Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online. If you are a complete newbie, or just want to refresh your memory, this article is for you. I have been actively making money with affiliate programs for over three years. Over the course of time I failed more than I succeeded. I'm proud of my failure because it taught me what "not" to do. Here's what you need to do in order to earn money from affiliate programs:
First of all, you should only promote the bestselling affiliate products. Don't waste your time with products that don't sell. I've learned the hard way that choosing the wrong product is a quick way to lose time and money. So if you don't want this to happen to you, only promote products that sell well.
Second, only promote products that will make you 50% commissions. This is very important, especially if you are using paid advertising methods to promote these products. There is nothing more depressing than spending $100 on advertising and only making a $25 commission. Get the idea? To be safe, choose a product that earns $97 per sale on the front end, and $37 from the backend. This will keep you in profit mode.
Third, build a mailing list. List building is the fastest way to succeed with affiliate marketing. If you don't build a mailing list, your chances for success are cut in half. Testing has shown that people who join a mailing list are five times more likely to buy something. For example, let's say that you drive 100 people to a sales page and it converts at 0.01%. That would be one sale. Let's say the sale is $97 and you spent $100 on advertising. You lost $3.00.
Now, let's say that you took that same $100 for advertising and sent the traffic to a squeeze page. And let's say that your squeeze page converts at about 50%. That's 50 people on your list. Here's where it gets interesting. Out of those 50 people, about 10% will buy the product you are promoting. That's 5 sales at a $97 commission. Your grand total would be $485 in sales. So for this example, you would have made a profit of $385. See the difference? Do you understand how this works now? If you want to succeed with affiliate promotions, treat this like a real brick and mortar business.
