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How to successfully sell products with affiliate marketing without any cost
Affiliate marketing is awesome!
All you need to do is to send traffic to another website and someone else takes care of the rest.
You don’t need to work on the product, create a sales page, take care of the customer support or anything else.
Plus, you can get 50% commissions with digital products.
If the price of the product is higher you can easily earn between $100-$500 per sale!
That sounds great, right?
But how can you get traffic to affiliate websites so that people will buy the product and you get your commission? And how can you do that without investing into traffic?
There are many different ways to do that, I’ll show you the most lucrative tactics in this article.
1. Write a blog article
Do you have a blog?
Then why don’t you write a review about that product? You don’t have to invest any money, just some time.
Attention!
Do never write about a product that doesn’t fit into your niche! That is the best way to destroy your blog.
I give you some examples:
- Do you have a blog about golfing? Then don’t write something about online marketing.
- Do you have a blog about finances? Then don’t waste your time writing about dog training.
- Do you have a blog about electronics? Don’t write about a smoothie recipe book.
Why shouldn’t you do that?
1. The wrong target group
People who are visiting your blog have an interest in your niche. However, if you sell something from another niche you would have a very low sales rate.
2. You scare off your readers
You readers wouldn’t understand why you are writing about something completely different. Or they do understand (that you only want to earn money) and they never visit your blog again.
That’s why you should always market only products that could be interesting for your audience.
How to write an article that sells a digital product
Now you have found one or more products that fit your niche and now you want to sell them by writing a blog post.
So what do you need to do?
It is always a good idea to test the product. Only then you can really see for whom the product is for and what ad- and disadvantages the product has.
Only sell the products that you are using yourself and that you like. (Don’t recommend anything you wouldn’t buy yourself or recommend your best friends)
If you want to market a product you don’t know, buy it. You can see that as an investment because you’ll sell it in the future. Plus you’ll learn something from this product 🙂
If you don’t have the money to buy the product you can ask the vendor for a free copy of the product. Often they help you because they want you to advertise their product!
However, if course not everyone will help you if you don’t already have a successful blog or an email list.
After testing the product, you maybe already have results you can show and if you are convinced you can write an article about it.
It is important that you give value to your reader.
Don’t use the blog copies of the vendors! This can harm your rankings within Google and cost you a lot of traffic.
Write about a problem and how the product helped you to solve your problem, what experiences you have made with the problem and who you would recommend buying this product.
There is no product that is perfect for everyone. There are always target groups for products. So for example, Wealthy Affiliate is great for everyone who wants to build an online business based on affiliate marketing.
However, it is not great for people who want to sell their own products/services.
The more honest and authentic you write your article the more trust you build with your readers. That can help you with future recommendations.
2. Email Marketing
If you have an email list you can promote products to your affiliates. That’s free because you already generated the leads.
Here applies the same concept like with blog post.
Only recommend products you have tested and you would buy again.
You can either send the link to the product or you send a link to your blog post.
Small tip: It is a good idea to send out several emails to your list. In the first email you can send out your blog article and 2-3 days later you can send out an email with the affiliate link.
Is there another possibility if you don’t have a blog or an email list?
3. YouTube Video
To create a YouTube video you need some equipment. You need a microphone. That doesn’t have to be expensive. I have two different, one is a little more expensive and the other a little cheaper.
If you are planning on making several videos then I can recommend the more expensive one, you can really hear the difference. But both are very good for that cause.
If you are planning on recording your screen you don’t need a camera. Otherwise, you can take the camera of your phone, that should be enough for the beginning.
You can easily create a presentation with Google Drive.
Now you need a program to capture your video.
I’m now using Camtasia. This program is very good, however, it has also a very good price 😀 You can use it for free for 30 days and in this time you can make as many videos as possible 😉
Or you can use a free tool like Screencast-O-Matic. I did make my first videos with that, it is very simple to use. However, you can only take 15 minutes videos and the video is watermarked with their logo.
