Supreme Affiliate Marketing Wizard

Chapter 1:

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing

1.1 The Background of Affiliate Marketing

As an ongoing way to create income opportunities, affiliate marketing has captured the imagination and attention of a number of entrepreneurs over the last decade. Here is some background on the development of affiliate marketing and how it continues to evolve today.

At its core, affiliate marketing is all about getting attention for a good or service by utilizing online resources that are managed by partners or affiliates. The most simplistic of all these methods is allowing advertising to be displayed on a web site that is the domain of the affiliate.

Typically, the advertisement will allow the prospective customer to click on and be redirected to a page or site where there is more information and the chance to order the good or service in question. In return for providing a doorway for that customer to discover the product of service, the affiliate is rewarded with compensation, usually via electronic transfer or check.

The concept of affiliate marketing is a natural outgrowth of the online marketing that sprang up in the early years of widespread Internet use. At first, online marketing was more of a business to business approach, since companies were the first to jump on the Internet bandwagon. Putting up a web site and sending emails out to solicit business was a cost-effective way to gather new business clients.

As Internet use began to spread into the home, a number of companies began to see that working with owners of personal web sites would be a great way to promote goods and services with very little in the way of investment in marketing resources.

The trick was to make the idea enticing to individuals, so they would be interested in allowing companies to advertise through their web sites. Out of this need to come up with a strategy that would appeal to a large body of people, the basics of affiliate marketing were developed, and still continue to shape the course of affiliate programs today.

The vast majority of affiliate programs provide compensation through revenue sharing. In some cases, revenue sharing is referred to as a cost per sale transaction. Essentially, the affiliate is earns either a fixed amount or a percentage of the purchase price when anyone locates and buys the good or service through the portal provided by the affiliate.

For example, a family web site that allowed businesses that produced infant care products to feature ads on the front page of the web site, complete with links, would pay the family for every sale that was made through that link.

Many affiliate programs require that the earnings reach a certain level before pay out takes place. Others will pay on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis, with no minimum amount of earnings required.

Another less popular means of generating revenue through an affiliate program is the cost per action method. This differs from the cost per sale method, in that cost per action simply requires that the prospective buyer see the ad on a web site and click on it to investigate for a minimum amount of time.

It does not have to end in a sale. As one can imagine, the amount of revenue generated from this sort of arrangement is much less than by a cost per sale revenue sharing plan.

With the cost per action world, the pay per click may be the format that most people recognize immediately. However, it is also the least popular method of affiliate marketing today.

While PPC began with a strong following, the method proved to be far too susceptible to fraudulent clicks, which resulted in little sales but a lot of money paid out by advertisers. Today's methods, which help to track addresses of the customers as well as require a minimum amount of browsing time, have cut down on the incidence of fraud a great deal.

Affiliate marketing today covers a wide range of products and services, from household items to telecommunications offerings. Any enterprising individual with some expertise in a given area could very well find an affiliate program that would generate some recurring income. All it takes is a look around the Internet.

1.2 Why Affiliate Marketing is a Lucrative Business

If you have been considering an affiliate marketing venture, there are some very good reasons why you should go with this method of generating recurring revenue. Here are some of the ways that affiliate marketing can be a lucrative means of creating income that will be stable and allow you to grow exposure over time.

One of the first advantages of affiliate marketing for the new entrepreneur is that the startup cost is very low. Most companies that offer affiliate marketing programs do not require any type of monetary investment on the part of the affiliate.

Expenses are limited to what you have to pay to connect with the Internet, the software you may need to load on your computer, and a web site where the ads associated with the affiliate marketing program can be placed. With web site hosting such an inexpensive service these days, setting up your own web site for the affiliate ads will be a breeze.

In fact, you may not have to set up anything, if you already have a web site up and running. As an example, you may already own a web site that is dedicated to your interest in alternative fuel options. Signing up for an affiliate program that will place ads on your site that click through to companies that produce vegetable based fuel options would be a natural way to earn a little money.

Associating your interests with the subject matter of the ads that appear on your web site is one of the easiest ways to build up a steady web presence that result in a steady flow of income.

Another reason that affiliate marketing is such a moneymaker is the fact that there are so many different types of ways to set up the program. You can go with the pay per click option, which works out great when it comes to promoting special offers. Ads that lead to product review sites often are a way to allow product users to go through your portal and leave comments on the items they purchase.

Using ads to re-direct to opt-in email listings allows companies to build up qualified email lists to use in their promotions, and results in income for you when people choose to sign up. In fact, you could conceivably have a combination of these and other ads on your site or sites, all earning money for you on a continual basis.

A third reason why affiliate marketing is so attractive is that you do not have to quite your day job in order to work with the projects. Instead of going out on a limb with your affiliate business, it is simply a matter of setting aside a few hours each week to devote to signing up for programs, promoting the web sites where the ads will run, and allowing your business to grow.

As the affiliate programs get on their feet and begin to generate respectable amounts of income, you can expand the amount of time you devote to the project, eventually phasing out working for someone else and creating your revenue streams full time. Few income opportunities offer this type of flexibility.

Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme, although there is plenty of money to be made with the right programs. You will have to devote some time and energy to the programs.

But the nice thing is that once the web sites you manage and have ads placed on become prominent on search engine lists, you will begin to see recurring income from your efforts. In time, that could lead to a very attractive income that allows you both the resources and the time to live the type of life you have always wanted for yourself and your loved ones.

1.3 First Thing’s First – Avoid These Silly Affiliate Marketing Mistakes!

While affiliate marketing is a great way to earn a living, the fact is that many people become discouraged and drop out of programs. In many instances, the failure to be successful with affiliate marketing has to do with making a few simple mistakes. Here are some examples of those mistakes and why they should be avoided.

Perhaps the most common misconception about affiliate marketing is that one can rake in huge amounts of revenue simply by slapping up a low-quality website with no original content and tossing in some affiliate links.

While it is certainly true that you need to have a web site up and running in order to participate in an affiliate program, there is also the need to apply some effort to getting the word out about your site. Otherwise, the chances of people visiting your web site and clicking on one of the links are pretty slim.

Promoting yourself and your web site is a big part of ensuring the creation of affiliate income. This will mean doing everything you can to raise your search engine ranking positions on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Far too many people assume that somehow the Internet magically will capture every lovely word on the web site and magically have it show up prominently when people do a search. This is not the case at all. Taking the time to carefully research keywords, craft content related to them, and the optimize your site for them is an absolute must.

And that’s not it. Marketing is bigger than just SEO. A strong and comprehensive marketing effort includes getting out there and using every legitimate means of promoting your site, from leaving business cards on restaurant tables to posting a printed ad in the local supermarket to listing your site at online business and informational sites.

Choosing to consider this sort of activity a waste of time is more or less deciding you want the program to fail.

Another mistake many affiliate partners make is not choosing products that have some relevance to the content of your web site. For example, you run a wonderful web site about the care and training of dogs. People will visit your site to see the images of your pets, read your comments on various aspects of dog training, and perhaps to post a message or two.

Since your visitors will already have an expressed interest in pets, why not make sure the ads that reside on your site have to do with some aspect of pets or pet care? You will earn much more money if this is the case, rather than having ads that have to do with home decorating or some other subject.

Keeping your site content and the ads more or less relevant to one another will make it easier to generate revenue, and not fail as an affiliate marketer. Now, this may seem intuitive – but many make this mistake in subtle ways (i.e. they mismatch their customers with products).

One final mistake that many affiliate marketers make is not sprucing up their web sites from time to time. Keeping the content fresh is one way of building and keeping a loyal reading audience.

If there is a reason to check back with your site every week, then chances are repeat visitors will click on ads that appear to be new to them, or that they enjoyed looking at the last time they visited your site.

Keeping the same old look and the same old text with nothing new to entice people back is a sure way to limit your chances at being a successful affiliate marketer.

In short, most of the more common mistakes all track back to an attitude that you do not have to do anything in order to generate revenue.

The fact is that you do have to proactively promote your site, keep the content fresh, and make sure the ads have some connection to the subject matter of your site.

By taking the time and effort to do these three simple things, you will have much better chances at being a success with affiliate marketing.

Chapter 2:

How to Identify & Pick

Hot Selling Products

2.1 What You Need Before Getting Started

While there is not a lot of expense in starting up as an affiliate marketer, there are a few things that you need to do if you really want to make money marketing other people’s products.

Here are some basic tips to help you line up all your things to do before you ever sign up for that first affiliate program.

