Author: blogger

THE AFFILIATE MARKETING SECRETS OF SMART AFFILIATES

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There are many ways to promote profitable affiliate programs online. Here are a few common methods: 1. Write an article based on the affiliate program that you wanted to promote and at the end of the article, promote the affiliate program with your unique affiliate link. 2. Create a new review site to review Clickbank’s products. Then inside the review, have your affiliate link that’s linking to the products. 3. Create as many fresh social pages as possible by using social sites like hubpages.com, squidoo.com, tumblr.com, etc. There are a lot more other methods to promote affiliate programs! But I do affiliate marketing slightly differently, so does the entire repertoire smart affiliate marketers today. You see, we do not promote affiliate programs directly. All of our promotions funnel into just one purpose – and that’s into a -squeeze page- to build a mailing list! Here is an example of a squeeze page:

Let me explain WHY building a list is ALWAYS much better than promoting affiliate programs to your first time website visitor, aka, your traffic: Yes, you may make more money (and a little faster) if you promote an affiliate program directly. But you get to promote it just one time! So if they purchase the product through your affiliate link, you’ll make the commission, but you’re not going to make another commission unless you start the process all over again! This means that you’ll ALWAYS be working, both day and night. And what if they do not buy the recommended affiliate program on your page? Well then, all of your effort and money will simply go down the drain. But let’s look at the second situation where you’ll drive traffic to a squeeze page instead- If you build a list, theoretically, you can promote to the same subscriber as many times as you see fit! So when you have a list, you can be reaching your prospect at any time of the day you wish, thus, allowing you to control or even predict your income! So let me just paint you a simple illustration: Assuming you already have 5,000 subscribers in your list and you mail out as little as just once a week. Now, to make the math simple, let’s say you’ll make $20 per sale – and if only 1% of them buy, you’ll be making at least $1,000 per week! All this is done by just sending out an email! 1. Send out one email per week to 5,000 subscribers 2. Affiliate program pays out $20 per sale 3. 1% of subscribers purchase and you make $1,000 per week! That’s a nice -pay check- of $4K a month. Not too shabby with affiliate marketing, is it? Let’s say that if you want to make $8,000 a month, you’ll just need to focus on gaining 10,000 subscribers. Do you start to see how SIMPLE it is to make internet marketing work effectively? The truth is, that is the REAL SECRET that all marketing Gurus are using to make money online. So what you really NEED here is: A Domain Name and Hosting A Squeeze Page An Offer To Entice Your Visitors To Subscribe An Autoresponder To Efficiently Manage Your List Well, basically that’s all you need to have to get yourself started. I guess the missing piece to complete this system is driving fresh traffic. And interestingly, that is the easiest part of all! You see, most people struggle to get traffic is because they’re looking at it from the wrong angle. They’re trying their best to gain traffic for -free-. There’s nothing wrong with that, but let me explain to you why it’s not an advisable method- Let’s assume you’ve just opened a new caf in your neighborhood. How do you promote your business – conventionally? You could probably do any of these campaigns: Run ads in your local newspaper Buy ad space in your local food review magazines Print out flyers to be distributed If you study the list above carefully, it’s about spending money to get the prospect! Just because the internet is free, it doesn’t mean that -everything- is free! If we start treating our online business as a business, we’ll start to plan things differently. There is an unlimited amount of traffic on the internet for you to buy. For a start, you can simply buy traffic directly from Facebook. By just using Facebook, you’ll probably have enough traffic to run your entire business. So when smart affiliates are promoting affiliate programs, here’s what it will look like: Promote affiliate programs in the email follow ups or with mass mailout! I’m not sure if the other Guru’s have shared this information with you before, but this is truly the biggest secret to internet marketing. This is the exact same formula that I have used to build my internet business empire for the past 10 years. For More Information Click Here:http://wp.me/P4NRpZ-6o 6o

The anatomy of an affiliate marketing sale

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The anatomy of a sale has not changed over the hundreds of years that we as humans have been selling to one another. First there is the offer, and then there is the counter offer, the exchange of money and the delivery of the product or service, affectionately known as “the close.”

If only it was that simple, right? The problem is that normally a person will never take the first offer and as such most sales people give up and don’t know the anatomy of a sale. When each step in the sales process is handled correctly, the close is the natural conclusion to a successfully followed sales process. If research tells us anything it is that: “You Can Not Take “NO” For an Answer!”

In the anatomy of a sale, most internet marketers or sales people have the following disposition;

* 48% of them will quit after the 1st contact where the buyer says NO.

* 73% will quit after the 2nd contact.

* 85% will quit after the 3rd contact.

* 90% will quit after the 4th contact.

Because of these startling numbers is it no wonder why over 80% of the sales will go to only 10% of the marketers who refuse to take No for an answer. Now obviously in today’s internet marketing world it would be impossible for you to maintain contact with so many people over such a long period of time. That is the reason that we discussed the power of auto responders in our prior newsletter. The auto responder will handle this process for you almost guaranteeing that you will have a sale in the future.

So when you are setting up your email campaign, you want to automatically plan to send out no less than 3 emails where you do nothing but provide the reader with good, valuable, and viable information. By looking at the chart above, you will note that you have already bypassed over 85% of your competition. If you remember correctly we made a recommendation that you do not make a product recommendation except for every 3 to 6 months, now you know why; it puts you ahead of the power curve.

Remember ultimately that your objective is to get people to click through your affiliate link to get them to buy a product or service. How you go about doing that is totally up to you. I would recommend that you do some further research into the art of the sale and how to do the soft sell. The most powerful tool in your tool box is the auto responder. Make sure that you use it.

An interesting corollary statistic that coincides with the above chart is that:

* Only 2% to 3% of the people will buy at the first to second sales contact.

* Only 3% to 5% of the people will buy at the third to fourth sales contact.

* Only 6% to 8% of the people will buy at the fifth to sixth sales contact.

* Only 8% to 10% of the people will buy at the seventh sales contact.

* Over 80% of the people buy when at or over the 8th sales contact.

So again, maintaining a good relationship with your readers is critical. Also critical is that when you do make a product offer you should plan on making that offer no less that eight times. How you do that is totally up to you. I would recommend that you push the soft sale with your post script for the first four to six contacts. Then really make an offer/product recommendation for the seventh, eighth, and ninth contacts and then a final email for that particular campaign thanking all recipient’s that decided to buy with some testimonials thrown into the mix on how much success they are having and a sorry you missed the opportunity to those that decided not to buy. That way the next time you make a product offer those that waited the last time might be more prone to act the second time around.

To your success in all you do

E. Alan Cowgill

PS. Go online and research some of those mini-sites that we talked about that are referred to as “long sales copy” so that you can get some ideas about the proper flow of a sales offer and get some ideas you can implement into your sales process.

Graham Gibson, Of Central Coast Nutraceuticals Speaks Out On Ftc Charges

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This past Friday, I had the opportunity to speak to Graham Gibson, of Central Coast Nutraceuticals , who is the target of a FTC investigation charging, among other things, with deceptive advertising and consumer fraud. He had reached out to me that day, wanting to make sure that his side of the story was told. I have to admit that at the time I wasnt sure I wanted to call him before the FTC revealed its case against him. Weve seen the press releases every time some peddler is charged with a crime, they all say the same thing they didnt do this, they didnt commit these crimes, they didnt defraud consumers, the FTC has it all wrong. So, while I was going to call him eventually to get his side of the story, I wasnt in any hurry. Im glad I called because Mr. Gibson has a real story to tell, and strange enough doesnt completely deny the charges against him and his company.

Central Coast (BBB “F” Rating Here) sells Nutraceuticals which is a made up word for diet and supplement related products that fall under a wide-berth of products from stuff to flush out your rear-end to berries that make you constantly erect supposedly. They are not to be confused with Neuticals, which are a brand of testicle replacement for Dogs. The comapny should also not be confused with Central Coast Pharma which Gus from Psych works for. For while they employed over 150 people in Phoenix Arizona and were one of the top suppliers of Acai related diet products. The model at one time was pretty simple people would sign up to get a free trial, paying only a small fee for shipping and handling. After they received the product, a large percentage wouldnt return it or cancel the subscription and thus be charged on a monthly basis for the product to be sent to their home, regardless if they actually took the product, or wanted it. Ive covered this model, often called continuity marketing or negative option marketing.

Gibson told me that on Tuesday, August 10th, he was raided by the FTC along with a group of Federal Marshals, local police and attorneys following a two year investigation of the company that included numerous interviews with his employees, customers and advertising partners. He was presented with a very large packet of materials that detailed the accusations and accused him and his company of a variety of things from consumer fraud to deceptive marketing to being the guy on the grassy knoll. Lets put it this way: on Tuesday you would rather be the subject of a pigmy porn film than be in Mr. Grahams shoes. Despite this, Mr. Gibson on the phone was very contrite, honest and REALLY wanted to share his side of the story.

According to Gibson, he had already taken steps to change his business and was on the front line of making changes to the industry. He had already settled with the Arizona State Attorney General a year earlier and for almost two years had changed his business model, had taken steps to be fully compliant and even hired FTC experts to advise him on what was legal, legit and compliant. The charges the FTC were accusing him were from over two years earlier, and many of those issues had already been fully resolved and that some of the specific complaints were from customers that had already been refunded. I run one of the most honest businesses in the industry, claimed Gibson and have even been working the last year on an organization that would help other companies in the industry compliant. The FTC is trying to make an example out of us, because we were one of the leading companies in this part of the industry. There are ads all over the place that are much worse.

Mr. Gibson then made it clear that he felt the industry was rife with fraud and deception. He pointed out that currently there are tons of ads on mainstream sites like MSNBC through ad networks such as Pulse360 that make obviously misleading claims. He pointed out that if you go to those sites, you will get tons of links to fake blogs or flogs, a practice that according to him, he did not allow. It was very clear that while he accepts some of the responsibility, he changed his practices 18 months ago but even then many of the issues came from his advertising partners. Mr. Gibson even went as far to call himself a victim of the scummy practices of affiliate marketing companies and their partners. He points out that you can go to many major properties right now and see really deceptive advertising that is promoting both direct response companies and sometimes major brands without the explicit consent of the advertiser. He is very honest about his complaint: that no matter what he did, display and affiliate networks would consistently violate his instructions over and over again.

Whether or not you believe Mr. Gibsons story, he brings to light the issue that we have all talked about. In our industry, who is responsible for the actions of publishers, affiliates, websites, ad-networks? Every time the New York State, California or Florida Attorney General goes after the dozen or so Scam Kings we hear the same thing coming out of their mouths: we werent responsible, it was rogue partners Its the same type of deniability we hear in organized crime trials. Perhaps there are some companies that genuinely are not responsible, but at what point when month after month, year after year when your partners are committing fraudulent practices, can you continue to pretend to know nothing? If someone is generating millions of dollars in revenue, are we really to believe that you are clueless how? Those in the industry who have been around as long as I have all know that this deniability is often nothing but complete nonsense. Do I honestly believe that Mr. Gibson never knew that his affiliates and ad networks were doing questionable things? Probably not. However, I do believe that at one point he made it clear after being sued by the AZ Attorney General that these practices should stop and found that many of his partners just kept on promoting his product anyway they pleased not caring if they burned him.

For those that dont know, this week is the Affiliate Summit in New York, gathering of all sorts of performance based marketers. Affiliate Marketing, while at one time was the realm of Amazon readers recommending to friends what books to buy and getting a commission from this, has turned into something else. The idea that the industry is hundreds of thousands of affiliates making money for companies is incorrect. Anyone who is in this industry knows that often even on the CPA/Affiliate networks it is just a few people, often less than 1% of the applicants who actually make the money for the network. Yes, there are great opportunities for anyone who wants to be innovative and in long hours to make a great living in this industry and a large part of Affiliate Summit and the affiliate industry is based on that, providing real services. Still, there is a huge part of the industry that is only about making the quick buck, screwing the consumer, hurting the client, and then moving on. How many times do we need the same scummy players in our industry brought into court for participating in the same scummy acts?

Here is what is going to happen, if we dont make the changes industry wide and refuse to work with these companies. The FTC and various Attorney Generals will rightly continue to go after anyone involved with these schemes, scams and devious practices. Unfortunately in these suits, sometimes innocent people, such as affiliates who may not know better will be hurt. Advertising networks that just take the advertisements and pretend not to know what is happening on the back end will be named in these suits (as they have already). Great companies will be harmed because they are part of the same industry, because they have a similar product, no matter how legit they might be. As is already happening, companies like Facebook will continue basically ban affiliate networks, ban performance based marketing. If you didnt know, Facebook over a year ago banned display ad networks on their site, after testing them, and finding an overwhelming amount of complaints based on viruses, popups and other issues. Now not a single display network can be involved with Facebook because of the actions of a few ad networks. More and more companies in the future are going to follow Facebook. With news coming out in the media of reputable marketers hacking Google and major dating sites spamming Craigslist, it is no wonder that more and more companies are banning outside advertising.

What needs to be done to wake us up enough that we pay attention to the immense fraud in our industry? Do we need to wait until the FTC requires all marketers to have licenses and pass ethics exams? Do we need background checks? If we do not wake up now, the FTC, the government will take action and force us to make changes. Until then, expect me doing more and more interviews with marketers who businesses have been shut down by the government.

Affiliate Marketing Program Has Been Popular Today

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Affiliate marketing programs has never been as popular before as it is today. Why? There can be a number of reasons. The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of this marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before.
Today, both the merchants and the affiliates can see clearly that it can work for both of them. The merchant sees it today as the chance to advertise their products at a lower cost. The affiliates, on the other hand, sees this as an easy way of earning profits online by doing what they like most, and that is by creating websites. Just as the popularity of this has shifted into greater heights, so has the people’s outlook about it changed. No longer it is considered today as an alternative method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a source of additional income for the affiliates. For merchants and affiliates alike, this is now considered as a main source of profits and revenues. So the question now is what type of this marketing will work best for you? Are all such marketing programs the same? Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs that work better than the others? For more help visit to:www.affiliate-directories-online.com. There are actually different types or classes of marketing, and the number of types will depend on how one will classify them. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee. But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program. In this type, for more help visit to:www.affiliate-sale-booster.com. the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant’s site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Compensation for this type is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type. For more help visit to: Aside from these three specific types of marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is also another type that pays the affiliate each time the customer he has referred purchases something from the merchant’s site. Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing. These types of marketing are based on the different levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made. In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant’s site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation. Multi-tier works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network. Residual Income Affiliate Marketing In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant’s site. Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred returns to the site and purchase another product. Compensation for such type is based on either sales percentage commission or fixed fee basis. The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would generally have their own list of benefits. Which type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? It is not really for me to tell. Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing program will suit your needs and characteristics best.

These Are Affiliate Marketing Tips That You Should Remember

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The internet is filled with opportunities. Internet companies are created and sold on a daily basis by their owners for large sums of cash. But if you’re just starting out, what’s the best way to start your own online business? The best thing to do would be affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing you won’t have to spend any of your own money in the beginning, all you are required to do is have a computer with internet connection and a strong will to do good. Taking into account that they were unknowledgeable at the start, many affiliate marketers work their way up to hundreds of dollars a day over a 1-2 year time period. One of the greatest secrets to affiliate marketing is that you have to treat it like a real business and nurture it and not think of it as being easy money. Although it isn’t like a regular job with regular hours, it is an opportunity for you to get away from that type of job forever. If you aren’t afraid to take the risky path, like to search for new topics and like being on the wild side, then affiliate marketing is for you. In this article we will be exploring some affiliate marketing tips that give results.

First and foremost, as an affiliate, you need to know your audience like the back of your hand. Until you know what you audience likes and dislikes, there’s no way that you can advertise the right items. Make sure that the affiliate item that you are selling really handles their dilemma. If you have a site about gardening, don’t promote a web hosting program just because it pays well. You need to sync in your products with the needs of your target market. The more you are able to do this, the more money you will make. The same method that you use for targeting your ad with the right people, you must ensure that those people get the right merchandise. In order to be successful, your product must be relevant.

If you want to establish a long term affiliate business, then you have to build an email list to follow up with your prospects. You need a way to get the information of every visitor that comes to your site so you have that valuable contact. You can do this by adding an Optin box to your site where people can subscribe to your newsletter or mailing list. Offering useful tips to your subscribers on a regular basis is a great way to build your relationship with them and keep it strong. Don’t overuse it, but from time to time send an offer for your product to your mailing list to remind your readers that it is there. Don’t go out there and promote everything under the sun, choose your products carefully.

When you are an affiliate marketer, try to guide your potential buyers. If you are able to help them out a little bit more, they will be more apt to read your ads. Solve a problem that puzzles them by providing useful and valuable information. You can expect to earn cash just by pasting ad blocks to your website. If you add a personal touch by writing a product review, this will turn into more income.

In conclusion, for you to be successful in affiliate marketing, find a niche that you enjoy that has plenty of promotable products. Also, always make an effort to bring targeted traffic to your content page.