Essential Guide To Affiliate Profits

 

Essential Guide To AffiliateProfits

 

Quick introduction to affiliate marketing...

 

Affiliate marketing is an "evergreen" way of making money online. Internet marketing strategies and 'fads' come and go, but affiliate marketing remainseternally popular and for good reason................................................................................................. there's

good money to be made as an affiliate if you know what you're doing -and it's relatively easy to get started.

 

Since you're reading this report I'll assume that you know what affiliate marketing is. If you don't then it's extremely simple - you promote other people's products using your unique affiliate link (they can be digital or physical products or service) and then you get paid a commission whenever somebody you've referred purchases something.

 

The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don't have to worry about things such as product creation or buying in products. There doesn't have to be an investment when you become an affiliate marketer - you simply sign up to get your affiliate link from the product vendor and away you go. You might choose to invest money in promoting your links of course but that's totally optional.

 

Affiliate marketing works because it solves two key problems in one go:

 1.   Product vendors always need more customers and thus they use affiliates to help them find them -for free.

 

2.   People who don't have products of their own to sell can promote products as an affiliate and they instantly have something to sell with very little effort.

 

Of course the reality is that most affiliates are also product vendors and vice versa. Any successful marketer will both have their ownproducts AND promote other people's as an affiliate. But if you're just getting started you can start off by being an affiliate-only and then move into creating and selling your own products as you build up experience.

 

How much is it possible to earn as an affiliate marketer?

 

 

Affiliate commissions can be anywhere between 1% and 100% of the purchase price. You tend to find that physical products pay lower percentage commissions whilst digital products such as eBooks and courses will pay a higher commission. This is simply because the digital vendor has very little costs involved to run their business and thus they can afford to be more generous with their commissions.

In addition digital vendors tend to have other products inside asales funnel, which will often be of much higher value. They might

offer you 100% commissions on the "front-end" product, for example - but that might only sell for $5, whereas their "back-end" product might sell for $97. In this case they might only offer you 25% commision on the back-end product or even non at all. They are basically using the front-end product to attract as many people into their sales funnel as possible - and offering 100% commission to affiliates is a key way of helping them do that.

 

How quickly do you get paid?

 Some products offer instant commissions which are paid straight into your Paypal account as soon as the sale is made. Other affiliate schemes make you wait until the end of a set period (say 1 month) before they pay you anything - and it sometimes takes into account things like refund periods. After all, product vendors don't want to pay you a commission and then have to later refund the customerbecause they would obviously lose out.

 If you're new to affiliate marketing then you might be wondering how product vendors know which affiliate sent them the sale, since they might have hundreds of different affiliate promoting their products.

 

The simple answer is that every affiliate is given a unique affiliate link (URL) to use. These links are tracked by cookies, so they always know exactly who sent them the sale and when. In many cases cookies can last for months, so even if you send somebodyto the vendors website and they don'tmake a purchase initially but

come back 3 months later and buy somethingyou'll still get paid.Pretty cool, eh?

Selecting products to promote

There is certainly no shortage of products out there to promote, whetheryou're interesting in digital or physical.

 Actually, that brings up an interesting debate...Is it better to promotephysical products or digital productssuch as eBooks, courses, videos etc?

 There are advantages and drawbacks to both - and it will depend on things like where your particular interests lie and what niche you are in. For example, if you're in one of the hobby niches then you'll probably find no shortage of physical products to promote - but if you are in a niche such as internet marketing then digital could be the way to go. Many people prefer digitalproducts because you often get paid more generous commissions and they are often paid to you immediately - and that's what we are going to concentrate on primarily in this report. However if you're in a niche such as diet or weight loss for example then there might be an opportunity to promoteboth digital and physical products.

 Now we've got that over with it's time to introduce you to some of the main affiliate programs and discuss some of the benefits anddrawbacks of each.

 

Clickbank
 

Clickbank deals in digital products such as eBooks, Courses and Digital Membership Programs.

 As one of the big affiliate networks Clickbank provides you with a huge choice in products you can promote, however they don't deal in anything physical.

