Archive for September, 2009

How To Work Smarter Not Harder As An Affiliate Marketer

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Hello Fellow Profit Masters… Randy here… I hope you enjoy this article. It was shared with us by Alice Seba & Melissa Ingold.  al_mel That’s them pictured at the right. 

Remember that you can contribute to Profit Masters and we’ll give you full credit.  Just include your author information and we’ll print it when we post.  We reserve the right to approve and edit if necessary.  But we’d never print anything without your consent.

Now, Alice and Melissa’s article on Working Smarter.

As an affiliate marketer, you know better than anyone   just how important it is to drive traffic to your affiliate website. After all, that is how you make a profit. However, affiliate marketing success takes strategy, time management and understanding the importance of how to work smarter, not harder.

The key to online affiliate marketing is to first learn affiliate marketing basics. Take the time to invest in an affiliate marketing guide, tutorial or affiliate marketing eBook. These tools can be instrumental in gaining the knowledge you need to become a successful affiliate marketer. You wouldn’t jump into the ocean without first learning how to swim. The same goes for learning affiliate marketing. Make sure you understand the basics before you jump on in.

randybandBW Once you know and understand just what affiliate marketing is and how it works, you can then start earning money. Well, almost. Earning a living through affiliate marketing sales is more than possible, but you must be strategic. The key to success is to know how to make it work for you. Many affiliate marketing newbies often spend too much time focusing on what they are doing and not who they are doing it for.

While working hard as an affiliate marketer is important, it is equally important to spend your time wisely. Initially, it may seem like a good idea to advertise on every website, become members of multiple online forums, and write as many articles as possible, all in hopes of gaining visibility. But you will soon discover that many of these efforts will prove to be in vain.

So how do you drive traffic to your affiliate site without spending every waking moment trying to master the myriad of online media available to you? The answer is simple. You must work smarter, not harder. Building targeted traffic is a keystone for affiliate marketing success.

While being visible is critical to affiliate marketing success, you must be seen by the right people. Take the time know your audience, seek them out, and direct your message to potential customers, not every John and Jane Smith who happen to be surfing the web. Once you have identified who your audience is and where they can be found, driving traffic to your affiliate site becomes a much easier, and more effective task.

For example, if you are an affiliate marketer for a health and wellness service, you wouldn’t want to write an article for an auto industry website. Instead you may want to consider placing an ad in a family oriented newsletter. Or, you might consider websites and ezines that focus on cooking, exercise, and even clothing. The more strategic you are about targeting traffic through well-placed ads, enticing articles and unique offerings, the greater success you will have in affiliate marketing sales.

Your success as an affiliate marketer is dependent upon you and you alone. Don’t burn yourself out by saturating the internet with one-in-a-million advertisements, going after dead traffic or wasting your time in front of a less than interested audience. Instead, work smarter by knowing your audience and being strategic with your approach. Then and only then will you attain affiliate marketing success. People make the mistake in thinking that a business built to last is too much work, or takes too much time. Sure, you�re going to have to work for it, but if you work SMART, you can get results faster than you may have thought. So, how do you work smart? The best things I’ve found, is to find someone else who’s ALREADY doing what you want to do and follow in her footsteps. If you want to follow in the footsteps of someone who’s been making a steadily increasing full-time with affiliate programs, go here:

Affiliate Manager Sweetie

Thanks to Alice and Melissa for sharing their article with Profit Masters.  I hope that you found at least a tidbit of helpful information.  Keep plugging at your niche or product.  You’ll get where you want to be.

