Affiliate Marketing Plans

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Ya Gotta Have a Plan

Having a plan is an essential step to succeeding in any venture. Affiliate marketing is no exception. There are hundreds of different affiliate programs available to you as an affiliate marketer, and just as many ways to promote and drive traffic to them. That's why it's so important that you have a well-defined plan before you even start.

When you set out on your quest to learn affiliate marketing, it can be very overwhelming. There are hundreds of ebooks and affiliate marketing systems out there, all vying for your attention and all professing to know what is best for you. As someone who has been doing affiliate marketing for several years now, I can say from experience that unless you have a firm foundation to build on, it can be very confusing at times.

So I'm on a quest to find or create an affiliate marketing plan that is straight forward, easy to follow, and action oriented. You're more than welcome to come along for the ride. You can even make your wishes known by using the guestbook to tell me what you'd like to see in this space.

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Getting From Here to There 

In the previous poll, I asked what type of people what type of planner they considered themselves. The majority answered "I at least know where I want to end up." So, since knowing where you want to be, or what the results you want to achieve are, is half the battle, let's talk about how to get from here to there. If you tell me what your biggest planning challenge is, then I can provide the content you need to overcome it...

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Creating Your Affiliate Marketing Plan 

The Five-Step Approach

Creating your affiliate marketing plan is a lot like creating a business plan. And that's as it should be. The more you think of your affiliate marketing efforts as a business, the easier it will be for you to stay focused and achieve success.

My own planning process can be broken down into five major steps. As a disclaimer here, I have to say that this is only my plan, I can't promise that it will work for you. But you're free to give it a go in its entirety or to take the bits that work for you and run with them.

The Five Steps:

Step 1 - Setting the Goal; Finding the Why
Step 2 - Market Research
Step 3 - Develop the System
Step 4 - Take Action
Step 5 - Review (and renovate when necessary)

By breaking the overall plan into sections, it makes it easier to plan overall strategies as well as use the process for individual product promotions.

Setting Your Goals 

Step 1 of Your Affiliate Marketing Plan

The first thing your new affiliate marketing plan needs is a well-defined goal. If you don't know from the start what results you want your plan to produce, you can't even begin to the first step to take in getting there.

That old adage, "failing to plan equals planning to fail" is true in any endeavor, and it's certainly the case in affiliate marketing. There are so many choices you can make, and more are being added every day. You need to know exactly what you want to achieve before you ever set out to choose your first affiliate product to promote.

A big part of setting your goal is finding the reason why you want to take on this project. What is it about the topic or product that really gets you excited?

Knowing your reason why will go a long way to keeping you focused and motivated when all the distractions start banging on the doors to your attention.

One word of caution here...

If your choice is based strictly on the profit potential of the niche, be careful. Doing something just for the money can be a double-edged sword. If you are making choices based on making a specific dollar amount, try focusing instead on what that money will bring you. It's a lot easier to be motivated by the thought of a new car or a mortgage statement marked "paid in full" than by an arbitrary number on a piece of paper.

Once you have a goal in mind, Write It Down!
Make it the focus of your plan, put it on a piece of paper and stick it in your wallet, write about it in your journal, put it on a sticky on your monitor, etc. Do whatever you can to keep that goal in your thoughts so that every step you take in your plan takes you closer to achieving that goal.

Need Help Setting Goals? 

If you need help in setting your goals, this short video will give you some great tips to start with.

Simply Unmotivated Success

Having goals is a great thing. But what makes them successful? Characteristics of our goals is a chapter in what hopefully will be a series of videos on success topics.

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Keep a Planning Journal 

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Searching for the Ultimate Affiliate Marketing System 

My wish list

Before I venture too far into this affiliate marketing thing, I want to make sure that any plan I use -- whether my own or someone else's -- is easy enough to follow that I can stay focused.

It's not that I'm looking for an easy meal ticket... we all know that's an affiliate marketing myth. It's more because I know myself enough to know that I have a tendency to over-complicate things. So the more clearly laid out my affiliate marketing plan is at the start, the easier it will be for me to stay focused and be successful with it.

Besides "focus-ability," the other abilities that my ultimate plan must have are:

1. Affordability - I want to be able to work with what I have and not have to buy a ton of new tools. I know that there are some affiliate marketing tools that are necessities, and I will budget for those.

2. "Duplicate-ability" - (I'm into creating my own language this morning :) ) I want to be able to duplicate the plan for a variety of different topics so that it's not totally time consuming for me.

3. "Checklist-ability" - and yes, I know that one's not a word :) My plan has to be able to be broken down into actionable checklist steps so that I know exactly what needs doing at every point in the process. This is not only useful for me now, but also will make it easy to outsource the work when that time comes.

