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#3: Secrets To Fastest Affiliate Marketing Profits
By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | April 5, 2007
Being an affiliate is being a “middleman”. In general, the more value you can provide, either to the merchant or the potential customer, the more money you’ll make.
I’ve earned affiliate commissions in many different ways:
Promoting to my own lists - Obviously, once you’ve built up your own customer/subscriber lists for your own products, promoting affiliate products to them is a no-brainer.
Distributing free ebooks w/affiliate links recommended inside - This can work well, but there has to be a catalyst that gets it distributed. Just making an ebook available for free download on your website probably won’t make it a runaway success.
Selling ebooks w/affiliate links inside (and/or selling resell rights to those ebooks) -A good example is Yanik’s “Million Dollar Emails“. In every niche marketers write articles on their topic to draw in traffic. Ask for permission to put those articles in an ebook and sell them, putting your own affiliate link to the author’s website which will make you money when readers click through. You make money 3 ways: 1) You sell the ebook outright and include resell rights. 2) It’s gets extra distribution from the resell rights, and you make money from affiliate clickthrough when readers buy 3) All purchasers to put in their own affiliate links instead of yours for an extra fee.
Creating Useful Software I gave away free that indirectly drove users to affiliate links (over 500,000+ downloads). It takes some creativity and an “ah-ha” moment.
Creating Content-Filled Websites with the sole purpose o being found in search engines. This is one of my personal least favorites, because I don’t like being at the whim of search engine rankings. If you do this, work at getting legitimate search engine placement instead of “flavor of the week” tricks, or your results will be short-lived.
Creating Useful Training Websites/Videos - Creating short, simple explanation videos or articles that explain how a product works or the benefits or how to use it better than the seller’s site does itself… In other words, becoming a valuable resource. Example: I rely on MailWasher to delete spam from my servers before downloading email, but it’s a little confusing to set up and understand if you don’t already understand filters, so I created a short video showing how to use it with an affiliate link to download the software.
Which One Is Fastest? - Which method is the quickest and most effective for you depends on what niche you’re in. If your niche is weight loss, getting permission to compile different valuable weight loss articles into an ebook with affiliate links to to the authors’ websites that pay you a commission may give you an instantly profitable business.
The advantages are:
1) You can test to find out if it’s do-able without much effort… Just look for good articles on your niche, confirm that they have an affiliate program to their products, and email them permission to include the article in your ebook. Explain the benefits to them (viral exposure) and that you’ll do all the work.
2) Leveraging off of other people’s work (the authors/creators) of the articles to create the chapters of your ebook. All you have to do is compile the articles into ebook form and write a simple sales letter for it.
3) Leveraging off of other people’s lists - You can also allow and encourage those who contributed chapters to the ebook to sell/promote the ebook directly to their own lists and keep 100% of the profits. You benefit from that by having a link in the ebook to subscribe to your email newsletter update, which gets you free subscribers which you can then promote affiliate products to in the future.
Better yet, you should write your own article for the ebook so that you are one of the featured authors, as well as having a subscribe link.
Tips: Granting purchasers their own resell/redistribution rights is an important “viral” angle to get the most coverage possible. Allowing purchasers the right to either sell it or give it away as a free bonus can help get it even more distribution.
The better the articles are in the ebook, the more valuable it will be to you (because of the value it provides to others).
Once you get a recognized authority in the niche to allow you to use their article, include their name(s) when you contact others: “Famous person 1, 2, and 3 have already donated chapters to the ebook, we’d like to include you as well”. It adds legitimacy to the project.
I hope that helps get you brainstorming! -Tim
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