Retouching A Stable Affiliate Marketing Plan
This is a stage by stage plan for
you to adapt into a financially successful affiliate marketing business, run
from your own websitThis is it if you’ve wanted to see a license to print money this is it.
You will learn a plan of action
that explains:
·
how affiliate marketing works,
·
helps you build your website,
·
choose a niche for your marketing,
·
choose the best products to introduce to your
readers,
·
target awesome traffic through your marketing
and
·
repeat consistently.
What is affiliate marketing and what is an affiliate?
Where we talk about a product or
service within affiliate marketing, it belongs to a company or business and is
not directly available from you. As the affiliate marketer, you provide the
link from the customer to the company and their product.
Think of yourself as the
‘middleman’ – you are affiliated with the product or service for sale, but do
not provide it yourself.
In reality; you’re involved in
the sa, earningre you earn a commission from each sale.
Here’s the short version before
the details. Currently you:
·
own a blog or website or can design one
·
can recommend a product or service to your
readers
·
can strike a partnership with the company that
sells the product or service
·
you can market the product or service from your
blog or website
·
you are now an affiliate marketer
You will be targeting specific
customers to a website page from your affiliate link or banner. By linking
customers and the best offers, you increase the chance of a sale and receive
commission.
This is what happens in affiliate
marketing, in real-time;
·
you write a blog post telling your readers about
the product or service from the company that you recommend, or
·
you place banner ads or buttons on your website;
these link to the company’s website. The link contains a unique ID. The ID is
you so the company knows who to pay
·
the reader clicks on your link in your post or
the advert on your website
·
the reader is sent to the company’s website
·
when the reader purchases the product or service
the company adds your payment to your commission statement
·
the reader is happy
·
the company is joyful
·
you are ecstatic
As you set up your new business
you have two choices to make:
1.
You can choose to link to a few companies that
are linked by niche to your current blog/website. This means joining an
affiliate program direct from a merchant or through an affiliate network that
manages the entire affiliate transaction.
2.
The alternative choice is to set up your new
blog/website as one gigantic affiliate marketing business and join several
affiliate networks.
Take time to look at competition
across the marketplace that interests you. This will help you decide which
actions to take.
Let your thinking concentrate on
three important points throughout your new business planning:
1.
Choose the best possible products and services
matched to good/great commission for your business
2.
Targeted traffic to your website is vital. Great
traffic will help your readers click your affiliate links for commission, even
where your products are average.
3.
Match the traffic to great products and hey
presto!
Alternative websites
Instead of offering a
website/blog, some successful affiliate marketing busiother methods that you may consider as opportunitiesies for you.
Coupon websites - everyone wants
a bargain and where you are paid to generate traffic to a merchant that offers
coupons, you will be paid a commission for your work.
Download websites - consumers
often wish to try software before they will purchase it. By offering a download
option and targeting great traffic to your website, you will be paid for each
customer that downloads software via your website and then again, as an
affiliate marketer, when they purchase the full product after the trial period
has been completed.
How to start your business venture
You cannot achieve success
without a website or blog. Where you already have a successful website, or a
following on Facebook, Twitter or other social media, you already have a built
in customer base.
Alternately, you’re starting from
the beginning.
You will benefit from operating
direct from your own domain/website, even if you use Google for traffic
elsewhere, use Facebook for attention and Twitter for marketing.
If Google change their rules or
one of the social media companies cuts you off, you’ll be pleased that you run
your business from your own domain.
Rewards for your hard work
You will be offered two
completely different types of commission from merchants and affiliate networks.
CPL; as an affiliate, you will be
paid a commission for every enquiry which moves from your website to their
website.
CPA; as an affiliate, you will be
paid only when a sale is completed through the products or service provider’s
website.
You can choose to mix and match
these different commission methods. Depending upon the price of the product or
service, you will usually receive more commission when a product or sale is
completed, compared to customers who use your website where a company pays you
for clicking through, only.
As you consider your affiliate
links, some companies will offer you a higher commission once certain sales
targets have been reached. This is an incentive for you to send more traffic
through to a particular merchant.
Website basics
Okay; let’s get past the basics.
We’re not going to waste your time here with irrelevant clutter. You know how
to do these:
·
how to register a domain,
·
get a hosting,
·
install a blog,
·
get an autoresponder,
·
creating landing pages
If you’re unsure how to complete
these tasks, become an expert from lots of free resources online to enhance
your affiliate marketing results.
