I was just about to leave for lunch when the switchboard operator told me I had a phone call.
Puzzled, since I was new on the job and not expecting any calls, I walked back to my desk and picked up the phone. It was my 10-year-old .
"Hi, Mom, it's me."
"Linda?...Linda?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"Why did you call? Is anything the matter?"
"I'm at Eva's house?"
"You're supposed to be in school. Why are you at Eva's house?"
"The school caught on fire and they sent everyone home."
"What do you mean the school caught on fire..."
"So I got on Eva's bus and went to his house."
" . . .If the school caught on fire and you're at Eva's house, where's Veroinca?"
"I put her on our bus and told her to go to Jackies's"
"Did Jackies say it was OK?"
"I don't know, I'm at Eva's house."
As it turned out, 6-year-old Veroinca was indeed at Jackies's, but that phone call made me start to reconsider whether taking the job as a staff writer on a business trade magazine had been the right thing to do. Although the job was exactly the type of work I had wanted and allowed me to schedule my hours around the children's school schedule, I just didn't feel comfortable about working away from home.
It wasn't long either, until I started to resent the hour and fifteen minutes each day I had to spend traveling to and from work, and to realize that the costs of going to work (need for new clothes, gasoline, tires, lunch from the deli on days didn't have time to make my lunch or forgot to take it with me) all were eating into the extra income I thought I'd gain by working at a "real" job instead of freelancing from home as I had been doing for the ten years prior to taking that job.
So, a few months later, when my husband took a new job and we had to move to another part of the state, I decided to give self-employment another go-round -- at least until the children were a few years older.
That was more than 20 years ago. These days the "children" come to visit on weekends. Stephen is an accountant with one of the largest accounting firms in the country and Vicki is a middle school teacher. I still work for myself and don't think I could ever work for anyone else again.
Over the years my business has changed and grown just as my children have. I'm no longer a one-person writer and copywriter. Instead, I run the Businessknowhow.com web site, which provides information, tools and resources to more than a million home-based and small businesses each year.
BusinessKnowHow.com was run from home until 2004. But I didn't run it entirely alone. Instead, I had - and still have - a network of small businesses and freelancers - mostly work-at-home parents - I call on as needed (and as they are available) for various projects. One of the freelancers I've used in the past was my daughter, who did some editorial freelancing while she was in grad school.
The business has grown over the years. So last year, at an age when most people are wondering where they'll get enough money to retire (and hoping they don't get forced into retirement before they're ready), I rented office space and moved my business out of the house. I hired employees to work in the office, but still call on my virtual network to do projects from their homes.
Instead of worrying about the financial and emotional ramifications of losing a job and being forced into retirement, I enjoy running my own business and working to do the things that will make the business be both saleable and valuable when and if I decide I to scale back my business activities.
Remarkably, I have never personally met many of the freelancers and business owners who work on projects for me. They are scattered around the country. We communicate primarily via computer or telephone, with fax or US mail filling in as needed to transfer documents or materials that can't be transferred by computer.
I believe in many ways, that my business - and the way it's run - is a model of the way many more workplaces will be run in the future. While there will always be glassed-in, climate-controlled, ulcer-producing corporate workplaces, today's technology gives us choices we never had before about where we work, when we work, how we work, who we work with, and how long we work. And working from home - or in your own business 5 minutes away from home- is a pleasant alternative to traffic jams and elevators and deli sandwiches gulped down between phone calls and meetings.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Dealing with Home Office Distractions
In today's business world it is not uncommon for many sales people to work from a home office. At first this may seem like a great opportunity, however, it does create some unique challenges. One of the biggest obstacles is the number of distractions that can take us away from our work and prevent us from achieving our objectives.
When you work from a home office it is easy to get distracted from work, especially if it is work that you do not particularly enjoy like prospecting or cold calling. Watering the plants, running errands or even doing laundry can be a welcome change from the daily drudgery of selling. And, if you have young children, the number of distractions increases dramatically.
I, too, work from a home office and have had to deal with this challenge. Here are a few ideas that can help manage these distractions and improve your productivity.
Create an office. When I first began working from home almost a decade ago, I used to work at my dining room table. Unfortunately, this put me in the middle of our household action. My wife would turn on the television and I would be instantly distracted from my work. In other cases, she would talk to me or ask me a question simply because I was in the same room. As a result, it was often difficult to focus on my work. Now I have an office and do the majority of my work there. If you don't have space to create an office, find somewhere in your house that has the least amount of traffic and opportunities for distractions.
Set specific "business" hours. This is particularly important if you have young children. It can be very difficult for children to understand that they can't disturb us while we're working. If you have an office, close your door and place a do not disturb sign on it. This is particularly important if you are making client calls because it prevents family members from inadvertently barging in on you during a critical call.
Use a "to do" list-everyday. Having a list of what you need to accomplish each day can help keep you focused; otherwise, it becomes too easy to do other things around the house. If you know that you need to accomplish a certain number of tasks by the end of the day, it can prevent you from getting distracted during the day. One of the challenges with this is that household duties or running errands are more enjoyable compared to work we have to complete. However, I have frequently found that once I get involved in my task, the desire to do something else fades.
Set deadlines for the projects you're working on. Although I don't have anyone holding me accountable to these deadlines, it find that this approach can help keep me on track. You can also share these deadlines with other people to help keep yourself focused especially if this type of accountability works for you.
Give yourself permission to relax from time-to-time. It's okay to allow yourself to get distracted once in a while. As long it's not a regular occurrence, you don't have to worry too much about it. However, if your relaxation time overtakes your work time, then you need to reconsider your priorities.
Share your goals and objections with a group of advisors. This type of accountability works well for many people because they know they will have to report their progress on specific projects.
Recognize that the results you achieve are a direct result of the effort you put into your work. When I first started my private practice, it was easy to put aside work and do chores or run errands. In my first year, I treated work like a part-time job, clocking an average of 20-25 hours per week. When I evaluated my results at the end of the year I realized I couldn't afford to maintain this mentality. So I started working more. And, I got better results. I eventually learned that the more effort I put into my work, the better results I achieved in terms of the revenue and income I generated. This made it easier to avoid the distractions and focus more on my work.
Lastly, you can try an approach I learned from Brian Tracy many years ago. When you find yourself procrastinating on a particular task or project, repeat the following three words to yourself over and over. "Do it now." This can be a great way to prevent yourself from getting distracted by other things you would prefer to do.
Distractions are sometimes positive. A break away from work can clear your mind, give you the opportunity to refresh yourself, and increase your energy level. However, it is important to remember that you have a responsibility to yourself and your business to limit these distractions
When you work from a home office it is easy to get distracted from work, especially if it is work that you do not particularly enjoy like prospecting or cold calling. Watering the plants, running errands or even doing laundry can be a welcome change from the daily drudgery of selling. And, if you have young children, the number of distractions increases dramatically.
I, too, work from a home office and have had to deal with this challenge. Here are a few ideas that can help manage these distractions and improve your productivity.
Create an office. When I first began working from home almost a decade ago, I used to work at my dining room table. Unfortunately, this put me in the middle of our household action. My wife would turn on the television and I would be instantly distracted from my work. In other cases, she would talk to me or ask me a question simply because I was in the same room. As a result, it was often difficult to focus on my work. Now I have an office and do the majority of my work there. If you don't have space to create an office, find somewhere in your house that has the least amount of traffic and opportunities for distractions.
Set specific "business" hours. This is particularly important if you have young children. It can be very difficult for children to understand that they can't disturb us while we're working. If you have an office, close your door and place a do not disturb sign on it. This is particularly important if you are making client calls because it prevents family members from inadvertently barging in on you during a critical call.
Use a "to do" list-everyday. Having a list of what you need to accomplish each day can help keep you focused; otherwise, it becomes too easy to do other things around the house. If you know that you need to accomplish a certain number of tasks by the end of the day, it can prevent you from getting distracted during the day. One of the challenges with this is that household duties or running errands are more enjoyable compared to work we have to complete. However, I have frequently found that once I get involved in my task, the desire to do something else fades.
Set deadlines for the projects you're working on. Although I don't have anyone holding me accountable to these deadlines, it find that this approach can help keep me on track. You can also share these deadlines with other people to help keep yourself focused especially if this type of accountability works for you.
Give yourself permission to relax from time-to-time. It's okay to allow yourself to get distracted once in a while. As long it's not a regular occurrence, you don't have to worry too much about it. However, if your relaxation time overtakes your work time, then you need to reconsider your priorities.
Share your goals and objections with a group of advisors. This type of accountability works well for many people because they know they will have to report their progress on specific projects.
Recognize that the results you achieve are a direct result of the effort you put into your work. When I first started my private practice, it was easy to put aside work and do chores or run errands. In my first year, I treated work like a part-time job, clocking an average of 20-25 hours per week. When I evaluated my results at the end of the year I realized I couldn't afford to maintain this mentality. So I started working more. And, I got better results. I eventually learned that the more effort I put into my work, the better results I achieved in terms of the revenue and income I generated. This made it easier to avoid the distractions and focus more on my work.
Lastly, you can try an approach I learned from Brian Tracy many years ago. When you find yourself procrastinating on a particular task or project, repeat the following three words to yourself over and over. "Do it now." This can be a great way to prevent yourself from getting distracted by other things you would prefer to do.
Distractions are sometimes positive. A break away from work can clear your mind, give you the opportunity to refresh yourself, and increase your energy level. However, it is important to remember that you have a responsibility to yourself and your business to limit these distractions
3 Simple Strategies to Build Your Home-Based Business Faster And Easier
One of the biggest mistakes new home-based business owners make is trying to do everything from square one.
You can rest assured that whatever you are attempting to do or build, it has already been done.
Sure, it probably won't be a mirror image of what you're doing, but it will have many of the same basic ingredients
The fastest and easiest way to get your business going and growing is by finding others who have already done what you want to do and learning and benefiting from their efforts.
A local business person recently told me he was in the process of building an autoresponder. Of course, this wouldn't be a strange thing to be doing if it was a service he plans to sell, but it has nothing to do with his business!
Instead of investing a few hours to explore those autoresponders already in existence, he is investing well more than a hundred hours trying to build one on his own so he can communicate with his customers.
By conducting only a couple of hours research, he would have discovered a variety of outstanding, affordable autoresponder services that are highly sophisticated and subject to continual upgrading and improvement to keep up with ever-changing technology and consumer needs.
Imagine the kind of business he could have generated for himself if he focused those one hundred plus hours acquiring new customers for his business and expanding and improving on his products and services!
Unfortunately, like him, many new home business owners are still of the employee mindset -- that they have to work relentlessly and do everything alone.
They haven't yet developed the entrepreneurial mindset that understands you have to work smarter, not harder.
Another time-consuming task many new business owners take on is spending hours, even days, trying to design the perfect logo. I'm embarrassed to say I spent DAYS searching the Internet for sample logos, looking for ideas, then sitting and drawing possible logo after logo.
Most people have more creative flair in their big toe than I have in my entire body, yet I thought that if I put enough time into it, even though it meant not focusing on increasing business, the perfect logo would reveal itself.
I eventually abandoned the obsession and as soon as I handed the project over to my web designer, I had a new, effective and eye-catching logo within 24 hours.
It was a costly mistake. I had spent so many years working in a support capacity that I didn't know how to make the shift to a leader capacity and delegate the task.
(Even more important, I later realized, having a logo is waaaay down on the priority scale and doesn't even have to be considered during the start-up period.)
As you are starting your business, consider the following tasks and ask yourself if someone else could be doing them while you focus on building:
designing brochures and marketing materials
creating your web site
setting up your voice mail and e-mail
purchasing supplies and equipment
stuffing envelopes and taking them to the post office, or delivering flyers
market research
hooking up your new computer, modem, fax and installing software
trouble shooting computer problems
writing articles, reports or white papers
These are not revenue generating activities and if you find them challenging or time-consuming, delegate these tasks to someone else like a family member, co-op student or part-time assistant.
For the more specialized items, seek the input of a mastermind member or business colleague on how they handle those responsibilities. Also, hire or barter with experts in marketing, web design and technology.
Another wheel you don't need to re-invent is that of processes, particularly in the area of marketing.
Marketing may not be your forte, yet it is the most important element of your business, and this is where many new home business owners bury themselves.
The good news is you don't have to develop your marketing process by trial and error. Commit several days to studying other businesses both in and outside of your industry. How do they promote themselves? How do they collect leads? How do they convert leads?
In other words, how do they catch the attention of potential customers, get them to express an interest to learn more, and how do they get them to ultimately pull out their wallets and buy?
The quickest and easiest way to create winning processes is to study already successful businesses, then model what they do. Sign up for their newsletters and request additional information. Let them begin a courtship with you and pay attention to what they're doing. Buy a product or two and see what tools they use to keep inviting you back for more.
This doesn't mean copy them word for word or action by action, but assimilate what works, mould it to your specific business and add the essential ingredient of uniqueness that allows you to stand out from the crowd.
These are just three simple strategies you can start with today to get on the fast-track to home business success.
Again, here they are in a nutshell:
Uncover what has already been created or invented, then implement or install. Don't reinvent the wheel.
Think like a business owner, not an employee. Delegate, hire or trade.
Model the processes of others who have already achieved the level of success you're seeking. They've already made the mistakes for you and know what works.
Incorporate these strategies and you will shave hours and dollars from your start-up curve and begin reaping the rewards faster than you ever thought possible.
You can rest assured that whatever you are attempting to do or build, it has already been done.
Sure, it probably won't be a mirror image of what you're doing, but it will have many of the same basic ingredients
The fastest and easiest way to get your business going and growing is by finding others who have already done what you want to do and learning and benefiting from their efforts.
A local business person recently told me he was in the process of building an autoresponder. Of course, this wouldn't be a strange thing to be doing if it was a service he plans to sell, but it has nothing to do with his business!
Instead of investing a few hours to explore those autoresponders already in existence, he is investing well more than a hundred hours trying to build one on his own so he can communicate with his customers.
By conducting only a couple of hours research, he would have discovered a variety of outstanding, affordable autoresponder services that are highly sophisticated and subject to continual upgrading and improvement to keep up with ever-changing technology and consumer needs.
Imagine the kind of business he could have generated for himself if he focused those one hundred plus hours acquiring new customers for his business and expanding and improving on his products and services!
Unfortunately, like him, many new home business owners are still of the employee mindset -- that they have to work relentlessly and do everything alone.
They haven't yet developed the entrepreneurial mindset that understands you have to work smarter, not harder.
Another time-consuming task many new business owners take on is spending hours, even days, trying to design the perfect logo. I'm embarrassed to say I spent DAYS searching the Internet for sample logos, looking for ideas, then sitting and drawing possible logo after logo.
Most people have more creative flair in their big toe than I have in my entire body, yet I thought that if I put enough time into it, even though it meant not focusing on increasing business, the perfect logo would reveal itself.
I eventually abandoned the obsession and as soon as I handed the project over to my web designer, I had a new, effective and eye-catching logo within 24 hours.
It was a costly mistake. I had spent so many years working in a support capacity that I didn't know how to make the shift to a leader capacity and delegate the task.
(Even more important, I later realized, having a logo is waaaay down on the priority scale and doesn't even have to be considered during the start-up period.)
As you are starting your business, consider the following tasks and ask yourself if someone else could be doing them while you focus on building:
designing brochures and marketing materials
creating your web site
setting up your voice mail and e-mail
purchasing supplies and equipment
stuffing envelopes and taking them to the post office, or delivering flyers
market research
hooking up your new computer, modem, fax and installing software
trouble shooting computer problems
writing articles, reports or white papers
These are not revenue generating activities and if you find them challenging or time-consuming, delegate these tasks to someone else like a family member, co-op student or part-time assistant.
