Affiliate Marketing on the Internet
Affiliate marketing isn't a job. It's a business opportunity. That means that there is unlimited moneymaking potential. But it also means that how much you make is proportional to how much work you put into it. That doesn't mean that you have to make it a full-time effort, but it does mean that you have to keep working at it. It's easy money, relatively speaking, but just signing up for a program and putting up a link or two doesn't guarantee instant income.
Whether you want to make a living doing nothing but affiliate marketing or are looking to generate a steady supplemental income, you must be willing to dedicate a certain amount of your time to it. And this is a big part of the reason why income varies so significantly between affiliates. Some believe that if they choose a program that performs well for others that the products will sell themselves, but it just doesn't work that way.
If you understand that being a successful affiliate requires commitment, you're ahead of the game. But it's still quite possible that you're not making as much as you'd like to, despite your best efforts. There are certain traits that so-called super affiliates possess that allow them greater earning potential. Some of these are:
They include affiliate marketing activities in their schedule. Telling yourself that you'll spend a certain number of hours a week working on it is nice, but if you don't set aside time specifically for that purpose, there's a good chance that you won't get around to it. Whether they decide to spend 2 or 20 hours a week on affiliate marketing, super affiliates pencil it in on their calendars and stick to it.
They're not afraid to spend some money. You can become an affiliate for free, but if you're serious about bringing in regular income, you'll probably need to invest a little cash into it. Super affiliates realize this, and they have no qualms about spending on site building, pay per click campaigns and other promotional efforts.
They understand the importance of keeping an eye on their stats. Knowing how many visitors your sites are getting, how many people are clicking on your affiliate links, and how many are buying is crucial to your success as an affiliate. It will alert you to strategies that aren't working so that you can replace them with strategies that do. Super affiliates check their stats often and use that information to fine-tune their efforts.
They are eager to learn. As the Internet evolves, so does affiliate marketing. New techniques and applications are coming out all the time, and if you ignore them, you could be left behind. Super affiliates understand that you can't learn it all in one sitting. Even if you were to learn everything there is to know about affiliate marketing today, there will be something new to learn tomorrow.
They don't mind taking risks. Just because the tried and true stuff is working, that doesn't mean that they won't attempt something new.
If you possess these traits, there's not much standing in the way of you making a nice passive income. If you don't, work on them. Without them, all the tips and techniques in the world won't be much help. The good news is that it's primarily a matter of attitude, and that's something you can always change if you want to badly enough.
What makes Big Dog Affiliates different?
The one factor that separates the Super Affiliates from the restthe people making stipend money with affiliate programs, or who never see any income as affiliates at allis perseverance. While it is possible to start seeing a respectable residual income in short time, it is not very realistic to make an entire living off it that quickly. It takes time to see results as an affiliate, and takes effort to put all the pieces in place so that your affiliate program can start making money without you there. Once that is done, You certainly can be a Super Affiliate making great money for only a few hours of work here and there.
Most people fail as affiliates because they do one of two things wrong; either,
They don't do any work preliminarily, or
They don't give it enough time
But if you are willing, able, and prepared to put in some work in the beginning, and willing to stick it out, you will be able to replace your income, or to build your income, and you will be able to sustain that income on just a few hours of work.
Now that you know there are people out there making money as affiliates, you might be asking why you personally should consider becoming an affiliate, and why you should put the time, money, and effort into being a Super Affiliate marketer.
We'll start with the most expendable reasonmoney. Why invest your hard-earned cash into building a business as an internet marketer? Quite simply, because building an affiliate business is one of the absolute least expensive businesses you could be in.
But what about websites and hosting costs? Those can be had for free as well. And should you choose to upgrade to a more flexible and higher quality site, you can do that for very little money (and this you really should do). Even if you're not a programmer, or know nothing at all about creating websites, coding, and everything behind the scenes of website building, you can have a website with user-friendly (read, no technological expertise needed) templates for fewer than ten dollars per month. That is no lie. These sites are out there. A couple of popular ones that come to mind are GoDaddy.com and HostGator.com, but there are many others, and many newcomers looking to serve this in-demand market, too (some that are even hosting affiliate programs!).
Time
People probably complain most about a lack of money when starting a new business; lack of time is the next most common complaint that would-be Super Affiliate use to reason against committing to affiliate businesses. You just don't have the time to dedicate to starting a business from scratch. Well maybe not if you're re-inventing the wheel, but affiliate marketing doesn't work that way.