 The best way to see the type of product's on Clickbank is to head on over to their website, go to the Marketplace and spend some time having a browse through the product offerings. Some of theseproducts are one-time sale products, whilst other's give you the chance to earn a recurring commission (for example monthly membership sites which charge people a monthly fee for access)

 Against each product you'll find detailed information about it such as a description of the product content, how much it sells for, the percentage sale commission and the average amount you get paid per sale (from memory it takesinto account refund rates etc).

Getting your unique affiliate link is easy - you simply click on"promote" next to your chosen product and enter in the Clickbank 'nickname' you chose when you created your account. If it's an encrypted affiliate link then it will be automatically generated for you. Clickbank commissions unfortunately aren't paid instantly - you instead receive your money once your commissions havereached a certainthreshold.

PayDotCom

http://www.paydotcom.com

 

PayDotCom seems to have reduced in popularity in recentyears, however they are still a notable affiliate network in the world of digital products.

 There is little point in going into too much detail about them inside this report - if you have a quick browse of their website you'll easilybe able to see how they operate.

 

JVZoo

http://www.jvzoo.com

 

 JVZoo is one of the biggest instant payment affiliate networks. When you promote something on JVZoo and make a sale the money lands in your Paypal account instantly, which is one of thethings which makes it so popular.

Like Clickbank and PayDotCom you'll see that all products listed on JVZoo are digital products. You'll find a huge variety too, from reports and courses through to software and plugins. JVZoo tends to be mostly internet marketing related - so if you're looking for products in other niches it's perhaps not the first place you'd look.

WarriorPlus

http://www.warriorplus.com

WarriorPlus is very similar to JVZoo except for one thing - it only deals in WarriorSpecial Offers.

In case you're not familiar with the Warrior Forum (http://www.warriorforum.com) it's perhaps the largest internet marketing forum out there - a place where marketers come to discuss their businesses, strategies and to network with each other. The Warrior Special Offer forum (WSO forum) is a sub- section where you'll find forum members selling internet marketing related courses and software - and you'll find that many of these offers are being sold throughthe WarriorPlus platform.

 If you're in the internet marketing niche then you'll find no shortage of products you canpromote.

 As a sidenote you'll also find WSOs listed on JVZoo. But whereas JVZoo deals in both WSOs and non-WSOs, WarriorPlus is ONLY for WSOs.

 

Amazon

 If you are in a different niche and want to promote physical products then one of the most popular affiliate scheme's is by the retail giant Amazon (https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

 One thing you'll notice is that the commission percentages aregenerally nowhere near as generous, however you also need to take into account the huge variety of products that they sell, the popularity of many of those products and the fact that many retail at much higher pricesthan digital products.

When you also factor in that Amazon is generally considered to be one of the world's most trusted brands and it's easy to see why you can make an awful lot of money promoting Amazon products as an affiliate, especially if you're in the right niche.

 As I mentioned earlier we're going to primarily focus on promoting digital products within this report but that doesn't mean that you should always dismiss physical products because it IS possible to see great successwhen doing so.

 

Product selection
 

 Ok - so let's get back to the primary focus of this chapter: choosingproducts to promoteas an affiliate.

 This is one of the most importantparts of being an affiliate because when you choose the right product to promote then you can make an awful lot of money and your customers will love you for it too.

 On the other hand, if you promote something that doesn't quite capture the imagination of your target market then you'll probably not make many sales. That's no biggie of course and it's definitely true to say that nobodypicks the right products to promote 100% of the time...

                          

 

What DOES matter more is promoting products that look appealing but are actually pretty rubbish in reality. Promoting bad stuff is a surefireway to lose the trust of your prospects and fail in your ventures, so it's important to do your very best to choose products that your audience will both find appealing AND which deliver what your audience actuallywants.

 Let's cut to the chase and look at how to go about selecting the RIGHT sort of products.

 To start with, head over to one of the affiliate network's we've just discussed.

 Have a browsethrough products that would appear to fit your nicheand get a feel for whether they appeal to you.

 Golden rule number one: Promote the product that your prospects will get the most value from, NOT the one which you think will make you the most money.

