The Importance of Building a List

Out of all the possible approaches to affiliate marketing, lead capture and list building represents the smartest and most effective option.

Why?

A lost visitor is a lost sale. A lost visitor is the loss of potential repeat sales. Think of it this way: you're putting time and money into your advertising. If you aren't capturing your visitor's email addresses, you're basically throwing all of that traffic right down the drain.

When you capture your visitors to your list, you open a whole new world of profit opportunities – not just for the short term, but for the long term as well.

The Benefits of List Marketing

You can educate your prospects. This will increase your conversion rate by giving you the opportunity to turn hesitant prospects into enthusiastic customers.

You can market to your prospects over and over again. Your long term profit potential exists in repeat sales. Never work for "just one sale".

You can double your return on investment while lowering your advertising costs. Once you've got a list in place, you don't have to limit your offerings to just affiliate product. You can bring in any additional, related products of interest to your list and make sales immediately without going through the same advertising process all over again.

Can you see the benefits yet? Why spend money over and over again sending people to the same page and 'hoping for a sale', when you can capture them to your list and have full control over the conversion process?

Any other approach leaves you at the mercy of the merchant's web copy and the customer's mindset at first contact. You've got to lure your prospects in and expose them your message multiple times. This will save you so much time and money you'll wonder why you ever did it any other way.

Beating the Odds

This will be a cold, hard dose of truth, but you need to know the facts. The majority of people who go into affiliate marketing fail to break even. Some people will earn thousands in this business, while others will struggle to generate even a few hundred in sales per month.

Affiliate marketing is very competitive and cut-throat. You've got to stay on your toes to win in this game. While I can't guarantee your success, I can provide you with some fundamental knowledge that just might help you beat the odds. Get ready to learn how to play hardball with the super affiliates.

#1: Never Stop Searching for Profitable Keywords

Successful affiliates are never satisfied with the status quo. Even if you endured hours sweat producing research to find your target keywords, keep on searching out new ones and adding them to your list.

#2: Become Obsessed with Testing and Tracking

If you aren’t testing and tracking absolutely everything – and I mean everything from your keywords, your ppc ads, your web site copy and any thing else you can think of to test/track, the odds are stacked against you. Successful affiliates are maniacal about testing and tracking every detail of their campaigns. They are details oriented and use all of their collected data to refine their entire system on a day to day basis.

#3: Innovate and Update Constantly

Keep your approach fresh by testing new conversion tactics. If you rely on PPC engines for advertising, start throwing in e-zine advertising into the mix. If that doesn’t produce the desired results, investigate banner ads, classified ads, message boards, offline media and anything else you can think of to get your message across.

Don't rely on one conversion channel. If you send your prospects direct to the merchant, change up your campaign and start sending leads to your own web site and start collecting email addresses. Experiment with your content and your web copy. Try out different link headlines. Never settle for the familiar. Tweak everything until you’ve squeezed the maximum conversion power out of it.

#4: Pay Attention to the Industry and Communicate with Other Affiliates

The world of affiliate marketing changes every day. There is always a new tactic to implement, a change in the rules at one advertising service or another, a serious technology failure at one of your merchant’s sites and so on.

Even though affiliate marketers are rabidly competitive group, they are also quite helpful and willing to trade information and tips with one another. You should bookmark the following sites and make a point of visiting them weekly if not daily:

http://www.associateprograms.com/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/

Five Approaches to Affiliate Marketing

As a new affiliate, one of the first things you'll want to know where and how to promote your affiliate link. Today we'll cover several options and discuss the merits of each method.

1. Direct Links via PPC Advertising

If you use PPC advertising, you can embed your affiliate to the ad and send the prospect directly to the merchant's site. This is a really lazy to do things, though. You might make a few sales, but it's far better to approach the process as outlined in tactic #2.

2. Linking to Your Site via PPC Advertising

Place ads for your target keywords and direct the prospects to greet them with an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter. Once you've collected a prospect's email address, they are yours to market to on a repeat basis.

