Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing Strategies: Using Case Studies
Case studies are one of the most powerful tools that you have as an affiliate to convince your target market that your recommendation is sound. In today’s online world where it’s easier to lie than it is to get a McDonald’s hamburger, your case study can pull you ahead of affiliates in your niche to build lifelong customers who trust your recommendations.
Case studies can be done in the form of blog posts, video blogs or a special report. The type of content isn’t as important as what the content accomplishes. When you complete a case study, you are testing out the product for yourself and then sharing the results with your audience. By documenting how it is working for you, you are giving your target market a real life example of how the product works for a real person. This can speak louder than any faceless testimonial or well written sales letter. Plan a case study for your market, and you’ll really stand out.
Before you start your case study, you need to plan out how you’ll document your success. This all depends on what type of product you are trying out. Weight loss products and other health type products need pictures and/or video. For make money products, you’ll need screen shots of your earnings to display how the well the product has worked for you. You can also keep a “journal” of your results with your blog for an interactive case study.
In your first post, video or page, you should explain what product you are using and what your goals are. Case studies work best when they are for a specific length of time…like 30 days, 60 days or 90 days. People like to think in months and visualize how much they can achieve in one, two or three months. By measuring your success, you can give them a blueprint to follow and an expectation of how much they can achieve in the same period of time. Be sure to take starting “measurements”, whether they are real world measurements (ie: pounds if you are trying to lose weight) or digital measurements (ie: the amount of traffic your website is getting if you are testing a traffic building product)
As you go along, document your results. If you’re doing blog posts, you should post at least once a week to keep your audience abreast of any developments along the way. Share tips and tricks that you learn for success that may not be part of the original product. You should also record measurable progress that you can share throughout your case study and at the end. You’ll want to have something to weigh against your original results.
Once you’re done, let your market know how it went. Give your honest results and share ways that you thought the method could be better. Doing a case study shows that you’ve put your money (so to speak) where your mouth is and that you can be trusted. You’ll get a lot of attention for your case study and new customers to boot, not to mention the results from the study itself. It’s a win – win!
Article Marketing Don’t Give It All Away
A common mistake that many people make when they are using article marketing as a form of traffic generation is giving away too much information in the article body. That doesn’t mean that you don’t want to offer quality writing to your readers, but your main goal is to get them to visit your site.
That’s why you’ll want to write your articles to entice the reader. A good way to make this easy is to follow the A.I.D.A format of writing articles. This stands for attention, interest, desire, action.
A. This means you want to capture their attention first with a compelling headline and a great opening.
I. Then, you want to maintain their interest by showing them how important what you’re about to say is.
D. Next, you’ll want to increase their desire for visiting your website. You can do this by handing out a solution or piece of information, but indicate that you have addressed the rest of the information on your site.
A. This is a great way to get people to click on your author’s resource box — the action you want — and to get more people to visit your website.
It’s not at all uncommon to get a click-through rate of around 40% if you use the AIDA method.
Here’s how it works.
- You write an article.
- You submit it to article directories.
- Web publishers (website owners & bloggers) grab your article from the article databases and use your article on their sites free of charge.
- Inside your article, at the end, you include a resource box that contains a link to your website. When the article is published, that portion must tag along and be published, too.
Your link tags along with your article and you get FREE advertising.
Well did I give it all away?
You still have Questions?
Focus On Your Author’s Resource Box
One of the most important article marketing tips you can follow is to focus on your author’s resource box. This is your “take” for your site, whereas the actual article body is your “give” to the directory.
Your author’s resource box should contain a compelling reason for people to continue on to your website. You may talk a little about yourself, but it really has to be more about the reader and what he/she wants.
For example, if your website is offering a solution for people suffering from acne, you want to give them a reason to visit. Clearly, you need to let them know that you have the answer they are looking for in order to get them to visit your website.
A huge part of crafting a great resource box is including one or more links to your website. Different directories have different rules about this, but the standard is to allow you to include two links. You want to surround these links in what is called “anchor text.” This is simply a way for you to name the link to let the search engines know exactly what your site is about.
Here is an example of anchor text:
If you want the search engines to know your site is about acne treatments you would type:
<a href=http://acnesite.com>best acne treatments</a>
This would help boost your rankings for the keyword “best acne treatments.”
I welcome your how to too….. let me know drop a comment.
Prove Your Worth by Offering Something Worthy.
A lot of online marketers miss the boat by using bad content or half involved approaches to their market. Your website, blog or newsletter needs to be high quality and speak directly to your potential customers. Whatever you send their way needs to be relevant, coherent and honest. This means that you shouldn’t send a course on coupon cutting to a group of forex traders. You should also proofread and carefully edit your articles, blog posts and e-mail messages. Finally, you should be honest with your communication – don’t make promises that you can’t keep.