One of the basic needs for any successful affiliate program is to have a web site of your own. While it is possible to purchase ad space on sites and to advertise through Google Adwords, this is short term strategy.

Setting up a basic web site that has a particular focus will make all the difference in the world to the success of your program. Keep in mind that your web site does not have to be complicated with a lot of flash media, animation or other fancy bells and whistles.

In fact, if you plan on focusing your attention on affiliate marketing strategies that target the home consumer, you are better off with a basic site that will load quickly on a dial up connection. After all, dial-up is still extremely popular in a number of locations.

While you could choose to go with a free web site, you will find it much easier to work with affiliate programs if you go with your own domain name. It is very easy and inexpensive to secure a domain name and space on a remote server these days. Some companies will provide you with both services for a low monthly charge.

Often, they may also have basic software to help you design and upload your pages to the server, even if you are not particularly savvy with the technology. One great place to check for this sort of thing is at http://www.soloadmarketplace.com/

Another important aspect is determining just what your contact information will be, regarding communication with your affiliate program. This would include an email address and physical mailing address. The email address should be one you have set aside specifically for your marketing business.

You may find it helpful to obtain a free email address, although you will certainly look more professional if the email address appears to be lead to a business of some sort. Often, you will have the option of having one email address when you secure a domain name. If that is the case, go this route and use that as your contact for any email correspondence.

As far as your physical mailing address, determine where you may want your affiliate checks to be mailed. If you are not secure having the checks come to your home for come reason, secure a post office box.

Online payments are a great way to easily receive your affiliate payments and keep track of your earnings. From this angel, you may want to look into opening an account with one of the more popular online services that send and receive funds.

PayPal is one example of such a service. Many people are familiar with PayPal, and just about everyone knows how to use it to send payments. Another popular option is ClickBank, which offers services that are almost identical to PayPal. Both these options are reliable, quick, and provide you with financial detail that will allow you to keep up with your earnings easily.

One last tool to set in place before you embark on your first affiliate marketing program is a promotion plan for the web site where the ads will reside. This will mean that you have a procedure in place to tie keywords and key phrases back to your site, publish the site on all the major search engines, and also have some content ready to add to the site periodically.

Additionally, you will have located at least a few online business sites where you can post your URL in business listings. Making sure people can find your site during searches is imperative; that is where a lot of your traffic will come from.

Also, you want the content to change slightly from time to time, so people have a reason to visit your site on a regular basis. All these methods will greatly increase the chances of clicks on the ads posted on the site.

2.2 How to Pick the Best Product with the Best Payout and Great Demand

Being successful at affiliate marketing takes more than just signing up for a program. It also means thinking through the process and making sure you sign up with a program that will provide you with the opportunity to make a lot of money.

Here are a few tips to help you determine which products would yield a high return in the way of generated revenue for you.

One of the first things to think in terms of when it comes to affiliate marketing is determining where your talents and expertise happen to reside. One of the keys to picking the best products for your particular situation have to do with what you know and how much you know about it.

As an example, a person that has worked in telecommunications for a number of years will probably know a great deal about telephony, related services, and technology that are used within that industry.

This would make it a natural fit to design a web site that would make a perfect showplace for ads that have to do with telecommunications providers, services, providers, and distributors.

Keep in mind that using your bank of knowledge will allow you to find creative ways to drive the right people to your site. They in turn will be the right market sector to be interested in the ads; great increases your chances of earning a steady and rewarding income.

Another aspect about setting up with the right products to promote has to do with where you see a niche to fill in. Finding a population or business sector that appears to be largely ignored in the marketing process can provide the inspiration you need to create a successful affiliate marketing program.

By promoting yourself and the affiliate ads to persons and businesses that do not receive a lot of attention, you very quickly build up a presence where the competition is less fierce, and enhance your potential for creating a secure revenue stream.

A third approach is simply taking a look at what is currently available in the way of products to promote. This can be accomplished by checking the types of promotions that are offered through the affiliate program.

If you have no special interest that you want to promote with your web site, then spend some time checking out the size and about of average revenue generated by the different industries represented in the product selections.

As an example, you decide that you may be interested in promoting legal services as part of your affiliate strategy. Get some figures on how much revenue mediation services and attorney firms are likely to generate in a year.

If this looks promising, you can develop a web site that is ideal for ads that track back to legal firms, arbitration services, and even office supplies for legal firms. This approach can lead to some excellent income opportunities.

It is important to remember that determining what direction to go in with your affiliate marketing plan may take some time to develop. While it is true that some people enter into affiliate programs with a very clear vision of what they want to do and why, there is nothing wrong with taking some time to investigate your options, doing some research, and even getting some outside opinions about the potential for success.

Do not allow yourself to get discouraged simply because everything is not crystal clear as you begin this part of the process. Practicing some patience and giving yourself time to find the right products to promote as part of the program will only serve to make you more dedicated to the success of the program.

In the end, you will find the products that will lead to a very successful affiliate marketing scheme and provide you with not only a handsome revenue stream, but also a lot of personal satisfaction.

2.3 Recommended Top Affiliate Networks on the Internet

When you decide to enter the world of affiliate marketing, there are a number of markets that are worthy of consideration. Here are three programs that have captured the attention of a lot of people, simply because of their stability and reliability.

Perhaps the best known of the three programs is ClickBank: http://www.clickbank.com. There are a number of reasons why people find ClickBank such an attractive option when it comes to affiliate programs.

One aspect is that the revenue generated by any purchase made through the ad portal is credited to your account within two minutes of the completion of the transaction. Because ClickBank provides such a comprehensive tracking program, it is easy for affiliates to see how things are going, even if they run multiple sites as part of the program.

This handy software interface means that you do not have to set up a separate ClickBank account for every different program that you are working. Everything can be routed to a central ClickBank account, and the transaction detail will be plenty to help you sort the transactions into workable detail on how much you are making from each web site.

Along with the ads on your sites, you will also have a branded portal that will take visitors over to the ClickBank marketplace. Any items that are purchased at the marketplace through your portal will also be subject to a commission payment to you, and will reflect in your daily detail, just as any purchase from the affiliate ads would do.

This in effect allows you to maximize your earning potential using the resources that ClickBank provides. Payments are currently made by check, which are mailed out every two weeks.

Http://www.paydotcom.com is also an excellent choice as an affiliate network. Just as with ClickBank, PayDotCom provides an easy to use affiliate interface that allows you to view your numbers in real time. You can easily track such data as the number of clicks on the ads and the amount of commissions you have made by directing visitors over to the marketplace through the portal on your web site.

One of the advantages of PayDotCom is that this program will interface with your PayPal account, which means that vendors can send your monthly commission directly to your PayPal account. It is important to note that not all vendors will use PayPal as a payment method, so you may still receive payments by check as well.

Still, a number of the vendors do utilize PayPal, and that can often mean generated revenue without having to wait for a long time. Keep in mind that if you select PayPal as your preferred method of payment, you will be subject to any fees you normally incur when receiving funds.

In like manner, you will pay a small percentage of the payout on each purchase to PayDotCom as well. This program is easy to sign up with, and the staff does a great job of working with persons who are new to affiliate marketing.

Http://www.sharesale.con is a third option that is rapidly gaining recognition among affiliate marketers. As a program that is designed to match up to the content of your existing web site, Sharesale is free to join as an affiliate.

Basically, you can sign up for the program and then browse through a list of available merchant programs, selecting the ones that you believe will be of interest to the readers and visitors at your web site. The merchant list includes a wide variety of industry types and products, some of them digital, but many of them physical.

Earnings for the sale will vary. Some merchants prefer to use a flat rate for a sale, while others go with a percentage commission on the purchase amount. It is easy to determine which method is preferred while you are checking out the merchant listing.

Persons that want to take a look at the merchant list before signing up for the program can search by category, by method of compensation, and by the newest programs added in the last twenty days.

As with all the best affiliate programs, Sharesale makes it easy to view your traffic and earnings around the clock. The reports are all web based, so you do not need any special software to load the reports.

Payments on generated revenue can be received via a check mailed to you, or by direct deposit to a bank account. At present, you have to earn a minimum of $50.00 USD during the previous calendar month in order to receive a payment. Any amount under that will roll over into the next payment period.

And we can NOT forget https://JVzoo.com

Chapter 3:

Using Pay-Per-Click to Promote

Affiliate Products

3.1 An Overview on Adwords and other PPC Programs

If you haven’t used Adwords yet to promote your business, you’ve been missing out. Not only is it one of the fastest ways to advertise (you can get ads up in less than 5 minutes), but it is also one of the easiest ways to reach a massive audience. You don’t need good connections.

