Thursday, 6 August 2009

20 Bite size Affiliate Marketing Tips A Must For New Affiliates




To Help You Avoid The Pitfalls of the ever growing need to plan before you execute while promoting Affiliate programs/ or running your own online business you need every marketing tips, the right mind set & attitude to help you start making money but to also break even in the shortest period of time before the long recession is gone.

There are 2 kinds of Affiliates & there are 2 kinds of people looking to generate income both on the internet & off line-

1-Those that treat their affiliate business as a hobby.

&
2- Those that treat it as a business but willing to work the business until they start making money.

Successful people are not quitters!

As an affiliate to a merchant or you currently use a network, the need to know the patterns & trends of the affiliate industry including internet marketing as a whole will help you stay ahead of your fellow affiliates/internet marketers which results to more sales & recognition for your smart work. As you continue to establish yourself to become a top marketer & a super affiliate in this industry, What comes with this success is another discussion for another blog post.Lets delve into the purpose of this post.

For those that rely on guess work & trial and error will always fail but get frustrated & fizzle out thinking that it is hard to make money online. Well if you may not know or you are aware already, Internet is the only place you can make an entire CEO'S annual salary in a month if you really know what you are doing period.

Successful people are always in a hurry, they do not look at things the way some of us do. When they see something of interest, the only imagination they picture in their brain is one thing-How can they make money with something presented to them & not thinking about the cost. Are you one of those, if you are, the following 20 affiliate Tips should be a wake up call for you. If you are seriously looking to make money in this industry you must do things differently in order to succeed.

1- Whether you are new to affiliate marketing or an advanced affiliate marketer, learning how to use HTML for customizing your site,editing landing pages, place pixels, etc. is a must in order to set yourself apart from the pack.You don't have to be an expert on html to do so!

I learnt html by purchasing 'Learn HTML in a Weekend' from my local book store. I believe you can get this book on amazon.com

2-Not Tracking your ad campaign can make or break your paid advertising like PPC or any other type of ads you currently run.

3-Using only your regular site expecting much sales will not work, you 've got to have 3 set's of sites for your campaign, SQUEEZE PAGE(A TEASER) to get visitors to first provide you with their names & email addresses(double opt-in of course) before being redirected to your SALES LETTER SITE. Your traditional website should not be used as your sales pitch. If you are currently doing this please desist as you are shooting yourself in the foot. If you are not a known brand like Apple, Amazon,Dell etc. you should follow the earlier suggested, you need a bit to convince your site visitor to buy from you regardless if you are #1 in most search engines. Sales letter page sites, the power of copy writing & a well crafted graphic based pages does the selling for you.

4- As a new affiliate in this industry your priority should & must not be to learn the inner workings of SEO & PPC. You must first seek to use free advertising to start generating sales before thinking of gambling with the money you don't have in order to face the complexities of PPC & SEO.

5- If you have not gone on a course on affiliate marketing/Internet marketing please do yourself a favour at least to know who, how, when & where. We have many resources out there on the net to assist you.

6- Targeting is key to your success- If you are not using alternative ways to direct traffic to your squeeze pages/ or your long sales letter sites you are wasting your time & resources hitting at the wrong goal post.

7-Apart from counties like U.S, UK,Australia & New Zealand are still a gold mine in this business, you do not have much competition in these 3 countries because many people do not know how to make money online yet they are searching but also looking for guidance. Geo Targeting is key.

8-Landing page CTR is very essential, use click heat maps to optimize your landing pages. ClickHeat is an open source Free tool & it works like magic

9-If you are using email marketing, the best 2 days in the week to blast your ads are on Tuesdays & Fridays. Folks do not really pay attention to their emails on Mondays hence it is the beginning of the week & as such they have little time to look at their emails but have loads of work to clear on their table. Begin your campaign on Tuesdays & Fridays. If you have an irresistible offer you will get tired of seeing those thank you messages for your sales in your email inbox.

