Associate Programs Newsletter #156
Many affiliates are frustrated because a decent income from affiliate programs eludes them.
If that’s sounds like you, read on.
I examine five things you could be doing wrong.
CONTENTS:
1. Five mistakes affiliates make – and how to fix them
2. Help your customers decide what to buy
3. e-centives does it right
4. CyberRebate takes a hammering
5. iSyndicate lays off 75% of its staff and other news
6. Popular articles you may have missed
7. Thought for today: A perfect life
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1. Five mistakes affiliates make – and how to fix them
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Affiliates struggling to earn $100 a month often find it hard to believe that other people could possibly earn as much as $10,000 or even $100,000 a month in commissions.
My report that CyberRebate had paid a commission of $461,498 to one affiliate for one month was greeted by cries of disbelief.
Believe it. Big commissions do happen. And you can expect to hear about even bigger commissions.
Forrester Research – https://www.forrester.com – predicts that affiliate programs and affiliate networks will represent 20%, or $53 billion, of e-commerce sales by 2005, compared with an estimated $10.5 million for 2001.
In most programs, 5% of the affiliates generate the vast majority of the sales. If you’re not in that 5% and want to be, you’ll have to change what you’re doing.
Here are nine mistakes you could be making, and how to fix them.
Are you telling people how to make money on the Internet when you don’t know how yourself?
Perhaps – just perhaps – you can succeed at this, but it’s the most obvious trap into which new affiliates fall. You join a few affiliate programs and set up a site offering Internet marketing tips, work-from-home tips, instant-business tips, or be-your-own-boss tips.
The advantages of doing this include having great products to promote, high commissions and lots of help from Internet marketers.
However, if you do this, you face two massive challenges.
You’ll have hundreds of thousands of web pages out there competing with yours.
You’re competing with the planet’s best marketing EXPERTS. Some of the brightest brains in Internet marketing are working full-time to grab the attention of your target audience.
I’m not saying you can’t succeed in this field, but if you’re new to affiliate programs, this is definitely NOT the best place to begin. If you’re struggling, find a less well traveled path.
You don’t have to abandon your existing web site. Just launch a new one based on a new theme. Later, when you’ve learned more and really have something to offer, it will be time to revamp your marketing tips web site.
If you want an idea for a product to promote, here’s one.
You could promote the new book “Make Your Net Auction SELL!” – https://www.associateprograms.com/netauctions – which tells people how to make a great income from Internet auctions. They don’t even need a web site.
[UPDATE: The new version of this book is free.]Sure, you’ll have some competition, but it’s not TOO lively.
Here’s an indication: The top spot for the key phrase “Internet auctions” costs only 21 cents per click on GoTo.com today. In comparison, the keyword “marketing” costs $1.11.
Choose a new theme. Try a new niche.
Are you promoting the PROGRAM instead of the PRODUCT?
Over and over again, affiliates join a two-tier affiliate program and then create a page telling other people to join it. I’ve done this myself with https://www.LifetimeCustomers.com . However, that site is not my core business. It’s just one page, which I created fairly quickly.
Feel free to try that technique, but don’t pin all your hopes on it.
Unless you’re really skilled at signing up key people in key places, or know how to sign up many thousands of affiliates, you’re not likely to get rich on second-tier commissions.
The people you sign up will tend to copy you and try to sign up more people… Whoops! That sounds like the worst aspects of multi-level marketing. Who’s going to actually SELL something and earn commissions?
I once read a report which claimed that my success with the SiteSell affiliate program – https://makemy.sitesell.com – is due to the fact that I’ve signed up thousands of sub-affiliates.
That suggestion was just a silly guess – and it’s utter rubbish.
Only a tiny percentage of the thousands of dollars I earn each month from SiteSell is from second-tier commissions. I succeed because I sell the PRODUCTS. They’re incredibly good value, I believe in them, and I succeed by telling people so.
Here’s proof that “affiliate programs” is a tough competitive field.
Try typing “affiliate programs” into https://www.Google. You’re competing with 302,000 other pages. Try the phrase without the quotation marks and you’re competing with 1,020,000 other pages.
Promote the PRODUCTS.
Are you using banners instead of endorsements?