You don’t need a big mailing list. You don’t need a massive budget (in fact, you don’t even have to pay for your advertising fees until the end of the month). And you don’t need a degree in computer science to “engineer” a site that ranks well in search engines.

So what do you need in order to be successful with Adwords? First of all, you need an account. If you haven’t started one yet, cruise over to http://www.google.com/adwords and open one.

Once you open an account, you will want to start testing some of Adwords’s features. Try out the keyword tool to find new keywords related to your niche. Use the bid tool to determine approximately how much your advertising campaign will cost. And so on. Get familiar with Adwords.

Once you become familiar with Adwords, you will want to consider making a campaign for your business. But before you do that, you need to understand the following two things, which will help you to structure your campaigns correctly:

1. Google Adwords—and all “pay per click” advertising programs—charge you per click, not per impression, action, or sale. What does this mean? It means it is incumbent on you to ensure that you are a) paying the right price per click; b) purchasing the right keywords; c) writing ads that people will actually click on; and d) making sure clicks turn into sales. Google will serve ads for you, but other than that, it’s up to you to figure out how you’re going to get a decent ROI.

2. Two things determine how well an ad is ranked by Adwords (but not necessarily other PPC advertising programs): 1) your bid; and 2) your ad’s click through rate (CTR). What this means for you is quite simple: if your CTR is phenomenal, you can get a high ad position without paying more money per click. If, on the other hand, your CTR is lackluster, you’ll have to pay out the nose to get that same position. So make sure you write an ad people will click on – or prepare to pay.

As a new Adwords user, you certainly have a lot to learn. But if you keep the two things above in mind, you shouldn’t stray too far from making successful campaigns and capitalizing on them.

Now, with that in mind, you shouldn’t forget that there are other pay per click advertising programs available. While Adwords offers high quality traffic in large volume, it also costs more to use (i.e. bids for keywords are higher) than most other pay per click advertising programs.

You may want to consider complementing your Adwords campaigns by creating parallel campaigns with the following advertising programs:

1. Yahoo Search Marketing: https://developer.yahoo.com/searchmarketing/ While Yahoo has a much smaller market share of the search market than Google, it is still formidable when compared to most other search engines. Additionally, many keywords on YSM are much cheaper than on Google.

2. Microsoft Search (BING): http://advertising.microsoft.com. MSN, like Yahoo, receives a considerable amount of search traffic – although still much less than Google. If you want to scalp some cheap PPC keywords, consider checking MSN out, too.

So there you have it: a brief overview of how to use Google Adwords, as well as a list of its major PPC competitors.

3.2 How to Write an Attention-Grabbing PPC Ad

Pay per click is perhaps the best advertising medium available for Internet-based businesses and for small businesses in general. It allows them to carefully cut the advertising fat by choosing exactly what they will pay for and what they won’t.

They not only get to select the keywords they want to bid on, but they only pay when someone actually clicks through one of those ads and is directed to their site. This is a far cry from paying for advertising on a billboard, which might generate a lot of “impressions,” but few actions.

Unfortunately, though, advertising through PPC programs, such as Google’s Adwords, is no piece of cake – despite what many gurus may tell you during a sales pitch. In fact, it may be extremely hard or even impossible to get a reasonable return on your investment in certain niches using pay per click advertising.

However, if you keep a few basic principles in mind, earning an excellent ROI on your PPC advertising investment is nearly guaranteed. So where do you start? Arguably, the most important part of creating a successful PPC advertising campaign is writing an ad that will increase your click through rate (CTR), so this is a good place to start.

Writing an ad that commands a high ROI can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Pick the right keywords for the ad. While this seems like it has nothing to do with writing the ad, it actually is the first and most important step. If you want your ad to have a high click through rate, it must be narrowly focused around a set of keyphrases that all have the same root keyword in common. This will allow you to repeat that root keyword 1-3 times throughout the ad. Whenever someone searches for one of those keywords and your ad pops up, the root will appear in bold, since it is part of the keyword they searched for. This will make it stick out clearly, drawing them to click on it.

3. Avoid fancy stuff in the headline. Here, all you want is a simple description of the product or service offered: “Grand Piano for Sale.” Also, remember to include that root keyword in the headline to make it stick out more. People need to immediately see whether or not your ad is relevant. And the best way to communicate that is to say exactly what you’re selling.

1. Communicate the best feature associated with your product on the first line of your ad (below the headline) or clarify exactly what is you are selling. For example, in the “grand piano” ad above, you could ad something like the following: “Choose Between 700 Grand Pianos” or “Pay Only $500 for Your Grand Piano.”

4. Last, in your second line, communicate a benefit associated with your product. Here, rather than saying something physical about your store or product, you will explain what the product can do for the person. The product might “Save You Hundreds” or “Teach You How to Make Millions.” Make sure it is compelling and relevant. Ask yourself (and possibly a friend) whether or not this is something that would make you take action.

And there you have it: a 4-step blueprint for creating an “attention-grabbing” PPC advertisement. Once you put your first ad up and allow it to rotate, you will then want to start testing competing ads.

The best way to do this is to alter one part of the ad at a time. For instance, start off by altering your headline until you get a better CTR. After that, work on your first line – and so on. After a few weeks of working out changes, you should have an effective, powerful ad.

3.3 How to Bid for Profits using Google Adwords

Bidding to make a profit on Google Adwords might not seem as obvious as the experts tell you. In their 5 minute videos, they’ll show you some quick technique to figure out how much to bid and for what keywords.

You’ll walk away thinking you understand the process. And then something strange will happen: you’ll be absolutely unable to implement their suggestions. No matter what you try, you’ll struggle to break even with your campaigns.

So why is this? Why can’t you experience the success that the experts suggest is completely within your reach? One common culprit is inept bid-setting. Many people who are new to Adwords do not know how to calculate profitable bid amounts. In fact, it is quite simple, but you have to work through it carefully. Here’s a step-by-step process for doing it:

1. Based on past selling experience, determine a rough conversion rate for the product you are selling. For instance, if you can usually convert 4 people out of every 100 who land on your salespage, then you have a conversion rate of 4%. Even if you cannot estimate this perfectly, try to come up with some rough measure before moving on to the next step.

5. Now that you’ve determined your conversion rate, you now need to calculate how much you profit per sale. Don’t get lazy here. If you sell an affiliate product and make a 50% commission, you might be tempted to simply multiply the price by ½. In reality, if you’re using Clickbank or Paypal, they will extract a fee, so you’re not earning 50% per sale. You need to calculate this, too.

2. Next, take the profit per sale and multiply that number by your conversion rate. If, for instance, your conversion rate is 4% and your profit per sale is $50, then you would multiply 50 by .04 and get $2. This means that the maximum amount of money you can afford to spend (if your conversion rate is 4%) is $2 per bid – your break-even point. Spend more than that and you’re actually losing money.

The most important thing to observe here, however, is the relationship between all of the variables.

For instance, think about what increasing your conversion rate means. It means that you would either profit more (without changing anything else) or it means that you could increase the amount you could pay per bid without exceeding your break-even point.

I.e. if you cannot break into profit with your current conversion rate, you may have to improve your sales page.

Additionally, if you increase the price of your product (and it doesn’t decrease conversions significantly), then you can afford to bid more without exceeding your break-even point.

In addition to simply setting prices below your break-even point, you will eventually want to refine your bids so that you are deriving the greatest amount of profit.

Let’s say, for instance, that you will earn $50 per sale on a product that has a conversion rate of 4%. Given the keywords available, you can bid $1 per click and get 700 visitors per day or pay 30 cents per click and get 300 visitors per day. Which should you choose?

In the first instance, you would sell a total of 28 units and make $700 ((28*50)-(700*$1)). In the second instance, you would sell a total of 12 units and make $510 ((12*50)-(300*$1)). Even though you are spending more per click on advertising in the first instance, you will still profit more, which means you should select this option.

At first, using this entire math may seem unnecessary, but it isn’t. Without tracking these variables and making decisions based on them, you will have no idea how to set bids; and will suffer as a consequence.

3.4 Tracking and Monitoring your PPC Ad Performance

You’ve heard the wild-eyed “experts” raving about it: “You have to test and track”, they’ll tell you. They’ll rattle on, pontificating on the virtues of tracking and testing. They’ll tell you that you can never have a successful business without testing and tracking.

