Build your business around existing traffic
A lot of online businesses, I hate to say it, fail. We’re talking about over a 90% failure rate. If that wasn’t bad enough, most of them failed on day 1. I can make that bold claim because they did not build their businesses around existing demand.
Please understand that online traffic is not some sort of abstract concept. Online traffic is actually made up of real people with real needs for real solutions looking around actively for these solutions. This is real.
Unfortunately, if you build your business around a “hot idea” that you have, you’re doing it wrong. It’s better to look for existing demand and then build a product or service around it and tap into that existing source. That’s how you build your business to succeed on day 1.
Here’s how you do it. First, you need to find high-traffic platforms. This is not hard to do. You can start with places like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and others. Within these platforms are specific areas where people with particular interests congregate.
For example, Chihuahua lovers have so many Facebook pages and Facebook groups to choose from. People interested in applying to college have specific hashtags on Twitter when looking for information about college applications and admissions.
Find these high-traffic platforms and drill down to the niches of information people are already looking for. I’m talking about hashtags, Facebook pages, Facebook groups, and so on and so forth.
Pay close attention to how loyal those people are. Do they post a lot of comments? Do people share a lot of content? How engaged are the members of these places?
You should also pay attention to whether people share commercial messages in those places. If you notice ads posted by members, this is a good sign. Please understand that you should not waste your time on Facebook groups and pages that are made up only of ads. Chances are these are just made for spam.
However, if you notice that a lot of genuine user interaction is mixed in with a lot of commercial messaging, you are definitely in the right place.
Next, be clear on the problem that you think most of these people have. This can take quite some time. You can invest the time and effort yourself or you can hire a virtual assistant through places like Fiverr or Freelancer.com.
If you want to save money, you can try thirty-dollar daily virtual assistant freelancers who work on a quota from Cognoplus.com. Whatever you do, get somebody to help you get to the bottom of the problems that people who hang out at these places have in common.
Next, find affiliate programs that address the problem of your intended audience. When you go to places like ClickBank or JVZoo, there are many affiliate products available that will solve a range of problems.
Consequently, look for your competitors on the traffic platforms and look at what they’re doing. See how they message your intended audience. Be inspired by what they’re doing. I’m not talking about copying and pasting what they’re doing, but be inspired or do something similar to what they’re doing and push your own set of affiliate products.
Finally, use a content-based sales funnel to sell using a list. This means that when you go to these places on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere, share links to content that solves some of the problems these audience members have.
Once they trust the content, they can dig deeper into your website so they can join your mailing list, and then from there, you can sell them affiliate offers.
Reverse engineer, your competitors to get a head start
If you want to be a super affiliate, you cannot waste time. One of the easiest ways to waste time and money is to build your business around a “hot idea” that you had. Let me tell you the chances of your idea being spot on are actually quite low.
There’s a reason why you haven’t seen your idea on the market yet and, believe me, it generally has nothing to do with people not stumbling upon that idea before. Chances are there’s simply no demand for that idea.
This is why I suggest you do things differently. Instead, find affiliate competitors on marketing platforms you are not targeting. For instance, if you are on Facebook groups and you have your own pages, look for your competitors on Twitter. Look at what they are doing on Twitter.
What kind of hashtags are they using? Pay attention to what kind of content they’re sharing. Look at the quality of their accounts.
Next, learn from what they’re doing by tweaking your messaging on the platforms you are targeting. Maybe you can change your branding a bit. Maybe you can make some editorial changes to your content. Whatever the case may be, optimize these marketing materials based on the inspiration you get from how your competitors market on other platforms.
The key here is to come up with better content and branding by figuring out what works for them. This is crucial because you don’t want to come up with completely new and untried and unproven stuff. You might end up spending a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money doing so only to end up with very little.
Focus on what works for other people on other platforms and then replicate those in the platforms you are targeting. Scale up by finding other sub-niches or marketing channels and then market on those. The key is to let your competitors do your homework for you.
