Learn Affiliate Marketing - Flop Idle » learn affiliate marketing

Affiliate Challenge Update

admin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:47:12 +0000

Things have been slow over the last couple of weeks, which is making me think that maybe Santa Claus visits on a more regular basis than my Clickbank checks?;) However, not to get too disheartened I continue to be productive and plan other options that I may want to try and test over the next few days.

Some days affiliate marketing is about as frustrating as trying to flush a beach-ball down my toilet! You have a great few days and then nothing for weeks, similar to to the situation a constipated donkey would find itself in.

But as this is a challenge I did not expect it to go easy anyway, so I’ll take everything in step and try to learn as much as I can from it.

With Christmas just around the corner I have been leaning more toward physical products in Commission Junction, and have been researching select products at Plimus too. I’ve been asking around and it does seem that around this time of year down-loadable products do suffer a slow down, with people pushing more for physical products instead.

To get an idea of what people are buying I have been researching using Ebay Pulse, which shows you the most popular searches people are making at Ebay. The other method I’m using is Amazon.com. I visit Amazon and search a category from the drop-down box, then I sort the order by bestselling first.

Using both of these methods I can get good ideas of what hot items people are looking at buying right now. Obviously I can use my Amazon affiliate link to promote the product, but I always look first at cj.com to see if I can get a better commission rate than the 5% I get from Amazon.

I’ll be using more articles and other free promotion ideas to try and make a few sales with the physical products I select.

But for now, back to work.

Affiliate Challenge: How To Get Your Article Stats Part 3

admin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:55:41 +0000

Part 3 is now upon us. We have covered how to get your stats and conversions from your articles in the last two posts, so we will use this post to cover the final stage of our analysis which is to grab our stats from the articles that link to the sub-domains we have created.

The goal for my articles that link to my sub-domains are completely different from my direct linking articles. When I use a direct affiliate link in my articles, I intend for the reader to read through that article and click on the link to be taken directly to the products sales page. I’m hoping that the reader then purchases the product so I can earn a commission.

When I use a sub-domain mini-site I want the reader to again click the link in the article, but this time they will be taken to my mini-site where I want them to enter their email so I can send them a pre-written follow up email sequence hoping that they make a purchase via a link contained in one of those emails.

It’s common knowledge that building an email list is more valuable than just sending someone right to a sales page, then losing them forever. Sure you make a commission from a sale, but if you get their email you have the opportunity to make the sale many times over with related products you offer in your email sequence.

I will now show you how to track your stats and conversions if you use articles that point people to a sub-domain opt-in page. I want to find out what percentage of people that visit one of my articles, then go on to fill in the email form on my mini-site to opt in to my email list.

By the way, if you want to find out how to create sub domains, and why I do it, then visit my post all about creating sub-domains.

I have several articles pointing links to my mini-sites, and as they are not affiliate links I cannot use any tracking ids in them. However you can still see how many clicks and visitors each one of your articles brings to your site by using your cpanel on your domains. So let’s do just that, but first we need to find out how many views our articles have received so far.

Using ArticlesBase I visit the statistics page and gather up all the views from the articles that are sending people to one of my mini-sites. In total I have 5 articles that are pointing to my mini-site opt in page, the product being promoted via the follow up email is another Clickbank product.

From the 5 articles combined I have received 120 views. Now I need to work out how many of these visitors actually clicked my links, and then went on to enter their email into the form on my mini-sites.

To find out how many visits my sub-domain sites got, I need to enter my domains cpanel(control panel). You can find out how to do this again by clicking on the sub domain link above. What you are looking for once you are in your cpanel is the Awstats icon below.

Once you click and enter Awstats you will be presented with the next page which will display to you a list of your sub-domains to pick from.

All you need to do once you get to the step above is select what sub-domain you want to see the stats for, then click on the small magnifying glass(red circle) above.

The next page you will come to is full of stats all about your sub-domain. But what we want to get from this page is the amount of visitors to your sub-domain min site, and we can do that by viewing this next part which is pretty much at the top of the current page.

Because I know that only my articles are sending people to this page, I can be sure that those 56 visits above are all coming from people that have read my articles. However, if you get traffic to your sub-domains from other sources there is still a way to find out what articles are sending what traffic.

You want to look further down your Awstats page for the “Connect To Site From” section. This section should look something like this…

Not only does the information above tell you how many visits you are getting, but it also gives you the exact article that is sending the traffic to your sub domain mini site. And because we have this information we again get to see what the best performing articles are. Who needs tracking ids anyway;)

I recommend studying all the stats in Awstats. I think Awstats is underused my most site owners, which is unfortunate because it can be a goldmine of information.

So from studying the Awstats info above, I now know I have had 56 visitors from my articles to my mini site page. And as we discovered from the start of this post I have also had 120 viewers to my articles, so we can now work out the click through rate of the 120 people that click the link and are taken to my mini-site where I want them to enter their email.