Optimizing your website is vital;
now is the time to perform the maximum SEO for search engines.
As soon as your website is up and
running, maximize the use of Title tags, description tags, keywords, robots and
other meta tags.
Niche marketing
Choose your affiliate marketing
links carefully, attracting customers that will enjoy a range of advertising
that is linked to a niche, rather than choosing links from anywhere, without a
common thread.
Individuals that visit your
website for more information about musical instruments will be interested in
links to keyboard music, keyboard stands, guitar effects, singers on tour and
so on. They may not be interested in Barbie doll sales, how to paint your
garden shed or movies about how to create calm through yoga.
Small niche marketing can be good
for you and may offer less competition. The greatest successes may come from
extremely popular and lucrative niche markets, even though they offer more
competition.
Buy your hosting
Now is the time to carry out these
first necessary steps;
• register
a domain
• get
a hosting
• install
a blog
• acquire
an autoresponder
Avoid the free services and pay
so that you remain in control of your domain, hosting, blog and auto responder.
Your WordPress blog will help
build a relationship with your customers and boost your search engine rankings.
How to choose your niche?
You must narrow down your choice
of niche marketplace before you can move onto the next stage.
To help you find your favorite
niche consider this;
·
What problems can you solve for your customers?
·
When customers search Google or other search
engines which other businesses advertise on the first few results pages?
·
Is there space for your business or is your
competition invincible?
·
Do you need to know the subject completely or
can you gain the knowledge quickly?
·
Do you need to enjoy the subject to keep it
fresh for you?
Keeping up with the times
Google are constantly and
consistently upgrading algorithms for SEO. You will need to regularly check
what Google considers to be positive or negative so that you can update the
links in your website.
When they change their rules,
part of your website may be affected and business temporarily reduced. By
keeping up-to-date with Google information, you can keep your website ahead of
the rest.
As long as you consistently think
that affiliate marketing is all about quality rather than quantity, you will be
heading in the right direction.
Working your affiliate marketing
As you stroll through the
Internet, the highest traffic for affiliates is driven by SEO (around 80%)
followed by social media (around 60 %.)
The key is to link with
successful affiliate marketing businesses where you will both be pleased with
profits and conversions.
Your next action is to choose
merchant’s websites which you can link to via an affiliate link.
As you start to research your
potential merchants or affiliate networks, consider;
·
How well each sales page at the relevant company
will attract your potential customers?
·
Is it a good product and will it help the
customer?
·
Does the sales page motivate the purchaser to
complete the transaction?
·
Is it easy for the customer to buy?
·
Does the merchant provide great after sales
support?
·
Does the merchant care about the customer?
Choose an affiliate network
What is an affiliate network?
Effectively, an affiliate network
is the business operator that links larger companies to deal with a high number
of affiliates to promote their products and services.
An affiliate network works like
this:
An affiliate network introduces
you to a large number of companies and publishers who have a wide range of
products and services for sale.
The affiliate network provides
you with all of the necessary tools so you can promote the products
effectively. You will be placing links and banners on your website/blog where
they are relevant to the subject matter.
The tracking codes within each
link or banner are the ID that links you to the commission you will receive
after a sale.
You may gain a greater affiliate
commission percentage with a direct link to a company. Alternately, when you
link through an affiliate network, the network needs to take their share as
well; but they may have negotiated a higher rate to cover the difference.
Which affiliate networks are best for you?
There is a good choice of
networks which will be right for you. Visit them and evaluate which feels best,
what affiliate sales they can offer, check out the deals, investigating the
percentage of commission you can receive.
After joining, follow their
training so you know how to search the network for suitable affiliate
offerings. Also, make sure you know, 100%, how to copy the link from the
product or service, to your website, to ensure you get paid when a sale
completes.
Clickbank are one of the most
well-known, one of the biggest, but this also means they have the most issues.
Of course, and here’s a large
hint; everyone has heard of Amazon. Don’t they sell everything in the world?
Here is a list of some of the major affiliate networks. Search for
more…
JVZoo http://www.jvzoo.com
Rakuten Linkshare http://www.linkshare.com/
CJ by Conversant http://www.cj.com/ also known as Commission Junction.
