If you are determined to make your affiliate efforts more of a business model that will help you leave your job, then there are a few things you need to consider first, you need to have a plan.
The Internet Is Changing And You Need To Change With It…
If you are building one page websites or just relying on free services such as Squidoo or Hubpages, Scribd or Associated Content then you will only have a limited self life with anything you do online, things are changing fast especially in the area of making money online.
If you are currently using Squidoo to promote products then you might want to read our post on Squidoo Drops the Hammer On Affiliates.
The very first thing you need to consider is building a long-range marketing strategy, you know it’s the same as setting your goals of what you want to achieve and where you want to be in the next 12 months two years and further into the future.
To develop the right strategy you are going to have to start paying close attention to the ever evolving online affiliate marketplace, with this knowledge you will then have to develop an affiliate marketing plan that will allow you to network with other affiliates (collaboration) which will keep you in the loop with things that could be effecting your affiliate business.
By joining other blogs on the topic of affiliate marketing or forums such as the Warrior Forum this will allow you to find out what your associates are doing successfully as well as what is no longer working. Doing this type of back-end research will not only save you a lot of time and headaches in the future but has the ability to put extra cash in your bank account which to me is a very sound plan.
Another tactic that you are going to have to develop if you are serious about doing business and this is something that can potentially keep your income growing constantly while building trust and loyalty with your visitors. It’s called lead capture or ensuring you have an opt in form on the front page of your site as well as your internal pages so that you can start from day one building an email list, this allows you to have contact with your subscribers and site visitors. If done correctly it can also bring visitors back to your site time and time again.
The way to do this is not to promote but to give them relevant and quality content that truly helps in their search to solve a problem you will build a loyal following with very few unsubscribes. Remember a lost visitor from your site or a unsubscribe from your list can potentially be a missed sale for you.
Many who have the attitude that this is a fast money business will fail and the primary reason is this, “they fail to capture the visitor’s attention and then their email address” as they don’t realize the importance of this marketing strategy and end up throwing away all the traffic that comes down the pipeline and the sales as well. There focus is totally on the money side so they don’t have any effective plans for long-term growth or survival online.
Your Email List Must Be Thought Of Like This “OPPORTUNITY”
Your prime objective should be this, to educate and help every customer that visits your site, this can turn a wary prospect into a buying customer and will allow you to market your affiliate products and services through the trust and association you have created. Once this happens the money will come, don’t rush and don’t get greedy or take short cuts that can potentially damage your trusted name and any sales.
Once you have built up your email list you will be able to send out the occasional email that is promoting different products within that niche without having to go through all the problems of building another site and new marketing promotions. You can read more about email marketing on this page.
However if you are like many overnight affiliates that in the past, and are even still doing today, have built there website around one specific niche only called a micro site, these can be awkward to maintain for a new affiliate and usually end up with you wasting your time.
You might encounter problems when it comes to sending out emails that are recommending another product. If you have had the foresight to build your site around a generic niche like Weight Loss or Computer Security just as an example of a broad niche you then have the opportunity to market many different products in that category from the one website.
Using this type of strategy gives you an increased measure of control in the ‘conversion” process, in that you can promote any product on your site that relates to that niche market otherwise you’re at the mercy of a single merchant’s web copy and product which is a very limiting factor for you to create growth for your business. I have written a complete post here that will help you plan a solid strategy.
Your job is to draw the customers to your website (and bigger is better) and expose them to your top quality content and knowledge on the subject of concern many times over. By doing this you are preparing them for when they actually go to the vendors site, and if all has gone to plan and your sales funnel has worked the “Buy Now” signal will already be turned on in their minds.
Things You Need To Be Wary Of
This does not happen to often but you need to be aware of this as an affiliate marketer, especially if you have put all the effort in to create a campaign to promote a product and the merchants only intention is to cheat you out of your hard-earned commissions. You need to know that the vendor has the ability to track everything all the way through to the point of sale.
This has happened on one occasion to us and the only solution is to make sure you remove all of those affiliate links from your site as soon as you can and move on, this is why we now use Gotrythis to manage all our affiliate links. Of course you can avoid all of this by sticking with the bigger affiliate networks and not join individual affiliate programs that don’t supply enough business information.
You can use tools that are provided by the affiliate networks such as in the case of Clickbank to evaluate the potential of a vendors product or service before you join that program by looking at the gravity or the popularity in the Clickbank Marketplace. You can find out more on Clickbank on this post.
One of the advantages of having a good plan is that you will realize very fast that joining the bigger affiliate networks is a smart choice simply because they are tried and tested and you actually have statistics that you can use to determine how profitable your efforts can be, it also ensures that the products you promote are of a good standing and that the vendor has been approved by these larger affiliate networks.
Having a good and solid affiliate marketing strategy means overtime more profit for you and a much better chance of surviving as an affiliate online.
Hi Andrew
Thanks for the post…
Yes this is something that many new marketers especially affiliates don’t realize or fully understand when it comes to being successful and every opportunity I get to discuss it I will. If I can help just one person to overcome the hurdles then this is what I feel to be a success.
Good luck on getting your site together if i can help please let me know…
Great post that really delivers the message that you can’t succeed in this business without (1) creating a sound, long-term strategy and (2) putting in the effort! Affiliates do not make thousands over night, they work on building their reputation, opt-in lists and TRUST with their readers and other affiliates. This point of trust is what causes readers to come back, open e-mails and eventually make purchases.
