You’re dead wrong if you think you know anything about being an affiliate. The simple truth is that the old rules no longer apply. If you play by the old rules, you will lose this game.

You’ve been duped

You’ve probably heard how easy it is to start an affiliate business. This is partially true. It’s far easier that developing, selling and supporting your own product. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

The cold hard truth

And to make matters worse, you’ve taught to do it the hard way. You’ve been told to find quality products. Next do some keyword research. Then buy some keyword ads that send traffic to the product. And just enjoy the commissions. But it doesn’t work.

Keywords are dead

This method worked a couple years ago. But it’s just too competitive to use keywords now. Adapt and change…

A better way

All is not lost. Here’s how to win at this game.

• Do CPA marketing instead of product promotion
• Instead of researching keywords, research demographics
• Do image ad marketing

Start using CPA marketing

CPA means Cost Per Action. It’s so much easier than promoting products. Because your visitor doesn’t have to buy anything. You earn a commission for having them perform an “action”. Like completing a survey. And it’s much easier to get them to do that.

Utilize demographics data

You’re not even going to use keywords (explained below.) Invest your research time into demographics. Once you’ve picked the CPA offer to promote. Then hop over to Quantcast.com. And find your target demographic.

Market on display networks

So far, you’ve got your CPA offer and your target demographics. You can advertise directly to them on display networks. And use images as your ads. And you don’t need to know or buy a single keyword. The biggest advantage is price. Image ad clicks are much cheaper.

In closing

This is a great way to make money fast. Because it’s free to get started in CPA. You can buy image ad clicks for a fraction of keyword ad clicks. You can laser target with demographics. And your commission is much easier to earn.

Answer this question: What’s the biggest reason millions of people log onto the internet each day? You probably already guessed that it’s to find information. Information seeking is so huge that Google alone hosts 400,000,000 searches every day! OK, so what’s it to you? It means that you have a massive opportunity to give people exactly what they’re looking for – information. And when done correctly, you can get paid for it, too!

Info marketing 101

This is by far the simplest business you can start. You develop a product that is nothing more than information. And then sell it to people who want to learn the info in it. Pretty simple, wouldn’t you say?

How do you make it work?

You’ve got the basic concept – exchange info for money. But to make it a successful business there has to be value in the info you’re selling. So step one is to discover what kind of info people want. How can you find out what people want?

One very simple method is to do a little research. Just go to Yahoo! answers or ask.com and look at the questions being asked there. Your goal is to find a common problem. That people are having trouble solving. And provide the answer – in the form of an info product.

Think about this:

If you’re concerned about information product development Put it this way: An ebook is just a series of articles. So instead of sitting down to write the whole thing. Just write some articles for your blog. And once you have bunch of good ones, refine and expand on them and voila! You’ve got an ebook.

So, what’s so great about ebooks? Funny you should ask . . . How about 7 reasons why:

1. Ease

Once it’s built it runs pretty much on it’s own. There is almost no support. Which means there nothing for you to actually *do*. It’s like having an automated cash machine.

You have no physical inventory. You don’t have to ship anything. It’s digital.

2. Repackaging

After you’ve created a few ebooks. You can put together bigger more expensive information products. It’s nothing to combine the content from several ebooks. And your new product will be able to carry a much higher sticker price. Your customers will gladly pay more for a single bigger ebook. As opposed to a bunch of little ones.

3. Resellers

Since it’s your product, you can offer other people the resale rights. This is a very popular topic right now, because it’s much easier to get the resell right than to make your own product. Plus, you can charge double, even triple your selling price for resell rights!

4. Leverage

Leverage your ebook by using the content in different ways. Use part of it to make an autoresponder series. And build your list with it. A list is it’s own reward!

5. More leverage

Don’t stop there . . . break it into several smaller reports. Then use these to generate leads for the main product. You can give them away or even charge a small amount for them. And it still benefits you because it in a lead-in for the main product. Taking this technique to the max, you can let your affiliate give the reports away for you. Affiliate, you say? Yes!

6. Affiliates

This one is huge. If you’ve got products you own. Other people can become your affiliates. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bunch of other people doing your marketing for you? You can’t do this unless you have your own product.

7. Joint Ventures

Last, but definitely not least… Setting up joint ventures is the fastest way to gain success. Period. So, I’d say this is the most important reason to have you own products. No products of your own = no way to do joint ventures.

Summing it up

If you’re not convinced to start selling information products, then you haven’t been paying attention. With your own info product you can write your own ticket. Because you’re 100% in control. So, decide to just start:

• Go to answers.yahoo.com
• See what people are asking about
• Start writing

Don’t make info product creation any more complicated than that. And in no time you’ll have an info product ready to go.

