March 17, 2008

The 2 Most Successful Affiliate Marketing Methods

Affiliate marketing can be an extremely successful way of making money online. Many internet marketers build a full time business recommending other people’s products and it is a model that has stood the test of time.

The problem with affiliate marketing is that the whole process seems so easy and yet so many people don’t actually make any money from it.

There are several reasons why someone can make thousands of dollars promoting a product where as someone else may not even make 1 sale!

Here Are The Top 2 Methods For Making The Most Money From Affiliate Marketing:

Having An Opt-In Subscriber List

It’s true that when you have a subscriber list in the tens of thousands you will make more money from affiliate products. It’s a fact that can’t be disputed and a good enough reason to spend much of your time building your list.

But you can still be successful even with a relatively small list. The secret is HOW you communicate with your list.

There’s absolutely no point in building an opt-in list of a few thousand people if you never contact them. Or worse still you only send them emails trying to sell them something.

Having your own subscriber list is pure gold! It is arguably the most important aspect of your online business and WILL provide you with a full time income if you treat the people on your list like personal friends.

There are books, reports, courses, mentoring programs and loads of other material detailing the process and advantages to list building.

The late Corey Rudl used to regularly state that if something like a fire could potentially destroy his whole business, the only thing he would want saving would be his list of opt-in subscribers.

If you have a responsive list, you will always be able to generate an income. So treat your list like a personal friend and you won’t go far wrong.

Generating Traffic

Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business and if you can generate enough traffic you will make plenty of money from promoting affiliate products.

Easy enough right? … Yea right!

Generating traffic is the Holy Grail for most internet marketers and yet is what eludes us the most.

If you are promoting other people’s products as an affiliate marketer, there are 2 recognized methods for driving traffic to your site or the affiliate’s site:

Short Term Traffic

Short term traffic is actually quite easy to get. There are several different methods to generate lots of short term traffic and the techniques can make you a lot of money.

Article Writing

The first and personally my most successful method is article writing. The idea is to source several Long Tail keywords based around the product you are promoting that have relatively low search volume but also low competition.

You submit your article to the most popular article directories like Ezine Articles which through the popularity of their website will rank your article on the first page of Google.

Your article will contain a link back to your own website where you are promoting the affiliate product. Some article directories will allow you to send readers directly to the affiliate’s website. You simply embed your affiliate link within the article.

This is fine if you don’t have a website of your own, but you should be concentrating on getting the visitors name and email address before directing them to the affiliate’s site. (Which builds your list).

Social Networking Sites

We have all heard of these various social networking sites like Squidoo, Stumble Upon, Google Hubpages, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube etc.

I personally don’t take advantage of them as much as I should, but there’s no denying they rank extremely well with the search engines.

It seems like almost every phrase you search for these days returns at least 1 or 2 of the popular social networking sites on the first page.

These sites DO rank well in the short term and WILL generate plenty of targeted traffic to your website.

As with article writing, these methods won’t cost you a penny and should be incorporated into your marketing.

There are other methods you can use, but to be honest, how many ways do you actually need?

If you just spent your time writing articles and incorporating social networking sites, you will generate more than enough short term traffic, but on a consistent basis.

These methods are free and proven, so exhaust them first before looking at other methods like PPC that cost you money.

Long Term Traffic

The thought of generating traffic for years and years to come without having to do any extra work sounds like the ideal scenario. But it is not as improbable as you may think.

Article Writing

Yes article writing can produce long term traffic as well as short term traffic. A well written article can remain on the first page of Google for years that brings in a steady flow of traffic every single day.

Here’s an example of such an article I stumbled across this morning:

Type ‘PLR articles’ into Google. The No.1 ranked webpage is an article written by Allan Gardyne entitled ‘How to find private label rights articles for your website’.

This article was written in December 2005.

OK the search count isn’t very high, but what if you have dozens of similar articles all promoting 1 affiliate product? These small streams of traffic soon add up and can be working for you for a very long time.

An Authority Website

If you find an affiliate product that you really like and/or it’s already generating some income for you, then the next step is to build a mini site around that affiliate product.

I call it an authority website because it is simply a website devoted to recommending just 1 product.

These mini sites are becoming more and more popular and I am personally using them to great effect with my affiliate marketing campaigns.

You can upload articles to your site, include a review of the product you’re promoting and even add multi-media content like audio and video.

One of the great advantages to setting up an authority website is that you can utilise the short term methods of traffic generation.

By submitting articles to article directories and creating pages using social networking sites you can easily link back to your authority site. This in turn benefits form that traffic and from the inbound links.

A good affiliate website promoting a good product can generate a healthy, long term income. Not only from the affiliate product you are promoting but also from related back end products you recommend to your opt-in list.

Your No.1 priority when building an authority website whether it’s to promote an affiliate product or a product you own, is to get the visitors name and email address.

As with short term methods of generating traffic there are plenty of other ways to generate long term traffic.

I recommend you do actually pay for some of these methods once you start making money from the free methods.

One long term method that I do recommend you consider is Jonathan Legers 3 Way Links system.

I have been using his methods to rank my affiliate websites on the first page of Google for over 5 months now and is the only monthly investment I make to generate traffic.

You can read my post I wrote last month about the success I am having with the 3 Way Links system: How to Achieve a First Page Listing on Google

Don’t be afraid to invest in something that can enhance a campaign that is already generating sales for you.

If you are already getting traffic from the free methods I mention above and some of that traffic is converted to sales, then it stands to reason that more traffic will equal more sales.

It makes sense therefore to spend $47 a month on a product that could easily make an extra 4 or 5 sales for you as well as exponentially increase your opt-in list.

Affiliate Marketing is without doubt a proven method to generate a full time income online.

It’s certainly not as easy to make money from promoting other peoples products as we are made to believe but if you do it right and promote the right products, the rewards are there to be had.

Having an opt-in subscriber list and methods to generate traffic are 2 of your major pillars for a successful campaign. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

Any thoughts? Write your comments below.

~ Peter Tremayne

Filed under Blog, Internet Marketing by Peter Tremayne