There isn't much guess work involved in starting an online business , but somehow 94% of the people who come online with the hopes of becoming an internet millionaire fail.
Why? It's an assortment of things, some believe it's an overnight sensation. Although there are some extraordinary stories of people making thousands of dollars in their first month, these results are not typical of the average online entrepreneur.
Some forget that this is actually a business and neglect to construct a plan. Affiliate marketing or any other online business is still a business where you make an investment, have profits and losses, and the climate changes every year, so why not plan for that?
Most importantly the one's who fail usually neglect educational resources to make money online. That's what we aim to provide with this E-Book. A straight to the point quick start guide on how to setup an online business. We talk mainly about affiliate marketing, but the concepts in this E-Book are interchangeable across multiple online business models.
This book will show you the basics on what you need to do to turn your website into a resource that your users can trust. You’ll also learn how to get more customers to your website. The main goal of this book is to teach you what you need to know to create a profitable online business.
Some of the things that you will learn include:
● Getting started with affiliate marketing.
● Quickly researching and picking your niche.
● Choosing a web host, domain name, and platform.
● How to build your website FAST.
● How to build an email list and reach your customers through e-mail marketing.
● How to create customized content for your website so that your customers visit frequently.
● How to establish yourself as an expert in your specific industry.
● How to market your website without overspending.
This book will give you the latest information gathered by our team of experts at Online Profit Partners to help you build an affiliate marketing business.
Affiliate Marketing is marketing a vendors product through an affiliate website or blog and receiving commission for every sale sent from the affiliates website. Affiliate marketing is a business model that is beneficial for both the vendor and marketer. The vendor can sell products without having to retain a sales force or marketing firm, and the marketer does not have to create or store the products marketed. As an extra incentive in return for sales made through an affiliate link, the affiliate can earn anywhere from 50% to 75% commission.
Affiliate Marketing can be broken down into four easy processes no matter how big or small your business is:
-determine who your target audience is (niche)
-find your product
-construct marketing vehicles and drive sales
-establish repeat customers
Going through these processes can be simple or extremely difficult (depending on your skill level). We aim to make it as simple as possible.
Affiliate marketing is much more than marketing products online. It is a business that includes communicating with your customers, managing your business, and making sure that your website content is useful and up to date.
The great thing about being an affiliate is that you don’t need to have a huge budget to put together a marketing campaign that is effective. There are tools that you can utilize to simplify the execution of your marketing plan such as website templates, plug-ins, social media tools and more.
There are some important points to consider before going further
● Products people want to buy online - Before you start marketing the products you have selected you need to be sure that you are offering a product or service that people want to buy. Customers need to find value in what you are selling.
● Resources - To succeed online you need to know how and where to find the tools to be successful. There are two ways to do it...the easy way or the hard way. Spend a lot of money on fluff and end up frustrated or spend your money smart and succeed. Our site has a tools and resources section where you can get the right tools to get started without all the headaches.
● Communication - An important part of affiliate marketing is to communicate your message to potential customers and drive them to your website.
Your first step is to identify a particular niche you are interested in or passionate about so it won't become monotonous as you bring in that first sale. Focusing on a specific area you know well will help bring out your best.
After you have chosen a niche, perform some research on current trends. If your niche is dental, skincare, or personal hygiene, “oil pulling” would be a good trend to research, both for popularity and to see if there are any products you could market for profit.
Here are some tried and true niches that you can start with:
-Weight Loss & Fitness
-Childcare
-Internet Marketing
-Self Help
These niches can be found on any number of affiliate networks, we recommend you get start ed with the more popular affiliate network ClickBank. They have a large selection of top tier information products you can market for huge profits.
Once on ClickBank look for good paying merchants and high converting products. Make a list of these affiliate programs and narrow your list down to a few products.
In choosing the affiliate products, you must also consider the support the vendor is providing. Vendors should provide marketing materials to include articles, text links, banner ads, blog posts, reports, etc. Don't forget to take a look at the affiliates sales page. Is it clean, well written? Do they have video or a long sales page? Would you buy their product?