It’s undeniable that if you add audio to websites it will increase your results. If you’re not using audio on your sites, you’re making a mistake. It will boost your opt-in rate. And your sales.

But why?

It’s simple. Most of the web is cold and impersonal. It adds a human touch to your site. And makes people feel they’re dealing with a real person. In short, it makes your site come alive. Which fascinates greater interaction from your visitors.

Some more benefits

You’ll receive two immediate benefits to your bottom line when you employ the use of audio. You’ll convert more visitors into buyers. And second you’ll save money on the sales letter. You see, you’ll be able to skip the expensive copywriter. Just record some audio and add it to your site. Your honest message about your product will sell better than a professional copywriter.

You’ll also get better conversions on your list opt-ins. People need to be told exactly what to do. Just add a short audio message saying: Put your email and name into the form and submit. A simple message like this will increase your opt-in conversions by 305% or more!

How to use website audio

A welcome message on your homepage. A warm welcome can be the deciding factor. This could be all it takes to get your visitor to decide to stay.

Step-by-step instructions. The same principle the we used to boost opt-ins applies. You can use audio to tell your visitors exactly what to do. And take them all the way through buying your product.

Product testimonials are great. It’s good to get written testimonials. But what’s even better are audio testimonials. You can just make up written one and people know that. So audio adds real believability. And will definitely increase your results.

Power tip

Something you may not have thought of is using audio for the product itself. This is by far the easiest content to produce. And your customers will be very happy with the product. The great thing about audio products is people can take them with them on the go. And you can get someone to transcribe them for very little money. This is the easiest way to “write” an eBook!

How hard is adding audio?

It’s not hard at all. You can find a lot of programs that create audio buttons for you. You don’t actually have to do anything yourself. The program records and then converts the recording and generates an audio button. Simply copy the code and paste it in your site. There’s nothing to worry about.

Summary

Let’s take another look at the benefits. Using website audio will increase your conversion rates. You’ll enjoy more customer sales. You will also increase your subscriber opt-ins. And you can use it to create products and sales letters quickly. It’s a less often used medium. But audio is a really big time and money saver. Get started right now and realize instant results.

Yes affiliate marketing rocks, but it’s really hard to get started. This is because there are already a lot of people doing it. What you need to do is come up with methods no one else is using. And the sea of information about this doesn’t make it any easier. Well, here’s on simple thing you can do that will put you ahead of the game.

Video marketing

You can’t deny that video is powerful. People love watching videos and that’s why they’re everywhere. About the only thing that keeps people’s attention anymore is video. So you can put this to great advantage in your affiliate marketing.

Here are a few ideas for creating affiliate videos:

• Record your testimonial
• Record a walk-through
• Record the order process
• Do a preview video

Testimonials

It doesn’t get any easier than this. Just turn on your web cam and talk. It does not need to be polished or pro. Seeing a real person on the other end helps your viewers make a buying decision. And the mess-ups or mistakes just make the video more real. So serious, just turn on the camera and talk. And if you don’t want to show your face, use one of the next ideas.

Record a walk-through

This one is a little more subtle. You’re taking the role of teacher and showing how to use the product. And while they watch you use it, they think, “I should buy that.” If the product is useful, watching the tutorial makes them want to buy it. So, obviously, pick a good product to demo.

Do an ordering video

This one is killer! Record a video of yourself actually buying the product. Watching you make a live purchase will inspire your viewer like nothing else. In the first place it acts as social proof. In general people are more likely to something they’ve seen other people do. This also makes your viewers trust you. They are much more likely to take your advice to buy when you’ve taken it yourself. And don’t forget about the need to “keep up with the Joneses”. It’s simple – you have it. Now they want it. You can add some extra punch to this by ending with: In order to get to see the inside, you gotta buy the product.

Do a preview video

This is a great way to build value. You do a tour of the members area. You show them the entire contents of what they get. This one also helps to remove the skepticism. It’s much easier to trust they’re getting something if they actually seen it.

It’s easy!

There’s no technical knowledge required. Some very easy to use programs make the videos for you. All the work is done by the program. So you don’t have to worry about the technical part of this at all. Just focus on the benefits:

• Make more money You’ll earn more affiliate commissions when you add video. People like video, so start using it.
• Reduce refunds You’ll also have less of your commissions taken back. Now they know what they get before they purchase. So they’ll be less likely to refund.
• Outdo your competitors! This is a really easy thing to do. But only a very small percentage do it. This puts you out in front of the rest.

