Affiliate Masters Course
Introduction
The Affiliate Masters Course is an intensive 10-DAY course on becoming a high-earning affiliate champion.
How? By “building income through content,” the proven, C
T
P
M way!
An affiliate business is one of the easiest ways to get your feet wet in e-business.
You send visitors (i.e., potential customers) to a merchant’s Web site that you are representing. If they buy or complete a required action (for example, fill in a form), the merchant pays you a commission. No fuss, no muss!
That, in essence, is the beauty of the affiliate concept. You can be up and building an online business in record time, at minimal risk. Top-notch merchants supply everything (i.e., excellent products, ordering, credit card processing, and delivery). All you need to do is to put yourself in the path between customers and quality merchants... and earn a commission for your efforts.
So what’s the best way to put yourself on that critical pathway?
Follow the natural, proven CONTENT
TRAFFIC
PRESELL
MONETIZE
process…
1) Recognize the fundamental reality of how people use the Web. Eliminate offline thinking of “location, location, location.” Online, people search for solutions through “information, information, information” (i.e., Content). So plan to build a tightly-niched Theme-Based Content Site.
2) Do the critical up-front thinking and planning...
• develop the best site concept/theme, based on what you know and love…
perhaps a hobby or past work experience can be your springboard.
• brainstorm the most profitable topics related to your theme.
• select the best related affiliate programs.
3) Then put yourself into the click path of your visitors. Achieve this by...
• delivering customer-focused Content (i.e., information that meets the needs/wishes of your target group).
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• getting Targeted Traffic by building pages that please the Search Engines and rank highly on a search results page. The higher the ranking, the easier it is for interested and targeted traffic to find you. More traffic means more potential sales, which means more potential commissions for you.
• PREselling (i.e., “warming up” your visitors) through valuable content that establishes credibility. Once you have that, your recommendations carry more weight. The difference in Conversion Rates between visitors who arrive PREsold to your merchant’s site via an in-context text link vs. a banner can be as high as 20-fold.
4) Eliminate dependency on any single source of income. By diversifying into other complementary Monetization models beyond affiliate programs, you reduce risk and increase stability. You are protected in case, for example, your merchant partner goes bankrupt, or shuts down its Web division, or reduces commissions, or fails on its payments.
Multiple income streams also have the potential to make every visitor to your site count. A particular offer might not spark any interest but another one may be the match that lights a fire!
The C
T
P
M process for affiliate marketing boils down to this…
Create searched-for content (the “C” ) that pulls in targeted traffic (the “T”).
Warm up (i.e., PREsell) your visitors so that they click on your recommendations with an open-to-buy attitude (the “P” ). And then generate income through those PREsold visitors (i.e., monetize) using the low-risk affiliate model -- as a primary source of income (if you have no product or service of your own to sell) or as a profitable secondary source (the “M” ).
Is this process difficult?
Not at all! But do keep in mind that this is not a “get-rich-quick” scheme. You need to bring effort and passion to the table. After all, you are building more than a Web site. You are building a real business!
C
T
P
M works, if you work it!
Make this your affiliate business mantra and you will succeed!
The Affiliate Masters Course and its 10-DAY program will show you how to execute the C
T
P
M process on your own. Each of the 10 DAYS has a specific “Goal-of-the-DAY,” a clear target that you can easily meet. By the time 3
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you finish DAY 10’s Goal-of-the-DAY, you will have a Theme-Based Content Site up and running and generating traffic and income.
Each DAY also sets an “Ongoing Goal.” A Web site is always evolving. The Ongoing Goal is what you should be achieving on a regular basis. The Ongoing Goals provide the pathway for building maximal income over the following weeks and months.
What’s the bottom line? Upon completion of this course, you will have the power of C
T
P
M working for you, helping you to build a flourishing, profitable and stable online business. With the right process, you get the right results!
Be forewarned about the Affiliate Masters Course, though. The material we cover will be extensive in scope. It will require effort and commitment on your part, as does anything important that yields rewards. Most folks have to train or go to university for years to prepare to earn a substantial income stream. Your mini-university course will accomplish this by the end of this e-book.
I don’t mean to scare you. All of it is manageable. Take your time to digest the information properly before you start to work on the prescribed action steps.
Use the Goals-of-the-DAY and Ongoing Goals as your guideposts, your beacons of light. Understanding the concepts will boost your confidence level in applying them. Even as adults, we never lose our need to know why things work the way they do.