It’s Easier to Sell a Warm Customer Than a Cold Customer
Imagine the last time someone tried to sell something to you. How did you react? Did you shut down immediately and walk away or did you listen with attention and consider the points in front of you? The first is a common reaction to sales techniques, but you can actually achieve the latter if you are trying to sell to someone that you already know.
Think about it this way…are you more likely to purchase based on a recommendation from a friend or from a commercial? Friends and acquaintances win every time. Understanding this, it becomes clear why it’s important to develop a relationship with your market before hand. Turning someone from a cold customer to a warm customer is easy if you use the following steps.
A Beginner’s Guide: 5 Simple Steps to Start Making Money with Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are one of the easiest ways to make money online. Rather than spending months putting together a product, getting a sales letter ready and then promoting it, you get to skip the first several steps and simply promote a product. Product creators will pay you a portion of the sales price in exchange for sending buyers their way. It’s a win-win situation.
If you want to make money online with affiliate programs, here is a simple series of steps you can take:
1. Find a niche market.
Many people start with finding a product to promote without discovering whether or not that product has buyers. You can overcome a lot of problems later down the road if you start with your niche first and then find a product or products to fit it. A niche market is a tightly focused group of people who have common interests; for example, mothers who feed their children organic foods or retirees who invest in mutual funds.
2. Find the supply and demand for your niche market.
Before you go forward with your affiliate marketing website, you need to decide if the market is worth pursuing. The best way to do this is to find the supply and demand for that term. The demand is how many people are searching for information on that topic each month. Use a free keyword tool like the one available at www. Seobook.com. Enter a general term for your niche market and see what other terms people are using to describe that market. Write down the top terms for your market, and then head over to Google.
It’s time to look at the supply for the niche market terms in the form of competing web pages. Start by typing in each term with quotes and seeing how many competing web pages there are. Aim for terms that have 10,000 or less competing pages for best results
3. Find a product
Once you’ve whittled down your niche market and your terms, you need to find a product. You can find products with affiliate programs through affiliate networks like Clickbank.com, CommissionJunction.com and Paydotcom.com. These networks have products to fit any niche imaginable.
4. Create a Wordpress blog
Wordpress blogs are easy to use, even for complete Internet beginners. They are much simpler to customize and update than regular HTML web pages and they have the added benefit of being updated frequently, which will increase your ranking in Google. With the purchase of a domain name and webhosting (less than $15 total) you can install Wordpress and be up and running with your own affiliate site.
5. Update and promote your blog
One of the best parts about using Wordpress for your affiliate site is that you can set up content to be drip fed on your site days, weeks or even months in advance. Just create a series of posts with a link to the affiliate sales page and set up your blog so it will run on autopilot for the next few months. Then you can do promotional work for your blog, like submitting articles, building backlinks and commenting on other blogs, without worrying about getting content posted.
This is just a brief overview of the steps involved in setting up an affiliate marketing business, but these simple steps are all you need to get started making money online.
Here is a FREE report you can download “A Beginner’s Guide: “5 Simple Steps How to Start Making Money with Affiliate Programs”
If you’re ready to see a detailed version of this plan, Affiliatenaire will teach you all you need to know in 3 to 4 hours per week without emptying your wallet. This is the system I use.
Steps to Earning Online: The Importance of Courage
If you are reading this article hoping for a step by step approach to use one of the methods of making money online, I’m sorry to disappoint you. There are many guides that will show the ins and outs of a particular online strategy, but far too few people talk about the characteristics of success that are required to make money online. These are qualities that are necessary to develop on a personal level in order to see the success that you want in the public arena. If you don’t take the time to develop these characteristics, you’ll find yourself failing in your quest to make money online.
One of the most important success characteristics is courage. According to Merriam-Webster, courage is “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty” but for online money making purposes, I greatly prefer Winston Churchill’s definition.
He said “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” This statement is particularly important when it comes to making money online. Failure is part of any venture, but it something that many people who want to earn money online don’t think about. They listen to the hype that claims that earning online is easy and it doesn’t require any effort.
While there are a lot of things that make an online business easier and more profitable than traditional business, to assume that it is completely failure free is a misconception. Failure does exist when you are trying to take steps to earning online. You may build a site that doesn’t pull in traffic. You may pick the wrong niche. You may not be able to make your traffic convert. There are plenty of opportunities to fail when you are trying to make money online.
However, if you want to see success you must have courage to keep trying. You must see each failure as an opportunity to learn more about what works and what doesn’t. You need to be enthusiastic about each failure to motivate yourself to keep going. When you have enthusiasm and you are excited about the process, you’ll be able to put your failures in perspective.
You’ll see each set back as a part of a larger process and you’ll have the dedication and drive to keep going.
