So I’m sure your very interested in this “secret” money making “scheme”, well the funny thing is that it’s actually not a secret at all and it’s legal and very popular but unfortunately our community hasn’t caught on to it yet.

Affiliate Marketing

Is a revenue sharing arrangement between a person (you) and an online merchant. The affiliate (you) places advertisements around the internet to either help sell the merchant’s products or send potential customers to the merchant’s website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Click – Every time a potential customer clicks on the affiliate link leading to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

Pay Per Lead – Every time a potential client registers at the merchant’s website as a result of the affiliate’s advertisement, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

Pay Per Sale – Every time a sale is made as a result of affiliate’s advertising, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

This Is Pretty Old

Affiliate marketing is nothing more than a company inspiring people to promote their products for performance based financial compensation. Basically, you’re a salesperson that gets paid on commissions. All of us have either done something like this before or know someone who participates in this type of business model. Some examples of popular offline affiliate programs are below:

Avon – Got its start in 1886 as the California Perfume Company based in New York. Avon sells women’s cosmetic and perfume products and grossed 6.2 Billion in sales last year. Avon’s entire business was built on individual representatives (affiliates) marketing their products and Avon has a little short of 100,000 of these representatives worldwide.

Pre-Paid Legal – Started in 1969 because the founder was involved in a head on collision and didn’t have proper legal coverage to cover the legal bills accumulating from his accident. They provide monthly legal expense plans and have thousands of independent associates (affiliates) nationwide promoting their services.

Amazon – Started their “associate” program back in 1996 to entice website owners to promote their inventory on Amazon’s behalf. Amazon spent next to no money on marketing in this area and it worked out pretty well as they are the internet’s largest seller of books and other goods, thanks in large part to their affiliates.

While there are a ton of extremely successful examples at these offline companies, there are a lot more who are less successful. It is the same way (to a smaller degree) online, so you may be asking “Why is online different than offline?” I have one word for you…

Scale

In affiliate marketing this is the ability to acquire prospects quickly while keeping any and all expenses constant and low. There are billions of people online all over the world and it is much easier than you may imagine, capturing them to market to later.

No Product, No Money, No Problem

Most income producing activities are called businesses and most businesses have expenses. The majority of most businesses expenses (other than personnel) are marketing. The cool thing about the internet is that there is a ton of FREE ways to get to masses of people looking to buy the product or service you may promote. These customers have demonstrated…

Demand

Is the act of displaying a need for something. Online there are tons of places where people are demonstrating a natural demand for some product or service. A great example of this is Craigslist. Take a look at the “Real Estate for Sale” section in any city. You’ll notice that everyone posting under this category has demonstrated demand for wanting to sell their properties. A smart affiliate looks at this and says “What product or service that is already created, can help these people achieve their goal faster?” Maybe it’s an information product, maybe it’s connecting them with a real estate agent in their city. There are tons of ways to provide value as long as you get paid for it!

The Product / Service

There are an abundance of companies online that would be happy to have you promote their product to your market. You can setup agreements with companies ranging from travel agencies to banks! There are even other affiliate marketers online that have created quality information reports that they normally sell. Some will give these to you for free or at a small fee so that you can redistribute them and keep all the profits, this is called buying the Master Resale Rights (MRR).

The List

Arguably the most important component to raking in the cash is building lists of people who have already demonstrated demand or have previously purchased something similar. Once you have the list, you can recommend products or solutions to these people and as long as it solves their problem. They will BUY from YOU.

One day I was talking with a friend (a successful serial entrepreneur) about some of the problems I was having in my business and he introduced a valuable concept to me. He asked if I knew the difference between Push vs. Pull Marketing. He went on to explain the differences between these and my outlook on marketing was changed forever.

Push Marketing

The most traditional marketing practice which involves “pushing” out a marketing message onto a group of prospects. A common example is a television ad on a major station. The companies using this method know that a certain portion of the group they are “pushing” this ad out too may be interested in the products or services they have to offer. This method is substantially less targeted in most cases and the ROI is lower for smaller companies. Push marketing can be good for larger companies with bigger budgets but not as good for small business owners who need to sell products now.

Pull Marketing

This method is becoming more popular as small and large businesses alike are experiencing amazing results. Pull marketing involves identifying demand for a product or service then placing a marketing message in front of the group. The marketing message is written in a way that “pulls” customers in the door a lot easier to buy your products or services. A great example of this offline are newspaper classifieds and wanted ads. Online, Google and Craigslist have made a ton of money connecting people to businesses that they demanded to seek. For small businesses, this is ultimately what you want to find, while it can be a bit more costly upfront (because of targeting) you will experience a much higher ROI.

