[AlphaTravel]

I know a few of you guys here are into affiliate marketing and thought I'd get some information from you. I'm planning on getting into it soon too, have been researching a few niches that I think I can make money on.

Anyone have any good information, tips, tricks, resources, websites or guides I can look at?

I know of the warrior forum and have been reading up on there.

Thanks.

[Deluge]

Affiliate marketing and referral marketing are not easy, but there are a lot guys out there who've made serious bank from it. It really depends on what you're selling. Stuff like a lot of the WSO's and pick-up literature don't get many sales because people realize they're scams or because they are too expensive or because the market was too small in the first place. Sell a product that is very high quality. Something legit, preferably created by a very well trusted and large organization. You could make your own product but unless it is very revolutionary it will not make you money. Once you realize that E-books and WSO's fail more often than they are successful you'll learn that whatever you sell whether it be a how to guide or website design needs to have value to the customer. If it doesn't bring real value to the table it's doomed to fail. Find a great product that someone else has made. It should be good enough that if you were a member of your target demographic you would buy it. This goes doubly so for small business clients. Throw in something for free to reel them in as well. Businesses especially love free shit.

[DareP]

I've made about $20,000 - $30,000 from affiliate marketing. My opinion - Don't do it. Put your energy and effort into creating a real business, a real asset rather than funneling traffic into someone else's business.

That said, if you really want to get into it, get into CPA marketing. Don't do ClickBank, don't do information products. The real money is almost always in lead generation. The one exception to this is if you can source your own affiliate deals.

Expect to lose money. If you don't have at least $3,000 that you can afford to lose, you're in the wrong business. Even if you find a profitable campaign, usually you'll lose money for the first round.

For example, say you're doing a dating campaign. You do run #1, spend $300 and make $180 back. You lost $120. That's a 60% return. That's a SUCCESS. Now you need to test an email list, track the profitable and unprofitable times of day, eliminate non-converting keywords / demographics, etc. Then you get to the point where you break even. Then you keep optimizing and later you get to the point where you're making a profitable return. Then you scale it out to different traffic sources.

Now, keep in mind that you'll have to run maybe 10 tests like this before you get one profitable campaign. So that's $1,800 down the drain, at least, before you have a winner. Now that winner could easily make you $20,000 over the course of a few months, but you really need to be willing to lose money and really need to know what you're doing to find those winners.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: It's not a newbie friendly avenue. It's very hard, highly competitive and very cuthroat. Instead of putting energy into it, I'd try to build a *REAL INTERNET BUSINESS* that delivers real value by creating a real solution to a real problem, rather than being a traffic funnel. You can do it, but it's very hard.

One last tip, if you must get into affiliate marketing: Spend your first $1,000 on a plane ticket. Get yourself to Ad:Tech or preferably Affiliate Summit. The real truth is, THERE ARE NO real affiliate marketers that'll teach you how they make $100,000 a month for "just $47 a month." The only way you'll *really* learn how the big players make bank is to meet them in person and befriend them. You'll learn more from showing up at a real life conference than you ever would buying infoproducts online and reading websites.

So if you really want to win at affiliate marketing, get yourself to an affiliate summit. All the info you'll find online is watered down and outdated.

Over and out.

- D

[zoom]

Thanks for the advice DareP. Are you currently creating your own products?

There certainly is value in affiliate marketing, but you need credibility and repeat customers. If you run an ad campaign, people might buy from you once and then never again. I think an email list is the best way to use affiliate marketing. Your subscribers trust you, an you make the recommendation. There is someone with a huge email list, probably 1 million or more, and he calls his list his virtual ATM. Anytime he needs money, he will send out a review of an affiliate product. But it is getting this list and credibility that is important.

[AlphaTravel]

Quote:

Find a great product that someone else has made. It should be good enough that if you were a member of your target demographic you would buy it.

This is exactly what I've done, I've found fairly niche products that I beleive can sell and make money. It's nothing to do with pick up or anything similar.

I also have an idea for a real internet business or two as someone mentioned but I don't see any harm in giving the affiliate marketing idea a go too. No need to keep all the eggs in one basket.

Thanks for the advice, not exactly the words of encouragment I expected but good to get a real opinion on it. Anyone can provide some good websites or resources to look at?

[AntiTrace]

(04-12-2012 09:01 AM)DareP Wrote:  

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: It's not a newbie friendly avenue. It's very hard, highly competitive and very cuthroat. Instead of putting energy into it, I'd try to build a *REAL INTERNET BUSINESS* that delivers real value by creating a real solution to a real problem, rather than being a traffic funnel. You can do it, but it's very hard.

This. Because heres my main question, you have identified a niche that people are going to spend money in. Why do you want to spend your time marketing for someone else instead of owning that niche yourself?

I have dabbled in affiliate marketing and will continue to do so, but the real money and fun is in business.

Creating a real internet business is definitely way more interesting. I wake up every morning excited to see the growth of my business. I spend much more time on it because I know I am the sole person responsible for making all the major decisions. I know if I dont pay attention and make the proper moves all the capital I have invested will go straight down the tube.

My current project is my biggest one yet. Heres my process so far, im still a couple months from launch, and will probably post about the whole process when Im done if anyone is interested.

1. The first thing I did when I got my current idea was to research the industry health it was going to be involved in. I spent $100 on a lengthy industry report from a reputable research company. The numbers proved it was a positive growth industry with a lot of money flowing through it. Best $100 ive spent in this project so far. Kind of like checking the date on the milk carton before you buy it. If you dont you might be good, but you also might take a mouthful of sour milk.

2. Now I had to decide if my idea was plausible. What were the barriers to entry, what were major competitors, how saturated was the market, was there even a demand for my service. Brainstorming, a lot of google work, and many cups of coffee followed. Hours would disappear when I went to coffee shop, I did not even notice the women there.

3.I made a business plan. While I could not completely finish it because I had no way to predict my sales forecast, it made myself come up with answers to problems I did not even foresee. It made me break down exactly what I was going to do, exactly where my income would come from, exactly where my expenses would go. I isolated my target market. Not just "guys above 50" but "Males between the age of 27-53 with an annual salary >75k that participate in X >12 times a year competitively." Business plans aren't required if your not seeking investors, but I would still highly recommend it.

This took about a week of several hours a day. It was only about 12 pages long but the problems I noticed and had to solve along the way took the majority of the time.

4.At this point I had realized the industry was solid, relatively low competition, low barriers to entry (<50k investment). My two main problems was the competition was small but it was established. It is going to take me a while to gain a good market share. The second was that I had no clue if the demand was there as my service was slightly more focused to a niche than the established competition. To me it was an amazing idea and I was surprised the service didn't exist yet, but thats just me.

5.I started pitching the idea to friends. Some I directly told about my plan. Others I told about this great new service I found and told them they should sign up, I wanted to differentiate from the people just being nice. Others I invited to be part of the testing process of the service. The demand was definitely there.

6.The hardest part of all: I had to put that money on the line, throw caution to the wind, and execute the plan. Advertised on oDesk for the web development, sketched an idea for a logo and pushed that out to some graphics designers, brain stormed domain names, developed a small scale marketing plan that I was not going to execute until the website was launched.

All that took about 3 months. Thats where I am now. Waiting for the web development to finish and trying to fix all the issues that arise along the way. Still need to get a new attorney since my current one does not have much experience in the field. Expecting to launch the experimental phase in about 8 weeks, spend 4-8 weeks working out bugs, then go public.

Like any business I have some weaknesses. Right now my biggest one is kind of catch-22. I am essentially a middle man. To get the customers I need suppliers. To convince suppliers to pay my subscription fees I need the customers. I plan on countering this by offering "grand-opening" deals to the suppliers, offering them free service for a year to sign up now or only charge them once they have produced positive sales.

Legal issues and internet security would be a small second weaknesses. A lot of money would be changing hands and I need to protect not only my self in terms of remaining within the limits of the laws, but I need my suppliers and customers to feel safe presenting their payment methods to me. Good representation and investing heavily in security is how I plan on countering that.

And if this project fails and I lose my entire investment. Fuck it, ill chalk it up as an educational experience. I have already learned way more about business in the last 2-3 years since I dropped out of college than all my friends who are about to graduate next month. I practically did their small-business presentations and business plans for the Senior Projects as I sat in on the couch pounding brews. Fuck I should I start a business doing that. Regardless they are 30-40k in debt with an entry level business degree that will get them an entry level management job at best. Im positive net worth and have one of them coming to work under me once she graduates.

Do business. That is all.

[Jalouse]

I did some affiliate marketing this year. I was the merchant not the affiliate so I only know it from this point of view.

At best I was bringing in a couple of thousand a month but out of this I had to pay commissions and my costs.

The real negatives I saw is that so many affiliates just put up cookie cutter sites and then start ranking on my brand name effectively taking sales I was already achieving then I would have to pay a commission on it. In any network there are a bunch of terrible affiliates and some really good ones, if you can attract the good ones then you have a chance of making some decent money.

The other thing I noticed is that is quite difficult to achieve any decent levels of traffic, there have been a number of updates to Google recently that have punished affiliate marketers so this is getting harder and harder.

[mofo]

Good luck

[AlphaTravel]

Can anyone recommend any good websites or forums which cover affiliate marketing?

