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Affiliate Marketing Fundamentals: How To Succeed As A Full-Time Affiliate

The more time I spend online, the more convinced I become that making money with an online business is simple. Note that I didn’t say “easy.” Launching a business and building it to the point that it generates a full-time income for you and your family requires effort. It always will. However, the process is straightforward, regardless of whether you’re launching a membership site, creating information products, blogging, or marching down the road to becoming a super affiliate.

The linchpin is marketing.

Today, I’m going to share with you three affiliate marketing fundamentals that most affiliates either ignore or fail to learn. There is an enormous amount of money at stake. Some affiliate marketers generate millions of dollars each year in commissions. Thousands of affiliates generate six-figure incomes. If you implement the following three basics, you can become a full-time affiliate:

#1 – Learn To Presell Prospects

Judging from the landing pages and sites I’ve seen, most affiliates consider themselves to be salespeople. And they’re going for the hard sell. The problem is that potential buyers are turned off by the hard sell. This is true whether they’re thinking of buying shoes, electronics, or an ebook that shows them how to get into shape.

Your job is not to sell affiliate products. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to “prime the pump” and excite prospects about owning the product you’re promoting. You need to presell them. For example, suppose you’re driving people to a landing page that promotes a weight loss product. They’re probably looking for information to compare with similar products. Your job is to give them the information they want while subtly preselling them with your content. By the time they click through to the merchant’s site, they’ll already have their credit card out.

Imagine meeting someone new and saying to that person, “I’m the smartest and most attractive gal (or guy) in the world. You’d be crazy not to ask me out.” Very few people would be open to that kind of sales pitch. The same is true for affiliate marketing. Learn to presell visitors and you’ll see your conversion rate (and income!) rise.

You should read my Post on How does Affiliate Marketing Work Here.

#2 – Be Yourself

Affiliate marketers love to stay off the radar. They don’t want anyone (including their friends and families) to know what they’re promoting. So, they use aliases in order to cover their tracks. That way, they can promote acai products, adult entertainment, and all manner of items while leaving nobody the wiser.

There are two problems here.

First, it’s easier than most affiliates realize to uncover their identity and sites. In fact, the tools for doing so are becoming more robust. Second, the Federal Trade Commission made a move on October 5th to limit how bloggers represent products. Their guidelines extend to Twitter, Facebook, and all social media sites. The FTC’s oversight of affiliate marketers will probably grow. So, if you’re hiding behind an alias, you may have problems in the future.

Be yourself. Be honest. Use your personality to presell people on buying the products you’re promoting.

#3 – Promote High-Quality Products

Promoting good products should go without saying. While there are plenty of affiliates generating $100,000 a month in commissions from promoting acai products, that income source won’t last forever. It is a money-maker, not a business. In a year’s time, the space will have dried out. In five years (and after taxes), they’ll have a few dollars and plenty of memories. Even the adult entertainment affiliates – whose commission checks were once the envy of affiliates everywhere – have been complaining about how difficult it is to make a buck.

That’s not a way to build a long-term, sustainable affiliate marketing business. Promote high-quality products. If you’re not sure whether a product is good, try it out. If you’re promoting ebooks and software from Clickbank, contact the merchant and ask for a copy. Many of them will be happy to oblige as long as they know you’re serious about promoting their product.

Becoming a full-time affiliate marketer is simple, though it takes time and effort. Whether you’re driving traffic from PPC, search engine optimization strategies, or other internet marketing tactics, you can build a long-term affiliate business.

Learn to presell, be yourself, and only choose high-quality products. The rest is marketing.

I recently had the chance to become part of Opportunity.com a membership site teaching affiliate marketing. That will allow you to grow and expand your own affiliate based business. Created: by john Reese the mastermind behind Traffic Secrets one and two. If you have not had the chance yet to learn more about john Reese and traffic secrets then I recommend that you get it now. It has a wealth of information when it comes to getting traffic to your websites and could really be a stepping stone to affiliate marketing.

Here is review that I did on part two of Traffic Secrets a while back.

Traffic Secrets Review: Part Two Click here

Opportunity.com is new and although I am a member of a couple of membership sites. I am really enjoying Opportunity.com and know that you would love it. If you are looking to have a one stop shop for finding affiliate products and setting up accounts then this is one site that you need to have a look at.

The pros that come with Opportunity.com is that it is filled with tons of great information and that anyone with basic computer knowledge can get going with there own affiliate based site.