 There's a generalphilosophy shared by many of the most successful marketers and that is that you should always put your customers interests above your own.

 Let me ask you a question. If you knew for certain that you could promote a particular productand make $1,000in commission even though you knew the product was crap, would you still promote it?

 

The answer should be NO because even though you can make a lot of money up front people won't make the mistake of trusting your recommendation's twice if you promote total garbage.

If you promote GOOD products and place other people's interests ahead of your own then you'll earn the trust of your prospects and people will purchase your recommendation's again and again.

 Part of being an affiliate is being a trusted advisor. Let's say you're using email marketing as the main way of driving trafficto the offers you're promotingas an affiliate. The peopleon your email list are placing their trust in you to recommend offersto them which you believe can help them. There are thousands of products out there - some good, some bad and some that aren't relevant to your audience. If you can point people in the direction of product's that can genuinelyhelp them or which they will find useful/interesting/relevant etc then you're setting yourself up for success.

 "So if I'm a trusted advisor, does that mean I have to purchase and review everyproduct before I promoteit?"

 Nope - not necessarily. There are several ways around this and sometimes you might choose to take an educated gamble on a product.

 

Here are severalscenarios:

 1.   You buy a product,like it and think that your niche will like it too, so you decide to promote it.

 

That's the ideal scenariobecause:

a.    The product sales page or listing was persuasive enough to make you buy it - and if you bought it then the chances are that other people are going to find it so too.

 

b.       You like the productand so you give it a personalrecommendation.

 

But you're not always going to want to purchase every product before you promote it, so....

 

2.   You couldask for a reviewcopy.

 

 

Many people who produce digital products will be willing to give away a review copy to affiliates. So, you can check out the productfor free and then decide if it's something your audience will want to buy and whetheryou can give it your recommendation (or not).

 

3.    You've bought from the same product owner before and you know you like their products.

 

Ok, so it's possible that you loved all their previous products but their new oneturns out to be bad.That's a slight risk, butnine times out of ten if you liked their previous offerings and thought they had value then the new one willtoo.

 

4.   You take apunt based on reviews.

 

 

Ok, so this is the most risky strategy of all - but it can work.

Let's say you're on the list of somebody who you consider to be one of YOUR trusted advisorsand they send you an email promoting a particular product. You trust their recommendation, check out the reviews and see that they're decent and you think the product's a good fit with your niche - so you decide to promoteit without seeing it.

 

NOTE: If you are promoting something that you haven't personally checked out then it can be goodpractice to tell people so.

 

Some other thing's to think about when choosing products

 

 

(Note that these are all of secondary importance to choosing good products that are a good fit with your niche)

 

The offer's average conversion rate

 

 

Some products can be great but have a rubbishsales page, meaning that very few people actually buy. You want to be looking for offers that convertat a fairly decent rate...so if a product converts at 7% then (on average) seven out of every ten people who view the product are going to buy it. If you promoted a product that only converted at 2% then clearly you're going to make less sales, even withthe same traffic.

 

Obviously bear in mind that conversion rates vary a lot, even for the same product and can largely depend on the traffic source. Imagine promoting a dog training product to an internet marketing mailinglist. Sure, some of those people might have dogs but

you're probably not going to make too many sales because it's untargeted :)

 

Similarly, if you promote an offer to a "dead" audience (for example a mailing list you have mistreated by promoting crappy offers to them all the time) then you're going to achieve a below average conversion rate.

 

So, when you're looking at a product's claimed conversion rate you need to remember that you're not always going to match it. Sometimes you'll achieve higher than the average conversion rate and sometimes it'll be the other way around.

 

There isn't always a logic to the actual conversion rate you achieve,either. Sometimes for example you'll promote a really good product that also has a good average conversion rate and you'll make very few sales. There isn't always a reason for it - sometimesan offer just captures the imagination for your prospects and sometimes it justdoesn't.

 

Don't worry about your actual conversion rates on individual promotions too much. Sure, look for products that have decent average conversion rates but don't take it as a given that those are the ratesyou'll actually achieve.

 

What is the percentage commission - and how much does thisactually equate to per sale?

