The Affiliate Marketing Blueprint

The Affiliate Marketing Blueprint There’s been a lot written about affiliate marketing. It’s the most popular choice for beginning marketers and it makes sense that many would begin their journey there.

However, you need to understand what it is, how you can make money doing it, what’s the best method to achieve success, what are the best business models, etc, etc.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with all the information currently available.

It seems like trying to get a sip of water from a fire hose!

But, in truth, it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

Affiliate marketing involves selling someone else’s product and receiving a commission in return for your efforts.

There are plenty of advantages to affiliate marketing as a business model. They include:  No need to spend thousands on product development and design.  No need to maintain any inventory.  No need to ship any products.

 No customer support issues.  No dealing with returns or refunds.  Low barrier to entry.

All you need to do is place the product in front of the most likely audience to buy it and earn your commission.

Nice and clean!

It works, too, because there are affiliate marketers who have earned millions (and continue to do so) during their careers.

But, unfortunately, there have been many more failures than successes.

Because, like almost everything else, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do affiliate marketing.

The problem with many wannabe marketers is that they over think and over complicate the process.

It doesn’t have to be as difficult as some would have you believe.

In this document I’m going to provide you with a simple formula for how to go about building an affiliate marketing business that can afford you a nice, comfortable income.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed because your ultimate success depends solely on you and the effort you expend in building your business.

I will also be recommending some tools and resources at the end of this document. These are things that you will need to effectively run your business.

Every business requires some investment and affiliate marketing is no exception.

So let’s get started‌

Audience

The first thing you will need is an audience. You can’t sell something if you have no audience, duh‌

The best way to create an audience is to offer free admission. Offering something of value for free is your best way to attract your prospects.

Your free item should be something with a high perceived value which is easily consumable by your visitors. Nobody will be interested in reading a two hundred page treatise.

Your freebie can be an ebook, a pdf document or a video, as long as your visitor will see it as something of high value.

You will offer your free item in exchange for the prospect’s email address.

These email addresses will be accumulated by you in your email service provider (autoresponder). This list will be your “customer” list and will become your business’ most valuable asset.

You will need to create an account with an email services provider. My recommendations are either Aweber or GetResponse. Both work very well for affiliate marketers.

You will be able to create and send email messages, through your service provider, to all the prospects on your email list.

You can load your messages in advance and your provider will send them out for you at a pre-determined time set by you.

Check out the email service providers here: Aweber: Click here for Aweber GetResponse: Click here for GetResponse

An autoresponder is a must for all affiliate marketers. Without the ability to communicate with your customers, you have no business.

Communicating With Your Audience It’s important that you communicate with your audience in order to build authority and trust.

When you do communicate, always provide only valuable, high quality content.

People will listen to you if they like you, but they’ll only buy from you if they trust you.

There have been numerous theories posed about what to email and how often to email..

You want to develop a balance between emailing too often and becoming overbearing and not mailing enough and becoming forgotten.

You must also strike a balance between offering valuable information and promoting products for sale.

Almost every marketer has their own theory on what works the best. I believe it’s safest to start emailing at a ratio of 75% valuable content and 25% promotion.

In other words, for every four emails you send, three should provide tips and strategies, and one should promote a product for sale.

There will, of course, be exceptions for special occasions. Every marketer will be able to eventually determine what will work best for their particular audience.

Bonuses When promoting an affiliate product for sale, always offer a bonus if they purchase through your affiliate link.

At any given time, there can be numerous affiliates offering the same product. You must give your prospects a reason to buy from you.

The best way to stand out and get the sale is by offering a bonus as an incentive.

Your bonus can be a product you’ve created, a course where you own the giveaway rights or it can even be a webinar or class where you will

give some useful instructions how to best use the product you’re promoting.

You do not want to skimp on your bonus because it can make the sale for you. Make your bonus as compelling as possible.

You can also offer several items as a bonus, instead of only one.

The best way to promote your bonus is to build a separate web page highlighting the value of the bonus, along with good quality images.

Once your prospect makes the purchase through your affiliate link, you can provide

them with a download link where they can access their bonus.

Another resource you will need for your affiliate business is a page builder. The page builder I recommend is Click Funnels.

