Affiliates Haven

ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 9: Jeff Walker on How to Launch Products

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:44:29 +0000

Our guest this week is the man who literally invented product launches, Jeff Walker!

In this episode, Jeff shares how he accidentally stumbled on the formula that lets product owners generate huge profits from their launches, and which has since been used by industry legends such as Frank Kern, Ryan Deiss and many more to generate maximum sales and exposure for their products. Jeff shares how his product launch formula can be used in almost any niche market, not just the “big 3″!

You’ll also learn:

How Jeff steadily refined and improved his launches to make them as powerful as possible
What’s working now in product launches, and how to apply it to your business
How you can build a pre-launch list that will be a valuable long-term asset
The key stages in a product launch, and how they all fit together
How to run successful evergreen launches (meaning you can launch over and over, reaping the benefits each time)
Jeff’s #1 tip on how to pull off the ultimate evergreen launch!
And much more…

Jeff is the guy the gurus look to for advice on how to launch their latest products, and people pay big bucks for his advice on how to make more from their products, so you don’t want to miss this episode! It’s packed full of awesome advice that any infopreneur can use to take their sales to new heights!

More from Jeff:

Product Launch Formula – Jeff’s flagship training, and everything you need to know to successfully launch your product
JeffWalker.com – Jeff’s personal blog with thoughts on business, marketing and more

Other ways to listen:

If you’re enjoying the show, please leave us a review on iTunes! Please also leave us a comment below and let us know what you think of the show, future guests you’d like us to interview, or topics you’d like us to cover! We love to hear your feedback.

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

Announcing ClickBank Exchange 2012: Registration Now Open!

admin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 02:40:08 +0000

This year’s ClickBank Exchange is only a few months away! We’ve just opened registration and tickets are moving fast. The second annual ClickBank Exchange will take place on August 10th and 11^th in New York City, and we’ll be satisfied with nothing less than making this the best Internet marketing event of the year.

Click here to visit the ClickBank Exchange Site.

This year, to bring you the absolute best in the industry, we conducted a global search for our hand picked selection of speakers. The result will be an unprecedented gathering of industry celebrities, experts and thought leaders that only ClickBank could gather in one place, at one time, for one incredible action packed, mind blowing weekend.

During this two-day exclusive and content rich experience, you will discover real time cash creation secrets from the top Internet marketing millionaires, and learn traffic, conversion, copywriting, and empire-building techniques that you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

And as if that’s not enough to get you booking your flight, as a ClickBank Exchange attendee, you will rub elbows and share cocktails with the Internet marketing elite. Learn how become successful NOW, from those who have already done it hundreds of times over, including:

Robert Cialdini: Dr. Cialdini has spent his entire career researching the science of influence, earning him an international reputation as an expert in the fields of persuasion, compliance and negotiation. Learn how to improve your customer engagement and conversions by incorporating into your sales process the valuable psychological principles taught by Dr. Cialdini, the most cited living social psychologist in the world today.
Ryan Deiss: As 10+ year Internet marketing veteran, Deiss has become a widely followed and respected IM Guru releasing countless reports and courses on subjects ranging from Social Media to Continuity Programs and SEO. His company, Idea Incubator, currently contains 6 companies offering products in the health market, relationship market, IM market, and even household green cleaning products.
Joe Polish: Founder of Piranha Marketing, Inc., creator of the Genius Network interview series and Genius Network Mastermind Group, Joe commands $ 25,000 for a half day of private consulting. Since 1994 his 3-day business transformation events have attracted people from around the world to learn from Joe and other top-level speakers how to build an “ELF” business—one that is Easy, Lucrative, and Fun.
Chris Farrell: A full time Internet Marketer, Chris began in 2008 with no prior experience. Chris has steadily grown his business and following, creating dozens of online courses and eBooks and has made millions online.
Ryan Lee: Ryan Lee is one the world’s most sought after marketing experts and entrepreneurs. He is the author of 2 best-selling books and has been featured in dozens of media outlets including the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the cover of Millionaire Blueprints. He helps over 220,000 people dominate their markets through his daily blog at www.ryanlee.com, his products, sold-out workshops and his coaching programs.
Mike Hill: The master of traffic and conversion, and one of the most sought-after consultants in online marketing, Mike has forgotten more about online traffic and conversion than most will ever learn in a lifetime. Discover the latest trends from this marketing master.
Chris Haddad: Chris “Mr. Moneyfingers” Haddad is an elite level copywriter you can’t hire at any price. He’s the “secret sauce” copy guy behind several multi-million dollar launches. Learn his secret – a unique approach to sales letters and sales videos that crawl into your prospect’s mind and force them to pay attention . . .
And many more!

