The biggest mistake is..

Not Building A Subscribers List By Capturing Email Address

What most newbie affiliate marketers do is sending traffic directly to the affiliate product. If you are doing this then you might loosing money even when the half of the visitors you send buy through your affiliate link! You will never leverage your affiliate commissions by sending them directly to the merchant.

Let me explain. When you want to drive visitors to an affiliate product you are going to use different traffic and marketing methods. These could be pay per click search engine advertising, banner advertising, search engine optimization, link exchange, article marketing, forum marketing, social marketing or web 2,0 traffic from websites like YouTube, Squidoo, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Delicious etc.

What you will do is struggle to get new visitors every time you want to promote a new affiliate product. If you promote 5 different products you have to do all this work 5 times. If you promote 10 products then you will have to go through these 10 times. Have you ever wondered how much time, energy and money you will have to spend to promote 50 or even 100 different affiliate products or services?

Yes that’s right. 100 more times!

You will never going to leverage your affiliate commissions! Never, unless you hire a large team of people just to promote all these products each using a traffic method.

By driving traffic at your own websites and build your email list, the next time you want to promote something you will not have to go through all these traffic methods from the beginning. You are only going to use one.

Email marketing traffic.

Suppose that you drive traffic of about 1,000 visitors to an affiliate product. Most of all these visitors have never heard of you or about the product. They are not sure if they can trust you, the merchant or the affiliate product.

You are making only one attempt per visitor to achieve a sale. They either buy or not. Well 99% of all those visitors will not buy right away, if they buy at all.

Once you have your own email list of subscribers all you have to do is write and send a simple email message promoting an affiliate product.

People rarely buy from their first visit. They are not sure if that product is going to help them. Most of them want to see multiple solutions so that they can compare the different affiliate products.

So if you don’t collect email addresses, your marketing effort is a one-shot wonder. People like buying from people they know, like and trust. If you’re not giving people a chance to get to know and trust you, don’t be surprised if they don’t buy.

“So what exactly do I need to do Andreas?”

What you need to do is build a list of contacts from people that want to solve a specific problem. You have to use an autoresponder company such as Aweber, GetResponse, Prosender etc. By having them on your subscribers list you will be able to offer them different solutions and when they buy you make a commission.

That is the important thing here. You are providing a valuable service by saving people the time and money of research. You are helping them by giving them the shortcut to the best possible products so they don’t have to waste their hard-earned money on rubbish products.

So how do I start building that lists?
There are hundreds of products that can show you how to build that list and hundreds of different list building methods. If you are a newbie affiliate marketer here is a video course that will show all the steps on how to build an email list properly, step-by-step.

Ok please dont make the same mistake that let me struggle for YEARS online. If you dont have a list get one today!

Thanks for reading. I would love to  read your comments and hearing from you!

Andreas

PS. You can find more affiliate marketing mistakes here:

1. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #1
2. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #2
3. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #3
4. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #4
5. Affiliate Marketing Mistake #5

You Are Promoting The PROGRAM Instead Of The PRODUCT

Many affiliate companies offer a two-tier affiliate programs. In a two-tier affiliate program, affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program. The first tier of commission is the same as in a regular affiliate program. The only difference is the additional tier(s), whereby marketers also earn a commission on sales generated by people they referred to the program. Sometimes compensation will be written in shorthand as tier1/tier2 (ex. 10%/5%)

Well yea, you can make money by using this technique however I will highly recommend you NOT to use this.

A reason it’s because it is harder since you have to market the “affiliate niche” and find thousands of sub-affiliates to sign up.

However the main reason is because none will actually promote the product and just consecrate signing up more affiliates. If you get some people sign up from your affiliate link most of them will just copy you and try to sign up more affiliates.

Who’s going to actually SELL something and earn commissions?

Exactly!

It’s like the worst aspects of MLM (multi-level) marketing. Almost all affiliate marketers will wait for the other affiliate marketers to make sales so that they can make money.

The affiliate marketing niche (NOT affiliate marketing) is a very tough market. The competition is a very high. After making a quick search on Google you will see that there are millions of pages on affiliate marketing. Just think on how much time and effort you have to give so that you can compete with all these people.

