Associate Programs Newsletter #317
Today’s newsletter covers everything from affiliate basics to super-duper advanced stuff, and a few things somewhere in the middle.
Whether you’re struggling to get started or want to move your business to a new level, there’s something here for you.
CONTENTS:
1. AFFILIATE BASICS:
For success, do one of these two things EVERY day
2. How to find hot markets
3. Want to crank your business up to a new level?
4. Membership sites tipped to be big in 2007
5. Gems from the affiliate forum
6. Why you can’t trust your keyword research
7. COMING SOON: Advanced affiliate techniques
8. Thought for today: Relativity
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1. AFFILIATE BASICS:
For success, do one of these two things EVERY day
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(Basic affiliate marketing involves building a niche website and earning revenue from affiliate links and AdSense. I’ll assume you own or have started building such a niche content site.)
You can be successful in affiliate marketing by concentrating nearly all your energy on just TWO things.
Judging by the questions asked on our affiliate forum, many affiliates feel horribly overwhelmed. They’re suffocated by too much information and too many choices.
As a result, they’re paralyzed and fritter away hours, days, weeks and even months.
It’s possible to become so involved in endless studying, thinking and planning – including checking emails and reading newsletters and blogs – that you achieve very little.
If that sounds like you, read on…
In the 10 years I’ve been marketing online I’ve learned that you can boil basic affiliate marketing down to two things which really matter.
That’s right. Just TWO things.
The key is that you need to do at least one of these things EVERY day. That’s the big secret of success.
The secret is NOT to be found in forever hunting for one more marketing tip. The secret is always taking action, doing something useful every day, day after day so that your affiliate business is always improving.
Think about it. Picture a business which is ALWAYS improving. That’s what your affiliate business must do.
At first, these little tasks don’t seem to get you anywhere. But eventually, all these little improvements add up beautifully. If you keep improving your business every day, success is inevitable.
Here’s the list. Do one of these every day…
1. Add an article to your website.
2. Get a link to your site.
That’s it! Focus. Keep doing these two things over and over again.
This really works. It does. Do it.
I know what you’re thinking. It’s too simple. OK. Let’s tart it up a bit.
Here’s the new modified list…
1. Add a unique, useful, keyword-rich article to your site. Always keep the reader’s needs in mind as you write the article.
2. Get a link from an on-topic site, preferably with related keywords in the link. [UPDATE: To look natural to search engines, you want a natural variety of words in those links.]
3. Optional: Collect email addresses for a newsletter or updates advice list.
You’re probably itching to tell me that this is too simple, that there are all sorts of other factors to consider, such as the niche you choose, the products you choose, keyword research, website design, your skills at preselling…
Yes, of course these things are important, but many affiliates spend so much time thinking about them that they lose sight of what’s most important in basic affiliate marketing:
Write articles. Get links. Write articles. Get links.
If you’re not sure how to write a useful article, imagine you’re explaining something to one person. Picture a friend who needs this information. Keep the friend in mind as you write.
For ideas on how to get links, re-read my free report, 77 Ways to Get Traffic. Nearly all the ways described are free.
[It’s available free to all subscribers of this newsletter.]Believe me, it’s possible to build a revenue-generating affiliate site – or a bunch of such sites – without over-complicating things.
If you concentrate on these two things you can make LOTS of mistakes and still succeed. Just do it. Get it done. You can always go back and review your articles some time later. You’ll probably be surprised at how many sentences you can improve.
Don’t be scared of owning a site which looks as though it was created by a hobbyist. In many markets, this works nicely. Let your visitors know there’s a real person behind the site with strong opinions. They’ll welcome a site which isn’t bland.
When I built my first niche website back in 1996, I didn’t do anything special. I just wrote useful articles on one topic, aiming to answer questions my visitors would have. The most important keywords naturally went into the heading on the page and appeared naturally throughout the article.
I had a simple site structure which enabled visitors and search engines to find the articles. I linked naturally between articles whenever it seemed appropriate. I provided prominent links to the most important articles.
In other words, I did everything based on commonsense, not on any special search engine optimization rules. At that time, I’d never read any marketing books. I created the site in raw HTML after reading a two-page article in a magazine.
Because the pages were very simple, when I added AdSense ads, they stood out prominently and attracted clicks.
Ten years after it was built, with very few changes, that old niche site is earning about $400 a month. I spend only about two hours a month updating it. I’ve never bothered collecting email addresses. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
If you’re stuck on affiliate marketing 101, burn this into your brain:
Write articles. Get links. Write articles. Get links.
When you start work for the day, do one of these two things – FIRST. This is essential. Emails and everything else can wait. Always do the most important thing first, and the most important thing you can do is something which improves your business.
I acknowledge that you can generate more revenue by studying 1001 other things and doing some of them, too, but don’t try to run before you can walk. Master the basics first.