Click here for the full list of speakers.

Here’s the best part. As a loyal ClickBank Blog reader, we’d like to offer you an early bird rate to this year’s ClickBank Exchange for a LIMITED TIME ONLY. Book your ticket by May 11^th using coupon code “blogfan100” and save $ 100 off the conference price of $ 797. For other events featuring a lineup of speakers this good, you can expect to pay thousands of dollars. At $ 797 this event is a steal, which is why tickets are going fast. And with your $ 100 off limited time discount, you will be hard pressed to find a price this low for a conference of this caliber.

Don’t Miss Out. Register Now.

We’ve heard all of the excuses in the book. You don’t want to spend the money, you’ve got a vacation planned, we know the drill. But the bottom line is, investing in the Exchange is investing in your future. This is a conference for serious Internet marketers, ready to “get real” about reaching their potential and their ability to make money online. So grab your coupon code, lose the excuses, and make a commitment to yourself that you will be successful this year.

Register Now.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 8: Email Marketing Mastery with Andre Chaperon

admin — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:46:03 +0000

In this episode of ClickBank Insider Radio, Molly and I interview the email marketing master Andre Chaperon, who has mastered the art of writing automated email sequences that get massive results! Huge marketers like Ryan Deiss, Rich Schefren, Jeff Walker and many more use Andre’s tactics in their email marketing campaigns, so we wanted to get him on the show and get the inside scoop on just how he is so successful, and what makes his marketing different!

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Andre’s personal philosophy on email marketing- and why so many people get it wrong
Tips on how to get your audience to truly know, like and trust you, and how that leads to huge results
The #1 secret to getting insanely high conversion rates
Why Andre’s signature “Soap Opera Sequence” is the quickest way to build automated email profits
List-building secrets for those of us without a list to market to
And much more!

Andre is the guy the gurus look to when they need advice on email marketing—now you get the chance to learn straight from the master himself!

More from Andre:

Autoresponder Madness
Tiny Little Businesses (how to create profitable, sustainable businesses from start to finish)
Affiliate Bully (a great example of Andre’s Soap Opera Sequence, with no opt-in required)
The Autoresponder Madness process in a nutshell (referenced during the show)

Other ways to listen:

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

Test and Grow Rich

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:48:37 +0000

“Testing” is an ugly topic. Why? Because testing variables in advertising, direct mail, phone scripts and sales presentations requires discipline, diligence and patience. To get it right, you can only test one variable at a time. This means that if you change a headline, you can’t change anything else. Plus you have to make sure all other variables remain the same, like the mailing day or a war breaking out that has everybody watching CNN day and night or the President getting caught again with his drawers down or a hurricane hitting.

Frankly, most business people will just not go through the “detailitis” required to test – which is why it’s a very good idea to model proven promotions. And in some cases where you’re only going to use something once or twice, or you’re dealing with a very small number, it’s just not worth testing; instead, you take your best shot. But let’s assume you’re working on something you intend to use over and over and over again in some significant quantity, so that it’s worth real effort to fine-tune it…

I have some tips for you: first of all, there’s non-testing testing – huh? Well, I describe that in my book ‘The Ultimate Sales Letter,’ where I talk about the steps to take with a finished sales letter before you actually mail it. Second, there’s split testing, which is the fastest way to test and get to a reasonable conclusion. Let’s assume you have a postcard and you want to leave everything the same but test four different headlines, and you have 4,000 similar addresses to mail to. You do “nth name testing”; that means Headline #A goes to every 4th name, Headline #B to every 5th name, Headline #C to every 5th name, etc.

