You’re going to learn how to own the customer! If you’re an experienced affiliate, you will begin receiving multiple commissions rather than the traditional one time commission.
If you’re brand new to affiliate marketing, you will learn how to do things the right way!
As you learned in the first blog post “What is Affiliate Marketing: Rise of the New Economy,” Affiliate Marketing, Network Marketing, and Production Creation make up the New Economy.
Before you get a glimpse at The Big Picture of Affiliate Marketing, let us return to the cold hard truth that many of you will be left without a job, wondering where to look next.
You’re most likely seen as a number at your corporate job. You may become known as the person that contributed to building someone else’s dream, rather than your own.
Many of you will be forced to agree with controversial office politics, which may lead to endless vicious circles of self sabotage, corporate hypnosis, and lack of responsibility for yourself.
You’re a puppet on a stick, and easily replaceable.
Many of you have student loan debt piling up, and the interest rates keep the principle from ever reaching a point where you just hope, and feel its possible to be debt free.
The current educational system is based on money for information. You pay money to attend an educational institution (college/university) to specialize in a topic of your interest.
Many of you will enter interests that are solely focused on money, and have nothing to do with your real life ambitions, goals, interests, and passions. Its a sad system you have to go through.
At the same time, many of you are completely satisfied and happy with your current position in life, and may seek a piece of The New Economy for other reasons.
You may desire to spend more time with your family. Perhaps you want some extra disposable income to save up for a new car, house, vacation, or shopping spree!
You may want to live a lifestyle of traveling the world, meeting with your clients, and enjoying the freedom to work where you want, when you want, and with who you want.
What is it that you desire more than anything in life? After you have achieved financial freedom, and you have enough money to whatever you want, what will you do next?
Think about it before you go to bed for a week, and then comment on the blog.
Educating yourself is one of the valuable things you can do in life.
The current educational system is in transition, and will continue to be redefined as information becomes more freely accessible (via Internet) to everyone on the planet.
Your grandfathers didn’t need an education to get a job. Many of your parents didn’t require an education to get a job. Many of you are told you need to go to university to get a job.
I personally jumped through the education ‘hoop’ in hopes of finding the best job in the world.
Sure, I got a job. How long did that last? 4 years…. I got another degree in experience.
If I had known you can educate yourself through the Internet, and had the opportunity to learn while I made money in my pajamas, I would have taken the opportunity!
I may have moved to Switzerland years ago… or perhaps Peru!
Now that I know what I know…. I want to share that the ability to educate yourself in any field of your choice is available right here, right now. You can specialize in any are.
You can use the Internet to make money, and use that money to fuel your passion!
New thinking = Earn to Learn.
Old thinking = Learn to Earn.
When you’re forced to pay money for information (education/specialization), so that you can get a job, start a family, buy a car/house, and you can’t get a job, its a joke. Its flawed!
The current educational system is set up as a business benefiting the business’s best interest.
Why do you think they call it ‘the system’?
This is real life, and you have a choice. Keep following this 10 part blog post series, and see how you can contribute to the new economy, and set yourself free from the system.
You’re independent, and in control of everything that happens to you.
If you haven’t noticed by now, this 10 part blog post series often refers to the old economy. The old system, the old way of living life, and how it doesn’t serve your best interest in life.
In order for you to see how bright, prosperous, vibrant, and real the new economy is, you must also revisit the old economy, and how dark, and challenging life can be for you today.
The New Economy serves your best interest!
In light of all of the cold hard facts, the focus of today’s blog post is The Big Picture of Affiliate Marketing & Owning the Customer. Lets step back into the world of Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate Marketing is a type of performance based marketing in which advertisers reward affiliates for providing new qualified leads & sales to advertiser affiliate programs.
Often advertisers hire agencies and/or affiliate networks to manage affiliate programs.
An affiliate network acts as a bridge between affiliates and advertisers (products/services).
To get started with Affiliate Marketing, sign-up to NAMoffers affiliate network.
