Affiliate Marketing Survival Tip 3 - Exploit The Improvement Triangle To Turn Your Pennies Into Pounds

So you want to get more from your affiliate marketing efforts? Are you just getting pennies and you think you deserve more?

Well, nothing happens by trial. Here are the three things you have to improve to move from zero to big results. Yes, also the big names are doing this. And you can do it too.

You can view this approach as “The Improvement Triangle”. This is because it’s based on three pillars which sustain each others.

Apply this systematically and you’ll get consistent results.

1) Improve Targeting

The first pillar of the triangle is “Targeting”. This means two things:

a) Understanding the product you are marketing who is for.

b) Get the kind of traffic who wants your product.

In a nutshell, this is what “targeting” is all about.
So you have to think who your ideal customer is, and tailor your website to suit him. An uninterested visitor will leave your site. A targeted visitor will find your content extremely relevant and will come back to you.

The more the visitor is targeted, the more he will find potential satisfaction for his needs and the higher will be the probability he will start a business relationship with you (meaning with this anything from subscribing your newsletter to buying your product).

2) Improve Sampling

The second pillar is “Sampling”. This is sending a message to the market to get a response. Well, we are talking really of two kinds of responses:

a) Getting traffic to your website as a result of your sampling.

b) Getting information on what your market is interested about.

You already know the importance of traffic. Well, the purpose of sampling is not just having the traffic you are hoping to convert. The purpose is getting traffic that will help you to improve your customer targeting.

In my opinion the best way to do this is with article marketing, i.e. writing free reprint articles that you publish in article directories that will send you some kind of traffic.

The interesting thing is that from a sampling perspective every article you write will be successful. Why?

If you get traffic, you’ll have both visitors and knowledge of what they are interested to.

If you don’t get traffic, you’ll know what your visitors are not interested to, i.e. you are however improving their targeting.

So continue writing articles in the sampling perspective; see what works and what is not working and you’ll get an increasing number of more targeted visitors at each successful article.

3) Expand Mutation

The third pillar is “Expanding the Mutation”. This is a mix of testing and the sampling concept, applied to your website.

What does it mean? Simply that you have to expand your horizons. Change what you are doing with the sole purpose of improving your understanding of your prospect and finally for targeting your marketing.

In its simplest form is about testing to improve your website conversion.

In its wide form is about trying different ways to interact with your visitors: do they prefer a minicourse, a report, an ebook or a video to opt-in to your list? Do they prefer a website or a blog? Do they visit usually article directories or social networks? Forums or Myspace? Do they prefer digital products from Clickbank or physical products from Commission Junction or Amazon?

Well, think big. It’s not just about testing your web page, headlines, colours and fonts. It’s about sourcing the traffic from the right place.

Invest time to get results

These three pillars form a triangle as each one sustains the other. Improving sampling will help you to expand the mutation, that will help you to improve targeting and this will finally improve both.

You can see that it’s all about having your customer in mind. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part and be eager to understand the message that comes from the results of what you are experimenting.

Apply All This To Your Current System

Of course all this is going to be leveraged if you have already a system you rely on. This will help you to start and monetize your online business growing it the sensible way.

To see the turnkey system that will let you build your own empire grab my free Turnkey Money Machine at my website at http://affiliate-marketing.thesolution2.com

Affiliate Marketing Survival Tip 2- From Prospects To Products Sales: The Magic Of Contact

Contact Over Time

Keeping in touch with your leads is an essential task in your affiliate marketing activity. Keeping in touch will develop relationship and will remind your lead of your product. He will become acquainted with it, will find it more and more familiar and finally will become open to evaluate it.

Finally they will examine it honestly and if they like it enough or understand that they need it enough, they’ll be buying from you.

How are you going to keep in touch with your lead?

Your Contact Manager

The usual weapon for the affiliate marketer is the autoresponder. It operates as your Contact Manager. Creating weekly autoresponder messages will in fact manage your relationship with your prospects for you on autopilot and you’ll get your result.

According to research, sales are usually closed between five and seven contacts. But there are known cases when your lead chooses to be your customer after twenty or twenty five messages. The short point is: build an autoresponder sequence and keep in touch.

Every single minute you invest in your autoresponder will be paid you back many times: exactly the number of subscribers you have in your list (and, to be precise, the number of subscribers you are going to have in the future in that list).

Converting The Contact

So you have to get the opt-in. You can get it in a few ways: offering a free minicourse, or a free ebook, or a free report, or a membership site or whatever you can think of.

Probably offering a free report is a wise choice, unless you prefer giving away an ebook; however chances are that other people are giving away the same ebook, so my preferred option is to resort to an original report (which is shorter than an ebook).

Positioning them in a strategic place in your home page will increase their chance to be noticed and caught by your website visitors.