Randy

What Have You Done for Yourself Lately

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Hi Fellow Profit Masters… Randy here…

What have you done for yourself lately?  Have you found the latest and greatest Affiliate program?  Have you developed a new and have to have product to sell?  Have you expanded your list(s)?  Do you even have a email list?  What have you done for yourself lately?randybandBW

We know that making a living on the web can be a series of pitfalls and successes.  How many of us have opted in for that great program for $97 dollars only to find it a bust and a waste of money?  The only way to make it on the internet is to forget all those offers that are “too good to be true”, because they are.  Now, I’m not discounting the value of affiliate marketing.   You can make a lot of money marketing someone else’s product.  That’s what keeps Clickbank in business.  But before you can market effectively, you have to have a list of customers to whom you can advertise your “products”.

How do you build a list?  God knows that every internet hack and his brother has their “List Building Secrets” that I’m sure they’ll sell to you for whatever they can squeeze out of you.  Don’t go that route.  The best way to build a list is through hard work and research.  Network with any other marketers you know.  Pick their brains.

I’m not trying to sell you on any particular methodology or “product” to grow your email lists.  I’m just suggesting that you think constructively.  Before you can create a list you have to have the proper mechanisms in place to gather your prospective customers.

First, get a good auto responder.  I can think of a few really good ones that will cost you in the neighborhood of $20 dollars a month.  But the best auto responder is the one that you’ve tried and you feel you can work with.  Most all reputable Auto Responder Services will allow a free trial period.  Take advantage of the offer.  If you don’t like or can’t get the hang of the service then cancel the subscription before the trial period is up.  I use AWeber.  I’ve been really successful with them.  Here are some posts from their excellent blog.  Again I encourage you to do your research.

Secondly, get yourself a mechanism to collect your prospects.  Think of prospect gathering as a funnel.  This is an old analogy.  Technically it’s works like this.  You gather as many leads as possible.  You work those leads until only qualified prospect are developed.  Then you cull out those prospects until you have only committed customers left.  To do this you need to start filling the funnel so the process can filter down and create customers.

So how do you collect the leads you need to fill the funnel?  There are a number of ways.  Generally, you need to find a way to capture the attention of as many prospects as you can.  You can:

1. Blog your head off and use services like Blogspot and others to get your blog around.  You want to create readership.

2. Use Social Networking to spread the word.  Find or develop a product that you can give away for free.  Put that up on your Social Network (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, etc.)  There are a number of free apps you can use to Tweet out your offer (if you’re using Twitter) or get the word out on Facebook.

3.  You can try the manual traffic exchanges.  What’s a manual traffic exchange?  It’s a website that allows you to post your ads for free as long as you take the time to view ads by other people.  I’ve done it and have gotten quite a bit of traffic this way.  You can try SWAT Traffic or Traffic Swarm

But you need a web presence.  By that I mean a place to create your websites and blogs.  Sure you can use Blogger and you can get Wordpress hosting.  Both options plus others are readily available.  But why?  There are some great deals on hosting on the internet.  My favorite is 1&1 Hosting. 

They’ve always been reliable and extremely fair.  I’ve used some others and haven’t been given the help and web tools that they offer.  They’re extremely cost efficient, too.  You don’t have to lay a lot to get a good product or service.  Such is 1&1 Hosting.

Okay, so we’ve covered some of the basics…  I don’t want to go into too much detail.  Think about what I’ve said and do your homework.  That’s what it takes to get the job done.

Green Sells So… Sell Green!

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Hi Fellow Profit Masters… Randy here…

We all know that everyone is conscious about their environment these days.  Heck, everywhere you turn people need information about how to live the green lifestyle.  From organic to solar, people want to know how they can live with a low carbon footprint.

Well this is Profit Masters after all and we believe in passing along as many freebies as we can.  I found this one and want to pass it along to you for use in your blogs, newsletters, or membership sites to help you Master your Profits!  Run the video and then click the “Free Green Content” button to get the goodies.  And, yes, they’re FREE!

<a href="http://www.linkedtube.com/f6u5MiMDxLIca2b8d18257d2bcc4b44dfcc107bac27.htm">LinkedTube</a>

If you just want to get the freebie green content, then just click the button.  I hope you take the time to watch the video.  You can never get enough information.