They may even tell you that, if you’re not already wealthy, it’s because you’re not testing and tracking. But is this all hot air? Or is there something vitally important about testing and tracking?

When it comes to business, being able to track the effects of all of your decisions actually is vitally important. The experts may not track and test as much as they urge you to, but their exhortation is nonetheless correct: you should test and track.

Doing so will allow you to determine when something really is effective and when something simply isn’t producing results.

When it comes to pay per click advertising, you have the unique opportunity to test and track everything. While you might not be able to test and track your other forms of advertising as easily, PPC is relatively easy to track; and, for that reason, you should consider doing it, so you can constantly improve your campaigns.

So what does testing and tracking consist of with PPC? There are several levels. The first level is testing and tracking the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. For instance, out of every 100 people who view a certain ad you’ve posted, how many are clicking through? This is your conversion rate; and you should know this, so you can compare several ads to determine which is best.

In the aforementioned situation, the “tracking” component involves looking at conversion rates. The “testing” comes in when you slowly tweak the headline in your PPC ad, testing out different elements to determine which performs best. Eventually, you should come up with an ad that you cannot improve on significantly – and this will all be determined by tracking and testing.

Next, you will want to track and test your sales page. Again, here, determine your conversion rate. How many sales do you make per 100 visitors? Also, are there significant differences in conversion rates for each advertising campaign? Are people searching for certain keywords and clicking on certain ads more likely to buy than people searching for different keywords and clicking on different ads?

If this is the case, then you may be able to afford to spend more money on certain ads; or you may want to reword other ads, so that you can weed out traffic that isn’t likely to convert.

Even if you’re already running profitable PPC advertising campaigns, you can still probably improve your profit margins; however, in order to do that, you need to know where the deficiencies and break-downs are in your system. Are they on the sales page? Are they in the ads? Did you select the wrong keywords? Did you pay too much for certain keywords? Are certain ads not converting as you expected?

Whatever the case may be, you need to figure it out if you want to increase your profit margins. Luckily, if you’re advertising with Adwords, Google provides a whole host of tools you can use to track and test your PPC campaigns.

Not only can you monitor your PPC campaign statistics, but you can also insert a piece of code in your sales page, which will allow you to track visitor behavior, so that you know everything visitors do from the point in time when they view your ad to the point in time when they buy (or don’t).

Testing and tracking may not be simple, but it is necessary. Even if you’re running a profitable business already, you should consider testing and tracking as a means to increase your profit margins.

Chapter 4:

Using Search Engine Optimization to Sell Products as an Affiliate

4.1 Why Search Engine Results Beat Sponsored Links Anytime

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. So make sure you scoff at anyone who tells you something is “free.” If you receive traffic from some place and it costs nothing, but you had to spend 300 hours to generate it, was it free? No, at worst, you could have earned minimum wage for those 300 hours. That is—at worst—it cost you 300 hours multiplied by minimum wage.

At best, you could have been doing something productive with your business that would have earned you ten times more than minimum wage during each of those hours. So don’t listen to this “free traffic generation” nonsense. Even traffic that comes from search engines has a cost – and that’s your time.

Now, with that caveat in mind, there is such thing as relatively cheaper traffic. If it takes you very little time to optimize your search for the search engines—and the result is considerable “organic” search engine traffic—well, great; you should generate traffic through search engine optimization.

In general, traffic that comes from search engine optimization does actually turn out to be quite cheap. In exchange for the time it takes to create some relevant content, use the proper tags, and exchange a few links, you could get a steady flow of several hundred visitors per day to your site.

If your wage is the only cost, this will be relatively cheap in comparison to pay per click traffic, which could cost you several dollars per visitor.

Other than simply being cheap, organic search engine traffic is also good for a number of other reasons. One obvious reason is that you do not have to spend time monitoring the flow of organic SEO traffic for fear that you will exceed your budget.

With PPC, you have to constantly check your Adwords account and other PPC accounts to determine how well your ads are performing. This is not so with organic search engine traffic. And the less time you spend thinking and actually generating traffic, the more you profit per visitor. If you spend your whole day watching statistics and you think you’re in profit – then you’re not adding your own wage to the equation.

Another major benefit to using organic search engine traffic is that it tends to convert better. In fact, many experts would argue that it converts much better than links from “sponsored” sections – even if they are on a search engine.

People tend to be considerably more skeptical of anything that looks like an advertisement. In contrast, if your site comes up as the first non-sponsored result on Google for a particular keyword, you will gain enormous credibility for that fact alone.

Last, there is one other major benefit of organic search engine traffic: high rankings tend to beget high rankings. That is – if you maintain the top position for certain keywords on Google, there’s a good chance sites will start linking to you, as you will be considered an “authority” on your topic.

This will solidify your top ranking and also improve your ranking for other keywords. In this sense, high search engine rankings can beget high search engine rankings.

And there you have it: there are several major benefits to using organic search engine traffic over popular alternatives, such as pay per click traffic.

Even though organic search engine traffic isn’t truly “free”—it costs your time at the very least—it may be considerably cheaper than other forms of traffic generation. Not only will it covert better than “sponsored links,” but it may beget future traffic; and will cost comparatively less.

4.2 How to Build Affiliate Sites and Rank High in Search Engine Results

Getting high rankings in search engines might seem like a completely impossible task. In fact, you might ask how you—a person with relatively little money and few resources—can outcompete large, well-funded corporations when it comes to search engine ranking.

Is it indeed possible at all? Or is it simply bait that shovel-sellers use to trick you into purchasing a product? “Yes, you too could rank #1 on Google in 24 hours!” We’ve all heard this line and similar ones.

I have good news for you: obtaining top rankings on Google isn’t really something you could do overnight. And that’s a good thing. Otherwise, other marketers could use the same trick to get ahead of you easily. Instead, getting top rankings on search engines is a slow, but rational, process. And the whole process starts with the creation of your affiliate site.

You might not realize this initially, but creating an affiliate site—as opposed to selling all of your own content—gives you a number of distinct advantages over people who are selling their own products. First, it allows you to quickly create an entire site around a much focused topic. Why is this important?

For one simple reason: the more narrowly focused your website is around a particular topic, the better it will rank on search engines. If, for instance, your site is a conglomeration of 35 different sales pages on totally unrelated topics, you will not rank well. If, on the other hand, your site only contains information about cranberry sauce, then you are likely to rank very well on keywords related to cranberry sauce.

Now, in addition to affirming the above (that affiliate sites can rank well in search engines), it is also important to emphasize that you should limit the scope of your site insofar as it is practical. Additionally, while you might sell products you created yourself, you should use content that you created (or hired someone else to create).

Articles scraped from directories and copied-and-pasted salesletters are duplicate content and are unlikely to help you perform better on the search engines.

However, with that said, there are a number of ways in which you can quickly generate information about affiliate products that you couldn’t do otherwise. One popular way to create content for affiliate sites is to create a “top 10 product” section, where you can include reviews on the best CB products for that particular niche.

If you haven’t actually used the products, you don’t have to claim that you did. All you have to do is summarize points in the salesletters (and explain that this is what you are doing) and paraphrase testimonials. This will allow you to give visitors the short version of the salesletter, which will count as unique content for your site.

Other ways to improve your search engine rankings include things such purchasing massive amounts of unique, focused, relevant content (i.e. articles, reports, etc.) and uploading them to your site.

For instance, you could do keyword research on your topic, find keywords that receive a lot of queries (but do not have a lot of sites returned on Google), and hire a ghostwriter at https://www.upwork.com/ (was elance) to create an article optimized for each.

https://fiverr.com could be a great low cost alternative – it sure is cheaper :-)

However you decide to generate traffic for your site, keep this in mind: you cannot get a top ranking in Google overnight. It simply doesn’t happen. You can do it, but it will require work. And when you finally do get that spot—and the traffic starts rolling in—you’ll be happy that those 24-hour tricks are myth, rather than reality.

4.3 Recommended SEO-Oriented Affiliate Marketing Techniques

If you want to make more affiliate sales, you have to ratchet up your traffic-generation efforts. There are a number of ways in which you can do that. You can send out solo mailing ads, you can use pay per click advertising, you create banner ads, you can post on forums -- et cetera.

Of all these avenues for traffic generation, search engine optimization may be one of the cheapest in terms of the amount of time and money it will take per visitor generated. One of the biggest bonuses to SEO-generated traffic is that it continues to flow in without any additional work and money.