Here is the sum….

56/120 = 0.46 *100 =46%

Nearly half of the viewers that read my articles want to click through to visit my mini-site! At 46% that’s awesome! But now I need to find out how many of the 46% actually go on to submit their information to join my list for that product.

I use Aweber to capture all the visitors email info, and then send those people the follow-up email sequence promoting my product. Looking at the Aweber stats I can see that so far 8 people have actually signed up by using their email on my mini site. So each one of these potential customers will be sent my email sequence as soon as they sign up to get more information from me.

Let’s work out the next sum which will find out what percentage of people that visit my mini site, actually feel the need to enter their email info to learn more about the product I am promoting. It looks something like this…

8/56 = 0.14 * 100 = 14%

So my conversion rate for email captures is at 14% which is also pretty good. Now as I did in part 2 of this stats tracking post I want to work out what the percentage of viewers to my articles, then go on to opt-in to my email capture list. Here is how that looks…

8/120 = 0.06 * 100 = 6.6%

It seems that my conversions on articles that link to my sub domains are performing better than the articles that link directly to the product sales page. But as I am yet to make a sale from this email sequence yet, I can’t get a number for the main conversion which would be the visitors to sales number.

However with such a high percentage of people visiting my sub domain site from my artilces, I’m hoping its just a matter of time.

Now I have some real stats to test with, and tweak until I can get as higher conversion rate as I can. Without collecting all this data I would be writing articles with no idea of how they are ever going to perform.

But now I have numbers to compare new ideas and techniques against, thanks to just a little work, and a good ol’ calculator.

I hope you got some good information from these posts? And as always, any questions feel free to leave them below in the comments.

Afilliate Challenge: First Article Sale Made

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:44:54 +0000

I was starting to think this would never happen, but Saturday came along and I hit my first sale via an article! $17.98 commission from a product that was not really my main focus at the time, but thanks to my new approach of fishing for promising niches it paid off nicely.

I want to start by showing you how tracking works to find the article that the sale came from. You can read more about how I track this information on my Clickbank Tracking post.

The first step is to log into your CB(clickbank) account which should bring you directly to your “Daily Snapshot” screen. If not, just navigate to the “Account Home” tab within the CB site.

This is what you should see…

Click on the colored bar next to your earnings for that day to bring you to this next page….

The important part in that picture above is the TID(Tracking ID) box. Because I added a tracking code to my affiliate link I was able to find out exactly what article produced this sale.

Why is this important?…

Because it’s telling me that the method I used to write this article was good enough to have someone read it, then click my affiliate link, and finally make a purchase from the vendors sales page.

What do I do now?…..

Now I will focus more energy on this product with more articles. And as I know what type of article approach converts readers onto buyers, I’ll use a smiler article format on the new articles and hope that they will do exactly the same.

My Crab Boat Affiliate Marketing Concept

I covered briefly upon this concept in my previous crab boat marketing post. I’m now starting to refine it a little with more ideas and techniques.

Here is a diagram of my new technique and the idea behind it.

The Concept:

Buyers are the Crabs;)

The Boat/Vessel is your general idea.

The Bait is the method you use to catch the crab.

The Idea:

I get a general idea of a product that may stand a good chance of getting me some sales, and some well earned affiliate commissions at the same time. But the problem is I do not want to have to spend hours upon hours researching the market thoroughly and all that jazz!

So what I decided to do was use some bait in the form of articles/blog posts to instead have the crab(buyers) hopefully find me. I wrote several articles(bait) about a few different products, got them published and then left them alone to give them a chance to work their magic.

Of course I helped some of them along with social bookmarking along the way, but I did not go overboard with link building or anything like that.

I have several different tasting baits(articles) just waiting to be eaten up by the closest and most interested crabs. All I had to do then was let it soak and keep checking back for bites.

As soon as I get a crab(sale), I will then follow it up by dumping more smiler tasting bait in that exact same area knowing that it seems to be a hungry place to focus much more of my time and energy upon. This means that I do not have to guess or spend wasted energy researching niche/market ideas, instead the direction in which to go comes from the buyers themselves.

My Progress:

With the first sale now upon me using this concept, I have to sat that I was very surprised. The sale actually came from an article I did not bookmark or promote in anyway, and it only has about 15 views to its name.

This product was in a niche I held no hope for, from the little research I did it seemed I was just wasting my time writing one article about it. But following this concept I stuck with it anyway, and obviously now I’m glad I did.

Phase 2 which is to dump more bait(articles) into this products niche will be fun to do. If this works out I could have found a great little niche to concentrate my energy on, and hopefully get a little closer to my $200 a week goal!

Going to be busy for the next couple of days!

New iMac

I took advantage of the Black Friday online deals last week and finally ordered myself an Apple iMac! A long time in coming, but much needed as the computers I have now are starting to turn into fossils and interest the local archaeologists!

Hopefully should have it on December 16th!;)

Off to work!!

Learn Affiliate Marketing – The Crab Boat Method

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:54:41 +0000

I’m sure you will agree that after viewing my drawing above, you are probably wondering why I even bother with affiliate marketing! And with artistic flare like that I should be spending far more of my time selling my paintings in art galleries right?

Or not?….

Anyway…. have you ever seen that show called The Deadliest Catch? If not then just quickly its about a Crab fishing fleet that go out and catch crab(obviously). But…. It shows you the ins and outs of their everyday crab fishing life.

What does this have to do that could help me learn affiliate marketing?…

Bait – General Idea – Find/Locate – Unload Everything

While watching the show it came to my mind that this is similar to what we do as affiliates. Take a captain of the crab boats approach to finding crab for an example.

Bait For Crab Captains:

Crab boat captains know what crab love to feed on, so they are aware that if they can find the right location where the crab hangs out, then the bait they have for them will do its job and catch tons of crab without any issues.

The reason they know what bait crab love may have been passed on through the generations, and is probably common knowledge anyway. But years ago they must have tested and tried everything in order to find the beat bait for the job.

General Idea For Crab Captains:

Before the captains set off they have a general idea from years of experience of where the crab just might be. They mark previous years golden spots on maps for future reference on where to go next time around.

Can you imagine having no idea of where to place your crab pots! The ocean would be an extremely large area to test that’s for sure.

Find/Locate For Crab Captains:

Even though they arrive on last seasons sweet spots marked on their maps, that is still no guarantee the crab will even be there. Like people, crab move around too;)

In order to get a good idea of where the crab my be, the captains launch what are called prospect strings over a large area that will cover some of the sweet spots from previous trips.

So they unload a couple of pots a few miles apart, and repeat this for several miles in order to let the first pots they launched soak for long enough to catch some crab. This enables them to test the waters without launching all there crab pots on just a guess.

Once they are done with that prospect string they then go back to the first post and pull it back up hoping for some crab. If that prospect pot is full of crab what do you think they would do next?….

Unload Everything For Crab Captains:

Now they have tested the waters and know where the crab are, they unload everything in that area in order to grab a huge payload of crab for the taking.

They do these steps over and over again, year after year. It’s the captains job to fill up the boat with as much golden crab as it can possibly hold. More crab = more money.

For Affiliate Marketers

For affiliates the steps to find profitable niches and products can be exactly the same..

Bait – General Idea – Find/Locate – Unload Everything

Bait – Product Type:

The bait(product type) for affiliates is not as set-in-stone as it is for crab fishermen. There is so much more scope and reach that we now have thanks to the Internet that our bait which is basically our product type can really be anything. We could create ebooks,vidoes,podcasts,blogs with ease, the list seems to be endless.

What helps us narrow this bait(product type) step down could be the next step..

General Idea:

Let’s face it, there are so many resources that will give you a general idea on what market/niches are profitable. You can use Clickbank, forums, Amazon and so on. This step is pretty easy at least to give us a general idea on what could make us a nice affiliate/vendor profit.

Find/Locate:

After our first two steps are covered and we are armed with a product type and a general idea, what we then do is launch our own prospect string.

As an affiliate our prospect strings could be things like dropping a few articles into that market/niche, maybe even a couple of blogs or so. We can even try PPC to test these waters. Again what we are looking for is a pot full of customers, or maybe I should say crab-stomers’)

Within my own article marketing and blog creation journey so far, it seems you can absolutely tell if the market/niche you are involved in will yield any paying customers at all. Although sometimes I wish it didn’t take as long to find this one out.

Indicators will obliviously be customers buying your offers, but it seems it can be as little as having them sign up to emails lists/newsletters. It all shows that they are keen to learn more.

Unload Everything:

If you are lucky enough to hit the big numbers then that’s when it is time to unload everything you have and concentrate much more energy on that particular area(market/niche). You now have proof that this is a profitable place to be, so why not milk it for all you can.

This is the time when we will place a mental dot on our own affiliate profit map, just so we are aware that this is a very abundant place to be right now. And maybe as we know what it takes to get to this stage, we can then repeat it all over again next time around.

The great thing about being an affiliate is the opportunity you have to do this over and over again, and in many different niches. But you are not limited to just one boat like the crab fishermen, instead you can have an entire fleet of your own. I think they call them people Super Affiliates?;)

Even though it may seem at face value there is a great deal of difference between crab fishing and affiliate marketing, the basic steps are pretty much the same thing. But as affiliates you don’t go home smelling like dead fish, because you are already at home smelling like dead fish;)

I think only I could link crab fishing to affiliate marketing! Do I need to get a life?…;)