Affiliate Marketing: How to be a Super Affiliate

Beginner To Advanced Strategies

Updated July 30th, 2007

Introduction
    Affiliate Marketing History
    General Affiliate Success
Finding An Affiliate Program
    Using Targeted Merchants
    What To Look For In A Merchant
Finding Merchants
    Using Search Engines
    Using Affiliate Directories
    Using Affiliate Networks
Refining Your List Of Potential Merchants
    Diversification
    Limiting Your List
    Final Factors Toward A Final List
About MLM
Types Of Affiliate Site
Optimizing Your Site To Promote And Convert
    Website Content And Its Importance
Affiliate Link Types And How To Best Incorporate Them
    Banners
    Popups and Popunders
    Hover Window Advertisement
    Text Links
    Reviews
    Virtual Stores
How To Build Traffic To Your Affiliate Site
    Search Engine Traffic
    12 Methods To Build Inbound Links
Building An Opt-In Email List
    Why Opt-In?
    The Newsletter
    Why Super Affiliates Use Opt-In Email Lists
How Super Affiliates Utilize Their Lists
    Contact Regularity
Using Auto Responders To Deliver A Series Of Persuasive Emails
Which Is Best – An Affiliate Site Or An Opt In Email List?
Is It Better To Have One Site And Email List Or Several?
Offering Bonuses
    Make It Unique
    Other Digital Products
    Physical Products
    Coupons And Price Reductions
    A Referral Can Be For Life Not Just One Purchase
    Article Marketing And Its Uses
Other Useful On-Site Promotion Techniques
    Error Pages
    Responses And Contact
    Personal Recommendations
Managing And Maintaining Your Opt In List
    Content Is Everything
    Offering More Incentives
Constantly Optimizing
    Ditching Under Performing Products
    Using Website Statistics
    Using Affiliate Statistics
    Acting On Poor Figures
Conclusion

Introduction
 
Affiliate marketing is a method of online marketing that allows Webmasters to promote goods sold by another website. For every sale, or other action, the affiliate receives a predetermined amount of money or a share of the proceeds. This pay for performance model quickly gained appeal after its introduction and remains popular because merchants only pay when results are realized by their affiliates. Affiliate marketing remains popular with affiliates because of the wide variety of choice and very reasonable payout rates.
 
Affiliate Marketing History
While many believe that Amazon were the first to offer an affiliate type program with the Amazon Associates program there was one other affiliate program introduced earlier. In November 1994 Geffen Records and CDNow came to an agreement that allowed Geffen Records to place links on their website directed at the CDNow website. Instead of these links directing to the CDNow homepage they would link to the appropriate artist’s page that included any CDs that artist had for sale. In April of 1996, EPage released an affiliate program to the public enabling them to work on a similar structure.
 
Amazon Associates was released later that year in July 1996. While Amazon wasn’t the first it certainly helped put affiliate marketing on the map and to this day the Amazon Associates affiliate program remains one of the most popular in the world. Many other companies have followed suit and offered their own affiliate programs. For those companies too small to introduce their own program, affiliate groups and other third party organizations have been established making the process easier and quicker.
 
Many foresaw the death of affiliate marketing with the introduction of Google Adsense pay-per-click advertising campaigns and while affiliate plans have seen a lull they are far from being dead in the water.
 
General Affiliate Success
Affiliate marketing success is all about numbers. The more people you attract to your site the greater the chance you have of diverting customers to the merchant’s site and hence making money. Affiliate marketing is not a quick hit and it will require a combination of time and patience before you make a reasonable amount of money from it. But during this time you will undoubtedly master some of the finer arts of making money through affiliate programs.
 
This E-book aims to guide you through many of the choices you will be faced with and also help you with some of the finer points of affiliate marketing. Whether you are a beginner or you consider yourself an advanced affiliate there is undoubtedly a large amount of information in here that will help you in your efforts.
 


Finding An Affiliate Program
 
One of the first steps you will need to take towards your affiliate fortune is deciding on the affiliate program, or programs, for you. There is no individual program that we can recommend because every Webmaster for every site has different needs and will find success from a different program. It is important that you choose carefully dependent on your own needs and those of your site visitors. After all, they’re the ones that will hopefully make you the money.
 
It would be a mistake to opt for an affiliate program based solely on its payout structure. Clearly, this is going to be an important part in your decision but nonetheless you should be comfortable with your choice from a variety of different angles. The first and most important factor is deciding on affiliate programs that match the content of your site and the requirements of your visitors.
 
Using Targeted Merchants
The traffic you receive to your website will be geared primarily towards a single topic. This topic is clearly the best place to start looking for merchants that offer an affiliate program. Whether you choose to look for individual affiliate programs or affiliate groups then you should still stick to topics that are relevant to your website or, more accurately, the pages of your website.
 
Using targeted merchants will greatly improve your conversion rate and your affiliate earnings.
 
Finding the most appropriate affiliate programs for your business needs can be done in one of several ways. Before making your final decision you should use the following methods to draw up a list of potential merchants that accept affiliate websites.
 
What To Look For In A Merchant
Search engines can provide easy access to merchants but if they feature at the top of the search engines for terms like “designer clothes affiliate” then they will undoubtedly feature on a large number of websites around the Internet.
 
Try to find unique products. Always ensure that these products are ideal for your site visitors but that doesn’t mean you need to promote the same, tired products as every other website in your genre. You have a much greater chance of making commission if you offer an item that your visitors don’t already own and haven’t already seen on thousands of other websites.
 
Match the product cost and pay rate to your visitors. If you run a website that attracts affluent visitors then you can afford to promote more expensive items and make more money per sale. This means you do not require the masses of traffic that you would need with an item that only makes you a few cents. On the other hand far fewer people are likely to make a purchase for an item that costs thousands of dollars compared to one that costs a hundred dollars.
 
Make sure that the payout structure is clearly defined. Not only does this ensure that you know how much potential profit you will make but it can also help to identify less than honorable affiliate merchants. If it takes time to decipher the payment structure for a particular merchant then you may be best moving on to the next.
 
It is essential that any affiliate program you join has well defined affiliate terms. This can only be achieved through the use of an affiliate agreement. If the merchant you are considering does not include this then walk away. Always read the agreement to ensure there are no nasty surprises. The majority of affiliate programs do include an affiliate agreement and the majority of these are above board with simple to understand, clearly defined structures. There is no reason to take a chance with one that does not include this information.
 
Try to include some two-tier programs. Two tier programs not only pay for visitors that come directly from your site, but they also pay for any visitors that they refer. The second tier is generally paid at a lower rate, but this type of residual income can see your profits climb in no time.
 
You will require full statistics in order to track your performance. Ensure that any affiliate program you consider offers figures for the number of times an ad or link is displayed, clicked, and purchased. Statistics should also include the amount that your referrals spent. These figures will be invaluable when assessing the performance of your pages and your affiliate programs.
 
Repeat business is another method of ensuring that you generate the maximum revenue possible. In order to ensure that you receive the benefit of this use an affiliate program that offers extended cookies and commission life. Some may only offer commission on the first purchase your referrers make while others may offer commission for life. Find the right balance for the products you intend to promote.
 
Support is vital. Some merchants are actively involved in helping their affiliates succeed. After all, success for the affiliate means success for the merchant. Try to avoid any programs that do not offer marketing support and definitely avoid any that do not have a clear technical support structure in place.
 

Finding Merchants
 
We’ve covered the most important factors to consider when looking for an affiliate program but what are the best ways to try and find the most appropriate one? After all, using the search engines will generate a good list of potential merchants but many are likely to be over subscribed with very little in the way of original products for you to promote.
 
Using Search Engines
 
While it may take a reasonable amount of work, the search engines might hold the key to finding the perfect affiliate program for you. After all they index a huge number of websites giving you access to a truly global marketplace.
 