There are a myriad of tools available for affiliates. Know the tools to use that will help you make money, and you severely reduce the amount of time needed to get your new venture up and running. But we get ahead of ourselves. Because the point moreover is that the companies who want you to be their affiliates have done most of the work for you. They've written the ads, crafted the code, designed the graphics, and in many cases built complete affiliate websites. All you have to do is find somewhere to host them so that people can find your links and click through to buy from your ads so that you get a percentage of those sales. All you have to do is put the right product at the right place at the right time. Of course, there are ways to do this so that sales are made, and that is really what this book is about. But rest assured that you can make the time to build a successful affiliate business. You can do it an hour at a time or days at a time. Whatever time you can allocate is time that will bring you income through affiliate sales.
Effort
We won't kid you. You do have to put in some effort in order to enjoy easy money through internet sales. You won't be putting in as much effort, say, as the guy who is hand-weaving organic wool blankets and then trying to sell them on the web, but you will have to put some real, focused effort into being an affiliateat first.
Much of the time and effort that is required is only in the beginning. Once you've built your platform and learned the basics, you need only to maintain. So it may take twenty hours of solid work (an hour at a time or a day at a time) to get you there, but then all you have to do is maintain. Once you've hit the level of maintenance, that's where you can really relax. Sit back, enjoy yourself, and be lazy like the Super Affiliates. Dedicate a few hours a week to maintaining the income stream and traffic that you've gained, and cash your affiliate checks as they come rolling in.
What does every dog want from life? The freedom to have a good time. What is freedom? Today, freedom is usually having the flexibility to run your job around your life, not have your life run around your job. That is something you definitely can do as a Super Affiliate. There's no greater level of flexibility than a business that runs itself. And that is the beauty of the internet. It's why everyone wants to be in an e-business. Because it's never off, and the potential for earnings are always on; and you can attend to it when you want, not when a boss or a client demands.
Income Potential
The income potential of affiliate marketing is virtually limitless. The more time, effort, and resources you want to put into it, the more money you can make with it. But better yet, you can make the big money without too much of that. Why else be in this business? Isn't it about the easy money? The big sell and big checks for short hours? It certainly is. When you learn how the Super Affiliates do it, you can be making the bigger, better, easier bucks, too. And then if you're feeling energetic, you can go for more. That also requires knowing the right tools and right products that you personally can utilize to make money on the web. That requires reading the rest of this book and finding out what those are.
Summing it up
To sum it up, you should consider affiliate marketing for these reasons:
Affiliate marketing is a low-cost (possibly no-cost) business to be in
Affiliate marketing requires limited effort, taking up limited amounts of your time
With the flexibility of affiliate business, you're in control
For your limited time, money, and effort, you can make unlimited income
Can we give you more reasons? Probably, but you get the drift, so let's get on to more important things.
Success Stories
As if our reason weren't good enough, we'll tempt you with an overview of affiliate success stories.
These stories abound on the internet. You can find them anywhere. They come from people young and old.
Often the old are those who got in when the getting was really good and perfected the art of affiliate marketing. These are the people who did invent the affiliate wheel, the experts you are learning from todaythe original Super Affiliates.
The young that we see are those smart enough to know that there is easy money to be made on the internet. They were raised in a computer culture, and knew from very early on that there was no reason for them to work hard and long for their money the way their parents did. So they didn't.
We see guys like Jason Calacanis making upwards of $3,000 per day with simple programs like Google AdSense, which your seven-year-old could help you use; or the guys and girls making a more than comfortable living by using affiliate tools like Commission Junction, or with big-name affiliates like eBay. And then we see the people who aren't using big-name associations at all, that are just marketing the small, but much-needed programs people are searching for.
They do it on websites and blogs, on forums and in emails. They do it virtually everywhere on the web, and they do make big money. We won't bore you here with names of people you have no interest in knowing, but we can tell you unequivocally that these people are out there. Google 'affiliate success stories' and you'll have more than the proof you need.
Selecting the Right Niche for You
Debunking the Myths About Niche Selection
One of the absolute most prolific pieces of advice for prospective affiliates is to work within their passionsto find their niche market in an area of personal interest and stay with it. While there is a place for niche marketing in affiliate marketing, it is not what you have been led to believe that it is. For sure, "work within your personal niche" is one of the worst pieces of advice given to new entrepreneurs, and the cause of multitudes of affiliate failures.