3. Build Content Focused Sites

This approach aims for long term traffic through search engine optimization. You’ll need to publish content related to the type of product you're trying to sell. Searchers will be drawn in by informative articles. You’re affiliate links will be sprinkled discreetly across the site.

4. Advertise in E-Zines

This is a good method to use if you can find targeted lists for your product. E-zine ads can be purchased in most cases, and in other cases you can snatch them up for free by bartering with the list owner.

5. Purchase text link or banner advertising on high traffic sites

This type of advertising isn't quite as popular as it used to be. It is most effective when you can find high traffic sites for smaller niche subjects. These sites tend to focus heavily on content and run only a handful of ads on site. Space is limited and rates are likely to be at a premium.

Choosing an Affiliate Program

Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, it is necessary to choose the right program for you. There are almost as many programs out there as there are products! When you first start out, it's easy to go overboard signing up to as many programs as possible, but this isn't the right way to go about it.

First, you need to decide on a area of particular interest to you. What products do you know the most about and think you could do the best job of selling?

Once you identify your specialty, you begin by sorting through the available merchants and examine the structure of their affiliate programs.

Key areas to investigate:

1. When and how do you get paid?

Find out whether the program pays you weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, etc. Most programs have a minimum payout amount, meaning that you don't receive your commissions until hitting a minimum number of sales for the pay period. You'll also want to find out whether the programs pays you via check, direct deposit, Pay Pal or any combination of the three.

2. How much do you make per sale?

Remember you’ll be investing your own money into advertising and other expenses to promote these programs. Therefore, you should seek programs which reward their affiliates well. You’ll also want to seek out high-value products. A fifty to sixty percent commission on a $100 product is very good, but it’s not so hot if you’re promoting a $15 product.

3. Is the program managed well? Is this a reputable company?

Larger companies usually have “affiliate managers” devoted to maintaining contact with their affiliates. Even if you go with a smaller outfit, they should at least offer clear contact information. You might want to try e-mailing them at their contact address to see how fast they respond to you. Mismanaged programs are, at best, a sign of disorganization and, at worst, could indicate a company in trouble. The last thing you want is to be sitting on a grand worth of hard earned commissions and see the merchant go out of business before paying you.

Keeping these factors in mind, here are some great places to seek out products you can promote:

www.clickbank.com www.cj.com www.linkshare.com

Commission Junction (CJ) and Linkshare provide affiliate hubs for major brand corporations and mid-sized businesses. Their focus is generally on tangible products and services. Clickbank is the leading source online for affiliates of information products like e-books, software and membership sites.

What Are Affiliate Programs?

Welcome to the wide world of affiliate marketing!

Affiliate marketing (sometimes called referral marketing)
is based business people.

So, what is an affiliate and what does he or she do?

The affiliate marketer acts as a 'middle man' between merchant
and consumer, but without adding anything to the consumer’s cost.
Affiliates do not mark up or resell products.

Instead, the affiliate educates and directs the consumer to a
product, and he receives a percentage of the sale in commission
from the merchant.

The affiliate acts as an independent lead generator for the merchant
by bringing in new customers.

This is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant.

The affiliate can reap a full-time income marketing a whole suite
of products that he does not own. He doesn't pay for product creation,
doesn't have to ship anything and doesn't deal with customer service
issues or returns. The merchant benefits from the influx of new customers,
the boatloads of cheap traffic and low cost advertising. Merchants get
their product and their brand in front of thousands of potential buyers
without paying a dime until someone makes a purchase.

It is truly a pay for performance arrangement.

Unlock The Name Squeeze Page Secrets

Let me ask you a very important question. Do you know the
statistic as to how many visitors your name squeeze page
will convert into subscribers? The reason I ask this is
that when I initially started out with my internet
marketing line of business I could only get five to ten
percent of my visitors to subscribe to my newsletter.

This is a significant number. Let us look at why. The
predominant aim of any internet business is to build a very
big list that you can market to over and over again. So if
you send a hundred visitors to your website then you will
be wasting a lot of traffic if your squeeze page only
converts at five percent. If you improve this to fifty
percent then you will get fifty subscribers for every
hundred visitors that you send to that specific name
squeeze page. This is a much better return on investment
than five percent.