I think the *danger* in affiliate marketing is promoting the wrong product and essentially the wrong business. You mention in the post, “building trust and loyalty with your visitors.” But the affiliate needs to be able to trust the publisher and the product manufacturer. I believe this is where ‘trial and error’ method goes into effect. If you’re a beginner affiliate marketer, there are a lot of forums one could dig through. However, often times you can get taken advantage of by the ‘big dogs,’ so to speak.
There needs to be more education on ‘how to make sure you get paid as an affiliate marketer.’ There are a lot of hard luck stories out there about those that don’t get paid. But not enough resources (blogs or forums) talking about how to secure commissions.
Thanks for this post. Really very informative. You jammed packed with a lot info. Glad I came across it.
.-= YourName@YourKeywords´s last blog ..Your Affiliate Marketing checklist… =-.
Yes you are right…
To many people start out thinking it is very easy to make money and never afford the time to actually do any research on what products to promote or what networks to join. And yes you should do your own research by visiting different forums and blogs online so that you can get an ideal from other peoples experiences of what to expect from the affiliate networks.
Here is an example of what not to do as an affiliate marketer if you want to survive online…
I like to go fishing every now and then and when researching some places to go (You Notice I Said Research) I came across a website on fishing that had banners and link text related to weight loss. Not only did I not click on any of his links I left the website to never return again all because he is so far out of his marketplace that I doubt very much that he will ever make a sale with his fishing website or his diet products as I instantly had no trust for the information and new he was not an authority.
So as you can see you not only have to research your affiliate networks and not believe everything you are told by them but you also need to research your niche because placing the wrong products on your site can have a devastating effect on your affiliate business.
I do not understand you would not look at his site again or return because he had some weight loss ads. What is so wrong with that???? I am not sure why someone having different ads would offend you so deeply. I am fairly concerned with where my online marketing is going. I seem to get ranked well for a good phrase and wala I am out of there for two weeks and traffic drops. I live by the principle the web is so big if I can figure out how to make $1 and just duplicate it from that.
The simply fact about this is that if I am looking for affiliate marketing as an example, I would want to find the best information available right. If I see a site that is coming up in the search engines for that term and go there to get information on affiliate marketing only to be presented with weight loss advertisements how much credibly do you think I am going to to give that website.
The chances of me clicking on that advertisement to buy a weight loss product are virtually zero as I was looking for affiliate marketing.
If you search for information online you want the best, and by advertising products outside of your niche you will loose the effect of being an authority and a lot of credibility with your site visitors. It is extremely important that you stay focused with-in you niche.
Great information here, I admit I’m a little bit scared of all the affiliate options out there and I’m not really sure which one would be best for me but I do hear quite a lot about them and how important they can be to a business and the success of a site. I don’t want to get ripped off though, as I’ve known a few people to be.
Hi Stacie
Don’t get to caught up in all the ways you can go about affiliate marketing. The key to it is simply picking one method and sticking to it, don’t try to do to much at one or you will end up getting even more confused about what it is you are trying to do.
I’m not really sure about which affiliate network to join up with. I have a few domains but I’m not using them so I’m thinking of setting them up as sites to help me earn some extra cash but I really don’t know who is best, or what the best product to sell would be. I will definitely go for a bigger one because they seem to be safer but there seems to be a lot involved that I’m not sure about.
I couldn’t agree more. You have to have a website these days that speaks not just to the people searching online but also to the search engines as well. If you can’t rank high for anything, then nobody will find your sight anyway, regardless of how nice it looks.
Hi Anthony…
Yes it is all about building trust and a solid relationship with your site visitors, using free services like Blogger, Squidoo or even Hubpages does not allow you to build that relation ship for long term growth. The more professional you make your site and the more helpful the content the more trust and respect you will have online.
Great post, It can be difficult to promote the right product if you don’t do enough research on it. what’s even worse is building an entire website around it. And if you pick a niche that is very limited it can be difficult to build a business around it. With that said it is very important to do your homework before jump straight in into any nich one may be thinking of.
Hi Ulices
Yes that is exactly right you need to research your marketplace before you attempt to promote. You need to know what competition you will be up against and even if the product is actually viable to promote. A new tool which is free has just been released by Brad Callen called CB Surge which can help you find the products you should be promoting from clickbank.
Striving for short term gain often results in long term pain. Of course that doesn’t stop some people chasing the next product launch squandering megabucks in the process.
I see GoTryThis are planning a 2012 upgrade:
We are now selling the last 500 spots that have unlimited domains. Once these are gone, we’re closing up shop until we launch next year with per-domain pricing. In the meantime, we’re using all the new income to hire more programmers and staff, and we’re putting all our innovation and energy into adding features, making things way easier to use, adding more reports, more real-time, a brand new interface, etc.
We’re onto the next phase and things are going to get extremely awesome!
Hi Jonathon
Yes these guys are very good at keeping everything moving forward and making improvements… I have been with them for over three years and have found them to be extremely professional and fast with any support issues. I have tried many other affiliate management systems over the years but none have ever come close to what Gotrythis can do or even offer.
For anyone that is serious about their affiliate marketing business they should have this tool, it not only protects your affiliate links but allows you to track, monitor and even split test campaigns.