To begin today's tutorial, like I made clear Affiliate Masters Trend is going to be a 10 part course. For easy walk through and assimilation, I have decided to split it into four categories. So, each sub-title/topic will appear like this “Part 1 Cat. 4” respectively.
Being a great affiliate is NOT about selling... It’s about
PREselling.
Goal...
This is the only part where you have nothing to do except read the
material. Actually, that’s wrong. Your goal is to understand,
understand deeply, the concepts outlined here, culminating with the concept of
PREselling to maximize Conversion Rates.
With this goal in mind...
1.1. Focus on
Maximizing Profit
The goal of any business, including your affiliate business,
is to maximize profits. Profit is simply
your income minus your expenses.
As an affiliate, there are exactly two ways to increase your
income (i.e., the amount of money your business makes)...
1) Refer more visitors to the merchants that you represent.
2) Increase the Conversion Rate (i.e., the percent of
visitors that you refer to your merchant… visitors who deliver the response for
which the merchant pays, whether that’s a sale, or a lead, etc.).
Simple formula, right?
If you refer 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1% buy, you get paid
for that one purchase. But if you send
1,000 visitors per day and 3% buy, you get paid for 30 purchases.
Yes, thirty times more!
So it’s pretty clear how to maximize affiliate income!
Of course, every business has expenses , too. Maximizing profits does not imply that you
must minimize expenses, too. After all,
if you spend no money or time on a business, you have no business! You must get the best possible traffic-
building and sales-converting results for every dollar you spend... and for
every hour you spend on your business.
Time is money. Don’t
count your hours as zero cost simply because they do not cost you “out of
pocket.” Assign your time a dollar value
-- it will put your affiliate business on a solid, professional “business
footing.”
Let’s examine expenses by asking two questions...
Question #1 --
What does it cost to build traffic to your merchants’ sites?
Traffic-building, no matter how you cut it, will cost you...
in terms of both time and money.
Spending dollars is optional, but spending time is not.
There are many ways, both offline and on, to drive targeted
traffic to your merchants’ sites. This course will show you the most highly
profitable, time-and- dollar-effective way to build traffic to your merchants'
sites...
Build your own Theme-Based Content Site - one that is loaded
with high info- value Keyword-Focused Content Pages that rank well with the Search Engines and that get the “click throughs” to your merchants’
sites.
Let’s break that down for closer examination. For your affiliate Web site to generate
targeted traffic to your merchants, it must do two things well...
1) Rank well at the Search Engines so that it pulls in lots
of targeted traffic. So far, though,
that traffic is still on your site.
Therefore, it’s not generating income yet. Your visitors are just “looking around.” So...
2) Get those visitors to click through to your
merchants. (Some affiliate program
models can actually place merchant offerings on your Web site. In this case, your traffic does not actually
visit your merchant’s site. But you
still have to “get the click” to generate income.)
Question #2 -- What does it cost to maximize Conversion
Rates?
Good news! Maximizing
your Conversion Rate (CR) is simply a question of doing things right. There is no extra dollar or time cost to
boosting CRs at your merchants’ sites.
This course will show you how to achieve this goal, too.
Remember… when this course talks about Conversion Rates, we
are talking about the Conversion Rate at the sites of the merchants that you
represent as an affiliate. So we are
talking about how you will maximize the percentage of referral visitors who
deliver the response for which the vendor pays, whether that’s a sale, or lead,
etc.
If you think that it’s impossible for you to change the
sales-effectiveness of your merchants’ sites, you are in for a big surprise.
Your primary goals are...
1) Maximize targeted traffic to your merchants, spending
only dollars and time that maximize profits.
2) Maximize Conversion Rates. Do things right (no expense).
Don’t do just one. Do
both. Why? Because, as you saw above, your payment is
determined by traffic multiplied by the CR... not “added.” Your profits grow geometrically when you
concentrate on maximizing both traffic and Conversion Rates.
I have spent quite a bit of time reviewing the difference
between 5 Pillar Affiliates who refer high traffic to us and who deliver high
Conversion Rates (% of visitors who purchase), and those who deliver low ones.
