TABLE OF CONTENTS
Affiliate Marketing - How
Really Competitive It Is 5
Offer Your Prospects Bonus
Incentives 9
Don't Cut Yourself Short
With Offering Rebates! 12
How To Win The Affiliate War 15
Affiliate Marketing – How Really
Competitive It Is
When you watch a football game on TV, you
can easily see how games are won or lost in the battle that takes place on the
line of scrimmage. Offensive plays are designed to protect the quarterback
and/or to open up holes in the defense so that yardage can be gained.
Defensive plays are designed to sack the
quarterback or close holes that would allow yardage to be gained. Quarterbacks
and coaches get the credit for wins and blame for losses but the battle is won
or lost in the trenches.
Affiliate marketing is a lot like a
football game just without the bruises and sore muscles. An affiliate
marketer must design offensive plays and defensive plays that will put him in a
position to win the affiliate wars.
When you are one of many marketers who are
trying to sell the very same product to the very same consumers, you had better
have a plan to get at least your fair share of the market or more.
Every niche market on the Internet is
highly competitive. If it isn’t competitive then there can’t possibly be much
of a customer base to sell to. That is just the nature of all Internet
marketing and in every niche.
Maybe you do have a long and impressive
list of paid customers. That’s great! It means you have already won several of
the affiliate marketing contests and come out on top. The problem is there are
always those up and coming marketers who want your customers on their lists.
Your list and your competitor’s lists may
well contain many of the same names and email addresses. Just having a list
will not be enough to assure you of a victory when selling an affiliate
product. You have to design some offensive plays that will assure that your
customers buy from you and not from your competitors.
So, you ask, what is it that I can do that
will assure that my customers will buy from me? The answer is just one word... unique!
You have to be unique. You have to offer something
that sets you completely apart from your competitors. You have to make your
offer for a product or service for which you are an affiliate more attractive
to buy from you than it is to buy from you competitors.
If you simply send out a marketing email
advertising a product or service that you are an affiliate marketer for, you
need to remember that there are dozens or maybe even hundreds of other
marketers who are sending out marketing email advertising the exact same
product or service and many of them are sending them to the same people that
you are. You have to do something to make sure that your customers buy from
you...you have to be unique.
There are several ways to achieve
uniqueness. One way is to have established yourself as an expert in the field
for which the product or service is being sold. You have to have become not
only visible but credible, as well. This visibility and credibility is not
easily achieved. It takes a lot of hard work, time and effort.
Visibility and credibility are established by taking such measures as writing and marketing
articles and E-Books, posting to blogs and forums, appearing as an expert on
teleseminars and webinars, etc. The fact is that when people know you and trust
you, they buy from you. They will buy from you even is your competitors are
offering a better deal or more incentives.
People do not like to buy from strangers. The Internet is a big impersonal and even frightening place to
many consumers. They want to feel like they know and trust the people that they
buy products and services from. The time, effort and energy that you put into
becoming visible and credible is the best time, effort and energy investment
that you will ever make. Reputation is everything in the world of Internet
marketing. Credibility makes you unique.
Another very important thing that you can
do to insure that your customers buy a product or service for which you are an
affiliate marketer from you and not from one of your competitors is to give
them a very good and compelling reason to make the purchase from you. Offer
something extra or a lot of different extras that will enhance the value of the
product that you are marketing.
No matter what the niche or what the
product is that is being marketed, there are free gifts that you can find that
will make the product a better value if it is purchased from you.
For example:
if you are marketing an E-Book about Internet marketing, you could add several
additional free E-Books concerning different aspects of the broad subject of
Internet marketing.
E-Books can be downloaded from PLR sites or
even from E-Book banks and repositories. Another free gift that people can’t
ever seem to get enough of is free utilities. There are many on the Internet
and you can bet that there are some that will fit right in with whatever
product or service that you are promoting.
While other marketers who are selling the very same product that you are, simply send out marketing emails that recommend the product to their lists, you will be adding value to the product and doing it for free to boot.
Add extras! Add free gifts! Even better than extras and free gifts is additional help to use
the product or service that is being sold. You can offer a free teleseminar for
those who buy the product or service from you that will make the product or
service better or easier to use.
You can most likely even get the producer
or the product or service to speak at your event if you plan far enough ahead.
People just love teleseminars... and they love free...when you add teleseminar
and free together, you will have a winning play that might just score the
proverbial touchdown for you.
