What we want to focus on more is the structure of your website and/or websites. First off, we'll talk about the individual sites themselves.
If you will be promoting more than one productand to make money the way the Super Affiliates do you will need toeach related group of products should have their own dedicated site; out of that group, you will focus on your one most promising product most of the time. This site doesn't need to be huge, it can be just a few pages in totalsay between ten and twenty, depending on the number of products you'll be selling; but it does need to incorporate all the elements that will gain you attention from the search engines, and thereby from visitors and buyers (targeted buyers with a need!).
Eventually you will want to build a master website that directs to each of your smaller, product-focused websites. This will be the website you use to "clean-up" the rest of the traffic generated by the keywords you haven't targetedthose generalities that aren't necessarily on the verge of buying anything. But that can come later. First, build the sites that will sell and start making money sooner.
So initially, your plan will look something like this:
Target markets and keywords
Choose specific affiliate products
Build a website around a specific group of products
Build more product-grouped websites for each affiliation
Create a master website that captures traffic, then links traffic to smaller product-specific websites
Let's try to put this into perspective and give you a real-world example.
Okay; let's suppose that you are selling fitness-related productsa variety of sorts from body-building supplements to fifteen minute workout routines. The buyers who are looking for muscle-building supplements and powders could probably care less about your crunch-time workout videos. And you don't look like much of a reliable authority by just slapping up one ad next to the other. So you break down each of those product types into groups, and market five or six or so together on one website dedicated to each. So instead of having a catch-all website with fitness products, you have two dedicated websites that specifically serve the needs of the visitors ready to buy. You have
A 10-20 page website selling body-building supplements, and
A 10-20 page website selling workout videos for the too-busy-to-exercise crowd
Each site gives your buyers what they neednot what the other needs. After those sites are established and doing their thing, you can go back to that model of the fitness-products store, and create sections and virtual "aisles" that point to these smaller dedicated sites.
Now here we need to clarify a bit. This structure is one of the number-one things that Super affiliates do, and small players do not.
What you will see many times is that small players collect a number of products, usually related, sometimes not even, and group them all on one website.
What the Super Affiliates do in contrast is start by focusing on the small sites. They build up products in a way that clearly sells each one. They create choice for buyers by comparing their own like-products against each other, so that whatever product is chosen, the sale is theirs. Genius, yes?
Then they get the traffic going to and buying at those sites. Later on they'll build something more akin to the storefront, and link to these smaller sites when visitors click to learn more, just to clean up the rest of the lookers.
In the end, eventually anyway, both the Super Affiliates and small-timers both end up with catch-all parent sites, but the Super Affiliates have that added layer of sales protection that gives the customers what they need to make the sale, and also brings traffic in at both ends.
Now build it and they'll come
What you most need to know, then, is how to build that small-niche site.
To reiterate, the purpose of this site is to develop a very consumer-specific website that provides information and resources for the person who is looking to buy a product of this type. That's from the buyer's perspective. But you have search engines to please, too, so that content will need to do double-duty and also help you be found and ranked well for your target keywords and target audience.
There are two basic components to these small sites. Those are
Articles and buyer-centric information
Products
The pages of your website will be split amongst these two components. It probably should not be a straight 50/50 split. The division should be weighted more in favor of information than products. This will serve two purposes:
Information gives the buyer all the supporting information and details they need to decide to buy.
Information provides more feed for search engines so that buyers can find you.
However you decide to structure the actual website, it should have a simple divisioninformation and products.
The product pages are simple. Create a page for each individual product that gives the specifics on the product (often the information provided by the affiliate). You need to give enough detail without overdoing it.
The informational pages require a little bit more work, but not too much. Each of these pages should host one piece of supporting information which helps your visitor decide to buy. It should be an article, product review, or product comparison. As you'll learn later, these are the things that will really draw the very specific and targeted ready to buy consumers that you want. This is the information that they are looking for just prior to purchase, and so it is the information that is most likely to net serious buyers, and not just curious visitors.
