As in, it doesn’t matter if you get 1000 unique visitors a day, it’s pointless if you have a website that doesn’t answer their questions. You’d be lucky to get 1 sale. The bounce rate will be high and you’ll be losing money out of your ears. You’d rather 100 visitors a day at a 10% conversion, which is extremely high by the way. But it’s possible, if you focus on excellent, relevant marketing.

Now, in case you don’t know, I am a Science student by profession. Affiliate Marketing is one of my passions and sources of income. I’ve flipped through marketing textbooks and stuff but just like all text books, they’re way too convoluted.

I was just going to have to rely on a holistic and logical understanding of marketing. I mean sure, most of the gurus online had degrees in sales and marekting or management or whatever, commercey type subjects. But that wasn’t me. I wasn’t going to fit into this mould and I’m determined to succeed so I’m going to make it work my way.

Having said all that, everything you’re just about to read is going to benefit you most if you’re someone who started from scratch like me, with nothing but desire. Like everything I learnt from Affiliate Marketing, everything I said made sense to me and was purely derived from logic. No confusing statements, just straight-forward, “If A=B, then B=C” type statements.

OK. The first question is “what do they want?” It’s not too hard to remember. You’ve got a product you want to promote, people are looking for a solution. Join the dots. The second question is “WHY do they want it?” This addresses the emotional aspect of purchasing. I heard it first from Ann Sieg, well-known MLM specialist: “people purchase with emotion and justify with logic.” This is the part that takes practice.

I read somewhere that it takes 8 seconds for you to grab people’s attention. I actually had this idea like right now. This is where layout’s important. Your layout has to be CLEAN. It has to instill a sense of security in the person, they don’t want to feel like their online safety could be compromised by being on your site.

But to REALLY catch them in the first 8 seconds, have a killer heading, banner and a big, clear picture that makes them feel something. Don’t jump straight into the hard-selling mode, that’ll lose them. Instead, somehow link the emotion with confidence in your site that the things you promote on it will alleviate the problem.

Number 3 is “WHY haven’t they already been able to get what they want? ie. what’s preventing them from getting it?” This is where you address the problems involved and why current methods aren’t working.

Number 4 is “Is the thing I’m promoting able to take away the impediment that prevents them from getting what they want?”

Number 5 is “How does it take it away?” This is where you delve into it and go into detail. Remember to speak normally, not in a salesy sort of voice. talk to the PERSON as if you’re a mate or family member recommending something.

Number 6 is “Is it the most effective way to remove it? ie. is there any chance that the impediment might come back?” this is a way to further garner trust, to address any “hold on a sec’s” that your “mate/family member” might have had when you were explaining your thing. It shows that you’re listening to them and understand them well enough to preempt any questions they might have?”

Number 7 is more for your own sake. After going through 1-6, you should have a good idea as to the key relevance question: “so, what are we really selling, in this case?” ie, all the questions above should fall into a logical pattern that allows you to ultimately answer this question. It’s hard answering this question immediately and it sounds salesy.

Hope it helps you understand affiliate marketing better! This is really scrappy but I hope to hone this and perfect it and formalise it to make it better for people to understand. I might make it a free e-book or something. Like a “Marketing for dummies” kind of thing. It takes a while to understand, but once you get it, you’re good.

Cross Campaign Promotion (name pending, this’ll do for now)

OK, say I want to promote a couple different products. They each need something else to make them get something. I’ll work with the internet marketing industry because it’s easiest.

Say I have an SEO product I want to promote. The ultimate purpose of SEO is to get good rankings for a website and the ultimate purpose of a website is (most likely) to get conversions and make money. Say you have a turnkey website builder that sets up affiliate websites for you, but won’t do the SEO dirty work for you.

See where I’m going with this?

Basically, something you can do is use a video review of the SEO product on a turnkey site that you’ve set up. The key to make this work is to have it running in the background (the website), so you’re indirectly promoting it, ie. at the end you say, “and now thanks to [SEO product] my turnkey website [whatever.com] will have hundreds of targetted visitors visiting it per day”

meanwhile, on the review site for the turnkey thing…

“… and now, thanks to [turnkey website builder] I don’t have to wait forever to set up an automated website to make me consistent weekly income”

This will run straight off some video reviews showing customers of you casually using some of the techniques from the [SEO product]. They’ll basically be wondering “what the hell is he doing and where can I learn more?”

There are a few keys to making this technique really kick ass…

• the promotion of the other thing has to be under the radar and done casually in the background.
• it helps if the audience that you’re appealing to wants both things. You can essentially get one customer buying both products.

This technique is a bit more advanced I reckon, so much so that I’m getting confused by it myself. =S

So I might work on it and get back to you. But if anyone reads this post and gets the gist of what I’m doing, then good for you! Hope you use it to your advantage. It seems almost devilishly Frank Kern-ish, if I don’t say so myself. =p

Cheerio.

On the way, we stopped at Hungry Jack’s, which is like the Australian version of Burger King or something like that. At this point in time, it was about… 5:15 am? I bought a Deluxe Chicken Thing and the poor guy that was serving me looked so wrecked. The bags under his eyes were huge.

It’s this sort of thing that I have to be aware of when I’m doing my Marketing, particularly before I start another day. I’ve got to appreciate what I have and what other guys don’t have, I can always approach my Affiliate Marketing with a spring in my step. What is usually a grind will become which I’ll do cheerfully, knowing it pays off in the end.

So that’s one thing I have to do before I start my Affiliate Marketing for the day.

I also noticed that it’s Mother’s Day pretty soon. I was at the Pancake Parlour today and read that it’s on the 2nd Sunday of every May, so Sunday week. I vow right here, right now that this time next year I can give something my mother truly wants… financial security. I’ll be able to replace her income with her own blog or something and she can retire, maybe at the end my sister’s final year, with some super and a piece of unshakeable VRE.

Next year will also be the year that I get Dad his car. See, now I’m just dreaming… I’ve got a long way to go, but once I have some time, I’ll be able to do this and more…

sorry for disappointing those of you who were expecting something about me singing. =p

Yeah that’s another thing about me. The reason I think that entrepreneurship suits me is because I find that I have many IDEAS that come to me on a regular basis. If I’d capitalised on every single one that I’ve had… well, I’d be a very busy man. They’re written here and there and hopefully, one day, I can pursue all of  them to some extent.

Hopefully, I’ll have the capacity to turn it from idea to reality like clockwork.

At any rate, here’s the business plan, scanned:

This scrappily drawn up business plan is going to get me a dependable, affiliate marketing income by the end of 2009.

Hmm… this isn’t Blogger, is it? Damn, I was hoping to be able to click on it and have it enlarge so people could see it.

I’ve nearly been an Affiliate Marketer for a year now. Once June 28, 2009, comes around, I’ll be one year old. It’s been one year and I don’t have any dependable affiliate income yet. I have worked pretty hard for the few sales that I’ve had and I’ve learnt a lot through the process:

1. I better understand my limits. I remember for one product I was trying to promote, my days were filled with article writing. I’d try to be writing up to 10 a day and frankly, it turned me off article writing even until now.
2. I learnt how to set better goals. Typically, a lot of my goals are really crazy and pretty much unattainable at my current “level”. What I’ll be doing in the next 3 months or so is attainable and I’ve “left room”, assuming that I get it up and running. =]
3. I learnt more about what it means to be a Marketer. Talking about this reminds me somewhat of something I read in some of Ann Sieg‘s material. She’s a specialist in Network Marketing and owns a hugely successful Network Marketing empire, employing “The Renegade Network Marketer” tactics that she learnt  through trial and error over two decades. Even though she’s in different industry, what she had to say rings very true across all forms of Marketing. She said something along the lines that the definition of Marketing was grossly misunderstood across the board and that’s why there were so many people who were unsuccessful with Network Marketing. This can be reflected in the Affiliate Marketing industry as well. A notable gem I gleamed from her is, “people purchase with emotion and justify with logic.” So true.

At any rate, I intend to approach this with much maturity and entrepreneurial flair. I’m still going to allow myself to dream, but I have to learn to see it from an external perspective, ie. practise metacognition, so that I don’t end up dreaming large but doing jack all.

We’ll see how this goes.