Secrets of Affiliate Marketing

If you want to get started quickly and easily in Internet marketing, then affiliate marketing is for you. What “affiliate marketing” means is that you just send traffic to someone’s website, they do everything else! (make the product, design the sales page, handle the billing and support, etc.), and you earn at least a 50% commission

Here’re just a few benefits

• You’re able to start right now without having to create a product, craft a sales letter, develop the website, create marketing materials, or get a merchant account and CRM.
• It runs on auto-pilot for you because you don’t have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
• You have nearly zero risk because you already know the product sells, because the product owner has already done all the research, development and testing. So you know that your traffic will result in sales.

There’s no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!

The downside is…

You work hard to send the traffic to the product owner’s website, but once you do that you will never see those visitors again. Most of them will not buy on their first visit, which means you’re losing over 90% of the traffic right off the top. And of the 10% or less that do buy, the product owner will be able to sell to them again, but you will not.

Is there are way around this?

It’s simple: You must get your visitors’ email addresses before you send them to the product owner’s website. If you do that, you can contact them again and send them back the product website multiple times. This will increase the number of sales you make. And, if you’re a super star affiliate, you’ll provide high-quality content before sending them to the product website.

Here’s why you want to implement these affiliate marketing strategies:

1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
2. You’re generating good will by giving them high-quality content. This way, they are much more likely to make a purchase when you send them to the sales page.

In order to set a system like this up, you will need the following affiliate marketing tools:

1. A lead capture page, preferably with video
2. One or more content-rich “warm up” pages
3. At least a 5-Part Email Followup Series

The video squeeze page is where you’ll direct your traffic instead of directly to the product sales page. Your squeeze page adds your visitors to you autoresponder. This is how you start building your list, and at the same time begin sending them useful information. Then it redirects them to your content pages after they subscribe to your email series.

You content mini-site builds the good will, so that when you send them to the product sales page, they are in a buying mood. And even if they don’t buy on the first visit, your email series sends them back to the product sales page again and again to increase your sales.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it’s well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it’s set up, it runs automatically – you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. These kinds of services will build the whole system for you and then just give you a video squeeze page (with video), pre-written emails, content pages, etc. The benefit is that it’s much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it’s instantly set up. The downside is that other people will be using the same affiliate tools as you. But the internet is pretty big, so this isn’t much of a concern.

The other route you can take is to hire people on Elance to create and implement the various aspects for you. Either way, it’s an important step that you need to take if you’re going to be serious about your affiliate marketing.

Be Willing to Learn at all Times

Internet marketing is a fascinating business to get into and one that can reward you handsomely for your hard work.  Anyone can become an Internet marketer without any previous experience, startup costs, or a college degree.  Now that’s exciting!  Still, not all aspiring Internet marketers make a profit and this is true for a variety of reasons.  But if you are willing to work hard and learn the business, the sky really is the limit when it comes to Internet marketing.

Be Willing to Accept Constructive Criticism

I’ve seen many posts at online marketing forums where a new Internet marketer put up his or her first website and asked members of the community to critique it.  Many of them were willing to oblige and offered their opinions of the site.  It can be invaluable to have others look at your website before you go live.  After all, by this time you probably can’t even see straight anymore and a pair of fresh eyes wouldn’t hurt.  They can view your site through the customer’s eyes and offer you their honest opinions.  Remember, if you ask others to view your websites, blogs, articles, ebooks, or whatever you create, be willing to accept constructive criticism.

Embrace Customer Complaints

Many Internet marketers cringe when they get complaints from customers but if instead of fearing them, you embrace them, you’ll reap the rewards.  When you embrace customer complaints, you reply to them right away instead of procrastinating.  You’re hungry to find out what went wrong so you can fix it right away.  You want to hear from your customers to see what they truly think of your website and your Internet marketing business.  You can then make your business bigger and stronger and you will get repeat business because the customers who complained will know they are dealing with a professional.

Keep up with Ever Changing Markets

Just about the time you think you’ve got this Internet marketing thing all figured out, change will come about.  It’s inevitable.  Savvy Internet marketers anticipate change and keep up with the changing marketplace so they can offer their customers the latest, greatest new products.  Successful Internet marketers aren’t afraid of change; they embrace it and prepare for it.

Be Flexible

You have to have a certain amount of flexibility when you own your own business and especially if you are an Internet marketer.  For example, if you offer a 30 day money back guarantee and a customer asks for a refund on the 31st day, don’t blow the chance to win that customer over for life by restating your policy and refusing the refund.  Remember, this is your business and you make the rules.  Customers have heard about policies and rules from gigantic conglomerates that left customer service in the Stone Age decades ago and they’re tired of it.  Treat your customers right and they’ll be your customers for life.