Archive for the ‘Monday: Weekly Action Plan’ Category

When I first got started online I didn’t realize the importance of a mailing list. I remember building a list multiple times for different sites, but I never actually emailed those subscribers. I guess it boiled down to the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing, so I was lost when it came to emailing them.

- What do I send them?
- How often should I email them?
- How did I get more people on my mailing list?
- How should I format my emails?

Of course it gets easier the longer you’re in business, but you can feel at a loss when you’re just getting started.

So I’ve put together a checklist that will help you build a list, understand your list, format your emails, schedule your emails, and what to send your subscribers.

Click Here to download the email marketing strategy checklist.

This week I’m changing directions from information products to affiliate marketing, but you have to admit, they’re both appealing in their ability to produce passive income

There are a lot of things you can do to tweak your affiliate marketing efforts, so this week I came up with a list of 10 tips for adding more to your bottom line.

But, I took it a step further and put together a worksheet and checklist to help get you on track. You’ll find the links to those at the bottom of this post.

So what can you do to become a better affiliate?

1. Broaden Your Product Horizons

All those super affiliates that you read about promote a wide variety of products for different companies, so they essentially have their hand in many different pies at once. This is a great way to boost your income, and provides security because you don’t know how long a particular product will continue to sell successfully, so avoid putting all your eggs in one basket.

But with that said…

2. Take it One Step at a Time

Trying to promote a lot of different affiliate programs in a short period of time can mean you don’t have enough time to dedicate to each one. Take it one step at a time. Start with one product and one site, test and tweak your formula until you’re happy with your success. And then it’s just a matter of rinsing and repeating, again and again.

3. Test What You Sell

It’s easy to get hung up on products that will reap you high paying commissions, but you have to remember that by promoting it to your market, you’re putting your reputation on the line. So make sure you believe in its ability to deliver on its promise.

Thoroughly research the company selling the product you are promoting. Is their customer service up to scratch? Is their site professional and easy to navigate? Will they treat your customers as you would wish them to?

4. Landing Page for Higher Commissions

Choose affiliate programs that link directly to the sales page for the product you are promoting. If your affiliate link leads to a home page, your customers are going to have to search for the product, meaning a lower conversion rate and less commission for you.

5. What Will You Earn

Check out the payment terms of each affiliate program you join. What percentage can you expect to get from each sale? Will you be paid only for a sale, or will you get commission for each sales lead you generate? Do you have to earn a minimum amount before they will pay you?

6. Profits for a Lifetime?

Try to find affiliate programs that have lifetime commissions. With a lifetime commission you receive a percentage of the sale price every time a customer you have recommended buys from the merchant site, whether they use your affiliate link or not.

7. Market Your Products

You can have a great website promoting high quality affiliate products, and fantastic sales copy that would convince the most skeptical visitor to buy, but if you don’t have any traffic to your site you are not going to make a profit. Successful affiliates spend around 75% of their working hours on marketing and only around 25% on building, upgrading and improving their sites.

8. Smart and Subtle Techniques

Many internet users have become so accustomed to banner and sidebar links that they tend to ignore them. Others are reluctant to click on obvious affiliate links. Embedding subtle text links into your website content can make your customers feel they are simply moving to another page of your site and tend to attract more clicks.

The key to successful affiliate promotions is pre-selling on your site before the customer clicks on the link. This way when they click on the recommended link they are pretty much sold already.

9. Take Advantage of Ready-to-Go Affiliate Tools

When you join an affiliate program, check the company’s website to see if they have relevant articles for you to download and reprint. Including these articles on your site will increase your site content and you can include affiliate links at the top and bottom of the article.

If you wanted to, you could also take it a step further and create your own content and promotional tools. Unique is always better

10. Build Your Own Assets

Just because you’re selling someone else’s product doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have your own list of customers. The wealthiest affiliates build assets. It makes sense to build your own customer list rather than sending your traffic directly to the vendor’s website.

By building your own list of subscribers, you have the opportunity to build a relationship and promote products to them on a long-term basis.

