How To Maximize Your Profit Promoting Affiliate Programs
by:
Ken Hill
Promoting affiliate programs can provide you with a good extra income or even a full time income online.
To help you maximize your profit promoting affiliate programs, I've provided the following tips to help you successfully market your affiliate programs more effectively to your site's visitors.
1. Publish an e-zine.
Running an e-zine will allow you to run prime position ads for your affiliate programs in every issue you publish, and is the #1 way for you to follow up with your site's visitors.
You can also easily increase your commissions by sending out special announcements to your subscriber base whenever one of the affiliate programs you promote is offering a special bonus or a special limited time offer.
Once you build up your circulation you can further increase your profits by charging for ad space in your publication.
2. Use a pop up on your site that promotes your e-zine.
Using a pop up as a well as a subscription e-mail or form on your site can substantially increase the number of your visitors that subscribe to your publication.
Your pop up will draw your visitors' attention right to your e-zine, and if you offer your visitors free bonuses for subscribing to your e-zine such as free ebooks or free ads you can further increase the number of visitors who subscribe to your publication.
3. Offer free e-mail workshops (e-mail courses) to your visitors.
Making e-mail workshops will enable you to effectively promote one or several affiliate programs that offer products that relate to the subject of your workshop.
Many affiliate programs provide their affiliates with articles to post on their sites or run in their e-zines which you can use to successfully form the different parts of your workshop.
If you already write articles, you can easily use your own articles to form the different parts of your workshop and transform your articles into yet another powerful marketing tool.
To get the most out of your e-mail workshops, offer your workshops both on your site and by using a pop up, and use your workshops to increase subscriptions to your e-zine as well as repeat visitors your website.
4. Publish your articles on your site.
Posting your articles on your site is a great way to continually add content to your site and draw more repeat visitors.
To successfully use your articles to promote affiliate programs offer a free e-mail workshop in your resource box or use your resource box to promote your e-zine.
This will provide you with an effective way to successfully follow up with your prospects when your articles get published as well as when your visitors read your articles.
5. Offer free ebooks on your site.
Many affiliate programs provide their affiliates with ebooks they can rebrand with their unique affiliate URL and these can be used as an effective marketing tool.
The best way to promote your affiliate programs with ebooks, however, is to make your own ebooks.
If you write your own articles, you can create a unique promotional item by making an ebook compilation of your articles with links to affiliate programs you promote.
You can also create a best of compilation of your e-zine's top issues to drive more subscriptions to your publication or if you make e-mail workshops you can transform these into your ebooks content.
To further increase your profits, offer your ebooks as a free bonus or part of a free bonus for subscribing to your e-zine, and/or allow your visitors to rebrand your ebook with a link to their own business, affiliate program or opportunity.
17. If you have enough traffic sell ad space. If you have good SEO ranking, charge more for ads.
18. Ask for the sale. Most affiliate program banners don't close sales, you must do it.
19. You must work 8-10+ hours daily to be a successful super affiliate.
20. Keep it really simple ... accomplish your goals with focused resources.
21. Find affiliate programs that offer a wide variety of advertising opportunities from banners to datafeeds.
22. Find affiliate programs that require strong marketing ethics and follow them, WIN-WIN.
23. Find affiliate programs that payout on schedule everytime. You're in control here!
24. Look for affiliate programs with affiliate tracking for phone sales you generate.
25. Look for affiliate programs with solid servers and software that works 100% of the time. Other affiliates write about the bad ones, so be aware and read the affiliate forums and blogs.
What do all “super affiliates” want more than anything else? Let’s say it together, they want to get paid and get paid handsomely.
So, what does it take to keep super affiliates on their game and advertising for your business? Well, you could say money again and while that wouldn’t be wrong, the answer has a lot more to do with the assurance of potential for income.
You see some merchants are floundering with the concept of “the cookie” and how long a cookie should be set for. They think that if they shorten the lifespan of the cookie that they won’t keep paying for the affiliate to acquire the same lead several times. So, what you might see in various affiliate programs are merchants who short the affiliate by only giving them a 48-hour window to deliver a lead from the customer’s initial click-through.
Statistics show that most customers will visit a site an average of five times before completing the lead or sales process. I’m thinking that the merchant’s 48-hour window might be a wee bit narrow for the affiliates to get what they want from the transaction and a little short-sighted for the merchant since “super affiliates” aren’t likely to want to help them as a result.
That’s short-sighted thinking. Studies show 98% of sales come within the first 48 hours after a person clicks through to a site. If that’s the case, why wouldn’t you extend that cookie for the maximum time allowed, because it makes the affiliate happier. In fact, some affiliate networks are equipped to track sales as long as 180 days after initial click-through.
If it’s not glaringly obvious, let me say it simply for you. Super affiliates like merchants who set cookies for extended periods of time. The potential for income from their advertising efforts to your potential customers is much greater and for them, that translates to more income return for their efforts to market you.
Super affiliates are “basically, commissioned sales people with the whole world to work for, who can walk away at the drop of a hat. Super affiliates are in the driver’s seat in their relationships with marketers, not the marketers. So you should treat that affiliate as you would anyone in the power situation. They are top producing digital sales people, pay them well and make sure they’re happy.
So, what do all “super affiliates” want? To be paid well and to be ensured happiness throughout the process.
