Blog Income Life

Blogging for Money and Loving It!

Posts Tagged Affiliate Marketing

The Week That Was: Feb 07 – 13

Feb 13

Posted by Valentina in Weekly Review | No Comments

What a week!   The city positively crackled with excitement as sidewalks spilled over with visitors from all over the world here to attend the Olympics .  Energy is high.  Hopes and aspirations  at levitation level.  Whether you live in the city or the burbs its hard not to catch Olympic fever.  Even though I crow with glee at the sight of blooming crocus, a slight drop in the temperature wouldn’t be all that bad – would do wonders for the mountains where the shushing events are taking place.  Ironic that last year at this time we had record cold temperatures and gobs of snow on the peaks – well we do have gobs of snow on the peaks, just not the ones where the events are scheduled!

This was the last week of my Internet Marketing Bootcamp.  Learned a bit more about WordPress which I will be putting to use within the admin area of my WordPress Direct program.  Polished up a few things on this site and I just might start a site on WordPress.org, just to put into practice the whole meal deal.

Participated in some Olympic revelry – planning on more over the next two weeks.

The week in review:

Musings On a Sunday Morn:  Done? Never! 07/02/01
Carlos Velez posted a comment which prompted a rebuttal and I had a bit of fun on how dishes never get done!    This was strictly off the cuff but apparently I hit on something somewhat accidentally: linking to comments!  Full Musings on a Sunday Morn reading

Affiliate Marketing:  Establishing a Control 11/02/10
What is a control?  In its simplest form a control is that system, process or campaign that produces the desired result; in affiliate marketing that result is sales.  The campaign that delivers the best sales results becomes the control. In this article I write on how to set up your first control.

The Mitts That Were Seen Around the World: 11/02/10
Went off topic – had a good time!  Actually, what was not off topic was how “co-incidences” happen.  I believe that  “coincidences” are not accidental at all and had alluded to that in a previous article when I wrote about my friend and author Wendy Atkinson. Back to the mitts … read how the lowly mitten has become the fashion item of the season & more.

Coming up:  This week nose to the grindstone – err… fingers to the keyboard. Setting up my affiliate marketing campaign so that I can establish a control for it.  Target date is to have it up and running March 01.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

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Affiliate Marketing: Establishing a Control

Feb 11

Posted by Valentina in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing | 2 Comments

What is a control?

In its simplest form a control is that system, process or campaign that produces the desired result; in affiliate marketing that result is sales.  The campaign that delivers the best sales results becomes the control.

The dilemma that an affiliate marketer faces is do I first set up a system or do I first make the sales and build a system around that result?

Answer:  yes and yes.

Sales is the backbone of any successful business – you can have the best product in the world but without sales you have no business.  By now you have selected your affiliate product.  Here is what a typical marketing funnel looks like:flow chart

You now have the bare bone structure for a system. That is where you start.  Lets examine the flow of such a funnel:

  1. Advertising:
    First you have to create the offer.  With affiliate marketing, especially with information products, this is often already done for you. But remember if you send your prospects directly to the affiliate’s sales page, you do not capture the lead.
  2. Capture:
    The way to get around this is to create your own offer.  It can be a free newsletter, an e.book, an introductory 7-day course, a CD or some other ethical bribe.   The idea is that you give it away for free.  It should be something that is in alignment with what your affiliate product is.  Let’s take my affiliate Atomic Blogging which is advertised on this site as an example.

    My options are:

a)  Just put up the banner which when clicked goes directly to the vendor’s sales page.  If the visitor buys, I make a commission.  That is good.  That is the job of the banner to the right.

or

b) Develop my own ad.  I have done this with the ABC’s of Blogging banner which you see on this site.  This is a free PDF on blogging for money.  When a visitor clicks that banner, they are directed to a capture page which asks for their name and email.  This is needed so that the visitor can receive the link to the download.

When the visitor submits the information it is directed to my autoresponder which “captures” the visitor’s name and email and immediately sends out the link to the PDF download.

I now have a qualified lead.  I know that this person is interested in blogging. The name is loaded into my blogger prospects list. My loaded autoresponder follows up with an email within 24 hours inviting the prospect to purchase Atomic Blogging

3.  Follow Up:
I am currently working on another option. After clicking on the download link, a popup sales page will appear with the Atomic Blogging offer.  Why?  Because the visitor is in action mode and may be ready to make a purchase right then and there.

Because this involves some tech type stuff my goal is to have it all up and running by the end of the month with tracking implemented for each option.  The method that delivers the best results will become my control.

