Monday, June 29, 2009

Affiliate Marketing - 6 Affiliate Marketing Survival Tips

The 6 affiliate marketing survival tips that I have listed below, have worked extremely well in the past for online marketers, and are still working in today's highly competitive affiliate marketplace.
If you choose to follow these 6 affiliate marketing survival tips, your affiliate sales will increase, and your online survival in the marketplace will be assured.
There is no single magic formula that will increase your paycheck outside of hard work, dedication to what you are marketing, and following the proven marketing practices sketched out in these 6 affiliate marketing survival tips.
1 - Promote each affiliate product that you are marketing separately from the others by using web pages that are unique to each product.
Many affiliate marketers try to lump all their affiliate products together to save on web hosting costs. This sounds like a money saving tactic, but in fact is a bad choice.
A web site focusing specifically on only one product, keeps the reader's attention centered on only one product, and will produce a greater return, regardless of hosting costs.
2 - Write a product review so that visitors will fully understand what the product can do for them if they choose to purchase it.
Include favorable product reviews from all customers that will allow you to use their names and pictures on your website. Favorable product testimonials will go a long way towards cementing the credibility of the affiliate product you are promoting.
3 - Make your web pages compelling and visually attractive to your visitors.
Include an additional page on your website, with an article that highlights the use of the affiliate product you are promoting. Your article should be a "call to action" that includes an attention grabbing headline, that will hold the readers attention, and urge them to ask for more information about the affiliate product you are promoting.
4 - Offer free reports to your readers and position them in an area of your web page where they cannot be missed.
Research shows that the top left side of your web page is where the majority of readers initially focus their attention. Position your most important information in this location for maximum exposure.
Be sure to include an auto responder sign up box, with a compelling message you can send your reader to get them to return to your website.
Research shows that it usually takes 6 to 7 visits before an actual sale is finalized with a prospect. It is a rare occurrence for a prospect to purchase a product on the first visit unless they are specifically searching for it.
Add the script, so the bookmark is positioned in the upper left portion of your web page. This gives it immediate visibility, so that it can be used by the prospect, to easily bookmark your web page for later viewing.
5 - Following up with your prospect is another affiliate marketing survival tip that should never be forgotten.
Remember that only two things can occur with an initial website visit:
A - You can close the sale.
B - Your prospect will leave the page and never return.
Following up the initial visit, and placing additional, useful, product information into your prospect's in-boxes at regular intervals, will remind them of the product, and hopefully close the sale.
It is important to give your prospect specific reasons why they should buy the product and not make it appear as a sales pitch. You do not want to be flagged as a spammer by the prospect or the email filters.
Include compelling lines in the email that focus on how your product can make life easier or more enjoyable for your prospect. Avoid using the word FREE in the email. Older e-mail filters will dump your email before anyone ever gets to see it, if the word FREE is used too frequently.
You can convince your prospects who signed up for your report, that they are missing out on something really big, without using FREE to boost your argument.
6 - Another affiliate marketing survival tip is to attract only TARGETED traffic to your website, by writing specifically targeted articles.
People looking for something other than what you are offering on your website, have absolutely no interest in buying anything at all from you.
Consider writing articles for publication in e-zines, e-reports, article net, and others. This tactic can develop targeted prospects for your website, in a very short period of time.
Write a minimum of two articles a week, with good unique content, using between 250 and 500 words. Do this continuously, and over a period of time, you can generate up to 100 targeted prospects per day. This sounds like a lot, and starting out fresh, it is, however, only 1 in 100 visitors will likely purchase your product.
Using this statistic; you can correctly assume that 1000 or more targeted prospects per day, should generate approximately 10 sales. In reality, an effective, nicely constructed sales page, should generate more than 10 sales daily.
Using these 6 affiliate marketing survival tips for your other affiliate programs, and following through with them, will provide you with a good source of income and assure that you will survive in this highly competitive business.
John Neila is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of Titusville, Florida.

How to Make a Lot of Money by Affiliate Marketing Fast

There are many ways to make money by affiliate marketing, and the fact of the matter is that depending on what way you choose to pursue you will make money fast or not.
Indeed, I will skip the discussion about whether it is possible or not to make money by affiliate marketing because there is no question that this is a business model that not only works, it works like a charm and you need little to no money in order to make it work big time.
Now, what are the fastest ways to make money by affiliate marketing faster?
As you may or may not know, there affiliates get paid to promote other people's products which in turn generates a commission.

However, there are two basic ways of generating an affiliate commissions:
1. By selling a product.

2. By providing a lead.

The first one simply involves getting someone to pay for a product that they will receive, usually via download and in some cases physically (depending on the kind of affiliate program you are participating in).

The second one does not involve selling anything, it involves only getting your prospect to provide information (often an email, an application or a trial offer), so in many cases your prospect will not even have to pull his or her wallet to complete the task you will be paid for. This is what is called CPA (cost per acquisition).

As you can imagine, CPA and has the potential to get you to profits faster, because a person is likely to have a lot less resistance to your offer if he or she does not have to pay anything or only have to pay shipping and handling for a free trial of a product they get to keep.

How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Home Business

The ease of use and low start-up costs have made selling products online an attractive business model. Below are three tips on how to start an affiliate marketing home business.
Equipment And Experience Needed
The start up costs for affiliate marketing are very low with many people already having the necessary equipment to get started. You'll need a computer, internet access, and software to type documents.
You don't need to have prior experience selling online to be successful with affiliate marketing. When first starting it's always a good idea to promote products within a niche you're familiar with.
You'll feel more comfortable writing about products and subject matter you're familiar with. It also cuts the learning curve by reducing the research needed to promote products within an unfamiliar niche.
Choosing Products To Sell
In the early days of affiliate marketing each merchant website had their own in-house affiliate tracking system. You would have to sign up with each individual website to promote a variety of products.
Today, the easiest way to gain access to a wide variety of products to sell online is to join an affiliate network. You can visualize an affiliate network like a giant mall of digital products. You only have to sign up one time, and then you're given access to thousands of products to promote.
You're linked to each individual merchant through the affiliate network. The network will track your incoming traffic, sales earned, and is responsible for sending your sales commission check every month.
Offering Your Products To Customers
After joining a network and choosing a variety of products to promote, your next step is to find customers for your offers. Affiliate marketing is very flexible without many promotional restrictions. You're free to engage customers online any way you choose, but you should focus on methods that produce sales for you.
Proven methods of promotion online include paid advertising, posting articles on directories, and contacting web users through forums and message boards.
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