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Posts tagged internet marketing
Affiliate Marketing Revised
Aug 21st
OK, forget everything you know about affiliate marketing. The tactics of the past few years just don’t work anymore. You need to adapt and change or perish.
The promise
You’ve probably heard how easy it is to start an affiliate business. Well, that’s true . . . to a point It’s far easier that developing, selling and supporting your own product. But “easier” doesn’t mean “easy”.
The bad news…
And to make matters worse, you’ve taught to do it the hard way. You’ve been told to find quality products. Next to look for easy keywords to target. Then buy some keyword ads that send traffic to the product. And sit back and collect the profits. But it doesn’t work.
Don’t bother with keywords
There was a time when this worked. But keywords are too expensive now. It’s time for a paradigm shift.
A better way
There’s still hope. Here’s a new method that works!
- Start using CPA marketing
- Utilize demographics data
- Do image ad marketing
Start using CPA marketing
CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It’s so much easier than promoting products. Because your visitor doesn’t have to buy anything. Your commission is generated when they complete an “action”. Like completing a survey. Which is much easier than getting them to buy something.
Utilize demographics data
You’re not even going to use keywords (explained below.) So spend your time doing demographics research. First you select your CPA offer. Next, you go to Quantcast.com. And research what kinds of people will be interested.
Do image ad marketing
So you know what your promoting and you know who will be interested. You can target these exact demographics on display networks. Using image ads. No keywords required. The biggest advantage is price. Image ad clicks are much cheaper.
Summary
This is truly a quick cash concept. Because you can start CPA marketing for free. Image ads are cheap. You can use demographics to target your ideal prospect. And you get paid for having them take a simple action.
7 reasons why you MUST have your own info product
Aug 6th
Consider this: What is the number one reason people get online everyday? You probably already guessed that it’s to find information. Google alone serves up 400 million searches per day! Why should you care? It means that you have a massive opportunity to give people exactly what they’re looking for – information. And to earn some cash for doing it!
Info marketing 101
First, understand that this is the simplest kind of business there is. You create a product that provides information. And other people buy this product to get the info. Sounds simple enough, right?
But how does it all work?
You’ve got the basic concept – exchange info for money. However, to succeed you’ve got to provide information people want. So the key is to figure out what people want. How do figure that out?
One very simple method is to do a little research. Head over to ask.com or Yahoo! answers and look at the questions being asked there. You want to find something a lot of people are asking about. For things that are causing people discomfort. Then just give them the answer in your ebook.
Think about this:
If you’re worried about how to write and ebook. Consider this: An info product is just a bunch of articles strung together. So instead of sitting down to write the whole thing. Just write some articles for your blog. And when you’ve got a few finished, flesh them out, add to them and combine them into a single ebook.
Why info products? Funny you should ask . . . Here are 7 reasons for you:
1. Simplicity and 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*. You’re building a completely automated business.
You don’t have any inventory. There’s nothing to ship. Your business is 100% digital.
2. Repurposing
After you’ve created a few ebooks. You can just combine them into a more expensive product. It’s very easy to package multiple ebooks together as one new one. Then you can sell it for a lot more. There’s greater perceived value in a single big course. Versus multiple smaller ones.
3. Resale rights
When you own the product, you can sell resell rights to it. This is a very popular topic right now, because most people simply don’t have the time, money and effort it takes to create their own products. And what’s more 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. These reports can then become lead generators for your ebook. You can make these low cost or even free. And you’re creating targeted leads for your main product all along. And if you’re really clever, you’ll let your affiliate use these reports as marketing tools. Affiliate, you say? Yes!
6. Affiliates
This one is huge. When you own your own products. Other people can become your affiliates. Imagine having 100′s or 1000′s of other people promoting your products. You’ve got to have your own products to have affiliates.
7. Joint Ventures
I’ve saved the best for last. Joint ventures are the biggest short cut to success known to man. So, I’d say this is the most important reason to have you own products. Without your own products, you can’t do JVs.
Summary
If you can’t see the power of info product marketing, then you’ve probably been sleeping. You are the master of your destiny. Because it’s your business and you control it. So, don’t waste any more time:
- Head over to Yahoo! answers
- See what people are asking about
- Write about the answers
Don’t make info product creation any more complicated than that. And in no time you’ll have an info product ready to go.
Using Web Audio for Success
Aug 4th
It would be hard to argue against the fact that adding audio to a website increases your overall results. If you don’t have audio in your arsenal, you’re missing out. Adding it raises your opt-in conversions. Audio increases sales.
Why does it work?
It’s simple. The web is mostly silent. Audio adds a human quality to your site. And adds the feel of a real live person. In short, it makes your site come alive. And this aliveness creates more interaction with your visitors.
Some more benefits
There are actually two profit boosts from using audio. You will close more sales. Secondly, you will not have to spend as much to make the sales. Instead of having to pay a professional to write you a great sales letter. Simply record an audio message yourself. Your visitors will respond better to a heart-felt message from you than some fancy copywriting.
You’ll get more subscribers, too. Most people need to be led by the hand. Just add a short audio message saying: Enter your email address in the form. Just this one simple thing will boost opt-ins up to 315%!
How to use website audio
Add a welcome to my site message on your main page. Most people abandon a website within just a few seconds. Grabbing their attention like this helps you keep them on your site.
Step-by-step instructions. It’s the same as when you use audio to increase your subscribers. Use an audio message to lead your visitors through a process. Use this to lead them through the ordering process, as well.
Get testimonials for your services and products. Written testimonials are good. But what’s even better are audio testimonials. It’s much hard to fake an audio testimonial. Using audio makes it much more believable. Which boosts your sales for sure.
Here’s a bonus tip
What about creating an entire product using audio? You’ll be able to produce audio products faster than any other kind. And it still has a high perceived value. Podcasts are still popular, so this is a great format. Plus you can get them transcribed cheap. This is the easiest way to “write” an eBook!
Is adding audio hard?
It’s not hard at all. There are quite a few audio streaming software programs out there. There’s no knowledge required on your part. The software creates the audio button code for you. You just copy and paste into your website. So don’t let this stop you.
In closing
Here’s a recap of the benefits. Putting streaming audio on your site will boost all your results. You’ll enjoy more customer sales. You’ll get more subscribers. And don’t forget that you can easily create sales pages and products in a flash. No many people are doing this. But you’ll save a lot of time and money. Start using it today and you’ll be glad you did.
Sneaky Affiliate Tricks
Aug 1st
It is extremely difficult to get started in affiliate marketing. This is because there are already a lot of people doing it. The challenge is to try and outdo other affiliates and think of ways to do a better job promoting. There’s also a lot of information out there about how to do affiliate marketing, so it can be confusing. But here’s one tip that almost no one is talking about.
Marketing with video
The power of video is undeniable. The reason it’s so pervasive is because everyone loves it. It’s so much easier to keep people’s attention with video. So why wouldn’t you use it in your affiliate business?
Here are a few ideas for creating affiliate videos:
- Do a testimonial video
- Do a video walk-through
- Do an ordering video
- Sneak peak
Testimonials
This one is super simple. Just turn on your web cam and talk. Don’t worry about quality. Just seeing another real person endorsing a product helps your viewers decide to buy. In truth, mistakes and mess-ups just make it more believable. You really can just click record and start talking. Use one of the other ideas if you’re feeling shy.
Do a video walk-through
This one is a little more subtle. You’re taking the role of teacher and showing how to use the product. And seeing it being used is a great way to make people want to buy it. If it’s useful, then what you’re teaching just makes people want it. So pick some really helpful aspect of the product and show how to use that.
Record the order process
This could be the most powerful method of all. Record a video of yourself actually buying the product. Nothing inspires your viewers to buy like watching you do it. In the first place it acts as social proof. People will feel more comfortable buying after seeing you do it. Second, it builds trust. Your advice is easier to trust if they can see you’re doing what you tell them to do. 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: If you want to see the inside, you’ll have to order it yourself.
Do a preview video
This is a great way to build value. What you do is record a tour of the back end. And show them everything they get by ordering. This one also helps to remove the skepticism. Once they’ve seen the back-end, they know it’s real.
Anyone can do it!
No special skills are required. There are simple software programs that make it easy to create videos. All the work is done by the program. So there’s no need to even think about the technical side. Remain focused on the benefits:
- Increase sales You will increase your affiliate sales when you start using videos. People love video, so please use them.
- Less refunds Less of your commissions will be clawed back, too. Now they know what they get before they purchase. So they’ll be less likely to refund.
- Rise above the competition! Adding video is so simple. But pretty much no one does it. So, you’ll be way ahead of the crowd.
Take your affiliate promotions to a higher level and getting started with this now. The bottom line is that if you’re not using video, you’re losing money.
Email List Building Strategies
Jul 30th
Honestly, everyone making money online has an email list. It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. After it’s built, it’s yours to use any time you want. It’s like a renewable resource that allows you to make money on demand.
So, how do you build a list?
Here are the three components of list building:
- The Squeeze Page
- Your Bribe
- The Thank You Page
The Squeeze Page – Your opt-in page is the page you send visitors to to build your list. It’s the page where you ask them for their email address. So, obviously it has to be well designed. It’s also got to be free from distractions. You’ve also got to make a strong “close”.
Failure to include a great “call to action” will result in failure. This “close” tells your visitors what you want them to do. Without this your opt-in rate will plummet. It’s strange, but if you don’t tell people what to do, they won’t do it.
One way to really spice up your squeeze page is to make it a video squeeze page. This will grab your visitors attention and keep it. Plus it give you a chance to tell them to opt in multiple times. And after the video, you can make it just say “fill in the form now”.
If you don’t know how to make video, don’t worry. Hiring out-sourced help to do it for you only costs $150 – $250. Or you can get email list tools that give you squeeze page templates.
The Incentive – Next, you’ve got to figure out what your bribe is. People won’t give you their email for nothing. Nobody likes spam, so most people guard their email closely. So you have to give them a good reason to do it.
The only way to make this work is to provide real value. That means you make it something people would actually want to receive. And can benefit from. For example:
- A free report
- A piece of software
- Training videos
- A multi-part email series
It all boils down to content. And make it both helpful and informative. And of course it has to be free. If you make it good enough, they will give you their email in exchange.
If you’re worried about creating this content, don’t be. Here again, you can hire freelancers to create this for you. Simply tell them what the topic is and they can write the content. For example, you could have them write a 5-part email course. Each email will cost between $20 and $25. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.
There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. Two things to keep in mind when writing (or buying) and email training series. First of all it has to give the subscriber what you promised – valuable information. And second, it needs to make you money. Mixing some affiliate products into your email series is a great way to do this. This is such a simple solution because you don’t have to create the product. And you can earn some commissions immediately from your emails.
Your Confirmation Page – The “thank you” page is the final piece of the puzzle. After subscribing to your list, your visitor is redirected to this page. A great thing to do here is provide some immediate value. Then they feel good about giving you their email address. It also helps to build the relationship. It also makes them more likely to open your emails.
You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. Or you can go the DIY route. And do your own writing for this content. Or pay a freelancer to write the content for you.
Summary
It doesn’t matter if you do all of this yourself. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. The key is to start building your list. Once you’ve got it built. You’ve got a license to print money!
Affiliate Business Tips
Jul 28th
Presell like a pro
If you want to make more money as an affiliate, you must presell.
First, what is preselling? There are two components to it – art & science. And it’s function is to prepare your reader to buy something. Then you send them to the site that sells what you’ve prepared them for. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.
Basically, you give them some content. Then send them to the sales page. We’ll get into how to do it correctly in a minute. Before we get into that, you should understand what’s in it for you. Here are a few benefits of preselling:
- It helps your reader trust you – And gaining the trust of your readers helps them want to click your links. And the more clicks you get the more sales you’ll make.
- It disarms your reader – When you’re preselling vs. pitching, you’re reader doesn’t feel the need to be guarded. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. So your content get absorbed.
- It creates buying readiness – Now they trust you and feel open to your message. So they become more receptive to other messages. For example, the sales message on the page you’re linking to. Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
- It increases your sales – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With a feeling of trust and openness. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
- It increases customer satisfaction – Plus, they feel they’ve made the buying decision on their own. Versus being pitched or convinced. So they are happier with their purchase.
- Your profits go up – Happy customers ask for refunds much less often. Less refunds means more affiliate money stays in your pocket.
The need to presell is clear. You earn more commissions. Your customers are happier. That’s a clear win-win.
Now, here’s how preselling works:
You’ve learned the importance of preselling. So, hopefully you’ve decided to start preselling. You’re ready to learn how to do it properly. Remember, there are two components – art and science.
Mastering the art
Effective preselling requires gaining your readers trust in order for them to let down their guard. And the only method of doing this is to give exceptional value to your readers. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. That is, they have to be wanting more when you refer them to the product sales page for the product you’re trying to sell. And because you’ve gained trust, they’re more receptive to the sales message and more likely to buy.
