Why You Should Provide Bonus With Your Affiliate Offers?

If you look at most product launches, you see a super affiliate program behind them. The truth is affiliate marketers are a big part of every successful product launch campaign. But with affiliates from all around the world competing for a piece of the pie, how is it that some folks manage to sell 10 times more than others do? They do so by providing bonuses to encourage folks to buy from them.

Successful affiliate marketers provide a bunch of bonuses and ask you to use their affiliate links to sign up or purchase to get the bonuses. In some occassions the bonuses are so lucrative that folks buy the main product to get their hands on the bonus products. This is a very powerful strategy as it not only generates more sales for the affiliate, but it also ensures that folks will use the affiliate links and don’t go behind your back and go directly to the seller.

The most successful affiliates act as an extension of their merchant’s marketing arm. That means that they set up promotions, bonuses, and sweepstakes to encourage folks to buy from them. It’s very simple, but if you are not doing it right now, you’d be surprised how effective this approach can be. Providing bonuses to your customers means more value for them and more cash for you.

Things To Look Out For In Your Outsourcing Partners

Outsourcing is one of the hottest topics in the affiliate marketing these days. Good old affiliates would spend hours in front of computer trying to make a decent living, but most successful affiliate marketers outsource their non-core processes to India or China these days and spend their time strategizing and working on their core capabilities.

Outsourcing is a complex process that should not be taken lightly. It’s more than hiring the first person you can find online and you should prepare for the unexpected and hedge your risks. Here are a few tips on how to go about outsourcing a process to an outsourcing partner:

• Do not outsource mission critical and core processes: if you are very good at a process, you should not outsource it. Your core capabilities are what help you get a leg up on your competitors. If you outsource your core mission critical processes, you will leave yourself open to too much risk, which is not recommended.
• Know your outsourcing partner: do the proper due diligence before getting into a relationship with an outsourcing partner. Take a look at their past clients’ experiences with them. Try to figure out if they stick to their deadlines and finish things up in timely fashion. Take a look at client complaints to find out the weak areas in your partner.
• Don’t fall for too good to be true trap: if something is too good too be true, it probably is. If someone is offering to work for you for $2 an hour, you should be concerned. Also, if someone offers to complete a project for you for only $20 when others are offering to get it done on average for $1000, then there may be a problem.
• Agree on the communication details beforehand: being in constant communication with your outsourcing partner is a must. You should talk to potential partners about ways to stay in touch via phone calls, email, chat, and weekly reports. You can also use collaboration software packages such as Groove to keep things on track.
• Take it one step at a time: do not throw too much at your outsourcing partner. Take it one step at a time. In addition, make sure you ask them about whether they will provide you with a project manager. If not, you will have to manage the project yourself (get Microsoft Project).
• Understand the challenges: understanding the potential challenges ahead can help you set your expectation level. You should find out if there are any language barriers between your team and the outsourcing partners’ team. You should do your best to clarify your requirements for the outsourcing partner (using diagrams and visual aids). Expect misunderstandings and work hard to resolve them.
• Don’t put your eggs in one basket: working with multiple outsourcing teams will help you face the most difficult challenges more easily. If you put all your eggs in one basket and work with only one outsourcing team, you may find yourself in a spot of hurt if that team disappears or does not perform as you expect them to. I always try to go with two or more teams for each of my project to make sure something’s getting done even if one of the teams is under-performing. There will be more red tape, but you can hedge your risks by asking multiple teams to take on your projects.

Outsourcing sounds easy on the paper, but it is a difficult process (especially if you go international). You should do your due diligence before jumping into outsourcing waters. That way you can hedge your risks and get things done more quickly. Stay tuned for my take on outsourcing do’s and don’ts in the upcoming days.

P.S. how’s been your experience with web-sites such as rentacoder or Guru.com?

Merchants Limiting Their Blog Exposure?

I was surprised when I heard about this at first but a major credit card company has announced that their affiliates are now not allowed to put links inside their blog posts. I do not have the liberty to discuss which company has mentioned this new rule, but the fact is, if you are a credit card blogger, you are pretty much not allowed to provide a link to credit card X even if you are reviewing the card X.

I understand that the financial industry is highly regulated. But what I don’t understand is why merchants shoot themselves in the foot by penalizing their best bloggers. Do I think blogging is the best way to run an affiliate marketing business? Not really! But there are decent bloggers out there who attract decent traffic to their websites. And these guys who are in authority position can actually sell anything on their blog, so to ask them not to put affiliate links inside blog posts is just baffling. I guess the industry is becoming even more regulated…

The Truth About Affiliate Videos

If you have been paying attention, affiliate marketers from around the globe are quickly jumping on the video bandwagon. Camtasia studio is a relatively affordable capture video software program that allows you to record your own video sessions and use them as a promotional material for products that you are promoting. But is the hype justified?

