A discussion of earning with the Best Affiliate Programs, SEO, Wordpress Blogging and General Motivational Ideas for Internet Publishers and Affiliate Marketers.

When I started this blog a year and a half ago, I knew that I was in for the long haul and in that time I’ve seen numerous bloggers make a big splash in the scene and then disappear as quickly as they entered. While I’ve chosen to keep a low profile and adopt a “slow and steady wins the race” mentality, it’s still interesting to watch the thundering herd of moneymaker bloggers migrate like sheep in search of greener pastures only to find out they’ve been left stranded in the desert with no shepherd to guide them home.

For the most part, there are common elements to success and conversely there are common elements that produce failure. While nothing in life is absolute or guaranteed, the following seven character traits are generally considered common shortcomings found in every washout story.

1. Patience is a virtue

- In the affiliate marketing world, patience is perhaps one of the most essential character traits you can posess. I routinely see people searching for “quick fixes” to gain traffic, backlinks, SERPS and pagerank without realizing that these things take time to develop. As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in one day”, in affiliate marketing it’s no different. Overnight success stories are few and far between but on the contrary, those who exhibit patience and work tirelessly to produce their visions usually meet with eventual success.

2. Give up too easily

- All too often, when faced with adversity or challenges beyond expectations many people will throw in the towel and walk away from something before they’ve ever really begun. Perseverance is mission critical when attempting to make a career of affiliate marketing. The ability to reinvent your strategy when you’ve hit a brick wall is also pertinent to a successful business. Charles Goodyear, the inventor of modern rubber vulcanization, spent years of failure and a creditor even had him arrested and thrown into prison before he came to a semi-accidental discovery that he eventually patented. Had he given up on his dream, we might still be driving on wooden wheels.

3. No Self Discipline

- A methodical approach to anything in life will usually yield the intended results but if you lack foundation, consistency and an overall gameplan, you’re efforts will usually go unrewarded. Contrary to what any of the “get rich quick” gurus try to sell you, the truth is affiliate marketing is a time consuming job. When you are responsible for setting your own work hours, nobody is going to be there to make sure you punched the time-clock or if you completed your tasks at hand. A diligent approach such as making “thing to do today” lists and following them is essential for reaching both long term and short term goals.

4. Lack of Concentration

- So many novice affiliate marketers waste hours of valuable time jumping from one idea to another thinking they are going to find the magic formula to success. They read every affiliate marketing guru’s blog and spend sleepless nights trying to duplicate the same success John Chow or Shoemoney claim they have but in the end, all they have to show for it is bloodshot eyes and a sense of unfufillment. Concentration is essential to the completion of tasks. Without it, you can wander the web forever without every having a penny for your thoughts.

5. Target Popular Niches

- Many novices make the mistake of targeting too wide of a niche in their affiliate marketing efforts. Generally speaking, if you go to some keyword tracker application and search for the top keywords and phrases, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to conquer one of the more popular, overpopluated niches. Targeting several long tail keywords and alternate phrases can produce more fruitful results than racking your brains trying to figure out how to find your place in the widest niche. As the old saying goes, “It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond” and mind you, the big ponds on the internet are brackish waters full of sharks and pirhanas who will eat you alive if you don’t swim fast enough or have a natural self-defense mechanism.

6. Can’t Close Sales

- Anybody who tries to sell you on the idea that affiliate marketing requires no knowledge of sales is either a clever salesperson, pulling a fast one or they’re sadly misinformed. Closing sales in the real world is essentially the same process as closing sales on the internet. The only difference being, in the real world, a good salesman can read the body language of a potential customer while using charisma and persuasion to close a sale. On the internet, affiliate marketers must be charasmatic and persuasive just as in the real world, except you can’t read a potential customers body language and see how they are reacting to your pitch so you can make adjustments. Honesty, trust and a good reputation are the most important traits if you are going to have people pay attention to you when you’re making a sales pitch on the internet.

7. Never Learn From Mistakes

- Learning from your mistakes is possibly the most important factor in attaining your goals and aspirations. Sometimes it’s from those mistakes that we find the greatest revelations which in turn lead us to our greatest accomplishments. Never be afraid to fall down and pick yourself back up again. It’s all part of the learning process and no matter what people say, everybody who achieves any modicum of success has picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and started all over again.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. If you’re serious about affiliate marketing, please take a moment and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep informed of what the wonderful world of affiliate marketing has in store for all of us who choose to make our living in the world wide web’s most cut-throat industry.

