Every affiliate marketer needs traffic otherwise you will never make any sales. If there are no human eyeballs on your offer, then the potential to earn an income from your affiliate marketing efforts will never materialise.

Of course there are great ways to promote your affiliate links and then there are not so great ways.

In this post I want to cover the best way you can promote your affiliate links, as well as giving you some insight into what to avoid as a beginner so you do not waste time, money and effort.

I am going to assume that you know about affiliate marketing, you have a product to promote and you know the link that you want to promote.

If you do not yet have a product to promote then check out my article Top 10 Affiliate Programs for Bloggers and Marketers. You can also read 6 Most Profitable Niche Markets For Affiliate Marketers And Bloggers which helps you discover different affiliate programs and networks and the most profitable niches.

In this blog post you will learn:

• How to use blogging to promote your affiliate links
• How to use product reviews to promote your affiliate links
• How to use SEO to promote your affiliate links
• How to use email marketing to promote your affiliate links
• How to use display banners to promote your affiliate links
• How to use PPC to promote your affiliate links
• What to avoid when promoting affiliate links

6 Great Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Links

How To Use Blogging To Promote Your Affiliate Links

Blogging is probably one of the best ways to promote your affiliate link, but it is one of the most time-consuming ways that take time to develop traction.

Why?

Because you have to build a blog, add content to it and then start promoting that content. When you start promoting that content you have to build a presence online as an authoritative figure so it will take time for people to trust your brand.

Whilst blogging has its downside, it is the best way because it is then easy to create a passive income stream from the blog.

As they say, spend time doing the work once and then it pays for itself over and over again later.

If you have not yet started a blog you can read my article on The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Successful Blog, ,where I take you through a step by step guide. You can start a blog for as little as $3.95 through Bluehost when you use my referral link.

The key to promoting your affiliate links with a blog is to create content that is valuable and useful for the reader.

Your content must seek to inform and educate the reader. So if you create a blog just to act as an affiliate blog where you place your links everywhere then you will hardly get any results.

The strategy to using affiliate links in a blog is to place them naturally within the content.

For example don’t do this:

This is an awesome training course that I would recommend you use. Here is the link www.awesometrainingcourse.com/affiliateID=no1wants2it

Instead do this:

This is an awesome training course that I would recommend you use. Here is the link.

What you are doing here is hyperlinking the text instead of exposing your affiliate link and this can be easily done from your WordPress editor.

Let’s say you are promoting one product with a blog. You should not stuff the blog content with affiliate links just for the sake of adding affiliate links.

For example, if you are writing a review article on the product, a good rule of thumb is to insert the affiliate link once every 500 words. You do not want to appear obvious to the reader by linking the keyword at every chance you get.

What I like to do is link in the introduction of my content and then create a specific call to action at the conclusion of my content.

You should also track your affiliate links to see which article or content is driving sales for you. This makes it easier to see what is working within your blog and where your focus should be.

A great place for help on tracking your affiliate links With Google Analytics is Matthew Woodward’s article on How To Track Anything With Google Analytics Event Tracking.

Another important point for you to know is that Google recommends that bloggers use the rel=”nofollow” tag attached to their affiliate link. This ensures that when you place a paid affiliate link in your blog post that it will not affect Google’s search results and consequently your site’s ranking in the search results.

Also if you are not sure about the content that you are linking to, it is good practise to use the rel=”nofollow” tag at the end of your link, so that the authority from your website page, known as link juice to Google, will not pass to the website where the content is questionable.

I use the Ultimate No Follow plug in from WordPress which easily integrates into your WordPress editor and allows you to add the rel=”nofollow” tag to every external link at the click of a button.

How To Use Product Reviews To Promote Your Affiliate Links

Product reviews can be done on many different platforms.

Niche Website

You can create a niche website where you only feature product reviews for many products to build a huge authority product reviews website.

Or you can do a very specific product reviews website where you focus on just one product.

Either one of these would be targeted towards Amazon customers and Amazon products using the affiliate program, Amazon Associates.

Each of these types of sites have their own advantages and disadvantages. For example if you want to create the larger site, it will require more time and content to build.

Whereas if you create the smaller specific site, it will be less time consuming as you are only focusing on one product.

With the smaller site however, you must do your research to ensure that you are reviewing a product that is in high demand but have low competition. I talk more about targeting niches that have this high demand, low competition in this article here.

Niche websites can be created in the same way as a blog, using WordPress and great web hosting. See my article The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Successful Website for step by step instructions.

Facebook

If you have a Facebook fan page with a lot of followers, you can write product review posts. Be careful with this method however as Facebook has reduced the opportunity for owners of fan pages to promote posts to their organic followers.

Fan page owners now need to pay to advertise to their own followers in Facebook’s recent algorithm update.

Another tip with Facebook is that you can try to take the customer off of the Facebook platform by directing them to your niche website review. So instead of creating a Facebook post that reviews the product, create a post with a short caption and direct the visitor to visit the niche website for more information.

When using Facebook, it is important to remember that it is not a place for promotional content. People do not go to Facebook to buy products but rather to hang out and socialise with friends.

So make your posts friendly and engaging.

If you are using this method, it is also a great idea to cloak your affiliate link using cloakers like Bitly, Goo.gl or Tiny URL. If you would like to cloak and track your affiliate sales then another great tool, although it is a paid option is the Clickmagick link tracker.

Facebook does not like affiliate links this is why using cloakers is a great tool for your business.

YouTube

You can also create a YouTube channel specifically for product reviews or as an educational platform where you recommend the affiliate product. Make sure to place the affiliate link within your description box and cloak the affiliate link as well using the cloaking tools I mentioned above.

The most important step when creating product reviews on YouTube is to ensure that the content of your video is of a high quality. Product reviews should be detailed and honest. These are two determining factors as to whether any viewer takes you seriously enough to buy your recommended product.

The biggest mistake you can do is to go on YouTube simply with the purpose of selling your product. So for example, creating a video which highlights the product and merely asking for a sale is not good enough.

I can almost guarantee that you will not get any visitors to your affiliate offers.

However if you take the time to provide content that is helpful, useful and honest, people would thank you for taking the time to show them more about the product by using your affiliate link.

How To Use Search Engine Optimisation To Promote Your Affiliate Links

SEO, blogging and niche websites all go together.  If you have a blog or website, your main goal should be to create content that is SEO friendly.

That means that the search engines can find your website and rank it within the search results. This makes it easy for people to find, read your content and eventually click on your affiliate link.

You should also make sure that there is a lot of search traffic for the product that you are promoting.

Therefore when choosing a product to promote, find one that has a lot of search volume. Want to know how to find those products that have a lot of search volume? Read this article here.

What to consider when creating an SEO friendly niche website/blog:    

Keywords

These are the words that people are searching for in the search engines that will show your website in the search results. If your website is for the purpose of making money, then you should focus on buyer intent keywords.

For example:

• Best weight loss pills
• Weight loss pills that work
• Best digital camera for video marketing
• Wooden wardrobe discount sale

You should distinguish buyer intent related keywords from informational keywords. For example, some informational keywords where the searcher does not have a buying intent are:

• Weight loss pills help
• Weight loss pills blog
• How to do video marketing
• Video marketing tutorial
• Wooden wardrobe pictures

Content

Google likes valuable content that is helpful and useful. The longer your content (some say more than 2000 words), the more authority Google attaches to your website.

Therefore when writing content for SEO related affiliate websites, your goal should be to over-deliver on content.

Try to also create unique content. Most websites touch on similar topics but to stand out from the rest you can take a piece of content that is great and either update it or add to it.

Backlinks

This is the most important thing that you can do for your affiliate website to work for you. Backlinking is simply the process of having authoritative websites link to yours. There are many good ways that you can achieve this:

• Guest posting writing blog posts or articles for authoritative websites in your niche and linking back to yours.
• Outreach link building editorial links from authoritative websites. This can also include simple roundup posts that link back to your site as an authority to consider.
• Social shares from your website to social media platforms.

How To Use Email Marketing To Promote Your Affiliate Links

The money is definitely in the list that is why you should be building your email list as an affiliate marketer.

If you don’t know how to start building your email list then check out my article The Ultimate Guide To Email Marketing which will take you through step by step how to start building your email list using email software like Aweber or GetResponse.

Communicating with your potential customers via email is one of the easiest traffic sources to tap into especially if you have cultivated, nurtured and added some type of value to your subscribers.

In the event that social media sites terminate your account for policy violations or Google penalises your website, you will always have your email list as a source of traffic.

Of course, the bigger your list, the more likely you are to make sales.

The rates go something like this. 30% of your email list will likely open your emails, 13% would likely read your email and click on your link and then 2% would likely buy something that you recommend.

So if you are selling a product where the affiliate commission is $25 per referral or sale and you have an email list of 10,000, then you have the potential to earn $5000 from one email blast.

That is the power of an email list.

A few things to remember when using your email list

• Don’t oversell your email list.

You do not want to sell products all the time to your list. No one likes to be sold to, so keep your emails more valuable then anything by following an 80/20 split. 80% more value 20% sales.

• Segment your list often for more opens, more click throughs and more sales.

You can even have subscribers that click on a certain link, opt in again in a special funnel. This tells you that these subscribers are more serious and therefore are more likely to buy your products.

• Split test subject lines and email content.

You will get more open rates when you do this. Some people may not resonate with one subject line, but will resonate with another. Don’t be afraid to test your subject lines.

• Clean your list.

Sometimes a list might go cold. You may notice that your open rates are getting lower and lower. If that is the case it is time to clean your email list and get rid of those subscribers who no longer open your emails. The way I like to do it, is like this:

1. I segment my email list with those people who have not opened my email within a month.
2. I send one email to that segment letting them know that I have noticed that they have not opened my emails and asking if they would like to stay. If they wish to stay on my list they should click on a special link within the email.
3. I give them 3 days to do that.
4. Anyone who does not open my email or click on the link will get deleted after 3 days.

It is a good idea to always keep your email list fresh because this affects your email account score and your ability to deliver emails to your subscriber’s inbox.

It also keeps your email software cost down so you will only be paying to have quality email subscribers on your list.

• Always cloak your affiliate links.

Email softwares do not like affiliate links. This is why it is important to cloak your affiliate links using link tracking software like Clickmagick or link shorteners like Goo.gl, Bit.ly or Tiny URL.

The best way that you can cloak affiliate links for email marketing is by using the Clickmagick software as it gives you the ability to track which email converted into sales.

It also lets you create your own custom domain and split test different landing pages to see which one produces better results.

Link shorteners like Goo.gl, Bit.ly or Tiny URL only cloak your affiliate link but do not allow you to analyse your clicks so you can optimise your marketing. This is something to be wary of. 

How To Use Display Banners To Promote Your Affiliate Link

Just like you would use a blog or website to promote affiliate links, you can also add banners to your website.

A banner looks like this and is a clickable image that takes the visitor off of your blog or website, onto the affiliate product page.

It is simply another method for attracting visitors to offers where text links may not prove effective.

When using banners a good idea is to have them at the side column of any website or blog. You can also have them within the content.

Banners should be consistent with and relevant to the content that is on the website. So for example, if your website or blog is in the photography niche you would not display a banner that is in the knitting niche.

Of course it makes sense because your visitors would probably only be interested in photography so your banners should be relevant to them.

As an affiliate, some companies do provide their own banners in your affiliate tools dashboard. So be sure to look out for them.

If you want to create your own banners you can do so as well. You can use design tools like PicMonkey or Canva.

Some best practices when it comes to creating banners:

Banners should be simple yet effective. Communicate one key message on your banner and ensure that you include a strong call to action like Click Here or Start Here

The smaller your banner in size, the more effectively it will load. Although banners can be any size, for horizontal banners I prefer to use a resolution of 728 pixels x 90 pixels. For vertical side column banners I prefer to use a resolution of 300 pixels x 600 pixels.