Once you have established a need for your product you will be ready to construct a business plan. Also, assess your goals and whether or not you can meet them. Your main goal is to drive customers to the vendor, but you need to decide how you are going to do that.
For example, you should consider whether to set-up a review blog where you evaluate products with your affiliate links embedded in them, or should you set-up an e-commerce store where customers purchase products you never have to ship yourself. This is mostly dependent upon your niche and the products you choose to market. The internet is a large landscape and affiliate marketing businesses need marketing plans that are targeted and precise.
Setting up a website isn't as scary as it sounds. There are three components you need to consider when beginning the process.
1. Platform- You must first decide on the platform to build your site. We prefer WordPress, it is one of the easiest platforms to navigate. Wordpress is beginner friendly, scalable and cost effective. There are other alternatives to WordPress, including Blogger, LeadPages, or having your own self hosted HTML site.
2. Domain Name- Choose a domain name that reflects your niche. As an added plus, try to incorporate a keyword into your URL.
3. Hosting Package- Dependable hosting is vital to your success. A hosting company that has more up time than down time is best because during the down time, your website will not be accessible. Good hosting is very inexpensive and you could always start out with the most basic plan and upgrade your service at anytime.
Here's a list of Hosting Providers you can check out to get started
-BlueHost
**You can purchase your domain name from your hosting provider. Some providers include a free domain name with your hosting package.
Building a website is just as easy as setting one up, even for beginners. GoDaddy has a website builder that is featured with their WordPress hosting package. Even with limited or no technical skills you can build a website in minutes.
If you are a little more tech savvy, there are plenty of free and low cost themes you could purchase from an online marketplace like ThemeForest to customize to your site. You don't need to know coding, just read the downloaded PDF that comes with your theme and you could have a WordPress site in hours. Plus there's tons of support from the developers if you ever get in a jam.
You have probably heard internet marketers use the phrase squeeze page, but never knew what they were. In it's simplest form a squeeze page is a landing page used to collect a prospects email in exchange for a freebie. If you are just setting up a squeeze page for the product you are marketing then take a look at Instabuilder, a WordPress plug-in that does all of the leg work building your squeeze page for you. As you grow within the industry and begin to create your own products, Instabuilder can also build high converting sales pages in no time.
When building your site try to limit the number of products or services you market through one site. “Information overload” is one of the biggest problems on the Internet. If you give consumers too many choices they will have a hard time making a decision.
The key to avoiding information overload is organization as well as making sure that content is directed towards your customers.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that marketing stops when you generate a sale. Your current customers are the ideal way for you to reach new customers. You want to get leads from your customers by using marketing concepts such as referral campaigns.
One mistake that many small online businesses make is to focus only on self-promotion. The bottom line is that customers don’t care about you.
They only care about what you are selling and what you can do for them. When someone Google’s something online and the search results return they usually open the first three to five top ranked results. The user will quickly scan each website begging for something relevant to catch their eye or peak their interest. They may click on a few links or just move on to the next website. This only takes a user ten to twenty seconds, and even less if the site is horrible.
You need to immediately grab the visitors attention with something relevant or risk losing a potential sale. The landing page of your website should tell people why the service or product you are selling is just right for them.
A big factor to successful online marketing is knowing who your target market is and how to reach them. To determine what types of customers you want to reach you should be asking yourself the following questions:
● What age group are you trying to sell to?
● Are you selling to a specific ethnic group or gender?
● Will most of your customers be married or single?
● Will you target customers who have children?
● What level of education will most of your customers have?
● Where will most of your customers live?
● Will your customers have any specific hobbies?
The more you know about your customers the easier it will be to come up with a marketing plan. You will also be able to design a website that is most appealing to these customers. The biggest advantage of marketing on the Internet is that it allows you to become very targeted towards your desired customers.
Once you know the demographics of your customers you will know how to spend your marketing budget. You can focus your online promotions using a targeted marketing strategy which is much more effective. Even though you may end up with fewer people visiting your website, you will have a higher conversion rate.
Marketing online is the same as marketing anywhere else. There are certain products, colors, themes, and lingo’s that will appeal more to some customers than to others. When you know your target customers you can grab their attention. Using specific features to lure customers to your website gives you the ability to gain their attention, loyalty, and trust.
For example, studies show that most female shoppers like to save money and time. Over 80% of purchases in the home are influenced in some way by women. Furthermore, these studies show that women like to compare costs fast and easily without sales pressure.
Knowing your demographics allows you to create a high quality experience for the customer, resulting in higher conversions.
Doing something innovative and creative online, as well as using the latest technology, will always get attention.
For example, producing a YouTube video can create a buzz about the product or service that you are selling. There are many ways you can go about presenting the product through video.
-Record a tutorial on how to use the product.
-Record a review of the product.
-Record a comparison review of the product.
-Record a testimonial.
Once your video is online there are multiple ways for it to be seen and get sales. Of course it's always good to send it out to friends and family who will find the product or service beneficial to them.
It's also a good idea to produce a video just for your website introducing your company to visitors. Studies show affiliate marketers who have replaced their lengthy sales letters with video convert 10-35% higher than those who don't.
If you are not camera friendly or lack video editing skills, don't worry. Fiverr has actors, animators, voice over specialists and cartoonists you can hire to create just about any video content you may need starting at $5.
One key to great online marketing is remembering that quality, not quantity, counts. Avoid buying e-mail lists and focus instead on building your own with people who are actually interested in what you are selling.
Today online marketing isn’t about how many people you get to your website or how many people are on your e-mail list. Today online marketing is all about how people react to your website and what it is that you are selling.
The Internet is designed to be changing and dynamic. If you are creating a blog, or review site people who visit want to see content that is new and filled with ideas. If people visit your website and don’t see new content on a frequent basis they will think that your site is stagnant and has been abandoned without any customer service for them to rely on.
The landing page of your website is one of the most important aspects of your online marketing strategy. The landing page is the first page consumers “land” on when they visit your site. This page has to have the most relevant content and have a clear goal for the desirable action you want the visitor to make.
The more useful and professional the information , the more credit you bring to the product or service you are marketing.
The Internet is one of the best places for consumers to find out about new products and services. This places the net above television, radio, magazines, and newspapers.
When you use the Internet to promote your product or service you have the opportunity to reach a multitude of potential customers anywhere at any time. The web is one of the most powerful mediums for reaching and influencing people and the decisions they make about business.
One of the key ingredients to success on the Internet is creating website content that Internet users want to read. When you have content that is interesting, factual, and well written; you have some of the main tools needed to get the desired traffic to your website.
It’s important that you find out what it is that Internet users are looking for so that you can focus your content on these issues. Take some time and visit Amazon.com, search a book or product similar to what you are promoting and read the comments. What you should be looking for are the complaints. The complaints give insight into what customers want and what other products and services are lacking. Incorporate this into your content providing answers and solutions to the problems customers are currently experiencing.
You can also study the top hits in the search engines for products or services that are similar to what you are selling. Read what it is that they are using to draw in the crowd. Take some of these concepts and include them in the flow of your web content….but ONLY if these concepts enhance what you are writing and are entirely relevant to the products or services that you are selling.
Even though some of these sites rank high they may not necessarily have content of the highest quality. Search Engine Optimization techniques are an effective way to rank high, but do not get too caught up in it's theory.
The times have changed with Google's search algorithm, gone are the days of keyword stuffing. Content is king more than ever, but there are still methods available to “hack” the system.
Keep in mind that although one website or blog may be at the top of the search engine rankings today, it won’t take them long to fall back into the ranks of “mediocre websites”. Websites that rely on SEO techniques don’t give people the information that they are looking for to keep them coming back. How many times have you searched a topic in a search engine only to find that the top hit is filled with articles and web content that has nothing to do with what the website is all about?
People who use the Internet are looking for one or more of the following components:
-Entertainment
-Information
-Community issues
If your website provides at least one of these components you are on your way to attracting potential and repeat customers. Websites that contain valuable content not only bring credit to your business but also position your company as an expert in your business industry.
Keeping your website fresh with new content does not have to be an overwhelming task. There are cost-efficient and time-saving techniques you can take advantage of to keep your website up-to-date at all times…without having to hire hundreds of people to help you!
Home Page Slider: The next best thing to having a video on your home page is a slider which is essentially a slide show you can use to promote articles or even advertise products and services. Design three to five eye catching graphics (or have them designed) and then rotate them every one to two months.
The home page of your website is much like the front cover of a magazine. People want to see a home page that has different photos and content at least every month. You don’t want all of the content of your website to be featured on the home page as this will overwhelm your website visitors.
Choosing one or two features to highlight each month through your home page slider is much more effective. The rest of your website content should be well organized within the rest of the pages of your site. When you are ready to update your home page all you have to do is grab content from other web pages. This way you are not always having to create new content yet instead reorganizing your current content so that people think it’s new.
Content if You Don’t Write: If you don’t write, or know how to produce videos, there are still some things that you can do to generate content for your website:
Hire Content Writers: You can hire content writers to create sales copy, articles, reviews, blog posts, and even social media statuses.
Free Articles: There are free article resources available , where you can take a pre-written article and post it to your website or blog as long as you credit the author.
Hire Animators/White Board Artists: You don't only want to limit your content to articles. Animators and white board artists can create high quality videos about any topic you provide. All you have to do is provide them with a script (which you can purchase), and they will do the rest.
Efficiency Tip: Create an editorial calender that details what articles need to be written and when they will be published. This keeps your content organized and on schedule.
The Importance of Communication: One thing that you need to remember as you make the decisions about what you want to say on your website is the importance of communication in anything that you write. These days competition for communication on the Internet is difficult. The sheer volume of information being routed on the Internet is a huge communications barrier.
Every day people on the web are bombarded with websites and businesses lobbying for their attention. People are busy and time is short. So it’s all the more important to know how to get your marketing message across. The key aspects of good customer communication include:
● the ability to read customers
● the ability to understand which communication style your customers are most likely to pay attention to, and
● the ability to adapt your website content for your customers.
When you communicate with your customers through the Internet you have only one shot at communicating your marketing message. You need to keep in mind that those customers, and potential customers, reading your marketing message don’t have a long time to read what you have to say….so you better say it fast, accurately, and in words that they want to hear. Learn how to keep it simple and direct.
There are some basic ideas that you should keep in mind when you are writing website content to engage customers:
● Identify and clarify the marketing message that you want to get across to your customers. When you pinpoint your focus you have the ability to zoom in and give your customers content that they can rely on and trust.
● Gather information. Don’t just write website content for the sake of filling up your web space. Find out what customers want to read and then write for them.
● Evaluate the information that you are writing about. Make sure that the information that you are basing your website content on is precise and reliable. Does the information represent the points of view about your online business that you want to get across? Is the information fact or opinion? Many times a combination of fact, and customer opinion, go hand in hand for writing web content that people want to read.
● Consider the alternatives and implications of what you write. Make sure that you draw the appropriate conclusions from what you write and that your readers will draw the same conclusions about your web content. What are the costs, benefits, and consequences of the content that you have on your website? Take the time to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of moving away from Search Engine Optimization techniques and focus on writing what people want to read.
One of the best ways to get free leads on the Internet is through social media. Social media allows you to directly engage with your target base. Effective online marketing is all about putting your product or service in front of potential customers at the exact time that they are looking for it. This technique is known as “pinpoint marketing”.
Pinpoint marketing is much different than advertising on radio or television, which are known as “interruptive marketing” techniques. Interruptive marketing costs a lot more than pinpoint marketing and is less effective for the simple reason that you are attempting to put your product out there in front of everybody instead of pinpointing those potential customers who want to find out more about you and your business.
Pinpoint Marketing: Pinpoint marketing is the process of sending the right message at the right time so that it produces actual results. For example, if you are at a ball game eating a bag of popcorn. Just when you take a handful of popcorn, the Coca-Cola logo appears on the big screen.
The next thing you know, you are looking for the first vendor who can sell you a can of Coke. However, if an advertisement for a new car appears on the big screen while you are watching the game and eating pop
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