One of the biggest errors that most people do when they get into affiliate marketing is they either create a blog or web site and totally make it into a super huge affiliate product shopping mall. No matter where a visitor clicks he is getting pitched. It shouldn’t be that way. A better way to run a blog or a web site is to offer diverse amount of information.

Not only should their be affiliate products available for sale on the site, but there should also be multiple sections that provide useful information to the customer. Some things that come to mind would be a support forum, an open community blog where customers are able to voice their opinion in comments, a reference library and even a FAQ section.

I understand that the strategy is to create pitch pages (landing pages) towards capturing sales. And that is fine… I think landing pages are an amazing way to close a sale. However, what happens next is what can cause the decrease in sales. After the sale is made and if you have not provided your customer with supportive resources, that customer is very unlikely to purchase from you again.

One of the key elements towards finding success with affiliate marketing and keeping your sales numbers high are selling to existing customers. When you have a customer sign up for your mailing list, he is very valuable. Your goal should to always keep that customer satisfied and keep him trusting you. If a customer trusts you after he makes a purchase, then it will be very likely that he will purchase from you again.

Another thing to consider is that affiliate marketing is a business. Unfortunately though, not many people treat is with this level of seriousness. One of the hottest elements with increasing affiliate sales is working your mailing list. Your mailing list can either be a very pure resources or one that has been exhausted, much like farm land. If you don’t’ tend to your mailing list and take care of it, it will no longer produce for you.

Some of the best ways to keep a healthy mailing list is to treat your subscribers like actual people. I subscribe to a lot of Aweber mailing lists – mainly for the purpose of observing how list owners run their list – and it amazes me how I am treated. I am never thanked or told that I am appreciated. Also, I am always spoken to as if I should know what is going on.

A better way to run your mailing list would be to address your subscribers in a more individual and personal manner. Ask your subscribers how their week is going? Ask them if there is anything that you can do to help them. Remind them that at any time they can simply click the reply button and send you an email back.

Use your mailing list as a pipeline to communicate with your subscribers. Engage with them and do things that encourage them to react with you. Doing these things keeps your mailing list alive and thriving and most importantly… clicking. When it comes time for you to recommend a product, you will have a much greater success selling to your active list compared to selling to a dead list.

There are quite a few ways to increase your success with affiliate marketing. One of the best ways that I want to talk to you about in this article is with getting to know the owner of the products and services that you promote. There are multiple reasons why it is important to take the time to introduce yourself personally to the owners of the products and services you sell.

One of the main reasons is simply because it naturally adds to your own self ownership of the items you sell. When you interact with affiliate product owners you in return get a more personalized feel for the products being sold. Over time through multiple conversations, you can learn the reasons behind why the products were created. Having that information gives you an edge over other affiliates who promote the same products or services.

A second reason why it is important to meet the owners of affiliate products is because doing so illustrates your level of sincerity towards being an affiliate marketer. Product owners and service provides want to increase sales. Naturally, they will latch on to their most effective affiliates or ones that show the most interest. When you contact affiliate product owners and service providers and establish a business relationship with them, often they will provide you with special incentives to sell. They may offer special bonuses or even increase your payout percentage.

The third reason why it is important to meet the owners of various affiliate products and services you promote is because you can use that publicly to your advantage. What I mean to say by that is simple. If you have a blog and start writing content that informs your readers and subscribers that you are on talking terms with affiliate product owners, it adds to your reputation and gives you more credit.

First impressions have a huge influence on sales. When you speak to your customers and tell them that you personally know the owner of the product being sold, that goes a long way and builds an excellent first impression. Also, if you play your cards right, you can even leverage your relationship with the owner. A great way to do that is by working special deals with the product owner and extend the offer to your subscriber and customer base. If you can make an effort towards working a deal with the product owner, people will soon discover that you are offering the best deal on the product being offered.

In the past few weeks I have explained to you about commenting on other blogs and how doing so can greatly impact and increase traffic to your own blog, web site or landing page. The reasons behind this is because other bloggers who visit the blog posts you have commented on will click the links to check you out and see what you’re all about. Commenting on blog posts are so important to the point where I even recommend that you place a focus on being the first person to comment on a newly published blog article.

Within commenting, I also explained the importance of making excellent first impressions when you do leave comments. Commenting on other blog posts gives you the free opportunity to sell yourself to thousands of other people. It gives you the opportunity to plant seeds of interest and to lure these people towards clicking over to view your site. When you do leave comments on other blogs, your comments should be of high quality and they should be well written. Always keep in mind that your comments and interactions with other bloggers are a direct reflection on the perception that these people have of you.

With that said, often I gun for articles that have never received prior comments. The reason I do this is because people often assume that a blog post without comments is a blog post without traffic. And that is far from the truth! Most all blog posts over time receive around a few thousand visits each year. And commonly this traffic come direct from search engines. Search engine traffic is excellent because it is targeted traffic. In the past I explained the importance of commenting on blog articles that have relevance to the products and services you sell. And by commenting on these articles you in return will pick up residual traffic from the traffic being received direct from the search engines on these articles.

Having that said, if you find articles that have no prior comments, then you have no competition created by other people who have commented. Another element of importance here is the fact that most bloggers are very natural people and don’t consider their blogs to be sources of income. Meaning when they write their content it isn’t written in a way to generate a call to action. Being the first person to comment on these type of articles — especially ones without prior comments — gives you the golden opportunity to take a balanced and authoritive roll towards creating your own call to action within the comment itself.

Often when search engine traffic read the article and make it to the bottom of the post, they are left with nothing else to do. And when your comment is in their view, they will naturally read what you write. If your comment is written in a way that plants a seed and creates interest, these people will want to learn more about you and your own blog or web site. And because you are conscious of your writing and because your writing has been carefully written, your newly recruited readers will be yet another added subscriber into your own network that you are slowly building and increasing in size over time.

The point to remember here is that most bloggers aren’t skilled marketers and they usually leave their readers hanging at the bottom of the article. If you are the first to comment and also the only person to comment you have a golden opportunity to create the call to action that the writing author failed to do. 

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

As mentioned, this month has been devoted towards teaching you alternative and free ways towards increasing traffic to your site. In a previous articles I talked a lot about social networking and commenting on blogs related to the products and services you sell. Today I want to talk to you about the importance of having an email newsletter. During this month, I have talked about driving traffic, but there is one very important thing that goes hand in hand with driving traffic, and that is conversion.

It doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your site or pages, if you can’t convert the traffic into sales, then it is all for nothing. With that said, having an email newsletter can easily become the hero and help save the day. An email newsletter is an excellent tool to have towards increasing conversions.

Social networking traffic typically doesn’t convert very well into sales on the initial direct contact. Meaning, the first time a person from a social network visits you, it is very unlikely that they will purchase from you. The goal at hand is really not trying to sell to them at this moment, but instead attempt to lure and interest them into subscribing into your email newsletter. The same can be said for people who visit your blog from other blogs you have commented on. Never try to directly sell to referral traffic from other blogs and social networks. It will not work and you will not retain a high amount of repeat traffic.

The email newsletter instead offers you the ability to sell. Once you have captured an email subscriber, you have gained their trust. Trust is easily gained by providing excellent advice, tips and tricks on your own blog. People will not purchase things recommended to them unless they trust the person who is offering the products and services being sold.

So you see, if the first impressions on people are of you trying to heavily promote products and services, they will perceive that you are nothing more than a common sales associate with having the only interest of selling. People don’t like that, especially in the world of the Internet. People instead want to feel like you care about them and care about their interests. If you allow people to gain the perception that you want to help better their life and help them find success in fulfilling their objectives, then selling to these people will become much easier.

Your email newsletter should always be top priority. Gaining email subscribers should always be your top focus. The more subscribers you have the more explosive your results will be when you send out promotional content within your newsletter aimed at selling.

My advice to you would be to make your email newsletter an extension of the wonderful information you provide on your blog or web site. Most of the content published within your newsletter should be free advice, tips and tricks that help people. On occasion, you should then publish information about a product or service that can help them.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

As mentioned in my previous article, commenting is a very easy and effective way to score traffic to your own blog, web site, or landing page which promotes affiliate based products and services. Contributing and befriending people who have related interests to the products and services you sell is an excellent tool of affiliate marketing. The more people you know, the more likely your odds are in getting not only sales but repeat business. Secondly, the more people you know, the more likely you are to receive help when you need it.

Being the first to comment on a blog post is very important because in the simplest form of this strangely, the first person to comment will get the most traffic. Within that there are additional reasons why it is important. Being the first to comment also massively increases branding. Most all blogs today auto display avatars within the comments. You should indeed invest the time towards creating an avatar that compliments your brand so that people can get exposed to your brand and so that your brand starts to get recognized within the community.

You will find that over time, people will begin to recognize you and if in the past you have contributed comments and content that appeals to them, they will be very likely to tune in and see what you have to say in the future. Your avatar places a huge roll in giving others a visual aid in finding you within these blogging communities.

Being the first to comment also shows your dedication and commitment within the community of blogs you contribute on. With that said, here is an easy way to make sure that you are the first to comment within your chosen niche of around 10 to 15 blogs. The best way to make sure you are the first to comment is to eventually make friends with the blog authors of the sites you like to comment on. If possible, you should establish a connection with them using instant messengers.

Blog authors want people to contribute and comment on their blogs. If you communicate to the blog author that you are willing to be active on their blog, they may be willing to send you an instant message immediately after they publish an article. Having the author tip you off allows you the opportunity to become the first person to comment.

Other ways include subscribing to the RSS feed of the blogs that interest you. Many blogs also include a way to receive a notification by email. Keep in mind though that the email notification services are usually delayed by a day. Another way to assure that you are the first to comment is to try to stop by and visit these blogs a few times each day. Making your rounds across a small network of 10 to 15 blogs towards checking to see if new articles have been written should only take a few minutes.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

Digg, at a minimum, is an excellent place to score a search engine friendly backlink. I am not sure if you know what the rel=nofollow is, but in short it is a tag that most all social network sites use to prevent web crawlers — especially Googlebots — from passing through to the linked site. In other words, this special tag puts a block on the link and makes it so that it can’t be accessed by search engines. With that said, most social networks use the rel=nofollow tag so that they can hoard all the search engine web crawler traffic. Digg, however, does not use this special tag and when you submit content into their network, at a minimum, you score a search engine friendly backlink.

Aside from scoring a search engine friendly backlink, Digg is just like any other social network. If you manage to build up your reputation and make a lot of friends, these people can be used towards increasing the number of votes on your submissions which then lead to a higher ranking within the network, which as you can imagine, help increase even more traffic. The key to being successful with Digg is in writing and submitting content into their network that targets the interest of the community. My advice would be to study the categories and study the items being submitted and reaching high ranks.

StumbleUpon is an excellent social network. However, it’s effectiveness to drive large amounts of traffic depend on the number of active and contributing friends you have within the network. If you have a lot of friends who are active and willing to cast their vote, the result can literally send your submitted page thousands of visitors within hours. StumbleUpon is very known as being a social network where friends of friends vote up the submissions. So the more people you get to vote on your submissions the more compounding the voting effects ripple within the network.

The key to success with StumbleUpon is the same with any other social network, you have to figure out the topics that of mainstream interest and you have to write content geared towards attracting the people within the network. Twitter and YouTube are both similar to the social networks mentioned above. However, each network — and even more not listed here — have their unique characteristics and traits. It is your job to identify how you can take the most from these social networks and how you can convert this massive amount of traffic into sales.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

Blogging is very popular and it continues to increase in popularity day after day. One of the reasons blogging has such an explosive growth is because a blog caters to the people who visit it. A blog allows for the blog author to easily interact with their readers and also allows for readers to easily interact with the blog author. The most common way these interactions take place is within the comment section of each blog post.

Commenting on blog posts is an excellent way to increase traffic to your own blog, website, or even affiliate product landing page. The reason is simple. Please click the links in the comments to see who you are. By commenting on blog posts, at a minimum, two things happen. The first that happens is the blog author will click your link and view your page. The next thing that happens is other people who read the blog will do the same.

My advice to you would be to search the Net and find about 10 to 15 of the most popular blogs related to the product or services you are trying to sell and become very active commenting on these blogs, contributing, and becoming a regular within that little blog niche. You should invest time and get to know the other commenters and even visit their blog and comment on theirs too.

Doing this builds trust within the community niche you are socializing in. Also it helps spread your links within a related community, this is great for search engine rankings. All in all the more activity and more you contribute within these little related niche areas, the more effective your comment campaign will be. Ideally, it would be very helpful if you had a blog yourself, rather than just a landing page that promotes an affiliate based product or service.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

Today in this article, I want to talk to you about the power of a television commercial. As you can imagine, television commercials are very expensive. During major events, such as the more recent Super Bowl, the cost to run a 30 second commercial can range in price from 3 to 6 million dollars. There is a good reason for this though. Companies know that having a TV commercial will help increase their branding and expose their product or service to millions of people.

After a television commercial is shown, millions of people who have an interest in the product or service being shown on TV typically will jump on their computers to search for more information related to what they had just seen. The beauty of this is the fact that after a television commercial is shown, it creates waves or surges of traffic on the Internet.

Ironically, most companies who advertise television commercials — especially infomercials which air late at night — don’t make sure that they have a strong presence on the Internet. In other words, let’s say Company A ran a television commercial to advertise Product B. In most cases Company A will rank very well in Google and other search engines for their company name. However, the commercial being advertised on television was promoting Product B. It is very common that most companies don’t follow through and assure that Product B ranks good as well.

This really doesn’t pose too bad of a problem for television commercial advertisers. Consumers who search on the Internet are smart and can eventually find Product B easily. However, in your case as the affiliate marketer, you have a window where you can capitalize on this and in many ways I like to call it “kidnap” the traffic and direct them to view your web page which sells similar or even the same product as being advertised on television.

The irony in this situation is that you are allowing someone else to pay the money for the advertising and you collect a percentage of the benefits for free. With that said, in order to collect on the massive amounts of free traffic generated from television commercials, all that is needed is for you to be perceptive on the television commercials being aired and to write content on your blog that targets the keywords that people will use to find more information about what they had just see on television.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

How do you get traffic? There are many ways. For one, you can pay for traffic. I’ve never done that, but many people do. However, what can you do to get traffic to your blog if you can’t afford to pay for it? How can you get free traffic to your blog? You have great content, you’ve got a nice looking blog, but you don’t have traffic… how do I do this? How do I get traffic?

That is where the buzz factor kicks in. There are many ways to generate a buzz. Some people offer contests, some people create blog memes and others write posts on controversial topics. Along with the various buzz building tactics comes a reaction. A reaction is the result of blog buzz. The reactions are either negative or they are positive.

Depending on what kind of buzz tactic you use will warrant which kind of reaction you get. So the key to getting traffic is by creating a buzz. But, within that, it is advisable that you create a buzz that scores a positive reaction. Otherwise, your create one hit wonder traffic, which are people who visit your blog and don’t like what they see and never will return again.

So far you have learned this:

1. A blog needs content to grow just as a bubble needs air to expand.
2. A blog has an added element in growing, unlike a bubble, and that is traffic.
3. Traffic is generated by creating a buzz.
4. A reaction is resulted from a buzz.
5. A reaction can be either positive or negative.
6. A positive reaction is what you should set goals towards achieving.

How Do You Create A Positive Buzz?

Here are a few off the wall ideas on how you can create a positive buzz on your blog. A positive buzz will convert visitors into regular readers. Regular readers create what I call a “Bubble Environment”. A bubble environment is an environment that is encased by boundaries. It is a place that people feel safe and some can even call it home. A bubble environment is something you want your blog to become for as many people as possible. The more people who are in your bubble, the bigger and stronger your bubble gets.

To create a bubble blog environment, you have to understand that basics needs of people in regards to what people look for in blogs. I call this, SEMI.

1. Stimulate. People want to stimulate their brains. Our brains are filled with thousands of pulsing receptors that need to be stimulated at all times.
2. Entertain. People want to be entertained. Why else do we have The Comedy Channel and a million and one Blond Jokes?
3. Motivate. People want to feel good. They want to be encouraged and supported. People want to be motivated and pushed towards achieving things.
4. Informed. People want to be aware. We want to know whats going on, how did it happen, who was the cause of it, when did this happen and where do I go?

Now, in the process of creating a positive buzz, you should remember SEMI and ask yourself this, “Is my post going to stimulate, entertain, motivate or inform people?” If you can get a yes for all four questions, you then have yourself an excellent post!

Now doesn’t that sound great? Much better than your typical random ramblings, cheesy blog memes and link list posts. It doesn’t matter what topic you have chosen for your blog, you have an audience. The best way to reach out to your audience is to give them SEMI!

Take what you have learned in this post and write one today that follows the basic rules of SEMI! Of course do that after you leave me a comment telling me how cool this post was.

Remembering this as if it were yesterday, I recall that we all weren’t very successful in achieving the results the owner was wanting. I only did this for a few days and then my friends and I got kinda bored, took our cash and never did the job again. With that being said, close to 20 years later, I still to this day get people knocking on my door with a flier in hand trying to sell me something. I find it funny, because I now why I wasn’t successful doing this as a teen.

When someone comes to my door and immediately starts off with their little sales pitch, I quickly loose interest and explain to them that I am simply not interested. Some people have developed thick skin from constant rejection, while others who seem to not be used to rejection are more persistent. The end result is the same though, as I never have any interest in listening to what they have to say. The reason being is simple, I didn’t ask for this, and needless to say, they aren’t running an “Open Door” marketing system. Are you running an “Open Door” Internet marketing system?

What Is Door to Door Internet Marketing?

Well, it’s actually a term I made up that labels quite a few ineffective forms of Internet marketing. Granted, I don’t really think many forms of Internet marketing yield a very high success rate. The successful Internet marketers are successful because they deal in sheer volume. To me, Door to Door Internet marketing are things that folks do online that deliver the same results as an individual going house to house in attempt to sell a product.

Sending Individual Emails

One example of door to door Internet marketing is when I receive an email from someone, granted this isn’t an automatically generated email from spam software, this is a real email that was sent to me from an individual. However, it is an email that I didn’t ask to receive and I consider it to be no different than someone knocking on my door in attempt to sell me something. Sending out individual emails is a great example of door to door Internet marketing. Not only is the success rate very low towards getting the desired action, you’re also dealing in very shallow numbers. Again, leading Internet marketers deal in high volume. Sending out individual emails is a waste of your time plus it’s hard work.

Sending Automatic Email

The same strategy as listed above however in this case, you’re dealing in sheer volume. This is more effective than sending out individual emails but also carries a huge price. Sending out mass email is dangerous to the health of your identity. Many times doing so will result if you losing your email account as well as your account with your ISP. Email spam over the years has become something that people take very seriously and it is something that you do not want to get into. While by dealing in such bulk numbers, sure you’ll get quite a few people to purchase what you want. The overall conversion will still be super low, but the volume will make up for the difference. But, you’ll get busted real quick plus ethically, it’s wrong to send out mass email.

Comment Spam

Comment spam is another example of door to door Internet marketing. Just like sending out individual emails, it too is based on very low volume and its highly ineffective. As a bonus and unlike sending out emails, publishing comment spam comes with also having a paper trail and a public perception about you. Comment spam is not a very good form of Internet marketing. I consider this door to door for sure.

Automatic Comment Spam

Automatic comment spam simply doesn’t work. Askimet is an amazing tool and it comes standard with WordPress and there is a huge percent of bloggers who know how to activate it or soon discover how. Even the smaller groups of people who don’t know how to activate Askimet do know how to delete comments and don’t want junkie comments being published on their blogs. Sending automatic comment spam is absolutely the worst form of mass door to door Internet marketing. I can’t stand comment spam, automatic or manual.

What Is Open Door Internet Marketing?

Open door Internet marketing is much like having an open invitation into someone’s home where you are greeted with open arms and encouraged to talk about the products or services that you have to offer. This form of Internet marketing is very powerful and produces amazing results. It has an extremely high success rate and can make you completely rich if you deal in high volume. So what can you do to start your own open door Internet marketing systems? There are quite a few things and I’ll get you started by naming a few.

Opt In Mailing Lists

Opt in mailing lists are amazing. People who have opted in to receive email from you want to read what you have to say. Being totally honest on your sign up page will help you a lot in weeding out the people who really don’t want to subscribe compared to the ones that really do. Having an opt in email list is a very powerful form of “Open Door” Internet marketing. If you don’t have an active mailing list, I would suggest getting one today. I use Aweber for my mailing list solutions.

RSS Subscriptions

If you run a blog your blog syndicates the content using RSS. Visitors have the option of subscribing to your RSS feed which will give them a personal notification and sometimes depending on how you configure your RSS feed an entire copy of your content. Typically there are two ways to subscribe to an RSS feed. I use a program called www.FeedBurner.com. This is a free service that allows me to manage my RSS feed from my blog and enables me to make use of some very powerful tools. One of which is the second option called RSS Email Notify.

RSS Email Notify is my favorite form of subscribing to an RSS Feed. With the RSS Email Notify option, subscribers get an email ONLY when you produce new content on your blog. Just like with having an opt in mailing list, when you produce new content on your blog and have a high volume of subscribers, you get a very sudden burst of traffic. If your subscribers have subscribed because they want to read the information you publish and if your information happens to be products that you review and or sell, the success rate in your attempt to sell is extremely high.

What is The Key To Being Successful In Marketing?

There are many elements that attribute towards being successful. In my experience the best element is being honest with your presentation. It all starts with how you present your subscription options. If you mislead people into subscribing into your open door Internet marketing systems, they will soon reject you and close the door on you. If you are up front, honest and accurate with presenting your open door Internet marketing systems, then people will have the opportunity to join or not join. It is much better to have someone decline your offer up front than to waste their time into making them think one thing and the deliver them something else.

It’s really all about honesty really as the second element is in accurately presenting the various products and services you offer. Once again, if you bait and switch or misrepresent your product or service, the result will end in having people become very unsatisfied with you and your business ethics. Long story short is that they will want their money back and they will never purchase from you again or follow your future recommendations.

The third element is in building trust within your customer base. Repeat customers are the best. Once you have clients who have experienced a very warn and lifting transaction, they will buy from you again. Not only that, they will also grow a very large mouth and start using it. Many people feel compelled to spread the word about things that positively impact their lives. Word of mouth marketing is a very powerful form of marketing. Also too, I label that is a a third system in “Open Door” Internet Marketing. When you have impressed someone so well that they turn around and write a blog post about you or cover a story in their own newsletter, circulation or publication, that says a lot for your name, your brand and products and services.