What you should do is learn affiliate marketing and promote products to people that are looking for solutions on specific problems. Find affiliate products that have an incredibly good value and that will help people. Don’t even care if they offer a second tier program.

This is a mistake that many newbies make. I was making this mistake too a couple of years ago. All I was doing was promoting the two-tier affiliate program and dreaming about the BIG and EASY $! Well by now you know that you should avoid this.

So always remember. Promote the PRODUCT! NOT the service.

Thanks for reading. I would love to  read your comments and hearing from you!

Andreas

If you want to make money online you will NEED to have a website with traffic. With the proper Search Engine Optimization you can get THOUSANDS of traffic to your website for free. Two important factors you have to know if you want to beat the search engine competition is by using off-page and the on-page marketing.

Before doing off-page and on-page marketing you will need to find out if there is demand for a keyword phrase. It is important to know the volume of a keyword phrase if you want to succeed. You want to know if people are actually searching for your term ex. internet marketing blog and how many times. By using a keyword tool such as Wordtracker, Google Adwords Keyword Tool it is easy to find out.  As you can see there are at least 8,100 searches for internet marketing blog. And a high advertiser competition so people who search for internet marketing blog are also spending money.

Don’t make this mistake!

One major mistake that many internet marketers do is looking on the search volume only. I was doing that mistake for 2 years! All I was looking was how many thousands a keyword phrase gets and trying to target the keywords with the highest volume.

That’s why I struggled to get ranked my website in Google! I was targeting very competitive keyword phrases that are almost impossible to rank well for them. Believe me keyword phrases with only 500-1,000 searches CAN make you money and the phrases with 30,000 may NOT make you any money!

Ok after finding a couple of good keyword phrases and know that there is a demand; it is time to research the competition.

Off-Page Marketing

You will need to have backlinks to your website with the suitable anchor text. Anchor text is the text used in the link back to a website. For example the following link ->>Internet Marketing Blog<<–, the anchor text is “Internet Marketing Blog “. I am voting the page AndreasSpyrou.com for this specific keyword phrase.

But how do you evaluate the competition in Google for a specific keyword phrase?  By using the allinanchor command in Google.

Allinanchor is a Google search command that searches for internet pages that contain inbound links with a specific keyword in their anchor text. That way you will know how many incoming links your website will need to rank for a specific keyword phrase. (Of course keep in mind that there are several other factors that determinate the ranking of a page but the incoming links with the exact anchor text is very important for a good ranking).

As you can see there are 242,000 anchor texts with the keyword phrase Internet Marketing Blog. 242,000 pages have an incoming link with the text “Internet Marketing Blog”. That’s VERY competitive. Unless LOTS of website owners links on my blog by using this keyword phrase I will never get a good ranking for this search term..!

Ok by using this command you can easily find out what keyword phrases to target. But there is a problem. Since hundreds of marketers use this command it disables it after a couple of allinanchor searches. I am getting the following message every 5-10 searches.

This reduces my off-page marketing!

On-Page Marketing

If I want to get ranked for the keyword term “internet marketing blog” I will have to include these keywords in my blog. I will need to create content and include that keyword phrase. I have to write blog posts and have that keyword in the article several times.

So when you type “internet marketing blog” it will show you how many websites Google has indexed that has exactly that keyword phrase anywhere in a webpage. That’s On-Page. On-Page marketing will show you how many webpages have a specific keyword phrase.

But even then when I found about the allinanchor command, when Google fist introduced it, I started researching the competition in Google by doing all the work manually. I was scanning thousands of different keyword phrases to see how competitive they are. Sure I found some lucrative niches and keywords phrases however it took me months of hard work.

But everything changed when I’ve discovered PushButtonKeywords!

By using PushButtonKeywords I was able to determine the on-page and off-page

keywords and compare them very quickly!  It eliminates hours of work and finds me untapped keywords in a matter of minutes!

• You can discover keyword phrases that are virtually undiscovered and untapped in Google, Yahoo and Bing!
• You can know exactly how much (or more importantly, how little) competition you will have for every keyword phrase imaginable!
• Save you hours upon hours of monotonous work by completing the research for you!

I can’t stress enough of how powerful this tool is. Just click here to view a video that Shannon Lueck created for you and download PushButtonKeywords now.