So you evenly divide the list without bias among the headlines being tested. Some media (like Val-Pak or MoneyMailer) will let you split test within a single buy. Third, there’s testing against a control. A “control” is a marketing strategy that already works well and you’re using it on a continuing basis – maybe it’s a series of letters you mail every month. You have been using it long enough you know what it produces. You have a “known” to measure against. Now you can start trying to improve that control, ideally one step or variable at a time.

If I’m trying to beat a control, here are the “hot” variables I’ll look at closely, to see if there’s room for improvement:

1. The offer

2. The guarantee(s)

3. The urgency of response

4. The big idea or big promise

5. The overcoming of skepticism i.e. credibility and believability

6. The style or tone of the writing itself

7. The look of the piece

By the way, little, very testable things DO sometimes make very big differences. Recently I showed an example in my newsletter of a guy who just added four rubber-stamped words to the outside of his envelope, and beat his control by 300%. I once brought a TV infomercial back from the dead by raising the price of the product.

Gary Halbert saved the Pearl Cream advertising by adding a particular bonus. In 1984, after attending my seminar, a dentist in Sacramento changed five words on his Val-Pak coupon and went from getting two or three new patients a month to 15 to 20. This is the sort of thing that makes direct-response advertising as frustrating as golf. (Did you happen to see John Daly miss a put seven times and scratch himself out of the tournament a few weeks back? Ugh.)

Obviously, you can’t test if you can’t, won’t or don’t collect accurate data. You have to code every offer, and track where every ounce of business comes from. If you have employees who are lax about this, you must educate them about the importance, discipline them if they goof it up, and ultimately can ’em if they won’t do it right 100% of the time. I confess that I fly by the seat of my pants in my business more than I should, but I can’t fire me, God knows there are days I should. Anyway, I can assure you: the clients I have with the best profits and incomes possess the best information about where their business comes from.

Let me switch gears and talk briefly about another aspect of “testing.” This is actually how all highly successful entrepreneurs view everything they do… as testing. They do NOT see things in the context of “success” or “failure” like ordinary people do, and as a result they do not become “de-motivated” like most people do. See, most people drain all the vitality, courage, optimism and git-up-n-go out of themselves by focusing on all the things they do that don’t work out well, as a compilation of failures.

But successful people understand the powerful impact of that negative reinforcement on their own self-image (somewhat akin to the impact of pouring a gallon of toxic waste into a pint of clear water, drinking the result, and wondering why the stomach backs up into the esophagus). Instead, they carefully organize the things they do into a series or sequence of experiments, testing options, and focusing on the ones they find that work. And they fully expect to go through any number of experiments that don’t pan out before walking away from the lab with a winner. This not only has practical relevance, it has profound psychological ramifications.

Just like a little tweak in thinking can make a big difference in the results of say, an ad or a flyer, a little tweak in thinking can make a giant difference in the life results experienced by an individual.

About the Author

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up. His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 7: Copywriting & Sales Secrets with Chris Haddad

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:41:24 +0000

In the latest episode of ClickBank Insider Radio, hosts Beau Blackwell and Molly Lane interview copywriting legend and master of persuasion Chris Haddad! Besides being a copywriting legend who wrote the sales letters for many record-setting ClickBank products in all kinds of different niches, Chris has created multiple top-selling ClickBank products of his own.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Chris’s advice on how to “invade and conquer” a niche market with your product
The importance of having a “hook” and how to develop one
How the “Magic Button” sends conversions through the roof
How to pick your battle in the sea of different niche markets
How to use just ONE sentence to grab the attention of your target audience
Chris’s golden rule for ultimate sales success

Chris’ advice is great for both vendors AND affiliates, so be sure to check out this episode!

