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Posted on 19th August, 2010 | No Comment

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. It’s also hard to figure out what to do because there’s a lot of information out there. Here’s one trick that almost no one else is using.

Video marketing

No one would deny the power and popularity of video. The reason it’s so pervasive is because everyone loves it. Keeping people’s attention is so much easier using videos. So you can put this to great advantage in your affiliate marketing.

Here’s how to use videos for affiliate promotions:

• Record your testimonial
• Record a walk-through
• Do an ordering video
• Do a preview video

Testimonials

This one is super simple. Simply turn on your recorder and talk. It does not need to be polished or pro. Listening to your honest endorsement makes your viewers feel comfortable buying. And the mess-ups or mistakes just make the video more real. You can literally just press record and talk. And if you don’t want to show your face, use one of the next ideas.

Do a video walk-through

This one is a little more subtle. You’re taking the role of teacher and showing how to use the product. And while they watch you use it, they think, “I should buy that.” If the product is useful, watching the tutorial makes them want to buy it. So just make sure you’re demoing a good product.

Ordering

This could be the most powerful method of all. Record a video of yourself actually buying the product. Nothing inspires your viewers to buy like watching you do it. In the first place it acts as social proof. People will feel more comfortable buying after seeing you do it. This also makes your viewers trust you. People believe you’re giving them good advice if you take that advice yourself. And finally, it creates envy. It’s simple – you have it. Now they want it. To really cap this one off, end your video with: You’re gonna have to place your own order if you want to see the members area.

Do a preview video

This one is perfect for building up the value of what you’re promoting. In this case you record a screen share of the inside of the product. They get to see everything they’ll receive when they order. It also reduces the reservations of skeptics. It’s much easier to trust they’re getting something if they actually seen it.

You can do this!

You don’t need any special training for this. There are simple software programs that make it easy to create videos. Really, the software does all the work. So there’s no need to even think about the technical side. Just focus on the benefits:

• Increase sales You’ll earn more affiliate commissions when you add video. Start using videos because people love them.
• Reduce refunds Less of your commissions will be clawed back, too. Your customers will know what they’re getting into ahead of time. So less of them will ask for refunds.
• Outdo your competitors! This is a really easy thing to do. And almost no one is doing it. So, you’ll be way ahead of the crowd.

Get started right now and take your affiliate marketing to the next level.  Affiliate marketing 2.0. Relationship ROI. Be personal. The bottom line is that if you’re not using video, you’re losing money.

Posted on 13th August, 2010 | No Comment

Winning Affiliate Marketing Strategies

One of the easiest and fastest way to make money online is through affiliate marketing. What “affiliate marketing” means is that you just send traffic to someone else’s website, they handle the sales, support and billing, and you get a percentage of the sale price as your commission, which for digital products can be 50% of more.

These are a some of the benefits

1. You’re able to start instantly without having to develop a product, write the sales page, design the website, create marketing materials, or get a merchant account and CRM.
2. It runs on auto-pilotfor you because they handle the billing, support, maintenance, etc.
3. Your efforts are risk-free, because the product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So you know that your traffic will result in sales.

Looking at these benefits, it’s clear that affiliate marketing is the way to go!

OK, but it’s not all rosy…

After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of those visitors again. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

What’s the solution?

What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product website. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you want to do it like a pro, you’ll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
2. By providing great content without a sales pitch, you put them in a buying mood. So when you do send them to the product website, they’re much more likely to buy.

In order to set a system like this up, you will need the following affiliate marketing tools:

1. A squeeze page, and even better a Video squeeze page.
2. At least a few pages of great content
3. At least a 5-Part Email Followup Series

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you’ll send them to your lead capture page first. This page is where you collect your visitors’ contact info and add them to your autoresponder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. Once your visitors have been subscribed to your email series, they are sent to your content pages.

These high-quality content pages provide value and build good will. This way your visitor is more likely to buy when they get to the product owner’s website. While they’re reading the content you’ve provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.

There’s no doubt that it’s worth the effort to put a system like this in place, because doing so will increase your profits by 500% or more. And once it’s set up, it runs automatically – you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. Services like this design the enter system (the video, the video squeeze page, the email series, the content pages, etc). The benefit is that it’s much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it’s instantly set up. The downside is that other people will be using the same affiliate tools as you. But the internet is pretty big, so this isn’t much of a concern.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to “outsource” each of these compnents. Whichever way you decided to go, it’s critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you’re at all serious about your business.