4.  Relationship Building
Not everyone that downloads the free PDF will buy the Atomic Blogging product.  These people will receive my pre-loaded, time spaced  emails with helpful information on blogging.  Some of the pre-loaded messages may include some information on Atomic Blogging which hopefully convert into a sale.

5. REPEAT.
Each option is a separate campaign.  Each will be tracked to the minutest detail.
The campaign that becomes the control will be the one that all other campaigns will be measured against.

It is best to run your control several times, tweaking where necessary.  Run the identical campaign but with two small differences and test to see which one pulls in the better results. It can be something as simple as the placement of a word.  This is called split testing or put another way it’s fine tuning the art of internet marketing and the way to building an enviable blog income.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

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Tools of the Trade

Jan 25

Posted by Valentina in Affiliate Marketing | 9 Comments

Now that you have selected an affiliate to promote and bought a unique domain name it is time to fill your box with some basic tools.

1. YOUR OWN SITE –  LANDING PAGE

The good thing about affiliate marketing is that the better affiliates already have collateral material ready for you including the “long sales letter” if you want to use it.  You could just redirect your new domain name to your affiliate URL – that way the traffic goes directly to the vendor’s site and buys the product.  You get the commission.  Easy as pie.

But you really want more.  You want to capture that buyer’s name and email address so that you can send your newsletters, emails, updates and valuable information to your customer.  That is where your own landing page …  alternately referred to as a squeeze, portal or capture page comes in. Now each of these have shades of difference, but basically their main job is to entice the visitor to give you their name and email address.

This is merely a mini site that is a page long – in this instance a “page” is not a designated size, it can be a short 5 x 8, a typical 8-1/2  x 11, or, go on and on like a roll of paper.  On this page you offer an ethical bribe so that the visitor gladly fills out her name and email address.  That ethical bribe can be in the form of a free ebook, a video or cd, a subscription to a free newsletter or if you can afford it a discounted price to the affiliate product (limited number, limited time), but in order to receive these they need to register through your landing page.

2. HOSTING

If your blog is already self hosted then that is where you host your new affiliate domain name.  I use Hostgator . This was the host that was recommend when I was going through the 30 Day Challenge last summer. I find their customer service to be excellent and their pricing is competitive with other hosting companies.  Another company I see cropping up more and more often is Blue Host.

3. AUTORESPONDER

An autoresponder manages your list.  It is a way to stay in touch with your prospects, to build rapport, establish credibility and promote new products and services.  You can program a thank you page to show up after a product has been purchased.  You can keep your prospects and customers updated on new developments in your business.  An autoresponder can have sub lists so that your customers are separated from your prospects, or perhaps they responded to different promotional material that way you can customize your messages to sync with their interests.

One of the most important features of an autoresponder is that about 90% of it is on autopilot – periodically you will want to interrupt pre-loaded messages with something new and fresh with a broadcast.  Use and abuse your autoresponder, it is there to serve you, your business and your subscribers – the more you know about how to use it, the stronger your business will be. A good autoresponder starts at about $10 per month and increases as your prospect list grows.  I use iContact . It was recommended to me by my mentor as a user friendly service and indeed I found that the learning curve was minimal.

4.  LINK TRACKING

Test, test & test again and make sure that everything you do to market your affiliate is tracked precisely.  What link tracking does is that it gives you information on every URL that you have published, whether it is by email, advertisement, articles, pay-per-click, even offline. A link tracking software is way over and above the statistics that your platform system or hosting company provide – those are just an overview of traffic and the source of that traffic. 

As you become more comfortable with your affiliate marketing efforts, you will want to mine deeper into which ad or words or  title drew the most traffic and converted in sales.  You can subscribe to a monthly link tracking software such as Website Gear from $10 a month or buy from about $300 upwards.

5.  LINK CLOAKING SOFTWARE

You don’t always need link cloaking but it is a good practice to get into.  What does link cloaking do?  It changes the original URL to a different one, while still leading the visitor to the same destination – in other words, the original URL is cloaked, or hidden. One of the reasons you may want to cloak the original URL is for sheer appearance.  Have you seen URLs that take up a whole line, something like (not a real URL)

http://www.valentinasaffiliates.com/linktracking=img&affID12345

I have seen URLs that are twice the length of the above.  Not only does it look cumbersome but it is much easier for the link to break, or it can be so long that your prospect needs to cut and paste it into the browser bar – some just won’t bother and another sale is gone.

