Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing’ Category
Sunday, July 15th, 2007 | 120 views
In your affiliate marketing, when you are creating a sales copy for an affiliate product, web visitors first skim a sales letter. During such skimming, if they come across a few attention grabbing items, then they may stop skimming and start reading the sales letter.
Writing a short sales letter is not a solution as long sales letters have a better conversion. You can also present the features and benefits in an elaborate manner so that a visitor is convinced and get the “Buy” mood.
With a long sales letter, you can still arrest the attention of the skimmers. The following are some of the ways that you can profitably employ:
- First impression is a lasting impression
Your ad copy should look professional. The reader should want to read your letter, should feel compelled to read your letter . A misspelled word in your heading can turn off a potential customer. Why would one buy from you if you don’t take care of details? What should your customer expect from your products, or even your support to the product later on?
- Headlines and Sub-headlines
Use a lot of headlines and sub-headlines to easily catch your visitors’ attention. Expand on the benefits and features of your product. Have a sub-headline on each benefit. Your readers may want to read further if they find your headlines and sub-headlines interesting.
- Pictures and Graphics
Use pictures or graphics that show your product and bonuses. They will make your product more concrete to your visitors. Pictures and graphics also easily attract one’s eye and make him wander on the graphic object.
- Fast loading of Graphics
Be sure your graphics load fast and the links are working correctly. People don’t want to wait. This is true especially if your graphic is at the top of your sales letter, and your whole web site will only be shown after downloading that picture.
- Short sentences
Use short sentences or sentence fragments. It is easier to read and understand short sentences than long ones. Very lengthy sentences may itself dissuade the visitor from proceeding further as he will realise the degree of difficulty in reading your sales letter.
- Text Font and color
Use color, bold, italics, underlining to highlight important words and phrases. However, use them sparingly. Too much of them may look like you are hysterical and will turn away potential buyers.
Use highlighting near the area where you want to have your visitors read more. You may want them to read the features or benefits of your product.
- Highlight Product Benefits
Pick the three most powerful and appealing benefits of your product and repeat them in various parts of your sales letter. At the same time, be careful not to make it too repetitive and boring. This will help your visitors easily remember these benefits. Just be sure to rewrite them, so it won’t appear that you just copied and pasted them in your ad copy.
- Bulleted Features List
Use bullets to list the features and benefits of your product. Bullets make reading easier making your visitor read more.
- Postscript
Use a postscript (P.S. and P.P.S.) at the end. This is some of the most read sections of a sales letter. You may repeat the strong point of your product, remind the bonuses included, or emphasize the urgency for the prospect to take action.
- Buy Button Placement
With a long sales letter, place buy buttons at different places of the letter. Your prospect may have been convinced to buy early on, so provide them with the opportunity to do so. You should capitalize on the prospect’s Buy mood immediately lest he changes his mind later on.
With lot of eye-catching phrases and other techniques discussed above, you can really make a visitor take notice of your sales letter and make him / her stay and read the sales letter long enough to get convinced enough to buy your product.
If you found this post interesting and useful, then you really haven't seen anything! Why not:
Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 | 102 views
Publishing an article in your blog does not mean putting down thoughts into words, typing and then publishing it. You have to attract the attention of your visitors so that they will be to your writing and force them to continue to read. You should know your visitors’ interest and write accordingly.
What is required to make your blog interesting is some ideas for creative articles, or a large dose of creativity while writing your articles. While many people are natural creative writers, for some, writing is a herculean task due to writers block. Many writers have literally torn their hair out when they get writers block and just can’t seem to get their creative juices flowing.
Putting words into images in the readers mind is an art. A clear and crisp depiction requires a certain flair that only creativity can provide.
So just what do you have to do when nothing comes to mind? There are no specific ways to get the perfect ideas but there are some easy ways to help you to get that frame of mind. Here are six easy ways to help you to get that.
- Keep a diary or a journal with you always
Ideas can be triggered by anything you may hear, see, or smell. Your senses are your radar in finding great ideas. Write all of them into a journal and keep it with you for future reference. You may also write down anything that you have read or heard, someone’s ideas could be used to develop your own ideas and this is not stealing. Remember that ideas and creativity can come from anywhere; it’s the development of the idea that makes it unique.
- Relax and take time to sort things out
A jumbled mind cannot create any space for new ideas. Everyone must have a clear mind if one wishes to have their creativity in full speed. Get rid of all obstacles that can be a hindrance to your creativity. If you are bothered by something, you cannot force your mind to stay focused.
Try to relax whenever you can and think about your experiences and interactions with others. Your experiences are what will shape your mindset and opinions which could be reflected on your writings. Try to discover yourself, find out what triggers your emotions. Discover what inspires you and what ticks you off. You can use these emotions to help you in expressing yourself and your ideas, with this you can grow creatively.
- Create a working place that can inspire your creativeness
Your working place can be quite a hindrance if it doesn’t make you feel happy or relaxed. Creativity comes from being in a good state of mind and a messed up workplace that causes distraction won’t be conducive in firing up your creative flow.
Surround your working place with objects that makes you happy and relaxed. You may put up pictures, or scenes, objects that inspire, or anything that can get your creativeness cranking. A clean and well organized workplace also rids of distractions and unwanted hindrances. With a good working place, you can work in peace and never notice the time pass by.
- Set the mood
Setting the mood requires you to just go with the moment or to induce yourself to feeling what makes your mind work best. Finding out what makes you tick could help you find ways to get your creative juices flowing. Set the pace and tempo for your mood and everything else will follow.
There are many ways to set the mood. Some writers have been known to use alcohol, a little sip of wine to stir up the imagination. Some would like some mood music while others let the lighting of the environment create the mood and a few others get the mood while smoking. In fact, I have known some who get the right mood while in the loo.
- Go on a getaway and just do some fun things
Letting yourself go and have fun produces adrenaline that can make your imagination go wild. Take an adventure or a solemn hike. Whatever it is that is unusual from your daily routine can take the rut out of your schedule. In no time at all, your creativeness will make use of that experience and get your imagination to go on overdrive.
- Check other blogs for ideas
While writing an article for your blog, check out other blogs (preferably, more popular ones) in the same niche for some ideas. Like I mentioned before, getting ideas or inspirations from others is not stealing. For example, in my affiliate marketing niche, there are certain affiliate marketing gurus whose blogs or websites I find extremely inspiring and kindles my creativity:
Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 2 Comments »
Sunday, July 8th, 2007 | 67 views
Affiliate marketing is the best form of online marketing since you could easily make a full-time living just with affiliate commissions. Theoretically, there is no need for you to have a website to run your affiliate campaigns but if you wish to become a super affiliate, then you cannot do without web publishing as one of the components of your affiliate marketing business.
Affiliate programs are a great way to make money online; if you choose the right affiliate program. That it why it is extremely important that you carefully choose which affiliate program or programs you want to join. When it comes to choosing an affiliate program, do you know what to look for? Below are some guidelines that will prove to be useful to you as an affiliate marketer.
Perhaps, the most important thing that you need to remember, when choosing an affiliate program, is to not pick the first affiliate program that you come across. This is a big mistake that many affiliate program participants make. Unfortunately for you, this can be a costly mistake. What many do not realize is that the product you choose to promote will reflect on you and your business. That is why it is important that you take the time to thoroughly examine an affiliate program first. You will want to choose an affiliate program that involves a product that you can stand behind, one hundred percent. You should have complete trust on that product and given a chance, you would purchase the product yourself.
One of the best ways to know that you are dealing with a legitimate affiliate program and a quality product is to test that product out. Although you are advised to do this, you may not want to or you may be unable to do so. If that is the case, you can still research an affiliate program or even the product that is being sold. You can easily do this online. One of the best ways to do your research is to perform a standard internet search. Search with the name of the affiliate program or the product being sold alongwith the word “Review”. You will search results containing a review of that product or affiliate program. Read through the reviews carefully.
Before applying for or signing up for an affiliate program, you are advised to read all of the rules, restrictions, or guidelines associated with that affiliate program. Unfortunately, you may find yourself disqualified from an affiliate program right off the bat. For instance, there are a large number of affiliate programs that prohibit their products from being advertised on websites that display pornography, foul language, and other offensive content. Familiarizing yourself with an affiliate program’s rules and guidelines will prevent you from being denied from a program or later dismissed from one.
Perhaps, one of the most important things to remember, when choosing an affiliate program, is the product that you will have to sell. In conjunction with making sure that the product is a quality one, you will also want to make sure that it is related to your website or business, in one way or another. For instance, if your own website focuses on computer programming, you will not want to join an affiliate program that sells pet products. Joining an affiliate program that is related, in one way or another, to your own website may increase your chances of making a sale; thus increasing your profits.