For the more specialized items, seek the input of a mastermind member or business colleague on how they handle those responsibilities. Also, hire or barter with experts in marketing, web design and technology.
Another wheel you don't need to re-invent is that of processes, particularly in the area of marketing.
Marketing may not be your forte, yet it is the most important element of your business, and this is where many new home business owners bury themselves.
The good news is you don't have to develop your marketing process by trial and error. Commit several days to studying other businesses both in and outside of your industry. How do they promote themselves? How do they collect leads? How do they convert leads?
In other words, how do they catch the attention of potential customers, get them to express an interest to learn more, and how do they get them to ultimately pull out their wallets and buy?
The quickest and easiest way to create winning processes is to study already successful businesses, then model what they do. Sign up for their newsletters and request additional information. Let them begin a courtship with you and pay attention to what they're doing. Buy a product or two and see what tools they use to keep inviting you back for more.
This doesn't mean copy them word for word or action by action, but assimilate what works, mould it to your specific business and add the essential ingredient of uniqueness that allows you to stand out from the crowd.
These are just three simple strategies you can start with today to get on the fast-track to home business success.
Again, here they are in a nutshell:
Uncover what has already been created or invented, then implement or install. Don't reinvent the wheel.
Think like a business owner, not an employee. Delegate, hire or trade.
Model the processes of others who have already achieved the level of success you're seeking. They've already made the mistakes for you and know what works.
Incorporate these strategies and you will shave hours and dollars from your start-up curve and begin reaping the rewards faster than you ever thought possible.
3 Simple Strategies to Build Your Home-Based Business Faster And Easier
One of the biggest mistakes new home-based business owners make is trying to do everything from square one.
You can rest assured that whatever you are attempting to do or build, it has already been done.
Sure, it probably won't be a mirror image of what you're doing, but it will have many of the same basic ingredients
The fastest and easiest way to get your business going and growing is by finding others who have already done what you want to do and learning and benefiting from their efforts.
A local business person recently told me he was in the process of building an autoresponder. Of course, this wouldn't be a strange thing to be doing if it was a service he plans to sell, but it has nothing to do with his business!
Instead of investing a few hours to explore those autoresponders already in existence, he is investing well more than a hundred hours trying to build one on his own so he can communicate with his customers.
By conducting only a couple of hours research, he would have discovered a variety of outstanding, affordable autoresponder services that are highly sophisticated and subject to continual upgrading and improvement to keep up with ever-changing technology and consumer needs.
Imagine the kind of business he could have generated for himself if he focused those one hundred plus hours acquiring new customers for his business and expanding and improving on his products and services!
Unfortunately, like him, many new home business owners are still of the employee mindset -- that they have to work relentlessly and do everything alone.
They haven't yet developed the entrepreneurial mindset that understands you have to work smarter, not harder.
Another time-consuming task many new business owners take on is spending hours, even days, trying to design the perfect logo. I'm embarrassed to say I spent DAYS searching the Internet for sample logos, looking for ideas, then sitting and drawing possible logo after logo.
Most people have more creative flair in their big toe than I have in my entire body, yet I thought that if I put enough time into it, even though it meant not focusing on increasing business, the perfect logo would reveal itself.
I eventually abandoned the obsession and as soon as I handed the project over to my web designer, I had a new, effective and eye-catching logo within 24 hours.
It was a costly mistake. I had spent so many years working in a support capacity that I didn't know how to make the shift to a leader capacity and delegate the task.
(Even more important, I later realized, having a logo is waaaay down on the priority scale and doesn't even have to be considered during the start-up period.)
As you are starting your business, consider the following tasks and ask yourself if someone else could be doing them while you focus on building:
designing brochures and marketing materials
creating your web site
setting up your voice mail and e-mail
purchasing supplies and equipment
stuffing envelopes and taking them to the post office, or delivering flyers
market research
hooking up your new computer, modem, fax and installing software
trouble shooting computer problems
writing articles, reports or white papers
These are not revenue generating activities and if you find them challenging or time-consuming, delegate these tasks to someone else like a family member, co-op student or part-time assistant.
For the more specialized items, seek the input of a mastermind member or business colleague on how they handle those responsibilities. Also, hire or barter with experts in marketing, web design and technology.
Another wheel you don't need to re-invent is that of processes, particularly in the area of marketing.
Marketing may not be your forte, yet it is the most important element of your business, and this is where many new home business owners bury themselves.
The good news is you don't have to develop your marketing process by trial and error. Commit several days to studying other businesses both in and outside of your industry. How do they promote themselves? How do they collect leads? How do they convert leads?
In other words, how do they catch the attention of potential customers, get them to express an interest to learn more, and how do they get them to ultimately pull out their wallets and buy?
The quickest and easiest way to create winning processes is to study already successful businesses, then model what they do. Sign up for their newsletters and request additional information. Let them begin a courtship with you and pay attention to what they're doing. Buy a product or two and see what tools they use to keep inviting you back for more.
This doesn't mean copy them word for word or action by action, but assimilate what works, mould it to your specific business and add the essential ingredient of uniqueness that allows you to stand out from the crowd.
These are just three simple strategies you can start with today to get on the fast-track to home business success.
Again, here they are in a nutshell:
Uncover what has already been created or invented, then implement or install. Don't reinvent the wheel.
Think like a business owner, not an employee. Delegate, hire or trade.
Model the processes of others who have already achieved the level of success you're seeking. They've already made the mistakes for you and know what works.
Incorporate these strategies and you will shave hours and dollars from your start-up curve and begin reaping the rewards faster than you ever thought possible.
You can rest assured that whatever you are attempting to do or build, it has already been done.
Sure, it probably won't be a mirror image of what you're doing, but it will have many of the same basic ingredients
The fastest and easiest way to get your business going and growing is by finding others who have already done what you want to do and learning and benefiting from their efforts.
A local business person recently told me he was in the process of building an autoresponder. Of course, this wouldn't be a strange thing to be doing if it was a service he plans to sell, but it has nothing to do with his business!
Instead of investing a few hours to explore those autoresponders already in existence, he is investing well more than a hundred hours trying to build one on his own so he can communicate with his customers.
By conducting only a couple of hours research, he would have discovered a variety of outstanding, affordable autoresponder services that are highly sophisticated and subject to continual upgrading and improvement to keep up with ever-changing technology and consumer needs.
Imagine the kind of business he could have generated for himself if he focused those one hundred plus hours acquiring new customers for his business and expanding and improving on his products and services!
Unfortunately, like him, many new home business owners are still of the employee mindset -- that they have to work relentlessly and do everything alone.
They haven't yet developed the entrepreneurial mindset that understands you have to work smarter, not harder.
Another time-consuming task many new business owners take on is spending hours, even days, trying to design the perfect logo. I'm embarrassed to say I spent DAYS searching the Internet for sample logos, looking for ideas, then sitting and drawing possible logo after logo.
Most people have more creative flair in their big toe than I have in my entire body, yet I thought that if I put enough time into it, even though it meant not focusing on increasing business, the perfect logo would reveal itself.
I eventually abandoned the obsession and as soon as I handed the project over to my web designer, I had a new, effective and eye-catching logo within 24 hours.
It was a costly mistake. I had spent so many years working in a support capacity that I didn't know how to make the shift to a leader capacity and delegate the task.
(Even more important, I later realized, having a logo is waaaay down on the priority scale and doesn't even have to be considered during the start-up period.)
As you are starting your business, consider the following tasks and ask yourself if someone else could be doing them while you focus on building:
designing brochures and marketing materials
creating your web site
setting up your voice mail and e-mail
purchasing supplies and equipment
stuffing envelopes and taking them to the post office, or delivering flyers
market research
hooking up your new computer, modem, fax and installing software
trouble shooting computer problems
writing articles, reports or white papers
These are not revenue generating activities and if you find them challenging or time-consuming, delegate these tasks to someone else like a family member, co-op student or part-time assistant.
For the more specialized items, seek the input of a mastermind member or business colleague on how they handle those responsibilities. Also, hire or barter with experts in marketing, web design and technology.
Another wheel you don't need to re-invent is that of processes, particularly in the area of marketing.
Marketing may not be your forte, yet it is the most important element of your business, and this is where many new home business owners bury themselves.
The good news is you don't have to develop your marketing process by trial and error. Commit several days to studying other businesses both in and outside of your industry. How do they promote themselves? How do they collect leads? How do they convert leads?
In other words, how do they catch the attention of potential customers, get them to express an interest to learn more, and how do they get them to ultimately pull out their wallets and buy?
The quickest and easiest way to create winning processes is to study already successful businesses, then model what they do. Sign up for their newsletters and request additional information. Let them begin a courtship with you and pay attention to what they're doing. Buy a product or two and see what tools they use to keep inviting you back for more.
This doesn't mean copy them word for word or action by action, but assimilate what works, mould it to your specific business and add the essential ingredient of uniqueness that allows you to stand out from the crowd.
These are just three simple strategies you can start with today to get on the fast-track to home business success.
Again, here they are in a nutshell:
Uncover what has already been created or invented, then implement or install. Don't reinvent the wheel.
Think like a business owner, not an employee. Delegate, hire or trade.
Model the processes of others who have already achieved the level of success you're seeking. They've already made the mistakes for you and know what works.
Incorporate these strategies and you will shave hours and dollars from your start-up curve and begin reaping the rewards faster than you ever thought possible.
"How to Move Past 'Newbie' Status to Full-Fledged Affiliate Marketer"
"How to Move Past 'Newbie' Status to Full-Fledged Affiliate Marketer"
Every day there's at least one person who discovers 'affiliate marketing' for the first time. And, every day, there's at least one person, maybe that person is you, who goes back to the drawing board trying to figure out why they haven't yet succeeded as wildly as they'd hoped.
No matter which category you fall into, I'd like to share some concepts with you that might make all the difference in the world to your future success. In fact, you just might learn from this article the one thing that helps you start earning real money.
It really all comes down these two mistakes that beginner's make:
1. Promoting to many products at once (lack of focus), and..
2. Giving up too soon.
These two mistakes are related, and are actually self-reinforcing. It sounds obvious enough, but let me explain exactly how this scenario plays out.
Lack of Focus:
Experienced affiliate marketers do have the ability to promote several products, sometimes far afield from each other, at the same time. The reason they can do this is because they'd already learned and applied certain fundamental skills, and have developed a system for themselves which works to bring in sales consistently.
As a beginner, however, you're still learning what works and what doesn't. For that reason alone, you need a clearly defined testing ground - and this means limiting your promotion to just one product when you first start out.
Just imagine for a moment if you were in a laboratory. You're working with a new chemical and need to determine its boiling point, solubility, molecular weight and so on.
Would it be quicker and easier for you to accomplish this by working with just that one chemical, or by juggling multiple, other chemicals all at the same time...starting one experiment and then rushing over to another one midway through?
Obviously, it would be easier to work with just the one chemical, right?
Well, the same is true for marketing. Just like the variables in your lab experiment, you've also got variables in every product promotion you undertake. The variables include things like traffic generation, conversion rates, advertising response rates and so on.
So, how much data do you want to juggle? Do you want to keep track of, say, Google Adwords performance for ONE e-book...or for a dozen of them spread across more than one niche?
This is where a lot beginners get themselves into a rut. They try to juggle all of this information at once, get overwhelmed by it and simply give up.
Giving Up Too Soon:
Ok, so, information overload hits, and you throw your hands in the air in surrender.
There's no need to despair!
You can turn the situation around completely if you'll just make a commitment to do the following three things:
1. Pick ONE niche market
2. Pick ONE product from that market
3. Use just that one niche product as your testing ground, in order to solidify your skills as an affiliate marketer.
You see, its a lot like learning to ride a bicycle as a kid. You start off with a tricycle, then move up to regular bike with training wheels and from there onto riding any bike you choose.
The same is true for learning how to promote products as an affiliate.
*Learn how to generate traffic on just one product
*Learn how to capture subscribers to your opt-in list for just one product
*Learn how to write advertisements and promotional copy for just one product
*Learn how to track your advertising links and conversion rates for just that one product....
http://tinyurl.com/2juuel
....and THEN, you'll be able to turn around and apply that knowledge to additional products, in different niches.
The key is to get some real results established in one place, and only then start building on that incrementally.
If you'll follow even just this one simple rule, I promise you'll see an increase in your commissions - and you can drop that 'newbie' label for the title of: Successful Affiliate Marketer!
Every day there's at least one person who discovers 'affiliate marketing' for the first time. And, every day, there's at least one person, maybe that person is you, who goes back to the drawing board trying to figure out why they haven't yet succeeded as wildly as they'd hoped.
No matter which category you fall into, I'd like to share some concepts with you that might make all the difference in the world to your future success. In fact, you just might learn from this article the one thing that helps you start earning real money.
It really all comes down these two mistakes that beginner's make:
1. Promoting to many products at once (lack of focus), and..
2. Giving up too soon.
These two mistakes are related, and are actually self-reinforcing. It sounds obvious enough, but let me explain exactly how this scenario plays out.
Lack of Focus:
Experienced affiliate marketers do have the ability to promote several products, sometimes far afield from each other, at the same time. The reason they can do this is because they'd already learned and applied certain fundamental skills, and have developed a system for themselves which works to bring in sales consistently.
As a beginner, however, you're still learning what works and what doesn't. For that reason alone, you need a clearly defined testing ground - and this means limiting your promotion to just one product when you first start out.
Just imagine for a moment if you were in a laboratory. You're working with a new chemical and need to determine its boiling point, solubility, molecular weight and so on.
Would it be quicker and easier for you to accomplish this by working with just that one chemical, or by juggling multiple, other chemicals all at the same time...starting one experiment and then rushing over to another one midway through?
Obviously, it would be easier to work with just the one chemical, right?
Well, the same is true for marketing. Just like the variables in your lab experiment, you've also got variables in every product promotion you undertake. The variables include things like traffic generation, conversion rates, advertising response rates and so on.
So, how much data do you want to juggle? Do you want to keep track of, say, Google Adwords performance for ONE e-book...or for a dozen of them spread across more than one niche?
This is where a lot beginners get themselves into a rut. They try to juggle all of this information at once, get overwhelmed by it and simply give up.
Giving Up Too Soon:
Ok, so, information overload hits, and you throw your hands in the air in surrender.
There's no need to despair!
You can turn the situation around completely if you'll just make a commitment to do the following three things:
1. Pick ONE niche market
2. Pick ONE product from that market
3. Use just that one niche product as your testing ground, in order to solidify your skills as an affiliate marketer.
You see, its a lot like learning to ride a bicycle as a kid. You start off with a tricycle, then move up to regular bike with training wheels and from there onto riding any bike you choose.
The same is true for learning how to promote products as an affiliate.
*Learn how to generate traffic on just one product
*Learn how to capture subscribers to your opt-in list for just one product
*Learn how to write advertisements and promotional copy for just one product
*Learn how to track your advertising links and conversion rates for just that one product....
http://tinyurl.com/2juuel
....and THEN, you'll be able to turn around and apply that knowledge to additional products, in different niches.
The key is to get some real results established in one place, and only then start building on that incrementally.
If you'll follow even just this one simple rule, I promise you'll see an increase in your commissions - and you can drop that 'newbie' label for the title of: Successful Affiliate Marketer!
Saturday, May 05, 2007
You may want to use this letter to encourage upgrades to EA
I have the BOLD text below as my New Affiliate Greeting. My downline affiliates who haven't upgraded to Executive Affiliate also get a slightly revised version.
Enter your own personalized affiliate greeting at the SFIMG Affiliate Center, go to My Account - Miscellaneous Account Options - My New Affiliate Greeting
You'll need to modify your letter copy if you're not a Team Leader. And of course, replace [Your Name] with your name at the top and bottom. The SUMMARY in italics at the bottom, may be kept with the letter, or not, as you prefer.
By the way, if you're not an EA yet - WHY NOT?
