2011 Online Affiliate Marketing Action Plan

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Neil Venketramen

The New Year has arrived…again.

Once you reach a certain age you cannot help but wish for time to slow down.

I personally want it to slow down so I can catch my breath, reflect on what happened in the past and make this my best year ever.

The trouble is 3 days have gone by into the New Year and I feel like I am already behind.

But I am excited about my plans this year and making money as an online affiliate marketer.

If you are wondering why then I have some good news for you.

I can see a clear path to success and many exciting achievements that lies ahead for this year.

Because of this level of clarity I believe that I have set myself up for success. I do not have any scientific data to back this up but my gut instinct tells me that I am ahead of most marketers that plan to make a full time living online this year.

Why?

Most never plan and set themselves up to make no money or worse, set themselves up to react to everything around them and when the year zooms by have nothing to show for it.

I have been there myself when first getting started. Fortunately for me I am fast learner and can make the changes required for success

In a nutshell here are my plans to promote Amazon products in the coming year.

Step 1: Set Up A Yearly Promotional Calendar

This is not a marketing calendar or business plan. This step for me is a very specific tangible activity that is designed to give me a clear outcome for the year.

I have this whiteboard hanging on my wall. On it I have the 12 months of the year. For each month I have very specific physical products that I will promote for the upcoming year.

For example in January I have already started promoting Valentines Day gifts. Actually I started in November of 2010.

At the end of January I have “mothers day” on my calendar. I have flowers, gift bags, jewelry, etc on my list of promotional items in January

For February I have wedding favors. Yes wedding favors I know.

Around April/May the season kicks off with weddings. And there is one huge event happening on the other side of the pond this year that is going to drive the sales of wedding items through the roof. Hint…Think of a Royal Wedding.

And every month I have a list of products from cameras, TV’s toys, etc that I will promote. I have very specific makes and model numbers of items.

This calendar keeps me on track. I am slightly ahead of the game. This keeps me focused and gives me a mental checklist of items that is going to earn me money this year.

If you are struggling to figure out what physical products to sell and how to build out your calendar this year get yourself a copy of consumer magazine.

In their Janaury 2011 edition they laid out all the top selling items that are hot in each month of the year.

This is a fantastic list of hot products to kick off your Amazon affiliate marketing business. Armed with just this piece of information you have already set yourself up for success.

Step 2- Daily Success Rituals For Making Money in 2011

If I had the option of getting up every single day and figuring out what to promote I probably would get nothing done. Left to my own devices, I will be busy and not productive.

Early on I figured out to succeed I need to scheduled my productive time.

And I do not mean 8am-10am, promote Amazon affiliate products.

No

I mean I had a detailed checklist for my productive time slots

So if one time slot is 8am to 10 am, it would be something like this:

8:00-8:30 Research for new products
8:30-9:00 Write product review
9:00 9:15 Submit reviews to blog team to upload with pictures. Notify SEO team to build links and promote lens
9:15-:10:00 Review previous days affiliate earnings, review results. Find topics to send to writers to write more product reviews

It would be detailed in a form of a checklist.

I do this because I know what needs to get done. I have very few unplanned hours. And as result of creating productive time slots and scheduling them with specific activities, I am productive during the day.

It all comes down to daily planning and more importantly executing what is on the plan

Now I realize your plan may be different. I have reached a point where I do not do most of the heavy lifting anymore as I have a team of outsourced staff, who do this for me.

You may have a full time or part time job and have limited time.

So planning out your productive hour time slots whether it is 2 hours or 4 or 8 is probably the best new years present you can give yourself this year.

So what is on your calendar this year? Leave a comment below. Or if you like to get off to a fast start why don’t you get your hands on my affiliate marketing course and set yourself up for success in the new year.

Online Affiliate Marketing

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The Most Effective Way to Make Money Online Fast

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Neil Venketramen

The number one question I get from my coaching students is how do I make money online fast and using free marketing strategies?

We get caught up in a life trap. We turn to online marketing in order to make money to pay for an impending emergency or we had enough at work and looking to quit our day jobs.

Or you want to get serious about your business and turn it from a hobby to a money-generating machine so that your family and friends respect you and your talent.

And as a result of that we are forced to find other ways to generate income online fast.

Now based on my experience the word fast is relative to most people. Some marketers want cash today whilst others are prepared to settle for a slightly longer timeframe say 3 months.

Depending how fast you need the money or want to earn the money there are specific strategies you can use to get to your goals.

Lets say you are brand new and need to make a hundred dollars a day in the next week?

The best way to do that is to use paid methods of advertising. In this case you may need to spend money to make a $100 a day.

If you are faced with this situation and you are able to start off and buy cheap advertising I would suggest a tool like banner advertising

You could use Google content network where the price per click is relatively cheap. Drive some banner ads and send them directly to your site.

When people come over to your website they will click on your offer and make a purchase from your affiliate links.

In this case I would pick products from amazon.com bestseller list and promote this.

Let’s Assume Your Goal is to make $100 in 30-60 days.

My favorite free technique of all time is to use hub pages. You can go directly to www.hubpages.com, open up a free account, write a review about a specific topic and insert your Amazon affiliate links into hub pages

If you focus on a topical item you can start getting clicks with little to no effort and scale this to make money fast.

The real secret is to write high quality content so that people want to read your blog posts and take action.

Lets assume your time horizon to make money is 90 days

If you have a three months horizon to earn money then you have a good solid psychological starting point to set yourself for success.