10- Pay attention to affiliate marketing patterns & trends- January of every year is always a good month to promoting weight loss programs.It is always a month when we are battling to keep up with our new year resolution to loose weight or stop smoking.

11- Are you currently using other sources of traffic to compliment your huge cost's of Google adwords.Traffic Exchanges, Safe Lists, Promoting with Article, Promoting With Web 2.0 sites & social bookmarking sites, Free Online classified ads sites, Adblasters, Promoting in popular forums(signature links), Offline advertising, Text Messaging Ads applications,Media Buying using Banner ads, Yahoo answers etc

12-Do you know that single parents are the most responsive targeted groups of potential opportunity seekers & you have them in droves in the UK. Are you targeting these people yet? If not you need some help.

13-If you are not using video in your campaign get some training, go get yourself 'Final Cut Pro 6'or the latest version 7( A video software suite made by apple for crafting top video's) If you do a search on youtube you will see folks offering the training for Free. Use your video's on squeeze pages & make it viral using TubeMogul.com. TubeMogul is an awesome video distributing platform, make sure they are all your video's or better still have the permission from your merchant to use them.

14- If you are promoting Affiliate programs through a network, be aware of the downside unless you are dealing with a CPA network & even if you are be ready to read their terms & conditions before using them.

15- Clickbank still remains the #1 source if you are not too sure of promoting an affiliate program dealing directly with a merchant. We also have sites like PayDotcom.com which is very good. Both are very good if you are promoting information products which is electronically based.Nothing to ship just downloads after payments.works better for most marketers.

16- You may have heard that the money is in the LIST. Since you started promoting affiliate programs how many list of subscribers do you currently have? If you do not have any, today is still better for you. Most successful internet marketers/ affiliate marketers make more money because they own a responsive list & not the amount of PPC ads they are currently running.

17- Google is getting difficult for most average Joe's trying to break even competing with folks who 're ready to bid up to $1.50 to $2.00 per keywords. Can you sustain yourself financially under this sort of competition where as you can use other frequently overlooked cheap pay-per-click advertising networks such as MSN Adcenter for your campaign(For Affiliates Already Making Money). If you feel you 've got the money like most do not & your call is to try the Affiliate industry as a way of generating extra income, do not compete with such folks as they have mastered how to work the Google Adwords. MSN Adcenter is there for you & you will not have to worry about any ''Google slap'' with MSN Adcenter. If you need the tricks on how we use MSN Adcenter, PM me for the tools/sites to use.

18-AutoResponder is a must for any successful affiliate marketer. I personally use 3 types, Get Response, Free Rotator & Aweber.They all do 3 different things for me.

19- Browser to use, Always 'Firefox'.It helps you to organise your work especially if you joined many affiliate programs.Also for your password protection, use notable tools to protect your password especially for hackers trying to steal your commission or trying to hack into your numerous affiliate account to change your whole details.

20-Finally, protect your commission by using cloaking tools to mask your affiliate links. Better still use URL shortening services or buy new domain names to redirect your affiliate links. People don't want to be sold anything, you must follow this otherwise you will keep loosing money.

For all your tracking services use a very effective tracking tools that hold your network accountable for not paying you your sales.

I hope i have covered enough grounds,get your foot in & let your success be heard. Remember! for you to be successful in this industry you must treat it as a business & not as a hobby

If there is anything i can do for you or you have any questions by no means PM me & i will do my best to point you in the right direction or solve it for you.

Anthony A JP
Internet Marketing Strategist
Firefox 2Webmasters choice of browser better than IE
Add to Technorati Favorites StumbleUpon My StumbleUpon Page

About the Author:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anthony A. JP, The Affiliate Marketing strategist has
helped thousands of people in over 100 countries around
the world start and run a successful home business.
A VIP Member of Maverick Money Makers - The Original Secret Society For Making Money On The Internet,
>Click Here To See Video
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------