Growing your blog income through affiliate marketing is an ongoing process. Seasoned affiliate marketers plan their campaigns months and sometimes even years ahead and often have several running simultaneously for each of their niches or affiliates. It takes time to get to this level of expertise and efficiency – and money to automate and outsource. Take a deep breath. You do not need to start at that level but if you want to earn a healthy online income then start you must.
One of the easiest ways to plan affiliate marketing campaigns is to center them around events, seasons, celebrations etc. The obvious are Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s, Mother’/Fathers’s Day … and so on. No matter what your niche is one you can definitely work one or two of these special days into your marketing campaigns.
But why not separate yourself from the pack? Everyone is selling at Christmas and it’s not to say that you shouldn’t, but did you know that there are dedicated “days” or months to just about anything and everything under the sky? The narrower your niche, the more bizarre the relevant topic day, the more attention you can draw with your advertising.
An example might look something like this:
Niche: Left handed people
Domain: LeftHandedPeople.com
Is there a Left Hander’s Day? Yes. August 13.
Now is the time to start preparing for an all out campaign that should launch sometime in July. But you need to start to have all your tools in place and there is no better time to start than now.
1. Do you have a mechanism to capture leads?
If not think about what it might be that would entice your blog reader to register and leave their name and email. Here are some possible options:
- weekly or monthly newsletter
- e.report on being left handed: 17 – 20 pages on what it means to be left handed
- e.book on famous left handed people – write one yourself, or check around to see if there is one that is available for PLR(Private Label Rights): 50 – 70 pages.
2. Decide what your offer is going to be.
What about left handed mugs – message on the mug appears to the right of the handle. Or left handed scissors? Left handed golf clubs. The list is endless.
3. Dedicated domain name.
You do not need to buy new domain name, you can have a sub-domain that would look like this:
LeftHandedPeople.com/August-golf
LeftHandedPeople.com/August-mugs
LeftHandedPeople.com/August-scissors
4. Contact your affiliate vendor.
See if you can work out a one time offer for their top selling product. Now you have a special price for your unique market: the lefties. It is estimated that 7% – 10% of adults are left handed. That is a narrow niche yet a significant market.
5. Write your ad:
Write your copy for the sales letter – this is the long sales letter telling your prospects why they need a new set of left handed golf clubs. Check and see if your affiliate vendor already has one. If you are going for more than one item have a separate sales letter for each one, as in example #3 above, it should be a different sales letter and domain for golf clubs, the mugs and the scissors. Not everything has to be different, just a few words and phrases to reflect the offer. Have these ready to go for first week of August.
6. Marketing blueprint:
Decide how you are going to market this. Start warming up your prospects. Pre-write a set of autoresponder messages that will start going out mid-July. Space the messages by several days, decrease the spacing as August 1st approaches.
7. D-Day
August 01: the mass promo goes out to everyone on your list. Put up banners on all your relevant sites. Put out a press release : “Lefties Rule August 13″ and submit to all press release directories. If you have the budget by all means submit to those that are fee based, but if dollars are scarce use the free directories service.
8. Daily Activity:
Have something happening on the net every day until the 13th – newsletters, blog posts, forums, see if you can get guest blog space on some of the more popular blogs.
9. August 14:
Tally up your sales. You may still have some straggle in after the date but the majority of your sales should be in by the 14th. Review everything: what sold, what promo delivered most traffic, what venue converted most, which gave the biggest return on your time/investment. Make immediate notes and make the tweaks to next year’s promotion while they are still fresh in your mind.
File away till January or February of the following year. Dust it off then, make changes, add new things you may have learned in the interval.
For a list of holidays/bizarre dedicated days etc. go to:
http://www.brownielocks.com/month2.html
For example, did you know that February is National Start a Business Month? I didn’t either. This morning I was pleasantly surprised when while doing my blog rounds I read this post on Pat’s Smart Passive Income blog. The article is on whether you should form an LLC for your business. You will notice that this is part I. Now Pat is a real savvy blogger who pulls in significantly more than just coffee change from his blogging. Dollars to donuts he has shingled several posts and put a small campaign together that will garner him some extra sheckels, I mean, who isn’t interested in starting a business these days?
Chances are that the first year you do this, the results may be less than sterling. Here is what you will have achieved:
- an affiliate marketing model centered around specific holidays
- established control(s) campaign for your left handed market niche
For a list of holidays/dedicated days etc. go to:
http://holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/index.htm
Don’t go hogwild now. You probably want to mix them up – you know, the odd ball days with the more mainstream ones, don’t forget Christmas or Mother’s & Father’s Day!
To Your Awesome Blog Income Life!
Valentina
Growing
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