Many people teach this philosophy, to learn from your mistakes, but Winston Churchill characterizes it as being courageous. Why? Going from failure to failure is courageous because very few people do it. If you look at most of the people around you, you’ll see that they use failure as an excuse to quit. They see setbacks as a sign from above that they should stop doing what they are doing and try something completely different.
If you have the courage to do something different from people around you, you’ll have the ability to learn from your mistakes and get closer to your goals. This is one of most important steps to earning online.
How to Rake in Internet Cash: Advice from Ben Franklin
If you want to know how to rake in Internet cash, there are many different routes you can take. While some of them will leave you with a stable and reputable online business, others will have you exploiting loopholes online in order to make a quick buck. Which should you choose? Perhaps you should take Ben Franklin’s advice.
Although he died long before the Internet was even conceived of, his advice still rings true today. One of my personal favorites from his vast body of wisdom is “A good conscience is a continual Christmas.” I believe that it holds true for many pursuits in life, but especially in Internet marketing.
In Internet marketing your “Christmas” can come in two different forms, much like the holiday itself. For most grown-ups, Christmas means feeling good and being happy. For kids, Christmas is all about the presents. Fortunately, when you own your online business and you act ethically you can experience both types of Christmas from your business.
Due to the nature of online business, there are plenty of opportunities for people to take actions that are a little bit shady or downright unethical. There is a lot of anonymity that comes with working online and many people use this opportunity to take steps that they wouldn’t if they had to look their customers in the face. In fact, there are even a selection of techniques called “black hat” techniques that exploit search engines and website visitors.
Although these techniques can and do work, that’s no way to run a business that you can take pride in. If you are making money off of taking advantage of others, it will only be a matter of time until your conscience creeps in and reminds you that what you are doing isn’t right. Do you really want to try to live with yourself by building a business on unscrupulous techniques?
Even if you don’t have a small voice inside telling you that black hat techniques aren’t the way to go, look at things from a more practical stand point. When you build your business ethically, you will see long term results from your websites. This is a continual Christmas because you’ll earn money from your business again and again.
“White hat” techniques help you build your business on a solid foundation. If you want to have a long term business online, your reputation is going to be very important. You can protect your reputation by using methods that respect your website visitors.
If you use black hat techniques, you’ll burn bridges with your target market. They’ll quickly learn that you and your websites shouldn’t be trusted. You’ll miss out on future sales because they won’t come back and visit your site.
However, if you build your business with ethical methods based on solid business principles, you’ll see return business and be able to make several sales from the same group of people time and time again. You’ll also be able to feel great about your business and take pride in what you do.
Starting An Easy Online Business Treasure Chest
Getting started as an affiliate marketer is a simple and successful plan for making money online. Best of all, you can get your business up and running in as little as a few hours per week. If you’re new to the world of affiliate marketing, here’s a treasure chest of information to introduce you to the topic and help you get started:
Dan Higby – How to Start Making Money Online in 3 to 4 hours per week
http://ebizsnap.com/2009/how-to-start-making-money-online-in-3-4-hours-per-week/
Lynn Terry – Starting a Free Online Business, Step by Step
http://www.clicknewz.com/1679/starting-a-free-online-business/
Alice Seba – Finding Your Own Profitable Niche
http://www.internetmarketingsweetie.com/blog/finding-your-own-profitable-niche
PotPie Girl – How to Make Money Fast with No Website
http://www.potpiegirl.com/2008/03/make-money-fast-no-website/
Andi Suroso – Where to Find Top Ranked Affiliate Programs
http://surososite.com/where-you-can-find-top-ranked-affiliate-programs.html
Nicole Dean – How to Write Affiliate Marketing Independent Reviews
http://nicoleonthenet.com/2009/affiliate-marketing-independent-reviews/
Jimmy Brown – Multiple Streams of Affiliate Income
http://www.jimmybrown.com/multiple-streams-of-affiliate-income/
Yaro Starak – How to Be a Dominant Affiliate
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/1463/dominant-affiliate/
Chris Rempel – A Very Simple Way to Make a Lot More as an Affiliate
http://www.thelazymarketer.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-very-simple-way-to-make-a-lot-more-money-as-an-affiliate/
Do You Have What It Takes?
Dan
You are not going to find online business success by spending all of your time in forums. You’re not going to see those commission checks or Paypal deposits coming in by chasing down the next big idea online. You won’t see it by telling yourself that you deserve the afternoon off instead of doing what you should be doing on your path to online success.
The only way you are going to make your online business work is to work at it. Working for yourself requires a great deal of self discipline. If you don’t have self discipline, you’re going to need to build up that strength before you’ll see any success. You need a strong work ethic so you can do what you need to do, even if your favorite show is on or it’s a beautiful day to walk in the park.
If you’re ready to see a detailed version of this plan, Affiliatenaire will teach you all you need to know in 3 to 4 hours per week without emptying your wallet.
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