Do what interests you
Do what interests you; find your niche; do what you are passionate about; sell the products that interest you the most
These are the pieces of advice that entrepreneurs are told time and again. And there is some basis to this thought, some method behind this madness.
The overall belief is that if you choose to do business in an area or 'niche' that you are deeply interested in, that passion will shine through and you will make sales almost accidentally. The feeling is that by selling products or working within your most favorite niche you will have a built-in sense of urgency and desire that will compel you to work on your business and to succeed.
Moreover, by working within a niche category of personal interest you will come prepared. That is, you will come armed with bucket loads of knowledge and experiences with various products so that you don't have to 'waste time' getting up to speed. You'll already know the products that deserve promotion. And you'll know all the promotional background information almost off the top of your head.
The belief is that if you focus on promoting products that are in some way of interest to you, you can easily take care of business. You can construct websites that will sell the products; you can write articles to submit to directories and gain links back to you, the niche expert; you can build blog upon blog and never run out of something great to say about your favorite little widget that so transformed your life as a widget collector (whether you should or not, is another matter, and we'll discuss that later).
Here's the thing about thisnone of it is untrue.
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What's wrong with passion?
The reasoning against personal niche concentration is more simplistic than you might think. And in point of fact, there are some exceptions to the rule, which we can touch upon after you understand why the myth in general is a myth.
Then cut to the chase already, right? What's wrong with doing something you are passionate about?
There is nothing truly wrong with it. But there is something unprofitable about it in an overwhelmingly large percentage of cases. What is unprofitable about this mindset is that it is just too limiting. By choosing your business and products based on one personal preference, you lose the freedom of choice. And that freedom is important, because it is what allows you to give buyers what they want, and saddles you with a limited number of affiliate product options, most of the time in a niche that isn't seeing very high demand.
Very simply, unless your niche interest happens to be in products or subject areas that coincide with what people are ready to buy, it does not come with the most essential element of affiliate marketing successbuilt-in customers.
Instead of focusing on the niche products, you need to focus on the products that can and do sell. At least if you want to be one of the Super Affiliates in internet marketing you do. If you want to make the big commission checks and the easy, sell-themselves-while-I'm-in-the-tropics kind of sales the Super Affiliates do, you have to think less about what you want to talk about and more about what customers want to hear.
The other factor you must consider is sustainability. When you do choose a niche, choose one with staying power. Choose one that can be recycled over and overthat will continue to elicit demand again and again. That will lend itself to up-selling with other products and/or upgrades. And while you do that, focus on how you sell, not only what you sell, so that you can re-use what you learn. That way, you can continue to be a Super affiliate success well into the future (say, to retirement?) even as products and affiliate programs come and go.
If by now you are concerned and thinking, "Great. Now I just don't know what to sell, and I thought I had it all figured out" don't worry. This book is here to re-train you and teach you to sell and make easy money the way the Super Affiliates do. Not the way the people making trickles and dabs of affiliate money do, the way the people living off affiliate commissions do. And to that end, we will certainly clarify for you how to identify the products that will sell. In fact, we'll do that shortly. But first, let's take away another fear.
But I'm no expert
Okay, so now that we've dismissed the thought of selling niche products that you like, and taken away your automatic level of comfort with your product, we need to talk about how to correct that problem for you, yes?
It is a lot easier to sell something you know and love, surely. It is easierat least in the beginningto build marketing and pre-sales around a product you have an interest in; meaning, if you are already an expert in "widgetta obscura" you could probably sit down and in one afternoon draft a complete website full of content on the matter. And if you choose another product, say an in-demand high seller that you know next to nothing about, you'll have to do some research before you can belt out that content.
You'll have to become an expert all over again.
There. You've just been given the answer. Did you see it? Become an expert. Just as you were not born an expert in widgets, just as you became an expert through study and use, you can do the same thing for any product that with excellent consumer demand.
All that it takes to become an expert is some time spent reading, and eventually using your products. You can become an authority. You can become whatever type of expert you want to be. And trust us when we say that you want to be the expert who knows the products with ready-to-buy consumers.
That being said, there is something more to consideryou don't really need to be an expert to be an effective affiliate! By default it is quite likely you'll become one over time, but in the meantime all you need to do is let your parent affiliate program do the work for you! All the information and ordering and purchasing tools are already there for you. Your job is just to get your people to them so that they can buy. And believe us when we say that if you target the right markets, they're likely to come with plenty of information anyway!
