There are a few reasons why your affiliate program isn’t bringing in the traffic and profits you’ve always hoped for. And below, I’ve outlined 5 quick ways to change that so you can get more traffic and profits using the power of “super” affiliates.

1) Make Sure Your Sales Letter Converts — Nothing puts a damper on an affiliate program quicker than having affiliates sending you tons of traffic but not giving them anything in return.

If your sales letter really works hard to turn prospects into customers, then you’re going to make your affiliates (and yourself) very happy.

So, spend some time getting your sales letter converting well. Study how to write better copy, or hire a professional to write you a hard-selling letter.

2) Offer Affiliate Tools — This is so important. Most affiliates will promote your program if you give them the tools to do it.

Hire someone to design some strong banners. Create a weekly “affiliate tips” newsletter to share new ideas. Create sales letters and graphics affiliates can use that will work to get the word out on your product fast.

3) Start An Affiliate Contest — And give away prizes for top sellers and those most improved. Or, make an offer that an affiliate making 10 sales through their link gets your product free. It doesn’t cost much to run a contest of this type, and the return is great.

4) Define Your Perks And Tell Potential Affiliates Why They Should Promote Your Program — If your sales letter converts visitors like crazy, tell them. If you split profits down the middle and share 50% of each sale with the referring affiliate, let them know.

Tell them about contests you run and tools you offer to make it easy. Put your offer into focus for potential affiliates. If you have a high-priced product, you could say something like, “This sales letter converts 1 out of every 50 visits. And with the product going for $297, and you getting half of that for each sale, 100 visitors sent from your site can put an easy $297 in your pocket.”

5) Get The Word Out — Place a link on your sales page that sends those clicking to a full-page sales letter detailing all the benefits of offering your product to their visitors.

Promote your affiliate program instead of the product. There are hundreds of ezines in existence that cater to those promoting affiliate programs. Take out an ad and tell them why they want to be an affiliate for you.

Check out keywords online that target your audience and get in touch with the webmasters. Tell them about your programs benefits and give them the opportunity to sign up.

Affiliate programs, once in place, can bring you automatic, low cost traffic for years to come. Take the time to set yours up right, and reap the rewards for years to come.

Share This:

1. Generate Targeted Traffic from Online Discussion Forums.

Online discussion forums provide an excellent way to promote your website without paying any money. Nowadays, you don’t even have to lurk around before you begin to post. Just browse the messages and you can start posting. There are basically three different ways to participate. You can ask questions, respond to requests for help or just post any useful information that fits with the general topic of that discussion forum. To promote your site in online discussion forums, all you have to do is enter your website address or ad in your signature line at the bottom of each message. Every time you post or respond to questions your ad will be displayed. If you post good content, people who read your threads will also check out your website. This is an excellent way to drive targeted traffic to your website at no cost to you. You can take this type of site promotion a step further by identifying the active members in each forum and contacting them for joint venture arrangements.

2. Write Articles or Free reports for other webmasters to publish.

Another effective way to promote your website is to write articles or free reports for ezine publishers and webmasters to use. If you write good content, your articles will be published and many readers who like your article will go on to visit your website. You can also write simple research based articles and allow others to publish these freely on their websites. The traffic from these free articles will come from your byline. The ‘byline’ is the short paragraph that goes at the bottom of each article and describes who the author is and what they do. The good thing about writing this type of content is that it establishes you as the expert and therefore increases the chances of people visiting your website and signing up for whatever you’re offering.

3. Do Joint Ventures with List owners and Webmasters.

If done correctly, joint venture marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote a product or service. A Joint venture can take many forms but it’s generally an agreement for some kind of partnership between one or more parties working together to their mutual benefit. It allows you to leverage highly targeted lists or traffic with no risk. Joint ventures are excellent for new product or service announcements because they allow you to reach a wide customer base very quickly.

4. Leverage the power of your email Signature.

One of the quickest and effective ways to start driving traffic to your website at no extra cost is to add your ad or website address to your email signature. This way, every time you send an email, you’ll be advertising your website. You can take this a step further by asking your friends and associates to put your website address in their email signature. Most people don’t use their email signature facility in their email program so you can easily get 10 or more people to agree to do this. If you and your 10 friends each send out 10 emails per day, that’s 110 exposures of your ad every day without any extra effort on your part.

5. Exchange Links with Other Webmasters.

This is another effective strategy for generating targeted traffic to your website for free. It involves contacting other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. All you have to do is locate websites that are related to yours but that are not in direct competition and contact the webmaster to swap links. There are various free ebooks and articles available online on this topic.

Share This:

Too many business owners and marketers know that Yellow Pages advertising has an incredible amount of potential… but they don’t quite know how to take advantage of it.

Fortunately, it’s a mystery that’s solved pretty easily once an advertiser knows where to turn for advice. There are fundamental truths about Yellow Page advertising that so many businesses fail to recognize, but once they do, they stand to capitalize on a sizeable reward. That said… let’s try to understand it a bit better, shall we?

1. Common Yellow Page advertising mistakes are simple to fix.

Very simple. You don’t have to be a graphic designer or marketing expert to drastically improve your ad either—you just need to know your customers.

You see, most Yellow Page ads make the very same mistakes… year after year …directory after directory …category after category. Some of the ads I see from professional design firms are riddled with mistakes too.

Of course they may look nicer… but that won’t cut it in the Yellow Pages! While a professionally designed ad can certainly help grab attention, there is no substitute for ad content (read: words) if your goal is to generate a phone call.

And when it comes to Yellow Pages advertising, that’s all that really matters.

By learning what makes a good headline, good body copy, and how to develop a strong offer—your Yellow Pages ad will run circles around an ad that just “looks great,” but makes the same mistakes most others are making.

An example? Using your name and logo as the headline…

It’s disastrous and yet more advertisers do it than not. No one cares what you call yourself until they’ve decided to pick up the phone and actually call you.

Your company name does not win you business. So if your name and logo is at the top of your ad… if it’s big and bold and takes up space… if it takes the place of an attention grabbing, hard-hitting headline… you’ve made a big mistake.

Next, here’s fundamental truth number 2…

2. Most Yellow Page ads are developed by the directory publisher.

That’s right—the directory itself develops most of the ads you see. That’s a pretty unfortunate scenario if you think about it. What happens if they design your ad and 4 of your competitors’ ads? Whose ad stands out? Who gets the best ad content and the most original headline?

That’s not a risk you’ll want to take.

When it comes to Yellow Pages advertising those that know how to set themselves apart from the pack fare well. Nice design might get you noticed, but good ad copy grabs attention like a magnet and doesn’t let it go.

Don’t just hand the reins to someone else and let them develop your ad for you. Learn what it takes to generate response and play a role in developing that winning ad for your business.

Your design department will be happy to design your ad free of charge, but make sure you play an active role in developing the content. Because no one knows what makes your customers “tick” like you do!

3. Yellow Pages Advertising is different from just about EVERY other medium you use.

You might want to re-read that. Yellow Pages advertising is different because people see your ad when they are ready to buy. This is huge! Almost every Yellow Page ad I see takes the approach: “This is who I am and this is what I offer.”

Guess what—that’s dead wrong!

All that matters in Yellow Pages Advertising are “the reasons someone should choose you over your competition.” Telling them what you offer does no good. They know what you offer! They’re looking at your ad because their tooth hurts and they turned to the “Dentist” category.

Focus on “why, with all of these options, they should choose you” and you’ll be doing what so many advertisers before you have failed to include.

That is the information your prospects looked in the Yellow Pages to uncover. Give it to them. Give them a reason to pick up the phone and know you’ll provide them with something different… something better.

Your prospects are a skeptical bunch. Make contacting you and giving your business a shot a risk-free, value-filled proposition for them. When done correctly this will give any usiness a tremendous edge over the competition.

Share This:

Any x by y matrix plan has one big risk… but also one big advantage.

The biggest risk: People in your downline might think they don’t have to promote and just wait for your spillover.

The biggest advantage: Still, it’s a great way to build a deep team quick… if you and the people in your team understand that they shouldn’t just sit and wait for it to happen.

The following 3 steps you need to follow and teach to build a successful team:

1. Find 2 people… It doesn’t really matter if it’s e.g. a 2×15 forced matrix or wider. If the matrix is wider than 2, or even unlimite^d wide, I recommend to start with 2 and then go wider when your team has been fully build at least 4 levels deep.

