What is Affilorama – Learn Affiliate Marketing and Making Money from Pros

I don’t know if you have been paying attention, but Affilorama has quickly become the talk of town in the affiliate marketing world. So I decided to sit down and figure out why these are being talked about all over the Internet. AffiloRama is a community of affiliate marketers who are out there to teach beginner affiliates how to start a start, how to market it, and how to actually go about making a sale.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

Affilorama has a lot of stuff for new affiliates. If you look at it, it’s very smart strategy. Folks are losing their jobs. Some are just tired of the whole 9-5 thing. Affiliate marketing is a tough business, but it allows you to set your own hours and make more money than ever before. So it’s smart on these guys’ part to target folks who are just getting started with affiliate marketing. They walk you through the basic of affiliate marketing to actually finding the right affiliate programs for your business.

You are going to learn how to build a site, choose a host, and choose the right software to optimize your site. In addition, Affilorama has a comprehensive section on creating content from PLR articles and other sources. They also talk about different content strategy that you can use to get some meat on your affiliate website.

Affiliate marketing for not so newbies:

I find the whole affiliate marketing for newbies pleasant. But I am not a beginner affiliate marketer, and with the buzz that Affilorama has generated throughout the WWW, I assume there are a lot of folks who are not beginners but are still getting some value from Affilorama. It turns out there is more than enough for intermediate and advanced affiliates to chew on Affilorama. Here are the areas covered in this community:

• Advanced PPC: that’s right. These guys show you how to do PPC right.
• Advanced SEO: advanced search engine optimization techniques, including link baiting and other link building techniques, are all covered on Affilorama.
• Advanced Blogging: there is a right way to blog, and there is a wrong way to blog. I am glad that these guys cover the former than the latter.
• Advanced Marketing: we are getting awfully in B-school territory here, but you are going to learn how to do proper market research
• Interviews: I don’t know about you, but I always learn a lot from other pros who talk about their experiences. Of course, they don’t share their deep dark secrets, but it’s still very motivating to hear from someone who’s making $200K a year.

The community comes with a bunch of premium tools for SEO and PPC that you can use for your campaigns. Some of the features are locked for premium members, but you are going to learn a lot from the free content available on Affilorama. You got to check it out.

Is Article Marketing Dead?

That’s the question many affiliates are asking these days. Article marketing used to be a full proof way to make money just a few years ago, but with more folks getting in, it seems super-affiliates have moved on from this channel. Well, I can tell you that I  personally haven’t moved on. It’s true that now we have Twitter, Facebook, and a bunch of other channels to play with, but article marketing is still a potent way to sell.

I am not a great article writer, but have been able to make $1-10 per article consistently on a monthly basis. Pathetic you might say. That’s a good way to look at it. But if I have 1000 live articles, we are talking about $1000 a month just from article marketing, and that’s a minimum.  And let’s not forget that once you have 1,000 article, you can keep recycling, optimizing, and submitting to different article directories. I have never tried any article directory but E-zine Articles, but I assume the money making opportunity would be even greater if we include GoArticles, and Article Dashboard.

What you want to do is write articles that folks are going to use on their site. Article marketing is not just about making money directly. When folks download your articles to their site, you are going to get links back, and that is going to help you with your SEO process. And let’s not forget that you can use your articles to create portals for your pay per click efforts. And one shouldn’t forget about services such as Article Marketing 2.0, which allow you to promote your articles in more ways than one.

It’s safe to say that Article Marketing will be around for some time. Boy, I wish I had come up with this whole “E-zine Articles” thing. But even if you are just a writer, you can still make money with Article Marketing. Read on your SEO, do your LSI homework, and articles can still drive traffic to your site.

How to use Twitter to Generate Leads

Twitter is the talk of town these days. Actually, it has been for some time now. I remember the first time I saw Twitter. I thought to myself, “this is one useless service.” There, I said it. I was wrong, and there is nothing with being wrong. It’s so easy to make judgments based on a first impression. But now seeing folks who are driving thousands of visitors to their sites using Twitter, I realize that perhaps I should have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon sooner. I guess you can say it’s never too late.

But Twitter is not just about talking about what you are cooking right now, or how you are feeling (depressed, happy, …). You can actually have a profitable affiliate business with the help of Twitter. I guess if you have paid attention to the Twitter community, you have seen guys such as Joel Comm trying to encourage their affiliates to promote products on Twitter. What most marketers don’t understand about Twitter is that it’s different from the traditional channels that we are used to working with. Twitter is not Adwords, and it’s definitely not your newsletter. Twitter is an alive community that is very judgmental and always on the look out for real value. So, it’s essential to know your environment before actually jumping in and playing with the sharks.

