6 BOOK COLLECTIONS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
.................................................................................
4
CHAPTER 1: WHY AFFILIATE
MARKETING IS THE BEST WAY TO MAKE MONEY FOR BEGINNERS
..................................................................................
6
HOW AFFILIATE MARKETING WORKS
....................................................................................................................
8
CHAPTER 2: HOW TO FIND AND SELL AFFILIATE
PRODUCTS ............................. 11
SELLING PHYSICAL PRODUCTS AND
SERVICES
.........................................................................................................
13
Other Options for Selling
Physical Products .......................................... 16
SELLING SERVICES
...........................................................................................................................................................
17
CHAPTER 3: HOW TO CHOOSE AFFILIATE PRODUCTS
WISELY ........................... 18
WHAT NOT TO SELL
..................................................................................................................................
19
ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES
............................................................................................................................................
20
CHOOSING PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
................................................................................................................................
21
CHAPTER 4: BUILDING AN AUDIENCE AND MARKETING
THE PRODUCTS ............... 23
HOW TO CREATE A BRAND THAT SELLS .............................................................................................................
24
PLACING YOUR LINK
................................................................................................................................................
27
Creating a Sales Page
.............................................................. 27
Building a Store
..................................................................... 30
More Ways to Sell
.................................................................. 31
PPC ADVERTISING
AND OTHER MARKETING
....................................................................................................
33
DIRECT SELLING THROUGH FACEBOOK AND
OTHER PLATFORMS ................................................................
35
CHAPTER 5: POWERFUL MODERN TOOLS AND STRATEGIES
............................. 36
CRUCIAL TOOLS FOR TAKING AFFILIATE MARKETING TO
THE NEXT LEVEL................................................. 37
More Tools
.......................................................................... 39
CONCLUSION...................................................................................
40
Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective
ways for anyone to earn money online. This is a quick and passive method to
earn cash that is highly scalable,
and that is easy to set up. No technical skill is required, and if you choose
the right products and connect with the right market, you can stand to make
hundreds of even thousands of dollars in a short space of time.
But let’s back up for just a moment. First: what
precisely is affiliate marketing? How
does it work? And what makes it so much more effective than other money-making
strategies for internet entrepreneurs?
Essentially, affiliate marketing means selling a product
that is not yours for a commission. You then get to earn money for each sale
you make, meaning that all you need to do is to connect that product with an
audience that will appreciate it.
When selling affiliate products such as eBooks, you
will often find that you get to keep 70% or more
of the profit! Choose the right product, and you can earn just as much
money as someone who built a product themselves.
In this book, you will learn the benefits of
affiliate marketing, as well as how to get started quickly and efficiently in
order to begin making money. With smart product selection, a primed audience,
and just a little bit of good fortune, this could genuinely change your life.
For those that are already selling affiliate products, this book should serve to
provide you with the additional skills and tips you need to really take your
business to the next level. This includes the tools being used by top brands in
order to sell HUGE ticket items like MBA courses and $5,000+ powerhouse
laptops.
Chapter
1: Why Affiliate Marketing is the Best Way to Make Money for Beginners
Affiliate marketing is a concept that eludes many
people. How can you make money from selling something you didn’t make?
How can earning money online really be that simple.
The simplest way to explain it is that it is
essentially sales. You are acting as a seller and earning commission on any
sales you make. In that way, you are just like the door-to-door salesmen who
come around to sell you broadband.
The
difference is that you aren’t going door to door. The internet is your door and this is a door that gives you access to
everyone on the planet. That right away gives you a huge advantage – and especially when you learn how you can get the
visitors to come to you.
The other difference here is that the commission
scheme is going to be highly different.
Regular salesmen will normally get a small cut of whatever they sell: perhaps
5-10%. As mentioned, the
difference with affiliate marketing,
is that you’re going to get as much as 70-80% of the proceeds. That’s right:
often as an affiliate marketer you are actually going to earn more than the creator of the product!
