Internet Marketing

Understanding Affiliate Marketing

Understanding Affiliate Marketing (Rewrite Text)

     

How come some Internet marketers live the life of rockstars and others seem to fail? As a successful affiliate marketer you need to be an expert in SEO, PPC, CPA analytics, traffic, conversions and have an understanding of what the best products are to sell on the web. Most people that are new to Internet marketing believe that they can just get a blog find a niche and start marketing. Since the Google Panda update the good old days of easy ranking and traffic just don’t exist like they used to. What does work is persistence, commitment and leverage.

Leverage Is The Success Key In Affiliate Marketing

Leverage Affiliate Marketing

Any affiliate marketer worth their weight in gold will have a team of people behind them. Sure it may seem like the affiliate is a one person show but behind the scenes they will have an outsourced designer, coder, SEO, copywriters, syndicators and a paid traffic expert. Some affiliates may dabble in all of these subjects but affiliates that are producers will outsource so they can focus on product creation, JV and marketing. Your most seasoned affiliate marketers are masters at building offline relationships and construction joint venture arrangements. It is one thing to create web traffic it is another to borrow traffic or to market to another marketers email list.

For those of you looking to become affiliate marketers and you know nothing about it the key is to get started some place. As an affiliate marketers you can sell products from Amazon or information products. There are people who get involved in CPA networks (stands for cost per acquisition) and in those you can market anything from how to information, education, insurance enrollment, motivation courses, credit cards or lead generation. Affiliate marketers can earn commissions for every sale or lead that they generate and commissions vary from 10% to 60% depending on what the product is.

How To Start A Carrier As Affiliate Marketer?

For many starting out as an affiliate marketer starts with the understanding of keyword research and search intent on search engines like Google. Using keyword research tools like the Google External tool is a good place to start. You will want to target something that has acceptable levels of competition because if it is too competitive you will never rank. You will need a blog preferably on a WordPress platform and if you are generating leads a autoresponder. To test your keywords you can do some small PPC campaigns on Google and see if your keywords convert. The goal of every affiliate marketer is to understand which keywords are your money keywords verses the ones that don’t convert. Once you understand your keywords that are highly converting then you can leverage your SEO efforts with outsourcing to invest in your organic campaign.

The fastest way to get traffic is to borrow it. Depending on what you are selling it may be possible for you to market to other affiliate marketers. If you are dealing in information products creating a joint venture with an established affiliate marketer could make a lot of sense since they may already be sitting on a large list. So if you are a master affiliate or have your own information product you can negotiate a shared commission with another marketer and they will market your products to their people. This is commonly done with information products via Webinars and it is a very successful model. Most affiliate starting out will not be in this position so you might consider leveraging video marketing, podcasting, article marketing, blogging and paid traffic sources. It is important that as your Internet marketing business develops that you attend industry conferences and events so that you can build those valuable joint venture relationships.

Looking For The Short Cuts In Internet Marketing?

No Shortcuts

Most everything in Internet marketing takes time or money so I don’t see a short cut to becoming an affiliate marketer rockstar. It takes years of dedication for most affiliate marketers as they have to gain the skills necessary and or you have to have the resources to be able to hire the experts that can help you in your business. An Internet marketing business is composed of many moving parts and the learning curve can be complex. That’s not to say that it isn’t possible to have success in affiliate marketing but rather that you have a realistic expectation of your results. The leverage you create through outsourcing and key relationships will be the difference between success or failure.

What Is The Best Internet Marketing Blueprint For Newbies?

I believe that your goal in your Internet marketing business should be to have multiple streams of traffic and revenue. You should have a mix of your own products and other peoples products that you market. Your other goal should be to deepen your understanding of the mechanics of online marketing and like any smart business person find your leverage by outsourcing and removing yourself from the business as much as possible. There are some systems that can assist you in getting started in affiliate marketing where they will teach you the basics of keyword research and you can become an affiliate and market their products.

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Is Working From Home For You?

Is Working From Home The Right Thing For You?

Is Working From Home The Right Thing For You?

One of the big mistakes that people make when they startup a home based business is they fail to consider what it actually takes to be successful working from home.

At first it would surprise me when people would tell me they could never do what I do simply because they wouldn’t be able to make themselves get up in the morning. They would sleep in and do nothing all day.

While a few online business owners are rather infamous for sleeping until noon, they’re also the ones you’re likely to find in their office working on a project at 3 am.

So today I want to help you understand what it really takes to start a home based business and make it successful.

Are you a self starter?

Entrepreneurs Working From Home

When you have your own business trying to make money online, it’s very different than working for someone else. If you show up late, nobody actually cares. Entrepreneurship means It’s on you to be accountable to yourself.

Can you get things done if there is nobody watching over you to make sure you get it done? If you’re not able to motivate yourself and to set your own deadlines for yourself then you may want to rethink this whole “starting a home based business” thing in the first place.

4 Hour work week working from home?

When Timothy Ferris released 4 Hour Work Week, he started a phenomenon. The idea of only working four hours a week really appealed to a lot of people. And yes, it is possible.

However, it’s not the normal case. First of all, most people that I know who have successful home based businesses actually like what they do. You know the old saying, “do what you love and you’ll never work another day in your life.” For many home based business owners they really do like what they do and want to work more than that.

The reality is that for most people, four hours a week isn’t enough. I know that in the past, I’ve had days where 14 hours a day isn’t enough. I don’t want to discourage you, but I do want you to get an idea of what it’s really like sometimes. Are you willing to do what it takes to succeed?

