Are You a Scatterbrained Affiliate?

By Amit Mehta

Let’s say you launch a new AdWords campaign, optimize it and get your affiliate promotion to $100 a day in profit. WOW! That’s $3,000 per month in profit. You’re really excited!

Now, you have two choices:

1) You think to yourself, “Hey, if I do this in 10 different markets, I’ll make $30,000
a month in profit!” You decide to jump into a completely new market, one you
know nothing about, in an attempt to duplicate your success.

2) You think to yourself, “I’m just touching the surface of the income potential in this market!” Then, you decide to leverage everything you’ve learned in this market. You continue to expand your keyword list, take your AdWords campaigns on to Yahoo, and MSN, split test your ads and hire a web designer to make a professional site. You add more unique content to your site to improve your AdWords quality score, rigorously split test your landing page to improve conversions, start collecting emails and building a list.

Now, sadly enough, most affiliates will opt for scenario one, and the following is what will likely happen six months down the road.

Scenario One

This person, basically letting his $100 per day profit run on autopilot, now goes into 10 different markets, unfortunately, they all turn out to be duds (or only temporarily profitable) except for the seventh one, where again, he made $100 per day in profit. 

However, by the time that happens, markets conditions have changed and more competition has entered into his first market. He starts to lose money on his first market. 

Overwhelmed and distracted by all the markets he’s testing, he puts that market on hold and says to himself: “I’ll come back to that later,” knowing full well he never will.

He then gets an email from an Internet marketing ‘guru’ about how to easily make $50,000 a month with pre-fab AdSense templates. 

Again, he thinks, “diversify” and says okay, let me do a little bit of AdSense while I manage my AdWords campaigns looking for a winner. So he devours the e-book, gets excited about it for a couple weeks, sees no results and then drops it.

And so far, in 6 months, this person is still at $100 per day profits, investing half of his/her time into testing new campaigns in different markets (instead of building up the one profitable campaign first) and the other half buying the latest money making get-rich-overnight e-books. Sound familiar?

Scenario Two

As you’ve probably figured out, this is the super-affiliate. Over the next several months, he continues to expand and build up the budding campaign that started at $100 per day in profit. He adds 5,000 keywords to the campaigns, expands on to other PPC search engines and tests out the Google content network. He improves & split tests his site and manages to increase his conversions over time by 50%.

Six months down the road he’s making $1,500 a day in profit from this campaign he started at only $100 per day.

Not only is this campaign highly optimized, it has a broad reach in terms of keywords exposure, search engines, content network ads, etc. This campaign will still be highly profitable, even if a lot of new competitors enter the market or the market enters a seasonal slow down (such as the summer).

Final Thoughts

Affiliate Marketing is about the thought process, NOT mechanics.

After an affiliate newbie has six months experience with PPC Affiliate Marketing, chances are that he/she knows how to setup a Google campaign, conduct keyword research, write a Google ad and select affiliate promotions that convert, etc. 

However, your ultimate success or failure will be determined by the decisions that you make.

Are YOU making decisions like a super-affiliate or an average affiliate?

The Economy and Affiliate Marketing: Should You Worry?

By Kathy Jackson

The U.S. government has finally confirmed what we already knew: the U.S. economy is in a recession. The world economy is in a recession. Homes are being repossessed at an alarming rate. Banks are failing — BIG ones! The Big Three U.S. automakers are in deep financial doo-doo. Is the sky falling on affiliate marketing, too?

How does this brick-and-mortar recession affect business in cyberspace, particularly in the world of affiliate marketing? Well, the world economy is, of course, going to have an adverse effect on the Internet retail market.

If people have less money to spend on nonessential retail merchandise in the "real" world, they have less money to spend on
nonessential retail merchandise being sold on the Internet as well.Affiliate marketers who make their living selling luxury retail
merchandise are only going to suffer. There’s no doubt about it.

But the news isn’t all bad. The sky isn’t falling. First it’s important to get a handle on the REAL facts. With good information, you CAN  recession-proof your affiliate marketing business.

The news screams that unemployment could reach 10 percent, and that’s bad; but that also means that 90 percent of the workforce still has a job.

