Successful affiliate marketing or any marketing exercise for that matter will only be as successful as your focus is honed in on 4 core areas, which I’ll reveal as we dive into this post.
While the strategies described in this post will ideally be suited for marketing in general, I wanted to specifically deal with successful affiliate marketing as this is where everyone’s focus is on these days.
But while this style of marketing (affiliate marketing) seems to be the more popular platform of choice, it is also the one with the most consistently high failure rate in the industry.
Why the failure rate associated with affiliate marketing is so high will be a consideration of this post, but more importantly, will be the solution that would lead to successful affiliate marketing. Let’s dive in.
The Four (4) Core Areas Of Focus
The four core areas of focus that will see your efforts becoming successful as you intentionally seek to master each one are as follows:
- Targeted Traffic
- Email List Building
- Follow Up
- Sales System
Now I am sure that you may be saying to yourself, “Hey, wait a minute! I already know all this,” and while that might indeed be true, I would hazard a guess that you have never heard or read what I am about to share with you here right now.
As simplistic as these 4 core areas may appear, yet the failure rate among affiliate marketers is hugely staggering. Why is this so? That is the question.
We shall learn the answers as we go through each of these core areas one by one and shall then learn what is really required if anyone will have a chance to experience successful affiliate marketing.
Targeted Traffic Is A Must For Successful Affiliate Marketing
Traffic has long been considered the lifeblood of any business. Let me be clear so you understand exactly what I mean when I use the word traffic. Simply put, people are traffic.
When it comes to marketing, you want to get your product or offer in front of as many potential buyers as possible. So your first order of business is to source traffic.
This task, for all intents and purposes, is sometimes very daunting because most marketers approach it in the wrong way.
When it comes to traffic, select a source from where you intend to harvest your traffic. I’ll give examples a bit later.
There are many sources of traffic all around. So in picking one, your next move is to learn all you can about that traffic source and master it.
Pick one, master it, and you will start to see results as you remain consistent.
The goal of successful affiliate marketing is to get the traffic to not only see your offer but also to click your affiliate links.
So then as you direct traffic (people) to your offer for them to click your links, that type of traffic is called targeted traffic.
There are so many millions of people online and with that in mind, there are also many platforms that are home to ridiculous amounts of traffic. How could you not succeed in finding traffic?
Traffic has always been there, and if so, then why do so many marketers fail?
As I take you through the core areas, you’ll soon begin to see a pattern of consistency and cohesiveness between the 4 core focus areas.
The average affiliate marketer today seeks to become a “jack of all trades”, but sadly soon realizes that he is a master of none.
So how could he ever hope to succeed when he has been going about it in the wrong way.
Traffic Has Always Been In Plain Sight
Traffic has always been in plain sight, yet so many don’t seem to notice this. I mentioned just a wee short while ago that there are many platforms where traffic exists. Let’s consider some of them.
Traffic Platforms
- FaceBook.
- Instagram.
- Twitter.
- Pinterest.
- LinkedIn.
- Quora.
- YouTube
- Google.
- Bing.
- Qwik Ads
With these platforms, one can do organic marketing which is simply utilizing the free traffic to be gleaned from the platforms by way of posting content in various forms to draw attention to yourself and your brand.
The other type of marketing is paid marketing and again one can use the same platforms as listed above for that as well.
In addition, I must mention the use of Solo ads as coming from Solo Ad providers and Banner ads as featured on Blogs.
So there is no shortage of traffic as you can see. You cannot do them all, but what is advisable is to first try one and get really good at it.
Once you have mastered it and are beginning to see results, then you can begin to scale upwards and draw even more traffic.
This is what targeted traffic is all about.
You become a master at identifying your target audience and then present your offer and watch the sales come in at a rate that generates massive profits.
One last thing I would like to point out is that targeted traffic is most importantly sourcing the right type of traffic for the offer you are promoting.
In other words, you won’t promote an offer on grooming dogs to prospects seeking to learn more about dating.
So in addition to sourcing your traffic, you must also be able to match that traffic to the offer you promote or you still won’t achieve the sales you desire.
Let’s Look At Figures To See Real Problems Marketers Face
If getting traffic is not the issue or maybe we were not as focused as we ought to be on one specific area of traffic mastery and we are now, then what else could be the problem?
The average affiliate marketer in order to be successful has to be not just making sales but also profits to go with those sales.
Let me take you through an exercise. As an affiliate, you are promoting an offer that traditionally begins with a low entry costing product into the sales funnel.
Then comes the first upsell or OTO ( One Time Offer) which carries a higher price tag and you may get one or two more upsells, each climbing a bit higher up the price ladder.
Once you go through the funnel that’s it. The vendor/owner of the product can go on to continually sell to that client you brought them as an affiliate and make thousands more dollars. Whereas you have to go look for your next offer to promote.
So while you might be making 50% commissions, unless you are driving hordes of traffic to that offer and making sales, you are not doing anything. Let me put it another way.