Twitter is a goldmine but comes with numerous pitfalls. If you go in with a closed mind, trying to do what you have been doing for the past 5 years, you are going to mess up. And when you do, Twitter will be useless to you. Here are a few things that I have personally learned the hard way:

• Be Authentic: being authentic is usually the best way to get your business going on Twitter. There are so many marketers who go on Twitter and start playing around. Trust me, being authentic pays on Twitter.
• Be Yourself: going back to the previous point, be yourself. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Twitter is a big community, and you can’t just slide in a character on Twitter (unless that’s what you do for a living). I know guys like O’reilly or Hannity do their characters well on TV, and they have become their characters over time, but you can’t pull that off on Twitter.
• Be Unique: I have seen so many affiliates who just grab the copy provided by the merchants and post it to Twitter. Sounds funny but it’s true. Some merchants are trying to be “innovative,” so what they have done is they have created these Twitter snippets that you can grab and post to Twitter. But it’s a no no no! You should not post anything that you get from the merchant. Be unique or forget Twitter.
• Be Polite: Twitter is a public place. Sure. You can’t see folks’ faces, and you probably don’t know most of folks who are following you. But you should never act as a troll on Twitter. It’s just not worth it.
• Be Useful: Just posting affiliate links to your Twitter account is going to get you ignored by the community. Try being useful for a change. Post interesting articles. Use services such as Delicious or Digg to find good articles and share them on Twitter. Try to add something to the community.

Twitter has the potential to be a huge commission driver for affiliates. But you need to take an indirect approach with it. It’s not Adwords, it’s not your newsletter, and it’s certainly not a forum you can spam. So just do it right!

The Real Money Is In the Global Markets

A lot of folks have been talking about going local to gain success in the affiliate marketing world. But I am surprised that nobody talks about going global with affiliate marketing. The truth is only a handful a countries (U.S., UK, …) have opportunities for affiliate marketers, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t take this trade global in countries that don’t have the system available.

Before going global with your affiliate marketing efforts, you need to find out more about the markets you are planning to go into. If you are a native of a country that is not covered by networks such as LinkShare or CJ, the opportunity is probably there to duplicate those systems in your country. But even if you are an American, you can still take this trade global. But you need to pick your spots.

The easiest way to go global is by focusing on Canada, Australia, and UK markets. The competition there is less than it is in the U.S., and the opportunity is there to make lots of money. You can also try to implement affiliate marketing in other countries, but you will need local know-how to get things done.

Global affiliate marketing is the future of affiliate marketing. It’s a logical steps in more ways than one. The competition is less in the global markets, and you can expect folks to catch up with the concept of affiliate marketing. I am a firm believer that while the sales process will defer in different countries, the language of selling an affiliate marketing offer to someone is truly universal, which is why going global now can pay big down the road.

Your take: Is going global with affiliate marketing worth it?

Affiliate Idol Super-Affiliate Course: Review

I remember the first time I paid for an online marketing training package. I had read the sales-letter, and I thought that my life would change forever. It’s been 7 years now, and I am still not making any money out of what I learned from that course. The truth is, there are many online courses out there, but finding the right one is the challenge.

Affiliate Idol is the latest affiliate marketing course that promises to show you the way to stardom in the affiliate marketing world. There are many courses that promise to teach you all kinds of things. So I decided to get my hands dirty with Affiliate Idol to see if it’s worth buying.

Affiliate Idol addresses the following affiliate marketing topics:

• Affiliate Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay Per Click Marketing
• Web 2.0 Marketing
• Article Marketing

I had a chance to go through the first series fast. “What is affiliate marketing” is how it starts, but I was surprised how detailed was the coverage of niche marketing. Steven also goes over how to find the right product at the right time in the right niche. That is really the key in the affiliate marketing world. Steven also talks about what is affiliate marketing all about. A lot of folks get started with affiliate marketing, thinking only about commission checks. But in reality, it’s more complicated than that.

Search Engine Optimization is the talk of town these days. In fact, it’s been for quite some time now. The truth is, Pay Per Click marketing is getting expensive, which means you should diversify to bring down your CPA. Steven talks about the major factors that can help you achieve higher rankings over the net. Here. I’ll give you one. It’s all about the domain name baby. You’d be surprised to see how folks are making a killing by just choosing keyword rich domains. I was impressed with the coverage of LSI here. This is more advanced stuff, so you want to read on more on sites such as SEOBook to get ready for some of these techniques.