Here are those handy printables I told you about:

CLICK HERE for a checklist so you don’t miss any steps of adding more affiliate products to your business.

CLICK HERE for a worksheet to help you add new affiliate products to your business. 

All my best,

 

P.S. I love affiliate marketing, not only because it’s profitable, but because it’s fun and challenging too. While I now know how to be successful at it, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, just a few short years ago it was a real struggle for me to get going and make money at it. Talk about frustrating!

But I don’t want it to be like that for you. Which is why I put together my Affiliate Marketing Guide (use coupon code: 06F90B8 to save 20%), so I can help you bypass those tricky hurdles and see results a lot faster than I ever did

I know, I know, I just did a whole thing on information products a couple of months ago, but I wanted to swing back to them because I think NOW is the perfect time to create an information product.

We’re well on our way into the month of April, which means the kids will be out of school in a flash and our work time is bound to get cut short – which it should!

Summer is a time for lazy days, play time with kids, and super fun vacations. We spend all winter indoors working, and I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to watch the summer pass by out my window while I sit in front of the computer.

So where am I going with this?

Well, if you’d rather spend a lot less time working this summer, information products are a great way to line your pockets with some extra moolah…do the work once, and make sales on autopilot. Of course it’ll take some elbow grease to make it happen, but there’s no better time than now to get your butt in gear and finally get a new product out there so you can laze around a bit this year

So let’s get rolling…

First, read the quick start plan below to get moving in the right direction, and then grab the printable worksheet and checklist at the bottom of this post to really get rolling!

Step 1#: Choosing your topic. Choosing your niche topic is perhaps one of the most important steps in creating and marketing your information product. You want a product that solves people’s problems, offers them a benefit, and you want it to be a product topic that’s in demand but isn’t being supplied by every Tom, Dick and Harry on the Internet. This step will then involve some brainstorming, researching and planning on your part. There are several tools you can use including keyword research, trends analysis tools like Google Trends, and by analyzing the market and simply asking people.

Step #2: Creating a business plan. This step involves establishing your budget for both the creation of your product and your marketing plan. You’ll also want to consider if you’re going to sell one information product or a series of information products. Here is where you begin to outline your marketing strategy, business vision, product strategy and all of your goals including the steps you need to take to achieve them.

Step #3: Product creation. Now it’s time for the fun stuff! Here’s where you’ll either contract someone to create your product or you’ll get down to work and create it yourself. You’ll choose what type of product you’re going to create, when you anticipate it being completed and finalizing all the details like your cover artwork, product’s title, and the presentation of your product including any graphics you’ll want to include in it.

Step #4: Your website. If you’re creating your product yourself, this step may be simultaneous with your product creation step. If you’re outsourcing the creation of your product, you can use this time to create your website. Again, this is something you can outsource but you’ll want to know what you want your site to look like and what functions you want it to have before you contract someone to create it. You’ll also want to choose a fulfillment software like 1ShoppingCart, AWeber or PayPal to collect payment and deliver your information product. Some website hosts provide this software to you so you don’t need an external service.

Step #5: Market your product. Marketing can begin well before the product is complete. In fact you’ll want to create your sales page and your advertisements before the product is complete so they’re ready for your launch. You can begin blogging, article marketing, networking online, building your opt-in list, and driving traffic to your website. Of course, once you launch your product you’ll want to begin marketing it specifically.

Step #6: Launch! Congratulations, you’re on your way to joining the ranks of those who make money while they sleep. Passive income is a great thing.

Step #7: Look to your future. What product is next in line to be created, marketed and sold? Begin building your passive income stream.

Click here to download the Information Product Checklist that will help guide you through the steps needed to plan, create, and launch your own information product.

Click here to download the Information Product Worksheet which is  series of questions to help you discover if information product creation/marketing is for you, or if it will be a good addition to you current business.

Talk to you soon,

P.S. If you need extra help and want to fast-track your information product to have it ready in time for summer, sign up for the free “Rapid Product Formula” call with Nicole Dean and Ronnie Nijmeh. They’ll teach you their own formula for creating & marketing info products in record time.