Click Funnels is the most powerful page builder available on the market today. You can use it to build all variety of pages.

It will build optin pages, sales pages, download pages and thank you pages. You can use it to even build an entire sales funnel for you.

Always Be Promoting

Affiliate marketing is a business and the purpose of being in business is to make sales.

You must always be promoting .

Find products that can benefit your audience and promote their benefits strongly to them.

Let your audience know why you believe strongly in the product and why it will benefit them.

Always promote the product’s benefits to your prospects. Their sole interest is in what you or your product recommendations can do for

them. Ignore product features and talk about the benefits.

Let them know very clearly how the product can help them reach their goals.

If you’re promoting a new product launch, which will be available only for a limited time, mail twice on the day the product first becomes available, and then mail once a day during the launch period and, finally, mail two to three times on the day the cart closes.

This is typically the day when the most sales are made.

Find Experts To Interview One of the best ways to gain authority is to align yourself with someone who already has it.

Find an expert, in the field you’re promoting, to interview. The interview doesn’t have to be long or complicated. Prepare ten questions and let your expert respond to them.

This will build instant credibility for you and help with your promotion.

Finding experts to interview isn’t that difficult either. They’ll be eager to work with you because you’re offering them free exposure to your audience.

This is a form of free advertising that will benefit them. Allow them to share their own links as well.

Accompanying Items

Throughout your communications and marketing, make product recommendations for other “accompanying” products that your prospects will need.

For example, in this document I’ve recommended r, Aweber, GetResponse and Click Funnels.

These are all products that every affiliate marketer must have to run a successful business. If a purchase is made through one of my links, I will earn a small commission.

Always add these ancillary product recommendations because your audience will have to buy them to run their businesses.

At the end of this document I will be making additional product recommendations for products you will eventually need.

Best In Your Niche Plant your flag! In whatever niche you enter, commit to be the best. Become the number one authority in that niche.

You can be a blogger, a webinar creator or a YouTube expert, but whatever you decide, determine to become the best.

See who the current leaders are and learn all you can about them. See what they do, how do they market, sign up for their email lists and study their methods.

Learn from the best first and then create your own style from a combination of the best strategies you’ve learned.

Stand for something. Brand yourself and play for the long game. Plan to be in that niche for a long, long time.

Leaderboards Always strive to be the top dog. Winners end up in first place. Second place for winners isn’t good enough.

Remember, the crowds always gravitate to the winners.

If you decide to promote a new product launch, focus only on the top prize. Plan your campaigns carefully to end up in the number one spot on that leaderboard.

You will immediately become a recognized authority, not only by your customers, but by your marketing peers as well.

You will be sought out to participate in others’ launches and even offered special incentives that are only available to the top dogs in the industry.

When you decide to launch your own product, all those you’ve promoted for in the past will now be eager to promote for you.

Product Recommendations Aweber Click here for Aweber

GetResponse Click here for GetResponse Both email providers are excellent for affiliate marketers. They understand the business and the affiliates’ needs. These are indispensable tools for affiliate marketers.

Click Funnels Click Funnels is the most powerful page builder available today. It will provide you with the ability to create any page you will ever need in your business.

Click here for Click Funnels

Clickmagick

You will need a tool to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. You can’t fine tune your marketing unless you know what’s already working for you. With Clickmagick you will be able to track the effectiveness of your ads on numerous levels.

Click here for Clickmagick

Long Tail Keyword Pro When looking for the most effective keywords for your marketing, you can use Long Tail Pro’s step-by-step system to discover thousands of profitable keywords and calculate keyword competitiveness for any niche you want to enter.

Click here for Long Tail Pro

Namecheap Namecheap is a domain registrar where you can purchase your domain names. Their rates are the least expensive and the service is great.

In addition, you will get free privacy for the first year.

Click here for Namecheap

BlueHost You need a web host to host all your websites.

BlueHost is among the best hosting companies and they have hosting plans that start as low as $3.95 per month. In addition, they have plenty of tutorials on their site to help guide you along.

Click here for BlueHost

Affilorama This is a wonderful training program for affiliate marketers at all levels. It has an affiliate marketing “quick start� guide, downloadable roadmaps and 120 video lessons included. It also offers advanced affiliate training and tools.

Click here for Affilorama