Pay Per Click marketing is an affiliate’s best friends. That’s the best way to drive traffic to any site in a quick fashion. The problem with PPC is that everyone’s doing it, and folks are getting smarter at it. That means, you either go head to head with these experienced folks and lose your shirt or you innovate and beat them in their own game. I wasn’t quite excited to see Steven teaching the very basics of Adwords, but he doesn’t want to leave anything out. But he does go into advance budget and ad management. And he does cover other pay per click engines such as MSN and Yahoo!.

Web 2.0 marketing is not new but it’s not too old either. In fact, there are lots of folks who don’t get the most out of Web 2.0 resources out there. There are plenty of examples with how to do Video and Audio, and Steven keeps up with his promise to show some new ways to drive traffic to a blog. But what I was impressed about was his unique approach to creating blogs. I usually create blogs for fun, but with Steve, it’s all about the cash.

Article marketing and using PLR articles to create portals is not anything new, but it’s surprising how many folks don’t know the right way to use PLR articles. Steven touches on how you can create audio-books from PLR articles. He also talks about how to create your very own product using a bunch of PLR articles, and he does that very quickly, which is quite impressive.

There are many other topics covered in this course, which quite frankly should give you a solid foundation in affiliate marketing. I still believe that the biggest challenge for newbies is to take risk and be willing to spend $1 to make $2 or $3. A lot of folks put more emphasis on SEO or PPC. In other words, they put all their eggs in one basket. No single course can teach you how to make millions. All methods get old, and only folks who can innovate and build on their past experiences can truly make it to the super-star status in the affiliate marketing industry. Having said that, Affiliate Idol teaches you everything you need to know as an affiliate to get a solid start in this industry. Steve goes on to guarantee his product which should allow folks to buy this with a peace of mind. If you do decide to get Affiliate Idol for super-affiliates, I recommend you set time aside to go over this and master the techniques as quickly as possible (I have this bad habit of buying things and forgetting about them). You don’t want to be on the end of line of folks who will be implementing these techniques soon.

Should You Get Paid for Off-Line Sales?

I am personally a big supporter of affiliates getting paid for their efforts. I don’t know about you but getting 5% conversion rate from some of these merchants on CJ or LinkShare has been difficult to achieve for me. I am talking about brick and mortar offers of course. Let’s say you promote Walmart deals. If someone can just take 30 minutes and buy something from Walmart directly, why would they buy it online?

Amazon’s associate program has been successful as Amazon does not really have a physical presence. It obviously does help that Amazon is a price leader too, but in general, your leads can’t get the same deals that they can get from Amazon from their local stores. However, merchants that have physical presence can be extremely attractive to your leads. So you spend money on PPC and other costs, and you pre-sell folks just for them to go to the stores and pick up what you have spent money on to sell to these guys.

RevTrax is a new solution if you are working with brick & mortar merchants. I think if you are working with these guys, you need to be realistic about the situation. You simply can’t afford to spend money on folks and get a conversion rate of 0.5%.

The issue of off-line tracking in the affiliate marketing world is real, and a few merchants are issuing offline coupons to help affiliates get paid for their efforts. But all these solutions are not perfect. One way to get around this issue is by offering folks bonuses to buy thing from the online store. Another way to go is just to ignore these hybrid stores (which I don’t recommend). At the end of the day, you shouldn’t be shy about talking with your affiliate manager for a higher payout to offset the lower conversion rates.

Why Timing is Everything In Affiliate Marketing

It’s true. Timing is absolutely everything when it comes to making a killing in the affiliate marketing world. There are many folks who make a killing by promoting the right product at the right time. Affiliate products are not different than regular products, and they go through a life cycle as well.

What the above diagram doesn’t take into the account is the intensity of your competition. The intensity rises to its max in the maturity and decline phases. That’s why you should try to catch your leads before your product reaches its maturity. Take Clickbank for example. It’s true that products with higher gravity have proven themselves to be better-sellers. However, a product with gravity of 100 is just tough to promote. Why? Because there are so many affiliates tackling the same product. The PPC costs are going to be too high, and there is a good chance that getting ranked for the organic search is going to be even too tough.

The best way to catch new products is by signing up for industry newsletters. Top merchants are kind enough to give you heads up about new products in advance, giving you plenty of time to prepare your campaigns. Now keep in mind that a whole lot of folks will start early, which is why you should be as agile as possible. What you don’t want to do is start promoting a product after the early buzz is gone, and the market is saturated. Affiliate marketing business is too competitive for marketers to wait around and promote products in their maturity phase. Promoting  the right product at the right time makes all the difference.

