Winning the Affiliate Game: A Ten-Step Master Plan For Maximizing Your Profits by Declan Dunn ÒThe secret to success is --find out where the people are going and get there first." Mark Twain This Internet Development Publication is part of an ongoing training series to maximize the value of your online customer base. Brought to you by Declan Dunn and ADNet International: The ActiveMarketplace: http://www.activemarketplace.com (530) 873-3637 Ð FAX (530) 873-0192 Ð declan@linkstosales.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents 2 Copyright Notice 3 Introduction 4-5 6 Success Stories To Model Your Affiliate Programs On 1. The Cybrary: Getting Paid To Help Children Learn 6 2. An Engineer Who Profits From His Hobby 7-9 3. Making Money on the Beach in Australia 9-10 4. Turning Your Competitors into Partners 11-12 5. Profit While Helping Dolphins, Whales, and Non-Profits 12 2. Giving Back to the Community While Earning Money 13 A Ten Step Master Plan For Your Affiliate Program 1. How to Plan Your Success in 30 Minutes or Less 14-16 2. Getting Started: What is Selling on the Internet 17-22 3. Choosing The Best Affiliate Programs 22-24 4. The Seven Keys to Affiliate Success 25-28 5. Five Positively Profitable Marketing Techniques You Must Know 28-35 6. How To Set Up Your Web Site to Maximize Profits 36-39 7. Affiliate Alert! Seven Warning Signs That You Must Avoid 39-40 8. How to Double or Triple Your Profits: New and Easy Ways To Win Customers For Life 41-45 9. The Most Powerful Secret Weapon Every Affiliate Must Have 46-53 10. Internetworking Your Way To Success 54-56 Conclusion & Affiliate CheckList: The Ten Golden Rules 57-58 Appendix: The 7 Step Affiliate Action Plan Turning Your E-Business into a Profit Center 1-28 Copyright Notices Copyright 1998 by Declan Dunn. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electric, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission or more information should be sent to The Write Thing, 6960 Ridgeway, Magalia, California 95954. Published by Declan Dunn and The Write Thing. 6960 Ridgeway Magalia, CA. 95954 (530) 873-3637 Fax: (530) 873-0192 email: dunn@webletter.net Created, e-printed, and distributed in the United States of America. Legal Notices This book is designed to provide information in regard to the subject matter covered. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretation of the subject matter. This manual is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If legal or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. The publisher wants to stress that information contained herein may be subject to varying state and/or local laws or regulations. All users are advised to retain competent counsel to determine what state and/or local laws or regulations may apply to the userÕs particular business. The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, both federal and state and local, governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the purchase or reader. The author and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchase or reader of these materials. The purpose of this workbook is to educate and entertain. Any perceived slights to a specific individual or organizations is unintentional. Announcing the Best, Fastest, and Easiest Way To Build Your Internet Business How To Get Your Own Automated SuperStore Selling the Hottest Products Online And Handling All Orders/ Customer ServiceÉ All You Do Is Market and Cash The Affiliate Checks How many times have you picked up a newspaper and seen other people making tons of cash from their Web Site? Thousands are profiting with affiliate programs, people who are no smarter than you are, no more experienced, but who seem to know exactly what to do. If your Internet business isn't generating significant income (and I mean at least $2,000 a month), here's the reason why. You probably don't yet understand how to get customers to buy online, easily. You are about to discover how to do this. The money being generated by the Internet is staggering, and experts point out that it will only grow even more dramatically in the next 5 years: "By 2002, 25 percent of the expected $37.5 billion in Internet retail sales, not including autos, will have originated on affiliate sites" -- Nicole Vanderbilt, Jupiter Communications The Internet is obviously one of the great economic revolutions: the real key to success is to copy what is already working, and put it into action for yourself. The fastest, risk free way to get your share of the Internet fortune is to take advantage of affiliate programs. Imagine if you were selling a product and making $20 per sale. No inventory, no credit card processing or customer service, simply marketing and making $20, free and clear. Here's the kind of income you could be looking at: Orders Each Day Weekly Income Monthly Income Yearly Income Yearly Income if you had 2 Affiliate Programs With These Results 1 $140 $560 $6,720 $13,440 2 $280 $1,120 $13,440 $26,880 3 $420 $1,680 $20,160 $40,320 5 $700 $2,800 $33,600 $67,200 10 $1,400 $5,600 $67,200 $134,400 15 $2,100 $8,400 $100,800 $201,600 Now anyone can open up a Web Site and join an affiliate program, just like anyone can open a store. The real secret is in making money with a tested, proven process that can build your business for the long run without risking your earnings, time, or sanity. The best part is, most of the affiliates out there are making the same mistakes. They are wasting time and money on online marketing insanity that simply will not succeed. In this book, you will tap into the strategies that do work, by focusing your efforts like the affiliates we are about to explore such as: 1. The Web Site dedicated to helping children learn and paying its way by selling books; 2. The engineer who sells toys and videos about robots as a profitable side business; 3. A journalist in Australia who writes, while on the beach, to an international audience of over 4,500 people who regularly buy affiliate products and services from him; 4. A software entrepreneur who sells his competitorÕs product and makes up to $1500 each month with absolutely no extra effort; and 5. An Ohio couple who set up their own network and in a few short months expect to generate millions with an approach so innovative, so simple, it boggles the mind. The key is to pick a few good products and test which ones sell best. Build your business for the long haul, because it will be worth it: ÒOnline Media is entering what we believe will be the most rewarding period in its developmentÉWe believe that the prevailing forecasts for online advertising expenditures will be comfortably exceeded in the coming years, and that the leading firms in the sector will be powerfully profitable in the longer term.Ó Online Media Rules, Salmon Smith Barney, August 1998. What you will discover in this book is the true secret of success; enjoy what you are doing and sell only those products you know, enjoy, and feel comfortable offering. HereÕs how: 1. Create an automated system that pays you to just market. Let them handle all the headaches. 2. Generate visitors and put your Internet sales system on autopilot. 3. Offer products that people are buying. Sounds simple, but few people are doing it! 4. Offer products that are easy to sell to your target audience. 5. Instead of creating mediocrity, why not copy genius. LetÕs begin by showing you a few of the geniuses putting affiliate programs into profitable action. To some, paying their hosting fees and helping children learn are the riches. To others, it may be a full time business that allows them to quit their jobs and be their own boss. Whatever your goals, remember these business models. What they have discovered is no secret; the best way to sell products and services online is to sell a few items and sell them very well. Forget about Internet flea markets, and focus, focus, focusÉNow! Success Story 1. The Cybrary: Getting Paid To Help Children Learn http://remember.org "Specialty retailers will embrace syndicated selling -- distributed points-of-sale -- within smaller, but more targeted communitiesÉwhere high levels of trust will yield conversion rates in excess of 10%." On-line Retail Strategies, The Forrester Report, May 1998. Overview: The Cybrary is an educational site (http://remember.org) set up since 1995 to educate students from sixth grade to early college. The visitors to this site are mostly teachers and students from throughout the world who come for the free information. The site has a long growth curve to its current steady traffic of 500,000 visitors a year, with 10-20,000 in slow months and over 100,000 on its two peak months, generating over a million hits. How This Site is Marketed The Cybrary built its traffic through word of mouth advertising; since it is an educational site, many newspapers and online awards have helped promote their efforts for free. Combined with strategic positioning on the search engines, this site has developed a loyal following. Niche markets like this, with a passionate audience, grow by announcing themselves to the newsgroups, mailing lists, and Web Sites where the audience goes. No monthly marketing is involved. How They Set Up An Affiliate Program With just one week of effort searching Amazon.com, this site set up its own