3 Ace-in-the-Hole Ways to Become a Master Affiliate Marketer
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Products, Affiliate Programs, Internet Marketing, Marketing Strategies
Becoming an affiliate marketer is one of the best ways to bring in a little (or a lot) of extra income for yourself depending upon how much work you put into it. An affiliate is someone, like you, who signs up with an affiliate program to sell products and services that are provided by other companies. When you make a sale, depending upon the affiliate program, you can make a percentage of the commission from the sale or you can earn a flat dollar amount per sale.
When you’re first researching companies to become an affiliate of, you’ll want to keep in mind a few things:
- Be familiar with the product or service you’re promoting. This will give you an edge over other affiliate marketers who aren’t as well-versed in the product or service you’re offering.
- Understand the terms of the program. Each company has different terms when it comes to what they’ll pay you and how often you’ll receive a check from them.
- You’ll be able to better suggest the product or service if you yourself have used it. If you can afford to purchase the product first this will also give you an upper hand over other affiliates since you’ll have information that they themselves didn’t bother to find out.
Being an affiliate has many advantages as well. You don’t need to keep an inventory yourself and you don’t have to deal with any support issues that arise from the sale of the product. Your only job is to promote the product.
But, being an affiliate does not mean that you simply rush out and start plastering advertisements everywhere online. People appreciate real content. This ties into you knowing the industry the product is in that you’ll be promoting. You’ll be able to write quality content about the industry and then offer suggestions to your site visitors as to what products you recommend.
The more content you have, and the more you update your website with information about the industry, the more you’ll create a following of people who trust you. And the more people trust you, the more likely they are to buy from you.
Your first stop should be to locate those products and services you’ve used and have liked in the past. Once you have located these, visit each of the product sites to see if they have an affiliate program that you can join and if so, sign up.
Once you have your affiliate link, start writing information on your website about this product. Since you’ve used it in the past, you can offer great information and detail that most other affiliate marketers won’t bother to share and this could mean a huge boost in revenue for you.
Tweet My Blog WordPress Plugin – Why I DON’T endorse it
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about this new plugin for the WordPress blogging platform called “Tweet Your Blog”…and let’s face it, we all love free plugins right?
In a nutshell, this plugin will make a post to your Twitter account every time you update your blog. Kind of like an “instant” marketing tool. And while an “instant” tool sounds great – especially where marketing is concerned, you first have to understand how Twitter is different and how this new plugin might not be the best thing in the world for you to use.
First, in the event you’re unfamiliar with this little social marketing site, here’s a brief overview.
If you’ve never used Twitter before, you definitely should start. When I first came across the program I honestly thought it was a waste of time, I’ll be honest with you. But then I saw more and more people I knew on Twitter and eventually got my own Twitter account.
When you first sign up for Twitter, you can enter in as little or as much information about yourself as you’d like, similar to other online social programs but where Twitter is different is that it only allows you to post 140 characters at a time. Kind of like blogging but without long-winded posts.
As people find you, they will “Follow” you. This means that each time you “tweet” or make a post on Twitter, the person following you will also receive your update.
There are some people who have over 50,000 people following them on Twitter! While this is highly unusual it’s not uncommon for people to have more people following them than they have in their actual business mailing lists.
Twitter is unique in that you are almost expected to be more personal. I’ve seen quite a few people use it for nothing more than self-promotion, giving nothing of themselves, only to have those who were following them, choose to “unfollow” them…think of “unfollow” as an “unsubscribe” from a mailing list. I personally have unsubscribed from some updates, and some from very well-known people, because all they do is push their own products without giving anything of themselves.
Which brings me to the new Twitter plugin…
At first glance you might be tempted to use this plugin since it will automatically market for you. But, as I noted above, you certainly don’t want to be spamming Twitter in any way, shape or form. You’ll even notice that some of the most noted and “famous” Internet Marketing experts don’t “market” their things often. As a matter of fact, you’ll find that most often the posts to Twitter are questions, responses to others who also use Twitter or just simple updates as to what’s going on in their day at that moment.
The moment that you start posting to Twitter with a link back to your blog on a regular basis, the more likely you are to get “unfollowed”.
That said, I don’t plan on using this plugin at any time in the future. If you do decide to use the plugin yourself, proceed with caution. Be sure you’re participating by writing other posts in Twitter other than just having links back to your blog.
The other downside is that unlike other plugins where you simply just download it and get it up and running in WordPress, this one does have an opt-in form that you need to fill out first.
If you’re interested, just Google “Tweet My Blog” and you’re sure to find it.
P.S. In the event you’d like to follow me on Twitter, just visit http://twitter.com/KristineWirth and choose “Follow” just under my picture.
No Website? No Problem.
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Online Marketing, Web Sites
here are countless numbers of people who want to get into affiliate marketing but simply don’t have the skills or the knowledge to create a website of their own and so they believe that there is no way that they can create affiliate income online.
Though it is true that having your own website will help you considerably when marketing a product, it is not the be all end all of Internet marketing. And yes you can be successful and make a living as an affiliate even if you don’t have the benefit of your own website.
If you remember from our other posts, affiliate marketing is nothing more than recommending a product to a group of people who have an interest in that product. You get paid a commission whenever someone purchases the product through your own, unique affiliate link.
Now, before you go thinking that I’m nuts, consider some of these strategies that you can use to market your affiliate products or services…
- Write some articles! Even if you’re brand new to online marketing, you no doubt have heard that a great way to garner interest in a product is to write an article about it and then submit it to article directories. When you write an article, you always place a link in your author’s bio which is often found at the bottom of the article. In most cases you’ll see article authors link to their own website. However, you can simply place your link to your affiliate product here just as easily. It’s important to remember though that not all article directories allow you to place affiliate links in your bio so be sure to read their guidelines first.
- Are you a member of a forum or message board? Online communities are also great ways to promote your affiliate links. Most message boards allow you to have your own unique signature which shows up every single time you post a message. Use this as a means to promote your links. Just remember to keep your posts relevant and useful. No one likes someone showing up just so their affiliate link is posted and to top it off, it could get you booted from the board.
- Create a free online blog. There are many options available to you here and they won’t cost you a cent. Whatever your specialty is, simply write about it, give good advice and respond to those who have serious inquiries about your posts. Every so often, you can place one of your affiliate links in a post you’ve made. Again, be sure you read up on the guidelines for the blog services before you use such a strategy.
Not having your own website should not stop you from being successful. Many of these strategies can be accomplished without spending a single penny.
Good Luck!
