Free Affiliate Marketing Course - Lesson 1

February 10, 2008 Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing Course

I want this free affiliate marketing course to cater to the absolute beginner Affiliate Marketer while providing neat tips and tricks for the more experienced guys and gals. If you’ve been in the game a while, feel free to skip some sections. However, I suggest that you read EVERYTHING. It is important to have a firm foundation of understanding so you can get the most out of this course and your career as an affiliate marketer.

Let’s rock!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing - is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. (Wikipedia)

Traditional marketing is the combination of marketing material development, direct to consumer advertising and a sales strategy. With the birth of the Internet and the boom of internet companies looking to market their products on this new medium, they quickly realized traditional marketing techniques weren’t going to work.

Internet companies can still develop marketing material and produce ads but they didn’t have boots on the ground (salesmen). Closing deals in traditional marketing is all about getting face to face with the customer. And with their customers spread across the globe, internet companies needed to find a way to maximize their reach.

That is where WE come in. When GoDaddy.com wants to spread the word about their hosting plans, why not get someone like me who’s been using it successfully to recommend it to my friends and pay me a referral fee. Referrals are vital to the success of business. The more people you can get to speak highly about your company, the faster it will grow. (See also Viral Marketing)

So there you have it, your first lesson in Affiliate Marketing. Did you miss it? Did you click on the Go Daddy hosting plans link? Don’t worry you’ll see that link again. As you read this course, I am going to recommend some products that I am using. I will tell you exactly how I’m using it and why I think you should be using it. If you decide to take the plunge into Affiliate Marketing and need the tools I’ve suggested then when you use my links, I will get a referral fee.

(Quick Note: I will explicitly tell you what links are affiliate links and which ones are not. I have absolutely nothing to hide; this course is all about full disclosure. The only reason I am using affiliate links at all is to compensate myself for the time and effort it took to put this course together. I am giving the course away so people can learn what it takes to be successful WITHOUT having to spend money. After you understand the commitment, the process and the skills required being successful, then and only then should you spend any money on affiliate marketing.

I will only be recommending products that are ABSOLUTELY necessary. I will not be plugging SpeedPPC, Affiliate Radar or any other super expensive products. Save your money for your campaigns and once you start generating some income, check back with me and I’ll show you some tools you might want to invest in to take your business to the next level. Until then, let’s focus on getting the business up and running.)

It is simple as that. I am an official salesman for GoDaddy.com.

**Random useless knowledge - the adult industry might have been the pioneer of the cost-per-click advertising model. Ahh, leave it to porn to revolutionize an industry. Speaking of which, did you know that the adult industry is also responsible for the disappearance of Betamax. When they decided to produce their movies on VHS instead of beta, the entire movie industry followed. I’m just waiting for Hugh Hefner to decide between Blu-Ray and HD so I can buy a player.

I digress, but I will drop in a few of those useless knowledge facts as we go along. Don’t worry, I will give you fair warning so you can skip them if you like.

There’s one more important concept about Affiliate Marketing I want to touch on before we get into the different models. There are a number of reasons why affiliate marketing is such a great technique for companies to implement including wide spread reach (some companies have thousands of affiates), etc but most importantly is the ability of those affiliates to pre-sell visitors. The goal for my affiliate sites is to establish a relationship with my visitors. I want them to see me as a source of valuable information. Then when I recommend an affiliate product they will trust my recommendation.

For example, I read Seth Godin’s blog daily. I also read almost every one of his books (he writes a new one every week so it’s hard to keep up). After reading his books and his blog I have come to respect his opinion in the field of marketing so if he recommends a book by another offer, I’m all over it. I trust and respect his opinion.

On the flipside (I will bash people, courses, ideas, and anything else I want in this course so be prepared. My opinions are purely my own and should not be used to pass judgment on the character of the person or people involved. They are simply my observations of a given situation.) I also read Anik Singal’s blog regularly. I’m also on his email list, though not because I trust and respect his opinion but just to keep up with the new product launches in Internet Marketing. I’ve been on Anik’s email list for 6 months and I have not received anything of value other than him promoting someone else’s or his next course. Therefore, we haven’t established a base of trust, we simple have a customer-salesman relationship.

To be a truly effective affiliate marketer you must develop that trust with your potential customers. That is a great advantage for the big companies. Instead of combing the reader recommendation archives at amazon.com looking for marketing books, I go to Seth and he tells me.

Affiliate Marketing Compensation Models

Over the years companies have refined the way they compensate Affiliate Marketers. Cost-Per-Click (CPC) models were very popular at the start of the internet marketing boom. The concept was simple, I will pay you a few pennies for every visitor you can send to my site. Click fraud took that model to an early grave. Companies also realize that the few REAL visitors they received weren’t highly qualified visitors. CPC programs are very few and far between these days.

Companies realize it was probably better to just pay a higher commission based on the visitor actually doing something useful like buying the product! Hence the birth of Cost-per-sale (CPS) models. This strategy was modeled after the typical sales-rep commission structure.

For every sale we close because of your referral, we will pay you a commission.

This has turned out to be a very profitable model for both the company and the affiliate. Some companies actually pay you the full amount of the customer’s purchase as commission. Companies who have a significant line of products which they use to up-sell their customers will actually give you the full price of their introductory product in commissions. We’ll discuss some of those products as we get to the product selection portion of the course.

Recently, CPA or cost-per-action models are on the rise. CPA is similar to CPS in that the visitor must actually do SOMETHING other than just click a link before we earn our commission. That could range from entering a zip code, giving up their email address, signing up for a free newsletter, or even a free trial. CPA offers allow the company to collect information that they deem valuable and pay their affiliate a (generally) smaller commission than an actual sale.

CPA is extremely popular in the ring tone market. Go type ring tone into Google right now, in fact just click this link. There are hundreds of people making thousands a month from those sites and the visitor has to do is enter their cell phone number, download a 99 cent ring tone. Some affiliates claim to be making $20/action with ring tones. $20 for simply getting someone to enter their phone number on a website, no wonder they are so popular.

Unfortunately, I won’t get in to CPA marketing very much in this course. While it can be lucrative, the competition is extremely fierce. Also, the marketing methods are very different than what I’m going to focus on here. Don’t worry, I plan to do another course devoted strictly to CPA. For now we’ll stick to my bread and butter, CPS.

I like CPS the best because it is the definition of real marketing. I can throw together one of those ring tone sites in less than 30 minutes, pay $5 per click and pray for the best; or I can find a real product that I believe in, develop an entire community around that product and make money talking about stuff I enjoy.

My CPS sites allow me to market multiple products from multiple different vendors to my visitors. That way I get maximum value from every visitor. Think about it, amazon.com doesn’t just sell book. I go there, read about a book on fitness and decide I need a heart rate monitor; well they’ve got that too. Oh, what about a yoga mat…. yeah, that too. The CPS model enables you to establish your own real business with real customers and real products.

I know, sounds more complicated right? Well it is, so if you were here looking for a Get-Rich-Quick scheme, sorry but you came to the wrong place. Real affiliate marketing is about building a business. You must approach this with the mindset of owning your own successful business or else you will fail.

Just like any other type of business, this is going to require a lot of commitment, there will be failures and hard times but if you are committed to making this thing work and you want to live the lifestyle of an Internet Marketer (like I do) then you’ve come to the right place. Stick with me and we’ll get there.

That’s enough for one day. I hope you learned a few things:

o I am a long winded son-of-a-gun

o Affiliate marketing isn’t easy

o The CPS model can be very lucrative

o The adult industry actually runs this country

So there’s our foundation. The next lesson will cover goal setting and niche market selection. I wanted to do goal setting in this lesson also but I wanted the first lesson to be fairly short and easily digestible. For some of you this was a review and for some it was valuable ground work laying. Either way I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought. Bring on the harsh criticism, I want you to get the most out of this course.

As I mentioned before, with a 9-5, a wife, two dogs and my niche sites I won’t be able to send a lesson every day so I’m shooting for every other day. In order to make sure you get every single lesson as soon as I publish them I suggest you sign up for my rss feed in your in box.

Affiliate Marketing Lessons in Your InboxEnter your email:

 

Think critically,

Mike

I hope you enjoyed the post and don't forget to sign up for my RSS feed.


Comments

2 Responses to “Free Affiliate Marketing Course - Lesson 1”

Reactions From Other Bloggers

  1. Affiliate Marketing Course Outline : Adventures in Internet Marketing
  2. HOME : Adventures in Internet Marketing

Leave a Reply