Reducing alternative courses of actions and increasing focus is a sure way to go. When you build a webpage where only two things can possibly happen (just opt-in or leave the page, and nothing else), is a sure way to increase the probability your prospect will opt-in.

Getting Acquainted

Once your relationship is set and your prospect has joined your list, it’s time to get acquainted. From a marketing perspective this means making your prospect in contact with your product, so he’ll get familiar with it and you’ll be ok.

You are going to get this result by putting in your autoresponder series content that will show relevant benefits that will stimulate your inaction regret. Let’s see what this means:


1) Relevance

The content you are sending must be relevant. It must be targeted to your customer. It’s easy to understand your target customers: are all people who have in common the reason to sign up for your autoresponder. Said another way, your readers are interested in what you have sold them in the sales letter for your free ecourse or free report: they’ve liked it and have joined you to get what you promised them.

2) Benefits

You have to focus on your product benefits. Show how your product can make your prospects life easier to manage and his goals easier to achieve. Remember that people who joined did this for a reason: you have to find and dig that reason; remember that your sales letter is your starting point.

3) Regret

Show your prospects how their problems are affecting them and how their solution is just a hand away. Mix with their problems what you have learnt about your prospects relevance and benefits, and set up an irresistible outline.

Contact Marketing

You have seen that contact and relationships are essential in marketing. You can get more about developing the relationship with your customer in niche markets by subscribing to my Turnkey Money Machine eCourse.

Affiliate Marketing Survival Tips 1 – Top Three Ways To Build Trust in Your Leads And Turn Them Into Customers

In the nature of a real Affiliate Marketer is the continuous search for the "system" giving him the most of the money with the less of the effort. It’s the search for the magic formula which is always in our minds.

Principles

The point is that there are many systems but just a few principles and many of those systems are just a rehashing of those principles. And these principles have been proven by hard practice and long time.

So, back to the basics and have a look to the principles you can apply to increase the profitability of your website.

Build Trust

Affiliate Marketing is all about building trust in your leads, such that they turn from potential customers to real customers. This is one of the most basic principles of what you are/should be doing every single day.

Well, there are many things you can leverage to build trust in your visitors. The first one is your web space, meaning the set of web pages your visitor is going to interact with when he reaches your website. This is the first by the simple fact that this is where your first contact with him will happen; whatever he’s going to do, two things will happen: he will continue visiting your website; or he will leave. What will be really happening will be depending on how much he will trust you’ll be able to help him with his problem.

There is just a single underlying principle about this:

Focus On Your Product To Build Trust

This means leveraging your web space to improve your customer experience and have him improve your mindset towards you and finally how much he trusts you.

Focusing is important also if you have many products you are marketing; well this is true especially if you have many products. For each product you should use unique web pages to promote it. It's even better to have a single website dedicated to a single product. Create multiple websites each one relating to a product in your niche, then interlink them all and you'll have your affiliate marketing niche empire.

How are we going to leverage our web space to increase visitor's experience?

Three Ways To Leverage Your Web Space

Well, there are three types of things your visitors are going to find in your web pages that will help you to build trust:

1) Product reviews

The access point to your visitors trust (and no visitor will become a customer if he can’t trust you) is telling him the truth about the product. Don’t hesitate including some minor quirks of the products, as this will of course increase your credibility.

So you always have to include product reviews in your website. This will allow your visitors to have an initial understanding on what is the problem your product is going to solve and how it’s going to help them.

2) Testimonials

If your visitors are like the vast majority of people, then they’re going probably to have a like-the-group mindset.

So if you can collect testimonials from users who have already tried the product, you have an easy way to capture this big part of your prospects…

You have to be care about collecting permissions to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

3) Articles

Writing articles is one of the never ending marketing duties any internet marketer has…
This will serve you twofold:

a) Posting these articles to your website, you are going to integrate info about your product and satisfy the needs of the suspicious….

b) Posting these articles to article directories, you are going to be recognised as “the expert” and, as you can figure out, this will make you trusted much more easily.

These articles have to be about the problems your product is going to solve and how it is going do get this. Make the pages attractive compelling and include a call to action.

A special point here is about headlines: they are the unique attention grabbing tool you have to capture your leads… If your headline fails, none will be reading your article…

Conclusion

Building trust in his prospects is the most important thing an affiliate marketer has to do. There are many ways to do this, and one is based on leveraging the website experience your lead is going to live when he reaches your website. Exploit it (we have seen a few tips to get you started) and you’ll be building your affiliate marketing empire in no time (as an increasing number of people will be trusting you).

See my website to get more affiliate marketing tips...

Need To Survive Online? What are you going to do?

Every affiliate marketer is always looking for the successful market that gives the biggest paycheck. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them.

Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication.

There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online.

What are these three tactics?

