Step 2 – Getting Your Affiliate Link

Jul 15
Posted by Carol Estep Filed in affiliate marketing, list building

An Affiliate Link is bascially a website address like www.createyourfirstdomain.com however affiliate links include information about who is responsible for that link, most importantly you, the affiliate. If a customer clicks on a link you’ve posted and ends up buying the product you end up getting credit for the sale and receiving a commission. The affiliate link lets the website owner know who to reward for promoting his product.

Let’s talk about Clickbank links, since they seem to be the easiest to promote for the beginner.  You will need a Clickbank ID when you register.  It’s up to you what ID you create.  You will use that ID from clickbank no matter how many affiliate products you decide to promote. There are two ways to create personalized Affiliate Links…at clickbank an affiliate link is known as a Hoplink.

The most common way is to create your Hoplink automatically using the Clickbank Marketplace. When you have found the product you want to promote, just click the ‘Promote’ button to the right of the product listing and it will generate your personal Hoplink. Then you can copy the Hoplink address by highlighting it and pushing the “Ctrl” button and “c” button on your keyboard.  Now, put your mouse in a  blank .txt notepad file and hold Ctrl and “v” together.  This will “paste” what you just copied into your new notes file.  Now you can save the file on your desktop. You can copy the Hoplink address and paste it anywhere you want to promote the product!

My Clickbank ID is 4045863.  So, an example of a clickbank Hoplink for me would be: http://4045863.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net <<<this is not a genuine link, just an example. If you decide to create your link manually to make the HopLink work, you just replace VENDOR with the vendor’s ClickBank nickname. Some ClickBank vendors will have their nickname listed on their product website if they have a page for affiliates.

As a final note! Be sure to TEST THE HOPLINK so you’ll be comissioned for every sale you make! To test your HopLink to make sure it’s working correctly, you can either enter your HopLink directly into your browser’s address bar and hit Enter, or click on your HopLink directly if you’ve already posted it somewhere online. Once you’re on the vendor’s website, click their Buy Now button so you’re taken to the ClickBank order form. If you scroll to the bottom of the order form, you should see [affiliate=yournickname]. Mine would look like [affiliate=4045863].

How to Promote an Affiliate Product with No List and No Traffic = Bliss?

Jan 16
Posted by Carol Estep Filed in list building


You ask, how can I promote this affiliate product if I have no list yet, and no traffic? This is a common question. If you’re a beginner to Internet Marketing usually you will have no list and no traffic. You want to immediately promote an affiliate product and get some $money$ coming in. Am I right? And you’re not sure how to get people to your new website. Right?

To be polite, but blunt, you’re looking at it from a backwards approach. The first and foremost thing you need to be focusing on is building your list of subscribers. The steps are simple but they must be followed in a certain order. You can have the best website and affiliate product in the world but if no one knows about it how can you sell anything?

You can’t. No way, nada. You need the list first. How you ask?

Sure a few people might stumble on your site from search engines but that doesn’t mean anything. You need is a steady stream of people to your website who are interested in your product. You must focus on building your list first. You build your list by having them opt in to your squeeze page, or on your blog etc. Anywhere you can put an opt-in form. Once you have this list of subscribers you can then send them to the affiliate products you want to promote. And yes, this can take some time. But with a little patience, and effort you will succeed! = Bliss :-)

You will be lost without a list. Period. Yes, there are other ways you can send bits of traffic to promote an affiliate product such as Pay Per Click etc., but to be successful in Internet Marketing you must have a large subscriber list. This is a given. To become good at Listbuilding, you will need to learn how. There are many ways to build your list of subscribers but the easiest approach is to put up a simple squeeze page. A squeeze page is a basic page that has an opt-in form on it, with a call to action asking the visitor to enter their name and email address. You are asking for one thing, for people to opt in. Once they opt in they are on your list and you are free to email them.

There are many ways to send traffic to a squeeze page. One of the fastest is by doing a teleseminar. Other ways include article marketing, blogging and pay per click. If this is beginning to sound confusing don’t despair. We can teach you everything you need to know in step by step videos over at http://www.CreateYourFirstDomain.com. My friend, Chris Farrell, has a membership site where we teach brand new beginners how to get started online in very easy step-by-step videos that even a child could understand! = Bliss :-)


Catering to the Wants and Needs of Potential Buyers

Oct 4
Posted by Carol Estep Filed in affiliate marketing

A lot has been said about list building and internet marketing. One thing most coaches leave out is finding out what your clients want and need . It’s actually probably the most important step when it comes to Online Marketing.