This is what makes affiliate marketing so hugely
appealing: because it means that you can start earning just as though you were
selling your own product, but without having to invest lots of money to create
something from scratch.
What’s more, is that because you’ll be selling a
product that is already out there, you can choose something that is already selling in big numbers. When you
create your own product to sell, there is always
a small risk that you’ll build something that no one wants. When you simply
market something that is highly popular, that becomes much less likely!
Another huge benefit of affiliate marketing is just
how scalable it is. If you create a single web page selling the merits of an
affiliate product, then you can start profiting from it within hours. In that
case then, what is to stop you from making another page to sell another product? And another page to
sell another product?
How Affiliate Marketing Works
So, let’s get a little more technical, shall we?
How precisely does affiliate marketing work and why would a creator ever be
happy to give away so much of their own profits?
First, let’s consider the type of content you are going to be
selling.
To many marketers, affiliate products will be
digital products. There are plenty more options, which we will explore in this
book later. But for now, that’s what we’ll focus on. That means things like
eBooks, like online courses and like presentations.
Digital products are immediately a
good choice for selling online
because they have zero overheads and
no ‘COGs’ (this is a business term meaning ‘Cost Of Goods Sold’. That means
that the creator doesn’t have to pay out at all for each sale and they can
instead just make profit and share that profit. It also means they never had to
invest large amounts of money upfront and they don’t have to handle delivery
either.
So, the creator likely made this digital product
themselves using Word or a camera, or perhaps they outsourced the creation to
someone else. Either way, they will have built this ebook or course with the
intention of selling it for profit.
Then the creator will probably have begun selling said product from their
website or from a random page online. They’ll try to drive as much traffic as
they possibly can to their website in order to encourage people to buy from
them and thus they’ll have their own passive
income stream.
But there’s only so much promotion that
one person can do and eventually their well is going to run dry. That is when a
creator might start looking for affiliates to work with to help them promote
their products.
The product creator is thus willing to offer
affiliates like us 70% and above because they want to incentivize us to sell
their products. They also want to encourage us to sell their products rather than the products that other
creators are offering affiliate programs for.
While the creator will now only make 30% on their
sales, this is still 30% more than they would have made on those sales
otherwise – because they wouldn’t have exited.
And if that seller can attract thousands of people
to their books with a legion of online marketers, they’ll be making gigantic
profits and much more than they could on their own.
In short, this is a win/win situation. The creator
gets a thousand more sales by encouraging marketers to work with them and
affiliate get to sell a product as though it were their own and keep most of
the profits! They can make just as much money as they would from their own
eBook or course, but without having to develop one and take that huge gamble.
Specifically, the way this process actually works
is via the use of ‘affiliate links’ which in turn work via cookies.
When
you find an affiliate product you want to promote, you will be given an
affiliate link and this is what you need to include on your sales page and in
your blog posts.
When a buyer clicks on your affiliate link, they
will first be redirected to another page on the web. Here, a cookie will be
stored on their computer which will identify them as having come from you. Now,
when they buy something from that store, they will be recorded as being ‘one of
yours’ and the commission will be added to your total for you to withdraw at
some point in the future.
For you it’s simple: promote the product and
provide the link. That’s all there is to it!
Okay, that’s enough hypothetical talk… how do you
actually get started and become an affiliate marketer?
Well, first you’re going to need a product. In
order to get this, you are going need to head over to a website such as
Clickbank or Commission Junction. Another good one is JVZoo.
Here, you’ll be able to see a large selection of
different products that have affiliate programs. Just scroll through and look
for the ones you’re interested in. You’ll find that you can see some
information regarding the different products, so try to look for things that
are selling for a decent price and offer a good commission.
Some sites will let you see a rough number of
sales, in which case you of course want to look for the items that are selling
well.
Once you’ve identified the product you would like
to promote, you then need to contact the owner. If you are successful, they’ll
provide you with your link and you’ll be free to use that as you choose.
Something else to keep in mind here though, is that
many affiliate products will include marketing materials along with them.