A single-digit portion of homes are being foreclosed upon; but most homeowners are making their mortgage payments. Some banks are in trouble; hardly all banks are in trouble — just the really, really greedy ones — but credit can be difficult to obtain anyway. Isn’t it fortunate that affiliate marketers don’t rely heavily on credit?

It’s always been true that when a recession occurs, some types of businesses and some people suffer greatly, while others not only survive, but thrive.

Affiliate Marketing Is, by Nature, Somewhat Recession Proof!

Here are some facts:

Those who work for manufacturers and merchants out in the brickand-mortar world can be "laid off." But you are your own
employer. You aren’t going to get laid off; you have a job

Those who own small brick-and-mortar business must depend on walk-in traffic. But as an affiliate marketer, the entire world
is your marketplace.

Your customer base is much, much larger than that of the proprietor of a small real-world business.

Out in the "real" world, rents can increase to the point that a business can no longer afford space to conduct business. But
the price of maintaining your affiliate marketing business address isn’t going to increase at all.

Fuel prices could rise high enough to make it impossible for people to drive to and from a job. But affiliate marketing is
done at home.

All of the equipment needed to conduct an affiliate marketing business is a computer, an Internet connection, a telephone
line, and electrical service. That’s it.

With just those four things and the information that you have in your own mind, you have the ability to earn a living.

For affiliate marketers, the sky is NOT falling. However, you must…

Diversify! Diversify! Diversify!

Relying entirely upon retail sales commissions could leave you in an affiliate marketing bind, because retail sales are very
likely going to decrease.

But as retail sales decrease, other sales are going to increase.

People will still spend money online. One thing that people will buy is information. What kinds of information, you ask?

-Information about money management
-Information about making money online
-Information about debt consolidation
-Information about lowering insurance costs
-Information about saving fuel
-Information about starting their own affiliate marketing business
-Information about online education opportunities

Also, businesses that have an Internet presence are still going to be paying for leads. You don’t have to make a sale to get
paid for a lead.

All your website visitor must do is complete an action (fill out a form or an application) on the vendor’s website for you to make a commission.

-Financial institutions pay for leads.
-Insurance companies pay for leads.

And hundreds of other types of businesses pay for leads. Remember this fact: When consumers "cut back" because of a
recession, they cut back on luxury items — not necessities. If your affiliate marketing business sells ONLY such items as
Playstation 3, you need to branch out and include items that people MUST have. Think food, clothing, health care, etc.

Advertise with Recession in Mind

If your advertising is focused on promoting ease of use or convenience of a product, change the focus of the advertising
and promote such advantages as:

-The payment plan offered
-The ironclad guarantee
-The long life expectancy of the product
-The way the product can SAVE money for the customer.
-Quality, quality, quality!
-Quality coupled with a low price
-Free shipping
-Overall value of the product

When consumers tighten the financial purse strings, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to purchase anything at all. It means that the selling points that will convince them to buy have changed.

The fact is that most people today check online before they make a purchase at a brick-and-mortar store. So, as an affiliate marketer, you get first crack at the customer. Take full advantage of that first opportunity. Hit the selling points that the customer is looking for now BECAUSE of the recession.

Continue to Advertise

The "advertising pays" admonishment of old is still viable today, even in the slowing economy…actually, ESPECIALLY in the
slowing economy!

There’s not much doubt that you are going to be tempted to cut your advertising budget to the bone. That’s a mistake that many
businesses, both online and off, make when the economy takes a downturn.

The marketing budget is usually one of the first things to be reduced when businesses begin searching for ways to cut expenses. But according to research, a marketing budget is directly proportional to a business’s gross revenue.

Basically, what all of the research tells us is that if you cut your advertising budget, you are automatically reducing your gross sales figures.

Therefore, advertising is the wrong place to cut your expenses. Find another way to cut corners. If customers can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.

Stretch Your Advertising Dollars

You shouldn’t spend less on your advertising through this recession, but you should spend your advertising dollars more wisely. You need to get the most bang for your buck!

Take a long, hard look at your ROI and determine what parts of your advertising are the most effective. Find out what advertising most often converts.

When you determine what advertising strategies are working and which are not, shift your advertising dollars to the most advantageous advertising venues.

