Affiliate Marketing Archives

Sales Army Secrets Product Review

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 11:36 am  
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Name of the Product: Sales Army Secrets by Jimmy D. Brown

Where you can Buy it: http://internet-marketing-muscle.com/go/sales-army-secrets/

Product Description: This course illustrates how to increase site traffic and income by creating affiliate programs.

This is a complete course including audio and transcripts as well as a bunch of great bonuses to help you either get an affiliate program up and running or greatly improve your current program. Jimmy shares some of his best ideas and techniques that have helped him attract affiliates and keep them motivated and promoting his products.

In a step-by-step process, Jimmy shares how you can get an affiliate program set up within a matter of hours, what tools you should provide your affiliates, and what you can do on an ongoing basis to support your affiliates and get them selling for you each and every month.

The product also includes a great interview with Jimmy’s own affiliate manager – Nicole Dean – who answers questions on how to find a great affiliate manager, why you need one in the first place and what to look for if you are thinking of hiring someone to take care of your affiliate center.

Who This Product is Intended For:

Anyone that wants to:

  • Start an affiliate program
  • Improve an existing affiliate program
  • Hire an affiliate manager
  • Become an affiliate manager
  • Learn more about affiliate marketing

Uses: This course teaches the reader how to build, market and run a profitable affiliate program.

Pros: Sales Army Secrets gives step-by-step instructions- complete with examples -to creating, implementing and improving an affiliate program.  Additionally, it explains why, as well as how, to hire an affiliate manger.  It also shares ideas to help your affiliates make more money while increasing your income, too.

Cons: I don’t really have any criticism of the product. It’s just too bad Jimmy is not sharing his affiliate manager.

Personal Opinion:

I like how “step-by-step” this product is. While it is great for a beginner who doesn’t have an affiliate program in place yet, it also contains plenty of advanced ideas and strategies that helped improve my current affiliate program. After going through the audio and transcript for the first time, I came up with 2 pages of ideas and changes that I am currently working on implementing.

I also have a better understanding of the role an affiliate manager plays in the process.

I highly recommend this course to anyone considering an infoproduct business online.
http://internet-marketing-muscle.com/go/sales-army-secrets/

“A” Is for “Affiliate”

Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 6:55 am  
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A Is For Affiliate

Affiliates are an important part of the Internet marketing world.  If you don’t already know by now, they not only help drive traffic if you have your own products, but becoming an affiliate can be one of the easiest ways to get started making money by promoting other people’s products.

What is it?

An affiliate is an individual who sends traffic to a product creator’s website. They are given a special website URL, called an affiliate link, which tracks how much traffic they send to the product website. They receive a commission for each sale that is made for their affiliate link.

There are many types of affiliate programs available. As an affiliate you can find programs for physical products, digital information products and even for services and membership sites. Affiliate programs are listed in affiliate networks like Clickbank, Commission Junction and Paydotcom, among many others.

What are three keys to being a successful affiliate?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable ways to make money online. You don’t have to worry about creating a product, paying for graphics, developing a sales letter or following up with buyers. You’re only in charge of driving traffic. Here are three keys to being a successful affiliate.

1. Product.

Choosing the right product to promote as an affiliate is your first key step.  You have a wide range of products to choose from as an affiliate, but that doesn’t mean that all of them will make you money. Before you put your time and energy into creating a marketing campaign for affiliate program, you should do some niche research. Is the niche popular?  Is there a lot of competition in the niche or will you be able to establish yourself pretty quickly? How does the sales page for the product look? Would you buy from the site? Carefully evaluating the niche and the product will help you find a product that will actually sell.

2. Prospects.

Building YOUR own list of potential customers is an often overlooked part of affiliate marketing.  Yet it is of paramount significance. Product creators will build lists from the people who buy from their sales letter. As an affiliate, you should be building a list as well. Before you direct your visitor to the sales page for the product, you should offer them something free in exchange for opting into your list. You can create a short report on the niche and give it away on a squeeze page before forwarding the visitor on to the sales page. By building a list, you can create a long term relationship with the visitor and offer them additional value and product offers.

3. Promotion.

Setting up your own blog is one of the best ways to promote affiliate programs due to the variety of ways you can use a blog. Smart affiliates know that their long term income comes from sales of multiple products in the same niche. One of the best ways to sell multiple products is to start a niche blog. Your blog can link to several different affiliate products so you have many opportunities to make money.

Can you give me an example?

After doing some research, you discover that solar energy is a hot (pardon the pun) topic. You start a blog on do it yourself solar energy. On the blog, you can write articles related to solar energy and link to the several solar energy products available on Clickbank. You can also give away a 5 Tips to Smart Solar Energy report on your blog to build your list.

