What Has Worked And What's A Plain Waste Of Time

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I often giggle at the reality of my online journey - I signed up for a training program that promised to show me how to make money online ... and they did!

Just over 5 years ago I stumbled across a website ran by Marcus, it wasn't the first wealthy affiliate website that I came across, however there was a certain tone to the message that Marcus put out on his website plus the fact that he offered me something quite unique that I would later realise the true value of.

The story of my early success I shared a while ago, and it's the lessons I learned in those first 6 weeks and the 5 years that have since followed that allow me to write this post "What Has Worked And What's A Plain Waste Of Time"

Approaches to Affiliate Marketing That Just Plain Work!

Article Marketing

Probably the first attempt my all online entrepreneurs at driving traffic to a website landing page or blog post to generate a click through. Article marketing is a very effective way of generating an affiliate income. The keys to success with article marketing to to have a headline that means something to someone and equally compelling content, ( usually tells a story in my case), that delivers on the title with a strong call to action.

The effectiveness of your article depends purely on the quality and extent of your research. Dig for questions within your niche topic, check out yahoo answers, join forums use keyword tools proper research is a must. Once you get your keywords for the base content use LSI to create your article. do please remember that we are writing for humans though folks, it may be easy to rank a web page with SEO but ‘speaking’ to your human readers in your voice is what will get you the sale.

In the old days you could use a redirect from your resource box, these days I've found that I need to approach article marketing starting with my blog post or landing page. The landing page I use to convert an already warmed up visitor from a article so early opportunities to click out to your offer within the landing page ie: above the fold, greatly increase chances of getting that sale.

One last thing that I must reinforce with taking the article marketing approach to online marketing is that it takes more than a handful of articles to start to generate a steady income. You must get at least 200 hits to your landing page to determine what keywords and phrases are bringing you visitors. and write for those visitors…. I typically achor a landing page with about 30 - 50 articles targeted around 5 or 6 main key phrases.

Niche Marketing Digital

Tackling a niche market with the aim of selling digital downloads is a killer strategy that has been around for ages. It was what I first started selling a forex product that was a digital download. We as affiliate marketers are familiar with promoting digital products from marketplaces like clickbank where digital information products have been available for donkeys years. However it’s not that type of digital product that I’m talking about.

This is 2013 and everyone has access to the smart phones and tablets, with the innovation of tech comes the acceptance of technology. It’s not only info products that folks are looking for theres:

  • Music
  • Books
  • Video Tutorials
  • Recipes
  • Films
  • Apps
  • Games

All the above are now perfectly acceptable forms of downloads that everyone with a smartphone, kindle (other electronic reading devices are available…) or tablet are looking for. This is the a totally new market place that warrants exploring if you’d like to add a very nice and steady residual income stream.

I’m certainly not saying that clickbank is dead, far from it. Digital downloads are now an acceptable and trusted daily online purchase. The fact that we all download and pay for digital content in one way or another, that in turn makes it a hell of a lot easier for the reader to trust you and buy a any type of digital download online. start thinking outside the box peeps!

List Building Plus Engagement

List building, sounds so scary doesn’t it? well it did to me when I first started, then there’s the cost if you use 3rd party software. But the truth is ... who needs google when you have a responsive list eh?

List building is something that almost everyone tries but very few get right. You only need to do a few things to grow your list organically. Only email pure gold dust. By that I mean subject matter in which ever format you wish that you know your “target” reader is interested in, I used to worry about the different level of competencies of folks joining my lists - but it doesn’t matter, as long as what I put out it’s top shelf info.

don’t get hung up on the term “top shelf info” Quality information can come in many formats, From short 3 minute podcasts or video, hangouts, news and industry updates, as long as it’s on the button and helps folks in the niche.

Needless to say that having a list of folks give you their emails is something that should be taken seriously. Dont spam them and don’t make every email a sales letter. Nurture your list give them an opportunity to get to know the face behind the emails. There’s a saying that ‘people buy from people’ not from websites! I think it rings doubly true if you using list building as a strategy.

