The Truth About Affiliate Marketing & Marketers
This lense is about all the neccessary things that can be done to build an actual, long lasting, profitable affiliate marketing career. Most people fail because they take short cuts. Its much easier to take a short cut, but trust me, it wont get you far at all. The major goal is to be a long term profitabe marketer. Remember that famous quote? "the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing". Its true.
Let me guess...
- You want to become filthy rich over night.
- You need to pay off your credit card bills because there gaining interest every month putting you further into debt.
- You think you have what it takes to become a millionaire, or even billionaire from making money online like everyone else.
Well I hate to break it to you, but the competition is very very stiff.
Allow me to give you some truth...
You will not make money overnight. It may take a couple days or weeks, and when you do, it will not be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Actually it will probably be $5 here, $10 there, nothing to quite your day job.
Thats why I tell people to invest slowly, take your time and do it completely right the first time.
Please enjoy my Squidoo lense and take a look around to see what it is you can do today to help further your affiliate marketing goals.
I never said becoming a millionaire with affiliate marketing was impossible.
Its possible.
How I Make 1 Billion Dollars A Year with Affiliate Marketing.
Why we're so successful with Affiliate Marketing.
WHY I'M WRITING THIS ARTICLEI'm only writing this article because there are literally thousands of Guru Affiliate Marketers on the Internet reeling in people on a fishhook. They also fail to tell you how much money they invest in order to make millions of dollars. If you're on a low budget, there methods will never apply to you. They're taking your money!
You need to save all the money you've been wasting on e-books every month and invest it into your online affiliate marketing efforts.
HOW I MAKE 1 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR (NET PROFIT)
Secret #1: I have to invest over $10,000 a week on cost per click advertising, and over $50,000 per month on our employee payroll.
Secret #2: I have at times over 32 people working for me on various jobs. The most we had in one month was approximately 45 (before the recession). We have In-House employees and some Outsourced US Based Freelancers. In the middle of the year we have a blitz and take on an extra 12-14 freelancers depending on what our profit is as that current state.
Secret #3: My work ethic is structured, accurate, and creative. It's in your best interest to keep your self constantly interested and motivated day after day. No one wants to feel as if they're working at a regular job.
Secret #4: The secret to all of our success is to be extremely diverse. We cannot rely on only several campaigns and niche markets to make money on month to month. This is what I call the "Shoot Yourself In The Foot" method.
Secret #5: Automate where possible and go the extra step and schedule functions of your marketing efforts where possible.
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF OUR BILLION DOLLAR OPERATION:
It didn't come easy, but with time, and severe management I was able to hit my billion dollar-a-year goals. I started making money by selling e-books, promoting CPA offers with Commission Junction and building web shops that sell actual tangible goods.
HOW MANY EMPLOYEES DOES IT TAKE TO RUN THIS OPERATION
We currently have 32 employees on our payroll. Some have been hired to work from home, but most are in-office employees that work with me on campaigns. Some have a degree, and some are currently enrolled in college.
WHY ARE YOU MAKING SO MUCH MORE MONEY THAN OTHER AFFILIATE MARKETERS?
We do things on a much larger scale than anyone else out there. So therefore we get a much larger piece of the affiliate marketing pie. It takes a large team to accomplish the billion a year goal. My company and I are responsible for some of the largest money making sites on the web today. Organization is key.
But wait, I thought I was supposed to make at least $100K a month!
Oh, I forgot to read the "results are not typical" line you hide so nicely.
Thats right. They get you to buy every program there is in the world, misleading you to think you might make hundreds of thousands of dollars every day. They even tell you that those types of results "are not typical", but they didn't make the font large enough to catch your eye.Stop wasting all that money. It ads up.
I personally wasted over $5,000 in my first three months trying affiliate marketing. Please do not think that you can instantly make hundreds of dollars every day. Those type of results are not typical.
You've got to do lots of planning, money saving, and organizing to be successful in this Affiliate Marketing world.
What is a Niche Market?
How will it benefit me?
Well lets first look at a mainstream market. A mainstream market would be lets say... Furniture, Electronics, and Sporting Goods.A niche market would be a sub-category of one of those mainstream categories.
For instance, a niche market of Furniture would be: Antique Danish Furniture, Mid-Century Furniture, Leather Furniture.
