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Welcome to the Affiliate Command Center
Welcome to the Affiliate Command Center, we are happy you have chosen to join us! We have created this short Quick Start Guide to assist you in starting to make serious money online as our affiliate.
Affiliate marketing is a very powerful and proven way to make money online. We have affiliates who are making some serious money already, and we want to do everything we can to help you on the path to your own successful affiliate marketing business as well!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
When you become an affiliate, you market the products of another business, and in return are paid a commission on all of the sales you make. You, and the company you are an affiliate for, are in a mutually beneficial joint venture relationship with each other
In our case, the company (us) provides the affiliate marketer (you) with the products to market. You market our products, and when a sale is made you receive a commission on that sale.
A good example of an affiliate marketing program you may be familiar with is Amazon.com. Amazon.com has an affiliate marketing program where you can post a link on your website. When one of your website's visitors clicks on your affiliate link they are routed to Amazon.com. When that visitor then buys something on Amazon.com, they then split their profits with you.
In this example, Amazon.com is the business providing the items to sell, and you are simply advertising for them as an affiliate. You take the time and effort to advertise for them, and for your effort to bring people to their website they pay you an affiliate commission on sales.
While a business like Amazon.com makes an easy to understand example of affiliate marketing, they generally don't make you a ton of cash. Where Amazon.com may pay you $2 to sell a $20 book, many affiliate programs pay much, much higher returns on their products. The real money to be made in affiliate marketing is to find products which sell well, and products which you make the most commission on as possible; generally 25-50% commission is a good benchmark to aim for.
What is the Affiliate Command Center?
The "Affiliate Command Center" is simply a business partnership between you and AffirmWare. The partnership promotes AffirmWare's products for the financial benefit of both parties. The Affiliate Command Center is free for you to join. There is no cost or obligation to you. However, by marketing our products, as our affiliate, you can easily generate an instant and ongoing stream of income for yourself.
The Affiliate Command Center will provide you, as our business partner, updated information on internet marketing techniques, marketing materials for our products, regular updates on our programs and products, and e-mail support when you need it.
At AffirmWare our business success is your business success. For this reason we want to support you in any way we can; we do this support through our Affiliate Command Center.
How Can You Make Serious Amounts of Money as Our Affiliate?
As an affiliate of the Affiliate Command Center, you will have the ability to market AffirmWare products and receive 50% commission on every sale you refer to us through a unique URL we will provide you with. You can place your URL link on your website, your blog, eZine, in a signature file on a message board, in a classified ad, or just about anywhere you want to online, or even off-line in print if you so choose.
How much money can you realistically make as our affiliate? That answer is entirely dependent on the number of sales you bring in through your unique affiliate URL. At AffirmWare we will do everything through the Affiliate Command Center to assist you in the following areas: product information, e-mail promotion, text links, banners, classified ads, product reviews, product images, 404 error pages, and signature files. We will do everything we can to help you succeed with your business goals.
How to Start Your Affiliate Business
You are probably asking yourself where you should start with your affiliate marketing business. Because we are here to help you, let me make a few initial suggestions to help you start off on the right foot and make your first successful sales!
Your Website or Blog
One of the first places to begin your affiliate marketing campaign is on your own website or blog. You can simply place a banner ad linked to your affiliate site. Visitors to your website will invariably be curious about your banner ads and click on them.
If you are promoting through your website you will want to offer your visitors good content and regular updates. By providing your visitors with some free valuable content such as articles and newsletters, you can build a relationship with your visitors and they will begin to see you as an expert in your niche subject. Once they have trust in you, then you can more easily promote your products and turn your visitors into paying customers.
A proven way to get sales on your website is to post a product review of the product you are trying to sell. Within your product review you can place clickable hyper link (text links) to your affiliate site.
For example, if you are an affiliate for Sculptor 3, you might want to do a review of it, or post one written by us, and everywhere you write the words "Sculptor 3" have a clickable text link to your own affiliate site. By doing this, readers of your review can click on the words "Sculptor 3" and are immediately taken to your affiliate site to purchase it.
For this example your clickable text link would look like this:
<a href="http://NICKNAME.affirmware.hop.clickbank.net">Sculptor 3</a>
NOTE: In the above example you would replace NICKNAME with your Clickbank affiliate ID (Nickname).
A visitor to your site would simply see the words "Sculptor 3" and by clicking directly on it would be taken to your affiliate website.
