Strategic Marketing At Warp Speed

When 99% of Online Marketers are selling other people’s products, and 95% of them are only earning peanuts, it is very apparent that Affiliate Marketing is not as easy as it seems.

Affiliate Marketing IS a VERY lucrative business, but if you do not do it right, What can you possibly expect? Now, not doing it right and not knowing HOW to do it are two completely different things. Some affiliates prefer the lazy route, and that most likely will entail a long and stressful, (most likely) unprofitable career.

Allow me (if you will) to share with you a few things that makes affiliates unsuccessful marketing other people’s products. I am not going to go into blackhat techniques here, I am going to speak solely on sound and fundamental things you need to do to avoid an unsuccessful affiliate marketing venue.

 Do Not Recommend Bad Products

The very first thing to do starting out the gates is picking the right product. I know, easier said than done right? It is very easy to find out what is selling. Go into your networks and look at at what has been selling. If your unsure, then get with your affiliate manager. They are there to help you succeed, so you should be taking advantage of that. Picking a quality product is of the most important things you need to do. If you recommend crap, then your buyers are going to remember that for a very long time. Do not get desperate, and tell yourself “I will promote this, just one time”. All it takes to lose your buyers is one bad recommendation.

It is becoming increasingly apparent not only to me, but around the web as well, that increasing your Social Media Appearance can do wonders for your business. Whether your a Marketer, Blogger, Business, or just a webmaster, the more Social Media Appearance you portray, the more likely you are going to receive more visitors.

I for one have turned directly towards the Social Media. I have provided 2 venues of Social Intervention on my blog. You can view both my MySpace and my Youtube pages. I have been getting a lot of emails lately that a lot of people thought I was an old man. Is this true? I have been accused of being in my 40’s just this morning. That was kind of funny I thought. The best one so far was a woman from the TechCrunch Forums this morning that downloaded my Yahoo Answers Report and said that I was actually a normal looking guy. I sent her to some of my videos to check out, and for some reason she really could not believe that was me. She said, “Oh my, you have a lot of tattoos”.  This was a good laugh. People are people, and the more you come out and show them who you are, the more they will respect you for being yourself.

I have been on both sides of these tactics so I know right now, that I favor Information Selling as my primary tactic online. My JV Partner and friend Joseph Tierney is also on both sides of these tactics as well. I can honestly say after seeing all the support he provides for the programs he creates, he has one hell of a heart that he pours into customer support. Do not get me wrong, I am the same way when I sell information online. I prefer to write and distribute my tactics, but my doors are always open to help people succeed with the information I provide, granted I have the time.

I do not really consider Software Production a long term income goal that I would be comfortable with. It is in my experience that providing information requires a heck of a lot more technical skills, and a lot less support. I would prefer to have my businesses run more on autopilot so that I could expand and leverage other niches. Although providing Coaching and Support is a must, it is a lot easier to do when the information has been supplied to the best of your knowledge.

Another thing that I have found that cuts down on the amount of “post” support or help after supplying information is I have made it very clear since I started Marketing Online, that I only report with tactics I have used and succeeded with. Furthermore, in all of my disclaimers, I clearly state that not doing exactly what I say and how I say, can warrant results which I would be unfamiliar with. I find it quite hilarious of all the crap floating about on the Net that has been rehashed. This is just bad information selling at its best. The more you speculate in your findings, the more support you are going to have to provide.

I have gone and written a Free Report Download On How To Make Money With Yahoo Answers. In the report I covered some of the basic methods that I have already blogged about before.

You will also find a few bonus tactics in it as well. You will also find a method I use to get my Questions on Yahoo Answers indexed within 2 days. Some of the tactics may feel a little extreme to some. While I do not condone spamming or being lazy on Yahoo Answers, I have made it very imperative in the report, that if you do not use the techniques outlined in the report as I use them, I cannot guarantee anything. These are personal tactics I use and have had success with.

I failed to put two tactics in there for a reason. I am currently testing two methods out currently that I am unable to report positive results with. I just started using these yesterday, and if they turn out as planned, I will release an updated version (free) as well. For now, you can head over here and download it. There is no optin or any hassles. I do not believe in that crap, at least not with my own reports.

Enjoy,

In my search for Contextual Advertising on my niche sites, I came across one thing over the last 2 years. I really dislike Google Adsense, I dislike it so much that I did not even give it a link, nope, not even an affiliate link. I could never really understand why someone would send their traffic away for pennies on the click.

 I have done the whole Arbitrage thing and I actually have had some clicks in the $$ range, but seriously, I could not stand it, and even more so today. They have rules that change faster than I can get my underwear off at night, and I just cannot take it anymore. Some webmasters love it, and that is great, but it is not for me. I would rather get a subscriber, a sale or let my visitors leave on a good note. That is how I feel about anyway.

I have tried other contextual advertising on my sites, (clicksor and Adbrite) and they were worse than Adsense. I recently just went thru a 36 website (that is exact) contextual advertsing overhaul. I was able to come across a neat little tool awhile back, and just saw it sitting on my desktop a few weeks ago.

Now I do not know if you have tried Clickbank Ad Box Professional yet, but it is turning out to be on of the cheapest yet BEST investments I have made online. I really do not know how this went so unnoticed. As of right now I am in the process of updating a total of 36 sites with it. I have given up on Adsense. I actually had my head up right when I built these sites (thank god) as I do extensive product research before I even start building a site.

Blogging your business to increase profits will kind of tie into Tips On How To Sell Information Products. The days of “marketing to the herd” so to speak are not working as well as they used to be. While some “big wigs” and “businesses” will still have their protected “target markets” it is becoming increasingly aware that people are getting more “internet savvy” and thus, are looking for and actually requiring more infomation before a purchase.

This works out really well if your like me, and give almost everything away at no cost. It does not work well if your from the “Stone-Age” where you instilled fear and hype to nab the dollar. While you may still be selling, it is apparent that there is a downhill trend in selling just by having hype and a sense of urgency as your two weapons of choice.

When your Blogging Your Business, your giving your “ultimate” weapon (The Search Engines) the ammunition they need to keep you fully loaded and firing away. Sorry for the analogy, it just came to me and sounds really cool. Keeping content up and consistently updated is what it takes these days to keep favor in the Engines. Keeping your visitors coming back and increasing your awareness thru Search Engine Optimization is the biggest and most important thing you can do with your blog. Everything else just falls into place.

Your blog should build credibility, respect, awareness and trust for you and your business. While building all of these your also building another characteristic that you may not realize (but you should), and that is –>Action. If people trust you, they respect you, they know you only come forward with the best content and products, and they are aware that you are an authority in everything you do, they WILL buy from you. It only makes sense right? Of course it does, as your going to great lengths to capitalize on your talents and researching abilities.

At least it means it is residual as long as it keeps repeating. One of the key things that I had going for me during my Craigslist SEO Ad Posting days was that I was able to retain EVERY single client that I had provided a Consultation for. The Consultation was my “presell” method way of getting the Clients squeezed into to my optimization, link building, and overall ranking services.

The only reason I ever once lost a client was because I had to let a few of the larger companies go. The amount of information they were publishing was just too overwhelming. I initially intended to use my SEO Service as a way for supplemental income. Marketing was what I wanted to do, and SEO Consulting was basically a way for me to fund it, without enduring out of pocket expenses.

 The reason for my success in retaining repeat clients was really based around one thing –> An Autoresponder! I kid you not, my autoresponse service saved me so much time and was able to pull (and keep) so much business. It eventually got to the point where I had to stop, because I could not handle the amount of consultations and referrals I was getting from word of mouth. I know some people would love to have that problem, but I actually hated it.

I was able to consult many clients at once. All I would really do was provide support and training thru the use of broadcasts. The Autoresponder saved me a lot of time and it actually “bought” me a lot of time. Whenever I got behind, I could put together a broadcast enabling me to have a little more time to get caught up. In the end though, I turned my focus on doing my own SEO for my Marketing purposes.