AffiliatesNeeded.Com What's New In Affiliate Marketing

The many hidden (and not so hidden) talents of our members have not gone unnoticed by the team here at Affilorama. We think that you’re all pretty special, and we’re lucky to have a supportive community where people are happy to help each other out.

So, we thought this is the perfect place for our members to make a bit of extra cash by lending a helping hand – AND the perfect place for our members to easily find services offering exactly what they’re after!

This is how our brand new corner of the forum was born – a place for our members to connect with each other to offer and find services. We’ve called it Affilorama Services.

What kind of services are we talking about?

Well,
this is an affiliate marketing website, so the services that are best offered here are those that can help out affiliate marketers, and
especially those relevant to our training products like
AffiloJetpack and AffiloBlueprint. Here are a few ideas to get the ball
rolling…

Writing services

• Are you specialized at writing in particular niches?
• Can you rewrite articles faster than you can read them?
• Do you have a knack for writing great sales copy or banner copy that converts?
• Maybe you’re a fast typist who can transcribe video and audio?

These will go down a treat with our AffiloBlueprint and AffiloJetpack members – offer your service now!

Design services

• Fancy yourself as a talented cartoonist?
• Or really good at making animated banners?
• Like to create eBook and 3D covers?
• Maybe you’re an all-round talented web designer who can offer the whole package?

Website creation services

• Are you an expert in working with Xsite Pro or WordPress?
• Able to write code really well in a specific language?
• Maybe you’re an expert in putting together AffiloJetpack or AffiloBlueprint sites

SEO, Marketing, and more

• Are you a link building pro?
• A fantastic website critic?
• Maybe you’re skilled in website optimization and usability design?
• Good at video creation?
• Social Media guru?

… How else can you help? Offer it now!

So, you’ve got a service to offer?

Great, offering your service on Affilorama Services is really simple.

All you need to do is create a new thread in ‘Affilorama Services’ that follows the following example ad:

=====================================================================================
Thread Subject: Setup of 1x AffiloJetpack site (AffiloJetpack members only) – $20
(Must contain a description of the service you’re offering, and the price.)

Thread content: (Should contain the details below).

Price: $20 USD (This should be stated in USD only)
Timeframe: 7 days
Paypal Address: simon@domain.com Please use your Affilorama username as reference on payment.

Description: Please provide a clear, detailed description of the service you are
offering and what the customer can expect in terms of quality, and
actual work completed.

=====================================================================================

What else should I know?

You must meet a few basic requirements before you can offer a service, and these include using Paypal as a safe payment provider, and having an Affilorama forum post count of at least 20.

If you’re looking for a service, please note that ‘services wanted’ type posts are not permitted, you can only use the forum to register your interest with advertised service providers. For more details on the specifics, please read the post How to Offer a Service.

We are excited to be introducing this new feature for our members, and want the forum to
serve as a convenient place for you to offer and find services.
Please help us to keep this a productive and beneficial place for all by
respecting our terms.

Visit the forum now, or see you there later!

Hi Everyone,

This is actually my first blog post of 2011.

That might sound a little slack, as it’s almost the end of January,
but I started the year in Malaysia at my Aunty’s 70th, then I flew back
to New Zealand to find that there had been another earthquake while I’d
been away and had to move offices as there had been significant damage
to our buildings. Following that I went to Las Vegas for a week for
Affiliate Summit, and now I’m back in good old New Zealand

So as you can see it has been an eventful time lately.

I’ll fill you in on the Las Vegas trip soon, and show you several
video testimonials that I recorded with successful students of mine whom
I happened to bump into while I was at Affiliate Summit.

For those of you who have emailed asking how my son is doing, he’s
crawling really fast, climbing up on furniture and smiles lots. He’s 9
months old, but is the size of a one year old, he’s growing up fast!

Now getting on to the main purpose of this blog post, I actually decided to make this on the spur of the moment.

I did it on the spur of the moment, mostly out of sheer frustration
at the number of you aren’t succeeding anywhere nearly as well as you
should be online.

And most importantly, I recorded this video out of an intense desire
to see you make 2011 THE YEAR that you turn your financial destiny sky
high.

These are my biggest core fundamentals that make me over 7 figures EVERY YEAR online. Pay close attention.

I apologize for being a little rambley, and for the audio sometimes
not matching up with my face – that’s because I used Camtasia to record
the video off my webcam on my laptop, as I wanted to try it out.