You need to go against your first instinct. Rather than cutting your expense, but advertising budget, you need to increase it, if you can. Look at your advertising budget not as an overhead expense, but rather as an investment in your success.

Concentrate effort on boosting the effectiveness of your advertising by doing the following:

-Networking
-Offering customer incentive programs
-Offering customer loyalty programs

Should Affiliate Marketers Worry about a Worldwide Recession?

Well, I’m really good at worrying, so I hate to pass up such a good opportunity. However, I honestly do not think that as affiliate marketers we have a lot to worry about — as long as we make a plan and follow through.

But we DO need a plan.

- We must diversify. We need to represent and promote a variety of products that people NEED, rather than luxury items that they simply want
- We must change our advertising focus to necessity. 
-We must keep on advertising 
-We must make our advertising dollars stretch as far as they will go.

The Outlook for 2009 and Beyond

A few affiliate marketing storm clouds will gather from time to time — remember the CAN-SPAM Act and how everybody was certain it was the end of affiliate marketing as we knew it? 

That turned out okay. CAN-SPAM actually helped affiliate marketers.

I have no doubt that affiliate marketers will face all sorts of "booger bears" in the coming years, but I don’t think that this recession is one of them.

In short, the sky is not falling!

In fact, I believe that this world wide recession can actually become a real BOON to affiliate marketers in 2009 — and maybe even far into the distant future.

About the Author
 
Kathy Jackson is a Texas rancher and a contributing author for several farm and ranch publications.  She is also an experienced freelance writer of email newsletters, review copy, educational materials, and blog posts on a wide variety of topics, including many aspects of online business and affiliate marketing. Internet marketing is one of Kathy’s burning interests. You can read some of Kathy’s articles on the Affiliate .  She can be Classroom Blog at  http://blog.affiliateclassroom.com  contacted via email at jacksokathy@gmail.com

How to Profit in 2009 Using Lessons Learned in 2008

By David Long 

The end of the year is always a good time to review lessons learned and develop a strategy for the upcoming New Year. This time around, with the economy in a nosedive, that’s more true than ever. Despite the tough times — with retail sales down more sharply than anytime in the
past 40 years — it’s still possible to profit in 2009. Just think about what you did right or wrong in 2008, and zero in on the best strategies.

PPC Strategies

Any affiliate who does PPC will want to take a good, hard look at his or her budget. PPC has traditionally required you to watch every penny, to and always make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. Now that is more true than ever. How can you stretch those ad dollars?

Simple. Just don’t forget a very important and always applicable lesson in this realm of affiliate marketing: concentrate your PPC dollars on developing relationships, not sales. With a PPC geared toward making a sale you’ve got one shot to make it. Fail, and your money was wasted. Develop a relationship, and you’ll have returning customers who give you sales (and more word of mouth) month after month.

How do you do that? It’s really not so hard. Instead of just offering a product, encourage your visitors to opt in to your email newsletter list. When you succeed, you now have someone who has indicated an openness to hearing from you later. That gives you many more chances to make a sale.

But don’t just make your newsletter an endless series of sales pitches. That very quickly turns off even those predisposed to read what you have to say. Instead, take it as an opportunity to be the go-to guy or galfor information on everything related to what you pitch. Are you an affiliate for, say, an Internet coffee club? Wonderful. You’ve got a chance to share your enthusiasm over the latest Peaberry from Kenya. Selling cameras? Excellent. There was never a better time to help your customers decide which is the better buy between the latest Canon 10MP and 12MP models.

While you’re thinking about PPC, consider some new arenas. Reach

beyond Google and Yahoo. Try some Facebook ads. You’ll find that, done thoughtfully, you can target a specific niche, and one that is generally expected to have rising income over the next several years. While still dominated by youthful visitors, Facebook is attracting more and more people from all age and income groups. You’ve got the whole world to choose from here.

Hone Your Marketing Skills

With the uncertainty we saw in 2008 that is sure to continue throughout 2009, more people than ever turned to the Internet to make a buck. That’s actually a good thing! Sure, competition is always…well, competitive. But all those added voices also help raise the general awareness of the buying public to what you have to sell. Hone your marketing skills, and you can carve out a larger share of the market.

How?