Enter into the search box the topic of your site plus the word “affiliate”, for example for example we used the term “loan affiliate” to generate the results above.
 
This gives a fairly broad mix of results but we want to concentrate on auto loans so we amend the search query to read “auto loan affiliate” and receive the following page of results:
 
Obviously you should amend the search query to match your specifications. If your site centers on shoes then enter “shoe affiliate”, or if you have a much more precise topic then “trainer affiliate” or “Nike trainer affiliate”. The more precise your search, the more precise the results will be.
 
Check through the first twenty pages that are displayed and ensure that each merchant offers the type of product that you believe will appeal to your target market. When checking the sites for their relevance also ensure that they meet all of the above stipulations, paying particular attention to the affiliate agreement page. For now, don’t sign up with any of the programs; instead make a note of the sites that match our requirements exactly. We will refer back to this later when refining our list of potential merchants.
 
If you have done any market research on your competitors then this is a good time to consider their affiliate programs. Visit what you believe to be the most successful sites offering the same service as your website. In most cases this will be the sites that appear at or near the top of the search engines. Follow some of the links on the pages of the site to be redirected to relevant merchants. Again, check the site meets our expectations and, if it does, then note it down on your list.
 
So far we’ve created a list of potential merchants that fit our needs. The problem is we have only really chosen the most popular options. One of the most effective affiliate marketing techniques is to find a relatively unique product and offer that to your clients. This can either be done in conjunction with the more popular options or in place of them. Remember that some people may only trust the most popular products from the most popular merchants so including a wide range is often the best solution.
 
Using Affiliate Directories
Our next stop will be affiliate directories. There are a large number of websites that offer a list of affiliate programs. Proper directories will categorize the programs according to the industry in which they operate or even the product they sell. Using an affiliate directory can give you access to a large number of affiliate programs you would not have otherwise considered. You can either use the search engines, and search for “affiliate directory” or use one of the directories listed below for guidance.
 
This list provides details of some of the more beneficial and well-populated directories on the Internet. By all means, find your own directories to refer to, but feel free to use any of these as a good starting point. Many of these also include resources, tips and tricks related to affiliate marketing and increasing your revenue.
 
Associate Programs – associateprograms.com
 
This is one of the Internet’s foremost affiliate directories. Allan Gardyne is considered one of the most knowledgeable and, importantly, successful affiliate marketers on the Internet. Associate Programs constantly updates its records to include and exclude affiliate programs. It does a very good job of providing only the most newsworthy of affiliate programs and is an exceptionally good place to continue your affiliate hunt. There are (at the time of writing) 9,075 affiliate programs listed covering a wide range of topics. As well as being sensibly categorized, there is also an onsite search engine to help facilitate an easy search.
 
Affiliates Directory – affiliatesdirectory.com

Affiliates Directory is another extensive resource that contains more than just a few affiliate program names. As well as reviews of each of the 8,363 programs in the directory there is also a very good list of articles and affiliate marketing tools and resources for everyone from beginners to the more advanced marketer.
 
Affiliate First
 
Affiliate First currently has 6,340 programs listed in the directory and all are well categorized. Interesting categories include the 2-tier category and even a UK category for geo targeting your leads. Again, all affiliate programs contain a brief overview of their program and their products to help you determine whether it is the right choice for you.
 
Refer-It
 
Refer-It is one of the monsters of affiliate directories. It currently holds and offers details on 12,008 affiliate programs. If there isn’t a merchant in here to suit your needs then you are likely to struggle finding one anywhere. Each program usually consists of a two or three line description, an overall rating, and details of the commission structure that is offered to affiliates.
 
2-Tier
 
2-Tier might not contain details of many affiliate programs, currently only holding 538 directories but all the programs listed offer 2-tier commissions to their affiliates. If anyone you refer becomes an affiliate themselves then you also earn a percentage of any affiliates they refer to the program. This kind of residual income can increase your profit dramatically and ensure that you continue to earn money in the future.
 
Affiliate directories work in the same way as any directory. Simply choose the topic that is most relevant to your needs and then drill down to the appropriate sub categories until you find the list you are looking for. Alternatively, if the directory in question offers a search box, then use this to find possible merchants.
 
Many affiliate networks also include top ten (top five, etc…) lists. Look at these and pay particular attention to merchants that offer products covering a broad range of topics. Amazon offers a popular merchant program because the vast majority of topics are covered in book form and are included in Amazon sites. Amazon also offer a broad range of potential marketing methods so are well worth considering.
 
Also check the directory forums. These are laden with existing affiliates willing to lend a hand and anyone that has a bad review of a particular program is especially likely to publish their review in this section of the site.
 
Using Affiliate Networks
 
The final option is to use an affiliate network. An affiliate network also brings together a typically large amount of merchants offering affiliate program but they also act as the go between for merchants and affiliates. The merchant must meet the criteria set out by the network itself making this a particularly beneficial way to find legitimate affiliate programs.
 
As well as providing merchants with all of the required affiliate software, a network also gives affiliates like you an easy portal to finding the most appropriate affiliate programs. They generally provide access to earning reports, banners and advertisements that can be used and they track the performance of each of your affiliate programs. Affiliate networks offer an excellent resource for merchants and for affiliates.
 
Among the most popular and beneficial of affiliate networks are the following two:
 
Clickbank – clickbank.com
 
Theoretically, Clickbank isn’t an affiliate network but they fit the bill perfectly for our needs. Merchants can list one or more products for sale by category and generally offer a good level of commission for anyone that sells those products to their site visitors. Clickbank also handle the financial side of things by providing reports and payments to affiliates. They are a widely trusted name in the affiliate industry and list thousands of products in numerous categories. However, all products are electronically downloadable products. If you don’t sell this type of product you may still be able to find e-books or related software that you can affiliate with.
 
Commission Junction – cj.com
 
Commission Junction is a true affiliate network. They act as an intermediary between affiliates and merchants for one of the most diverse range of products available. They provide banners, advertisements, and extensive tracking reports for your own performance and the performance of all affiliates promoting specific advertisements from merchants. We highly recommend using Commission Junction to look for at least some of the products you wish to affiliate with. Another advantage of CJ is that they offer an easy way to link directly to individual product pages and not just to the homepage of the merchants.
 
Some affiliate programs and networks offer unique and highly advantageous methods to promote products. Amazon now offer aStore, which allows you to include an entire store on your website with every product potentially earning you a commission. Commission Junction enables you to deep-link to a particular page that details a specific product and not just to the homepage of a website. These can provide very beneficial returns and improve conversion rates greatly.
 

Refining Your List Of Potential Merchants
 
Settling on the actual affiliate programs you choose will be a personal decision to some extent. You must decide on the products and the merchants that suit your needs, but more importantly suit the needs of your website visitors. You will need to actively promote these products and choosing ones that you genuinely find useful or good value will be much easier that attempting to promote something you have little or no interest in.
 
Diversification
Any investor knows that security is found in diversification. Investing in websites or your online business is no different. Using just one affiliate on any website is a potentially very damaging thing to do. Once you’ve established your website and have a good source of incoming traffic the last thing you need is for your affiliate to go bust. Try to keep a good portfolio of merchants to ensure that if one does go bust or no longer provides the goods you require you have backup and your other pages and products will continue to sell. Owning one website concentrating on one particular topic always carries a certain degree of risk but diversifying your portfolio of affiliates and affiliate products can reduce this risk significantly.
 
Limiting Your List
On the other hand it is important not to use too many affiliate programs on one page or on one site. Include around a dozen at the most for a site that includes several pages with affiliate links on. It’s still possible to keep track of this many affiliates without placing too much dependency on a single merchant or, for that matter, a single affiliate network.
 