But it is for free 🙂
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is amazing.
You don’t have any work with the product itself.
However, you can only make money if you send the right people to the right product. And that takes time.
But I believe that is a very good investment 🙂
Now I want to hear from you:
How do you recommend digital products?
And if you don’t what do you think is your favorite way? 🙂
Leadfriend Review – Scam or Opportunity?
If you search around for an Instagram automation tool that will help you grow your account, you’ll find many different tools. However, the problem with most of the tools is, that they are using robots.
The problem with robots is that they automatically like or comment posts. As an example, it can happen that the bot is commenting a photo with a funeral with “Awesome!”.
Of course, that will not happen a lot, but this is a really negative side effect.
In addition, from time to time when Instagram updates it algorithm the bots are not working properly and your account can be banned. These are all reasons not to use an automation tool that uses bots.
However, there are also many tools that are very helpful growing your Instagram account. One of them is Leadfriend.
Leadfriend is an Instagram automation agency that helps people grow their profile. (Check it out here)
How does it work?
Leadfriend helps to grow your Instagram account by interacting with other users in your niche. That means they like and comment posts, etc.
The most important part here is that there will be only real humans working with your account. That means if the Instagram algorithm chances there is absolutely no chance of getting banned!
In addition, they start following people that are interested in your niche. After a period of 2 days, they start unfollowing these people again. As stupid as this technique sounds as effective it is.
Think about it. If you get a new follower on Instagram you check out the account of the new follower. If you like the content of the account you start following back.
The greatest feature Leadfriend offers is automatic direct messaging. That means every new follower gets a direct message from your account. This is a great feature to build trust and to generate leads.
This is a great feature to build trust and to generate leads. For example, if you are a shop owner you can offer a coupon if they visit your store. This is a really effective technique.
Costs
Leadfriend offers different packages, depending on the number of accounts and the number of features.
Basic: The basic package costs $37/month and is for one account. They say you get up to 3X the growth of your competitors, advanced following/unfollowing and advanced liking/commenting.
MVP: The MVP package starts at $57/month and is also for one account. Additional to all the features of the basic package you get 5X the growth of your competitors and direct messaging.
BIZ: The BIZ package starts at $97 per month and can handle two accounts. Besides all the features of the MVP package, they offer 10X the growth of your competitors.
VIP: The biggest package is the VIP package for $137 per month. This package can handle up to 5 accounts and all the features of BIZ. In addition, you get access to an engagement group which can help you getting posts viral.
Does it work?
I was a little skeptical at the beginning because I never thought that something like that could actually work. However, I was bored of all the “growing work” of my Instagram account so I gave it a try.
And I have been absolutely blown away. My account started growing right away after setting it up and my daily work dropped from 1-2 hours a day to 15 minutes!
Now I only have to take care of the content and answer direct messages. The rest Leadfriend takes care of.
I’m able to grow my account for 600-1000 new followers each month with the Basic package. This is really great for only $37/month.
The affiliate program
Leadfriend offers also a very amazing affiliate program. And this has several reasons.
Reason #1: The commission structure.
You get $10,$25,$45,$65 monthly per referral and $10 monthly per second tier referral. This is a really great opportunity to build up passive income with Instagram!
Reason #2: Training
Leadfriend has some great step-by-step training in their backend. This can really help you closing sales and earn more money with your Instagram account.
Reason #3: Mentoring
If you join Leadfriend you get access to the Facebook group where the Co-Founder of Leadfriend will guide you and support you closing sales. This is very good if you are a newbie to affiliate marketing or need some support on your way.
So as you can see the affiliate program is amazing and there are also regular sales contests.
Conclusion
I can understand if you have been skeptical at the beginning. I have been there too! However, there are already 3,000 active users using Leadfriend to grow their accounts.
The Co-Founder and sales coach is a very cool guy and he’s very helpful everyone getting sales.