Although it is important to choose a quality product to stand behind, you also need to remember that your goal is to make money. One of the easiest ways to make a substantial amount of money is to choose an affiliate program that pays their affiliates decently and regularly. The average commission for affiliates is three to five percent of each sale made. While this is a good percentage to make, there are higher paying affiliate programs. You may want to look for affiliate programs that pay around ten percent. In fact, there are even a select number of affiliate programs that pay around fifteen percent in commissions.
There are lot of info products whose affiliate programs pay as high as 75% commissions. There are several very popular affiliate portals with whom the vendors tie up and you get the commissions from the affiliate portals and not individual vendors. The best and the most popular affiliate portal dealing with info products is called ClickBank. Registration at ClickBank as an affiliate is free. The best way to start earning quick affiliate commissions is to join ClickBank.
When choosing an affiliate program, the above mentioned guidelines are just a few of the many that you will want to take into consideration. Although the above mentioned points are helpful, the most important thing to keep in mind is your judgment. Using your best judgment is the easiest way to choose an effective affiliate program.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 24th, 2007 | 230 views
I found this excellent article on Terry’s SuperAff.com.
He had quoted an article from Studge.com which gives you PHP code to cloak affiliate links as well as click tracking by using MySQL database with just one table.
I am presently using a Meta Refresh Tag for Link cloaking and Adminder software for click tracking. Now, I could have directly used Adminder for Link Cloaking also but Adminder has put a restriction on the use of their links in email campaigns. That is a big negative point with this software as email campaigns form one of the important part of an affiliate marketers’ business.
So, I am in the process of implementing the code given by Partrick of Studge.com. You can either implement this code on one site and use it for all your domains or create this code in each of your domain and have link cloaking for each site independently.
I would prefer the first method of having the code in one site and using it for multiple domains. The main reason for this is better control and manageability. Whenever a vendor’s affiliate code changes or you want to use a different affiliate code for the link, then you need to change it at only one location. And, all your campaigns will start reflecting your new code.
Patrick has also given an SQL query for displaying the click statistics. But, if you wish, you could also write a more versatile frontend for displaying the statistics.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing | 3 Comments »
Monday, April 30th, 2007 | 108 views
A person who loves money and (s)he who loves to make legitimate money would welcome the Ebook from Kyle and Carson. They are two well known kid millionaires who have made their millions through affiliate marketing. They own and operate the very popular membership site, The Wealthy Affiliate. They have also authored the hugely successful Ebooks, Beating Adwords and Inside The List.
Knowing very well that Kyle and Carson always overdeliver, I would have no hesitation in buying the new ebook Who Loves Money, which is being released on May 1, 2007.
I would sincerely urge you to sign up and pre-register the ebook without any delay.
Pre-Register Now before the May 1, 2007 Launch and
EARN HUGE DISCOUNTS
Among Other Things…
Kyle and Carson are very well known Affiliate Marketers who have personally coached me and ensured that I was successful as an affiliate marketer in 2006. I know them to be sincere, honest and genuinely helping people succeed in the affiliate marketing business.
Their earlier Ebooks, Beating Adwords and Inside The List, have both been runaway successes. They are still highly sought after by internet marketers.
Similarly, they promote a membership site, Wealthy Affiliate Internet Marketing University which is also much sought after.
A Sneak Preview of some of the topics discussed in the Who Loves Money Ebook are:
- How to earn $60/Minute with a single Niche market? The exact niche and the product are exposed in the ebook.
- How to determine which keywords sell?
- An in-depth look at ClickBank
- Niche Hunting exposed - How Kyle and Carson does it?
- Penny Pincher traffic techniques
- Kyle and Carson’s Slow Roller technique
The Best Part is that these techniques can be implemented with ZERO Risk and without investing a dime of your own money!
I would suggest that you should grab this special pre-release offer for Who Loves Money before it is too late.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing Reviews | 3 Comments »
Sunday, February 11th, 2007 | 74 views
If you are an Affiliate marketer, you need to take care that you do not commit these mistakes in your affiliate promotions. By avoiding these 5 mistakes, you are sure to go a long way in establishing a very successful and trouble free life as an affiliate marketer and, of course, it will also definitely increase your affiliate sales potential.
Mistake #1:
Researching on various affiliate programs should be the first step that you should take before you start affiliate promotions.
You will not believe when I tell you that most of the affiliate marketers simply start promoting any affiliate program that comes his/her way just because there is a high commission for that affiliate program or that other marketers are also promoting it.