By now you should have an extensive list of potential merchants. It is quite possible having followed the previous methods that you have thirty, forty, or even fifty different merchants sat in your list of probably affiliate programs. Now is the time to wheedle this down to ten to twelve programs.
 
Final Factors Toward A Final List
There are a number of important factors to consider. You should remember that while you are “only” the affiliate it is still your name and your reputation that are put at risk if you use a below par program.
 
Ensure that the merchant offers the kind of service you would want to offer your clients. Look at the shipping policies and search the Internet, if necessary, for reviews of a particular merchant. The quality of the site itself can also be a good indicator and only consider those that offer a reasonable contact method in the event of any problems. Visitors that use your site regularly will be put off if they have a bad experience with a site you recommend (by placing the link on your site, most of your visitors will see this as a recommendation).
 
As well as ensuring your referrals get a good ride you should also ensure that the site offers everything you want and need. There should also be a good method and level of communication between you and your merchants. Sometimes, things can go wrong, and other times you might just have a niggling question to ask. Without an email address, live support desk, or telephone number you have little or no chance of ever getting your questions answered. Tracking reports are also vital because once you are established and up and running you will want to track the best performing sites, pages, products, and suppliers that you have. Ensure you gain access to all of the relevant information.
 
Ignore any service that requires payment. This may seem a bold statement and you may see an affiliate program that tempts you because of what it promises despite the fact that it charges. Put simply, don’t do it. You are, in essence, being sub contracted on a commission basis to attempt to sell the company’s products. You should not have to pay to make them money.
 
Obviously, the more attractive the affiliate commission the better. This not only means looking for the highest affiliate percentages but also looking for programs that offer an extended period of referral. Some programs may only offer commission on the sale of the first product and, by all means if they offer the right product that you simply can’t ignore use them, but finding programs that offer a lifetime commission on exhaustible goods can help you rake in lots of money in the long term.
 
About MLM
A note on MLM, or Multi-Level Marketing, is important at this stage. While true MLM is perfectly legal you must check that any MLM program you are interested in is completely above board. At best you will learn early on that a program you are promoting offers nothing to your referrals and you will lose face. At worst a program is illegal and you, as an affiliate or marketer of that program, are also breaking the law in promoting it.
 
By choosing the programs that offer the greatest value to your customers and the best commissions and service to you, it should be possible to whittle your list down to a manageable but profitable and diverse amount of programs. These will be the affiliate programs that you should promote on your website, in your newsletters, and through any of the other marketing techniques we will discuss in the remainder of this e-book. We will start off with some of the more basic techniques available and progress to some advanced affiliate marketing strategies. If you are new to online business, or new to affiliate marketing as a method of making money online then we strongly suggest that you read through this e-book in its entirety.
 


Types Of Affiliate Sites
 
There are many examples of affiliate sites on the Internet. Some provide an excellent resource for the new and existing affiliate because they showcase some of the more popular and effective methods of improving your affiliate earnings. However, be careful when looking at other sites because you don’t always know the successful ones. If you have recently bought any products online then look at the site you used. If it’s an affiliate site and you purchased a product through it then it clearly offered something that worked. Think about what it was that made you purchase. Did they offer something extra on top of the deal? Maybe you receiving an email because you are part of their opt-in email list.
 
Generally, affiliate sites can be categorized into the following:
 
Content sites - these are one of the simplest but still one of the most effective sites when done properly. They can also be called article sites and the concept is to build a site with numerous pages in a hierarchical structure. Every page is geared around one or two keywords to help promote with the search engines and one or more affiliate links are placed on each page. Most commonly these types of sites are used to display contextual pay-per-click advertisements but still offer advantages to the affiliate marketer.
 
About.com is an exceptional example of a content site. You’re not going to be able to create anything as expansive as this because it covers virtually every conceivable topic on the Internet. However, it does show what a content site can be.
 
Comparison sites - comparison-shopping is one of the most popular online activities. Why trek down to the high street and look around two or three shops when you can sit in your own home and look through hundreds of different websites and find prices that are invariably cheaper than anything in your home town? Comparison sites offer the advantage that you can include various different affiliate links for a single product and with careful search engine marketing your visitors will have come to your site specifically to look at that product and find the cheapest price for it.
 
Bizrate.com is a popular, well-designed, comparison-shopping site with extensive category listings. This is the kind of comparison site you should aim to have.
 
Sales promotion sites - sites that offer details of promotions that merchants are running can generate a mass of traffic and you are already offering products that have a price reduction or some other offer. Coupon sites are popular because the e-commerce bubble looks far from bursting.
 
Hotcoupons.com provides a good resource for anyone that wants to establish a coupon site.
 
Reward sites – reward sites provide visitors with incentives for making purchases through their affiliate links. Some reward sites offer vouchers to spend at Amazon or other online stores while some reward or rebate sites provide cash directly back into a visitor’s account. This offers visitors something very unique and the affiliate is virtually guaranteed that every customer that joins up will keep returning to the site to gain more rewards.
 
IPoints offers a veritable banquet of affiliate links and advertisements on every page. While some sites can’t get away with this level of advertising on a single site, sites like iPoints can afford to place a lot of links on pages.
 
Community sites – Web 2.0 is the new coming of the community site. This category includes the remarkably popular blog as well as forums and any other website that encourages visitor participation in some form or another. While a blog could also be considered a content site, it is quite important to realize that there is a discernable difference because by enabling visitors to join and by posting regular content you will build a loyal fan base inclined to click links and other advertisements found on your site.
 
Dilbertblog.typepad.com is not only funny but it also shows how a blog can use an affiliate link or banner on its pages.


Optimizing Your Site To Promote And Convert
 
An affiliate website can be as simple as a single page of sales copy or it can be as complex as a multi page behemoth offering extensive information, reviews, resources, tools, and applications. The site you build will be dependent on your own skills or your financial budget but if this is your first attempt at building a profitable affiliate site then it may be better to start off with something simple.
 
We aren’t going to give you in depth instructions on building a new website or suggest the type of site to build but everything we discuss can be implemented on any type of site unless otherwise stated in the appropriate section. Do note that as you gain more experience in affiliate marketing you will undoubtedly find tips and tricks that work better for you in some cases. Every site is different, every affiliate is different, every customer is different, and only by knowing as much as possible about all of these factors and many more can you truly get the optimal performance out of your new affiliate site.
 
Website Content And Its Importance
The single most important aspect of an affiliate website is the content it contains. Predominantly this is the textual content but to an extent also includes graphical and application content too. The more genuinely beneficial content you can provide to your visitors the more likely they will be to surf your site or finish reading the page. The more authoritative you appear, the more likely they will be to purchase the products you recommend and direct them to. The more friendly, amicable, or fresh your content appears the more often they will return to your site and the greater potential you have for repeat business and increased profits.
 
Another advantage of generating a lot of beneficial and informative content using good keywords is that with a little extra effort acquiring links to your site you will also benefit from free search engine traffic. This is highly sought after traffic because it is highly targeted to the content on your website and your visitors are already predisposed to the idea of buying the products you are promoting.
 
Your visitors are your primary concern. No matter how much traffic you receive if your content is not appealing to your human visitors you will not convert those visitors into paying customers and you won’t gain any notable affiliate commissions any time soon. It is, therefore, absolutely imperative that you offer high quality content that not only informs but compels and excites. Boring content is the quickest way to ensure that your visitors click the back button or the close button. Both of these actions are undesirable traits in a visitor.
 
Their exists, on the Internet, numerous directories and PLR (Private Label Rights) article bins. These contain content that is free for you to use as you see fit. In the case of article directory content you must retain the links that appear at the foot of the content in the About The Author section in order to qualify to use the content. In both cases, the content is highly likely to have been republished on numerous sites on the Internet. It therefore loses much of its value as unique, fresh content to offer your users.
 
