The Smart Passive Income Blog » affiliate marketing

SPI 030 : Pat’s Top 30 Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing

Pat — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:47:23 +0000

In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I go over my top 30 tips for successful affiliate marketing, which involve a wide range of topics – all the way from the approach and mindset of affiliate marketing, to the little details of where links should be placed and how often.

As many of you know, especially if you’ve recently glanced at my monthly income reports, affiliate marketing has become a major portion of my earnings over the past year, which is why I wanted to end the year with a hold-nothing-back type of session that will definitely help you and your online business one way or another – whether you already promote products as an affiliate or not.

There are 30 different tips here – all based on my own experience – so I hope you enjoy!

Oh, and you’ll notice that during the session, my voice starts to “go away” or change a bit. The reason is because I’ve been sick the last few days and I guess my vocal chords were just not ready for an hour long recording session yet. All good though – I got through it and the information is there for you.

If you’re at work and can’t listen to audio or you just aren’t into podcasts, I recommend you open up the transcript at the bottom of this post so you can read through the tips instead. The transcript is already available for you.

Right click here to download the MP3

Items mentioned in this podcast include:

GreenExamAcademy
Keyword Research Webinar
SPI Podcast Sessions #10 and #22 (with Chris Guthrie)
SPI Podcast Sessions #08 and #23 (with Corbett Barr)
Affiliate Marketing for Beginner’s Course
Amazon Affiliate Marketing Course
Mark Mason from Masonworld.com
GoToWebinar
Article on FTC regulations and disclosure (from Social Media Examiner)

Please let me know what you think of session #30, and if you enjoyed this episode, please share it!

Thank you all for making the SPI podcast such a major success. It’s just a few downloads away from 1,000,000 downloads since session #1 and the response from you has just been incredible. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

2011 was amazing, but 2012 is going to be even better!

Happy New Year, and look out for a lot more from me in the new year!

Cheers!

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript for Session 30 (PDF)

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SPI 030 : Pat’s Top 30 Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing
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An Insider Look: My Affiliate Links and Exactly Where They Convert

Pat — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:57:00 +0000

I received an interesting email from an SPI reader over the weekend:

“I don’t get it Pat. You make all this affiliate income (your June income report was off the hook!) and you have never come across as being pushy or aggressive with your promotions. I read your blog and am subscribed to your newsletter and you have never sent me anything but content, and somehow you’re earning a CEO’s income. I hope this isn’t rude, and it’s not that I don’t believe you, but how exactly are you doing this?”

To answer this question I can break it down into 4 key concepts:

Provide massive value.
Earn massive trust.
Learn and understand the needs and wants of your followers.
Lead and teach by example.

Combining these 4 concepts together allow me to share products (some of which I am an affiliate for) without being hawkish, and instead of worrying about losing readers, subscribers and potential customers, I’m actually strengthening the relationships I have with them.

For many of you, this isn’t groundbreaking news – and some of you are already putting these concepts into practice, which is fantastic.

Today, however, I wanted to provide you with a more detailed and concrete example of how I earn an income from affiliate programs, specifically illustrating where on my site (and “off site”) sales are coming from.

Getting Into the Details

In my June Income Report, you can see that I am an affiliate for nearly 30 different products and services – for SPI and for other niche sites and businesses that I own.

The most profitable product/service was BlueHost, a domain and hosting company that I use and recommend to anyone looking for a relatively inexpensive, quick and easy way to setup a website. In June, I referred 79 people to Bluehost, earning over $7000.00 in commissions.

Although June was a record month of affiliate earnings, for Bluehost and overall in my business, Bluehost has consistently been one of the top contributors to my monthly affiliate income.

Lets analyze.

Honest Recommendations Work

My most important rule for affiliate marketing is: I only recommend products as an affiliate that I’m extremely very familiar with – preferably products that I’ve used and have helped me achieve something. If I’m not confident in the product and I don’t feel it will positively help people, I will not promote it.

Although affiliate products are created by others, the moment you promote something you become a representative of that product and it reflects on you and your brand.

My second most important rule for affiliate marketing is: I never directly tell anyone to buy a product. I always recommend products based on my experience and in the context of what I’ve done or what I’m doing.

There’s a huge difference (on several levels) between:

“Buy [product] now because you need it to grow your online business…”

and

“This is how I used [Product] to help me achieve…”

I obviously have used Bluehost, and I still do (on all sites except for SPI, which needed an upgrade due to traffic and activity), and I am very familiar with how it works so I can be there for some support if it’s needed, which makes people much more comfortable with their investment.

Show ‘em How It’s Done

As I just mentioned, affiliate product recommendations are much stronger if you actually demonstrate how the product works and how it’s used.

