Serious Marketing Guide

What does it take to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? All these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business. Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business and below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business. Important Tool #1: Your Own Website The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base. Important Tool #2: Incentives Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects.

Offer a newsletter or an e-zine.

Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free softwares, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects. Important Tool #3: Link Popularity The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign. One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles, with your website’s link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it. These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential.

The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.

To succeed in the mortgage industry, get used to meeting people. Referrals from people who know you and business from Realtors will make up at least half closed loans. And no matter how good you are, if people don’t have some reason to trust you, they’re not going to call. “Real estate is a contact sport,” said Realtor Barbara Anderson. She and her husband Ron are the owners and instructors of Success Real Estate Academy in Prescott, Arizona. According to Barbara Anderson there are some specific steps you can take that will keep you on their radar and building revenue: • Be really, really good at what you do. According to Anderson, this means communication, competitive rates and consistent excellence. While Anderson and her colleagues can’t by law refer their customers to you, they do provide them with a list of three mortgage professionals. You have to be a star to get on that list.

Nothing else will work. “I tell my students that they need to get out and interview them,” she said of choosing which mortgage professionals they’ll work with. • Offer classes. Anderson says that she often has mortgage professionals speak at her school. Many of them will end up on the lists of the fledgling Realtors. Focus on subjects that enhance their professional lives. Topics that tap your expertise to show them how to save money, make more money or attract more clients are all winners. • Join a Realtor’s association in your area. Like marketing frequency, the more times Realtors and escrow professionals see you, the more likely it is that you’ll come to mind when their list comes up for review. If you can, go the extra mile and offer to host a meeting. According to Anderson, mortgage professionals prove that they’re helpful, congenial and accountable by the way they show up amongst their peers. “It’s just being there for them,” she said. • Grow your supply of testimonials. Another way to tap the power of who you know is to collect testimonials from your clients. Most people will lend far more credence to another person’s description of their experience with you than with your own assertions of excellence.

Put the testimonials on your website, your brochures, your mailings and even on your business cards.

A time-saving way to collect testimonials from all of your clients is to program an email request into your customer relationship management (CRM) software. That way, testimonial gathering, like all of the other tasks automatically managed and executed with your CRM, is a zero-work, high-yield proposition. If you’re still shopping for CRM, consider one geared specifically for mortgage professionals. Taking advantage of service opportunities and association memberships has skyrocketed the revenue and credibility of more than a few mortgage professionals. According to Ron Anderson, it’s the most important thing they can do after establishing professional excellence. “Their reputation makes a big difference, just like Realtors and doctors,” he said.

Mike Adams Getting content for web sites is one of the challenges every webmaster faces. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, «Content is king.» Have you ever wondered why content is king? And have you ever wished it was easier to find content for web sites? Content is king for one reason: People surf for content. Each of the major search engines is only successful to the extent that it helps people find the web site content they are looking for. Whichever search engine helps people find that web site content the quickest becomes the most popular. The more popular the search engine is, the more money it makes from advertising. That last paragraph contains the secret of why content is king. Search engines make money from advertising. And they make more money from advertising if they consistently help people find the web site content they are searching for. Now that you know why content is King, the next question is: Where can you find content for web sites? The two easiest sources for content for web sites are article directories and private label rights. Article directories are huge directories of articles. In most cases, you are free to publish articles from the article directories on your web site and in your newsletters or ezines.

Be sure to read each article directory’s terms of service, because some have limitations. But in general, article directories exist to give writers a place to publish their articles and to give publishers a place to get content for web sites and newsletters. Article directories like EzineArticles.com and ElectricText.com provide content for web sites on almost any topic you need. You can also find hundreds of article directories that provide content for web sites with a simple search for «article directories» in any search engine. There are two advantages to getting your web site content from article directories rather than from private label rights articles and eBooks: 1. Articles from article directories are normally free – you do not have to pay anything for the rights to publish the articles. 2. There are tens of thousands of articles available for web site content on virtually any topic you may need. Private label rights can be acquired in a variety of ways. In general, private label rights mean you have the right to put your name on the product as the author. You can get private label rights articles, private label rights eBooks, even private label rights software and scripts. For web site content, you want private label rights articles and eBooks. You can get private label rights articles and eBooks from membership web sites such as Gigantic Resale Rights.com that specialize in resale rights and private label rights products. You can use the articles for web site content more directly. And you can use many of the eBooks as content for web sites by breaking them up into articles or web pages. There are two advantages to getting your web site content from private label rights articles and eBooks rather than from article directories: 1. Generally you can put your name as the author. You can include it as regular web content or as an article with your resource box at the end. Check the terms of service of the private label rights to determine your rights in using it as web site content. 2. Generally you can also (and in some cases must) edit and modify the text to make it unique.