PLR article directories are used quite regularly by affiliate marketers. They provide a regular influx of articles for a range of topics. Members to the directory must then pay a subscription to gain access to these articles. In some cases articles can be downloaded by any number of members but even the most discriminatory of directories allows several users access to and use of the article. If you find a good article that you believe would benefit your visitors and pre-sell the products you are trying to promote then without making wholesale changes to the article you are serving unoriginal material that can be gained on other sites.
 
Many marketers and affiliates use PLR articles but amend the content and make it original. While this does offer much greater benefit it is far better if you can tailor your content completely to meet your needs. The art of pre-selling is a vital one and in order to do this properly you either need to create the content yourself or have a direct influence over the content as it is created.
 
In all of this section it is important to note the term pre-sell. Pre-selling a concept means that by the time your visitors click one of your affiliate links they have already bought into the value and the benefit of buying that product. Doing this means you have to rely less on the power of the merchant site. No matter how good a merchant site is, your customers trust you and want you to persuade them that the product in question is perfect for them. It is the authoritative voice and compelling content of your site that will do this.
 
Remember that your visitors need a reason to visit your site and a reason to stay on your site. Providing them with invaluable information is a big part of this but you also need to provide a unique angle, or a unique concept. There are many ways to do this.
 
The content of your site itself is the first way to provide something unique to visitors. Unique content also benefits you when you attempt to generate traffic from search engine results. Make all of your pages unique. If you offer reviews of products then don’t use the same, tired descriptions provided by the merchant. These are used by many of the people that sell these products and if a person has seen it before they will not be inspired by the information you provide.
 
 We’ve already discussed that PLR articles and submission directory articles do not generally provide enough uniqueness in the content available. If you are able to write enthusiastically about the content of your site then you should have no problems creating your own unique content for your affiliate site. Another option, however, if you don’t feel you are able to do the writing yourself is to employ the services of a website content writer. Find the best person for the job by looking at samples and references and once you find a good content writer provide them with as much information as possible so they can create good, unique, and useful content.


Affiliate Link Types And How To Best Incorporate Them
 
Offering a beneficial online tool is another way to attract people. If you operate in an industry that enables this then pay a programmer to write an online script and offer this freely to your visitors. This is also a very good way to persuade your visitors to bookmark your site and visit often. By doing so you can massively increase your chances of making one or regular sales to the same person. The tool doesn’t have to be complicated and there may be tools that already exist on the Internet. In some cases it is possible to pay a comparatively small fee and have this tool co-branded to match your site.
 
E-books and courses offer several benefits to the affiliate site and affiliate webmaster. Later on, we discuss the benefit of growing your own email list but you can also offer a free e-book or free course with every purchase. You will need to arrange a method to track sales and buyers with your merchant, though, so ensure that you have this set up before you place the offer on your site otherwise you will have a lot of disappointed customers.
 
You should know your market better than anyone. By knowing your market and, more specifically, your visitors you should also know what they would find beneficial and alluring. Offer them anything you can, that doesn’t cost huge amounts of money, in order to attract them, persuade them, compel them, and pre-sell them.
 
Of course, even once you have your visitors’ attention you need to do something with it. Specifically, you need to convert them from visitors into referrals. To do so you will need to place your affiliate link, in one guise or another, on your site. Don’t simply opt for the first banner or advertisement you see and place it anywhere on site. There are many different ways you can include your affiliate link on your website and each offers its own advantages and possible disadvantages.
 
Banners
The banner was one of the first and foremost methods of advertising on the Internet. A graphical banner is placed somewhere on the page or pages of your site in the hope that the content of that banner attracts the attention of your visitors and persuades them to click on it. In doing so they are directed to the site or the page of the site you are promoting. If they then make a purchase you receive the agreed commission and rest easy knowing that your tactic worked.
 

An example of a graphical advertisement (banner)
 
However, over time web surfers have become accustomed to seeing graphical banners. As they have grown accustomed to them banners have lost their appeal and their conversion. They do still have their place but they must be used carefully and sparingly to ensure that you don’t overwhelm or completely put your visitors off. They certainly shouldn’t be used as your Websites only form of affiliate advertising if that is how you intend to make your money.
 
Used sparingly they can actually add to the benefit of a sit that is heavy on textual content and light on graphical content but you absolutely must remember that your visitors will get sick of looking at overly bright, flashing banners. Some banners can also be very slow to load if they use a lot of animation or a lot of frames so test any banners you intend to use before implementing them on the pages of your website. On the other end of the scale your visitors may completely ignore them.
 
Popups and Popunders
Another form of advertising that has long been used is the popup or popunder advertisement. It’s certainly true that these are virtually impossible to ignore, except for the introduction and advance of popup blockers of course, but they are also known to be extremely annoying and intrusive to visitors. That said many websites find them to have an excellent conversion rate when used properly and sparingly.
 
If you do insist on using popup advertisements then attempt to use them as infrequently as possible. If a visitor closes a popup when they open the first page they land on then they will quickly become annoyed if they have to keep doing so on every other page of your website that they visit. You are very likely to lose a lot of people this way. If you can implement a popup that only displays once when somebody first visits or attempts to leave your site then you will witness the best results.
 
Perhaps the most beneficial use of a popup, though, is as a squeeze page to persuade people to part with their email address. Email list promotion comes later in the e-book but bear this in mind.
 
The biggest problem with this type of advertisement, though, is the existence of popup blocking software. These applications prevent any windows from being displayed that are not expressly requested by the user. Unfortunately for the popup advertising fan this software is even prepackaged in numerous search engine toolbars, browsers, and other applications so it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.
 
Hover Window Advertisement
An advance in the popup window has also been introduced called the hover window. These act in a similar fashion to the popup window but can not be blocked by popup blocking software (yet). As a general rule, merchants do not offer these directly but the code is available on the Internet to help you implement them.
 
Because popup-blocking software cannot yet block floating window ads they provide much of the benefit of the popup ad but without the ability for users to screen them. However, it is again important that you pay particular attention to how, where, and when you use them. Many users will find them irritating especially if they hover over important parts of your site content. Irritation is one of the biggest factors to a visitor leaving your site without performing the desired action.
 
Text Links
Text links have been popularized thanks to the inception of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. In particular, Google Adsense has brought the contextually relevant text link to the fore of online marketing. On your website it is also possible to include similar advertisements but using affiliate links. These can be beneficial when space is limited and you don’t want to fill your site with banners or use other techniques that might cause detriment to the overall value of your website.
 
Consider including a text link in a “related resources” box somewhere on the page. Typically, these tend to be included at the foot of the page but can perform well if included within the content of your site.

However, one of the most effective methods of including text links in your site to give a very high conversion rate is to use in-context links. This means roaming through the pages of your site to find relevant keywords for the products you are pushing and then turn these keywords into direct links. The link still looks as though it is part of the content of your site but because your visitors must actively read this part of your content they are increasingly likely to click the link to your merchant’s site.
 
Sample of a block of text links
 
Reviews
This is, in a way, similar to the resources links but a much more in-depth way of pre-selling an item. Because your site makes you appear an authority on a given topic (at least, it should do) this means that your visitors are inclined to listen to what you say. It also means they will be eager to learn your views on websites and products related to the category of your site.
 
One of the most powerful ways to offer information about a product and essentially pre-sell it is to offer reviews. You have to be careful not to go overboard here. If you appear to give too many products or services a positive review then it won’t take long for your visitors to determine why you are doing it.
 
A lot of sites take this a step further with a ranking system too. If you attempt to implement a ranking system then you should be sure of the quality of the product or site that you promote as being the most highly ranked. Don’t simply opt for the service that offers the greatest payout. While it may result in commission checks for your efforts you really do need to promote yourself and your website as well as your affiliate links.
 

