5 Essentials every online marketer must know. If you are a new Affiliate Marketer read this!

So you want to make some extra money online by being an Affiliate Marketer. Affiliate marketing is fun and you’ve got lots of choices for what you can promote PLUS lots of places to advertise at no cost or low cost. I don’t have to even tell you what to market, you have so many choices. Companies want people to become an Affiliate and market their product online and pay you a commission for doing so.  A great gig for anyone who wants to work from home.

Amazon may be one of the largest companies familiar to you that offers an Affiliate program.  Clickbank is another very familiar name, allowing you to promote thousands of digital products and earn a commission for your efforts. It’s free to get started so you can sign up for a free account and learn more about how affiliate marketing works without making an investment.   

If you are new to online marketing, here are five essentials you need to know so you can maximize what you earn as an Affiliate.

1.  For those serious about building an online business and who want to market a number of programs, product, services or opportunities, you will want to start with a home base for your activities. The best way to do this is by booking your own domain name. This will cost you as little as $10 a year and establishes a permanent, reputable home for your business. If you are doing affiliate marketing on the side from your full time occupation (like so many do), it will also help your activities separate. Having your own domain name makes you and your business look more solid, accountable and professional. Your domain name can be your name, a business name, a catch-all name for your online activities that includes a few key words.    You can book a domain name with a reputable domain registrar, do a search at Google or Bing to find an option that works best for you.

2. In my role as a consultant to small and home business owners, I also recommend a system for organizing your business. A pen and paper will work initially.  Over time you will come to recognize that as an online marketer time, and the saving of time, is critical to being able to market often  and efficiently. You see,  most websites that offer advertising require you to sign up for Membership account, and that means multiple user name and passwords at what could eventually be dozens and dozens of sites. So I recommend, a Password Manager program called Roboform. As your online business grows and you start to lose your sanity keeping track of all your user names and passwords you will come to realize the incredible organization value of a program like Roboform. It will make your logins or form filling, much faster and that means less time trying to recall or find passwords and more time for doing what makes you money – promotion.

3. If you are new to online marketing you need to understand that it is not enough to promote. You need a reliable method for tracking your ad results. In other words, if you post an ad, you want to know how many clicks you got on your ad. If you don’t know what kind of hit rate you are getting you have no idea of the effectiveness of your ad, or the advertising source.    These programs that allow you to do this are called Ad Tracker Software or Ad Analysis software.  Most are free or very low cost. You can get started with a free Webmaster Tools account from Google.  Some of the companies you advertise with may also offer you an ad tracking tool within their member area

4.  I talk to many new online marketers, and they will tell me they have some amazing product that will sell itself it is so good. This is absolute nonsense. ALL products, no matter how good they are, need to be promoted to sell.     If you want to make online sales you need to promote constantly.  Understand that PROMOTION is what drives sales – it is so important that 80 – 90% of your time in building your online business should be devoted to promotion. I don’t mean surfing, researching, or face booking and tweeting with your friends. I mean time spent actually posting ads online at classified ad sites, forums, blogs, safelists, traffic exchanges, pay per click, joint ventures, ad swaps, and email marketing. If you want to make money online as an affiliate marketer know that constant, consistent promotion is critical.  Some see this as a very boring part of being an online marketer, get over it, promotion is what you have to do to earn money.

5.  Don’t do this alone. Affiliate marketing can be very frustrating if you don’t know what you are doing and not seeing any results for your efforts.  If you are determined to make money online, then invest in yourself, take a course, download eBooks, participate in a webinar, find a coach, training program or otherwise so you can learn the best methods.  My company offers online training, software, advertising and resources for people who want to learn how to earn at home.   Get a free Associate membership and get on your way to learning what works so you can join the growing ranks of people working from home and benefiting from affiliate marketing.

 

About the Author

Sandi Hunter has been an online marketer for nearly 20 years.  Sandi and her team at Worldprofit Inc.,  provide a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses.  Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Worldprofit Associate (Affiliate) Membership today.  Get a free copy of Sandi’s new book, "Internet Marketing for NEWBIES: The definitive guide to promoting your product or service online.”   http://www.internetmarketingcanada.net/

10 Marketing Mistakes Revealed!

By Sandi Hunter

I’ve been in the home business and online marketing industry for nearly 20 years. These are 10 of the most common marketing mistakes I hear or see most often from both Newbies but also from people who assure me they know what they are doing. Here’s the critical mistakes to avoid and what you should be doing instead to maximize your results.