Other ways to listen:

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 7: Copywriting & Sales Secrets with Chris Haddad

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:41:24 +0000

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Chris’s advice on how to “invade and conquer” a niche market with your product
The importance of having a “hook” and how to develop one
How the “Magic Button” sends conversions through the roof
How to pick your battle in the sea of different niche markets
How to use just ONE sentence to grab the attention of your target audience
Chris’s golden rule for ultimate sales success

Chris’ advice is great for both vendors AND affiliates, so be sure to check out this episode!

Other ways to listen:

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

How To Be Profitable With Your ClickBank Product (Part 2 of 2)

admin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:45:20 +0000

(This is part 2 of a 2 part post). Click here to read part 1.

Written by: Guest author, Kevin McClelland

Testing

OK cool – you now have traffic coming to your sales page… what’s next? The next step is to test absolutely everything you can think of on your sales page.

Believe it or not, things like the color of your background, your headline font size, what your “add to cart” button says (i.e. buy now, get access now, sign me up, etc.), and the height of your header image can all affect your conversions. Changing your headline font can be the difference between making $ 500 and $ 1000 in a month. Use a tool such as Google Optimizer to test various aspects of your sales page. You literally can never test enough.

I won’t try and give any specific tips for increasing conversion rates because with every product it will be different, but here are a few things I’ve had success with: videos on the sale page, arrows pointing to my add to cart buttons, making your guarantee offer nice and visible, and including lots of testimonials.

Capturing Leads

Have you ever heard the saying “the money is in the list”? For those who are unfamiliar with that saying, it refers to capturing leads usually with an email marketing service (Aweber or iContact for example). I am a big believer in this, as I have made a lot of money from leads I’ve captured and communicated with through email alone.

I highly recommend that you try and capture the emails of as many of your visitors emails as possible. There are a few ways to do this on a sales page. You can have a mandatory squeeze page that captures emails before visitors see your sales page (the downside to this is some people may close out and never end up getting to your sales page), you can use scripts that have email popup boxes when people try to leave your site, or you can offer a portion of your product for free in exchange for their email (example “Get 1 Free Chapter from my Cooking eBook to test out – simply enter your email below). Whatever you do you should be trying to get as many emails as you can without disrupting your sales process too much.

The next step is to create a follow up sequence with anyone who entered his or her email but didn’t purchase the product. Provide them with as much valuable content relating to your product as you can. Again, this can be sneak peaks at certain parts of your product, or whatever you think will keep the prospect interested in your product. Every now and again throw in a call to action to try and get them back to your sales page to purchase.

Note: The email marketing services allow you to automate your lists so when the prospect purchases they can be taken off the list. This way the emails aren’t being sent out to customers who’ve purchased already.

Tip: I find the more the customers you’re trying to target are like you as person, the more they are willing to purchase from you.

Don’t be overly annoying, and make sure you are providing value for free more than you are trying to sell. Once you have this all set up properly it will all be automatic and your sales will start to increase.

Cross Promoting Products

You’re now at the step where you have customers, and you have a list of people who didn’t buy your product but you know are interested in your niche.

The money making isn’t done just yet. You can now visit the ClickBank Marketplace and find similar products to yours that you can become an affiliate of and promote to your past customers and prospects list.

If your product is a video membership site teaching people how to cook Italian why not show them a great home wine making course, or a Chinese recipe cookbook?

I recommend purchasing the product first and trying it out yourself before recommending something blindly. This way you can actually give your personal experiences with the product and the selling will come easier and be more natural. If you don’t want to spend your money you can always take a look at the cool info that ClickBank has in their marketplace like average $ per sale and gravity and get a good idea of which products are the best to promote.

Lastly you can always begin the process over and create another product to cross promote to your now raving fans.

So that is how I’ve started to make a great income selling my own products on ClickBank, and I hope you found at least one or two points in here that will help you start making more money.

About The Author

Kevin McClelland is an Internet Marketer who blogs at his personal blog “DropoutGotRich.com” and has a growing lists of sites including his “Workout Tips” blog.

