Knowledge Base For Those Willing To Succeed In Online Business

Top 10 Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer

Back when my online business consisted ONLY of affiliate sites, I had no need for a personal assistant.

The sites were all in place, and my affiliated merchants handled everything related to orders.

Last week, one of my clients mentioned that he was moving AWAY from selling his own products to promoting more affiliate programs just for the simplicity and freedom.

Yup, he definitely 'gets' it

Although there are many, many benefits to promoting affiliate programs with your own home-based Internet business, here are my top 10 reasons to become an affiliate marketer.

1. No Product Development Costs – The cost to develop and produce a new product is expensive! But you needn't worry about that as an affiliate.
    
2. Low Cost Set-up – Got a desk, Internet-connected computer and word-processing software? You're in business!
    
3. No Fees or Geographic Limits on Distribution – Affiliate programs are usually free to join, and market reach is limited only by the affiliate's ability to promote his or her web site.
    
4. Choose From Thousands of Products and Services – What isn't sold online? With affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Be Free and Linkshare, it's easy to find products related to your current or planned web site.
    
5. No Merchant Account Required – Forget the problems associated with collecting and storing names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. The merchant handles all payment processing, so you never have to lose sleep over chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.
    
6. No Inventory to Carry – Even if you live in a small one-bedroom apartment, you can sell large items without storage concerns.
    
7. No Shipping Costs – Don't worry about buying packing supplies or postal rates. The cost and hassle to prepare and ship products to customers worldwide belongs to the merchant.
    
8. No Customer Concerns – Do you hate the prospect of dealing with nasty people? Don't worry about it! The merchant handles the snivelers.
    
9. Make Money While You Sleep – What other business allows you as a sole proprietor to keep your doors open and keep making money even when you take breaks or after you go home for the night?
    
10. High Income Potential – With your own affiliate business your income potential is limited only by your desire, effort and imagination - not your boss.

Relatively low outlay of resources with huge potential returns truly makes affiliate marketing on the Internet an outstanding business opportunity.

The Internet Marketer's Mini-Checklist

Throughout my online travels and particularly in my marketing consulting practice, I encounter many a netpreneur who wonder about the reasons why they are not yet successful. "Mike, why am I not getting as many hits" or "as many sales," they ask. It's a question of which I am asked all too often, it seems.

I can appreciate their frustration since I've been there. It took me years to achieve what I'm experiencing today and a lot of it is the result of pure trial and error. But a lot of it is also based on simple, common sense. The reality, however, is that so many people, enticed by the overblown hype and promises of the web, expect some "get rick quick" solution. I wish there was one.

So I often reply with a checklist, which I will reprint in this week's editorial. It is far from being a comprehensive list -there are many more tactics, techniques and strategies one can implement beyond what the list suggests. Additionally, for many it might appear as an appropriate roadmap for the newbie webmarketer; some tend to even scoff at its simplicity.

But surprisingly, its simplicity is the reason why it is also so easily ignored by the more experienced. I ask that you take a good, hard look at it. Answer it truthfully and completely. How many of the tactics suggested did you really implement? How many have you abandoned after only a few attempts? And how many tactics do you put into action on a regular basis?

Think about your answers.

Granted, some of these may not apply to all situations. But generally, I have found that those who complain the most have not implemented a fraction of these or lack a clear plan of action through which some of the most profitable among these should be repeated on a periodic basis. The latter is crucial.

My colleague Jim Daniels is the master when it comes to developing and maintaining a rigorous marketing plan. (Jim printed his own in a recent issue of his very informative BizWeb Gazette as a template that's worth its weight in gold.) So let me ask you at this point, isn't it time you too have one ... And stick to it, consistently?

So here is the checklist:

• Are you subscribed to ezines and websites on Internet marketing, and do you read/visit them on a daily basis?
   
• Have you implemented most if not some of the ideas you've learned in them? What were your results? Good? Bad? Why?
   
• What ideas worked best for you? What ideas worked least?
   
• Do you or did you track your results? How? Do you review and analyze them on a daily basis? What are they telling you?
   
• Do you constantly educate yourself on your industry and your specific area of expertise? In fact, do people look upon you as an expert in what you do? Do you *love* what you do?
   
• Do you follow a daily marketing regimen? Consistently? If so, what did you do this week? And the week before that?
   
• Did you bid on keywords in pay-per-click search engines?
   