Don't you want to be rich?
Hi New Affiliate,
Welcome to SFI!
My name is [Your Name].
I'm an Executive Affiliate (EA) and Team Leader (TL) in SFI.
And I'm absolutely delighted that you're now on my SFI team!
As your SFI sponsor, I'm here to help you get off to a fast and profitable start.
My success is tied directly to yours,
so feel free to contact me to assist you with anything, anytime.
The purpose of this message is to give you some really great news!
And also to tell you a little bit about why I'm in SFI
so that you'll understand how you too will benefit, like me, by being in SFI.
Here are 4 of my reasons.
> SFI is a good honest company.
> I want to use SFI to make a good income.
> SFI gives me all I need to make becoming rich possible.
> SFI's founder, Gery Carson, can be trusted to deliver these things.
Now then...
I already know a couple of things about you.
You're not an Executive Affiliate in SFI... yet.
And, like me, I'm sure you want to become as rich as possible.
So, here's your good news.
I know how to quickly make us both rich with SFI.
And I have an excellent plan which will do just that.
The plan is below, right here in this letter.
I call it "3 Steps To Riches".
It's my recommendation, a path for you to follow,
based on my experience having found out what works with SFI.
In a word, it's DUPLICATION.
1) Become an Executive Affiliate, like me... preferably TODAY!
Why...?
Because being, and staying, EA locks you into SFI's companywide Powerline
where you'll earn regular Executive Bonuses, a real live paycheck each month.
What you'll earn with this bonus is based on company earnings.
When SFI grows, your income grows with SFI!
*A single retail sale or a single purchase of SFI's products can make you EA.
2) Sponsor new affiliates... hopefully DAILY!
Why...?
Because here you build your team and earn the more lucrative bonuses - Executive Matches and Team Matches.
This income can be bigger and better because your teamwork will make it so.
As your team succeeds you succeed along with them!
*Showing your free SFI websites to people can produce sponsored affiliates for you.
3) Send this same letter I've sent you to all your affiliates who aren't yet EA... I recommend REGULARLY!
Why...?
Because Self-Discipline, Followup, Persistence, Duplication, and Teamwork
are what WILL make you a winner with SFI.
No one wants to be a loser.
SFI makes it possible, likely, and very easy for you to win, even win big!
SFI will indeed help YOU finally become the winner you've always wanted to be!
*People often need to see your offer several times before they can confidently respond.
That's it!
That's the plan!
It's as simple as 1, 2, 3!
A MAJOR HINT!
If you'll show your sponsored affiliates your personalized version of this letter and plan,
over and over again,
they'll eventually understand how they, too, can easily and quickly become rich with SFI!
===> Important <<<===
This plan is believable. It is not hype!
This plan has been tested, and it really does work!
This plan will work for you... but only IF you will execute the plan!
You must be EA, and stay EA, just like me, if you hope to become rich in SFI!
You can be EA by either selling or buying SFI's products monthly.
You will be EA sooner or later, guaranteed, so why wait?
For best results and most benefits, I suggest that you... BECOME EA NOW!
If you'll upgrade to Executive Affiliate, here's what I'll do for you.
If you need help sponsoring people into SFI,
marketing any of the fine SFI products,
or advertising your SFI websites,
that help will be yours!
Please let me know.
EXTRA Help Is Available, TOO!
What else can I do to aid you with your new SFI business?
Are there any questions I can answer for you?
Is there anything I can clarify for you about the SFI Powerline program?
Have you been to SFI's extremely valuable Discussion Board
where you'll find much more information freely provided by other affiliates?
If there's anything at all that I can assist you with, please, don't hesitate to ask... anytime.
Bottom line - I'm here to do what I can to ensure your success in SFI.
SFI and I will help you build a profitable, worldwide Internet business.
MORE Good News for YOU!
Become a Team Leader in SFI by sponsoring only 5 Executive Affiliates.
Achieving the TL level positions you to earn the biggest money SFI offers.
That's about it. But there's just one more thing I'd like you know.
You may wonder how I maintain my personal Executive Affiliate status.
I have a monthly Standing Order for IAHBE.
(IAHBE is a subscription to SFI's International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs).
See http://www.iahbe.org/.
Why do I buy IAHBE?
IAHBE is online (no shipping and handling) and accessible worldwide.
IAHBE makes it easy and fun for me to operate my SFI business.
IAHBE is worth at least 100 times it's expense in value to me.
IAHBE costs me only $29.95 a month, less than $1 a day.
IAHBE gives me the 10 SVP monthly I need to stay EA.
IAHBE was my first choice to be EA because I wanted to become rich with SFI, fast.
And many of SFI's top Executive Affiliates and Team Leaders agree.
OK, that's enough about me... now how about you?
Are you ready and willing to follow this plan?
So that we both can become rich?
I certainly do hope so!
Remember these 3 important things.
> Be EA - Simply retail or buy SFI's products each month.
> Become a Team Leader - Simply sponsor 5 Executive Affiliates.
> Make big money with SFI - Simply create a team that does as you do.
Are you willing to do what I've done?
You can easily and inexpensively do exactly what I do and teach what I'm teaching you.
Just follow my example, and use "3 Steps To Riches".
It's all you need do to be a success with SFI.
So...
Will you execute my plan?
Will you do what it takes for you to be EA
so that you can obtain wealth with SFI... just like me?
RIGHT THIS MINUTE...??
Or will you continue just barely getting by, by not becoming EA?
OK, it's time for you to decide - the next move is yours!
Join SFI's Top Earners... Go EXECUTIVE!
Click on the link below or place it in your browser.
http://www.sfimg.com/EA/
SUMMARY:
1) Become EA yourself... right away.
2) Sponsor new affiliates as often as you can.
3) Encourage as many of your sponsored affiliates as you can
to become EA like you as soon as possible, assisted by SFI, as
often as it takes for the few go-getters, the best ones you can
identify and help support, to understand what to do and do it.
Then repeat 1-3 each month, and advise them to repeat each month.
Nothing hard about it. No personal websites needed. It's free, or can be.
You can become rich as you want simply by doing steps 1-3,
but you and your team must do every step, over and over again,
or in other words, everyone must do his/her part
to do a little easy work for SFI before SFI will reward you with commission.
If you don't do your part, don't expect to earn anything from SFI.
But by doing your part, using the 3-Step Plan,
SFI will reward you and your team handsomely
for your efforts, your sales, and your teamwork!
With DUPLICATION... it's quick, easy, and fun!
Till next time.
Your sponsor in SFI,
[Your Name]
P.S. HERE'S Another Major HINT!
Try replacement buying.
Here's what I mean by that.
SFI products are of such high quality that
you might find it better to buy from your own SFI Store.
Find something you now get elsewhere and use frequently, and then consider getting it instead from SFI.
Thus, you'll have no extra out-of-pocket expense to be EA each month!
Neat, huh? You can be EA for FREE!
And you'll quite likely save money doing it too!
SFI's Earnings Calculator will show you the amount of money you can
earn by being EA and sponsoring EAs, from now on.
Login to the SFI Affiliate Center, then use this link for SFI's Earnings Calculator.
https://www.sfimg.com/PopUp/earnings_calculator.jsp/
Logon to the SFI Affiliate Center, then use this link for Success with SFI... "as simple as 1,2,3!"
https://www.sfimg.com/Reference/StepsForSuccess.sfi/
You can do it... just like I am. And I'll help you!
If each of us does just a little work each month,
in other words...
===>>> Use the Extremely Simple and Easily Applied 3-Step Plan, <<<===
to do your part,
then I can confidently predict,
we as a team WILL make very good money with SFI.
Finally a quote from Gery Carson, Founder and President of SFI:
"As for the comp plan, you simply have to be a TL. Period.
This keeps the comp plan clean, simple, and puts the big money within reach of every affiliate."
Visit the SFI Discussion Board
http://www.sfidboard.com/index.php?/
for an almost unbelievable amount of Fabulous FREE Information!
Here's to you and me getting rich with SFI... soon!
Remember, so that they'll eventually come to understand how SFI works,
and so that they and YOU will make BIG money in your new business,
ensure that affiliates you sponsor see this message regularly!
Enter your own personalized affiliate greeting at the SFIMG Affiliate Center, go to My Account - Miscellaneous Account Options - My New Affiliate Greeting
You'll need to modify your letter copy if you're not a Team Leader. And of course, replace [Your Name] with your name at the top and bottom. The SUMMARY in italics at the bottom, may be kept with the letter, or not, as you prefer.
By the way, if you're not an EA yet - WHY NOT?
Don't you want to be rich?
Hi New Affiliate,
Welcome to SFI!
My name is [Your Name].
I'm an Executive Affiliate (EA) and Team Leader (TL) in SFI.
And I'm absolutely delighted that you're now on my SFI team!
As your SFI sponsor, I'm here to help you get off to a fast and profitable start.
My success is tied directly to yours,
so feel free to contact me to assist you with anything, anytime.
The purpose of this message is to give you some really great news!
And also to tell you a little bit about why I'm in SFI
so that you'll understand how you too will benefit, like me, by being in SFI.
Here are 4 of my reasons.
> SFI is a good honest company.
> I want to use SFI to make a good income.
> SFI gives me all I need to make becoming rich possible.
> SFI's founder, Gery Carson, can be trusted to deliver these things.
Now then...
I already know a couple of things about you.
You're not an Executive Affiliate in SFI... yet.
And, like me, I'm sure you want to become as rich as possible.
So, here's your good news.
I know how to quickly make us both rich with SFI.
And I have an excellent plan which will do just that.
The plan is below, right here in this letter.
I call it "3 Steps To Riches".
It's my recommendation, a path for you to follow,
based on my experience having found out what works with SFI.
In a word, it's DUPLICATION.
1) Become an Executive Affiliate, like me... preferably TODAY!
Why...?
Because being, and staying, EA locks you into SFI's companywide Powerline
where you'll earn regular Executive Bonuses, a real live paycheck each month.
What you'll earn with this bonus is based on company earnings.
When SFI grows, your income grows with SFI!
*A single retail sale or a single purchase of SFI's products can make you EA.
2) Sponsor new affiliates... hopefully DAILY!
Why...?
Because here you build your team and earn the more lucrative bonuses - Executive Matches and Team Matches.
This income can be bigger and better because your teamwork will make it so.
As your team succeeds you succeed along with them!
*Showing your free SFI websites to people can produce sponsored affiliates for you.
3) Send this same letter I've sent you to all your affiliates who aren't yet EA... I recommend REGULARLY!
Why...?
Because Self-Discipline, Followup, Persistence, Duplication, and Teamwork
are what WILL make you a winner with SFI.
No one wants to be a loser.
SFI makes it possible, likely, and very easy for you to win, even win big!
SFI will indeed help YOU finally become the winner you've always wanted to be!
*People often need to see your offer several times before they can confidently respond.
That's it!
That's the plan!
It's as simple as 1, 2, 3!
A MAJOR HINT!
If you'll show your sponsored affiliates your personalized version of this letter and plan,
over and over again,
they'll eventually understand how they, too, can easily and quickly become rich with SFI!
===> Important <<<===
This plan is believable. It is not hype!
This plan has been tested, and it really does work!
This plan will work for you... but only IF you will execute the plan!
You must be EA, and stay EA, just like me, if you hope to become rich in SFI!
You can be EA by either selling or buying SFI's products monthly.
You will be EA sooner or later, guaranteed, so why wait?
For best results and most benefits, I suggest that you... BECOME EA NOW!
If you'll upgrade to Executive Affiliate, here's what I'll do for you.
If you need help sponsoring people into SFI,
marketing any of the fine SFI products,
or advertising your SFI websites,
that help will be yours!
Please let me know.
EXTRA Help Is Available, TOO!
What else can I do to aid you with your new SFI business?
Are there any questions I can answer for you?
Is there anything I can clarify for you about the SFI Powerline program?
Have you been to SFI's extremely valuable Discussion Board
where you'll find much more information freely provided by other affiliates?
If there's anything at all that I can assist you with, please, don't hesitate to ask... anytime.
Bottom line - I'm here to do what I can to ensure your success in SFI.
SFI and I will help you build a profitable, worldwide Internet business.
MORE Good News for YOU!
Become a Team Leader in SFI by sponsoring only 5 Executive Affiliates.
Achieving the TL level positions you to earn the biggest money SFI offers.
That's about it. But there's just one more thing I'd like you know.
You may wonder how I maintain my personal Executive Affiliate status.
I have a monthly Standing Order for IAHBE.
(IAHBE is a subscription to SFI's International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs).
See http://www.iahbe.org/.
Why do I buy IAHBE?
IAHBE is online (no shipping and handling) and accessible worldwide.
IAHBE makes it easy and fun for me to operate my SFI business.
IAHBE is worth at least 100 times it's expense in value to me.
IAHBE costs me only $29.95 a month, less than $1 a day.
IAHBE gives me the 10 SVP monthly I need to stay EA.
IAHBE was my first choice to be EA because I wanted to become rich with SFI, fast.
And many of SFI's top Executive Affiliates and Team Leaders agree.
OK, that's enough about me... now how about you?
Are you ready and willing to follow this plan?
So that we both can become rich?
I certainly do hope so!
Remember these 3 important things.
> Be EA - Simply retail or buy SFI's products each month.
> Become a Team Leader - Simply sponsor 5 Executive Affiliates.
> Make big money with SFI - Simply create a team that does as you do.
Are you willing to do what I've done?
You can easily and inexpensively do exactly what I do and teach what I'm teaching you.
Just follow my example, and use "3 Steps To Riches".
It's all you need do to be a success with SFI.
So...
Will you execute my plan?
Will you do what it takes for you to be EA
so that you can obtain wealth with SFI... just like me?
RIGHT THIS MINUTE...??
Or will you continue just barely getting by, by not becoming EA?
OK, it's time for you to decide - the next move is yours!
Join SFI's Top Earners... Go EXECUTIVE!
Click on the link below or place it in your browser.
http://www.sfimg.com/EA/
SUMMARY:
1) Become EA yourself... right away.
2) Sponsor new affiliates as often as you can.
3) Encourage as many of your sponsored affiliates as you can
to become EA like you as soon as possible, assisted by SFI, as
often as it takes for the few go-getters, the best ones you can
identify and help support, to understand what to do and do it.
Then repeat 1-3 each month, and advise them to repeat each month.
Nothing hard about it. No personal websites needed. It's free, or can be.
You can become rich as you want simply by doing steps 1-3,
but you and your team must do every step, over and over again,
or in other words, everyone must do his/her part
to do a little easy work for SFI before SFI will reward you with commission.
If you don't do your part, don't expect to earn anything from SFI.
But by doing your part, using the 3-Step Plan,
SFI will reward you and your team handsomely
for your efforts, your sales, and your teamwork!
With DUPLICATION... it's quick, easy, and fun!
Till next time.
Your sponsor in SFI,
[Your Name]
P.S. HERE'S Another Major HINT!
Try replacement buying.
Here's what I mean by that.
SFI products are of such high quality that
you might find it better to buy from your own SFI Store.
Find something you now get elsewhere and use frequently, and then consider getting it instead from SFI.
Thus, you'll have no extra out-of-pocket expense to be EA each month!
Neat, huh? You can be EA for FREE!
And you'll quite likely save money doing it too!
SFI's Earnings Calculator will show you the amount of money you can
earn by being EA and sponsoring EAs, from now on.
Login to the SFI Affiliate Center, then use this link for SFI's Earnings Calculator.
https://www.sfimg.com/PopUp/earnings_calculator.jsp/
Logon to the SFI Affiliate Center, then use this link for Success with SFI... "as simple as 1,2,3!"
https://www.sfimg.com/Reference/StepsForSuccess.sfi/
You can do it... just like I am. And I'll help you!
If each of us does just a little work each month,
in other words...