With that said, you are probably familiar with the many routine ways of generating traffic. You know about using tags, using keyword optimization, submitting articles to directories, getting back links, etc. This is nothing novel. You’ve tried these techniques and you’ve either gotten results or not).

At this point, what you’ll want to do is find a couple of feathers to put in your cap – a few truly novel SEO techniques that you can use to boost your results. With affiliate marketing, you have a number of interesting options.

There are a number of methods you can use to generate traffic for little or no cost through search engine optimization. For instance, you create a forum on your site; and encourage people to post. Not only would this help to encourage repeat traffic, but this would allow your visitors to generate content for you, which search engines would rank and attribute to your site.

You can purchase or create scripts that automatically collect product information and display it in a unique way. Google will take note of this next time they rank your site; and you are likely to see an improvement in your search engine ranking positions as a result.

When it comes down to it, you have many options for improving your search engine ranking positions; and doing so can often be much cheaper than using pay per click sources of traffic. So integrate some of the aforementioned tips into your arsenal and put them to use generating traffic.

Chapter 5:

BUM Marketing Exposed

For Affiliates

5.1 What is BUM Marketing?

Marketing programs come and go. Some of them breed a lot of success and others don't fare so well. In many cases, there is a lot of expense involved to sign up for a program, get the materials and set up shop. None of this is true with BUM Marketing.

As a common sense approach to creating an ongoing revenue stream, the basic concept of BUM marketing is to make good use of the resources that are already available on the Internet. The great thing is that using these resources requires little on the part of the user, other than free registration for revenue generating tools, posting free articles, and being inventive with SEO optimization.

The founder of this common sense marketing concept, Travis Sago, credits his wife with coming up with the name for the method. The name comes from the belief that Sago could take any bum off the street, trot him or her down to the local public library and onto a computer, and help the individual develop a revenue stream that would begin to bear fruit within a very short time.

True to his word, the free online training video that Sago has developed is not just a teaser designed to entice people to buy an Ebook or sign up for some marketing concept. There is actually a great deal of usable information included in the course.

You can learn some valuable information about how to use Google search engines to your advantage, some great places to create how to articles and incorporate keywords that will result in some excellent income opportunities. Sago shares a lot of expertise that he gained by trial and error, and helps people to sidestep situations that could slow down the process.

For those that may wonder how to go about getting the most from keyword optimization, Sago provides a perfectly simple and logical way to uncover phrases that are sure to be attention grabbers and get you to the top of the search engines. He uses a method that anyone can use, and curiously enough, one that not that many people actually think about using.

Of course, this is true of quite a bit of the information contained in the BUM marketing course; it is all out there, but before Sago, nobody took the time to put it together in such a logical and straightforward manner.

There is one word of warning here. Sago does not present a get rich quick marketing scheme. There is some work involved with the BUM marketing method. It requires establishing the portals for revenue generation and then also researching and writing copy that provide opportunities to prompt folks to visit those portals.

This is not a program where you fill out a couple of blanks and consider yourself done. Be prepared to put in some time getting started. Also, while the odds are very good that you will see some revenue in a very short time, don't expect an avalanche right out of the box.

Like any business, it will take time to build up those revenue streams. Sago makes this clear in the course and also offers helpful ideas on how to incrementally increase your web presence and over time establish a nice steady income.

For people that have tried online affiliate marketing and not done very well, BUM marketing may be just the approach you need to think about in order to get moving again. Anyone what is interested in giving affiliate marketing a try should take the time to sign up for this free course and soak up this excellent process.

BUM marketing is easily one of the most comprehensive, yet most common sense approaches to affiliate marketing to come down the road in a long time. Check out some of the reviews of BUM Marketing available online, as well as visiting the BUM marketing web site. It will be time very well spent.

5.2 How to Apply the BUM Marketing Method to Increase Affiliate Sales

There is quite a buzz about the BUM marketing method these days and rightly so. BUM marketing is easily the easiest marketing method to follow. As developer Travis Sago states on the BUM marketing web site, this is something that anyone with some time, an Internet connection, and the ability to employ a logical thought sequence can accomplish.

Within this context, the use of several of the approaches found within the BUM marketing approach can be used to increase the sales potential for any affiliate marketer and result in an enhanced revenue stream. Here are a couple of the ideas from the BUM marketing method that will help you to begin thinking in terms of how to make more money.

One of the key components of any affiliate marketing program is to find ways to get the right people to click on ads. Generally, this means driving people to the pages where the ads are housed and keeping their attention long enough for them to spy the ads and decide to give them a try. One of the main ways to accomplish this is with the use of keyword optimization.

Contained within the BUM marketing method are some simple tricks to uncover key words and key phrases that regularly result in a lot of hits on search engines. Making sure that the content of the web page where the ads will reside is rich with those key words will make it much easier for people to find the pages online and will increase the chances of them clicking on the ads.

As Sago points out, there are several places around the Internet that Google seems to love, and getting content on those sites is free. All you have to do is contribute content, arrange for the ads associated with your affiliate programs to pop up on those pages, and you are off and running.

The BUM marketing concept also has a recommendation when it comes to writing your content. Borrowing the principle of KISS from public speaking programs, you want to keep the content simple and fun to read.

How to topics are great and a format that includes quick and easy reading sentences and bullets will go a long way toward becoming favorites on search engines? As Sago makes clear, it is not necessary to create a doctoral dissertation in order to write a piece that is informative, interesting and has plenty of key word enrichment. Generally, an article that is between two hundred and five hundred words will do the trick nicely.

Placement of the content is also very important if you are to hope to bubble to the top of the search engine listings without having to pay for the privilege. From this perspective, there are several article web sites that welcome contributions by people who can put together a credible string of sentences.

While the sites do not pay you for the content, that is perfectly fine in this instance. What you want is a slot on a web site that is loved by the search engines and will allow affiliate ads to run along with your content.

Identifying those web sites and contributing that free content, then placing your affiliate ads to run with your content will result in much more income than developing your own web site and scrambling to find ways to get noticed during searches.

The overall emphasis in the BUM marketing method is to make the best use of resources that are already in place on the Internet.

By using online tools to identify popular keywords, writing short articles that will include those keywords, and placing the content on the right web sites, you will be well on your way to making a nice amount of sales each month with your affiliate marketing programs.

5.3 Recommended BUM Marketing Resource

One of the great things about the BUM marketing method is that the process relies on the use of several identifiable resources. Here are a few examples of resources named in the Bum Marketing materials that can result in the generation of additional revenue for your affiliate marketing programs.

One of the cornerstones of the BUM marketing method is the creation of helpful copy that will make the most of keywords and key phrases. In order to determine the subject matter and appropriate key words to use, you can use this Google program https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

Google is your friend but if you want to pay Google paid alternatives.

In lieu of using a software program to come up with keyword ideas and article topics, you can simply use your search engine to locate topics that have somewhere between a thousand and five thousand optimized results when used for a search.

As BUM marketing strategies make clear, this is not a case where the more the merrier. You want to find a niche market where there is a good chance that your subject matter will bubble to the top of the search engines. Using the right key words along with the right topics can go a long way in making that happen.

Second, BUM marketing recommends several article placement sites as being much loved by the folks at Google. These sites also are set up to allow you to make money via ads placed on the page along with your article.

Among the sites recommended by BUM marketing is http://www.ezinearticles.com. It's very easy to establish a writer account with and you can have content online and on its way to showing up in search engines within twenty-four hours.

BUM Marketing also recommends http://www.wordpress.com as Google favorite, but also cautions that there is a little more work involved with them, so you may want to hit the easier setups first and then address these last two options as outlets for your affiliate ads and keyword enriched articles.

Another recommended online tool that Bum Marketing is excited about is the Wealthy Affiliate site: http://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/. In fact, when you sign up for the free course, you will also get a link via email that will take you to a tutorial that Bum Marketing has designed to walk you through the Wealthy Affiliate site.

Here you can learn the latest news in the affiliate world, get some inside scoops on the major search engines, and network with other marketers. Keep in mind there is a monthly membership fee, so this may be a resource that you ease into after you have begun to make a little money using the article writing strategy that forms the basis for the BUM marketing method.

From a purely great way to share ideas with other marketers and get the lowdown on how to use various portals to make money, Wealthy Affiliate does have some interesting tools to recommend.

Sites for posting ads are another recommendation featured in the BUM Marketing method. All you have to do is write a short paragraph to go along with the ad, using important keywords to capture the attention of the search engines, and you are ready to roll.