Look around at other websites in your niche, and you’ll quickly realize that you can increase your revenue by improving your content. If you don’t have the time or skills to do it yourself, one inexpensive way to do looking, finethat is to subscribe to a PLR service. In the interest of full disclosure: Yes, that’s a blatant plug from a freelance writer! Nevertheless, it’s still
tuned website true. Private Label Rights allow you to get content that is professional and easily tailorable to your website (so you avoid duplicate content penalties).

This is also an opportunity to create that new version of the graphics and functionality you’ve been thinking of for some time. When things slow down a little bit, you have a little more time to invest in inexpensive changes that can bring you big profits down the road. Even a good-looking, fine-tuned website can benefit from a makeover. Customers like to see change; it tells them there is a dynamic team behind the site. Incorporate your visitors’ suggestions when you make the changes and you will see higher conversion rates.

When you think about honing your marketing skills, consider what you did in 2008 and how effective (or not) it was. Did you use all the available information from Statcounter, Analytics, and the rest to find out how people found you? A careful keyword analysis will show you what works and what doesn’t. Common sense will carry you far, but it really helps to have hard data, especially if you have A and B versions of the site.

I discovered for example, that months after posting a blog post on 1957 Hamilton Ventura watches, I’m still getting visitors looking for that unique timepiece. I expected that content to be attractive to collectors for about a week or two at best around Christmas time. What a surprise! It turns out that there are a lot more people interested in that niche than I could have known. But I wouldn’t have known it without using the free tools available.

Be Patient

For those of you who just got started in affiliate marketing in 2008, it’s especially important to remember that it was an unusual year in many ways. Seldom have we seen such large-scale, roller-coaster changes and uncertainty, thanks to the economy and the election campaigns. If things are taking a little longer to work out for you than you anticipated, don’t be discouraged. It can only get better from here.

Affiliate marketing takes a long time in the best of times. Building a website, achieving a good ranking, and learning the ropes all require a long-term commitment. Not years, certainly, but don’t expect huge sales in just a few weeks. In the October Affiliate Classroom issue, you might have read the story of Super Affiliate Amit Mehta. (If you haven’t, you should do it soon!) His experiences show how you can really make a lot of missteps but, with grit and by being adaptable, you can get on track to
big riches.

Try Something New This Year

Write an ebook. In good times or bad, but especially in bad, you want to look for ways to increase revenue that require little investment of capital. One way to do that (a way affiliate marketers are real experts at) is to substitute your labor for spending hard cash. How? Consider writing an ebook. Another shameless plug for my ghostwriting services! Seriously, though, it’s a great way to make money six ways from Sunday.

One way to profit from an ebook is to use it as an advertising vehicle for your affiliate websites. ClickBank makes that a breeze. That way, even if you don’t see much income from ebook sales (which is sure to be the case if you give it away), you’ve created a very low-cost advertising vehicle. You can also use an ebook to polish your credentials as the expert on a subject. Look how much good publicity Rosalind Gardner received from The Super Affiliate Handbook.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with actually making big bucks out an ebook, and it happens from time to time. The chance to grab the brass ring motivates writers of paper books to keep slogging away, even though only a small percentage get the gold one. The same can happen with ebooks. There are several differences, though, where ebooks are concerned.

With a paper book, the publisher and distributor get about 90% of the sale price; you get about 10% at best. With an ebook, you get all the money. (That’s one big reason ebooks can sell for so much less.)

Ebooks also have a much longer shelf life. Most paper books go out of print once they’re pulled from the bookstore shelves. Ebooks are forever. That means ebook income is, potentially, forever.

Ebooks are also cheaper and take less time to produce. A paper book takes about a year or more to write and another two years to hit the shelves. You can write and market even a large ebook within a few months or less.

Enter a New Niche. People who take risks get the rewards. People who keep doing the same thing over and over again usually do not. You may not be realizing your full income potential because you’re in a niche that isn’t right, or just isn’t right for you. Things change. Some niches get hot, then fade. Who knows why? You may have arrived at the party late, or you may just not have a flair for a particular niche. Try a new one! Maybe you started selling doll collectibles because it’s a personal passion. That’s a great way to get motivated. But you probably have more than one major interest; most people do. Look at some of the others and see how you can monetize them. With people spending more time at home the coming year, there are lots of new possibilities.

