6 Steps To Success
In Affiliate Marketing
by Richard Quek
Affiliate programs are suitable for those who do not have their
own product or service to promote. They can promote other
people's products or services as Reseller or Affiliate.
The commission income can be fairly substantial and there are
many super affiliates that are earning six figure income on
the internet promoting products and services for others.
Here are 6 Power Steps that will assist you in your Affiliate
Marketing venture.
1. Choice of Company
The company that you're going to represent must be established.
It must be credible and have an excellent track record.
Remember that you are going into a joint venture with them
to promote their product or service.
Here are other factors that you should take into account:
(a) The company must have products or services that are
unique, of value, and are in demand.
(b) The company should provide excellent support, training And
resources to assist you to promote their products or services.
(c) There must be excellent tracking employed by the company
to ensure that you will be credited for all your referrals.
The tracking should credit you even when your prospects
make a purchase months later.
(d) The commission rate must be attractive.
For ebooks, softwares and virtual products, an acceptable
commission rate should be between 40% to 60%.
Commission payments for physical products are normally
lower, between 5% to 15%.
(e) The company should pay commissions on at least 2 tiers.
This will make it attractive for you to refer others to join
you since you will be paid a percentage on their sales.
2. Cloak your referral links
There are many affiliates who lost their commission because
their prospects 'change' the referral links.
These affiliates took all the trouble to promote the products or
services but the commissions due to them are 'hijacked' by
the prospects because the prospects realized that these are
referral links and therefore changed it to their own link with
their own user name.
In order to avoid this from happening you should CLOAK your
Referral link. This will hide your referral link. There are various
ways of doing this. Here are some ways:
(a) Use a sub-domain name.
(b) Use a tracking URL. You can get this from many companies
that provide such services such as Ad-Alyzer, Adminder and
Hyper Tracker.
You can get a FREE tracking service from:
http://resultstracker.net/t.php?id=2066
(c) Use a Free Service that shortens your 'long' URL.
(d) There are many softwares available such as Affiliate Defender
And Instant Affiliate Masker.
3. Test and Track your Promotions
It is important to test and track all of your Ads and promotional
activities. You should be able to know the
ROI(Return On Investments) on all you various campaigns.
This will enable you to zero in on those that are productive and
provide you with the highest ROI.
You will avoid those that do not produce the expected results.
You could use the tracking services mentioned in step 2 above.
4. Build an Opt-In List
Most affiliates send their prospects to the web sites of the company
that they are promoting. They may end up making a few sales and
receiving some commissions. However, that's all that they will receive.
They have worked hard to convince the prospects but they have no
further contact with these prospects. These prospects are now
in the opt-in-list of the Affiliate companies that they are representing.
The smart thing to do is to capture the details of the prospects to build
your own opt-in list before sending these prospects to the Affiliate
company web site.
There are 2 ways to do this:
(a) Set up you own web site and collect the email addresses and
names of your prospects before sending them to the Affiliate
company web site.
You should create a web form to capture the email addresses
and names. This can be done using HTML or if you are using
an autoresponder, you'll normally be able to generate the
web form with the autoresponder. These web form can be set
up on your web site or as a pop-up.
(b) Plug into the systems set up by various companies on the
Internet. How it works is that you'll be provided with a
'special' URL to promote.
When your prospects click on this URL, they will be directed to
an 'emotional' flash presentation. At the end of the
Presentation, they will be required to fill in a short
questionnaire. There are 2 benefits here.
You'll be pre-qualifying your prospects and you will have a
copy of the questionnaire that they filled it. This will make it
easier for you to followup with them.
5. Autoresponder
The autoresponder is the heart beat of any Internet business.
It has been discovered that 71% of Internet sales are made
after 7 contacts. It is therefore important that you follow up
with your prospects. This is why the use of autoresponder
is crucial to your success.
6. Getting Traffic
There are many ways to generate traffic. Always keep in mind
that the more targeted is your traffic, the better will be your
conversion rate and the more will be your sales.
Here are a few ways that may be useful:
(a) Search Engines
This will be appropriate if you are having your own web site.
Concentrate on keywords that relate to the product or service
you are marketing. Make sure that the kewords are 'targeted'.
Submit to only a few of the top search engines such as Yahoo,
Google, Alta Vista, Netscape, Lycos, and All the Web
(b) Pay Per Click
For those who are new, the pay-per click search engines will
provide you with the necessary traffic. Just like with the search
engines, the keywords need to be targeted.
http://www.overture.com
http://www.kanoodle.com
Google Adwords is now gaining popularity and you may want to
check it out. It works like the pay per click search engines.
https://adwords.google.com/select
(c)Ezine Ads
This is one of the best way to generate targeted traffic to your
web site. The Solo Ad is the best way to advertise but it
may cost you a bit. It is important to choose Ezines that
relate to your product or service.
You can check out from Ezine directories:
Ezine Search - http://www.ezinesearch.com
Ezine Seek - http://www.ezine-universe.com
(c) Viral Marketing
There are many viral marketing programs that you can join.
The traffic may not be targeted but these are free traffic.
These are the 6 power steps that will assist you to have
the cutting edge in Affiliate marketing.
Following these steps will put you in the 5% categories of those
Super Affiliates who are making 'BIG' money on the Internet.
Richard Quek is the author of 4 books, 'Cappuccino & Success',
'The Insider Secrets to Network Marketing', 'The Internet M~oney
Machine' and 'Exposed!". Visit his website at:
http://www.internetmarketingtrainer.com
Email: info@internetmarketingtrainer.com
Check out Richard’s latest book, Exposed Traffic at
Copyright 2004 Richard Quek. Please feel free to pass this article
on to your friends, or use it in your ezine or newsletter.
It's a shareware article.