Another reason to cloak your affiliate URL is, well people can be funny.  Onliners are becoming insreasingly savvy and recognize an affiliate URL when they see one.    Sometimes, for whatever their reason might be they don’t want to have someone make a commission on their purchase so they eliminate that part of the URL that is affiliate sensitive and buy directly from the vendor… I know, the price is the same, go figure!

There are URL shortening services such a Tiny URL which are free.  The problem is that you have no control over how long the redirect will last.  Affiliate Cloner Software will do the job for a one time fee.

There will be other tools that you will want to add to your toolbox.  The five mentioned here are a good start and signal  your professionalism.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

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The Week That Was: Jan 17-23

Jan 23

Posted by Valentina in Mastermind, Weekly Review | No Comments

A week flies by so fast I often feel that I got nothing done, especially when I look at all the items I had on my “to do” list!  Do you ever feel that way?  I find that a  good antidote is to go review the week and highlight all the things that did get done.  Guaranteed you’ll feel better about your time – I know I do.   I also recommend that you not only highlight but double underline that which took you closer to your goal, focus on it and capitalize on it.  On that note I have got some good highlights to share with you about this week that was:

-  Highlight of the week for me was “guesting” at Dave Doolin’s Website In A Weekend blog.  Dave invited me to submit an article or two on MasterMinds.  I submitted a mini-series – what Dave terms as “shingling” your articles, yes, new term for me too!  This is my first “guest” gig and I am so honored to be on Dave’s blog.  You can read the articles:

How 5 Boys Achieved Unparalleled Success
A story is told of a handful of pals who achieved extraordinary success in their lives.  With the telling and retelling, the origin is somewhat hazy, but it is supposedly based on true life and while the details may be a bit scant, the concept is powerful. … read full story


Napoleon Hill Father of MasterMind
In his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill outlines 13 principles that his 29 years of research defined as common to every successful person.  One of those principles was the Power of the Master Mind which he defined as: “Coordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose.”  … read full article

Two more articles are scheduled for Jan 25 and 27.  Be sure to hop on over to Dave’s and read them, or better yet, subscribe to Website In A Weekend’s RSS feed.

Articles published at Blog Income Life:

Golden Nuggets for Your Blog Income – 18/01/10
A very special THANK YOU to Mike Paetzold for guesting here at Blog Income Life for the past week.  The series gave me some golden nuggets and exposed areas where I can certainly do some tweaking.  Below are some things that I took away … read full article.

Blog Income Org Chart – 19/01/10
Expand your thinking and your blog income.  It’s time to think beyond just a blog.  If you have not already incorporated yourself as a business, you will definitely want to do so as your online earnings grow.  I like to see things and thought it would be fun to put up an org chart of what my internet marketing business looks like….read full article and see the chart

Five Basic Steps to Start Your Affiliate Marketing: 21/01/10
What is so powerful about affiliate marketing is that you do not need to have a product of your own.  You profit by someone else’s research, development, production and fulfillment.  All you need to do is promote and convert your promotion into sales. In other words you get to make money without the worry, stress and up front costs of developing a product. … read full article

As to those items that were left undone … I think that I tend to put too many on my list.  I read somewhere that it is best to scale down the number and complete them, that way the  mind is being programmed for completion rather than partial completion.  Habits are being formed.  Done is better than almost done ……..hmmm… article brewing there.

And now for something a little bit different – starting tomorrow there will be a new feature to this blog “Musings on a Sunday Morn”  … Once upon a time I started a blog which I titled  Four O’Clock Thursdays.  The blog had no purpose other than to write on whatever it was that captured the mind at, well four o’clock on Thursdays.   After a few posts the time allotted was given a different job and the postings disappeared.  I miss writing that blog and thought that Sunday morning would a good time for those musings.  Now, I don’t promise a “musing” every Sunday … but do drop by on Sunday morns – or any morn for that matter,  the door is always open at Blog Income Life!

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

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Five Basic Steps to Start Your Affiliate Marketing

Jan 21

Posted by Valentina in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing | 11 Comments

Last week I had the honor of Mike Paetzold guesting here at Blog Income Life.  Mike’s posts were mostly directed to blogging yet the very same principles apply to affiliate marketing.  That’s how we get better and stronger  – reps at the gym build your body muscles, reps on the internet build your marketing muscles

Ewen Chia of Secret Affiliate Weapon says that when you master affiliate marketing you can your write own paycheck any time you want.  This self made mulit-millionaire made his first million focusing on affiliate marketing. In his book How I made My First Million on the Internet, Ewen sets out the step by step process that he employed to bring in the big bucks.

What is so powerful about affiliate marketing is that you do not need to have a product of your own.  You profit by someone else’s research, development, production and fulfillment.  All you need to do is promote and convert your promotion into sales. In other words you get to make money without the worry, stress and up front costs of developing a product.  You can even be choosy and take on products that are proven to convert well, its like betting on a sure horse.

Here are some basic tools that you will need to have:

#1.  HANG OUT YOUR SHINGLE

Tell the world you are open for business.  How are you going to promote your affiliate product?  Of course you can put up banner ads on the sidebar of your blog, as I have done here, but that of and on its own will not bring you many sales.  Have you ever noticed that in the offline world  big brand names appear in so many different media venues?  Coke ads  for example  appear in magazines, on billboards,  TV, as sponsors for major events, co-op with movie theaters, restaurants, and the list goes on and on.  That is marketing at its most.  As an affiliate marketer you need to do the same with your chosen product.

#2 – DIRECT MARKETING

One of the strongest methods of getting a message to your market is through direct opt-in marketing.  Strictly speaking direct marketing is the flyers and leaflets and “junk” mail that finds its way onto your porch or mailbox.  Internet marketing pioneers learned much from this method and with a few adjustments here and there developed a system that works.  So when I say “direct opt-in marketing” I am really referring to getting your message to your market’s inbox.  How do you do that without spamming?  You build an opt-in list.

#3 – OPT-IN LIST

This is a list of people in your market who have opted in to receive information from you.  It is permission based marketing by email that goes directly from your autoresponder to their inbox.  This is how you send them information about your product, about any specials that you may have, or an introduction to another similar type of product that may be a good add on to what they already have.  This works for both informational product as well as physical.

An example of this is the ABC’s of Blogging banner ad at the top of this page.  When you click that on you are taken to a long sales letter at the end of which you are invited to submit your name and email address and for that you will receive the link to a free PDF download of my e.book ABC’s of Blogging for Money.  Many marketers publish a newsletter and offer a free subscription – you may have seen such invites on other blogs.

#4 – VIRTUAL BILLBOARDS

Everything in the virtual world has a twin in the “real” world.  Virtual billboards  are mini sites and they are a full blown ad for the product that you are marketing.  Typically a good affiliate program will already have this type of collateral material ready for you,  and you can just go ahead and drive traffic to that mini-site, but it would be better if you could somehow manage to collect an opt-in before your prospect goes off to buy the product.  Don’t get me wrong, a sale is good but it’s better if in the process you can also add the name of the customer to your own list.  A future post will deal with how you can do this.

In future postings I’ll cover additional ways of growing your list.  As a point of clarification RSS feeds and email via Google does not contribute to your list.  Those are people who just want to know when you have fresh content on your blog or site – the contact information belongs to Google and you do not have access to it.

#5 – EZINE ADS

Look for online publications on your topic, be it a newsletter or an online magazine and place an ad.  This is going to cost money but you are advertising to a qualified target market.  Be sure to get the circulation numbers and other logistics such as the readership percentage and typical click through rate for each ezine broadcast.

These are some of the ways that you can promote your affiliate products.  As with anything it is starting, testing and tweaking.  It is best to start with one method, massage it till it starts to make money, then expand on the same method, when you get real good at it introduce another.  Indeed,  master affiliate marketing and you will be well on your way to living the big awesome on your blog income.

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina


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Blog Income Org Chart

Jan 19

Posted by Valentina in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing | 8 Comments

Expand your thinking and your blog income.  It’s time to think beyond just a blog.  If you have not already incorporated yourself as a business, you will definitely want to do so as your online earnings grow.  I like to see things and thought it would be fun to put up an org chart of what my internet marketing business looks like.  It also gives me a structure, one I can add on to – or make adjustments as needed.  Here is what my org chart looks like:

I’ve put INTERNET MARKETING as the holding company.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT  and BLOGGING  are each an “Internet Marketing” company.

BLOGGING is  the owner of each blog.  Each blog has its own set of affiliates.  Under Blog Income I have listed my affiliates for that blog.  This list will continue to grow as I add other affiliates.  I have a white board in my office and have drawn this chart on it – I see it every day and it gives me a better sense of business – it’s easy to lose sight of that fact when the commute is a scant minute and the dress code doesn’t stop at pajamas.

Just for the fun of it, put up your own org chart.  The good thing is that you can draw one any way you want.  Just imagine what you want your internet marketing business to look like in five years.  The parts that you can flesh out right now are the affiliates.