Sales Page Basics in 11 Simple Steps — Part 2: Headline

Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 6:01 am  
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In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the pre-headline, or as I like to call it, the “Ladies and Gentlement, can I Have Your Attention, Please” component of an effective sales page.

Remember, the idea of any landing page, especially a sales page, is to get browsers (i.e., visitors) to take an action. In the case of a sales page, this action would be to buy the product or service you are promoting on your sales page. If you have a landing page, aka a “squeeze page,” you are seeking to turn browsers into list subscribers.

The ideas I’m about to present work for any type of “action page.” That is to say, they work on all pages where your intent is to entice browsers to take your desired action(s).

With all that said, let’s jump to the most important component of any sales page:

The Headline

I call it the “I’ve Got To Find Out More” Headline because that’s what you want your headline to do.  You want to present a 1-2 sentence headline that makes the reader want to find out more about what you are offering.  You want to generate enough interest to that he actually LOOKS FORWARD to reading your sales letter.

You want to build anticipation.

Here’s an example:

“How to Launch Your Own Opt-In Mailing List and Milk It For Everything It’s Worth!”

Again, this headline conveys a lot of information…

  • You immediately know the nature of the offer itself — we’re going to be talking about mailing lists
  • You immediately know that there is a promise that will show YOU the way to build a mailing list. The “how to” lets you know that you can expect to find out information on “how to” do it.
  • You immediately know that you will be shown how to get the maximum profit out of your mailing list — which is something near and dear to all of our hearts.

Now, this headline is very specific, very targeted and it pushes the emotion button — which is exactly what we want here.  You wouldn’t even be at the website if you weren’t interested in mailing lists, so reinforcing the content is a great thing to do because it lets you know that you’re in the right place and you’re going to find what you came looking for.

The main thing you want to do with your headline is to stir up a desire to find out more. Focus in on one quick benefit, possibly even a “summary” benefit, which is what we did in the example.  There will be many benefits later in the sales letter, but the “summary” benefit is “you are going to learn to make a lot of money by starting your own mailing list.”  It is a “mini” presentation of the offer itself.  Use your headline to refer to your offer in some way.

Another way that you might also want to use your headline is to offer some free information.  For example, if your offer is on creating your own information product, then you might use the headline,

“5 Free Sources For The Hottest New Product Ideas That Everyone Is Asking For”

Then, you merely blend these 5 free sources into your sales letter itself.  That way, you are providing quality free information as you weave in your ad copy for your offer.  The word “FREE” in your headline is a powerful tool.

There is no more powerful word than “free.”

Use it wisely and it will be a huge benefit to you.

Next up: Part 3 — Hypnotize, Mesmerize, and Simonize! (Or something to that effect)

Sales Page Basics in 11 Simple Steps — Part 1: Pre-Headline

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 2:06 pm  
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Everybody laments poor traffic. But there’s one thing that’s psychologically worse than poor traffic and that is untargeted traffic. Imagine that you finally got some good traffic numbers (perhaps through a Stumble, a Digg, a FaceBook post, or a Tweet) yet you still didn’t sell anything.

I can tell you that I’ve been in both places (no traffic AND a ton of traffic with no sales) and it’s the latter situation that totally sucks!

The key is getting targeted traffic to your sales page. Once you get targeted traffic (ready, willing, and able buyers), you still have to persuade them to buy your products and/or services. That’s what this series is about: Your Sales Page.

It takes special talent to convert “browsers” to “buyers.” Below is a simple 11-step process to help you with the task.

Step1:  The “May I Have Your Attention, Please” Box

The first thing we want to do is get the reader’s attention focused in on a major benefit of your offer.  Have you ever heard someone begin talking on a loud speaker, “Ladies and Gentleman, may I have your attention, please?”  That’s exactly what we hope to accomplish as soon as the visitor arrives at your website.

We want to get their attention.  Now, traditionally, this would be done with a headline.  But, I like to do things a bit differently than everybody else, so this is what I do: Instead of using the headline first, I use what I call the ‘”May I Have Your Attention, Please’ box”. Others may call it the “pre-header.” Whatever you call it, call it effective!

Take a look at an example:

pre-headline

This is really a glorified headline.  It is a headline on steroids.  Because it is highlighted in a box, it grabs much more attention.  And when it grabs your attention what are a few things that leap out at you?

Immediately you see the “3 *Exclusive* Free Bonuses” and the “You Won’t Find Anywhere Else Online!”  Notice the reason you saw those two things so clearly:  The first is highlighted by using a different ink color and the second stands out because it is underlined.  Two easy things to do that really grab the reader’s attention…

…and they take less than 5 seconds to create.

You might also have even subconsciously soaked up the “order today.”  In this “attention” box, you’ll notice several things…

  • You become aware that you’ve got some bonuses awaiting you.  If nothing else, you’ll probably be interested in at least seeing what they are – since they are exclusive.
  • You’ll become aware that you are about to find something that you can’t find anywhere else.  There is something at THIS website that is unique and different and nobody else has it.
  • A subtle seed gets planted that you need to order today.  Before you even get to the offer, you’ve been presented a call to action.

I have done extensive testing on sales with and without this “attention” box.  I’ve found that they  outpull the sales letters that did not have the box almost 2:1.  How else can you DOUBLE your sales in less than 30 seconds of work?

I highly recommend that you use one of these boxes as the FIRST point of contact with the reader when they arrive at your website.  Here are just a few ideas of how you can use this “attention” box…

  • Hit them with a powerful and significant benefit.
  • Make some attention-grabbing promise.
  • Offer some kind of freebie or discount.
  • Refer to a deadline.
  • Mention your bonuses
  • Include a testimonial from a well known “guru” in your field.

Whatever you do, use this section to convey to the reader that there is a reason to stick around.  The web moves at the speed of sound, so you don’t have long.  Make a strong immediate impression and let them know that it will be worth their while to take a closer look.

Next up: The Headline, of course!

Traffic Building Tips, Part 1 of 10

Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 12:08 am  
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I’m going to share with you 10 traffic-building tips in each of 10 posts, for a total of a whopping 100 traffic-building tips in total. Does that sound good? Good. Here goes.

ARTICLE MARKETING

Adding articles to article directories is one of the best ways to build traffic and get your website spidered by the search engines. These two critical things will raise your site up the search engine rankings. Plus, by creatively using your resource box, you get a backlink back to your website.

  1. Do your keyword research. You can get your site indexed for “long-tail” keywords very quickly by writing articles with juicy keywords that you want to get ranked for in search engines. I’ve seen results for ranking for keywords I’m targeting by submitting articles to directories in as little as under 1 hour at Google. There is really no faster way of getting ranked for target keywords than article marketing. But do your research! In order to get ranked quickly, you’ll have to choose keywords that people would use in a search query but that do not suffer from high competition.
  2. Balance your articles for your readers, but keep the search engines in mind. What this means is that you write for people but you also write for search engines, which are definitely not people. Sprinkle in keywords that the search engines (SEs from now on) like but in a readable and natural way. Remember this, though: ALWAYS write solid content for your visitors’ sake. Content is, has always been, and will always be — KING!
  3. Don’t waste time submitting your same article to dozens of obscure article directories. There is a temptation to write one article and submit it to every “Tom, Dick, and Harry” article directories. Don’t do it! Make your article submissions exclusive with sites like eZineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleDashboard, and SearchWarp. These are quality article directories with thousands of visitors every day.
  4. Make the best Resource Box possible. This is your one chance to get your reader to act; and by “act” I mean to go to your website, fill out a form, buy something. In other words, to take an action that you want them to take.
  5. It’s a numbers game, so submit MANY articles. Getting your site indexed by the SEs for highly desirable long-tail keywords is an arduous process that requires dozens of article submissions. Like I said before, make your articles exclusive to a particular directory. So, you’ll have to write a bunch of articles and submit them to article directories. See what happens. Watch your stats!
  6. Re-purpose your content. Does this contradict what I’ve just said? No, not really. I am suggesting here that you not only put your article up on an article directory, but that you also put that article up on your own website. Don’t worry about the SEs counting those two nearly-identical articles as duplicate content. It’s only “duplicate content” if it’s on YOUR site more than once. This way, you will be leveraging work you’ve already done to building a long-tail keyword page on your site at the same time as you wrote an article for a directory that the SEs love!
  7. Don’t give it all away. What do I mean by this? In your article, give enough information to entice your reader to visit whatever link you reference in your Resource Box. Get them to take your “Most Wanted Action.” In other words, give your readers “interesting but incomplete” information that forces them to take the next step of signing up for your email marketing list.
  8. Become an expert. By writing dozens of articles that thousands of people daily have access to makes you an expert in your field. Capitalize on that fact!
  9. Research your competition. Look at the most popular articles in a particular directory in your niche and find out what their keywords are, how they write about the topics, how they construct their Resource Box, etc. You want to find out how successful people are submitting articles so that you can mimic their process and make it your own.
  10. Set up your article marketing profile. Put up a picture and some interesting facts about yourself. If somebody finds one of your articles, he may try to find you on the article directory website. No picture = very little credibility.

That’s 1-10 of our traffic building tips. We’ll bring items 11-20 next week.

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