You’re dead wrong if you think you know anything about being an affiliate. The tactics of the past few years just don’t work anymore. And if you don’t change your tactics, you cannot survive.

You’ve been duped

You’ve probably heard how easy it is to start an affiliate business. This is partially true. There’s no doubt it’s easier than starting your own business. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Here’s the ugly truth

And to make matters worse, you’ve taught to do it the hard way. The first thing you’re taught is to pick some great products. Next to look for easy keywords to target. Then to use these keywords to buy ads promoting the product. And just enjoy the commissions. But this just won’t work!

Forget keywords

Keyword advertising used to work. But keywords are too expensive now. So, throw it all away.

A better way

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here’s a new method that works!

• Start using CPA marketing
• Utilize demographics data
• Use image ads

Do CPA marketing instead of product promotion

CPA means Cost Per Action. It’s much better than promoting a product. Because it doesn’t involve payment. You get paid when they take an “action”. Like completing a survey. And getting them to do this is so much easier.

Instead of researching keywords, research demographics

Don’t waste time researching keywords (see below). But demographics are highly important. Once you’ve picked the CPA offer to promote. Next, you go to Quantcast.com. And research what kinds of people will be interested.

Use image ads

So far, you’ve got your CPA offer and your target demographics. Display networks allow you to target demographics with your ads. And use images as your ads. And there was no keyword research required. Plus you’re going to save a ton of money. Display networks charge a fraction for image ad clicks vs. keyword ads.

In closing

This is powerful method to make money online. Because getting started in CPA is free. You can buy image ad clicks for a fraction of keyword ad clicks. Display networks let you do demographics targeting. And getting them to take an action is much easier than making a sale.

Answer this question: What’s the biggest reason millions of people log onto the internet each day? The answer is simple – they’re looking for information. Information seeking is so huge that Google alone hosts 400,000,000 searches every day! So what does this mean to you? It means that you have a massive opportunity to give people exactly what they’re looking for – information. And when done correctly, you can get paid for it, too!

Info marketing 101

First, understand that this is the simplest kind of business there is. You develop a product that is nothing more than information. And other people buy this product to get the info. Pretty simple, wouldn’t you say?

But how does it all work?

You’ve got the basic concept – exchange info for money. However, to succeed people need to want the information you’re providing. So the key is to figure out what people want. How do figure that out?

One easy way to figure it out is with a simple search. Visit answers.yahoo.com or similar sites and look at the questions being asked there. You want to find something a lot of people are asking about. That people are having trouble solving. And solve the problem for them by writing an info product on it.

Power tip

If you’re concerned about information product development Think about this: An ebook is just a series of articles. Writing a whole ebook can be overwhelming. Just try to write one or two articles a day. And once you have bunch of good ones, expand and embellish them and combine them into a single ebook.

Why info products? Interestingly enough, we’re back to the name of this article Here are 7 reasons for you:

1. Simplicity and ease

An info product business runs on auto-pilot. Custom support is all but non-existent. So it’s nearly a 100% hands-free business. It’s like having an automated cash machine.

You have no physical inventory. You don’t have to ship anything. Your business is 100% digital.

2. Repackaging

After you’ve created a few ebooks. You can just combine them into a more expensive product. It’s nothing to combine the content from several ebooks. And you’ll be able to charge much more for this “new” product. There’s greater perceived value in a single big course. As opposed to a bunch of little ones.

3. Resale rights

Since it’s your product, you can offer other people the resale rights. Resell rights are very hot right now, because it’s much easier to get the resell right than to make your own product. Plus, you’re selling the same product . . . but for 3 times the price for the rights!

4. Leverage

It’s your content, so you can use it in as many different ways as you want. Break it apart and create a multi-part email series with it. And build your list with it. A list is it’s own reward!