Offer Your Prospects Bonus
Incentives
What usually happens when an affiliate
marketer goes to Clickbank or Commission Junction and signs up as an affiliate
marketer for a particular product or service that is relative to his affiliate
marketing business topic?
The first thing he does is usually to place
a logo for the product on his website and send out a marketing email to his
list advocating the value of whatever the product or service happens to be. If
this average affiliate marketer has any zip at all, he will make his sales
letter as good as he can make it.
It will address each member of his list by
name and there will be bullet points listing the advantages provided with
ownership of the product or service. Then he will sit back, cross his fingers
and toes, and hope to make a few sales. Well, that IS a plan but it isn’t a
very good one.
If this average affiliate marketer happens
to get lucky and be included in the launch of a new product, he does pretty
much the same thing. He notifies his list of the upcoming launch (the average
affiliate marketer usually only sends one preparatory email) and then he sends
out the marketing email at the launch.
He will make a few sales...very few. Of
course, he won’t be working very hard either and maybe he is very happy being
an average affiliate marketer. There is a problem, however, with being average.
Average is a very crowded place.
Average! Why would anybody want to settle
for average anything? Doesn’t ‘average’ mean ‘common or ordinary...nothing
special’? If you are not happy with being an average affiliate marketer, then
you need to keep reading.
What puts one affiliate marketer above
the average affiliate marketer? The answer is uniqueness.
Being unique is a quality that sets one
apart from all of others. If you want to be better than just average, you will
need to develop some uniqueness in your marketing techniques that will set you
above just an average affiliate marketer.
Average
affiliate marketers just don’t grasp the idea that in order to sell a lot of
product, their offer needs to be more valuable than the offers their
competitors are making. Most affiliate marketers won’t offer any incentives to
their lists for buying a specific product from then rather than buying the same
product from some one else.
Some affiliate marketers will offer some
bonus incentives but they will be pretty ordinary and things that are really
not of much value or even unrelated to the product that is being promoted.
The really GOOD affiliate marketer will
offer bonus incentives that are BETTER than anything that is being offered by
any other marketer and are directly related to the product that is being
promoted. The really GOOD affiliate marketer will give his customers a very
good reason to buy from him.
Actually, the whole idea of offering better
incentives to customers is just plain old common sense. If you can buy 2 ears
of corn from vendor A for 20 cents or 2 ears of corn from vendor B for 20 cents
and vendor B throws in some butter to go on the corn free of charge, which
vendor are you going to buy from?
Affiliate marketing is the very same
thing.
You have to offer bonuses and you have to
offer better bonuses than those that other affiliate marketers are offering.
For example:
Let’s say that there is an E-Book about Email Marketing than you are an affiliate
marketer for. It’s a very good book that has been written by an Email Marketing
Guru. It is selling for $100 and your commission is going to be $50 per sale
that you make. There is an elaborate live launch for the product. Your
competitors are offering an additional E-Book or two as bonus incentives.
How can you get an edge here? The only way that you can possibly get an edge is to offer
something that your competitors are not offering. You could have set up a free
teleseminar that will take place within a few days of the launch for those who
buy from you or you could offer a free 30 minute downloadable audio tape that
further explains certain points in the E-Book.
The people who buy from you will be getting
a better deal than they could get from your competitors. The product will
always be the same...but the bonuses that are offered is where you get the
edge.
Tip: Never
underestimate the power of ‘free’. Everybody loves getting something for
nothing or getting something extra. They especially love getting something that
everybody else is not getting. And that brings me to another, finer point of
offering bonus incentives.
If you can offer something such as a free
teleseminar that is related to a product launch, you need to limit the number
of people who will receive the bonus. That makes it more exclusive and thus
more desirable.
This is tricky.
You don’t want to make customers mad but
you do want to make those who get the added bonuses feel like they have gotten
something others have not gotten. You might phrase your offer to say that the
first 200 people who buy the product from you will be allowed to join the
teleseminar live and others will receive a transcript of the teleseminar. Like
I said, this is tricky but it can be done.
The bottom line is just this: if you want to be a better than average affiliate marketer you are
going to have to offer more and better bonus incentives than your competitors
offer. All affiliate marketers for any product are all trying to sell to the
same basic customer base and that base is not unlimited.
In order to get an edge and rise above what
is common, ordinary and average you will need to get really creative with the
incentive bonuses that you offer with your affiliate product or service.
Don't Cut Yourself Short With
Offering Rebates!
Rebates! Rebates seem to be all the rage in
today’s market place. Rebates are everywhere. Out in the brick and mortar world
there are ‘mail-in’ rebates and instant rebates offered on every product
imaginable from computers to home appliances to cars. In cyber space the rebate
is everywhere. Rebates are offered on all kinds of programs, software, products
and services.
A rebate is simply a discount in fancy
clothes. The principle is exactly the same. The customer pays less than the
list price for whatever the program, software, product or service might be. The
customer is getting a bargain. That’s true. The question, however, is what
exactly is the seller getting?
The answer to the question, what is the
seller getting, is pretty simple. The seller is getting less money than he is entitled
to get on every sale he makes.
If the seller is giving a 50% rebate that
means that he will have to sell twice the number of programs, software copies,
products or services to make the same amount of money he would have made had he
not offered the 50% rebate.
The seller is giving away his profit
especially if the seller is an affiliate marketer because any rebate an
affiliate marketer offers his customers comes out of his commission. For example:
if you are marketing a product that sells for $197.00
and you earn $98.50 from it, offering a rebate of $50 means that your
commission is only $48.50 per sale.
You aren’t going to be earning
very much per sale. That can’t be a good thing.
There has to be a better way than offering big rebates...and, fortunately,
there is.
One of the big problems with
offering big rebates is that the offer attracts what is known in the
business as ‘cheap customers’. Cheap customers are those who never expect
to pay the full price for anything, ever or under any circumstances. They
expect to get something for nothing and that something for nothing expectation
will always come out of your pocket. You are simply better off without cheap
customers.
The answer to the rebate question
is just this: give your customers a good reason to buy from you at the full
price. Even if you have to pay something for incentive bonuses, it is better
than offering a rebate to the customer.
You will attract a better class of
customers who will continue to buy from you. Many affiliate marketers think
that offering incentive bonuses that are valuable enough to entice people to
pay full price for an item is just too much trouble. They will tell you, that
it is easier, quicker and just a lot less trouble to simply offer a rebate of a
discount than it is to find bonus incentives.
Okay. I agree. Offering a rebate
or a discount is certainly easier, quicker and a lot less work than finding
bonus incentives that are of enough value to make a customer pay full price for
a product or service. However; it is simply not the best thing to do.
The customers that will be
attractive by deep discounts and 50% rebates are the cheap customers and once
you discount or offer a rebate they are going to expect you to do so with every
product or service that you ever offer them. You are going to be working for
peanuts when you could be working for the whole peanut gallery.
Don’t waste your time worrying
about lazy affiliate marketers who offer deep discounts or big rebates. They
will attract the cheap customers that you don’t want anyway and those lazy
affiliate marketers will never be any competition for you.
If you are willing to go to the
trouble, put in the work, and make the effort to find incentive bonuses that
make it possible for you to sell products at their full price to your
customers, you will leave those lazy affiliate marketers eating your dust.
Before you even consider offering
a rebate or a discount on a product or service think about the reason that you
became an affiliate marketer in the first place.
Did you become an affiliate
marketer so that you could just barely scratch out a living or did you plan on
making a very nice annual income that would provide a very nice life style for
you and your family? I doubt that scratching out a living was the top reason
that you chose to become an affiliate marketer.
Look at it like this: every time
that you accept less than you could get for a product, you are giving away the
lifestyle that you have been working for and you are settling for less than you
deserve not only for yourself but for your family as well.
It really is never necessary to
settle for less. It just isn’t necessary to offer a large rebate or a deep
discount to sell a quality product or service.
People need, want and will pay for
the products and services that they need. It isn’t necessary to give away your
profit if you will just work harder and finding incentive bonuses that will
entice your customers to buy the products and services that they need from you.
Don’t discount the product or
offer a rebate. Increase the value of the product instead. Remember this;
increasing value is better than cheapening the product or service that you are
trying to sell. People don’t always see a discount or a rebate as value. They
sometimes see it as an attempt to entice them into buying a product that wasn’t
worth the full price in the first place.
Only the cheap customers will go
for a rebate or discount. The good customers will be shopping around to see
what the best incentives being offered are. If you make your bonus incentives
the very best, then you will attract the best customers and you can charge the
full asking price every time and for every product or service that you promote.