This is an excellent first step for new affiliate marketers that may be intimidated by the idea of writing a whole article the very first time.

The BUM marketing method involves the efficient use of a lot of resources that are already in place on the Internet. While they also include suggestions for resources that may cost some money, the method does not require those resources in order to work, so they can easily be integrated into the overall program at a later date.

By working with the free resources mentioned in the BUM method, it is possible to create a steady revenue stream and grow your business to the point that investing in additional software or online programs becomes practical.

Chapter 6:

Leveraging on FREE Reports to Increase Affiliate Sales

6.1 How to Create a Free Report – Step-by-Step

Creating free reports as a way to call attention to affiliate ads that you want to spotlight is a common practice. The trick is to come up with a free report that people want to read; and that you can easily disseminate to large groups of people.

Here are some tips to help you write a free report that will capture the attention of people searching the Internet.

Also, you will find ideas on how to entice readers to click on links within the body of the free report as well as ads that reside on the pages of the free report.

One of the first things you need to do is determine the content of your free report. To a degree, this will be governed by the affiliate products you want to spotlight either within the text of the report or in the ads that accompany the report. At the same time, you want the subject matter to be focused enough that an informative article can result, without being too vague.

As an example, instead of writing a general article about office management, you may want to go with a narrower topic, such as "Seven Effective Ways to Deal with Habitually Late Employees." In focusing in on one aspect of office management, you help yourself in two ways.

First, you have created a topic that will easily find its way into search engines. Second, you have laid a foundation for a whole series of free reports that can focus on other aspects of effective office management.

One thing to keep in mind with your content is that people love to read stories. That does not mean you have to provide a full-blown story with each point you make. Just keep in mind that quick illustrations can make your points and still play like the recitation of a story in the eyes of the reader. This will motivate your reader to keep going, so he or she can see what mini-story you will present with the next point.

The focused topic also will provide you with the ability to include links and ads that will be relevant to anyone that is interested in helping an office run smoothly. Placing the links so they make sense in the course of the text is very important.

Failing to do so will simply derail the train of thought and possible lead to the reader switching off before giving the links and ads any consideration. Keep in mind that your money from the free report is going to come from people clicking through the links to either merchant sites or ads and in some cases buying a product.

If the link is positioned properly within the text, it will seem almost natural to click on the link and investigate what is on the other side.

Circulating your free report can be as easy as offering the report on classified ad sites that allow you to post for free; or as easy as putting a link to it in your signature and posting on forums.

By making sure that you use the classified ads sites that actually generate a lot of traffic; you can easily set up a process for people to either click over to your free report on a web page or receive the free report by email.

Keep in mind free web pages that will allow for the inclusion of ads on the page as well as links in the text is available. If you cannot afford to set up your own web site for this sort of thing at first, you can begin to generate some income and eventually move the free report over to your own site.

Placing your free report online, advertising it at online classified web sites and also making sure it gets massive amounts of exposure on forums and places well in search engines to will make all the difference in the world in how much success you will have with the free report method. Why not try one out today and see what type of revenue it generates over the next month?

6.2 Inserting Affiliate Links into Your Free Report

One of the reasons why you would write free reports is to circulate affiliate links. Here is some background on how to go about inserting a link into the text of your free reports, and making good money from your work.

One of the first things you need to do is make sure the positioning of the links within the text of the free report makes sense. The idea is to have the reader discover your link while reading through the body of the report.

The presence of the link will be obvious, as it will normally appear as a blue font that is underlined. What you want to happen is that the reader comes across the link, sees it is relevant to what he or she is reading and decides to click on the link before continuing.

This is not something that is as likely to happen if your links are not named in such a way as to hold the attention of the reader. Using link names that jars the reader away from the content with no apparent purpose will probably mean that not only will he or she click on the link; the reader may also stop reading altogether and move on to another page on the web.

When it comes to the sheer mechanics of inserting a link into your report, here are the basics of completing this procedure:

First, you will want to make a source document with your links already set up. To accomplish this, open a blank document in your word processing program. Also locate the site you wish to have the link take the reader to and have that up in an open browser.

Highlight the URL you want to create as a link, then right click on the mouse or use the "Control" and "C" keys on your keyboard to pick up the URL for copying. Switching over to your blank word processing document, paste the link onto the page. Continue this process by cutting and pasting over all the links that you want to use for your free report.

In effect, you are creating a source page that you will be able to use in the next phase, which will involve inserting the links into the text of your free report.

For the second stage of your task, write your report. Include the keywords that you plan to use as the names for the links in your text. This will provide you with the easiest manner to work with the insertion of the links, as you will have the places marked out in advance.

Keep in mind that you want the text to flow naturally, and hold the attention of the reader. The links should come along as an obvious part of the report, not as something that seems to have been stuck into the body for no apparent reason.

Pay close attention to the way you construct the report and you should be able to include quite a few links, as well as important keywords that will help your free report to show up in searches.

Next, begin the insertion of your links. You can accomplish this by reading through your finished report. As you come to a place that is ideal for the insertion of one of the links, toggle over to your saved source document, and locate the link that you want to insert.

Highlight the link and use the same procedures to copy and paste as you did when creating the resource page. The link will appear in the body of your test, either highlighted in blue font, or underlined, depending on which criteria you have selected.

Note that if you are using a Microsoft Word document to create your free report, that you can simply highlight the text in your free report that you want to use to lead to the link and then click on the "Insert Hyperlink" tab on the toolbar.

From there, you will have a screen appear that allows you to paste in or type the URL you wish to associate with the word or phrase you selected. This will automatically create the link in your document for you and provides you with the option of using any key word or key phrase to lead out to an affiliate ad or site.

Make sure you save your document once the links are inserted. From this juncture, it is just a matter of converting the document to PDF format. You can do this through Word or you can download http://www.openoffice.com and use the word processing program.

All you have to do is simply cut-and-paste your report; and then click the “PDF” icon. Once you’ve done that, all you need to do is find the right home for your free report and begin to promoting it. From there, you will realize some income from your efforts in a short time.

6.3 Submitting Your Free Report for Exposure

Once you have written your free report and inserted links to various products offered by your affiliates, the next task on your list is going to be finding a home on the Internet for your free report.

You will also want to develop strategies for promoting the free report so you can generate some interest in both the report and the affiliate links contained therein. Here are some ideas to help you make a permanent place online for your free report, as well as publicize the report in the right places.

One potential means of finding a home for your free report is to start up your own web site. These days, it is very easy to get excellent pricing on the joint purchase of a domain name and a basic hosting that will only cost a few dollars a month to operate.

The advantage of having the free report on your own web site and hosted on a remote server is that you can update the report whenever you like.

Also, you have control over which affiliates can post ads on your free report pages, and certainly can update the links in your free report whenever you like. This makes creating free reports very simple, as you can have several free reports that are posted under one domain name, just on different pages.

Once you have a permanent home on the web for your free report, you can begin the process of promoting it. One of the best places to begin is on web sites that allow classified ads.

Write a short blurb, no more than a paragraph that will let the reader know what your free report is about. Include something that will serve as a teaser, catching the interest of the reader. Include the link over to your free report. Try to use classified ad web sites that rate high with the search engines. This should produce some traffic to your free report in just a few days.

Another alternative is to get your free report listed in listings of Ebook directories. Look for directories that focus in some manner on topics that are related to the subject matter of your free report. This will make it easier for people to come across the link to your free report while looking for information online. This approach is a little less direct than the classified ads, but can still lead to some excellent traffic for your free report.

Another avenue of promoting your free report is to target web sites that invite authors to write articles on a variety of subjects.

Write a two hundred to five hundred word article about a topic that involves some aspect of the information found in your free report. Include a link to the free report either in the body of the article, or in the author description. Make it a point to go with one of the article sites that tends to rate high with the search engines, and you may find some great traffic coming to you from that angle.

Making sales with your free report involves three basic elements. First, you must have a free report that is entertaining and informative. If the report does not hold the attention of the reader, then chances are he or she will never even notice the links. Hold their attention long enough and well enough to entice them to give the links a try.

Second, make the information relevant to the links. No one wants to link from a free report on raising funds with a canned food drive to a site selling makeup. The leap must make sense.

Last, make sure you include as many links as possible without littering the report too heavily. The more links included, the better your chances of a reader clicking through, seeing something he or she likes, and deciding to buy a product or products. Keep these thoughts in mind, and you will find that producing free reports is well worth your time.

