Generating More Traffic For More Affiliate Sales

The easiest way to make more affiliate profits is to simply generate more traffic.

I generally use pay-per-click traffic for almost all the affiliate products I promote simply because you can control exactly how much money is going out- and once you figure out how many visitors it takes to make a sale with whatever you are promoting, then you will know exactly how much money will come in.

PPC advertising just makes affiliate marketing easier if you ask me!

First off, pay per click (PPC) does NOT mean Google Adwords. Adwords is just the most popular form of PPC advertising, but it is definitely not the only one. On that note, PPC search engine advertising is also not the only form of PPC.

You can pay per click on a variety of different advertising vehicles including banner ads, text ads, flash ads, email ads, etc.. So don’t limit yourself to just Google Adwords, or just search engines.

If you want to find more sources where you can pay per click, just go to Google.com and search for “pay per click advertising”.

Before you do any PPC advertising (or any advertising for that matter), you need a good tracking system to track your results. If you are doing search engine PPC, you need to know which keywords are producing sales and which aren’t. This will help fine tune your marketing system.

Included in this product is a software program which is perfect for tracking search engine pay-per-click ads. It allows you to use “trackers” for each keyword and will then display how much traffic that keyword is getting. Although most systems like Googe.com, MSN.com will have their own tracking that you can look at as well, it is best to have all of your tracking for all of your affiliate products in one place.

So what works in PPC advertising? Well, the truth is, 90% of the money you make from PPC ads will come from 10% of your keywords- The same keywords that produce results for you in the organic search most of the time.

Be very specific. “Golf” is going to be way too expensive, but “Golf swing instruction” may be much cheaper per click and will certainly produce more sales if you are selling golf instruction.

This isn’t really rocket science, it has just been made to be more difficult than it really is. The fact is, if you want to get big traffic from PPC keyword ads, then you will be spending some big money.

The more competitive keywords are going to cost more, so your sales ratio will have to pick up the slack.

Here is a formula I follow..

For the more competitive keywords that cost $0.50-$2.00, I just try to break even with my initial product while building a list. I will gladly spend $1+ per visitor and just break even because I know that a good percentage of those visitors will subscribe to my list, and/or buy my upsell (profit), and/or buy a backend product from me (more profit).

Most people just look at trying to make a bunch of money with their 50% commission of one $27 product that converts at 1% and are finding it incredibly hard, especially with highly competitive advertising vehicles like Google Adwords.

But if you just look at breaking even on the first sale, it becomes so much easier. Marketing in general becomes so much easier when the initial sale doesn’t have to produce a profit.

So let’s say that you are doing the “Insider’s View” video idea with a PPC advertising campaign. You set it up to where they have to subscribe to your list for the inside view video. You build your list this way by just breaking even on all of the sales that are generated from that video.

So for the very competitive words that generate a lot of traffic, just break even.

For the low hanging fruit, the words that aren’t competitive, don’t cost too much per click, and don’t generate as much traffic- these are the ones that can make you money up front. The problem is, they are not searched for as often and just don’t bring in the clicks that the expensive ones do.

It is also very important to be on the front page when you are advertising via search engine PPC. This not only generates the most traffic, but also the more hungry visitors who seem to buy much more often.

So whenever possible, get on the front page, spend the extra money to test it out and see how profitable it is for you and your product.

You might just be breaking even on the initial product, but your follow ups may make you a fortune. Getting the most of each visitor is what marketing is all about!

The more you get out of each visitor, the easier it is to generate tons of traffic to your web site. Why? Because you can spend more.

Put it this way, if your web site generates $3 per unique visitor, do you think it would be hard to generate traffic from say Google Adwords? You could spend $2 per click and still make money.

The biggest search engine PPC advertising vehicles are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, And MSN Ad Center. There are others, but I never found the others to be worth the effort.

However, there are a lot of sites that offer PPC advertising that isn’t search engine keywords. Like I said above, go to Google.com an do a search for it and you will get plenty of ideas.

It is a good idea to set specific days to do certain tasks that will build traffic.

For instance:

- On Mondays and Thursdays, check all PPC advertising and tweak the campaigns to make them profitable.

- Go to the discussion forums that are in your market at the end of everyday (after your to do list is completed) and make relevant post about the topic and leave your link in your sig file (don’t spend too much time at the forums, just get in and get out).

- Pick a day each week to brainstorm new ideas to generate traffic (I don’t work on Fridays or the weekend, so my brainstorm day is Thursday so that the ideas are in my head all weekend. I find this helps to come up with new ideas while I’m out and about enjoying life.)