How To Win The Affiliate War
Winning the ongoing affiliate war isn’t
easy but (unlike some wars) it IS winnable. The affiliate wars cannot
and will not be won by lazy affiliate marketers. The affiliate marketing wars
will be won by the aggressive strategists who are willing to work hard and
long.
Affiliate marketing is not for the faint of
heart. If you had really known how tough the competition is in affiliate
marketing would you have joined the fray? It doesn’t matter. You are in the
midst of it now and quitting simply is not an option for a true warrior. The
only option is winning...and winning BIG!
Winning the affiliate marketing wars means
winning the small daily battles and minor skirmishes one at a time and winning
them decisively.
You want to become one of those super
affiliates. You want to become one of those big earners that make an annual
income that has more than one comma in that number on the bottom line, right?
Then you need to be prepared to work hard.
You need to be prepared to do more than what is required. You need to be
prepared to go that extra mile.
First and foremost, reputation counts in
affiliate marketing. There are thousands of affiliate marketers out there but
the ones who make the big bucks are the ones who have established high
visibility and great credibility for themselves.
Establishing credibility and visibility go
hand in hand and establishing both are critical to your success and your
victory over your competitors.
Credibility and visibility are established
in several ways. Two of the most important ways of establishing credibility and
visibility are by writing and marketing articles and E-Books that relate to the
products and services that you sell. You must establish yourself as an
expert...a guru, if you will.
You need to become the guy or the gal that
others go to when they need information or need questions answered. Writing
articles and E-Books (or having them written for you by a ghost writer) is one
of the very best ways of establishing your reputation as a person who has
answers.
Articles that you write or have written for
you by a ghost writer will be uploaded into article banks for other website
owners of E-zine publishers to download and reproduce free of charge. At the
bottom of each 300-400 word, key-word rich article you will include a resource
box that has your name and your website address in it. This helps to spread
your name and news of your knowledge around the Internet to those who are the
most likely to be your customers.
E-Books should only be 10 to 12 pages long
but a link to your website needs to be included on every single page as well as
in the resource box at the end. E-Books are uploaded to E-Book repositories
where others may download them and reproduce them just like articles.
Because it is required that E-Books cannot
be altered and that resource box information must be included when E-Books are
downloaded and reproduced, your reputation as an expert in your field will be
enhanced each time anyone chooses to use them.
Another way to build your visibility and
your credibility on the Internet is to post to blogs and forums that have
topics related to the products and services which you sell. It is a very simply
matter to find these forums and blogs. Simply type your related key word into the
search box of your favorite search engine followed by the plus sign (+) and the
words blogs or forums. You will get many hits.
Choose the three or four of the ones that
have the largest number of active members and join those blogs or forums. Be
careful here. Posting to blogs and forums effectively is going to take several
hours of your time every week so don’t choose too many.
Once you have joined three or four blogs
and forums do not go in with guns blazing posting blatant advertisements. The
idea here is to build visibility and credibility. Introduce yourself and behave
as though you had just moved into a new neighborhood. Your signature tag that
appears at the bottom of each and every post that you make should have your
name as well as a link to your website.
Take you time to get to know the other
posters in the community and become a valued member of the group. You will be
building a good reputation, visibility and credibility.
It takes time to build your visibility and
credibility. While you are building them, you will also be promoting and
selling products and services and you want to establish a good relationship
with those who buy products and services from you. Be sure that you provide
good information, good service and a guarantee if one applies.
Go to great lengths to never appear to be a
cheapo or corner cutter to your customers. Always treat your customers like
they are your most valuable asset...they ARE your most valuable asset.
Never discount products or services or
offer rebates. You don’t want to build that kind of reputation or that kind of
customer base. Instead of offering discounts or rebates take the time and put
forth the effort to add bonus incentives to the products and services that you
promote to give them added value.
The winners of the affiliate wars are the
men and women who go to the trouble and take the time to build excellent
reputations as experts and as fair and honest merchants.
People buy things on the Internet from
people that they feel like they know and can trust. People buy things on the
Internet from affiliate marketers who have the reputation as an expert or a
guru and one who actually cares about the people to whom he sells products and
services to. A positive and hard working, fair–dealing reputation will help you
win the daily battles and, ultimately the affiliate war.