I know. It takes time, effort and money to buy and study the product you’re trying to sell. It’s much easier just to cut and paste a bit of HTML code. However, personal, enthusiastic endorsements out-sell everything else by miles.
If you put in the effort, you’ll get the sales. You can probably quadruple your sales by endorsing the products you sell.
You can also combine graphics, text, short descriptions and relevant articles. Here’s an example: Cynthia Arko’s KidstownDirect.com. Best of all are your own, original personal endorsements.
Write honest, enthusiastic endorsements.
Are you failing to capture e-mail addresses?
If you don’t collect addresses, your marketing effort is a one-shot wonder. You’re making only one attempt per visitor to achieve a sale and then giving up.
As branding expert Rob Frankel says, people like buying from people they know, like and trust. (That’s why, when I already receive far too many newsletters, I’ve just paid $18 to subscribe to FrankelTips – https://www.FrankelTips.com – because I know, like and trust Rob and expect him to deliver valuable content.)
If you’re not giving people a chance to get to know and trust you, don’t be surprised if they don’t buy.
If you’re not collecting e-mail addresses, you’re seriously crippling your marketing. Remember how the big dot-coms poured buckets of money into banner advertising and TV advertising? Now they’ve finally realized that collecting e-mail addresses is much better value.
It’s getting harder and harder to do, because we’re all deluged with spam and newsletters which don’t provide the information we need. So get started now, before the competition becomes even stronger.
You may not want the commitment of publishing a weekly newsletter. Perhaps you don’t believe you have the necessary skills. One option is to simply offer a monthly Update newsletter, telling people what’s new on your site.
Perhaps you don’t like the thought of being tied to a weekly or monthly publishing schedule. You don’t have to be. You can publish irregularly, only when you feel you have something worth saying – or selling.
If you want a non-nonsense, no-hype guide to newsletter publishing, I highly recommend “Ezine Adrenaline: How to Create, Publish and Market A Profitable E-zine on the Internet” by Kate Schultz. It tells you all the stuff you need to know.
[UPDATE: Kate’s old book is no longer available. For a more advanced guide to email publishing, I recommend The Insider Secrets to E-mail marketing – Advanced Series by Derek Gehl and the Internet Marketing Center. This really experienced team shows you everything, from growing a super-responsive opt-in list as quickly as possible, to generating the highest possible revenue from every email you send, to protecting your business from being wrongly accused of spamming and knowing how to effectively deal with it if you are. This is vitally important stuff you need to know before you begin.]Build an opt-in e-mail list.
Do you have visitors but no sales?
Some affiliates complain that they receive thousands of visitors but can’t turn those visitors into buyers. To them, I usually recommend re-reading Ken Evoy’s article on pre-selling – https://www.associateprograms.com/pre-selling. Studying that article and implementing Ken’s suggestions could have a huge impact on your sales.
Here’s another fascinating, useful article.
Donald Skarzenski reports on a company which bought a MILLION visitors but – whoops! – hadn’t first taken the time to figure out what to do with them. It’s a tale of stupidity on a grand scale. Donald explains what the company should have done:
digitrends.net/marketing/13639_15229.html
Learn how to PRE-sell.
PART 2 NEXT WEEK:
Are you doing the same old tired things over and over? Five MORE things affiliates do wrong – and how to fix them.
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2. Help your customers decide what to buy
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Here’s a new way for web sites to help customers decide what to buy. It directs the shopper to the right product to close the sale.
It’s Blexel’s “automated sales assistant” which can work with e- commerce enabled sites or on affiliate-driven sites.
The products selected can include affiliate links.
Here’s how it works.
The shopper clicks on a link, for example to “Cordless Phones”.
Up pops a page asking: “Do you want a digital or analogue phone?”
The shopper selects a box. The next question asked is adjusted according to the previous answers.
Each answer takes the shopper nearer to a decision to buy.
Products with lots of features can be confusing. The “sales assistant” leads the shopper gently through the maze, helping to isolate the product which best matches a customer’s exact needs.
If you were promoting web hosts, for example, your visitor could answer a series of questions to make a complex buying decision easy.
I think it’s a fantastic tool.
