Bruce's Golden Goose marketing

A lot of affiliates immediately feel drawn to the “make money online” niche, or they like to go after the big offers on CPA networks.  The whole time, though, there are thousands of affiliates quietly making money on physical products with a lot less competition and a lot less volatility.

Physical products can definitely make for an easier time as an affiliate, but there it’s just like every other kind of affiliate marketing in that it comes with its own set of rules and quirks.  Before you get started with marketing physical products, consider these tips:

• You need to be very specific. If you’re promoting grills, you can’t just bid on the keyword “grill” and except big things to happen.  Even “Weber grills” is probably not specific enough.  You want people who are very close to knowing exactly what they want, as they are the most likely ones to convert to sales.
• Modifiers can mean big money.  Often, merchants advertise their goods with brand names and colors and model numbers.  A lot of them, however, forget that consumers also search things like “cute recycling bins” or “stylish blue flats”.  These less common modifiers can be easier to rank for and much more profitable for the average affiliate.
• Not all products work for paid advertising. If you’re promoting a $5 product with a 10% commission, your take on each sale is going to be $.50.  If you’re paying .25 cents/click, that’s not a margin you can support for long.  It’s better to focus on products with a minimum of $10/sale for the average transaction.
• SEO is your friend. When margins are tight on PPC, you can dramatically improve your overall profits with the SEO traffic that continues to come even after campaigns have failed through paid traffic methods.  With a properly optimized site, no paid traffic test is ever completely wasted.
• Finding ways to keep your visitors can be the difference between a super affiliate and a struggling affiliate. You put a lot of time into getting people to your sites, so it makes sense that you should also spend time building a newsletter or otherwise bringing your traffic back again and again.  It’s not about single commissions anymore.

One of the best resources on learning to market physical products is Rosalind Gardner’s Affiliate Marketing Handbook.  Check it out and see what you’re missing.

Almost every new affiliate has encountered this problem at some point.  You spend hours getting accepted at affiliate networks, picking programs, researching keywords, and building a website to promote the products you’ve chosen.  You get the site up, and then you wait.  And wait.  And wait…

Getting traffic requires a lot more than just a good looking site and some well-placed affiliate links.  And of course, without traffic, there are no sales, no commissions, and no checks in the mail.  This is a big part of why most affiliate marketers fail.  You have to be a strategist, a web developer, a writer, and an expert marketer if you want to succeed.  That’s also why there is absolutely no shame in seeking out extra help from experts on any or all of the relevant skill sets.

Tellman Knudson has put together a great guide for helping affiliates get a huge amount of high quality, converting traffic.  It’s designed to be a 20-week course, but a particularly devoted affiliate could probably get through it in much less time.  Remember that most courses are geared towards people with busy work and family lives who are trying to get away from that – so if you have a bit more free time, you can definitely use that to your advantage.

The best part of this particular course is that you can get Easy Traffic Secrets for $4.95 at the moment.  It’s just a trial, but it should be more than enough to let you know if it’s right for you.  That’s less than the price of a typical drink in a bar – so what’s stopping you?

Five years ago, article marketing was all the rage.  Every affiliate was doing it, and many of them were doing quite well with it.  Today, many have abandoned it in favor of “easier” or faster marketing methods that don’t require the tedious job of writing and rewriting endless articles.

Today, affiliates are still doing article marketing and having a lot of success, but they’re doing it a lot more quietly.  It’s no longer the “cool” thing to talk about, and a lot of people are convinced that it’s useless.  That’s great news for those of us who know better.

The key to success with article marketing in 2010 is automation.  You can’t reasonably expect to spend 40+ hours/week writing 500 word articles and submitting them nonstop.  You’d go crazy.  Instead, it’s vital that you write a handful of good articles on a topic (or have someone write them for you) and then spin them to get fresh new content.  Spinning simply takes the articles, runs them through a software, then spits them back out with a slightly different set of words and phrases.  This ensures that search engines don’t view all of your articles as duplicate content and de-index them.

Beyond that, you need to find a way to submit them quickly and automatically.  Although you can never fully automate account creation, you definitely don’t have to sit down and manually submit every article one-by-one.  That’s time better spent on finding new products and markets to promote.