bookstore. Books are a natural market for these visitors. Since it only took a week to set up this book store, with no changes in two years, the time factor is limited. Now this book store pays the hosting fees for this site for an entire year, not much but enough to keep it going. LetÕs break this down to see the value. A Sample Weekly Report From Amazon.com For the Cybrary Click-throughs and sales by individual item For the week of 22-Nov-1998 through 28-Nov-1998 YOUR HITS DIR. NDIR FEE TOTAL SALES ---------- ------ ----- ----- ------- ----------------------------------- Totals: 497 0 31 $ 9.58 $249.46 They generated about $250 in sales for Amazon.com and make $10 a week., a little less than 5% margin on average (many of the books bought here are hard to find items). LetÕs estimate the value of this small affiliate over a year, with these as an average sent through Amazon.com: Per Month Per Year Total Visitors 1572 18,864 Total Sales $1,000.00 $12,000.00 Total Affiliate Payout $38.40 $460.80 For no effort, the Cybrary pays its own way. Riches here cannot be measured in money alone. Not bad for a weekÕs worth of work; this site it totally on autopilot. Success Story 2. An Engineer Who Profits From His Hobby Carlo Bertocchini is an engineer who loves robots. His site is a natural extension of his own interest, applied in a very specific and profitable way. HereÕs an interview with Carlo. Overview ÒI work full time as a mechanical designer. I have been involved with robotics (mostly as a hobby) since about 1993. I have built several robots for robotic competitions. I won the heavyweight division of Robot Wars in 1996 and 1997. My robotic Sumo wrestling robot has won the annual competition at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco every year since 1994. RobotBooks.com is the first web site that I have put together (except for a site about one of my robots on one of the free web page services). I noticed Amazon's affiliate program one day while I was shopping for books. It sounded like a great idea, so I reserved the RobotBooks.com URL that same day.Ó CarloÕs Marketing Strategy ÒI have contacted over 700 robot related web site owners and asked for a link. My first email does not offer a reciprocal link, but I give one to most of the sites that ask for one. This is important not just for the traffic that you will get from the links, it is also important because some search engines take into consideration the number of other sites that link to yours when they decide how high to rank your page in their search results. I have submitted my web site to over 100 search engines and directories. There are many businesses that will do this for you for a fee. Here is a free one: http://www.selfpromotion.com/. Most of your search engine traffic is going to come from the big ones (Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, Hotbot, and a few others). You want to come up on the first page of the search results. It's not that easy, and there is a whole cottage industry devoted to raising search rankings. We have pretty poor rankings right now. I have a lot more work to do in this area, but that is where much of our growth will come from. I wrote two articles for the magazine "Robot Science & Technology". Almost all the readers of this magazine are hobbyists. In exchange for writing the articles, I get six months of advertising and some cash. I'll use that cash to buy small ads in other magazines. I have announced my site on several news groups, and I started an on-line forum on robotics at www.delphi.com. Delphi provides the forum for free in exchange for the right to post advertising banners on it. This forum is now getting about 100 unique visitors per day, and each of them sees my advertisement every time they log on. I had a service send out a press release to about 1300 newspapers and magazines. This cost $225, and I have gotten two calls from reporters so far. I don't know yet if this will pay off. Banner adds probably wonÕt work for a product that such a tiny percentage of the population is interested in, but I might look into one of those pay-per-click banner add services for bringing in more traffic.Ó What He Offers ÒWe sell books, toys, kits, movies, and magazines that have something to do with robotics. The market I am going after is the hobbyist market. Each item that we sell has a picture and a short description. All the order taking, money collecting, and order fulfillment is done by the companies that I am affiliated with. My plan is to never touch the merchandise myself. I spend all my time on content development and promotion. Our first full month was September '98. We averaged 50 visitors per day, and we earned about $100 in commissions. In October we averaged about 140 visitors per day, and we earned about $250. It is now near the end of November, and we are on track for an average of 275 visitors per day and earnings of about $500. Our book vendor is Books.com. They offer 12% commission on all sales, which is the best deal I have seen for books. I actually started with Amazon, and I was looking forward to those 15% commissions they offer, but it turns out that most of the books that I wanted to sell did not qualify for their 15% plan. They would only pay 5%. Our toys vendor is eToys.com. They offer 25% commission to serious sites that have their own domain names, and 12.5% to smaller sites. Most of our sales are books. Toys are doing pretty well, but magazines and videos are not moving. I will keep offering them though because it adds content and rounds out the site. They may also help bring some people to the site.Ó The Key Elements That Make His Program Successful ÒTo be successful with affiliate programs on the web you have to bring several things together. First of all you need to have a product that people want. If you choose a popular product like computers, you have the potential to make lots of sales, but many businesses are selling computers, and you will probably have to spend some big bucks to get their shoppers away from them. I chose to go with a niche product. Robots aren't as popular as computers, but selling them has some advantages. The robot hobbyists are easy to find. Alta Vista returns almost 700,000 hits on the word "robot". The interest in robots is growing rapidly, and very few web sites offer as large a selection of robotics products as we do. In fact, when it comes to robot books with reviews, we are the biggest. You need a good web site that is easy to navigate. The user should also be able to get something of value from it without spending any money. We have a "Robot News" page on which we post a new press release or article every week, and a links page where we link to over 20 robot clubs, and 25 robot competitions around the world. GoTo.com, one of the smaller search engines, allows you to pay for better rankings. I reserved top position for about 25 key words and phrases and most of those only cost me 1 penny each. For example, at the time of this writing, I have top position for the phrase "robot toys". If the surfer clicks on the link to my site, I pay GoTo one penny. This is a great bargain. But if your keyword is "computers", be prepared to pay almost 30 cents for top position. I don't know if GoTo is going to make it with this mode of doing business, but I hope they do because we get almost 10% of our traffic from them. This will probably go down to 2-3% when we get our rankings up in the other search engines. Do you have any suggestions for how other businesses can apply what you've done to their own associate programs? ÒVisit http://www.associateprograms.com/ for lots of info on affiliate programs. Notice the high commission levels of most of my vendors. Most operators of affiliate programs offer much lower commissions. Don't waste your time with them. If all you are getting is 5%, you really can't afford to pay for any advertising. Even the few pennies you pay at GoTo.com will start to eat into your profits. This isn't easy. It takes a lot of work to put together a decent web site. Once you have done that, your real work begins. Marketing is the best name for your new job if you decide to try to earn a living with affiliate programs. I reserved several other domain names, and once I get RobotBooks.com going pretty good, I plan to do the same thing with GourmetBooks.com, VideoGameBooks.com, NutritionBooks.com, and several others. It should be a lot easier the second time around. How can our readers contact you for more information? Visit us for an introduction to an interesting and fun new hobby! http://www.RobotBooks.com/ or email Webmaster@RobotBooks.com Success Story 3: Making Money on the Beach in Australia Allan Gardyne's well researched site: http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/ Associate Programs is an excellent resource for associate/affiliate programs (just ask Carlo!); the unique approach of its creator, Allan Gardyne, incorporates actual, personal involvement with affiliate programs along with a community sharing feedback. He offers discussion boards and insights into this market, as well as recommending his Top 10 programs. This is an excellent site to get a personal view of affiliate programs; the key strength is AllanÕs email list of over 5,000 subscribers. A list like that will keep you in business for a long time. Let Allan show you how he makes a good living with affiliate programs himself. Overview ÒI'm Allan Gardyne. I live with my wife Joanna in a pole house among gum trees and jacarandas by the beach at Tuan, a tiny fishing village without a shop, in sub-tropical Queensland, Australia. I wasn't born here - I just got here as fast as I could. Three days a week I work as a sub-editor for a daily newspaper and Joanna usually works one day as a reporter. These days, I spend just about every other hour I can manage working on AssociatePrograms.com.