Affiliate Marketing has become a relatively easy and convenient way of earning money, thus, attracting quite a number of followers. For those who are new to the business, they have quite a lot to learn before they get to reap the bigger fruits of affiliate marketing. In fact, there’s so much to learn, it is quite difficult to focus on where and how to start on your own affiliate marketing venture.

The focal point of affiliate marketing, or of any business enterprise for that matter, is the product. No exchange ever happens if there is no product involved. For those who are new to affiliate marketing, choosing a product to promote might make their head spin like crazy.

The following tips regarding what kinds of products an affiliate marketer should promote are perfect for beginners. For those who are more experience in affiliate marketing, however, do not fret. You might also get a few tips from this article (or this article might just confirm what you already know, which isn’t all that bad, either).

The first step in choosing a product to promote using affiliate marketing is not being too specific just yet. Focus on a certain group of products you might find interesting enough to sell, and soon, we’ll get to the part where you choose the specifics of what you’ll be promoting.

For starters, CHOOSE A TYPE OF PRODUCT YOU BELIEVE IN. Promoting in itself is a great task, perhaps, the main focus of all your affiliate marketing activities. For those who aren’t exactly experts at promoting just yet, you might have to rely on your belief of the product above anything else—the more you believe in the benefits your products have to offer, the easier it would be to promote them. Anyway, if you, a real human being, find your product good enough, you might discover that other human beings find it good enough, too.

For those who are simply starting out, you might find it easier to PROMOTE A PRODUCT THAT IS ALREADY POPULAR. Promote those with brand names that stand out. Competition might be fierce, but since your product has already been able to establish a name on the market, it would be much easier to sell. A few newbie affiliate marketers think that promoting lesser known products would be easier due to the smaller competition.

They can’t be any more wrong. The fact that they are newbies promoting unknown products makes for the worst combination of all. Yes, competition might be fierce, but if you are just as fierce with your marketing strategies and promotions, you will eventually find yourself earning just as well as more experienced counterparts.

DO A “MARKET RESEARCH.” It sounds like an expensive activity to undertake, but it isn’t. All you have to do is be observant. Try to observe people around you: family members, friends, strangers passing you by on the streets, and people you ride with on the public transit. What products are they using?

Put yourself in their shoes and try to think what kinds of products they might like to purchase. Ask them, if you have to. Try to observe how they react to certain product names, and how they do not when it comes to others. You might find yourself flashing a light bulb once in a while. Take advantage of what you have learned. They might come in handy as soon as you gain the information, or at a much later time.

Once you know what kinds of products you would want to promote, it is time to narrow down the list. This might be, initially, a tad confusing, but once you have established the categories of products you would like to promote, this part becomes much easier to undertake.

If you were lucky enough to know the specific product to promote given the tips above, then you might want to try SEARCHING FOR YOUR PRODUCT THROUGH YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SEARCH ENGINES. If you have already set your heart and mind on promoting a certain product, look for it, and try to find out whether the product can be promoted through affiliate marketing.

However, if you are like the rest of affiliate marketers just starting out, and, well, still confused on the specifics of the product you would promote, you might want to JOIN AFFILIATE MARKETING NETWORKS. In this case, search engines are as much your friends as the first case. Find marketing networks that have large product databases, and preferably, do not have any membership fees.

Once you know what products to promote, there should be no turning back. Everything else will fall into place. Though the next steps to finalizing your affiliate marketing venture aren’t exactly walks in a park, at least they are now focused towards a single goal, and that it to successfully promote the products you have just chosen.

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Article marketing has been around way before online media has been invented. Business establishments have been known to promote their products and services through the written media even before the internet was invented. And with the onset of the internet, online article marketing has become an easier means of promotion compared to its older predecessors.

Not only is online article marketing free (like most of its predecessors), it is non-seasonal (meaning, people can read your articles the whole year round, without exception as to what season your article is most applicable to), and can exist for even much longer than you will.

Many online business pursuits, affiliate marketing among them, have made use of the ease and the accessibility which online article marketing offers them. However, this same ease has jeopardized many qualities good ol’ fashion articles used to have: fun, quality, and creativity, among others. Many article writers have apparently forgotten the fact that their articles are trying to serve real life people, and not virtual search engines.