If any of these sounds like it takes too much time and effort to implement, there is a shortcut. You can hire a virtual assistant from places like Fiverr, Upwork, or Cognoplus. If you’re looking for a cheap solution, try Cognoplus.com.
They have thirty-dollar-a-day virtual assistants who can help you with these types of tasks. You can hire an assistant for one day or three days or however you want.
Regardless, you need the right kind of help to implement this tip.
The money is on the list
If you want to become a super-affiliate, you have to remember this phrase: “The money is on the list.” You need to wrap your mind around that because it solves one particularly serious problem for Internet marketers. I’m talking about the fact that traffic sources, no matter how awesome, will eventually dry up. In fact, traffic sources dry up all the time.
You may be getting a tremendous amount of traffic from a specific traffic platform and then, all of a sudden, they change their policies or terms of service. If you need a good example of this, just look at Facebook.
Three years ago, Facebook was a slam dunk in terms of traffic. You only need to put up halfway decent content on Facebook and get people to share it, and you can expect a steady stream of traffic.
Well, not anymore. Facebook figured out that their traffic is worth a lot of money, so they are sending less organic traffic to materials being shared on Facebook. For you to reach people, Facebook is basically pushing your to pay for ads. A lot of free traffic just went up in smoke. What do you think the impact was on affiliate marketers’ income? It was a blood bath.
Thankfully, there is one strategy that you can use that will help you preserve your income for a long, long time. How? Create a relationship with your target audience. This relationship with your audience members leads to some sort of emotional investment on their part in your brand. They feel associated with your brand.
How does this work? By building a mailing list, you get a chance to communicate with your community over an extended period. You let them know that you care. You tell them that their feedback matters. You let them know that you have this unique content that solves their problems.
The problem with a lot of marketers is that they let their website become their brand. This is a serious mistake because, for whatever reason, your users might not engage well with your website. It may be too flat. They are using mobile devices, and your website may not be all that optimized for tablets or mobile phones.
Whatever the reason may be, don’t let your website become your brand. Instead, build a relationship around your mailing list. This mailing list is more portable; it’s more versatile, and it’s less prone to traffic fluctuations.
Of course, you’re going to have to spend time or money driving traffic to build up your mailing list, but once you get people engaged, this mailing list can be a self-sustaining source of traffic that would help you survive massive fluctuations from your normal traffic sources like Facebook.
This is why I could say that the money is on the list. Take care of your mailing list and your mailing list members will take care of you financially.
The 7 deadly sins of list marketing
While it’s true that the money is on the list, you can easily screw it up by committing any of the following deadly mistakes. I’m not talking about committing all of them or some of them. I’m talking about just screwing up once. If you just make one mistake, that may be enough to kill your list-marketing business. It’s a good idea to pay close attention to what I’m about to share.
Deadly Sin #1: Attract the wrong list member
If you want to be successful with your list, you have to attract the right people. These are people who are actually interested in your update emails and these are people who are actually interested in clicking on the links that you share in your emails. Those links are what put food on your table. It makes no sense to build a list of people who have no interest in your emails.
How do you attract the wrong list member?
First of all, you use a single opt-in system. In other words, when people enter an email address, they’re automatically put on your email list. That’s a problem because people enter their emails to get a freebie. That’s how mailing lists are normally built up.
These are people who enter their email into a form just so they can download a book or watch a video. They really couldn’t care less about the updates the list sends. That’s the wrong person.
When you set up a double opt-in system where they have to click a confirmation link, this increases the chances that these people are not just in it for the freebie. They’re actually interested in your list.
Also, you have to qualify people to sign up for your list. You have to show them content that highlights what the list offers and what kind of problems they could solve with the information you present on your list. If you don’t do any of this, attracting the wrong list of members can be a very costly mistake.
Deadly Sin #2: Send out too many emails
If you send out emails on an almost daily basis, your list members will quickly find your brand annoying. It doesn’t matter how informative your emails are. Eventually, they’re just not going to want to open your emails because they think they are an annoyance.