The key thing I want you to get out of this video is that the 3 core
fundamentals that I mention in this video are the exact 3 fundamentals
that I’ve religiously followed over the years in order to build a 7
figure a year online business. More importantly, every other 7 figure a
year marketer that I know follows a similar pattern with their wealth
creation (even if they make their money outside of online marketing).

Here’s the video, please comment too, I love to hear feedback:

Also, don’t forget that tonight’s incredible wealth building webinar with Eben Pagan commences on Monday at 9pm EST (yes you read that correctly, the date has changed to Monday).

Isn’t it time that you made it a priority to learn about money and
wealth – so you you control it – rather than it controlling you?

Full details are below, register now and I’ll see you on the live webinar!

==> http://www.affilorama.com/redirect/ebenwebby

To your long term success!

Mark Ling

Hi everyone,

I was talking to my friend Ben Shaffer last week about website
conversion rates and he recommended that I check out a blog post by Rich Schefren
which was all about ‘Billy May’s Marketing Magic’

Billy Mays was one of the greatest TV pitchmen ever, he was
really good at taking a product that you didn’t know about and in a short 2
minute mini-informercial he’d get you picking up the phone and ordering it. He
was amazing.

Unfortunately, died recently, so Rich Schefren decided to
honor him by writing a detailed blog post about Billy and his methods for
pitching products. It included several videos from his commercials and I found
it to be thoroughly fascinating.

Click here if you wish to go and read that blog post.

After reading it, you might want to check out the notes that
I took from it. I basically wrote them into a checklist that I can print out
and look at whenever I’m writing email copy or salescopy or any form of copy
designed to get people to buy stuff.

My Notes:

____ How can I demonstrate that there will be instant and/or
fast results?

____ Expose the pain they may currently be feeling.

____ How can I demonstrate this in a way that gets my
prospects to say WOW?

____ How can I demonstrate that this product produces
seemingly effortless results (like  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLDXfYDAziI&feature=player_embedded#!)

____ Introduce a new way to do something to ‘suspend
disbelief’, introduce a new mechanism. Don’t just make a bigger bolder claim,
introduce a new secret mechanism that makes this all possible. Your secret
mechanism will make your claims seem more reasonable.

E.G. "The secret the six carbon steel blades combined
with the rotating action – each time you tap it rotates and chops at a
different angle and never misses a thing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpqiyFPdHZ4

____ Contrast your superior solution with the frustration
other products are giving to your

prospects. OR offer other types of contrast like
before/after, with/without your solution,

etc.

____Use a Sinatra example:

“In Frank Sinatra’s classic “New York, New York,” he sings
about starting a new life in New York City, and the chorus declares, “If I can
make it there, I can make it anywhere.” This is what is called the “Sinatra
Test’ – an idea when one example alone is enough to establish creditability in
a given domain. For instance, if you’ve got the security contract for Fort
Knox, you’re in the running for any security contract (even if you have no
other clients). If you catered a White House function, you can compete for any
catering contract. It’s the Sinatra Test: if you can make it there, you can
make it anywhere.”

An example from the cult-classic infomercial The Ginsu
Knives; “The Ginsu is so sharp it can cut through a tin can and still cut a
tomatoe like this.. It can chop wood and still remain razor sharp…”

____ Use a direct command to ask for the order "Order
Right Now"

____ Offer great reasons to buy NOW and not later e.g. great
bonuses, better pricing, etc.

____ Have a strong money back guarantee

____ Use testimonials that enhance credibility and use ones
that make people say ‘wow’

I hope you enjoyed this blog post.

All the best for a fantastic rest of the week ahead!

Mark Ling

Put your hand
up if you’re not a fan of long sales copy…

Now keep your
hand up if you have purchased a product after reading its long sales copy.

That’s what I
thought.

No matter how
much some of us just don’t like long
sales copy, we can’t escape the truth that good long copy actually works – and
it works well.

So how do you
take this seemingly conflicting knowledge and apply it rationally when choosing
affiliate programs to promote?

Gravity
ratings can be excellent indicators, but they’re only one  of many metrics that determine a program’s
potential and there are times when they don’t come in handy – such as new
product launches.

Or you may
find yourself promoting products that you have no personal need or desire to
purchase. For example, if you are an affiliate looking at promoting a golf
product with no interest and minimal knowledge of the niche, you’ll likely find
it hard to relate with the market. This makes it much harder to gauge the
effectiveness of the sales copy, because you can’t simply test it on yourself.

In order to
quickly gain an informed perception of a sales page’s ability to convert, here
are the top five questions you should be asking:

1) Do the headlines, bolded, and highlighted text paint
a cohesive story on their own?

Are you able
to understand what the product is, and why anyone should feel compelled to buy
it by simply skim reading the eye-catching headlines and copy?

Value is key
here – you should be able to instantly identify the product’s value and see how
it justifies the price point.

2) Does the copy provide enough detail to thoroughly
explain what benefits the buyer will receive from this product?

This is
important – the copy needs to thoroughly describe the product but this
description must be benefit-focused, NOT feature-focused.

Example
feature description:

“This product can do XYZ, which makes it go whiz-bang,
really fast!”

This may be
impressive to the product creator, but why should the reader care that it can
go whiz-bang really fast?

Example
benefit description:

“This product can do XYZ, so you can cut your research
time in half and instead spend more time doing the things you love.”

This is, of
course, a very general benefit description – better copy would identify the
‘things’ the reader loves, and capture their attention with those. This brings
us to the third question you should ask yourself…

3) Does the copy correctly identify the buyer market
and speak directly to them?

Take a closer
look at the benefits stated – are these appealing to those who the product is
intended for?

If the copy
fails to engage the reader, they will stop reading and not purchase – simple as
that.

4) Does the copy create a sense of trust?

No matter how
legitimate and well-intending the merchant is, if they are unable to establish
a relationship of genuineness and trustworthiness, you can bet your bottom
dollar the sales page won’t convert.

Trustworthy
copy will be scattered with testimonials – from short in-text references to
case studies. These should be a mixture of success stories and endorsements
from other, relevant businesses. Testimonials from high profile businesses
bring extra credibility because readers can easily identify with them.

Be sure to
consider the claims made by the copy too. Alarm bells should go off at
hyperbole. Are the claims believable?

While
impressive, it would be an extremely tough job to convince me that you
drastically improved your golf handicap so much that you went from worst player
to best player at your club in less than 24 hours… would you be convinced?

5) Does the copy create a sense of urgency?

If it fails to
give explicit reasons why the reader needs to purchase the product right now, then they won’t purchase it immediately.

They may be
close to being sold on the product, but without a sense of urgency they’re
likely to leave the page and have a think about it, and probably purchase a
more convincing product in the meantime.

If you can
answer yes to these five questions when assessing sales copy, then you’re
looking at a sales page that has the ability to convert well.

What do you
look for when assessing a merchant’s sales page? Share your tips with us in the
comments below.

It’s that time of year again! 2010 sure has
gone fast.

It’s been busy at Affilorama over the past
12 months – we’ve welcomed many new members to our community, launched
AffiloJetpack, and taken pleasure in helping our members over the hurdles and
towards success with their affiliate marketing businesses.

Here are some highlights of the last 12
months from the Affilorama blog…

January

Chris talks about
the changing demands of marketing brought on by the ‘global age’, in his post “Cultural
conflict – Do we need to start thinking globally in our marketing?”

February

Mark imparts
some pearls of wisdom picked up from his visit to
the Affiliate Summit this year.

March

A guest post from internet marketing expert
Matt Carter reminds us about the classic
online marketing mistake of becoming “A Jack of all trades but a master of
none”.

April

Grace takes us through how to
use Affilorama’s new website ping tool, and why affiliate marketers should use
it.

May

Mark announced that he is now a proud
father! His son, Benjamin Logan Ling, was born on April 22^nd and
there was an overwhelming number of well-wishes from the Affilorama community. Now
8 months old, Benjamin is a happy, healthy, gorgeous growing baby about to have
his first visit from Santa! Here’s a recent photo of him:

June

Aletta writes her last witty blog post
before leaving, outlining the theory she had developed of “The
30% Brain” and why it’s bad to assume your visitors are smart.

July

Mark gives us some top tips on how to
rank highly in MSN’s Bing.

August

I detail the what,
where, who, when, how and why of rewriting articles for all of our new
AffiloJetpack members who were busy doing exactly that!

September

On 4^th September at 4.35am, an earthquake
measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale hit Christchurch (Affilorama’s
headquarters) at a depth of just 11km. We’ve now had over 4000 aftershocks in
the region, check out this quake-map
visualization for an idea of just how much it has been shaking here!

October

We introduce
the Affilorama YO Blog, a place for Affilorama members to share their
knowledge with the Affilorama community through blogging. There have been some
top-notch posts so far, check them out
or submit one yourself!

November

Haden provides some great pointers for optimizing your
blog post to make the most of traffic from the search engines.

December

I ask the question, what
does Christmas mean for Affiliate Marketers? This post explores some ways
you can make the most of the Christmas demand with your affiliate marketing
business.