The #1 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
Banner ads! No
content!
Retinal studies have shown that Web surfers actually avoid
banners. Yes, their eyes look away!
Our study found that 5 Pillar Affiliates who relied solely
on banners had an average CR of 0.5%.
But those who used “in-context” text links (i.e., text links that are
part of the content of the Web page) averaged over 3.5%!
How’s that for a reason not to use banners?
Banners are cheesy and hurt your credibility. If visitors happen to click through (a big
“if”), they arrive at their destination feeling “pitched” rather than informed.
They have a resisting mindset, rather than with an open, ready-to-buy attitude.
Remember that example where you sent 100 visitors per day to
a merchant and 1% bought? If you rely on
flipping up some banners, it will be more like 10 visitors per day and not one
person buys!
We reveal a lot about 5 Pillar Affiliates during this
course. But it is not the 5 Pillar
Program that is important here -- it’s the lessons to be derived. This course
is about making any affiliate of any program more successful.
Conclusion? ... Don’t use banners.
Yes, I know “they're so-o-o-o-o easy.” It’s always easy to not make money. That’s
how all those get-rich-quick-guys do so well... the allure of easy money. No
such thing.
I must repeat… don’t
rely solely on banners.
If you simply must use banners, save your “in-context” text
links for super companies with wonderful products that deliver true value to
your reader.
Beside the obvious futility of banners, I’ve spotted another
major point. This one is more subtle,
but it’s important… extremely important.
The #2 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
After banner advertising, it’s the second most common
error. And it’s an even bigger shame
because this boo-boo involves a lot of work... misplaced work. If you’re going to fail, the best thing would
be not to spend much time at it, right?
Reason #2 is... Selling instead of PREselling.
Some 5 Pillar Affiliates have really made great efforts in
creating sites to promote our SiteSell products. And they are building some sales and
traffic. But when I
see a low CR (i.e., CR under 2%), I know that something is
amiss. Great efforts deserve greater
results than 1%.
Yes, I agree that these efforts are better than
banners. But remember… creating these
sites takes a lot more work than tossing up a couple of banners. We’ll see in a moment that it’s misdirected
work. (The good news is that this course
will redirect those efforts into high-profit areas.)
Time for a philosophical perspective...
In life, the vast majority of people just keep doing the
“same old thing.” Life seems easier that
way. But “doing the same old thing”
guarantees the “same old results.” So in
the long run, it’s actually much, much harder.
In the movie, “The Renaissance Man,” Danny De Vito’s
character makes a profound statement...
“The choices we make dictate the lives we lead.”
To paraphrase...
“Where you are today is the result of all the choices and
actions that you have made in your life.”
When he said that, I remember thinking, “You know, he’s
right. Except in rare cases of
extraordinarily good or bad luck, people basically end up where they are as a
result of choices they make and courses of action they take.”
People tend to blame a lack of success in life on “bad luck”
or “poor timing” or other people. And
yes, at times, that can be accurate. A
heck of a lot of factors beyond our control can blindside us. In the long run, however, as long as we
persist in our efforts, these factors tend to even out and De Vito's statement
remains valid.
Now, here’s the good news...
E-commerce is simpler than life. Due to its digital nature, there are fewer
variables... so the outcome is more controllable. Which means that we can boil De Vito’s
statement down to “The #1 E-commerce Reality.”
This Reality is almost self-evident, yet it’s so easy to
forget. Your success with anything you
do in the world of e-commerce flows from it.
Internalize it and act upon it... and you will succeed.
Yes, it’s that fundamental.
And that leads me to…
The #1 E-commerce Reality
“Nothing happens by accident in the world of computers, the
Net, and customer response. There is always a reason for what happens, good or
bad, and that reason is YOU.”
When I see some 5 Pillar (“5P”) Affiliates with CRs over 10%
(and a few over 20%!), I figure that those with CRs at 1-2% or less could be
multiplying their sales five-or-more-fold.
How?
Not by working harder, but simply by channeling their
motivation in a better direction.
Let’s continue with the case of 5P Affiliates who make
“great efforts” but get so- so results...
