Promotion is a Limitless Topic in Affiliate Marketing
Most of the newbie question in affiliate marketing is about how to promote their own affiliate offer? I usually respond by giving them some short list of different tactics and strategies that I use in my own campaigns.
If you look at the Affiliate Marketing Basics Page here, the no.7 step is promoting. It’s kinda vague to think about it since promoting affiliate offers is a wide topic. That’s why there has never been a scarcity of this topic online. Affiliate bloggers never run out of posts in tackling this and it’s a continuous debate over and over.
It’s limitless because for instance, when you talk about pay-per click marketing, you can talk about several variations on how to do it effectively. You can also include copywriting inside it where there are another heap of variations. And we’re not even into different PPC networks yet and their differences in their own rules.
Overwhelmed by now? It’s normal. In the next few days I’m going to carve out a post about a huge list of different ways on promoting your affiliate offers and in each ways, I would try to be as comprehensive as possible. Stay tuned.
(Sorry for leaving you hanging)
The Importance of Tracking in Affiliate Marketing
In affiliate marketing, you can easily distinguish the experts from the noobs. Most newbies don’t do tracking. In fact and surprisingly, they don’t even seem to know how to track and don’t show any interests in tracking. Probably one of the many reasons why most “affiliate marketers” doesn’t really make money with affiliate marketing.
Tracking is essential, just like testing and tweaking, it helps us do well and improve our own campaigns. By tracking, we come to have an idea of what is working and what’s not working w/c will then give us the opportunity to tweak.
There are several tools that you can use to track your own affiliate marketing campaigns but you don’t need to use a lot. If you are with Pay-per click networks like Google Adwords, Yahoo Search and MSN Ad Center, you can already have that built-in tracking with them because they have the data, although only basic tracking.
You can also make good use of Google Analytics if you have landing page for the product that you intend to build in for long term. Besides being free, you also get to enjoy all the add-on tools that the Analytics provide.
Lastly, there is an awesome service known as Tracking202. It’s amazingly free and it’s a very reliable service that can pretty much do advance tracking for your campaigns. You can either opt to use the free hosted version or the premium self-hosted version (needs a dedicated server). Unlike analytics, tracking202 is nearly real-time with its flawless tracking and I don’t know any other program that does tracking superbly combined with reliability and affordable cost than the 202 product. It’s also fully integrated with the major pay-per click networks so you’ll not have any issue with it.
Not tracking is a murderous crime in affiliate marketing. Do not think I am over-exaggerating things here. If you’re not tracking your campaigns yet then start doing so now, and you will be ahead of many other marketers. What say you?
Following Hot Trends is the Easiest Way to Make Money
In my last post entitled there’s no best product to promote in affiliate marketing, I explained why there really is no product that can make you tons of money that easy. I emphasized the essence of testing and tweaking in affiliate marketing and how it can literally make or break your business. For today, I would like to contradict that thought a bit by talking about profiting from the latest trends.
What is a hot trend? Ok I will not quote a definition from some stupid ass resource site. Hot trends are simply the ones that are being talked about a lot (yes it speaks volume) and that people are willing to spend for it. In short, if an anime is getting a lot of buzz it doesn’t really mean it’s automatically profitable.
Some Good example of Hot trends
One good example is the recent buzz around Apple’s iPad. Because Apple finally released some info about it, it opened a profitable market for people, what is it? Email Submits! Just by surfing through PeerFly, I easily noticed an offer paying $1.20 per lead (email only) with a VERY high conversion rate of 40% (it obviously went down afterwards).
Another good example a long time ago is the Obama, McCain related offers. During the presidential campaigns, a lot of merchants and affiliate alike are cashing in through this trend simply because it was the “in” thing.
You may probably be thinking about saturation and stuffs but remember saturation and competition is good because it signifies there’s a money in that market. More competition means more money.
How to Find the Hot Trends
People do it differently and I’m amazed on how a lot of marketers get creative with this. But for the blog’s audience and nature I will discuss the basic ways.
Twitter is the top social media tool and just by searching for surging topics that are lasting a bit longer, you can already have your offers to promote. What I usually do is go to sites like TweetMeme and find the hottest post. After that I’ll match that with a certain offer.
Google Trends
Google Trends is the best tool for finding the latest buzz search-wise. There’s a good comprehensive post on how to maximize the use of this tool located here.
Blog-Hopping
It does make sense actually to explore the big sites in the blogosphere to find what’s hot. I usually browse big and authority sites like TechCrunch, Mashable and etc to find out what’s kicking in.
How about you? Do you care about hot trends when doing your own affiliate marketing stuffs? Let me know!
Free eBook: Affiliate Marketing Manifesto
You probably have noticed right now that there is that ugly eBook located at the header of this site. That is actually the free stuff given if you subscribe to AffiliateHat Dot Com’s newsletter. You get the info product for free, plus you are subscribed to the weekly newsletter which will give out awesome tips that will accelerate your learning on affiliate marketing. Do take note that the newsletter contents are the ones that are not published (and will never be published) in this blog.
What is Affiliate Marketing Manifesto?
Affiliate Marketing Manifesto is like a general guide in affiliate marketing which is newbie-friendly. The book is written with the audience in mind so if you’re just getting started with affiliate marketing then you are probably the best person for this. It’s 25-page eBook which hands out no fluff, all pure meat content.
This is what is inside the Manifesto:
- Affiliate Marketing Introduced
- The 3 Things All Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive Online
- How To Become A Super Affiliate In Niche Markets
- So Many Affiliate Programs! Which One Do I Choose?
- Which Affiliate Networks To Look Out For When Promoting
- Easy Profits Using PPC In Your Affiliate Marketing Business
- Using Product Recommendations To Increase Your Bottom Line
- Using Camtasia to Increase Your Affiliate Checks
- Top 3 Ways To Boost Your Affiliate Commissions Overnight
- How To Avoid The 3 Most Common Affiliate Mistakes
Go now and make sure to grab your copy of affiliate marketing manifesto located at the topmost part of the page.
Simple Secret in Making Money from Facebook
Ok sorry for being hysterical in the title. By now you should already know that there is no such thing as secret in affiliate marketing. Or to be more specific, a secret that would literally explode your profits. Again affiliate marketing is all about testing and tweaking and the more you learn from your data, the more you will earn.
Before, it’s very easy to profit from Facebook. All you need to do is run that shady email submit and get it in front of as many as audience as possible. Time flies very fast and now with all those new terms, a lot of people find making money from Facebook impossible.
If you get lazy to do a good ad copy, most of the times it will just get rejected. Even if you do a good copy, sometimes it will get rejected even. The key there is by getting into the smallest niche or what is called microniches.
A good example. If you’re going to run a quiz offer where you are going to target literally everyone, target the tag entertainment and have as much people see the ad, are you going to make money? I doubt!
There’s no secret but here’s one thing you’ve got to bare in mind. When you promote something on Facebook, make sure you laser target your audience according to the offer you’re promoting. For instance, if you’re promoting the Avatar Quiz Offer, then target not just the Avatar movie avid fans. Target them by age, whether they’re single or not and stuffs. Do you think a 40 yr.old woman would be interested to take that quiz? I bet not! Or will an 11 year old devoted fan have the money to pay for the subscription? Naah!
At the end of the day, it’s just about simply trying to get as deep as possible. While you may get lesser impressions by doing this, it may literally double your EPC. What are you gonna do with 10 mil impressions and no leads? and on the flip side, how about 10000 impressions and 10 leads? Remember, the more your ad is clicked, the more it will be displayed. And the bottom line is that the cost per click would be much cheaper if you’re ad is getting clicked often.
What say you?