Back to our example, if we have five muscle-building supplements, we'll have five pages of products and perhaps ten pages with articles and comparisons. Use the articles to address the concerns of people in the market for supplements, and include topics important to them. They might be side-by side comparisons, reviews of specific powders, or topics such as "Five Tips for Building More Muscle."
Now you've given your already needy buyers the two things they need to decide to buy your productsadditional information, and the place to make the purchase.
Tips for Tapping into Demand Markets
To be clear, these techniques can and do work to get you selling in any market, regardless of how in-demand and highly-competitive the market may seem at first view. You see, the key is not in going for the most popular traffic, but in the most targeted traffic.
You can, most certainly, gain enough ground in any high-demand niche market to make Super Affiliate kind of cash. First off, you're not looking to net every sale the niche makes, you're just looking to net a percentage that translates into steady income for you. In high-demand markets, even a small percentage of overall sales can be highly profitable.
But moreover, youas opposed to most other affiliates out thereare targeting the right kind of traffic. You are using the less-often searched, but more productive keywords to get your traffic, and so you've already slipped in under the radar of everyone else who has cornered the big-time keywords (but are making few sales with them).
In internet marketing circles, this is what is referred to as riding the 'long tail' of keywords. For every top keyword, there are many more (hundreds more sometimes) that are used by searchers and neglected by website owners because they are not the "best" way to draw in big traffic. But the key isn't quantity so much as it is quality, so for you that works just fine.
Basically, tapping in to the big-demand markets all boils down to this:
Choose niches that have selling potentialnot obscure interests where no one is buying (solve a need! Provide a product)
Choose the products within that niche that are really selling and that meet the needs of your buyers
Figure out what the top sellers of those products (your competition) are doing that serves the needs of your consumers; draft an outline of your target visitor
Create product-centered websites to serve your target consumers
Use the right keywords to attract the right kinds of consumers
Create content that serves your audience, and also feeds the search engines
Follow this simple plan for tapping the in-demand markets that are selling and generating affiliate profits, and then you will be very well on your way to making money easily, just like the rest of the Super affiliates do.
Going for the Conversion
So, Why Does Conversion Matter?
People often want to knowwhy does conversion matter? When in the end, conversion is all that matters.
But to go a step further, conversion as it matters to you, the Super affiliate marketer, isn't just about what one or two visitors doit's about what the masses at your website do. For our purposes here, conversion really means what your site is doing as a whole. We can't reasonably expect that every visitor to your site will convert into a buyer (but wouldn't it be nice if we could!). You do need to know that overall, however, what you are doing on your site is working.
Conversion is about rates and statistics and sales, and unfortunately there are no real solid rules that apply. You cannot make sweeping judgments because the rules will be different for each and every product that you have. Each product and niche has its own set of needs.
What you can do is maximize the profitability of your site. The way to do that is to test and change and tweak your content and your website until you have gotten the highest amount of sales and profitability that you can. There are ways to do that, and that's what we'll talk about next, but by and large there is a definite element of trial and error involved in converting website visitors into buyers.
In the end, we're left with exactly what we started with in answer to this question. Plain and simple, conversion matters because conversion equals sales. Learn the "art" of the conversion, and you'll have one more of the crucial pieces of the affiliate marketing puzzle.
How to make it Happen
First off, to understand how to make conversion happen, you have to understand your role in the grand scheme of things. Your roleyour sole purpose for Super Affiliate survivalis to get your visitors to your parent affiliate's sales pageyour merchant's sales page.
Many new affiliates, and indeed some seasoned affiliates who just don't 'get it', mistakenly think that their job is to sell the products themselves. Subtly, yes, in ways, that is true. But overall, that is not your jobthe sales itself is the role of the product seller. What you need to do is warm your visitors up so that they can feel confident in taking that final step, and going on to seal the deal.
Again, this is where you need to realize that the merchant has done a lot of the work for you. They've constructed the sales pages and order processing mechanisms. They've written (or had written) the killer copy that will totally convince the buyer to buy. All they need you to do is get the seller there.
This is the part of the biz that is referred to as the 'pre sale' or 'pre selling'. This is the part where you work as the middle manthe liaison between the seller who has this great product and the buyer who really does want to buy, but needs that added little push, or the point in the right direction.