Marketing Mistake #1

You send all your traffic to your primary website. Most people involved in online marketing or affiliate marketing,  are selling more than one product or service. By all means, list all your products and services on your site, but don’t rely on your website for lead generation.  Your website can be too busy and too big to funnel your buyers into the section or item they are looking for.  Fussy, large, poorly organized websites can cost you leads and sales.

What you should do.

You should send all your traffic to landing pages NOT to your website. Ideally you should have one landing page for each product or service you offer.  This way you can target specific markets and cater your copy and offers to that population. Landing pages are clean lead-generating machines. Effective landing pages start with a compelling attention-getting headline, then drive home the benefits of what you offer, point by point. Landing pages that get results always have an OFFER to generate an action by the reader – in most cases this action is either to get a contact form completed, or an instant sale.   Every person who lands on your landing page (squeeze page) is a highly valued prospect.

Marketing Mistake #2

You focus only on lead generation and not list building. Newcomers to online marketing, and even seasoned marketers often make the mistake of posting static information on a website or a landing page.  They fail to do the most important task of all. That task is to include an opt-in form on your landing page that encourages the prospect to sign up for your newsletter, or your email updates, or your special promotions email.

What you should do.

Every landing page you create should include OPTIN boxes so respondents can check off interest in other services you offer including your newsletter, special promotions, or related products and services. Every successful marketer knows that the key to sales now, today, and the future is based on a solid mailing list.  The best way to generate your own email marketing list is to encourage people to agree  (opt-in) to receive your email.  This can be made easy for prospects by having check boxes on the lead form included on your landing page. They simply check off what they would like to receive additional information about.   Mail order companies have known the power of a good mailing list for years, now online marketers need to understand this too.

Marketing Mistake #3

You tell not sell.  You ramble on with details and jargon that bores your prospect to tears. You don’t offer the exciting benefits of what your product or service offers –  what it will do for them to make their life better, or solve or eliminate a problem. Prospects stop reading long before they get anywhere near becoming a lead or a buyer.

What you should do.

Use sales-generating copy tells the prospect the BENEFITS of what you offer. Include a special offers that motivates a response!   Stop boring people by TELLING  the minutiae of what they are buying and start SELLING them on why they must get your incredible product TODAY.  Sell all the benefits of what you offer, make an offer to get it today, then limit that offer so they understand they will miss out if they don’t act now – right now!   Every statement in your copy should be moving towards the sale.  You get this, this and this too but you must act now! Punchy copy that is laden with value and excitement gets a response.  Your marketing copy must speak directly to the needs of the reader, they want to know what is in it for them. Your only need as the marketer is to get the point across that your offer is outstanding and must be responded to right now.

Marketing Mistake #4

You are trying to BUY success. Many inexperienced marketers will buy the services of an SEO company in an attempt to artificially force their website to the first page of Google and other search engine sites.   I hope you have a money tree because you are going to need one. You’ll be out of money before you know it with no sales to show for it.

What you should do.

Learn how to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) yourself. If you don’t you will always find people with their hand out ready to take your money, and your return for this kind of service will be minimal. Here’s why. SEO is not that hard, you can easily learn how to do this yourself if you are willing to learn, give it time and are very patient.  There are TONS of free courses, free ebooks, low cost software and training programs that teach you how to increase your website ranking.  At least first give it a try yourself, save yourself a lot of money, learn for the sake of long term growth of your online business. See Marketing Mistake # 5 for more on this.

Marketing Mistake #5

You rely on automation or short cuts to fast-track your marketing. You’ve bought software or services that allow you to:  – Spin articles – Mass blast ads – Generate mass link submissions – Blast messages out to Twitter and other social media sites   – Mass product fake content pages

Guess what? The folks at Google and Bing are smart cookies.  Every day they tighten their algorithms a little bit more to decrease or eliminate the search returns generated by automated programs. The result: one day you are on the first page and the top 10 search returns, the next day your site is dropped for no reason and no recourse for the unfortunate site owner.  I don’t have to tell you that this can cost you a LOT of money.   The search engine sites don’t have to tell you why your listing disappeared, they change how they rank sites all the time. As soon as there is an obvious pattern, or sometimes just a hint of artificial attempts to jimmy your rankings from automated software, look out!

What you should do.