If you're choosing between two $10 products and product-A offers you 100% commission and product-B only offers you 50% then logic would dictate that you shouldpromote product-A....

 BUT you also need to factor in backend sales. So - if product-B turns out to have a backend product behind it that sells for $97 and offers 50% commissions, whereas product-A only offers you 10% commissions on a $20 backendproduct then you could make more money with product-B, even though it offers you lower commissions up front.

 

Remember also to take into account the selling price. Would you prefer to earn 100% commissions on a $5 product or 10% commissions on a $1,000 a product?

 

Refund rates

 A high refund rate would indicate that there is something wrong with the product and people aren't happy with their purchases forwhatever reason, so take a higher than average refund rate as a warningsign that it might be a productto avoid.

 Recurring affiliatecommissions

 

 

Some products charge a monthly fee for access and thus pay affiliate's recurring monthly products. These ones are great to look out for because you can make a sale once and get paid for it over and over again. Rack up a decent amountof sales on recurring

income productsand you can quicklybe looking at a rather healthymonthly income.

 

What's the salespage like?

 

 

It's always worth having a look at the sales page/offer page of anything you're considering promoting...

 

Does the page appeal to you? Does it make you want to buy - or does it put you off?

 

Clearly everyone is going to have a different opinion, however it's often possible to get a "feel" for whether the offer is a good fit for your audience and whether they are going to be persuaded by it.

 

The sales page is also extremely useful in helping you craft your affiliate promotion. By reading over it you should be able to see what the main "selling points" or benefits of the product are and thus these can be used in your promotion materials, be that a promo email to your list, aproduct review, blog post etc.

Themoney is in the list!

 

You've heard that expression before, right?

 

 

As an affiliate marketer, building a list of prospects is fundamental to your success. There are certainly other ways of making affiliatesales but many would say that doing so through having an email list can be one of the most effective - and here'sthe reason...

 

An email list literally allows you to make money on tap. Once you have a list you can simply find a relevant product to promote, type out an email,press send and makeinstant sales.

 

There's a little more to it of course but please understand that this IS the reality once you've got a decent sized list of targeted prospects.

 

So, how on earth do you build a list if you don't have one?

 

 

The first thing is to get together something that you can give away in return for people signing up to your list...

 

It could be a free report,video course, etc.

 

 

Whatever it is should be highly appealing to the people in your niche. You want people to be desperate to join your list so that they can get hold of your freebie, so it's worth investing the time to create or source a great productto give away. You could create it

yourself or find a good quality product that comes with Private LabelRights or Resale Rights.

 

Once you've got something to give away then you need to set yourself up with a squeeze page. This is a simple one-page website whereyou tell people what your free offer is, togetherwith an opt-inbox where they enter their name andemail address.

 

Most squeeze pages follow a fairly similar format, so have a look at other's in your niche to get a feel for what they are like.

 

You can see an example squeeze page below:

 

 

 

 

It's worth mentioning at this point that in order to build a list you'll need to sign up for an autoresponder service such as Aweber or Get Response. They give you all the tools you need to capture and store email addresses and to send emails to them once you've built your list.

Behind your squeeze page you should have a paid offer, sometimes called a One Time Offer (OTO).

 

Again, this could be your own product, a resell rights product or even an affiliate offer - but whatever you decide it makes sense to offer people something to buy as soon as they sign up to your list. You've engaged them enough to persuade them to give you their email address so there's a decent chance that they might also be in the mood to buy something. Most won't buy of course but a percentage WILL and thus it provides you with the opportunity to make some money as you build your list.

 You'll also need to set up a download page (a simple page which thanks people for signing up and provides them with the link to download their freebie.

 What you're doing here is building a simple sales funnel. I'm not going to cover list building in great depth here because there are plenty of guides to list building available online - and many of them are free.

 The point that must be emphasized however is that building a list is pretty essential for any online business owner and it's a particularly valuableasset to have tous as affiliate marketers.

Getting people onto your list

 

 

Once you've built your funnel then you'll need to send traffic to your squeeze page.

 

There are probably hundreds of different ways out there of doing this, including solo ads, Facebook ads, article marketing, forum marketing, linkingyour squeeze page to your blog - etc.

 

If you're just starting out and can afford to spend a bit of money on advertising then many peoplewould recommend solo ads.

 

If you don't know what a 'solo ad' is then it's really simple - it's just where you pay somebody who already has a list to send out an email to their subscribers promoting your free offer.

 

Solo ads are popular amongst many because they can provide you with an opportunity to build your list prettyquickly...

 

Most solo ad sellers will offer you a certain number of guaranteed clicks. So, if somebody guarantees you 200 clicks from the solo ad and your squeeze page converts on average at 45% then you're going to get 90 new people joining your list. Once a solo ad has been sent you usually get the traffic pretty quickly, so it's possible to build a list of hundreds or even thousands of people in a matter of days.

 

Obviously solo ads cost money. But if your sales funnel has paidproducts behind it then you could recoup back the cost of the ads and even make an upfrontprofit. Often you won't recoup back your costs initially but you'll have a list that you can market to for years to come.

A key aspect of being successful with solo ads is knowing your figures- especially your conversion rates...

 

If you know the average conversion rate of your squeeze page and  backed offers then you can work out how much you can afford to spend on solo ads.

 

It's important to TEST your funnel thoroughly so that you can improve on it. You can split test different offers and work out which ones convertthe best...

 

Take the following example:

 

 

You've got a free report you're giving away to build your list and you make two different squeeze pagespromoting the report.

You do a simple 50/50 split test on your offer, which simply means you send 50% of your traffic to one squeeze page and 50% to the other (thereare plenty of tools out there that enable you to do this)

 

You buy a solo ad with 200 guaranteed clicks, so 100 of those people will see the first squeeze page and 100 will see the second.

 

When you've done the test you find that the first squeeze page converted at 32% (so 32 people subscribed) and the second one converted at 48% (so 48 people subscribed).

 

As you can see the second squeeze page converted at a much higher rate than the first...

So imagine if you had not bothered testing and had simply thrown up squeeze page number one. You'd have lost out on quite a few subscribes, and as you bought more and more solo ads you'd lose out on even more.

 

PLEASE test because it'll make your chances of success so much higher:)

 

Adswaps

 

 

Once you've built up your list to a certain size using solo ads then you could considermoving over to adswaps...

 

These usually work exactly like solo ads, only instead of paying money for the other person to send out your offer you simply return the favour and send out their offer to your list.

 

With adswaps you obviously need to have a list in the first place, which is why it could be a good idea to start with solo ads and then move up to adswaps once you've got a list.

 

Where do I purchasesolo ads or find adswaps?

 

 

There are no shortage of places online where you can find solo ads and adswaps, especially if you're in the internet marketing niche.

 

Two places to start could be:

http://www.safe-swaps.com

 

 

and http://www.warriorforum.com

 

 

however there are loads more too and if you have a dig around online you should be able to find them quite easily.

 

Not got any money to spendon advertising?

 

 

If you're trying to build your list and don't have any money to spend at all then there are other options.

 

A good one can be forum marketing, where you sign up to forums in your niche and post to those sites whilst including a signature link to your squeeze page.

 

Forum marketing works well for many people, although you need to makesure that you get your strategy right...

 

The key to forum marketing is to forget you are actually there to promote your squeeze page. Instead you should simply join in the forum conversations and become an active member of the community. Demonstrate your knowledge but NEVER mention your squeeze page or any of your products. Your signature link will do the "selling" for you because people will see your posts, be impressed by your knowledge and thus decide to click on your signature link, which will take them to your squeezepage.

NOTE: it's always important to check out forum rules and establish whether they allow signature links to external websites because some don't.

 

Promoting affiliate productsto your list

 

 

Ok, so you've either already got a list or you're on your way to building one...

 

The way you make money as an affiliate is to let your list know about products you recommend - and that means sending them out promo emails.

 

As we talked about earlier, one of the key aspects of being a list owner is becoming a 'trusted advisor.' People on your list are looking to you as the expert and when you send them an email saying "go and buy this product" then they are trusting your judgement - which is why you need to carefully select the product'syou promote, as we discussedearlier.

 

If you've done that - and are genuinely recommending products that you think will help people on your list - then you shouldn't have a problem with or feel "bad" about sellingto the people on your list.

 

But here'sa quick warning...

 When you sell to people, some of them get upset. That's just a fact of life and there'snothing you can really do about it. Some people

seem to think that your only job in life is to provide them with free information.

 

If people don't like the emails you send or get "upset" because you're selling to them then they can simply go and unsubscribe. You reallydon't want those sort of peopleon your list anyway.

 

But whilst you shouldn't have a problem with selling to your list (it's how you make money) you also need to remember that you need to provide a balance between selling and giving people free content...

 

At the end of the day you've got to give people a reason to stay on your list - so just like a TV show can't show adverts all day without any programs then you can't simply send promo email after promo email without any content. Some people DO do that but those sorts of marketers burn out their lists very quickly and rely on constantly getting new people onto their lists in huge quantities to replace the oneswho got fed up with being sold to all the time.

 

There's nothing necessarily wrong with the above strategy but it's definitely not for everyone.

 

 

Crafting a promo email

 

 

So - you'll need to send out content to people but you'll also need to sell to them too.

 

The first thing to think about when creating an email is the subject line.

 

The subject is your only chance to get people to actually open your email - and if they don't open it then they can't make a purchase, so it's important to get this right.

 

One thing to avoid is spammy subject lines... Ever seen emails in your inbox like... "You've got cash"

or "You're paymentis waiting"

 

 

or "I've been trying to contact you" They'rea total turn off, right?

When you see those you immediately think SPAM. They maybe used to work in the past but nowadays most people are wise to such tactics and generally most people would probably agree that they only serve to piss people off...

 

The thing is that when people then read your email body and see what you are actually promoting then they will most likely be pretty annoyed because it bears no relation to theproduct itself.

 

Following on from the advice I give a little earlier then I'd recommend heading over to your email inbox and having a look at how your favourite marketers write their subject lines. What intrigues you but doesn'tpee you off at the same time?

 

It's good to add a little mystery into your subject lines because at the end of the day you don't want to give the entire game away because you want them to open the actual email and read the body text, but at the same time your subject lines shouldn't be so irrelevant that they have absolutely nothing to do with the content of your email. It's all about strikingthe right balance.

 

Once you’ve written your subject line then the next thing to think aboutis the body of the email.

 

Obviously your job here is to get people to click on your affiliate linkand land on the productpage.

 

The biggest pieceof advice I can give isto just be yourself. Giveyour promo emails a sliceof "you", a bit of your personality.

 

Whilst I highly recommend studying the promo emails of othermarketers and learning from how they do things you never want to copythem.

Take a look at pretty much any top marketer and you'll notice that they all have their own style.

 

You'll often see multiple marketers promoting the same product but they'lleach do it in a completely different way.

 

Some marketers have certain "buzz" words that they like to use. Other's always structure their emailcontent in a certain way.

 

Find your own style and don't be afraid to experiment a little.

 

 

I mentioned earlier that part of being an affiliate/email marketer is becoming a trusted advisor - and that definitely comes into play when writing your promo emails...

 

Before you write a single word of your email spend some time studying the product and the sales page. What do you like about it? What don't you likeabout it?

 

You can then give your opinion of those things into the email. So -you might say something like:

"I purchased this product yesterday and spent some time this afternoon going through it. On first glance you'll see the sales page is pretty hypey (click here to view it) but get past that and inside this is a really good product that I reckon a lot of you will benefit from."

Can you see that by making points like that you're actually differentiating yourself from everyone because you're giving your opinion?

 

Don't be afraid of pointing out the negatives either. For example, you might check out a product and find that it's not as detailed as you were expecting. So, you could say something like:

 

"From initially glancing at the sales page I was expecting a detailed a detailed step-by-step training product but when I actually startedreading it I discovered it's not quite like that. If you're looking for a paint-by-numbers system then this probably isn't for you, however what it IS is one of those reports you'll read and it'll leave you feeling fantastically motivated. I like that you can read this in less than an hour and I almost guarantee you'll be smiling by the end of it because the author's story is so inspiring and I challenge anyone not to feel motivated by it."