Get started right now and take your affiliate marketing to the next level. It’s your profit that’s affected by not taking action.

You need a list. That’s a given. It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. Once you have a list built, you can market to it again and again. It’s a resource you can tap at any time and generate income.

Now you now why. Here’s how:

There are 3 factors in list building you need to consider:

• Your Landing Page
• Your Bribe
• Your Confirmation Page

Your Landing Page – Your opt-in page is the page you send visitors to to build your list. This page is the one that asks them for their email. That’s why it needs to look like a professionally designed page. And have an easy to understand opt-in form. And your call to action must be clear!

If you fail to make a strong close, you’re wasting your efforts. This is a definitive message that tells your visitor what to do. You opt-in rates will take a dramatic nose dive without it. The funny thing is that people just don’t know what to do unless you tell them.

If you want to add some extra juice to your opt-in page add a video to it. You only have a few second to get your visitors attention – video helps! It also allows you to tell them what to do several times. And after the video, you can make it just say “fill in the form now”.

Now, don’t worry if you have no idea how to make videos. It’s very easy to hire people for a couple hundred bucks to make one for you. Or you can get email list tools that have everything pre-built for you.

Your Bribe – Next, you’ve got to figure out what your bribe is. You have to give people a compelling reason to give your their email. Most people are very protective of their email address. So you have to give them a good reason to do it.

You have to provide value in your bribe for it to be good. That means you make it something people would actually want to receive. And will be able to actually benefit from it. Here’s some examples:

• A PDF report
• Some useful software
• Training videos
• A multi-part email series

Basically, you just need some content. It’s got to be something helpful for your new subscribers. And nothing sells like “free”. If you make it good enough, they will give you their email in exchange.

Now, if you don’t know how to create the bribe don’t worry. Here again, you can hire freelancers to create this for you. Just give them a topic and they will write the content. A 5-part email series is a good freebie. Each email will cost between $20 and $25. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.

Or again, you can find complete list building packages for sale online that include an email series. There are two important things about the email series. First, it must provide value to your subscribers. And it’s nice if it earns you some money, too. Mixing some affiliate products into your email series is a great way to do this. Affiliate products are easy because you don’t have to do anything at all. And you can earn some commissions immediately from your emails.

The Opt-in Success Page – The “thank you” page is the final piece of the puzzle. After subscribing to your list, your visitor is redirected to this page. It’s a great idea to give them some valuable information right on the thank you page. This helps them feel they’ve made the right decision giving you their email. It also sets the foundation for your relationship with them. It also makes them more likely to open your emails.

This is another case where you can get a complete marketing package. Or you can do it yourself. And write it all yourself. Or pay a freelancer to write the content for you.

Summing it up

It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or go with a complete package. The key is to start building your list. Because as soon as you’ve got your own list . . . You can basically write your own meal ticket.

Why you must presell

If you want to make more money as an affiliate, you must presell.

Before we begin, we need to first define what preselling is. There are two components to it – art & science. And it’s function is to prepare your reader to buy something. Then sending them to the product sales page to make the purchase. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.

The gist is that you give your reader some useful information. Then send them to the sales page. In a second we’ll talk about how to do actually it. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Here are a few benefits of preselling:

• It builds trust – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. And the more traffic you can send to the sale page, the more commissions you’ll earn.
• It takes your reader out of defense mode – When you’re preselling vs. pitching, you’re reader doesn’t feel the need to be guarded. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
• It preps them to buy – Now they trust you and feel open to your message. And in turn, they’re open to other messages, as well. This includes the sales website you send them to! Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
• Your commissions go up – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With the guard down and trusting your recommendation. The only thing that can result is increased sales!
• It boosts customer loyalty – People like to make their own buying decisions. Versus being pitched or convinced. And this leads to greater satisfaction with the product.
• Preselling increases your bottom line – A satisfied customer doesn’t ask for a refund. And that translates to more commission staying in your affiliate business.

Obviously, it’s important to presell. You increase your profits. And produce happier customers. Everybody wins!

OK, so how do you do it?

You’ve learned the importance of preselling. And I hope you’re resolved to being preselling, too. So, it’s time to break down how it works. Like we talked about before, it’s an art. And it’s a science.

Becoming an artist

Effective preselling requires gaining your readers trust in order for them to let down their guard. This can only be accomplished by providing actual value in the information you’re presenting. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. So you send them to the product website with a hunger for more of what the product provides. Plus they’re not guarded, so they’re more open and likely to purchase the product.

Scientific preselling

You also have to include some very specific things.