Clicks to banners should open in a new window if you want your visitor to remain on your website. Always be sure to select this option when customising your banner ads.

Don’t overload your website page with banners, especially the ones that flash. This can be distracting and lead to higher bounce rates.

How to use PPC Advertising To Promote Your Affiliate Link

The biggest names in PPC (pay per click) advertising are Google Adwords, Bing Ads and Facebook Ads.

With PPC you are only paying for the click to your link. How it works, is you bid a certain price for relevant keywords as with Google Adwords or Bing Ads and interests as with Facebook Ads.

The keywords are all related to the product that you are selling. If you win the bid then your ad may show up in the search results as in the below examples.

The key to having effective PPC ads is to ensure that you track your data using a tool like Clickmagick.

You will be able to track which keywords are giving you conversions on your website so you can optimise your ad for better results by focusing only on the converting keywords.

If you are using Facebook PPC ads to drive traffic to an affiliate offer, be sure that you are testing different interests within your ad sets and use tracking tools to measure your results.

If you are new to Facebook Ads I would recommend following the Social Traffic Blueprint course which walks you through how to use Facebook ads for your business so you can get profitable results. What I like about this course is that not only do they teach you Facebook Ads but you have lifetime access to the course with updated content throughout your lifetime.

So if Facebook changes their algorithm which affects how you run your ads, you will get access to that updated material ensuring that you are always using current strategies.

The creators of the course also give weekly group coaching calls which are invaluable as they can critique your ads and help you to optimise them. They are also pretty active in the private Facebook members group answering questions from their members.

As a bonus they allow you to promote their course to other potential students where you can earn $500 per affiliate sale.

To view a free webinar with the Social Traffic Blueprint, click here.

The #1 Strategy To Crush Facebook Ads

What To Avoid When Promoting Affiliate Links

Before I go, I wanted to touch on a few things that you should be aware of when promoting affiliate links.

There are many ways that you can promote affiliate links but there are also a few things that as an affiliate marketer you should avoid.

When you are placing affiliate links on the internet, it is crucial that you track everything that you do. Avoid using affiliate links without some type of tracking software.

The reason for this is because you want to understand what traffic converts better so you can place more attention and effort on that traffic source. This can ultimately help you save money.

I would therefore recommend using a tracking tool like Clickmagick.

Avoid using as many traffic sources as you can when promoting your affiliate links. The above are some suggestions to you, but if you want to perfect your advertising, choose one or two traffic sources and learn to master them. Each of the methods are effective but you only become really good at it when you focus on understanding how they work.

When promoting affiliate products it is a good idea to use lead capture pages to attract leads, then send your leads onto the affiliate product page. This way you’re also building your email list for retargeting and monetisation.

Final Thoughts

Promoting affiliate offers requires commitment and a skill set that involves targeting, advertising, email list building and knowing your product.

It is not a simple thing to choose a product, put up some advertisements and hope they convert. It takes a lot more effort and the right tools to make affiliate marketing work.

If you are excited about affiliate marketing or need more training, you should check out my guide on How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Huge Blog or Website 

It’s the perfect solution for those who are looking to promote an affiliate or network marketing product, but really don’t want to create a traditional blog. This guide teaches you how to do affiliate marketing or promote any product with small valuable blog posts.

Plus it comes with a bonus freelancing guide that teaches you how to get other people to pay for your business costs and how to use free traffic methods to promote your content fast for incredible results.

You can check it out by clicking here!

Remember that the most difficult part of any business is showing up. Make sure and show up today to get the best chance at success.

Don’t wait too long to invest in you.

Cheers,

The post 6 Great Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Links appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

Clickbank

This useful guide will answer every question that you could potentially ask about Clickbank, as well as show you the affiliate marketing strategy that I am using and would recommend that you use too, to promote Clickbank products.

Like all other affiliate products, there is no secret sauce to making Clickbank work for you. All there is, is a strategy that will help you set up your business for sustainability and profitability.

If you are keen to build a strong business for the long term instead of a fly by night business that may only be short-lived, then keep on reading.

Here’s What You Will Learn

• What Clickbank Is?
• How to Pick Products to Promote
• The Most Common Ways to Promote ClickBank Products
• How I Promote Clickbank Products With a Marketing Funnel
• How to Build a Marketing Funnel (Tools Needed + Cost)
• What to Say in Your Email Funnel
• Facebook Ads for Clickbank Offers
• Bing Ads for Clickbank Offers
• Using Tools to Track the Traffic to Clickbank Products

What ClickBank Is?

Before I explain what Clickbank is, I want to make sure that you understand two terms –

Affiliate network and affiliate programs.

An affiliate network is essentially a platform that hosts many different affiliate offers and products for affiliates to choose to promote online.

Affiliate networks connect affiliates (or publishers) with advertisers (affiliate product owners), making it easier for affiliates to select a niche and choose a product that they want to promote.

When affiliates promote the product and a user takes a certain action, such as making a purchase of the affiliate product, submitting their email address or completing an application form, the affiliate is paid a commission.

An affiliate network also takes care of the payment processing ensuring that the affiliate is paid the commission that is due to them.

An affiliate program however is a single product, owned by a merchant, that is promoted by affiliates in exchange for a commission when a sale or action is completed by a user.

Affiliate programs may or may not be part of an affiliate network.

With that said, Clickbank is an affiliate network.

Clickbank defines it’s company as:

So it is a company that allows manufacturers of primarily digital products to host their products on the platform, so affiliates can promote them for a commission.

Unlike other affiliate networks, Clickbank products are promoted on a cost per sale basis. Which means that the affiliate only earns a commission when the sale of a product is made.

How To Pick Products To Promote  

In a previous post I already set out a detailed guide on how to choose products to promote on Clickbank.

The post covered the metrics to consider on Clickbank products when promoting it. If you would like to check out the post, you can go here, then come back here to continue with the tutorial.

You can also check out Zac Johnson’s Clickbank tips for finding interesting products to promote. Pay attention to what he says on trust points. 

Whilst Clickbank metrics are a start to uncovering some of the best products to promote, I always go a bit further and do competitor research.

Competitor research involves studying competitor affiliates who are promoting these products and observing if they could be making money from it.

Whilst you will not know for certain that a competitor affiliate is making money from a product, there are key indicators that you can study to determine whether that affiliate is likely successful with his marketing efforts.

In the video below, I am going to show you how I do my research and the type of information I am looking for, to help me decide whether a Clickbank product is worth my time and money.

The Most Common Ways To Promote Clickbank Products

Most affiliates, especially beginners try to make quick money when promoting Clickbank products.

Instead of taking the time to design an A-one strategy, they take shortcuts and waste money and time.

Some may get lucky and make a few sales here and there, but when considering the profit margins of these affiliates and the methods they are using, it’s safe to say that their business strategy is not viable at all.

If you are guilty of using the below methods, I would recommend that you adopt a different strategy that will help you achieve long-term sustainability in your business.

What I mean by that is, instead of looking for ways to make quick money, take the time to build out a Clickbank affiliate marketing campaign which includes building a niche using efficient funnels, nurturing your audience that you gain through traffic campaigns and then monetising them with affiliate products.

All of this I will dive deeper into, in this tutorial.

Onto the common ways that most affiliates promote Clickbank products:

>Social Media Posts

Posting your Clickbank affiliate link on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter is not a good way to promote Clickbank products at all.

First of all the actual Clickbank affiliate link looks long and ugly and can be viewed as spam by other Facebook users.

Here is an example of a Clickbank affiliate link that has been posted on Facebook.

You can see that the affiliate has made a post in an English Language learning group. There is no cloaking of the affiliate link. The actual raw link is used. He tries to convince people to click on the link by calling out a solution to their problem – speaking the language without attending language classes.

The problem with this, is that whilst you may have some curious people who want to know more, chances are they will click on the affiliate link, land on the Clickbank product landing page, read what it is about and then leave.

The affiliate has therefore wasted time because he knows nothing about the people who have clicked on his link.

Neither has he captured the interested person’s contact details (name and email address), to follow up with them later on and remind them about the product.

If you have heard about the follow up rule before, the fortune is in the follow up, it means that you are more than likely to convince someone to buy a product when you follow up with them more than once.

This method is not a good strategy and if you are using it, you should stop now.

>Blogging

This method of promoting Clickbank products is worthwhile and I do recommend it.

With blogging, if you have gained a loyal readership you can get really great referrals to the Clickbank product because you are pre-selling the product with valuable content.

Just like with this blog, there are many products that I promote here and my clickthrough rates are decent because I have built trust with my following.

The same way with Clickbank products or any products for that matter, a blog offers insight and education to people who are searching for a solution to their problem.

Even if you created a brand new blog and are promoting Clickbank products, I do believe you can convert cold traffic from it but the conversion rate may be lower.

The conversion rate may be lower because no trust has been built but I have been able to make a good profit from this method when promoting affiliate products.

So don’t let conversion rates deter you.

Here is what blogging looks like when you are promoting a Clickbank affiliate product.

If I were this author I would have gone a step further and added a lead page within the content of the blog to collect email addresses and build an email list for remarketing purposes.

But all in all, if a lot of traffic is landing on this blog and even if a conservative 1% converts into sales then the author of this blog can make a lot of money from it.

>Video Reviews

Video reviews are really great for promoting Clickbank products.

Check out this review of the Red Tea Detox Clickbank product and take a look at the number of video views he has.

It’s a small number and in my search for more video reviews just like it, I realise that unless you are promoting a product that is being searched for a lot, to make video reviews work for you, you probably have to do many of them.

When I looked at the comments section I can see that many people have actually used the affiliate’s affiliate link and he was smart to add a bonus with this offer.

This is a really great strategy that affiliates use when promoting Clickbank products.

They offer bonuses to help customers make a decision whether to buy the product. This often works out quite well and as you read further into this post I am going to show you how I incorporate bonuses into my Clickbank affiliate marketing funnel.

Video reviews work best if you have actually tried the product and you are recommending it.

Other types of reviews that work well are:

• Demonstration video reviews where you show how a product is used
• Walk through video reviews where you show the inside of the product, such as a back office or dashboard. Useful for digital products.
• Tutorial video reviews where you show how to do something using the product.

>Direct Link On PPC Advertising

If you are spending money on advertising, such as with Google Ads or Bing Ads, please do not do this!

You are seriously wasting advertising dollars and this type of work tells me it is the doing of a beginner affiliate marketer.

If you are reading this blog post, take the time to understand the different marketing strategies that you can use to get more profit for your advertising dollars.

What’s wrong with this affiliate’s ad?

He is sending traffic directly to the affiliate offer. When I click through to the offer I come to a landing page where a name and email address is being collected.

Had this been a custom landing page where the affiliate built the landing page himself, this would have been acceptable.

But because he is not building his own email list and is relying on the Clickbank product owner to follow up with and convert the lead, he is giving full control to the product owner to do his marketing for him.

Another thing that’s wrong is that he has used the raw Clickbank affiliate link in his ad.

Do you see how ugly the link looks. Would you click on this link if you were a potential customer or would you think the link looks spammy and could lead to a dangerous site?

If the affiliate is using his raw Clickbank affiliate link, this tells me that he is also not using tracking tools, like Clickmagick, to track his traffic and conversions.

This affiliate is pretty much throwing money down the drain.

Don’t do this. I will show you a better way in a minute.

In summary here are the dos and don’ts of promoting Clickbank products based on the above examples.

How I Promote Clickbank Products With A Marketing Funnel

Now that I have shown you the most common ways of promoting Clickbank products, I’d like to show you an approach that will help you stand out against the competition and increase the life time value of your affiliate customer.

This approach will help you build a viable, long term business asset instead of jumping through hoops to potentially make fast money which does not last long.

Whilst this approach has a lot of moving parts with it, you will see how it is worth mastering and will help you to scale your business to increase profits.

Let’s dive right into it.

When promoting Clickbank products I use a marketing funnel that includes paid ads, lead generation funnels and email funnels.

A snapshot of this campaign looks something like this.

Let’s break this down further.

How To Build A Marketing Funnel (Tools Needed + Cost)

Your marketing funnel consists of a sales funnel, an email funnel and an ad funnel.

>Sales Funnel (Tools: LeadPages; Cost from $37/month)

A sales funnel is a series of pages that a lead lands on that takes them from awareness of your product to consideration and then purchase.

Sales funnel builders like Clickfunnels or LeadPages are really great for designing sales funnels.

I like LeadPages and use it in my business. You can read my review of LeadPages here.

The sales funnel can be a simple funnel that consists of just three pages – the lead page, the pre-sell page and the sales page to a complicated funnel that consists of many upsells and downsells.

The sales funnel is what you will send your traffic to.

Your sales funnel can be posted on social media, in your ad campaigns or even in your videos or blogs.

When building a sales funnel for your Clickbank product, to encourage a lead to provide their name and email address for the opt in, give away a complimentary product that will help the user.

This complimentary product should be of a high perceived value and something that you won’t mind trading your email address for.

Examples of complimentary products:

How To Create A Complimentary Product

Complimentary products can be eBooks, worksheets or an email series in your autoresponder.

To create these products I use Canva and PicMonkey. For the email course I simply create an email series in an autoresponder like GetResponse or Aweber.

When you create your document you can upload it to hosting sites like WordPress (if you have your own blog) or Amazon so that you can generate a downloadable link for the lead.

Once the lead hands over their name and email address, direct them to a pre-sell page where you speak to the lead in a video or with text.

The purpose of the pre-sell page is to educate the lead on the Clickbank product. A review on this page is a good idea or you can simply provide a customer testimonial or walk-through of the product.

Next under your video or exit you can provide a call to action to the lead that takes them to the sales page of the Clickbank product where hopefully they convert into a sale.

>Email Funnel (Tools: Aweber; Cost From $19/month)

When the lead opts in you are probably wondering where they go. You will see on the above diagram that the lead is taken to an email funnel of 5 or 7 emails.

Email funnels are created with email marketing tools like Aweber or GetResponse.

These tools are integrated with your chosen sales funnel builder (eg. LeadPages) so when the lead opts in, they are automatically added to the email list you created.

The lead will then receive 5-7 pre-written emails that continue to sell the Clickbank product. If you want you can make this series shorter but I recommend a minimum of 5 emails. 

The great thing about an email funnel is that you now have contact details of someone that you can follow up with over and over until you convert them to a sale.

Why this is important?

Because you can sell products to this person over and over. Think about if you did not have an email funnel in place.

Instead of someone seeing the Clickbank product once because you sent them directly to the offer, they’re now going to see the product multiple times which increases your chances of them making a sale.

The sale may not happen right away but eventually it can.

Industry standards say that email has an average return on investment of 122% and is 4x higher than social media marketing, direct marketing and paid search (source).

>Ad Funnel (Tools: Facebook ads, Bing ads; Cost: You Decide)

For your ad campaigns I recommend using Facebook ads or Bing ads.

Both are affordable if you know how to use it.

I will describe how to set up your ad campaigns in a later section.

When using paid traffic sources and building out an ad funnel, keep in mind that you will be using marketing to your funnel and then re-marketing to bring people back to your funnel who have not taken the desired action the first time.

It is therefore important that you use the ad platform’s pixel to help you re-market to visitors to your funnel.

What To Say In Your Email Funnel 

When writing your emails, you want to write compelling content that will help your leads click through to the Clickbank affiliate product.

The average click through rate for marketers is between 3% and 8% (source) so use this as a benchmark to determine how effective your email copy is.

Here are some ideas that you can use to include in your email series:

Day 1: Welcome Email

Thank the lead for opting in and deliver the lead magnet. Go a step further and introduce yourself and why they should listen to you.

Day 2: Value Email

Provide valuable content that teaches the lead something in the niche.

For example if the Clickbank product that you’re promoting is Doggy Dan’s Online Dog Trainer, a video that teaches the lead how to walk their dog on a leash is great content.

If you know nothing about this niche, don’t worry. It is perfectly acceptable to find video from YouTube and link directly to it. Just remember to give credit to the owner. 

To accomplish this, I would create a custom landing page that has the video embedded on it and then a call to action button below the video to visit the Clickbank product’s sales page.

This helps keep the lead in front of your content as well and does not distract them by sending them directly to YouTube.

Day 3: Value Email

Provide more valuable content here and a soft pitch promoting the Clickbank product.

Day 4: Value Email

By day 4 the lead will be warmed up having had three days’ of content that will help them understand why they need the Clickbank product.

In your day 4 email you can mention the Clickbank product and do a review.

Day 5: Hard Pitch Email

Sell the Clickbank product to the lead by outlining its uses, features and benefits. If you would like to add some bonuses to convince the lead to use your affiliate link, this is a good idea.

Make sure that you use urgency tactics (eg. Time limit offer) to encourage the lead to take action.

Day 6 and 7: Final Warning Email

Use urgency tactics to encourage the lead to take action today. Send reminders about the offer ending.

Facebook Ads For Clickbank Offers

Facebook ads are powerful because Facebook captures so many data points on its users that make it very easy for marketers to target their ideal audience.

For example if you are promoting the Ted’s Woodworking Clickbank product you can target people who are interested in wood working projects.

To start using Facebook ads make sure that you have a business manager and business ad account.

With those created you can then go on to create your Facebook Ads.

When creating Facebook ads take note of the following tips:

• Create more than one adset that targets a different interest
• Target one interest per adset so you can see which interest is performing better
• Split test different creatives, headlines and text in your ads.
• Monitor your ads for 3 days and see which one is producing the cheapest results
• Turn off the ads that are too expensive
• Let ads run for at least 5-7 days to see if you get any conversions

Bing Ads For Clickbank Offers

Bing ads rely on keywords to help you target people who are searching for a particular word or phrase.

To set up your Bing ads think about keywords that people might be searching for to help them find your ads.

Here are some keyword ideas for different Clickbank products

To start using Bing ads you need to create an account. Once that is created you can create your first Bing ad campaign.

When creating your Bing ads here are some tips to take note of:

• 10-15 keywords in your ad campaign are more than sufficient
• Make sure and track your keywords with a tracking tool like Clickmagick
• Split test different ad variations (3 ads per campaign is sufficient)
• Run your ad campaigns for at least 7 days to see which keywords are getting the most clicks
• Start your keywords on broad match
• Narrow down your keywords that get the most clicks by creating an exact match campaign

Using Tools To Track The Traffic To Clickbank Products

It goes without saying that when promoting Clickbank products, always use a tracking tool like Clickmagick to measure the performance of your ads.

This is crucial as it will help you save money as you can determine which traffic source is generating the most sales conversions.

When you know this you can put more effort into that traffic source and stop the ad campaign that is not producing results.

The tracking tool that is easy for beginners is Clickmagick.

Clickmagick starts from $12/month and is pretty easy to set up and start using in your traffic campaigns. They also offer a 14 day free trial which you can claim here.

Wrapping Up

The marketing strategy that I have outlined in this post is the strategy that I use when promoting any Clickbank product.

Even if I write a blog post I make sure that there is somewhere on that blog, a place where leads can opt in and provide their contact details to join a marketing funnel.

This helps me build an email list to re-market to and achieve a greater return on investment in the long run.

If you are reading this as a beginner, think about ways that you can build a profitable asset by spending a bit more time in your marketing effort and building these funnels.

Even though the idea of making fast money is appealing, it is not going to be sustainable.

On another note, remember that affiliate marketing networks are not under your control. Products can be discontinued at any time and it is a good idea that you join more than one affiliate network so you can replace your product.

Other reputable affiliate networks include:

• FlexOffers
• ShareASale
• Above All Offers
• MaxBounty

If you have any questions leave them in the comments. This was a super long post where I tried to give as much information as I can about the strategy that I use for Clickbank products.

Give me some love in the comments. Have you used this strategy and what have I forgotten?

Cheers

Additional Resources: 

• Start a Money Making Blog Course (free)
• How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing Course (free)
• How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Huge Blog or Website Ebook ($7)
• Email Marketing For Marketers 
• Automated Sales Funnels
• Facebook Ads for Affiliate Marketing

The post Clickbank Affiliate Marketing Strategy – Make Money With Clickbank Products appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

One of the reasons why I like Facebook ads is because you can quickly launch a campaign and get sufficient data to help you decide whether a campaign will be profitable in a short space of time.

It is also easy to scale an advertising campaign once you have found one that is profitable. By scaling it, I mean you can add more money to your advertising spend and then make more money on the output from your affiliate offer.

Whilst Facebook ads has powerful data points to help you identify your target market which makes it a very popular platform amongst advertisers, with the recent Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal it is also difficult to have your ads approved if you are promoting an affiliate offer.

This is because Facebook does not permit certain types of advertising campaigns and if it does, you must be very careful the angle that you’re taking when promoting the offer.

For that reason I thought it would be helpful to you guys to understand different angles that you can use to promote your affiliate offers using Facebook ads.

Here’s What You Will Learn:

• How to know whether your affiliate offer is compliant with Facebook Ads
• How to promote your affiliate offer via a blog post
• How to promote your affiliate offer via a bridge page
• How to promote your affiliate offer via a sales funnel
• How to do direct linking of your affiliate link without getting in trouble
• How to set up your Facebook ad

How To Know Whether Your Affiliate Offer Is Compliant With Facebook Ads

One reason why new affiliates get their ad account banned or suspended on Facebook, is because their affiliate offer is not permitted on Facebook.

Like any advertising platform, Facebook has rules and guidelines that assist advertisers in understanding what Facebook does and does not accept.

Therefore before you even start an advertising campaign on Facebook, take the time to read their Advertising Policies to see whether your affiliate offer or product is accepted on the platform.

When reading the policies, pay attention to the restricted and prohibited content.

Prohibited content means that the product or service is not allowed on Facebook. Restricted content means that whilst the product or service may be allowed on Facebook, there are additional requirements that must be met for the ad to be approved.

Therefore although your product or service may fall under the prohibited content category, there is still a chance that your ad could be disapproved if it does not fully comply with Facebook’s requirements.

So let’s look at an example.

|Supplements

Most offers promote some type of supplement – hair supplements, weight loss supplements, skin supplements. If you have decided that this is a product you’d like to promote, this is a restricted product on Facebook.

Their advertising rules say that “adverts that promote acceptable dietary and herbal supplements may only target people who are at least 18 years of age.”

Now whilst you may think that all you have to do is set your targeting to persons over the age of 18 years, closely consider that the product must also be “acceptable” to Facebook.

How Facebook defines the word “acceptable”, it is not quite clear. You will see from the above screenshot that they have merely listed examples of supplements that are not permitted but this is not an exhaustive list.

For this reason and because of the ambiguity and uncertainty over the type of supplements that can and cannot be promoted, it is best to avoid this product in your Facebook ads to avoid your ad account from being suspended.

If you are convinced that your product is allowed and safe to be promoted on Facebook, you can also reach out to a member of the Facebook support team with your proposal before you start your ad.

You should note however, at least from my experience, that some of the support team merely repeat what is included in the Advertising Policies and offer nothing different than what is already stated there.

How To Promote Your Affiliate Offer Via A Blog Post

Once you have decided on a Facebook compliant product or service let’s talk about how you can promote that offer.

