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Automate Your Way To Affiliate Marketing Cash

By: Cleo Craig

If you want to make a sustained online income with affiliate marketing, you'll need to automate both the front end and the back end offers.
Here are a few proven tips to ensure that you'll be effortlessly generating affiliate commissions while you count sheep...
1. Research and select the best affiliate products and related affiliate programs which best fit your target market and that will enable you to earn the most amount of money for the least amount of work in the shortest amount of time.
You want to make sure that the "affiliate vendor" (if they manage their own program) or the affiliate network (who manages a variety of affiliate vendor products) has a reputation for paying affiliates on time with a simple method for affiliates to sign up (get their affiliate ID/link), track their progress (clicks, sales, etc), and get paid (ie: direct deposit into a paypal account versus receiving a check).
Find products or services that provide high commissions and that have a top notch sales page to ensure high conversion rates (from lookers to buyers).
Always look over the sales page to determine if it entices youto buy the product. If not, it probably won't entice others either. Don't forget that downloadable products or services pay a much higher commission percentage than a physical product simply because they cost less for the vendor to create, advertise, inventory, and deliver to the buyer. If you do chose a physical product, try mixing it with a related digital product to increase your overall payouts. An example would be marketing a gardening device with a related "how to grow the fattest, juiciest apples" downloadable report.
Also keep in mind that an affiliate product or service with a monthly subscription fee (ie: a gardening club membership site)
provides an ongoing steam of income for work you did once. For maximum income possibilities, you try to have a combination of "one time cost" and "monthly recurring cost" products that relate to your desired market.
Since you should also plan to sell additional products to those that have bought from you, be sure that the affiliate network you decided on has a variety of "complimentary" products you can sell. Since people usually buy more than one product on a subject they are excited about, this will lock in an ongoing stream of income from your initial marketing workd. Although you can transparently offer products to your market from a variety of affiliate programs simulatneously, it will be less stressful on you and your ability to efficiently handle your affiliate activities if you have as few affiliate product owners and/or affiliate programs to manage as possible.

2. Concentrate on ONE product or service at a time to avoid "activity overload".
You need to know if your promotional efforts for a specific product or service are making you money or if you are just wasting your efforts. You need to monitor and tweak until you have a continous stream of money from your chosen product or service. If it doesn't happen, drop it and move on to another product.
Get all promotional and upsell tasks (ie: squeeze page, pre-sell page, free reports, autoresponder series, etc.) determined and ready to function on autopilot before moving on to promoting a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.
Automation of each affiliate product or service's procedures enables you to turn your focus to creating additional streams of income without sacraficing your previous affiliate income stream.

3. SMART affiliates ALWAYS capture prospects name/emails for maximuming profit potential
Since the affiliate product owner or affiliate program doesn't provide you with a visitor or buyer's name and/or email address, if you route your prospects directly to the affiliate vendor's webpage, you have lost them forever (even if they purchase, you won't know who they are only that you made a sale). Therefore, you won't be able to capitalize on your initial promotional efforts by presenting other products or services to those who either expressed an interest or actually bought.
Therefore, prior to sending your visitor to the affiliate product owner's sale page, you first want to route them to a page that you have generated to capture the prospects name and email address. This page is called a "squeeze page" or "opt-in" page. On that page you'll need to give something for FREE (ie: a report, mini-ebook, software tool, newsletter subscription, etc.). Something with VALUE that will entice them to give up the information you want.
Since it is a common fact that most people won't purchase on their first introduction to an individual or product or service, you also need to follow up with the people that have downloaded your FREE item (your list). Since statistics have proven that it usually takes 7 exposures before a prospect feels comfortable enough to purchase, you need to have a process set up to make sure that you follow up in a timely manner.
Setting up an autoresponder with a series of messages that are automatically sent at predetermined intervals, is the best way to make it happen. This email series should be set up so that it helps you to start a relationship as well as establish you as a trusted advisor in your targeted marketplace. This will make it easier for your propsects to purchase from you.
By continuing to offer FREE, valuable information to your readers along with additional promotions built into your email series, it will ensure that your subscribers will continue to stay "subscribed". That they will continue to open your messages and eventually purchase one or more of your affiliate offers.
4. Get maximum exposure to your affiliate offer
There are a number of ways to achieve exposure for your affiliate offer (both free and paid). In other words, traffic to your promotional offer. The biggest marketing effort is made upfront. After that, if done right, a "viral" effect takes place and your marketing efforts will take on a life of their own.
Free ways:
Article writing - Write associated articles and send to article directories. Articles are then picked up by a number of website owners, ezine owners, and others looking for online content. Your article's "resource box" should have a direct link to your promotional "squeeze or "opt-in" page (which can't be removed by the publisher). So, every time anyone publishes your article, you'll get free traffic.
Forum participation - look for related forums and join in the discussions. Ask questions, offer solutions from your experience/educaton (not a sales pitch). Just set up your "signature" to route to your promotional "squeeze page" and Let your "signature" do your selling for you. Just make sure that the forum offers this type of signature (most do).
Blogging - seek out related blogs and write comments, again with a link to your promotional "squeeze page" or "opt-in" page.
Joint Ventures - find like minded people in your target marketplace that have "lists" that you can promote to and vice versa. If they promote your promotional link to their list, you'll introduce their product in your autoresponder messages to your list.
Paid ways:
Google Adwords PPC (or other PPC Services) - Write & publish PPC (pay per click) ads. Each time someone clicks your ad, you are charged a certain fee. Keep in mind that you are charged this fee when they "click" your link, not if they "buy" the product. So, if you aren't managing your PPC allowance closely, you will spend lots more money on "clicks" than you'll ever earn on affiliate commissions. Be sure to read and understand the terms and conditions of any PPC program before you start to use this promotional resource.
If you are too busy or simply don't want to do these tasks yourself, you can always/could easily outsource them to be done by others. But, make no mistake, they do need to be done. As usual, its a trade off of your time or your money.

5. Make more cash than other affiliates promoting the same product or service
Once you have established a solid track record as an affiliate who can bring in the sales, you can request a higher than normal commission from the merchant. Just contact the affiliate merchant and negotiate a larger percentage of the pie.
Since the merchant doesn't pay you anything unless you've made a sale, they have a zero risk investment in you. If you have been a producer with them or can confirm your success with other affiliate efforts, many will work with you. Since only about 5% of their affiliates ever generate money for them, they won't want to lose one that does. Just be reasonable in your request.
Use these guidelines and you'll soon see a BIG increase in your affiliate commissioins in no time at all.

Article Source: http://www.articlekingpro.com

Cleo Craig is the founder of Internet Marketing Scout, a research group dedicated to helping newbies find proven, low cost, and easy to implement stratagies for generating an online income. See her latest recommendation at www.internetmarketingscout.com

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