Remember: if you are doing well, that means that the creator is doing well.
They have every reason to want to see you succeed and as such, they will
provide things like emails, a sales page, banner ads and other materials in
many cases.
If you’re someone who is completely new
to the world of marketing, then I highly recommend
that you choose a product that offers these kinds of bonuses. This way, you can
get up and running almost instantly by simply copying and pasting the materials
you’ve got.
You should then see yourself sell in the same
numbers: it’s the same product and the same marketing spiel… so there’s no
reason that it shouldn’t work just as
well.
Like I said before: this is literally a ‘copy and
paste’ business model. Someone else already has the product selling well with a
set system, all you are doing is copying the same system but making sure it’s your bank account that will receive the
income.
Selling Physical Products and Services
While selling eBooks through platforms
like JVZoo is an excellent way to ensure that you can keep the maximum profit,
it also has its limitations. Despite what some other marketers might tell you,
the most popular type of product online is still
of the physical variety.
 |
And this makes sense if you really think about it. How many people do you know
who buy physical products? Pretty much everyone right? But then how many people
do you know who would buy an ebook? Your Grandma might not (unless it’s through
Kindle) because she doesn’t know how to use a PDF file. Likewise, your friend
who doesn’t like reading probably wouldn’t either!
And that basically leaves you with
a much smaller cut of the market.
So how do we go about selling physical products as
an affiliate marketer? The most popular option is to become an Amazon
Associate.
Start
Your Affiliate Marketing Journey Today !
Amazon’s associate scheme is their version of an
affiliate program and it’s a very tempting option for many marketers.
If you look up information on affiliate marketing,
then you’ll likely find that the vast majority of it focusses on selling
digital products through the likes of JVZoo, ClickBank and Commission Junction.
On Amazon, things are different. Amazon is already
splitting the profits with the manufacturer, they have to pay for storage,
shipping and postage and generally they can’t afford to offer you more than 4%
or maybe 8% at a push.
This means you’ll have to sell a lot more items at
much higher prices in order to turn a proper profit.
But does that mean you should rule
Amazon Associates out? Not at all.
For starters, selling physical products is often
much more profitable than selling digital products. Think about it: are you
more likely to spend lots of money on something you can hold in your hands and
show to friends, or something you have to read on a computer screen?
Better yet, Amazon is a recognized brand and a
company people trust. That means they’re much
more likely to buy from them – and they can buy with one click!
Amazon has a massive roster of products you can sell and that means there
will be something relevant to go with nearly every article.
And finally, if someone clicks on your URL but ends
up buying something else from Amazon…
you still get paid! This can potentially result in a lot of earnings if someone
were to – for example – buy a new computer and you were to get 8% of that.
Even if you didn’t promote the product directly, as
long as you sent the buyer to Amazon in the first place, you would earn that
commission.
So, the best thing to do? Use both types
of affiliate marketing! But just don’t leave Amazon out of the equation or
you’ll be missing out!
In future chapters, you’ll discover how to promote
Amazon products slightly differently, in order to get the most from them.
(Note: One limitation of Amazon Associates is that
you can’t earn cash if you don’t live in the same country. In other words, if
you are based in the UK, then you will need to send your customers to Amazon
UK. You can still make sales through Amazon.com, but you’ll only be able to
collect vouchers in exchange.)
Other Options for Selling Physical Products
Amazon is of course not the be-all and end-all when
it comes to selling physical products. There are countless physical stores out
there, as well as many manufacturers that will offer affiliate programs direct
to marketers.
You might find that if you take the time to look
around for other products, you’re able to find something that is much more
directly relevant to the topic of your site (and thereby more likely to sell).
To find these affiliate programs, just
try typing in your niche and then “affiliate program” when searching on Google.
You can also find plenty of lists online for the best affiliate programs in
each industry.
Another option is to direct a
manufacturer or seller that doesn’t offer
an affiliate program… and then to ask them if they would consider creating one
for you. If you manage to do this successfully, you can strike up an exclusive
deal and potentially get a large commission too.