If you are into affiliate marketing, you are reading the right article. If you are into online article marketing to help you promote your products, all the better. This article will help you outline the qualities your affiliate marketing articles should have to provide the best profits for you, without sacrificing your potential customers’ trust.

INFORMATIVE ARTICLES

The main focus of online article marketing is to provide prospects with information at the click of a button. Your prospects do have a tendency to be impatient, so make your articles concise. Focus your articles on the product features and benefits your readers would most probably want to know about. If you feel you have enough skills as a writer, you might wish to omit some really good information about the product, and write in such a way that your readers might want to read more.

And never forget that not all information are created equal—some information are more beneficial than others, depending on the type of product you are promoting. Some products require a thorough discussion of the features, whereas a simple discussion of a product’s benefits might be enough for other types of products. The prospects should benefit from online article marketing, too, and if you have to, place yourself in your prospects’ shoes and try to imagine what kinds of things they would rather get from your articles.

QUALITY ARTICLES

Article writers nowadays are beginning to forget just how important quality is when it comes to written material. This isn’t to say that you have to be a major in journalism or a Nobel Prize winner in Literature to get to write well. The internet is bombarded with article-writing tips, a lot of which are even focused on online article marketing. If you still aren’t confident enough, you might wish to hire someone else for the job. Always remember that quality, and not quantity, articles will be best for your affiliate marketing venture.

WRITE FUN ARTICLES

How many crowded parties have you been to your entire life? And in how many out of these parties did you actually remember the names of all the strangers who attended? See how easy it is to remember the guy with the great sense of humor, or the girl with great conversational skills? Leave the same impression with your online article marketing efforts. Make your affiliate marketing prospects remember you. They may not buy anything off your hands right away, but the moment you sell them something they feel they need, the chances of them hesitating given their knowledge of your written humor is quite small.

POST IN ARTICLE DIRECTORIES

This might just be the best way for you to get your articles read by as many people as possible. If you do decide to post your articles to as many article directories as you can handle, please have the decency to write articles that deserve that much exposure. Reading a badly written article is, well, bad enough, but having it posted all over the World Wide Web?

No one needs, or wants, a badly written article, all the more, hundreds of the same thing. Do yourself a favor and don’t simply kiss your success in the affiliate marketing world by posting hundreds of useless words online.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZE YOUR ARTICLES

Article marketing is entirely useless if you can’t get people to read your articles. Make your articles easier to find online. Imagine what keywords your prospects are most likely to enter when looking for your products. Establish them in appropriate places throughout your article. And don’t forget the quality of your articles.

Affiliate marketing has now become a much easier venture to undergo, especially with article marketing aiding its efforts. You can be successful in either of these ventures (affiliate marketing and article marketing) if you work hard enough.

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Article marketing is the use of well-written articles to supply information on a topic that is closely related to a product. For instance, if you are selling a medicine on diabetes, a great way to promote the product and to catch the eye of people with diabetes is to write an article about diabetes! That way, your target market will be caught.

Articles used for this type of marketing will often include a bio box that will list down the company, the product and the contact details. Some will even have pictures of the product beside it. Quality articles that are used in this field are often informative and short. After all, you want to keep them interested and not bored them to death!

It is not surprising that in recent years, the world wide web has caught on to its effectiveness. Article marketing now has become an online phenomenon. More and more articles about a variety of subject areas are being uploaded everyday over the internet. People who have websites have turned to articles to increase their page views.

In turn, they are supported by online advertisers who rely on their page views for advertisement views and consumer awareness. Search engines also rely on the articles submitted to their directories to rank websites during a search. The more articles in the directory, the better the rank.

But the use of online article marketing has lowered the quality of the materials that are being posted over the internet. Instead of the well-written articles that inform consumers about a relevant topic, websites post materials that are haphazardly written. Check some of the websites that come out from the search engines and you will see just how much the quality of the Internet articles have lessened.

Some articles on the Internet are copied from another website. Even though they have different first paragraphs and introduction, the essence of the article or even the body will be the same exact same thing. Some rephrase the original article but when you read it, you will see that the concept and the principles being discussed are often the same. This is why there are a lot of duplication when you research over the Internet. Some will even present an entirely different topic after the second paragraph.

Another problem is the structure and grammar of the articles posted. Most of the articles nowadays have really atrocious grammar and several wrong spellings. Typos are also pretty common in websites. The structure of the articles is also not well-done, leading people to think that the people who wrote them are non-writers.

Reliability is also another problem that has cropped up with article marketing. Since articles are written primarily for the search engine rank and the page views for advertisers, most articles will no longer contain any authors. This is considered unreliable sources especially for people who are researching technical pieces. Only a couple of websites have articles that carry bylines.

This has affected the reliability of the information that are gotten from the Internet. Some in fact cannot be trusted at all especially the sites that are not so well-known.

Article Marketing

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The reason why article marketing is so important is that it will not only enhance your website with information but it will also make it go up the ranks of major search engines which all boils down to quality traffic.

This means that chances of people buying your items via the web are much higher and some of these customers might even come from out of state or from a different country.

A. You can make this happen simply by choosing the right keywords which the search engines will pick up when someone decides to look for it.

B. Another option is to send your articles only to those that cater to it. This can be done by uploading the article to your favorite online network. There are also popular article submission sites also known as directories as well as article search engines which you can submit to free of charge.

C. You can also get help from friends who also have websites and also post your articles there. The more sites you are able to advertise in the better so you get to reach a larger audience.

D. If you have written a lot of articles already, it is time to put these into categories. You can also put these all together in the form of an e-Book and give this away fro free.

E. The articles may also be submitted to ezine sites.

Article marketing is just one of the tools in promoting your site via the web. There are also meta-tags and pop up tags which happen to be very popular. The only difference is that you have to spend a few dollars in order for these to be posted in other sites.

So is article marketing important? The answer is yes because with 300 to 500 words, you are able to talk to the reader in a more personal level better than what a banner can do. Most people don’t even pay attention to a banner and just close it because many feel that it is a waste of time just entertaining it.

Perhaps the best part is that you don’t have to be an expert writer to tell the reader what your product is all about. The main thing is that you are able to say it simply so this will be easy for just about anyone to understand.

If you are having a hard time putting the words together, do some drafts, proofread it before submitting this online. For those who don’t write very well, maybe you should hire someone to do that for you by simply giving them certain guidelines about the message you are trying to convey.

People who want to search for something using the web have to type in certain keywords in one of the major search engines. If you want people to find your site, you have to put yourself in their shoes and then put in factual information so you can be trusted. This is the essence of what makes article marketing is all about and why it is so important for anyone who wants to do business online

Article Marketing Tips

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Article marketing can help your business the minute you submit these to different article directories. If these are approved for posting, people will be able to visit your site or may want to get in touch with you as they click the link or look at the resource box.

The resource box is usually found at the bottom of the web page. Here, writers can put their name, website and email.

If your article had a significant impact on the reader and they would like to post your article in their websites, they can do so which means more people will be able to see your work without you having to do anything.

Articles that are posted in directories usually ask you for keywords so this can easily be found when someone visits the site. These keywords are also given to search engines so if people type it in, your article will also appear and they will be able to view it.

Another way of getting people to see your site is giving this in the form of a report or e-book to potential customers. With all the information there, that person will surely want to know more and get in touch with you in the future.

People who are serious about article marketing have to venues where the articles can be displayed. The first is high traffic distribution sites while the second is submitted to highly relevant niche publishers. The difference between the two is that although the second will not be read by many, it will be easy for those who run this site to refer qualified visitors to the author.

It doesn’t matter if the article you are writing about is for a small, medium or large business because there are ways to promote it. For instance, if your article is for a small restaurant, you should put in the title something related to the location of the establishment. The same goes for the medium and large scale business. The key here is to come up with a catchy title that your audience can relate to.

Of course there are other ways of promoting your business such as paying for pop up ads and meta-tags. But why would you spend when you can get this for free? So, take advantage of this free marketing tool and see what it can do as it has done for others. You surely wouldn’t want to pass up on the chance so write something about your business or get someone to do it for you.

Is article marketing better than conventional print publications? The answer is yes because people will easily find your article by typing in some keywords. Print publication on the other hand is difficult because you will have to browse through how many back issues of newspapers and magazines just to find it.

Also, conventional publication is only relevant to the time it was written. The online form will be there for many years ahead as this information is stored somewhere in the cyber space. Just make sure this is updated if something new comes along so you are sure that article marketing is able to help your business.

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2. Just like what you read in the newspaper or see on television, the article must be both timely and newsworthy. This will allow you stay in touch with what is happening in the world. One good way is signing up with a site that gives you alerts with regards to certain topics.

3. Some writers post one article and that’s it. Just like movie producers in Hollywood, you should post a sequel to this because there could already be new information available which you could share to the public.

4. You should also make your articles viral. What this simply means is allowing other people to publish your article just as long as nothing is changed and you are given credit for it. Another way of doing this is offering your writing services to others which will become added revenue for you.

5. Each article you write must be short and simple. It must be short so that it will not bore the reader. Simple so that they will be able to understand the message you are trying to convey.

6. Just how many articles must your write to increase traffic? The good news is that you only need 2 to get things started. A good title will be “ how to do something” and “ x number of tips for something.” If this catches their interest, that person will most likely click on the link to your site and then buy something. The bottom line is that it increases web traffic.

7. You can stop at just 2 articles to promote your site. If you have other products, you can write articles on it as well and then mention in the resource box. This is known as cross-referencing which a lot of webmasters allow their contributors to do.

8. Aside from posting your written work in other websites, don’t forget to also put these in your own. If you have written 10 or more about the same topic, put these together to what is known as an e-book and then pass this along for free. Again, if people like what is written there then people wouldn’t remind reading it several times.

9. Aside from posting in websites, make use of RSS feeds. There are plenty of them around so make use of it.

There are two ways to get into article marketing. The first is to write it yourself and just hope that people will appreciate your writing style. The other is to hire someone to do it. Some charge by the hour while others charge per word. It may be worth it if this increases traffic to your site.

By following these article marketing tips, it won’t be long before you get a lot of hits.

Affiliate Marketing

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1. First, you must come up with a catchy title to promote your business. Ever heard the line, “Curiosity killed the cat”, in this case no one is going to get hurt. But could you just imagine what would happen if people would like to know more about the article just by reading the title? It would also be helpful if you use keywords so people who type it will see your article. At the same time, you can mention the benefits of what reading your articles can do for them.

2. Second, make sure that your article is well organized. Instead of just writing your article paragraph by paragraph, maximize the use bullets or numbers to stress important points. This will make their reading experience a memorable one because they are able to remember it.

3. Third, your articles have to be informative and not just impress the reader. You can do so by using simple words instead of using big ones by putting this in a way that the average person can understand. You may have had an experience at the hospital where the doctor told you of your condition using some medical term that sounds serious but in English simply means you have a stomach ache.

Once you finish writing the article, read it over and see if you understand it. Better yet, give this to someone and see what they say. If there are some concerns, edit it because although you may be an expert in this matter, your readers may not and the reason why they want to read it is to learn more about what you have to offer.

Don’t forget to check on your article to see if there is anything new you would like to add. This is where variety comes in as there are different ways of stressing a point when the bottom line is that you want people to visit your site.

You can get new information by joining and posting in online forums and blogs. Some even put snippets in their articles. You should add something daily and don’t forget to put a link to your site.

4. Lastly, each article has an article summary. Most websites require this so in just 3 or 5 sentences, get down to it and say what your article is all about and why should they spend their time reading the entire thing. If you don’t put any effort here, you may have already lost the opportunity to make it look interesting for the reader to find out more.

Promoting your site thought article marketing is very easy. You just have to follow the 4 secrets mentioned and then use this to your advantage. Again, you need to have a catchy title, make sure it is well organized and informative so people will be encouraged to visit your site.

If done properly, you will undoubtedly get more traffic which is what this form of advertising is all about.

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● Let’s jump in immediately, and having already talked about the list and your short term customers, let’s discuss your long term customers and the relationship they have with your other four resources.

● The first thing I want to talk about is trying to turn your long term customers into heavy hitting affiliates. The best thing to do here is avoid trying to do that.

● For the reasoning behind this, we first need to refer back to the role that long term customers play in your business. Couple your long term customers and place them in the same category as your standard customers. They’re special, your money-makers, people who are purchasing your products.

● For this reason we need to treat them as such. Trying to get the most affiliates as quickly as possible may seem like a good idea in the beginning, but when we take a closer look, we know that such actions can go towards removing the role of your customers especially, and when we do things that count towards unsubscriptions especially when looking at your profit pullers, this is not a good move.

● If anything, leave them be, use them to promote your products and place the commission levels on a big red button on your site, as we discussed previously avoiding any unnecessary unsubscriptions through wrongly crossing your resources.

● You can also see through a little math how much more devastating it is to annoy anyone on this or cause them to leave for any reason. Granted, you may argue there’s plenty more out there, but this is where most of your advertising funds are going. Getting people to buy your products that are going to be bringing you in a mighty profit in the first place isn’t a short or easy task. Be very careful what you do with this list. This is going to be the long running theme in this section about your long term customers.

● So how about turning long term customers into your list? Well, treating long term customers is very similar to the way in which you’re treating your first time customers, because they’re so closely related and generally have the same role; to make you profit through the products they buy now and into the future, the reaction here is the same.

● Don’t worry about trying to separate them, instead use the fact that most will be on your standard list through your other subscription methods to your advantage to build trust and prove your special previous-customers-only offers really do mean previous-customers-only. Straight forward enough, but there is a difference here, and something that I’d like to talk about is what do you do with them after they’ve bought their second product.

● Do you start them at an intro product and work them up again? Or do you sell them straight onto the follow-up profit making products? In effect, do you turn your long term customers back into customers through less expensive products, or turn your long term customers back into long term customers straight up?

● Well, the answer is mixed. It’s both to be exact. The general consensus on the matter is they should indeed receive immediate notification on the launch of your follow-up products. After all, they already have the trust factor three, so there’s no reason that they shouldn’t buy these high priced products from you. There’s no need to demote them to standard customers again.

● There is only one situation in which it’s best to start them all over again, and that’s if you haven’t contacted them for a long time. This should be taken care of in your list maintenance however, as you should be in touch with your list, customers and long term customers at the very least once every two weeks to prevent the evaporation of this trust that you’ve worked hard to build.

● There is another way to build trust further with your long term customers, that’s to give them something free. Now I’m not talking the standard freebie with a made up price on it, but in fact your intro product that you’re selling for sixty dollars or so to your standard customers. This is especially helpful as a booster after the initial ad for a high ticket item, because it allows you to convert extra sales through the intro product. You have nothing to gain any longer by actually selling these products to your long term customers, but everything to gain when you consider giving them your intro product further inspires trust when they see it come down for the other list members at a cost, and secondly, by converting those extra sales when your intro product is tailored to selling onto the higher priced product. Sales coming from every angle, just what we like to see.

● Next, lets move on and talk about turning your long term customers into one of the most powerful resources you can have at your disposal, joint venture prospects. Many would disagree with me when I say long term customers are a good source of joint venture prospects, but through my personal experience, I have to disagree.

● Now there isn’t much that you actively have to do here aside from passively watching out for the signs. It isn’t unlikely that you may have contact with some of your long term customers, more so than any of the resources we’ve discussed so far.

● Even though this isn’t the quickest or most effective way of pulling JVs from your resources, it’s still quite possible. There’s nothing much that I can say aside from you’d be surprised what happens when you begin talking to people, especially your long term customers, some of which I’ve now been in personal contact with since my first site back in ‘99/2000.

● So, don’t go out there looking, but look out for signs such as mentions of having large amounts of promotion resources themselves, or mentions of their previous experiences, or even if you just happen to get talking, which has happened to me on a number of occasions, more often than you might expect.

● Lets move on to the next resource type and one of the most interesting and pliable of the lot, your affiliates.

● This is where things begin to get interesting and flexible too. The reason being when looking out for affiliates and converting affiliates into different resources you have a lot more to work with as far as the numbers are concerned and it’s much easier to pick out and approach them yourself safe in the knowledge you’re approaching the best performers. It’s clear cut. They signed up with you to promote your products and make a bundle of cash, making you a bundle of cash at the same time.

● Beginning with the least effective, and that’s turning your affiliates into your list. As far as affiliates go, they’re the least likely to be on your list as well as on your affiliates list compared to the other resources, because a majority of them are there for the promotion opportunity instead of the products themselves unlike your customers, long term customers and standard list. The only time that this may not be true is when you’re in online marketing to teach online marketing. Many of your students and purchasers may become your affiliates too.

● What we’re not going to be doing in this particular case, is sending random adverts to your affiliates, not even for your products, because, as we learned earlier, they’re more important than even your immediate profit, in fact, they’re going to be the ones bringing in the majority of your new resources together with joint ventures.

● Remembering that each of these resources is a list of their own anyway, you will be sending out communications, jump starts and offers to get and keep affiliates promoting.

● Before getting to the good parts, let’s take a look at turning your affiliates into customers and long term customers.

● If you’ve been following us so far and your affiliate commissions are nice and high to get lots of people promoting, you’ll find that you won’t be making much profit even if you did get them all to sign up. In any case, it’s more likely you’ll put them off promoting and lose some quick blasts to some of these peoples big lists if you go about this any other way. Steer clear of it, and remember the role of your cheap introductory and purely resource building products, and the resource itself, your affiliates.

● Looking at affiliates in the light of converting them to long-term customers, however, is a different story altogether simply because that’s what your high-priced product is there to do. Make you a profit, and if any of them sign up and buy this whilst promoting, while it’ll be very unlikely it’ll be the main source of customers for your business, it can be a nice little bonus. How you do this is only limited by the system you have set up and your imagination, adaptation and implementation. There really is no right or wrong way, and to list every single method would be a whole encyclopedia in itself.

● An example of this would be a discount or even a free product after making a number of sales. Remember not to substitute this for their commissions or any other special offers at any point, because it’s extremely unlikely that this will be a large source of income anyway, and you have to be careful not to take away the number one reason they’re your affiliates, and that’s to make money for their pocket.

● A good method to adopt is instead of pushing affiliates hard, is to have the ticket only request one sale of your product before it becomes valid. It’s very unlikely an affiliate with a good list is going to make exactly one sale when they blast an ad out. Easy they think, out goes the ad, ten sales come in instead of the one that they needed, they get a discount, you persuaded someone to get out there and promote, not only bringing in more sales, but a bundle more resources that are going to do the same again and again.
● Finally, in the affiliates section, let’s look at turning your affiliates into joint ventures. A very powerful technique indeed, looking back to what we approached earlier in this section when talking about the ease of this method due to your knowledge of their performance simply through their sales.

● A really simple way to comb your affiliates for good JV prospects is, after a number of weeks of promotion, check your affiliate stats, select the top ten, and approach them. Tell them that they’re in the top ten, and that your next product has just been released, and you want them to promote. Because of their past performance you have already raised the commissions on their account by ten or fifteen percent compared to the regular promotions.

● This is also a very viable tactic after a few weeks of promotion for the same product, but remember to take your affiliates with you no matter what you launch, because wherever they go is where your ads will reach the most people, and also where your ads will pull in the most resources for future promotion further building your arsenal without pulling money out of your pocket for paid ads. See how easy this is once you’ve got started, and how important it is to understand already? Where others are spending all their time and money getting started again and again, you’re here letting your resources build themselves. You may be giving away higher commissions but you’re getting equals back in return through the gain in promotion power.

● Remember also that just because your affiliates are not turning into other resources directly, they are indirectly building your resources through their promotions. This is the main importance of affiliates aside from making direct sales, and what makes them so powerful in building your resources for you compared to the standard list or your customers and long term customers.

● Ok, let’s move on to the final resource, your JVs, comprised of all sorts of marketers that have come from every other resource, top affiliates especially. Some of which you approached and some who approached you, their promotion power is as immense as the affiliate, but on an even higher level, the least numerous and most personal of your resources.  When you think that some of your JVs might end up being seen by lists of ten to a hundred thousand or more, it suddenly becomes clear how important this is.

● First and foremost, we don’t turn our JVs into our list full stop. Again, through their promotion they may build your list as a resource, and they may jump on it if they want to keep an eye on your progress and your business, but aside from that, we’re never bulk mailing these people, even when making deals, because each one is tailored to each individual product and you and your JV prospect. It’s simply different every time, and heck, most of these people won’t need to be on your JV list anyway because they’re going to end up working with you and communicating with you through more personal and direct means.

● Next, turning your JVs into affiliates is moot because generally they are an extended form of affiliate-promotion for specific deals instead of the standard commissions. Due to their promotion power they always get something extra, so shouldn’t be grouped in with your affiliates at any stage.

● Ok, here comes the good bit, my favorite part of the whole lot that I’ve been itching to tell you about turning your JVs into customers and long-term customers. The number one thing that I can think of that in my experience many attempt, but attempt totally one hundred percent incorrectly.

● It’s possible that some may have bought from you before, or even learned how to promote from you if your products are geared towards that way of thinking, however, your joint venture partners are way too important to go advertising to unless it’s in a ‘hey check it out, thought you might find it interesting’ manner.

● Here’s a little something that might get you thinking. Imagine you’ve been working with five people for a year or two on your businesses, JV’ing with them and such. Then one day, along comes four of them, up pops a message on your IM program. They do the standard meet and greet, and then comes the moment you’ve been waiting for. Along comes the hard sell, a corny cliché passage from a sales letter and a very obvious scripted sales process. Bear in mind these are the people you’ve worked with and talked to as if they were friends in a business sense for long periods of time and have already built a good business relationship with them.

● What would your reaction be if your wife or your husband, or even one of your friends tried to hard sell you on something with typical sales patter? It’s not very nice, I can tell you that. I should warn you at this stage, too, if you go on to take this information and be a success, some of the people you’ve been working with and have been friendly with for some time might even adopt a hard sell approach with you, when on a normal day they would have just said ‘Hey, check out my new product’ in a friendly manner. ‘Are you up for a deal, maybe an ad to your list if I whack your commissions above the norm?’ Or even, ‘hey some guy sent me an ad for this yesterday <insert link here>. I thought it looked cool. Check it out if you have time’.
● That’s all it takes. A quick, straight up, not beating around the bush nor wasting time, non hard-sell like mention or offer. The moment you try to hard sell a JV, they stop being your JV partners and contacts and you demote them to standard list members. When you begin to launch your own products and this happens to you, you’ll spot it a mile off.

● It’s immediately obvious once you’ve been around a while when someone you know is trying to sell something to you in this manner. Sure, contact me, tell me about your new stuff, and show me the new op you joined, tell me how it’s going and what the word is on the net. Ask me if I’m interested in joining you, not a problem. But, the moment you start talking to me about how much of a stunningly amazing deal I’m getting and how it’s going to EXPLODE my sales by 400% overnight, guaranteed, expect me to raise an eyebrow at you, turn around, and walk away. Moral of the story, watch what you’re saying and how you’re saying it if you want to keep your joint venture partners close, and your current marketing contacts would be wise to do the same for you to avoid negative effect. If you begin to get hard sells from your contacts, don’t fret, just relax and walk away. If they’re hard selling their close contacts it’s likely they don’t know what they’re doing anyway and it isn’t worth your time to worry about.

● Much like affiliates, as you can see the higher we get up the resource chain, the more important the resource becomes, and the less you can actually turn your affiliates and JVs into, but the more of your resources they build for you through deals and promotion anyway.

● We’ve just covered how to get your resources to build each other internally. Couple this with the external building and the influx of new customers you’re receiving through your new products, while others are struggling to start again, spending loads of cash and time trying to get started each time they launch a new product, and you’ll find yourself with an abundance of promotion power, now and far into the future.

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Note: This is not some fancy marketing system that’s been created for the sake of doing so. It simply demonstrates one of the fundamentals of every manual I’ve ever written. Your resources, and how when they’re building each other, you can never say you have no one to promote to, no one to promote your stuff, no one to strike deals with, and no way to make profit, because you do have all of those things. It’s all here, ready and waiting.

3 Steps to a Good Customer Relationship

Ok, finally before moving on to the next subject, and wrapping up this section, I’d like to talk to you about three, very general concepts relating to how to and how not to treat your customers, with a view to getting the most out of each every one of them through your marketing. I’d like to start off by giving you a quick run down of freebie syndrome and giving away the world.

Freebie syndrome, as I call it, unfortunately seems to be almost incurable over short periods of time. This occurs when you give too much for to little to your resources. Generally, the people that do this are in the mindset that people will remember them, thank them, and like them for giving things to them. It’s important, however, that no matter what resource you’re dealing with not to do this too regularly for starters, and secondly don’t give away anything worth more than around sixty dollars at the absolute max, especially when the product is new.

If you find yourself starting to do this, whether it’s with affiliate commissions, mailings to your list, or being too kind to your customers or even your joint venture prospects and contacts, you’ll likely see that they start to take it for granted and come to expect it, only to suddenly be offended when you don’t keep up the pattern. Remember this if you’re giving freebies away, make sure people know that it’s a special thing that you don’t do very often. This not only adds even more value to your words and products, but inoculates against freebie syndrome from the start, and you won’t have to keep giving away the world to keep everyone happy.