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

How To Be Profitable With Your ClickBank Product (Part 1 of 2)

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:40:23 +0000

(This is part 1 of a 2 part post)
Written by: Guest author, Kevin McClelland

Hey guys and girls, my name is Kevin and I’ve been an Internet Marketer for about 4 years now, going full time about a year and a half ago. I started first as an affiliate for other people’s Clickbank products, but have recently started selling my own products and would like to share some of my tips to becoming profitable selling your own product.

Creating Your Product

Even if you have already created your product you might want to read this, as there are some valuable tips.

The first thing you want to do is make sure your product is solving a problem.

For example, someone is overweight and wants to lose weight. You create a product that helps them lose weight – you are solving their problem.

A man wants to impress his girlfriend by cooking her a nice dinner… problem is he doesn’t know the slightest thing about cooking. You create a video site that teaches a beginner how to cook like chef – you are solving a problem.

If you aren’t solving a problem you will have a hard time trying to sell your product.

The next thing you want to do is figure out if there are enough people looking to solve that problem.

Lets say you have an idea to write a strategy guide that is going to help people beat your favorite N64 video game. Is there really going to be enough people looking to solve that problem to make it profitable and worth your time?

Remember no matter how good you are at getting traffic, marketing, selling, etc., you are only going to get your product in front of a very tiny percent of your target market. Focus on markets that have thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people you can target.

Sure the bigger market, the greater the competition, but there are lots of potential customers on the Internet to go around.

You can always find a big target market and find a smaller “niche” within that market. For example if you are doing a weight loss product, you could focus on weight loss for woman over 50 and still have a big market. If you are doing a cooking video membership site why not focus on people looking to learn how to cook Italian meals.

The worst thing you can do is put in weeks of your time creating an awesome product, only to find out no one is interested in what you have to offer. Do your research before you start creating your product and make sure there is a need.

Lastly I highly recommend creating a product worth at least 5-10x what the customer is paying. This is tough to judge in some niches, but as an example, if you have a course that teaches small businesses how to advertise online and you want to charge $ 100 for it, you will want to make sure that if your customers follow your course, they will easily make that $ 100 back and then $ 500-$ 1000+ more on top of that.

Another way you can look at that is lets say you have a weight loss product that costs $ 50. If you are completely replacing their personal trainer that would cost the person $ 1500, there’s a lot of value in your product for the customer so you shouldn’t be selling them too hard.

Product and Website Design

Alright, so you now have an awesome product that a lot of people are going to want to get their hands on. Next is “packaging” your product, creating your sales page, and creating your sales process.

A lot of products sold on ClickBank are “virtual” products, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need any packaging. Getting a graphic designer to create “packaging” for your product can pay off ten fold. If you are selling an eBook, you can get a book cover created, membership sites can make membership cards, and video courses can create DVD cases. These types of virtual packaging will make your product look more valuable in the eyes of potential customers (just make sure you remind them that your product isn’t actually physical and that it is just for display purposes).

If I was writing this a year or two ago I would probably come out and tell you to get a nice, professional looking template designed for your product’s sales page, but I’ve learned over the years from others and from personal experience that pretty websites don’t always result in the most sales. Sometimes ugly is better. This is something you will have to test on your own. What I would recommend as far as website/template design is that you choose a template that allows you to have content “above the fold” (meaning the part of your website that is visible when people first arrive on your sales page). This gives you room to put an eye catching headline, video, and/or content where visitors will see first. I also recommend having a sales page design that isn’t too distracting. Try to keep the eyes focused on the sales copy. Eliminating sidebars and other distracting stuff that takes the eye away from the sales copy is usually your best bet.

Lastly, create a sales process following the ClickBank guidelines. You have the option to offer customers a low priced front end product, and then upsell them on bonus products. For example, using our cooking example, maybe you will sell a basic cooking instruction book for $ 9, and once the customer makes the purchase they will immediately be offered an upsell of $ 39 to get access to the video instructions. Then after that you may want to offer them a bonus cooking for fat loss recipe book for $ 19. Create your sales process and make sure you get the customers email captured with an email marketing service somewhere along the way (more on this later).

Getting Traffic

Once you have your product and website set up the next thing you will need is, of course, traffic. I could probably write an entire article about finding traffic, but I will just throw out some ideas here.