Amazon https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/main.html
Avangate http://www.avangate.com/
eBay Partner Network https://ebaypartnernetwork.com/
ClickBank http://www.clickbank.com/
ShareASale http://shareasale.com/
FlexOffers http://www.flexoffers.com/
Revenue Wire http://www.revenuewire.com/
AvantLink http://www.avantlink.com/
LinkConnector http://www.linkconnector.com/
Affiliate Window http://www.affiliatewindow.com/us/
oneNetworkDirect http://www.onenetworkdirect.com/
AffiliateNetwork http://www.affiliatenetwork.com/
Affiliatefuture http://www.affiliatefuture.com/
AdMedia http://www.admedia.com/
Tradedoubler http://www.tradedoubler.com/
Webgains http://us.webgains.com/
Impact Radius http://www.impactradius.com/
Valuleads https://valuleads.com/
As you investigate each
merchant’s product or service, you must decide whether it is worth promoting
for the commission you might receive or whether you should move on to a
different product or service that will be more effective to your bottom line
profits.
The products you choose must;
·
Be excellent products or services
·
introduce an excellent commission structure
·
offer great support to your customers
Important note about affiliate networks
Life changes and updates. Before
you choose from any of the above listed networks or others, just because they
are a top rated network now, doesn’t mean they will stay that way in the
future.
Check reviews, check other
affiliate comments and feedback and keep up-to-date with changes in the
marketplace.
Arrange for Google to send you
direct notification any time that your favorite affiliate network is mentioned
in the news so you can stay one step ahead and be prepared to change at a
moment’s notice when necessary.
Affiliate sign up process
Signing up for a network is easy.
You just follow the prompts offered to you. For affiliate networks, you sign up
to the network. With some networks, you sign up separately for each product or
service you intend to use.
It’ll take you around five
minutes providing you have your account information available, so they know how
to pay you.
For direct merchant affiliate
sign ups, have ready:
·
Your personal and business information
·
Know which promotional methods you intend to use
·
An estimate of your monthly sales (difficult to
guess, I know!)
·
Read the full terms and conditions agreement. If
there are any parts you do not understand, find out what they mean to you.
·
Have your savings or checking account
information available. Many will pay you by PayPal, as an option.
Your website/blog
Add Google’s AdSense banners to
your blog to see which advertisements appear across your pages. These will
almost certainly be good money earners.
Go to these companies direct and
add them as an affiliate.
Remove those AdSense from your
individual website pages, so they do not clash and lose your business large
commissions.
How to place your affiliate links and banners
The content of your website is
the key to your affiliate sales. Where the content and your affiliate sales are
not of a high enough quality, your customers will quickly move on to another
website.
Content is king
Good quality content on your
website/blog will attract customers and help you to a higher page ranking
within search engines. Poor quality content will result in low page rankings
and your readers will struggle to find you.
Original content will always
prove much more successful than generic or copied content, which is effectively
wasting your time.
The best positioning for
affiliate links and banners are within the content of your website/blog.
Affiliate banners in your sidebar
may look pretty, but this is not where your customers will click.
The best way to make the content
and link interesting for your customer is to ensure that the two blends well
and mix kindly within your overall website. This is why products related to
your website work best.
Your webpages should not appear
as a mass of links for affiliate sales. Each page should be full of great
content with links you hardly notice as you read.
Customers who are reading your
content are interested in the information you are providing. This makes them
more likely to click on your link and make a purchase.
Some merchants will provide you
with custom copy for your website/blog. Where you can alter the content your
page will appear as an individual option within the search engines.
Other merchants will provide you
with custom copy that you are not allowed to change. This copy may then appear
exactly the same in several searches across the Internet.
Writing content for your website
For those who do not know:
·
Make the content great to read. Good quality
information keeps readers on your page.
·
You can use freelance writers to compose your
content if you’re not a great writer.
·
Post at least once every day - as the bare
minimum.
·
You can try to place relevant guest posts across
the internet to drive traffic back to your website.
·
Respond to all blog comments and be friendly,
not argumentative.
Targeted traffic
By combining your website/blog,
social media activities and great content, traffic will be targeted to your
affiliate links.
This is the time to organize;
·
landing pages
·
high quality reviews of the products or services
·
tutorials on the subject
You will now;
·
share your content through social media
·
email your subscribers and auto responders
·
create free downloads, such as PDF reports, with
links back to your content
·
repeat and repeat again
Work out a strategy to promote
each individual affiliate link. By regularly managing and performing the
actions of your strategy, you will consistently attract traffic to your
affiliate links.