They might not unsubscribe but these members will be essentially useless to you because they don’t read your stuff.
Deadly Sin #3: Send out too infrequently
Believe it or not, if you don’t send enough emails, this could kill your responsiveness too. Remember, when people sign up for your mailing list, they are actually looking to get information from you. If you don’t send out the information soon enough, they could quickly forget and your emails won’t get opened because people don’t know what it’s about.
Deadly Sin #4: Send updates that are too commercial in nature
If it’s obvious that you’re just trying to make money off your updates, people are not going to waste their time on your emails. They feel that they’re being taken advantage of; they feel that you’re just trying to make money.
Do yourself a big favor and forget about putting an affiliate link in every single email you send out. Make sure that you only include an affiliate link with your email updates when it makes sense.
For example, if you’re talking about a certain problem, it would make sense to offer an affiliate link because it leads to a solution. You, of course, have to describe what the solution is so you can prequalify people to click on that link.
Deadly Sin #5: Ignore the quality of your headlines
If you just write your emails’ subject lines based on what comes to mind, chances are you’re doing it wrong. You have to understand that people are busy. They have so many other things to do.
You have to catch their eye and every minute you invest in crafting a high-quality headline can pay off in the form of more dollars in your bank account. You need to increase your open rates, and this means spending the right amount of time on your headlines.
Deadly Sin #6: Fail to call your readers to action
Can you imagine convincing somebody that your content is awesome and getting them all pumped up about a solution and then failing to get a sale? This happens all the time because marketers send amazing emails but do a poor job calling recipients to action.
You cannot assume that they know what to do. You have to spell it out for them. You have to be clear about the action that they need to take. The more you do this, the more money you make them.
Deadly Sin #7: Fail to promote the right products
Even if you did everything right, you can still drop the ball if the affiliate products you’re promoting with your list simply don’t match the needs of your list recipients. It really all boils down to niche specificity.
For example, if you have a mailing list composed of young moms interested in baby shoes, it doesn’t make any sense to send out an email promoting testosterone shots. There’s a disconnect between the affiliate link in your emails and the needs of the people who are on your list.
Final Warning
Once again, commit any of the seven deadly sins above and you can kiss your mailing list goodbye.
Don’t hesitate to ask for a better deal once you’ve proven yourself
I’ve got some bad news to share with you. The sad reality of affiliate marketing is that the majority of people who sign up for an affiliate marketing program don’t send any traffic. Seriously. If you have one hundred people signing up for an affiliate program, only a small percentage of them would end up sending any traffic at all.
For a variety of reasons, the majority of people simply send any traffic. Wait, it gets even worse. Of the few that send traffic, only a certain percentage of those people actually send traffic that converts.
Among those people who send converting traffic, it’s very easy to feel that the affiliate program doesn’t really care about them. Now, do you get a clear picture of why a lot of affiliate program marketing people struggle with affiliate marketing?
If you think the life of an affiliate marketer is tough, you might be surprised to learn that the life of an affiliate program manager is no cakewalk either. They have to deal with the ugly reality that the vast majority of people they recruit to their program don’t really do much of anything.
Also, they have to jump through a lot of hoops to retain the affiliates who could actually deliver traffic that converts.
Still, if you are a top producer, you should insist on getting paid what you are worth. Simply put, you have a skill most other affiliate marketers would kill for. Why short-change yourself?
The good news is you don’t have to be one of those underserved neglected star performers. If you are able to convert your traffic at a very high rate, don’t hesitate to ask for a better affiliate deal.
Don’t be shy. Take the initiative. Take the first step in asking the affiliate manager of your program for a higher rate or freebies or some sort of goodie to reward you for doing a good job.
What do you do with your higher payout rate? You should only do one thing with it: reinvest it in your business. This enables you to get better traffic; this enables you to optimize the conversions of your mailing list, and this can lead to even more income.
Don’t just buy a new car or waste it on a big-screen TV. Instead, reinvest it in your mailing list business so you can make even more money.