As an affiliate marketing you need to make sure you test and use a product or service yourself first before you recommend it to your list. By recommending only the best to your list you build a strong loyalty and repeat customers that are eager to see what you have to say. Even if the product is only ok or good you can still promote it to your list, however be honest about your review. If it has bad sections in it point them out and if it has good sections then point those out as well.

How do you become an better affiliate marketer?

It’s quite simple, if you wouldn’t use it yourself then don’t recommend it. Everyone has their own area of expertise and those who joined your list are curious to learn about what has worked for you and not what has worked for someone else. By recommending and teaching your own ways to success you separate yourself from the herd and attract more customers and readers.

Things Not To Do

Don’t over dramatize – There is no reason to shout in your emails LAST CHANCE!!!!! ONLY 24 HOURS LEFT!!!!

Using the wrong words in your subject line can have harmful effects. Not only can it land your email into the dreaded spam folder but it could also result in your business losing customers. There are a few things to look out for when creatingyour subject lines . Avoid heavy punctuation, all capital letters, symbols, hard sales pitches, misleading subject lines and words that are associated with spam such as “free”, “limited-time offer”  and “amazing”.

On the other hand you don’t want to make your subject lines to generic such as “July Newsletter” your goal is to get your readers to open your email and then to interact with it.

Things To Do

Catchy but to the point – Top 10 affiliate marketers 48 hours discount act now

When creating your subject line think of it as a movie line. It should be intriguing but not to explanatory, just enough to grab your attention and get you to read on for more details.

Tracking is also very important. You should always be tracking your open rates and your link clicks for each email. This will help you find out what’s working and what’s not. By gathering this information you can expand on the subject lines that work and try to beat out your old open rates.

… and always remember the best subject line is the one you haven’t written yet. Grab some paper or open that notepad file and start getting creative. If you feel you have a real winner please share it with me in a comment below.

While Google is not disclosing any of this information what you can take away from this post is what’s been used in the past and has proven to be beneficial to your overall growth of your site. Please understand while every attempt was made here to bring you the best information it is still just speculation.

One of the biggest targets by Googles algorithms seems to be targeting networks which are using black hat methods. These sites are ones such as Link Networks or Collectives. These networks and collectives tend to give you a blast of links within the same day or over a few days and then just stop. This clearly gives Google a red flag that you are manipulating the link building for your site. A solid back linking service of your own should be a slow but steady pace in which the anchor text is different.

Keyword Density and Metadata spam is a clear sign you are up to no good in Googles eyes. If you are stuffing a repeated keyword in a post you are writing and then stuffing it within the meta information you can be sure it’s going to be flagged and sand boxed. While maybe not at first, they will eventually find it and shut it down (in most cases) Just honestly stay away from attempting anything like this and instead use your keywords and like keywords sparingly. Write your content more so its easy for your readers to read instead of stuffing it for search engine spiders.

In 2012 Google announced a new algorithm for Ad/Content ratio which takes a snap shot of your site and figures out where ads are being displayed on it. Google recommends not adding any ads above the fold but lets be serious here. Any site will have some ads above the fold just because that’s what gets the best results in terms of income for the site. With that being said just make sure your site design is clean and that your ads are not taking away from the readers ability to find and read your content easily. You can use a site such as Browser Sizes to view how your site looks in various situations.

By understanding and following these basic guidelines you can rest assure your site should be in good hands. Just be smart and don’t try to manipulate the system and you will start reaping the rewards of a solid SEO campaign for your business.

So how do you track your link building once you start?

There are a number of tools to help you figure out where you stand in the search engines and where you rank. Many of them are free tools. If you know what keywords you are trying to rank for I recommend using a software program called Rank Tracker.  This program allows you to input your target keywords and run a scan which will tell you exactly where your pages are ranking. You can also save projects so you can view what keywords are increasing rank and what ones might be falling. This allows you to pinpoint issues and address them quickly by building more backlinks to the keyword that might be falling.

Other programs such as MajesticSEO, Open Site Explorer or Buzzstream are also well known and quality programs that will allow you to manage your SEO tactics.

When creating your video the last thing you should do is pitch them a sale. People searching for content are looking for something helpful and if you provide them with the answer they will be grateful. By providing helpful and educational content around your product you will build a trust with them allowing you to push the sale more easily later on.

Meta Tag Information Is Important

Since videos have no content that can be crawled by search engines it’s important to tag your videos correctly with the right keywords. These tags and short description are what’s going to be used by Google and other search engines to index your video. By pinpointing relevant keywords along with popular keywords in your niche you will be able to both pinpoint your traffic and benefit from various traffic sources.

Media Sharing

The ability for people to be able to share your video on Facebook, Twitter and other networks is important to building traffic to it. Above all make sure the link back to your video displays your video in a clear and easy to access area. The last thing you want to do is have someone click on your link and have to search half way down your page for the video they want to watch. Easy access to this data is going to keep your new visitors at your page for longer.

Branding

Since videos are shared all over the net, branding your videos will make sure that your business is front and center no matter where your video links end up. By having a quick introduction that’s 5 seconds long that displays your companies name and url will yield huge benefits for getting traffic to your main url as your videos go viral.

