Archive | October, 2019

Are you one of those marketers who only wants to promote affiliate products? If you are, you’re not alone. Affiliate products are great – you don’t have to create the product and you don’t have customer service problems. Heck, you can make a fortune promoting affiliate products, and I highly recommend that if your heart is set on affiliate marketing, that you pursue it without hesitation.

That said, if you are ONLY doing affiliate marketing, you are putting yourself and your income at the mercy of other people, other businesses and other entities that you have NO control over.

Plus, it’s not always a bag of laughs, either. You want to promote that cookware set on Amazon because it’s got great commissions? Cool. So go set up a website, get some lousy articles written by someone whose first language isn’t the one you need, buy a few thousand spam links and so forth to get this site ‘ready.’ Then find a way to send the traffic, and then do it all again with the next product.

Great fun, right? I’ll bet you don’t even care about that cookware set or the people who might buy it. But you should care that the seller can stop selling it at ANY time without notice. Or they can change the commission structure. Or they can do whatever they like.

Are you getting your traffic from Google? Then you already know how fast Google can pull the rug out from under you. Maybe you’re buying traffic from Facebook? Facebook has already banned countless businesses and untold numbers of marketers, and they will be banning more – without notice.

How do you like affiliate marketing so far? Yes, there is a right way and a wrong way. If you choose a great niche and focus just on that niche and build up your readers and your traffic and especially your lists, you can make a ton of money in affiliate marketing.

But you know what? You can make even MORE money by creating your products, and it’s not nearly as difficult as you might think.

Plus, creating your own products has great perks:

First, when you make a sale, you get to keep ALL of the sale.

Second, you can get your own affiliates to promote for you. Just think how much more you can sell with a hundred affiliates promoting your products, than if it’s only you promoting. The difference is beyond huge, it’s almost mind-boggling.

Third, if you’re a good affiliate marketer, you’re building lists anyway. Why not sell your own products to those lists, in addition to selling affiliate products?

Fourth, when you have your own products, you can earn money for months and years on work that you did ONCE. It’s like being a songwriter and earning money every time the song is played for the next 20 years, only instead of a song it’s an info product.

Now, I know your next objection:

And let me tell you, this isn’t a good objection for two reasons.

#1, YES you do. If you’ve been alive for more than, say, 15 years, then you know stuff that other people DON’T know but they WANT to know. Have you found a way to treat your own illness? Have you lost 20 pounds? Have you traveled somewhere? Do you know how to save major money on something? Do you have secret to seducing lovers?

Think of it this way – what do you know? Make a list. Write that stuff down, and keep writing over the next few days because you will realize you know a lot more than you thought. Do this and you’ll likely have three sheets of paper filled with things you know that others want to know.

#2: Let’s say that you do the exercise in #1 above, and you come up with nothing. NOTHING. You are the only person on the planet who doesn’t know ANYTHING that anyone else wants to know.

That’s okay, and here’s why: All you have to do is pick your topic, learn it, do it and teach it. That’s it. Learn it, do it and teach it. You don’t have to become an expert. Just learn enough to get started DOING it, whatever it is. Make notes of what works and the results you get, and guess what happens?? You have yourself an info product. YES, it really can be that easy.

True. So here’s a shortcut: Choose your niche, go find an expert and use THEIR knowledge to create your product. Then cut them in on the deal. You get a percentage, they get a percentage.

“But then I’ll have to share the profits – wouldn’t it be better to just promote affiliate products?”

True, you’re sharing the profits with the expert, but remember – you can then get affiliates to promote for you, something you cannot do when you are an affiliate yourself.

So even if you give the expert 25% and you keep 25% so that affiliates earn 50%, that’s 25% that you continue to earn for as long as the product is selling.

One more thing before I forget – when you sell your own products, you are building lists of BUYERS. And as you know, one buyer can easily be worth 10-50 people who are just looking for freebies.

So when you have your own products, whether you create them alone or with partners, you are building lists of buyers that your affiliates send to you. And this alone is HUGE. So much so, that even if you gave away ALL of your commission up front, it would still be highly profitable because of all the backend products you could sell to your new buyers.

A hot niche is one where there is more demand than supply. That is, there are lots of people looking for a solution and ready to pay money for that solution, and not enough marketers out there offering the solution that buyers are looking for.

Seeing what is selling, or doing keyword research, or haunting the best seller lists of Amazon are all great ways to uncover niches. But oftentimes the very best niches are right under our noses. These are the niches were people are truly desperate for a solution and you can be the hero who steps in, saves the day and makes a healthy affiliate commission for your effort.

Just to be clear: There are niches and there are keywords, and these two things work together but are NOT the same.

Your focus should be on finding a hot niche and only then do you look for the keywords you’re going to target.

And finding hot niches can be as easy as paying attention to what’s happening around you.

Look for the problems in your everyday life. Your computer is running just about as fast as molasses in winter and it’s driving you bonkers. Cheer up, you’ve just found a niche, because you can BET you’re not the only one with this problem.

You do a Google search and sure enough, there are forums everywhere full of people looking for ways to speed up their computer or laptop.

You do a second search and find there are several products out there, with affiliate programs, that address this specific problem.

Congrats, you just found your first hot niche. You can now create your own WordPress site addressing the issue and offer the products as your solutions. In fact, if you purchase one of the products and then use some of their tips as your content (rewrite it!) you’ll come across as the authority. Then when you recommend they get the product to get the other 90% of the info they need, sales will be easy.

Another example: A young lady was taking self-defense classes but found the entire experience to be frustrating. The instructor would rush through a dozen or more examples of different moves in each class, and by the end of each class she couldn’t remember more than one or two. She said, “If only I had this stuff on video, I could actually LEARN it.” Bingo! If you overheard this comment, within minutes you could find a self-defense program for women online, and within a week you could be making profits from it by addressing the exact problem stated by the lady in class. Keep your ears open and opportunities will abound!

Promote a best selling product to an entirely different niche. Speaking of getting the product, here’s a backdoor method of finding niches: Buy a HOT selling product, one with tons of competition. See how everyone else is promoting this product, then do it differently. Look inside the product, find out who else it applies to, how else it can be used, what niches would benefit from this product who aren’t being marketed to, and market the product to those niches.

Instead of meeting stiff competition, you’ll be in a league (and a niche) of your own promoting a hot seller to people who otherwise would never have heard of the product.

Watch the news for things that are about to catch on. For example, if you were at the forefront of the Paleo diet or the Keto diet or any of these special diets, you could have cleaned up. Guarantee, there is a new diet on the way.

Or maybe there’s a really hot star who is bragging about her workout or her exotic pet or her accessories. Watch to see what’s going to catch on, and if there is an affiliate program tied to it, you can do really well if you’re a first mover.

Look for what drives people to distraction. That is, what is it that invades their thoughts at all times of the day? What keeps them awake at night? What would they pay money to solve RIGHT NOW?

Weight loss is a big one, and so are most health issues. A bad relationship is at the top of this list. Pregnant women are continually thinking about their baby and whether or not they’ll be a good mother. Men are continually thinking about sex. The key here is to get really specific and not try to go after the entire niche. A fellow marketer knew a pregnant woman who had a particular health issue. He found a product that addressed this issue, made a website on this and because it was so keyword specific, he got it ranked easily and still makes several sales from this a week, passively.

Look for the fears. All around you, people are afraid. The woman next to you in the check out line is afraid she’s going to lose her husband. The person behind her is afraid he’s going to lose out on the promotion. In the next aisle is someone who is afraid they won’t get the job they want, or any job at all.

Next to them is someone who is afraid she’s going to have to pay thousands to get her car or her home fixed. And next to her is someone who fears their tax problem will never be solved. Look for the fears and you’ll find people who will leap at the chance to get their problem fixed so they can start relaxing again and not be so worried every moment of the day.

The next time someone looks worried, or your friend complains about a problem, or you find yourself frustrated – realize you may have just found your next hot, profitable niche.