Mark Hopkins, Blexel’s founder, spend many hundreds of hours to writing the script which drives the “sales assistant”.
Mark says he based the system on several years’ research into “data analysis algorithms”. Mark graduated from Oxford University, England, with a mathematics degree, and worked as an IT consultant.
His latest major project was producing a CD-ROM for the UK Automobile Association. This software provides maps and routes for the whole of Britain. Mark’s algorithms allowed data from almost every street in the country to be linked to AA’s renowned hand-written route text. This combined, for the first time ever, street-to-street routes with easy-to-follow route instructions.
The automated sales assistant could help with almost any shopping decision.
I like it because it makes the shopper feel in control of the decision-making. The shopper makes the choices and should be in the mood for buying when the final decision is reached.
Blexel’s affiliate program is managed by Neil Durant, author of “The Practical Guide to Creating and Managing a Profitable Affiliate Program”.
[UPDATE: This book is no longer available.]Neil says that in planning the program he felt one concern among potential affiliates would be protection of their residual incomes, so there’s a clause in the contract covering that:
“Should an affiliate be terminated ‘without cause’ you will continue to receive your residual commission payments at the current rate or be offered an agreed lump sum in full and final settlement of any customer introductions you may have made.”
Neil, who does a really good job of running the Affiliate Announce service, says:
“For as long as my name is associated with this program I will ensure it operates on an ethical and fair basis for all its affiliate partners.”
[UPDATE: This affiliate program no longer exists.]===========================
3. e-centives does it right
===========================
The e-centives affiliate program has been closed, with good news for affiliates. They’ll be paid even if they are owed less than the $100 threshold.
Now that’s a welcome change!
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4. CyberRebate takes a hammering
================================
Hot topic on the message board… CyberRebate.com.
The company is taking a hammering on the Associate Programs Message Board, with links to articles complaining about its service, including this one:
“When ‘free’ products are no bargains”
news.cnet.com/news/0-1278-210-4918026-1.html
Jared Bloom of CyberRebate responds: “The number of complaints we receive is incredibly small when compared to our sales volume…”
To read Jared’s full response or join in the discussions, look under “C” for CyberRebate on the message board:
https://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
[UPDATE: CyberRebate went broke.]======================================================
5. iSyndicate lays off 75% of its staff and other news
======================================================
San Francisco-based content syndicator iSyndicate laid off approximately 60 of its 80 employees, according to a source close to the company. New York-based Screaming Media is in talks to acquire iSyndicate. Full story:
dotcomscoop.com/
Amazon Pares Quarter Loss as It Increases Some Sales
nytimes.com/2001/04/25/technology/25AMAZ.html
(requires free registration for access)
Fraud: Affiliates Fight Back
clickz.com/article/cz.3714.html
Tracking affiliate codes from one domain to another
willmaster.com/possibilities/currentissue.shtml
Dell Takes Top Spot in PC Sales
nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-PC-Sales.html
E-Stamp to Merge with Learn2.com, Focus on E-learning
ecommerce.internet.com/ec-news/article/0,,4_748641,00.html
Ashford.com Warned By Nasdaq – E Commerce Times
ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/9109.html
No Spending Slowdown on eBay
thestandard.com/article/0,1902,23839,00.html
Party’s over for free online storage
zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2710637,00.html
iVillage Faces Delisting From NASDAQ
internetnews.com/fina-news/article/0,,5_750961,00.html
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6. Popular articles you may have missed
=======================================
Previous articles:
Want traffic? Go out and get it
https://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter152.shtml
17 strategies from highly successful web sites https://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter151.shtml
How fast learner Yanik Silver succeeds https://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter150.shtml
15 ways to cope with GoTo.com’s price rise https://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter149.shtml
Seven tricks the search engines don’t want you to know https://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter132.shtml
At last! Practical Guide for affiliate program managers https://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter145.shtml
My view of a sub-tropical bay https://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter064.shtml
Are you new to affiliate programs? I highly recommend the free “Affiliate Masters” course.
Download the 10-day free course here:
====================================
7. Thought for today: A perfect life
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“If I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting but I would have to decline, for life would no longer teach me anything.”
– Allyson Jones
https://www.powerquotes.net
All the best
Allan Gardyne
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