It’s also a science
There’s also a specific formula you need to follow.
One of these key elements is the presentation of the information. You have to have your end in mind. Your goal is to sell the product you’re promoting. How can providing information accomplish this goal? The first method is to provide enough info to get them started, but not enough to finish. The other method is to explain all the details and expose how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining. Whichever method, you send them to a product website that solves the problem you just created.
But you can’t link to your affiliate link. Instead, you use a direct link to the product website. That’s because nobody likes to click on affiliate links. But how will you earn affiliate commissions if you don’t use your affiliate link? 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.
The next trick is to hyperlink specific words and phrases inside the content of the article you’re providing. Hyperlinked words are clicked more than anything else. And if the words you hyperlink relate, your reader will naturally click them for more information.
What you have now is a super powerful system for affiliate marketing success.
Now for the bad news…
It’s extremely difficult to do this correctly. Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Good content. The entire process depends on your being able to provide useful information to your readers. This means you have to be able to write well, and have enough knowledge to be useful. Strategic writing. Yes, you must providing useful content. And you have to make the content accessible in order to provide value. And still leave them wanting more. The other approach is to reveal a self-evident problem through the information.
Picking products. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. Even if you can pull off writing and great article. Your efforts are completely wasted if you don’t pick a winning product.
Technical skills. To be most effective you have to use the “covert cookie” method. This is fairly simple – you use a 1 X 1 image and set the “source” to your affiliate link. (But if you mess it up, your referrals won’t be tracked.)
Summary:
Now you know exactly how to presell effectively. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! So, start now and develop preselling content for all your affiliate promotions. Don’t wait another minute. Put in the effort to reap the greater rewards.
Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST
Jul 23rd
The best way to ensure your success is to build automated traffic sources to send you visitors day and night.
Before we begin
Before you begin trying to get traffic to your site, you need to do your keyword research first. The reason this is so important is that you are going to be building content and traffic sources for specific keywords. Which means you need to put some thought into the keywords you’re targeting.
Here are the important considerations for your research:
- How competitive are the keywords you’re going after? Take a look at the “strength” of others websites (and how many) are already targeting these keywords.
- What kinds of visitors do these keywords bring? Certain keywords are good for generating a lot of visitors who don’t buy anything. This is not what you’re looking for.
- Another thing to think about is affiliates. Generating your own customers is great – having other people do it for you is even better. So make sure you are also targeting keywords to attract affiliates.
Of course, this all takes time if you plan to do it yourself. Hiring someone else to do it costs a lot of money. And that’s why most people skip this step! The smartest marketers use website traffic software to automate this and other aspects of their business. This way you get this critical step done fast and done well.
Once you know your keywords…
Now that you’ve completed your keyword research, you can begin using these keywords to get traffic to your website.
Here’s a short list of sneaky traffic techniques:
- Most people overlook the power of Surveys!
- “Help” Websites
- Video Sharing Sites
Surveys
People love filling in surveys. And smart website owners know this, so they will include your survey on their site if you make a good one. They benefit by getting free content for their site and you get a link to your site under the survey. This allows you to get free website traffic from other people’s sites! Most people think surveys are just for collecting data, but in this case you don’t even care about the answers. The only thing you have to do is think of a novel question for your survey.
“Answer” Sites
Sites like Yahoo! Answers allow users to ask and answer each others’ questions. Once again, the main reason for this site is not the reason you’re interested. What you want to do is use these sites to generate traffic and leads for your business. One thing you can do is to visit sites like Craigslist and Yahoo! Answers and manually extract contact info to contact other users. So, if you’re smart, you’ll use website traffic software to do it all for you. Then you just get a daily batch of fresh leads delivered to your inbox.
Video Websites
Another great resource is video sharing sites like YouTube. These sites generate massive traffic and people watch over 2 billion videos a day on YouTube alone . If used properly, video sites can get you more website traffic than you know what to do with.
Even if you don’t think you can make a good video. It’s really easy to just start with an article or something you’ve already written. And use free screen capture software to record yourself reading it. And like anything else, there is software available that will turn articles into videos for you automatically.
The Bottom Line…
It’s not that hard to get traffic to your websites. Use your noodle and come up with things other people aren’t doing. Plus, there’s lots of great software out there to help you.
Don’t waste any more time:
- Do your keyword research
- Set up some viral surveys
- Build your traffic traps
- Capitalize on video!