I have had mixed results with affiliate videos. I have had huge success with making video reviews of products and services that I market to my audience. Let’s say I want to market a software package (e.g. Camtasia studio). People tend to respond better to a video presentation than to a text sales copy. In addition, vidoe tutorials have worked great for me. But here is what you should pay attention to:

Stay on Topic

Some folks tend to ramble on and go on tangents on their videos. If your audience comes to believe that you are wasting your time, you can kiss your commission check goodbye. At the end of the day, you should value your prospects’ time as you do yours. Stay on topic, and provide real value, and video will do wonders for you.

Video is great, but you will still need sales copy to accompany it. You can’t just put a video on a page and expect people to come and sign up for your service based on that. That’s why most successful affiliate marketers mix video and text content on their pages to achive the best results.

Video can be a great complementary promotional vehicle to your sales copy. If it’s done right, you can achieve much better results than you would with you sales-letter alone, but if your video is horrible, you can expect to lose customers swiftly!

So are you using video on your sites? How much success have you had with your videos? Please share your experience.

5 Signs Your Are a Lazy Affiliate

Are you a lazy affiliate? Affiliate marketers have developed the reputation of being very lazy. Make no mistake about it. You CAN make it in the affiliate marketing world even if you are lazy. A lot of super-affiliates have that luxury. Being lazy is different than being incompetent and not getting anything done. But if you don’t have the luxury of outsourcing your business processes, then you will have to get things done yourself. Surprisingly, a lot of affiliates slack off only to end up in a hole too deep to dig out of. Here are 5 signs you are a lazy affiliate:

1. You hate getting up early or going to bed late at night: OK. We all love to go to sleep early and get up late in the morning. A lot of people do it on an everyday basis. But if you are not prepared to get up early to grow your business, you are plain lazy. Also, if you can’t fight off sleep to get your work done, you are probably in this group.
2. You believe there is a tomorrow: there is always a tomorrow, but not if you want to make it in the affiliate marketing. If you are starting in the affiliate marketing world, you should treat each day as your last. With the state of economy, you can go broke so quick it’s not even funny. If you give 110% and don’t succeed, then there is no shame. But if you slack off, it is going to come back to haunt you and believe me you’ll have enough time from 9-5 to think about what went wrong with your business.
3. You believe you can pull it off with no sacrifice: going back to the above points, if you feel you can get your things done and also watch TV, party, and get drunk for weekends, then you are simply mistaken. Running a business is more demanding than having a job. With a job, your paychecks keep coming in as long as you keep showing up. With your business, you have to earn those checks as nobody’s sending them to you for nothing.
4. You find basic affiliate marketing boring: affiliate marketing is kind of a cool thing these days. You go to parties and you say I am an affiliate marketer. People think you are a big shot. But affiliate marketing is not all fun. There are some boring tasks (paperwork, some SEO tasks,…) that are simply boring. If you keep avoiding these tasks and find them boring, you should take a look in the mirror. I am sure you’ll have no problem finding the real cause of the problem.
5. You keep believing in a divine intervention: let’s say you have been promoting an offer for a few months, and you still haven’t managed to get any sales done. You keep hoping and praying to God night after night to bring you some sales, and you keep doing what you are doing. God is not going to listen to you as I doubt he is on lazy people’s side (OK. Maybe not true. A lot of brainless lazy people are rich because of their looks but not everyone’s lucky). You should always be ready to change you tactics and come up with new business strategies to move forward. No divine being is going to run your business and dig you out of your hole.

Affiliate marketing is a tough business and is not for everyone. There will be disappointments and enormous challenges before you can succeed in this business, but that’s what makes this business fun.

How To Avoid Information Overload As an Affiliate

That’s the biggest problem that lots of us are suffering from. There is a lot of good solid information on the Internet, and if you are anything like me you want to know everything about everything. But too much information can be bad for your health, physically and mentally. The fact is our brains have limits and after a while, you simply can’t stuff more information in. So how do you take advantage of all the information that is out there without burning out?

Consume information that matters: A lot of people keep up with the latest news as they are afraid that they are going to be left behind. Smart marketers keep up with the news because they use the latest developments to their advantage of make more money. At the end of the day, a marketer doesn’t want to know why Pluto is not a planet anymore. But he does like to know if Google is changing its quality score. Affiliates should always read the news not for the sake of following it, but actually finding ways to make more money.

Moderation is the key: it’s easy to go overboard when it comes to consuming information. But a lot of things we read online are repetitive or similar takes on the same issue. That’s why you should get your RSS feed reader on and find one or two blogs that you trust the most in your niche. Don’t sign up for all the feeds in your niche as you may end up spending more hours reading than actually doing things.

Outsource information management: one way to outsource your information management is by letting others (e.g. bloggers) do the research for you. You can also take advantage of your colleagues’ efforts by asking them about the latest developments in your market. Sometimes you don’t have to know everything but just enough to be dangerous.

The key is action: I don’t know about you, but I have never made any money out of reading books. I have made money by putting what I have learned in to action. But a lot of people read books and then do not implement what they have learned. If you are not prepared to use what you have learned from books to further grow your business, then you are wasting time. These days, you either grow or your die a slow death. Reading things doesn’t make you a master. Putting things in action does.