Of
course, for this to work, you need to be able to demonstrate that you have the
reach and the influence to make it worth their while.
Selling Services
Another option is to try selling a service or a SAS
(Software As a Service). This option is potentially the most lucrative!
The reason for this, is that many services will
offer you a recurring commission. Let’s say that you manage to get someone to
sign up to a gambling website. Some gambling sites will offer commission on all
earnings from that customer for their lifetime with the brand!
Likewise, if you can convince someone to sign up
with a hosting account, or to otherwise join a recurring service, then you will
often find that you are offered a commission that is paid to you every month
that they remain with that hosting company.
Of course, this might start as a small amount of
commission. BUT it can then add up to a large amount of time. In a few years,
you might have hundreds or even thousands of conversions, which will then earn
you recurring income even if your site
were to close down!
Chapter
3: How to Choose Affiliate Products Wisely
While affiliate marketing is an
incredibly simple and effective way to make money online, it is not completely foolproof. That is to say
that if you choose the wrong product, or market it in the wrong way, you might
not see the immediate kind of success you were hoping for.
A lot of
your success then will ride on your ability to choose the right product. Here’s
what you need to know.
What Not to Sell
Most people when choosing a product to sell will
load up their affiliate network of choice (ClickBank, JVZoo, WSOPro) and then
look for the items that have the most sales and the best commission.
This is a good move because those figures suggest
that other people are earning a lot of money and so should you be able to. In
fact, you can literally ‘copy and paste’ their business model!
But if that’s all you’re doing then you’re making a
mistake. 99% of the products at the top of the listing are going to be on the
same precise things: making money online, dating or fitness.
If you start promoting one of those books, you’re
now competing with all the other people selling the same book and all the people selling similar
books. Most people who have used the internet for more than a day are already sick of being sold ‘make money from home
programs’.
What’s more is that these are the most competitive
niches on the web. If you don’t already have a massively successful
website/mailing list, then getting to the number one spot on
Google for ‘Make Money Online eBook’ or ‘Build
Muscle’ is going to be nigh impossible. You’re setting yourself up to fail.
Alternative Strategies
Instead then, consider picking something in a
smaller niche. Let’s say you find an eBook aimed at a specific industry or job
– maybe something telling people how to make money from flower arranging. It
seems less exciting and the audience is smaller but your product is now unique.
What’s more is that you can easily reach those
flower arrangers by posting on a few flower blogs. And you can probably get
your sales page to the top of Google for ‘flower arranging eBook’ much more easily. It has a clear USP as
well, which makes it very easy to sell.
Better yet though, is to look at the routes to
market you already have. What contacts can you leverage? Where can you reach a
lot of people? What are those people interested in?
Think about how you’ll sell the product and where
you’ll reach your target demographic before
you pick the product. That is how
you succeed and it’s a strategy you can repeat over and over again.
If you already have a successful website with a
huge audience, then of course it
makes sense for you to choose a product that will appeal to that audience.
Multiple Products
Remember as well that you have the option of
selling lots of products. This is
another one of the big advantages of selling digital products: you can quickly
add or remove products from your site without needing to spend days writing and
formatting!
There are pros and cons to selling multiple
products. Selling multiple products is great if you have a big site and you’re
using soft-sale techniques (see the next chapter). This also allows you to
offer a range of prices for different types of customer.
That said, focussing on one product at a
time will allow you to create more buzz and excitement around that one specific
product, and to create a more streamlined website that directs customers all to
a single page: the buy page.
Choosing Physical Products
Choosing physical products is a slightly different
process. Again, the strategy here should be to pick things that are relevant to
your content, and to the typical reader of your website.
At the same time, they should also be items that
are good quality, and that fulfil a real need.
The good news is that there is no reason to make a
big upfront investment and take a risk by buying lots of items in bulk. You
aren’t going to be looking at a situation where you have a warehouse full of
fidget spinners!
That means that you can follow trends, and generally throw everything at the wall to
see what sticks.
