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You’re dead wrong if you think you know anything about being an affiliate. The simple truth is that the old rules no longer apply. If you play by the old rules, you will lose this game.

The big lie

You’ve probably heard how easy it is to start an affiliate business. Well, that’s true . . . to a point It is the easiest business you can possibly start. But “easier” doesn’t mean “easy”.

The bad news…

The worst part is that the information you’ve received is all wrong. You’re told to pick one of more products to promote. Next to look for easy keywords to target. Then to use keyword-based advertising to send visitors to the product. And sit back and collect the profits. But it doesn’t work.

Don’t bother with keywords

There was a time when this worked. But the competition has shot the price of keywords through the roof. So, throw it all away.

A brand new formula

There’s still hope. Here’s how to win at this game.

• Do CPA marketing instead of product promotion
• Instead of researching keywords, research demographics
• Market on display networks

Start using CPA marketing

CPA stands for Cost Per Action. It’s much better than promoting a product. Because your visitor doesn’t have to buy anything. You earn a commission for having them perform an “action”. Entering their email into a form, for example. Which is much easier than getting them to buy something.

Utilize demographics data

Don’t waste time researching keywords (see below). So spend your time doing demographics research. First, select the CPA offer you want to promote. Next, you go to Quantcast.com. And research what kinds of people will be interested.

Do image ad marketing

So far, you’ve got your CPA offer and your target demographics. You can advertise directly to them on display networks. And use images as your ads. And there was no keyword research required. Plus you’re going to save a ton of money. Keyword ads are expensive, but image ads are still cheap.

In closing

This is a great way to make money fast. Because getting started in CPA is free. Image ads are cheap. You can laser target with demographics. And your commission is much easier to earn.

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It is extremely difficult to get started in affiliate marketing. The reason is because there is a lot of competition. In order to survive you have to beat your competition. There’s also a lot of information out there about how to do affiliate marketing, so it can be confusing. Here’s one trick that almost no one else is using.

Affiliate videos

The power of video is undeniable. Video online is everywhere because people love it. It’s so much easier to keep people’s attention with video. So why wouldn’t you use it in your affiliate business?

Examples of how to use video for affiliate marketing:

• Do a testimonial video
• Walk-throughs
• Record the order process
• Record a preview of the members area

Testimonials

It doesn’t get any easier than this. Just turn on your web cam and talk. Don’t worry about quality. Listening to your honest endorsement makes your viewers feel comfortable buying. In truth, mistakes and mess-ups just make it more believable. You really can just click record and start talking. If you don’t want to be in front of the camera use one of the other methods.

Do a video walk-through

This technique works slightly more subconsciously. Make this more like a tutorial helping them use the product. And while they watch you use it, they think, “I should buy that.” If the product is useful, watching the tutorial makes them want to buy it. So just make sure you’re demoing a good product.

Record the order process

This could be the most powerful method of all. Record a video of yourself actually buying the product. Watching you make a live purchase will inspire your viewer like nothing else. In the first place it acts as social proof. In general people are more likely to something they’ve seen other people do. Second, it builds trust. They are much more likely to take your advice to buy when you’ve taken it yourself. And finally, it creates envy. They see you getting the satisfaction of making the purchase and that makes them want it. You can add additional juice to this one with: In order to get to see the inside, you gotta buy the product.

Sneak peak

This is a great way to build value. You do a tour of the members area. They get to see everything they’ll receive when they order. And it helps soften the skeptics. Once they’ve seen the back-end, they know it’s real.

You can do this!

You don’t need any special training for this. There are simple software programs that make it easy to create videos. Really, the software does all the work. So please don’t let technical worries slow you down. Remain focused on the benefits:

• More sales You will increase your affiliate sales when you start using videos. People like video, so start using it.
• Lower refund rates You’ll lose less of the commission your earn. Your customers will know what they’re getting into ahead of time. So they’ll be less likely to refund.
• Rise above the competition! Adding video is so simple. And almost no one is doing it. So, you’ll be way ahead of the crowd.

So get serious about your affiliate business and add video in now. It’s your profit that’s affected by not taking action.

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Learn Top Affiliate Secrets

One of the easiest and fastest way to earn a living online is through affiliate marketing. What “affiliate marketing” means is that you just refer visitors to someone else’s website, they handle the sales, support and billing, and you keep 50% or more of the sales

These are a some of the benefits

1. You’re able to start instantly without having to develop a product, craft a sales letter, design the website, come up with support tools, or get a merchant account and CRM.
2. You have almost no investment of timebecause you don’t have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
3. Your efforts are risk-free, because the product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So you already know that the visitors you send will result in commissions for you.

There’s no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!

The downside is…

Once you send your visitors to the product sales page, they are gone forever. Less than 10% of the visitors your send will actually buy the product. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

How can you avoid this pitfall?

What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product website. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you’re a super star affiliate, you’ll provide high-quality content before sending them to the product website.

Here are the benefits of doing affiliate marketing like this:

1. By building your own list, you’re creating a renewable resource that you can tap again and again for instant profits.
2. You’re generating good will by giving them high-quality content. This way, they are much more likely to make a purchase when you send them to the sales page.

Here’s what you’ll need to create affiliate tools like this:

1. A lead capture page, preferably with video
2. At least a few pages of great content
3. A multi-part email series with at least 5 emails in it

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you’ll send them to your lead capture page first. This page is where you collect your visitors’ contact info and add them to your autoresponder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. Once your visitors have been subscribed to your email series, they are sent to your content pages.

These high-quality content pages provide value and build good will. This way your visitor is more likely to buy when they get to the product owner’s website. While they’re reading the content you’ve provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.

Putting all of these pieces together will increase your sales by 500% or more, so it’s obviously worth the time and energy to do it. And after you get it all set up, it runs on total auto-pilot. You just refer people to your lead capture page, instead of the product sales page.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. With a service like that, you don’t have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. The major benefit of using a service like this is that you can get started right away, and for a whole lot less than it would cost to do it all yourself. The downside is that other people will be using the same affiliate tools as you. But the internet is pretty big, so this isn’t much of a concern.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to “outsource” each of these compnents. Whichever way you decided to go, it’s critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you’re at all serious about your business.

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