Affiliate Classroom Blog Archives

List Building Requires Solid Relationships

Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 1:54 pm by Gracie Browning

Henry Winkler once said, “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”

That saying is not only true in our real-world relationships, it’s true in our online relationships….especially our online relationships with members of our opt-in lists.

Of course, first you have to HAVE an opt-in list before you can begin to build a solid, termite-free relationship.

The ways to build an opt-in list are many and varied but the most tried and true methods are:

  1. Offering an opt-in incentive that has real value (example: an eBook, report or software)..
  2. Being an active poster of online blogs and forum communities that relate to the products and/or services in your niche.
  3. Writing thoughtful and informational articles and ebooks about your niche topic and submitting them to article banks and eBook repositories.

Even after you have done these things, it is still not time to start trying to sell products or services to your opt-in list….not yet.

BEFORE you sell, you must build a trusting relationship with each and every opt-in list member. And trust building takes time as well as patience.

You should send between ten and fifteen INFORMATIVE emails to each opt-in list member before you try to sell anything. Think of it as termite prevention.

You will build a solid relationship and the members of your list will trust you. That way when you do begin recommending products and services to them, they will be much more likely to buy them.

In order to maintain this solid relationship that you spent so much time building, you must be very, very careful to always recommend only high quality products and services that are beneficial to the members of your opt-in list.

To sum it all up, there are three main steps you need to do to build your solid, termite-free opt-in list:

  1. Start building the list
  2. Establish a relationship before you sell.
  3. Maintain the relationship by only recommending high-quality products.

Affiliate Classroom Opens New Doors

Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 11:59 am by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Affiliate Marketing

It’s been over 2 years!  

I’m not sure if you were around in this industry back then (2 years in internet talk is like decades!). But, I still remember back in January 2005 when Affiliate Classroom, led by Anik Singal launched their first training center!

It swept the industry by storm, the biggest break-through was their “Step By Step” training program that is a web-based software that actually gives you small step by step instructions AND tracks your progress (on as many websits as you want).

Affiliate Classroom celebrated it’s two year anniversary a few months ago, and is now industry-wide recognized as a premium affiliate training center.

AVERAGE STUDENT SAW 11-40% INCREASE…

Talk about results, actually over 50% of the students reported seeing an increase in their business of over 23% after going through the information in the classroom!

 

From newbie to expert marketers…

As if it was not enough, Affiliate Classroom just announced a completely new training center! They took the last 2 years of experience and have revamped their entire training.

  • - Made the step by step EVEN simpler
  • - Added free tools - a Keyword research tool is one of them!
  • - New interviews, case studies & more!

The best part is the SUPPORT that Affiliate Classroom has come to provide it’s students. It’s absolutely un-heard of.

They now have a team of over 10 people dedicated JUST to helping their AC students build their business.

DON’T DRINK COFFEE TODAY…

As if all this was not enough, Affiliate Classroom doesn’t charge you a crazy fee to use their training and participate in their 24/7 community - all Affiliate Classroom asks for you to get started is $1.

So, today, skip your coffee or soda and invest in the training that over the last 2 years has helped their students increase their business by 11-40%!

If nothing else, just go read the types of results they’ve produced (this really proves that ANYONE CAN make money online - just with the right training)!

Affiliate Classroom.com

Clickbank Launches Recurring Billing!

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 10:40 am by Anik Singal

Last night I was just randomly logging in to check my affiliate stats (ok, I confess, I do it about every 1 hour, giggle and then log-off). But, yesterday, my giggle was stopped DEAD IN IT’S TRACKS!

Actually, I almost damn near fell out of my chair when I read that my old dinosaur friend, ClickBank was FINALLY listening to their customers and releasing a feature I think they should have released AGES ago (at least 3 years ago when I wanted it).

See, the biggest appeal behind ClickBank has always been that you can easily (instantly) start promoting products as an affiliate and get paid ON THE DOT every 2 weeks. Also, as an advertiser, you can launch a product fairly quickly and have access to a huge pool of affiliates. In today’s age, it’s hard to find a serious affiliate who does not already have a Clickbank ID.

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Their used to be a couple of main problems.

#1 - They didn’t accept Paypal (they were forced to correct this with the launch of PayDotCom.com - thanks to Mike Filsaime).

#2 - As an advertiser, you could only sell a “onzie” product - that meant I couldn’t generate a recurring income!

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Well as of yesterday, Clickbank released their recurring billing so now both the advertiser and publisher can each make a recurring income. Here’s a few things ClickBank is priding themselves on regarding the recurring billing system:

1. No Monthly Fees (Just the transaction Fees)

2. No Integration Needed - No Software/Scripts To Install

3. Reduced Authorization Declines - If you do any recurring billing, you know what a pain “failed payments” can be - well, ClickBank says they have a system to help decrease that (read more about it here…)

4. Full Subscriptions Reporting

You can grab the full details here…

My hats off to you ClickBank, I think this is going to be a huge hit in 2007 - but you really should have done this earlier!

For More Information:

1. ClickBank Press Release
2. Recurring Billing FAQ

Making PLR Material Your Own

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 1:52 pm by Gracie Browning

The three most important things in the real estate market (according to the real estate gurus) are location, location and location.

According to internet marketing gurus, the three most important things for a profitable website are content, content and content. But new content doesn’t grow on trees.

If you have more than one web site, finding the time to write your own content is nearly impossible - even for a full time internet marketer. Still, we know we need content, lots of it, and on a very regular basis.

So, the question is, how do we come up with content that is new, original and doesn’t cost us an arm and leg or take hours of our valuable time? The answer is PLR material.

The biggest problem is that not all PLR material is created equal. You should always choose the PLR content you will use carefully.

Good PLR content will include a lot of facts, as well as be grammatically correct (written in good English). If it doesn’t meet those two criteria, you need to keep looking. Once you find good PLR content, though, the rest is really a piece of cake.

Customize PLR to Avoid Duplication

The first, and most important thing to do is to change the title. This isn’t really optional because it’s the first thing your visitors will see, as well as the Search Engines.  No one will read something they have seen a million times before, and you could get a duplicate content penalty from Google! 

It has been said that the Search Engines look more thoroughly at the first three paragraphs, so make sure those are completely different.  Also make sure the last paragraph is substantially revised.

Many people just write, and forget all about their Keywords.  After you’ve finished re-writing the content, make sure your main keyword is in the title, as well as in the first sentence,  and at least twice in the first paragraph. 

This may all sound a little complicated, but this kind of rewriting takes only a fraction of the time that writing new material takes and it is far less expensive than hiring a ghost writer to write for you.

Find good PLR materials and then rewrite them sufficiently to make them your own and you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to keep up with adding content to your web sites.

Spam: Out to Lunch

Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am by Matt Van Atta

Perhaps you’ve just cleaned out spam from your email (again). Messages promising a certain type of enlargement, or requesting help with stashing cash from a foreign prince, or other such things can drive us crazy.

Given that, it’s hard to believe that “spam” meant something else to people before computers came along. It’s also unimaginable – at least to me – that some people like the taste of spam.

A few generations ago, spam referred simply to canned luncheon meat. It’s been produced since the 1930s by Hormel Foods. SPAM the food (Hormel insists on making “SPAM” all caps) consists of chopped, spiced pork shoulder and ham. It is perhaps the quintessential “mystery meat.”

Today, in our computer-driven world, most of us think of spam as the devil’s work. (I’m not talking about deviled ham, either.) SPAM refers to any commercial communications sent to recipients in mass quantities that are unsolicited and usually unwanted.

How did spam evolve – or perhaps, mutate – into its contemporary meaning? The most common explanation involves a famous Monty Python skit. The skit takes place in a café in which spam is served quite generously with every entrée. A group of Vikings in the skit drive the point home even more by singing ad nauseam about spam. Twice they are asked to stop because their singing drowns out the dialogue nearby….the same way electronic spam can “drown out” our daily activity.