Consistently check the quality
and increase content to your website/blog so that they remain fresh, rather
than being left alone to die.
This regular maintenance of your
website/blog content will ensure that your links and banners are unobtrusively
monetizing each of the opportunities you offer.
Regularly check the search
engines’ latest rules to ensure that you have the correct number of links and
banners on each page. Too many will lead
to your page being removed from the search engine and too few will leave the
customer with few opportunities to make you money.
Add a forum to your website to
include long-tail keywords to decrease your bounce rates. You will increase
visitor time on site and build a trust community.
Continue your exploration of merchant offers
Once your website/blog is up and
running, you will benefit from consistently finding more successful merchant
affiliate products and services which can be added to your website or may
replace those that they are proving unsuccessful.
What works together?
As you update your website/blog,
you will be able to consider relevant matched, yet different affiliate links
for your suitable content.
Where your article is about road
safety, you may choose to run affiliate links connected to vehicle tires and
brakes.
Thinking outside of the box,
consider the security aspects for a child to be transported safely and this
will lead you to further affiliate links within the same content.
Thinking further afield, what
other items related to children, within an entirely different marketplace, are
applicable?
This provides you with the
opportunity to try different affiliate products and test market them. Where you
receive positive results you will continue. When the figures suggest you are
wasting your time, remove the affiliate product and replace it with a better
choice.
Every customer is important
Every reader that arrives on your
website/blog is there for a reason. They want to receive high-quality
information and will be pleased to click a link to give them the opportunity to
better their lifestyle.
Each and every visitor to your
website is either a potential customer for the future, a customer now or
(hopefully) a repeat customer.
Your auto responder, perhaps
introducing your customers to special offers or a regular newsletter, will
provide you with customer contact details so that you can continue to target
market these individuals.
Providing customers receive
relevant emails through marketing, they will continue to read them and click
through to your website. It is difficult to find the balance between how many to send
and how between. Trial and error as well as receiving expert advice will provide
you with the answer.
Each reader is a potential
customer that can provide you with money, so you mustn't do you mustn'toallow themsite.
Seek expert opinions and advice
for attracting targeted traffic to your website.
Pay per click
There are many pay-per-click opportunities pay-per-clicking payment each time individual clicks on a
link within your website/blog.
Research which pay-per-click opportunities pay-per-click and incorporates these into your website.
Pay per click is not the samPay-per-click links, but they provide another opening for you to monetarize your
website/blog. These clicks will be distinctly different links within your
content in comparison to your affiliate links. They provide another opportunity
for you to earn dollars for your business.
Research this subject separately
to gain knowledge so that it is efficient within your affiliate
marketing website.
Learn from others and don’t make these mistakes
Other affiliate marketers made
these mistakes and shared their story. You can move forward stories by avoiding
these mistakes:
Do not overload your readers -
too many affiliate marketing activities make it difficult for a reader to
choose which one or two to click. Where you offer a handful of links it is
easier for a reader to choose which to click. Should you offer a page of 100
affiliate links, readers are more likely to click away from your website and move
elsewhere.
Be a customer yourself - test
that the system works in n its entirety by buying a product yourself and acting
like a potential customer. This will prevent you from offering products or
services that customers will be unable to purchase.
Be consistent - do not
dramatically change from one strategy to another unless you have an excellent
reason. A properly managed business is incredibly more successful than 20
half-hearted efforts.
Track your results - consistently
reviewing your results can be a great motivator, especially when you see how
much money is on the way to your commission account.
More importantly, well almost,
tracking your results shows you how each affiliate choice is working. Where
something is not working consistently - replace it.
Are you selling or suggesting? -
The company and their website are the people selling. Your aim is to
suggest that people click on the link to investigate the product or service.
Where you come across as an impartial review and not a relentless salesperson,
you are more likely to see readers click through to your suggestions. Don’t
overdo the sales aspect of your blog or website.
Avoid spamming and phishing and
your business will work long term. Use spamming and long-term techniques and
you’ll be out of business quite soon.
Specific considerations
During the course of running your
dating business, you may increase your business turnover and
profits by;
·
introducing different languages to your website,
which allows non-American speaking custom-American-speaking tests and click on
your affiliate links
·
work globally, by understanding specific laws of
countries around the world that affect your marketing activities
·
consider making videos for your marketing
activities to bring you further affiliate links.
·
you choose links for advertising with an
audience that can reach you via every possible resource.
