Affiliate Marketing Strategies

 

I spent about 2 years learning everything I could about Affiliate Marketing in college, but for "some reason" my income wasn't increasing every month like I wanted. The reason? I was too spread thin, trying way too many things at once!

 

The key to being successful as an affiliate is to pick your favorite strategy, master it, replicate to boost your residual income, then build on it with higher-level strategies. There are some people that have the time & money to start at the higher-level strategies (and they tend to make six figure salaries within the first year), though it's rare. If you're not in that group, I'd highly recommend starting with the 1st or 2nd strategy below. Then, as you become more comfortable (with your skills and paychecks), scale your business out with the "real deal" systems to make the big bucks!

 

Read on to see what I mean...

 

 

Strategy #1: "Bum Marketing"

 

What in the World is "Bum Marketing"? A dude named Travis Sago (a friend from Wealthy Affiliate) coined this term and made it really popular by explaining it as a method that he could teach a bum off the street (no skills, no money to invest, etc.) and have them making money using nothing but a library computer!

 

Sounds crazy I know, but here's how it works:

 

1) Find a starving crowd (lowe weight, learn a new language, cure health issues, make more money, etc.)

2) Find a solution to their problem (feed them what they're starving for) - i.e. Pick a good affiliate offer

3) Break down the mindset of the group into specific keywords they search for in the Search Engines (that are easy enough to rank for)

4) Create or outsource content (short articles with a little research) based around each keyword

5) Submit the content to free sites that allow you to use affiliate links (and have authority in the Search Engines)

 

That's it! Some of that may seem strange right now, like how to tell if the offer is "good", what keywords people search for, or getting ranked in Google for the keywords, but don't worry: it's easier than you might think...

 

Here are the pros & cons of the "Bum Marketing Method":

 

Pros:

- Easy & cheap to get started

- Builds small recurring income streams that add up over time from little effort

- Doesn't require a website or design skills

- Content can get ranked quickly since it's being submitted to authority sites

- You'll learn a lot of cool stuff from your research and writing!

 

Cons:

- You're building someone else's website, not yours (not as secure)

- Can get boring just constantly writing articles (until money starts flowing in of course...)

- The sites you submit your content to can do whatever they want (Less control than with your own site)

- Requires a lot of writing and market research unless you have the money to invest in outsourcing (although it's cheap: $5-10/article)

- Not as flexible: the sites you submit your content to have limitations like only including two links in a bio box below your article

- Takes quite a while to build up a full-time income (But making $100/month or so can happen pretty quickly)

 

Overall, this strategy has the lowest barrier to entry, which makes it a good one to start with. However, it's important to consider that this entire strategy is fragile in the longrun. If you stay focused with the resources below, the odds of something bad happening to your income are very low, but it could still happen. If you stick to pure marketing techniques (no spam, promote great programs that actually help people, etc.) then you'll be fine.

 

Resources Needed:

- Google Keyword Tool: The best free keyword research tools for this strategy (they tell you what people search for and how often)

- Squidoo.com: the best place to submit your content hands down! They allow affiliate links throughout the content, and you can add pictures, videos, etc.

- EzineArticles.com: The best article directory out there. Not as cool as Squidoo (max. 2 links, nothing but text, lots of ads), but great for short articles

- OnlyWire & SocialMarker: Use these tools to get your pages crawled by the Search Engines quickly (if they don't notice the page, it won't get ranked!)

 

Resources Recommended:

- Wealthy Affiliate University: A fantastic community of nothing but motivated affiliates. All the tools & training you'll need ($40/month)

- Micro Niche Finder: Amazing keyword research tool that finds perfect terms to dominate, analyzes their competition & finds affiliate programs for you ($67)

 

Imagine this: you start doing this, and you spend months writing articles with no guidance or direction, and you make ZERO cash. You give up, thinking this whole thing was just not for you. Now imagine this: you invest $39/month to be part of a community that you can learn from, and use time-saving tools included to do things the right way (without having to learn all the hard lessons yourself), and you start making $100-$500/month in profit within a few months of starting...

 

Then, you proceed to outsource more and more work with your profits, move on to even bigger and better strategies to eventually make $100,000+ every year!

 

Would you rather go through the toughest part of starting the business by yourself armed with nothing but hope, or with a community of over 20,000 affiliates to learn from and talk to that includes all of the tools you'll need to get your business off the ground?

 

Yes, it sucks that it costs $39/month for Wealthy Affiliate, but they charge because they offer a sensational service.