At the moment they offer a trial period of $1 for 5 days so it’s great if you want to give it a try! (Start your trial here)
Also, if you are interested in getting your account to the next level you can check out this website!
Have you tried out Leadfriend? What has been your experience with it? I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment below!
When should you start outsourcing?
At the beginning, I want to ask you a simple question: Is time or money more valuable?
Before you answer this question I want you to think about it for a minute.
In my opinion, the most important value we have is time. We can’t buy more time or sell it. And we all have in common that we all have only a limited time on earth.
What does this mean? That means that you have to trade your time as your most valuable asset. You have to invest your time in the right things. But what has this all to do with online marketing?
One big advantage of online marketing is that it can be highly automated. That means your business is working for while you…
… spend time with your friends
… spend time with your family and kids
… relax on the beach while listing to the ocean
But how can you achieve that? You can achieve that by automating your business
Automate your business
One way to automate your business is by using an autoresponder (more info here). An autoresponder sends automated emails to new leads. That means you can build automated trust. These email will be sent to your leads regardless where you are or what you are doing.
However, there are many tasks where there isn’t technology that can help you. An example would be writing a new blog post. For all these tasks you can use outsourcing.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing means delegating tasks to workers outside of your company. So for example, if you go to Fiverr and delegate the task to design a 3D cover for a freebie you outsourced a task.
I think there is only a very small number of tasks you can’t outsource. You can outsource the writing of your blog post, the design of a landing page, the creation of a freebie and much more.
Why should you start outsourcing?
The first reason why you should start outsourcing is that you save time. Every task that you delegate you don’t have to do yourself. So for example, if you need one hour to write a blog post and you delegate that task you save yourself one hour of your time.
The second reason is that you can delegate tasks to experts and achieve a higher quality. If you don’t know how to design a banner you can skip the whole learning and trial and error process and have a high-quality banner right away.
You don’t need to be an expert in anything. You only need to let the experts work for you. That’s how real entrepreneurs think and work. With every task, you outsource you have more time to focus on working on your business.
You can’t build a business by answering support tickets the whole day. Save yourself a lot of time and effort by outsourcing tasks like this.
Simple rule for outsourcing
When I think about outsourcing I have a simple rule. I say that my time is worth at least $30/hour. Now I have a look at a task and how long I have to work on it. So for example, writing a new blog post costs me around one hour.
One hour of my time is worth $30 that means if I write the post myself it would “cost” me $30. If I can outsource the post creation for $25, I “saved” $5. So every task that has a lower cost of $30/hour should be tried to be delegated.
When should you start outsourcing?
When and how you should start outsourcing really depends on your time and your money. If you have a lot of time and not much money you should do most of the tasks yourself. The more money you have and the less time you want to invest the more tasks you should outsource.
For example, you start your business by doing all the tasks yourself. After a while, you start to make the first commissions. Then you can start outsourcing tasks and earn even more money with less effort. That’s the moment when you start automating your business.
The “bible” of outsourcing
When I started with online marketing I never thought of outsourcing. I thought that with every task I delegate I only lose money. I haven’t seen that I could save myself a lot of time and trouble if I start outsourcing.
This all changed when I read the “bible” of outsourcing. This book is called “The 4-hour Workweek” by Tim Ferris. You can get it here on Amazon:
I think this is one of the best guides you can get about outsourcing. It changed my whole thinking about outsourcing and I can really recommend it to everyone who wants to have more time.
As you can see outsourcing can save you a lot of time. Now I want to hear something from you! Do you have experience with outsourcing? Or have you already read the book? I would love the hear from you so please leave a comment below 🙂
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
If you are new to online marketing or blogging you may have already heard of affiliate marketing. But what is affiliate marketing and how can you use it to monetize your website?
What is affiliate marketing?
In affiliate marketing, you earn money by promoting and selling products from merchants. Usually, you get a link from the merchant referring to the sales page or checkout page of a product. If a user clicks on your link and purchases the product you’ll receive a commission.