Using reviews to promote affiliate links.
 
Virtual Stores
One more alternative is to establish your own storefront effect on your site. Obviously, you won’t be conducting the sales or dealing with the transactions themselves but you can still display items as though you are. This gives you the chance to write a review, or description to be more accurate, for every product. Try to appear unbiased with your opinions - if you want to promote a particular item then include that in a prominent position or perhaps push it as a “most popular item”.
 
Obviously you will be unable to include shopping cart software or some of the many features that can be included in a normal e-commerce store. However, there are options. We’ve already mention Amazon aStore because this provides you with a fully functioning store to place on the pages of your website. Integrating this seamlessly into your own pages gives it the appearance that it is a part of your own site and doesn’t belong to another merchant.

Amazon eStore sample
Different techniques will be more or less effective on different sites as well as each page of that site. In some cases banner advertisements may provide the best conversion rates whereas in other cases in-context text links will provide the greatest


How To Build Traffic To Your Affiliate Site
 
You now have your website set up with the most appropriate affiliate links in what you believe, at present, to be the most beneficial regions on your site. You also have a short e-course to offer your readers in exchange for their email address, which you will subsequently use to promote further items. This leaves one essential ingredient for you to really get started on the way to affiliate success. You need to have targeted traffic.
 
Traffic is targeted only when people visit your site looking for the information that you provide. The Internet offers a vast array of traffic generation methods but very few offer this level of laser-targeted visitors. Auto surf programs and cheap traffic packages are invariably useless. In the case of auto surf programs they install software on a user’s computer and these users are awarded credits or page views whenever they spend an allotted amount of time on a random website. This is usually no more than fifteen to thirty seconds and most users leave the auto surf program running while they look at another site in another window or use another application. There is no benefit to you, as a Webmaster wanting active traffic because you are highly unlikely to gain any clicks.
 
Search Engine Traffic
The most targeted and highly sought after traffic is search engine traffic. By optimizing your web pages appropriately and building a good basis of links into your site it is possible to rank highly in the search engines. Doing so will usually yield good traffic results in the end. Using the best keywords for your site means finding those that are highly searched on the engines but have very few sites competing in the results.
 
You can build a list of keywords using online keyword research tools such as wordtracker.com. These give all the results and data that you need. You should attempt to optimize each page for two or three keywords each and include your keywords roughly twice in every one hundred words to give a 2% keyword density.
 
The other important factor is to use one or more of these keywords in the anchor text of your internal and inbound links. This obviously isn’t too difficult in terms of your internal links, after all, you have complete control over those. However, you will also need to encourage other sites to link to you using these same keywords in the anchor text. While this may seem implausible it is actually quite feasible.
 
That was an over simplified view of exactly what SEO is and how to optimize a site for the benefit of the search engines. It is important to remember when you are optimizing page content that your visitors are the ones that you want to click the links. Don’t over optimize a site if it costs you in terms of genuine, quality content. However, links can also provide direct inbound traffic if they are on a busy site.
 
In terms of SEO, links should be gained from sites that are considered authoritative by the search engines. Authoritative sites are those that have a very good number of inbound links of their own. If those inbound links come from further authoritative sites then that’s even better but for now we’ll just concentrate on the sites linking directly in to you and how to receive these links.
 
12 Methods To Build Inbound Links
Once upon a time, the search engines viewed absolutely any link from any site as being a positive vote for your site and all links were treated pretty much equal. However, in a bid to improve their rankings and results the search engines have moved away from this extremely linear practice towards a more algorithm based solution as described above.
 
By creating an informative site with genuine, useful information you attract natural links. This may not give you the kind of control over the anchor text you need, but by including your keywords in your main URL and in your page titles you can increase the chances of them being used. The more unique your content the greater the likelihood of receiving these organic links although when your site is brand new it is virtually impossible to garner any links naturally in this way.
 
Directories have long been faceted as a major source of beneficial inbound links. Directories are categorized lists of websites and a true directory is human edited ensuring that the content is of the highest quality. For this reason many of the search engines use directories as a guide to useful websites and a link from one of the more highly coveted directories can increase your linking profile greatly. A number of web surfers also still use directories despite the advance of the search engine.
 
The two most well known and widely used of all the directories are Yahoo and Dmoz (also called the Open Directory Project or ODP). Yahoo can prove expensive and while DMOZ is a free inclusion directory it can take anywhere from a few days to over a year to become listed.
 
There are, though, a large number of directories on the Internet. They tend to range from free in price to being quite costly and some require a reciprocal link. It shouldn’t take too much digging to find a reasonable number of directories that offer free inclusion. Directories also offer the benefit that you are able to choose the anchor text of the link as well as the link to your site, although not many directories allow deep links into pages of your site, or multiple entries. Look for some general topic directories as well as, where possible, industry specific topics.
 
Writing an article and including one or two links to your own site using your keywords in the anchor text of those links gives you the capability to have these articles published in online article directories, archived newsletters, blogs, forums, and other websites. Often, a single article can generate a large number of links as well as provide direct traffic.
 
You can also directly approach websites that are on a similar theme and compliment (rather than compete with) your own site. Request that the article be placed on site with the link in tact. Many sites are on the look out for fresh, unique content all the time and are often only too willing to offer you a little exposure in exchange for a well-written article. Of course, instead of an article you could offer a review or a white paper.
 
Articles aren’t the only way to get into newsletters. Write fillers, jokes, reviews, interviews, and even testimonials for high traffic newsletters. Send them to the newsletter informing the editor that your only payment is that the link is left in tact and in whole when your piece is published. The majority of newsletters are archived and will eventually get a good Google PageRank. In the meantime you can enjoy the benefits of direct, targeted traffic from relevant newsletters.
 
If you struggle writing your own items for newsletters then you could consider paying for an advertisement in a newsletter that is relevant to the topic of your site. Try to ensure that the link is a text link although with high traffic newsletters you could consider other forms of advertising.
 
Many forums, blogs, and other community based sites enable you to place a link in your signature file. Always check the terms and conditions before doing so or you run the very real risk of being banned from the site. Also ensure that your posts and comments are genuine and offer a real answer or helpful information. This will encourage more people to your site in the long run. Forums don’t always provide that much benefit in terms of SEO but they can provide excellent direct traffic and some forums are optimized well so they do give your site ranking.
 
Text link brokers act as go between for those purchasing and those selling text links on websites. Opinion is somewhat divided on whether this is a genuine and ethical way to garner your site with inbound links but if you are careful about the text link broker that you use to purchase links through, and you use one that does not publish the details of the linking site on their own site then there should be no reason to worry.
 
Free software is always popular. Whether the software can be embedded directly onto the page of your site or it needs to be downloaded to be used it has its benefits, its uses, and will not struggle finding itself a market. Always ensure that your link is included on or in this software. You could also offer to let other sites to embed software or offer a link to your software on their own pages. As long as the link to its location on your site exists you will gain traffic.
 
Write any form of information product and include your link in the header or footer as well as the title page and copyright notice. As well as providing people with a link to your site from an informative and helpful product you can also allow the publication of parts of the article on the proviso that your link is published with the excerpt. Again it is vital that the information within the e-book or electronic product is of a high enough quality to persuade people to do this.
 
Business associations and business directories generally have an online presence as well as offline and they almost always have a constituent member list. Sometimes these can cost money but they are definitely considered an authoritative site with many people when looking for information related to the topic of your site. The same can also be said of the way that a search engine looks at the information on your site.
 
News releases and press releases started offline but there is a large market for newsworthy clippings now. These give great potential to include your link and are considered to be from an authoritative site by readers. It is even possible that you could find a link in the Google News or Yahoo News pages. These can generate a surprisingly large amount of traffic in a short space of time.
 
