Affiliate Marketing: How to Be a Successful Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make a real full time income from home.  This is one of the few businesses where you are almost completely in control of how much your affiliate marketing commissions are. With the seemingly infinite possibilities that the internet offers, all you have to do is find one or two effective strategies and implement them consistently and your commissions will skyrocket.  

One note of caution though, while it is true that you can make virtually unlimited commissions with affiliate marketing, please don't fall for the scams that tell you that you won't have to do any work and that you can be making a six figure income in 30 days.  That is simply not true.  While affiliate marketing is an easy business to learn and run successfully, it will take work and time to get your business to the point you want it to be. 

There are several things you can do to increase your commissions, but one of the best, and most  simple, things you can do to earn higher commissions is: build an opt-in list. 

Most people don't realize that up to 98% of the people who visit a website not only won't make a purchase...they won't ever be back.  In order to convert more of your visitors into customers you need multiple contacts with them.  Having multiple contacts with them can lead them to trust you and feel more comfortable about spending money with you.  

But how do you do that if 98% don't buy?  Simple, you build an email list.  You can do this on autopilot simply by signing up for an auto responder service.  When you set up an account you can pre-load a series of emails into the auto responder and they will go out over a period of time, whatever you set up.  That way you can not only be building trust by providing the people on your list with valuable information, you can also, subtly, remind them that the product you are selling can help them achieve the results they are looking for.  

When you have an auto responder you will need to get your visitors to opt-in to your list.  By doing this they are giving you permission to contact them by email so you avoid any spam complaints.  But how do you get them to opt-in?  Well, one of the most common practices is to bribe them!  Don't worry, I'm not talking about anything unethical.  You simply offer them something of value in return for them signing up to your email list.  

It doesn't have to be anything expensive, just something with a high perceived value...something that they will find helpful and consider valuable.  For this purpose a free ebook or report is great.  Just make sure that the free gift you give them isn't some junky thing that you threw together in 10 minutes.  Provide them something of real value so they will trust you and feel more inclined to not only sign up for your list, but purchase products from you. 

One very common mistake people will make with their list is to make every email nothing but a sales pitch.  If you do that they will unsubscribe and you've lost a potential customer.  Instead, give them valuable hints, tips in every email they receive from you and only occasionally pitch a product to them.  This technique will work much better than if you're always asking them to dig into their wallet.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make a living, and there are easy ways to greatly increase your affiliate marketing commissions.  Using an auto responder is the quickest, easiest way to make more money. 

How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

It's true that you can make a ton of money with little effort that will only happen after you've spent the time to build your site and get a steady stream of traffic.  So at first, you'll have to work very hard.  Then once your site is established it won't take much effort at all to keep it going.

Don't ever let someone convince you that you'll be making six figures in a few months especially if you've never done this before.  Affiliate marketing isn't a hard business to learn, but you'll still need to take the time to learn it. 

The biggest challenge is getting a steady stream of hungry customers to your website.  There are many methods you can use to get customers, many of them are completely free and easy to learn, while others can be quite expensive and have a pretty steep learning curve. 

Article marketing is a great free way of generating a lot of traffic.  This method simply involves you writing, or hiring someone to write for you, articles that will provide valuable information on your product or service.  I don't mean something that is one long sales pitch, I mean something that contains truly helpful information.  

When you submit your article to an article directory it will be published and when someone does a search using the keywords you used for your article, they will read your article, click on your website link at the bottom of the article and  visit your site.  

Another way of generating traffic is with Pay Per Click or PPC.  While equally effective as article marketing this method has a steep learning curve and since it's not free you'll be spending a lot of money while you're learning.  With PPC you submit ads to a search engine and target a keyword specific to your website.  When someone clicks on your ad you have to pay.  

The amount you'll pay will vary on the popularity of the keywords  you've chosen as well as a quality score and other variables.  If it sounds a little complicated that's because it is.  I wouldn't recommend anyone try PPC until they have the money to take a course and learn how to do it properly. 

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