If I am using paid traffic which brings faster results, but I am spending more money on the traffic than I am getting sales of my offer being promoted then I’m dead in the water.
That’s often the case for most affiliate marketers today. The cost of traffic acquisition tends to be more than the commission earned and that is a recipe for disaster.
While costs associated with affiliate marketing have gone up over time, commissions have all but remained in the same bracket.
If an affiliate cannot make a decent enough profit, then he cannot do else but fail.
This is why it becomes of necessity to learn the four areas of focus and master them all so that as an affiliate marketer you can command the income earned and go on to enjoy successful affiliate marketing.
Targeted Traffic then is your first core area of focus and from there you go on to the next area of focus. Email list building.
Core Focus On Email List Building Creates Money On Demand
I mentioned not too long ago that once the prospect had been taken through the sales funnel, the owner of the product could go on to make thousands of dollars more to their new client.
Our making more money at this stage has ended unless in our affiliate marketing we find a way to build our own list of prospects as we promote the offers and products of others.
With our own list of prospects, now we can potentially market to our list over and over again often creating what is called money on demand.
There is a reason for the catchphrase, ” The Money Is In The List.”
When I came online back in 2014, I never knew about building a list. In fact, it was only a couple of years ago that I seriously considered pursuing building an email list.
So as an affiliate, when you have or own an email list of your own, as you come across offers you know will help your list of prospects who already know, like, and trust you, then the inevitable happens.
You promote the offer to your email list and while not everyone might buy, you’ll still come away with a decent enough amount of sales to leave you in awe and in profit.
if you are going to experience successful affiliate marketing, then you must build an email list. And with that list, you will want to have them stored in a nice cozy place.
To build an email list that you can be one day be proud of, you will need to have the following 3 items in your arsenal of tools.
You’ll need an autoresponder, an opt-in page like this one, and an irresistible bribe or offer to lure your new prospects.
In fact, I know of a program that can help you with building your email list. Click here and check it out.
You can also drop by and check out this solo ad traffic provider that is worthy of mention.
Let me explain with a little more detail about autoresponders, opt-in pages, and your lead magnets which are your bribe offers.
Autoresponders
Of the many autoresponder services on the market, the two that pop out in my mind are Aweber and GetResponse.
Both are really great at what they do and provide for their customers and they both offer free options.
Essentially an autoresponder is a software tool that houses or stores your subscriber list in a secure location whilst giving you as owner the ability to correspond with your list at any given moment through the emails that you collected when they joined your list.
You can preschedule emails to go out to your list upon their subscribing through what is called an email campaign.
Alternatively, you can also send out broadcast emails to your subscribers anytime you like. These are done on the fly.
Any marketer looking to engage in successful affiliate marketing must have a way to build his or her very own email list and an autoresponder is a tool to help you get it done and done correctly.
Opt-In Page
Of course, to get to the autoresponder, it must be preceded by the opt-in page. All these tools work hand in hand towards helping you with your overall goal.
The opt-in page as it suggests is the opportunity for you to have your visitors be given the choice of becoming a subscriber to your list.
To get them to opt-in, however, there must be an enticing offer or ethical bribe as we marketers call it. I will cover that in the next section.
Here they will be treated to the value you seek to give them by way of your content in whatever form or fashion you determine to serve that content.
The above image is an example of an opt-in page.
The opt-in page basically facilitates the exchange of something of value that your prospect might need in exchange for their contact information.
In this example that is their email address. Some opt-in pages do include the name and sometimes the phone number as well.
But studies reveal that by only asking for the email address the opt-in rate is far better.
I can’t underscore this enough.
Successful affiliate marketing, as well as other forms of online marketing, will use this means to go on to build a large subscriber list of future loyal customers.
Some autoresponder providers also have services included where users to their platforms can create opt-in pages of their liking and ideally match their brand.
Here is another example of such a service providing these tools.
The Ethical Bribe
I won’t spend too much time here as we still have two (2) core areas to explore that will give you all that you need to now crush your affiliate marketing business.
To get someone to opt-in to your page and eventually onto your list will call for an exchange of value. Some marketers refer to it as an ethical bribe.
What happens is that you make an item of value available to be given away for free to potential subscribers in exchange for their contact information, in this case, their email address.
This is not the type of bribe I am referring to in this section
The item of value could be anything from an ebook, a free video, case study to a cheat sheet and not money as pictured above which is often the case with a bribe of a nefarious kind.
What is of vital importance however is that the gift must be geared towards being something that can solve the problem your prospect is experiencing.
It should also act as a forerunner to the greater perceived value you will later make available through your main offer which by then your potentially new subscribers will be eager to buy.
That’s the purpose of the lead magnet as it is also called. It is an exchange of an item designed to whet the appetite of your future subscriber, by sharing value in the way of solving their problem through your gift.
This also opens the way for them to begin to get to know, like and, trust you.
Everyone who will experience successful affiliate marketing will understand at this point, having gotten subscribers onto your list now comes the most important feature of one’s marketing.