My best strategy for this is to build an email list. When you have an email list is almost like printing cash on demand. Every time you send out an email mail you will earn money.

But most rookie marketers start out building their email lists the wrong way.

You need to give someone the right ethical bribe or reason for joining your email list.

Without this, your subscription rate will be flatline and will be a challenge to grow your income in the long term

Lets examine some of the reasons why people may join your list:

1. They want a discount
2. Looking for free shipping
3. Want to buy latest products before everyone else

You can survey your customers and figure out why they search online for services.

Now if you offer them something like a video on how to buy hot products at 30% discount they will want to join your list.

Not only that they will tell others about this as well

The good news about being an Amazon Associate is that they offer numerous promotions to get deals for example deal of the day, Amazon gold box deal, weekly price discount, etc

Your customers do not even know about this.

If you can teach them how to shop effectively and save money they will immediately join and trust you. You have now became a trusted person rather than a salesman and set yourself to make money for a long time.

Now you have the equivalent of the printing press.

And you never need to worry about your next commission check.

So here is the next step:

Get in the habit of creating one promotional review a day. Write an article based off a hot selling product item on Amazon every single day.
Get in the habit of doing that.

Then promote it on hub on your blog and start building a list. As soon as you take action you immediately set yourself for success.

Then keep monitoring what is working or not.

This way before you know it, you will set yourself for success and will find the shortest route to making money online fast.

What strategy do you plan to implement in the next year. Leave a comment below.

Please share your strategy below on how to make money fast in this market.

Make money online fast and free

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4 Tips To Jump Start Your 6 Figure Internet Marketing Business

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Neil Venketramen

So you want to make 6 figures your first year online?

I recently did an informal survey with my in-house list. I asked how much money do you want to make in your first year online.

About 80% replied that they would like to make 6 figures.

So how you set yourself up for success and breakthrough to reach this. Well the best way I can think of is to sell someone else’s product first. Build your skill and make mistakes on someone else products and once you are ready then start selling your own products and services.

Learn to fail fast and build expertise on someone else’s product and then once you earned the money you can move on to other exciting projects.

There is no better way to start of as an Amazon affiliate. Amazon has a brand name and a solid reputation for online. If you crack the code and sell physical goods then you will get all the skills you need to take your business to the next level.

Here are my best 5 Internet marketing tips to help you get started and achieve your dreams

1. Be The Expert In Your Niche

We all want to buy from experts. Especially from people we regard as experts as we value their opinion.

And this even applies more to physical products.

Lets say you decide to sell product to couples that recently had a baby.

And you want to help them make their lives easier.

You can sell diapers; bottles, stroller and the variety of products are endless.

So the first step is blog about it. Think about what your family needs, their challenges and joys you going through and talk about it, then start promoting specific products.

Better still buy the products, use them and give your honest review on them.

It is fun being a marketer. You can get to buy and use just about any product in any niche

And when you show people how to use you become the authority in your field.

And you earned the right to sell them

It is easy to start. Go to Hubpages.com. Open up a profile and start blogging about a topic.

Create a persona and position your self as the expert by writing one hub page at a time

2. Skip The Same Old Generic Advice

The biggest mistakes I see affiliate marketers make online is fill up your blog posts with product features.

Lets assume there are over a 1000 pages on Google competing to sell the same product online.

Now if all of them have the same generic advice on product features, why should the client choose your webpage or your affiliate link?

My favorite question I get all the time is how do I get more people to click through to Amazon and buy the product

Do I place my Amazon affiliate link at the beginning or end of the page?

If this is you, this is not uncommon.

It does not matter where you place the link if you are offering generic advice.

You need to become a bona fide specialist.

You need an angle or solve a problem

For example “10 ways to pick a multi purpose stroller that will keep baby smiling”

Instead of telling you what to buy I am telling you what to look for and keep baby quite and happy while you are on the go.

Most people will not be able to find this kind of information.

The more specific and valuable the information, the more money you make.

3. Inject Some Persona

I have a pop quiz for you. Who would you buy from?

Someone who looks like Mary who has picture with three kids and blogs regularly about how to get the best products for your baby or John who sells sledgehammers, car parts and baby feeders on his site?

Mary right. Because seems similar to the type of demographic of your customer and her persona is a trusted one.

Personas are ways to make your customers like and trust you.

You can be humorous, angry man or scientist with the use of your persona.

The best way to figure out your persona is to do some demographic research on your market and build this accordingly.

Go to www.alexa.com type in your keywords and it will show you demographics of visitors to your website to help you develop that persona

4. Give Them a Visual Experience

A picture says a thousand words.

When it comes to buying physical products online most people want to see and experience the product before they buy.

They want to justify their decision that it is the right one.

Write text only posts for physical products and this may be a long road to making money.

As you know that YouTube is great for promoting products and services

And the best part about Amazon is that they allow you to use their marketing creative. Please see their rules about their terms first

You can convert pictures into videos or better still take your own pictures and videos and share them on your blog.

Now if making videos really intimidates you then use a tool like animoto.com

They allow you to upload pictures and convert this into 30 second HD quality videos for you. And it will not cost you a dime.

Your customers will get a visual and sensory experience and it will make their purchase decision so much easier

Master these simple but effective strategies and you are on your way to 6 figures a year.

Let me know you best strategy for getting your customers attention and helping you grow your business.

Internet marketing tips

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