Select just one affiliate to start with and treat it much the same way that you did your blog.  Experts recommend that you have a domain name for each of your affiliates, or, at the very least, have each of your affiliates as a sub domain.

An example would be:

-  www.AllanasFavoriteAffiliates.com or
-  www.BestAffiliates.com

Both are fictitious.

Then for each affiliate you can have a sub domain without paying for a new one.  Here are some examples:

- www.AllanasFavoriteAffiliates.com/dogtraining
- www.AllanasFavoriteAffiliates.com/rawdogfood
- www.AllanasFovoriteAffiliates.com/puppytreats

Next stop for me is getting unique domain names for my affiliates.  I haven’t decided on how to organize them yet.  For the moment they are just being marketed directly to the vendor’s sales pages.

I’ve mentioned this before but it begs repeating – choose an affiliate that you are familiar with, whose service or product you are personally pleased with.  This is particularly important in the early stages of your affiliate marketing.  Later as you get to know your vendors well and trust them you can forego the third degree before promoting a new product of theirs.

Last week Mike Paetzold talked about  getting quality affiliates and pointed to some that are so obvious that they slipped right under my nose.   He said that the services you are currently using make for a good start – most online services have affiliate programs.  The only “service” I promote is Hostgator by just putting up a banner ad.  I just checked Go Daddy where I buy all my domains, and yes, they have a revenue sharing program as well but I think you really need to be a substantial internet marketer before going that route.

What are your thoughts about where your online business is going?  Do you see yourself  incorporating it into some sort of a legal entity?  How do you envision your chart?  What does it look like today?  In five years?

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Best……………valentina

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Golden Nuggets for Your Blog Income

Jan 18

Posted by Valentina in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, List Building | 8 Comments

A very special THANK YOU to Mike Paetzold for guesting here at Blog Income Life for the past week.  The series gave me some golden nuggets and exposed areas where I can certainly do some tweaking.  Below are some things that I took away

#1.  LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT
Every little zig that should ‘ave  been a zag, when corrected leads to knowledge and better understanding.  Of course there was a zig – mine!  Little things like the difference between an author and an editor in your admin make a difference.  Note to self: pay close attention to detail.

#2.  BLOGGING & LIST BUILDING
List building is an important fundamental in internet marketing, particularly if you, like me, have affiliate marketing as the next step in building a blog income.  What I found interesting in Mike’s post is that the blog and the list can serve each other equally well.  Use the blog as a billboard for your own ad inviting people to sign up for a newsletter,  a free ebook or perhaps even a webinar.  As your list grows from this source and others, you can now email your subscribers to update them on your latest blog posting.  This may sound redundant but not necessarily so.  People are busy and may not have the time to visit your blog daily to check for fresh content and if you post only three times a week or even weekly, sending an email to your subscribers is just plain good service.

#3.  NICHE & KEYWORDS
I have never seen such a clear cut flow chart of how to organize your niche and  supportive keywords:

Niche
Category
Keywords

Assigning a value to each category and the supportive keywords is very interesting.  I like the idea of using a term with four words, getting that to page one quickly, then fight for the more competitive three words within that term – the two words become more difficult, but at least you’re on your way.  Do this with each category and sprinkle your post with other keywords that you want to tackle down the road.  Its all about planting seeds for your success.

#4.  POST REVIEWS

On the heels of affiliate marketing, doing a review post on your affiliate is a good way to drive traffic to the affiliate sales page.  Mike pointed out that a good first set of reviews could be about the services you are already using – for example, I use Hostgator as my host, I use iContact as my autoresponder, and my platform is WordPress Direct There are other services that I use.  Some have affiliate programs.  Taking this bit of advice from Mike, I’ll be posting reviews on these products that way not only might the article result in a few affiliate sales if the my readers sign up for the service, but it will be useful information for others when deciding on which service to subscribe to.

#5.  FINDING QUALITY AFFILIATE PRODUCTS

Test. Test. Test.  As an affiliate you are promoting someone else’s product and the first step is to know that product.  I think that this is particularly true of courses and software.  Try it, if you like it, then become an affiliate.  Sometimes if you know the vendor very well and have already had a good experience with his previous products, you can go on reputation.  Another way is to check reviews on the product before you decide to promote it yourself.

Thank you, Mike. 

To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!

Valentina

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Finding quality affiliate products

Jan 15

Posted by Mike Paetzold in Making Money | 3 Comments

Mike Paetzold back again for the final day of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. Today the discussion will be on finding quality affiliate promotions.