Dealing with distraction

Distraction

You’re going to need an area where you can focus and get work done. I remember when I I was working in the corporate world, where we had the open office system, my productivity was terrible. I was permanently interrupted by colleagues, either saying hallo or asking a question. And even if they respected my desire not to be interrupted I was distracted by office noise.

Eventually, I found that for me, the best plan was to have a home office, where I could do the productive work. So, I did split my time in three parts. Customer facing time, office time for meetings and interactions and home office time for productive work. And that worked perfectly for me for a long time, that it wasn’t difficult for me to continue the same concept as I started my won business.

You need to be very consistent in the time you are working at home. Make sure that your kids and spouse know that when you’re working they can’t bother you unless it’s an emergency. If you fail to do that, you’re setting yourself up for a very frustrating experience of working from home.

Are you willing to learn?

The last thing I want to mention is the need to be willing to learn. I’ve seen people who have spent $60,000 on a college education become unwilling to spend a few hundred dollars on a course that will teach them what they need to know to be successful in their business.

One way or another, you are going to pay for your education. It’s either going to be through experience and the school of hard knocks or you can take the easier route and pay others for their specialized knowledge. 

Keep in mind eventually there is nothing for free. Either you spend your time or you spend your money to acquire the knowledge you need to succeed. That’s why there is the saying “time is money”.

It’s cheaper and less stressful to take the paid route, but the choice is ultimately up to you, but just remember this, a lot you don’t know and you need to be willing to learn to be successful. 

And even when you are successful, you still need to learn everyday something new and do something new to remain successful! I like a quote from Andy Grove that reminds me about this fact:” “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive”.

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Product Reviews

The Product Review And 5 Key Tips How To Do It Right?

The Product Review And 5 Key Tips How To Do It Right?

A product review and a rating system has become a popular feature for successful sites. Not only it matters if you are selling a product over your online store, but also if you are selling other people products through affiliate marketing.

As a matter of fact the main advantage of a product review is the assurance to the visitors and customers that this product is not just another banal one. People are actually talking about it (both in positive or negative sense) and their thinking is highlighted on the product page!

In addition, people some times switch to the competitors, when the product details page can’t satisfy their need for detailed information and assurance about the value through a product review. 

Also, the product details page is the most important part of the site as this is the place when the customers decide whether to add the product to the cart or not to do so. 

Hence, you should take every effort to assure the customers that the products, which are being offered are indeed a good bargain and value for the price.

Here are 5 tips for making the product details page more efficient by encouraging customers and visitors to write reviews for the purchased products:

Tip 1 – The Design Of The Product Review page:

 
Product Review

One of the strongest features in the product details page is the option to let the customers express their opinion and experience about the product in form of a product review. 

A simple one line comment added by a happy customer can give many other visiting customers, who are sitting on the fence, the needed nudge to purchase the product.

In addition, you should give the product details page design a special emphasize, since people always love to visit product detail pages that are visually attractive and neatly presented. 

The product details page should arrange the product images, description, prices and attribute selection options etc. in a structured and simple way. This will help the customers to find information easily. 

If the product details page design and arrangement is vivid and attractive, people would love to write something about it. Adding Image zooming, image video and multiple images illustrates the product better and thus gives customers a good insight about the product. 

If  visitors finds an eye-catchy product details page, it’s more likely that they would like to contribute some feedback.

Tip 2 – Simplify The Process:

Keep the Review & Rating feature simple. A complicated process would simply hinder visitors and customers from adding the review. 

If you want the rating feature to be present along with the review option, offer a visual 5 star rating which can be rated using the mouse click. And offer the negative rating options that would give a bold impression to the visitors that they are free to rate it the way they feel. 

For the Review make the email fields optional as people often don’t want their emails to be visible publicly. Offer an option whether to show or hide the email addresses from the published reviews. 

One issue you should be particularly careful about is the CAPTCHA. Easy CAPTCHA can easily be broken by the spammers and hard CAPTCHA irritates the real reviewers. 

Choose one which is difficult to break by the Spamming software yet easy for the human users to read.

Tip 3 – Moderate the Product Review and rating:

Your e-commerce platform should help you administering the review and rating casted by the visitors or customers. 

You should be able to publish/un-publish the review (even manipulate if you want), control the visibility, control the number of reviews per page, reply back to a reviewer and other conventional review & rating moderation features. 

If you value what your customers are saying about your products, you should regularly moderate the reviews. Visitors feel frustrated when they find that their reviews are never getting published on your website. 

Send them thank you emails for giving the reviews and visiting your website and as reply to the review, write something that would not only impress the reviewers but also other visitors.

Tip 4 – Keep the ‘Negative Reviews’ as well:

You Should Keep A Negative Product Review On Your Product Page

If your product details page is full of reviews with flattering and praising words & all 5 stars, that would possibly make other visitors doubtful about authenticity of those reviews. 

If customers are criticizing the products, it’s your best chance to defend the reason and let others know it. Take the chance to confront the negative reviews with satisfying answers and place them among the other reviews.

Tip 5 – Consider A Product Review Competition:

What about announcing a little gift, free coupon or discount for the top rated reviewers? 

Yes, that would definitely encourage visitors and customers to explore your products and write something about them. A $5 coupon code, 5% discount or free gift wrapping would inspire lot more visitors and customers to write some lines for your products.

Wrapping Up

The Product Review is a key pillar of Internet Marketing and another way of word of mouth. If you want to have positive impact

  • present your products more visually and in richly designed format 
  • offer some benefits for writing reviews 
  • make the process easy 
  • and moderate regularly to get more reviews and customer feedback

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