First of all, it’s important HOW you present your information. You’ve got to map out your strategy before you start writing. Your goal is to sell the product you’re promoting. There are two ways to accomplish this with great content. First, you can provide useful but incomplete information. The second way is to provide all the information and let your reader discover how hard it is to actually implement it. In either case, the product you’re referring them to solves the problem for them.

But you can’t link to your affiliate link. Instead, you use a direct link to the product website. When you do this, you’re click-throughs go way up. But, without your affiliate link, how do you get credit? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You use an image tag to cookie your reader before they leave your site.

Next, you want to make sure you’re linking on related words and phrases. It’s habitual to click on words and phrases that are hyperlinked. Plus, if you link on relevant words, it only makes sense to click on there.

Using this system, you’re virtually guaranteed to increase your affiliate business success.

OK, here’s the not-so-good news:

Doing all of this right is really hard! Think about everything that goes into crafting an effective preselling article: Great content. First and foremost, you have to be able to write a great article that provides valuable information. To do that you have to have enough information to be valuable and be able to present it in a useful way. Writing to presell. Yes, you must providing useful content. You also have to present the info in a way that provides real value. While at the same time making them want more. Or make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.

Picking products. After that you have to figure out which products you want to promote. If you can manage to get the article written well. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

Techy stuff. And finally, you need the technical know-how to embed your image tag and make sure you get credit for the sale. This is actually pretty simple – just embed a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image and set your affiliate link as the “source” of the image. (Just don’t mess it up. Otherwise, you won’t get credit for your sales.)

Wrapping it up:

Now you know exactly how to presell effectively. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! It’s absolutely critical to do this every time – and to do it correctly. Please don’t be lazy. The effort it takes is well worth the benefits…

If you’ve got traffic coming to your site, you’re 99% there. The other 1% is what you do with that traffic, but if you have to traffic – you can figure out the rest. Once the visitors arrive you can have them join your mailing list, purchase a product or subscribe to your RSS feed. The most crucial aspect of this process is getting the visitors to your site.

Let’s talk about how to generate traffic…

Here’s a short list of great, free traffic generating methods:

• Web 2.0
• Article Websites
• Video Marketing

And here’s how to use each method…

Web 2.0 Methods

Web 2.0 is the name given to websites that get their content from their users. These are great sites to work with because they allow you to participate in this content creation. Because these sites get so much traffic, Google and the other search engines treat these sites with greater importance in their algorithms. The benefit of this to you is that your content is now considered as part of these sites. By placing links to your websites in this content you’ve created, you get traffic from the site and search engine ranking for the keywords you choose. That’s the real benefit of adding content to this sites – search engine ranking means ongoing free traffic. Getting free web 2.0 traffic is a big topic that we’ll discuss more later. This is good overview of the reason to get into it, though.

Article Websites

Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. Article sites are in essence web 2.0 websites. Just like web 2.0 sites, article websites allow you to upload your own content – as articles. Just as with the other web 2.0 sites, having your content included gives you immediate traffic and search engine ranking. And in addition to this, other users can take your article and place it on their own website. And because the terms of the directory say they have to include your “resource box” you get links back from all these other sites, too. If you want to generate traffic from articles follow these steps:

• Figure out what keywords you want to go after
• Write your article for the keywords you’ve chosen
• Hyperlink these keywords to your website – both in the content of the article and in your author’s info section.

Video Marketing

And finally, we need to talk about getting traffic from videos. Once again, this is really a sub-set of web 2.0. So, just like article marketing, video marketing enables you to add content to authority sites. And if all that wasn’t enough, you also stand a much stronger chance of getting a high search engine ranking for the keywords you want with video than you do with text-based content.

Here’s how to get free traffic using video…

• Set up your YouTube account
• Turn off all the modules in your account profile
• Put relevant “tags” in your profile
• Include a link to your main site in your profile
• Upload at least 1 video
• In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Summary:

If you take action on the items listed here you’ll have free traffic in no time.

Let’s talk about niche selection. This is very important to ensuring the profitability of your membership website.

First – Look for Fanatics

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you’re looking for because they are so enthusiastic they’re willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. OK, so we know what a fanatic is, but how do we find them?

