Affiliate Marketing Revised
OK, forget everything you know about affiliate marketing. The tactics of the past few years just don't work anymore. If you play by the old rules, you will lose this game.
The big lie
You've probably heard how easy it is to start an affiliate business. And it is - sort of. It's far easier that developing, selling and supporting your own product. But that doesn't mean it's easy.
Here's the ugly truth
And to make matters worse, you've taught to do it the hard way. The first thing you're taught is to pick some great products. Next do some keyword research. Then to use these keywords to buy ads promoting the product. And finally get a fat check for all the sales. But this just won't work!
Don't bother with keywords
There was a time when this worked. But the competition has shot the price of keywords through the roof. So, throw it all away.
The NEW game
There is a solution to this problem. Follow this method and win again...
- Start using CPA marketing
- Instead of researching keywords, research demographics
- Market on display networks
Do CPA marketing instead of product promotion
CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It's much better than promoting a product. Because you don't have to get people to spend money. You earn a commission for having them perform an "action". Such as filling in a form. And it's much easier to get them to do that.
Do demographics research
You're not even going to use keywords (explained below.) So spend your time doing demographics research. First you select your CPA offer. Next, you go to Quantcast.com. And research what kinds of people will be interested.
Market on display networks
Now you have your offer and your demographics. You can target these exact demographics on display networks. Using image ads. And you don't need to know or buy a single keyword. The biggest advantage is price. Image ad clicks are much cheaper.
Summing it up
This is truly a quick cash concept. Because getting started in CPA is free. Image ads are cheap. You can use demographics to target your ideal prospect. And getting them to take an action is much easier than making a sale.
More About CPA Marketing. Click Here!
Sneaky Affiliate Tricks
It is extremely difficult to get started in affiliate marketing. And that's because you have a lot of other affiliates to compete with. The challenge is to try and outdo other affiliates and think of ways to do a better job promoting. It's also hard to figure out what to do because there's a lot of information out there. But here's one tip that almost no one is talking about.
Video marketing
No one would deny the power and popularity of video. Video online is everywhere because people love it. It's so much easier to keep people's attention with video. So using it in your affiliate promotions is a no-brainer!
Examples of how to use video for affiliate marketing:
- Record your testimonial
- Do a video walk-through
- Ordering
- Record a preview of the members area
Testimonials
This one is super simple. Just click record on your web cam and start talking. It does not need to be polished or pro. Seeing a real person on the other end helps your viewers make a buying decision. And the mess-ups or mistakes just make the video more real. You really can just click record and start talking. Use one of the other ideas if you're feeling shy.
Record a walk-through
This one is a little more subtle. You're taking the role of teacher and showing how to use the product. And in the process you're actually selling the product. If it's useful, then what you're teaching just makes people want it. So pick some really helpful aspect of the product and show how to use that.
Do an ordering video
This technique is super powerful. Record yourself placing an order. Watching you make a live purchase will inspire your viewer like nothing else. First, it's social proof. In general people are more likely to something they've seen other people do. Second, it builds trust. They are much more likely to take your advice to buy when you've taken it yourself. And don't forget about the need to "keep up with the Joneses". They see you getting the satisfaction of making the purchase and that makes them want it. You can add some extra punch to this by ending with: If you want to see the inside, you'll have to order it yourself.
Do a preview video
Here's an easy way to show the value of the product. What you do is record a tour of the back end. You show them the entire contents of what they get. And it helps soften the skeptics. It's much easier to trust they're getting something if they actually seen it.
Anyone can do it!
No special skills are required. There are simple software programs that make it easy to create videos. Really, the software does all the work. So you don't have to worry about the technical part of this at all. Remain focused on the benefits:
- Make more money Using videos in your affiliate marketing will dramatically increase your sales. People like video, so start using it.
- Less refunds You'll also have less of your commissions taken back. Thanks to you people know what's inside before buying. So, very few of them will cancel their order.
- Beat your competition! This is such a simple technique. But pretty much no one does it. This puts you out in front of the rest.
So get serious about your affiliate business and add video in now. It's your profit that's affected by not taking action.
Affiliate Marketing Secrets
Learn Top Affiliate Secrets
Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. This is when you send visitors to someone else's product sales page, they make the sale and deliver the product, and you keep 50% or more of the sales
The benefits of this are
- You can start instantly with no up-front costs and no need to develop a product, write the sales page, develop the website, come up with support tools, or get a merchant account and CRM.
- You have practically zero time investment because you don't have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
- You have nearly zero risk because you already know the product sells, because the product owner has already made sure the product sells. So you already know that the visitors you send will result in commissions for you.
There's no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!
There is one major drawback...
You work hard to send the traffic to the product owner's website, but once you do that you will never see those visitors again. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. And of the 10% or less that do buy, the product owner will be able to sell to them again, but you will not.
Is there are way around this?
It's simple: You must get your visitors' email addresses before you send them to the product owner's website. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you want to do it like a pro, you'll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.
Here are the benefits of doing affiliate marketing like this:
- You'll be building your own list of potential customers that you can market to again and again.
- You'll be warming them up by providing valuable information and then casually linking to the product sales page in the context of this information.
If you want to create an affiliate marketing system like this, you'll need the following:
- A lead capture page, preferably with video
- Several high-quality content pages
- A multi-part email series with at least 5 emails in it
Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you'll send them to your lead capture page first. This page is where you collect your visitors' contact info and add them to your auto responder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. After subscribing them to your email list, it redirects them to your content mini-site.
You content mini-site builds the good will, so that when you send them to the product sales page, they are in a buying mood. And at the same time, the email series begins following up with them to get them back to the sales page, in case they don't buy on the first visit.
All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it's well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it's set up, it runs automatically - you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.
One option, if you're not up to the challenge of setting this all up yourself, is to let someone like Affiliate Silver Bullet do it for you. With a service like that, you don't have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. The benefit is that it's much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it's instantly set up. One negative is that there will be other people using this same affiliate marketing system. However, the odds of you and them both finding the same visitor are so small, that it doesn't really matter.
Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to "outsource" each of these components. Whichever way you decided to go, it's critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you're at all serious about your business.