A niche market for Electronics could be: iPods, Flat screen TV's, or Computer Hard Drives.
A niche market for Sporting Goods would be: Tennis Gear, Paintball Guns & Gear, etc...
For every niche market, you could create a website dedicated solely to that specific product type & category.
Why is targeting a Niche Market Important?
Because focusing on a specific niche will give you more exposure on the internet. If a site is narrowed down to that specific niche, people will find exactly what their looking for quickly, and thus leading to a sale.
Bonus Information:
Build a Niche Store
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Affiliate Marketing Sheep
Are you going to be just another one following the heard?
Wouldn't you rather build your affiliate marketing career slowly, knowing that your building something that will last and be hugely profitable in the long run?Too many people hop on a band wagon of false hope. Weather it be a new amazing program that everyone is promoting blindly or another one that looks just as promising. Either way you look at it, its not a sure fire way to get your career started.
You need to do what everyone else is not doing at the moment.
You need to not be another sheep following the heard.
Some people have the idea that you can just make thousands of dollars every day by just promoting a couple products. And we all know why they think that this is true. Products are sold every second showing realistic results.
While it is true that this can be done, it still takes a decent amount of effort to reach that point. It doesn't happen over night.
Its very easy to take short cuts. Patience takes practice.
One of the top reasons affiliate marketers quit is because they waste there money way too quickly. They'll spend it on an expensive Adwords campaign, promoting some product thats been talked up. They were told by the product maker that in converts really well and end up loosing money. This happens all day long.
These results are completely discouraging for anyone just getting started in the affiliate marketing business.
Don't become another affiliate marketing sheep.
Remember...
The harder thing and the right thing are usually the same.
Be Sucessful, Concentrate!
Tips for Concentrating on Projects
Its hard enough to build a profitable business, but its even harder when you've got the TV on!Personally I work very well when I'm listening to music. Because it doesn't require me to look up to view it and break my concentration. Plus, its motivating listening to songs that make you feel good and energetic.
If your neighbors are to noisy, or the street traffic is to loud I would suggest visiting a library.
Before I had my own sound proof office I would go with my wife to her college and stay in the library while she was in class. They had WiFi internet anywhere you were on campus. You did have to use a campus id and password to get on (it was for students only). It came in handy because sometimes at our apartment, I would not be able to upload a 7 mb file from our connection. It was pretty frustrating. Especially when you pay verizon monthly and couldn't upload a small file without timing out.
Enjoy that picture of the thinking affiliate marketer? I did.
Having a place like a library creates a working atmosphere that influences you to accomplish goals.
Links to Products that Enhance Wordpress
These wordpress plugins are a life saver.
- phpBay & phpZon Plug-Ins for Wordpress
- You can download phpBay and display any products from eBay to earn money from the eBay Partner Network. It's a very good plugin that we use to make about $20,000 a month over several niche product websites. You can geo locate the listings. We do this for our automotive blogs.
You can also purchase phpZon from this website to display amazon products on your wordpress blog and earn commission. - DataFeedr Plug-In for Wordpress
- This plugin will allow you to build professional wordpress affiliate stores. It connects with 18 Affiliate Networks (Cj, PepperJam, Google, Linkshare & More), 5,904 Top Notch Merchants, which leaves you with a selection of over 113,197,447 products to promote.
Diversifying Your Income with Affiliate Marketing
Bottom Line. Diversification = Protection
As a professional affiliate marketer earning over a billion dollars a year. I can say, without a doubt, that its because my company and I diversify our marketing efforts.What do I mean?
Don't have all of your eggs in one basket. Its that simple. Do not only work with one affiliate network, one affiliate product, and one web page.
This is not only true for affiliate marketing, but for other businesses as well.
My Beginnings as An Affiliate Marketer
I wasted lots of money at the get go and well... I made simple mistakes. I eventually had a routine method of making money set in stone. After about three months I had at least 10 sites dedicated to niche market products. Each new web page I created was another step towards diversification.
When one market is down, and another is up, you'll always be making money. That's the true power of diversifying your marketing campaigns.
The bottom line is that diversification is protection, security and insurance for your money making efforts.
Organize Your Marketing Efforts with Excel from Microsoft Office
Top Tool for Organizing your Affiliate Marketing Business
Our company uses excel to organize everything. Believe me, once you start forgetting passwords, usernames for all of those web portals you'll think back to this site.
