probably yes. It is not really for me to tell. But with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore such programs.