NAMoffers enables affiliates to find advertisers, and enables advertisers (products/services) to reach a larger audience by promoting to all of the affiliates participating in the affiliate network
If you’re finding this blog post, and want to learn the foundations of Affiliate Marketing, check out blog post 1, “What is Affiliate Marketing: Rise of The New Economy.”
You’re now entering The Big Picture of Affiliate Marketing: Owning Your Customer.
Many of you have made excuses, “I’m… too old…. too young… not educated enough… not skilled enough… “ for ignoring the Internet revolution, and tapping into The New Economy.
Think back to the first time you have done anything. You can feel inferior because you have never done this activity before, or you can feel superior, knowing you’re creating new challenges.
It comes down to your mindset, and how you feel today.
Since you’re reading this, and learning about the future before it happens, I can only imagine you’re feeling happy, and excited to begin making money with Affiliate Marketing.
If you’re fresh out of the cocoon, and have never experienced flying before.
Know this… Everything you do in life starts with the first step. You want to take action.
You’re reading part 2 of a 10 part blog post series that will hold your hand, and guide you the entire way down the yellow brick road of Affiliate Marketing, and ‘The New Economy.’
In the next blog post, you will learn how to implement The Big Picture of Affiliate Marketing, including which tools you need to start your online money making adventure.
Below, are the 6 steps to attracting people you don’t know to affiliate products you’re interesting in promoting online AKA The Big Picture of Affiliate Marketing
Step 1: Choose a niche you want to OWN
In order to be motivated everyday to make money in Affiliate Marketing, you want to choose a niche you personally like, and/or are inclined to learn more about.
For example, cooking, comic books, fashion, fitness, health, making money, music, personal development, photography, sports, teaching, and technology are niches.
Think about your hobbies, interests, and passions.
Business Opportunity is currently a very profitable niche. You’re always looking to make more money, right? Almost everyone is looking to make more money!
The Internet itself is a business opportunity. Those of you who previously had no access to computers, or laptops now have access to the Internet through mobile phones.
You can make, what many would consider a lifetime amount of money by teaching others how to make money online. You can retire, and enjoy the things you truly desire in life.
Step 2: Market Research – Part A
Once you have decided on a niche you want to own, its time to begin market research.
Market research means you’re going to do research on the type of products available in your niche, the customers available, the demographics of those customers, and much more.
This will make it easier to communicate, and offer solutions (products) to your customers.
You can learn about Market Research in full details in the 4th blog post of this 10 part series.
Start by thinking about products/services that are needed in those niches.
For example, if you’re interested in making money online then you may want to coach others on how they can do exactly the same thing. What products do you need to start online?
1. Domain
2. Web Hosting
3. Email Marketing Provider
You can start online without these tools; however, the intention of this blog posts is to educate you on The Big Picture of Affiliate Marketing, rather than small niche money making areas.
The next step is often challenging for affiliates. You have thought of a few products needed in your niche, and are now wondering where & how you gain access to the affiliate programs?
Affiliate Networks represent advertiser affiliate programs, and is your starting point.
Consult with NAMoffers for recommendations from Affiliate Marketing Experts. You can get access to 1000’s of products in seconds by joining the NAMoffers Affiliate Network.
NAMoffers also provides affiliates with an advertiser “Wishlist.” You can request any affiliate program you want to promote, and NAMoffers advertiser team will meet your request.
To bring it back to the example, you have now consulted with NAMoffers….
You learn that Godaddy (domain), Media Temple (hosting), and GetResponse (Email Service Provider) all have affiliate programs available for affiliates to promote.
GoDaddy = $20.00 commission.
MediaTemple = $60.00 commission.
GetResponse = $95.00 commission.
Total Commission = $175.00.
That’s right, you’re going to get $175 commission for sharing the products that people already need to start an online business. How happy are you to figure this out?
You can offer many other products related to starting a business, and earn increased commissions from the same people. Keep reading this post to learn the full process.
This is one example for those interested in the business opportunity niche.
