Time for a weekend mini post Social Marketing
Since I do have a life, well somewhat. I will be making a weekly mini-post these post are to help bring quick burst of traffic to your site or sales page. The post will be short and sweet but the steps are well worth implementing.
Now that you have your article campaign going in full force, and you have a written some quality informative articles. You will want to submit the links to your articles on sites like Digg.com, there are 100′s even myspace. Let all your myspace, facebook, pownce and twitter friends know about your articles. This can bring a lot of traffic to your articles and ultimatly to your sales page.
This is a great option to build a quick jolt of traffic, or even get your site crawled quickly. If you post on digg a link to your site, sales page, or article it is usually picked up by google in as little as 30 mins. Below is a list to some of the most popular social networking sites.
Now that you have chosen your product
Now that you have chosen your affiliate product, it is time to do a little preperation before you start promoting.
First you need to learn how to cloak your affiliate links, this is easy I use a process called php redirect. Here is how you do it, you first open up a blank text document. Now the easy part, just copy and past the code below, insert your hoplink and save the document as a .php file.
<?php
header(‘Location:http://insert your hoplink here’);
?>
Now you just simply upload this file to your web server. If you do not have a web host check out Flux Services They offer great hosting packages starting at just $9.95 a month. You want to use this link in all of your marketing methods. This will help to protect you from affiliate thief’s, it is not fool proof but it will help protect your hard work.
Now that you know how to cloak your hoplinks, lets find out how you are going to promote your product/service. This is where it gets lengthy, so everyday I am going to post a new method of promoting your products. There are some methods that work better than others, that is where your research that I described in the previous post comes in.
Today I am going to talk about the easiest way to get started where it will not cost you any money, but will require a bit of work on your part. As you may have noticed many of the publishers on clickbank have great sales pages. You can use this to your advantage by simply writing short articles, and submitting them to article directory sites like ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com. These articles do not have to be many pages, you are not writing a book. They must be informative and be an article that someone would want to take the time to read, and what you really want re-post your article on their site.
There are some basic things you will want to include in your article. One is a hoplink to the product or service you are trying to sell. The other is a brief bio about yourself tell your readers why they should listen to you. Explain in your Bio what qualifies you to write the article you have written. Remember you want to cloak your hoplink if you don’t feel comfortable cloaking links on your own you can use Covertlinks to protect your affiliate links, it is the easiest software I have found to cloak links.
Now that you have written your article you want to post it to one of the article sites, and promote your articles in forum post and even social networking sites, like digg.com and even your friends on myspace. One very important thing to remember don’t be a spammer, be helpful in your forum post and add the link to your signature. This will gain you respect in your chosen niche.
I bet you think you are done right? Wrong. You want to write on average of 2-3 articles everyday. Don’t just change the title of your article, re-write the article. Even chose another product to write about. Everything is really about numbers. If only 10 people read your single article your chances of getting a sale is slim but if 10, 20 even 1000 people read one of your 50 articles your chances of success have increased significantly.
Finding the right product to promote
This is where it all begins, you must decide on a product, or service to promote. You cannot promote a product if you do not have a product to promote. Stop! don’t just jump in and say hey that product looks good and start putting your hard earned time into it, do some research. There are many resources out there for you to research the need for your product, or even the competition. I like to start with search engines. If you search on say google for your product, you will see advertisements called google adwords around your search results. This can be a good indication of how well your product may do. If there are a lot of adword ads for your product or a similar product the someone is making money. If there are only a few, then maybe there is not as big a demand but maybe still a market for the product you have chosen. Also make use of forums, and news groups in your research. If there is a community build around a product or service then there may be a demand.
There are some software that is available to help you in your research and below I will list a few. Remember one thing if you are not excited about your product or service it will show in your marketing efforts, so a good place to start your search for the perfect product is find a niche you love, and know about. Everyone has a hobby rather it is model building or making money, this is where you can start your search. If your hobby is video games then search clickbank marketplace for video games. This is your starting point, but there are some factors you may want to consider before making the decision.
If you are using clickbank you will notice that in the marketplace there is the option to sort by: I ususally choose gravity, this is really the amount of sales the product has had. The higher gravity means that the product has alot of affiliates and may mean alot of competition. I like to choose an item that has a lower gravity, but not to low. I usually choose a product with a gravity over 50% but lower than 150%. This does not mean that you cannot not make money with a product with a high gravity.
Here is your homework for the first day. Find a product, and do some research. Below is some software to help you on your quest to finding the right product, or niche.
Learning affiliate marketing is easier than you think
For those of you that do not know what affiliate marketing is, here is a brief explenation. The process is very simple. You sign up to be an affiliate for a website for example clickbank.com, then you choose one or more of the thousands of products listed on the site. Then you simply promote your product, this is where it gets tough. Don’t woorry I will be here to help you as your make your first sale. Everyday I am going to post a new tip, suggestion and even some free resources that you can use to market your affiliate product.
There are affiliate marketers out there that are making 1000′s a month, and all with very little investment and some dedication. Thats right there is easy money to be made but you need to be dedicated to succedd. The steps are easy but they do take some work on your behalf but the rewards are well worth the time.
