Affiliate Incubator Part 1
I'm attending the Affiliate Incubator seminar next week (Sept. 25th - 27th 2008) in Dallas, Texas. I'll probably learn lots of things about promoting stuff as an affiliate.
Affiliate marketing is pretty cool, you don't need to worry about product creation or customer support, you just send traffic to the vendor's page and then get your commission.
My own products sell the best to my list ($2000 to $4000 launches all the time) but I have been known to send $500 e-mails on a regular basis. Recently, I promoted the legendary Ben Prater's "iPhone Secrets Exposed" package.
That landed me 8 sales on a $397 product with 50% commission. You do the math... that's 1500 bucks from a couple of e-mails, probably 20 minutes of work writing the follow-ups. Those e-mails were so good that Ben incorporated them into his sales letter.
Let me empty out my brain with what I know about affiliate marketing already...
Affiliate Tactic #1: Have a List Already
It's simple, you can't expect any big profits unless you have a list of leads you've built yourself and more importantly, qualified buyers. Write up a quick 10 to 20 page report, record at least 20 minutes of videos and price it at $7 to get lots of buyers. Make sure to capture an e-mail address after the sale.
If you can get just 100 people to buy that $7 report, you can safely assume you'll score one affiliate sale... if you promote a complementary product to that list.
Affiliate Tactic #2: Think of Something They Didn't Think Of
I learned this one watching Todd Gross promote affiliate products. He promoted a product called "Floating Action Button" ... it's just what it sounds like, shows a hovering box that moves as you scroll. My Action PopUp script does the same thing.
Instead of giving people the usual sales pitch about popups, he showed how cool it was to place a YouTube video on the floating button, giving your sales pitch in the corner WHILE they read your sales page, and you urging them to click the order button.
All I see Big Jason Henderson do when he promotes affiliate products... records a video of himself (either screen capture or talking head) going over the benefits, then he watermarks his affiliate link to the bottom of the video and blasts that video out to YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, all the video sites.
When I promoted "iPhone Secrets Exposed" I just thought of what Ben left out of his sales letter...
E-Mail #1: You should be in a SPECIFIC profression... i.e. iPhone programmer instead of a regular programmer. No URL yet, just warming them up.
E-Mail #2: Code iPhone apps to get a recurring income on subscription fees... I just looked at Ben's bullet points and asked myself, "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME when I create an iPhone application?"
E-Mail #3: Are iPhones an untapped resource? What would you do if you invented YouTube, MySpace, before anyone else. If you don't code an iPhone app is it like letting the next Facebook pass you by.
E-Mail #4: Statistics to blow them away. There are this many iPhone users, this much profit from the AppStore, this many applications (low competition).
That's it. I could have fired that off as one e-mail but I spaced it out into several.
This tip goes without saying: Don't promote the same launches as everyone else and don't use the samea cut-n-paste affiliate messages as everyone else.
Affiliate Tactic #3: Proper Redirects
Don't promote your naked affiliate link. Get a simple script to send traffic from a link like http://www.robertplank.com/recommends/some-affiliate-program so it's not totally obvious you're using an affiliate link.
Actually what I really prefer is, I register a .com domain and use that as a redirect. It's only 8 bucks, and I've got some really good ones. For example, Jason Fladlien's 7 Minute Article product is on a domain name called "InstantContentCreation.com" ... but I grabbed up 7MinuteArticles.com and redirected it to my affiliate URL.
I'm sure Affiliate Incubator will have a lot of newbie-oriented info like, promote recurring products... how to calculate the Clickbank refund rate or statistically decide if a product is worth promoting... how to make a squeeze page and a viral report. How to add your own crazy bonuses "Gary Ambrose" style.
But if I can find out just one thing I don't know, the trip will be worthwhile (just like everything).
What's your FAVORITE affiliate marketing tactic? I mean marketing AS an affiliate, not MANAGING affiliates... we'll get to that later.
I need ten comments on this post... add yours below... or I might stop creating products for good, and only promote affiliate offers.
Filed in: Product Launches • Seminars
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I’ll see you there Robert…will be right in my back yard. I think everyone needs to know effective affiliate marketing and I’m looking forward to learning a lot of new stuff as well!
Thanks for another series of great tips, Robert.