5. More leverage

Utilize your content in as many ways as you can – like creating a few reports from parts of the ebook. Then you can use the reports as the front-end of your product funnel. You can give them away or even charge a small amount for them. And you’re creating targeted leads for your main product all along. And if you’re really clever, you’ll let your affiliate use these reports as marketing tools. Affiliate, you say? Yes!

6. An army of affiliates

This one is huge. If you’ve got products you own. You’re able to let other people market it for you. How would you like to have an army of affiliates selling your products? Well, you *need* your own product to get affiliates.

7. Joint Ventures

OK, this is by far the biggest reason why. The number one way to launch your success is through joint ventures. So, I’d say this is the most important reason to have you own products. No products of your own = no way to do joint ventures.

Summary

If you don’t want to sell digital products by now, then you’ve probably been sleeping. With your own info product you can write your own ticket. Because you’re the boss! So, don’t waste any more time:

• Go to answers.yahoo.com
• Discover what questions are being asked
• Start providing information

Information product development really is that simple. Before you know it, you’ll have your own info product.

There is no doubt that web page audio significantly increases results. If you don’t have audio in your arsenal, you’re missing out. Audio increases opt-ins. Audio increases sales.

What makes it so effective?

There’s no real mystery. Most of the web is cold and impersonal. It makes your site more “human”. And adds the feel of a real live person. Basically, audio brings your site to life. And people like to interact with things that are alive!

Some more benefits

You’ll receive two immediate benefits to your bottom line when you employ the use of audio. You’ll convert more visitors into buyers. And second you’ll save money on the sales letter. You see, you’ll be able to skip the expensive copywriter. You can just add your own audio. An authentic message from you will do more than the best ad copy.

You’ll get more subscribers, too. Most people need to be led by the hand. Just add a short audio message saying: Enter your email address in the form. A simple message like this will increase your opt-in conversions by 305% or more!

Some ways to use audio

Put a welcome message that plays automatically on your site, Most websites are cold and in-human. Grabbing their attention like this helps you keep them on your site.

Step-by-step instructions. Just like in the opt-in example. Use an audio message to lead your visitors through a process. Use this to lead them through the ordering process, as well.

Get testimonials for your services and products. Written testimonials are good. But audio testimonials are great! You can just make up written one and people know that. So audio adds real believability. Which boosts your sales for sure.

Sneaky tick

Did you ever think of making a product just by recording some audio? Audio is faster to produce than anything else. And it still has a high perceived value. The great thing about audio products is people can take them with them on the go. And you can get someone to transcribe them for very little money. This much easier than writing the eBook yourself!

How hard is adding audio?

It’s actually really easy. There’s software that will show you how to add audio to a website. There’s no knowledge required on your part. The software records the audio, creates the button code, etc. Just paste the code you copy from the software. There’s nothing to worry about.

In closing

Here’s a recap of the benefits. Using website audio will increase your conversion rates. No doubt your sales will go up. And your opt-in rate will increase. And you can use it to create products and sales letters quickly. You’ll be one of the few you use these strategies. So you’ll be one of the few reaping the rewards. Get started right now and realize instant results.

Yes affiliate marketing rocks, but it’s really hard to get started. The reason is because there is a lot of competition. What you need to do is come up with methods no one else is using. There’s also a lot of information out there about how to do affiliate marketing, so it can be confusing. But here’s one tip that almost no one is talking about.

Video marketing

You can’t deny that video is powerful. People love watching videos and that’s why they’re everywhere. About the only thing that keeps people’s attention anymore is video. So you can put this to great advantage in your affiliate marketing.

Here are a few ideas for creating affiliate videos:

• Testimonials
• Record a walk-through
• Do an ordering video
• Record a preview of the members area

Testimonials

It doesn’t get any easier than this. Just turn on your web cam and talk. It does not need to be polished or pro. Just seeing another real person endorsing a product helps your viewers decide to buy. In truth, mistakes and mess-ups just make it more believable. You can literally just press record and talk. Use one of the other ideas if you’re feeling shy.

