Sell, Sell, Sell

Since the 90′s, we’ve gradually stopped going to the store, the store comes to us.

Affiliate Marketing is like direct selling.  Direct Selling carries the potential of awesome financial rewards for individuals who learn to maximize this kind of distribution channel. Why do major corporations such as MCI, U.S. Sprint, Coca Cola, Colgate Palmolive, Gillette, Avon and Fuller Brush, among many others, take part in direct marketing?  Because it works! It’s a cheap and effective way to garner market penetration.

According to the Direct Selling Association, this selling approach sets in motion some 12 billion dollars annually on products in the U.S. alone, from vitamins to rain chains. Within its membership, the DSA has recognized 200 companies and about 16 million sellers. Total sales for 2010 $16 billion. 

The trend is clear, the most renowned economist of the past few years, Paul Zane Pilzer, predicts that the next trillion dollar industry is the health and welfare and its distribution through network marketing or direct sales.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor estimates that 20 percent of the workforce in the United States is already working on their own. If forecasters are right, that number can approach 100 percent in the coming years.

Experts have long predicted that the twenty-first century is an era of luxury, Internet, health and welfare, a world of abundance designed specifically to accommodate the expectations of consumers. And it will. But this opportunity is only available to those who make smart decisions. 

In the coming years, our survival is primarily determined by the decisions we make today,  and on the strategies we choose to build our businesses in this Information. Those who choose to work in network marketing today are taking a giant step in the right direction.

 

Go For The Gold!

Their seems to be a lot of talk in some financial circles about the unique benefits of gold as an investment.  And, did you know there are Gold Coin Affiliate programs? I did a little bit of research into this niche, and here are some of the selling points:

Discovered about 5 millennia ago, throughout history, Gold has been used not only as jewelry but also as the most popular investment. Since it’s not a paper investment (such as stocks or bonds), gold helps to diversify an investment portfolio.  What’s more, gold is a tangible asset, such as a home – but this one has beauty and romance that you can literally hold in the palm of your hands. When purchased in the form of legal tender bullion coins, gold can be affordable, easy to buy and collect.

An important measure of any investment is its liquidity, right?  Yes. And just how easy is it to unload it, you ask? As a liquid asset, it trades worldwide – everyday. Meaning at any given moment, the market is open to trade somewhere in the world for you to sell or buy gold bullion.  Cool eh? So, including Gold in any investment portfolio  can provide a safety net for when the stock market dips, which reduces risk.

All this adds up to one thing: this niche becomes a golden opportunity (no pun intended) for the ever so savvy affiliate- you! So go for the gold…

The Delicate Art of Preselling

When doing affiliate marketing it’s imperative that you keep your eye on small but important details.

No. 1 in my book: Please avoid the conversion-killing mistake of trying to hard sell. Take a look at your bounce rates: if site visitors are only at your sites for a few seconds, could they feel as if you be trying to hard sell? Your responsibility as an affiliate marketer is to “presell” your readers before they get to the actual sales message from the vendor.

No one wants to read a sales pitch, and they don’t want to see anything resembling it on a website. So keep in mind that you only presell, and the person who made the product does the selling part. Your presell efforts will create a desire to know more and also make the person feel comfortable about clicking through to read more. You’ll discuss the benefits of the product in an objective manner and even talk about the negatives. Be honest – it’s critical that your readers feel and believe they are reading someone’s objective and unbiased review of a product.  Remember: your visitors want help making a decision, and if you do that then you’ll help enough people to decide to buy from you.

The better affiliates build a sense of community with their sites. You can too. Try to have your target audience participate at your site. Make your site interesting so that your visitors stay longer, perhaps with some video production. Add a cool voiceover, perhaps a female voiceover.  And don’t forget social links so that visitors can tweet or share something from your site on facebook. Remember, preselling is giving valuable info to your vistors so they can decide to buy something they need.

So give value –  and receive value in return…

Making Money With Articles

Article directories are internet sites that house free articles. These articles are normally place by whoever owns the trademark to them as a promotion method. Each article has the owners byline placed under it so that people who eventually read the article will know who wrote it ( or at the very least who owns it) and will be in a position to get in contact with or visit their internet site for further facts.

Articles directories are a great place to put your articles so that they will make you cash. By utilizing this technique, people who are interested in your product or service will see your article, view you as an expert in the subject, and will visit your website. Even though you cannot write or do not have any knowledge on the subject on that you are promoting ( for example for you run an affiliate website), you can always employ a writer to do the work for you. Getting quality articles written will be costly up front, but they will pay for themselves in no time, either through affiliate sales or selling your own services, and everything from then on is pure profit.