That means the more people are purchasing a product over your link the more money you can make. There are many different affiliate programs with different commissions and products.
Why is it so effective?
Let’s say you are searching for a new book to read and you ask your friend for a recommendation. Your friend recommends you a book and says that it was very exciting and well written. What’s the possibility that you’ll buy this book?
I’m sure the answer is: really high. That’s one of the reasons why affiliate marketing is so effective. Because when you already build a connection to your audience and gained trust it will be very likely that they will buy your recommendation.
And for the process of building a relationship/acquiring new customers, your merchant is giving you a commission. Because they don’t need to do anything for marketing they are willing to give a part of their profit.
The second reason why affiliate marketing is so effective is that you can start right away. As you don’t need to create a product you can start selling right away. If you don’t have a website yet (create one in 30 seconds) you can post a picture of yourself with the product on Facebook.
Add the affiliate link and you have your first affiliate business. Very easy and fast, right?
Of course, on this way, you can’t get rich but you can start earning some money. However, there are other ways to sell your affiliate product.
How can you sell an affiliate product?
There are different ways to sell your affiliate product. I’ll show you the in my eyes the two most effective ones.
Write blog review
An effective way to promote an affiliate product is to write a review about it in your blog. You should write an honest article about that product. Say why that product excited you and to whom you would recommend it.
When people read your review and they liked it the possibility of a sale is high. Important is that the product fits into the interest of your audience. If you have a blog about losing weight and you write a review about a book that helps people earning money online you’ll not make a lot of sales.
If you can solve a problem if your audience with your product the conversion can be very good.
Email marketing
If you have an email list you can promote affiliate products to your subscribers. Here is again the rule that the products should fit the interests of your audience.
You can either write the review within the email text or you can refer them to your blog article. Both ways are good and effective.
If you don’t have an email list you should either start building one or borrow an email list.
Of course, you shouldn’t spam your email list. Try to alternate content emails and promotional emails.
With these two methods, I’m sure you’ll sell your first product soon. But where can you find affiliate products for your audience?
Where can you find affiliate programs?
Almost every bigger merchant/online shop has an affiliate program. Just search Google for a product and add “+ affiliate program”.
It is incredible how much affiliate programs out there: Amazon, Apple, Nike, Adidas, NBA and much much more. Just search around a little bit and you’ll find an affiliate program soon.
There are also affiliate networks. They have many affiliate products in one program. That makes it easier to keep track of your referrals and sales. Here are some examples:
And as I said there are many affiliate programs for online shops.
How much commission can you get?
The commission depends on the affiliate program and type of product. Digital products have usually a higher commission than physical products because they don’t have production costs. Also, the storage and the shipping costs fall upon.
There are also products like Wealthy Affiliate or GetReponse where you can get a monthly commission.
If you look around a little bit you can see that Amazon is giving you very small commissions (between 1% and 10%). However, I still recommend you to join the Amazon affiliate program. Why?
At first, Amazon has almost every type of product. I believe they have products in every niche you can be. That means you’ll always find products for your audience in Amazon.
Secondly, Amazon is one of the most trusted online shops worldwide. I believe that everyone trusts Amazon. That means the conversion will be much higher than with an unknown online shop.
Lastly, Amazon is giving you the commission for the whole shopping cart and not only your product. Let’s say you recommended a book to your visitor. He’s now visiting Amazon and purchasing a new TV (why not) and not your book.
But you get the commission! And for an expensive TV, the commission can be really high. That means a single sale can get you hundreds of dollars of commission. Of course, it is not very likely that they’ll buy an expensive TV but they could also take a second book and your commission is doubled.
That is why I think you should use the Amazon affiliate program.
I hope you can see now why so many people do affiliate marketing and why it is so effective. You can start selling products within minutes.
