Today I want to finish up my 15 proven ways to promote affiliate products series. This will be article three of three.
In the first installment we discussed ezine advertising. This is a highly targeted way to reach a proven audience. You know these people are interested because they’re reading these ezines.
Pay-per-click advertising is still very useful for affiliate marketing. Banner advertising is an overlooked resource. Viral marketing is a powerful way to get the word out to a lot of people in a short period of time.
We also discussed getting traffic from search engines in part two. We discussed doing other forms of email marketing in addition to solo ads and ezine advertising. We also discussed joint ventures even if you’re a newbie, doing teleseminars and publishing your own ezine.
Let’s get into the last six ways.
The first is marketing on forums.
Forums are groups of people who meet together online to discuss a particular topic.
It could be a fan forum for a particular movie star. It could be a way of doing business like franchising, internet marketing or affiliate marketing. It could be almost any topic under the sun.
The key with forum marketing is not to go in there with guns blazing making the best offer you can make. That’s what they resist. They want you to participate first.
Help first and then ask for help or look for opportunity. There is an exception to that. You might go to a forum in order to learn something. Let’s say you go to an affiliate marketing forum so you can learn how to be an affiliate marketer.
It’s 100% OK to ask all the questions you want and get help. Once you have some knowledge and success under your belt, give back by helping people.
One of the great keys to forum marketing is to make a special offer for that forum only. The Warriors have a section called Warriors Special Offers. You can make special offers just to the members of that forum. It’s a very effective technique.
Blogging is a wonderful way to get the word out about how you feel and what you think about particular products.
If you can type, you can blog. The key with blogging is to share from your heart and your head.
Don’t try to sound like someone else. Don’t try to be someone else. Just say what you’re thinking and feeling. If you’ve been ripped off or hurt, it’s OK to say that.
If you’re frustrated, it’s OK to say that. If you found a resource that gives you hope and real help, it’s OK to say that, too. On your own blog you can promote as overtly as you want to.
If you’re a real fan of a particular site, you can say, “I love this site. Here’s why I like it. Here’s the help I got from it. Here’s a link where you can learn more.”
A great resource I want to share is Blogger.com. They have cool templates. You could have a blog literally 15 minutes from now. If you can type, you can blog.
Article marketing is an incredibly powerful way to sell affiliate products.
It’s one that most people struggle with. Why is that? I think it’s because they don’t learn enough about it.
An article can’t be an ad. You can’t overtly say, “I think Aweber is the best auto responder on the planet.” You have to say, “Here are five reasons you need an auto responder.”
Let me encourage you to write articles once a week. People call me and say, “I’m going to do article marketing. I’m going to write two articles a day.” That’s a lot of pressure.
That’s a lot of pressure even for a person who loves to write much less for someone who sees it as a chore. Set a goal to write an article once a week and submit it. If you wrote an article once a week since the time you first heard the term “article marketing” you’d probably have 50 or more articles under your belt right now.
Remember to submit your articles to article directories like ezinearticles.com and to ezines also. When you submit your article to an article directory, you’re one of thousands of articles. When your article runs in an ezine it runs alone. You get more focused attention from interested readers.
Social media is a great free way to get the word out about products you believe in enough to promote.
Remember that it’s a conversation, not a pitch. You have to go in and get to know people.
It’s like walking into a giant party. You have to walk up to someone and say, “Hey, I’m John. This is what I do. Who are you?” Get to know people. Then you can make an offer.
“Give and then look to receive” is the rule in social media. That’s one of the keys of social media. You want to give and then look to receive. This is just like in forums.
Give of yourself. Give of your knowledge. Be yourself. Don’t try to be a super salesman or big-time marketer. Be yourself.
If you don’t know something, ask. If you like something that someone said, say that to them. People love that.
Classified ads are a great way to promote affiliate products.
Don’t spend more than an hour a day posting classified ads. Free ad posting sites generally don’t work for selling products. They can work for testing copy.
If you have five ads and you want to test the headlines, you can post those to a free classified site. If you get any hits you’ll know which headline pulled better. I talk to people all the time who spend eight hours a day posting on classified sites.
They don’t sell anything. The reason is when people want to buy things they don’t go to a classified ad site. They do a Google search.
Here’s an insider secret: Most free classified sites have ads that you can pay for. They are sponsor ads. Those do work. Go for that. Don’t go for the free ads.
You can bonus it up.
My favorite technique is to add a unique bonus that people can only get if they click my affiliate link. Offer a bonus that people can only get if they click your affiliate link.
How do you do that? You can use private label products. You can create a product. There are a lot of ways to do it.
Choose something that complements the product you’re promoting. That’s one of the keys. That’s a very important key.
I hope you enjoyed reading this series as much as I enjoyed writing it. Have a blessed day.