An important thing to remember, too, is thisyour readers are busy people. They, like you and everyone else in the modern world, do not have the time for extensive reading and research. That's why they're coming to you. They're hoping you've already done that for them. The lesson to take from that is that you should put up quality, product-supporting content, and you should make it valuable; but you should not kill your visitors with kindness. Make the whole process very easy.
Give readers a piece of information they can use (a product review, a tutorial, et cetera).
Show them that you understand their need (you identify with their problem, you see their need, you know how to fix it, you've been in their shoes).
Point them to the place with the solution (link to your merchant's page).
Let the merchant do the rest! (They've already done it anyway, why reiterate and waste your visitors' time?)
The whole process is done and over in about three simple steps. And out of those, the only one that really requires work is the providing of useful informationthe converting part. You'll read more about some very specific methods for subtle conversions in the latter part of this chapter in the 'Tips and Tricks' section, but understand that whichever method you choose to use, it needs to fit within the needs and demands of the visitor's life. In other words, it needs to be simple, directed, and effective. And all the better if it is action-oriented. When people have to take an action (and we're not just talking about the action of buying),
Focus is Everything
You've built your affiliate website and your pages for a reason. A very specific reasonto sell your targeted affiliate product! What is critical to your success as an affiliateto barking with the Big Dogs, not just lapping up the trickleis to stay focused on that central goal, that very specific driving reason for the very existence of your website.
To do that, you need to keep the eye on the prize, to use another cliché. You have to make your information and your product your number one focus; more specifically, the only focus.
All too often, affiliates are drawn by the prospect of easy money from simple to use monetization programs like AdSense or some such program. They'll fill up their sites with ads to make traffic-based money, and they kill their chances at affiliate success!
In effect what you accomplish when you fill up your conversion website with advertising and peripheral monetization strategies is inviting in all your competitors. Every ad or link that posts is one more opportunity for your crowd, which you've worked hard to get there, to leave and get consumed by the tangents. You drive your very own visitors straight into the waiting, wide-open arms of your competition!
Moreover, the inclusion of multiple ads and streams of information is down right confusing. You draw your visitors in with the promise of the information they've so desperately sought, and then you take them to a site so muddled with banner ads and links that they can't tell which one is the piece they've come for. They become distracted and frustrated. And then they leave. They go back to their search bar to find a website that really delivers the goods.
Trust us when we say (and you probably know this just from being a web consumer yourself) that people have had enough of bogus sites that don't help them. They want the website that is straightforward, to the point, and helps them, rather than hinders them. They recognize the pretenders within a few seconds of landing on a site, and if you don't prove yourself to be helpful right away, they'll move on and not bother to scroll down for your article or product review to find out if it really is there.
How, then, do you create focus on your web pages?
Stay away from advertising, monetization programs, and outward links that don't lead to your sales pages (at your merchant's site)
Only include ads and links that go to your affiliate products (imbedded, naturally, with your affiliate ID so that the sale is credited to you)
Feature your promotional material and one link above the fold of the page so that it is readily available (seen immediately by visitors when they land on your page) keep the focus on the solution your readers seek
Remember that this focus is about helpful content. This isn't the place for the hard-sell sales letter. Leave that to your merchant. This is the place for soft-selling; the kind of selling a friend of yours might do by suggesting something that's worked for him or her. Stay focused on your goal and focused on the product and solution at hand. By doing so, you'll help your visitors maintain focus, and move them on to where your real profits lie.
Tips and Tricks You Can Use
You've got the theory down, so by now no doubt you're looking for some real techniques that you can use to help you convert web traffic into buying, paying customers at your merchant's site. Here are some of the things that the Super Affiliates do that you can do too to make easy moneyin the affiliate's way!
Create Interactive Experiences
As we said, people feel a sense of accomplishment from action. And it doesn't need to be complex action, either. Even a simple action, like using a poll or diagnostic quiz, can give that feeling of accomplishment that gets visitors one step closer to buying.