Above all else, even above begging and borrowing links, create something unique and compelling on your site. Make it fun, exciting, too good too miss or even argumentative and there is a very good chance you will start a debate. A debate will generally carry a lot of traffic and potentially spread your link throughout much of the online world.
Your SEO efforts can take some time to come to full fruition but if you keep working at building positive and powerful links then you should see results from direct traffic as well as eventual search engine traffic.


Building An Opt-In Email List

The most successful affiliate marketing needs to combine three vital factors – a source of targeted traffic, content that is geared towards conversion, and a high customer retention rate. Repeat business can be the difference between constantly struggling to find new sources of traffic and having a list of willing buyers on hand at all times. Building a list of your referrals may seem an impossibility but it isn’t.

Opt-in email lists provide affiliate marketers with the perfect opportunity to make sales to new and existing customers. Any list you generate must be opt-in to prevent your email address, domain, and IP address from being labeled as spam by the search engines. When this happens your sites will generally be removed from the indexes and it is incredibly difficult to have them re-indexed.
 
Why Opt-In?
An opt-in email list is exactly that. Your members must have opted to be included in the list and must always have the option of being removed from that list. There are a number of ways to build your own opt-in list and, while email marketing lists can be purchased, building your own does not need to be that difficult. The most difficult step and the one that is put off the longest is the first step. This is the step that may entail some time, effort, or financial resource to ensure it goes well.

In order to persuade people to sign up for an opt-in email list you must give them reason to do so. Simply asking for email addresses and names is highly unlikely to yield results especially in an age where every one has to attempt to counteract the numerous spam emails we receive on a daily basis.
 
The Newsletter
The most common method to legitimately harvest email addresses and contact details is by offering a free newsletter related to the topic of your website. Just about every website can conceivably offer a newsletter. Your loan website could offer a financial newsletter or one that informs visitors when any new loan rates are released to the public. Your Nike trainer website could offer a newsletter that gives details of the latest offers on Nike trainers. Whatever the topic of your newsletter, though, it must be appealing and it will need to offer value to your visitors.

If you’re in a quandary over the ideal newsletter topic for your site then look around at similar websites. See what your competition are offering and, if necessary, sign up to receive a few copies. You shouldn’t be rushing into releasing your first issue; you should certainly ensure that you have some readers before your publish your first introduction.

Once you have the topic of your newsletter you will need to offer it to the public. If you already receive a good level of traffic to your website then this shouldn’t be too problematic. A prominent link on your homepage or other high traffic page of your site will grab your visitors’ attention. In your signup form ensure that you give the option to be included in mailings. It may seem ridiculous when the main intent of the form is to attract people to sign up but it must be there.

The most common option to get people’s permission is an opt-in or opt-out radio box. When ticked this box indicates that your visitor either wants or doesn’t want to receive the newsletter. Always ensure that, by default, anyone using the form will be automatically signed up for the newsletter. Either pre-select or deselect the button according to the option you have given.

Another effective method is to give a report, e-book, or course away for free. These are useful because you need the email in order to deliver the products you wish to send. Obviously, not all are applicable to every type of site promoting all types of goods. If you have details of any coupon codes or similar promotional material then you could offer this by email as an incentive for your visitors to hand over their contact details. Everyone loves to receive something for nothing or get details of a bargain.

When you finally submit your newsletter to your new audience you should provide some value as well as attempting to push your affiliate products. Your readers provided an email address to you because they believed they would receive something beneficial in return. If they don’t get any benefit then they are likely to click the unsubscribe link that you must have in every emailed newsletter you send.

Provide some beneficial content. Give news of the latest offers in your industry or provide news headlines if your industry offers this opportunity. The more informational and useful the more likely your newsletter subscribers are to remain subscribers and the more likely they will be to click the links and purchase your products.
 
Why Super Affiliates Use Opt-In Email Lists
The most successful affiliates, or super affiliates, understand that a vital aspect of their affiliate profit business is the opt-in email list. By pointing all of your traffic to a single sales page or single page website with no way to acquire email addresses it means that you do not have the benefit of making residual lifetime commissions from your referrals. On the other hand, an opt in list enables you to freely (within reason) email them on a regular basis and make regular sales. This is the most effective way of producing a residual lifetime income from affiliate commissions.
 

How Super Affiliates Utilize Their Lists

You can use many reasons to contact your customers, and in some cases with no real reason at all. Some of the most successful email marketers have revealed that one of their most effective methods to generate a sale is to send a welcome email and then follow this up with an identical or near-identical email a few days later.

People are busy living their lives and this means that in a lot of cases they are unable or unwilling to read every email they receive. Clearly, it’s their choice, but as an affiliate marketer looking to profit from your opt-in list it is not good news for you. By sending the same email you double your chances of having that email read and the recipient making a purchase.
 
Contact Regularity
The regularity of email contact is essential to your success too. In some cases the emailing frequency may be dictated by what it is you’re emailing. If you offered a weekly newsletter with no other forms of contact then you can email once a week. However, in most cases it is possible to email as little or as often as you like. Obviously, being excessive in either way is likely to cause more damage than good.

Once or twice a week should usually be enough. Some affiliates choose to increase the frequency over time, especially if the emails are not gaining the desired results. You would be better placed looking for improved content or affiliate programs with improved conversions. You should look after your email list members while ensuring that you are giving yourself enough opportunity to persuade them to buy.
 
Using Auto Responders To Deliver A Series Of Persuasive Emails
Auto-responders offer a superb way to really capture the attention of new members. An auto responder is set up to automatically email members, or new members so many times in the first week, fortnight, month, etc. of their joining your list. By having this well structured series of promotions being fired off to new potential customers without any need for intervention on your behalf this is a very simple way to generate residual or passive income.

Offer a 5 or 7 day e-course as a tempter to get people to sign up for your site and then set up your auto responder to send emails over the allotted times. Include your affiliate marketing advertisements in the emails, sit back, and determine how successful they have been. You should always be tracking your results of any marketing campaign you implement in a bid to improve and optimize on those results and, therefore, increase your future profits.

A lot of super affiliates swear by the use of auto responders because the more contact you have with your readers the much greater the chance that they will convert, click your links, and if you have pre-sold the item already then you are also extremely likely to make a sale at the end of it.

Which Is Best – An Affiliate Site Or An Opt In Email List?
This is a question that is asked on a regular basis but the answer is not so simple. You may eventually find that your opt-in email list will provide you with the greatest return for your efforts but it is generally an affiliate site that helps to build this list in the first place. Having a website helps to juice traffic from the search engines for your most highly beneficial keywords and also gives you the opportunity to promote several items at once.
So, in short, the best solution is to have both.
 
Is It Better To Have One Site And Email List Or Several?
It is a regularly debated question. Is it better to have one site that makes $100 per day or 100 sites that each make $1 per day. The result is the same and, all things being equal, then a single site would probably be easier to maintain and you would be able to put all of your effort into that one site. However, diversification and protecting yourself against the unexpected is the key.

Any one site can suddenly lose all its profitability. You could lose your stream of traffic or your merchant could go bankrupt. While you figure out a way to resolve these issues you are not making money. With one hundred websites making $1 per day each the loss of one site is not a big problem and it can be quickly and easily replaced while the remaining 99 websites continue to earn money.

Running 100 sites single handedly could prove difficult though. Why not aim to have twenty sites making $50 a day each? $1,000 per day is surely much better than $100 a day.


Offering Bonuses

Offering bonuses to your visitors is a good way to increase your sales and your profits and while it may require a little extra work it is not only worth it in the long run but is easier than you probably imagine. In most cases you should be able to request a receipt of purchase (an email confirmation) and then check that against your affiliate commissions statistics.