Most people do not want to do the extra work of creating content to sell a product so they link directly to the site. There are a few instances when direct linking may be the best and I shall discuss that later.

I find that the best way to promote any product, whether it is an affiliate product or not, is by a blog post.

A blog post helps to deliver value to your reader and gives them insight into the product that you’re offering.

With a blog post, you are taking the Facebook user from off of Facebook and directly to your blog. This is a great strategy because you own the blog, you are free to include as many affiliate links as you want. You can also hyperlink text on your blog so that your affiliate link is not easily identifiable.

Whilst the Federal Trade Commission mandates that bloggers must prominently disclose their affiliate relationship, the ad to blog post method removes any suspicion from the Facebook user that they are being directed to an affiliate site.

As an affiliate another reason why the ad to blog post method is attractive, is because you can write compelling content that encourages Facebook visitors to click on your affiliate link thereby leading to more sales conversions.

I particularly like this method and have used it in many of my Facebook ad campaigns. In fact in my latest eBook, Make Money With Small Blogs, I provide a step-by-step breakdown of how this strategy earned me a return on investment of x2.7 with an affiliate product.

To use this method you will need to set up your own blog. You can start a small blog with Bluehost for as little as $3.95 per month.

If this interests you, then be sure to follow my step-by-step tutorial on how to start a blog with WordPress.

You can also use other content management software like LeadPages or Clickfunnels. I use LeadPages to create my small blogs for Facebook advertisements.

How To Promote Your Affiliate Offer Via A Bridge Page

If writing content in the form of a blog post is not your thing, then a more simple method is to use a bridge page.

A bridge page, is any page where you take the visitor to a single website before directing them to the affiliate offer.

Your bridge page can have content on it if you want to, such as an image, text explaining to the user why they arrived at the page and a call to action button.

Here are two examples of simple bridge pages used for affiliate offers.

When the user lands on the black mask bridge page, the affiliate link is embedded in the call to action button “Yes! Instantly Apply My 65% Discount”. On clicking that button they are directed to the affiliate product.

The same for the Gentleman’s Beard affiliate product. The affiliate link is embedded in the “learn more” button.

By using this method you are using a simple way to introduce the Facebook user to your affiliate product instead of sending them directly to the affiliate offer.

This bridge page is useful for many purposes:

• You can track individual campaigns using a tracking link provided by Clickmagick. Clickmagick is a tracking tool that all affiliate marketers should have in their arsenal to track their campaigns and make it profitable.
• The tracking link can be installed on the bridge page’s call to action button if you’re trying to understand which Facebook audience interest clicks on the call to action button to learn more.
• You can track the performance of the bridge page which can result in higher conversions. If people are not clicking on the call to action button, then it means your bridge page is not effective and so you can work on improving it.
• You can pre-sell the affiliate product on the bridge page if you want to. You will notice on the Black Mask bridge page a video is included. This video can be used to pre-frame the visitor for what they can expect when they visit the affiliate page.

To create your bridge page you can use many content management sites. I use LeadPages to build my bridge pages. You can also use Clickfunnels or WordPress.

How To Promote Your Affiliate Offer Via A Sales Funnel

In addition to a blog post, sales funnels are an excellent way to promote an affiliate product. This may take some creativity and time from you but it is worth it.

To use this method you will need the following:

A lead magnet – a product that you can give away that is relevant to the affiliate product and which is considered to be of a high perceived value.

A sales funnel which can comprise two or three pages. So you may have a lead capture page that takes the lead to the affiliate offer or a lead capture page that takes the lead to a pre-sell page then the affiliate offer.

An email autoresponder. Because you are building an email list using this method, you will need an email follow up sequence. Most affiliate offers provide you with affiliate tools which include email scripts.

Keep in mind that by using this method, the prospect’s journey is longer so any sales conversion can be delayed and may require more advertising spend to test whether the affiliate offer converts.

By using a sales funnel in your Facebook Ads you keep your affiliate link off of the Facebook platform and if you are strategic enough with your content, you can promote affiliate products that are likely to be disapproved on Facebook.

For example, let’s say you want to promote diet supplements but you are not sure whether it is permitted on Facebook. You can create a sales funnel that gives away a lead magnet promoting healthy living then only when the lead enters your email list you can start promoting the affiliate offer.

I would like to add as well, that this method can also be risky as some advertisers claim that Facebook inspects your funnel as well as your emails by opting into them, to keep out prohibited business models.

In my opinion this is quite an extreme level of safeguarding their platform, but I thought I would mention it so you are aware of it.

How To Do Direct Linking Of Your Affiliate Link Without Getting In Trouble

Sometimes writing a blog post, using a bridge page or building a sales funnel, does not convert your traffic.

It happens.

You may think that you have the best content but for whatever reason Facebook users are not converting with it.

This is where direct linking may be an option and I would recommend that this is used as a last resort.

Why should it be a last resort?

Because  you can lose a lot of money if there are very little affiliate tools to properly track your marketing efforts.

If your affiliate tools enable you to track your affiliate campaigns and add pixels to the sales page, then it can be to your benefit as you can then use the data you gather to retarget your visitors.

If not then you are likely to lose a lot of money and diminish your chances of securing a return on your investment.

Also, because links are long and appear ugly, they can be seen as spammy and Facebook does not like this. If many affiliates are using direct links in their Facebook ads, Facebook tracks the link and blacklists it. When the link is blacklisted, Facebook can suspend your ad account. 

As long as you are aware of this and understand the risk, here is a pretty good hack that I use to link my ad directly to an affiliate offer.

To tell whether an affiliate link can be directly linked to an ad, include the link in a Facebook chat or try and post it on your Facebook personal profile.

If you get the error that the link is blocked, then you should not use it directly in your ad as you run the risk of your ad account being suspended for using malicious and suspicious content.

If the link is blocked on Facebook, even masking the link using a tracking link or a domain forwarding service can still prevent you from promoting the product as Facebook has a robust system where they scrape data from your landing page and look for trigger words that can cause your account to be suspended.

Therefore this is a warning that you should not take that risk. Before putting an affiliate link in your ad, use the method that I teach you above to determine whether it is blacklisted or not.

If the link is not blacklisted, be sure to review Facebook’s Advertising Policies to ensure that the product you’re promoting is permitted by Facebook and if it is, consider masking the link using a link shortener like Bit.ly or a custom domain link tracker by Clickmagick.

To hide the link completely from Facebook’s users, when building your ad, you can include the link in the website URL field only instead of the text box along with your ad’s content.

How To Set Up Your Facebook Ad

Now that you are familiar with the number of ways that you can promote your affiliate link with Facebook Ads, I will quickly show you how to create your first Facebook Ad.

It’s really simple and takes less than 10 minutes.

Watch the video below.

Wrapping Up       

You can become successful as an affiliate marketer with Facebook advertising as your traffic source.

Facebook Ads is a high quality platform for driving targeted visitors to your offers and if you play your cards right, you can end up earning a lot of affiliate commissions.

As an affiliate if I were you and you wish to master Facebook ads, I would recommend spending a small budget like $100 to $300 per month testing various affiliate offers.

When you find an offer that converts well, cut the losing ad campaigns and scale the winning ad campaigns.

Whilst I have given you a small overview of the Facebook ads and affiliate marketing process, there is so much more to learn about using Facebooks ads for your affiliate marketing campaigns.

My latest eBook, How To Make Money With Small Blogs is a useful and helpful resource that teaches you how to promote small niche affiliate blogs using Facebook Ads.

I give away my Facebook Ads strategy that I continue to use over and over to get visitors to click on my link and check out my offer for sometimes less than $0.25.

With other traffic sources like Bing Ads or Google Ads you could pay up to $1.50 or even $6 per click. So if you’d like to see how you can save money using Facebook Ads, then the information that you will learn in my eBook will be a valuable outlet.

Click here to check out the eBook.

The post Facebook Ads Guide And Affiliate Marketing Strategies appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

You can read about it here. But I have been at this game since 2014 when I first found out that people were making an income from home, from their computers and phones.

I started with network marketing. Network marketing seems to have a bad name now because of how difficult it is to make money and if you do make money, because of how small the commissions are.

I made my first $700 however with network marketing within two years of promoting the product and I just was not satisfied.

That dissatisfaction resulted in me losing interest really quickly in network marketing, which then took me to affiliate marketing.

I saw a guy posting on Facebook about how much money he was making. It was not hundreds of dollars a month or a day. It was thousands.

“No way does that happen”, I thought; but on closer look and more intense research I realised that it could be done and became more intrigued in affiliate marketing.

That’s where my journey began. A year ago and within one month I made my first affiliate sale of $22.

10 Lessons I Learnt In A Year of Affiliate Marketing

Even though I made $22 in that first month, I still did not understand how it happened. All I was told was to buy a solo ad from Udimi and send the traffic to my affiliate offer.

I did that and was surprised that $22 appeared in my back office and within two days another $22 appeared. I thought to myself, where did this money come from?

Related Article:

• How To Make Money With Clickbank Affiliate Products
• 10 Step Blueprint To A Profitable Affiliate Marketing Campaign

I really did not understand it and for the next few long months I had a lot of high moments and tons and tons of low moments.

So the purpose of this post is to share with you the lessons I have learnt. I hope from my transparency you will be able to pick up a few golden points to use in your own marketing journey.

1. You Will Never Get Rich Trading Time For Money

What I realised is that the internet is a powerful tool. Using the internet and reaching billions of people all over the world, makes the opportunity to make money from the internet limitless.

That’s why working a job or exchanging time for money will only keep you at a certain pace because there are only 24 hours or 8 (if doing a job) where you will be able to do hands on work.

The thing about internet marketing is that you can use tools to automate your business. By using those tools you can have your business running automatically for 24 hours giving you the opportunity to make money whilst you sleep, whilst you’re travelling the world, or even if you’re around with your family.

You don’t have to be in front of a computer working all the time.

You can also scale your business to insane proportions.

If you’re reading this and still looking for ways to make money passively, then check out my article 25 Best Online Passive Income Streams And Opportunities.

You will find there, different ways that you can make money from anywhere in the world and also on a passive basis so you don’t have to work tirelessly at a job.

2. It Takes Money To Make Money

I see a lot of people still asking questions about how they can start an online business for free.

Hello!

The truth is, you can start an online business for free but you’re likely to make money very slowly or none at all.

The reason for that is because you need money for business tools and most importantly advertising.

Paid advertising rocks and whilst I have seen awesome results with organic traffic using this strategy, I get faster results with paid traffic.

With organic traffic like Google SEO and Pinterest SEO, it takes time to build traction. It also takes a lot of work.

However if you pay an advertising agency a few hundred dollars to run an advertising campaign, you can get your ad in front of the right people, a large audience and in a short space of time.

Also there are a lot of tools you can use for free but eventually you will have to start investing some money into these tools to get the best usage out of them.

For example, if you wanted to make money blogging, having a free blog will make you zero dollars as you are unable to post affiliate links to them or offer advertising.

Having a paid blog on the other hand means that you own it and you can add affiliate links, ads, sponsorships, etc.

You have a wider opportunity with paid blogs.

Start A Successful Blog Step By Step

3. Always Split Test

The first time I heard about split testing was when I started affiliate marketing. I did not know the real importance of it until I tested two lead capture pages and one converted at 65% and the other at 21%.

From that day forward I made sure to split test everything to get better conversions and save money.

I split test my lead pages, my target audiences, my ad networks, even my links in my ads and on my blogs.

You never know what appeals to your audience and you should never assume that people will prefer one thing over another.

Chances are the variable that you think your audience will like actually turns out to be otherwise.

4. Choose One Thing And Focus

It always amazes me how people blame a business opportunity or program for not making them money.