Forget about automation, it may work now, you may get away with it for the short term but in the long term, it won’t.  Google themselves will tell you the best way to get high ranking is with fresh, natural content posted frequently.    Yup. That takes time, sorry folks, no way around that but it is time well spent. Stop thinking you have to get rich over night, start thinking of your online business as a REAL business, not a hobby. A legitimate business takes time to build, consistent effort and some learning along the way.   Read, learn, download ebooks on the topic, take a Bootcamp training course such as the one offered at Worldprofit, and work on building your web footprint one day at a time.  Every had a tap dripping into your bathtub. It doesn’t take long till the tub fills then starts to overflow. Use the FREE and plentiful tools available on the web to learn and understand how to increase your ranking.  You can get started right now! Set time aside as you learn and do a little every day. Create social media profiles, create blogs, post an ad, build a WordPress site (the SEO is built in already), write an article, comment on an article, be a guest blogger, tweet, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Marketing Mistake # 6

You don’t track your advertising results.  No clicks on your ads means no intelligence on which ads are working at which places.  You are marketing with a blindfold.

What you should do.

The beauty of online advertising is that when you post an ad you can check to see if you get hits. This is smart!  The only way of knowing if your ads are working, if your time was well spent, or your advertising dollars were well spent is to know if you get clicks on your ads.   Tracking your ads and the response allows you to tweak your ad copy, better your offer, identify both good and poor advertising sources.  Most online advertising sites provide you with a Member area where you can login to check your statistical data on your advertising response.

Marketing Mistake # 7

Buying ads on Google and Bing without knowing what you are doing. Newcomers to online marketing do this all the time. They put up a website then buy ads at Google. Google loves you for this but you won’t fall in love with the cost.

What you should do.

Research key words in your industry so you know what people are using to find businesses, products or services that you offer. How do you do that? Easy. Google has a key words tools within their Webmaster Tools to help you with your ad campaigns. It’s free whether you advertise with them or not, and a great way to get started learning about key works so you can use this information in your marketing.

Marketing Mistake # 8

Not promoting consistently.  You are short on time, and short on money, so you post infrequently.  You don’t vary your offer, your products, your ad copy.

What you should do.

Successful marketers know that promotion is something you must do every day, and if not every day as often as you can.  People short on time make the grave error of buying large quantity mailings to massive amounts of people in one shot, instead of doing  small amounts of promotion to target markets on a continual consistent basis.  Do you ever notice that big companies NEVER stop marketing? They are always in your face.  What do they know that you don’t know? The consumer has a very short attention span and if you are not in their face they quickly forget about you.  My colleague impressed on me the 7 time rule of marketing.  The idea of this is that people have to see an offer, or an ad as much as 7 times before they do anything.  Ever notice that when you watch the morning news while getting ready for work, that the same McDonald’s commercial plays over and over again! Why? They know you are watching the news getting ready for work and want you to stop in for a breakfast sandwich. Repetition in marketing is key and give the competition out there for various offers, it’s important that your message be seen.  Post your ads often. You are NEVER done promoting. As an online marketer your job is simple. Promote often, promote consistently.  This leads into our next critical mistake.

Marketing Mistake # 9

Only advertising at a few places and not constantly looking for new advertising sources.

What you should do.

New marketers tend to find one or two places to advertise then only advertise there. The web is filled with great places to advertise. You must try to continually expand your reach, tap into new markets, target new customers.  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and rely exclusively on single sources or you will be cutting off your profit potential.  Look into all kinds of different types of advertising including pay per click, login ads, banner ads, safelists, traffic exchanges, ad swaps, classified ads, joint ventures. Avoid vendors that sell extremely large lists or leads for a ridiculously low cost, chances are good they will be fake or computer generated.

Marketing Mistake # 10

Underestimating how much marketing focus is required to drive your business.

What you should do.

Understand that marketing is and should be 90% of how you spend your time in building your online business.  This one thing alone dooms so many Newbies to failure, they don’t spend enough time on marketing in order to get results.  I hear people say ‘this product is so good it will sell itself”. That has got to be one of the worst errors in thinking I have heard when it comes to making money.  You’ve got your products or services you want to sell, now focus on promotion. When, where, and how. Then stick to it.         I’ve had people tell me they are spending 12 hours a day promoting a product and not getting results. I tell each and everyone of them this. “If that’s actually true, you are doing something terribly wrong.”  If this is you then go back and read over these common marketing mistakes. You are making one or more and this is sabotaging your own success. Sometimes you just need to step away, take a breather, and review what you are doing. You may think you are working hard but you aren’t focusing on what will get you results. Something is perhaps distracting you, something is eating up your time, something you are doing is not what you should be doing.  One person who told me they were spending dozens of hours a day with no result, was actually spending most of their time blogging and Facebooking. When they evaluated what they were actually doing they then saw that what felt like work was really just time wasted in front of a computer. The bottom line is this, reassess but never never give up.

