An Affiliate Marketer from the Ground Up

If you’ve been investigating Affiliate Marketing for long, you’ve probably read (many times) that the money is in ‘The List‘.

Well, that’s partly true. You can have the biggest, most focused list on the Internet, but if you don’t have a quality product or service to promote to your list, then it’s all for nothing.

Let’s assume however that you do have your great product and just need individuals to market it to. The basis for your business is going to be your Website. I won’t go into what you need there, other than to say you’ll want a well-focused, content (original) rich site. Make sure you do your homework on keywords and generating organic traffic. Obviously PPC (Pay Per Click) is a great way to get visitors too, but if you can get many visitors without spending money, it’s a whole lot better.

So, you’ve got your product/service/site etc. Your visitors are obviously interested in what you’re offering because they searched for it or clicked a relevant link somewhere in the mix.

Here’s the sweet spot…the list and your autoresponder. When the surfer first comes to your site, you must entice them to give you their email address. Obviously we’re not out to use just any method of getting the email address. We want to offer the visitor something valuable in return. Something that will help you build respect and creditability with everyone on your list.

What you offer is beyond what this article is about, but it’s usually along the lines of a free ebook or newsletter. You can also have them ‘opt-in’ via your RSS feed. Some people like receiving the feed via email too, so make sure that’s an option.

Now, the product that makes all of this possible….AWeber. This product is the best at what it does, period. They’ve been around for over 10-years, and really know the business. What AWeber does is allows you to add a tiny bit of code (the form) to your site that collects the email address (and name), thus constructing your list.

After the intial form is filled in, an automated process can begin, where the user is emailed a link for their download/confirmation, and then subsequently. You can have the automation set up to send emails at predetermined intervals, or just when you initiate it.  If you don’t have a newsletter that’s published regularly, that’s no problem.

I won’t try to cover all the possibilities here, but it’s a very simple principle, and I’m sure you can see the value in the list, and at least as importantly, the automation that AWeber offers. You can sign up for a free trial and check the system out to see the value it will add to your online business.

Just imagine what the process would be manually. People use to even use this bulk mailing (and still do to some extent) with the ’snail mail’ postal system. You’ll have a massive amount of potential for earnings available to you with the combination of your list and the automation, ease of use and power of AWeber.

Six Common Mistakes Made by Email Marketers
By Jim Janowiak

There are lots of mistakes made by beginning email marketers. When your emailmessages are not well thought out, you will not get the responses you want. If you’re not getting the responses you want, you are losing money and wasting time. Not only are you losing time and money, but your list recipients will start to recognize your poor quality. Once that happens, it is very difficult to regain their interest and curiosity.

Most of the mistakes can be broken down into one of the following general categories.

1. Over Use of Personalization. All auto responders allow you to personalize your email. This is a great feature if it’s used correctly. The problem is that with many emails the creator believes more is always better. Only use the personalized information when necessary. If I get an email with my name in it several times it makes me feel creepy. There are times you won’t use personalization at all. Just think how you would have a normal conversation with a friend.

2. Over Use of Power Words. You probably know that you can’t scream at your prospects with capital bold letters and exclamation points. Well, you also can’t use power words either. Here are two examples. “If I don’t tell you about this I will EXPLODE”. “This is the GREATEST THING I have ever seen”. This type of thing just doesn’t work today.

3. Too Formal. Writing for the internet should be just like you are talking. Write as if you are talking to your friends in a bar or other comfortable social gathering. Throw out most of what you learned in English class. Even punctuation is not important. Save the formal writing for your doctorate thesis. Correct spelling is important because you do want to look professional and literate.

4. Two or More Offers. One offer, one email. Don’t send an email and have several offers included. You will confuse and distract the prospect. They might not know what to do by the time they get to your call to action or close. Focus their thinking on just one offer. Stay on point and then ask them to click on the benefit they will receive.

5. No Clear Call to Action. Every email must tell the prospect what action to take. Don’t hesitate to ask them to buy your offer or click the link. If you don’t tell them to take an action they probably won’t. So many emails beat around the bush. Get to the point and tell them what to do. If you don’t you are wasting their time and yours.

6. Talking About Yourself Too Much. Your prospects don’t care about you or your problems or glories. They want to know what you are going to do for them. What benefit you are going to give them. Your emails are not the time for long chats. Use your stories for squeeze pages, websites or eBooks when the prospect will give you more time. This is an email and everybody gets lots of them everyday.

These are the main blatant mistakes. Lots of other mistakes can be categorized into one of these six. Go back and make notes for yourself. By avoiding these common mistakes you’ll get a lot better response from your email campaigns.

Article Source: http://www.affsphere.com/Internet-Marketing/Email-Marketing/Six-Common-Mistakes-Made-by-Email-Marketers.html

How to Write Smart Email Marketing Campaigns
By Jim Janowiak

It doesn’t matter what you are marketing online; Sooner or later you will use an email campaign. Email marketing campaigns can be one of the best ways to get your message and offer to your customers. There are companies that use nothing but email campaigns to market there products and services.

It is a huge industry and you need to learn how to use it. Many email campaigns are very poorly done. You can’t use anything that comes into your head and think your customers will read it. Everyone’s busy and bombarded with email; most email is not even opened.

These tips will help you focus and organize your efforts to build effective emails THAT GET READ!

Take several days and study the emails you receive for an offer you were not expecting. Make notes about why the subject line caught your attention. Find at least 10 emails that you did a second take on and were curious about the content. Write them down and you will find they have something in common.

You will see that the subject lines are enticing and interesting, but are a blind offer. It will not tell you exactly what is in the email. It will have a benefit that interests you or a question in which you are interested. But you will have no idea what the exact benefit or content really is.

If you let the recipient know exactly what is in the email they will make an instant decision and assume they know what is inside. Then they will delete it.

When you are putting your email campaign together write out what your intention for the email really is. Most of the time, you will want the recipient to take some action. What is that action? Be specific. Define the specific action you want before you write the copy.

If you want them to click on a link you will tailor your copy from the beginning to get that click. You tailor your copy by getting to the point. Make your copy very tight and relevant to getting the click. Use this simple formula to lead prospects to your intention.

1. Who are you? – Briefly let them know who you are.

2. What do you want? – Tell them why you are talking to them.

3. Why should I care? – Give them a major benefit.

4. What is in it for me? – Let them know exactly how the benefit will help, solve, or prevent a problem.

5. What do I do now? – With a strong call to action, tell them to click on the link. Don’t be afraid to tell them exactly what to do.

We’re just scratching the surface here. However, if you follow the steps above you can improve your email marketing response. Once you write several tight and to-the-point emails, this will become very easy for you. Your sales will go up.

Article Source: http://www.affsphere.com/Internet-Marketing/Email-Marketing/How-to-Write-Smart-Email-Marketing-Campaigns.html