(Download affiliate marketing tips and tricks pdf in pdf format here)
In this affiliate marketing tips and tricks pdf I’m going to share some of the things which have worked best for me. My name’s Tim Halloran and I’ve been an affiliate for over 10 years now. In that time I’ve discovered several affiliate strategies, some of which have worked to great effect and some of which haven’t!
As a beginner affiliate I made a lot of mistakes so I’m also going to share some simple ways to avoid them! Some of the most common mistakes affiliates make are:
- Shiny Object Syndrome – looking for the “next best thing”. I did this for years and wasted a huge amount of time looking for the fastest solution to my problem – panic! Jumping from course to course seldom works. You need to commit to a single course of action for long enough to make progress and learn from your mistakes.
- Being a busy fool – I was a busy fool for some time! I spend hours on actions which only entertained myself rather than driving my online business forwards. A quick remedy – focus on money producing activities, (which are not necessarily the ones you like)
- Going it alone – Get help – affiliate marketing can be tough. If you’re all alone, it’s so much easier to fail when the going gets tough. Join an online community here.
Affiliate Marketing Tips and Tricks PDF
In addition to personal issues such as wasting time online and jumping from course to course, it can be a mistake to choose the wrong products to promote and/or use the wrong marketing strategy. When I first started learning affiliate marketing I made these mistakes too. I was desperate and this too is a bad place to be if you’re planning on making a living from the internet.
A saying in Forex marketing is that “scared money is lost money”. Similar to Forex, affiliate marketing takes some time and dedication to learn. Don’t expect to outrun an employment wage in a few weeks. It’s amazing though what can be achieved in only a few years. So keep your eye on the longer term prize!
So, what are the wrong products to promote as an affiliate? While there’s no definitive answer to what is “right” or “wrong” with affiliate marketing, you ultimately want to get paid. Choosing to promote low value physical products means you’ll need to sell in bulk to make a good income. This can be tough for a couple of reasons:
- Selling in bulk means you’ll need a lot of traffic
- You can either pay for traffic or create content – which takes much longer
Selling low value physical products is therefore not a great strategy for both of these reasons. It can take months before you realise your content marketing strategy is not working! After which you’ve already spent a heap of time creating content! Paying for traffic is expensive and this is much more difficult with low value products. Spending on advertising while trying to squeeze a profit from low value products which only pay tiny commissions is not a good strategy!
Affiliate Marketing Tips And Tricks PDF – Business Models
It’s wise to be aware of the different business models available in affiliate marketing. Amazon is one of the lowest paying affiliate programs out there and although there’s a tonne of products to choose from on the site, most of them will only pay peanuts in commissions. Checkout Amazon’s commissions rates here.
You’ll see that commission rates go from 1%-11%. So the most you can make on any product on the site is 11% commission! Contrast this with digital products which typically pay above 30% commission on a sale.
If you also choose to promote subscription affiliate programs, you can make a whole lot more for the same amount of work!
Subscription programs offer ongoing value and take the form of membership products and software products. If you sell a subscription product to someone who continues to use the product for a lifetime, you’ll keep earning commissions for the lifetime of their membership! This makes a huge amount of difference when you’re trying to get an affiliate business off the ground. Those regular commissions come in month after month for the sales you’ve made already.
With “one-off” commissions you only get paid once and you need to keep selling over and over to keep earning them!
Affiliate Marketing Tips & Tricks PDF – High Ticket Affiliate Marketing
What is high ticket affiliate marketing? A “high ticket” affiliate product typically has a much larger price tag than standard affiliate products. Usually this is over $500 and therefore high ticket products pay larger commissions. The highest type of affiliate commissions come from high value digital products because they carry the largest price tags AND the largest commissions. However you can also find high ticket physical products which pay out superb rates of commission.
Here’s a submarine which pays out a whopping $24,000 commission and has a price tag of $300,000! So even a small 8% commission can make a massive difference to your bottom line as an affiliate if you use the right kinds of products.
Before discovering high ticket and subscription products, I struggled for years. This knowledge alone could have shaved years off my affiliate struggles!
Marketing Your Affiliate Products
There’s so many ways you can market your affiliate products too! Some people like to use video, and others like blogging. Some use paid marketing, and others choose social media. There’s also faster ways and slower strategies when it comes to affiliate marketing. Blogging, for example is definitely a slower strategy. If you’re impatient and want results more quickly, or don’t have the time for blogging, you’re definitely better off choosing another marketing strategy. See this article: 22 ways to promote affiliate products, for more strategies.
Building an email list has definitely been the best thing I’ve done for affiliate profits! Before I discovered the power of email marketing, I was struggling trying to sell products directly off my websites. But since I also struggled getting traffic due to my strategy and lack of support (for some time), I seldom made a sale.
An email list can make a massive difference to your affiliate business. It puts you in charge of your traffic. On a website, a visitor only has a small time (a few minutes usually) to make a buying decision. After that they will leave, potentially forever! But if you can get their email address, you can extend this period for days, weeks, months and even years and decades!
Since most customers need a few touch points before they make a buying decision, selling directly from your website is a less effective strategy than through email marketing. In addition with an email list you’re learning to control your traffic, rather than relying on SEO (search engine optimisation) or paid advertising for it! Get access to a free autoresponder here.
Play To Your Strengths
Whatever marketing strategy you use to build an email list, choose something you can do consistently. If you have less time, use paid marketing. If you have more creativity, choose video marketing or blogging. Many affiliates will quit long before they get any results and one of the main reasons is not having a marketing strategy they can do over the longer term.
The fastest and most effective marketing strategy is definitely paid marketing. But this still takes time to learn. Not every campaign will be profitable right out of the gate.
So expect a learning curve with whatever you choose to do. I’m a fan of blogging, but before this became a regular habit, I struggled for years! With a long term strategy like blogging, you should ideally pick a topic you can stick with for the long term. It’s a slow and labour intensive marketing strategy and if you don’t have the patience or creativity to keep creating new posts, choose something else!
If you’re happy shooting lots of video, use that instead. If you’d rather not show your face, look at email marketing or blogging. Or use paid advertising instead!
A simple blogging trick I use is to find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.
Procrastination & Doubt, Health & Well Being
Procrastination and doubt can easily kill your ambition of becoming a successful affiliate marketer. Consider this your enemy. It can take a long time to get traction with an affiliate business. Even if you use a high ticket sales funnel and paid marketing, (one of the quickest strategies), you’ll likely face some doubt on your affiliate marketing journey.
You need to combat this with strategies which help you maintain a positive state of mind and optimistic outlook. I find reading motivational books a huge help. See motivational books pdf free download.
It can also help to meditate and take regular exercise. Get to know when you’re in the optimum state of mind for working and when it’s a bad idea to work!
Learning to control your state of mind with the information you feed it is pretty important for affiliates, or anyone who is self employed. Your business is you! So if you’re not looking after your health and mental and emotional well being, it will have an impact on your business.
Stay The Course!
Most affiliates will quit after only a short amount of time. If you’re forewarned of this you’re forearmed! Of course affiliate marketing is easily accessible and this can account for some of the high drop out rate. But also the beginning phase of affiliate marketing is fraught with problems as you get to grips with learning a new skill.
Everyone’s experience is unique in affiliate marketing and will depend on their own learning and growth. Some affiliates will take a paid marketing route, and others will go for the cheaper, but longer road of free marketing. It’s worth knowing that many of the tactics you use won’t produce immediate results, particularly if you’re blogging or using organic marketing methods. You will need to learn from mistakes as well as successes. The first goal should be something very easy to obtain so you gain some traction and enthusiasm for the journey. If you look too far ahead, it will seem like a huge undertaking.
Celebrate the small wins on the journey too and give yourself time to develop. The affiliates who earn the most are often too the ones who have been at it for the longest!
Stick at it and enjoy the journey! Access a free video series here to learn more.