Affiliate Apocalypse

Affiliate Apocalypse

 

Introduction to Affiliate Apocalypse............................................................ 3

Blogging Is The New PPC......................................................................... 6

Promotion.............................................................................................. 7

Scheduling Updates............................................................................... 9

Create Posts with a Purpose................................................................ 10

Mailing List............................................................................................. 13

Create a Freebie.................................................................................. 13

Choose A Mailing List Provider............................................................. 15

Email Often.......................................................................................... 16

Pre-Load a Series................................................................................ 16

Set Up a Squeeze Page....................................................................... 17

Social Media........................................................................................... 18

Twitter................................................................................................. 18

Facebook............................................................................................. 18

Pinterest.............................................................................................. 19

Incentive Marketing................................................................................. 20

Choosing Products to Promote................................................................ 21

Don’t Be a Product Zombie...................................................................... 21

Final Words............................................................................................ 23

Resources.............................................................................................. 24

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  Introduction to Affiliate Apocalypse

Have you been mindlessly shambling through your affiliate marketing campaigns like a zombie, reusing the same old brain-dead methods again and again? If so, you’ve likely been forced to watch declining sales, limp commissions and almost dead conversion rates.

Well, it’s time to fight back against these zombified tactics and discover the NEW way to make money in the profitable world of affiliate marketing!

You see, the old strategies of yesterday aren’t just outdated, they are actually incredibly dangerous. Not only do you risk losing a lot of time and money because your affiliate campaigns are designed on a broken down format (that savvy marketer’s have long since abandoned), but you also risk something even more valuable – your reputation!

If you’ve been involved in affiliate marketing for any length of time than you already know just how important credibility is.  When it’s marketer-against-marketer and many of us are touting similar products and pushing out competing offers, sometimes the only difference between us making the sale or the competitor is our reputation for quality, honesty and integrity!

So If you’ve discovered that your affiliate marketing just isn’t working as well as it used to, or perhaps it never worked that well at all, it just might be that you’re using the same general tactics the “uninformed” are still using. The truth is those tactics haven’t worked in years and WILL NEVER WORK AGAIN…

It’s time for something different – something that is not only effective but designed for long-term, continued success.

In this report, you’re going to learn some tricks you can use to bring your affiliate marketing into the future and explode your profits like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You’re going to learn how to stop being a zombie in a world where you must choose to be just another follower, or a leader, destined for ongoing success and prosperity.

There’s no middle ground in an arena where only the fittest survive.  So without delay, let’s get you off the path to certain death and find you safe haven so you can rebuild your business and save your income.

Let’s get started…

 Blogging Is The New PPC

Okay, so blogging itself isn’t new. In fact, almost every marketer has a blog these days. Some have many blogs! But the way they are using their blogs isn’t working as well as it used to! Most of these bloggers are just mindless zombies who continue to churn out the same tired content and use the same old marketing methods.

Does this sound like you?

1.    You get a domain name and set up hosting.

2.    You install a cool theme, add a few plugins including the all-important SEO plugin, and set everything up to run on autopilot (or as close as you can possibly get).

3.    You create a few posts to get started, plugging in as many keywords and tags as possible.

4.    You might share a few posts on various sites or do some article marketing to get some links back for SEO.

5.    Then you sit back and wait for the traffic to roll in.

6.    When it doesn’t, you lose motivation and never post again.

Unfortunately, this is what happens to most affiliate marketer’s who set up blogs with the purpose of driving in targeted traffic in order to convert offers.

But the reality is – blogs can be incredibly effective traffic generation tools. In fact, with a high quality, well-structured SOLID blog, you can literally DRIVE unstoppable traffic from all of the major search engines to your blog while ensuring maximum conversion rates (because the traffic is heavily-qualified!).

So it’s not the blogging platform that’s the problem – it’s the FORMAT that makes all of the difference.

We’re going to take a look at a few great ways you can go above and beyond with your blog, allowing you to boost your income and maximize your efforts so that your blogs are traffic-magnets, pushing business through your offers every day, all day.

Promotion

 One of the most important things you can do is to promote your blog instead of just expecting people to find it on their own. The fact is, you may never get a significant amount of traffic from search engines unless you tell the search engines that you exist.

There are many ways to get traffic without search engines. Of course, you should definitely do all you can to properly optimize your blog for search engines. But using these alternate methods can ensure you’ll get a continuous flow of traffic without having to depend on Google or other search engines.

Before you get started, if you have blogs in different niches, you might want to choose a different pen name under which to run each blog. This will make promotion easier.

Here are a few methods you can use to promote your blog:

1.    Twitter – Make a profile on Twitter for whatever name you use to blog. Tweet at least a few times each week, with most posts linking to your blog posts, especially if you have a news item to tie into one of your articles.