Lastly, and quite simply, keep in touch. I’m not suggesting you mail your resources every day, or even every week, but I’d suggest keeping in contact at least three or four times a month minimum without making that fatal mistake of sending out e-mails when you have nothing to say. If you don’t do this, gradually, over time, people will forget that trust you’ve built up with them, or even worse, forget who you are altogether, or not remember to update their accounts and subscriptions with their new contact details.

Wrapping Up

Generally they’re more likely to remember you the further down the resource chart they are, and the more you should be doing to make sure they stay this way. That about wraps it up for how to treat your customers. I hope you’ll agree that we’ve just talked through something far more important than customer service techniques here. We’ve just covered how to get your resources to build each other internally. Couple this with the external building and the influx of new customers you’re receiving through your new products, and you’ll find yourself in an abundance of promotion power.

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Turning Your JVs into Affiliates

First up, you should keep in mind that most joint ventures that you receive after launching your fist two products will come from your affiliates anyway. As far as those who don’t, they’re really glorified affiliates only. As with the difference between customers and long term customers, you’ll find that even with those who aren’t your affiliates, you’ll be in contact with them pretty frequently anyway, whether they’re on your instant messenger list, or you just fire emails at each other when you each launch new products.

Building up a circle of contacts that act in this way is extremely powerful in itself. Just, it takes a little more time to set up when it comes to product launches. Maintenance won’t be a problem if you’re using good affiliate software so, in this respect, keep your joint venture prospects separate. They’re something special, and you’ll likely find yourself in contact with them even more so than your long term customers, and they will be your first line of attack when launching future products. So when it comes to turning JVs into regular affiliates, don’t bother, because they’re all that and more already.

Turning Your JVs into Your List

Secondly, turning joint ventures into your list. Not something to dwell on, because your joint ventures shouldn’t be a list themselves. They should be a selection of business people that have access to resources that are beneficial to your business, not a bunch of e-mail addresses that you fire out ads to. Some may be on your list already, those that like to see what you’re getting up to and when, and some may not. Either way, it doesn’t matter, and you should never be thinking of your joint ventures as just a list of e-mail addresses. Things should be far more personal than that, at a cost of set up time to you, but producing some major profits and massive resource building potential.

Not Turning Your JVs into Customers

And now to the section I’ve been itching to tell you about, and that’s moving joint ventures over to become your customers and long-term customers. It’s possible that some may have bought from you before, or even learned how to promote from you if your products are geared towards that way of thinking, however, your joint venture partners are way too important to go advertising to unless it’s in a ‘hey check it out, thought you might find it interesting’ kind of way.

Let me tell you a little story about how not to do this. I used to work with a few people when I first started, and we were getting along fine, we created a few sites, experimented and compared notes a lot, and things were going great until I decided to branch out on my own. At regular intervals over the next three or four months whilst I was working on building my affiliate software, I started to receive interesting e-mails and messages from these people. Now understand that we were business colleagues, kind of like the people you talk to and hang around with and take your lunches with and had a laugh with at work.

Unfortunately that all changed pretty quickly, and although I was still getting the personal one on one deals from these people, they were trying to hard sell me. You can imagine logging on to the net and receiving mails or Instant Messages from one of your old friends that contained sales letter patter and hard sell messages. This is not how joint ventures are supposed to be carried out. It’s inevitable, once you’ve been in contact with people for a period of time, you find yourself more relaxed and chatting more like friends, even though you both know business is the underlying subject.

So here’s the deal, no matter how short of cash you get, no matter how much you think they’re going to spend, don’t hard sell or give your joint ventures sales pitches. Remember what they’re there for, mutual deals that benefit both your products and businesses. Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t tell them about your new stuff or a new product someone has released, but watch the way you go about it.

It’s immediately obvious once you’ve been around a while when someone you know is trying to sell something to you in this manner. Sure, contact me, tell me about your new stuff, and show me the new opportunity you joined, tell me how it’s going and what the word is on the net, ask me if I’m interested in joining you, not a problem, but the moment you start talking to me about how much of a stunningly amazing deal I’m getting, and how it’s going to EXPLODE my sales by 400% overnight, guaranteed! Expect me to raise an eyebrow at you, turn around, and walk away. Moral of the story, watch what you’re saying and how you’re saying it if you want to keep your joint venture partners close.

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