Record a walk-through

This is a great way to promote something without selling it. Basically you’re doing a tutorial on how to use the product. And seeing it being used is a great way to make people want to buy it. As long as the product is good, the tutorial makes them want it. So, obviously, pick a good product to demo.

Ordering

This technique is super powerful. Do a screen capture of the ordering process. There is nothing more motivating than watching someone buy something live. In the first place it acts as social proof. Once they see you doing it, they feel more secure. Second, it builds trust. They are much more likely to take your advice to buy when you’ve taken it yourself. And let’s not forget about good old fashioned envy. People want what they see you getting. You can add some extra punch to this by ending with: You’re gonna have to place your own order if you want to see the members area.

Record a preview of the members area

This is a great way to build value. What you do is record a tour of the back end. And show them everything they get by ordering. And it helps soften the skeptics. Once they’ve seen the back-end, they know it’s real.

It’s easy!

You don’t need any special training for this. Some very easy to use programs make the videos for you. The software really does all the work So you don’t have to worry about the technical part of this at all. Keep focused on the rewards:

• More sales You will increase your affiliate sales when you start using videos. Start using videos because people love them.
• Less refunds You’ll lose less of the commission your earn. Now they know what they get before they purchase. So they’ll be less likely to refund.
• Rise above the competition! This is a really easy thing to do. And almost no one is doing it. So, you’ll be way ahead of the crowd.

Take your affiliate promotions to a higher level and getting started with this now. Not using video is detrimental to you business. So do it!

If you’re going to be successful in internet marketing, you need to build a list. It’s the number one key to opening the success floodgates. Because you can market to your list whenever you want. It’s a resource you can tap at any time and generate income.

So, how do you build a list?

There are 3 factors in list building you need to consider:

• Your Landing Page
• The Bribe
• The Opt-in Success Page

Your Opt-in Page – Your opt-in page is the page you send visitors to to build your list. This page is the one that asks them for their email. This page needs to look professional. And it needs to be simple to see how to opt in. You’ve also got to make a strong “close”.

If you fail to make a strong close, you’re wasting your efforts. Your call to action tells the visitor what to do. Without this your opt-in rate will plummet. Oddly, if you don’t make it clear, people will be confused and end up doing nothing.

If you want to add some extra juice to your opt-in page add a video to it. This will grab your visitors attention and keep it. Plus it give you a chance to tell them to opt in multiple times. Then at the end of the video you can print “sign up now” on the video.

It’s OK, if you’ve never made a video before. You can hire freelancers to do this for you for a few hundred dollars. You can also find ready-made list building tools that have everything pre-built for you.

Your Bribe – The second component is the reason they are opting into your list. You have to give people a compelling reason to give your their email. Email privacy is very important to most people. This means your bribe needs to be very attractive.

The only way to make this work is to provide real value. Then it becomes something people want to get from you. And will be able to actually benefit from it. It could be:

• A PDF report
• A piece of software
• A video
• A multi-part email series

You’ve got to create some great content. It’s got to be something helpful for your new subscribers. And nothing sells like “free”. Bottom line is it’s got to be worth more to them than their email address.

Once again, don’t worry if you don’t know how to create the freebie. It’s super easy to hire someone to create it for you. Simply tell them what the topic is and they can write the content. One easy and effective bribe is a 5-part email training series. And you can get emails ghost written for about $20 – $25 each. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.

There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. Two things to keep in mind when writing (or buying) and email training series. First of all it has to give the subscriber what you promised – valuable information. And it’s nice if it earns you some money, too. One very easy way to make some money from your list is with affiliate marketing. This is such a simple solution because you don’t have to create the product. And you can earn some commissions immediately from your emails.

The Opt-in Success Page – Finally, you need to consider your opt-in confirmation page. This is the page your subscriber sees after they opt in. It’s a great idea to give them some valuable information right on the thank you page. Then they feel good about giving you their email address. And it helps you establish the relationship. It also makes them more likely to open your emails.