Mass Article Control handles automation on both fronts.  For a very reasonable price, you can spin your articles and submit them with very little manual effort on your part.  For now, it’s $77 to get both pieces of software.  That’s less than 8 hours of time with a typical virtual assistant, and it will give you a lot more submissions in the long run.  Can you really afford not to give it a try?

A lot of affiliates like the idea of a newsletter…in principle.  If you ask, though, most have never actually acted on what they know to be a very good idea.  Building a list has potential for a great ROI if you do it right.  To help you out, I’ve included a number of tips that have been helpful to me.

• Get a trustworthy mailer. I like aWeber because they’re double opt-in (that means that users have to confirm their email address to get on the list) and they have extremely high deliverability rates.  They’re also very affordable.  Click here if you want to learn more about their plans.
• Mail frequently. If you don’t, people have  tendency to forget who you are.  When your mailing finally arrives, they’re likely to hit the “Spam” button because they don’t hear from you often enough to remember when they opted into your correspondence.
• Make it timely. While this may not apply to all fields and topics, people definitely appreciate current information.  If you can save them a trip to their favorite website for the same information, you’ve saved them time and helped to win their favor.
• Keep your tone consistent with your website (if you have one) and your audience’s sophistication level.  If you’re writing about web marketing but targeting people with brick and mortar businesses, your language will be much less technical than if you’re writing about the same topic for industry veterans.
• Don’t be afraid of templates. If you have no design skills, there’s absolutely no shame in using a template.  Heck, you can even joke about it if your audience is a casual one, but for goodness sake, have mercy on their eyes.  Don’t go the DIY route and create some fluorescent monstrosity that gives everyone eyestrain.
• Keep it simple. If you want to highlight a lot of content, offer links to your website where people can view it all.  Don’t clog up their inbox with a 10,000 word email.

Are there any good techniques I’m missing?  I’m sure there are tons, so feel free to chime in on the comments.

When it comes to list  building, it seems like some people are blessed, while others struggle for years with lists that never seem to get out of the 2-digits.  What is the difference between the two groups?

Sometimes, it’s as simple as having the right friends.  If you’re best friends with Frank Kern or Mike Filsaime, you’re not going to have any trouble building an email marketing list.  The same thing can be said of befriending popular web personalities or webmasters in other niches.

Relationship building is extremely effective, and it’s a great way to build your list.  However, we don’t all have those connections, and some of us just aren’t good at reaching the unreachable types.  For those of us who don’t have connections, freebies can be extremely fast and effective, assuming that you have an existing traffic source.  By offering your viewers some kind of free, interesting download, you’ll dramatically improve your signup rate.

That said, I still don’t have the secret to building a great email list.  In my experience, it has always taken a lot of hard work and time to grow a list.  That’s why I was so interested when I saw what Covert Opt-In had to say.  They are giving away top email marketing secrets in exchange for joining their list. From what I found on Google, that includes a host of tips on using social media to grow your list faster than was ever possible in the past.  To get the details, though, you’ll have to join their list.

A lot of new affiliates see the gurus who have done huge amounts of business over short periods, and they assume that affiliate marketing is a get-rich-quick, overnight success kind of thing.  While it’s true that there are a lot of very short sighted affiliates who build businesses that grow and die almost overnight, there are plenty of people in the industry who are focused on building lasting businesses.  One of those people is Rosalind Gardner.

Rosalind is the author of The Super Affiliate’s Handbook, and she’s been in the industry for over 10 years.  Through her focus on building a quality business and diversifying your successes, she’s been able to weather the storms that have brought down many lesser marketers.

Her guide is extremely useful for new affiliates, as it goes over everything from basic terminology to history to big picture strategy.  If you want more from this business than a quick profit, this is the book for you.  If you envision yourself doing this in 10 or 15 years, you should take a break from the one-note gurus and soak up everything Ms. Gardner has to say.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to pick products that work
• How to align yourself with reputable brands and companies
• How to know if you’re right for affiliate marketing
• How to build quality sites that earn money for years

You’ll also get a sneak peek at one of her actual affiliate sites.  That alone is worth the price of the book.  So what are you waiting for – check out The Super Affiliate Handbook today.