Bonuses can range from inexpensive (but valuable to your visitors) to much more expensive items. Obviously, the cost of the bonus needs to be offset against your commission to determine whether it is a worthwhile exercise and ensure that you aren’t just throwing money down the drain. The most effective bonus offer is one that complements the primary product you sell. It is possible to offer a unique incentive for more than one of your items but that can cost money and take considerable time. If you can find a single item or perhaps a small number of items that offer value to many of the products you sell then you’ve got it figured.

The principle is simple. You offer your site visitors a free gift that no other site and no other affiliate is offering. This comes back to offering something unique to your clients again but it is a concept that truly works. You provide your visitor with this gift if they click through your link and purchase the product via that link. Super affiliates use this technique regularly and effectively. The higher the value of the free gift the more likely it is to pull in new customers and earn you revenue.

Always attempt to put a value on the free gift you offer. If it is an e-book that you have written or you have had written especially then price it according to market trends. Remember that you won’t be selling it so there is no reason to try and undercut the rest of the market but don’t make it look too unrealistic. Of course, an e-book isn’t the only option you have for free gifts.

You might want to consider using physical items but always remember to include all the costs associated with the purchase of the item, and the shipping and packaging of that item. Using physical gifts enables you to include a business card or compliment slip as well so can prove extremely fruitful in the long run by helping you build a loyal visitor base.
 
Make It Unique
The trick with offering free goods is really is making it as unique as possible. If your free gift can be easily obtained elsewhere for very little then there is really no incentive for your visitors to purchase a product through your link. An e-book really does offer value but only if you resist the temptation to offer e-books that you have purchased the resale rights for. There are likely to be numerous other websites offering the very same products or, worse still, offering something better.
If you do intend to offer an e-book make it a unique one and really sell it as being unique. Make sure that your visitors know that the content of the e-book is not published or available anywhere else online. You should also sell the e-book as vigorously as you pre-sell the item you are promoting.
 
Other Digital Products
As well as e-books many affiliates have found success through offering other digital products. White papers and reports can be used to show a range of things. If it is an e-book or an e-course that you are attempting to sell then you can use that as a basis of the report you offer. For example, offer a white paper that gives concise instructions on exactly what you need to do to profit from the money making system you are trying to promote. Try to come up with new and original tips to help further the profit gained from that book. This link between the product and the free gift makes the link more appealing and you know for certain that anyone interested in either the freebie or the main product is interested in the other.

If you are a web developer then you could offer some free development if the product is a particularly expensive one. Copywriters could offer free page content and flash designers could offer free banners. Exactly what you are able to offer will obviously depend on exactly what you can do or what you are willing to spend.
 
Physical Products
Physical gifts can prove a bit more costly but they also have the appearance of being worth more. Buying wholesale or buying individually at wholesale prices, though, does offer excellent value for money. Ensure that the book is relevant to the product you are promoting. If you are promoting a case of fine wine then you could consider providing a fine wine guide or a guide to the winemaking regions.
 
Coupons And Price Reductions
Another possible alternative is to contact the merchant and ask if they have any coupon codes that offer cash back. You may be able to agree a deal whereby you forego a percentage of your commission and offer the equivalent as a reduction to your visitors. Nothing says, “buy from me” like a reduction in price. Be warned though that not all merchants will be willing or even able to do this. Another possibility is an incentive type scheme allowing you to offer cash back to your loyal visitors.
By providing this added incentive to purchase you are fulfilling several vital roles. Not only should you increase the likelihood of making a sale, therefore bumping up your conversion rate and your profits but you also make your readers trust you and believe you to be an authoritative voice on the appropriate topic matter.


A Referral Can Be For Life Not Just One Purchase
Promoting affiliate products on a one-off basis can make a very good stream of income when done well but the secret of the most successful affiliate marketers is the creation of passive income that is generated over a lifetime. Yes, an affiliate website will continue to pre-sell your items but without constant supervision you will find that your traffic is likely to die down and there will come a point when your target market for a particular product diminishes.

It is at this point when your opt-in list really comes to the fore. As well as providing you with the opportunity to continue plugging your existing products, an opt-in list also gives you access to qualified leads for years to come. By sending out one email to your entire list it is possible to generate a large amount of income. Multiply this by the amount of emails you send and the amount of products you promote and it is easy to see why super affiliates depend on their opt-in lists to make them their money.

Managing and continually striving to increase the size of your opt-in list should be as important as promoting your website. Powerful newsletters or email content can pre-sell your concept before your visitors even click your link and visit the appropriate page on your site. In fact, it isn’t even necessary to direct visitors to your site any longer. Send them exclusive offers that only registered email members have access to. Because this makes them feel as though they have access to something that your “regular” visitors do not have access to they are more likely to intently read your email content. 

When writing your emails or newsletters you need to appear personable as well as informative and authoritative (there’s that word again). The more you can make your readers believe they have direct access to you and that the information you send them is virtually for their eyes only the more trust you will gain. Don’t expect your first email to pay dividends. If you have a reasonable sized list before you begin then you may make a few sales and earn a little commission but generally speaking the first few emails you send will be laying the groundwork for the future. This is another aspect of using an auto responder to send an initial series of emails works very well.

In order to generate even more lifetime residual income you should concentrate on affiliates that offer decent cookie lengths. Cookie length is the amount of time that your referrals can potentially earn you money. If a site offers a cookie length of a single visit or several hours then you have to rely on them making a purchase almost immediately when they follow your link. Cookie lengths can vary greatly from a single visit to several years.

There are still good reasons to choose programs that offer short cookie lengths, especially if you offer a free gift on a high commission sale. Always ensure that you clearly state that the product must be purchased through your link in order to gain the free gift and visitors will generally do exactly that. However, for smaller commission items you should attempt to find affiliate programs that offer longer-term commissions.

Consumables and other exhaustive goods offer a potential for repeat business that other products simply don’t offer. By choosing an affiliate program that offers a lifetime commission on any products that your referrals buy then presuming the quality of the product is up to scratch in the first place you should be able to rely on a very good level of repeat custom without having to re-sell the item.


Article Marketing And Its Uses
We briefly touched on article marketing earlier. Essentially it enables you to create a compelling article with links back to your affiliate site and distribute this article on numerous directories, websites, blogs, and in newsletters. Every website has a need for compelling content and if you can write about the topic of your site then you have a market for your articles. The good thing about article marketing is that the marketing involved from the writer’s perspective is minimal.

The links in your article should generally appear at the bottom and while with some article directories they can be tailored to point directly to the affiliate page on your merchant’s website it is better if you send readers to your own site first in a bid to try and capture their email addresses for your opt-in list. Mention the free e-book or other free product that you offer and you should get a good number of bites.

There are quite literally hundreds of article directories on the Internet. These allow writers, Webmasters, and promoters to submit articles on a range of topics. While some of these directories are geared specifically towards a single topic or a small group of topics others are extremely broad and allow the submission of articles related to absolutely any topic.

Try to choose a good combination of topic specific and broad category based directories and don’t submit a single article to too many of them. You want website owners and other new media publishers to use your article and if it is plastered all over the Internet already then this is less likely to happen.

Article submissions of this kind provide you with a good basis of inbound links to assist in promoting your site with search engines and in driving direct traffic to the pages of your website. A single article can literally end up on tens or hundreds of websites each providing a link to your site and each one potentially generating traffic.
 

Other Useful On-Site Promotion Techniques

Error Pages
Error pages are a part and parcel of surfing the web. In an ideal virtual world your readers will not suffer the irritation of being forwarded to an error page but it does happen. If you have access to your own site then create a custom error page that is called in place of your existing one. Include an affiliate link in here. Instead of annoying your readers being forced to try and re-navigate their way around your website they may instead click the link and make the purchase.

Responses And Contact
Email responses and signatures are all good real estate in terms of promoting your affiliate products. Don’t get carried away by plastering every affiliate link you have but consider the group of people that are most likely to read the email and include the most pertinent link in that email. Use your signature in the same way.

