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Do I Love or Hate Affiliate Marketing?

Posted by in Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing tips 19 comments

I need to clear some things up.

There seems to be a conflict in my recent messages about affiliate marketing.

On the one hand…

I use affiliate marketing in my own business to endorse products that I believe in. This means that occasionally I get paid a commission on products that I endorse on my blog or in my newsletters (I ONLY endorse what I fully believe in – that’s how I protect my reputation). I don’t accept advertising EVER.

… but at the same time I’m writing articles like these in recent weeks:

How can I seemingly LOVE and HATE affiliate marketing at the same time?
To make matters even more confusing for you there’s the fact that I earned a good portion of my income last year finishing in the top 5 (total sales) in several affiliate marketing promotions (that’s just good ol’ fashioned full disclosure).

Am I contradicting myself?

YES I AM…unless you know a couple of important facts!

Once you’ve been “educated” you’ll find out that I’m being 100% consistent with my message and there is ZERO conflict.

I’ll explain:

There are TWO entirely different approaches to affiliate marketing (there’s only one term that covers both though unfortunately).  Here are the differences:

  1. I don’t like “Stranger Danger Affiliate Marketing”:  This form of affiliate marketing is getting HARDER to do all the time with fewer and fewer true success stories. This is the dying strategy of driving random traffic to thin SEO optimized pages that contain affiliate links.  More and more “experts” are getting out of this game (while eager newbies keep falling into the trap of thinking it’s “easy” and they keep buying the courses and training from often unscrupulous “experts”)
  2. I LOVE “Relationship Based Affiliate Marketing”: This is the other affiliate marketing strategy that is GROWING in popularity and the results are there to prove it for those doing it. Protecting your reputation and genuinely caring for people are at the heart of success in this model.

If you are trying to earn money from RANDOM TRAFFIC without building relationships (approach #1) I think you are playing a TOUGH GAME that will only get harder and harder over time.  Strangers are easily replaced. There’s not such thing as “proven” SEO strategies that will work indefinitely. Google doesn’t even really like you in my opinion!

If, on the other hand you are GROWING YOUR OWN CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE and providing valuable content to an increasingly loyal and expanding audience (approach #2), then you are in affiliate marketing heaven (that’s where I am currently).

This audio explains the difference if you’d rather “hear” your lesson instead of “read” it:

Please leave a comment or your questions by clicking the comment button at the top of this article.

The best way to sell your ideas is to give them away creatively

Posted by in Affiliate Marketing, Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, Hot Niche Markets, inspiration 6 comments

use twitter? Spread the word ->

Question sent to me recently:  “A friend asked me how I thought he should sell his new ebook.  What advice would you give him?”

My reply:

I’ve sold nearly 100,000 copies of various information products and ebooks over the last several years so I’m a good guy to ask I suppose.  The secret to success selling ANY information comes down to two concepts in my opinion. First, learn the power of “free” and next learn to find and partner with INFLUENCERS.

For the sake of clarity, an ebook in this article is a simple download file that is most often a PDF file – easily read on any PC, Mac or reading device. I’m not talking about a book that requires an electronic book reader, although there’s no reason you can’t include any books or other information products in this discussion.

While doing all this BE SURE TO GROW YOUR OWN MAILING LIST.

Let’s start with “FREE”:

To leverage the power of free you need to GIVE AWAY whatever you are used to charging money for. Ideally

Wisdom from the mountain top guru: "If you can't find a way to GIVE IT AWAY then you'll never sell it fool!"

this is an information product, video, audio etc. so that the value (both real and perceived) is high, and the costs are low.  If you don’t have a high value, free informational product to give away yet then you need to be convinced that this is the way to go. This video might help convince you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df9RRvGAzOI

If you aren’t convinced of the power of “free”, and you aren’t willing to “give away” HIGH VALUE information, then stop here. My advice is useless for you from here forward.

You need to come to the realization that a single book, or info product SHOULD NOT be the end goal or you will struggle to succeed. The end goal is to grow your audience and become influential in the arena of your expertise. More books, products, influence and success will come with time. Success comes in streams when you are a writer. It’s not a sudden gift overnight for 99.999% of us.

The next obvious question:

Once you have a valuable freebie to give away, who can you give it to? Who wants it?

Enter the INFLUENCERS.

An “Influencer” is someone that has the attention of the audience you’d like to reach. It could be a blog, a website, a twitter guru, a magazine editor,  or better yet someone with a large email list of eager, loyal readers.

How to find and partner with an “Influencer”:

A bit of research on Google, facebook and twitter for top sites and experts in your niche that also gather email addresses is your best first bet on finding the influential in your niche.  They aren’t hiding.  NOTE: If you have a hard time finding the influential websites and leaders in your niche then there’s a good chance you are facing a BIG UPHILL climb in establishing yourself in this “new market”.  In other words, “no audience” = “no book sales”.