If you really think about it, the entire process is just action after actionone step leading to another; first,
Visitor has a need or a problem, for which they need a solution
Visitor starts searching for solutions to his/her problem, or products to fulfill his/her need
Visitor clicks on your site in a search, because it seemingly offers something helpful of value
Visitor reads your content, then
What comes next is up to you. If you find a way to make it another action step, your visitor will continue to feel good about what he or she is doing. So maybe you put up a little quiz or questionnaire that offers up the problems they are facing. You tell them that if they take this one- or two-question quiz, you can help them solve their problem. Maybe you offer a trial-version to show how you can help (which leads to a trial at your merchant's site), or maybe you tempt them by getting them to take action now so that they can enjoy an added bonusa free program or product that you've created, just to add value and get the sale.
All of these actions can help you convert buyers by subtly moving them on to your merchant's sales page. And the best part is, your visitors will be happy you're doing it, because you are helping them!
Along with this, you can use other little tips and tricks of the trade that have been known to increase clicking, and thereby increase conversions. Some examples
Divide articles and tutorials across pages so that visitors have to go from one to the next (such as by clicking a 'Next' button, etc)
Place order buttons or links as alternative options next to other action buttons (such as with the 'next' button)
Use different action buttons placed strategically on your pages; they tend to get better response than links and make the visitor feel they are moving on to better things (even though they'll all lead to the same place)
Use bonus features like promotional codes to allow visitors to feel they are getting an extra
Give an extra bonus, such as a calculator or converter you've built or had built, something that correlates with your product (for example, for fitness products, perhaps a calorie converter or burner)
Assign an action off-site, such as using the free function at site ABC (your merchant's site)
Lay out a larger plan of action, and spell out the steps your visitors should take to solve his/her problem
Use tutorials with multiple action steps, at some point including your product
Use videos to demonstrate product uses
Above all, no matter what strategy you decide to use, keep your site's navigation clear and simple. Make it obvious what your reader needs to do, and make it easy for him to do it. Use clear, user-friendly conversion actions to move people forward and land them on that buy button on your merchant's page.
To Blog or Not to Blog and Other Questions
A Closer Look at the Blogosphere
What is the blogosphere, really? It's a place where anyoneman, woman, child, or automated feed scrapercan slap up templates or build a site of their own and update it with useful(?) information or tales of their weekly shopping trips to their hearts content. It's both a powerful tool utilized by businesses and websites on a daily (or more often) basis and a running personal diary put up online for all to see. The blogosphere is filled with experts and novices, and people who think they are experts who are really novices.
As such, blogs can be a boon or a bust to your affiliate program. Nevertheless, they are being touted as the fastest, easiest, most simplistic way to promote affiliate products and generate sales. But are they? Let's explore both sides of this issue.
The Bene's of Blogging
The up-side. Let's take a look at what we've got; blogging is
Easy to get started
Cheap to get started
An easy place to put up relevant information that can really have value for your readers
A place where you can utilize the community aspects such as commenting to hold virtual conversations with your readers
A place where you can potentially build long-term relationships with your readers, which in turn can boost return sales and add to the lifetime value of that customer
A place where you can feature, in detail and in depth, any singular product you want
A simple way to update content to get on the good side of search engines
That's quite a list of benefits in the argument for blogging. Truthfully, blogging isor can be, has the potential to beall of these things and probably more. A blog can be a very good way to sell an affiliate product. But there are a lot of other things that blogs are, too, and many of these qualities do not fit into the grander scheme of affiliate websites. So before we decide on whether to blog or not to blog, let's looks at the flip side of the coin.
Why Blogging Might be a Bust
Many of the very things that make blogging a 'natural' choice for affiliate promotions are what make blogging the wrong way to effectively market as an affiliate.
First of all, let's take on the very blogosphere itself. It's a crowded place. It is true that the blogosphere is filled with a variety of interests, and holds something for everyone, but in the midst of all that interest, it's increasingly hard to be found. Even the best, most prolific, and most dedicated bloggers take months and years to build a solid following. A blog is absolutely not the place to go for instant traffic.