Ó What inspired you to create your Web Site? ÒI run a directory of associate programs - the Associate Programs Directory, at http://www.AssociatePrograms.com . I began it because I had joined Jim Daniels' associate program for his introduction to marketing on the Internet, "Insider Internet Marketing". (It's http://www.bizweb2000.com/d2080.htm ) I loved the way commissions arrived regularly in the mail - I was making money while I was walking on the beach - so I searched for more companies offering similar programs. I was amazed that apparently no one had started a directory of such programs, or if one existed I couldn't find it. So I decided to start my own. At first it was just a one-page Associate Programs Guide, but it quickly expanded into the Associate Programs Directory and I got my own domain name in March, 1998.Ó Could you explain the strategy behind your directory? ÒMy directory of associate programs is different from most directories. It allows companies running programs to list them, but also allows other people to recommend programs. I also publish an associate's special URL or ID number, so in some cases they can earn commissions from those links. I also allow them to include their own web site's URL, giving them free publicity. This gives people a strong incentive to send me listings, so the directory grows fast.Ó Tell us a little about the results you've achieved in terms of your business. ÒTraffic to AssociatePrograms.com has grown quickly, from 4227 unique visitors to the main page in April, 1998, to 12,305 in August. The Associate Programs Newsletter has gone from nowhere to more than 3000 subscribers in just over five months. I love getting e-mail from people thanking me and telling me how helpful the newsletter has been. It's fun, making money by helping people make money.Ó What do you think are the key elements that make your Web Site successful? ÒI tell people which programs have made money for me and for other people, and also give marketing advice. I took Corey Rudl's advice and after buying his marketing course, I wrote a personal recommendation for it, instead of just posting banners. My sales soared from $195 (US) to $845 for a month. I use advice from Corey's manuals to market his course and have now achieved more than $1100 in sales for a month - just for course alone; it's at http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/7134/Ó Do you have any suggestions for how other businesses can apply what you've done to their own associate programs? ÒThe Internet is growing an a phenomenal pace and so there are always new people seeking products and services. For example, I've found that there are a lot of new businesses looking for an easy way to accept credit cards online, so associates of a company such as Thomas Harpointner's AIS Merchant Services should do extremely well. It offers an amazingly generous $175 commission per sale, and also has a second-tier commission of $50. It's at http://www.aismedia.com/x/cc.cfm?AG45xDUNN (Note the nifty trick in the URL. AIS allows an associate to change the last part of the URL, so if any sales are made because of this publication I will know. All programs should include that excellent feature.) Beware of thinly disguised pyramid schemes. I'm extremely suspicious of businesses which excitedly emphasize how much money you can make, instead of telling you about a wonderful product or service. How can our readers contact you for more information? Allan Gardyne allan@AssociatePrograms.com AssociatePrograms.com -- http://www.AssociatePrograms.com Success Story 4: How To Turn Your Competitors Into Partners Brian Clark, http://www.rankthis.com and http://www.gmdstudios.com Brian Clark heads Radiation, a software company offering LinkTrakker software. Drawing on a strong technological background, and offering his products to WebMasters and Web Development companies, he taps into a natural and huge market on the Internet; offering software. He has an affiliate program he runs, as well as participating in his ÒcompetitorÕsÓ program. HereÕs how he approaches the affiliate market. Overview ÒWeÕve been doing CGI web development since 1994, mostly from the entertainment industry. We needed to be able to track promotionally what was working and what wasnÕt. We really want to be able to see the results coming from search engines, links, banner banners, and get a feel for how our techniques were working online. We decided to build the tools because we need them ourselves. LinkTrakker has been around since March 1995 with 16 point version upgrades since then. Now it is the centerpiece of our well tested, well deployed products under the Radiation brand. In my mind, the most beautiful affiliateÕs system requires the affiliate to do the minimum amount of special things. Amazon and Barnes & Noble use their cgi program, making you link to a particular book, which is not the easiest thing to do for an affiliate. In the ideal world, the affiliate would just make a link, and it would count towards their sales, friction-less. It is not about managing the sign up process of affiliates, calculating the percentage they should be paid, and setting up all these systems. Affiliate programs have extreme customization needs on the front end and the back end. On the front end, what info do you want to collect, and how much do you want them to track real time? Linktrakker fills the middle, connecting each visitor to the Web Site with the outside Web Site that led them in from lead to sale, just by reading a cookie on a browser. ItÕs simple to customize shopping carts to read that cookie and store it as an extra field of the order. Our affiliate program for LinkTrakker has allowed us to dedicate support resources to everyone whoÕs installing before they bought. Affiliate programs are becoming accepted and free up resources for support, for customer service. We launched our affiliate program 3 months ago and have over 220 affiliates already, providing them the technology without requiring having a direct relationship with their clients; we are thinking like an outsourcer.Ó How Do You Use Affiliate Programs To Generate Extra Income? ÒI discovered WebPosition software, which is a great match for RankThisÕs services, so close that a business person who is more narrow minded might see them as competition. I signed up for their affiliates program, and dedicated 40 CPM of banners for WebPosition, generating $1500 in commissions a month. I get $37.50 per CPM for my banner advertising with this affiliate program, measured in commissions. Compare that to my other options; if I sell the banner ads, the book rate is $15 CPM. If I canÕt sell the banner bars via that method, and put that into the hands of a broker, I earn about $1.40 to $5 CPM...compare that to the money ($37.50) from WebPosition. Plus I donÕt have to convince WebPosition to buy advertising every month, like I would if I was simply selling banner ads at my Web Site. The problem with banner ad CPM is that it doesnÕt provide enough accountability to advertisers. Clickthrough doesnÕt provide enough accountability to publishers. Affiliate programs protect both.Ó Brian looks to the SellThrough, instead of the clickthrough. He finds that certain sites related to his product line generate much more sales than others through his affiliate program. Success Story 5: Profit While Helping Dolphins, Whales, and Non-Profits Dolphin, Whale, and Shark Gift Store, http://www.dolphinws.com This amazing story, inspired from the interview in Inc. Magazine Tech 1998 No. 3 issue, shows how two entrepreneurs took the idea of affiliate programs to create a full time business. They have built their own affiliate program by following the Amazon.com model and putting in their own, unique approach. They have provided a middle ground between the companies offering products and the non-profits they have targeted to help. Overview Rudy Socha and Carolyn Darrow thought of the idea for this online Gift Store in 1997. By March 1998 they opened their own store online. Socha had learned about Amazon.comÕs model and the amazing amount of affiliates they had. Instead of copying Amazon, he invented his own approach, targeting non-profits. By May 1998 they had signed up their first, affiliated non-profit: the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). The ASPCA gets a customized entry page to their gift store. This is a model they have extended by working with just a select few non-profits, instead of managing the headache of many affiliates. They provide products as the retailer of a variety of dolphin and whale related items (isnÕt retailer another name for affiliate?). They then sign up non-profits like the ASPCA, who gets paid 10% per transaction. The