For those of you interested in health & fitness, what products/services do you need to start?
Most likely you will be eating differently, considering supplements, exercising three to five times a week, going to a gym, yoga, hiring a trainer, watching home video’s, or using a home gym.
Consult with NAMoffers for recommendations from Affiliate Marketing Experts. You can get access to 1000’s of products in seconds by joining the NAMoffers Affiliate Network.
Step 2: Market Research – Part B
Once you know which products the customers in your niche need, want, or desire, and have consulted with NAMoffers to learn which affiliate programs are available in your niche…
You want to do Market Research on the customers who buy products in your niche?
What gender are they? How old are they? Do they live in a specific country? Are they going to University? Single Parent? Family? Do they play sports? What is their personality?
In order to effectively communicate with your customers, you need to be laser focused with who your customer is, and why your customers buy what they buy.
Below are two examples of two target markets (customer profiles) for making money online,
Educated Eddy: Eddy is a manager at the local bank who works 9-5 Monday-Friday, often leaving the office late at 6pm to make sure everything is done.
Eddy attended University in hopes of getting a high paying job. Eddy started as a bank teller, moved up to bank manager, making a comfy $50K a year, yet left unsatisfied.
Eddy is married, has 2 kids(12 & 16 years old), and is 44 years old.
Eddy wishes he could spend more time with his family during the week. The weekend is consumed by family, friends, BBQ’s, golf courses, and home renovations.
Helpful Heather: Heather is a registered nurse who works three 12 hour shifts / week, often skipping lunch or working an extra 30 minutes out of the goodness of her heart.
Heather has been working part-time as a registered nurse for the past 25 years, and often finds herself watching TV, doing crosswords, and finding other distractions to pass the time.
Heather is divorced, has 3 kids (all who have moved out), and is 52. When Heather had her first child at 22, she quickly adapted to being a stay at home mom, working on call & part time.
Now that Heather’s kids have moved out, she is often left looking for new projects to make some extra cash, and grow her mind. Heather clearly loves supporting and serving other people.
You can go a few steps further, including Household income, and other demographic & psychographic data related to your customers. Blog post four will cover these details.
Now you know how to do Market Research for products in your niche, and the customers who buy these products. There is a third component you will learn about in blog post four.
This third component is doing Market Research on the traffic. There are numerous ways to drive traffic to your capture pages, and each requires a similar, yet different way of thinking.
You will learn about keyword research, how to find websites that match your target markets, and how to approach platforms such as Facebook, Google, and many other traffic sources.
Step 3: Create a Capture Page/Landing Page
Your landing page, or as we call it in Affiliate Marketing, a capture page provides a solution to the customer. Its called a capture page because you collect, or “capture” data.
Primarily email addresses, names, and phone numbers are collected.
Email is the suggested method to start. You learn the basics, generate your first leads/sales (commissions), and understand how Affiliate Marketing works from the foundation up.
To bring you up to date, you have decided which niche you’re going to own, did your market research, and are now going to build capture pages to get your first leads, and sales!
The objective of your capture page is to grab the customers attention in a way that makes them want, almost need to sign-up to your capture page. Why should they sign-up to your page?
You may get signups by offering a specific solution, a free ebook, among many other methods.
Since you have done your Market Research, you know how your customers think, feel, act, and why they think, feel, and act the way they do. You stepped into your customers shoes!
You want to think about your target markets when creating your capture pages.
Why do they want to buy the product’s you’re sharing? What benefits do these products provide to your customers? These are the solution you want to answer on your capture pages.
To give you an example, lets keep it with the business opportunity niche.
GetResponse is one of the tools you need to begin making money online, and start a business.
With GetResponse, you can set up a series of emails to send at specific times of the days, to specific people, with specific customized messages.
Imagine this…. “Congrats, you just got your first sign-up on your capture page!”
Where does that email go? and how do you email them?
GetResponse allows you to automatically send email’s to the customers who sign-up to your capture page. You can have a personalized welcome email sent right away.