Actually I can’t be mad at that because at one point I thought that network marketing sucked until I really understood what marketing involved.

However, I was not the one to jump from opportunity to opportunity.

In fact I gave one program my all. I promoted it to the max and only changed it or moved to another when I felt that the program was no longer serving me and so would not serve my audience.

I really only promote any product that I use and can give my honest testimonial about it. I don’t promote products for the sake of making money, like some people do.

That’s why, you should promote one product that you truly believe in, learn how to make money from it and then move on to the next thing after you have made money from the first one.

Forget chasing the shiny objects because you will only lose money in the end.

I always tell people that the product is not the problem. What is the problem is that you have not given the opportunity and the advertising time to work.

When promoting anything give it at least 3 to 6 months of consistent effort. Always be willing to learn the best ways to promote the offer before giving up on it.

For example, you may be promoting a business opportunity. I have found that the best traffic sources for business opportunities are solo ads, safelists and PPC (excluding Facebook PPC because Facebook does not like this niche).

You should therefore be split testing these traffic sources and learning which one works well for your offer.

It may actually be that the product is not the problem, but rather the angle by which you are promoting the offer. For that reason before choosing an offer, make sure that you do a lot of research to see which products are converting well and how you can take what works well and model after it or improve it.

Which brings me on to my next lesson.

Start A Successful Blog Step By Step

5. Don’t Try To Reinvent The Wheel

There are already people who have mastered a certain thing so why try to do something else when it has already been tried, tested and reaped incredible results.

The best thing you can do, especially if you are new to a method of making money online or a product, observe what other marketers are doing and either model after them or put your own twist on it and improve it.

So when I say model after the marketer, it is perfectly acceptable to use what they have and create a likeness.

For example, if you see a marketer who is promoting Bitcoin and his ad copy is engaging a lot of people, instead of trying to copy what he has written, take what he has and create a similar ad copy from the same angle that is already winning.

You can use your own image and call to action but it is never cool to copy verbatim what someone else is already doing.

Here’s a case in point.

I found an offer that was converting well for one marketer. I simply observed what they did and wrote my own copy but in a similar fashion.

I simply looked at how they pitched their idea and modelled after it.

That’s why it’s always important to do your research to see what is already working on the internet.

That way you save yourself time, frustration and money.

Always go after what is already working. Never reinvent the wheel.

6. Relationships Matter

The reason a lot of beginners fail is because they don’t understand the concept that “people buy from people that they know, like and trust”

Therefore before trying to get a sale you should always try to build that relationship. Most people get confused when I speak about relationships.

I know I was one of those. I always thought, “damn, are you saying that I need to try and become friends with my audience?”

No. Building a relationship simply means, introducing yourself to your audience, showing up consistently and talking to them everyday.

For example, if you’re using Facebook to promote an offer, one way of building a relationship is by posting regularly. Post content that inspires, encourages and showcases your life.

That way people will get to know who you are and by doing that you are building a relationship.

If you are using email marketing to promote an offer you can build a relationship by sending your list regular email broadcasts. In those broadcasts you can talk about your life, share valuable information that will help your list and even offer to have one on one conversations with them.

There are so many ways to build a relationship with your audience.

But most importantly focus on adding value first then the sales will come.

7. Learn AND Apply

This one is too funny for me.

Although it is not something that I have taught myself because I was always a doer, it is a lesson I have taught others.

Most people are afraid of taking action because they are afraid of failing. There seems to be either a fear of failing and embarrassing oneself, or a fear of failing and wasting money.

I think it is the latter one as my friend explained to me the other day.

One thing that stood out from our conversation and she explained why she had not done what I told her to do yet, was that she was afraid. Then she went on to say “but I know I have to buy it to get started” and it made me believe that the real reason why people don’t start something is because they are afraid of the initial investment and the fear of losing that investment.

All in all, sometimes you have to learn how to stop learning so you can apply and win. If you never start, you never know where you will end.

For me, the hardest part is just never knowing where I will end because it may actually turn out great and had I not started I would have never known what my fate would be.

All I can say, is that with any business you need to have an open mind and a positive one at that.

If like me, you believe in the Law of Attraction then you would understand that whatever you put out into the universe is what you will attract to you. So if you think that you will be a massive success, then expect that to be your reality.

If you think that once you take action you will fail, then that will be your reality.

8. The Money Is In The List

Yes it is.

My first affiliate campaign went something like this.

I sent 100 visitors from a solo ad campaign to my first affiliate offer. I spent $75.

I got 35 people added to my email list and two sales conversions. I made $44. I lost $31.

Then I stopped when I experienced a loss.

I said ok let’s try this again. I sent 200 visitors from a solo ad campaign. I spent $145. I got 58 people added to my email list, one conversion and made $22.

I lost $123.

I said damn! I’m just throwing away money! I was not prepared to do anymore of it because I had yet to see any profit.

What I had not realised until months later when it was explained to me, was that if I continued to buy traffic, build my email list and follow up with my email list that the sales would come eventually.

At the time my focus was on getting sales.

When I understood that my focus should actually be on building my email list and then nurturing that list to produce sales, that’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

After sending an email to that same list about three months later and making $374 in profit, I thought to myself, Oh my goodness! They were right all along.

Therefore as an affiliate marketer your goal should always be to build your email list. Never focus on the sale from the start.

The money that you put into building an email list is only an investment because that email list eventually becomes an asset which can pay your bills one day.

Related Articles: 

• How To Build A Profitable Email List Step By Step 
• How To Start An Email List From Scratch 
• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Bloggers

9. It’s A Numbers Game

How do people go on to make $5000, $10,000 and $25000 a month?

It’s because of their numbers and the ability to scale their campaigns. So the more people that see your offer, the more likely you are to generate sales.

It took me such a long time to understand this concept and get it.

I would say when I finally got this my entire business changed.

Because then I really understood what I needed to do, to make money in my business.

When I understood conversion percentages and how much traffic I needed to make a sale, I was able to improve my advertising campaigns and scale it to big numbers.

10. It’s Always A Good Thing To Invest In Yourself

I remember there was a time when I just could not fathom spending hundreds of dollars on an internet marketing course.

I had that fear of losing money too, so I could not justify spending so much money knowing that there was a risk I would not make it back.

Then my thoughts changed and I realised as time went along that internet marketing was the thing that everyone wanted to know.

If I could learn how to do internet marketing and then teach other people the same or actually offer a service to help other people, I would have had a great return on my investment.

Start A Successful Blog Step By Step

Now I am not afraid to buy marketing courses as I know that the knowledge that I gain, would be valuable to someone else.

I am now in the stage of building a course on Facebook Marketing and Blogging. Something I would not have been able to do, had I not invested in my own education.

So when next you have to take a course, don’t see it as wasting money. See it as investing in yourself and creating a marketable product which you can monetise later on.

So those are the most important lessons I have learnt and I hope that you can learn something from them too.

I am thankful for my journey even though there were highs and lows. Everyday is a new day and most importantly they are joyful because I am working on my own dreams rather than someone else’s.

Internet marketing is making people millions of dollars every day. If it’s one thing that you go away with, remember that you don’t become a success over night.

I am in my third year of internet marketing. I still have a lot to go through and only now can I say that I am finally reaping the rewards of my labour.

Who would have thought that I’d be a millionaire on the second day of starting my journey. Not me.

It takes time, progress, failures and eventually success.

You can do this.

Cheers,

The post 10 Marketing Lessons I Learnt In A Year of Affiliate Marketing appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

If you are not already using this tool then I urge you to read my article, Affiliate Marketing For Beginners which is a detailed guide on the right way to do affiliate marketing.

If you are using a lead capture page then to be a successful marketer you should be split testing your pages to improve conversions.

If you are not, then you are leaving a lot of money on the table and this article will teach you how you can get better conversions and stop wasting money if you are using paid traffic.

Here’s What You Will Learn:

• What is split testing and why you should do it
• The anatomy of a lead capture page
• What can you split test on your lead capture page
• Lead capture page split test case study
• Lead capture page best practices

What Is Split Testing And Why You Should Do It

Split testing is testing two or more variables against each other to improve a certain metric. In marketing that metric might be a click through rate, an opt in, a purchase, etc.

The reason why this is important is because if you are running a paid affiliate marketing campaign, split testing allows you to improve your marketing so that you get more conversions for your money.

So for example if you are split testing a landing page or lead capture page and you have sent 100 visitors to landing page A and B, you can see which landing page performs better to give you higher conversions.

So landing page A might give you a 40% opt in rate, whereas landing page B would give you a 70% opt in rate.

What that means is that if you paid $50 for the traffic, 50 visitors go to landing page A and 50 goes to landing page B. With landing page A you were able to get 20 visitors to opt in to see your offer. That means that for landing page A it cost you $1.25 per lead ($25/20 leads).

With landing page B you were able to get 35 visitors to opt in and see your offer. That means that for landing page B it cost you $0.71 per lead ($25/35 leads).

You actually paid less for a lead with landing page B and without split testing you would never have known which variation was more appealing to your visitors thereby improving your conversions and lowering your cost.

Therefore whenever you run an affiliate marketing campaign and you are using lead capture pages, there are ways that you can split test features on the page to improve your chances of lowering your cost and getting more conversions for your money.

The biggest mistake that affiliate marketing beginners make is omitting this important step. You should never ever assume what your audience will like.

If you can, you should try to split test as many features as you can in your marketing and whilst there are many variables that you can test depending on the platform on which you are running traffic, today’s post will focus on lead capture pages.

The Anatomy Of A Lead Capture Page

Let’s dissect the lead capture page.

First of all I want you to understand the difference between a landing page and a lead capture page.

The landing page is the first page a visitor lands on when they click on your URL. So your landing page could be a page to your website or blog. It could be a page to your lead capture page, it can even be a page to a social media account.

A lead capture page, is the page that helps you collect email addresses or leads.

When doing affiliate marketing and if you are promoting a product, I would always recommend that your landing page is a lead capture page.

Never put your landing page as the affiliate sales page. Here’s a few reasons why:

• If a product has a lot of affiliates and they are promoting the same offer without using a lead capture page, it is more than likely that your traffic may have seen the sales page already which may lead to a high bounce rate.
  
• In most cases, 90% of the time, visitors to a website, who do not know you or the product, are unlikely to purchase the product the first time. When you send a visitor to a sales page but do not collect email addresses through a lead capture page, you are missing out on the opportunity to convert that visitor into a sale and so you can lose money.
• A sales page does not allow you to build your email list. As an affiliate marketer your biggest priority should be to build an email list. Your email list will eventually become your business asset. For my email list, I use the Aweber email autoresponder which stores and follows up with my leads automatically.
• Because you have no control over an affiliate sales page, you may not be able to track any visitors. Some product owners do not allow you to place tracking pixels on the sales page. Without tracking you are running your affiliate campaigns blindly and are more likely to lose money. By using a lead capture page before the sales page this gives you some control over your campaign and you will be able to track your traffic using tracking software like Clickmagick.

Here is what a lead capture page looks like:

Headline

The headline captures your audience’s attention. It tells them what they are about to learn or receive. Make sure that your headline arouses curiosity or creates a perception that what they are about to receive is of a high value.

Here are some examples of lead capture page headlines.

Backlinko

It’s page is simple. It’s straight to the point telling the viewer exactly what they will be getting.

There is a very strong headline here.

This lead capture page is suitable for people who want to learn how to get more traffic using SEO. If you are not getting results from your own tactics then I can see how this lead magnet can encourage people to sign up.

The only thing I would change is adding a bit more detail by telling the visitor where I will get traffic to. Is it to my blog? My website in general? My single page lead capture page? What exactly? Then I can decide if I need his information.