non-profit gains a source of ongoing income as an affiliate, while the gift store is able to focus strictly on doing something that matters to them, helping non-profits. Their Marketing Strategy They do not actively promote their Web Site. They do not collect emails or customer information, because they feel it just isnÕt the right thing to do. Despite what appears to be the wrong thing to do, they are profiting by working through high traffic, non-profit sites, mostly wildlife organizations. Their marketing cost is the 10% they pay on every transaction. That is it. Donations are also accepted and routed to the non-profits. The Results By following their own passion and taking the high ground in business, they have developed core relationships with non-profits. Socha has estimated $7 million in earnings their first year, all for doing something they love, with little or no marketing, and helping non-profits survive. Success Story 6: Giving Back to the Community While Earning Money iGive.com, http://www.iGive.com Making money for yourself is the goal of any business. Imagine if you could help others, giving back money to the community while profiting yourself. Unlike the previous story, the following is a site based on giving more than on selling a specific line of products. Its success is an inspiration for anyone seeking to really use the power of the Internet to help themselves, and their community. Overview The goal of iGive.com is for the shopper to give back to the community. A wide selection of products are available from merchants such as: eToys Beyond.com software Music Boulevard Avon Reel.com J. Crew Notice that the profit margins for most of these are in the upper ranks; this gives the site an ability to generate profits. This profit margin is split equally, half going to the non-profit of the shopperÕs choice and half to keeping iGive.comÕs efforts going. Their Marketing Strategy iGive.com earns its money by matching shoppers to the selected merchants. It creates cause related marketing, donated a matching fund for each purchase. In essence, the good will of the shopper is encouraged and the non-profit gets half the net profits. The Results iGive.com opened in 1997 and in its first year estimates to have generated over $180,000 for 43 non-profits (ÒOrganizations make it easy to donate time, money onlineÓ, Jamie Beckett, San Francisco Chronicle, December 24, 1998, p. D3). Remember that since they split the profits, they also earned $180,000. Total earnings is over $350,000 for the first year, while helping non-profits and the community. No inventory, no burdens of order processing or delivery; simple, direct cause related marketing. Where else but the Internet could this happen? How to Plan Your Success in 30 Minutes or Less Now that you have read some amazing stories of how others are achieving their dreams, itÕs time to get focused on the results you can generate. You will notice something common among all the success stories; every one of them intensely enjoys what they are doing. The first thing that leads to most affiliateÕs failure is the lack of real interest, passion, or love for what they are doing. In fact, most people assume that they should just sign up for every program and chase customers down. They set up sites with hundreds of programs on it, putting up banner after banner on their site. In the following chapters, weÕll show you how to set up your Web Site and marketing. For now, remember the most important lessons the success stories have taught us all: 1. Measure your success in your own terms. For the Cybrary, it may be paying its hosting fees and breaking even. For others, it may be money. But if you look closely at those success stories, every one has an extreme joy in helping others achieve their goals. 2. This joy is part of their success; if you do not enjoy what you are doing, eventually you will get cynical and give up. Your customers will pick up on it, even if you donÕt think you are being negative. As the saying goes, ÒLife is a state of mind.Ó Prepare yourself with a positive attitude. 3. Begin with the end in mind; determine what is important to you, set realistic goals, and pursue your goals. Test your efforts cheaply and when you find what works, then you can sink your money into it. You want to find the best affiliates programs for you; target ones that you can sell a product a day, and make $20 of off each sale. These are the ones that can build your business. 4. Remember that none of these stories happened overnight; promises of instant success is not what this book is about. Focus on your long term efforts and building an Internet business that fits into your life and doesnÕt make you work too hard. 5. You only have so much time in life; enjoy what you have. Let the Internet help you further that enjoyment. If you find yourself complaining instead of doing something to solve the problem, you have missed the point. 6. Abraham Lincoln put it so well: ÒThe pessimist sees the difficulty in opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in difficulty.Ó No achievement comes without its challengesÉand thatÕs where the real fun comes in. Ask any successful person about the most enjoyable, alive time of their lives and it inevitably comes down to when they were just starting their idea. These really are the good days. LetÕs get started by taking 30 minutes to determine what it is you would like to do with affiliate programs. Phase 1: Take Ten Minutes to Inventory What You Do (And Hopefully Like to Do) Best Time: 10 minutes Goal: Make a list of the following: ¥ Every job you may have had ¥ Every hobby you may have, or would like to have ¥ Every personal interest, hobby, related topic, business, or special interests you may have High profit ideas can be found with a little fishing. Don't think too hard, just write it down. And limit yourself to 10 minutes. You are looking for those subjects, interests, and related products and services that you can offer. Imagine yourself 5 years from today, the day you made a decision to change your entire life, and you will look back on this moment as the time you took the next step. Picture yourself doing what you would like to do; what sort of people would you like to meet? How much vacation time would you like to take? Take some time to take your dreams and put them together with what you are thinking now. What can you realistically achieve and within what time frame? Phase 2: What Areas Could Yield High Profits? Time: 10 Minutes Goal: Take each item from Phase 1 and ask: 1. What are the major problems facing people interested in this subject? 2. What are the important goals that people interested in this subject would like to achieve? Do this as quickly as possible, 10 minutes only. Remember not to think too hard; if you cannot list them quickly, it is likely your target customers cannot as well. Think of yourself traveling up in an elevator with one other person; this person will get off on the next floor. You have 30-60 seconds to describe exactly what you do and make it so interesting, that they do not want to get off. DonÕt worry if this doesnÕt come too quick; in fact, you should work on your elevator speech throughout your business. It will change and adapt as you do. What is important is to focus your efforts on being able to exactly and quickly explain what you do in the time it takes to ride up an elevator. Phase 3: Picking the Ideas with the Most Profits Let's start judging what you wrote. Which ideas are worth your time and which are wasted time? Go back through your list from Phase 1. Ask two questions of each: A. Can I write about the solutions or goals these people want to achieve? People who write about something based on their own experience put out more interesting materials than "experts". Don't think of yourself as an expert, can you simply write their goals and solutions from experience? If you can, customers will pay for it. The real challenge is to provide a new twist to the subject that no one else has. B. Can I provide products/services to supply my customers? Is anyone else doing what IÕm doing? This question is usually assumed by most businesses; if no one is selling what you are, you have to create a market. If too many people are selling what you are offering, your competition may hinder your results. Be honest and donÕt use your own opinion only; get feedback from others. It is often easier to take part of an existing market than creating your own. Phases 1 and 2 are for letting your ideas go. Use Phase 3 to sort your ideas, check them out. Do this for yourself and work with a partner. Make sure you are honest in Phase 3 and take only those ideas that are workable, and throw out the rest. Remember that competition is not necessarily bad; it has been proven that in a town with a McDonaldÕs burger restaurant, that opening up another McDonaldÕs in the same area can actually improve sales in both stores. People want more of a good thing, but be sure you donÕt pick out a business with an 800 lb. Gorilla that owns the market. For example, it would be silly to create a Personal Computer software system to compete with Windows. But if you could sell something that Windows users would want, you gain part of a natural market. What you are looking for is your natural