Righto, enough theory on affiliate marketing let’s get into some details.  In an earlier post I discussed why it’s important to understand the fundamentals of affiliate marketing to do it effectively.  It sounds pretty obvious but many new marketers really do look for the quick fix rather than learning the ropes.  It’s not like we need to know it all, or can’t start testing things as we learn them, but if we don’t get a grip on the basics we’ll be relying on others to show us the way all the time.  I don’t mind a little hand holding every now and then, but personal coaching is too expensive to need it as a precursor to taking the next step.  It would be like paying a driving instructor every time you wanted to go down to the store for a quart of milk. 

So what’s this post about?  Basically it’s about knowing the skeleton steps of affiliate marketing so we can flesh it out by doing some of our own research.  If we don’t at least understand what steps we should be taking, how on earth can we possibly complete the task at all, let alone successfully? 

Ok, before we get into it, let’s remember again that affiliate marketing is really as simple as this:

1. People have a problem, need or interest
2. They surf the net for info on how to solve their problem or satisfy their need.
3. They find an article or content we have written and it offers help.
4. Our article or content redirects to a product that will solve the problem.
5. People buy the product…happy days!

So what other elements do we need to be aware of?

Step 1:  Affiliate Marketing Overview

We already covered an overview on affiliate marketing in an earlier post, but basically we need to understand where we can find affiliate products or services to promote, and how we get paid on them (ie: per sale, per lead or per click). Once we’ve decided on a product to promote by doing some market research, we then want to promote it with a view to making some dollars.  

Step 2: List Building

If you haven’t heard it already, I’ll trot out the old maxim that ‘the money is in the list’.  Basically we need to understand the following:

A list is an important resources as it enables us to build rapport and trust with a target audience we otherwise would not be able to, and allows us to use a list of subscribers as our very own captive market to whom we can offer value, and at appropriate times promote products to.

How do we build our own list?  We utilize an autoresponder system, such as Aweber or GetResponse to capture the name and email address of prospects using an opt-in form.  You can see an example of an opt-in form on my Newletter post. 

Generally, we position our opt-in form on a ‘squeeze page’ which is a page we set up offering our visitors some bonus or item as an inducement to joining our mailing list, but we can also have an opt-in form on a content site such as a blog.  What we offer as an incentive might be a free ebook, report, piece of software, an eCourse…almost anything with a perceived value to the visitor. 

The cool thing about the autoresponder is that it enables us to send a single or series of pre-written emails to those who opt-in, ultimately inviting them to purchase a product or service.  The techniques and strategies used to convert sales with email marketing is a large sub-set of affiliate marketing, so we certainly won’t cover it here.  What is really cool about the autoresponder is it enables us to build a relationship with our prospect on auto-pilot.  We write the email series once, plug it into our autoresponder, and every time someone new signs up they get our emails without us having to send them manually.  

Step 3: Generating Traffic

Almost all forms of traffic generation are based on good keyword research practices.  Trying to generate traffic without understanding keywords is like trying to find the toilet in the dark…time consuming, unnecessary…and apt to produce messy results.  We’ve previously touched on the keyword research basic principles, so we’re aware that we’re looking to find keywords relating to our product or service that have a high volume of daily searches, but low competition so that we can have an article or content piece that ranks highly in the search engines.  This way when people go looking for an answer to a problem, we make sure we’re the ones pointing them in the right direction.

Want a quick example?  I was promoting an ebook on Aspergers Syndrome.  I discovered a keyword generated quite a number of searches per month, but didn’t have a lot of competition (which was actually a misspelling…asbergers…and yes I ‘discovered’ it because I misspelled it too demit!).  So I wrote an article using that keyword in the Title, intro and body of the article, then referred people to a content site where I plugged the product. I then posted the article on Ezine Articles. People would do a search on Google using my keyword, and sure enough my article would be in the number 1 or 2 position.  They read my article where I make some helpful suggestions about recognizing symptoms of aspergers, click on the link I include in the article, and get taken to my main page, where I exposed them to the product I was promoting.  Giddy up. 

It is important that we understand keyword research to make sure that our efforts to create traffic are not wasted.  Nothing sucks quite so much as writing a 500 word article only to rank on page 57 of Google. As a guide, I generally know if a keyword generates around 500,000 results in Google and there are less than 15,000 competing sites (which we check by searching for our keyword on Google with parenthesis…as in “keyword”) I can usually get my content to rank on to the first page. Any words with around 200,000 results and >5000 competing pages should be much easier to get towards or at top spot (or ideally, 1st, 2nd…3rd etc…all with different articles of my own).   

Once we have located a decent keyword we then use any number of methods to generate content which can rank for that keyword in the search engines, therefore delivering visitors to our website or squeeze page where we have our opt-in form.  What sort of methods?  Here’s a few:

Article Marketing (eg. Ezine Articles)
Video Marketing (eg. YouTube)
Blogging (your reading one…cool eh)
Content Sites
RSS Feeds
Posting on public forums
Pay per click advertising (Adwords)
Viral Marketing
Public advertising
Social bookmarking (eg. SocialMarker)
A review site, where we review the products we are promoting. 

Step 4:  Making The Sale

So if we’ve managed to get some traffic in to our squeeze page (or content page with an opt-in form) what do we do next?  Basically we want to redirect them to the sales page of the product we are promoting (if you want some examples of sales pages, head over the the Clickbank Marketplace and take a look).  We can do that on a number of levels. 

For example, if we have sent our visitors to a squeeze page or a content site with an opt-in form, when a person opts in to our mailing list we can redirect them to the product sales page.    This gives them the first look at the product on offer.  Why not just send them to the sales page without getting their name and address?  Because some folk just won’t buy the first time they see a product.  It can take a bit to convince them.   So much so that some marketers prefer not to direct a prospect to a sales page right away, but might offer an eCourse or some other information which they provide through the autoresponder email series, and raise the product they are promoting in their emails.  By using that delayed method, the prospect has the chance to warm to the idea of the product first. 

Is it starting to gel for you yet?  For anyone who has done a bit of affiliate marketing this stuff is basic, but when starting out it can be a real head-bend not to have that ‘aha!’ moment when it fits together and starts to make sense. 

Later, we’ll look at each step in greater detail, as well as the other side of the affiliate marketing coin…creating and selling our own products through other affiliates.