Affiliate Marketing Success Keys
How is it some Internet affiliate marketing success gurus live like rock stars while others fail? Find a profitable niche and make money online. As a successful affiliate marketer, you need to be an expert in SEO (search engine optimization), PPC, CPA analytics, traffic, conversions and having an understanding of what the best products are to sell on the web. Most people who are new to affiliate marketing believe they can just get a blog, find a profitable niche and start marketing on the Internet. Since the Google Panda update, the good old days of easy ranking and traffic just don’t exist like they used to. What leads to marketing success is persistence, commitment and leverage.
Affiliate Marketing Success Requires Leverage
Any affiliate marketer worth their weight in gold will have a team of knowledgeable people behind them. Sure it may seem like affiliate marketing is a one-person show, but behind the scenes, they will have an outsourced designer, coder, SEO, copywriters, syndicators and a paid traffic expert. Some affiliates may dabble in all of these subjects, but affiliates that are producers will outsource so they can focus on product creation, JV and marketing.
Your most seasoned affiliate marketers are masters at building offline relationships and constructing joint venture arrangements. It is one thing to create web traffic; it is another to borrow traffic or to market to another prospective email list. For those of you looking to become affiliate marketers and know nothing about it, the key is to get started somewhere. As an affiliate marketer, you can sell products from Clickbank.com or PLR (private label rights) information products.
There are people who get involved in CPA networks (which stand for cost per acquisition), and in those networks, you can market anything from how to information, education, insurance enrollment, motivation courses, credit cards or lead generation. Affiliate marketers can earn commissions for every sale or lead that they generate and commissions vary from 10% to 60% depending on what the product is.
How Does an Affiliate Marketer Get Started?
For many, starting out as an affiliate marketer starts with an understanding of keyword research and search intent on search engines like Google. Using keyword research tools like the Google External tool is a good place to start. You will want to target something that has acceptable levels of competition, because if it is too competitive, you will never rank. You will need a blog, preferably on a WordPress platform and if you are generating leads, an autoresponder.
To test your keywords, you can do some small PPC campaigns on Google and see if your keywords convert. The goal of every affiliate marketer is to understand which keywords are your money keywords verses the ones that don’t convert. Once you understand your keywords that are highly converting, you can leverage your SEO efforts with outsourcing to invest in your organic campaign.
The fastest way to get traffic is to borrow it. Depending on what you are selling, it may be possible for you to market to other marketers. If you are dealing in information products, creating a joint venture with an established affiliate marketer could make a lot of sense since they may already be sitting on a large list. So if you are a master affiliate or have your own information product, you can negotiate a shared commission with another marketer and they will market your products to their people.
This is commonly done with information products via webinars, and it is a very successful model. Most affiliates starting out will not be in this position, so you might consider leveraging video marketing, podcasting, article marketing, blogging and paid traffic sources. It is important that, as your Internet marketing business develops, you attend industry conferences and events so that you can build those valuable joint venture relationships.
Are There Any Affiliate Marketing Short Cuts?
Most everything in Internet marketing takes time or money so I don’t see a short cut to becoming an affiliate marketer, Rockstar. It takes years of dedication for most affiliate marketers, as they have to gain the necessary skills. You need to have access to the many resources available to find and hire the business experts that can help you succeed. An Internet marketing business is composed of many moving parts and the learning curve can be complex. That’s not to say that it isn’t possible to have success, but rather that you have a realistic expectation of results. The leverage you create through outsourcing and establishing key relationships will be the difference between success and failure.
What Is The Best Internet Marketing System For Newbies?
I believe that your goal in achieving Internet marketing success should be to have multiple streams of traffic and revenue. You should have a mix of good products and multiple vendors whom you choose to represent. Your other goal should be to deepen your understanding of the mechanics of online marketing and, like any smart business person, find your leverage by outsourcing. Learn to remove yourself from the business as much as possible. There are some systems that can assist you in getting started and will teach you the basics of keyword research. Choose Vendors who will also provide approved promotional tools. You will, more likely, become successful when marketing their products.