You must understand that affiliate programs that you plan to promote should be in line with the overall theme of your site, or else it will be difficult for you to convince your visitors or subscribers to purchase the product. In other words, the products that you plan to promote should be highly targeted towards the niche of your website.
Mistake #2:
You need to know how to use your signature file correctly. This is another mistake that affiliate marketers often make. They will simply add some 15 affiliate links in their signature file. Firstly, this will prove to be counter productive as no one will want to go through so many affiliate links. Secondly, this will also be considered by may recipients of your communication as spam.
Your signature file should not be more than five lines and the first line should always have an interesting, intriguing and attention grabbing text. Also, your signature file should deal with only one of the following:
- Have links to your website if you wish to draw more targeted visitors to your website. Any affiliate promotions can be taken forward in your website.
- Promote only one product which has relevance to the subject of your communication.
Mistake #3:
If you have been an internet marketer for some time, and whenever there is a product promotion, you might have received mail after mail about that product all having same or similar subject line and text. What, generally, is your reaction once you have seen 3 or 4 such emails? You will, simply, hit the delete button once you see the ad for that product promotion.
Now, what is the lesson that you need to learn from your own experience? You need to personalize your ad copy if you wish to draw the attention of your subscribers. Either, tweak the ad or, better still, rewrite it. Give it a complete personal touch. Make it unique. Make the subject matter stand out from the rest of the crowd.
You will immediately start seeing results! More Click Through Rates (CTR)… More Conversions… More Sales and Revenue…
Mistake #4:
Just to save a few dollars, never opt for free domain names or [tag-tec]web hosting[tag-tec] accounts. It is typically like penny wise, pound foolish.
Human psychology tends to make people wary when they see free accounts in your domain name or hosting account. They suspect your seriousness in your business. They feel that you are a fly-by-night operator.
Always purchase your own domain name as well as web hosting accounts. This small expense will pay you many times over in the long run.
It is not necessary that you should take the domain name and hosting account from the same service provider.
For registering your domain names, you could consider Go Daddy as they are one of the cheapest for domain name registrations.
When it comes to web hosting accounts, there are actually two options:
- Web Hosting account only
You could opt for purchasing a web hosting account. Most of the web hosting service providers fall under this category. They, basically, provide you with space on their servers for hosting your website. I would recommend Go Daddy, Host Gator or Lunar Pages. Go Daddy and Host Gator are good for all practical purposes but if you need premium services, then you should look at Lunar Pages.
- Web Hosting Service Provider giving Integrated Services
There is another category of web hosting service provider who not only gives you the basic web hosting facility but they also give you website development environment, content publishing and content management system, automatic search engine optimization and submission, submission to RSS feeds, social networking and bookmarking directories, etc. In other words, you get everything under one roof. So, you actually end up spending less and saving quite a bit of money.
Without another thought, I would recommend Authority Site Center under this category. Actually, I am hosting many of my sites with them. In fact, I would like to recollect a wonderful event that happened to me. I had hosted one of my sites with Authority Site Center. And, I had not done any marketing or promotion for that site with the search engines. Exactly one week after I had hosted this site, I checked up the targeted results of my site in Google. I was #1 in Google for my Site Concept Keyword. I was absolutely thrilled as the #2 site in that search was a Google PR5 site. It was simply amazing. You may click this thumbnail to see the result for yourself. The #1 site is mine.
So, I would any day prefer a web hosting company that gives you integrated services like Authority Site Center.
Mistake #5:
Another major mistake that many of the affiliate marketers commit is not thinking long term. An affiliate promotion will simply send the prospect directly to the affiliate product site without capturing those leads for future long term business prospects. You need to set up a leads capture method through any of the major autoresponders. The leads capture method could be a squeeze page, other pop-in methods, sign-up from your website home page, etc. The autoresponder should preferably have unlimited autoresponse and various methods of automatic follow ups emails.
The best and the most widely used autoresponder is Aweber. I would strongly suggest not to compromise on the quality of the autoresponder system as it is one of the critical factors to the success of your affiliate marketing business.
Avoiding the above five mistakes are critical to the success of any affiliate promotions. You need to understand one very important thing! Internet Marketing or Affiliate Marketing is like any other business. You must consider yourself a businessman. Hence, the same amount of professionalism, seriousness, dedication and business acumen are required to grow your affiliate marketing business.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 | 57 views
We will talk here on what is affiliate marketing, what are the forms of affiliate marketing, how to promote product or services, a few good affilaite marketing portals and some tips on how to start it off.