You can have a daily email sent to each subscriber at 11am.
You can be at the beach, hanging out at the park with your kids, working your regular job, and anytime someone signs-up to your capture page, you’re email’s are automatically sent.
What benefit does GetResponse offer to your customers?
When starting an online business, you will need new customers. In a traditional offline business, you would have to cold call, rely on foot traffic, or go to local events in hopes of new business.
With online marketing, you can drive qualified customers to your doorstep by advertising your business (capture page) across millions of websites, or only a few websites.
If someone is interested in your product, you will get an email saying “I want to buy.”
The benefit of GetResponse is you’re no longer cold calling customers.
You’re now setting up capture pages, driving traffic, discovering who is and isn’t interested, and speaking with customers only. You can demand new customers!
You’re capture page is like the front door to your business.
If you explained email marketing as explained above to someone or a local business, do you think that person or business would be interested in learning more about email marketing?
With Affiliate Marketing, you can create capture pages around any product, and provide solutions that benefit customers around the world. You’re goal is to own your niche.
Step 4: Set Up a Thank You Page
After someone signs up to your capture page, they will land on your ‘thank you page.’
The thank you page is generally where you thank the customer for signing up. As well, you tell them to check their email to confirm their email address, and read the first email.
In this case, you’re going to redirect the user to the affiliate product that offers the solution you mentioned to the customer on your capture page. Affiliate Marketing with a TWIST.
In this example, lets say you’re running GetResponse. Once you have your capture page setup, you will input your affiliate link as the thank you page link.
Your affiliate link for GetResponse will lead to – https://secure.getresponse.com/pricing/en/
When you’re logged into GetResponse, you can easily select a custom thank you page.
If you’re setting up a personal branded capture page, you may want to consider sending subscribers to a thank you page with a customized message from you.
CLICK HERE to see an example thank you page from Affiliate Expert Academy.
Its suggested, you only redirect to affiliate offers when promoting affiliate products.
Step 5: Create Email Autoresponder Series
Once you have captured the customer’s email address, its your duty to set up an email series that educates, provides value, displays the benefits, and guides the subscriber to buying.
In step three, you learned that with GetResponse you can schedule your email’s at specific times, and days – automating the entire process of emailing your subscribers.
You speak with those interested in buying, and those who are paying customers.
Many people think keeping in touch with their subscribers (people who put their email in your capture page) is not easy…. You’re right, its a piece of cake!
There are tools to take care of all the technical mumbo jumbo.
You will have to learn a new language; however, you will only have to learn 10% of this language to begin making money online. You don’t need to know English….
Sign up to Affiliate Expert Academy to learn the 10% of the language you want to know!
You can download an A-Z Affiliate Marketing Dictionary in the Affiliate Expert Academy membership area. If you find a word you don’t know, and its not in our dictionary, contact us.
Before learning more about setting up your email series, lets review what you learned today.
You now know the niche you’re going to own. You did market research on the products you’re going to promote, and researched the customers who buy these products.
You created a capture page customized to your target market, which is set up to collect people’s email addresses. Once they sign-up, the subscriber is redirected to the affiliate product.
If you’re promoting a personal brand, use a personalized thank you page. If you send people to an affiliate product after subscribing to your brand, you may see increased unsubscribers.
If you’re at this stage, and have no idea how you’re going to write about the niche you choose to own. Go back to the beginning, and think about your hobbies, interests, and passions.
The things you love are the things you have the most knowledge about. You know plenty of details on the target markets, and how to effectively communicate & sell to these markets.
You can share ideas, and talk about the things you love with others all day & night.
Lets keep you focused, and return to the autoresponder email series.
In your email series, you want to formulate an overall approach to guiding your subscribers (customers) to buying the product, and understanding how it benefits their life today.
Why should people buy from you? Why should people open your emails?
These are two serious questions for you to think about.
Once people have subscribed, you want to introduce yourself. Connect with the subscribers, share your story, show them you’re a real person, and how you can better their life.