 

I seriously wish I could go back in time and just pay for these two things (instead of the $6,000+ that I spent learning this stuff). If you wanted to start any other business that could bring in passive income, you'd have to shell out $10,000's just to get started. $39/month is nothing compared to what you could be making in just a few months of hard work and applying what you learn from Wealthy Affiliate, so take action!

 

 

Strategy #2: "Niche Marketing"

 

While all of these strategies are technically "Niche Marketing" (because we pick niches, or markets, to promote stuff to), this strategy is a little different because it's based on diversifying into many niches, and incorporating your own websites into the mix!

 

This strategy is basically the same as Bum Marketing, but using your own websites makes things more secure (and increases potential revenue) for the longrun. Yes, this means it takes more work, but it's VERY worth it...believe me.

 

Oh yeah, and don't get all freaked out. Making websites doesn't always require knowing HTML code, and you don't have to buy $300 software programs just to make decent-looking sites. There are plenty of free options that work just fine, and most allow you to do everything without even seeing any code!

 

Here are the pros & cons of the Niche Marketing strategy...

 

Pros:

- Easy to get started

- Low investment required

- Builds many decent-sized recurring income streams that add up over time from your own websites

- Can make a LOT more money than Bum Marketing due to more control and flexibility

- Can be combined with Bum Marketing to make it more powerful

- Not as boring since you'll be working on so many different niches all the time, and doing more than researching & writing

- You'll learn a lot from your research!

 

Cons:

- Requires a more knowledge & skill than Bum Marketing

- The sites you build can fade away if you don't maintain them

- Because you'll be cranking out so many sites, you won't be able to make any one of them extremely high-quality

- Usually takes 6 months or so to be bringing in $500-$1,000/month without working anymore (Ahhh...residual income)

 

Once again, stick to the pure strategy of promoting legitimate, helpful products to the right people, without spamming in anyway. This strategy is all about quantity though, so quality can be tough. Here's what you're going to need to get started:

 

Resources Needed:

- *Host Gator*: The best hosting service available, provides unlimited websites, files & bandwidth for only $9.95/month!

- Google Keyword Tool: The best free keyword research tool for this strategy (they tell you what people search for and how often)

- PLR Pro: Why write content & make sites yourself when you can get 440 articles and a site builder/promotion tool for $147? What's your time worth?

 

Resources Recommended:

- Wealthy Affiliate University: A helpful community of nothing but affiliates, geared toward Niche Marketing. All the tools & training you'll need ($40/month)

- OnlyWire: Use this tool to get your pages crawled by the Search Engines quickly (if they don't notice the page, it won't get ranked!)

- Market Samurai: Amazing keyword research tool that finds perfect terms to dominate, analyzes their competition & finds affiliate programs for you ($67)

- NVU: If you want to make HTML sites without coding or buying software, NVU is the best free program I've found.

 

Here's the deal: If you decide you'd like to start making money with niche marketing, most full-time affiliates would recommend using blogs so you can crank them out quickly. However, imagine trying to keep up with making posts every week (or even every day) on each of 50 blogs! That's ridiculous, right? Well, only if you are trying to do everything manually, but who does that anymore? =)

 

If you want to do this right, invest in PLR Pro. Every month, they pick 11 profitable niches and give you 40 articles you can slightly rewrite to make your own for blog posts! The research is done for you, and rewriting takes like 1/10th the time writing from scratch takes, which means you can keep cranking 'em out.

 

Oh yeah, and each of the niche packs you get from PLR Pro comes with the best affiliate programs to promote in the niche, suggested keywords to target and get your blog ranked for, a header graphic to put on your site, and...here's the big one: a software tool that automatically builds & promotes the site for you!

 

Between this and Host Gator, you can easily make 5-10 nice sites each month, and start building a strong passive income quickly!

 

But what about keeping up with all the blogs? It's easy: if you use Host Gator, you can setup WordPress on one of your sites in 2 minutes flat, without knowing any code, or spending any extra cash! Then, you can copy/paste your rewritten content all at once, and set the "Time Stamp" for each post, meaning they will be published automatically on the days you set them to!

 

So, with Host Gator and PLR Pro combined, you can easily manage an infinite number of blogs, and each one can gradually add to your affiliate (or even advertising) income over time!

 

HINT: PLR Pro is expensive ($147/month as I write this, and it's already been $197/month before), but you do NOT have to pay for it every month! Some people don't know this, but you can actually stop paying for your membership long enough to get all of the blogs setup for the niche packs you received, then rejoin when you need more, which saves $100's over time (be sure to check with Daniel or Marc before doing this, just in case they changed their policy)! Keep in mind though that even spending this every month is nothing compared to what you could make from the sites you create with the content.