Understand Your Marketing Mix

It is important you understand your marketing mix so that you can be sure that all of your efforts are correct and aligned with you making more sales. The marketing mix is made up of the 4 P’s below:

Product

All successful businesses solve problems through their products and services. You must look at your offer and truly define the problem you are solving for your market. The problem could be as simple as developing a better way to remember things you are supposed to do (Post-It Notes) or as complex as developing a new undetectable airplane that can be used in warfare (Stealth Bomber). Whatever it is, solve a problem that your market understands and identifies with.

Price

Pricing can be tricky but I have learned a couple of tips from past experiences and other successful entrepreneurs that may be helpful to you:

• Compete on quality, not price
• People will either pay or they won’t and price normally isn’t an issue if someone wants something (Thanks Wil Schroter)
• Connecting price to a valuable benefit will make it easier to price your products higher

At the end of the day, if you can provide a unique value and strive to build a brand of quality around your products and services, you’ll be fine. I mean hey, who would have ever thought millions of people would pay $4 for a cup of coffee? Thanks to Starbucks and their branding, people are motivated to do it everyday.

Place

A popular area of focus over the last 10-15 years for businesses has been finding the right place for customers to purchase their products. As consumers are becoming busier and more inundated  with marketing messages from your competition, they are looking for companies that can deliver the products they want without infringing on their lifestyle. I came to this realization the other day when I was looking to order a pizza. I wanted Pizza Hut but for some reason they didn’t deliver in my zipcode. I admit that I was too lazy to go pick it up so I called Domino’s and received my order in 30 minutes. While this may sound like a funny example, let’s look at some numbers that show us why this example is not funny to a business owner.

Order Price: $14.85  X  100 other lazy people in my zipcode = $1,485 worth of revenue that went to Domino’s vs. Pizza Hut (in one day)

Look for ways that your customers can interact with your brand on their own time in the environment they are most comfortable and you will be able to maximize profits.

Promotion

You could have the greatest product in the entire world but without promotion, no one will know about it and no one will buy. When promoting, you have to be an evangelist of your product, always talk about the benefits and problem you solve. You have to “infect” people with your enthusiasm and story so that they will do the same on your behalf. One important note to understand about your marketing tactics is the difference between Public Relations (PR) and Daily Marketing Processes. Public Relations is any non-recurring public event that highlights your company in a positive or negative way. The most important thing to understand is that you cannot rely on it to drive consistent leads to your business. Nonetheless, PR can be a great way to get your company’s name out there for branding purposes. On the other hand, Daily Marketing Processes can drive you targeted leads daily. This process may involve sending out letters to prospects daily, calling leads or posting ads. Whatever process you choose, be consistent and constantly monitor performance to increase your company’s ROI.

There are no catches, just fill out the form above and we will send over your plan ASAP. Oh just in case you’re wondering, this plan covers the following areas:

• Article Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Joint Venture Creation
• Email Marketing
• Marketplace information capture
• Social media and so much more!

We sell similar reports to our client base @ $500 a pop! So act fast and get it now because I am not sure how long my business partner is going to allow me to give away MOST of our marketing secrets

See you on the other side!

Number two, web promotion can scale to levels that other advertising mediums cannot.  Going global using Google Adwords simply means checking a few extra boxes for the countries you now wish to target.  Running print ads and tv/radio in a foreign country?  Good luck.

Number three, search engine web promotion is also necessary because it’s the reason you built your website.  What good is your website you spent all your time/money on that nobody can find?  What was the point of building it if you don’t want people to find it?

Number four, you can do some of it yourself. Reaching out to bloggers, and getting a few links from family/friends’ websites does not require much work and can go a long way towards your success online.  Web promotion on the search engines is all about exposure.

Search engine promotion is all about maximizing your potential traffic from the various SEs.  Keeping up with each search engine’s algorithm is probably a good idea.  There are a number of blogs & twitterers you can follow on the topic of SEO to keep abreast of the latest changes.  For the most part, algorithms don’t change much over time.  Inbound links, length of domain name registration, site history, quality content, and number of pages have always been the major factors.  Minor things will change from time to time, and keeping up is important, but the key elements have remained the same since the late 90s (thankfully, or keeping up with the industry would require a lot more work).  With social media for example, the industry evolves at a much quicker pace, and trying to keep up means you spend your entire day reading blogs and accomplishing nothing but treading water in the industry so you can speak the lingo.

Search engine promotion involves more than just SEO and CPC.  It can also involve using tools like Google Local, as well as creating presences on the various social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIN, and so forth.  SE promo is vital to your business.