Peace Out,
Dave

         

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Affiliate programs are a fantastic way to make a residual income utilizing the power of the internet, but I would be lying if I told you that finding success in the affiliate marketing industry could be accomplished with little or no effort.

Another common misconceptions is that affiliate marketing can be automated, not unlike a virtual money-making machine. The truth is, promotion and marketing are hard work but if you’re the type of person who loves a real challenge, maybe you might be cut out for this frustrating yet fast paced industry.

While most fledgling promoters go into the field thinking it’s all about driving traffic to your website, the real battle is finding legitimate, honest programs or services worth promoting to earn commissions. You’ll also want to be certain a vendor you are promoting has a satisfactory history of paying affiliates on time and as promised.

There are countless facets to achieving success through affiliate marketing but in this article I’m going to briefly touch on several fundamental concepts considered essential when choosing to promote or not to promote a particular affiliate program.

#1 - “Supply and Demand” drives the global marketplace

The first thing you need to ask yourself when choosing a program - “Is there a demand for this product and can the vendor keep supplying the demand?” To put it simply, do you think that a lot of people would want the service or product and would you personally buy it? Do you know what type of people would be interested in it and/or where to find them? Do you have insight on how you will reach those people and get them to respond to you efforts by purchasing the product which will earn you a commission? If you think that the internet is just some great big place that all you have to do is spam your ad to a few select sources to turn a profit, you’re sadly mistaken.

#2 - Conversion, Conversion, Conversion

Do you think the vendor’s sales page for the product itself will convert a sufficient amount of your leads into buyers? This is about numbers. If you are spending money or elbow grease to bring visitors to your pitch page, only to pass them to the final sales page, does it make the product and the offer look enticing enough that you would buy it? Other considerations are the ease with which potential customers can navigate the website and is the purchase process secure and professional. Is there a detailed FAQ and are all potential questions answered honestly on the vendor’s site. When you look at the sales page, do you trust your own consumer instinct with the vendor’s final pitch? If you feel as if you could be sold on this product and if you would feel secure doing business with the vendor, you’re probably ready to get started promoting.

#3 - Commission vs. Conversion?

Commission rates are irrelevant due the fact that sometimes a program that offers a higher return can have a poor conversion rate over the long run. Factors that influence affiliate sales are : the availability of marketing materials for promoters and most imporantly lack quality in the product or service. Most marketers initially lament “is the commission rate high enough?” but the overall commission rate is only a small factor defining the potential marketability. Digital products (such as e-books) usually offer huge commissions (50% and up) but they have high rates of returns (which you, as the affiliate, lose commission when a digital product is returned). Physical products (the ones that need to be shipped to the customer) usually pay 5-10% per commission but have a higher true conversion rate because returns on tangible goods occur at a much lower rate than digital products. Paying attention to the dollar amount that you’ll be earning per sale (ie: a 10% commission on a $200 product equals a 50% commission on a $40 product) is essential to evaluating the cost of your promotional efforts versus gross earnings to reach your net revenue. While they may seem to be identical on the surface, if the $200 product required 100,000 page impressions to convert and the $40 product required 4,000 impressions to convert, you can see the law of averages is in favour of the second product as being a more productive promotion.

#4 - Quality or Hype ? It’s YOUR reputation on the line.

Do you believe in the product? Would you be proud to promote it? No matter how “hot” and lucrative an offering may seem, if you have any reservations about the product or service’s quality, purpose or it’s industry, you will probably be better off not promoting it. Your online reputation depends on an inumerable amount of factors, but honesty is the #1 quality that will win you a loyal following. Engaging in any sort of business or doing something that does not feel honest is not only going to be a failure from the start, it could also involve you in unwanted personal and business liabilities that you might regret in the end.

As a promoter, putting your reputation on the line each and every time you turn your audience onto a new program, product or service is a given. In this industry, respect is not only something you must earn, respect is a commodity that must be maintained. Promoters and marketers are in a constant morale struggle between making a quick buck “at the moment” which could damage your reputation down the line. On the flip side, taking the time to build a residual income based on an impeccable reputation will almost always yield favorable results. As an example, You’ll never find this blog promoting opaque “get rich quick” programs like Ty Coughlin’s “Reverse Funnel System”, Agloco, Yuwie or other shady, borderline pyramid schemes and potential scams. As an affiliate publisher, promoter and marketer for the better part of a decade, I’ve lost a lot of sleep, time, blood, sweat, tears and money on the learning process but the experience has taught a valuable lesson which is “slow and steady wins the race”. This is why you will often hear me extolling the virtues of established affiliate programs such as Amazon Associates and Commission Junction (particularly the eBay affiliate program) and examining the transparency of any questionable programs.