If you offer automated replies to emails or if you have “non-sales” pages on your site then try to work an affiliate link in each of these as well. Don’t make the link too obvious and always ensure that it is targeted to the people most likely to visit your website and end up on those pages.

Personal Recommendations
If you’ve ever visited a successful affiliate site you will have seen the personal recommendations that are invariably included. We keep mentioning that a big part of the battle in affiliate marketing is making you and your website appear trustworthy and authoritative. If you can do this through whatever methods you find successful then by using yourself as a testimonial to the product then you give that product much more credence. You should certainly always include a couple of customer testimonials for a little extra leverage but a personal testimonial from the Webmaster of a site that readers trust will go a long way.

Your personal testimonial shouldn’t be limited to your website either. When you send out emails and newsletters offering details of the latest products include a report of how you bought and prospered or benefited from the item. While it doesn’t necessarily have to be true it is probably fair to say that the most effective personal testimonials come from people that have genuinely used the product. 

Consider writing testimonials to be placed on other people’s sites. It may sound counter intuitive helping to promote another affiliate or another site but it is a link to your website. You are unlikely to lose any readers because of that but it could help gain search engine traffic and you never know, you might actually gain a couple of direct visitors through that link.

Managing And Maintaining Your Opt In List

Your opt-in list may turn out to be the most profitable aspect of your affiliate marketing and so it is important that you treat it and your list members properly. Remember that an opt-in list must also have an opt-out opportunity with every item of email you send. The method you use needs to be simple and needs to be displayed so that it can be seen easily. Unwilling recipients aren’t just unlikely to follow your links they’re likely to get angry if they can’t unsubscribe from your list.
Keeping list members means only posting good, relevant information but ensuring that you do so often enough so that you aren’t forgotten about. If you are only emailing every month then you aren’t emailing often enough. On the other hand if you are emailing twice a day with the same content every time then you will quickly start to hemorrhage members and lose the potential gold mine that you have carefully developed.

Content Is Everything
The content and information you email is very important. Yes you are trying to promote one of your affiliate products but you still need to provide something. The word unique crops up again here because you need to either offer a unique spin on a tired story or offer something completely unique. Your own personal testimonial is a good place to start when you are promoting a brand new product. Remember, you are a voice or figure of authority to your list members and you should be able to use this to your advantage.

An emailed appraisal of a product must absolutely smack of personal, first hand knowledge. There’s no room for just regurgitating old information and passing it off as your own experience. Include the reasons why you decided to try it. Tell your users when, where, and how you used it. Then tell them how good it was and how it changed your life or, at least, how it made your life a lot easier. Remember that time and money are both important to most people. If you can tell them how a product saved you both of these then you have two huge benefits for that product that you can offer

Offering More Incentives
Can you find anything to offer as an incentive to purchase? Maybe another e-book or another free product of some description. We keep mentioning free products because they do genuinely work. By providing something extra on top of the deal you elevate yourself above all of your competition and increase the likelihood of making a sale. Whatever you give away don’t forget to tell your subscribers that you are giving it to them because they are your loyal members.

Constantly Optimizing

Tracking your performance is something that you should learn early on. Eventually it will become second nature to check your statistics on a very regular basis to find out your most effective marketing methods for each of your sites and, even more specifically, each of your products, links, and other advertising techniques. Only by going through a constant optimization procedure can you be sure that you are getting the best results.

Remember that every site is very different. Also remember that the same thing is also true of products and merchants. They are all different. This means that while a single page website offering a 5 day auto responder may work perfectly for selling an e-book on making money on the Internet the same technique and tactic might not work to sell a luxury vacation in the Bahamas.

The word unique has cropped up a lot throughout the course of this e-book and it still rings true in this section even as we near the final sections of this guide. Every concept is unique and you should treat it as such. Even as you master the techniques outlined in this e-book and as you develop and expand on some of your own techniques you will inevitably that there is not a single tactic that works equally as well for every product.

Ditching Under Performing Products
You will come across products that simply do not sell well. Generally these will be products that have been done almost to death. If all of your site visitors either own what you are promoting or have already decided they do not want to own one then you won’t sell that product regardless of how good it is. The simplest way to tell whether it is the product or the site is to first of all do some research. Look at sites in the same industry as yours and if they are all promoting the same product or products as you then you should probably put it down to experience and move along.

Another important word to remember is courage. You must have the courage to change things when they aren’t working and you have to have the courage to try new things once in a while. Similarly, you have to have the courage to stick with something that is working particularly well.

Remember that you need to drive traffic to your site or your opt-in list, then you need to persuade those visitors to click on your affiliate links, and then you need your leads to purchase the product you are promoting.
You will have statistics to help you every step of the way, though.

Using Website Statistics
Your website host or analytics provider gives you access to information regarding the amount of traffic your website receives. If you aren’t getting any traffic then you need to look for ways of generating it. While SEO can provide an excellent way to generate targeted traffic it can take time to have any serious effect on your site. Consider PPC advertising, newsletter advertising, and even setting up your own affiliate program if this is a possibility for you.

Using Affiliate Statistics
The affiliate programs you use will show you how many page views you have, the number of times your links are clicked through to the merchant site, the number of purchases that has lead to, and the total commission that those purchases have generated. In the majority of cases, affiliate programs offer a figure known as CTR, or Click Thru Rate. This is the number of clicks divided by the number of page views expressed in a percentage form. The higher the number the better, but every product in every industry has different levels of CTR that you should be reaching.

Acting On Poor Figures
If your CTR is low then it could be that either the affiliate links are not performing as they should, you are promoting the wrong product, or you aren’t effectively pre-selling the product on your site or in your emails. You will need to take action to stop the rot. Don’t change everything in one wholesale bid to put things right. First look at the likely culprits and change the one you believe is most likely. Be realistic and honest when looking at the content you have written yourself. “If it isn’t performing then it isn’t staying” should be your motto.

If you are getting a good CTR but very few purchases then it’s the product itself that is letting you down. With high-end and therefore high-cost goods you should expect a relatively low amount of people to purchase but this isn’t a problem because of the size of the commissions you do receive. If this isn’t the reason for your low percentage of sales then change the affiliate program or affiliate product you are selling. Again, be unscrupulous with this. No matter how much you like the product or how fervently you endorse it if it is an unappealing product it simple won’t do the business for your affiliate efforts.

 

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is far from dead. Programs like Google Adsense may have gained in popularity but done well, affiliate marketing can potentially make very large amounts of money. However, don’t believe the hype that it is easy money. You will either have to invest a lot of time and effort or, alternatively, a lot of financial resource. Whatever you invest you will need to ensure that you get a good return on that investment to make it worthwhile.

Diversifying your portfolio is not just something that applies when looking for the right affiliate programs. While it may be unmanageable to maintain hundreds of different affiliate sites, auto responder series, and email lists it is always a good idea to have a network of opportunities to make money. You never know what is going to happen to a particular market, even online. By having ten or twenty sites centered around several different industries you should be able to ensure that any crashes or loss in revenue from a particular site or a particular group of sites will not instantly bankrupt you.
If you are just starting out as an affiliate then it is best to start with something relatively simple and build on it. Don’t look on your first commission check as being your success, but your first success on what will eventually be a very long and fruitful list of successes.

Set goals for yourself and each of the projects you take on. If you have twenty projects then start off with a relatively low milestone and once you hit that milestone move up. Eventually you will find that those nervous first few months are a distant dream, but this will only happen if you stick at it, don’t stray too far from your plan and always offer the right level of commitment – complete commitment.

We hope you have enjoyed this e-book and that you will profit from the techniques and help we have offered in each of the sections. If you do, then don’t forget who helped you along the way!