And with little more than a week left in
the year, it’s time for the team at Affilorama to wish all of our members a
very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Here’s to 2011 – bring it on!

The benefits of posting on the YO blog are
not limited to gaining a quality link and a boost to your reputation. If you do
it right, and use these SEO optimization tips, you’ll maximize the backlink
benefits and increase the likelihood of that post being featured in the search
engines and grabbing some free traffic.

Yes, it involves a little more effort on your
part, but the payoff is more than worth it. Not to mention you’ll end up with a
more focused article and increase your chance of getting published!

If you’re looking for more in-depth coverage
on SEO, check out our lessons on optimizing for on-page SEO factors. In the mean-time here are a few
basic things you should keep in mind which can help you increase the SEO
quality of your post.

Keyword Research

Even if you’ve got a good idea for the topic
you want to write about, it’s worth doing a little keyword research before you
begin writing to make sure you’re targeting the right terms for SEO.

What you’re looking for

For a blog post, you’re looking for one
primary keyword, and a few variations around that keyword.

The primary keyword will be related to the
main focus of your article, and preferably have a good amount of traffic. 1,000
to 10,000 searches per month is a good target. For example, if you were to
write a post on Google Adwords for Affiliate Marketing, the phrase ‘Adwords
Affiliate Marketing’ has a monthly search volume around 5,000.

The variations around your primary term can
be longer or more targeted keywords. For example, ‘Make money from Google
adwords affiliate marketing’ has around 1,000 searches per month and ‘Google
Adwords Affiliate Marketing’ around 660.

Keep in mind that 55% of all searches are for
phrases with more than 3 words, so don’t be afraid of targeting the longer
keywords.

How to do it

Keyword research for a blog post is similar
to any other keyword research you’ll do for your site in general. If you want
some more in-depth tips on how to do keyword research, check out our lesson on How to do keyword research.

The important thing is to not get too bogged
down when doing the research. I like to set myself a strict time limit to get
it done (usually one hour), and I’d recommend you do something similar.

A couple of suggestions:

• Think about what you would type while searching. Put yourself in the prospects shoes.
• A full 20% of all queries searched today have not been searched for in the past 6
  months, so don’t be afraid to try terms that don’t feature in the keyword tools
  yet.
• If you want some quick ideas, go to Google (make sure Google Instant is off) and
  type in your main term followed by a single space. The suggestion drop down box
  can be a great source of keyword alternatives or secondary phrases.

Writing

The first thing you must keep in mind when
actually writing your post is quality. You must give your audience something of
value.

If you work to make your piece something worth
reading, then it’ll get read and in turn you will get the benefits that go with
that, like more traffic. Not to mention when you’re guest posting (like on the
YO Blog) your writing must meet a certain level of quality before it will be accepted.

A couple of tips for high quality writing:

• Write your article, and then leave it alone for a day or two before you come back and
  edit it. The time away will give you a fresh perspective and you’ll see ways to
  improve it that you didn’t see the first time.
• Practice makes perfect. Don’t be afraid to go through two or more drafts.

Title & URL

Your title is the main headline for your
post. It needs to be able to grab the reader’s attention as well as get
recognized in search engines for your targeted keyword. Doing both is sometimes
tricky, if you’re stuck it’s more important to go for engaging and descriptive
than it is to include your keyword at all costs.

With a YO post you can’t directly control the
URL as one will be auto-generated based on your title. This makes it more
important to try if you can to include your keywords in the title, as unlike on
your own site you won’t be able to change the URL independently.

Image

Including an image can help you rank in the
search engines as well as help with image searches. Search engines look at two
things here: the alt attribute and the file name.

The alt attribute is the description of your
picture that appears if you have pictures turned off in your browser. Although
with a YO post you can’t control this directly, by giving your file a
descriptive name, ideally including your main keyword, you’re giving yourself a
good chance of having a relevant alt attribute. For example,
‘Google-adwords-screen.jpg’ rather than ‘pic67000001.jpg’

An appropriate and eye-catching picture will also
help your post stand out on the page. The best picture size for a YO submission
is 240x240px.

Body

• Your YO blog post has a minimum post length of 300 words. 500-800 is a good target
  to shoot for.
• For a shorter post, you can look to include your keywords around 2-3 times. On a
  longer post, 3-4 times. Don’t get too hung up on this, the main thing is
  readability.
• Within the first 50 words you’ll want to include your main keyword once. If that’s not
  practical, then at least within the first 100 words.
• Use sub headings to break up your text into readable sections. They might contain
  your keyword but this is not essential.