#5 - Tracking is Essential

When promoting affiliate programs, keeping track of all your work in terms of clicks, conversions and commissions is a priority. Not to mention, keeping track of any expenses you might have occurred for a particular campaign. In the long run, it’s best to work with well established programs that have CSV exportable reports that allow you import your performance data into a spreadsheet or tracking software to monitor your results. Many of the most popular programs such as Commission Junction, Google Adsense, PepperJam, Amazon Associates and even Bidvertiser provide a significant amount of tracking information available in a variety of formats. The reason tracking is so essential is because you will want to know “what” works “where” in order to maximize your earnings. If something works, you will want to focus more effort on that particular niche and if something isn’t working at all, you’ll want to pull it from your roster.

While I’ve glossed over some of the most basic yet essential topics here, each entrepreneur learns to eventually make experienced descisions for themselves based on their efforts which is the best policy for increasing earnings across the board.

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The Amazon Associates program can be one of the most profitble affiliate programs but many webmasters seem time have a hard time making a single sale while others make considerable profits. As with any online moneymaking scenario there are secrets to be learned, mostly by trial and error, however many people give up when they are not seeing the results they expected instead of refining their experimentation. While the Amazon Associates program may not be suitable for all webmasters, if you have the incentive to go out and learn the ropes, you can find yourself with a very profitable website in a relatively short period of time.

Monetization “Before” Content
Yes, you’re reading that correctly, monetization before content is the single most important trick when working with any product based affiliate program. I know most of us with any experience in SEO work scratch our heads and think of this as a backwards way to deal with the creation of a website but to have any real success with Amazon, you’ll have to re-think your objectives. The common method most webmasters use for creating a website is to buy a domain name, find a theme for the site then start adding content. After the content is somewhat established the next step it to find suitable methods to monetize the creation. In most cases this will simply not work with Amazon and you must set out from the beginning with a plan.

Plan for Products
The first step you will need to take when planning a website for monetization with the Amazon Associates program is to decide what type of products you would like to promote. Finding a niche that is suitale, that you have some knowledge of is rather easy and it is the starting point for your objective. Before you register a domain, before you even write the first line of html, you must have a clear visualization of exactly what product niche you are going to be creating a website for. After all, the purpose of an affiliate site is to lead visitors into your affiliate pages and close sales.

A Website is a Vehicle
Think of your website as a vehicle, not just any vehicle, a huge semi truck full of goods from your perspective niche that you need to find buyers for. In this case, the content you deliver on your site should be constructed to revolve around the sales of your targeted product niche and only that. Straying from your objective will result in loss of sales and thereby loss of commissions on your part.

Use Content Provided by Amazon
There’s no reason to waste time re-inventing the wheel. Amazon provides ample content for publishers to use in their webpages and more often than not the content provided is top notch marketing copy. Amazon allows associates to freely use this content when building pages and you should take full advantage of it.

Finding Impulse and Repeat Buyers
Any successful Amazon Associate will tell you the joy of logging into your account and seeing that somebody has went on a buying spree and purchased several items using your affiliate id. These are the type of visitors you want to lead to your website and then turn them loose on Amazon. It’s not hard to do if you keep your content oriented to your niche and give some incentive for visitors to return to your website. This is where using a mailing list and other marketing techniques really pay off. If done cleverly enough, so not as to look like spam or junk mail, and if you build a rapport with your visitors, you will find the commissions rolling in.

Know Your Niche
This is probably the single most important ascpect of building a successful affiliate site. If you know about your niche, possibly products that you have purchased in the past, you can sincerely guide your visitors to the best value for their money and if they are satisfied, they will return time and again to reap your knowledge. Again, building a rapport with your visitors is essential for a successful affiliate website.

These tips and techniques here are just a basic rundown of the concepts most successful Amazon Associates will not share with you because they are afraid it might cut into their commissions and generate unwanted competition. While this article has not went into depth regarding using PPC marketing to drive perspective customers to your website, if you subscribe to this blog’s email RSS feed you will be kept in the loop for the next installment of this article series where I’ll show you a site I’ve built using these techniques. I’ll only be releasing the next portion of this article to my email RSS subscribers, so don’t miss out and signup today.

Happy Publishing
Dave

         

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