I do recommend though that you have a range of
different products at different price points, in order to cater to every kind
of buyer.
BUT also remember that you make
commission on anything that is bought after the user visits Amazon. That means
that the main priority should be to get the person to click the link and to
visit the page – perhaps more so than selling that specific item!
***
Get yourself a web host and create your site. Make
one new page and place the sales page copy you got on there, along with your
affiliate link. You now have everything in place in order to start selling and
start making profit! We’ll take a look at this next step in the following
chapter.
Chapter 4: Building an Audience and Marketing the Products
The key to success when it comes to selling
affiliate products, is to build an audience first. This is the “catch” (insofar
as there is one), as it means that you need to actually put in some time and
work in order to make the biggest sales.
The good news, is that if you choose a topic that
you find interesting, you will essentially be earning large amounts of money
for doing something you enjoy.
But in order to get to this point, you first need
to build that audience and gain their trust as an influencer.
Are there other ways to sell affiliate
products? Of course! And we’ll explore those in this chapter too. BUT I still
highly recommend that you build that audience and make sure that people are
interested in your brand.
How to Create a Brand That Sells
Gaining this kind of influence of course is not
easy. In order to get to the point where people will buy things just because
you recommend them means putting in a lot of time, and making an honest attempt
to provide real value over time.
This starts by creating a website along with a
strong social media presence. Don’t try and sell right away, but instead spend
time building up that trust and loyalty through a campaign of delivering
excellent quality content consistently.
The most important thing? Have a clear, strong
brand, with a great mission statement, and a concrete “buyer persona.” (The
buyer persona is the portrait of your “ideal customer.”)
The biggest mistake to make is to try and create a
very general website with as broad an appeal as possible. As with the digital
product you buy in the first place, this can be a mistaken strategy. The reason
for that, is that when you go extremely broad, you also necessarily create a
brand that is dull and uninteresting.
A “fitness” website for instance is too generic and
too done to death to be popular. It
means competing with the entire internet pretty much. How do you stand out in
such a saturated market?
Consider
instead then having a website that is about Fitness
for Over 40s. Or how about Paleo
Fitness. Or CrossFit. Or Outdoor Fitness. Or Hardcore Bodybuilding.
All of these options have a much clearer target
audience, a much clearer mission statement, and a more interesting hook. They
will each appeal to fewer people, but the people that they do appeal to, will be FAR more likely to engage and be excited that
there is something out there specifically
for them.
The brand should then be born out of this clear and
passionate goal. That means that when someone looks at your logo or your
website design, they should know instantly
whether it will appeal to them or not. Your brand should strongly
communicate who it is for and what it is about: and your content should then
back this up.
The hardcore bodybuilding site will likely be red
and black with lots of dark images of extremely strong guys, and articles about
“boosting testosterone with compound lifts.”
Meanwhile, the paleo fitness site will likely be
green and white with images of people running outside in nature. From here, all
your advertising, all your social posts, and EVERYTHING should be congruent
with this image.
And then, when you choose your affiliate product,
it should ideally speak to that exact same audience. And you will market it in
that way, and sell it with that value proposition.
What’s ALSO crucial is that you provide
unique and new content that demonstrates real expertise.
Here’s a shock: if you hire a writer who doesn’t know
about the topic, then you will NEVER sell the affiliate product. Why?
Because all that hired writer CAN do, is to
research the topic and regurgitate it in their own words.
That means that none of the content is going to be
new or insightful, and might well be out of date or incorrect (because they
won’t know the topic well enough to identify when this is the case).
You should write yourself or find a writer who is
genuinely passionate about the topic. Why? Because then they will have
something NEW and exciting to say! This is how you become a thought leader, and
get people to listen and to sign up: because they want a new perspective.
Be bold. Be different. Be passionate. Then choose a
product that speaks to the very same audience.
Don’t have time for that? Don’t worry –
there are other options too which are listed below.