Your Take: Which product phase do you find more suitable for your promotional campaigns?

Does Affiliate Marketing Make You Fat?

That’s an interesting question that many have been asking in the past. Does affiliate marketing make you fat? I know a lot of folks don’t give these issues a thought. After all, there could be many other reasons for someone getting back. Just as you can’t claim coffee is giving you cancer if you smoke 2 packs a day.

In case of affiliate marketing, there are enough reason to make this argument. Affiliate marketing is all about finding the right offer, do keyword research, create sites, create landing pages, promote landing pages with PPC, and build relationships with leads. All the above steps need you to spend a lot of time in front of the computer. Spending hours a day in front of a computer can be boring, and one way to get over the boredom is by eating junk food.

Making money online could be addictive too. You may actually spend more time than you would normally in a real job creating campaigns and managing your affiliate offers, which means you are not going to have enough time exercising. You may argue that super-affiliates and successful Internet marketers all look ripped and fit. First of all, that’s not always true (Frank Kern is fit but not everyone is). Besides, these guys have a few folks working for them (doing their dirty work).

Does affiliate marketing make you fat? Not by itself. But it certainly can be a good choice for lazy folks. If you are an active person, there is a good chance that you are going to find a way to keep your active lifestyle. But if you have been a couch potato before, there is a good chance that affiliate marketing will help you stay in bed more often, which means you will burn less calories and get fatter. But as long as you are making the big bucks, that’s a good problem to have.

Do You Have the Never Die Attitude?

Now, the whole idea of never die attitude has been around from the dawn of time. But knowing something and seeing it in action are very different. I first got familiar with the real never say die attitude from the work of legendary Gary Kasparov. Gary was my idol growing up. I was a young kid wanting to be a chess champion, and the guy was a beast. He still probably is, but that’s beside the point.

Here is what “never die” means. No matter how tough things are, and no matter how depressed you are with your situation, you don’t give up all you have worked for to feel better for just a short moment. Most folks have these reflective moments when they look back at their lives and think about how they could have done things differently. A whole lot of folks look back at their lives and thought about what could have been had they started they own businesses.

If you are in the affiliate marketing world these days, you probably won’t have that regret. But a lot of affiliates give the business a try and give up as soon as things get tough. It’s easy to come in this business and expect to start making $$$ right away. But the truth is, you are going to have to build your business up gradually. A few folks get lucky and start making thousands right away, but not everybody’s going to do it. At some point, you are going to have to realize that every minute that you are putting into your business, you are building up assets for your business.

Affiliate marketing is not an all or nothing deal. It’s easy to give up on affiliate marketing after your first, second, or even 10th try. But the never die attitude is all about taking punches and still standing up. If your PPC campaign doesn’t produce results at first, then you should try again. I don’t suggest that you should keep smacking your head against the wall, hoping for different results. But at the same time, you should go crazy and quit the business if your campaign bombs. Affiliate marketing is not for everybody, and the business is tough enough to filter out folks who are not tough enough. But at the end of the day you are going to be pitted against folks who want it as bad as you do, and it all comes down to who will have the never die attitude to get back up more than their competitors.

Are You Taking Advantage Of Social Media?

Social media and Web 2.0 caught fire a couple of years ago, and folks have been jumping on the bandwagon since then. Using Twitter a year go would have made you an early adopter, but nowadays using Twitter is more of a necessity than anything else. Twitter used to be just a micro-blogging platform that folks hated just a year ago, but you can’t imagine how much traffic Internet marketing geniuses are driving to their sites by staying active on Twitter.

If you have not been using Twitter so far, the least you can do is create a Twitter profile for yourself or your business. If you have no idea how to create a good Twitter profile, you can just learn from the top Twitter users. But if you look at guys like Ed Dale in the top 20, you’ll see that they don’t try to spam Twitter by continuously posting affiliate offers. They link to useful sites, and they engage with their followers.

Affiliate marketing on Twitter really can’t be done in a direct kind of way. Folks are too smart to fall for someone who’s just trying to make a quick buck. You can easily get ignored by the Twitter community if you are too pushy. But if you show the community that you are there to provide value and not just spam the community, you can generate lots of traffic and even make a greater number of sales.

Your take: are you using Twitter to promote affiliate offers? Have you had success linking directly to affiliate offers?