- Whenever you find something that works well, outsource it. If you have found that it works, and are done with all of your testing or experimenting with that concept, then you can outsource it and move on to finding other traffic generation methods that work well for your business.

Are Sales Page Opt Ins Decreasing Your Affiliate Commission?

There are over a hundred affiliate marketing businesses running actively nowadays with people striving to earn a stable income online. One of the most popular trends is to become an affiliate of Clickbank products and to sell these to interested customers through a sales page.

But of course, with such a strong competition and lack of knowledge on how to effectively sell these digital products, a lot of internet marketers tend to lose the will and the resources to continue selling as they encounter problems and issues regarding the products they sell, the links being used, and the like.

For this article, the issue whether sales page opt ins are a factor of decreasing commissions will be discussed to provide insight and understanding as to how this internet marketing tool works and how one can actually benefit from it.

As we all know, the role of the affiliate is to sell the product through a sales page to customers online. The sales page would normally contain the content introducing the product, the link that will lead them back to the main website where they can purchase the product, and of course an opt in list for the customer to receive mails and updates with regards to the product.

These opt ins are usually paired with freebies and bonuses that the customer can avail of, so by entering their email addresses in the opt in box they are not only signing up for the bonuses and email updates but crediting your page for commission. But the issue raised here is whether or not the affiliate still has a role in the business if the customer simply opts in without actually purchasing the product. Will that decrease one’s chances of earning commission?

The truth is affiliate marketing systems as well as Clickbank websites track the referrals of their affiliates through cookies and the IP address used, in which the former would normally be saved into the computer not less than 60 days at the most.

So most likely if the customer decides to opt in to the mailing list of the vendor, the ID of the affiliate will be identified and the sales will be credited to his or her account. Though there is no assurance that the customer will buy the product, the fact that he or she found his or her way to the mailing list through the affiliate’s sales page will already indicate that the commission will still go to him or her and that he or she will still be paid months from now.

But of course, there are certain possibilities that you as the Internet marketer would lose commissions if there are opt ins on the sales page. Supposing the customer decides to opt in into the mailing list but decides to check out the product a little later. If he or she erases all cookies in the PC or decides to use a different browser to buy the product, then most likely the commissions won’t go to you.

3. Find out what loopholes the vendor will use to keep your money.

Here’s one last tip: Always read the TOS (terms of service) and affiliate agreement. Sometimes you’ll find outrageous payment thresholds that allows the vendor to legally keep your money until you reach that threshold! Other times the vendor charges a huge “accounting fee” just to cut you your check.

There you have it three quick and easy ways to start banking bigger affiliate paychecks. To find out how the super affiliates keep those checks rolling in day after day, follow the link ahead for more help. Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

2. Look for these common sales leaks.

If you don’t vet the sales process thoroughly, you may find that the biggest thief is the product vendor! Sometimes the vendor is just a new marketer who doesn’t know any better. Other times, you may find vendors who are deliberately trying to rip you off.

Here are some things to look for:

· Google AdSense ads on the sales page. Some marketers don’t realize that a sales page shouldn’t have any distractions, and that the only way to leave a sales page is via a back button or the buy button. Other marketers know exactly what they’re doing – you send them traffic for free, and they get the money every time someone clicks on their ads. Either way, avoid these vendors.

· Alternative payment options. Another sneaky way product vendors reach into your pocket is by offering multiple payment options on the affiliate landing page. This is only troublesome IF you don’t credit if the customer chooses a different option.

For example, if the vendor uses Clickbank for affiliate tracking, then obviously you won’t get a penny if the vendor encourages customers to call their orders in.

· Customer service reps that send visitors to a new page. Watch out for this sneaky trick: sometimes when a prospect has a question, the customer service rep (or the vendor) sends the customer to a different sales page. End result? You lose the commission!

1. Stop using direct affiliate links.

You probably already know that it’s a good idea to cloak (hide) your affiliate links. Doing so will help ward off the link hijackers who switch in their affiliate ID for yours, and thus steal your commission when they buy the product. It also virtually reduces the number of buyers who “cut off” the affiliate portion of a link and go straight to the sales page (perhaps thinking that doing so will somehow give them a better deal).

But there’s another reason to use direct affiliate links: Namely, because you could end up with hundreds of “dead” links all over the Internet.

You see, if you make a blog post, Twitter about an affiliate product or include your direct affiliate link in an ebook, then what happens if the vendor stops selling that product? You’ll have dead links. Maybe hundreds of them.

If instead you use a redirect link, you can change the redirect link to point from the dead affiliate link to a similar affiliate product in just a minute or two. And in doing so, you could potentially save thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions.