Today I want to share with you 13 things I’ve learned in my journey of making money with affiliate marketing.
Many of the tips I will share with you have taken me a long time to learn and can help you greatly to make much more money promoting other products.
Let’s just dive right in!
1.) Make sure ANY product you promote is excellent and delivers on it’s promise
( Purchase the product and do your homework or have the company give it to you for free ) If you promote Sh*t products your audience / followers will not trust you and following promotions will FAIL.
2.) Building up to the offer is key.
Don’t go in for the kiss on the first date… meaning don’t just make a YouTube video promoting something right off the bat and then never talk about it again… I’ve done this and it converts extremely bad. Be creative…. Introduce the product, show yourself using… it if possible, give an in depth review, document a case study, add value to your audience, interview the person or people who created it. Do something that is different and goes above and beyond really educating your audience.
3.) Create urgency in your offer.
Now I’m not telling you to lie but do something that get’s people to take action. This is why the open/ door close door product launch strategy works so well.
4.) Add bonuses.
People love getting something additional and this will also help you to get the last click which = a commission for you over the competition promoting the same thing as you.
5.) If possible get people to opt into your email list in order to watch videos, webinars, free content, etc relating to the product you are promoting.
This will allow you to connect with the people who are interested much easier and will better your chances of landing an affiliate sale. This will also give you the ability to retarget them later on.
6.) When sending emails to your email list tag the people who take action
( e.g – click or engage with an email ) then after 2 or 3 emails stop sending follow up emails to the people who did not click or take action ( in order to avoid spamming people to the point of unsubscribing )
7.) Cloak your links.
For example instead of sending people to a URL such as affiliateproduct.com/xxjhksldf send them to your website. I use pretty link to create cloaked links. For example a cloaked link may look like www.raikenprofit.com/privatelabel. This helps build trust and increases the chances of people clicking when the link looks familiar.
8.) Be transparent with your agenda.
One of the things I hate most is when people try to hide the fact they are an affiliate. Anyone who has any bit of knowledge with internet marketing knows that you are being compensated. In my book honesty goes a long way and helps keep the trust with your followers. Again, as long as the product helps people and adds value you should not be ashamed of promoting it. I think it’s also illegal not to disclose this.
9.) Being able to drive warm/hot traffic to your offers is key.
YouTube, Email, blogging, and social media is a must. There are tons of ways to drive traffic but these are what have worked best for me. Without being able to drive traffic affiliate marketing is literally impossible. If you don’t have an audience learn about paid traffic.
10.) Try to team up with affiliate programs who have an easy way for you to track your marketing abilities. Clickbank, Commission Junction and JVzoo are networks that do a good job with this.
I’ve worked with quite a few companies ( not on a network ) that don’t give you access to your stats such as views, clicks, conversions, revenue, etc, and it makes it almost impossible to know what’s working. I try to avoid these programs as much as possible. On a side note I love working with companies who use infusionsoft because it has an amazing backend affiliate portal.
11.) If you work with an affiliate who uses infusionsoft ask them to give you content with an affiliate cookie.
Driving traffic to free content that cookies users for 30 – 60 days is much easier than having to sell the product. Daniel Meadors with The Wholesale Formula did an amazing job with this!
12.) I’ve found that you can make much more money promoting high ticket products versus low dollar products.
I’d rather get 50% commission on a $1,000 product sold 10 times versus 50% commission of a $10 product sold 100 times. More customers more headaches especially if you’re offering bonuses and customer service on the backend.
13.) Retargeting
People who have opted into an email list who are interested in the product and or took action ( i.e – opened or clicked an email ) convert extremely well and is worth spending good money on. Most people need to see something 5 to 10x to make a decision. Persistency pays off.
( P.S – I’m definitely not an expert and have much to learn but have made some good money over the last year with affiliate marketing)
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this post if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below!
Steve Raiken
