subject: Affiliate Marketing - The Truth [print this page] If you are looking for a proven, easy to implement system, for creating a reliable income as an affiliate, this may very well be the most important article you will ever read!
The truth is, making money online is easy.Yet most affiliates fail before they even get started. They end up with nothing to show for all their hard work... except for a credit card maxed out by hopeless Adwords campaigns.
Because that's what the so-called "gurus" would suggest you do, to desperately live up to their "Earn $50,000 Per Month" hyped up affiliate strategies, that just don't work for regular people. Sound familiar? You're about to learn a cold hard truth. It's not your fault, because they have been lying to you.
There are tons of "how to make money" products out there, maybe you've been a "test subject" for cheap marketers trying to make a quick buck on outdated information?
Some of these products are good of course, but 99.99% of them suffer from the same problem, if they aren't outright lying to you, then at least they aren't telling you the full truth. And even if they are telling you what to do they are certainly not showing you how to do it.
If you had a look at your computer right now, it's probably filled with all the information you would ever need to make money online. But even if we put a gun to your head you couldn't use it, because all the hyped up ebooks rave about "Step 8" in the process, when what you really need is "Step 1".
The so-called "gurus" tell you that you can make loads of cash exploiting this or that Google loophole, by writing tons of articles, by using this magic PPC campaign and just sending traffic to a Clickbank affiliate link.
But let me tell you, there are no loopholes. There is no magic PPC campaign or "guaranteed" keyword list. You can't just press a big red button and make money while you sleep. What these so-called gurus are talking about is simply how to generate traffic to your affiliate links. Yes, traffic is important - but it should be the last thing on your mind!
You need to have a proven system set up before you even think about sending traffic, let alone experimenting with costly Adwords campaigns. And yes there is a proven system. Look at it this way; just sending traffic to your affiliate link might generate some sales. In fact it might even be very profitable.
Chances are it won't be though, because the people hitting your affiliate link are likely not specifically looking to buy that product. You are relying on the vendor's sales copy to convert them and you are extremely lucky if you get 1-2% of the visitors to buy anything.
But even worse, you have to invest the same amount of money and time to make every single sale. Profitable? Maybe, but a lot of work and it won't make you rich!
Now wouldn't it be better if you could:-
Get you visitors so interested so that when they click your affiliate link, they go there because they want the product?
Capture your prospects so you could continue to market related products to them forever, with no extra work or investment?
Have the entire sales process run on autopilot, so you can focus on getting more prospects in at the top of your funnel - knowing that they will have turned a handsome profit when they emerge at the other end?
Of course it would... and you hopefully answered yes to all 3 questions!
The trick is to always go for the subscriber first, not the sale. Offer your visitors a valuable free report related to the product you are trying to sell. Get them to opt in to your list and use the whole process to "presell" them on the product.
Up until now it's been a lot of work to implement a system like this. You would need to design squeeze pages, download pages etc. and upload them to your own server. You would have to write the reports good enough to get people to opt in and to presell them on the product. And you would have to pay for and set up your autoresponder... not to mention writing the follow up series.
Most affiliates lack the time, skill or motivation to set this up for every product they want to promote. Chances are one or two of the above apply to you, and as result you are not raking in the commissions you deserve.