The first thing you can do is try and get natural traffic from the search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). You will need to make sure your page is Search Engine Optimized (SEO’ed). Depending on your product this may be hard to do, especially if your site is new. For example, if you have a fat loss product it will be pretty tough to rank for “fat loss product” or “how to lose fat”. If that is the case what you can do is try to rank for a variety of “longtail” search terms. The easiest way to do this is to start a blog and write relevant, quality articles around your topic. Sticking with the fat loss product, you can start blogging about anything fat loss related and you may have people finding your site via searches like “yoga for fat loss,” “struggling losing weight because I’m stressed,” etc. Once the visitor is on your site you can direct them to your product via calls to action within your articles.

The next thing you can try is pay per click advertising. This is where you run ads and pay a certain amount of money every time someone clicks on your ad and gets taken to your sales page. Pay per click is popular on Google, Bing, and Facebook (just make sure you meet their guidelines). Be careful with pay per click advertising if you aren’t familiar with it, as you can run up your advertising very quickly this way. I’m not too familiar with search engine PPC, but with Facebook I know you can do some cool stuff such as targeting certain categories and interests, which really helps get your costs per click down.

My favorite way to get quality and cheap traffic is to contact website or blog owners that have sites within your niche and ask them if they are willing to sell you advertising space. Often times these sites are run for fun, and the website owner will be thrilled to be paid for advertising. Create a banner that stands out, grabs attention, and has a call to action and ask them to post it somewhere (above the fold is best). Another thing you can do is ask to buy an advertisement paragraph or sentence within their content. This gives you a great chance to create a solid call to action and get click throughs to your sales page. Plus it will help with your SEO (as long as you make sure they don’t “no follow” the link).

Lastly is something that ClickBank does a great job with – affiliates. As you probably already know, you can get other people to promote your product for a percentage of the sales. If you are offering a virtual product that doesn’t cost you money to take on a new customer I highly recommend looking at offering at least 50% commissions. Think of it this way – without the affiliate you wouldn’t be getting the sale. Assuming 50% and a $ 100 product – would you rather have $ 50 over $ 0? Offer your affiliates a generous commission and more people will be willing to promote your product.

Don’t be afraid to go out and actively search for affiliates. Find people who are promoting other products within your niche and ask them if they’d be willing to promote your product.

Also I highly recommend putting up an affiliate page, and link to it from the footer of your site. On this page include your ClickBank hoplink, and creatives (banners, email copy, etc.) that affiliate can use. The easier you make it for the affiliates the more affiliates you will get promoting your product.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article coming soon!

About The Author

Kevin McClelland is an Internet Marketer who blogs at his personal blog “DropoutGotRich.com” and has a growing lists of sites including his “Workout Tips” blog.

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

ClickBank Insider Radio Episode 6: Traffic Master Justin Brooke

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:43:20 +0000

We’re back with an awesome new episode of ClickBank Insider Radio, with a topic every Internet marketer wants to know about: how to get more traffic!

Since we all need more traffic, and getting traffic through sources like Google PPC has gotten much harder than it used to be, we went straight to the master of “alternative traffic,” Justin Brooke. Justin has mastered several sources of traffic that most people have never heard of, and in this episode he shares tons of useful tips on how to take advantage of the sources, drive traffic for pennies per visitor, and how to get the most out of your advertising efforts.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why Google and Facebook aren’t the only sources of quality traffic out there
How you can drive traffic to squeeze pages, sales pages, naked affiliate links- anywhere you want
The names of high quality, low cost ad networks you can start advertising on today
How to decide whether PPC or CPM advertising is better for you (and what the difference is)
The one thing you should never skimp on when advertising
Specific tips for getting more clicks and conversions on your ads
Why you should consider running paid traffic instead of trying to get visitors for free
And much more!

If you’ve been struggling to drive traffic, or just want to ramp up your efforts with some great new resources and channels, you can’t miss this episode!