Other explanations also exist. Some of them contend that spam is merely an acronym with a particular meaning. Those meanings range from “Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages” to (my favorite) “S— Posing as Mail.” But the Monty Python explanation is closest to the truth. Not the luncheon meat itself, but the word’s overuse and ability to interrupt normal discourse, solidified “spam” as a nasty word in the electronic lexicon.

Spam is most popularly associated with email, of course. But it also applies to postings in forums, blogs, chat rooms, and other electronic venues. It also applies to search engines. “Spamdexing” is the intentional altering of web pages through underhanded SEO techniques to boost the pages’ rankings in the search engines, artificially and unfairly.

The tip to affiliate marketers is obvious; don’t spam. However, it’s not easy to avoid the accusation of spamming, particularly given that individual definitions of spam vary greatly. My next post will cover this topic and the best practices you can implement to send email without ruining the recipient’s appetite.

New Kid On The Affiliate Block

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 3:36 pm by Mark Thompson

First there was Clickbank standing alone in allowing affiliates to sell digital products. Then along came PayDotCom and took them on. Clickbank responded to this challenge by giving their site a long overdue makeover and tweaking their system a bit.

Both networks have survived in the market place and both continue to prosper. It was only a matter of time before someone decided to challenge them and create another network.

Enter SharePayNow. SharePayNow has recently gone into public beta and is fully functional, recruiting both Publishers and Affiliates.

Similar in many ways to PayDotCom, SharePayNow has looked at where the two main networks have perhaps not served their customers as best they could and tried to rectify it.

The most obvious difference is that SharePayNow doesn’t charge affiliates any fees. They also allow product images in the marketplace, which is a great help when trying to choose a product to promote. Like PayDotCom SharePayNow affiliates can be paid via PayPal. But unlike PayDotCom they insist that Publishers sign an Affiliate Payment Guarantee, which will hopefully go some way to ensuring that affiliates are paid on time and the correct amounts.

As with most start ups it is difficult to tell where SharePayNow will be a year down the line. But it’s often worthwhile getting in at the start just so so you can take advantage of all the opening offers designed to get the program off the ground as quickly as possible. There are affiliates and publishers already making sales through SharePayNow, so why not check it out.

Three Ideas to Increase Conversions

Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 5:04 pm by Kathy Jackson

Some people are unfortunate enough to know that you can have a very popular website on the internet and still not be making any money.

In order to resolve this situation, the first thing you need to do is get traffic, and then, most importantly, sell your products and services to that traffic.

If your website visitors come to your website and read every word or every piece of content that you have posted, and then don’t buy anything, you don’t make a dime.

So the question is…are you doing everything that you possibly can to sell your products and services to your website visitors? Maybe you aren’t. Here are three ideas that just might help you to increase your conversion rate:

Idea #1 - Add data feeds to your website: It has been proven over and over again that data feeds increase the conversion rate. What you want is a merchant data feed with information about the products and services that you sell. Make it easy for your website visitors to click on a product and instantly get all of the information available about that product. Your data file can include anything and everything….photos, diagrams, specs, charts and descriptions. You can even include the price if you want to.

Idea #2 - Embed links in your pre-sell copy: This is such an obvious conversion rate builder and yet it is one that is very often overlooked…even by the most savvy of Affiliate Marketers. Almost everyone puts links in the beginning or end of pre-sell copy, but it is much, much more effective to embed those links within the pre-sell copy and do it in context. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again…people HATE advertisements but they LOVE relevant information.

Idea #3 - Optimize your site layout: Okay…maybe you don’t want to use Google AdSense advertisements…no problem. But do take a look at the Google AdSense Heat Map at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17954. This really is the most effective layout for a website to optimize conversion rates. Google spent a lot of time and money figuring it out and you can use the information to your own best advantage.

Use the above ideas in any way that makes the most sense to you, and gets your Affiliate Marketing income coming in!

How Affiliates Can Easily Sell Their Own Products

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 4:07 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer

Affiliates SHOULD sell their own products!

You’ve heard this before - it’s not new advice by any means. Being an affiliate is a great business, but if you want the quickest way to double your business - you need to also launch your own product.

Some people just don’t want the headache of developing a product (they think they don’t have great ideas!) They’re just happy marketing to their list, or making money with Google Adsense.