Well (watch this space)...

Affiliate Project X - Affiliate Marketing Revolution or Scam?

On Monday afternoon I came across a website selling an ebook, called Affiliate Project X.

(In a Hurry? You can check it at: Affiliate Project X)

I come across to almost a dozen of sales letter every day and normally I'm not pulled by advertising hype, but this time something happened.

In his sales letter Chris (the site owner) promises he could train anyone up to quit their day job as an affiliate -
and he guaranteed it in fact. And it seems supported by the dozens of testimonial of people doing that, sometimes in a few week.

As we are talking here of affiliate marketing, you can imagine all this was really intriguing me and finally I made my investment and got the copy.

So how did it fare?

Well, I've read it as fast as I could, just after having printed it (I like taking notes on printed ebooks....). Probably is best said that I couldn't stop reading it....

What you are going to find is not the usual affiliate marketing training manual.

You are going to find, instead, a short absolutely-zero-fluff 50 page report that is organized in "methods" (after a few pages of introduction to affiliate marketing).

The techniques are simple and well laid out. Each method is complete in itself, i.e. you are not driven through a bunch of theoretical marketing steps in a 300 page guide; instead, every method is simple and complete, and guides you from driving traffic, to content and conversions.

In the meanwhile the internet marketing world exploded. Everyone in the world is promoting this book, as it was the last most amazing thing ever appeared on earth.

So is Affiliate Project X a revolution?

Well, in my opinion is not. This is because many of the techniques are a smart ensamble of single things which are already known.

Well, you may think this is funny, but it is EXACTLY the reason I think it's the best book on results-oriented affiliate marketing I've ever read. In fact, as I told you, everything has been assembled in simple methods which cover all.
And in each method everything is organic, i.e. is thought knowing that each of its parts is going to relate to the other parts of that method. This makes each single method especially efficient.

If you have already read a few books on affiliate marketing but can't get results or you are confused on how to proceed, this is the final book for you.

Accessing these methods I've had many "Ah-ha" moments due to seeing the special way this clever guy is assembling what I already knew.

So I don't think Affiliate Project X is revolutionary; I think is Highly Evolutionary, i.e. it shifts things from Affiliate Marketing practice to Affilate Marketing results, without return.

These techniques are NOT mainstream and will be of high benefit to your wallet, even if this product is not that cheap (but being cheap or not depends on the money it will make you, and there are good chances this short 50 page ebook will be one of your best opportunities).

I have sent this offer to everyone on my list, and so I suggest you
head over to

Affiliate Project X

and claim your guide while the
techniques are still new and underused.

Believe me when I say, you will thank me.

Write to me when you have made the investment, and let me know how it has changed your life too.

Last chance to claim your exclusive package:

Affiliate Project X

Tags: Business, Computers and Internet, Internet, Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Programs, Google, Adwords, Internet Marketing, Affiliate Project X, Make Money, Affiliates, Home Based Business, Work At Home, Online Marketing, Internet Business, Adsense, Blogging, Affiliate Project, Search Engine Marketing

The Affiliate Marketer, The Search Engine and The Article: The Search Engine (2)

In the first instalment of this three part series, we have seen how traffic is vital for an affiliate marketer, whose job is essentially brokering traffic from market needs to market products.

We have also seen how The Affiliate Marketer and The Search Engine have the same final purpose: deliver to people what people want, and how this is affecting the current and future technology of search engines.

We have also seen how the so called “black hat” techniques to get traffic are banned from the search engines and how this is essentially against your affiliate marketer purpose, i.e. serve your customer, fulfil their needs, and develop trust and relationship.

Long Term Search Engines Strategy

It’s now clear that the long term way to exploit the search engines is to resort to the core behaviour and desires of the search engine users, as they are going to mimic them more and more as time goes and technology progresses.

The strange thing about this trend is that the more you think about giving your customers what they want, the more you are going to rank well in the search engines as time passes and their technology improves.

If all this is true (and it is), when you think to long term search engine optimization strategy for your website, you have to think on how people are using the search engine and what do they want.

How People Use Search Engines

You find that people do access the search engine and type in some keywords. They see what comes out and click on the results they think are relevant. They are bored to see the same result if they’ve already seen them and they’re not relevant; you can bet that they want results which are fresh.

In the search results the customer sees the title page, the first paragraph including the heading.

So we could say that whatever the search engines are going to do, they will deal with the page heading, title, first paragraphs, keywords, and freshness.

So, What About You?

You should fit in your content your relevant keywords. As search engines are becoming more intelligent with Latent Semantic Indexing (a mathematical technique to recognize similar words) you are no longer forced to "keyword stuff" your web page with the keyword you are looking for. The important thing is to write a web page tightly themed on a topic. Then this topic has to be easily found in your web page title, heading and first lines.
This will work as your copy in the search results, as people will be going to decide on this content if to click or not from the search engine page to your website page.