Affiliate marketing is defined as a widespread method of promotion in which an affiliate (or associate) is rewarded for every view, sale, and/or registration produced through the affiliate’s effort.
It’s similar to collecting a finder’s-fee or the commissions typical of retail store clerks. The more one sells… the more one gets paid.
Compensation calculations vary and could be based on any of the following:
- PPC (pay-per-click) a specific amount is paid for each visit
- PPL (pay-per-lead) where registration or sign-up counts
- PPS (pay-per-sale) a specific commission per sale is paid
If your goal is to generate your total income online, you can drive traffic from your subscriber lists to affiliate links just as easily as to your own product links.
What About Product Sales and Marketing?
You’ll want to watch for great products and services with the potential to benefit your niche and your mailing lists. To build trust and income, it’s best to recommend only those products that will be of specific interest to them. It’s a win-win situation for everyone that way.
When an affiliate is marketing any product, the cost of advertising the product is absorbed by the affiliate. It’s important to keep this cost in mind when promoting products. The higher the percentage of affiliate income possible from any quality product, the more that product is worth promoting.
When a product is sold through the affiliate’s link, depending on the service used, the total sale is divided up among the vendor or service, the affiliate, the taxing authority, the shipper (if any), and the payment processor.
It is common and expected that all affiliate details be spelled out in the affiliate sign-up process. However, you needn’t be afraid to contact any vendor to clarify their affiliate program if you have questions. Often you can telephone or email for a fast reply.
Is a Digital Lifestyle for Me?
Many standard retailers offer very small rewards for affiliate sales while most internet marketers offer upwards of 50% as commission. This is why being an affiliate of digital products can be very lucrative in a relatively short period of time.
Although the number of affiliate programs for tangible goods and off-line services is rising, a completely digital lifestyle can be developed solely from digital or downloadable affiliate products that may never take physical form.
Of course it’s important to note that as an affiliate of any tangible product, you generally never do more than promote a link to the product online. So in that sense it’s the same as a digital product.
One of the best places to find digital products to affiliate with is ClickBank. They have an automatic affiliate ‘hoplink’ program built into their payment processing service so that affiliate payments are not left up to the product owner to process.
Four other good ePortals for affiliate programs to check into are:
- Commission Junction
- Amazon
- Link Share
- PayDotCom
The above primarily follow the PPS model, i.e., Pay-per-Sale model.
In fact, the model of Pay-per-Lead is also becoming very lucrative and wide spread. The advantage with PPL model is that it pays much more than Pay-per-Click (PPC) and the effort involved in promoting Pay-per-Lead is much less than Pay-per-Sale. The reason is, in PPL, you do not ask a person to purchase anything but he/she needs to take some tangible action other than purchasing. For example, the visitor may need to fill up a form, sign up for a newsletter or opt-in list, take a poll or fill out a survey, join a free program, etc. Since, everything is free, the conversion rate for PPL is usually much higher than PPS.
The best place to register yourself for PPL is called Pay-Per-Lead Power Ads. I have found this to be the best PPL website that ensures you make very good money with PPL programs.
Staying with reputable, well-known internet vendors makes a great deal of sense because you know you will get paid, when to expect a check or bank deposit, and you can see your account details online at any time.
How Do I Get Started?
There are many ways to approach affiliate marketing, but a basic starting point is to have a web site with text or image affiliate links to products you want to promote. Generally you want to stay focused within a niche or interest group to increase your sales potential.
If you have used the products, your promotional efforts could include a product review based on your own experience along with images and other supporting information.
Developing an email opt-in list is helpful in affiliate marketing as it gives the promoter an opportunity to find the products with the most potential benefit for a group of like-minded individuals.
When providing a service such as this, most affiliate marketers are able to reach enough potential customers to produce some affiliate income.
When a lot of products are promoted to several targeted niche markets, it is possible to create an income of substance over time. Especially when the affiliate marketer is only promoting quality products with a real potential to benefit customers within the niche.
In summary, affiliate marketing is a great way to build an income without having a product of your own, and without having to do much more than get interested people to view product information through your affiliate links. It’s very easy to get started and can eventually put a lot of money in your pocket. Even though, a website is not necessary for your affiliate marketing exercises, it will definitely be an asset if you have one.
In subsequent pages and articles, we will go in depth into affiliate marketing methods.
Posted in Affiliate Marketing | No Comments »