Just to refresh your memory let us look at the main reasons
why you need to build an optin list. You need to uncover a
reduced segment of a mainstream market where the amount of
sales is too small to justify a large competitor to enter
that market. You also need to offer good customer service.
This will earn you substantial profits in the future as it
it is much easier to sell to an existing buyer than to a
new customer.

I am going to share with you some tips that have helped me
to create squeeze pages that convert up to fifty percent.

The most important part of your name squeeze page is to
generate an attention grabbing headline. This element will
have the most impact and I suggest that you test opposite
headlines to determine which is the most effective.

The layout of your squeeze page. For example where you
locate subscription box will be very important. The more
prominent it is the more likely people will enter their
details. It also helps to include an actual testimonial
using audio and video which will get rid of any doubt from
the prospect and improve your conversion.

Once you make use of these tactics into your business you
will experience a major improvement in your results. Get
this critical part wrong and your internet line of business
will crumble.

Google Adsense Frequently Asked Questions

The way that this works is that websites that are accepted into the Google Adsense program are allowed to show adverts on their website using special javascript code that they get from Google. Every time that a person clicks on the advert the website hosting the adverts will earn money. Google Adsense is commonly used for many businesses to advertise.

Google will only issue a payment once your adverts have earned more than a hundred dollars from clicks. This depends on many factors for example the volume of visitors that you get to your website, the click through rate on your adverts and the amount of money that the specific adverts will pay. Channels are used specifically to allow the advertiser to track the details of their advertisements. You can elect to have your money deposited directly into your bank account or get Google to ship your check via DHL. This is especially valuable for countries not in the United States where the postal mail is not reliable.

Once you start using Adsense in your business it will be an excellent way to earn further money and is also a great way to advertise your line of business.

Article Marketing

People only buy from people that they like, know and
trustworthiness. Unfortunately, for most people get
started is a really large ordeal. By writing articles you
will generate yourself as an expert in your niche.

You need to find a smaller segment of a mainstream market
where the amount of sales is too small to justify a large
competitor to enter that market. You also need to offer
exceptional customer service.

When you write your articles you need to be doing so
informally. Differentiate yourself and focus on providing
them with helpful content. It is significant to target
your articles to a very specific market.

Expand on these bullet points and generate the body of
the article. Write your introduction and conclusion
paragraphs first. Consequently you need to come across as
though you are having a conversation with a friend.

You need to make your writing concise and like you are
having a conversation. The main reason for this is that
the predominant reason you are writing articles is to
drive traffic to your website and build an opt in list and
generating repeat customers. Make sure that you only
recommend products of high quality that you yourself would
be willing to purchase.

If they like and identify with your style of writing then
they will click on the link to your website in your bio.

Free Autoresponders - The Plain Truth

Should you use free autoresponders? Well that is a question
that I will answer with a lot clarity exposing the
advantages and disadvantages of using this option.

Free autoresponders work similarly to paid autoresponders,
but have a lot less features. In my opinion if you do not
have the money to spend on a paid autoresponder you should
not be in business on the internet. There are two tools
that you cannot do without. They are a professional
autoresponder and web hosting. Usually the free versions
are inferior to the paid options.

If you do decide to take the free autoresponder option I
recommend that you use FreeAutoBot as this service has been
around for a long time. Alternatively a better option would
be to use the Getresponse free autoresponder. The service
comes free, but displays adverts on the top of your
autoresponder messages. However, you have the option of
upgrading to the professional version once your business
grows.

The disadvantage of using a free autoresponder especially
some of the other ones that exist besides the ones I have
listed above is that because of spam and blacklisting you
might find that your messages actually never get delivered.
Usually the owners of the free autoresponders are not sure
how to get the email addresses of the autoresponder removed
from being blacklisted.

If you are not using an autoresponder then the chances are
that you are losing up to 400% of your sales. Most people
need to be in contact with you at least seven times before
they decide to buy.

The main way that you will use the autoresponder is to send
out autoresponder messages and also a monthly or weekly
newsletter. Using autoresponders in your business is
crucial to your online success.