However, sometimes it is not that easy as it sounds. The principle of affiliate marketing is very simple but to really make good money you need to invest a lot more time and effort.
You need to learn how to build an online business, how to market to people, how to get traffic and so on…
If you need help with that I have written a free ebook where you’ll learn all the basics to build a successful online business (sign in here).
Now I want to hear something from you. What has been your biggest problem with affiliate marketing? What experiences have you made?
Should you sell affiliate products or your own products?
If you want to earn money with your online business there are many different possibilities. I believe that one of the best ways to monetize your traffic is to sell products.
If you want to sell products you have two possibilities. You can either sell your own products or sell products of someone else (affiliate marketing). Both of these choices have different advantages and disadvantages.
Now I want to have a better look at both sides so you can choose the side what is best for you. I’ll start with the most common way the affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing
If you sell someone else’s products you call that affiliate marketing. The principle is very simple and effective. As an affiliate, you get an affiliate link referring to the merchant. This is usually an online shop (for example Amazon). When people use your link to buy something you get a commission.
When people use your link to buy something from that merchant you get a commission.
The commission depends on the product and the online shop. In the Amazon affiliate program, you get up to 10%. The commission for digital products is usually much higher as there are no production costs. These can be between 50% and 80%.
Advantages of affiliate marketing
The big advantage of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to take care of several things.
At first, you don’t have to create a product. Creating a product can take a lot of time and if you don’t have a lot of experience you never know if you can sell your product. That means creating a product can be very risky.
Also, you don’t have to create a sales funnel or a sales page. Creating a converting sales funnel or page can be very costly. And again, if you don’t have a lot of experience it will be very likely that no one will buy your product.
In addition to the product creation and the sales funnel you also don’t have to take care of shipping or the sales process.
And lastly, you don’t have to take care of the support. These are all processes that take a lot of time and effort. And also you need experience so you’ll have a converting product.
But with affiliate marketing, all you need to do is to send traffic and you can earn money. The better your traffic converts into paying customers the more money you’ll make.
That means you have to “warm up” your traffic. I give you an example. Someone is searching for a coffee machine with vintage design. So they search in Google for “coffee machine vintage design”. Now they (hopefully) visit your
Now they (hopefully) visit your website where you have written a review about a coffee machine in vintage design. If they like what they read they maybe will click on your button and buy the coffee machine at Amazon.
That is called “warming up” the traffic. The easiest way to warm up traffic is to solve the problems of your target group. If they have a problem and you explain to them that they can solve that problem with this or that product the conversion rate can be very high.
Another benefit of affiliate marketing is that it is easily scalable. As the merchant is responsible for shipping all the products you don’t have more effort to sell 10 coffee machines or 1,000.
As it is in life, there are always advantages and disadvantages. Therefore there are also disadvantages in affiliate marketing.
Disadvantages of affiliate marketing
The biggest disadvantage of affiliate marketing is that you only get a part of the profit. If you would sell the product on your own you would have a much higher profit.
I’ll explain that more in detail when I talk about the advantages of selling your own product.
However, there is one other disadvantage that many people don’t know. What I talk about is controllability. In control of your commissions and your paycheck is your merchant.
I’ll explain you more in detail what I mean. Let’s say you sell a product with a monthly commission. And after some weeks you made it to earn more than $1,000 with this product.
Suddenly they drop their commission payout from 50% to 25%. That means that your monthly earning shrinks from $1,000 to $500. Of course, not many companies will do that but it can always happen that the company goes to bankrupt.
That’s why I would always have several affiliate products and not focus on only one.
I think you can see now that affiliate marketing can be a huge opportunity if you don’t have a lot of knowledge or experience. It is absolutely possible to earn really good money with affiliate marketing.
Sell your own product
Besides affiliate marketing, you have always the possibility to sell your own product. Selling your own product can be a huge challenge but also offers you a lot of opportunities.