Placing Your Link
As an
affiliate marketer, selling couldn’t be easier. You’re given one link, which is
a link to promote a product and you can then make sales and cash from anywhere
you place that link.
So the question is: where do you put it?
Most of us will place our link on a
landing page/sales page, but this is only one option. In this section, we’ll
look at how that works, as well as several more options.
Creating a Sales Page
A sales page is a page on a website that has been
designed specifically with the purpose of selling something. That means that it
won’t provide any other content (no articles) and likely no other links or even
adverts either. You don’t want anything here that could risk distracting people
from the product you’re selling.
The design of a sales page is normally going to be
very long and narrow, which will in turn encourage readers to keep scrolling
and therefore to invest more time into the process of reading what you have to
say. This makes it much harder for them to leave without buying, as they will
feel as though they wasted their time!
Most important though is the writing.
Write your sales pitch correctly, and you can take this captive audience and
turn them into eager buyers.
Persuasive writing is an incredibly
powerful tool that can turn you into a marketing Jedi. These are not the drones
you are looking for…
Ultimately, if you know how to use
words to persuade an audience, then you will be far more effective at making
sales, at getting people to subscribe to your list and generally at achieving
any goal you’re looking to.
So how do you go about learning this superpower?
Here are some tips that will help…
• Grab
attention: People are in a hurry and they don’t want to read through large
amounts of text. If you want to persuade your audience, then first you need to
get them to actually read what you
have to say. How do you do this? One method is to open with a bold statement.
Another is to grab attention by
using a narrative structure. The latter works particularly well as we naturally
find it very difficult to turn away from a story without getting to the end!
• Appeal
to facts and figures: People aren’t always inclined to trust you – after all,
they’ve never met you and they know you want to sell to them! Instead then, let
the numbers speak for you. The more figures you can quote and the more
authorities you can reference, the more persuasive your argument will become.
• Anticipate:
Try to anticipate the concerns that your readers will have and then combat them
right away. For instance, you can mention how there are ‘lots of amazing
sounding offers online’ but point out that this isn’t ‘just another scam’.
• Mitigate
risk: People are naturally inclined to ‘loss aversion’. This means that they
are more keen to hold onto what they have than they are to gain something new.
You need to remove any risk factor then by offering money back guarantees and
free trials.
Most importantly: understand the value proposition.
This is the emotional value of your product: the way in which you are
promising it can change your readers’ lives.
For example, if you are selling an eBook on fitness, then you should note that
you’re not really selling an eBook on
fitness!
What you’re really selling is the feeling of having
boundless energy, ripped abs, and tons of confidence. You need to focus on
that! Speak to the heart, and try to get the reader to feel something – ideally excitement for buying your product.
Remember: many digital products will come with
ready-made sales pages like this, meaning that you can simply lift the script
wholesale to use on your own page.
With your sales page, you now simply
need to direct your audience toward that page in order to start generating
conversions. This can be done through emails, and by promoting your product on
your social media. You can even include adverts for the product in the sidebar
of your site and elsewhere.
Building a Store
If you are selling multiple affiliate products
(which is also very good strategy), then you can build a store in order to sell
them from. That means that you’ll be highlighting and promoting products that
are relevant to your brand as you might do in an ecommerce store. The only real
difference is that when the buyer clicks on your item, they will now instead be
taken to an external page.
This is simple to do: for example, you can do it by
using the WordPress-friendly ecommerce plugin called WooCommerce. This will
allow you to create a store from your site where people can view items. It
supports affiliate content, meaning that if someone clicks on an item, they
will be taken to the new page using your referral link.
More Ways to Sell
But how about embedding links
within the body of your articles?
This is something that very few affiliates take
advantage of but it’s a great way to
monetize a website or blog. Simply write about whatever subject you’re
interested in covering and then insert an affiliate link into the text. This
way, you can promote the product subtly and anyone who is engaged with your
content might click it.
It’s like adding AdSense to your page, except you
earn much more commission and you get
to actively encourage people to click the link. You can even be honest about
the fact that it earns you money!