It’s critical that you finish each DAY of this course before you begin the next. The DAYS build on each other. Always keep in mind that you are following a step-by-step process.
Please don’t feel that you have to rush. Work at your own pace, as time allows.
This is not a race. Sometimes, you will be able to devote large blocks of time each day to the course. At other times, you may have only 15-30 minutes per day to spend on it. In this situation, it could take you a week or more to complete a “DAY” of the course. And that’s perfectly normal!
It does not matter how long it takes you to complete the course. The key is to set aside a realistic amount of time each day to “do” the course. You’ll find it was time well, no best, spent.
Final piece of advice...
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Print out a hard copy and make your own textbook! There is just too much information in the Affiliate Masters Course to learn by reading off a monitor screen.
Underline the important parts. Add your own notes and ideas. I promise you’ll get lots and lots of great inspiration as you go along.
Please, please work with a printed version of this course. If you are at all serious about following this course to build a serious income stream, start right.
Here’s a super little printing utility that will allow you to print 2 or 4 pages to a single 8.5” x 11” piece of paper. It saves you paper, space, and money...
OK. Ready to begin DAY 1 of the course?
Sound the bell. Class is in session...
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1. DAY 1
Intro To Affiliate Business Basics
Being a great affiliate is NOT about
selling... It’s about PREselling.
Goal-of-the-DAY... This is the only DAY where you have nothing to do except read the material. Actually, that’s wrong. Your Goal-of-the-DAY is to understand, understand deeply, the concepts outlined here, culminating with the concept of PREselling to maximize Conversion Rates.
With this goal in mind...
1.1. Focus on Maximizing Profit
The goal of any business, including your affiliate business, is to maximize profits. Profit is simply your income minus your expenses.
As an affiliate, there are exactly two ways to increase your income (i.e., the amount of money your business makes)...
1) Refer more visitors to the merchants that you represent.
2) Increase the Conversion Rate (i.e., the percent of visitors that you refer to your merchant… visitors who deliver the response for which the merchant pays, whether that’s a sale, or a lead, etc.).
Simple formula, right? If you refer 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1%
buy, you get paid for that one purchase. But if you send 1,000 visitors per day and 3% buy, you get paid for 30 purchases.
Yes, thirty times more! So it’s pretty clear how to maximize affiliate income!
Of course, every business has expenses, too. Maximizing profits does not imply that you must minimize expenses, too. After all, if you spend no money or time on a business, you have no business! You must get the best possible traffic-building and sales-converting results for every dollar you spend... and for every hour you spend on your business.
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Time is money. Don’t count your hours as zero cost simply because they do not cost you “out of pocket.” Assign your time a dollar value -- it will put your affiliate business on a solid, professional “business footing.”
Let’s examine expenses by asking two questions...
Question #1 -- What does it cost to build traffic to your merchants’ sites?
Traffic-building, no matter how you cut it, will cost you... in terms of both time and money. Spending dollars is optional, but spending time is not.
There are many ways, both offline and on, to drive targeted traffic to your merchants’ sites. This course will show you the most highly profitable, time-and-dollar-effective way to build traffic to your merchants' sites...
Build your own Theme-Based Content Site -- one that is loaded with high info-value Keyword-Focused Content Pages that rank well with the Search Engines and that get the “click throughs” to your merchants’ sites.
Let’s break that down for closer examination. For your affiliate Web site to generate targeted traffic to your merchants, it must do two things well...
1) Rank well at the Search Engines so that it pulls in lots of targeted traffic. So far, though, that traffic is still on your site. Therefore, it’s not generating income yet. Your visitors are just “looking around.” So...
2) Get those visitors to click through to your merchants. (Some affiliate program models can actually place merchant offerings on your Web site. In this case, your traffic does not actually visit your merchant’s site. But you still have to
“get the click” to generate income.)
It makes sense, of course, that a Web site is the way to go. After all, this is the Net!
http://blogorbuild.sitesell.com/
And there are loads of other ways for affiliates to drive targeted traffic to their merchants, both offline and on.
SiteSell’s 5 Pillar Program provides all the tools, information and strategies you need to PREsell effectively and generate substantial commission income.
http://affiliates.sitesell.com/
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You can easily apply these marketing theories/strategies to your other affiliate programs as well.
OK, that wraps up expenses and traffic-building. Now for our second question about expenses...
Question #2 -- What does it cost to maximize Conversion Rates?
Good news! Maximizing your Conversion Rate (CR) is simply a question of doing things right. There is no extra dollar or time cost to boosting CRs at your merchants’ sites. This course will show you how to achieve this goal, too.
Remember… when this course talks about Conversion Rates, we are talking about the Conversion Rate at the sites of the merchants that you represent as an affiliate. So we are talking about how you will maximize the percentage of referral visitors who deliver the response for which the vendor pays, whether that’s a sale, or lead, etc.
If you think that it’s impossible for you to change the sales-effectiveness of your merchants’ sites, you are in for a big surprise.
Your primary goals are...
1) Maximize targeted traffic to your merchants, spending only dollars and time that maximize profits.
2) Maximize Conversion Rates. Do things right (no expense).
Don’t do just one. Do both. Why? Because, as you saw above, your payment is determined by traffic multiplied by the CR... not “added.” Your profits grow geometrically when you concentrate on maximizing both traffic and Conversion Rates.
I have spent quite a bit of time reviewing the difference between 5 Pillar Affiliates who refer high traffic to us and who deliver high Conversion Rates (% of visitors who purchase), and those who deliver low ones.
The #1 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
Banner ads! No content!
Retinal studies have shown that Web surfers actually avoid banners. Yes, their eyes look away!
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Our study found that 5 Pillar Affiliates who relied solely on banners had an average CR of 0.5%. But those who used “in-context” text links (i.e., text links that are part of the content of the Web page) averaged over 3.5%!
How’s that for a reason not to use banners?
Banners are cheesy and hurt your credibility. If visitors happen to click through (a big “if”), they arrive at their destination feeling “pitched” rather than informed.
They have a resisting mindset, rather than with an open, ready-to-buy attitude.
Remember that example where you sent 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1% bought? If you rely on flipping up some banners, it will be more like 10
visitors per day and not one person buys!
We reveal a lot about 5 Pillar Affiliates during this course. But it is not the 5 Pillar Program that is important here -- it’s the lessons to be derived.
This course is about making any affiliate of any program more successful.
Conclusion?...
Don’t use banners.
Yes, I know “they're so-o-o-o-o easy.” It’s always easy to not make money.
That’s how all those get-rich-quick-guys do so well... the allure of easy money.
No such thing.
I must repeat… don’t rely solely on banners.
If you simply must use banners, save your “in-context” text links for super companies with wonderful products that deliver true value to your reader.
Beside the obvious futility of banners, I’ve spotted another major point. This one is more subtle, but it’s important… extremely important.
The #2 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
After banner advertising, it’s the second most common error. And it’s an even bigger shame because this boo-boo involves a lot of work... misplaced work. If you’re going to fail, the best thing would be not to spend much time at it, right?
Reason #2 is...
Selling instead of PREselling.
Some 5 Pillar Affiliates have really made great efforts in creating sites to promote our SiteSell products. And they are building some sales and traffic. But when I 9
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see a low CR (i.e., CR under 2%), I know that something is amiss. Great efforts deserve greater results than 1%.
Yes, I agree that these efforts are better than banners. But remember… creating these sites takes a lot more work than tossing up a couple of banners. We’ll see in a moment that it’s misdirected work. (The good news is that this course will redirect those efforts into high-profit areas.)
Time for a philosophical perspective...
In life, the vast majority of people just keep doing the “same old thing.” Life seems easier that way. But “doing the same old thing” guarantees the “same old results.” So in the long run, it’s actually much, much harder.
In the movie, “The Renaissance Man,” Danny De Vito’s character makes a profound statement...
“The choices we make dictate the lives we lead.”
To paraphrase...
“Where you are today is the result of all the choices and actions that you have made in your life.”
When he said that, I remember thinking, “You know, he’s right. Except in rare cases of extraordinarily good or bad luck, people basically end up where they are as a result of choices they make and courses of action they take.”
People tend to blame a lack of success in life on “bad luck” or “poor timing” or other people. And yes, at times, that can be accurate. A heck of a lot of factors beyond our control can blindside us. In the long run, however, as long as we persist in our efforts, these factors tend to even out and De Vito's statement remains valid.
Now, here’s the good news...
E-commerce is simpler than life. Due to its digital nature, there are fewer variables... so the outcome is more controllable. Which means that we can boil De Vito’s statement down to “The #1 E-commerce Reality.”
This Reality is almost self-evident, yet it’s so easy to forget. Your success with anything you do in the world of e-commerce flows from it. Internalize it and act upon it... and you will succeed.
Yes, it’s that fundamental. And that leads me to…
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The #1 E-commerce Reality
“Nothing happens by accident in the world of
computers, the Net, and customer response.
There is always a reason for what happens,
good or bad, and that reason is YOU.”
When I see some 5 Pillar (“5P”) Affiliates with CRs over 10% (and a few over 20%!), I figure that those with CRs at 1-2% or less could be multiplying their sales five-or-more-fold. How?
Not by working harder, but simply by channeling their motivation in a better direction.
Let’s continue with the case of 5P Affiliates who make “great efforts” but get so-so results...
As I reviewed many of these affiliate sites (those who are getting sales but have CRs under 2%), I realized that almost half were basically one big sales letter for SiteSell products and Ken. Which means that these affiliates are selling (with sales copy) when they should be PREselling (with great, and related, content that is of value to the reader).
There’s really not much point in straight selling off your site -- that's what your merchant’s site needs to do. Picture this...
A visitor arrives at an affiliate’s site that is really just one, big sales site. Yes, I know that the words are sincere -- I owe all 5P Affiliates a big thank you for the truly wonderful things they say. But put yourself in these visitors’ shoes for a moment. They don’t see inspiring, editorial content. They see a sales effort.
But they were searching for content!
“CONTENT!” I said. (Sorry for yelling.)
People resist sales efforts, so your click-through actually goes down. And if a visitor does click, what does she see when she arrives at an SBI! site? More sales effort. And, in some cases, many of the words on SiteSell’s site are similar to the words that she’s just read. Result? Poor Conversion Rate.
If your site is basically a “bunch of sales letters,” you have not yet built your credibility and likeability with this visitor. Your visitor ends up feeling “pitched.”
And then she feels double-pitched if (chances are low) she clicks through to your merchant’s site. That’s why the CR actually goes down.
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To make things worse, as she “smells” a sales effort, she becomes less likely to click! So referred traffic drops, too.
Women represent 50% of all surfers. And they control approximately 80% of all shopping dollars. To reinforce this in your mind, we’ll use the feminine pronoun to talk about readers/visitors/customers. To keep things simple and even, we’ll use the masculine pronoun when referring to affiliates.
OK, let’s see...
1) Referred traffic down.
2) And Conversion Rate down.
But these are the two ways to increase your income. (That’s what we talked about near the beginning.) We’re going in the wrong direction!
Conclusion? Don’t sell!
Instead, warm your visitor up for your merchants by PREselling her with great content that she values and respects. She’ll click-through with pleasure, arriving at your merchants’ sites in an open-to-buy mindset.
It’s your PREselling effort that will boost your traffic-to-merchants and CR, which in turn maximizes your income.
This brings us to our second philosophical premise…
“The #1 Affiliate Reality”...
“Your CR will literally vary from 1% to 10%
(and at times, as much as 20%!), purely
because of...
1) HOW YOU REACH your visitor, and…
2) WHAT YOU SAY to her, and…
3) HOW YOU REFER her to your merchant.”
Your CR depends upon what you do and how you do it. You do not need Lady Luck, Sir Serendipity or anyone else. There is always a reason for how well you do, and that reason always relates to what you do and how you do it.
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Once you realize this, then you know success really is do-able. Some people do succeed... big-time… but not necessarily the first time. Just keep trying until you find the right approach.
To quote Calvin Coolidge…
“Nothing in this world can take the
place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common
than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is
almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of
educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent.
The slogan 'press on' has solved and
always will solve the problems of the
human race.”
Of course, the goal of the 10-DAY Affiliate Masters Course is to reduce the amount of trial-and-error persistence that will be required before you find your own successful formula!
Why is “The #1 Affiliate Reality” true?...
Because how you reach your customer, and what you say once you reach her, and how you refer your visitor to your merchant directly affects your visitor’s mindset when she arrives at SiteSell.
A positive mindset turns into a purchase with amazing regularity. A negative one is nearly impossible to overcome.
And that is what “high-CR affiliates” have known all along…
*******************************************
“They refer people to their merchants
in an OPEN-TO-BUY frame of mind.”
*******************************************
Best advice? Write “The #1 Affiliate Reality” onto a yellow Post-It Note and stick it onto your monitor...
“Your CR will literally vary from 1% to 10%
(and at times, as much as 20%!), purely
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