Day 1 Introduction To Affiliate Business Basic - Part I
Always remember that being a great affiliate is NOT about selling... It’s about PREselling.
1.1. Focus on Maximizing Profit
The goal of any business, including your affiliate business, is to maximize
PROFITS. PROFIT is simply your INCOME minus your EXPENSES.
As an affiliate, there are exactly two ways to increase your INCOME (i.e., the
amount of money your business makes)...
1) Refer more visitors to the merchants that you represent.
2) Increase the Conversion Rate (i.e., the percent of visitors that you refer to your merchant… visitors who deliver the response for which the merchant
pays, whether that’s a sale, or a lead, etc.).
Simple formula, right? If you refer 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1%
buy, you get paid for that one purchase. But if you send 1,000 visitors per day and 3% buy, you get paid for 30 purchases.
Yes, thirty times more! So it’s pretty clear how to maximize affiliate INCOME!
Of course, every business has expenses, too. Maximizing profits does not imply that you must minimize expenses, too. After all, if you spend no money or time on a business, you have no business! You must get the best possible traffic building and sales-converting results for every dollar you spend... and for every hour you spend on your business.
Time is money. Don’t count your hours as zero cost simply because they do not cost you “out of pocket.” Assign your time a dollar value -- it will put your affiliate business on a solid, professional “business footing.”
Let’s examine expenses by asking two questions...
Question #1: What does it cost to build traffic to your merchants’ sites?
Traffic-building, no matter how you cut it, will cost you... in terms of both time and money. Spending dollars is optional, but spending time is not.
There are many ways, both offline and online, to drive targeted traffic to your
merchants’ sites. This course will show you the most highly profitable, timeand- dollar-effective way to build traffic to your merchants' sites...
Build your own Theme-Based Content Site -- one that is loaded with high infovalue Keyword-Focused Content Pages that rank well with the Search Engines and that get the click throughs to your merchants’ sites.
Let’s break that down for closer examination. For your affiliate Web site to
generate targeted traffic to your merchants, it must do two things well...
1) Rank well at the Search Engines so that it pulls in lots of targeted traffic. So far, though, that traffic is still on your site. Therefore, it’s not generating income yet. Your visitors are just “looking around.”
2) Get those visitors to click through to your merchants. (Some affiliate program models can actually place merchant offerings on your Web site. In this case, your traffic does not actually visit your merchant’s site. But you still have to “get the click” to generate income.)
Question #2 -- What does it cost to maximize Conversion Rates?
Good news! Maximizing your Conversion Rate (CR) is simply a question of
doing things right. There is no extra dollar or time cost to boosting Conversion Rates at your merchants’ sites. This course will show you how to
achieve this goal, too.
Your primary goals are...
1) Maximize targeted traffic to your merchants, spending only dollars and
time that maximize profits.
2) Maximize Conversion Rates. Do things right (no expense).
Don’t do just one. Do both. Why? Because, as you saw above, your payment
is determined by traffic multiplied by the Conversion Rate... not “added.” Your profits grow geometrically when you concentrate on maximizing both traffic and Conversion Rates.
~~ Common Mistakes Corner ~~
The #1 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
Research shown that Banner ads with No content performed badly when come to Conversion Rate.
Banners are cheesy and hurt your credibility. If visitors happen to click through (a big “if”), they arrive at their destination feeling “pitched” rather than informed. They have a resisting mindset, rather than with an open, ready-to-buy attitude.
Remember that example where you sent 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1% bought? If you rely solely on flipping up some banners, it will be more like 10 visitors per day and not one person buys!
The #2 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
After banner advertising, it’s the second most common error. And it’s an even bigger shame because this boo-boo involves a lot of work... misplaced work. If you’re going to fail, the best thing would be not to spend much time at it, right?
Reason #2 is...Selling instead of PREselling.
As I reviewed many of these affiliate sites (those who are getting sales but have Conversion Rates under 2%), I realized that almost half were basically one big sales letter. Which means that these affiliates are SELLING (with sales copy) when they should be PREselling (with great, and related, content that is of value to the reader).
There’s really not much point in straight selling off your site -- that's what your merchant’s site needs to do. Picture this...
A visitor arrives at an affiliate’s site that is really just one, big sales site. Yes, I know that the words are sincere but put yourself in these visitors’ shoes for a moment. They don’t see inspiring, editorial content. They see a sales effort.
But they were searching for content!
“CONTENT!” I said. (Sorry for yelling.)
People resist sales efforts, so your click-through actually goes down. And if a visitor does click, what does she see when she arrives at the Merchant's site?More sales effort. And, in some cases, many of the words at the Merchant's site are similar to the words that she’s just read.
Result? Poor Conversion Rate.
If your site is basically a “bunch of sales letters,” you have not yet built your
credibility and likeability with this visitor. Your visitor ends up feeling "pitched.” And then she feels double-pitched if (chances are low) she clicks through to your merchant’s site. That’s why the CR actually goes down.
To make things worse, as she “smells” a sales effort, she becomes less likely to click! So referred traffic drops, too.
What is the end result?
1) Referred traffic down.
2) And Conversion Rate down.
But these are the two ways to increase your income. (That’s what we talked
about near the beginning.) We’re going in the wrong direction!
Conclusion? Don’t SELL!
Instead, warm your visitor up for your merchants by PREselling her with great content that she values and respects. She’ll click-through with pleasure, arriving at your merchants’ sites in an open-to-buy mindset.
It’s your PREselling effort that will boost your traffic-to-merchants and
Conversion Rate, which in turn maximizes your income.
~~ End of Common Mistake Corner ~~
The #1 Affiliate Reality
“Your Conversion Rate will literally vary from 1% to 10% (and at times, as much as 20%!), purely because of...
1) HOW YOU REACH your visitor, and…
2) WHAT YOU SAY to her, and…
3) HOW YOU REFER her to your merchant.”
Relevant Posts:
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