Your ultimate goal is to help people, but you also want to increase your bottom line. Learning how to make money with your list is essential — it’s also important that you don’t make mistakes that could cut into your profits.

Promote Affiliate Products

One way to make money with your list is to promote affiliate products. The chances are good that no matter which niche you’re in, you can find relevant products that people will respond to. These might be information products, physical products, or even services. The important thing is that you check the product yourself for quality to make sure it’s something that you will feel good about putting your stamp of approval on.

Many list owners make the mistake of simply choosing offers based upon their commission without checking to make sure it’s something that their readers can actually use. By hand-selecting what you promote, you’ll gain the trust of your list members and they will be more likely to buy from you in the future.

In doubt? Don’t promote.

Promote Your Own Products

What many list owners end up doing is creating their own products (if they don’t have them already).

This gives you ultimate control over what you’re offering to your list, as you are the one who decides what goes into the product. This is amazing, because after a while you will have gotten a feel for what the members of your list really need. This allows you to zero in on their wishes and hand-deliver them a product you know they’ll be happy to pay for.

It can also be more beneficial to promote your own products, since you don’t have to split the commission as an affiliate. This can be more lucrative in the end. Having your own product can also brand you as an expert. As soon as people see your name on a book or other product, they know that you are a serious person in your field.

Presell The Product

No matter whether you’re promoting an affiliate product or you’re providing your own, you need to make sure you presell the product.

Preselling means to warm up your reader BEFORE he/she is sent to the sales page.

That means using good copywriting skills right within your e-mail that will show people that the product that you’re recommending is one that they actually need. Empathize with the reader, and show that this is a product that can do exactly what they need it to do.

That doesn’t mean you’re going to hype the product at all or lie. You can certainly make a lot of sales without making false claims about anything. It will be easier than you think to presell to your customers if you are promoting a product that you truly believe in.

Create Special Offers

Creating special incentives and offers can help you to make sales. Your list members will be thrilled to get discounts just by being a member of your list. This strategy also makes being a member of your list special and exclusive – something they can’t get from the competition.

Here are some ideas…

Negotiate a special discount with a product owner if you’re an affiliate. Ask the owner for a percentage off, a free trial, or even an added bonus – just for your readers.

Create and offer an added bonus yourself. Provide it only to those readers who buy a product through your affiliate link. For instance, an extra report, audio, or maybe even your notes that you took when YOU went through the same course.

Drop your price just for your list members on a product that you own.

Offer Resale Rights or PLR rights to your own product – only to your list.

Bundle up other people’s Resale Rights products into a package and offer it at a steal.

Offer personal coaching only to your list members.

No matter what you decide to do, keep in mind that you need to treat your list members like gold, which means giving them offers that nobody else has access to.

If you make these offers truly special, you’ll get customers for life!

Don’t Be Afraid To Change Out Products Over Time

It can be very tempting to just leave everything as it is after you’re done setting up different products to promote in your autoresponder series. The truth is that some offers may not convert as well as you thought they would. You need to check your stats and periodically clean things out. Test different offers to make sure the needs of your list members are being met — and that you’re earning as much money as possible.

That may mean trying different affiliate offers or taking note of your list member’s feedback and creating products based around that. Even though your autoresponder series can be “set and forget,” that’s not always the best case scenario.

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Affiliate marketing is one of the most “passive” forms of online income there is.

- No products to create.
- No customers to deal with.
- No shipping or refunds or anything.

Easy peasy. Well, once you get started it is.

The hard part has been HOW to get started.

1. Buy a web design program for $300?
2. Hire someone to create a website?
3. Set up something free that you have no control over and could be taken away any time?

eek. Not great options, until now. Jimmy D. Brown, highly successful online marketer – and fantastic mentor, has put together a course teaching how ANYONE can get started with affiliate marketing with NO experience, NO $300 website software — and build a lasting business.

He was kind enough to share an excerpt from one of the lessons of his course. Keep reading to see his teaching style. I think you’ll like it.

—–

Excerpt from Affiliatenaire
by Jimmy D. Brown

Welcome – welcome – welcome!