Let us take a real life example. Imagine that you are an accountant working out of your home. You write a piece on an accounting topic and put it on different article directories. People who are searching for the subject you wrote about will read your article, see that you have the knowledge and skill that is required to do a job for them, and go to your internet site or speak to you via e-mail. Your article just gained you a new customer who may make use of your services regularly, but will surely give you a nice profit at least once.

Moreover, as you have posted it on a free article directory, other people who have affiliate internet sites about accounting will in the end use your article for their web site. Since they need to attach your byline to it, this will bring you even more exposure for every website that re-posts your article. This since you will be benefiting of off the traffic that they get to their website.

There are numerous article directories out there for you to use. Your bet best is to put a copy of each of your articles on every person for maximum exposure. It will eventually help to bring lots of traffic and customers to your website, that will result in new sales and profits…

3 Information Product Ideas that Work

When you think about information product creation, what comes to mind? Do you get stumped at some point and can’t think anymore? One of the greatest problems that online marketers have is that they don’t think differently and don’t come up with new product information ideas. However, it’s really not that difficult to create an info product if you look into varied directions. In the following article we shall be looking into 3 unique information product ideas that you can use to get your creative juices running.

Recording an information product on your own is one of the easiest ways to create such a product! All that is required for you to do to quickly create an information product, even if you don’t know what you are doing, is to record yourself as you talk about the subject in question. Let’s presume you are a “Dog Training” expert but aren’t really happy with the idea of writing a book or something similar. All that is required is for you to download a program like Audacity and record any information you wish your customers to have. It doesn’t matter whether they are a few ideas, some tips or a strategy they can use. You can offer virtually anything you like. As long as you offer value people will be quite happy. Pick that microphone up and start talking because your information product could be ready in a few hours.

You can also provide your customers with individual coaching for a price. This is a very popular business model because everyone wants to be shown how to do it. If you have information in a particular area or a skill that you can show others how to do, it would be easy for you to start personal coaching times on the phone. If you want to advance to the next level, you can also give out internet coaching sessions where you teach many people all at one time. This is an extremely good way to make high value info products because giving lessons is usually seen as being valuable. You can get more cash from clients than from other types of things. The best part about this is that it doesn’t take much of your time and all you need to do is help others with your knowledge and get paid for it.

Last but not least; if you’ve conducted a few teleseminars or webinars over a course of few months, you can actually sell them as a package. people love to get information products that are recorded in a live format. You can give them great content by giving out these bundled up webinars.

In conclusion, this article has presented some extremely effective ways to put together effective, unique products. It requires little time to create a product and the best bit is that you work only once and you keep on earning. Besides that, once you start creating information products, you’ll discover that there is a never ending demand for knowledge and you’ll be able to sell it for a price.

Google Alerts Has Unlimited Applications

How do you keep abreast of new information on your marketing niche? Google Alerts™ is really an excellent tool to build your business intelligence. Here are some great ways to use this tool!

Learn When You Appear in the Search Engine Results

For instance, I have my name and company name entered into Google Alerts. So every time it sees those parameters in the Search Engine results for Google and its partners, alerts sends me an email and shows me the referenced URL and a summary of my information. I can quickly see what blogs and article sites are publishing my articles, who is linking to our website and blog, as well as see, the buzz and conversations about me and the company I work for.

Keeping Up with Your Competitors and Partners

You can enter any set of parameters into Google Alerts. Things like: product names, new services, company names, people’s names- the sky is the limit. This will in turn provide you a wealth of information in real time. You can keep track of what your partners and employees are doing. This is a fantastic tool to gain that intelligence you need to keep competitive edge. It helps with your market positioning as well.

SEO Keyword Tool

Getting alerts in certain keyword strings can quickly help you determine whether the keyword string is good for you and if so, how to approach your Online Marketing Strategy so you can take advantage of the market opportunity. The internet changes quickly, but these alerts can keep you ahead of these changes, capitalizing on the opportunities presented.

Industry and Market Trends

See what the experts are writing about concerning your industry and market. Another great data input for your Effective Business Plans.

Tracking Social Media and Networks

Social media changes minute by minute. How do you track and keep up with results? Understanding how your social media strategy is working is really important and sometimes hard to define and quantify. Google as a search engine pays close attention to the social networks in real time. Use alerts to gain that critical intelligence about what is happening and hot in the social networks. You can find and apply real time data. This gives you great opportunity to address any problems or emerging opportunities immediately. All this with a free tool!

Unlimited Applications

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I am sure you have a bunch of ideas on how you can use alerts to bolster your company’s business intelligence. Ask your Business Plan Company about it today!