• Here’s something you may not have considered – magazines! We’re so internet-based these days, it’s easy to forget about them. Because it’s becoming harder and harder to keep print periodicals profitable these days, if you see a magazine on the shelves, you know it’s making money. And that means there are lots of people interested in it. That doesn’t mean definitely that it will make a good membership business, but it’s a good starting point.
• You’ve got lots of opportunities every day to see what people are interested in. Just pay attention to what people talk about on the radio, at social gatherings, at the store or restaurants and anywhere in public. If people are talking about something, they probably want to know more about it. And this means there may be a market for information about it.
• Conventions, clubs, and organizations. Once again, if there are enough people interested in a topic to create a club or organization, then there are enough people to build a membership business around it. By the same token, if enough people are interested to hold a convention on a certain topic, you can definitely find enough people to build a membership business around that same topic.
• What about your interests and hobbies? There’s a good chance that others are interested in these things, as well. Making money is fun and it’s even more fun if you can do it in a niche you’re excited about.
• Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. This service shows you the current most popular search terms. These are the things people are actively searching for in Google. They’re searching because they want information. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.

Next – Figure out if there’s money in it

Once you found a potential niche or topic to center your membership site around, you need to figure out if you can actually make any money in it. The quickest way to find out is to determine if others are profiting in your potential niche.

Here’s how to determine if you can make money in your chosen niche

• Find out if there are blogs or forums related to it. Just search Google for “YourNiche blog” & “YourNiche forum” and see what comes up. This lets you know there is a market (a group of people actively interested in the niche.)
• Search Amazon, Google shopping and eBay to see if people are creating and selling products in the niche. If other people are creating and selling products in this niche, it means there is money to be made.
• Look at Google Adwords for the same ads are running over time. If people are running the same ad over time it means they are making money in the niche. They would not continue to spend money on the ads if there were not making a return from them.

Finally – Figure out your barrier to entry

OK, so you found a hot topic and you know other people are making money on it. Will you be able to get involved and do the same? Here are some things to look at to figure this out:

• Product types. What kind of products are being sold in the niche? You’re looking for a niche that sells info products. Membership websites based on information are the easiest to start and maintain.
• Competition. How many other people are trying to sell to this market? You want to start in a market that’s not completely saturated with competitors.
• Unless the market is just so big that it doesn’t matter how many competitors there are, you want to limit the competition. So evaluate the size vs. the competition.
• Market readiness. Are people ready to buy? Are the receptive to marketing messages? Some niches are made up of people who require lots information and have a very long lead time, and some markets are filled with people who will spend lots of money right now.

Putting it all together

OK, now that you’ve figured out what niche you’re going to go into. Determined there is money to be made and that the competition is not too strong to break into it. You’re ready to start your membership business. If you’ve followed along with these steps you’re success in practically guaranteed. The only thing left to cover is exactly how to run your membership business…

We have all made the mistake before, hiring expensive web designers that end up being no more helpful than a free website that you could have found online.

There’s a cool tool I found that will give you the instant ability to create and embed all types of graphics that are fully loaded with your text and customizations for any web page or blog online. The all-in-one system gives you the power to create sales graphics for all your web pages.

The best part is all of your graphics are saved online, and when you edit them they update live no matter where you have uploaded your embed code. This will save a lot of time, if you’ve ever had to update your graphics then you know what I mean.

Ready to fire your web designer and starting graphics in seconds? It’s really that simple. Period.

There is nothing more to it. Just download your copy, upload to your FTP and create unlimited graphics that are guaranteed to convert and look 100x better than other mucher harder to edit graphic templates available online.

Check out the SalesGraphicsPro creator for easy salespage graphics.

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List building has become a popular tool used by online marketers to get more subscribers to increase the likelihood of making more sales. This article gives basic information about list building so as to help you understand how this can help you in your business.

What exactly does list building entail and how can it help online marketers get more subscribers? List building is essentially collecting the names and e-mail addresses of your potential customers through your company website. As you may have noticed, some websites have a small box that asks people to register their e-mail addresses so they can receive the newsletter or something similar, such as information about promos, product launches, and such. To make it more enticing for customers to sign up to their mailing list, a lot of online marketers offer freebies to those who will be subscribing to their lists, such as free products, e-books, discounts on their products, and other such goodies to increase their interest in joining the mailing list.

Once your subscribers have registered to the mailing list, you can then send them information relevant to your niche. Common content of mailing list messages include informative articles about or related to the products and services of the seller, promos, discounts, and launches of their own products, and other such information that is relevant to what the website offers.

List building is a great tool in marketing, because you are targeting the people who are already interested in your product, as opposed to shoving advertisements down peoples throats, regardless of whether they want to buy what you’re selling or not. The key is to keep your customers’ interest so as to build their trust and make it more likely for them to avail of the products and services that you’re offering.

Click here if you’re interested in finding a list building tool that can help you get more subscribers quickly and easily

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