Marketing Sherpa

I think that lead capture page headlines should be bold and inviting. There is nothing on this opt in form that makes me want to hand over my email address because the headline seems mundane.

A headline like Free Case Study Shows You How To Increase Your Sales By 16% Just Like The Global Leadership Summit Did would be more appealing.      

With a headline like that I know exactly what I am getting. I am more inclined to provide my email address if the lead capture page speaks to me.

Digital Marketer

The Digital Marketer’s headline is inviting but could be bigger.

For someone who uses Facebook for advertising, getting insider knowledge on the Digital Marketer’s Facebook ads secret would compel me to give up my email address.

I think that a headline should take over 30-40% of a page so that it is eyecatching and immediately clear to the reader.

Sub Headline

The sub headline may break down even further what the lead will get when they opt in. As in Digital Marketer’s lead capture page, you can see that their sub headline is “Copy and paste these 7 proven Facebook ad campaigns to create low cost, high converting ads on demand”.

So not only do I know that I am getting a Facebook Ad Template library. I also know that I can copy and paste 7 proven ad campaigns. I also know that by doing that I can get lower cost ads.

Having a sub headline may or may not create more conversions. This is something that you will need to split test if you decide to use a sub headline along with your headline.

Opt in boxes

Your opt in boxes will include fields for the lead to enter their details such as a name, email address, phone number, etc.

If you are running an affiliate marketing campaign, some affiliates prefer to have a simple opt in page that only asks for an email address. Others prefer a name with an email address if they intend to personalise any emails being sent to the lead.

My preference is to ask for a name and email address but you will only know the effectiveness of what you ask for if you split test it.

You may find that the more information you ask for on your optin form, the lower conversions you get. So if you ask for a phone number, home address or date of birth it is more than likely that your conversions will not be impressive.

Call to action button

The call to action button is used to submit the information that the lead enters so that their email address can be registered in your autoresponder and the lead can receive your lead magnet in their inbox.

There is a psychology behind the use of call to action buttons.

For example, a red call to action button may instigate a different action from an audience than a green call to action button as generally speaking red to some means stop whilst green means go.

The same can be said of the words on a call to action button.

By saying “send me the book” as opposed to “download now”, you may get a different reaction from your audience as by saying “send me the book”, people infer that they are receiving an item by email. “Download now” one can infer that it is an item that is being downloaded onto the user’s computer which some people are not comfortable with.

Just like the other features of a lead capture page it is crucial that you split test this as well.

What Can You Split Test On Your Lead Capture Page 

You can split test anything on your lead capture page.

The main goal will be to increase conversions which in your case as an affiliate marketer will be to get more opt ins to your email list.

I would recommend that you split test one variable at a time. Here are the main things you should be split testing on your lead capture page:

• Headlines
• Sub headlines – different text or a lead capture page with or without sub headlines.
• Call to action button color
• Call to action button text
• Background color or image of the lead capture page
• Input fields like name and email address

It is interesting to see what results are like because whilst you may assume that a certain headline works, the results prove otherwise. Which is why you should never let your conscience decide anything in marketing.

Always let the data of split testing decide how you should run your campaign.

Landing Page Split Test Case Study

As a marketer I do many split tests on my lead capture pages to see which one gets a higher conversion.

When doing split testing I am looking for the way a visitor behaves and that behaviour is based on whether they take a desired action such as opting in to get my lead magnet.

My current split test is on my main affiliate offer which is found at the top bar of this website.

If you click on the top bar of this page you will come to a long form or short form landing page that looks like this.

Long form lead capture page

Short form lead capture page

The variable I am testing is between long copy and short copy.

I wanted to see whether people are more likely to provide their email address for further information if they were given some value upfront.

So far it is early stages as I have only gotten 86 unique visits to the pages. I use the Clickmagick tracking tool to help me with tracking visitor behaviour and here are my results so far.

Clickmagick is a really useful tool to help with your marketing so you can know how your pages are performing.

I would strongly recommend this or if you are using LeadPages or Clickfunnels for your lead capture pages, they also have split testing features that you can easily implement.

From my results you can see that the percentage difference between opt ins (ACR) is of little significance.

I will allow this test to run until I have approximately 500 visitors landing on each of the lead capture pages then analyse my results.

Want to see my final results? Subscribe to my newsletter here and I’ll deliver the results with more fantastic tips on how you can get the best out of split testing.

Landing Page Best Practices 

What is your reason?

When starting a split test, you should have a reason for conducting one. What do you want to test and why?

Do you want to increase opt ins to your landing page? Then you should be testing your headline, subheadlines, call to action and background of the lead capture page.

Create a sample size

Create a sample size to run your test with. Your sample size is the number of visitors that should visit your page before you can be confident that you have a clear winning lead capture page.

If you send too little visitors then there is a chance that the data will not produce accurate results to help you determine which landing page performed better.

In marketing there is also something called statistical significance. Your lead capture page should reach this level of significance before you can be comfortable with the results. The acceptable level of significance is usually 95% and there are tools that will calculate this for you. Clickmagick is actually one of those tools.

To help you determine your ideal sample size you can use the Optimizely Sample Size calculator.

Create your control and variation

If you are using Clickfunnels or Leadpages you can create two variations of a lead capture page and implement the variables on both to start testing.

So if you are split testing headlines the control lead capture page may say “Free webinar teaches you how to drive an insane amount of traffic to your website at no cost”.

The variable lead capture page may say “Learn the one secret to getting a huge amount of free traffic to your website”.

Most lead capture page software do also have a split testing feature so be sure to look out for them and use them.

Eliminate factors that can affect your test

When split testing be sure to do your test in a controlled environment. For example it is important that you use the same traffic source when running your test. Do not use different traffic sources directed at different lead capture pages as traffic sources are not made equal. So if you are using Facebook Ads for your traffic, use this traffic source for both lead capture pages.

The same goes for your software. Use the same lead capture page software for both lead pages when doing your test.

Make sure that everything works

Before running your traffic make sure that your lead capture page is working. So are the links functioning properly?

Do they load to the correct versions of the page? Are your call to action buttons working and do they generate a lead in your autoresponder?

Do you have proper tracking links and pixels inserted on your lead capture pages? The pixels are available from Clickmagick if you are using this tool to split test.

Clickfunnels and LeadPages also have their own test features that help you understand your results.

Send traffic

Now that everything is working it is time to send traffic to both pages. Ensure that both pages receive an equal amount of traffic so that your results can be accurate.

Wrapping Up

If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer it is so important that you take this additional step to split test your lead capture pages.

A fully optimised lead capture page helps to lower your conversion cost so you may end up spending less money for a conversion and your overall advertising campaign will be cheaper.

If you don’t know how to create a lead capture page most software have detailed on-boarding for their customers and have helpful videos showing them how to do this.

Would you like a detailed walk through of how to create a lead capture page with LeadPages? Leave a comment in the comments section and I just might be able to stir this one up for you.

Cheers,

The post The Ultimate Guide to Split Testing – Lead Capture Page Optimisation appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

He tried everything. From teaching English online, to launching and selling merchandise but never had momentum to make enough money to replace his full time job income.

He was looking for the ultimate side hustle and kept seeing many people talk about affiliate marketing.

Related Articles: 

• 10 Step Blueprint For A Profitable Affiliate Marketing Campaign
• How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Website Or Blog
• How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

It was mind blowing the type of money people were talking about so he decided to dive right into it in January.

One night, while talking to a friend, Justin was introduced to the CB Passive Income which is an internet marketing training that allows people to copy a proven internet business system so they can create their own income using automation.

When CB Passive Income launched, Justin had already been doing affiliate marketing for six months and was getting the hang of it.

What attracted him to CB Passive Income however was the hands off approach to earning an income online. The done for you model made it possible to simply share the program and courses with his audience and the marketing is done by the system.

Before he was earning somewhere close to $1500 a month but wanted to see how far he could push it and thought this was the best vehicle for him to test that.

His income goal was to earn $10,000 a month and the way that CB Passive Income was being promoted he felt that it could be the one.

Here is how the conversation went:

Jason: I’m promoting this program which is helping business owners learn how to set up their businesses online.

It’s a brand new platform and we’re actually looking for affiliates to promote it as well.

Justin: I have been doing affiliate marketing for a while and I’m actually looking for something new. Tell me more.

This is exactly how it all started for Justin.

As an affiliate marketer what you need to realise is that once you understand how to sell a product on the internet, getting future sales for a product is no secret.

All it takes is showing your offer to the right number of people with the expectation that some of those people will convert to sales at a percentage.

So if you show your product to 300 people and 3% of those people convert into sales, then it is simple mathematics to find out how much you can make from the sale of that product.

But no doubt there are strategies that each marketer can use to get more effective results and this is what Justin did.

He stepped outside of the box and did things a little bit differently. Everything involves strategy and these are the exact steps he took.

Education

Justin first of all purchased the CB Passive Income product so he could see for himself what it was and whether he could promote it.

He followed up with Jason and according to Jason it had many tutorials within the program that taught you step by step how to set up the program and automate it.

Justin was intrigued by the material within the program and studied each video and realised how powerful the lessons were.

He also saw that they had several different products to promote and tested each one of them to make sure that the steps that were being taught were simple to follow.

After all if he is putting his name to a product he has to be assured that it does what it says so as not to mislead his audience.

Justin also looked at the compensation plan.

He had to make sure that it was worth his time promoting a product and that he would get rewardly generously.

The CB Passive Income pays 50% – 70% on the front end in commissions but as an affiliate and provided he was able to get his referrals to set up their internet business using the tools recommended by the program, he could earn recurring commissions on the backend without doing any additional work.

Planning

Justin did not start promoting the CB Passive Income by posting everywhere on his social media networks.

This is what average affiliates do.

Most affiliates only think about the money aspect of an affiliate product but what they fail to understand is that if they took a little bit more time to add value to their audience, they could build that know, like and trust factor and convert their audience into sales quicker.

Justin therefore created a strategy which was set to put him as the authority in his field and build a relationship with his audience from day one.

Here are the planning steps that Justin took before he launched his affiliate marketing campaign:

1. Create a blog post that had nothing to do with CB Passive Income
2. Create an email list with a follow up sequence of five emails
3. Research his target audience
4. Reach out to influential bloggers for guest blog opportunities

The planning stage took about three weeks as it took some time for the bloggers to get back to him.

In all he was able to secure two guest blog opportunities with high traffic blogs so that took care of some of the traffic that he was looking to generate back to his original blog post.

Justin was in no hurry to make money fast. After being an affiliate for six months he understood that to get the best results, he had to strategically place himself in the best position to get massive results.

Execution

Create A Blog 

Justin did not have a website and did not plan to start one. He decided to set up a quick webpage using a web page builder by LeadPages.

He did not have to buy a domain as LeadPages hosts webpages on behalf of marketers.

So all he had to do was select a pre-designed template and create a blog post from there.

Justin also did not write a blog post about CB Passive Income. Instead he wrote an educational post about how offline businesses could turn fledgling businesses into profitable ones by using the internet and coming online.

He structured his blog post in a way that it gave the reader ideas on how they could use the same concept of consumer generation offline and apply that to online methods.

He also made sure that the blog post mentioned a few of the tools recommended by CB Passive Income as a way of pre-framing them.

He knew that anyone who was interested in reading a blog post like this, would be interested in CB Passive Income

He made sure to add a pixel to the webpage so that the visitors could be re-targeted later through Facebook Ads and Adroll website ads.

By taking this measure, Justin does not appear as a salesman. Rather the first impression his readers will get of him is that he is an expert and can be trusted.

After all he is giving them free advice on something that they want anyway. This way he has allowed his readers to know him, like his work and therefore trust him.

Landing Page 

Next he created a landing page offer with LeadPages as well. This was to be shown to the visitors who first of all visited his blog post and then redirected to the landing page through re-targeting.