About The Article Author – Frank Goley is a Business Turnaround Consultant for ABC Business Consulting. He is an expert in business planning, marketing, strategic planning, business turnarounds, online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). Frank has written over 135 Business Success Articles and E-Books. He is author of a Business Plan Book and writes the Business Success Blog. Frank really enjoys helping companies to succeed!

Affiliate Marketing

I know many of you are still sitting on the fence about FINALLY making the decision to start your affiliate marketing business.  So, lets review:

Whether you want to quit your day job or you just want to make a little extra money to help with the bills, Affiliate Marketing is a great place to start  because unlike PPC Marketing, affiliate and Internet Marketing Tools will help you get set up and running with little or even no cost at all. If you use PPC advertising for your campaigns and you don’t know what you’re doing, you can easily clean out your bank account in a matter of months without any return on your investment.

Affiliate Marketing affords you an easier start too because you don’t have to own product to get started making money. You make money promoting other peoples products and receiving a commission once a sale has been made. The commission you receive can be as high as 75% with some products; these are usually from the sale of digital products which can be downloaded over and over again with no cost to the seller, hence the high commission you receive for selling the product.

The Process

When you want to start your Affiliate Marketing campaign, the first thing you need to do is the Keyword research, this is a very important part of Affiliate Marketing and should be researched by using  Internet Marketing Tools thoroughly before jumping straight into a campaign because choosing the wrong keywords could be the difference in either making a ton of money or making absolutely nothing at all. There are a lot of good keyword research sites out there but I would recommend Google’s’ Keyword tool because it is free of charge, easy to use, and you don’t need to register for an account to use it.

Once you’ve chosen your keywords you then need to set up a site or blog and optimize your chosen keywords. This can be achieved by writing a short article or blog post, roughly about 300-500 words long which includes your keywords at least 3 times. By doing this it will help Google find your site more easily when someone is searching for content based on your keywords. The Article you use must be relevant to the product you are promoting and once you have it uploaded to your site, you can then link your keywords in your article to the Affiliate product you are promoting.

Once you have your site up and running you must then drive traffic to your offer. Traffic is the most important part of your business. You might have the best website in the world but if no one sees it,  what’s the point? A great way to start driving traffic is through Article Marketing. If done correctly, you can drive tons of laser targeted traffic to your site all ready with their wallets open hungry to buy whatever you are offering. The good thing about Article Marketing is that it’s free of charge and once your article has been published, you can start receiving targeted traffic very quickly. There are a lot of great Article directories on the web which get thousands of visitors every single day and these are the people you need to be targeting.

Back-linking from Forums is also another great source of traffic. These Forums must be related to the product you are promoting, for example; there’s no point leaving posts in a Weight loss Forum if you are promoting a product for Teeth Whitening because the traffic you do receive will just be clicking on your link through curiosity, and once they give your site a quick once over they will move straight on without taking the time to read your offer thoroughly, thus reducing the chance they will actually make a purchase.

So let’s re-cap: start off with your keyword research, this is a very important part of your campaign and should be researched thoroughly. Create your own website or Blog and optimize your keywords - this will help with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and hopefully help you get on the first page of Google for your chosen keywords.

Do this and reap the benefits.  But you have to start.  Go start NOW!!!

Website Traffic Basics

One of the most significant keys to success is getting website traffic. The more visitors you have, the better your sales and profits. Presumably you have a niche and you know your keywords, and regularly conduct keyword research to stay on top of what’s popular. Based on those assumptions here are five quick and easy tips to get website traffic fast!

Tip #1 Make sure you’re actually tagging your keywords

Do you spend a lot of time optimizing your content and then neglect to tag them on your webpage? Tags are where search engines look and if there are no tags they’ll pass right by your web pages. Here’s a quick brief on tags.

There are a number of tag types including,

• Title tags. Title tags are quite possibly the most important place to situate your keywords. Here’s what they look like – <title>Primary keyword phrase here. </title>. Your title tag is where you place your primary keyword or keyword phrase. The sentence will describe your business in less than 90 characters.

• Header Tags. Header tags are next in order of importance to search engines. They’re ranked in order of importance and look like this – <h1>Primary and/or Secondary keywords here</h1>. The <H1 designates this header as the most important header on the page.

• Meta Tags. Meta tags provide the small descriptive text found underneath the title tag on the search engine results page. Like title tags these should be kept brief, informative and up to date.

• Alt Tags. Alt tags are used to provide a text description of a graphic. Each graphic on your site should have a description and an alt tag.

Tip #2 Add content to your site regularly

Content is essential for traffic and a top search engine ranking. Content is what search engine spiders look for and index – without it there’s nothing to index or rank. Give visitors and search engines a reason to visit and index your site. Make a commitment to provide daily, optimized content and your traffic will soar.