2.    Facebook – Create a Facebook page for each blog. Link to your blog posts, but be sure to do so in the way that most encourages sharing. Use videos or photos to get people to be more likely to share. This is key.

3.    Pinterest – Pin interesting images and link them to articles on your blog that correlate to the images. This is especially beneficial for posts that show people how to do something.

4.    Guest Blogging – Look for other blogs in your niche that have decent traffic and write guest posts. Link your posts back to your blog.

5.    Video Marketing – Create videos that show people how to do something or give other valuable information. Do not create “commercials” unless they are extremely interesting and/or viral! You’ll only be wasting your time.

People don’t visit sites like YouTube to watch commercials. They visit to be entertained or to learn something.

Scheduling Updates

 One of the most important keys to success with a blog is to update often. Not only is this critical to keep search engines interested, it’s also vital for keeping visitors interested. They need regular content coming through their RSS feed, and they need to see something new every time they visit. Otherwise, they aren’t likely to keep coming back.

You may think you don’t have time to update regularly. Or you may find you lose interest in your blog quickly, because it doesn’t make any money right away and you think it isn’t worth updating.

There’s one very simple way to avoid this trap. Schedule several months’ worth of posts in advance! Ideally you want to post at least once per week. More would be better, and daily posts would be best. However, one post weekly is reasonable.

If you want to schedule a year of posts in advance, you will need 52 posts. They need to be significant in length. 200-word blog posts aren’t enough these days – not for search engines, and not for visitors. 400-word articles or longer are preferred.

Yes, it will take a bit of time to create this many articles, but once you have them created and scheduled, your blog will mostly run itself unless you need to delete spam from your comments or add breaking news.

Scheduling a post in WordPress is simple. Whenever you go to create a post, look on the right side under the “Publish” section. You’ll notice a date and time with “Edit” beside it. If you click “Edit”, you will be able to set a specific date and time for your post to appear.

See below:

 

In order to make sure search engines don’t see your posts as potential spam, you will want to schedule them to post at different times. Do not set each one to post at midnight, and do not set each post to go in on the same day of the week. This will help search engines see your blog as natural.

Create Posts with a Purpose

 Every post you make on your blog should serve one of two purposes. It should either promote engagement or it should promote a product. Most of your posts should be either informative or entertaining and for the purpose of engaging your visitors in discussion. This will keep them coming back regularly. A certain number of posts, perhaps between 10% and 25%, can be posts that promote a product or service for which you earn money.

You can add affiliate links and other promotional links in your engagement posts. In fact, you should. But the post itself should not focus on the product. Instead, the affiliate link should simply support the article in some way.

A purely promotional post will go for the hard sell. The whole post will focus on selling the product. There are several ways to do this. Below are a few examples of ways to sell products on your blog.

1.    Review – If you’ve used the product, you can offer a review of it. Make sure to include a few drawbacks instead of solely focusing on positive aspects of the product. This will make your review more believable.

2.    Benefits – If you haven’t used the product enough to review it yourself, you can just create an informative post about the benefits of using the product. Note that this does not mean a list of features. Features are things like size, shape, weight, how many pages a book has, what color something is, etc. Benefits are the things the product does for you.

For example, a feature of a particular book might be that it is available in digital format. The benefit of that feature to the customer would be that it can be carried easily on an electronic device for reading anywhere and that the customer doesn’t have to wait for shipping.

3.    News – If a product is a fresh release, newly updated, or has some other major news attached to it, you can simply announce the product as a type of news article.

These are just a few ideas you can use for promotional posts. The more original your articles, the more likely they are to ultimately result in sales.

Mailing List

 Everyone knows by now the importance of having an email list, but many people just don’t put as much effort into it as they should. It baffles us really, the number of times we hear someone bitch and moan about their inability to make money in the industry yet they haven’t even bothered to build a mailing list.

A mailing list is your greatest asset, don’t kid yourself – you will never make as much money without one. A mailing list gives you direct and immediate access to a customer base. You can notify them of product launches, jump-start traffic to a new website or blog within seconds and send a swarm of buyers to any offer, anywhere – all with a few clicks of your mouse (and all entirely FREE).

So if you haven’t yet built a mailing list, you absolutely need to do so. If you have dabbled in list building, it’s now time to take it seriously and ramp things up a notch or two.  You could literally live off of the income your mailing list provides if you focus on building lists of buyers, not subscribers.

Here are a few ways to do that:

Create a Freebie

 Freebies are critical for building a mailing list, because most people aren’t going to give their email address to a complete stranger without some sort of real reason to. Incentives are everything.  (And a 5-page report isn’t going to cut it, anymore. Because spam is so rampant even among companies who claim to be “spam free”, people need a real incentive to give out their email address. You basically have to make them an offer that they can’t refuse.)

In other words, a lead-generating, irresistible freebie needs to be of enough value that people would be willing to pay for it. It doesn’t have to be a 100-page book, but it needs to have excellent information in it, and it can’t be anything people can easily find elsewhere. In fact, it should be exclusive to your squeeze or landing page. 

No one wants what can be obtained freely anywhere & everywhere. There’s no scarcity behind that message, no urgency, nothing special.  But if you give them something that they can only get from you, and only for a limited time, you’ll be able to jam your mailing lists with hundreds, if not thousands of subscribers quickly.

Some ideas for freebies include:

·        A quality eBook in multiple formats (include mobile devices and eReaders whenever possible)

·        Free software.

·        Exclusive discounts, coupons & offers.

·        Free physical goods (that make for awesome branding tools ;)

·        Free training of ANY kind (if it has a high perceived value) such as Udemy courses/similar training, video training packages, etc.

·        A multi-part course that is delivered regularly by email (also called an eCourse).

Choose A Mailing List Provider

 Okay, so your mailing list needs a place in which to be hosted and maintained and while you could do this on your own servers we highly recommend going with a professional third-party trusted provider who will ensure that your emails are compliant with anti-spam policies and that your list is always available to you.

There are literally dozens of mailing list providers to choose from, but it’s important to properly evaluate each service to find the right one for you. Since your mailing list isn’t always easy to move to another provider (you will always be able to export your list but then importing may require that every subscriber reconfirm their request to be a subscriber resulting in lost leads), so choose wisely.

Important Note: You’ll want to avoid the free providers because they often have very poor deliverability and their tracking tools are poor or non-existent. Additionally, the free providers place ads in your messages, which can take attention away from your own ads.

Some of the most popular mailing list/autoresponder providers include:

>> http://www.constantcontact.com

>> http://www.getresponse.com

>> http://www.verticalresponse.com

Email Often       

 It’s vital to email your list often, but not so often they become numb to your offers. Or worse, they may unsubscribe altogether. On the other hand, if you don’t email often enough, they could forget who you are and end up reporting your emails as spam.

So it’s important to find your middle ground. Determine what your subscribers are comfortable with and maintain a consistent schedule. This isn’t always easy (trust me, we know!) but you can utilize the autoresponder features and create emails that go out on autopilot, scheduled well into the future.  It takes a bit of work when initially setting up your list, but it’s well worth it.  The objective is to build a relationship with every subscriber and to do this you need to become a regular part of their daily lives.

Pre-Load a Series

 You may want to pre-load a series of 5-7 emails to be delivered every day or two after a new prospect joins. These emails should contain great content and few or NO ads in order to get people to look forward to receiving your messages. You want people to look for your mail and get excited to see it!

At first, you don’t want to push too many ads on people. Instead, concentrate mainly on delivering excellent content. You can include ads at a later time, and those ads will be much more effective once the prospect has become conditioned to trust you because of the great content you’ve delivered.

Set Up a Squeeze Page

 You’ll need a way to deliver your freebie, and that is usually through a squeeze page. The easiest way to do this is by using Squeeze Ninja. You won’t need any coding experience at all!

>> http://www.squeezeninja.com

Make sure to focus on great sales copy for your squeeze page. (What? Sales copy on a squeeze page?) Yes! You need to have great copy in order to get people excited about receiving your freebie, because they have to be excited enough to be willing to trust you with their email address!

If you can’t hire a professional copywriter, just keep these things in mind:

1.    Headline – The headline is the single most critical part of your squeeze page. This must grab attention very quickly! This could let people know the main benefit of your freebie or why they should join your list.

2.    Opener – This is a little paragraph of information that gets them to keep reading. A single paragraph is usually plenty on a squeeze page.

3.    Bullets – Next, you need to include a few bullet points that explain the benefits of your freebie. Be mysterious, but let them know exactly what type of information they will learn and how they will benefit from that!

4.    Call to Action – Don’t forget to include a call to action. Let people know what you want them to do (as in opting in to receive the freebie).

Social Media

 Even more frightening to many people than email marketing is the s-word… social media. Social media may seem daunting, especially if you don’t consider yourself a social person in general, but it’s deceptively easy.

Twitter

 Twitter is especially easy, because they limit how much you can post. Twitter is useful for letting people know when you’ve made a new blog post and linking to it, posting quick affiliate links, sharing other social media stuff, etc.

Facebook

Facebook is a bit more complex than Twitter, but it is still extremely easy to use effectively (although it can take a bit more time). Facebook users are especially prone to clicking the “like” button and the “share” link, either of which will show up to people they are friends with. This is how things go “viral” online.

The easiest way to make use of Facebook is by setting up a fan page in your niche and then sharing cool things that are related to the niche. This could include any of the following.

1.    Memes – A meme is a viral idea that spreads online. You have probably seen at least a few of these. Some popular memes include “Ermahgerd”, “Trollface” and “Overly Attached Girlfriend”. Creating a meme of your own is a great way to get a lot of traffic on Facebook.

2.    News – Sharing shocking or exciting news articles is always a great way to get attention. These links will get passed around a lot.

3.    Interesting Videos – Search YouTube for great videos in your niche. Videos get passed around very easily and go viral quickly.

You can also join Facebook groups in your niche and use them to get your name out to a larger audience. Just don’t spam them!

  

Pinterest

 Pinterest is mostly about images, so you’ll want to have a bunch of interesting images to share that relate to your niche. Create different pin boards that correspond to different elements of your niche, and then post various images to those boards.

Pinterest has a lot of potential to make your content go viral, so be sure you share your pins via your other social media, as well.

Incentive Marketing

You’ve seen those affiliate offers where the bonuses seem even more valuable than the product itself, right? They are everywhere for one reason – they work! Incentives are great for making a deal “too good to pass up”.

Let’s say you’re marketing a weight loss product that sells for $19.95. Maybe it’s a month’s supply of a particular diet pill. You could offer a whole package of weight loss guides and such to go with it, increasing the full value of that $19.95 product to hundreds of dollars!

For example, you might include:

1.    A 100-page guide to losing weight without counting calories that normally sells for $77.

2.    A 50-page recipe book of healthy weight loss recipes that normally sells for $17.

3.    A 20-minute workout video that normally sells for $27.

Those three bonuses alone increase the value of the product by $121!

When using incentive marketing, be sure you keep two things in mind:

1.    The incentive should always match the general niche of the product.

2.    The incentive should be something one would consider valuable, not something they could get free elsewhere.

 Choosing Products to Promote

One major mistake the average affiliate zombie makes is to choose products blindly and promote them just because they look interesting or have a high commission. Don’t do this! It’s a trap!

Think about it. As an online marketer, the most valuable asset you have is your reputation. If you ruin it, you may never get it back! If you do, it could take many months or even years to restore. And yes, promoting a bad product can ruin your reputation even if you have absolutely nothing to do with the product itself!

Before you promote a product, try it out yourself. Either use the product, or at the very least inspect it thoroughly to be sure that it is quality and does what it promises it will do.

Also, be sure the company’s customer service is top-notch. If a company is going to upset your buyers, they aren’t going to be your buyers for very long! They may start complaining to you, and if you don’t do something they are going to be mad at you, because you recommended the product. In other words, if they can’t get a refund from the other company they bought from, they may expect you to offer it to them!

It’s best to just avoid that hassle altogether by ensuring you only promote quality products that will really benefit your visitors. Never, ever just promote a product blindly and hope it turns out okay!

  

Don’t Be a Product Zombie

When it comes to choosing affiliate products, quality is vital. However, the actual products you promote can be just as important. For example, stop promoting the same old stuff everyone else is promoting. Don’t be a product zombie!

Clickbank products can be great, but if that’s all you ever promote, you aren’t likely to get wealthy. Instead, look for something unique to promote. Find small, individual affiliate programs that promote unusual products.

Promote physical products and not just information products. Sure, info products have very high profit margins. They can also be a tough sell, because many people don’t believe they have as much value as a physical product. Or people have been burned by low-quality info products and don’t trust them anymore.

It’s fine to promote some virtual products, however adding some physical products to the mix can greatly increase the chances that you’ll find something that will interest your list members and blog visitors.

If you can’t find anything interesting to promote, you might consider creating your own product. You can always outsource this if you need to. Just remember to create something people will actually want to pay money for. You may be in the HDTV niche, but not many people would be willing to pay money for a 20-page guide on how to choose the right HDTV. That might make a great freebie to get people to opt in to your list, but it’s not a great product to sell!

Final Words 

Stop being an affiliate zombie who mindlessly promotes the “next big thing” and uses the same old pathetic tactics people have been using for the last fifteen years!

Wake up and join the Affiliate Apocalypse and put an end to those tired old methods! These new tactics will open up a whole new world to you if you’re willing to put them into action!

These strategies will work. They are working right now for thousands of super affiliates all over the world. They’re working day in and day out pulling in untold riches for those who are smart enough to put them into action.

But you have to take action…

Don’t just read this report and toss it aside. Do something about it!

Start putting these strategies into place today, and within the next few days you’ll start seeing a dramatic difference in your business! You’ll see more traffic and more sales than ever before.

The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll start seeing the kind of results you’ve always dreamed of!

Resources

 Download The Affiliate Survival Guide!

 

Discover the truth about becoming a respected, feared and successful affiliate!  The ‘Affiliate Survival Guide’ offers you access to an all-inclusive battle plan so you can win the affiliate war and become a zombie-slaying powerhouse!

>> http://makecommissions.com/zombie/