Our marketers use excel to organize all of our social networking site logins, website log-ins, affiliate network campaigns and much more. Its a life saver.
The student edition is the cheapest and it comes with excel, powerpoint, word and others.
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand by
Affiliate Marketing using Amazon & Twitter
Easy to Learn, No Upfront Cost, Affiliate Marketing.
Twitter...
I'm assuming you're already familiar with the micro blogging website Twitter. If your not please visit their site to find out more information about twitter and the current growing phenomenon.
Twitter Marketing?
Yes. You can market products on twitter very easily. To do it effectively is another thing all together. It requires patience, but with time it becomes very powerful. I'd first suggest looking at actual twitter users and start studying the lingo, and what it is people commonly "tweet" about.
The Ultimate Twitter Marketing Goal
The ultimate goal when marketing with twitter is to program "tweets" months in advance. You can literally take one day and program tweets to be released every day for the next month.
Using Twitter & Amazon to Make Money
The ever so popular Twitter Shortening service Bit.ly has a service you can easily create amazon affiliate links quickly. You shorten the affiliate link URL so that it will fit nice and short in the twitter message. Bit.ly also provides live visitor stats for your links to monitor which tweets are performing great. You can promote the affiliate links on Twitter and link directly to products on Amazon to earn money. Join the Amazon Affiliate Program and Bit.ly to get started. Here are more detailed instructions below:
What we'll use for this Twitter Marketing Method:
Twitter, Amazon, Bit.ly, and HootSuite
Step 1 - Getting Setup:
When logged into your new bit.ly account, simply click on the tools menu and scroll down to the "Goodies" section.
Step 2 - Getting Setup:
Simply drag the "bitlyAmazonAffiliateLink" link onto your Internet Browser's tool bar. This will allow you to easily link an Amazon Product Page Instantly. At this time you cannot link to a specific category. I can see in the near future them developing a category linkable feature to this tool.
Step 3 - Just One More Sign Up Step!:
Now that you have your Bit.ly and Amazon Affiliate Account set up, take the time to sign up for the Tweet scheduling service "HootSuite".
Let me just give you a quick rundown on what you can do with HootSuite.
- You can have multiple profiles (twitter accounts)
- You can schedule "tweets" to be sent out later
- You can shorten affiliate link URLS directly from the interface, Attach pictures, and files to be viewed by your followers.
- You can view Statistical Tracking Data
Important Note: Right now we're currently using Bit.ly to shorten our Amazon Affiliate Links. In the future we'll shorten directly from the HootSuite menu.
HootSuite does not have the same quick Amazon Affiliate Link shortening service, so this is why we're using bit.ly for this particular step.
Wait! What are you going to promote? And how are you going to approach it?
Don't worry about that with his particle article. This is just for training. I will give you tons of ideas on the next step.
Step 4:
Make sure you logged into the Amazon Affiliate Program, and Bit.ly. After you've logged into both services, go to the main Amazon page and find a product you want to promote! How about a Samsung HDTV!
Click on the "Link to this page" link.
Step 5:
Once the below window has opened up. Leave it there!
Step 6:
Click on your "bitlyAmazonAffiliate" tool bar link in your browser. This will take your to your Bit.ly account.
Step 7:
Copy your shortened link.
Step 8:
The rest is easy. Type your message and paste the bit.ly shortened link. Click on the Twiter profile you'd like to send it from and Click "send later" to schedule that Tweet. Rinse and repeat.
Fun Stuff & Tips:
Stats & Tracking
Try and send out the Tweet now. Go back to Bit.ly and watch the live stats on who's clicked on the link, what country they are located in, and what service your link was clicked from. Your twitter messages are seen on other web pages. So you don't necessarily have to have followers in order to see it in action right now!
Tip to Remember
- You only need one bit.ly account, one hootsuite account to manage multiple twitter accounts.
- Only tweet about 20 messages a day.
- When scheduling messages, make sure to humanize your tweets as much as possible, and through in a couple tweets that do not contain a affiliate link. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it. You can literally schedule a months tweets in one day.
Bonus Information:
Twitter Rockstar: Click Here!
Advanced Twitter Tactics & Brand Domination
by BillionaireAffiliateMarketer
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