Other ways to listen:

More from Justin Brooke:

TheTrafficStrategist.com

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog

Three Constants in Affiliate Marketing

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 02:49:57 +0000

Written by: Guest author, Simon Slade

Those of us who have been involved in the affiliate marketing world for a while are all too aware that it is an industry prone to change, and lots of it. A website that makes you money one day, might literally disappear from the search engine rankings overnight, and leave you struggling to find a reason why. The terms of service (TOS) on one of your favorite Web 2.0 sites might change in the blink of an eye, and you suddenly find yourself losing an important traffic or income source. Wouldn’t it be nice just to have some reliable marketing constants for once? Well today, you are going to learn about the three constants in affiliate marketing; these are the things that won’t change any time soon, and they should form the foundations of your affiliate marketing efforts.

1. Content is King

You’ve probably heard this term referred to many times before, without actually paying too much mind to it. However, one of the constants of affiliate marketing is that search engines and readers alike reward quality content. Not only are you going to rank higher in the search engines by creating original, well-researched content that provides value to readers, but you will also build trust. This trust factor will help you to achieve better conversion rates and more sales, since people are far more likely to buy from someone they trust.

Creating quality content IS actually an exact science, and there really isn’t much guesswork involved at all:

Find a problem that people in your niche have
Research a number of different ways to solve the problem
Write it out in a clear and logical fashion
Make sure your content contains good grammar and spelling
Teach what the headline of your article/content piece promises to teach (this is by far the biggest secret to creating quality content)

Many websites provide free and informative lessons on creating quality content.

2. Keyword Research

I used to have a high school history teacher who swore by what he called the “5 Ps” system – “Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.” Not only was this great advice for passing exams, but it relates directly to affiliate marketing as well. Proper keyword research is going to help you prevent poor performance (i.e. not making any sales).

For as long as people have been searching for information online through search engines, keywords have been relevant. According to Wikipedia, Google receives several hundred million searches per day, and with more people coming online every day, this number is only going to increase. It seems unlikely that search engines are ever going to disappear as one of the cornerstones of the Internet!

Keywords are at the very heart of search engine queries, so it makes sense that keyword research – getting to the bottom of what people are actually looking for – is a constant in affiliate marketing.

Look out for keywords based around the following:

Urgency (‘fix bad credit score quickly’)
Crisis/desperation (‘how to get ex back’)
Product name + review (‘The Truth About Abs review’)
How to/learn (‘how to fix a broken Xbox 360’/ ‘learn to fix a broken Xbox 360’)
Product type (‘dog training DVDs/eBooks/guides’)

To find keywords you could try the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, or get a free copy of Traffic Travis (a little bit of self-promotion there!).

3. Proven Affiliate Products

The final constant in affiliate marketing is making sure you promote proven products. There is always a massive temptation to jump on board and promote the latest products from the Clickbank Marketplace that promise huge commissions and launches, and then fade to nothingness after a while (leaving you stuck promoting a product that isn’t really going anywhere).

As an affiliate, you want to avoid promoting “fly by night” products if you plan to build a reliable income stream that has good growth potential. Instead, focus most of your energy on promoting products that have been around for a while and have a proven track record.

Our SaleHoo affiliate program, for example, has been running since 2005, and provides plenty of resources for affiliates, with new ones added regularly. Look out for affiliate programs of this nature, which provide consistent support and potential on a going forward basis. Take your time when picking products; research here will save you potential headaches down the track.

Some things to look out for are:

How long has the product and affiliate program been around
Does it offer free resources to help you, the affiliate, do your job properly
How easy is it to get in touch with the product owner/affiliate manager
Are customer reviews of the product largely positive (look for unbiased reviews in forums or blogs)
Is the product high quality (consider asking for a review copy first)

In conclusion, you can see that there are some constants in affiliate marketing – a world that usually evolves at such a rapid rate it can even give experienced marketers a headache. Quality content, solid keyword research, and promoting proven affiliate products; these are the three “bedrock” constants in affiliate marketing that are unlikely to change any time soon.

About the Author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers.

Take a look at these related posts:

ClickBank Blog