You Can’t Enjoy Successful Affiliate Marketing WIthout This
Have you ever heard of the phrase which goes like this? “The fortune is in the Follow-up.”
Well, it’s true and you’d better believe it. Do you know how much money is left on the table because marketers fail to follow up? It’s insane.
To follow up has been the difference for those who enjoy successful affiliate marketing. Why?
In the follow-up, there are many who might have been tottering on the brink of a decision and just needed that gentle nudge to help them make the move that closes the sale.
Building an email list is important, but because of certain elements involved in list building, you will definitely need to have a good follow-up plan in place as well.
What I mean is this. When you get prospects to subscribe to your email list, you are going to meet what is known as an impulse buyer. This kind of prospect likes to take action and fast.
But you’ll also meet the kind of individuals who will need warming up. They don’t buy from you right away. You’ll need to show them the offer a few times as you allow them to get to know you, like, and trust you.
This occurs when you keep up to date with them through the emails sent out via your autoresponder. So you can see how useful and necessary an autoresponder can be.
This core feature is so very important. It is in the follow-up that you make sales. This is why you need to build an email list. It invariably is and can be your greatest asset.
A lot of marketers fail here simply because they do not understand just how valuable an email list can be or even something as simple as a follow-up.
Now we come to the last of the four core areas of focus necessary for successful affiliate marketing. The Sales system.
Want To Remain Successful At Affiliate Marketing, Create One Of These
If you will want to remain at the top, with successful affiliate marketing, you will need to have a killer sales system.
This is the icing on the cake so pay attention.
Affiliate marketing was successful for most of those attempting it in the past because traffic was dirt cheap costing not much more than pennies on the dollar.
But that has changed.
Traffic is a lot more expensive now and unless you can recoup the money spent in acquiring the traffic by the number of persons opting into your list and buying the offer, then your business won’t be profitable.
So you’ll need a system that takes your prospects into a deeper dive as it were when going through the sales funnel process where they are exposed to more premium offers of a high ticket kind.
A sales system can do that for you.
Simply because your focus will not have to be on creating products, building high converting sales pages, worrying about product fulfillment or customer support and so hopefully less headaches.
The format or process then for successful affiliate marketing is 1. targeted traffic, 2. email list building, 3. following up and, 4. the sales system which offers affiliates commissions on all areas of the funnel for all times.
The Sales System For Successful Affiliate Marketing
If successful affiliate marketing is what you seek, then you’ll definitely want to pay attention here.
You may find yourself asking the question, ” what exactly is it that I should be aware of with the sales system?” and it’s a good question.
The sales system is about sales primarily that you generate from the time people land in your funnel, but it also takes into account, follow-up sales, future sales and the money to be made on the back end.
The sales system also takes into account all the areas that as an affiliate you cannot take on yourself. For example, product fulfillment, sales pages, customer support, and so on.
The sales system takes your prospect by the hand through the entire sales process, in a simple yet systematic way where everything that the client will require to make his experience profitable and pain points vanish is included.
But all sales systems are not equal. Some profit affiliates, while most do not.
The traditional affiliate marketing model fails here from the perspective that once the front-end offer goes and the one or two upsell offers that quickly follow, the affiliate has to move on to his next promotion.
The product creator can now expose his high-end offers to the prospects the affiliate brought to him through the promotion earlier.
This is done on the back-end. All those sales are pocketed by the vendor.
What if, however, there was a way to partner with a vendor who had your back? One that gave you as the affiliate the opportunity to also benefit from all those backend sales?
Now that would be pretty cool, huh? Of course, it would.
And this is why it is important to not only carefully select your products and affiliations wisely in successful affiliate marketing, you also have to have all 4 core features primed and working to full capacity for you.
Conclusion
Now I know that there is a lot more that can be said here in this last section, but please bear with me as I make you an incredible offer.
Much of what you have been exposed to in this article has been proven to work and still does today. It is essentially what you need to be doing to achieve a thriving successful marketing business.
In addition to having the 4 core focus features, you will also need and should honestly consider a mentor.
The beauty of what I want to share with you today will provide you access to training and a chance to be mentored to success by one of the best in the affiliate marketing space today.
This is how to be successful in affiliate marketing.
I first want to give you access to this Free Book that explains why the traditional model of affiliate marketing as we know it is down the tubes.
Dead. Hence the reason so many marketers fail.
But on the flip side, this is also your solution. So just take a look at the FREE Book offer, as I believe that this is what you will need to literally crush it in whatever type of marketing you seek to do online, especially affiliate marketing.
I hope this post has served to make you more aware of what you need to focus on as one who will upon implementation of the skills and strategies mentioned go on to achieve success.
It has been my pleasure sharing with you and I do wish you every bit of success you’re due.
Feel free to leave a comment as to your biggest takeaway from this article. Thank you in advance.
ps. To get access to the book offer which goes through what I have essentially shared here in greater detail and is a tangible resource you can refer to again and again, you can either contact me here.
Or you can watch this promo so you can learn how to get started and follow the instructions in the description section of the video.