The community aspect of blogging can be great, but couldn't it also be a bust? All that commenting and free-for-all outside commentary might work against you and discredit you. And you need to think about how valuable that following is. This will largely depend on your spectrum of product offerings. If you have a variety of products that a customer might want to come back for, or an upgradeable product suite, staying in touch with buyers could be a great thing. If your product is more of a one-time-only purchase, there's probably no recouping the time investment you will incur.
Content refreshment is one of the biggest recognized benefits of blogging. You can post quickly and easily everyday and thereby please those search engines and hungry blog-followers with new content. There's no denying that. But you need to think this throughhow much can you come up with to say about your products? Can you keep your products upfront on a blog? How many times can you spin it? And most importantly, what happens when your well of topics dries up? Those search engines and readers will be waiting for more, and you'll be grasping for new post ideas.
It's easy to get a blog started and keep it running for a few months, but Super Affiliate kind of income demands that you construct a more long-term plan. Theoretically a blog is a long-term prospect, but without something new to say, one can only live so long.
We also need to tackle the issue of being able to feature multiple products. This flies right in the face of the discussion we just had in the last chapter, doesn't it? By doing that, you're dividing your forces and taking the focus away from your top-seeded efforts. You've created a marketplace of confusion, and you've made it hard to figure out what the rightsimplesolution is.
We also need to talk about blogs from a structural standpoint. Unless you can build your own blog (and even if you can this is tough), blogs and templates do not allow for a high level of flexibility. There is a basic structure, and it is very hard to add the buttons and features in the places you need them to be. Consider, too, that sometimes the structure and design you've worked so hard for may be impacted (rearranged) by the length and amount of your postings.
Now it might sound like we're completely anti-blogging for affiliate programs, but that's not exactly the case. Let's wrap this discussion up by looking at how a blog might still be a useful tool.
To Sum it all Up
Blogs are not horrible things. They are not the bane of the affiliate. But there is too much about a blog that makes it unmanageable as a sole selling agent for affiliate products.
To be clear, we are not entirely against blogging. There is a place for those who enjoy it, and a usefulness that can certainly boost affiliate sales. But that place is secondary to the structure we've already outlined here. As are the sales that you will generate though a blog.
The distance that you get from a blog, even given their many benefits, is not worth the investment of time and effort; not from the standpoint of your primary selling tool. Rather, you would be better off relegating a blog to a secondary feeder-source of traffic and revenue.
It takes a lot of constant, dedicated work to be a blogger and to maintain a blog consistently in the way that will net these benefits for you. Blogging is a lot of hard workand it never ends, or your income stream will. And plain and simply, that's just not what being a Super affiliate is about. Being a Super Affiliate is not about working hard for your money, it's about working moderately hard for a few weeks, and then riding the coattails of your success. It's about minimum maintenance. And a blog is not that. Blogging is a way to make some money as an affiliate, but it's not the Super Affiliate way.
In summation, if you enjoy blogging go for it! But don't make it the focus of your affiliate business plan.
Other Options that can Pay Off More
Hopefully we haven't dashed your dreams too hard of being a big success by blogging your way to big affiliate sales. But you came here to learn how to be a Big Dog Super Affiliate, not to find out how to make trickling sales; so we have to give it to you straight.
Recognizing that we may have just put a big dent in your game plan, let us redeem ourselves by offering you some sage advice. Let's talk about how your blogging efforts might be better spent for bigger sales and returns on your time investment.
Website & Content
The obvious choice would be to put that effort into your website and content. You can achieve the same results by simply refreshing the content of your website. You can add to its archives and additional resources sections (without muddying the primary pages we established before), and still give current information and additional value to your customers and to the search engines.
Not only can you add additional content, but you can test and tweak and change the content you have and test it against past versions. As you'll learn, even very small, seemingly insignificant changes can really make a big difference to traffic and conversions. Spend the time you would spend posting on a blog to look for ways that you can tweak or enhance your website.
And don't forgetyou've got that master site to build. Instead of devoting time to a minimal-return blog, why not get started on your big catch-all so that you can dominate your niche traffic?