When selling ANY ebook the BEST place to start is by finding partners that have the attention of your target audience – ideally with a BUNCH of email addresses. Find win/win/win ways to partner with them and you’ll do very well.  If you take my advice from day one you SHOULDN’T EVEN WRITE A BOOK OR A COURSE UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE FOUND AND CAME TO AGREEMENT WITH YOUR KEY INFLUENCERS!

In other words, don’t start with the product, start with the audience building.

some examples:

  • Have your influential partner offer 3 free chapters of your book to their email mailing list and tag the “free report” with an affiliate link for the rest of the book. The affiliate link ensures that your partner/influencer gets credit for sales made.
  • Put up a banner ad on the influencers site with a link to your book – tagged with a 50% or more affiliate link of course.
  • Interview your influential partner, or have them interview you, package it for them (clean up the mp3, put a cool play button on it etc.) and GIVE it to the in exchange for their time. Ask that they post it as content on their site.
  • Put the influential persons name ON THE COVER as co-author and tell them to give it away for free, or better yet, sell it as great content for their list and on their site. In the book tastefully encourage readers to join your mailing list.

    • Get the idea? The possibilities are endless, but it all starts with FINDING THE INFLUENCERS that have the attention of your audience.

    Some good follow up reading:
    You don’t need a website, you need an audience
    Email Marketing, The Only “techie” skill you’ll ever need

    I love getting feedback! Please leave a comment above by clicking the comment button at the top of this article.

    The ONLY semi-techie skill you’ll ever need for online business success

    Posted by in Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, inspiration, Outsourcing 12 comments

    Use twitter? Give me a tweet!  —>

    Success online is NOT a matter of YOU obtaining a bunch of new skills.

    Another skilled worker...

    I say it all the time.

    Success online is for IDEA people…not “skills” people.

    People with skills compete and work hard for jobs to serve (and make richer) the people with ideas.

    Learning Leverage and Influence are the keys to success online. New technical skills may make you more confident, and they will add to your resume or help you get a job, but they WON’T make you successful as an online entrepreneur. If anything all those “techie skills” will get in the way of your success.

    You don’t need web design, Java, HTML, or any other web language skills in order to succeed online. You don’t even have to know how to set up a blog (although that’s getting pretty darn easy to do with blogger.com and wordpress.com). In most cases you shouldn’t even be setting up a website though.

    This all runs counter-intuitive to the way most of us have been educated.  In public school we learn a bunch of new random stuff each week and then HOPE that some of it will help us someday as we seek a job (a job that will make someone else rich).  I’m all for a good well rounded general education, but if you try to do the same thing with an online business effort you’ll NEVER GET ANYWHERE.

    It’s not your fault.  It’s ingrained in you.  Even “forward thinking” higher education institutions incorrectly approach “Online Business” by starting out teaching “skills” like how to build a website.  Next they might teach you graphic design so you can put in pretty graphics. Next they might teach you how to add or program a shopping cart etc.  Those are all virtually USELESS skills when it comes to success online. I can find someone willing to do all that stuff WAY BETTER than you can all for about $2.50 per hour!

    The ONE SKILL (semi-technical skill) that I repeatedly see as being key to someone’s online success though is EMAIL MARKETING and email list management.  The fact is that email marketing has the highest ROI of ANY large scale marketing option in the world. It’s a “must have” tool for any business or entrepreneur I ever consult with.

    If I could convince you to pick up ONE new skill in your search for online success it would be the skill of growing and maintaining your own email list.I Heart AWeber.com Sure you can outsource this task as well once you grasp it, but you first need to learn what is possible and how it all works.

    So where do you go to learn email list management? I use aweber.com. Click here or use that pretty little button over there  –> to check out aweber.

    Getresponse.com, constantcontact.com and several other sites offer similar services. I LOVE aweber though for my own list management needs.

    I have a full course on this subject at ListBuildingClass.com where I explain how I’ve gone from 0 email list followers to over 100,000. That is 100,000 people that WANT to hear from me and also volunteered to be on my mailing list. Email marketing is a powerful tool for success in any business ESPECIALLY for any online business.

    …and it’s the ONLY “semi-techie” skill you’ll ever need.

    By the way – the ListBuildingClass.com course is currently on sale. It’s on par with courses that have sold for thousands of dollars, but mine is under $50 right now. It’s a tiny investment in the ONE SKILL that I say you must have in order to succeed long term online.

    Please leave a comment or question using the comment link at the top of this article.

    Jim’s NEW Top 10 Rules of Online Business Success

    Posted by in Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, Hot Niche Markets, inspiration 21 comments

    IF you use twitter click the retweet button please!

    I sent out an article last week that has generated a lot of email responses back to me so I thought I should put the entire article here for us to discuss. If you have questions, agree or disagree please leave a comment below. Let’s see what the brilliant readers of my newsletter think of my list:

    Here are some big picture observations I’m making about the online landscape currently.

    1. Google (and slowly but surely all other search engines) can’t be fooled or relied on long term. If you are trying to do either you need to stop now.

    Note: Only great websites will be on page one very long and even they aren’t safe no matter what anyone tells you. The ONE POSSIBLE exception is local search – more on that in a moment.

    2. Affiliate marketing is HARD and getting HARDER. It’s no place for a “newbie” to play. Sending other people all the customers you are generating IS NOT a good stand alone business model for the long term. If you can’t grow a mailing list you certainly can’t succeed at affiliate marketing.

    3. Building a website is NOT the place to start. Building relationships or a following is where you start.

    Note: If my 10 year old can get 30,000 views in a few months on youtube.com there’s no excuse for the rest of us not to be growing a following.

    4. Good ideas are a dime a dozen online. I’ll take a big TARGETED audience over a good idea any day.

    Note: If you ask me, “Will this work?” I’ll ask you, “Where’s your audience and how do you plan to reach them without spending a fortune?”

    5. eBay and Amazon remain a VERY reliable way for any online entrepreneur to profit in creative ways very quickly.

    Note: I know so many people still doing SO WELL on those two sites. Most of the “complainers” have all stopped selling there, but a lot of sellers are STILL getting rich there RIGHT NOW. eBay also remains a great place to grow your prospect list when done right.

    6. Grow your email list. Learning to do this is the ONLY “techie skill” you’ll ever need.

    Note: Lifetime customers are possible in a way unknown to business in the past. Take advantage of this! Here’s a link to my brand new course that shows in step by step video how I’ve grown HUGE email mailing lists…and it’s ALL people that LOVE to hear from me. You can do this too. The price of my course is very low compared to the other “list growth” courses out there.

    7. You need to be an EXPERT at something. The world NEEDS experts now more than ever. Even tiny niche ideas are seeking leaders. Step up.

    Note: The fastest way to “expert status” is to write. Articles, a blog or better yet, a book. Can’t write? SPEAK into a microphone and pay a transcriber that edits spoken word into easy to read copy.

    8. The fastest way to success is to go where success is already happening and partner with it in a win/win/win way. Lone wolves nearly always die online.

    Note: Win/win/win happens when you win, I win AND the email list or audience that either or both of us have also wins.

    Speaking of “lone wolves”, you NEED a community of like minded people supporting you. A great way to find partners, new ideas, support, and friendship among your peers is to join a community of like minded folks. A great example of such a community is my membership site at MySilentTeam.com that boasts a membership of thousands with active discussion forums.

    9. Many of the best online opportunities for you RIGHT NOW are probably within a few miles of where you are living RIGHT NOW. Note: This is why OfflineBiz.com is so popular and growing so fast. Local businesses lack Internet skills. The opportunity to partner with local businesses even to do something as simple as sell excess inventory on eBay is HUGE.

    Perhaps the best TOOL ever released to help you dominate as a local Internet Marketing expert helping small businesses is Traffic Geyser. I’ve been endorsing it for years and it keeps getting better.

    10. Your reputation is your ticket. Do things right or you will be exposed EASILY and it will burn you in a big way. Always over deliver!

    NOTE: Reputation management will become a huge industry. Your ability to influence and succeed will be tied to your reputation in an exponentially increasing way.

    I promised ten rules, but…

    11. (Bonus rule. Over deliver!) If it can’t be automated or nearly automated don’t do it. There are too many low hanging fruit opportunities online to waste time chasing “jobs” that require all your time, effort and energy. Stop trading dollars for hours – your life really is too short for that.

    12. ANOTHER BONUS RULE: No matter how great the “big launch” of the latest income earning system looks to you please just WAIT IT OUT. If an idea is great RIGHT NOW it will still be great in a couple months when the price drops, or someone else comes out with a cheaper version of the same course, or as occasionally happens, the course turns out to be a real dud and NO ONE is still talking about it etc.

    I’ve been observing the online marketplace for a decade and I doubt you’ll find many people that have a list like that they can give you based on watching thousands either succeed or fail.

    Please leave a comment below – let’s discuss this.

    My youtube “body of work”

    Posted by in Creative Ideas, Email Marketing tips, Hot Niche Markets 4 comments

    Instead of spending 15 minutes reading my newsletter this week I’ll instead point you to some of my YouTube.com free videos. These are all popular videos that have gotten a bunch of good feedback.

    And it’s all free.

    I’ve put a lot of solid advice and instruction in these short videos. If you haven’t been on my youtube.com account lately go check it out.

    Some viewer favorites are:

    Grow your email list WITHOUT a website:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzdemYscFhY

    Ideas on what to sell on eBay:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbz_PE9LmCI

    eBay Classified ads:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtiSumDP-PY

    Save a TON of time dealing with email (a little fuzzy, but GREAT video):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39R_4lMr8jo

    Just for fun… a paper airplane video game (my most watched video):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLgiMAPQfC4

    Have a video you’d like to see me make? Have feedback on any of these? Leave a comment below or on my youtube.com account.

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