Top 10 Tips For Affiliate Promotions – by Michael Dunlop
Today’s post, from IncomeDiary.com, is all about YOU earning more money as an AFFILIATE promoting other peoples products.Now I appreciate some of you will be thinking — I don’t have much of a list or much of a following – so how can I go about promoting a product launch.
Well of course in theory the bigger the list you have the more sales you will have – but let me make another point. Some of the most successful affiliates for the Pre-Launch of PopUp Domination actually had relatively small lists but what they had that more than made up for it was a very responsive list.
So you might ask how do you build a responsive list? There are a number of factors that matter – but the two I would highlight are:
1) Your reputation with the subscribers on your list. If you are someone who consistently offered your subscribers great value in the way of information and strategies then the more likely that they will read your emails and more importantly take action based on your recommendation in those emails.
I have said it before, but I will say it again (and please take it as read when I discuss any affiliate promotion) – only ever promote products you believe in and would buy yourself. The quickest way to lose that good reputation is to constantly be peddling and hyping STUFF – just because you might make a few commissions.
2) The second factor is of course your niche. I have a pretty responsive list but if I was to start promoting a course on Pay Per Click marketing I can bet the response would not be so good. You see most of the people on my list are not using PPC – but rather are bloggers.
People (myself included) have often said the Money is in the List — well that is true, but the real fact is that the money is in the responsiveness of the list!
OK, let’s get started – here are my Top 10 Tips for being a successful Product Launch Affiliate:
1. Review The Product
Reviews have been one of the most powerful things I do for launches, for a lot of reasons including:
- Proof I have the product and am not just promoting to make money
- Proof it works
- Long team sales from new readers coming to my site
- SEO Rankings. Tip: Name your post something people will search in Google to find it.
You want to of course do a write up on the product and include screen shots and a video would be a great addition. One great example of a review was by David Risley for my launch, he was able to sell over 100 copies of my plugin by writing a post, adding images and a video then emailing it to his list. He still get’s regular sales although he posted it nearly 2 months ago which just goes to show the power of blog posts, long term sales!
ANOTHER TIP: Not sure when product launches are happening? Visit your competition and the gurus in your industry and sign up to their list, if there is a product being launched, they will be promoting! Then you can go about getting involved, usually you can find the affiliate page is linked to in the footer of the sales page.
2. Email Pre-launch
For a long time I was against emailing pre-launches because I was scared I would lose a whole load of my list to someone else, however this isn’t the case, your readers will not unsubscribe just because they opt-ed into someone elses list, the fact is, they probably already are on dozens of other lists already. As long as you provide value, your subscribers will stay with you!
Emailing pre-launch is great because it builds momentum and interest. The problem with emailing a direct sales page is that people have no idea why they need to look at the product in the first place, it’s a lot easier to tempt them in with a free video or download from the pre-launch so that they can learn about the product and why they so desperately need it. It’s also a good opportunity to build trust and the fact is, most of the time, your readers don’t realize you are promoting a squeeze page because your make money of it, but rather because you are being nice.
3. Follow Up
Often you have 3 or even more opportunity to email, blog, Facebook, Twitter etc… a launch:
- Launch Day
- 24 Hours Till Close/Price Increase
- Reopen for 24 hours/Webinar
We all know email is the most important thing you could be using right now, that’s why all the big marketers do so much to build a list. It’s simple really, you build a list and then at any given time you can email your subscribers a product launch and cash in. For me it literally is the closest thing to printing money. I have friends who travel the world and live off just emailing promotions to their list, a lot of people don’t mind being send promotions, heck if I minded, I wouldn’t be on half the lists I’m on. If you want more information on list building, check this post out!
4. Interview Creator
Typically product owners will be mega busy coming up to their launch, however this is pure gold as well. I often interview people before launches such as Adam Horwitz. When he launched his most recent product I was getting 100’s of visitors a day from people interested in who the guy was before they bought. A great chance for you to “steal” traffic and sales from other affiliates.
5. Split Test Emails
I have many different lists, something I recommend everyone does. What I do is email one of my lists (for example my Retireat21 subscribers) a new promotion / product launch. When I do this I use two different Subject Lines in the email sent out and then whichever SUBJECT LINE gets the best open rate – I roll out and use on the rest of my lists. I mean if your email doesn’t get opened – you may as well not have sent it!.
This is a very simple split test (there are a lot more complicated split tests you can do another day) and I have been blown away with how beneficial it has been to me. I used to just use one subject line — sometimes I nailed it and got lots of OPEN’s but other times I did not. At least with this simple Split Test I am assuring myself a lot more opens with the majority of my list by testing on part of the list first.
The other advantage of doing a smaller mailing first is that you can discover if the OFFER is converting. If I get bad results with my initial mailing using two different subject lines I may well not roll out across all my lists.
From the screen shot above you can see to emails I sent out to my Aweber list, same content just different titles. One got 5.9% open rate and the other 6.7% which may not seem like much but when your talking about 1000’s of people, it soon adds up.
6. Promote The Right Product
There is no point me promoting a Pay Per Click product to my readers and buyers because I have never talked about PPC and most probably don’t have a clue about it and if they do, they probably don’t want to do it, hence why they are on my site learning about blogging. You want to promote something with broad appeal to the subscribers on your list. Let’s take for example, PopUp Domination – this is software that could be used on just about every website because it will make the website owner more money. That means that just about everyone in the internet marketing industry can promote it. Bloggers, Social Media People, PPC guys, Product Creators — all of them need a product like PopUp Domination. The advantage to me of course is that I have a very wide range of people who I can approach as potential affiliates – even though in many instances it would not make sense for me to promote their product in return because my subscribers are not interested in their specific niche. That is what I mean by BROAD. Of course there are lots of people who will say to go NICHE and sub-niche. That works as well – I am just pointing out that with PopUp Domination we deliberately went BROAD.
7. Offer a BONUS!
This is one of the most important things you can do when promoting someones product – ADD A BONUS for all the buyers who buy via your affiliate link. A lot of people follow most people in the industry so by you offering a free consult, review, product, download etc.. you will stand out and choose to buy via your affiliate link over someone elses.
Recently when promoting a product launch by Gideon Shalwick I put together a special bonus offer for people who bought via my link. This proved to work quite well because several people commented that they bought via my link because of my bonus offer. This also means they can’t go through their own affiliate link to buy but instead have to buy via me if they want my great bonus! James Schramko mentioned how he built a business around offering a bonus for each product he promoted in an interview with Yaro Starak, click here to see it!
TIP: Adding a exit popup will also increase your sales conversions.
8. Use It In a Tutorial
Depending on what you are promoting, you can sometimes use it in a tutorial, for example, Aweber. I can teach people how to make money with email and promote Aweber as my choice of email software. This I have also found to bring in a good quality of long term sales.
9. Use All Of Your Resources
There are so many ways to get the message out, some people simply over look them, you can:
- Blog about the product
- Tweet/Facebook about it
- Build a review site (someone did this to PopupDomination and is making a lot of sales)
- Email your mailing list
- Submit articles to article directors targeted about the niche of the product and at the end promote it.
10. Think Out Of The Box – Just Ask!
Most of things I have got in life are simply just because I asked, it’s something we all need to learn to do. Sometimes it doesn’t work however when it does, it’s work it so here a few examples of things you can ask for:
- $1 Trial Offers
- Special Landing Pages
- Webinars (these convert like crazy, see Lewis Howes and Steven Beck)
- Discounted Price
- Special Bundles
- Coupon Codes
At the end of the day, product creators rely on affiliates to make their launches a success so will at least listen to what you have to say.
….in Closing
We are launching Popup Domination 2.0 on the 28th of September and I highly recommend you sign up to our affiliate notification page so that you can get all the most up to date affiliate information. This is another thing you want to do if you want to do really well with a product launch, connect with the creator and make sure you keep on top of what is happening so you can get your promotions out first and get the inside track on whats happening.
Thought For Today – a nice Danish Proverb:
“He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning”
As I said above much of my success can be put down to ASKING — well that and a healthy amount of thinking outside the box as well!
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To get more great tips, and information from Michael Dunlop about affiliate marketing, be sure to visit IncomeDiary.com
Affiliate Marketing | Michelle September 9, 2010 | 
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