market, things that you understand and can easily explain, and offer, your target customers with affiliate programs. Phase 4. Market Research: Start Thinking About Your Affiliate Programs The first step was brainstorming exactly what it is you are selling: 1. A solution to the problems your customer has. 2. Supplies to help them solve the problem.. Now find out what your likely affiliate programs are. This is the time to start looking among your current clients, their vendors, associates, and others. Can they generate any leads for you if you were to offer the products from these programs? Make sure that you can solve the problems for the customer base you have brainstormed, and donÕt be afraid to repeat this exercise. Keep testing until you find affiliate products that can solve your customerÕs problems. Getting Started: What is Selling on the Internet? Now that you have an idea of what it is you would like to offer via the Internet, apply this to what is actually selling online. Certain products move better than others; for example, most online shoppers would not buy an expensive suit, because the expense and need for personal assistance are not available. Yet these same people would buy apparel from a catalog like L.L. Bean or Habitat, Inc, the kind of apparel that is not priced too high, that you can look at a picture and decide whether or not you want to buy it. At the end of this chapter is a long list of Web Sites you can visit to discover exactly what it is that people are buying, Apply this to what you want to sell via affiliate programs and use the following criteria to measure whether or not you select an affiliate program to work with. You should be able to: 1. Open an online store, ie, Web Site, as your primary business or additional revenue stream and immediately begin selling products. 2. Take advantage of online customer service, automated order processing and delivery, and the ease of having a business that virtually runs itself with no overhead. 3. Drive people to the door and help them decide what to buy, wherever they are. 4. Use your highly trafficked Web Site to attract traffic and generate residual income. 5. Increase your profits by putting an automated system in place that works for you. Most of all, you do not need to be an expert. The affiliate store and staff are set up to answer questions and fulfill the orders. Your job is to simply get people into your store.. All you have to do is market and cash your percentage of net profits your store generates, hopefully doing something you enjoy. Sound good? LetÕs look at what is selling online: What is Selling Online: The Top 10 1. Computers: If you want to prosper during this Internet economic revolution, then you need to offer the products that people want to buy, quickly and easily. Today, they want computers. Lots of them. They want faster computers and modems, better monitors, and more software. Most people who visit your Web Site are using computers. Our whole Information Age is powered by computers. Here is a conservative estimate of what the future holds for Online Computer Hardware and Software Sales: 1996: 140 million 1997: 323 million 1998: 701 million 1999: 1,228,000,000 2000: 2,105,000,000 Source: Forrester Research While computers are an excellent item to sell, the affiliate programs are even better. The challenge is in selling such a wide variety of products. If you choose to sell computers, make it one of your core focuses and make sure that you know what you are doing. Once again, donÕt worry about being an expert. I had a computer salesperson in my staff in San Francisco who had never sold computers. He simply read trade journals, one hour a day for a period of 3 months. By the end of that period he was the best salesperson in our office. Computers have and will be a major part of this market. 2. Books are the next biggest item sold online by most estimates. You have a broad selection of affiliate programs to choose from, including Amazon.comÕs famous affiliate program. Barnes and Noble, Books.com, and many other book stores await you. Measure these stores on the profit margins you can gain from them. Remember in our success stories about the engineer who started with Amazon.com, but found out that most of the books he sold went at just a 5% profit margin. He opted to go with Books.com, which gave him 12%. Another Web Site, targeted towards a niche market of Pets online, generated over half a million visitors a month and ran into a similar decision. This Pet Web Site owner was selling many books for Amazon.com and negotiated with them to get 15% of everything he sold. Then he called the distributor of books (this affiliate was selling many, many books) and asked if he could sell directly from the distributor and by pass Amazon.com. Because of the high volume of books he was selling, the distributor allowed him to become a direct reseller. Books are an excellent product to sell as an introduction to your customer base. Keep in mind that even at 15% per sale, you are most likely selling a product in the $20-$30 range. ThatÕs only $3.50 to $4.50 in profit per book sold, not even close to our $20 a product item outlined at the beginning of this book. Yet books can help you get your customers used to buying from you, and they obviously like to buy them online. It is estimated that 23% of the people online buy books (Iconocast, October 1998). Look around at any of the bigger Web Sites and you see the are all offering books. 3. Travel is a huge market online and one of the most lucrative. From Web Sites like Travelocity to MicrosoftÕs Expedia, the ability to book cheap travel online is powerful. Travel will continue to be a major portion of Internet sales. There are some affiliate programs with these travel opportunities, but donÕt just think about selling plane tickets. You may find people want to travel to a certain destination, which may result in a significant market. For example, Hawaii is a highly searched for vacation spot online. You may be able to sell apparel, travel, vacation rentals, and other Hawaiian related products. Just look in a search engine and you will find a battle for the top spots for this heavily searched for term. Keep an open mind if you are thinking about travel, because there is much more than the flight involved. People also like to remember where they have been with clothing, souvenirs, and videos. 4. Music is one of the biggest markets online as well. From music CDÕs, to personalized CD recording where you pick your own songs to make your own records, the market is vast. People like to buy music, but like books it comes with a lower profit margin than most other items. Even if an estimated 10% of people online buy music, you have to be sure that your target customer base is interested in buying this from you. Two great affiliate programs are Music Boulevard and CDNow; both offer decent profit margins, but this is again a commodity product. 5. Apparel and clothing are just starting to catch on the Internet, as people see the traditional catalogs make an online play. In 1997, American Online found that apparel was its biggest seller during the Christmas season. Apparel and clothing can be a seasonal play, as most buying happens during the December holidays, Valentines Day, and MotherÕs Day online. These patterns may change as more people shop online, but for now the apparel game is wide open. 6. Toys are also big online, with affiliate programs running with good profit margins. This is most often a seasonal play as well. Etoys is the biggest player in this market, but look for a wide variety of companies as this market develops. Also consider that toys shouldnÕt be limited to Christmas-type gear; if you count computer and Nintendo/Sega type games, this market is very big. 7. Flowers and Greeting Cards are an obvious fit for the Internet. If you can pick up a phone and make a transaction easily, the Internet can facilitate this commerce. From companies like 1800Flowers to ProFlowers.com, these sites have networked florists nationwide and offer decent profit margins. Products like this would again move in according to certain holidays; MotherÕs Day in the United States is one of the biggest days for sending flowers, as is ValentineÕs Day. 8. Outdoor gear and sporting goods are also a good target. In particular, fishing is a very popular sport online. Most of the major sports like football, baseball, and basketball are dominated by the bigger sites, many of which do not use affiliate programs. Still you can look around for what is available. Outdoor gear for hiking, fishing, for extreme sports like rock climbing or mountain climbing may move well, along with vacations that relate to this gear. Here is where you could combine the travel with the actual sales of outdoor gear. Imagine a site selling fly fishing rods and travel to select areas to fly fish around the world. If you worked through our 30 second brainstorm and found fishing as your passion, you have an active market with many possibilities. 