In fact, the law in many parts of the world is that
you must
disclaim that you are making money from those
products. You can do this easily by using a plugin that adds a message
to the bottom of every page on your site – but don’t forget!
One of the best types of content for
selling affiliate products is the top ten list. You can make a countdown
article listing the best home gym equipment if you’re in the fitness industry,
or you can create an article sharing the most powerful laptops on the market if
you write about tech.
Whichever
you do, this is perfect for
generating clicks and money, and will also lend itself perfectly to rich
snippets, which can really help your content to stand out in the SERPs (Search
Engine Results Pages).
Likewise, there’s nothing stopping you
from placing an affiliate link within the body of an e-mail. This is a great
way to reach people right inside their inbox at a time when they may be
receptive to your offers.
Affiliate links can also go in eBooks. If you are
selling a digital product or giving one away for free, then you can add links
to your PDF. The people reading this are likely to be highly engaged with your
brand, and thus likely to buy what you recommend. These are qualified leads and that makes it the
perfect place to try and sell even bigger ticket items.
Imagine selling a digital product for $20 a pop,
and then making lots MORE money from all the people reading the book and
following your advice.
Or how about putting an affiliate link on a
physical flier or pamphlet? The best way to use this is to use a more memorable
and simple URL and then have it redirect to your affiliate link. That way you
can actually advertise your product in person!
The point of these suggestions is partly to
demonstrate that you don’t always have to be actively selling the product: you
can try the soft-sell by simply adding the link, perhaps with an image.
This works especially well for physical products
(especially if you use a well-designed button and the item is actively related
to the content on the page). If you have a popular site with a lot of viewers
and a lot of content, then simply weaving buy links in
throughout in this way can lead to lots
of sales trickling in… and they all add up!
There are many more ways you can use affiliate
links, you just have to be creative. Experiment and try different things and
you might be surprised what works best for you and your product!
PPC Advertising and Other Marketing
But what if you don’t have an audience? What if you
aren’t an influencer who has earned the trust of your readers?
In this case, you will need to find ways to send
visitors to your sales page directly. The good news is that you can do this
easily through PPC (Pay Per Click) platforms such as Facebook and AdWords.
PPC means that you only pay when someone actually
clicks on your advert. You decide what your maximum spend “per click” is going
to be, and what the cutoff point of your budget will be as well.
If you set your per click spend too low, then your
ad won’t show when there are lots of competing ads from other brands in the
same niche. Set it too high, and you likely won’t turn a profit.
When placing ads on Facebook, you will be able to
target who they are shown to based on information that users share with the
social site. Those include:
•
Age
•
Sex
•
Location
•
Hobbies and interests
•
Job title
•
Income bracket
•
Interests of others And more!
When placing ads on Google through AdWords, the aim
is to consider not only the interests of the person (based on what they are
searching for – the “keywords”) but also the intent of that person.
Intent is an important consideration for PPC,
because it tells you whether someone is researching, or looking to buy.
If they are researching, then they might search for
“best computer games this year.” If they are looking to buy, then they might
search the name of the computer game, or “cheap computer games.” You can also
use “negative keywords” to rule out phrases that might suggest someone is not interested in buying and so has the
wrong intent (such as “free download”).
The aim of PPC is to ensure that people ONLY click
the link if they are likely to buy from you. This lowers the amount you spend,
while increasing the potential profit. That means the adverts must be as
tightly “targeted” to the right person as possible, even to the point of
scaring away people who won’t likely want to buy using the right text.
The link should of course direct people to a sales
page in order to maximize your profits. You then need to focus on the conversion rate of your site. In other
words, if your landing page is well written, then it might convert 1% of
visitors (meaning 1% of visitors buy from you). The higher you get this number,
the more you can afford to spend on your advertising while still earning a profit.
Direct Selling Through Facebook and Other
Platforms
Of course, you also have the option to sell directly through those other platforms.