Now the easiest way is to promote products that you have bought that are working for you and tools that you actually use. All too often I have seen people ignore the items they use.

Every blogger that has their own blog and domain already have a service they can promote.If you really like your blog host and have gotten great support it is really easy to tell others about it and most hosting companies have an affiliate program. (Oh and if you don’t like your host enough to tell others you probably need a new host ;) )

If you are building a list then you are using an autoresponder company. For my blog I use Aweber and have no problem mentioning it any time I talk about building a list. Gee, I just did didn’t I? Not hard to do is it?

Next is to find products that will help your own readers. One of the easiest ways is to use the big G (Google) and do a search for “your topic + affiliate program”.

You can find numerous programs for almost any niche. Check out what is available and sign up for those that will work for you.

For most in the internet marketing arena you can find digital products through Clickbank and PayDotCom. Digital products usually pay a much higher percentage than physical products do so if their are digital products for your niche these will usually pay more.

A couple other places to check are Commission Junction, Pepper Jam and Azoogle. Each has their own requirements to get approved for various products.

Remember that almost anything you can buy at your local mall or department store can be sold as an affiliate.

If you are just starting out I would not worry about finding affiliate products right away until you have your site up and some traffic arriving. Quite often the best affiliate programs will want to see the site you will be using to promote their program before they will approve you.

This is not a problem with the digital sites like Clickbank and PayDotCom but quite a few of the others want to see your site first.

Finally to properly promote a product it is important that you know the product. Other than some physical products (I have a site on LCD TV’s and I can’t test them all although I would like to) do I promote a product that I have not bought or at least reviewed.

It is hard to do a credible job for a product that all you know about it is what is on the sales letter.

Hope you have enjoyed my stay here and I am finished with this version of the blog tour. Does not mean I won’t be cranking out quality content and I welcome you to follow me on my regular blogs.

About the author

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Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends.

You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy.

Follow Mike on Twitter

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Review Posts – A great way to generate affiliate sales

Jan 15

Posted by Mike Paetzold in Guests | No Comments

Mike Paetzold back again for day 4 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. Today the discussion will be on using review posts for your affiliate promotion.

One of the best ways to pre-sell affiliate products or even your own product is to use a review post. This model works quite well if you follow a few simple rules.

!. Use the product name in your title. You want to rank in the search engines for the product name because you are looking for those that have heard of the product but are cautious buyers. They want more information on the product before they make a decision so they have gone to Google to find out what others have to say.

A good title tag will improve your chances of ranking highly for the product.

2. Give a fair review. Your visitor is not looking for they hype when following reviews (leave that for the sales letter) but more solid information on what the product does and who it is for.

Explaining how you are using it is key. Before the new FTC regulations I would normally have said give your exact results but that has become a problem now.

3. Compare the product to the competition if there is some and there usually is. (Link to the competing product too.)

4. What are the downside to the product. Nothing is perfect so letting people know what is missing or could be done better helps to build your credibility.

5. Ask for input from your readers. If you can get comments on your review it will increase the chance that your post becomes the tipping point that makes the reader decide to buy the product.

Follow these tips and you will find that doing honest reviews can be an excellent way to generate more sales.

Be back tomorrow for my last day here and I will be discussing finding the right affiliate products to promote.

About the author

align=left Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends.

You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy.

Follow Mike on Twitter

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The Old Bald Guy Blog Tour has arrived

Jan 12

Posted by Mike Paetzold in Guests | 1 Comment

Hi all. Let me introduce myself, my name is Mike Paetzold and this is the last week of my Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. I have been traveling from blog to blog across the internet and setting up my cyber tent to camp out for a week at a time. This is the last stop of the tour and it has been a fun time.

This week I will be talking about using a blog for affiliate marketing.

Now you can do this in any niche and it is probably easier to do in niches outside of the internet marketing area. Blogs work because Google has shown that they like blogs and the ease of use to add content helps you keep it current.

The topics that I will cover will be using your blog for…

  • List building
  • Finding a good niche
  • Review posts
  • Finding the right affiliate product

All of these things are important but the item that will help you the most is doing good research before you even start your blog. You need to find the right keywords to be able to rank and generate traffic from the search engines.

Finding the keywords that you can easily rank for and that are words searched for by buyers is the real key no matter what your business model. You can get more information on doing keyword research and finding a good niche check out the keyword research call.

Look forward to spending the week and look forward to your comments and questions.

About the author

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Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends.

You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy.

Follow Mike on Twitter

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