Traffic Generation Tips
Jul 22nd
If you’ve got traffic coming to your site, you’re 99% there. Obviously, this assumes you actually have a reason for wanting this traffic. After getting the traffic you just need to convert it into subscribers and customers . . . but that’s the easy part. The most crucial aspect of this process is getting the visitors to your site.
Let’s talk about how to generate traffic…
Here are a few of the most popular way to get traffic to your site – for free:
- Web 2.0 Methods
- Article Marketing
- Video Marketing
OK, so how do they work?
Web 2.0 Sites
The term “Web 2.0″ is associated with websites that facilitate interactive information sharing and collaboration in a social media setting. What this means for you is that you can join into the community and add your own content. Because these sites get so much traffic, Google and the other search engines treat these sites with greater importance in their algorithms. And that’s important to you because it means that Google and the other search engines treat links from these sites as more meaningful than links from other sites. So, if you place links to your own site inside your content, you get a search engine ranking benefit from those links. The direct traffic from the Web 2.0 sites themselves is only part of the benefit. There are many more web 2.0 traffic tactics we don’t have time to get into here, but this will get you started.
Article Websites
Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. This is because article websites are really web 2.0 site. In typical web 2.0 fashion, article sites rely on user-generated content (i.e. your 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 along with your article, they have to include your author information and a link back to you – so you get more free traffic and SEO benefits. In order to get the most free traffic make sure you:
- Do your keyword research
- Write your article for the keywords you’ve chosen
- Be sure to link to your site on the keywords you’ve chosen. Do this inside the article itself and in your author’s bio.
Video Marketing
Our discussion would not be complete without talking about video. Here to we’re really looking at a web 2.0 sub-category. So, just like article marketing, video marketing enables you to add content to authority sites. And in addition to this, because Google and the others love video so much, you can get listed for highly competitive keywords much more easily.
Here are just a few video marketing tips:
- Get a YouTube account
- When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
- Use the tags in your profile to enter the keywords you want to rank for
- 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 want to get traffic to your site, then follow the advice in this article.
Membership Niche Selection Tips
Jul 21st
This article explains how to select a profitable niche for your membership business.
First – Look for Fanatics
The first step in developing a profitable membership business is to find a market with fanatics in it. Simply put, a fanatic is someone who’s willing to spend time and more importantly money on a topic they are interested in. Now that we know what we’re looking for, let’s talk about how to find them…
Step 2 – Determine the financial feasibility
After selecting a possible niche to build your membership site around, the next step is to find out if it’s a profitable niche to be in. 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
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? How do you gauge the ease of entry?
Putting it all together
So far, we’ve talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you’ve determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. If you’ve done your homework, your business will be a success because you already know your market is a profitable one with room for you. Learning how to run a membership website is a topic for another article…
Affiliate Marketing Secrets
Jul 20th
Winning Affiliate Marketing Strategies
Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started earning a living online. This is when you refer traffic to someone else’s product sales page, they do all the hard work of making the sale and supporting the customer, and you get a percentage of the sale price as your commission, which for digital products can be 50% of more.
These are a some of the benefits
There’s no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!
There is one major drawback…
After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of 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. That’s fine for the product owner because she can sell to them again and again, but you can’t.
Is there are way around this?
What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product website. By getting their contact info, you can follow up increase your odds of making the sale by sending them back to the product owner’s website multiple times. And if you’re a super star affiliate, you’ll provide high-quality content before sending them to the product website.
Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:
In order to set a system like this up, you will need the following affiliate marketing tools:
You’ll use the squeeze page as the place to send your visitors instead of using the product website. This page is where you collect your visitors’ contact info and add them to your autoresponder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. Then it redirects them to your content pages after they subscribe to your email series.
The content pages provide valuable information for your visitors and make them more receptive to the sales message that you’ll link to from inside the content. While they’re reading the content you’ve provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.
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.
If you don’t have the time or expertise to set it all up yourself, you can use something like Affiliate Silver Bullet. Services like this design the enter system (the video, the video squeeze page, the email series, the content pages, etc). On the plus side, you’ll save a ton of time and money vs. trying to build this yourself. Plus you can get started instantly. 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.
Another way to accomplish this is to hire “outsourcers” through a website like Elance to build and put your system together for you. The important thing is that you start using affiliate tools like the ones described here right now! Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and money.