More time spent at home means games will likely get bigger this year, both the online and real versions. Entertainment always does well in a recession. (Remember the movies from the 1930s? Ticket sales went through the roof.) That means DVD sales will probably go up. (Streaming films and downloads aren’t quite here yet.)

Home improvement products will improve. As the sale prices of homes decrease, people will be spending more to dress them up, whether to sell them or just to live in them more comfortably.

Those are only three possibilities for new affiliate marketing niches. Giveit some thought, and you can undoubtedly come up with many more.

The Future

The future is always unpredictable. But as you are an entrepreneur, which is central to what being an affiliate marketer is all about, I expect you get jazzed from that. It means taking a risk, but it also means pursuing your dreams. Move your dreams closer to reality by learning from your experiences in 2008. That will make 2009 your best year ever

Have a great future!

About the Author

David Long is a freelance writer and editor with over 20 years of experience. His PLR articles and eBooks have appeared on hundreds of websites. They cover topics that include Wine & Beer, Travel, Gardening, Health & Fitness, Pets, Stocks & Bonds, and dozens more subjects. He can be contacted for hire at JDavidLong@gmail.com
 

Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

Affiliate marketing for beginners can be confusing and downright costly. But it doesn’t have to be.

Many new people to affiliate marketing don’t know how to get started so they end up jumping in to a program or system. Generally this leads to failure and they’re looking for the next quick money maker. They can spend a lot of money and time on programs that do not work. After they fail or make little money for their effort, they’re ready to proclaim to the world that affiliate marketing is a fraud and scam.

This doesn’t have to be the experience you take away from affiliate marketing. With a little patience and planning, affiliate marketing can be enjoyable and profitable. But it won’t be overnight!

Here are some mistakes I see new affiliate marketers making:

1. Lack of patience: Many people come to affiliate marketing because they heard about someone who’s making $10,000 a week with affiliate marketing. They think “How hard can it be?” They soon find out it’s not as easy as it sounds. Affiliate marketing should be a long term endeavor if you want to make money with it.
2. Lack of focus: I’m guilty of this myself. I’ll start one project and soon I’m distracted by another project. I love to start projects, but I’m not a strong finisher! Pick your niche and stick with it till you’re done. This includes periodic following up to make sure your project is on a long term success track.
3. Lack of funds: I’d say a majority of people starting out in affiliate marketing believe they can get started wtih no money of theirs being spent. Perhaps there are a few who’ve pulled this off, but to have long term success you need to treat affiliate marketing like a brick & mortar business. Capital will help ensure your long term success!
4. Lack of Knowlege: I see beginners jumping into all sorts of programs and systems that they have no idea how it works. All they can think of is all the money they are going to make! Then when they fail or go broke, they want to blame someone else. Before starting any program or system, you should thoroughly research all angles of that particular program or product. Knowledge is power!

These are just a few things I see people doing wrong. I’ve been guilty of all of them at one time or another. Hopefully through this blog I can help you from making some of the same mistakes I made when getting started!

source: http://www.affiliatewatcher.com/affiliate-marketing-for-beginners/

Performics and the e-tailing group have released ten tips for affiliates to maximize commissions during the holiday season.

Here are their Ten Ideas to Better Reach and Convert Holiday Shoppers:

1. Centralize and prominently position free shipping offers: shoppers flock to these

2. Create a sense of urgency: remind shoppers of the number of days until Christmas

3. Create a suggestions page: provide gift recommendations segmented by price/recipient

4. Inspire impulse holiday purchasing: showcase top sellers, editor’s favorites, etc.

5. Make finding merchants and merchant offers simple: visibility leads to conversion

6. Aggressively promote sale offers: segment deals by percentage/dollar off, just added sales, soon to expire sales, etc.

7. Remember last minute shoppers: highlight gift certificates during final shopping days

8. Ensure timely delivery: note stock status/shipping availability at merchant/product level

9. Support the brand: provide shoppers with comprehensive contact information, including
FAQ locations and store-based information

10. Think long term: collect email opt-ins for future alerts, newsletters, etc.

This checklist is based on the e-commerce merchandising expertise of the e-tailing group and a review of 25 affiliate sites through a Performics’ sponsored study.