The truth about Affiliate Marketing

There are so many myths flying around about affiliate marketing ……..

on how to be successful, how hard it is to be successful and what you actually need to have a successful affiliate marketing business.

So lets see the truth about affiliate marketing and show you that you are only a few steps away from creating  a viable home business opportunity.

Size of Email List

The size of your email list is one of the biggest misconceptions out there. People say you need a HUGE list to make money with affiliate marketing. NOT TRUE!

 The quality of the list is more important than the quantity. Mailing to 100,000 subscribers does not mean you will make sales. Having a list of buyers is so much better than having a list of subscribers that have opted in for a free report or ebook.

The free subscribers probably will buy from you but someone that has already bought from you before has trust in you and will be more likely to buy products you have recommended to them.
So the bigger the buyer email list the more likely it is you will get commissions and profits from your efforts to supply quality and value to them.

The general advice is:

• It’s not just about delivering promotions to them all the time but also giving them advice and showing them results. Sending clickable links in each email is important so they can view your recommendations regularly.
  Emailing daily is a must to keep you and your brand at the top of your subscribers mind and inbox. Don’t let yourself get forgotten.
• If you are not emailing your list AT LEAST once a day you are leaving money on the table. When people first begin making a new email list and check how many subscribers they have. They tend to see an email list with a huge number of subscribers as a successful one.  It is important but isn’t and shouldn’t be the only measurement of a successful affiliate email campaign.

All good advice but I am not sure that is entirely true to be honest. The amount of times I have subscribed to something interesting and have then unsubscribed due to the amount of emails is very high. I would say once a day is more than enough as I have heard others voice the opinion that more than one a day is the trigger to make them unsubscribe.

Many marketers do worry and try their best to maintain the overall number of subscribers on their lists. Keeping subscribers is important but it’s just as important to consider the message open rates, clicks through your links and sales conversions too.

Starting Out

Someone who’s starting to be an affiliate marketer might think about creating their first blog, making a niche website, or establishing an online store because these websites are platforms to generate profits. Whatever direction you go in, affiliate marketing, dropshipping or physical products you make or buy and sell, you will need a blog. Customers now like to read about the products they are thinking of buying or they come looking for solutions to problems you write about.

Setting up your own blog might be simple and easy from the start but it’s not the same story as you go through the process. How to secure a good number of viewers to your articles is the biggest problem for newbie bloggers.
It’s definitely hard to engage enough eyeballs when you are creating your new blog. You have to realize that you are competing in a huge and populated market that makes for very tough competition.

Next step

Having and offering a unique product is good, however you still have to provide satisfying and informative content to answer the never-ending questions. Knowing what your audiences really want is your ultimate goal in promoting your product.

It’s important to allow your voice to come through, to have content that’s interesting and holds the readers interest. It’s important that it doesn’t come across as a pushy sales page. Your blog is to answer the questions that customers might ask about your particular niche. They have to learn to trust you before they will be inclined to buy through your affiliate links.Also, don’t forget that you are selling something that is not tangible. Adverts and affiliate links on your blog is what will bring in the money.

Content is king and trust is key to success.

Traffic

If you want to generate real profits you have to create a very big audience. Niche websites are easy to make but  the competition can be greater depending on the niche you choose. To get a large number of visitors to your sites, you need to enhance your Search Engine Optimization skills since search engine traffic eventually contributes to a large part of the total traffic going to a niche site. SEO can be time consuming and is always changing. You can always outsource this to stay in the search engine rankings.

However, regular organic traffic can take a lot of time to build. So in the meantime you build up your social media accounts as they can encourage traffic while you wait for Google to recognise your site.

Are you thinking that technical knowledge, selling skills and other things are the biggest hindrance to start your career in affiliate marketing? Well, these issues can be overcome and solved by a good work ethic and your determination to become a successful affiliate marketer. Don’t let them get in your way to having a business you really want.

Bonuses

Bonuses are purely to persuade the potential customer to buy a particular product through your affiliate link and not from a different affiliate. Customers like to get something that adds value to their product or better still have bonuses that are more valuable than the original product, this makes a customer more likely to buy from you. Bonuses simply add value to the original offer product.

I would say that most of the time the bonuses are worth more than the product. They are needed as an incentive because you are selling the same thing as many other affiliates. The types of bonuses can swing the sale in your favour rather than someone else’s. Customers like getting value for money.

Offer Page

Having a well-written bonus offer page could make the sales flow more easily.

In my opinion more of the offer pages should be honest about their product. They all have a tendency to say the same thing.

• Up and running in 3 clicks.
• 5/10 minutes and your site will be earning money.
• So simple a newbie could do it.
• Earning within hours.

It’s only when you look closer on the page or in the Frequently Asked Questions, that there is a mention of training videos. I fell for one of those early on in learning affiliate marketing. When I got inside there were 15 sections of videos and the first one had 25 videos in it. The instructions stated that you must watch all the videos first. I was horrified, I just did not have that much time to waste.

Unfortunately, despite many messages sent, I did not get my money back. Really stupid of them because you never trust anything from that person again, the seller (affiliate marketer) or the person who created it. Plus anytime time someone asks if anyone knows what they are like you are going to say, Untrustworthy, don’t buy.

How to create bonuses.

Here are some ways for you to create bonuses. To start with, doing it by yourself is actually the easiest way to create a bonus offer, though a little bit of effort is needed to prepare for it just like doing a little research for your special report. Preparation saves money. You don’t need to spend much in making the bonus available to the customers when you do it yourself.

Another and easier route that is also often used in in affiliate marketing is the use of Private Label Rights. PLR products are created by someone else and you can buy the product and the rights to it, so essentially you own it. That way you can sell the product or offer it as a bonus or as part of a bonus package.

This is a good choice if you don’t have your own items as yet for bonuses offers. It would save you time and effort as well and with many you can edit the product and even put your own name to it.

Some affiliates also get together to share items for bonuses but this would need to be with someone you trust. Plus it would have to be worked out fairly for the benefit of both parties.