This is a continuation of the Affiliate Marketing Tutorial Part 1 that we discussed yesterday. The first half of the Affiliate marketing tutorial was geared at creating a strong foundation for your affiliate marketing business. Today we will be talking more about the strategies you need to actually drive traffic and start converting that traffic. Details right? Details!
Affiliate Marketing Tutorial 14 Tips of The Trade
Continuing at Number 8
8. Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
A crucial component of driving traffic to your site. I have discussed SEO countless times on this blog. Just because you are doing affiliate marketing does not mean you should not be optimizing your site for Google. In fact, if anything when you are using a blog to start promoting affiliate links you need to up the ante. Check out the following posts that I have written on the subject of SEO: Effective Search Engine Optimization, SEO Keyword Research, and 8 Ways To Increase Quality Backlinks to Your Website.
9. List Building
This is bigger than you possibly imagined. It is amazing how many people when they sign up for your list for a while and hear what you have to say are interested in your products and services at some point and time. The fact is that the web is not the new frontier that it used to be. People do not go online and get all up in a frenzy because they are connected to the WWW. Instead, you have to build a relationship. The easiest way to do this is through email.
Having the right email auto-responder is crucial for automating the system. I have been using Aweber for the past 2 years now and it is a dynamic system where I am always finding new and cooler applications for all the time. Update 8/31/19: I now use Active Campaign. While Aweber is still a quality product, I found that Active Campaign had more features I could use to grow my business.
10. The right content for the right crowd
Make sure your content is appropriate for who you are writing to in your articles, web content, and emails. You would not use “LOL” or “ROTFLMAO” to a business audience, just as you would not obsess about using words, such as “ROI” and Split A/B Test among teens. Learn who you are talking to and adjust your style to match theirs.
11. Cloak Your Links
The Aweber link above is cloaked. What that means is that you can not pull out the affiliate tracking code that directs people to Aweber. The reason this is important is that some people will do this to spite your efforts to make money. Therefore, cloaking your link protects you from losing affiliate commissions.
I have been using Pretty Link Lite, however, Go Codes was not bad from the brief tests that I did with that software. Please note that these are WordPress plugins. They might be available off WordPress, but my experience with them is completely through WordPress. Do not ask me what they are like off WordPress.
12. Paid Advertising
Some times it pays to advertise for either product or just to build your list for future offers. I am not a huge paid advertising person, but I have had some success with limited advertising. One of my favorite sites for paid advertising is 7Search.com.
I once did some Peerfly sales off of 7Search for Google Android that returned a 25% profit margin. They slowed down eventually and it was not scalable but good for making some quick bucks on the right products. I have found that technology and money-making opportunities do best here. Other products have dive-bombed so far on the site that they ended up on the other side of the planet.
13. Article Marketing
This ties in with a lot of the other approaches above, but it needs its own category for the breadth of different types of article marketing that you can do. Everything from blogging to writing ezines to re-purposing content for your emails marketing is a great way to build your business.
Now, for those who are deathly afraid of article marketing, you are talking to the right person. My recent 28 Cent Articles video course shows you how to outsource articles for only 28 cents per article and a little lifting from yourself.
14. Different Affiliate Programs
That brings us to the close of this Affiliate Marketing Tutorial. Where do you actually go to become an affiliate? Well, I am going to give you a few options to get started. Some of the first sites you might want to take a look at are ShareASale, Peerfly, and Linkshare. These sites have a wide variety of merchants who are
However, for the first five people who take me up on this post before November 1st, 2011 I will be offering a special to help you get started with affiliate marketing.
I have a number of affiliate products that I am launching in the next few weeks. Right now, I have all my affiliate products over at E-junkie but am in the process of applying for Clickbank, which is another affiliate network.
Final Thoughts
If you have additional questions about how to improve your affiliate marketing, then set up a free 30-minute consultation with me at SmartattheStart.Com today!
Hey Andy, great info on getting to the top page of the search engines. I like your advise about email campaigns and cloaking your links. Having a great niche and emails that cater to that niche is very profitable. It’s great to see you putting the whole game plan together and helping people because it really is so important to success in online business. Thanks for the advice.
Rick Salas
Rick,
Thanks! Glad you enjoy the game plan. I think it is necessary to take people with you on the ride to the top.
Andy
Andy,
Great info and a great offer as well. Very informative post. Definitely going to look into becoming an affiliate.
Dewane,
Thanks!
I just shot you a follow up email to your comment above.
Andy
This is my first time to encounter link cloaking and it seems that it serves as an insurance. It gives the owner the ability to ensure that its links are protected, so that the flow of income on affiliate commission is stable. Sounds like a good strategy to use.
Candice,
I never thought of it like insurance, but in essence yes it is insurance.
Andy
I’m not a beginner in Affiliate Marketing, but not a expert as well. However, I’m just curious if link cloaking is a new strategy or not. I was telling my friends about this and like me they do not also know that there is a way to protect an affiliate commission. Do you have any other source of information about cloaking links?
Candice,
Link cloaking has been around for a little while. If you google it that would work, or check out Kim Castleberry’s blog http://Just-Ask-Kim
She is an expert on this topic.
Andy
Hi Andy:
I just read both part one and two and your training is excellent!! All the tips you have provided on both part 1 and 2 are great!.. I do use affiliate cloaking with Ninja but am not sure I am a big fan. I realized a couple of my affiliates when cloaked with that plugin did not work well.
I have heard a few people recommend Pretty Link.. So I might have to check that out. Do you know if there are companies whose affiliate links cannot be cloaked? Was just wondering because no matter what I do those two affiliates did not work.
I find it hard to believe that you can do such a great job providing quality information and recommendation, then someone decides to yank out your affiliate tracking code so you do not make the referral commission. Crazy world we live in.
I signed up for your article marketing affiliate.. Looking forward to see what other affiliate product you will have over at Clickbank.
Liz,
I hope you do not mind if I condense both of your comments into this one comment.
To start off, I am glad that you agree on the blog being the central part of your affiliate marketing strategy.
I do not believe so. All links should be equal, but I am not a guru in this area. Just know the basics.
Andy
Enjoyed your two-part series Andy. Great tips – I especially agree with your point about being mindful of your audience. I also use Pretty Pink and have been happy with it.
Awesome information and blog, there is some info on here I didn’t know about such as clocking. I do web design for small local companies and WordPress is the only thing I’ll use too. However I sometimes have a hard time convincing clients of this. (sadly these are clients that know nothing about blogging or websites, but they have a friend that told them to use this or that) so I just might send them to this blog to have you back me up a little.
To think I found you in the Craigslist Forum (you know that place, they everyone says is nothing but spammers…lol) Thanks for the great info and I’ll be checking back often…..
Becca,
Thank you so much for the post and sending some of your clients to the site to get a better idea of how this site works.
Glad that you found me through Craigslist forums! Cool to know that the forums actually work.
Andy
Great article, both Part 1 and 2. Although I’ve done most of the basics it’s always exciting when you find something new like link cloaking. Thanks
Gareth,
Glad to help! Link cloaking was something I should have done a lot earlier. Glad to help!
Andy