If you have a good idea and there is none or no good affiliate product you can sell you can fill that gap with your own product. A product can either be a physical product or a digital product.
Selling a physical product is a much higher effort as you have to produce, store and ship it. In addition, you need money beforehand to start producing. However, if you have a product that you can produce and sell then go ahead 🙂
But this blog is more about online marketing businesses so I want to talk more about digital products. Digital products can be an ebook, a video course or anything like that.
The advantage of a digital product is that it is easily scalable. It doesn’t make a difference if you want to sell 100 or 10,000 ebooks. Also, the money you have to invest is very low. I think you can start selling a product with less than $100.
Advantages of selling your own product
The biggest benefit of selling your own product is that you make 100% profit and not only 50%. That means you have more money with the same number of sales.
In addition, you have much higher controllability. You can raise the price at any time and earn more money with the same number of sales. That means you are much more independent from other companies and their decisions.
Disadvantages of selling your own product
The advantages of selling affiliate products are the disadvantages of selling your own product. If you want to sell your own product you need besides your product a converting sales funnel.
This can be a really high challenge if you don’t have a lot of experience. There is the possibility to outsource these activities but this can be very costly.
If you sell a product you have also take care of the product. There are always people who have further questions or problems. And as the product owner, you have to take care of it. This can cost you a lot of time.
A very fast way to sell a product
There is one possibility how you can get the advantages of selling your own product without most of the disadvantages. You can sell PLR products. I already wrote something about PLR products in my last article (read here). These are products you can buy and then sell as often as you want.
They can be used as a freebie or you can sell them. The benefit is that with PLR products you have already a product and usually a sales page and promotional tools like banners or email swipes.
With a sales system like Sellfy, you can start selling your own products in minutes!
If you are in the personal development, earning money online niche I have something very cool for you. With ViralPLR you get one PLR product per month for free you can either sell or use it as a freebie. With an already built in sales page, web hosting and much more. And the best part is that you can use it for free.
I believe that selling products is one of the fastest ways to earn money online. If you want to you can take a picture with your most favorite book and post it to Facebook. Now you only need to add your Amazon affiliate link and you could make some money really easy and fast.
If you are new to online marketing I would recommend you to start with affiliate products. You have a much lower risk selling products from other people and you can make really good money with it.
What experience have you made? Have you already sold your own product? Let me know by leaving a comment below 🙂
Your perfect freebie
As I already mentioned in an earlier article, if you want to build a huge email list you need a freebie. And a freebie can be a free pdf report, free video course, an email course, free coaching lessons or a coupon. In the following, I will describe them in detail and the advantages/disadvantages of every freebie.
In the following, I will describe them in detail and the advantages/disadvantages of every freebie. Of course, I believe there are many other possible freebies but these are the most popular.
Free pdf report
One of the fastest and easiest ways to create a freebie is to write a pdf report. All you need is a problem your target group has and they are willing to give their email address for. Usually creating a list of something is a good idea.
Search a little bit in the forums of your target group and have a look at their problems. If you can solve their problem with your pdf report is it very likely that they give their email address for.
If you don’t want to create a freebie on your own you can buy a freebie. There are products called PLR products or private label products. By buying the rights you can sell this product or give it away for free.
There are different websites that offer ebooks that you can sell. A great website is Master Resale Rights. There are PLR products in every niche. (If you are in the personal development niche or earning money online niche have a look here)
The advantage of PLR products is that you get besides the pdf-report 3D covers of the ebook. That makes your freebie look very professional.
There is also the possibility to outsource the writing and designing of your freebie. That is slightly more effort but that makes it easier to have a unique report.
The advantage of a free pdf report is that you can produce it very fast and easy. Also, it is easy to scale it. It doesn’t make a difference if you have 10 sign ups per day or 1,000 sign ups per day.
The disadvantage is that the pdf report is not very personal. If you offer free coaching lessons it is easier to communicate with them. However, I think that is only a small disadvantage since you can build this relationship with a good autoresponder.