 

I'm ramblinga bit, but hopefully you get the point.

 

 

Inside any promo email will be a strong call to action, so something like:

 

"Click here NOW to check it out" or "You can get full details at the link below"

Blogging for affiliate sales

 

Don't dismiss blogging as a way of making affiliate sales. Starting a niche blog, building up an audience and sending them to affiliate offers can certainly work well for many people.

 

There are a few different blogging strategies when you want to make affiliate sales but here I'm goingto cover just two...

 

Banner advertisements

 

 

The first one is placing banner advertisements on your blog. People come along, read your blog posts and see your banner advertisements.

 

A lot of product vendors put together affiliate promotional graphics to help encourage people to promote their products, so often it's simply a case of grabbing the banners, copying and pasting them onto your blog and then linkingthem with your affiliate link.

Whenever anyone clicks on the banners and makes a sales you'll get paid.

 

Blog review posts

 

 

Again, this goes back to being a trusted advisor. You simply writeup a blog post reviewing a specific product and then at the link of it you insert your affiliate link so that people can buyit.

The thing is that most people will search online for reviews before they purchase a product, I reckon we've all headed to Google and typed in something like "product name review" before parting with our hard earned cash - and thus blog review posts are an excellent way of cashing in on this.

 

The most important elementof writing a blog reviewpost is to give a totally honest review. Forget that you are trying to make affiliate sales and instead write up an impartial view that anyone considering buying the product would find useful.

 

What do you like about it? What don't you like about it?

List those points in your review (EVERY product has negatives) and then draw up a conclusion as to why the person should buythe product.

 

(Obviously only review productsthat you like and fully recommend)

 

 

The classic mistake people make is to only harp on about the positive points, however this actually works against you because people will look at your review and think that you're simply trying to earn a commission. By talking about the negatives of the product you'll actually enhance your credibility - and remember that every producthas something that isn't quite perfect!

Boosting those affiliate sales

 

Affiliate marketing can be a tough business in so much as you are often competing for sales with lots of other affiliates who are all promoting the same product.

 

For this reason you might sometimes want to do something to stand out a little from the competition, which can sometimes especially be worth doingif you are promoting a higherticket item.

 

Be yourself and become the advisor

 Yep - we've harped on about this quite a bit in this report, however it really is a good way to differentiate yourself from the competition.

 

Many affiliates are lazy and will blast out the promo email that has been given to them by the product owner. If you can become a bit different and put your personality and opinions into your affiliate marketingthen it can really help.

 

Time your promotionright

 Sometimes people's decision between purchasing through your affiliate link and someone else's comes purely down to timing. This is particularly the case with email marketing - if they see someone else's email before yours then they might already have bought it by the time your email even lands in their inbox...

So - promoting as early as you can could be a good strategy. The longer the period since the launch then the more chance there is that people have boughtfrom somebody else.

 Equally leaving it late can be an effective strategy! Sometimes people will see a launch, check out the offer and decide not to buy for whatever reason. Then, a few weeks go buy and they change their mind. So - by promoting a while after everyone else you can sometimes "mop of" some of the people who were initially undecided.

 

Bonuses

 This can be particularly relevant when promoting high ticket items because the effort involved is justified by the high commission payments if you makesales.

Basically you just say "if you buy through my link I'll offer you THIS for free."

Your bonus could be anything really - an additional bonus report, coaching, consulting etc.

 

The key is to make it something relevant to the main offer - and the more valuable the bonus is the more likely they are to buy through your affiliate link.

Summing up...

 In all honesty it doesn't take a genius to make sales as an affiliate. It's all about selecting the right product's and then promoting it tothe right people,in the right way...

 

I hope that this report will help you to do that. Whatever you do now make sure you go away and work hard on your business. Whilst affiliate marketing can provide one of the easiest ways of making money online it still requires considerable effort in order to be successful.

 

As you become more experienced as an affiliate marketer you'll startto learn and get a "feel" for what works and what doesn't.

 Now, go and get selling :) I wish you much success!