4. "Prove-ability" is the final criteria. If I'm using someone else's plan, I want to know that they can prove that it works. I already know that I can create really cool looking flow-chart style plans on paper... What I really want at this point is a plan that has the proven ability to put the dollars in my pockets.

So there you have it, my criteria for deciding whether an affiliate marketing plan will work for me. Stay tuned to see what I find.

My Affiliate Marketing Plan Search Results 

Part 1

Over the last few days I've been checking out a few affiliate marketing plans. So far I've come up with four that meet the criteria defined above.

#1 - Bum Marketing - created by Travis Sago, this plan has taken the internet marketing world by storm. I wish this had been around when I first came online. It's as close to the perfect way to learn affiliate marketing without having to mortgage the farm.

#2 - Secret Affiliate Weapon by master affiliate marketer, Ewen Chia. This affiliate marketing plan gives you the chance to learn from a master. One of the best reports in the system gives you a step-by-step plan to get started. Broken down into daily tasks, it's the most easily "checklist-able" I've found so far.

Stay tuned for Part 2...

Rate Your Planning Prowess 

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Part 2 of The Affiliate Marketing Plan Search 

This one found me...

Every once in awhile something brilliant drops into your lap, and it's just what you were looking for. Whether you call it luck, coincidence, or the Law of Attraction makes no difference. The end result is the same. And that's what happened in my search for an affiliate marketing plan this week.

Here's what happened...

As a Turbo Member, I get a package of unique products each month that I can resell. And in this month's package there was a new ebook entitled Affiliate Marketing Success.

The first of two volumes on the subject, it covers the basic plan for getting started in affiliate marketing. From the process of choosing markets and products to driving traffic to your offers, Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. 1 is 54 pages of relevant information that you can take action on today.

Read the Full Review

Click here for more information

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Affiliate Marketing in the News 

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Leave a Comment 

Don't be shy! Leave a comment, even if it's just to say hello :)

Lensmaster

tenretni

loads of information really good lens, thanks, and keep up the good work
another site thats worth a visit is googlesucks

ReplyPosted October 17, 2008

Lensmaster

RedMarketeer wrote...

Nice lens. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Well done.

ReplyPosted July 10, 2008

Lensmaster

Junyuan wrote...

Great information you have in your lens on the step-by-step plans for affiliate marketing success. I totally agree with you on everything you've said here, and I think it's something that newbie affiliate marketers should read before they get started with affiliate marketing. I've given your lens a 5 star rating. By the way, I've just created a lens on affiliate marketing - where I've answered questions that most people have when they are looking to start off with affiliate marketing. You may want to consider adding your lens to my Internet Marketing directory which I've created and give you more traffic to your lens. Hope to see you there! :)

ReplyPosted May 28, 2008

Lensmaster

Junyuan wrote...

Great information you have in your lens on the step-by-step plans for affiliate marketing success. I totally agree with you on everything you've said here, and I think it's something that newbie affiliate marketers should read before they get started with affiliate marketing. I've given your lens a 5 star rating. By the way, I've just created a lens on affiliate marketing - where I've answered questions that most people have when they are looking to start off with affiliate marketing. You may want to consider adding your lens to my Internet Marketing directory which I've created and give you more traffic to your lens. Hope to see you there! :)

ReplyPosted May 28, 2008

Lensmaster

Barb_Sabathil wrote...

Hi Ruthie! Nice lens - very thorough! Esp. enjoyed the "Unmotivated Motivational Writer" video...gave me a laugh
AND got me refocused. :-) Barb

ReplyPosted March 15, 2007

 
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Ya Gotta Work the Plan 

The Transition from Planning To Doing

A wise man once told me that a good plan is like a fine wine. You can't truly appreciate it until you use it. It doesn't matter how well-crafted your new affiliate marketing plan is, until you actually take action on what you've written, it's just another piece of paper. For many affiliate marketers, however, making the transition from planning to doing is the hardest step to take. To be truly successful in affiliate marketing, you need to be able to take action on the plans that you have created.

One of the easiest ways I've found to make the transition easier is to break the plan down into actionable steps, and create a checklist of them. This is why "checklist-ability" is hight on the list of criteria for my ultimate plan. By breaking the plan down into easily manageable steps, the chances of being overwhelmed by the big picture become considerably less.

Once you have your checklist of action steps, then the next thing to do is to transfer those action steps from the checklist to your to-do lists. These to-do lists will form the basis of your daily action plans. The Art of Planning is an excellent article on how to create your to-do lists for maximum effectiveness.

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