Thanks for the advice so far.

[bface]

wickedfire

Stay away from the rest, seriously. They only make money by selling shit to each other (warriorforum, digitalpoint etc).

[Spike]

(04-12-2012 09:01 AM)DareP Wrote:  

I've made about $20,000 - $30,000 from affiliate marketing. My opinion - Don't do it. Put your energy and effort into creating a real business, a real asset rather than funneling traffic into someone else's business.

That said, if you really want to get into it, get into CPA marketing. Don't do ClickBank, don't do information products. The real money is almost always in lead generation. The one exception to this is if you can source your own affiliate deals.

Expect to lose money. If you don't have at least $3,000 that you can afford to lose, you're in the wrong business. Even if you find a profitable campaign, usually you'll lose money for the first round.

For example, say you're doing a dating campaign. You do run #1, spend $300 and make $180 back. You lost $120. That's a 60% return. That's a SUCCESS. Now you need to test an email list, track the profitable and unprofitable times of day, eliminate non-converting keywords / demographics, etc. Then you get to the point where you break even. Then you keep optimizing and later you get to the point where you're making a profitable return. Then you scale it out to different traffic sources.

Now, keep in mind that you'll have to run maybe 10 tests like this before you get one profitable campaign. So that's $1,800 down the drain, at least, before you have a winner. Now that winner could easily make you $20,000 over the course of a few months, but you really need to be willing to lose money and really need to know what you're doing to find those winners.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: It's not a newbie friendly avenue. It's very hard, highly competitive and very cuthroat. Instead of putting energy into it, I'd try to build a *REAL INTERNET BUSINESS* that delivers real value by creating a real solution to a real problem, rather than being a traffic funnel. You can do it, but it's very hard.

One last tip, if you must get into affiliate marketing: Spend your first $1,000 on a plane ticket. Get yourself to Ad:Tech or preferably Affiliate Summit. The real truth is, THERE ARE NO real affiliate marketers that'll teach you how they make $100,000 a month for "just $47 a month." The only way you'll *really* learn how the big players make bank is to meet them in person and befriend them. You'll learn more from showing up at a real life conference than you ever would buying infoproducts online and reading websites.

So if you really want to win at affiliate marketing, get yourself to an affiliate summit. All the info you'll find online is watered down and outdated.

Over and out.

- D

Dude, you have an interesting website !, thanks for sharing your ideas on there.


.

[user10726]

I have a Facebook page and managed to get 1.1k fans in the first week by offering an iPod Touch in a competition, once that competition ended the fans joining per day dramatically went down. I wouldn't suggest using competitions to get a user base as you'll get a lot of people not interested in your actual product who will leave once the competition ends.

After that I joined an affiliate network (CJ.com) and now once a week I post a status offering a £5 Amazon voucher to one person who signs up to a website using my referral link (From CJ.com), comes back and comments "done" on the status.

That way, 20-30 people sign up using my referral link, making me around £25 per status I post (Assuming I make £1 per lead, its usually more), and all I have to pay is £5 prize.
Sure, for me this is no way to make any serious money, but I just consider it like this: I post 1 status a week, takes 2 minutes, and it covers my gym cost.

I also sometimes email small businesses asking for free samples of their product I can give away as prizes in order to exchange fans of our facebook pages.

I'd say CJ.com is the best network to join cause you easily get accepted onto it and have got a good amount of ads you can use. I've seen some bad posts about them online but so far for me they've been fine.

[AlphaTravel]

Thanks for the info bret. Appreciate it.

[DareP]

(04-13-2012 04:22 AM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

Dude, you have an interesting website !, thanks for sharing your ideas on there.

Cheers =)

Quote:

Thanks for the advice DareP. Are you currently creating your own products?

Yep - Working on it.

Quote:

Can anyone recommend any good websites or forums which cover affiliate marketing?

http://www.WickedFire.com

That's the only site that superaffiliates hang out on. Keep in mind, there's quite a high degree of assholeism on that site. That said, you can't really expect super affiliates to share their secrets publicly can you There's a lot you can learn there, you just have to read between the lines.

The Warrior Forum is 99% newbies, but there is a 1% that's valuable.

To see a list of all the top affiliate blogs at the moment and their most recent posts, head over to AffBuzz.

But again - The only way you'll really learn this is to meetup with real affiliates in person. Look for a Meetup202 in your area, or take a flight to Affiliate Summit.

[AlphaTravel]

Good advice, thanks.

[travolta]

STM forum. You're gonna have to shell out $99/month, but there's some gold on there.

You're welcome

[babelfish669]

Go to a trade show, at the parties these idiots get drunk and will tell you everything they are doing and how they are doing it. Then copy them. Don't bother reading forums or ebooks, the amount of crap vastly exceeds the good stuff.

[Beyond Borders]

(04-12-2012 03:00 PM)AntiTrace Wrote:  

(04-12-2012 09:01 AM)DareP Wrote:  

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: It's not a newbie friendly avenue. It's very hard, highly competitive and very cuthroat. Instead of putting energy into it, I'd try to build a *REAL INTERNET BUSINESS* that delivers real value by creating a real solution to a real problem, rather than being a traffic funnel. You can do it, but it's very hard.

This. Because heres my main question, you have identified a niche that people are going to spend money in. Why do you want to spend your time marketing for someone else instead of owning that niche yourself?

I have dabbled in affiliate marketing and will continue to do so, but the real money and fun is in business.

Creating a real internet business is definitely way more interesting. I wake up every morning excited to see the growth of my business. I spend much more time on it because I know I am the sole person responsible for making all the major decisions. I know if I dont pay attention and make the proper moves all the capital I have invested will go straight down the tube.

My current project is my biggest one yet. Heres my process so far, im still a couple months from launch, and will probably post about the whole process when Im done if anyone is interested.

1. The first thing I did when I got my current idea was to research the industry health it was going to be involved in. I spent $100 on a lengthy industry report from a reputable research company. The numbers proved it was a positive growth industry with a lot of money flowing through it. Best $100 ive spent in this project so far. Kind of like checking the date on the milk carton before you buy it. If you dont you might be good, but you also might take a mouthful of sour milk.

2. Now I had to decide if my idea was plausible. What were the barriers to entry, what were major competitors, how saturated was the market, was there even a demand for my service. Brainstorming, a lot of google work, and many cups of coffee followed. Hours would disappear when I went to coffee shop, I did not even notice the women there.

3.I made a business plan. While I could not completely finish it because I had no way to predict my sales forecast, it made myself come up with answers to problems I did not even foresee. It made me break down exactly what I was going to do, exactly where my income would come from, exactly where my expenses would go. I isolated my target market. Not just "guys above 50" but "Males between the age of 27-53 with an annual salary >75k that participate in X >12 times a year competitively." Business plans aren't required if your not seeking investors, but I would still highly recommend it.

This took about a week of several hours a day. It was only about 12 pages long but the problems I noticed and had to solve along the way took the majority of the time.

4.At this point I had realized the industry was solid, relatively low competition, low barriers to entry (<50k investment). My two main problems was the competition was small but it was established. It is going to take me a while to gain a good market share. The second was that I had no clue if the demand was there as my service was slightly more focused to a niche than the established competition. To me it was an amazing idea and I was surprised the service didn't exist yet, but thats just me.

5.I started pitching the idea to friends. Some I directly told about my plan. Others I told about this great new service I found and told them they should sign up, I wanted to differentiate from the people just being nice. Others I invited to be part of the testing process of the service. The demand was definitely there.

6.The hardest part of all: I had to put that money on the line, throw caution to the wind, and execute the plan. Advertised on oDesk for the web development, sketched an idea for a logo and pushed that out to some graphics designers, brain stormed domain names, developed a small scale marketing plan that I was not going to execute until the website was launched.

All that took about 3 months. Thats where I am now. Waiting for the web development to finish and trying to fix all the issues that arise along the way. Still need to get a new attorney since my current one does not have much experience in the field. Expecting to launch the experimental phase in about 8 weeks, spend 4-8 weeks working out bugs, then go public.

Like any business I have some weaknesses. Right now my biggest one is kind of catch-22. I am essentially a middle man. To get the customers I need suppliers. To convince suppliers to pay my subscription fees I need the customers. I plan on countering this by offering "grand-opening" deals to the suppliers, offering them free service for a year to sign up now or only charge them once they have produced positive sales.

Legal issues and internet security would be a small second weaknesses. A lot of money would be changing hands and I need to protect not only my self in terms of remaining within the limits of the laws, but I need my suppliers and customers to feel safe presenting their payment methods to me. Good representation and investing heavily in security is how I plan on countering that.

And if this project fails and I lose my entire investment. Fuck it, ill chalk it up as an educational experience. I have already learned way more about business in the last 2-3 years since I dropped out of college than all my friends who are about to graduate next month. I practically did their small-business presentations and business plans for the Senior Projects as I sat in on the couch pounding brews. Fuck I should I start a business doing that. Regardless they are 30-40k in debt with an entry level business degree that will get them an entry level management job at best. Im positive net worth and have one of them coming to work under me once she graduates.

Do business. That is all.

How did your launch go?

[FretDancer]

@DareP: Man I love your website, bookmarked it a good while ago and read many stuff. How come there haven't been any new updates?