We are entering into some exciting times now. Today’s lesson and next week’s lesson mark the final “setup” activities.

Today we’re going to “populate” your blog with content and next week we’re going to publish the first issue of your newsletter.

Then, it’s time to…

Promote, promote, promote!

Woohoo!

So, we’re closing in on those first sales. Keep going. You’re almost ready to begin seeing some results from your efforts.

I’ve heard from quite a few members who have told me they are “finally getting somewhere” due to the step-by-step, drip-feed format we’ve been using. Trust me when I say, it’s only going to get better.

But, it does illustrate a good point: the hardest part of success in internet marketing for most people is getting out of the gate.

It’s been my experience that those who get things setup end up making money. The staggering failure rate that is reported as the “norm” primarily is a result of the lack of getting the foundational things in place.

If you quit and turn back, you’ll be stuck in the starting position once again. And off to find another “option”. One more stat in the staggering failure rate.

If – you – stick – with – this – and – follow – instructions – you – won’t – fail!

Introduction

The ultimate way to get buyers is to strategically use presell content to convert browsers into buyers. It’s time to start blogging!

Your first step is to populate your blog by posting at least five or six messages initially. That way, anyone who visits your blog in the near future will see a busy blog, which makes them more likely to return. If they visit and see just an article or two, they may assume the blog is abandoned (which means they won’t bookmark it, subscribe to the RSS feed, or visit it again).

After you’ve populated your blog, you then need to commit to a regular posting schedule. Obviously, the more you post the better. So if you can post a short article each day, that’s great. But if not, then commit to posting at least three or four times per week.

SIDEBAR: We’ll talk more about “regular” weekly blogging later. In fact, I’ll give you so many ideas for getting ready-made content and creating fresh content that you’ll have plenty of options for years to come. For now, we’re just gonna focus on populating your blog with initial content so it has some “meat” to it when people visit.

Here’s how to create tag cloud keywords for your web pages.

What’s a tag cloud?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia…
 
A tag cloud is a set of related tags with corresponding weights. Typical tag clouds have between 30 and 150 tags. The weights are represented using font sizes or other visual clues. Meanwhile, histograms or pie charts are most commonly used to represent approximately a dozen different weights. Hence, tag clouds can represent many more weights, though less accurately so. Also, frequently, tag clouds are interactive: tags are hyperlinks typically allowing the user to drill down on the data.

A Cloud tag helps your visitors know what your blog is all about. It also helps with the search engines because the most important keywords are displayed on each web page.

The free tool I’m using to determine the most important keywords on my blog pages is called ABAKUS Topword. ABAKUS Topword analyzes a web page for top keywords and phrases. I use the keywords for the tag cloud and I use the top 2 keyword phrases for the categories for the page.

I ran the URL for this web page through ABAKUS Topword and here are the results:

Meta Keyword Suggestions: 
free, keyword, cloud, keywords, tag, tool, with, marketing, internet, web

I added these single keywords to the tag cloud for this web page.
 
2 Word Phrases:
tag cloud (10)
affiliate marketing (10)
internet marketing (9)
free keyword (7)
keywords with (7)
with free (7)
keyword tool (6)
marketing course (6)
marketing affiliate (6)
cloud keywords (5) 

I used these 3 keyword phrases as the categories for this web page:
affiliate marketing
internet marketing
Keyword Research

That’s all there is to quickly creating tag cloud keywords for your web site.

By Jimmy D. Brown of  “Affiliatenaire”

It’s important that you understand something about affiliate marketing from the very beginning -

        Earning affiliate income isn’t easy for the average person. 

Let’s face it, there are 50 gazillion other people out there doing the exact same thing you are doing – if you could remember what it is that you are doing.

So, that’s what I want to address. Here’s the mindset that I want you to remember: there are only so many customers out there. And each affiliate in the program is doing basically the same thing to try to reach them. 

That’s why you are going to be different. Got it?

Before I jump into what I consider to be the “real secret” to earning commissions with affiliate programs, let me share with you a basic concept that is going to be important to what you are going to learn today.

Here is how the average affiliate approaches promoting their affiliate link…

A) Send out a mailing. Purchase ezine ads. Get a few 
pay-per-click  keywords. Post a few links. Make a small 
profit. Get discouraged. Move on to the next affiliate 
program.

Or, if they are slightly more aggressive…

B) Send out a mailing. Purchase ezine ads. Get a few 
pay-per-click keywords.  Post a few links. Write a few 
articles. Create an eBook. Do a joint venture. Swap ads. 
And they continue promoting that same affiliate
program until they (along with a few other aggressive
affiliates) have found every potential customer on the
face of the earth. Make a decent profit. Where do I go
now? Move on to the next affiliate program.

While I certainly agree that the “slightly more aggressive” affiliate is on the right trail with their approach, it still leaves a common problem that all affiliates have…

              Finding NEW customers.

You make an affiliate sale. Great. You make another one. Great. You keep working and working and working to make another sale and another sale and another sale. Now, remember, there are a gazillion others out there trying to do the same thing. And, even if all of these other affiliates only make one or two sales each…

…that’s a LOT of customers that you WON’T be selling to!

    For example: If there are 10,000 affiliates promoting
    Product A and they all, on average, sell just 2 copies
    each, that’s 20,000 customers that are immediately
    unavailable for you to sell to.

Doesn’t matter how hard you promote and how much you do, you WILL NOT sell them a second copy of something they have already bought. Even if they love it. They won’t buy another copy.

So, here’s the “real secret.” While everyone is promoting the heck out of all of the same programs you are, you need to refine who it is that you are promoting.

***Bottom line: Start FOCUSING on those affiliate programs that offer MONTHLY commissions.

Here’s why. Let’s say you promote an absolutely awesome product by Mr. Guru that sells for $29.97. And Mr. Guru gives you 50% commission. By the time all of the processing fees are out of the way, you earn about $14.00 for a new customer.

And you’re done with that customer — it’s time to move on and find the next guy.

HOWEVER, if you promote an affiliate program that pays MONTHLY, let’s say a membership site, then here’s what you would find happens…

The membership site is $27.00 PER MONTH. You earn $13.50 per MONTH for every referral you make for as LONG AS THEY REMAIN ACTIVE! 

With the $29.97 product, you earn $14.00 for all of your efforts in finding a customer. One time commission. That’s it. Time to find another customer. With the MONTHLY service, you earn about the same commission for that same customer. Then, next month you earn that commission over again! Month after that, you’re still earning that same commission from that same customer. For each and every month that the customer continues to use the service you continue to bring in the commission without finding a new customer.

Do you see the potential here?

It makes much more sense to focus on promoting affiliate programs that bill monthly and pay commissions monthly. That way, you continue to earn profits from the…

              Same customer base!

If I am going to buy ads and purchase pay-per-click keywords and create eBooks and bust my behind to get those customers, I’d sure rather get paid every month (without doing a bit of extra work, mind you!) that to only earn a one-time commission.

 —————————————- Side Bar —————————————-
While this isn’t as good as MONTHLY income, choosing an
affiliate program that offers you LIFETIME customers is the
next best thing. For example: With some programs when you
recruit a customer, they are yours for life. If they purchase
future product releases, then YOU receive the commission as
the original referrer. It’s a good second option, but it’s not as
good as getting paid monthly!
———————————————————————————————–

So, what should you promote? Your eyes have been opened. You’ve seen the light. You realize that what you’ve just read does make sense. And you want to get paid monthly!

So, what should you promote? While you definitely need to check things out yourself and make that determination on your own, let me give you a short list of TYPES of offers that you can promote that bill monthly and award monthly commission checks.

* PLR AND RESALE RIGHTS CLUBS

* MEMBERSHIP SITES

* WEB HOSTING

* AUTORESPONDERS AND LIST MANAGEMENT TOOLS

* COACHING CLUBS

* PAID NEWSLETTERS

* SERVICES (AD TRACKING, LEGAL DOCS, MANAGEMENT, ETC.)

The important thing is for you to identify at least one really good affiliate program that offers residual income possibilities for you.

Once you find the right program to promote, it’s a matter of getting as many different people to click on your link as possible.