The landing page would have an opt in field where visitors could enter their email address to learn more about how they could use the CB Passive Income program to help them grow a profitable online business.

From the landing page, he created a bridge page which had a mini video tutorial introducing the CB Passive Income program. On the video he explained the concept of how an online business worked and then offered the leads to learn more about that with CB Passive Income.

On the bridge page there was a strong call to action where if the visitor clicked it, it went straight to his affiliate link and then onto the CB Passive Income sales page.

Email Marketing 

Thirdly he set up his email list using Aweber. The email series that he created were for those who did not purchase a subscription with  CB Passive Income.

Within the emails he took prospective users on a journey introducing them to CB Passive Income again. Talked about the benefits of the training program, included testimonials of other users and did a walkthrough of what they would get when they joined the CB Passive Income program.

He tracked his progress by looking at who opened his emails and clicked on his link within the emails.

Anyone who clicked on his link, he segmented and sent them a further email with a stronger call to action but this time offering three super bonuses which included a worksheet, additional training to get their business set up and a video tutorial showing the business owners how to earn their first $10,000 online.

The bonuses were all free and he made sure to highlight the value of the bonus compared to the price they would pay to subscribe to CB Passive Income.

He felt that by offering these bonuses would make the prospects more inclined to take the offer seriously and see the benefit they would get when they joined CB Passive Income through Justin’s affiliate link.

That strategy seemed to work as he was able to get a few signups in the follow up process.

Personal Contact

Justin made sure to make himself available to those people who initially signed up for CB Passive Income as a monthly subscriber.

He included several weekly training Google Hangouts and added more value by offering his monthly subscribers free training on how to grow their online business.

To get more value out of each subscriber he would talk about the benefits of upgrading to a Pro Annual member so they could eliminate monthly payments.

This seemed to be received well by a a few prospects and he was able to earn a few $47 commissions from people who liked his training and rewarded his efforts.

Justin knew that personal contact allowed his subscribers to see that he was a real person and was invested in their success.

Every affiliate marketer knows that the relationship between a prospect and them is valuable. If you help your prospect make money, you as the affiliate make money too.

It’s a win win and both parties are happy. So having the weekly training increased the value of his subscribers and therefore earned him more money in his pocket.

The Results     

Only after three months of marketing CB Passive Income Justin added up his affiliate commissions and it totalled $12519 which was $4173 per month. With CB Passive Income he was able to almost triple what he earned from other affiliate products when he started affiliate marketing in January. 

Through his efforts he was able to generate the following:

3100 leads which is 1033 leads each month

82 paid monthly members of CB Passive Income earning him commissions of $1804

25 paid annual members of the CB Passive Income earning him commissions of $1700

73 Clickfunnels members which gave him $5767.00

30 Clickmagick members $788

43 Aweber members $2292

34 GetResponse members $168

These additional products are what he introduced to his members to help them promote their own internet business with CB Passive Income. Each product had their own affiliate program attached to it.

Key Takeaways

For some affiliates they enrol in as many affiliate programs as they can but that only leads to burnout and sometimes confusion as trying to remember all your affiliate programs takes some serious memory skills.

All Justin had to do was promote the CB Passive Income system and the commissions for the other programs like Clickfunnels, Clickmagick, Aweber and GetResponse all happened automatically when they were activated by his members.

So he did not have to waste his time promoting any of the other marketing tools and that was less of a hassle for him because it saved on his ad spend.

By putting his focus on one done for you affiliate program and adding extra value to his members by helping them build their own business with relevant marketing tools, Justin was able to generate a five figure income with CB Passive Income within three months.

Also whilst everyone was sending traffic directly to the affiliate offer, Justin’s approach by using a blog post helped position himself as an authority.

That way when the visitors saw his offer a second time through his landing page, it was a no-brainer to opt into his landing page to get the free training that he was offering on his bridge page.

Justin did not need to know anything about web design or web programming. LeadPages took care of everything for him. He also automated the entire process with the email marketing platform.

Justin’s results show that there is more than one way to get results with affiliate marketing. There are some people who are still trying to get results but when you think outside of the box Justin shows how doing that can pay off big time.

The post [CASE STUDY] How This Affiliate Marketing Expert Made $12500 In Three Months appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

I have news for you. This is not exactly how it works.

Affiliate marketing is like any other job or business. You need the skills and you should learn the skills before you start it.

So this is where you get lucky and where I will take you through the ten steps that you should be considering when launching and running an affiliate marketing campaign.

These steps are all crucial and it is important that you understand each one of them and why you need to do them.

Affiliate marketing is not easy if you do not know what you are doing but today I want to take you by the hand and give you an idea of what you should be doing.

Hopefully by the end of this post you should have some education to at least get you started with your first affiliate marketing campaign.

Here’s what you will learn:

• Research and choose your product
• Decide how you are going to promote your product
• Get your marketing tools
• Design your landing page
• Prepare your email sequence
• Add your tracking pixels
• Create your ad, decide who your target audience is and launch your ad
• Split testing your ad creative and landing pages
• Analyse your data
• Scale

Before I continue I would like to point out that whilst I will give you a guide, there is so much more depth that you need to go into to understand and apply these concepts.

I would therefore recommend taking an affiliate marketing course to give you more value and show you everything that you need to do to be successful.

Also if you are going to read these principles you will never get any results if you do not take action.

So once you have gone through this guide be sure to implement it immediately. Apply it to whatever product you are promoting and remember everything will not happen overnight. It’s a matter of failing a few times before your success appears.

With that little motivation out of the way, let’s get right to it.

Research And Choose Your Product

You can choose whatever product you want to promote but if you want to promote a product that is likely to convert well, read my article 6 Most Profitable Niche Markets For Bloggers and Marketers for ideas.

There are three ways that you can decide whether a product is worth promoting:

• Popularity
• Reviews
• Your intuition

But I will tell you this. Once your intuition tells you go for it, do just that. Go for it!.

Don’t spend a lot of time deciding whether to promote a product or not. You will only waste time.

Let’s go a bit further with each point.

Popularity

Some affiliate networks will tell you how popular a product is. For example Clickbank helps you judge the popularity of a product by giving you a gravity score

The higher the gravity score, the more popular it is.

Related Article: 

• Make Money With Clickbank – The Ultimate Clickbank Affiliate Guide 

Amazon Affiliates tell you about the popularity of a product based on the number of sales or reviews it has.

Share A Sale uses Power Ranks to categorise the popularity of a product.

So whatever affiliate network you decide to join be sure to look out for its popularity points to help you decide on which product is the best to promote.

Reviews

You can also decide on whether a product is worth your time by looking at reviews. Look at both positive and negative reviews.

You can easily do a Google or YouTube search for the product you want to promote. See what other people are saying about it.

Here’s a quick Google review search I did on the Fat Burning Kitchen product from Clickbank.

Click Here To Learn How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

If you do not trust internet reviews then you can purchase the product, test it and review it yourself. This is the best way as it lets you see the product firsthand, it allows you to try the product for yourself and helps you make a good decision as to whether you want to promote the product or not.

Sometimes it may not be practical to buy the product yourself but this is the safest way to decide whether it’s a product that you will be happy promoting and attaching to your brand.

At the end of the day, people trust other people’s judgements so if you promote a product that you have not yet reviewed which then leads to a bad customer experience, you can lose the trust of your audience and your own credibility.    

Your Intuition

Finally your gut instinct will tell you what to do.

Sometimes people overthink an idea when their thoughts are speaking to them and telling them to go for it.

This only leads to procrastination.

So once you have chosen a product and something inside you makes you feel good about it, then just promote it.  

Decide How You Are Going To Promote The Product

There are many ways to promote a product but you must decide exactly where you are going to promote it.

This usually involves looking at traffic sources such as YouTube, Facebook, Bing Ads or Google Ads.

There are other traffic sources like Pinterest, solo ads or ad networks that you can try and it will be up to you to research which traffic source is best for your offer and provides the best results.

The only way you can really do that is by testing each traffic source.

I would however highly recommend using Facebook as your first attempt. Facebook is a very intelligent and super powerful platform that allows you to promote the right product (see Facebook’s Advertising Policies for confirmation that your type of product is allowed on its network) to its audience.

Facebook can produce successful campaigns because of the overwhelming amount of data it collects about its users.

But producing a successful campaign takes time and patience because you have to test different demographics, see how the ad performs on different devices, placements, which country the ad performs better in and other variables.

Split testing all these variables play an important role in determining whether you will have a successful campaign.

It will also be useful and helpful to you if you learn how to use Facebook Ads before you start any ad campaign so you can get better results.

Right now the best Facebook Ads course that I have seen on the market today is by Jon Penberthy and Jubril Agoro who have made millions of dollars with Facebook Ads. They have a free webinar where they teach you the number one strategy that can help you increase conversions in your ad and boost your business.

Click here to view the webinar.

If you do not want to use Facebook then you can use other platforms like YouTube Ads and Google Ads.

Sometimes an offer works better on video so you can trial your efforts to see how it works with video marketing.

Sometimes your target audience may not actually be on Facebook, but may be on YouTube.

You may also get better results by putting an ad in front of people who are actually searching for your product as with Google.

Wherever you decide to promote your offer remember that your goal is to get as many people as possible to see your offer.

The more people that see your offer, the more profit you can make.

Related Article: 

• 6 Great Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Links

Get Your Marketing Tools In Order

To promote any affiliate product you need marketing tools. Marketing tools will help automate your affiliate marketing campaign and streamline the process so you can accurately track whether the campaign is successful or not.

The most essential marketing tools are: 

• Landing Page
• Email marketing software
• Tracking software

|Landing Page

The first thing you will need is a website that will talk to your audience about the offer.

You can either have a large website like mine where you promote many different affiliate products or you can have a small website solely for the purpose of promoting a single affiliate product.

For the purposes of this post, I am going to speak about using a small website to promote your product. This website is what is called a landing page but to promote the product you will be building a sales funnel.

The sales funnel is simply a series of website pages that introduces the product to your audience. It starts with a landing page, goes to a bridge page then the affiliate product sales page.

There are many landing page builders that you can use to design your website and which help you build sales funnels.

I prefer LeadPages because of the ease of creating standalone websites and building sales funnels. It also has drag and drop features and awesome customer service. LeadPages offers a free 14 day trial so you can check them out if it interests you.

Other landing page builders are Clickfunnels which also has a free 14 day trial. I recently discovered BuilderAll which is actually new to the market. I have tested it but I did not like its usability. You may decide otherwise so feel free to check them out by using this link. They offer a free 7 day trial.

Related Articles: 

• 4 Awesome Landing Page Builders You Must Use For Marketing or Blogging  

|Email Marketing

Email marketing software helps you to grow your email list and communicate with your leads to remind and educate them about your product.

This software helps take out the human element meaning that you don’t have to personally follow up with your leads.

The automated sequence of email marketing does that on your behalf.

For your email marketing you can try MailChimp which allows you to store 2000 leads for free before you are upgraded to the paid option.

I use Aweber because it is the only software that helped improve my email deliverability. This ensures that my emails get to my leads’ inbox instead of to their junk mail. Aweber offers a 14 day trial which you can access by Aweber.

Another email marketing software is GetResponse.

Related Article: 

• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Marketers And Bloggers 
• How To Build An Email List From Scratch 
• How To Get Email Subscribers As A Newbie

|Tracking

It is very important that when you are running any affiliate marketing campaign, that you track your progress.

The reason why you want to do this is because it helps you to see what is working and what is not.

For example if you are testing how two landing pages perform against each other, you can use a tracking software to tell you which landing page your audience prefers.

You can also use tracking software to help you understand which demographic resonates with your ad and consequently which ad is performing well.

This will help you save money so you can cut any ads that are wasting money and save those which are producing results.

Most Ad platforms like Facebook, Google and Bing have pixels which is a piece of code that you can place on your website to track data. This tracking helps you to optimise your ad.

You must also optimise your website and so a tracking tool like Clickmagick helps you to do that by giving you a piece of code to place on your website so you can track which landing page performs better if you are split testing.

Design Your Landing Page

This is where most people get stuck because they do not know what to put on their landing page.

And this is what I tell most people. Stop trying to figure things out on your own.

There are people who have already figured out what works so why not use their success and imitate what they have done?

For example, Sue is promoting a law of attraction affiliate marketing product on Facebook but does not know what to say on her landing page to attract her audience.

The first advice I would give to Sue is to see whether there are any affiliate tools for the product. Most affiliate programs provide already-made landing pages for their affiliates.

So instead of reinventing the wheel, use those landing pages for inspiration. Here’s the affiliate tools page for a program that I am promoting.

Here’s a pro tip! Do not use the actual landing page provided by the affiliate company, because there are many, many amateur affiliates who are already using those landing pages.

As a smarter affiliate you want to stand out. Therefore create your own landing page but model after the one you are given.

For example, change the background image, text and call to action of the landing page.

If the affiliate program does not offer done-for-you landing pages then spy on your competitors. See what is already working and try to produce similar but improved content.

Never, ever copy your competitor’s content as you will lose your credibility.

Going back to Sue’s example, to spy on your competitors you can use a tool like AdEspresso. AdEspresso helps you to create and optimise your Facebook ads easily, but it also helps you to see what ads are already performing well on Facebook.

So by using AdEspresso together with my keyword, law of attraction, these are the results I come up with.

I can take this a step further by honing on the ad and seeing what links the advertisers have in their ads.

If I click on the link I am directed to their landing page and this is the landing page that I can model after.

To make this work successfully pay attention to how much engagement the ad gets. If the ad has a lot of engagement it means it was successful so you can model after the ad creative.

If there is little to no engagement, it means that the ad was not successful and therefore will not be one that you should model after.

Keep searching until you find one that satisfies the above criteria.

Prepare Your Email Sequence

After you have designed your landing page you need to create your email sequence. Plan your email sequence strategically so you can build a relationship with your leads sufficiently to turn them into customers.

When writing my email sequences I keep a few things in mind:

• Length of sequence
• Value
• Pitch
• Bonus

|Length of sequence

When preparing your sequence you want to it to be long enough to get across your point but short enough to keep your leads engaged.

I always find that an automatic sequence of five to six daily emails is good enough to make an attempt to convert the lead to a buyer. When I have sent my sixth daily email I switch to broadcast emails where I follow up with my leads weekly.

By following up with my leads weekly I make sure that they still have that reminder about the product.

You can also keep track of those leads who are no longer engaged and remove them from your list.

|Value

Every email that you send to your leads should be filled with value where you teach your lead something about the product that will help them.

For example, you may do a product review, you may show how the product can help them solve a problem or you may write a blog post about other products like it but still include yours in the post.

This shows the lead that they have options instead of always shoving your product down their throat.

|Pitch

Sometimes it’s ok to sell to your leads.

If you don’t you will never make money and when promoting a product that is the ultimate aim.

But there are ways that you can sell to your leads.

Do it in a way that promotes value. Explain the benefits and features of the product. What’s in it for your lead?

Include a strong call to action in your email pitch and tell the lead what to do.

For example “click here to get 60% off the product” or “click here to join this limited time offer today”.

|Bonus

Bonuses are additional strategies that you can use to entice your lead to take an action.

This makes you stand out from your competitor.

Tell your lead what you will give them or help them with if they place an order through your link.

Your email sequence will determine the number of sales that you can make on the back end and should be carefully thought through to ensure the best conversions.

Here is what my email sequence for one of my products looks like.

Want to see exactly what I write? Then opt into my list here and check it out.

Add Your Tracking Pixels

Depending on your landing page provider, you should be able to add tracking pixels to your website.

To add tracking pixels sign up for Clickmagick. Clickmagick offers a free 14 day trial.

Once you’re in Clickmagick click on Links then Create New Link.

A tracking link lets you measure the number of visitors that are going to your website where TC means total clicks or visitors and UC means unique clicks or visitors.

It also tells you whether any robots have tried to access your site where FC means fake clicks or visitors.

As a marketer this is important for you if there are any disputes about whether your ad network provides human visitors to your websites or robots. If you have run an ad campaign and there are no unique clicks but plenty of fake clicks, this tells you that the type of traffic provided was not genuine.

You will then be able to use this as proof to file a complaint or seek a refund of money for any purchased advertising.

After clicking on Create New Link complete the required fields by naming your tracking link and adding a link ID. This helps identify the tracking link for your reference only.

Add the URL of the landing page that you have created then click Create Link.

If you are split testing two landing pages then click on the gear icon.

Next click on Split Testing.

Add the second URL of your landing page in the space provided. You can split test up to three landing pages with Clickmagick.

Once your tracking link is finalised click the gear icon again then this time select Track Conversions.

This is where you will build your pixel to add to your landing page.

Select Conversion Tracking Method #1 then select Step 2 to use the Pixel Builder.

For a generic pixel follow the selections as in the below image. Your pixel will be built for you and is the final HTML code that you see in the green bar below.

Copy and then place this code within the opening and closing body tags (<body></body>) of your landing page.

Create Your Ad, Decide Who Your Target Audience Is And Launch Your Ad

Creating an ad is the easy part.

You can use any of the platforms I mentioned before to get your product in front of people but I would strongly recommend starting with Facebook because that is where I believe you can reasonably get a ton of success if you play your cards right.

If you already have a Facebook personal profile you will need a Facebook Business Account to get started.

Never run Facebook ads on a personal account as you risk having your personal profile being disabled. If your personal profile is disabled then think of all your friends, posts and pictures being lost into nothingness!

To start a business account click on Create Account.

Click Here To Learn How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

If you already have a Facebook profile simply log in. If you do not have a Facebook profile then create a new one.

Once you have logged in click on Create Account and go through the steps of providing a Business Name and Business Email Address.

You will then come to a screen that looks like this.

Click on Create Ad Account as to run an ad on Facebook you must use an Ad Account. You can create up to five ad accounts in advance.

Complete the required fields by naming your Ad Account, time zone and the currency you want your ad account to be in.

Click Create Ad Account to finalise the process.

When you have created all ad accounts it is time to start running ads. But before you do that, if you have absolutely no idea how to run an ad on Facebook, how to optimise your ad and analyse the data then I would strongly recommend learning from someone who has had success with Facebook Ads.

I learnt everything I know about Facebook Ads from the Social Traffic Blueprint course by Jon Penberthy and Jubril Agoro. So if you would like to master this before you place an ad on Facebook this is where I would suggest you start.

If you don’t want to use Facebook Ads for whatever reason then your options does not stop there. I have tried Bing Ads before and gotten great results.

There is also Google.

But the number one advice I would give you before you start any type of advertising, is to learn how to use them by taking an appropriate course. Do not be selfish with yourself. Invest in yourself and your education. 

Deciding Who Your Target Audience Is 

Your target audience will depend on the product you are promoting.

To find out who your target audience is with your product in mind, there are a few tools that you can use to identify who your ad should be directed to.

The first tool if you’re using Facebook is their Facebook Audience Insights tool.

This tool gives a breakdown of Facebook’s users according to their interests. So let’s say you’re promoting a weight loss product.

From within your Business Manager account click on the three lines in the top left hand corner, then All Tools then under Plans click on Audience Insights.

When you get to Audience Insights select Everyone On Facebook.

Then pay attention to the left column where you will enter your search criteria.

If you are promoting your product to the USA then leave the location as is. Other countries like United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have less data available so I would recommend leaving the country as USA for every product that you promote.

Next go to the Interests tab.

This is where you need to think about the type of interests that your potential customers like.

I have used the keyword weight loss as I am using a weight loss product example.

When I type in weight loss Facebook gives me the demographic of my audience on Facebook.

As you can see from the results my target audience is predominantly men and women aged 25-54 who live in the US. I usually choose an audience where the percentage of people are over 20.

If you are using Google Ads then you can use their Think With Google Insights Tool.

From there scroll down and click on Shopping Insights.

This insights tool will allow you to see the shopping behaviour of consumers on Google.

Enter your search term. In this case we are searching for weight loss and I have selected the most searched for item related to weight loss which is weight loss pills.

Google will then provide us with data and we can look at our demographics to see who our potential consumers are.

From here you can see that the average age for shoppers who purchase weight loss pills are 37.4 and are both men and women with a 1% difference.

Whilst you can target both men and women on Google, you may get better results when you target only women or only men. It will be up to you to test which ad directed to which target audience converts the best.

Launch Your Ad

Once you have created your ad and researched your target audience you only need to launch your ad and wait for the results.

Here are a few expectations that you should have:

• Your first ad probably will not work
• You have to test many different ads before you get a winner. That may involve launching 10 different ads and studying the results to see which one gives better sales conversions.
• You have to let your ad run for at least 2 to 3 days to get some data. So be patient.
• You have to allocate a decent budget to your ad in order to be successful with your affiliate campaign. How much this budget is depends on the ad network you are using as some networks are more expensive than others.

Split Testing Your Ad Creative And Landing Pages

Split testing is the best thing that a marketer can do because it helps them save money.

The reason why you want to split test your ads and landing pages is because your audience may resonate with one ad over another.

You may also get better responses on one landing page over another.

It is therefore imperative that to run a successful affiliate marketing campaign, that you have to do as many of these tests to see what works.

This is the frustrating part because it takes time, it takes focus and a lot of creative thought.

Some things that you can split test include:

• Your ad content
• The image on your ad
• Whether the ad is a video ad or image ad
• The headline on your ad
• Your affiliate product
• Your landing page background image
• Your landing page headline
• Your landing page text
• The call to action on your landing page.

If you are not prepared to split test, then prepare to fail. It’s that simple.

And this is where newbies give up the fastest, because they do not understand that split testing is part of the process.

And with split testing you are bound to lose money. Again it is all part of the process.

The good thing is however, by split testing you are improving your ad campaigns which will eventually lead to brilliant results. 

Analyse Your Data

As I mentioned before allow at least 2 to 3 days to accumulate data from your campaigns and study them.

See who is responding to your ads. What age groups and which gender.

When you do that you can start optimising your ads.

So for example you can run an ad only to the age groups or gender groups that are engaging with your ads.

Study the click through rates of each ad. Here you will look at those ads that are getting high click through rates at a low price point.

Which ad is making you money. Although an ad is making you money you still need to consider whether it is profitable, most important.

There are so many variables to consider when analysing your ads in order to make your campaign better.

Scale

Once you have analysed your data and know what is working, by now you should have a profitable ad campaign.

From here you now need to scale your campaign to make more money.

Scaling your campaign will involve:

• Scaling out to different countries.
• Increasing your budget
• Using different traffic sources. So if you are using Facebook can you use Google or Bing? (they may not perform better but go for it and test).
• Get an increase in your affiliate commission. Do you think you can approach your affiliate manager and ask for an increase in your commission rate? Of course you can.

Wrapping Up

So I have laid out for you the basics of creating and launching an affiliate campaign. These are the skeletal parts of what an average affiliate campaign looks like but like everything it may appear simple on paper but there is a lot more fine detail that is involved which you can only uncover when you actually start doing it.

At least you have a bare bones blueprint to follow when you decide to take massive action and implement.

You learn the best by always doing and then seeing what works.

If you have any questions be sure to leave them in the comments.

Cheers,

The post 10 Step Blueprint For A Profitable Affiliate Marketing Campaign appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.