The 9 Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Checklist For Online Success
Most affiliate marketers struggled to make real money promoting affiliate products. According to statistics, 99% experienced this problem. I did too until I was taught The Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Checklist I am about to reveal to you in next few minutes.
Most of those people who struggle, just decide to throw in the towel, or try something else, and continue to struggle. That is really unfortunate because affiliate marketing can be both rewarding and at the same time simple to manage when done right.
One reason for marketers struggling with promoting other people’s product and making a living from it, has to do with the type of decisions they make BEFORE starting their promotion.
This is what I mean……
There are nine simple but significant factors which are The Successful Affiliate Marketer Checklist, that can put you light years ahead in the affiliate marketing race.
If you take these factors into consideration before you decide to invest your money and your time promoting a product you will save tons of cash, disappointment and heartache.
How does that sound? If it’s good to your heart, then let’s dig in.
Here Are The 9 Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Checklist.
1. ARE YOU CHOOSING PRODUCT THAT MATCHES YOU
It is easy to see the logic behind this — if you are passionate about cooking, you probably won’t do very good at selling track shoes or materials for building a house.
The key issue here is to follow your heart desire, your passion, what will keep you motivated.
If you are promoting a product you know and love, learning the process of marketing will be much easier, with more fun.
Getting motivated and staying in that attitude is a big plus in any successful endeavor.
So let us conclude that you have found a product you want to promote.
What is the next step?
2. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT IT, CHECK IT OUT
What you need to concentration on here is to look for quality.
Because you see …
It matters greatly the quality of the products you promote.
Why it that? here is why…..
Your ultimate goal is to build a list of buyers of your product (yes, this should be stored in the back of every affiliate marketer mind) therefore, you are going to want those customers to be happy with you AND the product.
Happy customers will become repeated customers, they will buy again and again. And those sales will be the easiest sales in the world. And then you will become a trusted friend, giving them advise about how they can benefit from your recommendations.
3. COMMUNICATE WITH THE PRODUCT OWNER
Here is a radically unusual idea.
The easiest way to talk to the person who owns the product is via email. You should do so BEFORE spending your hard earned cash and valuable time to promote their product.
And the story doesn’t end there — they should be helpful in their reply to you.
When you can get real help and answers from contacting the owner or assistants, you would have found a company that cares about affiliates.
And that’s a good position you want to be in.
4. DOES THE PRODUCT SELL WELL?
How well does this product convert? Conversion means that for every 100 visitors to your site, a certain number may buy something. And that is usually expressed as a percentage like five percent (5%) or fifteen percent (15%).
So it simply means that if 100 persons visit your site and 5 of them buy something, that would be a 5% conversion.
You need to find out from the owner how well their product or service you want to promote, ‘converts’.
For a good and established product you will promote, it is normal to expect conversion ranging from .5% to about 10%. Anything higher or lower reason to be cautious about you being told the truth.
5. FIND OUT THE COOKIE DURATION!
The best affiliate programs, in fact most affiliate companies track using ‘cookies’ that are set on the visitor’s computer. A cookie is simply a small file that is downloaded to your computer as a visitor to the affiliate company’s site. These cookies are necessary for web navigation.
These cookies are very essential because they identify you as the affiliate so you can be paid your commissions.
If you should ask me, that is one very important cookie!
Two things you need to know about this cookie.
- What is the duration of cookie? (Cookies usually expire after a certain number of days)
- Can it be overwritten?
It is important to know this because it will determine how you market.
- For example, if a company has a short cookie duration then you have to apply urgency in your ads that make sale now. Your advertising has to drive them and stir their emotion in buying now.
- If there is a longer cookie duration, you can use other methods that are less aggressive and seem less pressuring and not so intense.
6. ARE YOU ENTITLED TO ‘BACKEND’ COMMISSIONS?
What “Backend” commissions mean, is that you get paid when someone you refer buys a second product.
This is a good product or service to promote if you can get it but it’s less common.
Can be debatable in some quarters. Here are two sides of the debate:
- The merchants will feel that they are doing the work for the second sale so they should not be paying a commission.
- Affiliates will feel that if it was not for them, the merchant would never have had that customer, and so they earned their commission.
7. ARE YOU ENTITLED TO RENEWAL COMMISSIONS?
This is another hotly debated affiliate matter that deserves your awareness and attention.
While you have no control over many of these things, knowing about them gives you the power you need to make wise decisions.
A very important question to ask is this – if you send a visitor to a site where they pay a monthly or quarterly fee, do you get paid every time they pay, or just once?
8. ARE YOU PROTECTING YOUR AFFILIATE COMMISSIONS? KEY IN THE 9 ULTIMATE AFFILIATE MARKETING CHECKLIST
Most affiliate marketers are actually doing everything they need to do online to make money except for one key thing.
That one BIG thing is PROTECTING their affiliate link.
There are ways to solve this problem I want to share with you. But before that, let’s find out why this problem exists.
A BIG Problem
This is a sad, but none-the-less true reality about affiliate marketing.
When certain unscrupulous persons see your ads and know you are promoting an affiliate product or service, they are often tempted to go around you and type in the name of website directly and rob you out of your commissions.
Even worse than that, some of these individuals see an offer you are advertising, join the affiliate program themselves and make a purchase under their own link.
Solution
This solution is simple, never – and to sound like Winston Churchhill – never, never, use a “naked” affiliate link.
What “naked” affiliate link means, you are promoting a link that reveals that you are an affiliate.
Let’s take a look at an example, and then I will offer a few solutions.
For this example we will use Clickbank and one of my products, I am promoting
A standard affiliate link with Clickbank looks like this.
http://adrianb56.60dayfix.hop.clickbank.net
This is my “naked” link for promoting 60 Day Fix …
In this link, adrianb56 is my affiliate ID (or nickname) and 60dayfix is the vendor.
Here’s the problem.
Many of those dishonest persons who see that link will know it’s an affiliate link, and replace “adrianb56” with their Clickbank nickname and get your commission for themselves.
And it’s not just a Clickbank problem. Many, if not most, affiliate programs provide you with a links that don’t protect you, the affiliate.
In order to protect yourself you must “cloak” your link.
One way to cloak your link is to use a link tracker, or redirect service, that creates a link that hides your affiliate link.
There are a number of ways to do this. Here are two I recommend:
Option 1 – Use A Link Tracking Service
The first thing is to use a cloaking service like HyperTracker.
If you use a cloaking service then the person who sees your affiliate link won’t know what product you’re promoting.
There are free trackers like Bit.ly but I don’t recommend free tracking because the volume of persons who are spamming and doing things like that can really hurt your business.
Free link shorteners can cost you sales!
It seems like most online entrepreneurs these days is using a free link shortening service in order to shorten their long affiliate links. Cloaking links makes sense and protects your affiliate commissions too.
While shortening makes perfect sense, did you know that using certain free link shortener services might actually be costing you sales?
It’s vital that you know which services are good and which carry risk. This is an article by Aweber shedding light on this growing problem and how to make sense of what service to use.
Option 2 – Put A Cloaker On Your Blog
To use a cloaking script on your own website or blog is a non-technical way to cloak your link and to brand your website at the same time.
My favorite tool to do this is called Pretty Link.
Pretty Link is a plugin that I install on my blog.
There is a free version that works very well. I install it from within my WordPress admin panel.
There is also a paid version if you want more options. I would suggest that you go with free version first.
If you use Pretty Link on your blog, you will be able to cloak your affiliate link, track clicks, and the link you provide to people in your ads will be your website address.
That’s cool for sure!
Here is an example. My website address is affiliatesproduct.com.
Using Pretty Link, I created this cloaked link for 7 Essential Tools For Affiliates …
https://affiliatesproduct.com/SuperAffiliate
I just love Pretty Link, I am branding my site by putting out links with my site address in them, I’m tracking clicks and cloaking my link … all free!
This is most important on the affiliate checklist.
If you are doing affiliate marketing, never promote a “naked” affiliate link. Always use a cloaking service like HyperTracker or using a cloaking script like Pretty Link.
If you begin protecting every affiliate link that you put out on the web, I believe that over time, you will see that your commissions are increasing simply because nobody can cheat you out of your earnings, and you can track results better.
By cloaking your affiliate links every time you promote a product or service, you will stop these thieves in their tracks. You will also know how many clicks you receive for every ad and see more money coming in your account.
9. DO YOU GET QUALITY SUPPORT?
You should expect the program you join to provide some basic marketing tools as well as some relevant training on how to promote and sell their products.
You should expect to get reasonable support from an affiliate company, just as you do when you buy a product.
What do you mean by reasonable support?
- Providing some pre-written ad copy.
- Providing eye-catching banners and other graphics.
- Providing email “swipes” you can edit and send to your list.
And that’s a beautiful place to be
The 9 ultimate affiliate marketing checklist are steps to take before you jump into this very profitable niche.