A friend once commented that I’d succeeded online by mastering the basics. I think he meant it as a compliment!
Mastering the basics has given my wife, Joanna, and me a lifestyle we never dreamed possible when we started.
Make this your mantra..
Write articles. Get links.
Even better…
Write good articles. Get good links.
You can do it.
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2. How to find hot markets
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If you want to generate more than mediocre revenue, you’ll want to identify hot markets.
You want to find products that people are going crazy over. Or you want to find profitable untapped niches where you’ll have little competition.
I’ve done serious market research and I’ve produced a long list of ways to generate ideas for a website or product, but my list is nothing like as comprehensive as the site I examined this week.
Gary Harvey has done some fantastic research in this field. He’s found more than 37 ways to identify hot markets and best selling products – the biggest source of market strategies and resources on the Internet.
If you’re having trouble finding a hot market, I strongly recommend you check out Gary’s membership site.
Right now, there’s a special introductory offer. You pay a small fee only once to get access to the site, which Gary keeps updating. For example, recent additions are links to articles predicting what will be hot in 2007.
Check it out here…
https://www.associateprograms.com/hot-markets
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3. Want to crank your business up to a new level?
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This is about as far from marketing 101 as you could get…
Yanik Silver’s Underground Seminars are so expert the attendees have been described as “graduate school MBA level” marketers. That’s just the attendees. You move in a rarified atmosphere at one of these conferences.
Our Special Projects Manager, Jay Stockwell, went to one of these seminars last year and came home raving about the inside information he’d learned and the amazing people he’d met. He made friends with some really generous people who have been giving him useful insider tips ever since. Right now, he’s busy on a new project based on information he learned at Yanik’s seminar.
Underground Seminar I and II sold out weeks in advance. Yanik says only 108 seats are left for Underground Seminar III.
It’s no wonder the seminars are so popular. Look at the quality of the speakers Yanik has attracted to his latest seminar…
* A $30M guy who imports goods from China.
* Drew, whose site gets 40 million pageviews a month.
* A comedian’s incredible MySpace success story.
* Dori, an $800,000 AdSense and affiliate income winner.
* An Australian who is so good at blogs he has raised $2M in venture capital for his blog network.
* Nancy, an SEO guru who quietly outperforms many big guns.
* Stacy, who makes $50k-$100k a month all with user generated content.
* Jermaine, who built a list of over 200,000 loyal subscribers in 2006 – and made a fortune from them.
Yanik’s seminars are seriously good. He’s a genius at locating brilliantly successful people and persuading them to reveal their secrets.
Want to mingle with greatness? Want to get a taste of huge success?
Here’s a backdoor way to get all the details without handing over your email address…
https://undergroundonlineseminar.com/go2/peek
(Don’t delay. Get in before the January 31 price increase.)
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4. Membership sites tipped to be big in 2007
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For years, savvy marketers have been setting up membership sites because they provide residual revenue, month after month. However, membership sites are tipped to boom in 2007 because they’re now so much easier to set up and run.
Nurse and membership site owner Kim Standerline and programmer Anthony Hull have combined their talents to create a new membership script which makes it incredibly easy to build and maintain a professional membership site.
You can create your own residual revenue membership site and have your own affiliates promoting it for you.
The script has been designed with the newbie in mind. If you want to set up a membership site with a script filled to the brim with features such as its own affiliate program, an online content management system and the ability to build your site with not a shred of html in sight, then you need to check it out here…
https://www.associateprograms.com/easy-members
Compare this with Gary Harvey’s membership site, which I mentioned earlier. Gary uses ClickBank and collects ONE fee. With this script, you collect a fee every month and so do your affiliates. Your affiliates love this and keep promoting you.
Can you create information you could turn into a membership site? Perhaps you already have some of this information on your hard drive. It’s worth thinking about seriously.
https://www.associateprograms.com/easy-members
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5. Gems from the affiliate forum
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It’s good to see a number of new members participating on our affiliate forum. Here are a couple of recent interesting posts…
Google Minimum Bids
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/ftopic22225.html
Do You Have A Reverse Gear?
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/ftopic22121.html
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6. Why you can’t trust your keyword research
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“You know what really frustrates me?” says Jay Stockwell. “People who talk about keyword research as if it’s an exact science.”
Keyword research is not an exact science. It’s more of a black art based on skewed and inaccurate data. Have a look at the examples Jay gives…
Keyword Data Is Almost Always Wrong
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7. COMING SOON: Advanced affiliate techniques
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An affiliate who went from zero to huge success in 12 months is writing an article for me describing the techniques he used. I’ve seen his first rough draft. The article will be worth waiting for.
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8. Thought for today: Relativity
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“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.” – Albert Einstein.
All the best
Allan Gardyne