Again, a simple solution to this is to get an email marketing package that includes everything. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. You can either write the content pages on your own. Or have someone ghost write for you.

In closing

Whether you decide to build your email funnel yourself. Or pay a freelancer to write produce it all for you. Or if sign up for a “complete package” solution. It’s just important that you start today building your opt-in list. Because as soon as you’ve got your own list . . . You’ve got a license to print money!

Presell like a pro

The most important thing you can do to increase your affiliate commissions is to presell properly.

First, what is preselling? There are two components to it – art & science. The goal is to get your reader prepped to make a purchase. Then when they’re ready, refer them to the product website so they can buy it. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.

In a nutshell, you provide value. And then refer them to the product website. In just a minute, I’ll explain exactly how to presell. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Just a few of the reasons you want to presell.

• It helps your reader trust you – And gaining the trust of your readers helps them want to click your links. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
• Preselling is disarming – Nobody likes to be sold something. By not doing that to them, your reader is less defensive. This means they are more open to what you’re saying. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
• It creates buying readiness – Now they trust you and feel open to your message. Being open means, they are open to everything you give them. For example, the sales message on the page you’re linking to. Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
• Your commissions go up – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. With a feeling of trust and openness. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
• Your customers are happier – Your referral now feels like they decided to buy. Instead of being manipulated into buying. And this makes them feel better about the product they purchased.
• Preselling increases your bottom line – A satisfied customer doesn’t ask for a refund. Which means you keep more of your affiliate commissions.

Clearly preselling makes sense. You increase your profits. And increase your customer satisfaction. That’s a clear win-win.

How does it work?

OK, now you understand why it’s so important. So, hopefully you’ve decided to start preselling. You’re ready to learn how to do it properly. As I mentioned earlier, it’s both an art and a science.

Mastering the art

Effective preselling requires gaining your readers trust in order for them to let down their guard. Honestly, the only way to do this is to provide real value in you content. But you can’t give them so much that they think they have everything they could need, and that’s what makes it an art. The idea is that they want more and the sales page you send them to gives them more. And because you’ve gained trust, they’re more receptive to the sales message and more likely to buy.

Scientific preselling

You also have to include some very specific things.

The first is how you present the information. You’ve got to map out your strategy before you start writing. In the end, you want to sell a specific product. You use the information to do this in one of two ways. The first method is to provide enough info to get them started, but not enough to finish. The second way is to provide all the information and let your reader discover how hard it is to actually implement it. Either way, the product sales page solves the problem.

Next, you have to use “convert linking” methods. Instead, you use a direct link to the product website. This increases your clicks. But how are you going to get credit for the sale, if you don’t include your affiliate link? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You use the “covert cookie” strategy.

Next, you want to make sure you’re linking on related words and phrases. People are used to clicking on hyperlinked words to get information they’re looking for. And if the words you hyperlink relate, your reader will naturally click them for more information.

Using this system, you’re virtually guaranteed to increase your affiliate business success.

Now for the bad news…

This process is not easy – at all! Think about everything that goes into crafting an effective preselling article: Awesome content. The entire process depends on your being able to provide useful information to your readers. To do that you have to have enough information to be valuable and be able to present it in a useful way. Preselling skills. First, you have to give good information. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And still leave them wanting more. Or make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.

Product selection. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. Even if you get the article written. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.

The technical know-how To be most effective you have to use the “covert cookie” method. This is pretty easy – you just make a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image with no border and make the “source” of the image your affiliate link. (But if you mess it up, your referrals won’t be tracked.)

Summary:

Now you know what it takes to be a Presell Pro. And doing this increases your affiliate commissions by over 500%! The important thing is to use these techniques for everything you promote as an affiliate. Please don’t be lazy. Put in the effort to reap the greater rewards.

The most important thing in any web business is traffic – lots and lots of traffic. The other 1% is what you do with that traffic, but if you have to traffic – you can figure out the rest. After getting the traffic you just need to convert it into subscribers and customers . . . but that’s the easy part. The important thing is getting the traffic and sustaining it.

How, then do you get traffic to your site?

Here’s a short list of great, free traffic generating methods:

• Web 2.0 Methods
• Article Websites
• Video Sites

OK, so how do they work?

Web 2.0 Sites

Web 2.0 is the name given to websites that get their content from their users. These are great sites to work with because they allow you to participate in this content creation. Because these sites get so much traffic, Google and the other search engines treat these sites with greater importance in their algorithms. And that’s important to you because it means that Google and the other search engines treat links from these sites as more meaningful than links from other sites. So, if you place links to your own site inside your content, you get a search engine ranking benefit from those links. That’s the real benefit of adding content to this sites – search engine ranking means ongoing free traffic. There are many more web 2.0 traffic tactics we don’t have time to get into here, but this will get you started.

Article Marketing

The next thing we want to talk about is article marketing. This is because article websites are really web 2.0 site. Article directories are sites where users (including you) can upload articles they have written. Just as with the other web 2.0 sites, having your content included gives you immediate traffic and search engine ranking. And the hidden benefit here is that your reach grows as other people take your articles and put them on their blogs and sites. And along with your article, they have to include your author information and a link back to you – so you get more free traffic and SEO benefits. Here are a couple article marketing traffic tips:

• Do your keyword research
• Tailor the content of your article for the keywords
• Be sure to link to your site on the keywords you’ve chosen. Do this inside the article itself and in your author’s bio.

Video

And finally, we need to talk about getting traffic from videos. Just like article directories, video sharing sites also rely on user-generated content. And just as article directories give you great SEO benefits and allow others to redistribute your content on their sites. video sharing sites give you all these same benefits. And in addition to this, because Google and the others love video so much, you can get listed for highly competitive keywords much more easily.

Here’s how to get free traffic using video…

• Set up your YouTube account
• When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
• Put relevant “tags” in your profile
• Add a link to your website
• Add 1 or more videos to your profile
• In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Summary:

If you take action on the items listed here you’ll have free traffic in no time.

This article explains how to select a profitable niche for your membership business.

First – Look for Fanatics

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. What’s a fanatic? It’s someone who is so excited about a certain topic that they will spend their time and money on information about it. Now that we know what we’re looking for, let’s talk about how to find them…

• One simple idea that’s easily forgotten is to scan the magazine racks when you’re out and about. Because it’s becoming harder and harder to keep print periodicals profitable these days, if you see a magazine on the shelves, you know it’s making money. And that means there are lots of people interested in it. This is a very good indication that it’s a good niche for you to go into.
• Watch and listen for fanatics in your daily life. Pay attention to conversations, social events, TV, restaurants, public places to see what people are talking about. If people are talking about it, they are interested in it. And that may also mean they’re willing to pay money to learn more about it.
• Again, looking in the physical world for clues you can tell there are lots of people interested in something if there are clubs and organizations around the topic. Conventions are expensive to hold and attend, so if one if going on that’s another strong indication of a good niche to go into with your membership website.
• And of course there are all the things you have an interest in, too! Chances are that if you like a certain topic or hobby, other people do, too. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
• Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. This service shows you the current most popular search terms. These topics are the hottest topics because lots and lots of people want information about them. Building a membership business around things people are actively searching for is a great way to ensure your success.

Next – Figure out if there’s money in it

Once you found a potential niche or topic to center your membership site around, you need to figure out if you can actually make any money in it. An easy way to determine this is to figure out if anyone else is making money in this niche.

Here’s a punch list for figuring out if anyone’s making money in your niche:

• First go to Google and type in the name of your niche followed by “blog” and “forum”. If there are blogs and forums related to it, that’s a good sign. This means there is a large group of people already assembled for you to market to.
• Search Amazon, Google shopping and eBay to see if people are creating and selling products in the niche. What you’re trying to figure out is if anyone is making money in this niche, and if people are selling products it means they are making money.
• Look at Google Adwords for the same ads are running over time. If people are running the same ad over time it means they are making money in the niche. They would not continue to spend money on the ads if there were not making a return from them.