I do this many times on several different platforms for Bluehost:

The Infamous 4-Minute Blog YouTube Video: This is a video I created that walks people through how to setup a domain and hosting account (and install WordPress) – in less than 4 minutes. The “less than 4 minutes” part is important because it’s differentiates my tutorial from the thousands of other tutorials out there, and also that it can be done quickly. This video has been viewed over 10,000 times.
The Niche Site Duel Posts: In this series of posts I take people through my transparent journey of building a niche site from scratch and turning it into a business that now earns over $1,000.00 per month. During this process I show people exactly how I built an SEO optimized website.
My Getting Started Page: This is a page that I recently created for people who are brand new to my site. On this page, I talk about some of the first steps to take, which include setting up a domain and hosting account, and I embed the 4-Minute Blog video to go along with it. You’ll see later in this post exactly how this page converts.
The SPI Podcast: On a few of my sessions on the SPI podcast, I’ve mentioned Bluehost as the hosting provider that I use. To make it easy for listeners to use my affiliate link, I created a short link using the Pretty Link plugin which make my affiliate link on audio much easier to remember.
My Resources Page: This is second most visited page that is clicked on in my navigation menu (My Income Reports is first). Here, I include products that I’ve used during my online journey that have helped me get to where I’m at today.

So Where Exactly Are My Commissions Coming From?

This is for Bluehost only in the month of June 2011:

The SPI Homepage – 20 referrals: These are from clicks on the 125×125 Ad in the sidebar. Part of this comes from the 4-Minute Blog video, which instructs people to click on that ad in my sidebar. If I could go back into time, I would have instead done a video-specific short URL, like I did for the podcast. Then I could better track how the video performs.
My Resources Page – 20 referrals: Like I said, this is one of the most visited pages on my site. If you’re not utilizing a resource page for your niche on your site, you’re crazy! It’s the ultimate non-aggressive way to earn money leaving all parties happy in the end.
How to Setup a Niche Site – 10 referrals: This is one post out of several in the Niche Site Duel series.
My Income Reports – 9 referrals: In each of my income reports, I include links to each of the products and services that have generated an income. These 9 referrals were even distributed through March, April and May’s income reports.
Getting Started Page – 9 referrals: This brand new addition to my site, which introduces myself and my blog to new visitors, is definitely paying off for the time invested to set it up. You can learn more about why I setup this page here.
Other Pages on SPI (10 total) – 11 referrals: Several other pages that briefly mention Bluehost have converted for me as well. Each only have one or two conversions, which is why I didn’t write them out individually. People may arrive on these specific pages from Google searches, from exploring on SPI, or from a direct link from a podcast or referring website.

The beauty of all of this is that it’s virtually 100% passive income. The 4-minute video, all of the blog posts, the podcast sessions, and the resource and getting started pages have already been published and are up for anyone to view at anytime, for now until the Internet dies.

I can work on providing more value and real life experiences to share, and as a result more people will be exposed to these affiliate income opportunities – and that’s really what it’s all about when it comes to this kind of affiliate marketing, specifically from a blog.

Plant seeds, nurture them and watch your income grow.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this insider look at one specific piece of my affiliate income pie, and remember that I have over 30 different products that I promote with a similar, non-aggressive approach which doesn’t upset my followers and allows me to sleep at night knowing I’ve provided some value and help along the way.

I’m interested – what are your thoughts are on the non-aggressive vs. aggressive promotion approach online, especially since most of you are probably familiar with both as a content consumer. Does the aggressive approach still work? Is it all about getting the “low-hanging fruit” and that’s it? Or, do you feel this passive approach to marketing provides for a more long-term internet business?

Please let me know what you think. Cheers!

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An Insider Look: My Affiliate Links and Exactly Where They Convert
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SPI 022 : Affiliate Marketing Strategies, Tips and Techniques From Real Life Experiences with Chris Guthrie

Pat — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:50:01 +0000

In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, special guest Chris Guthrie and I discuss several affiliate marketing strategies, tips and techniques drawing from real life examples from our own websites and experiences.

Affiliate marketing has been huge for me lately. Last month, I earned $18,638.24 from affiliate marketing and Chris has pushed over 1.5 million dollars in product sales from Amazon.com alone, which is out of this world.

You may remember Chris from Session #10 of the SPI Podcast, which was more of an interview style type podcast. This time around we do more of a “round-table” type discussion about affiliate marketing and throw tips back and forth that have worked for us in the past. There’s a lot of little golden nuggets in this session, so whether you’re just getting started with affiliate marketing, or you’re already experienced with it and want to increase your conversions, there should be something here for you.