This is especially true if you have a private label rights eBook that grants you the rights to break it up into articles or pages as content for web sites. Again, be sure to check the terms of service of the private label rights to determine your rights. Breaking up private label rights books into articles is a great way to get content for web sites. Why? Because it takes effort. Most people will not take the time and effort. If you do, you will have more unique content on your web site. Unique content is another aspect of «content is king.» Search engines hunger for content. With articles from article directories and private label rights articles and eBooks, you can feed that hunger with an unending supply of content for your web sites. As the search engines gobble up your web site content, it won’t take long to understand why content is king!

Tale Chaser Publishing, Inc. Have you noticed how entitled some people seem to feel about getting targeted, interested visitors to their sites? And have you seen some of the sites they feel should be honored with the precious time, clicks, and purchases from visitors? John Reese said it all when he said most sites on the web are junk. (I paraphrase, but that was the gist.) It is so true there is not a single person on the web that would disagree. Yet every website owner truly seems to believe their site is worthy of top search engine positions and hundreds of links. The vast majority of website owners cannot fathom that their lack of traffic could possibly stem from the site they built and the business model they adopted! I joke with my clients that most sites would get more traffic if they were parked at their registrar with some Adsense ads on them.

What then is the problem? People feel they can come on the web, slap up a site, and begin reaping the same rewards that hard working, dues paying professional site publishers enjoy. And that has never, nor will ever, happen on the web. The internet is a bastion of opportunity, it’s true. Once you get to a point in your business where you can understand how the web works and what motivates search engines and visitors in any market, it’s like there are hundred dollar bills laying a foot deep all around you for as far as you can see. Until then, «someone with a website» is simply nothing. There are billions of web pages on the internet. There are only 10 top 10 positions in any given search engine. In order to earn a spot on a high-traffic web site, whether a search engine or a link partner, people seriously have to raise the bar on what is considered a solid content site. If your site looks, performs, and informs nothing like the sites you have in your own bookmark file, how can you expect anyone to put your site in theirs? Authority sites stand out like a bucket of fried chicken on a fat farm. If you don’t have the tools and know-how to create an authority site that looks, feels, and acts like sites that have sold for millions in the recent past, you still have options. None of which include you building it yourself with FrontPage and a $3.99 a month hosting account. Step 1: Become a student of the web, not just someone who wants to make money and quit their job. You will neither make enough money nor be able to quit your job in NEARLY the timeframe you’d like, so get over it and be nice to your boss for awhile longer. Learn what makes the web and the particular markets you are interested in «tick.» Think for yourself and don’t blindly follow the advice in ebooks written by anonymous 13 year-old mouth-breathers who have absolutely no right to advise anyone on building and marketing high value sites.

Step 2: Find the right people to follow. Usually they own some extremely high-value property on the web and can prove their methods work. Once you find the right people to help you (because you are definitely not going to pull this off on your own before you have grand kids) unsubscribe from every «newsletter» you are subscribed to that doesn’t fit what your personal expert is telling you and put on your blinders. Find a plan. Follow that plan to the end. And never EVER let yourself get side-tracked by gimmicks, schemes, and guys or gals trying to sell you on a «better plan.» Step 3: Read steps 1 and 2 again and consider them your new religion. Jaded folks will say that I want them to ignore everyone else and just buy from me or the people I tell them to buy from. Only I know for sure that it would be a damn good start given that what I teach works. Really the biggest reason I say put on blinders and get to work is that the reason people fail to make their dreams come to fruition on the web is distraction. The information on how to have a thriving internet business isn’t hidden. In fact, there’s way too much of it. And most of it is wrong for you. Good advice stands out like that bucket of fried chicken on a fat farm does.

You can tell, if you stay objective, who is bullshitting you and who might just be on their game.

The first thing that happens to newbies when they express interest in having a thriving online business is that the vultures descend. It is much like running away to Hollywood, getting off the bus, and having the drug dealers, sex merchants, and other undesirables mob you hoping to take you into their dark underworld, pick your bones clean, and discard you in an alley. And you thought Tom Cruise was going to escort you to your first sure-thing audition for a feature film? That’s exactly the same thing as expecting life on the web to be easy, no sweat, a walk in the park way to start a valuable high-dollar business. The key is to be dead serious, willing to sacrifice, and willing to search for the truth about internet business, content site building, and publishing without settling for nickel and dime schemes that feed on newbies on the way.