Thanks for reading! Comments are always welcomed.

You Are Selling Instead Of Helping.

Let me ask you a question. Why do you promote different affiliate products?

What is your main reason that you are advertising affiliate products and services?

“To make money of course!”

Well not exactly…

If this is the only reason that you promote affiliate products then you will not succeed with affiliate marketing. You will FAIL!

The main purpose of promoting an affiliate product or service is to help people.

Yes to help people. If you help people solve a specific problem then you will become a successful affiliate marketer. An affiliate marketer that his main purpose is to help people instead of making the most money is the one that will make the most money with affiliate marketing in the end.

There are affiliate marketers that do not care about their visitors or subscribers.

Many newbies all they do is selling, selling and selling without giving any real help. Their only reason of promoting a product is to make money. If you are doing this then you will not become successful (at least in the long term).

You might make a few thousand affiliate sales now but what about next month or next year? Will people trust again your recommendations? Will they listen to you?

Most of them will not. You have to help your visitors and buyers so that you can build trust and credibility. Help people learn how they can solve a specific problem. Give them some tips and other free information.

For example if your niche is “golf swing” you can help the golfers by giving them a free ebook about golf swing. Give them some tips on how to better their golf swing on your blog or website.

Is your website or newsletter just selling, or is it helping people learn something? If so you have to immediately fix it.

Remember to help people before selling an affiliate product or service.

Thanks for reading. As always you can leave your comments.

Andreas

Not Using The Product Or The Service You Are Promoting.

The most important reason of doing affiliate marketing (other than making you money) is helping people to find the correct solution on their problem.

For you to achieve this purpose, you must be able to relay to the customers that certain product and service. It is therefore difficult for you to do this when you yourself have not tried the product or service yourself.

Try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate to see if it is really delivering what it promises. If you have done so, then you are one of the credible and living testaments aware of its advantages and disadvantages. Your customers will then feel the sincerity and truthfulness in you and this will trigger them to try them out for themselves.

“But this will cost me money, Andreas!”

I am not saying to buy all the products that you recommend. This will cost you hence a lot of money! I understand that this will be very hard if you are a newbie. However it is one of the most important things that every successful affiliate marketer has to do. So what can you do?

Contact the vendor and inform him that you are going to promote their product. Ask him if you can have a look on their product so that you can make a review. Some vendors will not allow you. However if the vendor understands the power of affiliate marketing he will give you a sample of their ebooks or a trial version of their service. Some will even give you 100% access on the product or service!

On the other hand if he refuses but you believe that it is a great product I would advice you to buy the product and use it your self. Remember that people are looking for honest reviews of a product or a service from other persons that have used the affiliate product.

Take care!

Andreas

Joining Too Many Affiliate Programs

If you want to make a lot of money with affiliate marketing then you have to promote multiple affiliate products. However one of the biggest mistakes that newbies do is joining multiple affiliate programs!

Huh? I know that this sounds strange, but let me explain.

Having multiple sources of income is a great way to make a lot of money. All super affiliates that are making thousands of dollars every month are promoting many different products by using different methods and strategies. They are joining and promoting hundreds of different affiliate products and get different affiliate cheques every month.

However if you just started affiliate marketing or made a few affiliate commissions online I would advice you not to join several affiliate programs.

Joining and attempting to promote them all at the same time will prevent you from concentrating on each one of them. What most newbies do is start promoting a product and before making a sale they start promoting a second product, a third, a forth and so on. They spend months and months trying to promote all that great affiliate products they have found. They dream of all the huge commissions they will earn. But after a couple of months they haven’t earn any money.

Does this sound familiar?

The maximum potential of your affiliate program is not realized and the income generated will not exactly be as huge as you were thinking initially it would.

The best way to get excellent result is by joining just one program. Then give it your best effort by promoting your products enthusiastically. As soon as you see that it is making a profit, it is time to join another affiliate program.
The correct method is to do it slowly but surely. There is really no need to rush with affiliate marketing. With the way things are going, the future is looking real bright.

Choosing The Wrong Affiliate Product/Service.

Affiliates promote a product just because it is “hot”. They choose the product that is in demand without actually considering if the product appeals to them. Because some affiliate marketers make money with a certain affiliate product this doesn’t mean that you will also make money with it.