In this session, you’ll learn:

The first experiences that both Chris and I had with affiliate marketing.
How to find the perfect products to sell as an affiliate on your site.
Our thoughts on promoting a product that you haven’t used yourself yet.
How to get products for free from companies to review and promote on your site.
Rules for long-term success with affiliate marketing – especially if you have an existing audience or following.
The best tips for affiliate marketing if you have a product-based niche site.
Detailed information about one of Chris’s niche sites that he recently sold for a lot of money.
The mindset that you need to really crush it with affiliate marketing.
The most important factor that determines your success with niche site affiliate marketing.
Why and when you should become a “sales rep” for a specific product.
Interesting and unique places to add affiliate links to increase sales and conversions.
Specific types of posts that work best for affiliate marketing.
Websites that we built that totally failed, and why.
How podcasts, videos and webinars can be the best way to promote products as an affiliate.
Where the affiliate links on your blog or website should really be.
Plus a lot more…

Right click here to download the MP3

Items Mentioned in this Session:

Make Money on the Internet (Chris’s Blog)
Chris’s New Podcast on iTunes
GamingVidz.com
Comission Junction
Amazon Associates Program
GreenExamAcademy.com
Clickbank
Netbook Reviews
Share a Sale
Link Share
KeywordResearchWebinar.com
Easy Azon WordPress Plugin (affiliate link)
Chris’s Amazon Niche Profit Course (with SPI only Discount)

Please subscribe below to the podcast to get automatic updates:

Thank you so much for your support, and if you have yet to leave a rating or review, please leave me an honest one on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes immensely! I appreciate it!

Enjoy the show!

Cheers!

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript (PDF)

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SPI 022 : Affiliate Marketing Strategies, Tips and Techniques From Real Life Experiences with Chris Guthrie
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SPI 015 : Types of Passive Income Generated Online and What to Expect From Each – Part 1

Pat — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 09:39:10 +0000

In this session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I investigate the different types of passive income streams that can be generated online, and what you can expect from each.

When I say “what you can expect”, I mean:

the costs that are involved
how one might get started
what kind of results are typical; and
how long it might take to see those results

A lot of people have been emailing me and sending me message that this blog doesn’t have a good starting point for newcomers.

Well – they’re right.

I don’t.

This podcast session, along with the other parts that go with it, will become that starting point – a place to give you an idea about what you can do and how you can begin to work towards earning a passive income online.

During this particular segment of this series, I talk about:

What I believe is the fastest and easiest way to make money online. You might be surprised!
An example of a totally passive, 100% hands-off income stream that continues to grow.
How I totally failed in my first experience with affiliate marketing.
Why affiliates are important and why 99% of the work is already done for you.
What you can do to get started, even if you don’t have any money at all.

Right click here to download the MP3

Items Mentioned in this Session:

As I mention at the end of this session, Cliff Ravenscraft from PodcastAnswerMan.com, a dear friend and frequent guest on my podcast, will be dedicating the entire month of March to helping a group of students create a successful podcast too. He’s helped me so much, I feel that he and his Podcasting from A to Z course definitely deserves a mention. It’s the least I can do for all of his help.

If you’re interested in Podcasting the right way, learn from the best. Check out Cliff’s How to Podcast from A to Z Course by Clicking Here. (This is an affiliate link)

As always, thank you for your support, and I wish you all the best. Cheers!

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript (PDF)

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SPI 015 : Types of Passive Income Generated Online and What to Expect From Each – Part 1
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How You Can Make Money From Shoppers Right Now

Pat — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 09:01:25 +0000

This is a guest post by Chris Guthrie who was recently featured in Session 10 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. His interview about how he sold nearly $1,000,000 in product from niche sites specifically for the Amazon.com affiliate program has generated a lot of buzz, and he was kind enough to offer some additional advice about how all of us can cash in on the biggest shopping day of the year – Black Friday.

Black Friday is nearly upon us and for those of you with websites now is the time to make some money.

I’ve earned over $60k in profit from Amazon’s affiliate program in the past 12 months, thousands more from other physical product based affiliate programs and last year over $20k came from the last two months of the year (Check out my podcast session with Pat Flynn for even more details on how I do it).

Many of the websites I run are based on physical products. If your website falls into this category the process of making money from Black Friday will be a little easier for you, but even if you have a site not focused on physical products there are still ways you can cash in on Black Friday.

Here are 3 ways I’m making money that you can copy right now:

1. Promote Each Major Shopping Day And Provide Legitimately Good Deals

If you know your niche then you know what prices are truly great and you can deliver value to your readers by showing them the best deals while at the same time lining your pockets with some extra cash.