At the end of the day, affiliates should focus more on running the business than reading things. Staying on the top of your industry is very useful, but you cannot spend 8 hours a day reading and only 2 hours executing. That’s the difference between knowledgeable affiliates and super-affiliates. It’s possible to be both but in most cases the first group end up reading more than acting whereas the second group find ways to implement what they have learned. Taking action is the difference.

Choose The Right Keywords For Your Business?

It’s surprising how many folks underestimate the power of keywords. To tell you the truth, I believe a lot of newbie affiliate marketers don’t know how to do their keyword research right. It could be lack of training in that area or having poor training in keyword research. When you are looking at the affiliate marketing business, things may look simple to you. You see the keywords that a superaffiliate uses to make money, and you think to yourself “duh, these keywords are so obvious.” But the truth is, a lot of new affiliates fail to produce a good keyword set for their business. It’s one thing to choose the most obvious terms. It’s another thing to choose the profitable terms.

The keywords that you choose can determine the amount of money that you will earn. Whether you are making money through your SEO efforts or through paid search, the type of keyword that you use can determine your audience and conversion rate. Not everyone is interested in buying from you. Some people are just looking for more information while others are shopping around. So by using the wrong type of keyword for your site, you can attract the wrong audience.

You should always choose keywords that bring enough traffic to your site (if you are doing SEO) and attract the attention of your ideal audience. If you are selling something and you expect people to buy, you can use more specific words such as model no. or SKU to attract customers. In addition, your paid search ads can be more specific too to grab clicks that are highly qualified.

At the end of the day, you should train yourself in keyword research to make the right keyword choices for your business.There are many books and articles that you can buy. I personally prefer the free book offered by WordTracker. Keyword science is not rocket science, but there are some subtle things about the process that you should ignore at your own peril.

How Narrow Should Be Your Niche?

Choosing a niche for your affiliate marketing business is one of the most important decisions that you will ever have to make for your business. Choosing the wrong niche is similar to choosing the wrong sport to be a part of. But how do you choose a niche that is good for your business?

You should always go with your interests first. If you are planning to start a business in the affiliate marketing world, you should figure out if there is an area that you feel comfortable about. If you are planning to write product reviews, then you better know what you are talking about. Also, you should figure out if the niche you have in mind is a viable niche. You can do that by checking a site like Amazon. Figure out how many products are available in your niche? You can also use Google trends to find out more about your niche, whether it is getting more popular or it’s in decine.

You can also use Google Adwords tool and a few initial keyword phrases to find out if there is demand for your product/service. You simply can’t expect people to come to you if there is no demand. So you are better off if you conduct a supply/demand analysis before getting into your niche. My rule of thumb is that if you don’t hate your niche and you can find plenty of third-party products to market to the consumers in your niche, then you are golden. But you should always be aware of the number of competitors in a niche and the demand in that niche before jumping in.

Are you in the right niche?

Amazon Re-Designs Its Affiliate Portal

For those of you not familiar with Amazon associates program, it is one of the most successful and best converting affiliate programs on the Internet. There is no question that when it comes to running a super affiliate program, Amazon folks know how to do it. Now they have re-designed their affiliate portal.

Amazon has some of the best affiliate tools on the Web. Video widgets, astore, recommended pages, and many more tools offered by Amazon are one of the reasons Amazon affiliates have so much success with the program. I personally thought that Amazon’s associate portal was getting stale as far as the design was concerned, but with the revamp that Amazon has done with their portal, they can now add many more features to help affiliates convert better.

The Affiliate Manager’s Pain: Affiliates Who Don’t Care

As someone who has been on both sides of the aisle, I can sympathize with affiliate managers who are left frustrated by the majority of their affiliates. The 80-20 rule applies in the affiliate marketing world as well. If you look at any affiliate program, you’ll see that 80% of the sales are being done by less than 20% of affiliates. But the other 80% of affiliates either have no idea how to promote a product or are just too lazy to put a good effort forward.

Affiliate marketing is a tough business, and it takes a lot of work. Cashing the checks is my favorite part but there are many boring tasks that need to get done on a daily basis. You need to constantly watch your market, improve your PPC campaigns, find new keywords, and participate in the social media. Besides, there will be times that you will have to do some data-entry work, and that is certainly no fun. But a lot of newbie affiliates think that affiliate marketing is a home-based business that keeps bringing you checks without you having to work more than an hour a month. That’s just not true, and I would blame those late infomercials for putting these notions inside some people’s heads.

Affiliate managers go through a lot of pain to design competitions and all kinds of incentives for new affiliates to get them going, but some affiliates are just hopeless. They grab your product’s banner and put that in the middle of the page. That’s their idea of promoting a product. It’s easy, but it won’t get you many sales.

As an affiliate, the best way to show that you care is by going back to your affiliate manager and ask him/her about his suggestions for your site. Your affiliate manager is there to help you succeed, and you should not be shy about asking for favors. Many affiliates don’t even respond to the communications their receive from the merchants. But those who do show that they at least care. It’s acceptable to be a newbie and ask questions. What is not acceptable is not trying hard enough.