9. Vitamins and health food are really just beginning to make their niche on the Internet. From affiliate program providers like GreenTree.com and MotherNature.com to many, small suppliers of vitamins and health supplies, this is another growing market. In a recent study, the one thing people didnÕt mind hearing about often were health related items. If people are continually concerned about staying fit and healthy, this kind of product line makes sense. It encourages repeat business and is likely a good, long term play. 10. Personals online are very popular. One and Only is the most famous singles program, which run the gamut from dating services to just about anything you can imagine. Some of these personals tend to run into adult services, so be sure it is something you are interested in before you get started. Research what the product line is and look for subscription based services, which can be very lucrative. Many Personals services have monthly subscriptions; you get paid each month the person stays as a subscriber. Look into these programs for long term revenue. Bonus 11. Credit cards and merchant card services are an excellent market online as well. The business to business market for services is very big, and there are some great profit margins to be made on moving people to merchant card services. Some credit card companies are offering bounties, or payment per customer, for referrals, but they donÕt tend to add up to much. Still this market obviously has a major market online. This is a simple overview of the best selling products on the Internet; subjects like pets, investing, and career development are major categories that we have not touched on. Look for more growth in these industries as affiliates programs spread. In the next chapter we will cover the places to go and find your affiliate programs; for now use the following list to keep up with the latest trends in the market. Remember these sites, because they keep up to date continually with the growth of the Internet. This is an important tool in determining what affiliate programs to offer. One last word of caution; donÕt expect to stay with all your affiliate programs for a long time. Test them and move to the ones that give you the most sales. Be flexible and set your goals so that you can gauge whether or not it is worth your pursuing for a long time. Charts, graphs, industry trends and projected growth Charts and Graphs re: Sales Projections on the Internet and types of product purchases: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/reports/1998-04-Netshop2.html Spending by location (USA, Europe, etc.), gender, experience, and age group: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q49.htm Web vendor to traditional vendor comparison, suggesting that the web has certain positive attributes and credit safety is not an issue: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q6.htm Opinions on Providing Credit Card Information: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q4.htm Which of the following features are MOST IMPORTANT to you personally, when shopping, or considering shopping, on the Web. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q66.htm How often do you use the web for shopping for personal reasons? (including gathering product/service/vendor information, placing orders, making purchases, and/or customer support) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q80.htm How often do you use the web for shopping for professional reasons? http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q81.htm Listed below are some of the alternative manners in which you might purchase from Web vendors. For each scenario, please indicate how likely you are to buy a competitively priced product/service that you really wanted. (In each case assume that you are providing the needed information, and receiving the product/service directly from the vendor.) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/q5.htm How often do you make a decision to purchase (or not to purchase) a product/service based primarily on information that you have gathered on the web whether or not you use the web to make the purchase? http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/graphs/shopping/personal/q99.htm Growth Projections of the Internet http://www.c-i-a.com/199809iu.htm Forrester Estimates Worldwide Internet Commerce Will Reach As High As $3.2 Trillion In 2003 http://www.forrester.com/press/pressrel/981105.htm A statistical snapshot of the net today, and a glimpse of where its going tomorrow. http://www.emarketer.com/estats/welcome.html How many are online throughout the world? http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html Choosing the Best Affiliate Programs For You The old saying in marketing applies to affiliate programs; there are two important keys to any business: 1. Making the right offer, so that it clearly outlines the benefits to the customer 2. Making that offer to the right list, the people who are interested in the product or service. In this workbook you have identified what you would like to do and the best selling products online. Now is the time to put these two together and select the affiliate programs you would like to offer at your Web Site. If you are looking to select affiliate programs, there are numerous sites popping up all over the Internet. Many great directories are out there in a market that is fast becoming crowded. Two of the oldest and most reliable Web Sites to look for affiliate programs are: 1. Refer-It, http://www.refer-it.com; they judge the top affiliate programs and rank them. 2. AssociatePrograms, http://www.associateprograms.com, which is run by Allan Gardyne and is a rich resource of information on the subject. Before we begin, remember that there are two ways for you to affiliate with these programs: A. At your own Web Site, which you update periodically to reflect changes in your product line and marketing; B. Via your email/ezine list, which can operate without a Web Site. You would be surprised how much more effective a good ezine/email list is than a Web Site. Web Sites are important but donÕt expect your visitors to be so energetic that they seek you out. If you have a Web Site, be sure to capture email addresses of your visitors and remind them to come back. You will hear this theme throughout this book for a reason; the companies that do well have great email lists. Their customers donÕt mind hearing from them. Amazon.com has an email mailing list, including sending out to its own affiliates. Xoom.com has built its entire business on email contact, follow up, and sales. Most affiliate program providers seem to be in love only with banner advertising at your Web Site, which is not necessarily the best way to go. Banner ads get a small amount of traffic and sales generated (see the next chapter for details). Consider this when you are choosing an affiliate program. Here are the rules to follow when selecting an affiliate program: 1. Get paid well for whatever you do. Make sure that you have a good selection of products to choose from. If you are selecting more than one affiliate program, make sure they fit together logically, ie, donÕt sell flowers and hunting gear. 2. Select your affiliate program based on your target audience and your ability to contact them. Be wary of signing up for every program under the sun and hoping that a few will work out. Even though most of them are free, the cost in your time and lost customers is tremendous. Confusing people by posting as many affiliate programs as possible will not work. 3. Make sure that the sign up procedure is easy to fill out. If you find it complicated to begin with, you may find it hard to work with the affiliate provider long term. Also be careful not to pick up an extra work load with an affiliate program. Amazon.com, for instance, insisted that people only promote recommended books at their Web Sites. While the logic is good (an endorsement is much more powerful than simply posting a banner ad at a site), the delivery was flawed. Affiliates wanted an easy way to send traffic to Amazon, even if they got paid less. The result was a growth of this program to include raw links and searches from other Web Sites at a reduced commission. 4. In keeping with this workbook, take time to find the products you would like to offer. DonÕt sell anything you donÕt really believe in, or from a company that is not reliable. One bad experience can ruin your customerÕs opinion of you, even if it is the affiliate company that is the source. 5. Check the way the affiliate program tracks and records your orders. Do they offer you statistics, email notification, and are they good about paying on time? Read about the rules and the system they have set up. Do they offer a third party auditing service? Have people complained about this service? 6. Do they give you the marketing tools to help you sell more? Look for banner ads, free reports, text ads that you can use in an ezine or classified advertisement. The more you have to create, the bigger the burden on you. But also keep in mind that if you are really selling well with a company, you should look for innovative ways to incorporate this into your business. Are they willing to go along with your innovation? 