The exceptions to the rule
We did say there would be exceptions to the rule of choosing a niche that interests you. That exception is very simple, and we won't spend a lot of time on it here.
The exception to the rule is that if you happen to love a product that people are clambering to buy, go for it! Jump in now while the getting is good. Consider yourself lucky.
The other exception is your personal interest. If you feel a burning desire to promote a product within your niche to suit your own personal fancy, go for that, too! There are no rules to what you can and cannot sell. You can be an internet marketer of a multitude of vastly different products in all sorts of niches. In fact, that's probably a good idea. There is no one perfect niche, there are many. Open up your options, do your fanciful thing on the side, but plan to make your money the way the Super Affiliates doby selling the right products that require the least amount of effort on their part.
How to Spot a Moneymaker When You See One
Fine. You can accept that you can't make it big selling your widgets to the five other people who love widgets. You accept that you have to look for the product that is in demand, with buyers ready to click that "buy" button. So how do you know which products to choose?
This is where your affiliate tools come in. This is where targeted product research comes in. This is also where SEO and keyword research starts to come into the picture, but the details of each of those will come in their due time, in their own, dedicated chapters.
What you need to do to spot a moneymaker is find out what is selling and what is not. Go to affiliate sites like Click Bank and Commission Junction. Utilize the marketplace tools there and find out what products are performingwhich products other affiliates are making money with. Start there, but go further. Consider the whole picture before you decide on the right affiliate products for you.
Go to these sites, and look at the market reports. Don't just start with a top keyword search; find out what is sellingnot just what is getting traffic hits. Compare products in your chosen category against each other. See which products are outperforming the others, and then go from there. Build your website and your affiliate program around that product. Then use your keyword analysis in the most productive way (as we'll show you).
Here's the trick, though. You don't want to just grab the first products you see with the highest traffic generations. Traffic in and of itself means very little. You want the products that are actually convertingthat are turning into sales. So even if a products gets thousands of hits a day, but only a couple of those hits convert to purchases, it is probably not the product that will generate the kind of easy, hands-off sales you want. A product with only a hundred (or fewer) hits per day that converts at a much higher rate would actually do much better. It's the conversion and sales that you need to know, not just the traffic generated by searches.
What sells and what doesn't
Sometimes these statistics are things that you can find through the marketplace tools on affiliate lead sites. Not always, though, and some sites are better at it than others, so you need to look at the proven factors that are more likely to result in sales. The trick to this is really in knowing a bit about the psychology of buyers, and then using that to guide your efforts at SEO and marketing (but more on that later).
First off understand that there are basically only two types of buyers of interest to you; they are
Buyers who are researching products, and
Buyers who need a product (or feel they need a product) because they need a solution to a problem (or think buying solves a problemsometimes the problem is simple want)
Are there other types of traffic-generators out there? Sure. But most of them are not buyers who are ready or nearly ready to buy. So that kind of traffic is essentially fluff. It looks good on your site meter, but it doesn't make you money. So it's not worth your time and effort.
This is where keyword research really comes into play. Effective keyword research will target those buyers ready to buy, rather than those just looking around. We'll break that down in later chapters.
It may seem as though we've gotten a bit away from the issue of niche selection. Really, though, it's all intertwined. To choose your niche since you're not choosing on interest alone you will need to know how to choose the niches that can perform. You need to know how to spot the moneymakers, using your market tools.
Now that you know your niche, we can start setting up your business. We can go on to formulating a game plan and carving out your piece of the market action.
Formulating the Right Game Plan
Getting Your Site Up, Running, and Making Money
Getting affiliate links is the easy part. Having a place to host themnow that's a little more involved. Having a place to host them where people will convert to buyersthat's even more work. You need to create a place where people can find you, where they'll want to come for information or assistance, and where they'll leave only to go complete the sale (even though they may not realize they are 'leaving'). Nevertheless, it can be done. But before you do anything, you need to structure a game plan. You need to write the plan that gives you all the potential for selling that you need.
We won't go into detail about how and where to get an actual website that's information you can find out easily enough and quite possibly already have. We'll throw out a couple of names like GoDaddy and Host Gator, but also know that there are numerous hosts and website building templates ranging from the freebie that came with your ISP to being your own host. The only point you need to know is that anyone can build a workable, attractive website; and even if it's not the best looking on the block, if it's built so that traffic can come, they will.
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