Like most Internet Marketers, I belong to various groups on Facebook. Most of them are about business and Internet Marketing.
One thing that really stands out is the number of people turning to the internet to try to make money. Seriously, with the economy like it is, and the number of people turning to online marketing, to qoute Omar Martin, “Now is the best time to start an Internet Marketing business.”
I really believe that. Now here’s the problem, yes anything worth pursuing is going to have challenges and problems. Those that know me know that I am a straight shooter and I will not post rainbows and unicorns promising you riches. I am going to post honest facts about Internet Marketing. It takes time, investment, and work.
Now, let’s get to the subject of this post and what prompted it.
I see all the time where people post in FB groups that they are new and want to know how to get people to buy through their affiliate links. This raises a few questions in my mind. How new are they? Did they wake up this morning and decide to be an Internet Marketer? Did they buy an eBook last week that told them affiliate marketing is the fastest and easiest way to make money online? Do they know anything about Internet Marketing?
Let’s be honest. There isn’t a single trade out there that you can enter without knowledge and start doing skilled work. To be an automotive technician, you have to know how to diagnose and repair automobiles. An electricians union will send you through an apprentice program before you can start doing the electrician’s job. You need to learn the skill to do the work.
Affiliate marketing is also a skill. There are some things you need to know. You get to know these things through learning and trial and error.
The first thing you need to do when you decide to get involved in marketing is to select a niche. One niche and stick to it. Then you need to use social media to establish a following or audience interested in that niche. create a lead magnet and squeeze page to send that following to in order to get them on your email list. What is a lead magnet? It is anything of quality that you can give away for free in exchange for their name and email. Okay so now you know that you need to learn how to choose a niche and create a lead magnet. Click this link and you will get a free report that will show you how to create a lead magnet that will work in any niche you choose.
Let’s look at a very basic thing to consider about affiliate marketing. If you are brand new, you have zero sales on the platform, and you apply to promote and get approved, you might want to reconsider if you want to promote that product. Now, that may sound harsh or like I have an attitude problem, but I am trying to help you. When a vendor receives a request to promote their product, they look at the profile of the affiliate. How long have they had the account? How many sales have they made? What is their refund rate? You see, these are important. If you send a lot of traffic and nobody buys, it hurts the vendor’s conversion rate. If you send buyers that always ask for a refund, then their refund rate goes up as well as yours. A high refund rate will hurt your chances to get approved to promote products and hurts the vendor from getting good affiliates to promote for them.
Don’t promote a product just because you can get a link for it. Know what that product is and know that it will do what the sales page says it will do. If you can’t get a review coy, then buy it, test it. Building a business does require financial investment. After you know that this is a good product and does work, apply to promote it. Use the notes to introduce yourself to the vendor and tell them how you plan to promote it. Let them know that you used the product and what you liked about it. Tell them if there is anything you didn’t like about it. Be honest, don’t tell them you have an email list of 10,000 and will send them a lot of sales if you have never started building a list or worse yet, have zero sales.
With Internet Marketing, reputation is everything. Don’t let your reputation be a bad one. Don’t be lying to your audience or vendors. Don’t tell your audience a product you are promoting will solve all of their problems if it is a product that is junk. Promoting one bad product can destroy your reputation with your audience. It can cost you all of the followers that bought it and send your refund rate so high that no good vendor will approve you to promote.
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