There are a lot of people out there who are great self starters.  They seek out resources and references, but ultimately, they burn from within and they don’t need a ton of support or encouragement.  This post isn’t for those people.  This post is for those of us who occasionally need a little prodding or a little extra push in the right direction.  It’s for those of us who have busy lives and get distracted from our goals every now and then.  It’s for those of us who need someone to be accountable to.

There are a lot of different internet marketing courses out there, but if you can’t figure out which ones are good for YOU, you’re never going to be successful.  Most courses are just information.  They don’t offer a community, they don’t hold your hand, and they don’t give you any extra encouragement.  Those  courses are great for the highly motivated and focused self starters.  In reality, though, most of us have busy lives filled with day jobs and spouses and kids.  We might read the material and get excited, but it’s extremely tough to sustain that level of motivation with so many other things competing for our attention.

If you find it hard to stay focused, make sure that the next course you buy is one with a little support.  Maverick Money Makers, for example, offers community access with your purchase, along with a 24/7 support desk.  No matter what niche you’re interested in tackling, though, you can almost definitely find a company that offers the kind of support you need.

As a new affiliate marketer, your hosting needs are pretty simple.  You need a quality shared hosting solution and a responsive hosting provider to work with.  If you have a big ad budget (which few newbies do), your needs might be more demanding, but for the vast majority, a shared hosting plan is more than sufficient.  Eventually, you will be driving more traffic and need a dedicated server, but there’s no need to complicate your life like that initially.

Above all, look for a hosting company with good reviews from other marketers.  Some hosting companies are suspicious of marketers or they don’t like to work with new webmasters, so you want to avoid those types of companies wherever possible.

Hostgator is a great example of a company that’s large enough to have their act together, but not so large that it’s impossible to get assistance.  They get great reviews from bloggers and other web marketers, and packages start as low as $4.95/month.  Click here to get unlimited websites on your hosting plan.

Something else that can prove invaluable is working with a company that has a large user base.  When you’re working late into the night, it isn’t always possible to get a support rep.  If the company you’re using has a big user base, though, you can usually find the information you need by Googling it.

If you don’t already have a basic hosting account, check out Hostgator and get started today.  It’s far simpler than you might be expecting, and it brings you one step closer to your successful affiliate marketing career.

List building is one of those affiliate marketing topics that everyone talks about and everyone knows they should be doing, but few affiliates actually “get around to it”.  It can be slow and frustrating to build your list, and the payoff isn’t immediate.  Even still, a list that you’ve built and properly maintained is an asset that no one can take away from you.

If you’re just getting started, there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of success.

• Work with a reputable email marketing company. aWeber, for example, is one of the top names in the business.  Click here and you can test drive their services for $1.
• Offer your users something for confirming their email address.  You can double or even triple your confirmation rate if you offer your users a bonus download for doing so.
• Ask, ask ask! Regardless of your promotional method, it’s vital that you ask for the signup.  Sticking a tiny signup box in the sidebar isn’t enough.  Shout it from the rooftops.
• Value your users’ trust. Remember that people can opt out or report you as a spammer whenever they want.  Make sure you treat your list members with respect.  You’ll get more long-term value out of the list and you’ll avoid jeopardizing your relationship with your mailing company, too.

Email marketing can seem like a long, hard road, but it’s one of those things you’ll be very glad you did once you have a list you can email freely.  Sign up with a company like aWeber today and get started!

One of the latest trends among affiliates seems to be a desire to get away from merely being an affiliate.  Although it’s great to be an affiliate because you miss out on a lot of the headaches that plague actual merchants, it’s also very limiting.  Commissions are not always as high as you might like them to be, and companies like Google are making it harder and harder to be successful as an affiliate.  Whether you want to focus entirely on being a merchant, or you just want to diversity, finding a product can be a great step in your business.

Not a lot of products focus on stepping away from the traditional affiliate arrangement, but that’s exactly what Resale Rights Hosting does.  You get access to 411 information products you can sell as your own, along with full hosting and support.  They manage your tracking, your autoresponders, and your security.  You focus on what you as a marketer do best – the promotion.

Resale Rights Hosting is also good for new affiliates who don’t have a complete handle on all the technical aspects of affiliate marketing.  With their system, you can focus on mastering marketing first, then learning technical skills later as you move on to other projects.

To learn more about Resale Rights Hosting, check out their videos.  They do a great job of clearing up any questions you might have about what it means to get resale rights, or how the system itself works.