Tip #3 Procure valuable and relevant incoming links

The more websites which link to your webpages the more valuable search engines perceive you to be, though not all links are created equal. Search engines give more leverage to links from sites which are popular and credible and from sites which are relevant to your website topic.

There are different types of links.

- A direct link looks like a basic website address, for example, www.yourwebsite.com
- A text link occurs when the webpage address is embedded in the text. Readers simply click on the link and are redirected to a new website page.
- If the link is to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page, it is called a “deep link”.

You can encourage linking to your website by:

• Adding content to your site.
• Submitting to article directories.
• Publishing press releases.
• Blogging and participating in social networking forums, chat rooms and social networking sites.

Tip #4 Be Social!

Now more than ever before, internet marketing is about building a community. Whether you offer a forum on your website or you participate in social networking sites, social networking is a valuable traffic generating tactic. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for generating links and traffic to your site ñ create a profile and then post comments, links to your site and ideas which generate conversation.

Tip #5 Advertise for more exposure and traffic

Advertising, when handled strategically, can be used to promote your content and products or services. PPC advertising is often the tool of choice because you control the advertising budget on a daily basis and have the tools to test and track your advertising efforts. Once you’ve honed your PPC ads the return on investment can be phenomenal in terms of traffic and purchases.

For maximum results, create a traffic and SEO strategy. Outline your plan and your goals and then take the necessary action. Take advantage of these five traffic and search engine tips to boost your business.

Super Affiliate Basics

As more and more companies are establishing their businesses online, affiliate programs have become dramatically popular as a viable internet marketing tool. Assigned affiliates get rewarded for directing traffic and potential customers to a company’s website.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn extra income. Finding a niche market with products and services you trust and believe in is the first step to success. There are tremendous affiliate programs which offer you an abundance of tools and materials to promote and market their products. However, what you do with those tools and materials is entirely up to you. You can be just another affiliate or a super affiliate.

Benefits To Being A Super Affiliate

The most significant benefit to being a super affiliate is the income. Many super affiliates make + six figures simply promoting the products and services of others.

Additionally, if you’re one of the main contributors to a company’s affiliate program they’re going to take care of you. You may receive a higher commission payout, be the first to make use of new marketing materials and get the direct manager support you need when you need it.

Here are some of the basics successful strategies many super affiliates use:

Step One – Commit to publishing content on a regular basis. Content has proven time and again to be the best sales tool available to affiliate marketers. Sure, thin salesletter landing pages may provide some conversions, but these are frowened upon by Google and are more and more seen as spammy by the more informed web navigator. Nothing, not even strategically placed ad copy works as well as providing quality content that pre-sells any product that you’re promoting on your website.

Possible content includes:

• Autoresponders.
• E-newsletters.
• Blogs posts
• Social networking via forums, social networking sites, and chat rooms
• Articles
• Press releases

Step Two – Track and test. Make sure you know where your prospects are coming from, what motivates them to click through and what information they read and respond to and then give them what they need. Tracking and testing is the only way to hone your affiliate program into a smooth running, money making machine.

Step Three – Use the provided marketing materials and be willing to take it a step further. Many affiliate programs do a great job of providing their affiliate with ready to marketing materials including:

• Banner ads
• Buttons
• Email copy
• Articles
• Free promotional reports

Use the materials your affiliate manager has provided. It’s been tested and developed for results. That being said, be sure to create your own content too. Even as an affiliate you are your own company and your website needs to reflect your personality and brand. Building a community around your website and providing valuable content is a sure way to create a following that trusts you and your credibility, which will result in click throughs and affiliate sales.

Step Four – Pre-sell. The good news is that your job as an affiliate is to pre-sell products and services. Pre-selling means your content, whether it is a review, article, tutorial, course, or blog post, speaks honestly about the products and services you promote. Pre-selling is about providing value to your website visitors and prospects, making them comfortable with you and your authority to generate interest and a click through to the company website, where the selling happens.

Step Five – Follow up. Just like your affiliate manager follows up with you to see how you’re doing and what you need, follow up with your prospects. A great way to do this unobtrusively is to create a lead list by providing a newsletter visitors can subscribe to, a free report, or any number of products in exchange for an email address and the permission to contact them with valuable information and special promotions.

Becoming a Super Affiliate is an awesome way to go if you want to build a Internet Marketing (IM) business. Find products and services you trust and believe in and then create a strategy to share information to your target audience. Test and track your efforts, focus on providing value to your prospects and leave the selling to the companies you represent. Helping others live better lives, without having to provide the products or services personally, is a great way to make a living.