Don’t promote products that aren’t truly on sale. Your conversions won’t be as good and again, you want people to thank you for helping them cut through the clutter and share only the best deals.

For example, I run a blog called Photography Tips with a friend of mine who is a professional photographer and I recently published a Black Friday Photography Deals post that lists all of the best deals I could find.

Feel free to copy the format I’ve used in that post, which includes both online and offline (in-store) Black Friday deals. People do still physically go to stores on Black Friday (for reasons beyond my comprehension), but it’s important not to neglect those readers by only posting online deals. Plus, it adds value to your post.

2. Promote Your Blog Post Heavily

If you’ve been building an email list for your blog (You have been building an email list, right?) then now is the time to send out an email to your readers about the wicked deals you just found for them on Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Here’s an email I sent to my Photography Tips blog:

Hello Fellow Photogs,

Check out this list I’ve compiled of great photography discounts:

Black Friday Photography Deals

I’ll continue to update the list as new deals are added, but in the meantime be sure to stop by and take advantage of the sale pricing before the deals expire! This is a collection of the best online and in store Black Friday deals I could find.

Happy Holidays,

Chris Guthrie
PhotographyTips.net

I sent out this email on Monday and as I said in the email I will continue to update the blog post as I find more deals.

I really do take the Black Friday sales extravaganza seriously because it’s one of the few times of the year that EVERYONE has a wallet open. I’ll post a follow up blog post for Cyber Monday with more deals and typically I tend to make more money with Cyber Monday anyway because the only deals available are online ones. Cyber Monday was the first time last year that I cracked the $1,000 day barrier in profit with Amazon.

Now, after you’ve published your first draft of the sales you should also seek out more deals and then send another email mentioning the new deals that you found. As long as you are continuing to share truly great deals then even your most cynical of subscribers won’t be annoyed by the “sales pitch” because everyone loves to save money.

3. Promote The Black Friday Home Page

If you have a website that doesn’t fit into a physical product category then chances are you’re probably making money with some other affiliate programs (or you made a serious error when deciding what niche to use for your website by not basing your website on something that you can sell). In either case, you can still promote Amazon’s Black Friday Home Page found here on either your blog or at the very least your website’s Twitter and Facebook account.

You could even promote the Black Friday home page from your personal Twitter account like I did a few days ago:

(I probably could have gotten an even better click through if I said something like “Forget P90x I bought this instead: http://amzn.to/ij0BXK“)

Bottom line, there really is something for everyone during the Black Friday sales, so don’t miss out on the opportunity. Besides, who wouldn’t want the Back To The Future: 25th Anniversary Blu Ray Set?

You can read more about how I earn a six figure income online by reading my blog: Make Money on the Internet

A Quick Note From Pat: The SPI only discount for Chris’ In-Depth Amazon Niche Site Video Training Course that I mentioned in my podcast session with him is still available by clicking here! Cheers!

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How You Can Make Money From Shoppers Right Now
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SPI 010 : Crushing It With Amazon Affiliate Sales With Chris Guthrie of MakeMoneyOnTheInternet.com

Pat — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:44:50 +0000

In this session (the 10th session!) of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I interview Chris Guthrie of Make Money On The Internet, who is making a killing as an affiliate for products from Amazon.com.

Out of all the places to sign up as an affiliate and earn a commission from the products you can sell, Amazon was my least favorite of all – that is until asking Chris a load of questions about why he chose to sell products specifically from Amazon and how he does it.

Last year, he sold almost $1,000,000.00 in products from Amazon and earned a full time income as a result, all from niche sites that he’s built and set virtually on autopilot. He’s also got a very interesting story about how he got into this business, thanks to a little video game called Halo.

In this session, you’ll learn:

How to maximize your conversions for products that you sell from niche sites (and your blog too).
What linking techniques have the best click-through rates for Amazon products, and which ones are the worst (backed up by hard numbers).
The one thing that most people building product niche sites tend to forget.
What you can do to maximize your search engine rankings right from the start.
How picking a less searched for keyword can increase your income.

Chris is an awesome, down to earth guy who I became really good friends with at Blog World Expo last month. What impresses me most about him is not how he’s making a full time income from Amazon.com, but how he’s so willing to help others.

I hope you enjoy, and just like Chris says in the interview, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’m sure he’ll be around to answer them from time to time.

Cheers!

Right click here to download the MP3

Items Mentioned in this Session:

Transcript:

Click Here to Download the Transcript (PDF)

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SPI 010 : Crushing It With Amazon Affiliate Sales With Chris Guthrie of MakeMoneyOnTheInternet.com
Join the community of over 10,000 fans of SPI on Facebook!