Filled with tons of videos here are some of the learning modules.

Opportunity features includes:

Getting stared Checklist
Aweber tutorial
Blue host tutorial
Ace Tutorial
Landing Page tutorial
Introduction Part one, two, three to affiliate marketing
Article Examination

Market Research:
Google alerts
Google trends
Competitive analysis

Keyword Research:
Google keyword tool
Compete.com
Spy fu

Google Adwords Information:
Overview
Competitive research
Writing effective ad copy
Keyword domains
Landing pages
Quality scores
Google search
Content Network
Language and location
Dayparting
Negative keywords

Traffic from Content:
Blogging
Podcasting
Social bookmarking
More that I did not list………..

Management:
Affiliate Army

Along with four bonus videos on affiliate marketing cash.

Three other section includes a Find offer section, My offer section and My alerts.

The find offers will gives you a whole directory of affiliate products to choose from while the My offer section will allow you to save the offers and come back to for reference. My alerts will notify you whenever new accounts or affiliate products are added to that area. Also on the home page every time you login in you will be able to see blog postings of some hot trends in products that are selling online and niches you could do well in.

Filled with video and pdf learning material and tailored mentoring opportunity.com is great membership site that will allow you to get your foot in the door with affiliate marketing with out having to search around for a ton of information. When, you can get it all right there.

I thought that john did a great job with this site and highly recommend it to new affiliate marketers.

The only thing I wish that it did have was probably a podcast to go with it and maybe some weekly webcasts or some sort of forum for quicker access with affiliate questions. Other then that is the place to go if you are new to affiliate marketing.

To See it and give it a test drive Click Here for Opportunity.Com!

4 Secrets To Increasing Your Affiliates’ Sales Efforts

If you’re selling a product, you need to offer an affiliate program. Your affiliates can drive an enormous amount of motivated traffic to your website. Because you’re only paying them when they generate a sale (or 100 sales!), there’s no cost of producing the increased revenue. The problem is that most affiliates do not generate many sales. For example, you may have 500 affiliates, but only 10 of them are actively promoting your product. Today, I’m going to give you 4 secrets to motivating your affiliates to increase their sales efforts.

#1 – Offer Tiered Commissions

Give your productive affiliates a larger commission than those who have yet to generate a give level of sales. Not only does this build loyalty among your affiliate base, but it motivates unproductive affiliates to promote your product more actively. For example, imagine that you sell a DVD training course for $197. You might offer a 35% commission on your affiliates’ first 5 sales, 45% commission on the next 5 sales, and 60% on every sale they generate after that.

#2 – Hold Performance-Based Contests

Your affiliates are primarily motivated by money. You can spur them to immediate action by organizing a contest with cash prizes awarded based upon their sales. Here’s how it can work: Imagine that you’re selling a product for $47. You normally give your affiliates a 50% commission. However, for the next 10 days, you’ll offer a 60% commission. Plus, the affiliate who generates the highest number of sales during those 10 days will receive an additional $200 check.

Depending upon the size of your affiliate base, the jolt in activity can drive hundreds of extra sales for your product.

#3 – Give Them A Toolbox

The easier you can make your affiliates’ job, the more active they’ll be in promoting your product. This goes far beyond giving them e-book covers and banners. Provide a toolbox with promotional emails, pay-per-click keywords, and ads. Give them small PDF reports with their affiliate links embedded within that they can give freely to their audience. For affiliates using search engine optimization strategies, provide articles that are focused on your main keywords. The more tools you can provide them, the more likely they’ll send their audience to your website.

#4 – Organize A Launch

Entire training courses have been created to teach people how to effectively organize a product launch. It is one of the most powerful marketing strategies you can use. And the success of your launch is largely upon the shoulders of your affiliates. It begins with building a buzz about your product. At the same time, you need to be in constant contact with your affiliate base, letting them know about the date you’re planning to launch.

As the buzz around your product builds, so does the excitement in your affiliates. When you finally release your product, you give your affiliates the green light. I’ve seen such launches generate over 1,000 sales in the first 24 hours.

Free, Motivated Traffic

Your affiliates hold a potent key to generating large waves of free traffic that is motivated to make a buying decision. If you’re selling your own product and have yet to offer an affiliate program, you’re not harnessing your product’s sales potential. If you already offer a program, use the 4 tips above to jump start your affiliates’ sales efforts.

In the near future, I’ll explain how you can create ongoing momentum in your affiliates’ promotional activity. Stay tuned.