• Which ones? Did you try other pay-per-rank engines? Did you use their keyword suggestion tools and looked at different variations?
   
• Do you have an affiliate program for your products? If not, have you implemented another form of "viral" marketing?
   
• Does your website have tools to help make it "sticky"? For example, do you maintain a discussion forum? A site-specific search tool? An archive of informative content?
   
• Does your business model strive for quantity or quality? In other words, do you seek bigger profits or market share? Are you achieving it or do you seem to be achieving the other?
   
• What areas of your business need improvement? An even more important question to ask is what do YOUR customers think?
   
• Do you tweak and test your website copy on a constant basis?
   
• Do you maintain an opt-in list or regularly publish an ezine? Do you remain in constant contact with subscribers? Does your marketing include increasing your subscriber base?
   
• Do you continually research your customers, your product category, your industry and especially your competition?
   
• What makes you unique? What's your USP (i.e., your unique selling proposition)? In other words (and think about this), what's your single, most marketable, competitive edge?
   
• Do you communicate that edge in all that you do?
   
• Did you submit your site to the major search engines and niche-specific engines? Do you monitor your rankings?
   
• Have you written articles and submitted them to newsletters read specifically by your target market? Do you periodically write and distribute press releases? How many? To whom?
   
• Do you market and advertise offline? If so, where?
   
• Do you have good, compelling email signature file? And do you use it with every piece of correspondence you make?
   
• Do you participate in newsgroups? Message boards? Forums? And especially those frequented by your target market?
   
• Do you offer one, two or three products? In other words, how focused are you on your niche or on your perfect customer?
   
• In fact, who is your perfect customer? Do you know your product's demographics (e.g., age, gender, employment, etc), geographics (e.g., location, country, city, etc) and psychographics (e.g., interests, culture, lifestyle, etc)?
   
• And do you have any backend products or services with which you can upsell your customer base? If not, do you (or could you) offer products from non-competing strategic alliances?
   
• Is your ecommerce system a well-oiled machine? Do you accept credit cards on your site? What other payment options do you provide? Do you have a customer support number or email?
   
• Do you package or bundle your products in order to increase their perceived value? Do you offer alternative packages (maybe with different price points or additional services)?
   
• Do you have a top level domain name (yourname.com)? Does it invoke the core benefit if not at least the nature of your site? Is it easy to pronounce? Spell? Remember?
   
• Do you have any strategic marketing alliances in place?
   
• In fact, how many alliances do you have in place? Do you keep in constant contact with them? What about joint ventures? Cross promotions? Referrals networks?
   
• Is your site easy to navigate? Read? Download? Do you provide your visitors with good, fresh, updated content?
   
• Most of all, do you give visitors a reason to come back?
   
• Have you implemented an automated referral system on your site (like a tell-a-friend script) that visitors can use to easily refer your site to others?
   
• Do you have testimonials on your site? A strong guarantee? A bonus offer? A privacy and security policy? An FAQ page?
   
• Do you sell advertising on your site? In your ezine? If so, did you develop a media kit for potential advertisers?
   
• Have you advertised online? In which ezines? On which sites? Do you constantly tweak your ad copy and track your results?
   
• Have you participated on online talk shows? Chat specials?
   
• Have you expanded your mind in terms of looking at different places, as many places as possible, in which you can market your site and where your target market likely congregates?
   
• In fact, do you try to keep your site, its address or its offers in front of your target market's eyeballs? How often?
   
• Does your site copy invite people to surf deeper into it? Or is it laced with external links that drive people out?
   
• Do you conduct contests? Draws? Surveys? Does your site capture, with permission, the email addresses of your visitors, especially on the first page, "above the fold"?
   
• Do you swap ezine ads with other publishers? Or in the very least, do you have a reciprocal linking strategy in place?

As you can see, this list can go on. But in my experience, just the above could open some eyes. For example, my clients must fill out a similar (but more extensive) list of questions before any work commences. As I found, simply answering it has been quite insightful for many.

Ultimately, you would be surprised to find out how much it pays to go back to the basics. Regularly. Consistently.

Simple Steps to Success

The one thing that I am asked the most is: "How does one successfully market on the web?" The answer that I usually give, one that is as effective, as precise and yet as straightforward as possible, is this (read carefully because it's the big one)...

Marketing, both online and off, comes down to three basic, foundational processes -- no more, no less (although since I wrote this article, I did add a fourth one in my latest book in order to reflect some of the changes we've seen in the last few years, especially online).

Nevertheless, if you follow these three basic rules, you've got it made pure and simple -- and ironically, they are also the ones that are the most often ignored. What are they? Here they are, in order:

1. Focus,
    
2. Target, and
    
3. Multiply.

To be short, let me give you a brief explanation of each one. "Focus" means to "niche-pick." Niche marketing is incredibly important and especially on the web. Narrow your focus to a single, central theme and, as the paradox goes, you'll find more with less. The narrower your market, the more people will visit your site -- and oftentimes almost effortlessly.

Second, "target" means to promote your site in front of those people who will not only have a genuine interest in your offer or business but also likely have greater chances of becoming your clients. I'm specifically referring to your business' demographics and psychographics.

Demographics are the basic characteristics of your target market. For example, they include age, income level, sex, nationality, geographic location, employment, industry, marital status, and so on. Basically, they are the qualities of those who *need* your product or service -- they are not prospects but "suspects," for you only suspect that will become your clients.

On the other hand, psychographics are the behavioral qualities of your target market. For example, they include buying histories, emotional qualities, personality types, other similar purchases, special interests, hobbies, and so on. In other words, they are the qualities of those who not only need your product or service but also *want* it -- they are your "expects" since you not only suspect that they will buy but also expect that they will.

Once you've clearly defined the psychographics of your core (and most likely) market, you've isolated the true prospects from your suspects. You then target that market. You find out where they are and market your offer to that specific audience more than any other -- and as often as possible.

For example, I often consult hair transplant surgeons. The demographics are obviously made up of those who have hairloss, which typically are men. Now, we can only assume that they need more hair, since not all bald men want more hair (it's a question of personal priorities, of course). Therefore, finding ways of marketing to those who may want more hair is much better than trying to target everyone with hairloss let alone the public at large.

While I agree that it is somewhat difficult to find such an exclusive market, the trick is to place your marketing message (e.g., buy banners, publish articles, post classified ads, participate in discussion lists, and so on) in locations where bald men seeking (or interested in) hair replacement alternatives will likely congregate. Here are some examples.

Write articles and submit them to ezines read by men who are looking for ways to replace their lost hair. Or advertise in newsletters catering to, say, men who have unsuccessfully tried some fancy hair growth potion and, being dissatisfied, offer each other support -- trust me, they do exist! Mailing list suppliers described in another of my previous articles provide some great starting points -- many offer searchable online list archives.

Place banners and classified ads on sites or other locations that are visited by such a specific audience. For example, men who feel that they "suffer" from hairloss are those who also feel less self-confident or those who are self-conscious about their image. Therefore, place ads in ezines or on web sites dealing with such topics -- like male self-esteem, for example.

Focus also on sites, newsgroups, discussion lists, forums, and ezines focusing on men's health, sexuality, or grooming. Besides hair and image, I ask doctors: "What other common characteristics do these men have?" Some work in image-based industries (like the sales, media or entertainment fields), and others are recently divorced men who seek to court a new partner. Therefore, advertise in locations that appeal to those areas as well.

The third and final element, or "multiply," is the viral marketing process I often discuss in my work. And it is a great tool since no one knows your audience more than... Your audience! In other words, "multiply" means to leverage your marketing efforts in such a way that the knowledge of your presence propagates easily and literally by itself.

To that end, you can set up strategic marketing alliances with other website owners, ezine publishers, forum administrators or discussion list moderators that cater to a market that logically fits into your own (and do not directly compete with you). Using the same example above, you can create a joint venture or exchange special offers with a website selling shampoos, cologne, men's vitamins, self-confidence courses, or image consulting services.

Also, joint ventures, affiliate programs, reciprocal links and strategic alliances developed in concert with others that fit together nicely with your site will thus increase your hits and your sales. Whether you're in the hair field or not, this also includes specific tools that you can implement on your site for helping your current visitors (who literally act like your network of independent salespeople) to refer your site to others let alone to return again.

For instance, you can offer free reports, provide free samples, distribute gift certificates and even use automated referral systems. Creating your own affiliate program in which others can sell your wares for you is another great example. There are also contests, quizzes, games, polls, article archives, greeting cards, continually updated, in-demand content, and ezine subscriptions.

I could go on, and on, and on... And I do have several "other" steps that you can follow. But it all boils down to those three. Follow those three simple steps, and success is virtually guaranteed.

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