You will decide which value added content to include (videos, blogs, social media) in your autoresponder series. Before you write each email, think about the main objective.
How does your subscriber benefit from each individual email you send?
Once you have prepared your emails, you upload each email into GetResponse. After you have uploaded, you will choose which time you want to send the email to your subscribers.
For example, you will send your personal introduction email immediately after they sign-up. You may send the 2nd email 24 hours after they sign-up. Perhaps the next day at 2pm.
You can create daily emails (Monday-Friday). You can create one email / week.
To start, you’re going to want 7-10 emails. Some of you may prefer to have an autoresponder series that goes on for years. Some niches will be short term, and others long term.
Step 6: Choose a Traffic Source (Method)
You have successfully created the front end (capture page/thank you page), and backend (email autoresponder series) of your first Affiliate Marketing lead funnel.
You have now accomplished what many of the top affiliate earners set up to generate consistent five, and six figure monthly incomes. Pat yourself on the back, and prepare for the home stretch!
Getting traffic to your capture page is a fun, and rewarding process. After you read this post, you will have a good idea on how you can get started for a minimum of $5 / day.
In the 8th post of this 10 part series, you will learn more in depth details about getting traffic to your capture page – including which traffic sources to use, and proven ninja traffic strategies.
You can use many free traffic sources, including: Blogs, eBooks, Facebook, Forums, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, SlideShare, Squidoo, Tumblr, Twitter, and Youtube.
Free traffic is an amazing resource for generating traffic; however, the purpose of this post is to educate you on how you can get traffic to your website today, and see immediate results.
Its recommended you invest 20% of your time into learning a free traffic source. Start with one traffic source, learn how it works, master it, own it, and then expand into other sources.
For paid traffic, you will invest 80% of your time into learning a method, mastering it, owning it, teaching others how to leverage it, and then expand into other traffic sources.
You can use many paid traffic methods, including:
- CPV/PPV (Cost Per View/Pay Per View)
- Display Banners (Websites)
- Email (Newsletters & Solo Ads)
- Incentivized (Loyalty & Virtual Currency)
- Mobile (Android & iOS)
- PPC (Pay Per Click)
- Social Media (Facebook/Twitter)
Each traffic method has a variety of traffic sources to choose from.
Traffic sources is where you will purchase the advertisements for your capture page. Traffic methods is how you’re advertising; whereas, traffic sources is where you’re promoting.
Choose your method, and then your traffic source.
When you’re considering which traffic method to use, its suggested you choose one of the following traffic methods, CPV/PPV, Mobile, PPC, or Facebook Ads.
CPV / PPV: Contextual Pop-ups, based on keywords searched by user through adware toolbar.
Mobile: Display, Icon Ads, Push Notifications, Search.
PPC: 7Search, Bing, Google, LookSmart.
Social: Facebook Ads.
Each of the suggested traffic methods have low start up costs ($5 / day), provide quality results, and can be learned, mastered, and owned with consistent practice.
You can also continue to follow this blog post series, and get more specifics in the 8th post.
You now know the 6 steps to attracting people you don’t know to affiliate products you’re interesting in promoting online. Follow these steps, and you will make money.
In this post, you learned WHAT you want to do to get started with Affiliate Marketing.
Comment below with your comment, feedback, suggestions, and thoughts.
In the next post, you will learn HOW to implement what you learned today. You will get step by step instructions on the tools you need, what you need to do, and how to do it.
LIKE what you’re reading? Scroll down and leave a COMMENT! Also, you may want to check out the 3rd post in NAMoffers 10 part series, “Painting Your Picture in Affiliate Marketing.”
PS. If you’re interested in free guidance to get started with Affiliate Marketing, sign up to Affiliate Expert Academy. 30 day kick starter programs, case studies, traffic strategies, and webinars!
PPS. If you’re an experienced affiliate, and are looking to develop new relationships with Affiliate Networks, sign up to NAMoffers to discuss new opportunities together!