Archive | June, 2022

If you look at the wealthiest people in America today – Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Michael Dell, Paul Allen – you’ll notice they’re all first generation multi-billionaires.

And here’s the wonderful thing: If you do what other successful people do, you’ll eventually get a similar result to what they got, depending on things like timing and market, of course.

But let’s say you only do 1/10th as good. Or even 1/100th or 1/1000th. That’s still better than if you did nothing.

So look at what successful people do. Copy them in your own way. Expect it to take work. And time. And lots of effort.

And then be proud of your results, whatever they might be.

There’s been a trend online for the last 20 years to write sales letters that are shorter and have more and more graphics and fancy images.

But just because everyone is doing it, does that make it the most effective form of selling?

Maybe not.

Do you remember direct mail selling?

You get a fat white envelope in the mail, and inside is a long form sales letter. No fancy graphics, just plenty of great copy.

Here’s the thing: Anybody and everybody can throw up a sales letter online. And they do.

But when it comes to direct mail, these companies are hiring the best of the best copywriters to write their letters.

How do I know? Because no company in their right mind is going to spend the money to mail thousands (hundreds of thousands, even millions) of these letters unless they know for a FACT that they’re going to convert.

And how do they know? Because they test them. They pit one version against another to determine which one is more effective, and that becomes the control.

Then they write another version and test that against the previous winner, and they keep this up until they are making serious money.

Then they mail out these letters by the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, and the money rolls in.

These are the best of the best in sales letters, and they’re not to be confused with online sales letters in quality.

After all, it costs nothing to slap a letter up on the internet and see if anything sticks.

But mailing out thousands of letters the old fashioned way is a serious investment – which is also why these companies are willing to pay the very best writers 5 figures plus royalties to write these letters.

So, get on as many mailing lists as possible and when these letters start coming in, read and re-read them.

Dissect why they work, and then use them as templates for your own letters.

I have a friend who is experimenting with this very technique, and his first try out of the gate more than DOUBLED his sales compared to the sales letter he was using.

He simply took a sales letter that he’s received in the mail twice (a sure sign it’s converting) and he used it as a template for his online letter for his own product.

He didn’t use any graphics at all. No flash and no sparkle – just a plain old sales letter full of words that convinced his online buyers to… BUY.

Try it. You never know – maybe you’ll double your sales, too.

If you’re a product seller, you already know that not all affiliates are created equal.

Some will never promote. Others promote once and disappear. And a small percentage will promote your products over and over, making a lion’s share of sales for you.

So how do you recruit great affiliates?

While there is no one answer, there are many ways to find and recruit those key affiliates who will take your business to the next level.

1: “Wanna Promote?”

Contacting websites, blogs and other web publishers.

Send them a well-written email to ask them in a very polite way if they would like to become your affiliate.

You’ll likely have to contact a lot of people to get results, but it can be totally worth the effort.

2: Use a Service

Use a service to locate potential affiliates by category, keyword or advertiser.

3: Bloggers

Group High is a site that will help you find the best bloggers and influencers, as well as manage your relationships.

4: Outsource

If you have the funds, you can hire a service such as Experience Advertising to do your outreach and recruiting for you.

5: Use PPC Search Ads

Did you know that affiliates are actively looking for great programs to promote? You can find them by running PPC ads in Google Adwords and Bing Ads.

Don’t forget to track to see which ads are bringing in the most effective affiliates.

6: SEO’d Affiliate Pages

Create a page just for affiliates. Then optimize that page for SEO results, so when people are searching for affiliate programs in your niche, they can find you in the organic search results.

7: Press Releases

Write press releases for online distribution. Press releases can be another way to gain traction in the organic rankings.

8: Facebook Ads

Did you know you can find affiliates on Facebook? Target people who are interested in affiliate marketing and blogging in your niche.

9: Networks

Launch your product on an affiliate network.

There are many to choose from, including Clickbank, Commissions Junction, JVZoo, Linkshare and Sharesale.

In some cases you might want to screen affiliates from these networks to be sure you’re only dealing with reputable people.

10: In Person

Trade shows, summits and conferences are great places to meet new affiliates. You might even consider getting a booth at some of these events, so affiliates are coming to you instead of you hunting them down.

11: Affiliate Forums

Build and maintain a presence on affiliate forums. These are great places to meet and recruit affiliates. Here’s a few to get you started:

Affiliate Fix https://www.affiliatefix.com/

Affilorama https://www.affilorama.com/forum/

Black Hat World https://www.blackhatworld.com/

DN Forum https://www.dnforum.com/

Digital Point https://forums.digitalpoint.com/

Site Point https://www.sitepoint.com/community/

Warrior Forum http://warriorforum.com

Wicked Fire http://www.wickedfire.com/

12: Twitter

Twitter is a good place to meet potential affiliates. Search for your keywords to find who is talking about your niche, and then follow them and start interacting.

13: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great place to meet affiliates and just network in general. You can post and participate in discussions and connect with people in a professional atmosphere.

14: Talk to Your Customers

This is a great way to get new affiliates who truly use and believe in your product. Reach out to your buyers and see who would like to be your affiliate, and take it from there.

15: Customer Referral Program

Tools such as Referral Candy and Friend Buy make it super easy to set up and run a customer referral program.

Plus it automates the process, so you can put your focus elsewhere.

16: Your Own Site

Place a link on your website. This is perhaps the most simple, yet most overlooked technique of all.

Place a link at the bottom of your website, and anywhere else you choose, pointing people to your affiliate page.

17: You Promote Mine, I’ll Promote Yours

Approach other product sellers and offer to do a deal in which you promote each other’s product.

A few notes about this one: Obviously you want to find product owners in your same niche.

You want to love their product enough to promote it – don’t promote junk just to make some sales of your own.

And while many will tell you that you cannot be direct competitors to do this, it’s simply not true. For example, let’s say you have a product that teaches traffic generation techniques.

You find another product that also teaches traffic generation techniques, so naturally they seem like a direct competitor. But the actual techniques they teach are somewhat different from yours.

I can tell you right now that your customers are not buying just one product on generating traffic – they’re buying several. You can be the affiliate who introduces them to a traffic course you truly believe in, and in return get your own product promoted as well.

18: It’s Super Affiliate!

Look for super affiliates – the top affiliate performers who can generate significant revenue for the merchants they choose to promote.

They’re going to be looking for high conversion rates and a decent percentage of the profits.

Be sure you’ve got everything running smoothly and converting well before asking them to promote. If they make a lot of sales, they may continue to promote you into the future.

But if there are technical glitches or low conversions, you will never hear from them again.

19: Spy

Watch to see who is promoting similar offers. If you’re about to launch that traffic program, so some research to find out who the top affiliates were for previous traffic programs.

Perhaps the easiest way to do the research is proactively. Sign up as an affiliate yourself so you can see who the top promoters are, and contact them well in advance of your own launch.

20: Contests

Run an incentive contest, promote it everywhere. Running a contest with cash prizes for top performers will entice new affiliates to join your affiliate program.

21: Affiliates Recruiting Affiliates

Offer an incentive to current affiliates to bring in new affiliates. Affiliates know other affiliates. And offering a percentage of profits on their affiliate recruits is a great way to incentivize them to do your affiliate recruiting for you.

Above all else, take care of your best affiliates and keep them happy. Affiliates can make or break your business. If just one affiliate has a bad experience with you, they can potentially tell dozens of others to steer clear. Once this happens, you’ll find it very difficult to recruit new affiliates.

But when you treat your affiliates well, they will send you sales – often a surprising number of them.

Just think – all it takes is one really good affiliate to add 5 figures to your business.

A half dozen of these affiliates promoting you on a regular basis can move you into the 6 figure range. All for just recruiting and taking care of your best people.