Articles, Articles and More Articles
All the articles you write, or hire out to a freelance writer to have written, do not need to be posted on your website. In fact, they shouldn't be. Use those primary articles and tutorials on your site, add some new stuff now and again to keep everyone happy, and then submit to article directories. Utilize profile and link capabilities to link back to your website, the authority on Widgets. (You might know this method by other popular names, like "Bum Marketing" or "Article Marketing.")
Subscriber Lists and Mailings
This is something you need to take some care with. Subscriber lists are not recommended for all types of products; leastwise, building your list through squeeze pages isn't recommended for everyone. For many sites, the presence of a squeeze page between the website and merchant offer will only turn the visitor of, and send them packing to the next, less demanding provider.
Still, there are ways to make subscriber lists work. If your product lends itself to this type of sales, then spend time crafting great emails and marketing campaigns instead.
Social Marketing
Social marketing is what is driving web 2.0. Instead of spending your time on a new blog people may or may not eventually find, spend it on the blogs of others who've already captured your audience. Become a contributing member of the community, make some friends, and use your wit and wisdom to get people to click on your name, link, or profile and visit your website. Do the same by creating pages on social websites like Facebook & Twitter; frequent forums and other places where potential buyers may gather.
By engaging in social marketing, you're bringing your products to the masses, rather than waiting for them to find you. It's a much more active approach, and one that can be tailored to offer that all-important focus your affiliate plan needs. Not only that, but it's a lot more fun than talking to yourself on your blog, too, and you won't have to worry about maintaining it when you're off on vacation enjoying all that Big Dog affiliate cash!
Now that we've addressed the question of blogging, let's move on and talk about the one thing that dominates the internetplaying the web game to pull in the traffic.
In the next few chapters, we'll talk about how to run with the Big Dogs that run the whole showGoogle and its peers (if Google has a true peer.). Next, we'll get into the issue of search engines and optimizing to make them your friends. It's crucial to affiliate marketing, so don't miss these next few episodes.
The Google Factor
Why Search Engine Traffic Matters to You
We can't be more clear. Without search engine traffic, you have no traffic at all; none worth mentioning and certainly not enough to sustain your affiliate business.
Ninety percent or more of the traffic to your website(s) will be from search engines, primarily the big-names like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. These search engines are what will deliver hundreds or thousands of people to your virtual doorstep searching for products and information such as that you've provided.
Outside of search engines, websites generate traffic in only a few ways. These include
Links from other websites or articles
Links and addresses from traditional marketing
The occasional word of mouth exposure
All of these combined, however, only equate to about 10% of visitor traffic. And while ten percent is certainly something worth grabbing, the absolute best expenditure of your resources is optimizing for search engine traffic. (Incidentally, your efforts to optimize will put more links and exposure out there for your site to be found through the above-mentioned means, making search engine-centered development even more important.)
More importantly, the traffic that you get from a search engine is organic. That simply means that the traffic that search engines generate for you is traffic from real, live human beings out searching for a site like yours. They search for information and products to serve a need. That need may be buying, it may be learning, business promotion, problem-solving or what have you, but it all comes down to one thingthese are the people that are going online with the express purpose of finding someone like you.
Whereas those who click on links or enter your web address from a business card or some such means may just be curiosity seekers, the people coming from search engines started with a purpose, a goal in mind. And if you're good, even if that primary goal wasn't buying, you just might convince them that that's really what they were after all along, and you just might get that sale!
Some search engines matter more than others
We've established that the only way someone searching through the vast mounds of information on the internet can find you [without an address or link access] is by using a search engine. Ninety percent of visitors, perhaps more, will find you this way. But as most of us also know, there are many, many search engines out there, and not all of them are the same. A handful of search engines matter a whole lot more than the rest.
So who matters and who doesn't? In truth, everyone matters because every visitation generated by even the most obscure search engine matters. But for your purposes, you need to work to please the Big Dogs in the search world so that you get the lion's share of the searches for your targeted keywords and keyphrases.
Having said that, understand that there is only so much you can do. Follow the advice given in subsequent chapters here so that you rank well in the more popular search engine results pages (SERP's), and the rest will pretty much follow anyway.
Search engines that rule the web
Enough talking around it, let's take a look at who really matters in the search engine world.
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