First Steps To Affiliate Marketing Success
The First Step To Affiliate Marketing Success
The one 'BIG AFFILIATE MARKETING TIP' that can make or break
your business.
Everyone is looking for the one magical tip that will instantly
put their business into six figure profits. Can it be done? I
have yet to see it instantly happen. Can you make six figures a
year with affiliate marketing? You bet, but you have to follow a
basic rule.
And it's quite common to all buildings.
Back in 1995 I had a job in the construction industry. I worked
for a company that built the foundation walls on new houses. It
was painstaking, back breaking work. We would carry hundred
pound, wooden forms on our backs and lay them out in the
configuration of the building. Once they were erected, the
concrete would be poured in them. The next day we would go back,
remove the forms, and presto... a foundation was born.
This foundation gave the house, building, business, or whatever
a stable place to build and even expand.
The same principle holds true for affiliate marketing. Build a
strong foundation before concentrating on the six figure income.
It won't happen any other way.
Your First Step
There is a lot of work in affiliate marketing. I know that the
people selling the automated software would like to tell you
otherwise, but it takes work.
You don't simply set up a page with some affiliate links on it
and expect the big pay day. Even if you are distributing
articles around the Internet, don't expect long lasting rewards.
There's only one way to give your affiliate marketing business a
stable place from which to grow.
Publish a newsletter or ezine. But, not just any newsletter.
Why an ezine?
A good question, and one that I've heard several times during my
one on one affiliate marketing consultations
(www.guaranteed-ads.com/affiliatecall.html), is why is an ezine
so foundational to an affiliate business?
Two reasons really.
# Advertising Budget
Having an ezine means you're capturing email addresses. This
causes you to be able to repeatedly stay in contact with site
visitors without having to spend dollars advertising to them
again. Once you have a visitor, you don't want to have to keep
spending your profits to get them to come back.
An ezine will allow you to actually save money on advertising.
# Longevity
That's the name of the game. Why start a business, spend money
advertising, setting up links, optimizing your pages, and the
hundred other things that need to be done only to go out of
business in a few months? What an ezine will do for you is
provide the necessary means for a long lasting affiliate
business.
The more subscribers you have the more people want to hear from
you and will sustain your business efforts over a long period of
time.
How to make your affiliate foundation strong and stable.
I've seen many a foundation under a house that was cracked,
leaked water, and was about to crumble in on itself. The same
thing can happen with your affiliate marketing foundation if you
let it. You need to make it strong right from the start.
# Focus on subscribers
A lot of marketers will only see the commission from a site
visitor. They neglect to see the long lasting benefits, and
multiplied income, from ezine subscribers. Focus on the email
address instead of the commission.
# Offer information
One great way to focus on the subscriber is to offer quality
information in the form of free reports, email courses, small
ebooks, short videos, and audio. Make these products a reward
for subscribing to your newsletter.
By doing so, the subscriber is seeing firsthand the benefits of
the information you will be providing.
# Be consistent
This is the one that I've had problems with of late. But, you
must remain solid in your commitment to providing your
subscriber with information he/she can use. If you publish
weekly, make sure it's every week. If monthly, have a new issue
ready each month.
# Stay original
This is your ezine, not someone elses. If you're using articles
from an article directory, chances are your reader has probably
already seen it and will see you as someone out to make a dollar
from them.
If you provide real, authentic, original content you are proving
to the reader you do know your stuff and they will be more
inclined to stay a subscriber and repeatedly visit your site,
buying your products.
# Befriend top marketers
This is the most intimidating part for me and realize that a lot
of people just aren't comfortable with it. But, for a strong,
long lasting ezine making friendships with top internet
marketers will strengthen your ezine more than anything else.
Why?
Because they will be mentioning you, your ezine, and your
business. Likewise you'll be name dropping and building your
image as a top professional.
I never go looking for ezines or blogs to subscribe to. I just
don't have time to read any more. But, I might check it out if
someone who's making millions a year online mentions an ezine
they read or someone they are friends with.
Affiliate marketing is hard enough, why make it harder?
Sure, there are shortcuts to quick money. But, if you want to
build a successful career, a long lasting business, then there
are no shortcuts. Why make it harder on yourself?
The first step to affiliate marketing success is building a
large ezine subscriber list and remaining faithfully committed
to publishing it.
Once you do that, everything begins to fall into place.