Monthly Affiliate Newsletters - August 19, 2008

Dear Valued Partners,

The end of summer is rapidly approaching and for most people, it will mean the return to normal activities. This will present a perfect opportunity for all affiliates who are currently aggressively marketing, as people get back online to spend money again.

In this month’s newsletter, I would like to provide you with the first in a series of training articles. It will cover how to properly prepare yourself as an affiliate, to sell the many different products and books we have available. I hope it is helpful in your journey.

Preparing to Sell

The most important step in being successful as an affiliate is to establish yourself as an authority in the industry you are selling in. It may seem like a daunting task to learn how to enter a new industry and get established as an authority, but believe me it can be done.

The following steps can help you do that with the least of efforts.

1. Identifying segment to target.
2. Understanding their problems.
3. Establishing yourself and creating credibility.
4. Understanding your responsibility.
5. Recommending the product.

1. Identifying Segment to Target

Whatever you are promoting may it be acnefreein3days.com, molewartremoval.com, skincultureusa.com, or any other of our sites, it becomes necessary for you to understand your target audience.

You will want to know their age group, whether your target audience is male or female, their geographical location, their lifestyle, and in some cases their financial status.

Once you know this, you will easily be able to choose your advertising avenues. For example, if females mainly use the product you are trying to sell, then you may want to find out sites that specifically attract females, and advertise on them. This way you can increase your ROI (return on investment) and will be able to earn more dollars on every advertising dollar you spend.

Now days all major advertising websites are providing the feature of targeting visitors by age, gender, financial status. You can use these features once you learn more about your target audience, and therefore, increase the number of sales you receive each month by spending less.

The next big question would be how to do all this research?

If you keep this perspective in your mind, soon you will get answers to all these questions. It is all there on the Internet for you.

All you have to do is visit other sites that are already established in your target market and are doing well. Once you visit these sites, keep your mind open; you will soon start understanding whether it is for males or females, a specific age group, or etc.

You can study advertiser’s competition for various keywords, which is provided by Google’s keyword tool. High advertiser competition or high cost per click for a keyword surely means good returns on that keyword.

You can also use MSN AdCenter’s feature where in, if you enter in a keyword phrase like “acne cure”, it will give you data on visitors, like age, gender, financial status, lifestyle, and etc. This will help you in further understanding your target audience.

The more you know about your target audience the better it is because this will make your marketing campaigns that much better. They will shine among the crowd, and your ads and reviews will just perform better.

This is something that every marketer must understand. If you have not tried to research this aspect yet, then it’s time now and you must start doing it right away.

2. Understanding Problems Faced By Your Target Audience

Another important factor for every marketer to keep in mind is that people are looking for a solution to their problems and not for a product in particular. This creates a gap between product and needs of people. This gap has to be bridged for you to be successful.

Your ad and then your landing page/review page must do this job of bridging the gap, and if you have done your job nicely there stands a good chance of making a sale.

To make this aspect work, you first need to understand the problems faced by your audience, and then use this understanding to write your ads and your landing pages. Your writing should reflect your deeper understanding of their problem, i.e. acne, moles and warts, or other skin issues.

This is the only way for your audience to be receptive to what you are saying. From there you will show them that there is a solution out there that can help them with their problem and then make your recommendation. This should include providing them with a link to one of our sites and asking them to visit it.

This selling technique works very well for product reviews, posting in forums, social networking sites, writing letters to your list of prospects, and many other advertising mediums. It is the best way to generate sales in my opinion.

3. Establishing Yourself and Creating Credibility

Establishing yourself as a credible source of information among your target audience is not difficult, though it requires some time and dedication. This is the most important step if you want to establish a long-term affiliate business.

In this fast paced Internet world, every person wants to make big money right from the start, which may not prove fruitful in long run. Truly, there is no other way to keep attracting “open to purchase” prospects to your site than by being a credible source of information for a particular industry or target market.

Though it can be a little time consuming, you must keep in mind that a real affiliate business is not built in just one day. To leverage your efforts to the maximum this step is a must. The very first thing you must possess is good knowledge of a specific topic. If you do not know much about the subject you are trying to sell for, first gain it. The Internet is the best source for doing this.

Once you have the knowledge you should get involved actively in forums. Over a period of time and after making a number of informational posts, people will start visiting your website. By including your URL in the signature of your posts, you can provide them with more quality information on your site and soon you’ll have a quality website with high volume of traffic and lots of sales.

Also, informative posts in high traffic forums tend to rank higher on the search engines, which again give your website more exposure and traffic. Leaving comments on blogs where your target audience regularly visit is also a good way of creating rapport and attracting them to your website.

4. Understanding Your Responsibility

I come across a lot of product reviews on the web and some of them are so pushy about a product, that they forget their very purpose of writing the review. On the other hand some are so conservative that even before starting the review they will say, “We are not responsible for this... do it at your own risk… so on and so forth.”

You must understand that even the best product can’t satisfy 100% of its users, may be because of the various factors that affect them. So, do not worry about such people and write for those people who are going to benefit from the product. In other words keep the undertone of your writing positive.

Keep a balanced approach, nobody wants to follow your orders they just want to know your opinion or just want to hear your experience, so give them that and let them make their own decisions.

Write about the benefits of the product and not the features, features are already there in the product’s website. You can be creative and write about what other benefits, other than the obvious, can be derived from the product.

Always think of adding some value to your reviews, if you can provide your visitors with value, they will surely reward you by making a purchase through your link.

Another way of approaching the review is to actually use the product and then tell your story of what happened when you used it. Combine this with everything else I have already discussed, you will sure have a great way to generate traffic and sales.

5. Recommending The Product

Recommending is an important part in making a sale. Visitors often want to hear your opinion and see your confidence in the product. However, they may resist any selling efforts.

They may also not give any importance to your review if your undertone is not confident or if you are trying to sell too hard. So make a balanced recommendation.

This is the final step that can make or break your efforts. Simply ask them to visit the website and see for themselves if this product is something that can help them with their problem and then provide them with a link. If you do this, then you will not have any problems with the recommendation part of your review/landing page.

Well that is all for this month. I hope this article helps you get started on the right track or reinforces and helps what you have already been doing. If you should have any questions regarding this month’s article, please feel free to email me at amit@universalmarketingmedia.com.

Happy selling,

Amit Singh
Universal Marketing Media, Inc.
Affiliate Manager
amit@universalmarketingmedia.com
646-797-3239

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