Affiliate Tips And Tricks Part 1

Knowing how to succeed as an affiliate for someone else’s product is very important to your online success.

Most of us start out as affiliates, selling someone else’s product for a commission.

In many ways affiliate marketing is the perfect online business.

You don’t have to create products or do customer service or answer pre-sales questions — as an affiliate you just promote and get paid.

Sounds good, right?

It sounds good because it is good. It can be a wonderful way to earn money online.

But the fact remains that some 98% (or more) of affiliates never make a dime online and very few of the 2% who do succeed make a full time living.

I believe this problem can be solved!

I want you to know that it is not too late for you. You have not missed out on anything.
You can begin again today and find success as an affiliate marketer if you work at it and use conservative and proven methods.

Over the years of my own affiliate marketing efforts I have discovered nine keys to affiliate marketing success.

I use each one of these principles and share them freely with you in hopes they help you too.

Allow me to add a personal note. I was not always a successful affiliate marketer. In the beginning of my online career I fell for the hype and fast cash promises too and it was not a pretty thing.

But I stuck with it, replacing the hyped up methods with proven business methods.

The results have been excellent. I don’t promote other peoples’ products often but when I do I am usually the top affiliate and often outsell the product owner.

How do I do that? By using what I’m going to share with you below.

In this short series I will share nine ‘tricks of the trade’, as well as a word or two about how you can put them into practice in your business life.

We will do that in three parts and so today we look at methods 1 – 3.

What we’re trying to get to here is what works in the Real World. No hype. No fluff. Just Real World Tactics that work.

Remember, every super affiliate was where you are right now at one point.
We all start in the same place.

Where we end up depends on our choices and how well we learn.

You do not have to be a ‘guru’ to use these techniques.

You just have to want success. :-)

Ready? There’s a lot to cover so let’s get going.

Affiliate Tip #1 – Use Great Ad Copy
Most people are not great copywriters. That’s completely understandable. While copywriting is something you might want to learn, it makes sense to model great copywriters until you get there.

Copywriters who get paid hundreds of dollars (sometimes thousands) per page to write have written great ads that are proven to work.

So why not use what they have written as part of your ad?

This is very important. You must never take someone’s copy, be it an email or sales letter or other ad, and copy it word for word or steal their graphics. That’s just wrong. Never infringe a copyright.

But you can model what they have done and make it your own. And believe me, it works!

Where do you find great ads to use as your model?

Watch the ezines you read. Look for repeat ads. If the ad runs over and over again it’s a winner.
Affiliate programs almost always offer pre-written ads you can use.
Classic eBooks often contain great copy ideas.

Social media – especially Twitter - is great for headline research.
If you are on top marketers’ lists you are getting lots of emails. Study them for good copy.

In each of these cases you will want to change what you find to fit you. 

My best advice today is to keep your ads short and create curiosity. You can find more about how to write ads (and other copy) here.

Affiliate Tip #2 – Promote Only GREAT Products
Have you fallen for the “high gravity” hype? I did. It’s so easy to just want to jump on the bandwagon of a hot-selling product and get your share of the action.

But that’s not the real world in most cases. If you have followed the “find a high gravity product and run an ad” advice you know that doesn’t work well.

The key is to promote great products, not products that are winning a popularity contest today. You want to promote products that help people and have stood the test of time.

To be great I believe a product must meet these three standards.

1. The product works well and meets a real need.
2. It pays you enough to cover marketing costs and provide a profit
3. It creates happy buyers.

The reason the product needs to work well is this. It’s a vital point that many affiliates miss. When you believe in something you will promote it well and with all your heart. When all you want is the money bad things happen fast. If you believe in a product you will find ways to succeed promoting it.

When all you want is money you will be tempted to give up after the first unsuccessful attempt and jump to another product.
And that is a sure recipe for failure.

The reason I say it must pay enough is that paid advertising is the #1 way to promote affiliate products. So you have to earn enough to both pay your ad costs and keep some profits too.

Not hard to do if you know what to look for.

The reason happy buyers matters is that you are going to be able to follow up with these buyers and offer them more. If they are happy they will buy from your recommendation time and time again.

Affiliate Tip # 3 – Use An Ad Tracker
This is one of those areas in which almost all affiliate marketers could improve.

While there is no reason to go crazy tracking every little thing (you really can waste a lot of time here) you simply MUST track every ad to know if you have made or lost money.

Probably the best example of this is the fellow who did two ad runs. One produced 500 hits and the other produced 100 hits. During the ad run he made 25 sales.

Naturally assuming that the bigger hits produced bigger sales, he cancelled the ad run that produced the 100 hits only to have sales drop! Sure enough, the ad that produced fewer hits produced the most sales due to the high quality of the traffic.

The moral of the story? Never confuse numbers with quality.

You really can get 100,000 hits to your site and not make one single sale. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Here are my two favorite ad trackers. These are not affiliate links.

Hypertracker http://www.hypertracker.com
LinkTrackr http://linktrackr.com

For perhaps the best information on the subject of ad tracking, visit my good friend Harvey Segal (who will fuss at me because I’m not tracking his link) at http://www.ad-tracking.com

One final word here if I may.

I strongly suggest avoiding all free link cloakers.
The spammers will ruin them all over time and your links will be at risk. And that’s a risk you can’t afford. For more about this read my article here.

Well there you have my first three tips.

Here are three action steps you might want to take.

1. Choose the one product you want to promote most
2. Get a great ad written for that product, or write one if you prefer
3. Get your ad tracking squared away.

If you do these three things you will be prepared for the success that you want and deserve. In the next message I will share three more keys (as well as one advanced technique) to help you even more.

Until then, be well and don’t ever give up. You are closer than you think.

http://charliepage.com/affiliate-tips-part-1