SPI 003 : Affiliate and Niche Site Strategies Revealed with Glen Allsop

Pat — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:05:50 +0000

In this session of The Smart Passive Income Podcast, I’m very excited to chat with Glen Allsop of Viperchill.com as we get into crazy detail about exactly how he makes money online. If there is one session to take notes on, this is the one because Glen reveals a ton of information about his 5 step process for making money with affiliate and niche sites.

You can learn more about Glen by visiting his high ranking blog at Viperchill.com.

Enjoy!

Right click here to download the MP3

Items Mentioned in this Session:

Action Items:

Download my free guide at http://www.ebooksthesmartway.com
Subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, or via RSS.

Transcript:

SPI 003 : Affiliate and Niche Site Strategies Revealed with Glen Allsop

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SPI 003 : Affiliate and Niche Site Strategies Revealed with Glen Allsop
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Multiple Strategies I Use For Affiliate Marketing – Where To Put Affiliate Links

Pat — Mon, 10 May 2010 08:17:49 +0000

I’m a big believer of creating your own products to sell online. Whether it’s something like an eBook, a membership website, or software of some kind, building your own products can yield the highest profits, as well give you a fantastic foundation to live a passive income lifestyle.

However, I know that not everyone is cut out to create their own products. Some people simply don’t have the time, while others don’t think they have information to make a worthwhile product. Sadly, some people know they have the information, but are just lazy.

Whatever the reason may be for not wanting to create your own product, I’m sure most of you know that you have the option of simply skipping that step and selling other people’s products as an affiliate instead, earning a commission for each sale that you drive. Heck – sometimes you don’t even have to create a sales page or worry about closing the deal, you just have to drive traffic to a certain page, and it takes care of the rest.

On top of that, there’s no need to worry about customer service, which is the one thing that can take some time away from an entirely passive income lifestyle if you’re earning money with your own products. I speak from experience.

Although I do sell products of my own online, I’m also an affiliate for various products in multiple niches as well. I’m actually seeing quite a lot of success too, as you can read in my latest income report.

I use multiple strategies to build up my affiliate income. Here is a majority of them, which I’m happy to share with you in case you were looking at some new and creative ways to boost your affiliate income.

A Resource Page

My resource page has been a top affiliate earning page on this blog ever since I published it, earning at least $1k a month.

It just lists a number of resources that I recommend, along with a brief description of each. It helps people who are looking for solutions, and it helps me because some of those resources are affiliate links. It’s an entirely amicable way of earning an income and building authority and trust with your readers. A win-win for all.

An “Extension” – Page

An extension page is similar to a resource page, however you do a little bit more to make it feel like what their looking at is related to your brand.

For example, on my GreenExamAcademy.com website where I sell study guides that I created for the LEED exam, I have a page for practice exams. On this page (which is still on the greenexamacademy.com domain), I describe a number of various practice exams that people can purchase. It is only then when people click on the affiliate link (which is a call to action) that they are taken to a product page on a third-party website.

To make this process flow even better, I should probably include some imagery on my own site that may also be seen on the third-party website, so there is even more cohesiveness in the buying process between both sites.

Sidebar Banner Ads

As you can see (if you’re not reading this in an RSS reader), there are four 125×125 pixel banner ads in the sidebar on the right hand side of the blog, which are all affiliate links to certain products that I recommend. I’ve been debating for a while whether to keep these up or take them down, but they still produce a rather substantial amount of click-throughs each month, so for now they are staying up.

What’s cool is that you don’t need people’s permission or any contracts to put these kinds of ads on your website, as opposed to selling private advertising space on your site. All you need is an affiliate link, and in many cases companies who are serious about their affiliate program will provide you with graphics to use, just as these 4 companies did here.

If you do end up experimenting with this method, make sure you test, test, and test! If the banner ads you put up aren’t getting any clicks, or you’re getting clicks but absolutely no sales as a result, dump them and try another. Unless you’re driving traffic and making a commission, it’s just wasted space on your site.

Within Blog Posts

On occasion, I’ll embed an affiliate link into a blog post. This is usually done when I’m already talking about a certain niche or product I’m involved in, and there just happens to be a specific product that I use and recommend that has an affiliate program tied into it. I never write blog posts just to make money by placing an affiliate link in it. I think people are too smart for that and can read right through those types of posts.

Money should never be the intention behind any content that you write in your blog posts. However, money can be the result of producing awesome content, with the intention of helping others.

Sometimes, the affiliate links will be “noticeable”. For example:

My iPhone app business is doing really well, thanks to the How to Make iPhone Apps with No Programming Experience eBook.

OR, I may make them a little more subtle, such as:

We don’t worry about building the apps ourselves, because it’s much easier to outsource the ideas to people who could build the apps faster and probably much better too.

Either way works well, it just depends on the prose and mood of your paragraph and/or post.

Within Products

I also embed affiliate links in the products that I create and sell. This is the nice part about creating an electronic product, because you can’t really embed an affiliate link into a physical book. Actually, you can – but I’ll get to that in a second.

Now of course, this can only be done when you create a product, so you’ll have to do that first, but if you have one out already or are working on one as we speak, don’t forget about the opportunity to put in an affiliate link where you believe one should go.

Within Physical Products or While Talking Live

I don’t practice this yet, but with my upcoming podcast, I may do something similar.

Let’s say you’re an affiliate for a company that sells fly fishing reels. On a website, it would be really easy to insert an affiliate link that looks like:

http://www.flyshingreelwebsite.com/affiliteid?=23109823

But, imagine showing that in a physical book, or saying that on a show. That would look or sounds really weird and there’s no way people are going to remember that unless they take the time to write it down or remember where it was in the book or audio you mentioned the link.

Our job is to make people’s live as easy as possible when it comes to getting them to take action.

So, here’s what you can do: you can buy a nice looking domain that forwards to that affiliate link.

Purchase bestflyfishingrods.com and tell it to forward to that crazy link above. That’s much easier to both say and remember.

A Few Last Pointers

Always track your affiliate links. Know how many clicks are going through, and how many sales are coming as a result. If you don’t, you’re just trying to get lucky. Make your own luck and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Understand my 8 Principles for Effective Affiliate Marketing on a Blog.
As far as PPC (pay-per-click) affiliate marketing is concerned, I’ve tried it, but it’s not my cup of tea. I know it can be hugely profitable if done correctly, but I also know that if done carelessly, you can lose a lot of money really fast.
Lastly, as more time goes by, and the more of the above strategies you implement, the more potential affiliate income streams you create for yourself, because you never know when someone random will stumble upon your blog.

Thanks for your support! Cheers everyone!

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Multiple Strategies I Use For Affiliate Marketing – Where To Put Affiliate Links
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8 Principles for Effective Affiliate Marketing on a Blog

Pat — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:59:16 +0000

In a little over a year, this blog alone has earned me $6,931.97.

Compared to my other online businesses, that’s not very much at all – but considering I don’t sell anything on this blog and have only 4 125×125 ads (below the fold) in the sidebar, I’d say that’s pretty darn good. My point here is that you don’t have to aggressively sell or advertise to your audience in order to earn some decent cash on your blog. You can do it by being honest and smart with your affiliate links.

Some critics might say that I probably could have earned more. Maybe if I placed Google adsense within my posts. Maybe if I had more advertisements in the sidebar. Maybe if I had text link ads. Maybe if I did product review posts.

I disagree.

All of those things take away from the main focus of this blog (which is the main focus that ALL blogs should have) – the content. If you write excellent content – things that get people excited, things that people haven’t seen before, things that make people want more – you’ll have the potential (and more importantly, the foundation) to make money online.

Pat’s Principles for Effective Affiliate Marketing on a Blog

Per a number of email requests, here are the rules that I apply when it comes to affiliate marketing on this blog. You may have a different way, but this is what works for me.

1. Affiliate Marketing Starts With the First Impression

First impressions are huge because they set the tone for a visitor’s entire experience through your website, including any possible transactions that may take place now, or in the future.

What is the first impression that you get when you go to a site and it’s splattered with advertisements, for example? What does a site like that say to a first time visitor?

“Hi, nice to meet you – click here so I can earn a buck?”

It’s like if you met someone for the first time and the first thing they ask you is if you’re interested in buying something from them. It reminds me of those guys who sell jewelry from inside their trench coats. Maybe you’d buy a “folex” (fake-rolex) from them once, but you’d never do any kind of business with that person beyond that.

I’d much rather get to know somebody first, trust them, and then have them tell me what they might have to offer. Or better yet, be genuinely interested in what they’re doing, and ask them about it myself. This is the kind of philosophy that I use when promoting other people’s products.

What do you see when you land on my homepage?

2. Only Promote Products That You Have Used.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the way I earn money with affiliate links in ALL of my online businesses is by promoting only products that I have used, and only what I would recommend to my friends who want to achieve similar results. I feel that anyone with an audience has a responsibility to do the same thing.

There’s something fishy about someone promoting Apple Computers who only uses a PC.

3. Always Describe The Product That You’re Promoting.

If you have an affiliate link that’s just a banner ad, or a link at the bottom of a post with no real description – it’s a waste. If you’re actively promoting a product (that you’ve used), you obviously know something about it. Share your knowledge with your audience, and they’ll be intrigued and more likely to click through to learn more.

4. Content First, Affiliate Link Second.

Although I just said you should always describe the products you promote, the content that you write should drive the affiliate links that you offer, not the other way around. Don’t write posts just for the sake of placing an affiliate link within.

5. Share Your Experience With the Product.

When describing whatever it is your promoting, share your experience! If you can throw in some data or graphs to go along with it, even better. Back when I was more actively writing about eHow, I promoted an eBook that I read which helped quadruple my earnings per article. I created a graph that showed how much I earned before I read the book versus how much I earned after. To this date, that eBook has been one of the most successful affiliate promotions I’ve done on this blog.

6. Only Promote One or Two of the Same Type of Products.

There are a number of reasons why you should never promote more than two of the same type of products:

The more products you promote, the less believable each of them becomes. If today I recommended Company X, and tomorrow I recommended Company Y and Company Z, each of their “stock” immediately goes down.
The more products you promote, the more difficult the decision to choose between them becomes. I’ve been to a number of personal finance websites that offer sign-up bonuses for 4 to 5 different banks (sometimes within the same post!). It hurts my brain.
If you keep promoting the same products time and time again, your audience will begin to realize that there must be something special about the specific ones you keep bringing up.

7. Starve the Horses and Feed the Stallions

This is a fancy way of saying that you should only promote the products that you know make you the most money, and forget about the ones that don’t. You will only know this after trial and error, so see what works, and get rid of the rest.

For a while, I had a number of banner ads on this blog that were not generating any type of income for me. There’s no point in wasting valuable ad space with banners that don’t pay out.

Test, test, test.

8. Utilize a Resources or Tools Page

A resource or tools page is a page that consists of helpful links to websites, products and services related to your niche. This is a perfect spot for affiliate links, so take advantage of this if you haven’t already.

It takes the “books I’m reading” area you often see in blogs (within Amazon affiliate links) to a whole new level. not only is this great for you, but it’s extremely helpful for your readers who may be looking for additional resources related to your niche. Plus, they may come across products or services they weren’t originally looking for while on your resources page.

Everybody wins.

Is Affiliate Marketing a Form of Passive Income?

In the pay-per-click sense of the term – I don’t believe so. There’s too much upkeep and constant checking of data each and every day for it to be even a little passive.

But, affiliate marketing with a blog with these principles in mind – absolutely. The blog posts that you write today will be on the web for a long, long time. Any affiliate links embedded in your posts will be included as well.

Cheers!

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8 Principles for Effective Affiliate Marketing on a Blog
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3 Types of Affiliate Marketing Explained, And The One I Profit From

Pat — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:41:10 +0000

In my latest monthly income report, you may have noticed that my affiliate income had surpassed my direct income from the electronic products that I sell online. I received a lot of comments, asking me to explain more about where my affiliate income comes from and how it works.

Instead of just breaking down where it all came from – how much this, and how much that – I decided to turn this post into something a little bit more useful that would do more than just tell you how much I earned. Again, I’m not here to show you the money I make online, I’m here to show you how I make money online, and what I’ve learned along the way.

When thinking specifically about affiliate income, I determined that I could divide how people earn money as an affiliate into three primary categories: Unattached, Related, and Involved. I’m speaking in terms of how we are associated with the product or products we may be an affiliate for.

Unattached Affiliate Marketing

These are your basic pay-per-click affiliate marketing campaigns where you have no presence and no authority in the niche of the product you’re promoting. There’s no connection between you and the end consumer, and all you’re doing is showing an affiliate link in front of someone’s face via Google Adwords, Facebook ads or whatever, in hopes that they’ll click on your link, buy the product, and you’ll earn a commission.

The reason why this type of affiliate marketing is so attractive to many is because no presence or authority in a niche is needed! It takes time to build up a reputation and trust with certain groups of people online, and many people are just too scared to commit to working on a blog or website, or just don’t have the time. For many, this is their only option.

Personally, I don’t like this business model because to me, this is not a business model. It’s an income generating model – yes, but a business model where I can build relationships with the end user – no. With PPC affiliate marketing, you become a behind the scenes middle man.

Not for me.

If you dabble in PPC affiliate marketing and are in the positive, I applaud you and I wish you continued success. Trust me, it’s a lot more difficult than it sounds, so props to those of you finding success with it.

Related Affiliate Marketing

Another form of affiliate marketing is what I like to call related affiliate marketing. This is where you have some sort of presence online, whether it’s through a blog, a podcast, videos, or whatever – and you have affiliate links to products related to your niche, but they’re for products you don’t actually use.

Back when text link ads were a big deal, I remember seeing every single “make money online” website with a 125 x 125 pixel advertisement for text link ads. Most of these sites did not actually use the text link ad service on their own sites. On many personal finance blogs, you’ll see a lot of different affiliate advertisements for things like ING, Everbank, LendingClub, and numerous other financial institutions. I doubt that every person who places one of those links on their blog actually uses each of those products and services.

And that’s ok.

Placing affiliate links on your site that are related to your niche is a great strategy to earn an extra income. Whether it’s in the sidebar in banner form, or in a text link at the bottom of your blog post, because you have a website and some authority, people will trust you and your decision to place the ad on your site.

I do have a few of these kinds of links scattered throughout this site. In the sidebar, you’ll see (at the moment) an ad for a “How to Make an iPhone App” product. Many of you know I do have a few iPhone apps that generate an income for me each month, but I did not use this product. I do, however, personally know the owner, which is why I trust him and decided to place that ad there.

Related affiliate marketing is great, but I can tell you that 95% of my affiliate marketing comes from the last type of affiliate marketing I’d like to talk about…

Involved Affiliate Marketing

Involved affiliate marketing is where you’ve used a product or service, truly believe in it, and personally recommend it to your audience. Not in a banner ad or somewhere that says “recommended resources”, but within your content, as part of your life and your strategy for whatever it is you’re talking about. The product almost becomes something people “have to have”, because it’s part of the process.

It’s your involvement and experience with the product that makes that offer so attractive.

There is, however, a level of responsibility that you have to uphold while making these kinds of recommendations, especially if you have a lot of authority and influence over your followers. This is something I take very seriously – even more so now that this blog has become so popular in such a short period of time. If it were up to me, this the only way affiliate marketing would be done, because to me it’s the most honest and most helpful.

This is the complete opposite of PPC, where you’re not even seen by the consumer in order for the transaction to take place. Instead, this is you talking directly to those who may need a product that you’re offering, who have their ears and eyes on you. This is not using your money in order to make money, like with PPC. It’s using your reputation, trust and authority in order to get others to take your recommendation, use it, and pay you something in return in the form of a commission.

My Affiliate Income

Last month, I made $5,023.33 in affiliate sales, and like I said, about 95% of that came from offering products that I’ve used and put my word behind.

Most of it comes from my LEED website. I do sell my own study guides, as you know, but I am also an affiliate for a company who sells practice exams as well. I thought about creating practice exams of my own, but this company is so good at what they do, (I used them to help me pass my test back in March of 2008), that it wouldn’t be fair to my customers if I tried to take their money by creating my own practice exams and kept them from this wonderful resource.

So, instead of creating my own, I have a page on my blog that recommends these exams, and within my eBooks, I talk about how I didn’t include practice exams because the best ones are available from this company, which I’ve personally used to help me pass. Of course, I put an affiliate link within the eBook, which is something you can’t do with a hardcopy book (unless you buy a domain that redirects to an affiliate link, which you can mention in that hardcopy, but that’s a whole other blog post).

I even go into tips for taking practice exams within my eBook, but again – I don’t offer include them, but I offer the affiliate link to where you can get them. Taking practice exams is part of the process that many people feel is necessary to achieve a higher score, and I offer my recommendation through an affiliate link to fulfill that need.

On this blog, I’m sure you’ve seen me personally recommend the Internet Business Mastery Academy before, and I do that because they helped my internet business get to that next level when I was starting out, I’m still a member today, and I truly believe in the program.

To respect the companies I’m an affiliate for, I don’t think I should present exactly how much I earn from eachI hope you can understand. I will tell you, however, that the Internet Business Mastery Academy affiliate program pays a recurring monthly commission, which is awesome.

I’m also an affiliate for a “Make Money Writing for eHow” guide, which I’ve talked about in numerous posts and how it helped me increase my eHow earnings, with numbers to back it up. This has been another great affiliate product that earns me a decent income each month as well.

So, to conclude, I would say that you can choose which kind of affiliate marketing works best for you, unattached, related, or involved, but in my experience, using your authority and presence in a niche to recommend products that you’ve actually used that have actually benefited you in some way is the best way to go. I think people will feel more confortable investing in products recommended in this way because:

They have some kind of proof that it works,
They have a resource to go to for help; and
They know to to blame if it doesn’t work.

Be as involved as you can with the affiliate marketing process and you will see success with your affiliate income.

Thanks everyone! My eBook is finished, and it’s just waiting on a couple videos and you’ll have free access to it very soon. Thanks to all of those on my Facebook Fan Page who have helped me with the name.

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3 Types of Affiliate Marketing Explained, And The One I Profit From
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