Niche Affiliate Marketing – clearing up the confusion
The one thing you’re likely to hear almost as often as the phrase, “the money is in the list,” is the phrase: “you have to target a niche.” What does this mean, and why is niche marketing such a ‘magic button’?
The answer is that all of this talk about niche marketing is really nonsensical. Niche marketing is not a revolutionary idea. Any educated marketer will tell you that niches are and have always been the foundation of successful marketing strategy.
So, when we talk about ‘niche affiliate marketing,’ what we’re really saying is: “target the sub-sets of a market, rather than trying to tackle the broader market as a whole.”
This is just basic common sense. You can’t sell everything to everyone. Think of the computer industry, for example. There are companies that produce computer parts, companies that produce whole computers from those parts and companies that write software for those computers. Few, if any, corporations ‘do it all.’
Now, as an affiliate, your targeting should focus not just on market subset themselves but only the solutions (products) you offer to the market. In other words, you must target your solutions to an ideal customer within the market.
We can illustrate this point further. The marketing of automobiles differs in approach from one brand of car to the next. Luxury cars, such as Porsches, are not marketed the same way as economy cars. In fact, if you advertised a Porsche the same way you advertise a mini-van, your sales would plummet.
Why?
It’s the same market (the auto market), but two different ‘niches’ which represent two different types of customer mindset. The customer who purchases the mini-van is looking for an affordable, fam
ily-oriented transportation solution. The customer who purchases a Porsche is looking for status, speed and beauty.
Think of this distinction whenever you’re researching potential niche markets. It is a fundamental marketing concept, and bring you closer to the ‘holy grail’ of the profitable affiliate niche than anything else.
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Affiliate Marketing: The Best Home Business
The best home based business for the average person is not multi-level marketing, data entry or even Ebay auctions. It’s affiliate marketing. I guarantee it, and I can prove it, too.
So, what sets affiliate marketing apart from all other business opportunities?
The first difference is in cost. The majority of home business opportunities you’ll come across require at least a modest investment in equipment or inventory. You can start an affiliate business, however, on your last $100, maybe less.
You don’t need any inventory or payment processing services. You won’t need to ship products. You don’t need a storefront. All you really need is a web site and a way of capturing names and email addresses (and some marketers will tell you that you don’t always need those two components, either!).
The reason affiliate marketing is so simple and so inexpensive is because affiliates earn their keep acting as “middle men” between a customer and a retailer. However, an affiliate is not a middle-man in the traditional sense. There is no markup on product price taking place here.
Rather, the affiliate gets paid a percentage of each sale he refers. An affiliate, then, is in the business of introducing people to products and solutions. You may not know it, but you’ve probably purchased something online in the past through an affiliate.
For example, let’s say that you’re doing your Christmas shopping early, and you use the Internet to search for the best prices on flat-screen televisions. You come across a site that reviews the latest models, and tells you which online retailers sell those models and at what price. You spot a good deal, click on the link, and buy the flat-screen television.
Nine times out of ten, the web site that provided that ‘comparison shopping’ service to you was likely owned by an affiliate marketer. That marketer is earning his or her keep by providing you with valuable information.
He doesn’t have an inventory of flat-screen televisions, but he does have an affiliate relationship with several merchants who do. He introduces, or ‘refers’ you, to those merchants, and is paid a commission when you purchase one of their products.
This scenario represents the easiest money you can make online.
If you choose, you could have your own information-based affiliate site up and running in a week or two. After that, it’s all about getting the proper training in marketing fundamentals like traffic generation and copy writing.
It’s not about spending gobs of money on office or storage space, cold-calling or anything else that turns most home business opportunities sour for the average person.
Would you agree now that affiliate marketing is the best home business? If you still need more proof, why not start one of your own today? You’ll see all the proof you need in your success!
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The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing Training
A tendency exists among new affiliates to jump into the game as quickly as possible, and ‘learn as they go.’ If you’ve some natural marketing talent or background, this approach can work. However, newbies should consider the benefits of investing in an affiliate marketing training program before they ever set up their first affiliate site.
In fact, the more prone you are to learning by trial and error, the more I would recommend putting yourself through a training program.
Why?
Quite simply, a good affiliate training program will save you months, possibly even years, of frustration. You might even save yourself from outright failure. Affiliate marketing is easy in principle, but highly competitive. You’ve got to go a step beyond just setting up a web site and driving traffic through your affiliate link.
Affiliate success depends on a number of diverse skill sets, each of which makes up a crucial piece of the marketing process. Understanding how to target a market, and further target solutions to that market, are just the first two pieces of the puzzle.
You’ve also got to learn how to drive truly market-specific traffic to your site, and how to convert that traffic once it gets there. This requires more than getting product images and links in front of visitors. It involves providing real, useful information.
Affiliate marketing training can give you all of this, and it can also give you a clear idea of how to structure the type of information your market desires.
For instance, many affiliates have discovered that providing balanced product reviews goes a long way in increasing conversions. However, some markets respond more strongly to simple opt-in pages, or free reports they’ve discovered themselves at ebook distribution sites.
Do you know which strategy works best for which products? Do you understand how your market wants to receive information, or the ways in which they prefer you sell to them?
Likewise, do you know how the truly profitable affiliate businesses are built? I can guarantee you it’s not about tossing up just one affiliate site and getting rich overnight.
Wherever you are in the process, you can always benefit from continuing your education. An investment in an affiliate marketing training program truly is an investment in your long-term success!
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Affiliate Marketing: Tips for Increasing Traffic from Videos
Affiliate videos are all the rage these days. The more personal, interactive ‘touch’ of video presentations adds up to more traffic and more sales when you execute the technique properly.
Getting traffic from videos requires more action than a simple video upload to YouTube. You’ve to couple together several parts into a strategic system before the ‘set it and forget it’ traffic starts to flow to your site.
Tip #1: Distribute widely
The secret to getting your video seen, then shared, is to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. This means submitting your video to as many sites as possible, not just the ‘bit three’ of YouTube, Google and Revver.
How about iFilm, Hello World, Vimeo and DailyMotion?
Did you know there are video channels on the social networking sites like Myspace and Friendster?
All of these sites offer additional opportunities to get your video in front of more people. Remember, too, that if you have a blog, you can post videos to it, then syndicate them across the web.
Tip #2: Cross-link between sites
The popularity of video means that many of your viewers at one site will also frequent the other sites you’ve used to post your video. Hence, you can use one site to drive traffic to another.
For example, let’s say you set up a Myspace profile and begin putting up videos there. You can use your Myspace traffic to boost your views over at YouTube. All it takes is a link in your Myspace profile, or doing a custom brand on your Myspace video (link it to your YouTube channel, rather than your main web site).
Here’s another idea. If you’ve posted your video to your blog or just a static page on your site, consider submitting that URL to social bookmarking sites like Digg.com. Include links on the page to the other video sites that you want to drive traffic towards.
You might be wondering “why would I want to send people to a page that has the video they just saw?”
The point of this is to get those visitors to view any additional videos you’ve got, as well as vote on or rate your video in order to increase its popularity. The more popular your video is, the more views you’re likely to receive as new visitors hit those other sites.
Tip #3: Add incentive
It’s always good to give people an incentive to visit your site. Your video should do the bulk of this work, but there’s always room for improvement.
Just as you would offer “list bait” to people you want to opt-in to your email list, you can offer bait to your video viewers. Let people know they can get the code for reposting your video on their sites by visiting yours.
In fact, if you wanted to, you could build your opt-in list by telling people they can get the code plus a special gift by opting in to your list.
There are a lot of ways to build incentive. Think of what you’d do in the traditional scenario of visitor -> landing page -> optin, and see if you can find a way to apply those techniques with video!
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The Importance of Having an Affiliate Marketing Strategy
One of the biggest mistakes made by novice affiliates is diving into their marketing campaign without a solid affiliate marketing strategy. What does it mean to have a strategy, and why is it so important? These are the questions we’ll examine in this article.
Any affiliate marketing strategy worth its salt will cover multiple levels of planning. In other words, your strategy should include things like: how you will present your offer to your market, how you will drive market traffic to your web site, how you will convert your customers.
Why?
Quite simply, you must learn to think of the entire sales chain from beginning to end. Conversion is crucial to each step in the process.
For example, getting someone to click on your pay-per-click advertisement should be considered a ‘conversion’ because the individual has taken the desired action of clicking an ad that leads to your site.
Once that visitor reaches your site, you must determine how you will convert them into ‘leads.’ Typically, you’ll capture the visitor’s name and email address to an opt-in list. In order to do this, you need a strategy for creating an attractive opt-in page offer.
Yet another strategy comes into play when you’ve gotten the lead onto your list. Your follow up email series must be designed to convert that lead into a customer.
However, conversions on new leads will not make up the bulk of your profits. If you desire serious affiliate income, you also need a post-sale follow up strategy. What types of follow up offers will you send to your list of existing customers? This is important because the repeat customers are really your bread and butter.
Finally, think about how to expand your affiliate business. Do you want to remain in the sam
e market niche indefinitely? If not, consider your long-term strategy. You can replicate your current affiliate model into another niche.
This will add an additional stream of income to your bottom line, and is a great long-term strategy for building your own affiliate empire.
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