I especially like the one about getting a domain to set up a redirect – why didn’t I think of this myself? 😀
My favorite affiliate marketing tactic? I’m trying to build (more or less) targeted lists. The list of people to send the promo to is smaller, but the conversion’s better.
My favourite affiliate marketing tactic?
Build a content-rich site on a particular theme with affiliate links for relevant products. Add in-depth review pages for these products. Rinse and repeat. It took my first site like this a couple of years to get to #1 on Google but now it is paying off.
Whether it is posting to Blogs, Forums or just sending regular, normal email, adding a link to your Signature is a really simple, easy, free way to promote a product or service.
John Wilson
Get a free trial of a Marketing Autoresponder at:
http://UltimateAutoresponderPro.com/trial/
Hi Robert,
I already use the domain for an affurl tactic, and it’s pretty sweet if it’s a top-seller. When Hodgkinson came out with his solution for a really cool membership site script I grabbed up instant-member.com as quickly as I could.
I also agree with your recommends tip – it makes a much more attractive link.
I still wish someone would create a script that hides the end-result of a CB link. That same old ?hop=affname that follows the final link stinx, I want the CB affurl to end up with the index page but still track me… am I making sense?
Thanks for a great post as always,
Donna
Robert,
Weldone! Your honesty and sincerity is what help you made those sale. Many affiliates and so call gurus lies just to get the commission and end up losing in a BIG way! The day you deviate from your honesty and sincerity that is the beginning of an end.
I hope you learn new things and get value for money with the Affiliate Incubator seminar.
Looking forward to hear how it went.
Thanks & Regards for the honest post,
Sam Odiaka
http://www.oraifite.com
Donna said:
Donna –
That makes perfect sense and I’ve always puzzled over that one too.
Robert –
Have I not read far enough into the huge package I got from you? Isn’t there a method for achieving this somewhere among all that information?
Is it that you have to use a frameset on your own site, and if so, doesn’t that method have a lot of dangers lurking around its corner?
Mitch
That’s the second script in Sonic PHP chapter 1. All you have to do is redirect if there is a “hop” in the URL…
<?php if (isset($_GET["hop"])) { // Set this to your front page URL header("Location:http://www.example.com"); } ?>First comment here.. Some good info! I work with Soren (FAB guy) and never even thought about a video in it! I guess I kept it in the box it was created as…
Anyways, I heard you were THE php marketer guy so I subscribed in a heartbeat.. No pressure =P
Robert,
Looking forward to meeting you at the Affiliate Incubator 🙂
You’ll hear a lot about various affiliate strategies at the event but one of my all time favorites is using an affiliate promotion to generate leads for your own products.
For example, you could easily include a bonus that quickly leads to additional back-end sales. Perhaps it’s an intro product, “Module 1” of an 8 module course or better yet, a seminar ticket where you could sell additional products or services.
My business partner Russell Brunson has used this strategy for years with great success.
Another thing that affiliate marketing provides is market research. If you are thinking about creating another product why not test the responsiveness of your list with a similar affiliate product.
If they respond well – create the new product. If not, you just saved yourself a lot of work.
Anyway, once again great stuff Robert and looking forward to meeting you.
Take care.
Stu
“I need ten comments on this post… add yours below… or I might stop creating products for good, and only promote affiliate offers.”
Pfffffff.
Ha. Robert? Never.
😀
Yes, I’m posting a comment just so I can leave your your 1100th comment.
It sucks I won’t be there at this seminar but hopefully I’ll catch the next one.
Hi Robert,
I’ve been very reluctant to get into affiliate marketing, but the more I read about the topic, the less resistant I am to the idea. You make it sound easy and profitable. Thanks for adding to my research and sharing your knowledge.
Best wishes,
Terry L. Gillis
Robert,
My question about Affiliates is: In your experience, do you seem to do better as an affiliate marketer if you have a niche and experience as well as a mailing list? To me that seems obvious. I’ll bet there are many out there that were sold the “promise” that “all you need to do is be a pure affiliate and BAM! the money just comes rolling in… Yet here you are a very experienced marketer who is know as “the PHP expert” – and I suspect that you do alright with affiliates related to your area of experience, rather than unrelated items. For example I would bet that if you were to put up links to “gourmet lobster shipped fresh to your home” – you would get less traffic than say a “great little javascript” because the second item is more related to your personal niche.
So “perceived” niche is very important in affiliate marketing, would you agree? Thanks.
David T. McKee