As I reviewed many of these affiliate sites (those who are
getting sales but have CRs under 2%), I realized that almost half were
basically one big sales letter for SiteSell products and Ken. Which means that these affiliates are selling
(with sales copy) when they should be PREselling (with great, and related,
content that is of value to the reader).
There’s really not much point in straight selling off your
site -- that's what your merchant’s site needs to do. Picture this...
A visitor arrives at an affiliate’s site that is really just
one, big sales site. Yes, I know that
the words are sincere -- I owe all 5P Affiliates a big thank you for the truly
wonderful things they say. But put
yourself in these visitors’ shoes for a moment.
They don’t see inspiring, editorial content. They see a sales effort.
But they were searching for content!
“CONTENT!” I said.
(Sorry for yelling.)
People resist sales efforts, so your click-through actually
goes down. And if a visitor does click,
what does she see when she arrives at an SBI! site? More sales effort. And, in some cases, many of the words on
SiteSell’s site are similar to the words that she’s just read. Result?
Poor Conversion Rate.
If your site is basically a “bunch of sales letters,” you
have not yet built your credibility and likeability with this visitor. Your visitor ends up feeling “pitched.” And
then she feels double-pitched if (chances are low) she clicks through to your
merchant’s site. That’s why the CR
actually goes down.
To make things worse, as she “smells” a sales effort, she
becomes less likely to click! So
referred traffic drops, too.
Women represent 50% of all surfers. And they control approximately 80% of all
shopping dollars. To reinforce this in
your mind, we’ll use the feminine pronoun to talk about readers/visitors/customers. To keep things simple and even, we’ll use the
masculine pronoun when referring to affiliates.
OK, let’s see...
1) Referred traffic down.
2) And Conversion Rate down.
But these are the two ways to increase your income. (That’s what we talked about near the
beginning.) We’re going in the wrong
direction!
Conclusion? Don’t
sell!
Instead, warm your visitor up for your merchants by
PREselling her with great content that she values and respects. She’ll click-through with pleasure, arriving
at your merchants’ sites in an open-to-buy mindset.
It’s your PREselling effort that will boost your
traffic-to-merchants and CR, which in turn maximizes your income.
This brings us to our second philosophical premise…
“The #1 Affiliate Reality”...
“Your CR will literally vary from 1% to 10% (and at times,
as much as 20%!), purely because of...
1) HOW YOU REACH your visitor, and…
2) WHAT YOU SAY to her, and…
3) HOW YOU REFER her to your merchant.”
Your CR depends upon what you do and how you do it. You do not need Lady Luck, Sir Serendipity or
anyone else. There is always a reason
for how well you do, and that reason always relates to what you do and how you
do it.
Once you realize this, then you know success really is
do-able. Some people do succeed...
big-time… but not necessarily the first time.
Just keep trying until you find the right approach.
To quote Calvin Coolidge…
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful
people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the
problems of the human race.”
Of course, the goal of the 10-DAY Affiliate Masters Course
is to reduce the amount of trial-and-error persistence that will be required
before you find your own successful formula!
Why is “The #1 Affiliate Reality” true?...
Because how you reach your customer, and what you say once
you reach her, and how you refer your visitor to your merchant directly affects
your visitor’s mindset when she arrives at SiteSell.
A positive mindset turns into a purchase with amazing
regularity. A negative one is nearly
impossible to overcome.
And that is what “high-CR affiliates” have known all along…
“They refer
people to their merchants in an OPEN-TO-BUY frame of mind.”
Best advice? Write
“The #1 Affiliate Reality” onto a yellow Post-It Note and stick it onto your
monitor...
“Your CR will
literally vary from 1% to 10% (and at times, as much as 20%!), purely
because of...
1) HOW YOU REACH your visitor, and…
2) WHAT YOU SAY to her, and…
3) HOW YOU REFER her to your merchant.”
1.2. PREsell To
Convert
Your strategies and actions as an affiliate directly affect
your Conversion Rate. This section deals with how to PREsell effectively. (Later in the course, we will cover
traffic-building in more detail.)
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