 

Not only that, but how do you value your time? Let's do some math real quick: It usually takes 20-60 minutes to write an article from scratch. So, if you were to write 40 articles to post to a blog with Time Stamp, it would take you anywhere from 13-40 hours, not including setting up the site, which would take about 5 more hours! Now, if you invest in PLR Pro, you could spend 10 minutes simply rewriting each article (far less stressful by the way), meaning you could setup a site in 6-7 hours total using their "Big Green Button" software.

 

It's your choice: write everything manually, taking 25 hours/site or so, or use PLR Pro and setup a better site in less than 7 hours!

 

So it's up to you. If you want to treat this as a business (and make some insane cash because of it), then don't waste time: sign up for PLR Pro & Host Gator and start building your Niche Marketing empire.

 

 

Strategy #3: "Authority Sites"

 

This is my all-time favorite Affiliate Marketing strategy! Does the title mean you have to be an authority in the niche you pick? Nope. In fact, some of the "Authority" sites I'm making are in niches I know nothing about, but I'm learning some cool stuff from them...=)

 

The key with this strategy is to combine the other two strategies, but focus on Quality, then Quantity.

 

See, here's the thing. Once you get good at this, or have the money to pay someone who is, you can make more from 1 kickass website than you ever could from 100 articles or niche blogs. Yep, it's true. Think about what that means: both of the strategies above are great ways to add to your income, and if scaled out properly, they can each make you $100,000+/year. But, building just 1-3 amazing websites (still just using Affiliate Marketing, nothing in the public eye or with huge development costs or anything), you can make more money! Talk about the 80-20 rule...that's more like the 95-5 rule.

 

Anyway, here's how it works: Instead of building 50 sites, each with 40 pages (2,000 pages total, in 50 different niches), you pick 4 niches that interest you, or are just really profitable, and you turn them each into 500 pages. Now, suddenly you have a site that Google & Yahoo! love, meaning you can get great rankings with every page, you can get cheaper PPC advertising, and your site is higher-quality, which visitors will notice. This translates directly into MORE MONEY!

 

Pros:

- Did I mention you'll make more money?

- People will notice the quality of your site, which will increase your conversion rates

- Search Engines will notice the quality of your site, which will increase your free traffic

- You'll be more proud of your work (also because of the quality)

- You'll have less sites to manage, meaning less maintenance work across the board

- If you wanted to, you could sell the site for $100,000's because it's so incredible. Or, you could just hire people to run it for you & keep the cash flowing

 

Cons:

- Requires more time & effort

- Won't make a lot of money at first (nothing really does, though)

- Takes more money to get started (content, graphics & outsourcing)

 

Overall, this is the best strategy there is for affiliates, and I desperately wish I had started doing this sooner. Here's what you'll need to get started:

 

Resources Needed:

- Host Gator: The best hosting service available, provides unlimited websites, files & bandwidth for only $9.95/month!

- Google Keyword Tool: Find great keywords to build an empire of profitable pages on your authority sites

- GetClicky: Analyze your traffic and website performance to reach out to more people, and to help them as much as you can

- ClickTale: Watch visitors interact with your website to make everything as easy and helpful for them as possible (and increase conversions!)

 

Resources Recommended:

- NVU: If you want to make HTML sites without coding or buying software, NVU is the best free program I've found. Get Dreamweaver if you can afford it

- SEO Mindset: The best guide I've ever found for learning how to build your site to get free traffic from the search engines

- Market Samurai: Amazing keyword research tool that finds perfect terms to dominate & analyzes their competition ($67)

- W3 Schools: Learn HTML so you can make your site look incredible and save money by not having to outsource little stuff...

- AWeber: Build a long-term relationship with your visitors to add more value (and hopefully make more money too)

 

Overall, nothing beats building Authority sites. I personally have switched my mindset to basing everything I do as an affiliate off of my auhority sites, including Bum & Niche Marketing. I still use the tactics, but only to help my authority sites grow. I expect to have 5 12 Authority sites launched by the end of this year, and my goal is to make at least $2,000/month in profits from each. Go ahead, do the math. =)

 

If you're serious about building a real business that you can count on for residual income, build Authority sites that are designed to promote products in evergreen niches (markets that will be around forever), and help people. No matter what changes over time, that will always be proftable...and fun.