Squeeze Page & List Building
One of the best ways to make money as an affiliate is to build up a list of your niche's potential customers. There are many ways to accomplish this. The easiest way is through the use of a squeeze page. A squeeze page is simply a website where you ask someone to give you their name and e-mail address in return for some free information. Many times this "free information" comes in the form of your newsletter or a free eBook they can download.
Every successful squeeze page has the following 4 components:
"An attention grabbing headline to make visitors want to read the page
"A benefit to the visitor for them to give you their name and e-mail address
"A call to action asking them to give their information to you
"A free offer which you will give them in exchange for their name and e-mail address.
By gathering names and e-mail addresses of people interested in the niche of products which you sell, you can begin to build a potential customer list. A nice big mailing list is the number one thing which can make you a lot of money in affiliate marketing. Because you acquired their name and e-mail address through a squeeze page within a specific niche market, your list is made-up of a captive audience of people looking for more items which belong in that same niche. Through e-mail promotion you can market products to this list of people.
E-mail Promotion
Once your list starts to add members, you will want to send out regular and valuable information to your list subscribers. Generally this is through an auto-responder which will send your potential customers a new message every few days for you.
One of the worst things you can do is to spam your subscriber list with "buy this" e-mail messages! Nothing will get your subscribers to unsubscribe faster than spamming them with sales pitches. First, you need to build up your relationship with your subscribers by providing them with free articles and information pertaining to the niche in which you are marketing.
Pretend for a moment you are marketing cat toys. Your squeeze page offers a download of an eBook which gives your readers tips on cat care. You are using your squeeze page and building your e-mail list of cat lovers by giving the eBook away to them in exchange for trusting you with their names and e-mail addresses.
The first few e-mail messages to your subscriber list should not be about buying cat toys, even though your ultimate goal is to sell cat toys. The first three messages should be about useful cat tips, games to play with your cat, etc. By doing this you are showing your list subscribers that they belong to a list of valuable resources and information coming from you - a cat expert.
The forth message you will want to do a product review of one of the cat toys you sell and give them a link to purchase the toy on your website, if they are interested. By repeating this pattern of information then product reviews your subscribers will take your advice and buy their cat toys from you as well because as their trusted expert on cats you are recommending the item.
Message Board/Forum Signature Files
One of the best ways to market online, without overtly appearing to be advertising, is through the use of a signature file on an internet message board or forum. A message board or forum online is a place where people of similar interest gather to chat about whatever it is they are interested in. The great thing is that most message boards online allow you to have a personal signature file where you can put just about anything you want. This is a great place to put a link to your squeeze page!
For the cat toy example above you would want to search out message boards of cat lovers. By going to any search engine and typing "cat +forum" you will come up with a ton of message boards about cats. Here is your target audience to market to!
Sign-up at the cat message boards you find and start participating in the conversations. Don't post a message that you sell cat toys and want everyone to check out your site. This action will likely get you banned from the site for spamming! Instead, offer the other cat lovers on the message board some valuable content about cats and participate in their ongoing conversations. After a short time they will begin to ask you about your cat toys and visit your squeeze page out of curiosity. They will sign up for your free item and you will have their names and e-mail addresses to use in your e-mail promotion.
By marketing your website’s through a signature file you get free advertising and at the same time you are able to bring your website to the attention of people who are specifically interested in what you have to offer. This can be one of the fastest ways to build up your subscriber list!
A Few Final Words
As you can probably imagine, entire books have been written on the business of affiliate marketing. While my goal with this guide is meant to get you started on your way to becoming a profitable affiliate, it is by no means a complete instruction guide for the business. Affiliate marketing takes some time, and some effort, but over time can be one of the most profitable business models online today.
The best thing you can do for your business is to simply start! Start your website, start building your list, start providing information and asking for sales, start looking for message boards and forums you can advertise in, simply start!
As with any business out there, the biggest obstacle to your success is your own negative thinking and procrastination. The easiest way to get past both is to simply start working, set your goals, and each day work towards your goals one step at a time. It really is that simple.
You may not become an internet millionaire overnight, but by working your business and dedicating yourself to your own goals you can succeed. You can build a great list and from that list comes a great income. There are people doing it every day, and some of them are the wealthiest people online!
Wishing you much success and looking forward to our continuing partnership.
Jeff Staniforth
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