If you’ve watched any super affiliate in your market for any amount of time, you will have noticed that they’ve got the biggest and most popular blogs, social media pages and mailing lists...
They’re topping the leaderboards every time they enter an affiliate contest. And you’d like to do the same thing… right?
Of course you would. And that’s why you’re going to want to check out these six keys to affiliate success.
The super affiliates know and use these keys, and now you can too!!
Diversify Your Business
Many an affiliate over the years has had a booming business, only to lose it in a stunningly quick way. While there are quite a few reasons why this may happen, one common reason is because the affiliate didn’t diversify their business.
For example, let’s suppose you focus on a single traffic source, such as search engine optimization. You dump all your time and money into this strategy. Months, maybe even years go by, and you take the top spots in Google for some of your niche’s most important keywords. Business is booming for you.
And then Google changes its algorithm – and they dump your website out of all its top spots. Just like that, your traffic source is gone – and along with it, quite a bit of income.
That’s just one example of the sort of thing that can happen if you don’t diversify your affiliate business. You’ll want to set some time aside and really look at your business – can you identify any weak points where you’re depending too much on one important thing?
For example:
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, it’s a good idea to think about how you can diversify your business.
Now take note: the key to diversification is to avoid trying to do it all at once. For example, if you diversify your traffic sources by starting up six different methods this week, you’ll dilute your efforts and likely not get good results.
Instead, what you want to do is focus on ONE thing at time. Once you get that one thing up, running, and delivering results, then you can focus on the next thing. For example, if you’re diversifying traffic methods, then maybe you’d start by getting your social media strategy up and running. Once that’s delivering good results for you, then you can add another method, such as guest blogging.
Now let’s look at the next tip for growing your affiliate business…
Set Yourself Apart
Most affiliates find they have a whole lot of competition in their niche.
Not only are there plenty of other affiliates who’re promoting the same product, but you also have to compete against the vendors themselves many times.
What’s more, even those who aren’t promoting the exact same product are still your competition.
Let’s suppose you’re selling a weight loss book. Not only do you have hundreds of other affiliates selling the same book, but you also have hundreds or thousands of other people across the niche selling similar competing offers. That’s a lot of market noise. How will you compete?
The answer: you NEED to set yourself apart from the other marketers in your niche. You need to find something that’s different about you and your business, and put that uniqueness front and center. In other words, you need to develop a unique selling point.
Consider these questions:
These are just a few questions to get you thinking. You’ll want to find that “one thing” that makes you different – something that your audience values – and then succinctly convey that one thing across your business.
Choose the Right Product
The next key to your affiliate success is to choose the right product.
Take note: this isn’t necessarily the product with the highest commissions. It’s not necessarily the same product that all your fellow affiliates are promoting. It’s not necessarily the newest product to come down the pike, either.
Indeed, your decision to promote a product shouldn’t be based on any one single factor. Instead, you need to look at the big picture. Let’s review some of the factors involved in your decision…
Is this a high-quality product?
You may have seen others talk highly about a product, but that’s not a good basis on which to form your opinion. You’ll want to review and use the product yourself to ensure this is indeed a high quality product that’s a good fit for your particular audience.
Does the vendor have a good reputation?
There’s no sense in promoting a product (even a really good one) if the vendor doesn’t have a great reputation. For example, if one of the customers you sent has a poor experience, that customer is going to blame you for recommending the offer. Keep your own reputation intact by only working with high-quality vendors.
How much money can you potentially make?
Now here’s the factor you’ve been waiting for: how much money can you make? To answer this, you need to look at the commission rate, check if you get commissions on any backend sales, and get some sense of the conversion rate. However, be sure to only consider these factors AFTER you’ve determined that the product is high quality and the vendor is reputable.
Create Your Own Content
When you join most affiliate programs, you’re going to get access to a lot of copy-and-paste promo materials. However, if you use that content exactly as-is, then you’re going to be using the exact same content as dozens or possibly hundreds of others. And in all likelihood, the content probably doesn’t even match your own natural writing voice.
Instead, you need to set yourself apart by creating your own content and promos. Sure, you can use the copy-and-paste materials to get ideas, such as what all benefits to include in a promo email. But ultimately, the content should come from you, in your writing voice, with your own unique viewpoint.
Add Your Own Incentives (Bonuses)
Still another way to set yourself apart is by offering a unique incentive alongside any product you promote. In other words, you offer a bonus to your customers if they purchase the offer through your affiliate link.
The key to this strategy is to offer a bonus that’s a really good fit with the affiliate product. For example, if you’re selling software, you might offer free installation. Or if you’re selling a course on copywriting, you might offer a collection of sales letter templates and swipes.
And finally…
Focus on Your List
Social media is cool and all, and building your followers can help you build your business, but you need to focus most of your efforts on building your own platform – specifically your mailing list. That’s because your mailing list is something you own – no one can change a rule and take that list away from you, or ban you from using your list. (Yes, your autoresponder can ban you if you break their terms of service – but the list itself is still yours.)
Another advantage of building your list is that it allows you to reach your prospects any time you want. Most people check their email at least a couple times per day. Some people have push notifications on their phone set up, so they’ll see your email the second it hits their inbox. But either way, email is still one of the best ways to reach your prospects – and it’s a great way to build a relationship.
I’m likely preaching to the choir here, as I’m betting you’re already building a list. But you’d like to build a bigger and more responsive list, right?
Then let me share with you another great strategy: use your prospects’ curiosity to get them to join your list.
See, most smart affiliate marketers offer an incentive to get people joining their list, like a free report. But most marketers also just describe this product on a lead page and hope their audience joins your list.
Here’s what we do, and it works really well…
If we’re offering something like a report, we give our prospects a free preview. Then we end the preview in a place that makes the audience curious enough that they want to join our list right now to unlock the rest of the report. (And of course what they’ve read so far impresses the heck out of them, so they’re eager to learn more.)
We couldn’t find any software or other solutions that provided previews and collected email addresses, so we developed it ourselves – and lots of people have told us this is just what they needed too. That’s because our software – FlipGuardian – is a publishing platform that creates an immersive reading experience with animated page turns, zooming, sound effects and more. It lets you provide a juicy excerpt for your audience, and then it encourages readers to give you their email address to unlock the rest of the product.
Before we created this platform, we hadn’t seen anything like it in the market before – and I’m betting you haven’t either. That’s why I encourage you to click the link below to check out the demos. Take a look: FlipGuardian .com
Now a few parting thoughts…
Want To Pull Down Big Commissions?
If you want to be the kind of affiliate who’s pulling down big commissions on the daily and winning the affiliate contests, then you need to do what the super affiliates do. And you just discovered six tips and strategies taken straight from playbooks of the top super affiliates.
Need that extra edge? Then be sure to check out FlipGuardian right now. This software is going to rock your affiliate business in a very good way by helping you with list building. It’s also a great way to deliver your affiliate bonuses.
See it here: FlipGuardian .com