You could promote a product that gives you the best commission. However this will not guarantee you that you will make the most sales.

Instead try to choose a really good product in which you are truly interested in and appeals to you. For example if you don’t know anything about the “weight loss” niche then do not promote a weight loss product! Select products in a niche that you have some knowledge or even better something that you are passionate about.

Also don’t promote a product just because it gives you a high commission! Trying to presell a product for the sake of the earnings only is on of the biggest mistakes. You want to select a really good product that will help your visitors solve a specific problem.

Always try to think what is the best solution (affiliate product) for my visitors? That way you will make more commissions even if you promote a product that doesn’t gives you the highest commission.

Comments are always welcomed…

Andreas

The last 3 days were one of the “hardest days” of my internet marketing business.  Why? Because…

I was writing the sales letter for my new product!

Yikes! Yes I know. Writing a sales letter is easier said than done. A sales letter is very important so important that it determines the failure or success of a product.

There are thousands of excellent products in Clickbank, Paydotcom in any niche that you can think of, but most of them hardly make enough sales. Your can have an outstanding product on a topic with huge demand, a very logical price, thousands of affiliate promoting it, but with a bad written sales letter you cant go far!

Writing a sales letter can be a very daunting task but here are some of the most important elements. Here are the basics but also VERY CRITICAL elements that every sales letter must include.

• Preheadline

The preheadline is used to grab your visitor’s attention and direct him to the main headline. It should not take up more than 2 or 3 lines.

• Main Headline

A headline is one of the most important elements in a salesletter. Your headline job is to grab your visitor’s attention in just a few seconds. If it doesn’t then your visitor will not read the page and lose lots of sales. It’s very crucial since it can be the success or failure of your product.

The most important components of a headline are to target the reader. You have to promise him a credible benefit. The biggest lesson I have personally learned about copywriting is that the BENEFIT is the single most important aspect of a headline.

Also include one or more items of

1. Self-Interest,

2. News,

3. Curiosity or

4. Examples of the ‘quick and easy way’

Identify the right people and then try to hit them with a benefit and also induce their curiosity and belief that it is in their own personal interest to find out more.

Some powerful headlines are that start or include the following:

“How To”, “Learn How To”, “Learn What”, “Discover”, “Uncover”, “Secrets Revealed”, “Exposed”, “Insider Tips”, “Exclusive” and THOUSAND of more examples.

How do you know if your headline is ideal? You don’t really know until you test it.

• Subheadline

It’s the first attempt to amplify the benefits or competitive positioning of your offer.

• Tell A Story

Telling a story is a perfect way to entice your readers to stay on your page more. The more a visitor stays in a website, the more possibilities there are to buy your product(s). Try telling a story that builds a picture up in your reader minds and evokes curiosity about its outcome.

Some great examples are to tell..

1. How you got started in the business and why readers should listen to you.
2. You can also tell the story of their problem, how frustrating it is and then slowly uncovers the solution. The ideal solution can be your information product.
3. Tell the story of how you helped someone get from “desperation” to “total satisfaction and improved quality of life.

Try to be as more specific as you can whichever example you use.

• Guarantee

Nobody actually likes buying something and having the risk. As a seller you have to reverse it. You must take the risk in this transaction. Give them your 100% money-back guarantee and for the longest period possible.

• Testimonials

Include testimonials from people that have successfully used your product. You need to have testimonials to boost credibility, express value and results, prove relevance to your target market, and validate expenditure.

• Bonuses

Offering bonuses will increase the value of your product. However not all bonuses are equal and have value. Always try to offer free bonus products that are supremely valuable, excellently targeted and totally relevant to your audience. For example if you are selling an ebook on how to do Pay Per Click advertising offering free bonuses such as website landing templates, Free $100 Google Adwords Credits will definitely increase the value of your offer and for your customers.

• How To Order

Then you tell to your potential customer how to place their order. Make it as simple as possible and don’t confuse him! Let your reader know that he can send his payment safely, for example through PayPal, Clickbank and that there is nothing to worry about. You can also include a snapshot for example of the Clickbank form. Several marketers verify that it increased their conversion rate.