Amazon dedicated website

Selling physical products from Amazon is something that I got into a bit late, but boy am I ramping up my Amazon niche sites or what! I if you’ve practiced article marketing and you know a little SEO you can quite easily benefit from being an Amazon associate. I would actually recommend all affiliates try marketing tangibles from Amazon.

Amazon make it easy for their associates to make money. They have niche stores like /www.javari.co.uk and www.amazonsupply.com as well as other seasonal and “in-house stores” that may focus on Pets or Christmas etc. Whatever your niche you are bound to find a few great targeted offers from Amazon that fit like a glove.

A lot of people build Amazon websites on the wordpress platform targeting a single niche there’s been a lot of success in that realm. However I have tried and tested other options for Amazon stores that do work awesomely. As long as you stick to your niche and are “unique” in your content it’s a winning strategy for making money online.

The Amazon Bonus - There’s a massive bonus to becoming an Amazon associate that you see coming into play once you start getting sales - The bonus is that it’s not just what you promote you get commision on but also whatever the visitor buts at the time. I often see random commissions on of items. Plus everyone trusts the Amazon distribution service.

Launch jacking

This is probably the fastest way to make money online (with a website) that I know. Its a simple concept that reaps quick rewards - If you know how to rank fast! The idea is to get ahead of the curve with a new product launch. When a new book is released we’ll rush off searching for reviews and information - but no-one’s read it yet so no info or reviews!

What we do as Launch Jackers is get our websites ready fro all the questions that folks looking for that new product want answering. There’s a host of great keywords that get targeted. And there’s not 1 visitor that doesn’t want to buy.. so it’s a game of conversions.

When Blackberry released the Playbook in 2011 - I was “jacking the launch of the blackberry playbook. I had 3 websites all EMD that ranked very well. Come launch day April 19 I had a websites ranking “above” blackberry for their new product related keywords. I made coin - Then Blackberry forced me to remove the sites!

No need to be as radical as me there’s new product launches all the time, in the digital arena and the tangibles - like a new tablet, mobile phone, a new book release, a new line in boxing gloves … whatever! If it’s a sought after item the price point is right, a new model being released - it may be worth jacking! Start to think about what’s up and coming in your niche.


Now for Part 2 of that title ... What's A Plain Waste Of Time...

But I've been rattling on for far to long - so I'm going to leave that for another day!
Until next time

So... now you DO KNOW what works why not try your hand at creating another income stream here at wealthy Affiliates


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Recent Comments

14

Very cool stuff..I knew people were making money doing this, just wasn't sure how.....makes a lot of sense good stuff

Cheers David -

You're in a good place here

Mission0ps I just loved the info you gave all of us. I will definetly be following you. Man you ROCK!

sweet - -cheers for the props

this is great, very informative. Im relatively new and learning alot from you. thanks

No worries.

Great content here. I myself use to sell digital ebooks on ebay, until ebay changed the rules. It was very easy to set a fully automated system to sell and deliver these. That got killed with ebays change in policy on selling ebooks. I sort of lost my way after that.
that was quite some time ago now.
This article been great in motivating me to look at it all again but with the training and tools I've got at WA.

you will certainly find all you need to surpass your ebay business - guarenteed

awesome stuff.

Again -- thank you for responding in such a complete way to my earlier question, you went the extra mile! It is nice to have validation and specific points highlighted by someone who has walked the walk and not just the talk -- this is excellent material!

All good Mike - I have to tell ya I enjoyed writing it. There are plenty of ways to go but I truly recommend those above.

Tenacity is the key buddy - don't stop until you get to where you are going!

You have made some great tips here and I will be looking into making an email list soon. I will need more revenue from my site before I can pay someone to do it for me.

Hi Jaron, thx for popping by and leaving a comment - PS: you don't want to pay anyone to do anything for you. Just wait and see you'll learn all you need to right here :)

Thank you :D

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