Become a solid Gold affiliate marketer

If you want to become a solid gold affiliate marketer first there has to be an opt in form. The placement of this form is more important than any thing you are trying to sell. You also need to have content which let prospective buyers know you are an expert in your field or niche. It has to be placed where it is the second most important information on the site with the opt in box being the most important. These items need to be the first thing anyone going to you website sees. These two items make the biggest difference in how much you are going to earn from an affiliate site. It is not necessary to have return customers see this page so from emails send them to product pages.

Branding is important, your brand should be something that comes to a person’s mind when they think about your niche. With branding in place, their thoughts will now be on how to reach your website. If you have sent an email with the link in it they can reach your business simply by going to your email and clicking the link you have there.

An example of branding is from our original business idea. Wheelinallover implies wheels in motion, our logo is a wheel bearing, and our site was easywheelchairparts.com. Everyone who worked for the corporation at that time had spent doctor ordered time in a wheelchair and overall we had twenty four years experience in ordering parts for many brands of wheelchairs and repairing them.

More and more people who own affiliate sites are going to social and viral marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) is still important but paying for high dollar advertising is becoming a thing of the past. Paid advertising is effective but quickly becoming out of the reach of fledgling businesses. There are a few times paid advertising can be cost effective so be sure to check those out. An example of this is having your ad on the page when someone opens a competitors email.

My corporation earns more money from people who don‘t use the internet or under utilize it than we do from online sources. While we were learning to become affiliate marketers with our web site we came across this niche while searching for ways to market our core product. Our niche is now taking the best the internet has to offer to people and companies who are not computer savvy. We use gifts internet companies offer, in the form of free services from the internet and use these to open doors and build trust. We are affiliate marketers for these online companies however our customers are unlikely to hear about them over the internet. You would call this a solid gold idea. Find an area someone is under utilizing and fill that need.

Our core product and service is only of value to Brick and Mortar businesses. To use magnetic marketing instead of trying to hard sell our core product it made sense to market our core product after offering free services which are cost effective ways for these stores to generate more income. The free services require time with a business owner and an opportunity to tell about our core offering instead of trying to hard sell it. Our intentions are to use the residual income from the free services to fund our retirement. Residual income is where the gold is. It is money you work for once and keep getting return for.

One of our services is building websites for businesses or individuals who want to be in business. We build them using services which offer free websites and for the most part use them to show companies what is possible.

Once a company sees them they always have ideas of their own which makes it easy to move them on to a professional website builder especially after the drawbacks of a free site are bought to their attention. We are currently solidly affiliated with one professional website building company and working on becoming affiliated with another. We are also affiliated with three "free" website builders which pay us if a client upgrades, and working on a fourth.

In the rare case they want to stay with free we now know how to drive both Geographic and targeted traffic to a site. We are also affiliated with two companies who specialize in this and who charge rates that are reasonable enough to satisfy most companies. This expertise was hard learned with many hours spent working with an antique template trying to put a website together and finding both Geographic and targeted traffic as a way to gain independent contractors.

The people who are making the big money online in affiliate marketing all use a secret or magic button. You hear many “Guru’s” pushing their three to seven button “wonder” systems which are a bunch of garbage. The truth is they all use their (one) magic button to get the wonderful screen shots they show everyone, at least those which are not faked.

Yes there is a secret or magic button, only one, which is the send button for marketing emails. Most people like to think things over before they purchase and many actually do not buy until they have seen something offered usually around eight times. A properly worded and placed sense of urgency can often convince people to buy faster.

All of the Guru's use this button and tactic. Now a few of the just "regular" folk have learned to use it too. The ones who have, will not remain “regular folk” for long. Once a customer buys, if the product filled their need it’s easier to make new offers which they won’t wait eight times to buy as you have built trust.

When you hear people say "the money is in the list" they are referring to a double opt in email list. The biggest thing you have to sell is yourself in your niche. Once you have done this you will gain an email list which is where you find the gold.

If you pay close attention when you are being shown screen shots by a “Guru” the traffic rises dramatically after a large group of emails are sent. They don't tell you this is the cause, because if they did you would know their product is useless. Their specialty is knowing what to write and how to put it across in such a way to get people to push the button they want pushed. The one that takes money out of your pocket and put it in theirs. This is solid gold for them, at your expense.

The truth is most sales are made on the back end, in follow up emails, and only then effectively by people who know how to do it properly. The information to do this is out there if you can read between the lines or know the "real people" who are doing it. For the most part this information is sold. What information isn't sold is used in other ways which make money for the people quietly in the background who consistently pull in six figure incomes.

My corporation has spent close to $500 dollars for this information and still pay monthly to keep every thing current. We don't have time to test everything as completely as we would like so we pay a company who specializes in testing and split testing. We also have trusted friends give us results of what is working for them. Two things are key, when something works well duplicate it. When it slows down or stops working change it.

Always have two styles of the same information and test them against each other. Then use the one which brings the best results. At this point it’s time for more testing. Placement of parts of the text and colors can improve return rates, so once you have the one with the best results tweak it for even better results.

The first and most important thing an affiliate website does is build your email list. If the site doesn't do this you are losing potential sales. A potential customer might not remember how to find your site if your not well branded. An opt in form is important and placement is also. A email will remind them you exist and what you are offering. Be sure to include a link or URL to your site in every email so its easy for them to find your site again.

When we started using what we had learned the open rate for emails jumped from 1.2% to 8.4% and our return rate increased by 1.9% to 4.8%. Remember to track everything. With the right tools anyone can do it. Tracking is important because it shows where traffic is coming from and which of your emails is the most effective.

What we cannot track using tools is our return rate for emails within programs where the emails are read inside a site, Those we track on paper, Right now ours stands at 80% in four of these programs. We currently have people asking how to opt in to our mailing list from these “in house” email programs. These are social media and business related sites which have email programs inside them. We do not force our business on anyone but we do explain what we do when people ask. Telling when asked instead of selling has always worked better. If you follow our advice you will soon find that you too are a solid gold affiliate marketer.

© July 22, 2011 Lisech Global Ventures INC