Do you think you don’t have good ideas – come on! As an Affiliate Marketer, you promote tons of products and services every day. You even have an upper hand because you’ve tested your traffic and know exactly what kind of offers convert the best.

Your number one problem is not idea generation, it’s probably a fear of having to deal with product fulfillment, payment processing, customer support, the technology to run/deliver the product and a million other things. Most people fear the technology part the most. HTML coding and dealing with bugs can be a real challenge for some (I learned by trial and error, and those errors cost me a lot of time and money!)

Fortunately, in the last 2 years, many new technologies have come out that make all this much easier for you. Now you can easily launch a membership site, and get recurring income, as well as market your own product. There are “already built – plug and play systems” where you can be up and running immediately.

Before you go out and buy a bunch of programs though, Affiliate Classroom has a recommendation, and some advice on what to look for:

  1. Make sure the script is Web 2.0 enabled – don’t buy an outdated script or use a PLR program, you’ll just be wasting your time.
  2. The script should include Membership Site programming (since this is the area that offers the second best income possibility, after your own product.)
  3. It should have Full Advertising Management - so, as your site builds itself with new members, it is programmed to be SEO friendly, automatically.

And a few other features like Automated Membership Management, Design & Page Control, Multi-Level Admin (so you can control what employees see), Full Customer Service Support, and last but not least, an Integrated AFFILIATE MANAGEMENT Program.

I guess the last thing should really be that it comes at a reasonable price, so you don’t spent your entire budget on software.

If you’re looking for something like this - If you’re even THINKING about starting a membership site, whether you’re an experienced marketer or a “newbie” - take a look at this new software that does everything I just mentioned software should do.

Either way, if you’re an affiliate and not selling your own products - you better start, you’re leaving too much money on the table.

Effective Sales and Pre-Sales Copy

Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 8:18 pm by Kathy Jackson

People are funny. They are so funny that years ago the late Art Linkletter even had a whole television show that was named “People are Funny.” Isn’t it funny how people HATE advertisements, but they LOVE information that they deem relevant and helpful?

The best advertisements are information. The information in an advertisement is written to convey pertinent facts about a product to prospective buyers.

But because people don’t like advertisements, your sales and pre-sales copy needs to be written in a way that doesn’t sound like advertising. Instead, it should have the appearance of information being shared and a product being recommended.

Funny how people share information all the time and don’t think they are selling. They recommend the best plumber or hair dresser to each other over back yard fences every day of the week, and they never realize that they are pre-selling their neighbors.

We can learn from that. Your sales copy and your pre-sales copy will be much more effective if you can give it the essence of sharing information - rather than that of hard selling.

One way to give your sales and pre-sales copy the appearance of helpful information rather than a blatant advertisement is to embed your affiliate links within the body of the text in a way that mimics the natural flow of conversation. Shouting, “Buy me! Buy me!” is ineffective sales and terrible pre-sales copy. Suggesting a product as a solution to a problem in context is much, much more effective. For example:

“BUY X BRAND FLEA KILLER!” is not nearly as effective as “When my dog came home with a major flea infestation, I used XBRAND and the fleas never saw another sunrise.” That blue text isn’t a live link, but on your site it would be. That’s called an inline link, and it’s one of the best ways to make your information into a sales tool.

Won’t You HUUUG Me?

Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 3:00 pm by Anik Singal

When I get to The Affiliate Summit this July 7th, I’m going to first run around the hotel looking for Scott Hazard (never met him before), but apparently I’ve learned recently that he gives a mean hug.And, you know what, it was a tough last year, lots of stress - I could really use a good hug, or a “ScooterSqueeze” as he calls it (trademarked term, so be careful)!

Scott has come together with Affiliate Summit for a great cause and all affiliates, yes, including YOU, should support this. For a small donation of $20, not only will you get a comforting “ScooterSqueeze,” but you’ll get a shnazy T-shirt!

All proceeds go to the “March of Dimes” - an organization fighting to save babies from premature birth.
Show your support and help out the cause - you can get more information and make your donation at AffiliateHug.com

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