===>>> Use the Extremely Simple and Easily Applied 3-Step Plan, <<<===
to do your part,
then I can confidently predict,
we as a team WILL make very good money with SFI.
Finally a quote from Gery Carson, Founder and President of SFI:
"As for the comp plan, you simply have to be a TL. Period.
This keeps the comp plan clean, simple, and puts the big money within reach of every affiliate."
Visit the SFI Discussion Board
http://www.sfidboard.com/index.php?/
for an almost unbelievable amount of Fabulous FREE Information!
Here's to you and me getting rich with SFI... soon!
Remember, so that they'll eventually come to understand how SFI works,
and so that they and YOU will make BIG money in your new business,
ensure that affiliates you sponsor see this message regularly!
Q: I don't feel my sponsor is properly supporting me. Can I be provided with a new sponsor?
Q: I don't feel my sponsor is properly supporting me. Can I be provided with a new sponsor?
A: If you don't like your sponsor, you can opt of SFI for six months and rejoin under any SFI affiliate of your choosing. However, even without factoring in losing six months of productivity, it's a bad decision in my opinion. I say this because I believe focusing on what your sponsor does or doesn't do is completely irrelevant to your success.
Before I started SFI, I was extremely successful for many years as a distributor in several network marketing companies. I built groups numbering in the many tens of thousands—generating millions of dollars in sales. I was wildly successful, yet I essentially never heard from my sponsors or received any upline assistance. I knew what I wanted to do, and I went out and did it. I didn't need a sponsor to succeed...and neither do you!
A good sponsor should be looked upon as "icing on the cake" ONLY. That is, if you're fortunate enough to have chosen a sponsor who supports you to your satisfaction, that's great. On the other hand, if you're not completely satisfied with the support your sponsor provides, that's okay, too, because whatever success you achieve is always going to come down to what YOU do and no one else.
As most longtime SFI affiliates know, one of my guiding mottos has always been, "If it's to be, it's up to me." NEVER, EVER allow yourself to think your sponsor, other upline members, or anyone else controls what level of success you achieve. Blaming anyone else for your lack of success is a defeatist attitude that will keep you from ever achieving your dreams. YOU and YOU ALONE are responsible for your success! Don't' ever forget that!
Now that you understand that, let's look at this from another angle: What do you expect your sponsor to do for you? He or she can't magically turn you into a success (that's up to you, as I've explained above). What a sponsor CAN and SHOULD do, however, is help you with your concerns, help you get your questions answered, etc.
Hopefully, your sponsor is providing this service. If not, however, you're FAR from being left out in the cold. You can go to your upline Team Leaders. You have up to six of them listed at:
https://www.sfimg.com/MyAccount/upline.sfi
There's also the SFI "DBoard" (www.sfidboard.com).The DBoard is like having a hundred sponsors! Indeed, the DBoard is a place where thousands of experienced moderators and fellow SFI affiliates gather to discuss SFI topics and help each other with problems, questions, and concerns. You can get help 24 hours a day from the DBoard by simply posting a question.
Finally, there's SFI corporate support. Our staff stands ready to help you with any problem or question you have. Just e-mail us at support@sfimg.com and you will receive an reply, usually within one to two business days.
Q: OK, I see now how I don't actually need a good sponsor, but can't SFI make my sponsor answer my e-mails or at least penalize him for being non-supportive?
That's a very loaded question! First of all, realize that all SFI affiliates are INDEPENDENT representatives. They are not employees. Just as we can't force you to answer your e-mails, we can't force your sponsor or anyone else to do it either.
The vast majority of affiliates DO answer their e-mails because, of course, that's how you build a profitable organization. Beyond putting that incentive out there, however, there's not much else we can do, particularly because we have NO WAY of knowing the status of your or their e-mails.
That is, because of misconfigured spam filters, millions of legitimate e-mails every day are not delivered or are routed to "junk" folders where they're never seen. The fact is, your sponsor may not be receiving the e-mails you send him or her. Or, he or she may be receiving them and replying to them, but your ISP is not delivering or junking the e-mails.
There's NO WAY we can know exactly what is occurring. There's no way to determine if it's your sponsor who is not responding to your e-mails, of if your sponsor's ISP, or your ISP is dropping the ball.
Because this cannot be known, punishment for "non-support" just doesn't work. If we suddenly cut off your check because someone in your downline reported that they had e-mailed you and didn't hear back from you, you'd likely be very upset. You'd probably think a lawsuit was in order in fact. Especially if you actually DID respond but through no fault of your own the e-mails never got delivered.
Now, all that said, there IS something coming to SFI that will change this dynamic. It's called "A2A" and is our new Web-based messaging system that will allow messaging between upline and downline members.
A2A, which stands for "Affiliate To Affiliate" will also allow you to send messages back and forth with ANY affiliate in SFI. This will be particularly valuable because you can precisely select affiliates. You will be able to directly communicate with affiliates in your country, for example...or, of same gender and age...or, choose affiliates who joined SFI the same time you did...and so on.
In regards to your sponsor, however, A2A will provide SFI for the first time with the ability to know if a sponsor is not responding to requests from downline members. This is because A2A operates 100% on our servers. There are no outside ISPs used. When you send a message to your sponsor using A2A, we'll know it was sent and delivered. We'll know if your sponsor responded, and we'll be able to take the appropriate actions if not.
A: If you don't like your sponsor, you can opt of SFI for six months and rejoin under any SFI affiliate of your choosing. However, even without factoring in losing six months of productivity, it's a bad decision in my opinion. I say this because I believe focusing on what your sponsor does or doesn't do is completely irrelevant to your success.
Before I started SFI, I was extremely successful for many years as a distributor in several network marketing companies. I built groups numbering in the many tens of thousands—generating millions of dollars in sales. I was wildly successful, yet I essentially never heard from my sponsors or received any upline assistance. I knew what I wanted to do, and I went out and did it. I didn't need a sponsor to succeed...and neither do you!
A good sponsor should be looked upon as "icing on the cake" ONLY. That is, if you're fortunate enough to have chosen a sponsor who supports you to your satisfaction, that's great. On the other hand, if you're not completely satisfied with the support your sponsor provides, that's okay, too, because whatever success you achieve is always going to come down to what YOU do and no one else.
As most longtime SFI affiliates know, one of my guiding mottos has always been, "If it's to be, it's up to me." NEVER, EVER allow yourself to think your sponsor, other upline members, or anyone else controls what level of success you achieve. Blaming anyone else for your lack of success is a defeatist attitude that will keep you from ever achieving your dreams. YOU and YOU ALONE are responsible for your success! Don't' ever forget that!
Now that you understand that, let's look at this from another angle: What do you expect your sponsor to do for you? He or she can't magically turn you into a success (that's up to you, as I've explained above). What a sponsor CAN and SHOULD do, however, is help you with your concerns, help you get your questions answered, etc.
Hopefully, your sponsor is providing this service. If not, however, you're FAR from being left out in the cold. You can go to your upline Team Leaders. You have up to six of them listed at:
https://www.sfimg.com/MyAccount/upline.sfi
There's also the SFI "DBoard" (www.sfidboard.com).The DBoard is like having a hundred sponsors! Indeed, the DBoard is a place where thousands of experienced moderators and fellow SFI affiliates gather to discuss SFI topics and help each other with problems, questions, and concerns. You can get help 24 hours a day from the DBoard by simply posting a question.
Finally, there's SFI corporate support. Our staff stands ready to help you with any problem or question you have. Just e-mail us at support@sfimg.com and you will receive an reply, usually within one to two business days.
Q: OK, I see now how I don't actually need a good sponsor, but can't SFI make my sponsor answer my e-mails or at least penalize him for being non-supportive?
That's a very loaded question! First of all, realize that all SFI affiliates are INDEPENDENT representatives. They are not employees. Just as we can't force you to answer your e-mails, we can't force your sponsor or anyone else to do it either.
The vast majority of affiliates DO answer their e-mails because, of course, that's how you build a profitable organization. Beyond putting that incentive out there, however, there's not much else we can do, particularly because we have NO WAY of knowing the status of your or their e-mails.
That is, because of misconfigured spam filters, millions of legitimate e-mails every day are not delivered or are routed to "junk" folders where they're never seen. The fact is, your sponsor may not be receiving the e-mails you send him or her. Or, he or she may be receiving them and replying to them, but your ISP is not delivering or junking the e-mails.
There's NO WAY we can know exactly what is occurring. There's no way to determine if it's your sponsor who is not responding to your e-mails, of if your sponsor's ISP, or your ISP is dropping the ball.
Because this cannot be known, punishment for "non-support" just doesn't work. If we suddenly cut off your check because someone in your downline reported that they had e-mailed you and didn't hear back from you, you'd likely be very upset. You'd probably think a lawsuit was in order in fact. Especially if you actually DID respond but through no fault of your own the e-mails never got delivered.
Now, all that said, there IS something coming to SFI that will change this dynamic. It's called "A2A" and is our new Web-based messaging system that will allow messaging between upline and downline members.
A2A, which stands for "Affiliate To Affiliate" will also allow you to send messages back and forth with ANY affiliate in SFI. This will be particularly valuable because you can precisely select affiliates. You will be able to directly communicate with affiliates in your country, for example...or, of same gender and age...or, choose affiliates who joined SFI the same time you did...and so on.
In regards to your sponsor, however, A2A will provide SFI for the first time with the ability to know if a sponsor is not responding to requests from downline members. This is because A2A operates 100% on our servers. There are no outside ISPs used. When you send a message to your sponsor using A2A, we'll know it was sent and delivered. We'll know if your sponsor responded, and we'll be able to take the appropriate actions if not.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
New Addition To Affiliate Center
When a new affiliate joins SFI, they want to get started NOW. They don't want to have to invest a lot of time and money before they can see some results. And they're definitely not interested in pursuing complex marketing strategies that they're not familiar with. What new SFI affiliates want is "plug and play." And starting today, SFI has it.
Go to your "Getting Started" page now:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/GettingStarted.sfi
On step five, you see that you choose the Gateway you want to use. Once you've selected your Gateway, step six now includes a link to a detailed listing of promotion methods and strategies specifically for your chosen Gateway.
The listing for your chosen Gateway will include beginner methods, intermediate methods, and advanced methods.
The beginner methods in particular are methods that can be employed immediately and/or are methods that anyone can do without any special knowledge or experience. Not everyone can build their own Website or conduct a successful pay-per-click campaign, but almost everyone can hand out cards, wear promotional garments, mail postcards, etc. Indeed, now there's no reason why every affiliate can't start actively promoting SFI their very first day!
Because all new affiliates are automatically presented with the "Getting Started" page containing the promo method links, all new affiliates now have a complete "plug and play" opportunity in front of them the minute they hit the Affiliate Center. So more than ever, make sure you are directing your new affiliates to:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/GettingStarted.sfi
Referring your affiliates to this page is also the clear action to take for many of the "what should I do?" type e-mails you get.
You can check out the promo methods for the /FREE Gateway directly at:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/promo_free.sfi
You can check out the promo methods for the default (official SFI "Retail Store") Gateway directly at:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/promo_retail.sfi
Note: Additional methods and strategies are forthcoming for both of these and will be added as they become available. Similar listing of promo methods for ALL our Gateways are also on the way.
Go to your "Getting Started" page now:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/GettingStarted.sfi
On step five, you see that you choose the Gateway you want to use. Once you've selected your Gateway, step six now includes a link to a detailed listing of promotion methods and strategies specifically for your chosen Gateway.
The listing for your chosen Gateway will include beginner methods, intermediate methods, and advanced methods.
The beginner methods in particular are methods that can be employed immediately and/or are methods that anyone can do without any special knowledge or experience. Not everyone can build their own Website or conduct a successful pay-per-click campaign, but almost everyone can hand out cards, wear promotional garments, mail postcards, etc. Indeed, now there's no reason why every affiliate can't start actively promoting SFI their very first day!
Because all new affiliates are automatically presented with the "Getting Started" page containing the promo method links, all new affiliates now have a complete "plug and play" opportunity in front of them the minute they hit the Affiliate Center. So more than ever, make sure you are directing your new affiliates to:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/GettingStarted.sfi
Referring your affiliates to this page is also the clear action to take for many of the "what should I do?" type e-mails you get.
You can check out the promo methods for the /FREE Gateway directly at:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/promo_free.sfi
You can check out the promo methods for the default (official SFI "Retail Store") Gateway directly at:
https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/promo_retail.sfi
Note: Additional methods and strategies are forthcoming for both of these and will be added as they become available. Similar listing of promo methods for ALL our Gateways are also on the way.
How do I organize a co-op?
The easiest way is to use Contact Manager. Send a message to the affiliates you want to invite to participate. Explain the type of advertising you're going to do, how you will set up the co-op (whether they'll receive an equal share of affiliates generated or a specific quantity of affiliates, etc.), and the cost or requirements to participate.
For more information about using the Co-op Manager,
see: https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/TLCoop.sfi
For more information about using the Co-op Manager,
see: https://www.sfimg.com/Resources/TLCoop.sfi
Boosting Upgrades With Gift Certificates
Boosting Upgrades With Gift Certificates
Incorporating gift certificates into your welcome message for new affiliates is a great way to get your team members to take action. But did you know you can get this offer in front of your affiliates at LITTLE TO NO COST to you?
Before we go into that, though...let's explain why gift certificates is a GREAT way to build your business.
The reason is simple: People like bargains. People like receiving and taking advantage of special offers. By offering gift certificates to your affiliates, you will create increased interest in SFI...and this will naturally lead to more upgrades.
Using our gift certificates program is very simple. You can find the Gift Certificate Manager HERE.
Read entire article:
https://www.sfimg.com/Training/GiftCertificates.sfi
Incorporating gift certificates into your welcome message for new affiliates is a great way to get your team members to take action. But did you know you can get this offer in front of your affiliates at LITTLE TO NO COST to you?
Before we go into that, though...let's explain why gift certificates is a GREAT way to build your business.
The reason is simple: People like bargains. People like receiving and taking advantage of special offers. By offering gift certificates to your affiliates, you will create increased interest in SFI...and this will naturally lead to more upgrades.
Using our gift certificates program is very simple. You can find the Gift Certificate Manager HERE.
Read entire article:
https://www.sfimg.com/Training/GiftCertificates.sfi
Some Very Good Things To Know... (if you want to make money with your SFI business)
THE http://www.sfidboard.com/ IS A GREAT PLACE TO START TRY THIS LINK :http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52807
1) Pointers For New SFI Discussion Board Members http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=48801
2) Some Very Good Things To Know... (if you want to make money with your SFI business)http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52804
3) How To Use SFI In Your First 30 Days To Soon Get All You Want http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=47835
4) I have a Sponsored Affiliate, but I'm not an Executive Affiliate yet...http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=46070
5) The SMART Way To Be EA With ZERO Out-Of-Pocket Cost! http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52473
6) I have new Affiliates - How do I support them? http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52487
7) How to Sell Your SFI Products (in 3 parts) http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=42680
8) Retailing SFI's Products and Services - Learn To Earn http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52333
9) Here's How To Start A Simple Email List http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=49239
10) DON'T MISS THESE! - Highly Popular/Important SFI DBoard Threads http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=48150
READY, SET, GO! It's time for you to start your SFI Business. Visit the SFI Affiliate Center Now! https://www.sfimg.com/
HELLO TEAM ! http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=45854
Getting Started - Finding The Treasure. http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=39457
Where To Advertise For RESULTS! http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52331/
1) Pointers For New SFI Discussion Board Members http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=48801
2) Some Very Good Things To Know... (if you want to make money with your SFI business)http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52804
3) How To Use SFI In Your First 30 Days To Soon Get All You Want http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=47835
4) I have a Sponsored Affiliate, but I'm not an Executive Affiliate yet...http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=46070
5) The SMART Way To Be EA With ZERO Out-Of-Pocket Cost! http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52473
6) I have new Affiliates - How do I support them? http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52487
7) How to Sell Your SFI Products (in 3 parts) http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=42680
8) Retailing SFI's Products and Services - Learn To Earn http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52333
9) Here's How To Start A Simple Email List http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=49239
10) DON'T MISS THESE! - Highly Popular/Important SFI DBoard Threads http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=48150
READY, SET, GO! It's time for you to start your SFI Business. Visit the SFI Affiliate Center Now! https://www.sfimg.com/
HELLO TEAM ! http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=45854
Getting Started - Finding The Treasure. http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=39457
Where To Advertise For RESULTS! http://www.sfidboard.com/showthread.php?t=52331/
Building on a Day to become Rich with SFI...
Building on a Day to become Rich with SFI....
3 Simple Steps!...interesting,exciting and very easy to do.....
1.Practice personal consumption as often as possible(redirect your spending)...Buy from your own store...daily use products...vitamins,bath soap,and cleaners....
2.Do Direct Sale of the Nutritional and Cleaning products,etc.etc.(to start earning Instant Cash!..Now!!....within your first week of signup...guaranteed!)...Everybody wants to make money, Now!...with their New SFI Business....
3.Always be "Scouting" for Direct-Action minded potential affiliates to build your "Dream Team"...spend little time talking to nay sayers...and folks not committed to their financial success by way of the Network Marketing lifestyle....you want people on your team that want to Win!...some one who is Ready,Serious,Committed,Hunger for Success and Willing to take Direct-Action!....
"....this is the life that we live,day in and day out.....Building on a Day to Become Rich with SFI!...in 3 Simple Steps!..."
...it starts with you!...the Man,Woman in the Mirror!....
SFI for Life!....win or die trying...Direct-Action ...Works!....Money in the Bank,baby!....
Mjdomini...."Making The Poor Man Rich!"
"...the young folks ..talking about "Real Talk"...this is the "Real Life" we live to become Rich with SFI....in 3 Simple Steps!...."
Reply With Quote
3 Simple Steps!...interesting,exciting and very easy to do.....
1.Practice personal consumption as often as possible(redirect your spending)...Buy from your own store...daily use products...vitamins,bath soap,and cleaners....
2.Do Direct Sale of the Nutritional and Cleaning products,etc.etc.(to start earning Instant Cash!..Now!!....within your first week of signup...guaranteed!)...Everybody wants to make money, Now!...with their New SFI Business....
3.Always be "Scouting" for Direct-Action minded potential affiliates to build your "Dream Team"...spend little time talking to nay sayers...and folks not committed to their financial success by way of the Network Marketing lifestyle....you want people on your team that want to Win!...some one who is Ready,Serious,Committed,Hunger for Success and Willing to take Direct-Action!....
"....this is the life that we live,day in and day out.....Building on a Day to Become Rich with SFI!...in 3 Simple Steps!..."
...it starts with you!...the Man,Woman in the Mirror!....
SFI for Life!....win or die trying...Direct-Action ...Works!....Money in the Bank,baby!....
Mjdomini...."Making The Poor Man Rich!"
"...the young folks ..talking about "Real Talk"...this is the "Real Life" we live to become Rich with SFI....in 3 Simple Steps!...."
Reply With Quote
Friday, March 30, 2007
BACK LINKS
It's that simple! Nothing to sign up for, no registering, no forms, no email, just tit for tat and link for link for as long as you want. Invest a few minutes to copy our link above to any page on your site and we'll start promoting yours right away. Your link will go to the top of the list automatically.
Most webmasters know that links to your site from other places on the web is an important part of building reputation and traffic. A link from our site won't shoot you to the top, but it will help, and it's a great free way to get your site noticed by human and robotic visitors! You may also want to consider our other free services.
Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Backlinks are also called incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.
Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the factors for determining that website's search engine ranking. For example, Google's PageRank algorithm uses backlinks to help determine a site's rank.
CLICK BLOW FOR MORE INFO :
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Why Do So Many People Fail In Affiliate Marketing?
More and More people are lured into affiliate marketing and you might be one of them. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the most effective means of generating a full-time income through the Internet. It’s a fair deal between the merchandiser and his affiliates as both benefit from each sale materialized. Like in other kinds of business, a great deal of the profits in affiliate marketing depends on the affiliate’s advertising, promoting and selling strategies. Everyday, as affiliate marketing industry expands, competition heightens as well so an affiliate marketer must be creative enough to employ unique and effective ways to convince potential buyers to purchase or avail of the products and services offered.
Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing? There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they lack hard work, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products. As earlier mentioned, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase—that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.
Lack of preparation is also a reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a merchandiser or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is researching. On the part of the merchant, he has to be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for his affiliate program. In order to be sure he has the best choices, he must have exhausted his means in looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites are sure fit to his products and services. The affiliate site’s visitors must match his targeted customers. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer must likewise research on the good-paying merchandisers before he signs up for an affiliate program. He must ensure that the merchants’ products and services match his interests so he can give his full attention and dedication to the program. He can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where he can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.
The website is a very important tool in the whole affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, you should plan how your site is going to be, from domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads. Some users are particular about what they see at first glance and thus when they find your site ugly, they won’t read through the content even if your site has many things to say and offer. On the other hand, there those who want information more than anything else. Affiliate marketers with “rich-content” web sites are usually the ones who prosper in this business because the content improves traffic to the site. Websites with high quality contents—with relevant keywords and more importantly, right information about the product and not empty hyped-up advertisements—allow you to earn big in affiliate marketing even when you’re asleep. If you won’t be able to sustain the interest of your site visitor, you won’t be able to lead him to the merchants’ site. No click-through means no sale and thus, no income on your part.
Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don’t appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites. Major search engines and directories would think of your site as transient ones and thus, they won’t list it in the directory. Before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote. Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and thus, won’t enter the site.
Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more. Certainly, there are still a lot of things to learn and so an affiliate marketer must continue to educate himself so he can improve his marketing strategies. Many fail because they don’t grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning big quickly. If you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, take time to learn the ins and outs of the business. Continue to improve your knowledge especially with the basics in affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your site users and how different merchandisers compete with each other.
Keep on trying; don’t get disappointed if your first attempts did not pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating skyrocketing incomes through affiliate marketing and so they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business. When they don’t get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others. When you sign up for an affiliate program, don’t expect to get rich in an instant. Work on your advertising strategies and be patient. You’ll never know how much you can get if you don’t persevere.
Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing? There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they lack hard work, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products. As earlier mentioned, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase—that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.
Lack of preparation is also a reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a merchandiser or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is researching. On the part of the merchant, he has to be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for his affiliate program. In order to be sure he has the best choices, he must have exhausted his means in looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites are sure fit to his products and services. The affiliate site’s visitors must match his targeted customers. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer must likewise research on the good-paying merchandisers before he signs up for an affiliate program. He must ensure that the merchants’ products and services match his interests so he can give his full attention and dedication to the program. He can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where he can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.
The website is a very important tool in the whole affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, you should plan how your site is going to be, from domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads. Some users are particular about what they see at first glance and thus when they find your site ugly, they won’t read through the content even if your site has many things to say and offer. On the other hand, there those who want information more than anything else. Affiliate marketers with “rich-content” web sites are usually the ones who prosper in this business because the content improves traffic to the site. Websites with high quality contents—with relevant keywords and more importantly, right information about the product and not empty hyped-up advertisements—allow you to earn big in affiliate marketing even when you’re asleep. If you won’t be able to sustain the interest of your site visitor, you won’t be able to lead him to the merchants’ site. No click-through means no sale and thus, no income on your part.
Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don’t appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites. Major search engines and directories would think of your site as transient ones and thus, they won’t list it in the directory. Before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote. Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and thus, won’t enter the site.
Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more. Certainly, there are still a lot of things to learn and so an affiliate marketer must continue to educate himself so he can improve his marketing strategies. Many fail because they don’t grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning big quickly. If you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, take time to learn the ins and outs of the business. Continue to improve your knowledge especially with the basics in affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your site users and how different merchandisers compete with each other.
Keep on trying; don’t get disappointed if your first attempts did not pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating skyrocketing incomes through affiliate marketing and so they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business. When they don’t get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others. When you sign up for an affiliate program, don’t expect to get rich in an instant. Work on your advertising strategies and be patient. You’ll never know how much you can get if you don’t persevere.
Don't Make These Common 4 Affiliate Mistakes!
Myths concerning affiliate marketing are appealing and attractive. People who do not know the entire system the wrong way round are prone to believing that it is something capable of giving them great fortune overnight. Stories concerning affiliates who earn tremendous amounts of money swim in their heads, and while these stories are as true as they can be, there are those who believe that they are going to have the same fortune once they indulge in this particular business.
It is true enough that affiliate marketing is financially rewarding. People who have gone through everything to be able to succeed in this business are reaping the seeds that they untiringly sowed. Many of them enjoy the kind of existence that was not possible for them to have had under ordinary circumstances. Having gone through the A-Z of affiliate marketing, however, these people are the ones who know that while such business is lucrative, there is absolutely no easy money in it.
Ignorance of this fact is one of the main reasons why there are people who fail miserably in the internet business. There are those who believe in myths concerning the easy money involved in systems such as affiliate marketing. They do not know that there are those who have wasted time, effort and too many resources in trying to pursue the life of ease that they believe this business will give them. And so they go into affiliate marketing armed with nothing but myths and fantastical notions of wealth swimming in their consciousness, never realizing that they bound to make mistakes that would prove to be their downfall.
What may be the reason why in businesses such as affiliate marketing, many are called but few are chosen? Perhaps the answer lies on the fact that many affiliates make mistakes that result from their ignorance of facts concerning how the entire business runs. Affiliate marketing is not as simple as an affiliate promoting a merchant’s wares through his website and getting paid for it. It is also about knowing the market and the customers at hand.
Discovering what the most common mistakes affiliates make can perhaps dispel the gloom about myths surrounding affiliate marketing by correcting some wrong notions about it. It might also be able to make those concerned understand that like any other business, there are dos and donts involved in this one if they want to make each of their steps count. The first common mistake affiliates make is their lack of knowledge concerning principles involved in their business. This refers to the affiliate’s knowledge of search engines in particular.
Affiliate marketing involves advertising, and advertising through the internet could not have been better without the existence of search engines. What every affiliate has to do is to make these search engines his best friend through studying search engine optimization closely. This way, he is able to know what to do in connection with building a better website to ultimately use for his business.
The second is that affiliates make the mistake of stuffing their sites with banners that do not provide enough information about the product at hand. The best way to battle this mistake is to provide good content hand-in-hand with such banners. It is important for customers to know and understand the features of a product, and good content will be able to help them realize this goal.
The third is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting only one product. Consequently, customers are not given enough options to choose from. There is also the risk of generating fewer sales as compared to having more options for customers ponder about. It is always better to give them a few better alternatives than to give them only one.
The fourth is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting too many products. As a result, customers are confused and end up beyond making a choice. It is perhaps good to give them only the best choices. This is because it is ultimately up to them to judge which one is the best for them to patronize.
All in all, affiliates that are doomed to fail in this business are those who do not exert enough effort to understand everything involved in the industry that they are in. Knowing their path step by careful step will prove to be beneficial to them, as there is no other way to succeed than to go through any path slowly but surely.
It is true enough that affiliate marketing is financially rewarding. People who have gone through everything to be able to succeed in this business are reaping the seeds that they untiringly sowed. Many of them enjoy the kind of existence that was not possible for them to have had under ordinary circumstances. Having gone through the A-Z of affiliate marketing, however, these people are the ones who know that while such business is lucrative, there is absolutely no easy money in it.
Ignorance of this fact is one of the main reasons why there are people who fail miserably in the internet business. There are those who believe in myths concerning the easy money involved in systems such as affiliate marketing. They do not know that there are those who have wasted time, effort and too many resources in trying to pursue the life of ease that they believe this business will give them. And so they go into affiliate marketing armed with nothing but myths and fantastical notions of wealth swimming in their consciousness, never realizing that they bound to make mistakes that would prove to be their downfall.
What may be the reason why in businesses such as affiliate marketing, many are called but few are chosen? Perhaps the answer lies on the fact that many affiliates make mistakes that result from their ignorance of facts concerning how the entire business runs. Affiliate marketing is not as simple as an affiliate promoting a merchant’s wares through his website and getting paid for it. It is also about knowing the market and the customers at hand.
Discovering what the most common mistakes affiliates make can perhaps dispel the gloom about myths surrounding affiliate marketing by correcting some wrong notions about it. It might also be able to make those concerned understand that like any other business, there are dos and donts involved in this one if they want to make each of their steps count. The first common mistake affiliates make is their lack of knowledge concerning principles involved in their business. This refers to the affiliate’s knowledge of search engines in particular.
Affiliate marketing involves advertising, and advertising through the internet could not have been better without the existence of search engines. What every affiliate has to do is to make these search engines his best friend through studying search engine optimization closely. This way, he is able to know what to do in connection with building a better website to ultimately use for his business.
The second is that affiliates make the mistake of stuffing their sites with banners that do not provide enough information about the product at hand. The best way to battle this mistake is to provide good content hand-in-hand with such banners. It is important for customers to know and understand the features of a product, and good content will be able to help them realize this goal.
The third is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting only one product. Consequently, customers are not given enough options to choose from. There is also the risk of generating fewer sales as compared to having more options for customers ponder about. It is always better to give them a few better alternatives than to give them only one.
The fourth is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting too many products. As a result, customers are confused and end up beyond making a choice. It is perhaps good to give them only the best choices. This is because it is ultimately up to them to judge which one is the best for them to patronize.
All in all, affiliates that are doomed to fail in this business are those who do not exert enough effort to understand everything involved in the industry that they are in. Knowing their path step by careful step will prove to be beneficial to them, as there is no other way to succeed than to go through any path slowly but surely.
Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Affiliate Marketer?
Each of us has our own interest or has a hobby. Some love all kinds of books, music, and movies while others are into sports and traveling. There are also people who love to grow flowers and loves pets. These things help us to relax and forget our everyday problems and troubles and these things are common to people. But not everyone has a hobby that makes money for him/her except if you love your job.
A money making hobby could let you treat your family and friends with the extra cash or you can even quit your current job that you almost certainly hate. That is why many of us today go online to start a business; their reasons are either to supplement their income or to gradually replace their offline income from their job. Affiliate marketing is a great way to start in making money online.
Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates. The affiliate is paid a commission for referring clicks, leads or most often sales to the merchant. An affiliate’s advantage is that he can make money in a business where he doesn’t have the upfront costs of creating his own product, and he doesn’t have to worry about e-commerce, bookkeeping, or even customer support for it is the merchant’s responsibility.
Now, for sure you want to be an affiliate marketer with all that benefits an affiliate could get. But, do you have what it takes to be an affiliate marketer? Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, you need to decide first which area interest you. What products do you know the most and which products you could do the best job of selling? Once you discover your specialty, perseverance, patience, determination comes next. These are the qualities you should possessed to be a good affiliate marketer.
Too many online business prospectors lose out because they become impatient. You also have to know what your strengths are, the things in which you are good at and your capabilities and abilities related to your chosen streak. And the most important thing is you have to have a strong desire to succeed in affiliate marketing.
To be an affiliate marketer is not an easy task. You have to learn the techniques of marketing your product or service. You shouldn’t be looking at every chance because marketing is all about attracting you to look at this or that particular opportunity. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you should learn how to listen and to be taught because in life we need to learn skills to get by.
For an affiliate marketer, you should know how to market your site effectively, in will enable you to get thousands of visitors coming to your site which transforms into more sales. This only means that the faster you set up a website, the bigger your chances of making money online faster. You should avoid the same mistakes some affiliates make everyday, they are only building a short-term business where they just make a small sale. Make sure you do understand that you should be building a long-term affiliate business and not just something that makes you a few dollars on one sale.
It is also better to have knowledge on how to upsell your visitors for expensive services. This will in turn make you become recognized as an expert in your field and making money will be easier. There are some people thinks that just by having affiliate links on their website will bring them good profits. This can have some truth to it, but then most successful affiliates still believe that making use of strong marketing campaigns for their affiliate programs is still important. But affiliate marketers become much more successful when they treat their customers or online visitors as friends. Make a commitment to establish relationships with your customers and especially with visitors to your site. It is very important for an affiliate marketer to have a good business relationship with customers or visitors.
You should also be creative. The real key to being successful with affiliate marketing is to develop a good content based website and weave your affiliate links into all your content. You have to provide your prospects with good, quality content to keep them coming back to your site. So, do you have what it takes to be an affiliate marketer?
A money making hobby could let you treat your family and friends with the extra cash or you can even quit your current job that you almost certainly hate. That is why many of us today go online to start a business; their reasons are either to supplement their income or to gradually replace their offline income from their job. Affiliate marketing is a great way to start in making money online.
Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates. The affiliate is paid a commission for referring clicks, leads or most often sales to the merchant. An affiliate’s advantage is that he can make money in a business where he doesn’t have the upfront costs of creating his own product, and he doesn’t have to worry about e-commerce, bookkeeping, or even customer support for it is the merchant’s responsibility.
Now, for sure you want to be an affiliate marketer with all that benefits an affiliate could get. But, do you have what it takes to be an affiliate marketer? Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, you need to decide first which area interest you. What products do you know the most and which products you could do the best job of selling? Once you discover your specialty, perseverance, patience, determination comes next. These are the qualities you should possessed to be a good affiliate marketer.
Too many online business prospectors lose out because they become impatient. You also have to know what your strengths are, the things in which you are good at and your capabilities and abilities related to your chosen streak. And the most important thing is you have to have a strong desire to succeed in affiliate marketing.
To be an affiliate marketer is not an easy task. You have to learn the techniques of marketing your product or service. You shouldn’t be looking at every chance because marketing is all about attracting you to look at this or that particular opportunity. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you should learn how to listen and to be taught because in life we need to learn skills to get by.
For an affiliate marketer, you should know how to market your site effectively, in will enable you to get thousands of visitors coming to your site which transforms into more sales. This only means that the faster you set up a website, the bigger your chances of making money online faster. You should avoid the same mistakes some affiliates make everyday, they are only building a short-term business where they just make a small sale. Make sure you do understand that you should be building a long-term affiliate business and not just something that makes you a few dollars on one sale.
It is also better to have knowledge on how to upsell your visitors for expensive services. This will in turn make you become recognized as an expert in your field and making money will be easier. There are some people thinks that just by having affiliate links on their website will bring them good profits. This can have some truth to it, but then most successful affiliates still believe that making use of strong marketing campaigns for their affiliate programs is still important. But affiliate marketers become much more successful when they treat their customers or online visitors as friends. Make a commitment to establish relationships with your customers and especially with visitors to your site. It is very important for an affiliate marketer to have a good business relationship with customers or visitors.
You should also be creative. The real key to being successful with affiliate marketing is to develop a good content based website and weave your affiliate links into all your content. You have to provide your prospects with good, quality content to keep them coming back to your site. So, do you have what it takes to be an affiliate marketer?
3 Easy Ways For Newbies To Start In Affiliate Marketing
With the aid of the Internet, you can almost have everything right at your fingertips. With just a few clicks you get access to thousands and even millions of pieces of information and data on virtually any field of interest. As years pass by, the Internet continues to effect radical changes in many facets of human endeavors, including commerce. Experts say that the information space, commonly known as the “world wide web,” grows by over a million pages everyday as more and more people utilize the Internet for information, education, entertainment, business and other personal reasons. It doesn’t take a business-oriented individual to realize that this phenomenon can bring about sky-high financial gains. The Internet’s fast-growing popularity in the recent years is surely an opportunity for business that any entrepreneur would not want to miss.
You might be thinking only businessmen can make much money out of the Internet, don’t you? Think again. You too can earn big bucks through the Internet even if you don’t have products to sell and high-profile and established company. How? That is through affiliate marketing. You might have come across these words over the net while surfing. Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing between a merchant and an affiliate who gets paid for referring or promoting the merchants’ products and services. It is one of the burgeoning industries nowadays because it is proven to be cost-efficient and quantifiable means of attaining great profit both for the merchant and the affiliate and other players in the affiliate program, such as the affiliate network or affiliate solution provider.
Affiliate marketing works effectively for the merchant and the affiliate. To the first, he gains opportunities to advertise his products to a larger market, which increases his chances to earn. The more affiliate websites or hard-working affiliates he gets, the more sales he can expect. By getting affiliates to market his products and services, he is saving himself time, effort and money in looking for possible markets and customers. When a client clicks on the link in the affiliate website, purchases the product, recommends it to others who look for the same item or buys it again, the merchant multiplies his chances of earning. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer benefits from each customer who clicks on the link in his website and who actually purchases the product or avails of the service provided by the merchant. In most cases, the affiliate gets commision per sale, which can be fixed percentage or fixed amount.
If you want to be an affiliate marketer and make fortunes out of the Internet, you may follow these three most basic and easiest ways to start an effective affiliate marketing program. First is to identify a particular thing you are interested in or passionate about so you won’t be bored and forced to develop your affiliate web site later on. Focusing on a specific area you know very well will help you bring out your best without much risks and effort. You can add a personal touch to your site and give your visitors who are possible buyers an impression that you are an expert in your field. In this way, you gain their trust and eventually encourage them to buy the products you endorse. Next is to look for good paying merchants and products or services related to your interest. In choosing the products, you must also consider its conversion rate—the number of visitors-turned-buyers. There are various affiliate networks and affiliate solution providers that can give you info on the most profitable products and best paying merchants. The key here is, be wise enough to choose the right one.
Now that you have decided where to concentrate, have chosen the products to endorse and the merchant you are supporting and have created your own web site with top level domain name and reliable hosting, you are ready to promote. This is a crucial task, since it is through this that you would be able to increase traffic to the business website, sales and of course, profit. In affiliate marketing, it is possible to earn large sums of money in a short span of time especially when you’re endorsing high-priced items. Expensive products are hard to sell; however, with the right marketing strategies and sales techniques, you can draw visitors to the merchant’s site and make them buy the products. How to promote the products, though, would need a separate discussion. Continue to educate yourself by reading books or other articles online about the best advertising techniques.
Keep in mind, there is no facile and quick path towards success. Affiliate marketing may seem very tempting due to numerous encouraging testimonies of merchants and affiliate marketers alike who have benefited from it, but it entails a great deal of hard work and persistence. Likewise, you need to be creative, flexible and willing to embrace new ideas to market your partners’ products until you find the perfect strategy that works for a specific market that you are targeting. Neither signing up for an affiliate program nor copying ads and leading others towards the merchants’ site doesn’t guarantee success yet. Many affiliate marketers fail to understand this, so when they don’t make sales, they quit, look for other programs and repeat the same mistake. In the end, they conclude that affiliate marketing is just one of those scams in the Internet. Even as you sleep, you can work your way to great financial success if you employ the right strategies in affiliate marketing. Be creative, be smart and surely, you’ll achieve your goals.
You might be thinking only businessmen can make much money out of the Internet, don’t you? Think again. You too can earn big bucks through the Internet even if you don’t have products to sell and high-profile and established company. How? That is through affiliate marketing. You might have come across these words over the net while surfing. Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing between a merchant and an affiliate who gets paid for referring or promoting the merchants’ products and services. It is one of the burgeoning industries nowadays because it is proven to be cost-efficient and quantifiable means of attaining great profit both for the merchant and the affiliate and other players in the affiliate program, such as the affiliate network or affiliate solution provider.
Affiliate marketing works effectively for the merchant and the affiliate. To the first, he gains opportunities to advertise his products to a larger market, which increases his chances to earn. The more affiliate websites or hard-working affiliates he gets, the more sales he can expect. By getting affiliates to market his products and services, he is saving himself time, effort and money in looking for possible markets and customers. When a client clicks on the link in the affiliate website, purchases the product, recommends it to others who look for the same item or buys it again, the merchant multiplies his chances of earning. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer benefits from each customer who clicks on the link in his website and who actually purchases the product or avails of the service provided by the merchant. In most cases, the affiliate gets commision per sale, which can be fixed percentage or fixed amount.
If you want to be an affiliate marketer and make fortunes out of the Internet, you may follow these three most basic and easiest ways to start an effective affiliate marketing program. First is to identify a particular thing you are interested in or passionate about so you won’t be bored and forced to develop your affiliate web site later on. Focusing on a specific area you know very well will help you bring out your best without much risks and effort. You can add a personal touch to your site and give your visitors who are possible buyers an impression that you are an expert in your field. In this way, you gain their trust and eventually encourage them to buy the products you endorse. Next is to look for good paying merchants and products or services related to your interest. In choosing the products, you must also consider its conversion rate—the number of visitors-turned-buyers. There are various affiliate networks and affiliate solution providers that can give you info on the most profitable products and best paying merchants. The key here is, be wise enough to choose the right one.
Now that you have decided where to concentrate, have chosen the products to endorse and the merchant you are supporting and have created your own web site with top level domain name and reliable hosting, you are ready to promote. This is a crucial task, since it is through this that you would be able to increase traffic to the business website, sales and of course, profit. In affiliate marketing, it is possible to earn large sums of money in a short span of time especially when you’re endorsing high-priced items. Expensive products are hard to sell; however, with the right marketing strategies and sales techniques, you can draw visitors to the merchant’s site and make them buy the products. How to promote the products, though, would need a separate discussion. Continue to educate yourself by reading books or other articles online about the best advertising techniques.
Keep in mind, there is no facile and quick path towards success. Affiliate marketing may seem very tempting due to numerous encouraging testimonies of merchants and affiliate marketers alike who have benefited from it, but it entails a great deal of hard work and persistence. Likewise, you need to be creative, flexible and willing to embrace new ideas to market your partners’ products until you find the perfect strategy that works for a specific market that you are targeting. Neither signing up for an affiliate program nor copying ads and leading others towards the merchants’ site doesn’t guarantee success yet. Many affiliate marketers fail to understand this, so when they don’t make sales, they quit, look for other programs and repeat the same mistake. In the end, they conclude that affiliate marketing is just one of those scams in the Internet. Even as you sleep, you can work your way to great financial success if you employ the right strategies in affiliate marketing. Be creative, be smart and surely, you’ll achieve your goals.
The Four Most Common Missing Pieces on Affiliate Sites
There are approximately 4 gazillion (unofficially) web sites in the world. Every teenager, mother, businessman, well pretty much everyone has a web site.
But you are different. You are monetizing your site, not trying to find a soul mate or post pictures of your latest fishing expedition. Your site should be clean, professional, and instill confidence in the buyer.
In finance and insurance, more than anything, you must gain the customer’s trust and confidence in your service. Unlike retail, flashy sites with bright colors and animation don’t work. Most of my suggestions below will apply mostly to the finance and insurance sectors, but lessons can be learned by all affiliates.
I have found that most affiliates (at least in the finance and insurance vertical) tend to leave the following four necessities off of their sites. Is your web site missing any of these important components?
1. Informational content. Conventional wisdom in the online world tells you to get to the point, to make the sale, and eliminate the clutter and slew of links that were so prominent five years ago. In the financial world, however, you need informational content to help convert the less knowledgeable visitors that may find your site.
The ability to educate your visitors serves a dual purpose on your web site. First, it is a great service to them and one they will not likely forget or fail to reward you for (read: convert into a lead). Secondly, educational tips and articles are chock-full of keyword rich content.
A well-written article can vault your site to the top of the search engines for many long-tail keywords and drive a substantial amount of traffic, as it is likely to be linked to from other sites. Plus, it will help convert the often confused customer into a ready-to-buy machine.
2. “Contact Us” Page. The hardest obstacle to overcome in the online world, especially in finance/insurance is customer trust. These people are about to give you (or your affiliated company) some pretty serious information: phone number, email, etc. You must do everything you can to earn their trust!
One of the easiest ways to gain their trust is to let them know you are real and legitimate, not just some information gathering scheme. Granted, you probably don’t have a fancy windowed office with 90 employees, but you cannot afford to look small-time or sketchy to your customers. So make sure that your site has a prominent “Contact Us” page, with at LEAST a contact form, phone number, and street address or P.O. Box.
If you can, get a dedicated toll-free number from your merchant that will track to your affiliate ID. Our studies have shown that online conversions go up almost 2% with the addition of a toll-free number. It shows the customer you are not afraid to have them contact you (even if that “you” is your merchant’s call center).
3. Privacy Policy. Will my information be protected? What data are you collecting about me? Will I get spammed by you after this?
These are all questions that your site’s visitors are asking themselves as they decide whether or not to trust you. Like the above omissions, not having a clearly written privacy policy that answers the important questions a visitor has can cost you their business. In their eyes, you are hiding something and must be some sort of a scam, no matter how legitimate you truly are.
Your site should have a well-written, easy to read privacy policy that lets customers know about things such as cookies, your anti-spam policy, form encryption, etc. Like the above suggestions, this page should be linked to and from every single page on your site.
If you are doing nothing more than referring them to your merchant’s site, ask the affiliate manager if you can list their privacy policy on your site and make it clear to the customer that you are sending them out of your site.
4. Customer Testimonials. I doubt that you get a flood of emails each day thanking you for your service. Heck, we barely get three or four a month out of a couple hundred thousand visitors. But what happens when you DO get a thank you message from one of your visitors? Do you just file it away and think “that was nice of them” or do you make use of this testimonial?
Testimonials are nearly priceless advertisements and, like the three items above, can make the difference between gaining a customer’s trust (and therefore their business) and having them immediately click the back button to go back to the search results.
The first thing you should do is thank them and show genuine joy that you were able to help them. Then ask them for their permission to use their testimonial on your site. In our experience, about 50% of the people will be more than happy to let you do this. Two or three well-crafted testimonials are worth as much as anything else you will have on your site, so make sure you take advantage of any and all thank you notes. Place them on your home page, landing pages, and on each internal page that you can, and if you get enough of them (more than five or so), create a “Testimonials Page” and link to it from each page.
If you do not have any, the easiest way to get testimonials of course is to use merchant testimonials when you refer the customer to the merchant’s site. Ask your affiliate manager if you can use these on your pages. Like your own testimonials, these quotes will give your visitors a trust of your referral and will significantly increase conversions!
Any one of these missing components can cost you conversions and ultimately a lot of money. Double check your site and make sure that you have all of these important pieces. If you do have them, make sure they are fully developed and geared to assist your customers in making the right decision (choosing YOUR site!)
Best of luck!
SCOTT
But you are different. You are monetizing your site, not trying to find a soul mate or post pictures of your latest fishing expedition. Your site should be clean, professional, and instill confidence in the buyer.
In finance and insurance, more than anything, you must gain the customer’s trust and confidence in your service. Unlike retail, flashy sites with bright colors and animation don’t work. Most of my suggestions below will apply mostly to the finance and insurance sectors, but lessons can be learned by all affiliates.
I have found that most affiliates (at least in the finance and insurance vertical) tend to leave the following four necessities off of their sites. Is your web site missing any of these important components?
1. Informational content. Conventional wisdom in the online world tells you to get to the point, to make the sale, and eliminate the clutter and slew of links that were so prominent five years ago. In the financial world, however, you need informational content to help convert the less knowledgeable visitors that may find your site.
The ability to educate your visitors serves a dual purpose on your web site. First, it is a great service to them and one they will not likely forget or fail to reward you for (read: convert into a lead). Secondly, educational tips and articles are chock-full of keyword rich content.
A well-written article can vault your site to the top of the search engines for many long-tail keywords and drive a substantial amount of traffic, as it is likely to be linked to from other sites. Plus, it will help convert the often confused customer into a ready-to-buy machine.
2. “Contact Us” Page. The hardest obstacle to overcome in the online world, especially in finance/insurance is customer trust. These people are about to give you (or your affiliated company) some pretty serious information: phone number, email, etc. You must do everything you can to earn their trust!
One of the easiest ways to gain their trust is to let them know you are real and legitimate, not just some information gathering scheme. Granted, you probably don’t have a fancy windowed office with 90 employees, but you cannot afford to look small-time or sketchy to your customers. So make sure that your site has a prominent “Contact Us” page, with at LEAST a contact form, phone number, and street address or P.O. Box.
If you can, get a dedicated toll-free number from your merchant that will track to your affiliate ID. Our studies have shown that online conversions go up almost 2% with the addition of a toll-free number. It shows the customer you are not afraid to have them contact you (even if that “you” is your merchant’s call center).
3. Privacy Policy. Will my information be protected? What data are you collecting about me? Will I get spammed by you after this?
These are all questions that your site’s visitors are asking themselves as they decide whether or not to trust you. Like the above omissions, not having a clearly written privacy policy that answers the important questions a visitor has can cost you their business. In their eyes, you are hiding something and must be some sort of a scam, no matter how legitimate you truly are.
Your site should have a well-written, easy to read privacy policy that lets customers know about things such as cookies, your anti-spam policy, form encryption, etc. Like the above suggestions, this page should be linked to and from every single page on your site.
If you are doing nothing more than referring them to your merchant’s site, ask the affiliate manager if you can list their privacy policy on your site and make it clear to the customer that you are sending them out of your site.
4. Customer Testimonials. I doubt that you get a flood of emails each day thanking you for your service. Heck, we barely get three or four a month out of a couple hundred thousand visitors. But what happens when you DO get a thank you message from one of your visitors? Do you just file it away and think “that was nice of them” or do you make use of this testimonial?
Testimonials are nearly priceless advertisements and, like the three items above, can make the difference between gaining a customer’s trust (and therefore their business) and having them immediately click the back button to go back to the search results.
The first thing you should do is thank them and show genuine joy that you were able to help them. Then ask them for their permission to use their testimonial on your site. In our experience, about 50% of the people will be more than happy to let you do this. Two or three well-crafted testimonials are worth as much as anything else you will have on your site, so make sure you take advantage of any and all thank you notes. Place them on your home page, landing pages, and on each internal page that you can, and if you get enough of them (more than five or so), create a “Testimonials Page” and link to it from each page.
If you do not have any, the easiest way to get testimonials of course is to use merchant testimonials when you refer the customer to the merchant’s site. Ask your affiliate manager if you can use these on your pages. Like your own testimonials, these quotes will give your visitors a trust of your referral and will significantly increase conversions!
Any one of these missing components can cost you conversions and ultimately a lot of money. Double check your site and make sure that you have all of these important pieces. If you do have them, make sure they are fully developed and geared to assist your customers in making the right decision (choosing YOUR site!)
Best of luck!
SCOTT
Friday, March 23, 2007
Running Home Internet Business Takes Time And Work
A home internet business can lead to financial stability, less required hours and more time to spend with your family and friends out partying like it is one long vacation. At least that is what many promotional websites would like you to believe just before they ask you to send them money so they can continue making the payments on their new car or the boat they are using in their advertisements.
Before you fall for one of the promotional efforts about starting your own home internet business, look through at least six different offers. Do not sign up with any one of them, regardless of how promising it sounds and despite any imposed deadlines, until you have investigated all six offers. Once you do that, you will notice that under all the hype and regardless of the type of business, they all share some common themes.
They will claim they stumbled on the product or service while looking to start their own home internet business, just like you. They had spent huge suns of money on programs that did not work but were merely false promises or down right scams that are probably illegal. Now that they have discovered the formula for success, they want to share it with others. Insert testimonial from Mr. or Mrs. every person here.
Sound familiar? Hardly a day goes by that someone, somewhere is sending out this type of an email or launching a website offering to share their experiences in starting their own home internet business. They will even talk about all the sites that simply want their money and when they agreed they found they could spend even more money on advertising, or more training and if they only became a paid member of this other site they could double their earnings. Most of the time two times nothing is still nothing.
The truth behind the hype is that if you want to run a successful home internet business you have to be willing to put in the time and effort just as you would opening a traditional business. Another company business model may be perfect and it may be something you enjoy and if you are diligent in your work ethics and dedication to this business, it could become a success for you.
However, if you expect to send someone $39.95 to start your own business and begin earning money in an hour or so, you will end up with a pocket full of disappointment instead of cash. Marketing is the most important part of getting traffic to your site. Some may argue that an ugly, non-functional website will drive visitors away and there is a large degree of truth in that statement. However, it will not matter how ugly your site if no one ever sees it.
Before you fall for one of the promotional efforts about starting your own home internet business, look through at least six different offers. Do not sign up with any one of them, regardless of how promising it sounds and despite any imposed deadlines, until you have investigated all six offers. Once you do that, you will notice that under all the hype and regardless of the type of business, they all share some common themes.
They will claim they stumbled on the product or service while looking to start their own home internet business, just like you. They had spent huge suns of money on programs that did not work but were merely false promises or down right scams that are probably illegal. Now that they have discovered the formula for success, they want to share it with others. Insert testimonial from Mr. or Mrs. every person here.
Sound familiar? Hardly a day goes by that someone, somewhere is sending out this type of an email or launching a website offering to share their experiences in starting their own home internet business. They will even talk about all the sites that simply want their money and when they agreed they found they could spend even more money on advertising, or more training and if they only became a paid member of this other site they could double their earnings. Most of the time two times nothing is still nothing.
The truth behind the hype is that if you want to run a successful home internet business you have to be willing to put in the time and effort just as you would opening a traditional business. Another company business model may be perfect and it may be something you enjoy and if you are diligent in your work ethics and dedication to this business, it could become a success for you.
However, if you expect to send someone $39.95 to start your own business and begin earning money in an hour or so, you will end up with a pocket full of disappointment instead of cash. Marketing is the most important part of getting traffic to your site. Some may argue that an ugly, non-functional website will drive visitors away and there is a large degree of truth in that statement. However, it will not matter how ugly your site if no one ever sees it.
Making Money with Articles via Niche Websites
Choosing a good niche subject to base your website around is one of the most important aspects of making money off of your articles. This will give you a foundation to build from and you can target one general audience with a pack of keywords that they are most likely to be searching for. You should take each one of these keywords and use it for the basis of one article on each page.
This way, even though you are targeting one specific subject, you will be sure to interest a wide variety of people in that one niche. They may also find other pages that interest them, which will keep them returning to your site to learn new information about the niche subject.
The best way to find keywords for your niche subject is to use a keyword software program and type in the word that is the subject of your niche. This will generate a list of keywords or phrases that contain your niche and will also show you approximately how many people search for each word or phrase.
Some software programs may also tell you how many sites are out there to compete with for each word or phrase (this will help you know if those sites are worth competing with for the number of searches out there). You then deicide which of these would be most profitable by determining which have the least amount of competitors, so that you have a chance at making it to the first or second page of search engine results, but that also have a decent amount of people looking for that keyword or phrase each month. These will be the keywords or phrases that you will base the pages of your niche site on.
If there are a number of topics that you like, pick the one that you feel would be easiest to start with and then, once that site is built and generating some revenue, you can start another site. The most profitable website marketers, who use their talent of finding niches and combining that with good site content and a handful of affiliate links, have a good amount and variety of niche sites that they have started. You are never limited in what you can do with niche website marketing, unless you find out that you do not have the marketing skills or the needed funding to make it happen. Otherwise, the sky is the limit!
http://www.webcontent-xtra.com
This way, even though you are targeting one specific subject, you will be sure to interest a wide variety of people in that one niche. They may also find other pages that interest them, which will keep them returning to your site to learn new information about the niche subject.
The best way to find keywords for your niche subject is to use a keyword software program and type in the word that is the subject of your niche. This will generate a list of keywords or phrases that contain your niche and will also show you approximately how many people search for each word or phrase.
Some software programs may also tell you how many sites are out there to compete with for each word or phrase (this will help you know if those sites are worth competing with for the number of searches out there). You then deicide which of these would be most profitable by determining which have the least amount of competitors, so that you have a chance at making it to the first or second page of search engine results, but that also have a decent amount of people looking for that keyword or phrase each month. These will be the keywords or phrases that you will base the pages of your niche site on.
If there are a number of topics that you like, pick the one that you feel would be easiest to start with and then, once that site is built and generating some revenue, you can start another site. The most profitable website marketers, who use their talent of finding niches and combining that with good site content and a handful of affiliate links, have a good amount and variety of niche sites that they have started. You are never limited in what you can do with niche website marketing, unless you find out that you do not have the marketing skills or the needed funding to make it happen. Otherwise, the sky is the limit!
http://www.webcontent-xtra.com
New Optin-Advertising Viral Email System
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Not getting the results you want from safelists? With Optin-Advertising Viral Mailing System, you can mail to an unlimited number of contact addresses and will never receive more than 10 emails a day from your upline. Best of all, it's FR*E!
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Everyone knows it takes years to build a good mailing list.
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Thursday, March 22, 2007
DEAR FELLOW MARKETERS
Dear fellow marketer,
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Sincerely,
SCOTT MCVEY
6 Ways You Can Advertise Your New Business
Your advertising plan should be a vital part of your marketing plan. You have an excellent service or a useful product and you need to let people know what you have to offer! People learn about your business through advertising. Because successful advertising is creative and innovative, the creative person has a distinct advantage in developing an effective strategy.
Advertising can be expensive, so you must be specific in identifying the objectives of your plan. Each home-based business is unique, but the fundamental objectives for advertising should include creating a public awareness of your business, reaching new customers, increasing sales and profits and being cost effective.
The first step is to define potential customers in the geographic area served by your business. Do some preliminary surveys and some interviews to determine which means of advertising will reach them. What newspapers do they read? Which radio stations do they listen to? Do they use discount coupons? Do they respond to direct mail? Tailor your advertising efforts to your market.
When you know which audience you want to reach and where you want the information to appear, you must look at the various methods of advertising available to you. Advertising methods differ according to medium, complexity, target audience and cost. Some forms of advertising are more effective for a home-based business than others.
1. Newspaper advertising can be effective for a small business. A relatively large number of people can be reached through a classified ad. Display ads are more costly and should be placed in the newspaper section read by your market. The cost of your ad will vary according to the circulation areas and the frequency of publication.
2. Direct mail while initially expensive can be economical in the long run because it delivers specific information in a personal way to large numbers of people. If you operate a mail-order business, direct mail advertising is especially appropriate because you can target your advertising. Direct mail can be used to distribute letters, promotional give-aways, discount coupons and brochures.
3. Brochures can be expensive but they are essential for any business for which the prospective customer needs detailed information about the qualifications and expertise of the owner and the services and products offered. More information can be supplied in a brochure than would be practical for a classified ad. Brochures can be mailed, distributed door to door or given out at community events and trade shows.
4. Yellow Page directories should not be overlooked as a means of advertising. Every person with a telephone has a copy of their local phone book with business Yellow Pages. Directories are one of the most widely used forms of advertising. The telephone company advertising staff will give you help in designing an ad that will present your business in an effective manner. Be aware that directories are published at various times of the year. Call the phone company to determine the publication deadlines. A home-based business may wish to omit the address from the ad. Phone calls can be screened and clients can be scheduled so the neighborhood is not disrupted by an increased flow of traffic.
5. Business cards are another inexpensive way to inform the public about your business. They are easy to distribute at meetings, upon the completion of a job or during networking. Think of your business card as a “mini-billboard.” It should contain the name of your business, the name of a contact person, the complete address, the complete phone number and an appropriate slogan or description of the business.
6. Promotional gimmicks are inexpensive give-aways that attract attention. For example, pens inscribed with your logo, balloons with your business name or t-shirts can be used to promote your product or service.
Advertising can be expensive, so you must be specific in identifying the objectives of your plan. Each home-based business is unique, but the fundamental objectives for advertising should include creating a public awareness of your business, reaching new customers, increasing sales and profits and being cost effective.
The first step is to define potential customers in the geographic area served by your business. Do some preliminary surveys and some interviews to determine which means of advertising will reach them. What newspapers do they read? Which radio stations do they listen to? Do they use discount coupons? Do they respond to direct mail? Tailor your advertising efforts to your market.
When you know which audience you want to reach and where you want the information to appear, you must look at the various methods of advertising available to you. Advertising methods differ according to medium, complexity, target audience and cost. Some forms of advertising are more effective for a home-based business than others.
1. Newspaper advertising can be effective for a small business. A relatively large number of people can be reached through a classified ad. Display ads are more costly and should be placed in the newspaper section read by your market. The cost of your ad will vary according to the circulation areas and the frequency of publication.
2. Direct mail while initially expensive can be economical in the long run because it delivers specific information in a personal way to large numbers of people. If you operate a mail-order business, direct mail advertising is especially appropriate because you can target your advertising. Direct mail can be used to distribute letters, promotional give-aways, discount coupons and brochures.
3. Brochures can be expensive but they are essential for any business for which the prospective customer needs detailed information about the qualifications and expertise of the owner and the services and products offered. More information can be supplied in a brochure than would be practical for a classified ad. Brochures can be mailed, distributed door to door or given out at community events and trade shows.
4. Yellow Page directories should not be overlooked as a means of advertising. Every person with a telephone has a copy of their local phone book with business Yellow Pages. Directories are one of the most widely used forms of advertising. The telephone company advertising staff will give you help in designing an ad that will present your business in an effective manner. Be aware that directories are published at various times of the year. Call the phone company to determine the publication deadlines. A home-based business may wish to omit the address from the ad. Phone calls can be screened and clients can be scheduled so the neighborhood is not disrupted by an increased flow of traffic.
5. Business cards are another inexpensive way to inform the public about your business. They are easy to distribute at meetings, upon the completion of a job or during networking. Think of your business card as a “mini-billboard.” It should contain the name of your business, the name of a contact person, the complete address, the complete phone number and an appropriate slogan or description of the business.
6. Promotional gimmicks are inexpensive give-aways that attract attention. For example, pens inscribed with your logo, balloons with your business name or t-shirts can be used to promote your product or service.
20 Reasons Why Nobody Wants To Promote Your Products
Having a tough time getting people to promote your products or do a JV with you?
You sent out 32 emails to seek JV partners, and all you got was a single bounced email?
It’s normal, I assure you, especially if you’re just getting started. Getting good JV partners is not as easy as it seems.
From my experience, both when seeking out JV partners, and when being invited as a JV partner, here are the Top 20 Reasons why people “politely decline” your offer of don’t reply to your emails at all.
They Don’t Know or Trust You - You’re new to the scene, and no one knows who you are. No one can vouch for you, therefore it’s difficult for others to trust you. This is unavoidable, but if you focus on building relationships it’s just a matter of time before people open up to you.
You Have a Bad Reputation - In contrast to the earlier point, you may be a regular in the market, but you may have left a bad on impression on others from previous deals. Most of the time it’s because you didn’t deliver what you promised or you don’t pay commissions on time. One mistake can be hazardous. But I don’t believe one mistake makes a person bad - it’s a series of mistake that you never learn from that will ultimately destroy your reputation.
Someone They Trust Said You’re an Jerk - The circles of trust. Don’t underestimate them. People you’ve never met or spoken to may already be predispositioned against your offers, simply because someone they trust or respect said that you’re not trustworthy. Know the affiliate, and know who his / her friends are. These are most likely the people that appear in the testimonials, commenters on their blogs, and also the owners of products they have been promoting. You piss one of them off, and soon the entire group will be unreceptive to your offers. Apologize for all mistakes, even if you’re not sure it’s a mistake, and never go back on your word.
They Don’t Believe in Your Product - You’ll realize that newbies will promote anything you ask them to. But the seasoned affiliate will only promote products he has reviewed or believes in. If they don’t believe in your product it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Some affiliates fail to see that your product may be targeted to the beginner’s market, and tend to judge the information you have based on their level of knowledge. So just move on.
They Are Already Promoting Similar Products - If your product is an almost exact copy of something they are already promoting with good returns, they wont promote yours. The exception is if your version is better than the one they are already promoting.
They Have Competing Products - You have a product on email marketing, and so do they. Unless your product actually complements theirs (for example a video version of their product) don’t expect them to promote for you.
Your Product Makes Theirs Redundant - Imagine if they are selling a product on “The Benefits of Using Botox” and your product says “Forget Botox - Use My New Invention”. Nope, they don’t even want their customers to know your product exists.
Your Payout Percentage is Too Low - Some misers want to pay you 20% and expect you to be excited about it. 50% is standard for one-time digital products, 40% is acceptable for recurring payments like membership sites. 2% - 10% is standard for physical products that have costs and shipping elements to it. Don’t go cheap on commissions if you want people to promote for you.
Your Payout Per Sale is Too Low - Sometimes, a low payout can simply mean a low-ticket item. For example if your 50% commission only means that they get $5 per sale, they may not be interested unless your other criterias are good, for example the $7 dollar Secrets offer which had a low payout but a very, very good conversion.
You Have a Name Squeeze / Fly Catcher Page - Used to work until affiliates started to see that they are actually losing out if the sales page itself does not convert. Then you get all the names and email addresses, and they get nothing. Most affiliates I know of don’t like name squeeze pages, and most serious JV offers on the Internet today don’t implement one either.
You Have Adsense on Your Salesletter - Noooo!!! Never ever put Adsense on your salescopy. I’ll leave it to you to figure out why affiliates run away in the blink of an eye when they see Adsense on a page that is supposed to sell a product.
Your Salescopy Is Horrible - Some people stay away from copy that contains numerous spelling or grammatical mistake. Don’t assume that your JV partners will not scrutinize your sales page. If they read your salescopy and find that it’s not compelling enough, chances are that their list would have the same experience. Seasoned affiliate marketers can tell is your salescopy is good and will convert, just by scanning through the contents. They know what to look at, but do you?
Your Salescopy “Leaks” Commissions - Again it’s probably the seasoned affiliate who would notice this. If you take payments by Clickbank for example, and you also have a number where people can make phone orders and maybe send you a bank transfer, then these are “leaks” that the affiliate will not get paid for. I wont promote anything with payment options that will not be credited back to the affiliate.
They Are in An Unrelated Niche - Maybe they are in a completely unrelated market, or in a “sub-niche” and they feel that their subscribers would not be interested to buy your products. Trust their judgement - if they are serious marketers, they know what their list will and will not buy, how much a person spend on average.
They Don’t Like Your Affiliate System - Some people are pro-Clickbank, some are not. Some people don’t like using JV Manger or any other such affiliate management software. This reason however should be easy to overcome by assuring them that you’ll pay them for sales regardless of refunds.
Your Product Has an MLM Structure To It - some people don’t like 2 tier or multi-level payment structures. Maybe they had bad experiences with MLM or MLM-type of products that they get dizzy when you start drawing circles.
Your Email to Them Got Lost / Forgotten - maybe they just didn’t get your email or it got buried in spam. Or maybe they had wanted to check out your offer but put it off till tomorrow, and tomorrow never came. A follow-up email can do wonders to eliminate this reason.
Their Email to You Got Lost - This is the most screwed up reason I can think of. Imagine someone said yes to you and asked for more information, but their email got lost because of your spam filters. But hey on a day where anything can go wrong, everything usually does!
They Are Just Too Busy - They have their own business to attend to, and have no time for you - perfectly normal. make sure you notify potential partners early (if it’s a new launch) so they can allocate some time for you. If they are too busy, forget them for now and look for other partners.
They Are Just Confused - Maybe they were initially interested, but then you did the mistake of sending them to a hyped up salesletter where they have to spend a lot of time figuring out just how to sign-up for your affiliate program, or exactly what it is that you’re trying to launch. Keep JV information pages as simple as possible but do tell them WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)
Well, those are the top 20 things I can think of from the top of my head. Anything else to add to this list? Be my guest, leave a comment below.
Don’t get demotivated by the list though, that’s not what I wrote it for.
I wrote it so you can understand the motivation factors that drive JV partnerships on the Internet.
It’s a checklist you can use when you find yourself in need of getting new JV partners for your products or services. Try to make sure that you eliminate as many of the top 20 reasons as soon as possible, and you should be doing fine.
Once you’ve helped someone make money from your products, it gets easier and easier to get their help in the future. They will talk about you to their Internet marketing friends, and it gets easier still.
If they don’t make any money promoting your products - APOLOGIZE!
I’ve sent apology emails to a few people because they promoted well and didn’t make any sale for my products. Just say you’re sorry - maybe their list was not as interested as you thought they would be - and leave the doors open for future partnerships. Promote their product in a swap-mailing arrangement to keep things fair.
NEVER send them packing empty-handed without acknowledgement of their effort.
In any case, getting JV partners are NOT the only way to make money from the Internet, so don’t get hung up if you cant find partners. It’s not game over until you admit defeat.
If JV partnership is the only method of promotion you’ve planned, I’d say you need to plan better next time.
You sent out 32 emails to seek JV partners, and all you got was a single bounced email?
It’s normal, I assure you, especially if you’re just getting started. Getting good JV partners is not as easy as it seems.
From my experience, both when seeking out JV partners, and when being invited as a JV partner, here are the Top 20 Reasons why people “politely decline” your offer of don’t reply to your emails at all.
They Don’t Know or Trust You - You’re new to the scene, and no one knows who you are. No one can vouch for you, therefore it’s difficult for others to trust you. This is unavoidable, but if you focus on building relationships it’s just a matter of time before people open up to you.
You Have a Bad Reputation - In contrast to the earlier point, you may be a regular in the market, but you may have left a bad on impression on others from previous deals. Most of the time it’s because you didn’t deliver what you promised or you don’t pay commissions on time. One mistake can be hazardous. But I don’t believe one mistake makes a person bad - it’s a series of mistake that you never learn from that will ultimately destroy your reputation.
Someone They Trust Said You’re an Jerk - The circles of trust. Don’t underestimate them. People you’ve never met or spoken to may already be predispositioned against your offers, simply because someone they trust or respect said that you’re not trustworthy. Know the affiliate, and know who his / her friends are. These are most likely the people that appear in the testimonials, commenters on their blogs, and also the owners of products they have been promoting. You piss one of them off, and soon the entire group will be unreceptive to your offers. Apologize for all mistakes, even if you’re not sure it’s a mistake, and never go back on your word.
They Don’t Believe in Your Product - You’ll realize that newbies will promote anything you ask them to. But the seasoned affiliate will only promote products he has reviewed or believes in. If they don’t believe in your product it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Some affiliates fail to see that your product may be targeted to the beginner’s market, and tend to judge the information you have based on their level of knowledge. So just move on.
They Are Already Promoting Similar Products - If your product is an almost exact copy of something they are already promoting with good returns, they wont promote yours. The exception is if your version is better than the one they are already promoting.
They Have Competing Products - You have a product on email marketing, and so do they. Unless your product actually complements theirs (for example a video version of their product) don’t expect them to promote for you.
Your Product Makes Theirs Redundant - Imagine if they are selling a product on “The Benefits of Using Botox” and your product says “Forget Botox - Use My New Invention”. Nope, they don’t even want their customers to know your product exists.
Your Payout Percentage is Too Low - Some misers want to pay you 20% and expect you to be excited about it. 50% is standard for one-time digital products, 40% is acceptable for recurring payments like membership sites. 2% - 10% is standard for physical products that have costs and shipping elements to it. Don’t go cheap on commissions if you want people to promote for you.
Your Payout Per Sale is Too Low - Sometimes, a low payout can simply mean a low-ticket item. For example if your 50% commission only means that they get $5 per sale, they may not be interested unless your other criterias are good, for example the $7 dollar Secrets offer which had a low payout but a very, very good conversion.
You Have a Name Squeeze / Fly Catcher Page - Used to work until affiliates started to see that they are actually losing out if the sales page itself does not convert. Then you get all the names and email addresses, and they get nothing. Most affiliates I know of don’t like name squeeze pages, and most serious JV offers on the Internet today don’t implement one either.
You Have Adsense on Your Salesletter - Noooo!!! Never ever put Adsense on your salescopy. I’ll leave it to you to figure out why affiliates run away in the blink of an eye when they see Adsense on a page that is supposed to sell a product.
Your Salescopy Is Horrible - Some people stay away from copy that contains numerous spelling or grammatical mistake. Don’t assume that your JV partners will not scrutinize your sales page. If they read your salescopy and find that it’s not compelling enough, chances are that their list would have the same experience. Seasoned affiliate marketers can tell is your salescopy is good and will convert, just by scanning through the contents. They know what to look at, but do you?
Your Salescopy “Leaks” Commissions - Again it’s probably the seasoned affiliate who would notice this. If you take payments by Clickbank for example, and you also have a number where people can make phone orders and maybe send you a bank transfer, then these are “leaks” that the affiliate will not get paid for. I wont promote anything with payment options that will not be credited back to the affiliate.
They Are in An Unrelated Niche - Maybe they are in a completely unrelated market, or in a “sub-niche” and they feel that their subscribers would not be interested to buy your products. Trust their judgement - if they are serious marketers, they know what their list will and will not buy, how much a person spend on average.
They Don’t Like Your Affiliate System - Some people are pro-Clickbank, some are not. Some people don’t like using JV Manger or any other such affiliate management software. This reason however should be easy to overcome by assuring them that you’ll pay them for sales regardless of refunds.
Your Product Has an MLM Structure To It - some people don’t like 2 tier or multi-level payment structures. Maybe they had bad experiences with MLM or MLM-type of products that they get dizzy when you start drawing circles.
Your Email to Them Got Lost / Forgotten - maybe they just didn’t get your email or it got buried in spam. Or maybe they had wanted to check out your offer but put it off till tomorrow, and tomorrow never came. A follow-up email can do wonders to eliminate this reason.
Their Email to You Got Lost - This is the most screwed up reason I can think of. Imagine someone said yes to you and asked for more information, but their email got lost because of your spam filters. But hey on a day where anything can go wrong, everything usually does!
They Are Just Too Busy - They have their own business to attend to, and have no time for you - perfectly normal. make sure you notify potential partners early (if it’s a new launch) so they can allocate some time for you. If they are too busy, forget them for now and look for other partners.
They Are Just Confused - Maybe they were initially interested, but then you did the mistake of sending them to a hyped up salesletter where they have to spend a lot of time figuring out just how to sign-up for your affiliate program, or exactly what it is that you’re trying to launch. Keep JV information pages as simple as possible but do tell them WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)
Well, those are the top 20 things I can think of from the top of my head. Anything else to add to this list? Be my guest, leave a comment below.
Don’t get demotivated by the list though, that’s not what I wrote it for.
I wrote it so you can understand the motivation factors that drive JV partnerships on the Internet.
It’s a checklist you can use when you find yourself in need of getting new JV partners for your products or services. Try to make sure that you eliminate as many of the top 20 reasons as soon as possible, and you should be doing fine.
Once you’ve helped someone make money from your products, it gets easier and easier to get their help in the future. They will talk about you to their Internet marketing friends, and it gets easier still.
If they don’t make any money promoting your products - APOLOGIZE!
I’ve sent apology emails to a few people because they promoted well and didn’t make any sale for my products. Just say you’re sorry - maybe their list was not as interested as you thought they would be - and leave the doors open for future partnerships. Promote their product in a swap-mailing arrangement to keep things fair.
NEVER send them packing empty-handed without acknowledgement of their effort.
In any case, getting JV partners are NOT the only way to make money from the Internet, so don’t get hung up if you cant find partners. It’s not game over until you admit defeat.
If JV partnership is the only method of promotion you’ve planned, I’d say you need to plan better next time.
Friday, March 02, 2007
WHY YOU SHOULD GO EA !
So what is this SFI Business
that you joined to make money for yourself?
... Or, did you join possibly because it was FREE?
While SFI is a free affiliate program and you can make money as a free
affiliate, there are important reasons why you should consider becoming an
Executive Affiliate.
In a nutshell, the difference is this:
As a free affiliate, you earn one-time commissions for your SFI product
sales.
As an Executive Affiliate, you earn RESIDUAL commissions for your SFI
products sales and you earn bonuses from the efforts of ALL the SFI
affiliates in your network (even from people you don't personally refer
to SFI).
Click here to see an overview of the lucrative Compensation Plan.
Now, through your and my marketing efforts you have already or you soon will be
referring a steady stream of new SFI affiliates into your network. That's
great, but if you have not upgraded to become an Executive Affiliate, you
are not going to receive the commissions you are hoping for from SFI when
your and my personally referred affiliates start upgrading and building their own SFI business.
Don't give away commissions that should be yours.
Upgrade your SFI account to become an Executive Affiliate today. To
upgrade, you simply need to purchase a subscription to IAHBE for $29.95
per month. Once you have a subscription to IAHBE, you will automatically
maintain your Executive Affiliate status and start earning residual income
from all of the SFI affiliates in your network (even the ones not
personally referred by you).
You can take my word for this and login to order your IAHBE subscription
now or you can take some extra time going through SFI's presentation on
why it's so important for you to become an Executive Affiliate right away.
Click here to login and order your IAHBE subscription to become an Executive Affiliate now.
Or if you still want more info, check out these links:
Click here to take a photo tour of
SFI headquarters.
Click here to see SFI explained in 60 seconds.
Click here
to see the benefit of being an Executive Affiliate.
Keep in mind, it's not just an "upgrade" you are paying for. Your $29.95
goes a LONG way with your purchase of an IAHBE subscrpition. First off,
IAHBE stands for International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs.
If you are serious about having a successful home business (and it's
obvious that you are), becoming an IAHBE member is a very powerful
association for you to belong to. Once again,
click here to see all the benefits
you receive as an IAHBE member. Plus, did you check out at that huge list
of bonuses that come with your $29.95 purchase of IAHBE?
You get over $1,000 worth of profit pulling bonuses
including:
12 FREE issues of Home Business Connection Magazine($28.00 value).
FREE copy of the audio cassette "Underpaid & Overtaxed." Learn how to set
up your home business to legally slash huge amounts off your tax bill.
($9.95 value).
FREE Copy of the book The Home Business Revolution's
Greatest Entrepreneurs, Volume 1 ($17.95 value).
Certificate redeemable
for $50 off Jack Zufelt's Conquering Force Audio Program,
Your IAHBE membership
includes 15 FREE leads by taking a no-obligation test drive of CEM's
proven lead system. Get your business into high gear with leads from one
of the most highly regarded lead sources in the industry!
$50 off an ad in a Cutting Edge Media
card deck,
$25 off postcard printing
AND MORE!!!
Check out all these amazing bonuses here!
If there was ever a no-brainer decision... THIS IS IT!
Geeeez, Louise.... Uh, excuse me... can I trade $30 bucks for OVER
$1,000.00 in incredible business building products and services please???
Uh, yeah!!! ;-)
Click here to become an Executive Affiliate now.
OK... Enough said.
Welcome to the IAHBE! :-)
When you become an EA, I will send you information on how to build your
SFI income rapidly.
SCOTT MCVEY , Your SFI Sponsor
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