Last, but not least… How hard will it be to break into this niche?

Once you’ve found a niche and figured out that there is money to be made in, you need to determine if you can break into this niche. How do you gauge the ease of entry?

• Figure out what kinds of products people are interested in. If it’s mostly physical products, coaching and live seminars, then it will be harder to break into this niche. The easiest membership website to create and maintain are information membership sites.
• The last thing you want is a marketing filled with tons of competitors. A few means it’s a profitable niche, but too many means you won’t be able to take a piece of it.
• Compare the size of the market versus the number of competitors. Some competition is a good sign – just make sure the market is big enough for you to join in.
• Market readiness. Are people ready to buy? Are the receptive to marketing messages? Some niches are made up of people who require lots information and have a very long lead time, and some markets are filled with people who will spend lots of money right now.

Putting it all together

So far, we’ve talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you’ve determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. If you’ve done your homework, your business will be a success because you already know your market is a profitable one with room for you. Learning how to run a membership website is a topic for another article…

Visitors to your site are critical – getting them there automatically is even better. Here’s how…

But, first…

The first thing you need to do before you start going after any traffic is keyword research. This is because you will building your traffic funnels around specific keywords. This means it’s critical to select your keywords properly.

A couple things to keep in mind when doing keyword research:

• Are the keywords you’re interested in attainable? This involves doing some competitive analysis to determine the ease of entry for each keyword
• What kinds of visitors do these keywords bring? If you don’t do your research you’ll end up with a lot of traffic that doesn’t buy from you. What you want is buyers!
• Will these keywords bring affiliates? Generating your own customers is great – having other people do it for you is even better. So, it’s important to also target affiliates in the keywords you go after.

Although this is an essential step, doing it all by hand can take a very long time. Hiring someone else to do it costs a lot of money. The upside is that these two factors keep most everyone from even doing their keyword research. If you’re smart you will use website traffic software to help you with this process. Using tools like this speed up the process and improve your results, too!

OK, now we can talk about traffic…

Now that you’ve completed your keyword research, you can begin using these keywords to get traffic to your website.

Here are a couple of clever ways to do this…

• Most people overlook the power of Surveys!
• “Answer” Sites
• Video

Surveys

Here’s the thing – people love surveys. It’s human nature. You can use this fact to provide “sticky” content for other website owners. They benefit by getting free content for their site and you get a link to your site under the survey. This allows you to get free website traffic from other people’s sites! Using just this one extra idea will put you ahead of your competition . . . who think surveys are for gathering information! So, get creative and make up a survey that’s wacky to get other people interested in putting it on their sites.

“Help” Websites

Maybe you’ve seen these help sites where people post questions and other people answer them. But, like the surveys, that’s not why you’re going to pay attention to these sites. You are going to generate traffic, leads and sales from them. Of course, the process of digging through these sites and pulling out the content info of leads for your business is very time consuming. The good news is that it’s easy to find website traffic software that can do this automatically. These tools put the whole thing on auto-pilot and just deliver the leads to you each day.

Video

Video is huge and sites like YouTube and Vimeo are extremely popular. These sites generate massive traffic and people watch over 2 billion videos a day on YouTube alone . So don’t miss out of this incredible source of free website traffic.

You don’t have to be able to make awesome videos for this to work. One super easy thing to do is take an article or website you’ve written. And use free screen capture software to record yourself reading it. You can even get software that will automatically do this for you.

The Bottom Line…

It’s not that hard to get traffic to your websites. Just be a creative and think outside the box a bit. Plus, there’s lots of great software out there to help you.

Get started right away:

• Keyword research first is key
• Then create some surveys born to go viral
• Take advantage of the “help” sites
• And don’t forget about video