7. Finally, make sure that you have some way to generate long term revenue. Few affiliate programs can afford to generate traffic back to your Web Site. Do your best to capture information about your visitors and your buyers. If you find that someone bought via your Web Site, send them a thank you note as well. If you let the affiliate provider do all the work, you will lose a long term customer. Make sure you build your customer list. HereÕs a checklist from Refer-It to help guide you along the way. Affiliate Program Checklist You can find this updated CheckList at Refer-It, http://www.refer-it.com, the leading search engine for Associate/Affiliate Programs Top of Form 1 1. Does the Program allow only certain sites to join (e.g., specific demographics, minimum website traffic, and focus of the site)? 2. How long has the Program been in place? 3. What sites are currently in the Program? 4. What form of compensation is offered Ð actual cash or only store credit for their product or service? 5. What are the financial terms of the agreement -- a percentage of the transaction or a flat fee? Does it stay the same, or change with the amount of volume you send them? 6. Is there a set-up fee, either in terms of dollars or traffic? 7. How will the referral be tracked? Will a third-party audit it? 8. How is reporting of actual activity done? How often is payment made? 9. Do you get paid on only the first purchase or on every purchase? What if your lead returns to their site later Ð do you still get paid a fee? 10. How long is the agreement in effect? What is the "out" for both parties? 11. What is your responsibility to promote their product on your site (banners, buttons, links)? 12. Will your visitors find these advertisements valuable or annoying? 13. Are you sure you want to give revenue away to another site? Perhaps you should do your own merchandising. Visit http://www.refer-it.com for more information on setting up your own program. The Seven Keys to Success for Affiliates If you are an affiliate who wants to increase your SellThrough, you are in luck. Remember read your complete, 7 Step Affiliate Action Plan. Discover how to increase your traffic and sales at your Web Site using tested, proven techniques. This 30 page Action Plan is yours to download at our Web Site. Affiliate programs may seem an easy way to sell. The problem is, most people focus on a one shot sale. They spend all their time chasing new customers, trying to sell them, and then forgetting about them. Without a good sales process and target marketing, sales will not be high. Without generating traffic to your site, you will not sell at all. If you do not follow up with your loyal customers who have bought (talk about a sign of trust), you are wasting your time and money. The statistics prove this out; first time sales will generate, at best, a 5% purchase rate. That would be an excellent result; most often it is between 1-2%. ThatÕs one sale per hundred visitors! Repeat sales to a loyal, buying customer base is much better; statistics show that customers who have bought once will respond much better to your offer, more like 20-30% purchasing. ThatÕs 20 customers per hundred compared to one per hundred. Remember this statistic as you market. Someone who buys from you once is more likely to buy from you again and again. Make sure you treat your customers with respect and build up your list of customers. This is the most crucial part of your business. Affiliate programs give you multiple products to offer your customers, but make sure you take the same common sense steps you would in the real world. Becoming an affiliate for other Web sites' products and service is a great idea if you take the right steps. The following are things to look for, and ways to plan out what you are about to do. 1. Sell One Thing and Sell it Well Web flea markets don't work for the most part. The Web is a virtually free publishing medium that allows people to offer anything quickly and easily. This is also the weakness of this "free" distribution system called the Internet. It is free in terms of printing costs, but not in terms of time. A Web Site with tons of products and services is a tricky venture to succeed with. For example, most people have 3-4 books in mind when shopping. Why would you approach them with 3 million titles? The same logic applies to what you are offering. Focus on a few good products and sell them well. So many Web Sites try to offer everything under the sun; this approach is confusing and has never proven to be a good basis to sell. Focus on a few products and sell them very well; then follow up to offer other products and services. Think of it this way; if you have ever been in a restaurant with children, you will notice that waiters often approach them differently. Instead of showing them a whole slew of choices on a menu, they point the children to one or two choices. The parents are happy, and the child can make a simple choice. Apply this same approach to your Web Site; focus your visitors on just one or two products, and sell them very well. Do not confuse the issue by trying to sell them everything on one visit. People simply do not buy things that way. 2. Get Good Profit Margins Amazon.com is the leader in affiliate programs, which is surprising. They pay 5-15% per book. Books are often sold for less than $20. At best, you are working for tips like a waiter, at $3.50 a pop. Unfortunately, if you do not have a busy restaurant, this deal will yield little or nothing. Let's say you want to make $1,000 a month; you would have to sell 286 books to reach your goal. That is a huge volume. Now compare that to a $50 book; your best case scenario becomes $7.50 a book. You now have to sell 133 books to reach your $1,000 goal. With Web Success, our affiliate channel offers a 25% commission on our $97 training system, the entry level to our network. You would earn $25 per sale. To make your $1,000 goal, you would have to sell 40 of these packages. If you were to sell our Deluxe training systems ($497), you would earn $250 per sale. To reach your goal, you would have to sell 4 deluxe systems. As you can see, it is more realistic to sell 4 products with a higher profit margin than 286 books. It is simply a case of volume; will your efforts be rewarded with a good profit margin? Make sure you count this before doing anything. Believe it or not, it takes the same effort to market the cheaper book as the more expensive one. Do your math and see which products sell the best, and remember to lead with an entry product that is not too expensive, and follow up with the more expensive products later, after you have built up the trust and name recognition needed for a more expensive purchase. 3. Don't just Display a Banner Ad and hope for the Best Many affiliate programs put up banner ads; the visitor simply clicks on the banner ad and goes to the company's Web Site to make the buying decision. The problem with banner ads is that 1-2% of people will actually click on them; so if you generated 1,000 visitors in a month, only 10-20 will even click on the banner ad. If you even convert 5% of those to sales, you will make only one or two sales a month. It is all a game of numbers; if you have a site with great traffic, this can change. But volume businesses are difficult to profit from; the bottom line is, do more than just put a banner up at your site. The same logic applies to posting at newsgroups; because it is so easy to post to many newsgroups, people believe that volume will generate results. The results have proven to be awful; mass newsgroups postings, like bulk email, are dangerous and rarely yield the returns. They are more a headache than a benefit in most cases. 4. Use Content, Updates, and Keep your Site Consistent Remember that you are selling a product or service; you are not just posting an advertisement at your Web Site. Use content to enhance what you are doing. Amazon.com encourages this in their reseller's program; you are urged to review and recommend specific books for your target market. If you just send people to Amazon's Web Site, you get a smaller percentage of the sale. Amazon.com had the right idea; a product recommended to a customer is more effective than a million titles at your Web Site. A consumer likely has 3-4 titles in their head when they shop; point them to the right ones. Give them a zillion choices and you confuse them. So keep updating your site, keep it consistent, and try to emulate the page that you will be linking to. If it changes, it tells the customer they are in a different retail space. This may affect their purchase decision; anything that makes them notice a difference can interrupt their impulse to buy. Keep your customers comfortable and within the same purchase decision. 5. Target your Market If you try to sell to everyone, you will sell to no one. It is that simple. It is amazing how people do not target their market. They try to sell everything under the sun. Once again, it is the illusion of a volume business. If you think this will succeed, go down to your local retail store. Look at the small profit margins they have to deal with. Retail is a brutal game. My friend Jonathan Mizel has a great saying; sell expensive products to rich people. More importantly, target your market and make sure they can afford what you have to offer. And make sure you can afford to live on what you will be earning. 