Summary: There is so much money to be made online it’s mind-boggling. It’s a type of money making that is not what most people are familiar, it’s a steep learning curve for many but it’s worth the time to learn.  There’s unlimited choices of products and services to sell.  You can build an online business for very little cost but treat it seriously. Be realistic about what you can earn  and put in the necessary time to learn and understand what you are doing.

About the Author

Sandi Hunter is the President of Worldprofit, Inc., a company providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today at http://www.WorldprofitAssociates.com

How To Pick a Legitimate Home Business Opportunity

You’ve seen the emails, the offers, the promises and the claims. Everyone it seems has a way to help you make money online.

But how do you know who you can trust? How do you know what system works? How do you protect yourself?  

The fact is that you CAN earn money online from legitimate sources, here’s what to look for when picking an online business opportunity.

Products or Services with actual value

Many companies including large companies like Amazon and ClickBank offer what is known as an Affiliate marketing program, or sometimes called a Reseller program. This allows you to promote a company’s products or services and earn a commission when a sale is made through your website link.   The key in knowing what is legitimate is to be sure you are actually promoting a real product, or a digital product, or an actually service.  Beware of selling anything that seems without substance, and has no real market value.   An example of something suspect would be getting paid to recruit people into a program who have not paid any money to do so.  All business online and off works when there is an exchange of money for a product or service.    Pyramid schemes exist online and off and are an example of focus on recruitment into a program rather then the sale of an actual product. In the case of a pyramid scheme, and example is someone paying to join a program but receives no product or service of REAL value in return.  In short, make sure that you are actually selling something of value. 

Customer Service and Support

Legitimate companies that sell actual products and services will support or service what they sell. In other words, good companies will have a Customer Support Department, or a Service Department or Technical Support division to assist customers who have either bought a product or intend to do so.    Reputable companies offer this support in any number of ways, online chat, support forums, Twitter, Facebook, telephone support, or online support.  

Time in business

Legitimate business opportunities most trustworthy are often those that have stood the test of time.  On the web it is very easy to set up a company, sell questionable products and services, then disappear into the night when the business practices come into question.   When picking an online business opportunity select a company that has been around for at least a few years. Companies that continue to exist are usually those that demonstrate an interest in keeping their customers happy, are accountable, and adhere to policy and legislation that permits them to provide a product or service.


Reputation

When picking a reputable business opportunity people will often look to review sites for feedback from others. This can offer you some interesting details about what people think about a company and how the company responds to complaints.  In reading the reviews though keep an open mind knowing that no company exists without complaints against it. Good companies that you would want to associate with, are those that try to address customer complaints or resolve issues brought to their attention.  People with an axe to grind will sometime post negative reviews and hide in the anonymity of that post.  So be  smart when reading review sites, and look for dates, patterns or themes and try to separate the intelligent comments from the less helpful and questionable ones.

Look before you leap

When you decide on which business opportunity you wish to join, be sure to take your time and read over what you are agreeing to before you sign on the dotted line or hit the submit button. Determine what your up front cost is, your monthly cost (if any), your ongoing cost? What happens if you want to cancel, is there a guarantee, or is there any long term obligation or a penalty for cancelling?  Find out how your sales will be tracked, how often will you paid, for which services and how will you be paid.

In summary, here are 5 questions to ask yourself for any company you are considering for a home business opportunity.

1. How long has the company been in business? What is their reputation?

2. What is the product or service you will be selling? What is the value in the market place? There should ALWAYS be a product or service that has an actual value. 

3. What is the initial cost to get started in the business? What do you get for that amount of money? What are the ongoing costs? 

4. What kind of support or service will you receive as an Affiliate Marketer or Reseller for the company to help you make sales? What kind of support of service will the people you refer receive when they make a purchase?

5. How much money are you paid by this company when you make a sale, how often, and how will your sales be tracked?  

These questions and information contained within are a guideline to help you make a smart decision about an online business opportunity that is right for you.

One final bit of advise. Once you have found a company to represent be sure to be realistic about your earnings and accept some responsibility for your own success.  At the end of the day, your success comes down to you, and your efforts.  It won’t matter what business opportunity you select if you don’t take the time to learn about the program, learn how to market online, and make an honest consistent effort to build your own success.

I hope this has helped you so you can select one or more legitimate companies and you can join the growing population of people making money at home using the power of the web.


About the Author

Sandi Hunter is the President of Worldprofit Inc., a company providing training and support for small and home based business since 1994. Services include home business training, reseller programs, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today at http://www.WorldprofitAssociates.com