2. Next build a relationship with them, teach them this 3 eas^y steps and motivate them until they find 2 people on their own.

3. Then motivate your 2 people to motivate their 2 people to also find 2 people … etc.

I believe this is a much better way to build a successful team. And not to mass promote and hope that a few in the masses you sponsor build a team on their own… but instead motivate to motivate to build the team… all the way down.

If you mass promote… you might be able to initially build a big downline… but since there will be no relationship, it will fall apart fast as well.

If you or somebody in your team has a big list of people to email to, then you or those people could send a message to all, telling them that you are looking for 2 leaders only. Ask them to email you back and tell you “why” you should choose them. Then pick the 2 best ones… and move one with step 2 above.

Also if a downline member is struggling… and no matter how hard he or she tries, he or she is not able to find two on their own… e.g. due to lack of people he or she knows… then you could do such a mailing on their behalf.

The primary approach that works best is to talk via chat first with the people you know already. Those, that we already have a relationship with.

If that doesn’t generate your 2 leaders… then you could use the mailing approach looking for two leaders as I described before.

But what should you tell people during the chat or in the email message you write to find your two leaders?

This is the point where you need to do your homework. Look very closely at the program for which you want to build a successful team for. Answer yourself the following questions:

1. What is the product or service that this program sells?
2. What main benefits does the product or service provide the customer with?
3. What makes the product or service better then those offered by the competition?
4. How much does the product or service cost?
5. How does the products compensation plan work?
6. What is necessary to break even and get into profit?

You noticed that I mentioned everything related to money at the end? Yes, I did order the above list by priority on purpose.

When you answer yourself those questions, keep always in mind to answer to most elementary question everybody has… which is:

What is in it for me? Also often called WIIFM. Once you learn to answer that question, you will be easily able to find your two leaders.

BTW… there is a shortcut to your homework assignment.

Ask your sponsor to answer the six questions above… then check an confirm those answers are accurate and match your own opinion about the program. This can save you time and strengthen the relationship with your own sponsor as you work with him together to answer them.

Tip: There are millions of programs out there on the net and many people, including me, fall easily prey to start joining too many at once. The grass always seems to look greener on the other side.

I live now by the following rule… Earn with two programs (meaning: be in profit) before you even consider to join one new one. And I recommend that you too do that.

Share This:

Publicity is obtaining editorial coverage or features for your business. Publicity is getting your business reported as news. Examples of publicity are newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television interviews and Internet forums and much more. These are just a few reasons you should consider letting your business tap into the power of publicity.

1. Effective – Publicity has been proven to be 10 times more effective than traditional advertising. Your customers believe what they read in the newspaper or watch on the TV news because humans by nature believe what is reported to them as news.

2. Affordable – Obtaining publicity can cost as little as $0 dollars. Business owners can substitute a little time and imagination for money or hire publicity professionals, many of which have very affordable rates when compared to advertising.

3. 3rd Party Credibility – Having reporters write about your business in a news format gives your business 3rd party credibility that’s extremely valuable. Anyone can sing their own business’ praises, but getting respected people in the media to do it provides a type of credibility that ads and money just can’t buy.

There are numerous other reasons to use publicity. Next time you are looking for a new way to get the word out about your business, consider tapping into the power of publicity.

Share This:

Well-written, tightly-focused articles are in high demand by thousands of online publishers. Why? Because publishers view good content as a value-added asset, enhancing their own brand awareness and deepening relationships with clients and customers.

As a content provider, you can attract a substantial and continuous flow of new prospects from online venues that might otherwise be inaccessible. And unlike other promotional methods, you get this traffic without spending a penny on advertising.

The three techniques below make it easy for publishers –your willing and enthusiastic partners– to find and publish your material.

1. Syndicate Your Articles

Syndicating your articles makes it easy for site owners to put your content on their website. It’s a real time-saver and totally hands-off for webmasters.

Automation is a big selling point of online syndication. The syndicating site simply inserts 2 lines of code on their web page, and your articles are distributed from your server to their web page automatically. You have total control over content and style, while the webmaster never lifts a finger again.

It’s an ideal situation for you. Once a site agrees to accept your articles through syndication, you are freed from the job of marketing each article individually to the site owner. A marketer’s dream!

For details on setting up your syndicated feed, read this article by William Bontrager:
http://www.homebiztools.com/syndication.htm

One of the first places to start marketing your syndicated feed is on your website. Post a sample article so others can see the quality of your work, and show them how to set up their web page to accept your articles.

For additional marketing muscle, solicit webmasters from the resource box of your article. Include a line to let them know your column is available for syndication.

Lastly, get listed in syndicated article directories such as those found at Freesticky.com and StickySuace.com. Traffic from directories is highly targeted and more likely to result in a syndication arrangement.

2. Publish Your Own News Channel

Your own news channel allows you to broadcast your content to the Web with one text file. The protocol to accomplish this is called RSS. This stands for Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you talk to). Weblogs are an example of content commonly available in RSS.

Once created, your RSS content file can be read by news aggregator programs. By registering with aggregator sites, your feed is indexed and made available for sites interested in receiving your feed. You can see my own news feed in action at NetBizHelpers.com.

Here are some excellent sites with articles on setting up and registering your news channel:

Mark Nottingham’s RSS Tutorial
http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/

Technology at Harvard Law
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

O’Reilly XML.com
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

3. Submit To Article Directories and Announcement Lists

Many publishers subscribe to announcement lists and browse article directories for content. High-quality articles are regularly picked up from these sources. It’s not uncommon for a good article to be published in several ezines with combined readerships in the tens of thousands.

Here is a listing of popular spots to submit your articles online:
http://www.homebiztools.com/article-dir.htm

To begin posting your articles on announcement lists:
http://www.homebiztools.com/article-lists.htm

There you have it! Three great ways to market your articles and give publishers what they need, while you enjoy no-cost advertising.

Share This:

After all the debate over website design, shopping carts and credit card processors, every website owner eventually comes to the startling realization that they need one more thing to survive - website traffic!

Without website traffic it’s the same as building an expensive billboard and, instead of placing it alongside a busy highway, hiding it in your *basement* where nobody can see it.

Upon realizing they need traffic, most website owners run out and start blowing chunks of money and time trying to get “hits,” but they fail to grasp that there are really only three (3) reliable ways to get traffic to any website.

Method #1 - Buy Traffic Currently, the fastest way to get traffic to any website involves using the little classified ads on the right side of search giant Google’s results pages.

Called Google AdWords, the system allows any advertiser to open an account with a $5 activation fee and start seeing their ads appear on Google within about 15 minutes.

Advertisers only pay when visitors actually click through from their ad on Google to their website or affiliate link.

Overture.com also sells traffic by the click, but they make you wait three to five days to go through their editorial review process before allowing ads to appear on their network.

You can also buy advertising on dozens of other pay-per-click search engines.

They all follow the same basic model of only charging advertisers for targeted visitors who read an ad based on a keyword search and decide to click through for more information.

Log on to www.payperclicksearchengines.com for a list of over 600 choices ranked by market penetration.

A word to the wise on pay-per-click advertising: Watch your costs and track and measure everything. Even though you can get traffic for as little as a penny, you should track your results by search engine and by individual keyword if you want maximum success.

Many a company has lost its entire advertising budget paying only a nickel or a dime per click, but not watching their conversion rates and pouring money into keywords that don’t convert… while neglecting the keywords that do bring sales (mainly because they don’t know which is which!).

Method #2 - Borrow Traffic If you need traffic to a website, then borrow it from people who already have it… especially people with lists of loyal subscribers or traffic from search engines, affiliates, or other steady sources.

“Endorsed Mailings” and “Reciprocal Linking” by other people represent the two fastest ways to borrow someone else’s traffic.

If they maintain a list of subscribers, convince them to send an email out to their people telling them why they should check out your site.

Also, negotiate a prominent link on their web pages to siphon off targeted visitors who find their website.

Often the best way to persuade someone to do this involves paying them a commission, agreeing to do a similar mailing, or providing a link to them on your site (or a combination of all three).

Imagine how much traffic you could get if someone with a list of 10,000 loyal subscribers told their people to go look at your website!

Method #3 Recycle Traffic The most economical way to get traffic involves turning one-time visitors into regular, repeat visitors that you direct to multiple sites over time.

You do this by pulling website visitors into your sphere of influence by enticing them to sign up for your newsletter, autoresponder sequence, or “mini-course.”

Then you keep in contact with regular articles, special reports, and recommendations enticing them to visit your own and other people’s websites.

Ultimately, every website owner should orient all of their marketing efforts towards this end of developing a stream of recycled traffic, because it costs the least and creates the best return on time and money invested.

It doesn’t matter if you promote your own product, promote only as an affiliate, or some combination of the two… if you don’t recycle traffic and get more than one hit out of each visitor, you’re making one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make online.

Share This:

So you’ve made the perfect web site (in your eyes at least) and that all-important traffic is out there just waiting to visit you. You’ve done your research and followed the usual methods for making people aware about it, and you’re now sat there twiddling your thumbs, regularly checking your traffic analysis tracker in case you get a sudden surge of visitors. Of course, unless you’re a big business with a mass of promotion behind you, those days of overwhelming traffic are quite a way off. So while you wait for your search engine submissions to reap their reward is there anything else you can do to help yourself?

Simple answer. Yes there is and it’s a method that isn’t discussed much. What is it I’m talking about?

Forums. No don’t run away just yet. Not only will you develop a small amount of traffic in the first few days of launch (a couple of hundred visits easy) but you’ll gain a lot of invaluable feedback about your site that can allow you to make changes before the search engines kick in. What could be better than free reviews?

First things first. If you’re unfamiliar with forums they can best be described as the communal discussion area of a web site. If you’ve never used one before don’t be afraid they’re not as scary as they seem. Go have a look at a few to see for yourself, read some of the topics and look at the messages people have posted. Nobody is going to jump out at you and ask what you’re doing there. Honest.

Right, now that you’re confident you can post a message on a forum, you should be aware that you can’t and shouldn’t post a message about your wonderful new web site on every forum you come across. If you’ve had a look like I suggested you’ll notice that most forums are split into sections that cover different areas related to that particular web site. Therefore, if you want to tell people about your site you need to look for forums that will accept this sort of entry.

It isn’t hard to think about where these magical forums might be. You’ll want to look at computer magazine sites, webmaster sites, web review sites, that’s just for starters, I’m sure you’ll come across more once you get going. The process is then simple; find one of these sites, have a look to see if they run a forum, then check the forum to see if they have a section that allows for your site to be submitted for review by other members.

If you’re new to this then keep things simple with just a simple post at first. Just ask people to look at your site and give you some feedback. The best things to remember with forums are to be polite and friendly in your posts. Most people will usually have something positive to say about your web site despite all the criticisms they may also give. Even if you get lots of praise you’ll often be surprised at the smallest tips that you get that can make your site look that little bit more professional looking. Once you’ve done a couple of forums and noted the general response, use your different forums to be more specific. Ask about your navigation, ask about the content, ask about the colours, or whatever else may be bugging you.

Some forums ask that you look first at one or two other members sites and give some feedback of your own before asking for yours to be looked at. This can help you in that it may show you how to critique your own site by looking at what’s wrong with someone else’s. Also if you do need to give some feedback look at the list of posts and pick someone whose reply count is low or non-existent. They’ll be pleased that you’ve responded and may pay you the same compliment by looking at yours.

This brings me to another point regarding the reply/view count. Most people who go to the forums (especially newbies) are more likely to look first at the posts that have a decent reply and/or view count. It’s a psychological thing, the post looks popular so you want to see what’s so interesting. With some forums you can use this to your advantage (just don’t abuse it). Be aware of the forums that show an increase in the reply/view count everytime someone (including you) adds a message. If you find one make sure you visit your post to respond to anybody’s comments and add a message to keep the count going. It’s a bit sneaky I know but like I said don’t abuse it and you’ll gain a slight advantage for getting people looking at your site.

Now don’t expect thousands of visitors from the method detailed in this article (unless your site is so good that everybody starts talking about it) but for every person that responds to your request for feedback you’ll get loads more that just visit your site who for whatever reason don’t reply. At the end of the day it’s all about getting the ball rolling and anything you can do to proactively promote your web site has to be considered. So best foot forward and get exploring all those forums.

Share This: