Many newbie online marketers believe that they have a chance of earning residual income without actually putting in much effort with their affiliate marketing, but does it really work in this manner?
A large number of affiliates get caught up in this mindset and actually make nothing from their affiliate programs for the very simple reason that they create a website and then do nothing to encourage people to visit, or even offer anything of value.
If it’s your intention to have this approach to affiliate marketing then, I would suggest that you concentrate on your day job as you are not going to survive if you think you can just sit still and wait on those big pay days to roll in.
Many also seem to forget that affiliate marketing is your business not that of the vendor or anyone else but yours, yes it is a form of online advertising, and you will without a doubt have to aggressively market the vendors product if you want to have a chance at making some money online especially if you are in the Clickbank marketplace .
With this in mind here are a few suggestions…
Firstly you should consider knowing as much as possible about the product you are going to be promoting, this will give you more credibility within the niche and with your site visitors especially if you are writing a product review. And if done correctly will get you that residual income you desire.
So how do you become an expert of the product you want to promote, the fastest and most effective way is to purchase the product yourself, in doing this, you can tell the consumers about your own experience utilizing the product when putting together the review on your site.
You can even write a genuine recommendation or an individual endorsement about it, however if you have a limited budget or are just starting out, you need to at the very minimum do some research and look at a dozen or so sites that are promoting the product before writing your own page about it.
Why You Need To Build Trust
For credibility with your visitors it is essential that you have your own domain (website), or at least get yourself a domain name that is both short, no more than 20 characters as well as simple to remember, you can’t expect your visitors to remember some long-winded and incomprehensible domain name.
Using free websites can take longer for you to get indexed unless you are promoting in a niche that has very small competition then I would suggest only using Squidoo or Hubpages to try to accomplish this. To learn more about getting indexed you might want to see our post on Promoting Your Money Sites.
What Affiliate Marketing Tactics Should You Use
There are many different ways that you can encourage your visitors to buy here’s one that is used often. Offer a membership site and offer access to it for anybody who clicks and buys a product from any of your affiliate links this would be a bonus offered to encourage the person to buy. Visitors usually get intrigued with these membership websites that additionally provide you with a very effective method to advertise those back-end affiliate products.
These are the ones which create the residual income for you with very little work needed as you have a captive audience. Remember the information you supply in the membership site must be relevant to your visitors and it must also help them to solve their problems.
Another dependable tactic is to write your own pages do not use the pages supplied to you by the product vendors unless you are going to be using Pay Per Click Marketing exclusively or you are going to totally re-write the content. This gives you a greater advantage over lots of other affiliates that are promoting the same affiliate product.
Those that use the standard landing pages supplied by the vendors are usually newbie marketers and find out very fast that using the same content and template as other affiliates only lands you with a duplicate content penalty.
Some say that you should also participate in chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums related to the product or service since it’s time for you to begin focusing your attention on them. You can start your own chat or join a currently established chat room pertaining to the product. You don’t have to promote your affiliate product straight away build up some credibility first, then find an opportunity to promote the product as you go along.
The corresponding would be true for message boards, discussion boards and forums. For me this is too much work and consumes a lot of valuable time as I use organic search for my affiliate marketing efforts.
Using Email Optin Lists
Create your newsletter or mini-course which are sent out to those that have opted in with the sole purpose being to educate your subscribers regarding a specific niche that you are promoting. In your newsletters or mini-course, you don’t always need to advertise the merchant’s product for this will actually annoy your subscribers and they will show their dislike by unsubscribing fast.
If you want to create long-term residual income then take it slowly and over a period of time start releasing your affiliate offers.
Rather, find a method to integrate the affiliate links on certain parts of the newsletter or send out broadcasts about site topics you have posted which have your affiliate links – Make sure you opt-in form is visible to your website visitors which ideally would be in the top fold of your website or blog.
These are just a few techniques you can use to increase affiliate sales and help you to keep growing your affiliate commissions. If you can implement just a couple of these ideas into your own marketing strategy there is no reason for you to fail with affiliate marketing once you have established a residual income.
If you like the post why not share it! That way you will get a lot more information if I know you like the stuff you are reading.
Hi Ron, interesting post. How many clickbank sellers provided you with an alternative landing page? I have only ever found two that will actually provide templates when pushed. I did host these on my own domain and send PPC traffic and like you say, it does work.
I suppose by putting in the extra effort, we can achieve results.
Hi Martin
Yes you are right about having to push, but what you can do is supply your own landing page which you created yourself. I only ever do this if the vendor has what I believe to be a good product but poor website copy.
So in actual fact I am bypassing his copy and replacing it with mine, then I use a program such as Gotrythis to send my visitors straight to the information page of the vendors site. This is a very basic overview of how I do it…
These are sound great. We all would like more money and with the internet developing more each day, it’s becoming easier to make money just by investing the right amount of time. I’m still learning, so all this information helps. Thanks!
Excellent points Ron. There are of course any number of GURU promotions that con newbies into believing that you can get “push button” systems that autopilot millions into your bank account with 6 clicks of the mouse. When those people wake up to the fact that “magic beans” belong in fairy tales they can start doing the simple tasks that generate a real business.
With respect to using Squidoo or Hubpages which I haven’t yet done, I understand that some affiliates use these to link to their main sites to achieve additional backlinks. Do you think this extra work is worth the effort or should more focus on onpage SEO be the priority?
Hi Jonathon
With so many changes going on right now I would be concentrating on adding value to your own site through good content, rather than trying to get artificial links from these other sites such as Hubpages and Squidoo. If you are giving your readers quality content then the backlinks will come naturally without having to use third party sites.
Many of these “affiliates” that use these platforms are just placing content where ever they can, not just for backlinks but also peppered with their affiliate links to try and get a commission. This usually leads to very low quality information which is why in most cases the links from these platforms are not even counted meaning you just wasted your time.
Good tips, I like the one about writing your own pages rather than the vendor supplied ones. I think it’s helpful to make your stand out and such. I hope these will help me make some residual income, I’m going to try them at least.
Hi Lizzy
Yes if you want to be successful as an affiliate marketer you need to take action, by that I mean not relying on others to do the work for you such as pre-made landing pages and sales pages. It is fine to use pages such as this but you should really re-write any promotional pages you have to get a better response rate from your visitors ans well as having a chance to get your sales pages indexed well.
If 50 or more other affiliates are all using the same pages you will struggle to see any positive results.
I really like your opening point: “If it is your intention to have this approach to affiliate marketing then, I would suggest that you concentrate on your day job as you are not going to survive if you think you can just sit still and wait on those big pay days to roll in.”
I have read that it is about only 95% of those who try to make money on line fail. That is a high number… think that they don’t realize how much work this can be.
I’ve heard the tip about joining chat room and discussion boards and such before, and though I think that can be useful I think that you should try a variety of options, like you outline here, opt-in lists and email and such. Though I know the chat rooms can be very time consuming.
-Jen
I think the idea of letting your subscribers know more about your affiliate offers slowly can be an advantage to those who want to earn residual income. At least they would find themselves irritated everytime you send them some of your offers.
I enjoyed the tips you are providing on your website. Residual income can make life easier by providing long term income for doing something one time. Thanks for the information
Thank you for great info. I started affiliate marketing 6 months ago and only for the last two months
I actually made some decent money. It really works, you just have to push it hard.
Ron: Thanks for your article and for posting comments. What do you have for people who have never done affiliate marketing and who don’t know where or how to start? Is there some publication with very elementary steps for neophytes, perhaps one that is akin to something like “Affiliate Marketing for Dummies?
Thanks.
Hi Paul
I have just finished putting a course together for newbie affiliates which is called Affiliate Armory and you can check it out on my other site here – Affiliate Marketing For Newbies