Further, as people do want fresh content, you have to keep your site updated. Or at least you have to get fresh links to your website.

A nice trick to an ever green site is to publish a blog. For the aforementioned reasons, blogs are really loved by search engines and tend to be favourite in their search results against similar but standard (non blog) websites.

So the most effective method for a good page rank in search engine results is to deliver good content consistently. If you provide interesting and well crafted content and regularly update it, your visitors will be coming back. And if you have a site your visitors are so liking that they’ll be really coming back, you’ll be of value for the search engine and they will find you in their evolution towards customer desires.

About Linking

Another essential part of SEO is linking. If someone likes your content, they will send their visitors to you. They will link to you, especially if they find your content useful.

If you get backlinks from other sites, you’ll gain many benefits:

a) People will be coming to your site thanks to natural traffic from the website linking to you.

b) Search engines are evaluating links as a “popularity vote” from other sites to yours. The more the links pointing to your web pages, the more ranking they’ll get.

c) Having an authority site pointing to yours will give you a trusting effect from your customers. A link from Amazon to your site means credibility to your visitor. This will affect the mindset of visitors to your site. And authority site often have also a lot of traffic.

Linking is currently a very important issue in search engine ranking. So important that is a favoured target of black hat SEO, by artificially generating thousands of links to your website. This has made many search engines careful about links. For example Google won’t consider new links for a few months (the so called "Google sandbox"); this will avoid black hat spammers to get any results. Technorati won’t consider links coming from the same domain (these links will count as a single link). This will have a similar effect, while leaving you with the good votes (as if your content is good, there will be many different sites at different domains that will be willing to link to you).

So you have to find a way that gives you backlinks in a safe way.

Will You Do It?

There are currently many sites that are failing to provide a genuine user experience, so even if you are starting now you have a good chance to win this game. As search engines are increasing their intelligence to get good content, the best your content is and the best you are going to win in the long term battle. Time is with you. Apply white SEO and you’ll win.

In the last part of this article series we are going to see the system to catch all these goals (consistent content, developing trust, proper linking and branding yourself) with a single strategy. Meet The Article at my website (you can find the first instalment of this series about The Affiliate Marketer still at my website).

You can discover the simple relationship-oriented way to build your Affiliate Marketing Empire with my popular Turnkey Money Machine eCourse you can get for free at my Affiliate Marketing Website.

The Affiliate Marketer, The Search Engine and The Article: The Affiliate Marketer (1)

If you are an affiliate internet marketer, you are essentially promoting other people products.
You have to drive traffic and convert it into money. And as people will buy depending on your claims, your top resource to make this happening is the essential art of credibility.

So it’s important for you to drive traffic to your site in a sensible way, and at the same time brand yourself in a way that sets yourself as the obvious expert; this means you are going to be recognized from your leads, that will believe your claims, buy the products you promote and let you earn money.

If driving traffic is imperative for you business, The Search Engine has to be your best friend.
Of course there are many different ways to drive traffic to your site (see 8 ways to drive target traffic to your website at my website, link: http://affiliate-marketing.thesolution2.com/Main/Affiliate-Marketing-TRAFFIC-8-Ways-To-Drive-Targeted-Traffic.php), but a good ranking from a popular search engine on popular keywords will outperform everything else you are going to try. As an affiliate marketer if you are not going to develop a sensible search engine optimization strategy for your sites, you are going to leave money on the table.

With Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is meant a process of modifying the web pages of your site such that the search engines are going to “like” your site much more; so your site is going to rank much better when people are going to use the search engine with the keywords your site is optimized for. More people will come to your site and you’ll have more traffic.

Being the most important source of traffic, you can bet there is a currently a big battle for SEO and competition is extreme. But learning SEO basics is essential if you want to have a chance to succeed.

There is an important trend in the search engines related to how they are going to rank web pages. The search engines are becoming increasingly smarter, and they are trying to help people finding what they are really looking for on the net.

There are people trying to heavily manipulate search engines results using unscrupulous techniques (this is called "black hat search engine optimization", opposite to "white hat" absolutely ethical techniques). The increasingly smarter search engine algorithms are everyday more capable of identifying such cases and are going to ban these websites.

With technology progress search engines are going to approximate people core desires and behaviours; they’re implementing sophisticate algorithms; so the only secure way for a long term search engine strategy is based on delivering to people what they truly want. This means that The Affiliate Marketer and The Search Engine are going to meet in the near future, as they have the same purpose in mind: deliver to people what people want.

See part 2 of this article here at my blog.

Get my free Turnkey Money Machine eCourse at my Affiliate Marketing Website where you can learn the simple and sensible way to run your affiliate marketing business.