Tracking

Once you have a number of videos up and running you can use the information video networks give you such as Youtube. This information can be used to see what tags are drawing the most traffic for your niche and what information your giving has the most comments and visitors being active with it. This information can then be used to produce better videos that address common questions in your niche.

With all of this video sharing the question that comes to mind is where are all these videos being viewed. You would think a majority would be made up of websites such as hulu or netflix but in a recent survey from comscore report these two only make up 2%-3% of the total online videos being watched. The majority of these are being viewed on Google sites such as Youtube and in second place VEVO. However Google holds a majority of these video views at over 50% of the total videos being viewed online.

This is why it is important as an affiliate marketer or as a business to have a Youtube account and at least backlink your videos to your main site. A quick service to create cool looking videos and information about what you offer is called Animoto. This creates a storyline with pictures in which you add cool effects, great video and sound quality to go with it.

So what can you do and merchants do to combat this dark side of affiliate marketing?

The first thing anyone needs to realize is if it sounds too good to be true then it most likely is. Feel free to question and ask questions about a product or service before you buy it. Also make sure it has some type of safety net like a money back guarantee. Also be sure you know the merchant service you are using. There are many new ones popping up all the time and some called e wallets that are not very secure and could close at any moment. E wallet systems can be a good means to fund your accounts and use however do a little research on the company that is providing this service before you go adding your bank account and other information to it.

There are a number of ways to syndicate your content now. For internet marketing type niche I use a program called Tribe pro. However just about every niche has guest blogs that are authority blogs.  By submitting your content to them for approval you will gain extra exposure and link juice for your site. This method is used for both building a solid quality backlink to your main site and also gaining extra exposure from all the readers this guest blog already has.

#2 – Ezines and Article Directories

This method has been around for a long time, however it still proves to be one of the most effective ways to build targeted traffic for your sites. While many programs recommend mass producing and spinning articles I do not, instead I recommend doing the following:  Find one top article directory and post only the best and unique articles you have to it. Create yourself a solid portfolio here in a niche and stick out as an authority figure in it. If you do want to spin your articles I recommend using a program called The Best Spinner and only creating 5-7 other articles from it using the best recommended like words only. This ensures your article will still be well written and readable to visitors.

#3 – Create a PDF Document

Creating a PDF document out of your content is simple with free software from Open Office. Simply create the content in their word processor and when completed click on the PDF icon to convert it. When creating this PDF be sure to add at least a header to the document on all pages that has a link back to your website. Then submit this new PDF to sites such as Scribd, Docstoc, DoxTop and Issuu.

#4 – Create a Slideshow with key points via powerpoint

Creating a Power point is easy, even more so when you already have the content in place. You then just need to chop it up into parts to create a slide show. After creating the Power point you can then add it to SlideShare.net

#5 – Video Sharing

While creating a video out of your documents is normally not the most impressive, you can spend a little extra time doing a voice over instead of making people read the video. However a simple way to create your video is to take the slide show you just created and import it into Windows movie maker: Within PowerPoint choose Save as and select the PNG option  to convert each slide into a PNG image file.

#6 – Podcasts

If you did a voice over for your article you can now strip that voice over and add the recording as a pod cast. You can then add it to programs such as Itunes, Podomatic and Podcast Alley.

Your First PayDay Tip

While thousands are paying big bucks for SEO and SEM for their sites to target keywords on websites there are other areas that are overlooked. On Google you may have noticed when you do a search there is also an images and video category. While these might not get as much traffic as the web tab it is still worthwhile to create and tag your content for these keywords as well. Since competition on these pages are lower you can get a decent amount of targeted traffic from them.

By getting your images and videos ranked for keywords it also helps in getting your content text ranked for the web tab of Google’s search. This creates a more targeted approach to getting the right visitors to your site which increases your overall traffic but more importantly your conversion rates.

You Second PayDay Tip

Email marketing has always been about creating catchy headlines to get people to open your emails. However when it came to articles and blog posts its been about stuffing it with keywords to get the traffic. With the new changes happening on search engines stuff keywords no longer play a major part. Instead creating catchy headlines that get people to +1 your content and share it with others is what’s going to get you the viral traffic you want.

Keyword targeting still plays a roll.  You will want to use it more within the content as well as any pictures or video you add to your blog. This allows you to capitalize on various searches including when people do video and image searches.

#1 – Don’t upsell at the last minute

With nearly every offer out there upsells have become the norm. However when someone is buying don’t upsell them right away. Wait till they purchase your basic package first and then offer it. Or better yet wait a week or a few days and then recommend the upsell to them. Many people end up leaving a program because they buy way to much and hit information overload.

#2 – Remove your sites navigation

The only thing on your page should be the button to buy. With less distractions your visitor now only has two options buy or leave. If the visitor ends up leaving try offering them an exit pop up with a discount or even something related to the niche for free to get them on your email list.

#3 – No Surprises

The last thing you want to do is surprise your new buying member with information at the last minute. Be upfront with them from the start and don’t forget to mention these key things

• Is this a one time payment or a monthly payment
• Payment methods accepted
• Remove any flashy pop ups before the sales process is completed
• Do not use any unrelated special offers
• Do not include price increases or extra terms and conditions
• Asking to much information of the person