There is nothing to stop you sharing an affiliate link to your Facebook group,
or to your Instagram (in your bio, or once you are able to add the swipe up
feature on stories). This is a useful way to build an engaged audience if you
don’t have the skills or time to create a website.
Selling a combination of different
products – including digital, services, and physical - is far more powerful
because it combines the kinds of massive sales you can make by building a loyal
audience with the VOLUME that comes from shifting lots of physical products.
And here’s something else to keep in mind: having
such a diverse portfolio of affiliate products to sell on your site means that
you have the option to add things
that are “pie in the sky” sales. An example? I once sold an MBA through an
affiliate link! This was through EDx, which is a potentially hugely profitable affiliate program,
though also an example of one that you must sign up for.
The challenge? Managing and juggling all
of those different items! This is why the big, serious brands will use tools
that streamline this process, and that give them access to some of the most
lucrative affiliate programs on the web.
Crucial Tools for Taking Affiliate Marketing to the Next Level
One of these tools is Genius Link. Through Genius
(https://www.geni.us/), you are able to attach multiple different
accounts and then add their affiliate programs. This works particularly well
with Amazon, as it allows you to add accounts with each of the different local
versions of Amazon.
Each link will then send the user to the correct
version of Amazon based on their location, meaning you don’t need to worry
about losing customers! You can also add a number of other programs however,
such as Barnes&Noble, BestBuy, and iTunes!
From here, you can generate a link from Amazon as
easily as grabbing the URL to the sales page, and then pasting it into a box.
If you have the Chrome plugin, you can just click that button right there when
your browser is pointed at the page!
A
similar option is something called
Trackonomics
(https://www.trackonomics.net). This tool works in a similar way, but
lets you add items from a FAR larger list of affiliates.
That includes the likes of the aforementioned EDx.
Better yet, Trackonomics can let you search for products in a vast array of
different affiliate accounts, and then use the option that earns the most cash.
In other words, if you are selling a
smartphone, you can now compare the commission on that smartphone were you to
sell it from Amazon, versus the commission were you to sell it direct from the
manufacturer. Versus Best Buy, versus every other option out there!
Both tools also let you track clicks and purchases,
in order to identify which of your links is the most popular, to identify when
a link is down, or to see how much you have earned in a given timeframe.
The only downside? Trackonomics costs a HUGE $500
per month. There is a free trial however. Genius Link meanwhile is free.
More Tools
These tools will help you to take your affiliate
earnings to another level, but there are many more options out there as well
for those that want to create a more streamlined business model and funnel.
For instance, it is almost essential to use Google
Analytics in order to track the success of your website and individual pages.
You can see how you rank for different terms, optimize those terms, and then
see how those pages are leading to the sales page, and which routes earn the
most commission.
Similarly, using tools that let you conduct A/B
tests on your landing page can also help you to improve it to the point that it
massively increases conversions.
So, there you have it: everything you need to know to build a highly successful
affiliate marketing business. Whether you keep things simple or aim for the
stars is up to you, but I highly recommend you follow the advice in this book
and try selling real products that have broad appeal and massive prices as well as the traditional digital
eBooks and courses.
The classic process for selling
affiliate products is simple:
• Find
digital product and get an affiliate link
• Create
a sales page
• Place
link on sales page
• Send
traffic to sales page both from your own website, and through marketing
• Wait
until the product stops selling, then rinse and repeat
I am recommending that you slightly alter this
model, to earn more money and build a more resilient, long-term business model.
Here’s the new strategy:
• Create
a website and build an audience that trusts you and enjoys what you do o
Do this by generating genuinely unique and passionate content with a strong
visual brand and mission statement
• Find
a few big ticket affiliate products and services and create sales pages for
those, then “launch” them from your site by using email blasts and teasers to
create hype o Find the products that are most successful and then
send more visitors here through paid advertising
• Meanwhile,
sell as many smaller digital products, Amazon physical products, and services,
through articles and websites that you promote using SEO
Whatever you do, you can now enjoy earning money while you sleep – and the more you experiment, the more efficient your sales technique will become.
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