If you aren’t finding a need, you’re really not going to get very far in your efforts to make money online. This has to be done before product development, before marketing, before find an affiliate product, before anything. You have to be able to supply what people want and need. If you don’t, you’re wasting time and resources.

 Let’s say that it’s around March or April. You know that people are shopping for Easter Products at this time. You decide to launch an Easter based product, or made a special Easter sale. You realize that there are people on the Net with a want and money to spend. You provide the wanted item, and make money. That’s the essence of how to go about finding a need.

It’s all about target traffic. As I just said, you have people browsing the Net that are “just browsing,” and then you have people that are actually shopping. Obviously, you want the ones who are spending money. Finding what they want or need is the first part of targeting your traffic. You don’t care about the guy browsing, you want the guy ready to buy.

Of course, the process of finding a need is a bit more complicated than just knowing that Easter (or any holiday or special occasion) is coming up, so you should develop an Easter line. It takes a bit of market analysis. Let’s say that you have this brilliant idea for a launch. Let’s say that it’s a line of instruction manuals on how to do something specific.

The first thing you do in finding a need is condense this whole idea into as few words as possible. Now you can take this to your keyword tool. Plug your words into your keyword search tool and let’s see what happens. Your keyword tool will kick out every (more or less) current combination of your keyword and how often it got hit.

Based on this analysis, can you say that by doing this search that you’re finding a need? A want? If you’re not, perhaps there’s some variation on your keywords that will actually hit higher than your original version. It can be a boring process, but sticking through with it will pay off in the end.

Now that you’re done finding a need, you can begin making your instruction manuals, or finding an affiliate product to promote for whatever need you see out there. You can then move on to pricing and marketing and everything else. But this is how we begin.

Once you have the wants and needs of your potential clients, and have your manual, ebook, or product in place, you can start building your list of potential buyers=Bliss!

You Need an Autoresponder!

Sep 25
Posted by Carol Estep Filed in list building

First of all, if you’re a total ‘newbie’ you’re probably wondering what in the world is an autoresponder?  An autoresponder is a tool or email system that allows you to manage, organize and automate the process of collecting email addresses through opt-in and distributing information via email.  Most companies, including all of the best companies use autoresponders!  I use Aweber.com to handle my mailing lists because they are the most well-know autoresponder online and their features are wonderful = Bliss! They are one of the most highly respected companies known online. I highly recommend that you use them if you are serious about building your own mailing list.

Once you are signed up to an autoresponder service like Aweber you will have access to many of their services that include list building tools, you’ll be able to generate opt-in forms, tracking, analytics and even reports. You can simply create a new list, the paste the web form code on your web page, and and sit back and wait.  The autoresponder will do the rest.  You can send a series of emails that are sent out once a week for however many weeks you choose.  It’s very easy. All you have to do is create a follow-up sequence of email messages, save them in in your Aweber control panel, and each time a new visitor signs up to your mailing list they will be sent the emails, all staggered at intervals that you choose. The feature and benefits of using a service like Aweber, far out weigh the small fee = Bliss :-D

List Building for Creating Long-Term Relationships and Lifetime Income = Bliss!

Jul 18
Posted by Carol Estep Filed in list building

Email marketing to existing and prospective customers is one of the most important and powerful internet marketing techniques for creating long-term clients and lifetime income – bliss!  The potential that these lists provide us as affiliates and internet marketers is well…bliss!  If you’ve even been thinking about becoming an affiliate or internet marketer you should at least entertain the idea of building a list or at least understand what a list is and what it can do for you and your business.

Email marketing is exactly what it sounds like.  You use email to promote your products or website to potential clients.  If you’v ever made a sale without a list, have you ever wondered where your customer is?  Will he ever return to my site? Does he/she know of my other sites? Probably not.  Once your customer is gone, they are lost.  If only you could contact them again.  Would you be able to convince them that another one of your products or services is worth purchasing?  Maybe they would continue purchasing from you if they were happy with the first and second?  Here’s a hint…without email marketing and an autoresponder you’ll probably never know!  Email marketing allows you to create long-term business with long-term customers.  Bliss!  It allows you to fully monetize all of your website traffic.

Example:

Your Website (with built-in form)>>>Autoresponder>>>Send Email>>>$$$You Earn A Sale$$$>>>BLI$$