Links

Proper linking is perhaps the most important
part of the equation. For a YO post you’re allowed a link out to your site. So
make the most of that and be sure to use anchor text that includes the keyword you’re looking to rank for.

Good writers often include other links in
their writing as well. It’s worth linking out to pages on the site which are
relevant to your subject. Just like I have with the ‘anchor text’ link above.
If done correctly this increases the value to the reader. If overdone it makes
a post incredibly hard to read. So keep it to no more than 2 or 3 internal
links.

To Sum Up

That’s the quick guide to getting your YO
post SEO ready. As you can see, it’s not difficult and by making sure these basics
are right you’ll get the most from your writing efforts.

Quick recap:

• Know what keyword you’re targeting
• Use it in the title and the picture filename
• Use it once in the first 50 words, and sprinkle a few variations throughout the rest of your post
• Use links within the same site to help explain key points
• When linking to your site, use anchor text that includes the keyword you want your site ranking for
• And above all – give value to your reader

There aren’t any hard and fast rules, but if
you keep these guidelines in mind when you’re writing you can’t go too far
wrong.

We look forward to seeing more of your
quality submissions in the near future.

If you are like me, you’ve read many things about affiliate marketing and even success stories about affiliates who built a huge business with it. It can be frustrating for a beginner to figure out how to do things right in order to begin working in this business because there is just so much information (sometimes contradicting) out there. To figure things out, you’ll find 5 action steps you can take to get on the right track.

The first step towards earning money with affiliate marketing is to research various markets and products. You need to find a market where there are a good amount of customers that can play in your favour. You also need to find a product or service that people want to buy. To get a handle on this information, you should use Google’s Keyword External Tool and research various market ideas with the help of sites like Amazon and eBay.

The second step is to establish your Internet presence. Most affiliate programs do not require that you have your personal site because you can simply use your unique affiliate ID to bring visitors. I would recommend however that you have your personal Internet site to use promotion methods such as search engine optimization, PPC and PPV, and various other approaches to marketing.

The third step is to come up with your marketing approach. There are several conventional methods to market online so it is extremely important that you focus your efforts on them sequentially until things start developing. For instance, if you want to get visitors to your site using article marketing, learn about article directories, how to write articles the right way, and other things you need to master until you get it right.

The next step is to put some money aside for your advertising. There are many ways to market online for free but eventually you’ll need to spend money on advertising if not on outsourcing. Figure out how much money you can spend monthly and where the money will go for your affiliate marketing business. This is something that only few affiliate marketers do and as a result ultimately they spend their budgets on unnecessary things.

The fifth step is to take action! You do not have to spend a ton of money like many companies to get off the ground. You can start with two hundred dollars and gradually scale up depending on the level of your successes. This is the correct way of growing your business – start small and scale up when you hit a money stream.

A good example of an affiliate program is LGN Prosperity. This is an opportunity based on discount travel. Travel is a huge industry and people are always searching the Internet for discounted hotel rates so LGN Prosperity is centered on a in-demand product. You can find more information about LGN Prosperity by going to this link: http://www.successuniversity.su/article.

Most people dream of letting go of our careers and working for ourself. Being your own personal employer can supply the accountability degree you wish in addition to the motivation to execute effectively. Operating your individual small business generally suggests lots of effort although the benefits can be quite remarkable.

On the subject of starting up a small business, many individuals get worried. Many people worry about losing that security that their work offers provided. Additionally, they worry about the risk involved in starting up your own personal business enterprise. The financial risk is worth considering being that just about anywhere from 70-90 % of all smaller businesses fail within the first year.

Affiliate internet marketing such as described in products like Blogging To The Bank is a wonderful approach to work for yourself along with minimal financial risk. When you function as an affiliate you always offer a variety of goods or solutions to make money. You will still have to work extremely hard in order to market your small business; however the economic danger for you is extremely minimal.

A few who have started out their own internet affiliate marketing home based business speculate about internet affiliate computer software. They question if it will be worth acquiring and what it can do for his or her unique small business. The answer to theses inquiries is placed totally upon the individual affiliate as well as the kind of company they may have. Nonetheless, there are several general things to try and think about prior to deciding to spend 100′s of dollars upon internet affiliate software packages.

Before buying any software package, you need to apply some perspective. Software programs will never take a floundering organization and get it straight into fortune 500 status. It’s just an instrument to help you in several aspects of running a business enterprise. You will still need to accomplish all of the difficult work on your own. The software will only help you up to a certain stage. It’s not a magic pill for your own small business.