How come some Internet marketers live the life of rockstars and others seem to fail? As a successful affiliate marketer you need to be an expert in SEO, PPC, CPA analytics, traffic, conversions and have an understanding of what the best products are to sell on the web. Most people that are new to Internet marketing believe that they can just get a blog find a niche and start marketing. Since the Google Panda update the good old days of easy ranking and traffic just don’t exist like they used to. What does work is persistence, commitment and leverage.
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Leverage Is Key To Success In Affiliate Marketing
Any affiliate marketer worth their weight in gold will have a team of people behind them. Sure it may seem like the affiliate is a one person show but behind the scenes they will have an outsourced designer, coder, SEO, copywriters, syndicators and a paid traffic expert. Some affiliates may dabble in all of these subjects but affiliates that are producers will outsource so they can focus on product creation, JV and marketing. Your most seasoned affiliate marketers are masters at building offline relationships and construction joint venture arrangements. It is one thing to create web traffic it is another to borrow traffic or to market to another marketers email list.
For those of you looking to become affiliate marketers and you know nothing about it the key is to get started some place. As an affiliate marketers you can sell products from Amazon or information products. There are people who get involved in CPA networks (stands for cost per acquisition) and in those you can market anything from how to information, education, insurance enrollment, motivation courses, credit cards or lead generation. Affiliate marketers can earn commissions for every sale or lead that they generate and commissions vary from 10% to 60% depending on what the product is.
How Do You Get Started As An Affiliate Marketer?
For many starting out as an affiliate marketer starts with the understanding of keyword research and search intent on search engines like Google. Using keyword research tools like the Google External tool is a good place to start. You will want to target something that has acceptable levels of competition because if it is too competitive you will never rank. You will need a blog preferably on a wordpress platform and if you are generating leads a autoresponder. To test your keywords you can do some small PPC campaigns on Google and see if your keywords convert. The goal of every affiliate marketer is to understand which keywords are your money keywords verses the ones that don’t convert. Once you understand your keywords that are highly converting then you can leverage your SEO efforts with outsourcing to invest in your organic campaign.
The fastest way to get traffic is to borrow it. Depending on what you are selling it may be possible for you to market to other affiliate marketers. If you are dealing in information products creating a joint venture with an established affiliate marketer could make a lot of sense since they may already be sitting on a large list. So if you are a master affiliate or have your own information product you can negotiate a shared commission with another marketer and they will market your products to their people. This is commonly done with information products via Webinars and it is a very successful model. Most affiliate starting out will not be in this position so you might consider leveraging video marketing, podcasting, article marketing, blogging and paid traffic sources. It is important that as your Internet marketing business develops that you attend industry conferences and events so that you can build those valuable joint venture relationships.
Are There Any Short Cuts In Marketing?
Most everything in Internet marketing takes time or money so I don’t see a short cut to becoming an affiliate marketer rockstar. It takes years of dedication for most affiliate marketers as they have to gain the skills necessary and or you have to have the resources to be able to hire the experts that can help you in your business. An Internet marketing business is composed of many moving parts and the learning curve can be complex. That’s not to say that it isn’t possible to have success in affiliate marketing but rather that you have a realistic expectation of your results. The leverage you create through outsourcing and key relationships will be the difference between success or failure.
What Is The Best Internet Marketing System For Newbies?
I believe that your goal in your Internet marketing business should be to have multiple streams of traffic and revenue. You should have a mix of your own products and other peoples products that you market. Your other goal should be to deepen your understanding of the mechanics of online marketing and like any smart business person find your leverage by outsourcing and removing yourself from the business as much as possible. There are some systems that can assist you in getting started in affiliate marketing where they will teach you the basics of keyword research and you can become an affiliate and market their products.