• PS

Studies have shown that the two most-read items of a sales letter are the main headline and the PS.  Many marketers quickly write a PS in sake of just including a PS. Dont do this! Take your time.

Here is what you have to include in a PS. You have to restate your offer, discuss the major benefits again very briefly and remind them that they have to take action now.  Try to restate the scarcity factors and what pain they will continue to feel if they don’t buy today. Also restate your guarantee but also anything else that would matter in closing the sale.

Implementing these elements is not enough. You have also to consider the design of your sales letter. Try using different fonts, different tables and background colors. You need to find the correct combination that will speak to your potential buyer.

Well creating the perfect sales letter requires lot of experience and knowledge that is impossible to include in a blog post.

As always your comments are always welcomed.

Take care!

Today I will continue writing about my product launch activities.

I’ve created all the needed promotional tools that affiliates and JV can use.

Most affiliates and joint venture partners are “lazy”. I don’t mean that they are lazy to work but they will prefer promoting a product that has all the promotional tools they need is done for them and can instantly use them.

None knows your product better than you, that’s why you have to show your affiliates how your product works, what problems it solves etc.

So I have written different prelaunch, launch and follow up emails for affiliates and JVs that they can use as a basis and send them to their lists.

The prelaunch emails will be used a week before the official product launch until the big day. The launch emails will be used in the launch day and the follow up emails will be used after product launch for a week.

Not everyone has an email list so I have also written a blog post, different email signatures, ezine ads, ordered the banners so that they can use them on their blog, website in different forums etc. The banners are in different sizes so that it can be used in any part of a website or blog.

What is also important is to have a blog for the affiliates and joint venture partners. I’ve installed a JV blog especially for this product launch so that affiliates and JVs can be informed about all the latest news and content stats about this product launch, get their promo tools etc.

Talk to you soon.

So what I first did was hiring a mentor and started writing my ebook that I am going to launch very soon. The ebook is especially written to newbies internet marketers that want to start a successful internet marketing correctly and avoid all the mistakes that I made in that last years.

So here is what else I did until today.

I ordered some quality graphics for the website and the product from Ray Johnson Online Design. We had a discussion about how exactly I want them to look, what message to give etc. A graphic should not only have to have a quality appearance. It has to give a suitable message to the visitor and the potential customer. The color and the text that will be used on the header, the opt-in box the background are very important.

You want to give your website a professional look, feel and identity. I let them design the complete site graphics including the header the footer the order button and the optin-box.

A header is very important for a website. It is proven by many internet marketers that a website header increases the conversion like 300%. Yes 300%! This means that you can make more sales just from that little header.

I also have the ecovers created for the ebook. To make the ebook look professional you have to create some high quality ecovers. Many people decide if a product is good or bad just from its appearance. No matter how good your ebook is, you got to get your own quality ebook covers to boost your sales.

An excellent product with a wonderful cover and a professional looking website are not enough. A website with no visitors will never make you any money. You have to also get some advertising banners so that you and your affiliates can use them to bring you traffic. Although banners used to be more successful some years ago they still are an effective way of advertising your website, attracting traffic and affiliates. Banners are proven effective tools and are needed for every information product you create.

Although I am not a graphics designer I could create my graphics on my own. Well I have to admit that I am not perfect creating them, that is why I let someone else create them. You can either find someone on freelance websites such as Elance,  GetaFreeLancer, oDesk or an individual service like Ray Johnson Online Design, PlusMiniSites, DesignGuruRyan etc.

As I wrote in the beginning of this blog post, for my product launch I used Ray Johnson Design Service. If you want some affordable professional looking graphics for your ebook, minisite, Adsense sites, CD/DVDs covers, business cards, twitter backgrounds that will also include the correct marketing I highly recommend you to check them out. These guys will also design a 100% custom blog for you in a very low price. Ray’s team not only knows how to create beautiful and professional graphics for any situation but they also know internet marketing. This is very important since graphics are used to “communicate” with the visitors and give them the correct messages. Remember. A picture is worth a thousand words and words are the one that are making you sales. Don’t forget that!

There are some more things that I’ve done this week but since I don’t want this post to get too long I will let you know more on another blog post soon.

Talk to you soon.