6. Market Your Site The bottom line is that you will have to market the site and the offer. If you just put up a number of affiliate programs, hoping one will pull, you are taking the magic dust approach. It is like the lottery; you may win, but the odds are against you. Take the responsibility to market and promote your offers; find out where the customers are and drive them to the site. By many estimates, you will have to generate 500 visitors a day to make decent money; thatÕs over 15,000 visitors a month. Your minimum amount of visitors should be 5,000 for a successful program; it is simple a case of math. One percent of 5,000 is 50; can you make enough money on 50 sales? Not if you are making $2 a book at Amazon.com. But if you are making $25 a sale, you could make $1,250 per month. Keep your expectations realistic; realize that marketing and sales are a numbers game. Know the numbers you hope to generate and focus on those affiliate programs that give you the best bang for your time and effort. 7. Take Precautions to Make Sure you Get Your Share Like any business, check out what is going on. Affiliate programs are simply your chance to resell other's products and services. Make sure you believe in what you are selling. Take the same precautions you would in the real world; what will be your investment in time, and money? Have you actually tried the product or service? A personal recommendation and belief is much more powerful than selling something simply because it has a good profit margin. Are you just generating leads for someone else? I have seen affiliate programs that have no intention of paying you for what they are selling. One client had to wait six months after making tremendous sales for a company to simply get paid his commission. Make sure you get paid for what you sell. Often this means waiting 30 days for a monthly check. Sometimes it means quarterly payments, like Amazon.com does. Five Positively Profitable Marketing Techniques Every Affiliate Must Know If you understand all the elements of setting up an affiliate program, a natural question will arise: How do I get enough traffic to my Web Site to generate sales? The key to getting traffic is to put your energies in what will bring you back the most value. ItÕs like deciding where to put your efforts so youÕll get the most return. Choosing how to generate traffic means understanding that you have to adapt your efforts to see which is working best. Think of it like the choices you make for your house; if you had to choose between putting in a bathroom, which returns most of the value of your investment, versus putting in a pool, which is more fun but returns nothing on your investment, what would you do? Most affiliates, unfortunately, choose to put in the equivalent of a pool at their Web Site. They focus on short term marketing that brings them little return and demands enormous expenditures. Make your marketing time and money go further by focusing on the following 5 techniques. These will cut your time, costs, and headaches down, and help to boost your sales. 1. Ezines 2. Search Engines 3. Banner Ads 4. Press Releases 5. Internetworking: Strategic Linking Strategies E-Zine- The e-zine is just a fancy way of saying an article or collection of articles published online. Most of these come in the form of ÒnewslettersÓ and consist of various information that will hopefully be of value to those subscribers and visitors. The focus and purpose of the Ezine is to attract attention to other sites and services or products that will be available to purchase at a profit for the company offering it. Information is always of value and is the best way to get the interest of the person. You must offer some idea or concept that they cannot find anywhere else, or at least give that impression. Then, after giving a taste, build the desire to form that mental need for more. To properly measure the success of an ezine is to record the responses from the replies of the customers. If you are promoting the website of a friend by sponsoring his information in your newsletter, perhaps an open dialogue with that friend will enable you to track your success through his response, and this may up the value of your newsletter to him and others, opening other opportunities. 1. Always offer something for free to spark interest in the Ezine. 2. Publish or Swap Articles in other Ezines if possible. 3. Focus on Ezines that are related to your product or service. 4. Build Business to Business relationships with publishers 5. Gain access to ezine recipient list and offer yours. 6. Use ideas from others in tailoring your offer. 7. Search out for different and new Ezines and evaluate them. Did they have important information, are they sponsored by a company or and individual, what is their method of delivery, their topics, is it worth pursuing and contact owner to see how we can be published as well. 8. You can use search engines to find access to ezines or you can go directly to related subjects columns and find a wealth of publishers, companies and individuals who are eager to provide this information. There is email, fax, and mail access available from most publishers. 9. Sites to go to include: http://www.dominis.com http://www.bizweb2000.com/wwwboard/messages/1488.html 10. Most of all, be sure to develop your ezine list. If you send out messages regularly to your list, you forge loyalty with them. The next time you make an offer, they may remember you. Without an ezine, you will be sending out messages to people who donÕt know you. Even worst, you may spend all your time marketing to strangers, a less than 5% game of sales...more like 1%. More on that laterÉ Search engines are the simplest solution. Sometimes too simple. People just believe in these things, and I donÕt know why. ItÕs not like you find anything half the time you are looking in. IÕve never been through so many dead ends to get where IÕm going. Search engines perform a function of cataloging the Internet, but I use them for finding niche markets. Once I go there, there is no point in searching any more. HereÕs the criteria I developed: 1. If you can name your product or service in four words or less, search engines are something to consider. 2. If you can afford to always focus on them and stay on top, they can be a powerful tool. Be prepared to fight this battle every week though; if your keyword is one lots of people want, beware! 3. It is better to pay someone on a monthly basis, or a per click through (per lead) basis to test these out. Services run from $100 to $1,000, with clickthroughs costing anywhere from 5 cents to a dollar. Twenty five cents seems to be a norm. 4. Places to visit are a good reason to use search engines as a form of advertising HereÕs some good ideas for getting to the top of the search engines. Please understand that every search engine has its own unique way of looking at things. It is worth it to invest in one of the many excellent subscriptions for search engine positioning, such as Planet Ocean CommunicationÕs book at http://www.searchenginehelp.com Some tips for getting one top: 1. Do not waste your time posting to hundreds of search engines; post only to the top 7 including Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek, AltaVista, WebCrawler, Excite, and Hotbot. This is where 90% of your traffic will come from, and it is best to focus your energies getting on top of those. 2. Create doorway, or portal, pages to your site for each individual product you sell. Search engines used to frown on this, but as long as you donÕt play too many games, this is a great way to get on top. The logic is simple; create one page featuring one product and word it well enough that it passes rank at the top search engines. Use this for all your affiliate programs and even when you market, drive people to that single page. 5. Understand how the search engines look at what the keywords you are submitting: ¥ Many look for how early on a page you put a keyword, especially after the first tag. ¥ How many times a word appears on a page; donÕt take this to mean you should just repeat words. The search engines have improved their technology and incorporate standard English rules. Repeating words is not an effective way for getting on top any more. ¥ How many other Web Sites link to yours. Infoseek is well known for using this as a criteria, and like all things with search engines, it may change. But it isnÕt a bad idea to get many links. ¥ The ratio of keywords to total words is also judged. If they read too many keywords to total words, meaning that you are simply repeating again, it can work against you, so be careful. ¥ How close keywords appear together on a page; this is again to target those simply repeating key words and phrases. ¥ Where the keywords are located; some search engines rank highly if they are in the title. Only a few now look in what are called ÒMETAÓ tags, which appear at the top of the page. Some also look for words as links, in headers and rank this as important. Again this varies from search engine to search engine. ¥ Grammar; believe it or not, some try to check your grammar to see if you are cheating. ¥ There are specific places search engines look for keywords, including:: Title Meta Tags (Description and Keywords) Headline tags like H1, H2, and H3 Within links In the actual copy on your page In ÒALTÓ tags, which are used to describe graphics and sometimes a good place to hide keywords In comments tags like this: