Monetizing any website, is a journey. It’s unrealistic to expect that you can make one change to your website and it’s going to provide you with the best possible results. The best way to approach monetizing a blog, is to focus on helping people.

As an example, let’s use a Photography blog. People visit the blog because they want to become better photographers. To get someone to visit this blog, you need to provide them with lessons, motivation, inspiration and so on. Now, the same applies to when you monetize a website. A reader wants even better ways to improve their photography, whether that is with better equipment or with even more training, either way, there is an opportunity to make money.

If the readers want better cameras or better equipment, you can promote other companies products and receive a commission.

If the reader wants better training, or more advanced training, again, you can promote other bloggers products, or you can create and sell your own.

I often think, the best websites are the ones that you can’t even see how they make money. And by that, I mean, you can see no visible advertising. Monetization doesn’t have to be obvious, in fact, I find it converts best when no one knows it’s there at all.

Real quickly, I will tell you why we don’t sell advertising:

• Constantly adding/editing/deleting advertisers
• Ads are often ugly and take away from user experience
• They can reduce your search engine rankings and increase bounce rate
• Most importantly… it makes us less money!

Selling advertising, for us, isn’t worth it.

Over the years, we have tried over a dozen ways to make money and from our experience, making money from a blog, falls into two categories.

Making money from affiliate marketing

and…

Making money from selling our own products.

Below, I will give you a break down of both techniques, with details on how we use them here on IncomeDiary.

How to Monetize a Blog With Affiliate Marketing

Finding Affiliate Products To Promote

Keeping with the theme of Photography, finding physical products to promote such as cameras and equipment is easy. Nearly every photography related product can be found on Amazon, and Amazon have their own affiliate network called Amazon Associates. This means Amazon let’s you sell their products and you receive a commission for doing so.

When it comes to any other product you want to promote as an affiliate, I usually start by visiting their website and scrolling to the bottom to see if I can find a link for an affiliate page. If I don’t see one, I will then Google their website name + affiliate. If nothing comes up, which at least, in my experience is quite rare, I will simply move on and find something else.

To find inspiration for products to promote, you could look at either a competitors website to see what products they are promoting or you can try an affiliate marketplace such as Commission Junction which has 1000’s of different companies integrated with their service.

Promoting Affiliate Products On Your Blog

This is where a lot of people go wrong, they simply add a couple affiliate offers to their blog and cross their fingers, hoping someone will buy from them. There is a lot, a lot more to it than that!

To start with, if you already have traffic I would recommend that you check to see if any of the links on your website could be updated with affiliate links.

What we did, was we tracked our outgoing links with Google Analytics and then we could see which links were getting the most clicks and prioritize from there. This one change increased our earnings by about $50,000 a year.

Promoting Products You Use

This works because people can actively see you using the service or product. For example with IncomeSup, I recommend my hosting company, domain registrar and the blog theme we use. Using the photography niche as an example again, you could recommend the camera you use, the lens, the camera bag, memory cards and so on.

Often you go to a blog and you learn something from the author. It’s only natural that you would want to copy their success by doing what they do.

“I use this, so, so should you”.

Promoting Recommended eBooks

I have found that two things convert really well for us – the first being the ‘Offer Box’ below.

In the past I have used banners provided by affiliate managers and also had some really snazzy boxes designed however this clean, simple box with a green stop sign converts the highest.

Perhaps because it looks more like content, then an advert.

I like to promote two offers in the box, one low priced and one high price. Fortunately for my higher priced offer above, I was able to secure a $1 trial and that has seen conversions go even higher. (Top Tip: If you are promoting a higher priced offer – try and get a special rate or introductory offer to get people interested in taking action.)

The second thing that converts really well is adding a text advert at the top of my list posts, such as on our Top Earning Bloggers post. I added a link saying, “Want to follow in their footsteps? Check out this product”. This works because as they read the post the reader is highly motivated and inspired and wants to see themselves on this list one day.

Comparison and Resources Page

These pages are usually used to reinforce a recommendation I have already made. People like the element of choice but in reality, usually, one product is better than the rest.

When you put this product up against competing products, it only shows how far better it is and should give your reader the confidence to go ahead and purchase. If they don’t go with your recommendation and choose a different product, well, that’s an affiliate link as well, so you will stay make money.

You can see an example of this on our Creating a Website page.

Special Note: It is also OK to put in some comparisons that will not earn you any commissions – if you are being authentic and creating trust, which you should be, then your visitors, especially your more ‘internet marketing aware’ visitors will appreciate your ‘impartial’ approach.

Publishing content that mentions affiliate products

This has started to make me more and more money as I test different affiliate offers. There are 3 main types of blog posts that make me money. They are Interviews, Guides and Reviews.

I shall point out the advantages of each below:

Making Money From Interviews:

One of the best ways to make money promoting products with interviews is to prepare the interview to go out as the product is launched. Why? Well, if the product has just been released, no one has bought it and so you increase your odds at making sales.

Not only this, but anyone interested in the product, will look for more information on Google and social media and if your post is coming up, then they will come to your site and hopefully by from you.

I recommend you do the interview over the phone (I use Skype) and record the call and get it transcribed. You then add the call to your site as an MP3 / Podcast and add the transcription for those who prefer to read rather than listen. (The transcription also gives you lots of valuable search engine content). When conducting interviews you can also review the interviewee’s products, ask them questions about it – and then at the end of the interview you can add if you wish your own mini-review of the product and the reasons why visitors should buy it.

Typically your interview will only touch generally on the strategies the interviewee uses but done correctly your listener / reader will be left wanting more. This is when you promote the Interviewee’s product as a way for your followers to learn more. Depending on the interviewee and the product, you can easily walk away with dozens of sales and continuous future sales depending on how often future readers find the interview.

Making Money From Publishing Guides

Another tactic I use is, producing ‘How to’ or Guide Posts – just like this one.

You give away great content that really helps your readers and at the same time you promote affiliate products. Visitors can see you using the products so they can decide if it’s for them or not and those who do notice you are promoting an affiliate product don’t mind because you are helping them out for free.

Very Important: This is very important – do take the time to produce good content / how to posts. Despite what some gurus try to imply — there is no such thing as Free Money – you need to work at providing real value to your readers — do that and the money will follow via affiliate sales. So often I see bloggers making ‘half efforts’ at producing guides – frankly you may as well not bother if that is what you are going to do. Readers can tell if you know what you are talking about and if you are passionate about it, or not.

Making Money From Review Posts

Just about every post you do can be a partial review post if you are doing it correctly. This is the essential bit here — no one is really going to pay any attention to your review posts unless they respect you, believe in you, have rapport with you. In other words they feel you can be trusted. As mentioned in previous posts this is why pages such as the ABOUT PAGE and the MY STORY PAGE are so essential.

To start building that trust and rapport you must first provide good content, valuable content. So often readers tell me they cannot believe how much good content I give away for free – if you start to get comments like that then you are doing it right. Build rapport and anything your recommend will stand a far better chance of being sold.

Using Email Marketing To Drive Traffic To Increase Affiliate Sales

Email marketing is often thought of as a monetization technique. But really, it’s a traffic source. It allows you to send traffic anywhere you like. And it’s good at it.

Getting people to subscribe to your email list, is perhaps the most profitable thing you can do with your blog – especially if you then followup with quality emails, that further help your readers.

If you ask any big internet marketer, one of the main things they would tell you is that they wished they had started to build their list earlier. Done right (which means first delivering quality information — not loads of spammy offers) than email marketing to a Strong List of followers is about as close as it gets online to printing money.

Let me run you through how my email marketing funnel works:

1. Opt-in boxes are displayed through out our website – for this we offer a special free gift to entice people into signing up. We also add a well designed eCover to give even more value to this FREE product.

63.9% of IncomeDiary’s email subscribers come from our popup. The second best way we get subscribers is via our opt-in box at the bottom of our blog posts, but this converts far lower than our popup.

You would be best of focusing on these two techniques first. Here’s a good post on how we get email subscribers.

2. Visitors sign up to your email list.

3. When we have a new blog post or we find good quality offers related to our niche, we email subscribers. Sometimes we can earn thousands of dollars from just one mailing by doing this.

When it comes down to email marketing and autoresponder software, we use and recommend AWeber. If you order today you can get your first month for only $1. Apart from AWeber, you may want to consider iContact. (see, this is me, giving you a choice, I will earn either way).

Extra email marketing monetization tips:

When someone subscribes to you list, usually you offer them some sort of incentive, such as a free ebook or some kind of training. This should be monetized with affiliates products and/or it should leave them wanting even better training from you that you sell.

You should save every email that converts well for you and add it to your autoresponder list, so that new subscribers, automatically get your highest converting offers.

Increasing Your Conversions

Although the following may seem like small things, the increase in conversions can be as much as 1000% in some cases, so do pay attention.

Ask For a Coupon Code

Most companies will have the ability to create custom coupon codes, all you have to do is ask for them. These are great for increasing conversions as the coupon can make a huge difference such as making it a trial offer or get something free. People love to think they are getting a good deal.

Ask For a Special Offer

Some of my best converting affiliate links convert so well because of the special offers I am able to offer my readers. For example a $1 Trial or a Bonus offer only available to my readers.

Ask For a Higher Commission Rate

If you are doing a good job at promoting a product, it’s quite possible that you can get an even better commission rate. If it’s a digital product that you are promoting, then the cost of each customer to the seller is very low, so it’s nearly 100% profit. So they can and often are prepared to offer more than 50% commissions, because whatever they earn, is often a result of doing very little.

Some product owners are even prepared to give 100% commission rates because money is not just earned with the first sale, but future sales and let’s not forget the ability to email them promotions.

How to Monetize a Blog By Creating and Selling Your Own Digital Product

Brainstorming Products To Create

Often, coming up with a product to create is an easy task. If you’re doing a good job, your readers should be telling you what they want.

If you are stuck for ideas, take a look at your most popular posts and ask yourself, can you make a product around one of these articles? Not only has the subject proven to you to be popular but you already have a very targeted traffic source to sell too.

Here is a list of different types of products I’ve seen bloggers create:

• eBooks (Traffic Domination)
• Checklists (110 Blog Post Headlines Proven To Get The Most Traffic)
• Services (Done for you blogging service)
• Consulting (Talk about how you can improve your blog)
• Membership Websites (8 Week Training Course for Launching Your First Product)
• Software (PopUp Domination)

Creating Your Product

Well, let’s assume you are creating a digital product, teaching something. And you want to deliver it as an eBook or membership website. To start with, I recommend you create an outline of everything you want to teach.

Now either decide if you want to offer it in text or video, or both.

If you decide you want to offer it as text, that’s simple enough, just get it converted to a PDF and give the customer the download link once they purchase.

If you want to do a membership site, you need to get some membership website software and install it on your blog. Now this can be quite simple, but you may have to hire a developer, depending on your ability level. If you are offering your training in video form, just upload it to AmazonS3 and insert the videos into your site.

Just in case it’s crossed your mind, if it’s a software product you plan to make. You need to find a great developer and make sure you have a budget to see the project through. If you don’t properly plan out your product, it can end up costing you a lot more than you expected!

Selling Your Own Product

You should plan to do this in two main ways, via your own website/mailing list and via affiliates.

Let’s begin with what you will do on your own website:

Firstly, you need to make your readers aware of what’s coming. You want them excited. You want them to buy the second it’s for sale.

We once launched a product and before we even announced it was on sale, two people had found the sales page and bought it. The next 98 customers signed up in under 100 minutes.

This is because we pre-sold our audience. Not only this but we added scarcity. We told everyone that, for the first day, we only were going to offer 100 accounts for sale. So they had to be quick!

To get started selling, you need three things:

1. A landing page. (Page dedicated to selling your product).
2. Merchant account. (We use Stripe and PayPal).
3. Checkout page software.

Readers visit landing page, they click the buy button, they go through the checkout page process and then pay via your merchant account.

Then once they pay, they either end up on the download page or they receive an email with a link to download the product there.

Getting Affiliates To Promote Your Product

You will earn a lot more money from affiliates promoting your product than you will earn selling it yourself.

Once you start working at this, your focus with your blog will become a lot more than a blog but rather a business. You will have assets, multiple income streams and more.

Often people think, well, if all the money is be made from creating products, then why even bother creating a blog. A blog gives you credibility, authority. Without the blog, you would find it a lot harder to sell your product and also to understand the industry you are in. At least, that’s our experience.

Take Action Today

There you have it, that’s our top two strategies for monetizing any blog or website.

If you could only take 3 things away from this post, I hope they are:

1. Using a Lightbox optin I was able to significantly increase my daily email opt-in rate (304% +). I wish I had started using it sooner.

2. Test promoting different products, one product I promote, out sells all others by at least 20 to 1 and I wouldn’t have know that if I had not switched around promotions on my site.

3. ASK! My conversions and sales continual increase because I’m always asking my affiliate managers for more, a free trial, coupon codes, different landing pages – if it’s going to make you more sales, it’s going to make them more money and so they should at least make an effort to help you.

Good luck!

Read more: ‘14 Ways to Make More Money From Email Marketing’

The post How to Monetize a Blog: The Two Main Ways We Make Money Online appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

All you do is identify a product, sign up to its affiliate program, promote it, generate sales and get paid commissions.

Affiliate Marketing Sounds Easy?

Up to a point… however it relies on one simple but essential factor – Traffic!

If you can’t drive targeted traffic you are going nowhere!

No point in sending a Fitness Offer to people who signed up to a blog about Knitting & Crochet and vice versa.

Likewise if you Buy Traffic (pay per click or Facebook advertising) you need to know your audience and what motivates them!

Back in 2012 in Affiliate Summit’s AffStat Report affiliates where asked how they typically drive traffic to their website…

In 2012 at least 60% of affiliates are using “blogging” as their primary method of “driving traffic” to their website.

But Affiliate Marketing has changed!

Sure, blogging still works and you should use it – but these days it requires a more sophisticated approach, better research and above all better writing!

11 Reasons Why Many Bloggers Fail at Affiliate Marketing

The truth is most bloggers fail miserably at Affiliate Marketing.

1) Many bloggers think they know Affiliate marketing already

This is one of the craziest reasons bloggers fail at making money with affiliate marketing. Once you think you ALREADY know something, you completely eliminate your chances to acquire new knowledge.

I know the Internet is full of free offers on Affiliate Marketing but many of these are obsolete. (written in 2012 or earlier!) Those things that worked some years ago absolutely have no impact in today’s world of content marketing.

I clearly remember my early days when Article Marketing on ezinearticles and web 2.0 properties like squidoo used to flourish. We worked with article spinning tools, stuffed articles with keyword, got links from spam sites, etc and all that worked for a while. But times have changed.

In order to survive in today’s online marketing world, we have to be opened to new things and adapt to changes through learning. Seek out the best training you can find, ask for recommendations and BUY it!

At this stage in a post you might quite rightly expect to see a recommendation for an Affiliate Marketing product – but we are not doing that here because as we said, products and techniques change regularly and what we recommend today may not be appropriate a year from now. We will however recommend a Facebook Group that everyone should join if you are serious about Internet Marketing – Internet Marketing Super Friends. It is not just about affiliate marketing, there is lots of tips on everything to do with Internet Marketing and a real wealth of talent regularly posts.

Successful blogger and affiliates are always learning – they never assume they know it all!

2) They promote products just for the money

This is the Ugly Side of affiliate marketing – promoting any product just for the commissions is unethical. For starters try every product you promote out yourself and ask yourself, would I buy this?

Now assuming you have found a product you want to support, how can you be confident that your readership will want to know about it?

For starters, from publishing articles on your blog you can do some useful market research.

=> Try to identify the articles on your blog with the highest number of social shares.
=> Identify the articles with the highest number of comments.
=> Identify the articles that are most linked to.
=> Identify the articles that drive the most clicks from search engines.

And of course, you can also find out what your readers need most by running a survey on your blog.

The more relevant the product you promote, the more your chances of generating sales and commissions.

3 – They don’t invest in required tools

There is no business you can successfully do online without investing in the right tools. For bloggers who want to succeed in affiliate marketing, there are a couple of tools you must get in order to positively affect your sales. Some of these tools include;

=> Premium web hosting for fast speed
=> Professional fast loading theme
=> Premium product review plugins that support user-generated reviews
=> Popup Domination
=> SEO tools – for example Plugins like Yoast

And very importantly…

They don’t keep up to-date with changes in the marketplace. Technology, SEO and Social Media are changing all the time – please accept that what works now, may work differently 6 months from now.

4) They have no knowledge about the products they promote

This one is a close relation of promoting a product just for the money! How can you ever sell anything effectively without knowing the product. Would you buy a car from a salesperson who did not own a car?

As an affiliate marketer, the best affiliate sales I have ever made have come from a product I use myself. This is the best way to position you to make more money from an affiliate product.

If you promote a product you are using, you are going to promote it from the stand point of a happy user. You will be able to demonstrate how it’s helped you out. Remember readers love ‘stories‘ and the story of how you found and fell in love with this product is one of the strongest persuasion strategies. (But remember it only works if it is authentic and genuine – I strongly discourage ‘made up’ stories.)

One More Tip:
Most product creators will produce a sales letter – professionally written by a skilled copywriter but remember, people buy from people, so I encourage to add your own introduction (video is good) when promoting a product. Just saying ‘check this out’ rarely works – give people a reason why they should check this out!

5) They just do what others do

If you want to make extra sales, you have to distinguish yourself from other affiliates.

So many affiliates just do a Copy and Paste – don’t do that! Be an innovator – come up with an angle others have not.

Have you spotted a benefit that others have not? It might even only be a benefit for you and a few others, but add that benefit and chances someone else will see that as a benefit also.

Additionally – and this is very important, add your own STORY as to why you got involved with this product…

I recently read the success story of one mother who started online simply to make enough to pay for horse riding lessons for her daughter. This was of course targeting the Newbie Marketer and it also had that all important ‘feel good’ feeling.

Other things you can do…

For instance;
=> Add a special bonus for your readers
=> Offer a special discount code from product author
=> Get co-branded sales page from author

Successful Affiliates are innovators – always be looking to add value to the offer, in terms of either a special bonus or better still in my opinion – reveal an angle or a strategy that no one else is talking about…

6) They lack strategies that work

Now, this point is closely related to point 5 above. If you use your brain as an affiliate blogger, you can always come up with promotion strategies that others don’t have. Most affiliate marketing platforms today allow vendors to generate special coupon codes for their affiliates. The best part is that most vendors are ready any time to get a unique code for you. With this in mind, you can always negotiate special deals for your readers.

One of the things I did in the past that generated some crazy sales is that I arranged a product-focused interview with a vendor on my blog. This enabled me to phrase questions that triggered appropriate answers to provoke more sales. You must always think of such new strategies and do things differently on order to make more affiliate sales.

7) They do feature-based reviews

Buyers want to know – WIIFM = What’s In It For Me?

Yet so many product reviews concentrate on the FEATURES rather than the BENEFITS.

As Theodore Levitt said “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole!”

And for those of us old enough to remember – Mr Levitt also said: “Kodak sells film, but they don’t advertise film; they advertise memories”

Get it?

Don’t concentrate on the features – focus on the benefits!

Remember…

Features Tell, Benefits Sell

The raison d’être of any affiliate product you promote should be to solve a problem. If that problem solving capacity is not underlined in the review, you are missing the point of the product!

8) They completely neglect SEO

For most bloggers, without huge budgets, SEO is the single best source of targeted traffic. Yes, Social Media also works, but my experience is that SEO brings the most targeted traffic.

How to not neglect SEO?

=> Do keyword research before doing an affiliate product review
=> Target the right buying or problem solving keyword in your review posts
=> Do proper OnPage SEO on your product review posts
=> Promote product review post on social media to generate likes, tweets, and shares.
=> Create backlinks to product review posts
=> Check out the best SEO Tools

The more traffic from search engines you get to your review posts, the more the sales you are able to generate.

Remember SEO changes all the time – it is no longer about trying to fool search engines, (Black Hat) rather it is about working with search engines to provide information in the best possible format. On this subject make sure to check out Schema.org for a set of extensible schemas that enables webmasters to embed structured data on their web pages for use by search engines. This is the new SEO!

9) They don’t promote products with recurring payments (and commissions)

Put simply when promoting products you have a choice of promoting a One Time Payment product or a product that requires a recurring payment (Software or membership usually). Of course you will have a mixture of both but whenever possible I like promoting recurring payments that pay me commissions for the life time of the recurring payment. Payments are usually monthly but sometimes quarterly or yearly renewal options pay out also.

To earn recurring permissions…

Identify membership sites in your niche that have affiliate programs and focus on promoting them to your audience. In addition there are software and hosting companies who pay out recurring commissions.

10) They don’t have a targeted list

One of the mistakes I committed in my early days of blogging was that I started my blog without building a list.
It’s generally said “the money is in the list” and and that’s true to an extent. But if your list is poorly built, you are never going to see any money from it.

Something not so frequently mentioned is:

Not All Subscribers are Equal

Some subscribers just because of how they found you are more likely to buy than others…

In other words, quality usually beats quantity. I have seen bloggers be tempted to buy or rent lists but it should be avoided. I could go into great detail about why you should avoid – but HubSpot have a pretty good blog post on it.

A targeted list of 1000 subscribers is better than a mix-up of 10000 subscribers. If you want more subscribers and more targeted traffic write posts directly related to your visitors problems – which demonstrate your knowledge and experience. Then when you have a product that solves those problems you have targeted subscribers who are more likely to convert to sales.

11) They don’t focus on Content and Targeted traffic

To succeed in Affiliate Marketing you need:

=> Quality content
=> Targeted Traffic

As a blogger and an affiliate marketer this matters more than anything else.

Yet, so many bloggers concentrate on things like design and the colors and size of fonts when really their priorities should be quality content and relevant search engine traffic.

There is no point in having the best theme and being hosted on the must robust server on planet earth, if you don’t have content that attracts readers who then subscribe to your list.

One Final Thought…

To succeed as an affiliate marketer you should always be learning – and this website has lots of resources for that.

In addition to links on list building and general blogging this website has lots of links on how to produce engaging content and content that gets shared.

To Your Affiliate Marketing Success,

Enstine Muki

Author Bio: Enstine Muki is an affiliate marketer and blogger. Follow him on Twitter

The post 11 Affiliate Marketing Mistakes You Must Not Make appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Why?

Because times have changed. Today success is about making friends. It’s about finding a common ground with your competitors. It’s about collaborating with each other to collectively get more customers.

If you want to take your online business to the next level, understand the power of partnerships. Stop seeing your competition as your enemy. And learn to embrace it, instead of fighting it.

By joining forces with your competitors you’ll worry less about losing sales and be able to focus more on growing your business.

Now, the question is, how do you create joint ventures that give results – without hurting your own profits?

For starters, make sure you do your homework before you jump into any kind of partnership with a competitor:

Get Clarity: Be crystal clear about what you want to achieve with your partnership. Yes, ultimately it’s about growing your revenue. But having a more concrete, mutually beneficial goal can take you a long way.

Do a Background Check: Regardless of who your competitor is, always check them out before moving ahead. Because striking a good joint venture deal is not just about money. It’s also about safeguarding your credibility.

Find a Gap: Working with your competition becomes easier when you find a gap in their business that you can fill with your product. They’ll be more open to partnering with you when your product actually complements theirs.

Be Ready to Commit: If you’ve decided to team up with your competitor, then take it seriously. Always keep in mind that a joint venture of any kind requires commitment to make it profitable.

Let’s look at 5 effective ways to leverage your competition to boost your sales:

#1: Conduct Free Value-Driven Webinars

Free webinars are gaining popularity these days. Many online businesses are using them to connect to their target audience, get more leads and win more sales.

So why not partner with your competitor and host a webinar?

The reason why webinars work so well is because they have a high perceived value and lead to better conversions.

By doing a webinar with your competitors, you’ll be able to tap into their assets – more specifically, their list of customers.

Imagine being able to instantly reach out to a pool of qualified prospects that are willing to listen to you and take action on what you have to say. If that doesn’t get you more sales, I don’t know what will.

When it comes to convincing your competitor to host a webinar with you, you need to create a win-win situation. Here’s how:

1. Prove to them that you know your game. Give them a preview of the kind of quality that you can deliver. Make it clear that your aim is to give solid value to their list and nothing less.

2. Offer a percentage of the profit that would be generated through the webinar. Give them a bigger share if needed. By no means should your deal look weak. Make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Your aim here is to not only strike a deal, but also create a strong foundation for your webinar.

Once you successfully convince your competitor to do a webinar with you, the ball is in your court. This is when you’ll have to decide on the topic and content.

Let’s look into some webinar ideas that you can go with…

Give Tips and Strategies: People are always looking for tips they can use. Ideas they can borrow. And strategies they can experiment with. By sharing useful content you’ll be able to prove your expertise and win trust.

Share Your Success Story: Nothing sells like success. If you’ve got a story to tell that proves your point and showcases your authority, then share it in your webinar. Remember, stories bring out emotions, and emotions lead to action.

Hold a ‘How to’ Session: Have a solution for a difficult problem? Show your attendees how to solve it. Get into the details but don’t give everything away. Lead them towards your product and explain how it’s the better solution.

As long as you’re delivering value, doing webinars can be fun and rewarding. But ultimately, it all boils down to numbers, or how many attendees you convert into customers.

#2: Create Branded PDF Reports

Informative how-to reports have always been the rage in the Internet marketing world. Whether it’s getting people to join your email list or creating a bonus for your main product – PDF reports work.

However, there’s an underutilized way of using such reports to drive back traffic to your site and score more sales. It involves creating high quality PDF reports that are specifically customized and branded for your joint venture partner.

Here, let me explain…

Just like you, your competitors are looking for ways to reach out to their target audience, grow their brand and get more sales.

So technically speaking, if you help them do all that, they’ll be glad to help you market your product.

What you can do is create a PDF report with premium, high quality content, and add a ‘sponsored by’ page right in the beginning. This is where you put up a review of your competitors product. If the product has an affiliate program, you link to it with your affiliate link.

But wait, what about your product? How do YOU gain from this tactic?

It’s fairly simple. You get to:

• Have your website’s link on the cover page
• Display your website’s link throughout the PDF – in the footer
• Recommend your product 1-2 times within the content
• End with a call to action, soft-selling your product to the readers

When you’re done creating the report, the next step is to get in touch with your competitor. Email them the report straightaway and let them know you created it exclusively for them. Ask them to share it on their blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The idea here is to get the report to go viral. But that will only happen when you over-deliver on the value.

So focus on creating a report that you’re proud of. Something you know will spread by word of mouth.

The more useful your report is, the more exposure it gets. The more exposure it gets the more targeted traffic you achieve – traffic that converts into sales.

#3: Refer Sales to Get Sales In Return

Ever thought about building a fruitful relationship with your competitors? If not, then you seriously need to consider it.

The fact remains that a business can’t be everything to everyone. You might have the best product in the market, but it most certainly doesn’t solve every problem under the sun. The same applies to your competitor’s product.

If you look around, you will find competitors who aren’t directly competing with you. They may be selling products that are complementary to yours. And that’s where the opportunity lies.

For example, if you sell web design software, you could refer prospects to your competitor who sells web design ebooks. This not only helps you get a percentage of the sales you refer (as an affiliate), but also positions you as someone honest.

As you start referring sales to select competitors, it gives you the opportunity to talk and persuade them to refer your product to their prospects.

Besides that, when you refer your prospects to quality products, you become a trusted source. The next time they need something, they’ll come to you. So your honest referral helps you bring in more sales in the long run.

However, this also means that you have to be choosy about whom you’re referring your prospects to. Besides a great product, the competitor you’re sending your referrals to should have:

• A professional website that makes a good first impression
• A proven track record in delivering quality service
• A proactive customer service that exceeds expectations
• Testimonials/feedback from existing customers
• Anything else that makes them look genuine and trustable

Growing your online business becomes simpler when you know how to partner with the right people – without putting your reputation at stake.

#4: Cross Sell Related Products

“Would you like some fries with that?”

Sounds familiar? It’s a common cross selling method practiced by fast food restaurants.

Cross selling is not new to the online marketing world. Many Internet marketers cross sell to get more sales.

Since the customer is already paying for one product, it becomes easy to convince him to add another one to the shopping cart.

So how do you go about using this tactic for your own business?

By finding competitors selling related products and negotiating with them to cross sell your product in return for a share in the profits.

Alternatively, you can also choose to cross sell their product if they cross sell yours. This way both of you can keep your own profits and still get to leverage each other’s assets. It may not work with everyone you approach, but is definitely worth a shot.

The cross selling tactic can make a big difference to your sales, as long as you avoid these 2 mistakes:

1. Choosing the Wrong Partner

Your product may have the highest conversion rate, but it won’t do much if you’re pitching it to the wrong audience. Choosing the right partner is crucial to make the most out of your cross selling.

So don’t go into partnership with just about anyone. You have to have the same audience to ensure that you get sales. The more targeted the prospects are, the better.

2. Offering the Wrong Product

On the flip side, you may have found the best joint venture partner to work with, but if you’re cross selling a product that’s not related to their audience, it’ll bomb. Just as it’s important to have the right audience, it’s also important to offer a matching product.

Regardless of how many products you sell or who you decide to partner with, see to it that the product you’re cross selling is relevant. This not only improves your conversion rate, but also ensures a long term relationship with your JV partner.

If you’ve got a useful product with a fine reputation, you won’t have a hard time striking partnerships. Even a few good competitors cross selling your product can help you reach out to a bigger audience.

#5: Give 100% Commission on a Front End Product

In order to increase your sales, you need more people to sell to. You need leads that are ready to buy what you’re selling. You need prospects that trust you enough to invest money into your product.

Generating such leads requires you to think tactically. It requires you to go beyond free email subscribers and start building a list of customers through an effective front end offer.

This is the first step towards getting people into your sales funnel, so that you can follow up and sell them your other products.

One of the easiest ways to start getting sales for your front end product is to leverage your competitor’s existing customer list. But it’s not easy getting someone to say ‘yes’ to promote your product, even if you promise a high commission to them.

The solution?

Create a front end product and make sure it’s good. I mean REALLY good. Something you’d be proud to sell. It could be an ebook, an online course, a WordPress plugin – basically anything that is saleable. And make sure you price it well.

Once you’re done with it, get the Rapid Action Profits script and install it on your site. RAP is an affiliate management system that allows you to give 100% commission to your affiliates/joint venture partners.

You see where we’re going with this?

With the product and the affiliate system in place, you’ll be able to easily convince any of your competitors to promote your front end product and keep all the money for every sale they generate.

Most fail to realize how powerful this tactic can be. Even though you’re not earning anything on your front end product, you are still growing your database of customers. Customers you can to sell to over and over again in the future.

Don’t take my word; ask any successful Internet marketer, and he’ll tell you that the real money lies in the back end – not the front end.

What do you think? How else can you partner with your competitors to grow your online business? Do share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

The post 5 Ways Your Competitors Can Help You Get More Sales appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

• You’re about to write a post and mention an affiliate product, then have to spend time to look for the affiliate link for it.
• You’re in need of a new banner for an affiliate product, but have no clue where to get it.
• You’re curious about your earnings for an affiliate product that isn’t under the umbrella of a major network, so you have to search for the affiliate site login, figure out your username, reset your password, and so forth.
• You’re watching your Twitter stream and see someone asking for opinions on an affiliate product that you wrote a review for sometime last year, so now you have to find that review post.
• You’re just shy of your next payout on SamCart and want to do a little push on all of the affiliate products you have under that network, but their promo materials are spread out all over the place.

While some of these things don’t take a lot of time, I’d bet there have been situations where you passed including that affiliate link, banner, checking your stats, tweeting your review post, or making several product pushes because you were too busy to mess around with tracking the information down.

To avoid this kind of problem in the future, why not get all of your affiliate marketing information all in one place? My favorite way to organize is simply using Google Docs. It’s free with your Google Account, and it’s accessible wherever you go, from your desktop at work to your laptop at home or your iPad to your Android when on the go without messing around with USB drives or wishing you were on a different device.

The Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Organizer

The following are important pieces of information I have in my Google Spreadsheet to organize my affiliate marketing resources.

Product Name – Simply the affiliate product name.

Contact (name, email, twitter) – I find that it’s best to keep track of who to contact when you have questions or concerns about a particular affiliate product or program. Most are happy to help you if it means you’re going to promoting their product! I’d also suggest following your favorite affiliate product creators on Twitter – it’s a great way to see if there are any updates to the products, sales, etc. coming that they might not have notified their affiliates about via email.

Niche – If you do affiliate marketing for more than one niche, then this will allow you to filter your programs just for one particular niche when promoting via blog posts, Twitter, and other avenues.

Type – Chances are, your affiliate products are made up of eBooks, events, membership programs, courses, plugins, themes, applications, and so forth. I like having mine distinguished that way if I’m specifically wanting to write a post on top WordPress plugins or themes, I can just filter those types in my spreadsheet.

Network – Most of your affiliate products may fall under major networks like SamCart, E-junkie, ShareASale, and other major affiliate networks, but you can also include links to those that have their own proprietary network.

Vendor ID – Clickbank, for example, has a Vendor ID for different affiliate programs which you can see in reporting. It’s good to have as a quick reference when you’re looking through your earnings reports.

Login & Password – Nothing is more frustrating than having to find login information. I wouldn’t suggest putting your full password in an online document, but instead maybe hints to your password as some networks require funky passwords with caps and special characters while others limit you to a certain amount and specific types of characters.

Product Price – If you are an affiliate for more than one eBook and have the chance to promote just one for a particular occasion, this might help you decide which to choose based on the audience. If you think they’re big spenders, go with the highest priced item. If not, go with the lowest priced one.

Minimum & Maximum Commission – When you’re looking to increase your earnings, the amount you’ll make off a product will definitely influence your decision on how much promotion to do for the product. The more you could make, the more you will probably want to promote it!

Promo Materials, Login & Password – While affiliate products on ShareASale have their banners and suggested text links on that affiliate network, products on other networks such as Clickbank and E-junkie tend to have offsite promotion material links. Some of these are available to the public while others are behind a separate login. Finding these materials (banners, swipe files, etc.) has always driven me insane, so having the links all in one place can be a lifesaver!

Affiliate Link (full & Bit.ly) – Depending on where you want to share your affiliate link, you might want to grab the full thing or just one that you have customized on Bit.ly or another URL shortener of your choice. Note that you’ll also want to follow affiliate program emails religiously and periodically check up on your affiliate links as some products might change affiliate networks. Nothing bites worse than making a sale and then losing the commission simply because the new affiliate network can’t track the old links (but can conveniently still make the sale).

Blog Link – If you use plugins like Ninja Affiliate for WordPress that converts your affiliate links to something more customized, then you can stick that customized URL here.

Review Post (full & Bit.ly) – If you have a review post for a product, you’re more likely to make more income from it. Hence, you’ll want to link to the full URL for the review post in your writing and occasionally reshare the shortened one on Twitter. This will help you keep track of those links.

Video – Videos make for great promotional content – especially if your video shows how easy a particular affiliate product is to use, such as setting up a plugin or WordPress theme. Keep your video links handy to push in a post or share with someone asking questions about a particular product and be sure that your review post link is in the video description.

Minimum Payout – Just something nice to know if you want to figure out how far you need to go to get paid again.

Earnings – Want to know how successful you are with your affiliate programs? Then track your earnings! Networks like Clickbank will let you run earnings reports from the last year, and E-junkie will let you see affiliate-specific earnings from the past few years (mine goes back through 2006). This will give you a good idea which products your audience loves and which ones, no matter how much you push them, are just not making enough income to be worth it.

Updated – This friendly column will remind you if it’s about time to check your earnings, links, etc. to make sure there’s nothing new you need to know about.

Get This Spreadsheet on Google Docs

If you’re not in the mood to create this spreadsheet from scratch, never fear! You can view the Google Docs’ spreadsheet online. If you are signed into your Google account, simply use the File > Save option to save it to your documents and start filling it in with your information.

Excel and Open Office Versions

If you don’t have Google Docs, or would prefer to save it on your local machine, go to the Google Docs version and use the File > Download As to save it as your desired file type. I’d suggest Open Office or Excel if possible for functionality.

Filtering

In the Google Docs version, you don’t need to do anything – just use the arrows on each column to sort / filter. If you download it in another version, be sure to add the Filter back to the header row so you can sort / filter specific information using the arrows. In Microsoft Excel 2007, select the first row and use the Filter option on the Home tab under Sort & Filter. In Open Office Calc, select the first row and use the AutoFilter option under Data > Filter in the menu bar.

Your Affiliate Marketing Organizer

Do you use a similar spreadsheet or other ways to organize your affiliate marketing logins and program information? Is there anything you would add to this spreadsheet? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The post Increase Earnings by Organizing Your Affiliate Information appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I started my online business way back in 2005 and migrated to an LLC in 2007 once I started making more money. I made the move to full time self employment in 2009 and last year I more than surpassed my goal to earn $150,000 in 2010. I also sold one of my larger websites in a deal worth six figures last year too so overall it was a pretty great first full year of self employment (I got fired in late 2009 lol).

Useful info box, one word answers are fine:

Book Your Currently Reading? Purple Cow

Best Business Purchase? $200 for NetbookReviews.com

Favourite Business Resource? My three 26 inch monitors

Favourite Business Website? BothSidesOfTheTable.com

1. What gave you the idea for your business and what motivated you to apply yourself and get it done.

I’ve been running a wide range of websites ever since I created my first forum for gamers back in 2005. I knew money was being made on the internet and I was determined to make sure I started making money too. I only wish I had met more people that were making money online earlier as I would have been able to make a lot more money faster if I did. My biggest motivation is a desire to build my own business and blaze my own path. I hate working for someone else because I’m just making them more money. When I work for myself I am building my own assets.

2. Comparing your business from back then to now, what has been the main thing that allowed you to expand your business?

The biggest thing for me was the decision to invest more time into my business. For a few years I was running websites for fun but only passively trying to make money with them. A few years after that I decided that if I really wanted to make money with websites I needed to have a clear monetization path before I invested time and resources into a website. Ask yourself this question before you start something “How will this (eventually) make money?” I simply ask myself this question before I do anything now and it helps me avoid wasting time on projects that won’t pay off.

3. Whats the most profitable aspect of your online business, why do you think this is and how can others apply this to what they are doing.

I started doing really well with Amazon’s affiliate program back in early 2009. I shared some tips on what I’ve learned after making $90k+ with Amazon here. The biggest suggestion if you’re looking to make money with Amazon is to use it on websites with a very specific product oriented focus. For example, with the Netbook Reviews website I sold in a deal worth six figures I aimed to create the best possible netbook website and so I did things my competitors weren’t such as actually reviewing the product with videos etc. etc. You can apply this focus to any niche, just know that if you want that #1 Google ranking your site needs to be better than the site currently ranking that spot (in terms of the quality of links, quality of your domain name, quality of your content etc.)

4. How Do You Work?

I wake up around 9:00 AM or 10:00 AM but that just varies based on when I went to bed. I prefer to work regular business owners, but lately I’ve been working a lot more because I have so many projects that have simply gone on for far too long. For example, when I was working on releasing my Amazon wordpress plugin: EasyAzon I had a few days of the week that I stayed up to 5:00 AM finishing up the members area, creating how to videos, talking to affiliates etc. etc. Right now I have one full time employee in the Philippines and she helps me build websites. I haven’t felt comfortable enough yet to outsource my customer support as some of my products were based on my expert knowledge and I just can’t let go of answering all of my customer’s support inquiries. Sometime soon I know I need to outsource the more basic stuff such as “this video doesn’t load” and “can you fix my email address in the members area?” etc.

5. When did you realize you were successful/made it? and how did you feel/celebrate?

I felt like I made it when I hit my one year fireversary (celebrating my first full year of self employment) and soon after that I really knew things would be ok when I received the first bank wire payment for my website in the deal worth six figures. Seeing that much money in my bank account felt awesome and I splurged on my $500 Herman Miller SAYL chair (ridiculous I know but since I sit all day why not?). I later paid off a $26k lump sum from my wife’s student loans (although that’s a decision I now regret).

6. Looking back, what could you of done sooner to of got to that point quicker.

If I would have stopped putzing around building websites that had no business model (i.e. video game forums) I’d probably be making double or triple what I am today. But I still like to say that I owe the start of my business and it’s eventual success to the video game Halo. So I do know there are things I could have done to be successful faster but I wouldn’t change anything.

7. What should other Internet entrepreneurs reading this be focusing on to expand their own Internet business.

I’m a huge fan of monetization. A lot of what I’m doing this year is simply buying websites from people and finding ways to better monetize them right off the bat. The easiest way to make more money is to make sure you’re fully taking of your existing traffic before you go out and try and get more traffic.

8. What do you consider the main differences between those people who have been successful in your industry and those who have failed?

Most of the people I talk to fail before they even start. There’s only so much time you can spend learning before you have to take action. If you are reading this interview and haven’t actually done something (i.e. registered a domain name and set up your first website etc.) then you should stop reading this right now. Figure out what you’re interested in, do a quick search to see who the existing competition is and then make a decision to move forward with building your first website. If you aren’t an action taker you will never be successful with an online business.

You can learn more about how Chris is making money and teaching others at his blog: Make Money on the Internet

Chris has also just released a really cool new WordPress Plugin for Amazon Affiliates, click here to check it out!

The post Chris Guthrie – How I Make Money With Amazon appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Now I appreciate some of you will be thinking — I don’t have much of a list or much of a following – so how can I go about promoting a product launch.

Well of course in theory the bigger the list you have, the more sales you will get – but let me make another point. Some of the most successful affiliates for the launch of PopUp Domination actually had relatively small lists, but what they had that more than made up for it was, a very responsive list.

So you might ask how do you build a responsive list? There are a number of factors that matter – but the two I would highlight are:

1) Your reputation with the subscribers on your list. If you are someone who consistently offers your subscribers great value in the way of information and strategies, then they are more likely to read your emails and more importantly, take action based on your recommendation in those emails.

I have said it before, but I will say it again – only ever promote products you believe in and would buy yourself. The quickest way to lose that good reputation is to constantly be peddling and hyping STUFF – just because you might make a few commissions.

2) The second factor is of course your niche. I have a pretty responsive list but if I was to start promoting a course on Pay Per Click marketing, I can bet the response would not be so good. You see most of the people on my list are not using PPC – but rather are bloggers.

People (myself included) have often said the Money is in the List — well that is true, but the real fact is, that the money is in the responsiveness of the list!

OK, let’s get started:

10 Top Tips For Promoting Product Launches as an Affiliate

1. Review The Product

Reviews have been one of the most powerful things I do for launches, for a lot of reasons, including:

• Proof I have the product and I’m not just promoting to make money.
• Proof it works.
• Long team sales from new readers coming to my site.
• SEO Rankings. Tip: Name your post something people will search in Google to find it.

You want to of course do a write up on the product and include screen shots and a video would be a great addition.

One great example of a review was by David Risley for my launch. He was able to sell over 100 copies of my plugin by writing a post, adding images and a video then emailing it to his list.

ANOTHER TIP: Not sure when product launches are happening? Visit your competition and the gurus in your industry and sign up to their list. If there is a product being launched, they will be promoting!

Then you can go about getting involved, usually you can find the affiliate page is linked to in the footer of the sales page. If not, Google the name of the product + affiliate.

2. Email Pre-launch

For a long time I was against emailing pre-launches because I thought I would lose a whole load of my list to someone else. However this isn’t the case, your readers will not unsubscribe just because they opt-ed into someone elses list. In fact, they probably already are on dozens of other lists already. As long as you provide value, your subscribers will stay with you!

Emailing pre-launch is great because it builds momentum and interest.

The problem with emailing a direct sales page is that people have no idea why they need to look at the product in the first place. It’s a lot easier to tempt them in with a free video or download from the pre-launch so that they can learn about the product and why they so desperately need it.

It’s also a good opportunity to build trust and the fact is, most of the time, your readers don’t realize you are promoting a squeeze page because you’re making money from it.

3. Follow Up

Often you have 3 or even more opportunity to email, blog, Facebook, Tweet etc… a launch:

• Launch Day
• 24 Hours Till Close/Price Increase
• Reopen for 24 hours/Webinar

I have even promoted a launch where they suggested you emailed as much as 12 times!

We all know email is the most important thing you could be using right now, that’s why all the big marketers do so much to build a list.

It’s simple, you build a list and then at any given time you can email your subscribers a product launch and cash in. For me it literally is the closest thing to printing money. I have friends who travel the world and live off just emailing promotions to their list. A lot of people don’t mind being send promotions, heck if I minded, I wouldn’t be on half the lists I’m on. If you want more information on list building, check this post out!

4. Interview The Creator

Typically product owners will be mega busy coming up to their launch, however this is pure gold as well.

I often interview people before they launch their products. This way, when they launch and all the thousands of people are research in Google about the product and who created it, they see my website. Then once they check out the interview, they end up buying through my affiliate link.

5. Split Test Emails

I have many different lists, something I recommend everyone does.

What I do is email one of my lists (for example my Retireat21 subscribers) a new promotion / product launch. When I do this I use two different Subject Lines in the email I’m sending out and then whichever SUBJECT LINE gets the best open rate – I roll out and use on the rest of my lists.

I mean if your email doesn’t get opened – you may as well not have sent it!.

This is a very simple split test (there are a lot more complicated split tests you can do another day) and I have been blown away with how beneficial it has been to me. I used to just use one subject line — sometimes I nailed it and got lots of OPEN’s but other times I did not.

At least with this simple split test, I’m assuring myself a lot more opens with the majority of my list by testing on part of the list first.

The other advantage of emailing a smaller list first, is that you can discover if the OFFER is converting. If I get bad results with my initial mailing using two different subject lines, I may well not roll out across all my lists.

6. Promote The Right Product

There is no point me promoting a Pay Per Click product to my readers and buyers because I have never talked about PPC and more of my subscribers are probably not interested in it.

You want to promote something with broad appeal to the subscribers on your list.

Let’s take for example, PopUp Domination – this is software that could be used on just about every website because it will make the website owner more money. That means that just about everyone in the internet marketing industry can promote it. Bloggers, Social Media People, PPC guys, Product Creators — all of them need a product like PopUp Domination.

The advantage to me of course is, that I have a very wide range of people who I can approach as potential affiliates – even though in many instances it would not make sense for me to promote their product in return because my subscribers are not interested in their specific niche.

That is what I mean by BROAD. Of course there are lots of people who will say to go NICHE and sub-niche. That works as well – I am just pointing out that with PopUp Domination we deliberately went BROAD.

7. Offer a BONUS!

This is one of the most important things you can do when promoting someones product – ADD A BONUS for all the buyers who buy via your affiliate link.

A lot of people follow most people in the industry, so by you offering a free consult, review, product, download etc.. you will stand out and they will choose to buy via your affiliate link, over someone elses.

Recently when promoting a product launch by Gideon Shalwick, I put together a special bonus offer for people who bought via my link. This proved to work quite well because several people commented that they bought via my link because of my bonus offer.

James Schramko mentioned how he built a business around offering a bonus for each product he promoted in an interview with Yaro Starak, click here to see it!

8. Use It In a Tutorial

Depending on what you are promoting, you can sometimes use it in a tutorial, for example, Aweber. I can teach people how to make money with email marketing and promote Aweber as my choice of email software.

I have found this to work very well!

9. Use All Of Your Resources

There are so many ways to get the message out, some people simply over look them, you can:

• Blog about the product
• Tweet/Facebook about it
• Build a review site (someone did this to PopUp Domination and they were one of our top affiliates)
• Email your mailing list
• Buy advertising

10. Think Outside Of The Box – Just Ask!

Sometimes, the best thing you can do, is contact the product creator and ask them what they can do to improve the deal for your readers.

Here are a few of the things they can offer you:

• $1 Trial Offers
• Special Landing Pages
• Webinars (these convert like crazy, just ask Lewis Howes)
• Discounted Price
• Special Bundles
• Coupon Codes

At the end of the day, product creators rely on affiliates to make their launches a success, so they will at least listen to what you have to say.

Read more: ‘Making Money with Email Marketing and an Autoresponder Series’

The post 10 Top Tips For Affiliate Promotions appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Last week I was on Skype with a new friend of mine Adam Horwitz brainstorming, masterminding and generally picking each others brains. Since doing this interview, Adam has launched a brand new site about how he makes $100,000’s from Mobile, visit Mobile Monopoly to find out more!

What was cool for me is that Adam is even younger than me and I was thinking I just don’t interview enough really young internet entrepreneurs. This interview partially corrects that. The thing I love about the Internet is the lack of Age Discrimination – no matter if you are a teenager (or even younger) or someone who is long retired the Internet provides opportunity for all.

There are quite a number of highlights in this Podcast interview (Transcript also below) – information on Video Marketing, Squeeze Pages, Pay Per Click, Adwords, CPA offers, Affiliate Marketing, Clickbank and Google Trends to name just some – but I think Adam’s reply to my last question (Any last little bit of advice?) is in fact the biggest take-away in this interview. One of the main reasons people don’t become successful online is because they never start, a lot of what we do is a system that anyone can and should copy!

If someone says, “There’s no way, you’ll never make money online, everything’s a scam online, blah blah blah, they’re lying. You don’t have to listen to what other people says – trust me, I went through that day in and day out with my friends and stuff. They did not believe that I could make money online, and then as soon as I did, I think their jaws dropped to the ground. So JUST GO FOR IT!

OK, I know that has been said so many times before here – but really it cannot be said enough. I was fortunate, my family was very supportive of my online career and being self employed, but I just like you had plenty of people sneer at me, try to poke fun of me – especially when I set up my RetireAt21.com website.

Have the ultimate revenge – Laugh All The Way To The Bank!

On a very personal aside – I was anything but an A-Grade Student at School but my Mom recently bumped into one of my former school teachers who apparently is now following my online career. I think to be fair, I frustrated that teacher and there must have been days when she teared her hair out over me – but she did tell my mom she always knew I would be an entrepreneur. For those that don’t know, I was the School Tycoon – selling Pokemon cards amongst other things.

So as you can see – Success is not only about laughing all the way to the bank.

Like myself Adam has been a little naughty in this Internet Career (ask him about Dirty Laundry) – but the amazing thing I find about so many successful Internet Entrepreneurs is how they just keep trying – until something eventually works! Adam is one of those – plus he has had a fair amount of fun along the way – as you might expect from a Californian Teenager.

There are lessons here for everyone – not matter what your age or what level of success you have had up to now.

This Podcast is a great listen – I just listened to a play back and I am quite proud of what we managed to cover here.

Enjoy and as always, I look forward to your comments.

To Our Success

Michael

PS: I have used this quote before – but it is one definitely worth repeating — and especially worth noting for those of us who are afraid to TAKE ACTION:

Action Diminishes Fear, Action Creates Success

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Adam Horwitz Interview Transcript

Michael Dunlop: Michael Dunlop from IncomeDiary.com, and today I’m with Adam Horwitz, and he’s an 18-year-old young entrepreneur who runs two six-figure businesses and has a great story. And hopefully today we’re going to share some great tips with you guys about how you can be online and start making money. So welcome, Adam.

Adam Horwitz: Hey, what’s up?

Michael: Hey. So all right, I first want to just quickly touch on your first online business, because it was really entertaining listening to you the other night. Let’s quickly run over your parties Website and how that one went.

Adam: All right. Well, when I first started, I was about 15, and there was actually this Website that started up at school about – it was called “Dirty Laundry,” and it talked about all the gossip of the kids around the school. It got banned pretty much within three days of starting, but all the kids went to it, and they loved it. It was like a blog setup. And so I thought that I had – when it went and stopped – I have no idea why it stopped – of course it was the legal purposes. But I decided to start up my own one that was kind of a twist, but the legal version. And I started putting up parties, when parties were going to be in Los Angeles, because that’s where I’m from, and just telling people stuff about events and all that.

But it kind of got out of hand eventually because I’d have 800 people show up to a house where it would be like a closed party for only like 20 friends, and then another 400 people would show up at another house where the parents would only be there because the party was supposedly canceled two hours before, and I would get all these phone calls and just go crazy from that. So I had to stop that pretty quickly, but it was fun while it lasted.

Michael: Sounds wicked. So after that, you did another Website and you played around with a couple of other ideas for making money. But I understand you started making some real money when you played with PPC, pay-per-click, and affiliate marketing. And one thing is you started selling chicken coops, I believe.

Adam: Yeah. Well, when I first started with affiliate marketing, I was just researching… well, originally I went to StomperNet with my father as a guest, and that kind of opened the doors to me to see that there is potential out there for making money online. I hadn’t really learned much when I was there, because I was kind of just like listening to what everyone had to say and I was just kind of absorbing everything into my head, because this was all new to me. So then I came home and I tried to set up some PPC campaigns, and I tried about four or five and I failed miserably. For the first ones, I lost a few hundred bucks. But then I came across chicken coops, and I went to Google Trends, and I saw that for some reason, people were looking for chicken coops at the time. And I was like, “Who would buy that?” But anyway, I just went for it. I set up a campaign, and i was able to start making money from that from the day I set it up. So that was kind of an eye-opener to me.

Michael: And so is that where you’d recommend anyone looking to find their hot market, is to go to Google Trends?

Adam: Well, when I first started – yeah, I went to Google Trends. Well, I first went to keywords, the Google Adwords keyword thing, and then I would just look up different keywords and see if there were a lot of advertisers in that market or whatever. Pretty much the basics, what any newbie does. From there I would just type it in on Google Trends, and it’s like a little graph thing, and if it’s going up, I assumed that more people were searching for it, which means more buyers. And that’s how I kind of thought, “Well, maybe I should give this one a try.” And it actually worked. So that was quite a good little secret I learned there.

Michael: Great. And what should – so many people are really looking into pay-per-click and affiliate marketing. What’s your biggest tip for anybody who is new and starting and sort of at the same position that you were when you were starting?

Adam: I think a lot of people’s struggle is they set up like eight different campaigns and they let each campaign get around 20 clicks. And then they say, “Well, I haven’t made any money or anything.” But I always say to myself that you ought to at least get one campaign going before you start other ones, and the one campaign, you have to at least get it to 100 clicks, because most products will receive about a one percent conversion. So if you just do a bunch of different products and they’re only getting 20 clicks, you’re not going to make a sale for any of them.

You have to just focus on one and get that up to 100 clicks, and then hopefully you’ll make a sale around there, and then you can expand it as long as you’re breaking even and making a profit. And then if you’re not you should stop that one and try a different one.

Michael: And because you have to buy so many clicks, do you recommend that you go to the higher-priced type product because… If it’s so low and you’re spending all the money on clicks, it wouldn’t work out, yes?

Adam: Yeah. Well, when I promote products and it’s actually funny because first started, the first product that I promoted was $10 commission, and I had no idea at the time that you really did need a higher product. I thought you could just make sales instantly off AdWords and all that, and that was not true. And I lost a lot of money there. So you really need to look for products that are – I love to think of products that are over $30 commission, so they can at least cover it, because I – and also, I don’t really spend that much on keywords. I try to spend as little as possible. So I maybe spend around 23 cents, 25 cents per click, and even though you’re not at the top, you’re still going to get the same amount of clicks as getting at the top, but it’s just going to be over a slower time period. But you always still make the same amount of money. I mean, it’s just going to be slower and you’re not wasting as much. And if it doesn’t work, then you’re not wasting as much money at all. So…

Michael: All right. Great. So, like a lot of people, once you learn how to do something, there’s a great opportunity then to teach it and make a lot of money. All right. I know you’ve set up a Website called Tycoon Cash Flow where you pretty much take everyone through how you’ve gone with pay-per-click and affiliate marketing. I really want to go through what you did then, how you’re having such great success. So firstly, what would you recommend to people, anyone who wants to create a product, and preferably quickly?

Adam: Well, I think to create a quick product, the best way to do it is through video. You just buy a program that you can record the screen and you can talk into it just like you’re talking, and I’m talking into the computer right now. And you just talk and record the screen and show them what you did to be successful, pretty much. That’s all people want to see. They want to see step-by-step how you did it. They don’t want to read a lot, they want to watch you talk about how you did it, and they can pause it and follow your steps and all that. That’s definitely the quickest way, I think, too.

Rather than writing out pages and pages and pages of an e-book, I think it’s much quicker to just do a quick video tutorial

Michael: Do you think people don’t mind? Typically a lot of products are just text and images. Do you think they don’t mind that it can be all covered in a few videos, or do you think they even prefer to have a few videos instead of a big, long e-book?

Adam: For my market, I kind of go for the younger crowd, my age. I’m trying to help a lot of kids my age so they don’t have to work at fast food places or they don’t have to go get minimum wage. I want to show them that it is possible to make money online. So, for them, I know they don’t want to sit in front of the computer and just read an eBook. I wouldn’t want to do that. I think of them like me. I would want to watch something. Just like you watch TV, or just like you watch YouTube videos. You watch it and then it’s just much easier to implement things. And it gets your attention. If you’re fun and laid back and stuff, they can relate better to you and it’s just a better connection. And it actually gets them motivated to make a change and start something.

Michael: All right, that’s cool.

Adam: Yeah, well when I first started we weren’t getting much traffic. What I did with my Tycoon Cashflow Website, I did with a partner of mine actually, who is also a little older, he’s 21. His name is Derrick. But we actually didn’t really have much traffic when we first started it. And we couldn’t figure out ways to get traffic. And then, all of a sudden, I was like let’s try to figure out if we could get traffic through going into contact logs and stuff, and seeing if they want to put an affiliate link up on their banner on their Website. From there, that resulted in getting 10 gravity. And then they all got up to 20 gravity. Then when that happened, we started to get people from ClickBank starting to pick us up. And inside of the course, and I think this is important for any course, you should have some viral thing going on.

Derrick and I actually gave away a free course, which is called the Enigma Marketing Method, which we still offer now. And it teaches people how to make money through affiliate marketing, through articles, through SEO’s, search engine optimization, and all that. And inside we used our product as an example.

So a lot of people took our product and re-promoted it. And that upped the gravity of two. And from there it was just a snowball effect and then more people started promoting it.

Michael: Nice. And for those who are listening and don’t understand what gravity is and Clickbank. Would you like to quickly explain that to them?

Adam: Clickbank is an online digital outlet with over 10,000 products that are all digital. So that means you just download them to your computer or you just get access to members area. But you can promote any product that gets accepted onto Clickbank. Which means you can become an affiliate to any of them. And they all offer, I don’t know one Clickbank for audit, that doesn’t offer 50 percent or more commission for the affiliates. Because they’re digital. There is no other money that the owners have to pay for. It’s all done automatically. So they can afford to give out that high of a commission.

But it’s actually interesting, because there’s like 9,000 or 10,000 products on ClickBank, and within those three months of getting Tycoon Cashflow up, we were able to get in the top 100 products on Clickbank.

Michael: Wow!

Adam: Just from Gravity wise. Just from that viral side of it where people would re-promote us inside the product. And just the snowball effect. It was very cool. It went quickly.

Michael: Presumably that’s because you had a great sales pitch or a great product to sell. What do you ultimately put down to the success of the product?

Adam: The thing is, the sales page isn’t like super advanced. It isn’t super crazy and modern looking. It’s just very simple. I think with any sale page now, people are so used to watching video that you need to have some sort of video on there. My sales page is all based around video. So when someone comes they watch. They see me talking to them. I kind of get them through the whole process. It’s me showing them things through video. It’s all video on my sales page. There is just very little writing. I think the video helps the conversion. It helps people feel more comfortable to buy. Because they feel like they can connect to you and that you’re a real person. Unlike if they just see writing, they’re like: “How do I don’t know this person is really real” and all that. So I think the video is a big help.

Michael: We have a lot of young readers, especially from RetireAt21.com, and they always send this into me. What would you say to them regarding being young in Internet marketing? Because I know when I started, a lot of people didn’t really want to listen to us because we’re young.

Adam: Yeah, I know.

Michael: What do you say to other young entrepreneurs who may be faced with that problem?

Adam: It’s changing. I mean the young people are going to just keep getting more and more into the whole Internet world. The older people are going to eventually fade out. And now all of a sudden the younger ones are going to come into the picture. I think it’s only going to get better for us. Trust me, I went through it too. Even as it went on and on, if you could deliver good content, and you really know what you’re talking about and they can see it in you and you’re passionate about it and all that, then they’ll believe you.

They also like it when you’re young. They think it’s interesting how a young person was able to pull it off. And you can even use it as a marketing advantage for yourself. “I’m this age and I was able to do this.” I think that’s also a benefit of being young.

Michael: Yeah I have seen change in the recent years. I think especially being young went from a negative to now a positive, I believe. You mentioned earlier that you actually have a business partner. What would you say to other people out there who may want to have business partner? Should they? How to go about it?

Adam: Well I actually met him at Stompernet. We were the two youngest people there so we kind of mixed from that. I think if you find someone that you really think knows what they’re talking about and if you like them as a person, then go for it. Because when you have a business partner, it’s much easier to separate. You don’t have everything on your shoulders. It’s a lot easier to just get things pumping. It’s a lot faster to get a course going and stuff like that. I enjoy having a business partner.

Michael: And you never cool out? You never worry that they won’t pick up the slack?

Adam: I mean there are times but you just have to talk to them. They’re normal people just like you. You just have to speak to them and say: “Look this is what’s going on. We have to do this, we have to do that. If you’re not into it, then maybe we should go our different ways.” But you really should figure out before you even get started with that partner, if that’s going to happen. Because you can tell with people. If you guys don’t mix from the beginning then it’s not going to work.

Michael: All right. Cool. Since launching Tycoon Cashflow, you’ve also bought a new product: CellPhone Treasure. A long time, people being one hit wonder. They’ve done it once but they haven’t done it again. I understand that site is another successful Website where you sell another product. Does it get easier with your second product?

Adam: Oh, yeah. It was 20 times easier, because first of all you’ve done it before, so you kind of can look back at what you did on the first one and say, “All right, I did that, I did that. How did it work out?” You answer questions. People ask emails, you answer them. You say, “All right.” And then you have more insight and you have a better understanding of what to do next. And then on top of that you have a huge email list – or a pretty big email list, at least – and then you have all your affiliates that have all opted in. So then you just say, “I’m sending this product out on this day. This is what it is. Go check it out, and if you mind, blasting it to your list as well.” It’s all about, really, networking. If you can get a good list of affiliates, you’re pretty much set for the next product you do, because they do the work for you.

Michael: All right. So your main sales page isn’t really – it’s a squeeze page, I believe. You don’t see the sales page until you opt-in, is that right?

Adam: Yeah, you first opt in. And then you go to the next page where there’s another video of me speaking to you and talking to you a little bit more. And then it says you can get in, you can buy now and get access to the members’ area. So that’s – I just like that whole thing, because I feel like when people come straight to the page and they see a price. Especially if it’s one of those longs sales pages which I’m not into, that’s one thing. But I wouldn’t even go that way from when I started because I like everything to be small and to the point, and so everyone can see one thing on the one page they’ve looked at instead of having to scroll down, like hours and hours of scrolling down.

So I just give them two steps: a video, opt-in, another video, talk a little bit more about it, and then buy now, then get access to the members’ area, and then I come up, back right up with another video of me. Once I’m in the members area and I’m walking through it, it’s pretty much me the whole way through helping them out. That’s what I try to go for.

Michael: And what if they don’t buy once they’ve opted in? Do you do anything after that to try and convince them to buy?

Adam: Yeah. Well, what I do is I actually send them – follow-up them or autorespond to them with a 50 percent off – because I’m like, “Look, times are tough right now. I know that not everyone can afford something, but you should definitely give it a try because I don’t want you to be backing out because you don’t have enough money to make money, you know what I mean? So I try to cut them the best deal as possible so that they can actually get started in finding change for themselves, and I also send them some free courses with the Enigma marketing method, and also I have something called Boot Camp, which is a seven day course that gets sent to them as well. And I try to help them make money there, and then once they make money there, then they’ll go for the course and they’ll have money to purchase it.

So it’s kind of a… Then if they don’t purchase it inside of those two or three courses I give them, that’s the viral effect. So even if I don’t make money out of them or they don’t take action and buy the course, then at least they’re just making money in other ways by promoting our course.

Michael: That’s very clever.

Adam: Yeah.

Michael: So apart from your two products, you also have a blog. Something I’m a huge fan of, having blogs. How do you find having a blog as – do you use it for promoting a product, building a personal brand? How do you use it, and what’s your top tip for readers?

Adam: I really think that a blog is very, very important, especially if you’re trying to build a relationship and you’re trying to brand yourself to your readers or to your customers or whatever. Because by them seeing you and your sales page, if you have a video there, you’re pretty much talking about- I mean, you’re trying to make them buy the product, so you can’t really be that personal and that laid back and stuff. I try to be the best that I can in my videos because I don’t want to be, like, an up-front, pushy salesman, but on your blog I feel like you can really let loose and be yourself and just share what you really are all about and all of what you do on a daily basis, and I think it’s a good place to just have be like your home where you can really be yourself to everyone and where they can communicate with you and comment. It’s just a fun place to have, you know?

Michael: Yes. I understand you’re still at college, but making money online sort of gives a lifestyle that most don’t – what would you describe your Internet lifestyle like?

Adam: Well, compared to a lot of my friends, they are also – they’re all in college, too, and maybe they do babysitting jobs or they work at a fast food place. They work, somewhere they make minimum wage, and I make a lot more than that. So I’m able to buy a lot more things. Like, I don’t waste my money. I’m trying to save up because I want to build equity for myself, and I have a lot of plans to- my goal eventually is to come out with a service, kind of like a social networking service, that- I have a few ideas in my head but I need the money to get started, and that’s what I am striving towards, because it is- I am looking for investors and all that.

So I’m saving as much money as possible, but I do spend on computers and stuff to help my business grow and all that kind of thing. And then TVs and my video games, and I just bought a car recently, a hybrid so I don’t waste gas. So I’m not, like, super spendy, but I do buy a certain amount of things that my friends wouldn’t necessarily be able to buy themselves, you know?

Michael: Naturally. What if it was possible there was actually such a things as a time machine and you could travel back? What would you do differently?

Adam: Well, if I could travel back, I’d travel back and start Facebook. No, but if I could travel back, I don’t think I would do anything differently, because I think I’ve learned a lot on the way, and if I didn’t do what I did and I didn’t start all my Websites and I didn’t fail all those times. I wouldn’t be who I am now. And I think with failing and getting back up and trying it again, failing and trying it again, it kind of builds up something inside of you that you’re not scared of failing anymore, and I think that’s huge. I don’t think people should assume that they’re going to make money within the first thing they do. I think you have to try a few things, like I had to try a few things, and eventually I hit it. I made it through. But you just don’t want to give up – I mean, that’s the main thing – and I was very close to giving up, but I just kept going for because I really – it was a goal of mine to be able to make money online. So you just have to find it out for yourself, give yourself a goal and go for it, and you’ll make it eventually. You’ve just got to go for it.

Michael: Hmm. That’s really cool. What’s the best advice you’ve been given while being an Internet entrepreneur?

Adam: Do what you love. I think that’s very important. You can come out with a bunch of products and stuff. You can come out with products that you don’t know anything about, and you can get writers and stuff. You can get outsourcing, get writers to do it, or get people making videos. But at the end of the day, do you really want to own a product, do you really want to sell something that you don’t like? That you don’t really believe in? I feel like if you’re passionate about something, you should start up something on that and start up a course on that. Something you’re passionate – start up a blog on that. And I think doing what you love is very, very important with anything, but I think especially online.

There’s a saying, “You’re the worst boss.” You could go work for someone else, but then if you’re – you can come back and work for yourself, but if you’re still not doing anything that you like, then you’re the worst boss of yourself. Then you’re just back to working. So I don’t think of this as work. This is fun, this is what I’m doing. And I like to get on a computer and set things up and set up new Websites and all that. So that’s my thing.

Michael: That’s great. So many people have probably failed because they just don’t enjoy what they’re doing. Everyone should probably do what they enjoy, then.

Adam: Yeah. And with the opportunities out there now, there’s no reason that with the Internet the way it is and with social media and with YouTube and Twitter and ways to create Websites for free and blogging, there’s no way that anyone should do something that they don’t enjoy. The opportunity is out there, you just have to to for it and really hustle and if you do that, you’ll make it and you’ll be above the game with what you love. That will be the best thing.

Michael: All right. Well I’m sure everyone who is listening to this who hasn’t yet created a product is dying to know how they can go off today and at least start. Could you just briefly break down what you’d tell them to do right now? What should they be doing straightaway to get this ball rolling?

Adam: Well, first of all figure out what you want to create your product on, and hopefully it’s something that you enjoy, after what I just said. From there you just start- if you want to go the screen recording way, you just get a screen recorder, which is Camtasia, and there’s ScreenFlow for Mac. Camtasia also just came up with one for Mac which I really like. And you just start it: start your course. Start teaching people what you love to do. Once you package it all up, once you make all the videos, then you just set up a simple Web page of you talking, maybe in a video. And say, “Here, opt in,” or whatever, and you send them to the same layout that I have – and that was successful for me, so I don’t know why it wouldn’t be successful for anyone else – and then you just go from there. Go contact some blogs, ask them to put advertisements up from your product that you’ve created. Then put it onto ClickBank so that other people can promote it.

I mean, it’s pretty simple. You’ve just got to start. I mean, the thing is that people feel overwhelmed because they just think about it: “Oh, my, that sounds like so much work.” But when you just do it and when you just start it, then it’ll just go, and once you start it running – well for me, at least, once you start going and once you start really pumping things out, it just goes very quickly. And that’s how I feel it goes. [laughs]

Michael: Wicked. I’ve got a five quick questions to end this interview.

Michael: Firstly, what do you like most about the Internet?

Adam: I like how easy it is to earn a passive income, and how I can be sleeping and I can be playing video games and I can be sitting in math class – which is dreadful, and I hate math so much. But I’m sitting in math class, and I can be making money. I think that’s why I like the Internet so much. It’s also so easy to get your opinion and to get your ideas out to the world, unlike having to hand out business cards and having to go talk people personally. With the Internet, you can put up a video on YouTube and potentially everyone in the world can watch that video if they decided to watch it and if they had Internet access. So I mean the opportunity is just insane. 10 years ago that wouldn’t have been possible, but now we’re right in the time which – the gold rush time, I like to say – and everyone’s rushing to get their spot, and everyone’s trying to really figure out what they want to do online, because anyone can do anything. No matter what age you are, no matter how old you are, or if you’re older, if you’re younger, if you’re 10. I mean, even a 10 year-old can pull something off. It’s just – the opportunity is huge.

Michael: And what do you like least about the Internet?

Adam: Hmm. That’s interesting. What do I like least? I don’t think I dislike anything that much. Well, once you get out there, you’re out there. You can’t really hide with the Internet. You’re kind of like a lifetime documentary of yourself. Once you put something out, once you put a Facebook picture up, once you put your own Twitter up, it’s kind of all adding to a documentary of your life, and that’s going to pretty much be there forever. Even if you delete it, it will still somehow be out there. So just thinking about that, it’s kind of – it’s not scary, but it’s kind of just something that you need to just keep in mind, that you’re always kind of leaving something behind you, and you need to make sure that you do the right things and not pull off something wrong. Because if you do something wrong, then it’s a little hard to pull yourself out of something like that.

Michael: All right, I completely agree. And you’re actually the first person to ever mention that, and it’s a really good point.

Adam: [laughs]

Michael: If the Internet hadn’t existed, what do you think you’d be doing right now?

Adam: I have no idea. I think I was just born at the right time. That’s it. I don’t know. I started out with the home business thing at my school, selling gum to make some extra money, and I was kicked out a few times of classrooms and stuff because you’re not allowed to have gum at school because it gets stuck on the ground and all that. So I don’t know, maybe I’d still be selling gum. I hope not, but… I was just here, I just found the Internet at the right time, and I’m just glad that I’m able to be here right now while things are really exploding. That’s that.

Michael: And who do you look up to? Do you model yourself on anybody?

Adam: I really like Gary Vaynerchuk. I watch his stuff all the time. Even though I’m 18, I watch him on library TV, the wine Website, and I just like – not for the wine part, but I just watch it to see how he does it, and I really aspire to how he is able to pull that off and really build a community on that. And he’s one of them. I also like Frank Curran. When I first started, I was watching Frank learn videos and all that. So I mean, there are a few marketers out there that I watch. That’s really who I look up to, and I’m like, “That’s what I want to be like when I’m older. That’s what I want to do.” So that’s that, I guess.

Michael: That’s really cool. So, any last little bit of advice before you go?

Adam: Yeah. I guess just go for it. No one should be holding you back. If someone says, “There’s no way, you’ll never make money online, everything’s a scam online, blah blah blah, they’re just saying lies to you,” or whatever, this is for you. You don’t have to listen to what other people are – trust me, I went through that day in and day out with my friends and stuff. They did not believe that I could make money online, and then as soon as I did, I think their jaws dropped to the ground. So I think just go for it. Do what you believe is best, and just have fun with it. To me, that’s pretty much all. Just really have fun with it.

Michael: Great advice. All right, thank you very much, Adam.

Adam: Any time.

ADAMS WEBSITES:
http://www.tycooncashflow.com (Watch the Introduction Video – look how Adam connects with people, builds rapport)
http://www.DudeIHateMyJob.com – a Course on making money blogging.
– Brand New Way To Make Money With Mobile!

The post Adam Horwitz Interview, 6 Figure Secrets Of A Teenage Affiliate Marketer appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Namely:

How Do I Get Products For FREE to Review On My Blog?

I have already done an interview for IncomeSup, but today I want to give you my complete blueprint to review blogging.

How To Get Products For FREE To Review On Your Blog

With the recent fire from the FTC in the United States requiring full disclosures from bloggers on their relationships with firms in regards to product reviews – product reviewing on blogs has gotten its 5 minutes of fame. The thing is that in reality, legitimate product reviewing on blogs and other media outlets has been going on since the beginning, and they can be a tremendous source of traffic, subscribers and revenue for your blog.

If you take a minute and scour your favorite blogs on the web, you’ll find a very high percentage of those blogs review a product related to their niche periodically. As you look around, you might find that your favorite blogs are reviewing products a lot more than you originally thought! Before we jump into the how…let’s look at the why on both sides of the fence.

Why Do Bloggers Review Products On Their Blogs?

As a blogger, this is an easy question for you to answer, but lets break it down to the basics. Why do you want to post product reviews on your blog?

Useful, Quality Blog Content – Product reviews are a source of quality content for your blog. Your readers want to know what you think about products and services that relate to your niche. Your blog is their resource for topic related information, and – by providing this resource – you can assist your readers by providing useful information that impacts buying decisions. By offering product reviews on your blog, you are expanding the resourcefulness of your content for your readers.

Search Engine Gold – For quite sometime now, I have been calling product reviews search engine gold for a reason. Properly written product reviews can bring a massive amount of new visitors to your blog. By writing product reviews, you are targeting long and short tail keyword strings that have very low competition. Over time, you will create a massive library of content that is extremely search engine friendly. On top of that, product reviews are attractive link bait as other bloggers, forum users and general internet emailers will link to your review articles as a resource for information.

Increased Blog Revenue – Product reviews are still the number one way to increase affiliate revenue on blogs. Want to increase your affiliate sales outside of the pennies you are generating from banner ad placement? Review that product on your site and include your affiliate link at the bottom of your review to increase conversions. Little tip: Honest reviews that outline both the good and bad on a product convert at a much higher rate than glorified advertisements.

Why Do Companies Give Bloggers Product To Review?

Now we know why you want to review product on your blog, but why do manufactures, firms and service providers actually want to give you their product to review for nothing (or even for a fee!)?

Cheap, Long Lasting Advertising and Promotion – Once a newspaper or magazine hits the newsstand, you see the ads and then throw that mag away until the next issue comes out. That advertisement is only good until the next issue. With the web, your product review stays on your blog unless you decide to shut it down. The company that provides you with the review product get the increased benefit of long term promotion by giving you something to review on your blog. Future readers will find the article in the archives, search engine users will find your review in the results and you will refer back to your product reviews over time. For the company in question, you – as the blogger – provide more value with a product review over the larger media competition.

Did I Mention Cheap? – What many bloggers fail to realize is the true cost of the review product provided to the blogger. For the company involved, their true manufacturing cost is the cost to them. What did it cost the company to product the product for review? Not nearly what it costs off the shelf for the typically retail buyer. When you convert this to software and services, all of their costs are in the back end development, so they are even more willing to work with bloggers to get the word out because the true cost is an email!

Social Media Is Changing The Retail Environment – If someone would have told you 10 years ago that Amazon.com would be the largest book retailer in the world and the iTunes music store would be the largest music retailer in the world, would you have believed them? The online world has completely changed how people shop and make purchasing decisions. Firms, companies and service providers know this and they want to tap into your audience. Free review product is their ticket to the big show that converts into increased sales.

How Do I Get Free Products To Review On My Blog?

Unless you are an internet hot shot who already has a huge amount of credibility online, you are going to have to cold call, email and fax your perspective review product companies. For many bloggers, this can be a nerve racking road as they have little experience in the corporate sales and marketing world. Here are a couple of tips to get you going…

Research Before Contacting – If you are just starting out in review blogging, do some research and see which companies in your niche will be receptive to giving out free product for review purposes. Check out other blogs in your niche and look for patterns. Is there one or two companies that seem to have reviews on every site? Contact those companies first with your idea and try to look for one of their products that is not well represented online (not a lot of reviews). This will be a great starting point to get things rolling and increase your chances of success on the first go ’round.

Contact Perspective Companies By Email – Email rules the world at this point in time, so you are going to have to research the company and find a valid email address. Many times, this email address will go to a default inbox, so it is essential that you cut the fluff at the beginning of the email and get straight to the point to insure it gets on the right computer screen. When contacting companies about review product, 100% honesty about traffic, subscribers and expectations is essential to success. With a little research, web savvy companies are going to be able to tell if you are stretching the truth and your credibility is shot. Even small blogs can get a ton of review product if they are creative and stick to the honest truth.

Do Not Limit Yourself To Email – Especially with larger companies, your email can get trashed without even being read. If the companies website lists contact information for sales and marketing professionals within the firm, contact those specific people via fax or snail mail with what you would like to accomplish on your blog. Most bloggers are not doing this and it will show your dedication to targeted results.

Stay In Contact – Once you have reached an agreement, stay in contact with updates. Send an email when you receive the product, when you finish the review process, once the review is posted and a follow up email with educated results. It is your job as the blogger to keep them informed, so take that part of your job seriously.

Reviewing Tips That Equal Affiliate Conversions

There is a misconception among bloggers and other review naysayers that there are glorified advertisements on the web to convert into sales even when the product is terrible. The truth…those glorified advertisement convert at a rate that is much lower than an honest review from a blogger. As a blogger, the credibility of your content is everything. New and old readers are going to absorb your content and present their own educated opinions based upon how you presented the facts. If you throw up a review that is blatantly positive in an attempt to increase revenue on your blog, the reader is going to see straight through it and leave your site (without clicking your affiliate link).

The #1 best way to increase affiliate sales is to be completely honest and fact based in your reviewing.

Spell Out The Perfect Consumer For The Product In Question – A perfect way to convert visitors into affiliate income is to spell out exactly who you think the product would be perfect for! Is there a certain group in your niche that would greatly benefit from that product while another might not see any benefit? Lay that out for them. Your readers want to know if that product will work to fill their needs…so tell them!

Show The Good And Bad – There is no such thing as a perfect product. By specifically stating the good and bad points, you are showing that there is also room for improvement. The side affect to this is that companies eat this information up as constructive feedback to make their product better in future revisions. By stating what you think the high and low points are…you are adding value to your review process.

Keep Things Fact Based – Your opinion is your opinion, but it needs to be based off of fact. If you throw up a review that is a bunch of opinion with no reason why…you are going to have a difficult time with review blogging. Every one of your opinions on the product need to be backed up with facts.

Review Blogging – The Big Picture

Review blogging is a great resource to companies within a niche, the blogger and the readers when done correctly. As with most things in life, when you stay honest and work hard at completing a task, good things result. The reason for the FTC disclosure regulations is from black hat techniques that are completely monetary focused by questionable internet marketers. As a blogger, you should want to continue to provide valuable resources for your readers and your niche. By providing 100% honest product reviews, you are achieving just that.

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If you have not already done so then you should check out the recent announcement by the FTC in the USA that Amateur Bloggers must Disclose Freebies when doing a review or be fined (Actually, there is much more to it than this one point)

I know many of you are thinking, well I am not in USA, so this does not apply to me. My view is that is is good practice to have Full Disclosure in any case no matter where up are located.

Here is helpful link that goes into more details:
FTC Tells Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined

I should also here do my usual Legal and Financial disclaimer – namely, I am not qualified to provide such legal or financial advice, anything you read here is merely discussion, you must do your own due diligence before making a decision.

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