Chapter 7:

Rising to the Super Affiliate Level

7.1 What Constitutes a Super Affiliate

Most affiliate marketers have a goal to become known as a super affiliate. But what does the term mean, and what characteristics does a person have to exhibit in order to reach this lofty status? Here is some background on the super affiliate and what it takes to become one of the exalted few who can rightfully claim this title.

Essentially, a super affiliate is a marketing affiliate that has created a network that provides a high volume of traffic to affiliate products and a high percentage of completed sales from that traffic. The super affiliate is not one who reaches this level once, or even once in a great while.

Instead, the super affiliate reaches high sales volumes consistently over a long period of time, resulting in a steady flow of completed sales that never seems to drop off.

Being able to recognize a super affiliate from the rest of the pack may not be easy at first. After all, there are a number of affiliates who generate some steady income from one or a combination of affiliate programs, and in fact have some excellent skills. However, there are attributes that will set the super affiliate apart from most other marketing people.

One of the most important attributes of a super affiliate is a capacity for recognizing opportunities that others can't or won't see. Super affiliates have to be visionaries, in that they often come up with new ways and places online to generate revenue opportunities for the products they wish to move.

Not content with going down tried and true paths, the super affiliate will brainstorm new variations on old themes, even while thinking in terms of some new territory that is ripe for the introduction of affiliate marketing. You will never hear a super affiliate say that everything has been done. The super affiliate knows there is one more road to travel; all it takes is the vision to find the road and start walking.

Creativity is another hallmark of a super affiliate. The ability to present the same old information is new ways will keep people interested. Super affiliates know how to look at products from a variety of different angles, determine a series of ways to present the product, and then go out and find an audience to match up with each one of those ways.

For the super affiliate, there is always one more way to draw attention to a product, and find a larger audience than ever before.

A third characteristic of a super affiliate is the desire and ability to master technology. This does not necessarily involve becoming an expert in information technology. But it does involve learning enough about existing technology to make good use of avenues already open on the Internet to promote products.

Not being scared off by having to submit reports, articles, and classified ads in different formats to different sites leads to a greater ability to spread the word about all the good things that can be obtained through those links and ads.

Super affiliates do not shrink back because it may take a little while to learn something new. Instead, they will relish the challenge and look forward to the day when they have mastered one more new bit of Internet savvy.

Last, the super affiliate often exhibits a large amount of patience. Using a logical thought process, the super affiliate is able to push aside the desire for instant results and do what it takes to create and nurture a secure affiliate network that will pick up steam and then never slow down again.

This does not mean that the super affiliate is against earning a quick dollar. What it does mean is that when a super affiliate sees an opportunity that may take a few weeks or months to fully develop and bear fruit, they will not pass it over.

Instead, the super affiliate will diversify their operating strategies to include affiliate opportunities that provide a quick turnaround while still devoting time to nurturing one that will require more time but will ultimately yield big results.

Super affiliates many be few in numbers, but the fact is that they can teach the rest of us a lot of things, if we will listen. In the end, they may trigger something that allows us to get on the path to super affiliate status, and become known by that title someday.

7.2 How to Build Influence in the Shoes of a Super Affiliate

One of the things about being a super affiliate is that your status allows you to gain a lot of recognition among other marketers, and sometimes will allow you to capture the attention of companies or individuals that would love to have you take part in their affiliate marketing programs.

Here are some tips on how your status as a super affiliate can be utilized to build your influence as well as bring you ever-greater profits.

Getting the most out of your status as a super affiliate can often begin with a very simple decision on your part to share the wealth of your experience. Because of your success with affiliate marketing, you can easily help persons that are new to the business avoid some of the more common mistakes.

With your guidance, they will not get caught up in some of the side roads that all too often are part of the learning process when it comes to becoming a competent affiliate marketer.

Having that bank of knowledge at your fingertips and being willing to share it with others will do nothing but enhance your reputation in the industry. You can also help to improve the image of the affiliate marketer, since way too many people still associate affiliate marketing with email spam. By pointing out ethical ways to market products and promote yourself, up to and including opt-in mailing lists that are qualified, you do the business in general a service, even as you make your presence even more visible.

Another advantage of your status as a super affiliate has to do with the ability to pick and choose various affiliate programs. As is true with any business community, word about success travels fast among marketers.

Once your name or the name of your affiliate marketing entity begins to make the rounds of the business world as a heavy hitter, you may find that your days of looking for affiliate marketing opportunities is over. Instead, companies come to you with solid offers and perks in an effort to entice you to represent them through an affiliate program.

This sort of recognition can be personally as well as professionally rewarding. It is one thing to be able to secure work whenever you go looking for it. It is quite another to have the work come looking for you.

For super affiliates that like to meet and greet people, you may find that you can pick up some additional income hitting the speaking circuit.

With the name value that your status as a super affiliate has generated, it is not outside the realm of possibility that you could make a handsome amount of money by making yourself available to speak at conferences and other gatherings devoted to affiliate marketers.

Holding workshops at these sorts of events is another way you could earn some extra cash. Because you would basically be helping to motivate other people to do what you have done so well, it would not take a great deal to prepare the materials and be ready to deliver a keynote speech at such an event.

As another perk, you may be able to have all the expenses paid, so you have no out of pocket expense.

Making the most of your status as a super affiliate means enjoying the opportunities that come to you through word of mouth; additionally, it means taking matters into your own hands and promoting your status in such a way that you increase your visibility.

Keep in mind that anything you do to promote yourself will not only open doors to new means of generating revenue, but it will probably also create additional traffic to those places that made you a super affiliate in the first place.

By maximizing your options, you can rest assured of having an excellent revenue stream for many years to come.

7.3 The Super Affiliate Marketing Tactics Exposed!

So what is it that allows a super affiliate to make hundreds or even thousands of sales when you struggle to make 5 sales of the same product? Why is that that super affiliates rake in the cash while you struggle to get by?

Think about this carefully: you’re both selling the exact same product. The only possible difference is the tactics you use to market it. Below, I’ve included a couple tactics that you should use to sell more like super affiliates. Try to incorporate them into your strategy.

Tactic #1: Play the Long Game

Without exception, super affiliates almost always have access to a very large, captive audience. Rather than scraping to find customers whenever a new product goes live, they usually have those customers well in advance; and they are pre-selling them the whole time leading up to the product launch.

In contrast, less successful affiliate marketers often use a sort of Google Cash approach to everything.

Whenever some new launch is coming up, they’ll throw together a promotional website; and try to direct traffic to it using pay per click search engine advertisements or solo ads.

But there’s a major flaw with this approach: almost without exception, people will purchase a “big launch” product from an Internet marketer they already know.

This is why you have to play the long game. Rather than focusing on each individual launch, prepare an approach that will work consistently for years. Start by building a list and sending ALL of your traffic there. This is exactly what super affiliates do; and this is what you should do, too, if you want to make more sales.

Tactic #2: Steal from Super Affiliates Whenever Possible

Many super affiliates are also big name Internet marketers. They have public personas that you can follow quite easily. You can find their userIDs on forums. You can scout out their blogs. You can join their mailing lists. You can find out which sites they own.

I encourage you to follow a handful of super affiliates carefully and steal every single lesson they offer unintentionally. Sign up for their mailing list and watch out they start to pre-sell products; or how they avoid pre-sales and then talk about the product several days after the launch.

There are dozens of different approaches that super affiliates take. None of these approaches is necessarily the “right” approach, but you can learn from each of them, since they are probably successful if a super affiliate is using them.

Tactic #3: Ignore Talk; Look for Revealed Preference

Talk is just that: talk. Many Internet marketers will talk about all sorts of different methods you can use to make money. They’ll tell you to advertise using Google Adwords or to build a list or to create viral reports.

While some of this information may be useful and legitimate, I would encourage you to ignore what they say and watch what they do. This is called “revealed preference.” If something works, they are likely to use it again and again, so look out for those things and ignore the babble.

Tactic #4: Make Friends with the Seller

Believe it or not, the seller wants you to be successful, too. So contact him ahead of time, make friends with him; and see if he has any particular advice for you on selling the product. Keep in mind that he talks to a lot of affiliates on a regular basis (especially around big launches) and has the best understanding of the tactics they actually use.

Conclusion

Super affiliates use a range of tactics in order to consistently outperform other affiliates. But one thing they always do is play the long game. They build lists, create forums, and secure a captive audience in advance of product releases.

7.4 Real Life Case Studies of Super Affiliate Marketing Success

One of the best ways to learn affiliate marketing is to follow those who have been extremely successful doing it. But rather than purchasing their products—which is also a good idea—you can look at what they actually do.

Below, I’ve included some brief case studies on two big name super affiliates. If you read these case studies and follow their actions closely, you should be able to pick up several tricks you can use the next time you decide to sell affiliate products.

Andrew Fox

If you’re not familiar with Andrew Fox – he’s someone to look out for and to follow closely. He will soon be one of the biggest names in Internet marketing. At the age of only 21 – and with only a high school education -- he was asked to speak at the Internet Super Conference in 2002.

He was by far the youngest speaker to have ever accepted the honor. And yet, even at his age and even without an advanced degree, he was able to excel in his field. This should be a clear lesson to anyone who doubts his own qualifications: there’s nothing that says you have to be an expert in some field to be a successful affiliate marketer.

Andrew has created a number of large, successful businesses, some of which have nothing to do with Internet marketing. For instance, he created a dating and text messaging site for people in the UK.

In addition to selling his own products, Andrew also sells a lot of products as an affiliate. According to interviews with him, he has made as much as $46,000 in a single month from doing so; however, when he first started, he had to work as many as 16 to 18 hours each day—including holidays and weekends—just to get to where he is now. So if you want to attain the success that Andrew has, then you may have to work quite hard.

Ewen Chia

Today, Ewen Chia is an Internet marketing guru. But I didn’t need to tell you that. You’ve probably already heard of him. And, in fact, there’s a good chance you’ve purchased one of his many high-quality Internet marketing info products.

What you may not know about Ewen Chia is that he is also a wildly successful affiliate product marketer. In fact, according to many who follow Internet marketing, he is currently or was for many years the “world’s #1 affiliate marketer.”

Unlike many affiliate marketers, Ewen does not rely on run-of-the-mill, 5-year-old strategies. Instead, browse any salespage for his affiliate marketing products and you are likely to find tactics you have never seen previously.

For instance, one thing Ewen teaches readers in his affiliate marketing courses is how to get sites featured at places such as CNN, Google, Yahoo, and other high-traffic sites for no cost at all. He also teaches them how to generate traffic without using the normal methods, such as PPC, SEO, and Web 2.0 tricks.

Ewen also uses and teaches the following tactics for getting traffic that will purchase affiliate products:

1) using “ethical bribes” on Myspace; 2) placing products in hot marketplaces that 99% of marketers don’t know about; 3) getting people on Ebay to promote affiliate products for you unwittingly; and 4) using “lost sites” to generate traffic.

Ewen uses and espouses tactics that are far from boring or normal. There’s a good chance that you’ve never used the bulk of them. And, for this reason, I would recommend following him closely to learn more about affiliate marketing.

Conclusion

Both Ewen and Andrew are talented affiliate marketers with a history of success. If you, too, want to be successful as an affiliate marketer, you should follow their lead, master their tactics, and take action.

Chapter 8:

Become a Supreme Affiliate

Marketer Today!

8.1 Additional Supreme Affiliate Marketing Tips

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. If you are on the completely wrong path – if you are seeing no results whatsoever – then it is time to try something different. Or it is time to accept that you are simply insane; and should seek help before you try to make a foray into affiliate marketing.

Now, even if you are getting good results, you need to figure out how you can ramp up the process, so that you don’t continue to replicate mediocrity. If you want to make a six figure income – and possibly a seven figure income – then you have to do something that is truly different than what you are doing now. You will somehow have to boost your sales volume by a factor of 10 or even 50.

The big question is “how can I do this”? Here’s what I suggest:

Tip #1: Start Acting Like a Business Owner

Right now, you’re probably enamored with the idea of the rugged, individualistic affiliate marketer – a person who sells thousands and thousands of products by himself and with no help at all. You might conjure up an image in your head of an Internet marketer who needs no one else, but generates all of his multi-millions on his own.

If you want to be a super affiliate, you have to let go of this idea. It is pure fantasy. Most big name Internet marketers and affiliate product marketers have a team of either contract laborers, freelancers, or paid staff. If you want to be a successful affiliate product marketer, you have to find people who can augment your weakness (and, trust me, no matter how smart you are, you have plenty of weaknesses).

Additionally, affiliate marketers do not work in isolation. Most of them are friends with the marketers they sell products for; and this gives them far more leverage and information than you have access to.

So start thinking of yourself as a business owner, rather than a completely self-sufficient Internet marketer.

Tip #2: Concentrate on Regular Sales

While big launches can be promising – and the idea of $500 commissions can be enticing – focus on regular sales, rather than pie-in-the-sky, lottery winnings. Regular sales are easier to quantify and predict; and, for this reason, it is far easier to continually ramp up small, regular sales until you are making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each year.

John Reese, for instance, sold tons of small affiliate products before he became a well-known Internet marketer. He sold things like golf balls and clubs in massive quantities; and makes a regular income of more than $50,000 per month doing so.

So don’t worry if you’re the top affiliate for some major new product launch. Instead, focus on regular sales and regular increases in sales.

Tip #3: Do What They Do – Not What They Say

By now, you’ve heard this dozens of times, but I bet you’ve only actually done it a few times. Next time an Internet marketer unveils a new way to make a killing with affiliate marketing, ignore it. Don’t buy the book. Don’t listen to what he says. Instead, watch what he does.

Observe the channels through which he promotes his product. Watch carefully to determine what methods he’s using to make sales, so you can replicate his successes, rather than chasing after dreams he’s written about.

Conclusion

There’s no single path to affiliate marketing riches – and that’s a good thing. Instead, there are many pathways through which you can make your millions. So scout carefully, look for functional methods you can use, and implement them in your own efforts.

You may be surprised with the results. But whatever you do – don’t continue to use strategies that haven’t worked in the past.

8.2 The Most Valuable Advice to Any Beginning Affiliate Marketer

If I could give only one piece of advice to a beginning affiliate marketer, it would be this: stop the cash bleeding. Almost without fail, new Internet marketers and affiliate product marketers gobble up products and software packages left and right.

Whenever they see anything for sale – especially if it’s the next big ticket product – they’ll buy it. They’ll get seduced by the copy; and they’ll whip out their credit cards, buying when they really shouldn’t. So, my advice to you is to stop doing that.

Now, you might protest. You might say that you need the information. You might grumble stuff about needing to be willing to spend money in order to make money. But ask yourself where you read line like that. Did you read them on a sales page? Did you hear them coming from someone who sells products you’ve purchased?

If so, that person was almost definitely saying it to loosen up your wallet. So tighten up your wallet again. Build up some resistance to buying.

Now, many people do not realize this, but the Internet is just brimming over with free information. Much of it is comparable to what you will find in products you might pay $30, $50, or even $100 for. While you might expect to get more from those products – or at least some guarantee to their quality – purchasing them is usually completely unnecessary.

In most cases, 90% of people who purchase these Ebooks skim them, consider incorporating a few new interesting ideas into their business models – but, for the most part, ignore the bulk of the text and go on their merry way.

If this is what you do with these Ebooks, too, (and it probably is), then your wallet would be better served by saving all that cash.

Instead of purchasing Ebooks you can’t and won’t use, save your money and spend your time getting a first class education from completely free information. If you’re an Internet marketer or affiliate marketer, spend some time on sites such as the Warrior Forum, which you can find at the following URL: http://www.warriorforum.com/forum.

And rather than focusing on all sorts of wily tricks – which probably have never worked once for you, anyway – spend your time sincerely attempting to improve your current business model, which is probably highly flawed, but contains many functional elements.

Ask yourself whether there are considerable leakages to your current model that could be improved. For instance, are you tracking all of your advertising efforts? If not, how can you expect to know which ones are successful and which ones are not? Also, are you advertising in every possible place where you could get a decent return? If not, you’re leaving money on the table!

So, rather than consistently shooting for the moon – and spending hundreds of dollars to figure out how to do it – keep that cash in your wallet. Instead, work on slight, but continuous, improvements to your current business model.

This un-sexy approach – slight, but continuous improvements – is precisely what major companies, such as Toyota, have used to continually get better and better, capture a larger market share, and out-compete competitors who are stagnant or are risking too much.

And there you have it: my single suggestion to any new affiliate marketer is not a “tactic” at all. Instead, I want you to avoid the gimmicks, cut back on unnecessary spending, and focus on your own business model. After all, you know far more about your own business model than any guru does.

So focus on continuous improvement; focus on making more and more affiliate product sales each day; and try to avoid all of the “must have” products. In no time, you’ll be earning what you want.