Free video course
Another great freebie is a free video course. That sounds very complicated but it isn’t. One possibility is that you can film yourself in front
One possibility is that you can film yourself in front of the camera. You don’t need to buy expensive equipment or software. For the beginning, it is totally fine to use the webcam of your laptop or the camera of your smartphone.
If you don’t want to be in front of the camera (totally understandable) you can also create a PowerPoint slide and film your screen and capture your voice, while you explain more in detail.
The advantage of a free video course is that they create much more trust than with a pdf report. They can see (or hear) you while you explain your topic more in detail. The trust of your audience will be much higher from the beginning.
Also, it is easy to scale. Once you have produced your video course you can send it out as often as you want.
The disadvantage of a video course is that it is more work to create one. You have to set up everything and maybe buy software for cutting.
Free email course
Instead of writing a report you can split the report into parts and send out the parts in an email course. An email course is a little more effort to create than a pdf report. However, it is easier to create a relationship with your audience with an email course because they will hear from you not once but many times (depending on the length of your email course).
Also, with an autoresponder, you can set up your email course completely automatic. Creating an autoresponder is not very complicated and easy to set up (read here). So if they sign-up they will receive automated emails from you.
It is very easy to scale your email course. As your autoresponder sends out automated emails you don’t have to do anything.
The disadvantage besides the higher effort is that it is not sure that your audience will get all of your emails. There is the possibility that one of your lessons will be filtered as spam.
Free coaching lessons
If you are a coach or an expert in your field you can offer your audience free coaching lessons for signing up with their email address. This can be a great way to build your reputation within your target group.
The coaching lesson can be between 30 and 60 minutes and can be held over Skype or Google Hangouts. Of course, you should try to offer them very good coaching. If your coaching is very good it is very likely that they will tell their family and friends and this will lead to more sign-ups and/or reputation.
Also, the trust will be much higher and it is much easier to sell something to them.
The advantage of a coaching lesson is that you don’t have much work upfront. You don’t have to write a report or create a video course and you can start right away.
The big disadvantage is that coaching lessons are not scalable. With every sign-up, you have to organize the coaching lesson. Also, this coaching lesson is free so it is possible that if you have many sign-ups that you work the whole day without earning something.
And I think as an online marketer/blogger time is the most important concurrency so you should really think how you should invest your time.
Coupons
If you have a local business or an online shop creating coupons can be very good idea. Groupon was able to build a six figures email list by offering coupons. So as you can see, it is a very good opportunity to build a really huge list.
The benefit of a coupon is that you can create it really fast. If you have a good online shop system that shouldn’t be much effort. Also, the conversion of coupons is very good because who doesn’t want to save money? 🙂
It is also a very great way to bring them to your online shop because when they want to use your coupon they need to buy anything from you.
Offering coupons is also very easy to scale (if you want to). You can send out as many coupons as you want and build a big email list very easy.
The disadvantage is that with every coupon, you giving away profit. However, once you have gained their email address you can market to them a lifetime for free (if they don’t sign out).
I believe that is a great way for local businesses or online shops to build an email list.
As you can see every freebie has it’s advantages and disadvantages. It really depends on your type of business and the time you want to put into your freebie.
I have created an email course myself where you’ll learn in 7 days how to build the foundation of a successful online business (see here).
What has been your experience with freebies? What kind of freebies do you use? I want to know your experience so please leave a comment below 🙂
The 8 steps to start email marketing
As I already described in an earlier article email marketing should be the foundation of every online business or blog. And I can’t emphasize this enough 🙂
With the help of email marketing, you can promote products or new articles and built a relationship with your leads. Building an email list should be your most important task.
And email marketing isn’t very hard. In this article, I’ll show you how to establish email marketing in eight steps.
Step 1 – The email marketing tool
The email marketing tool is the basic of your email marketing campaign and here you have several opportunities. I use GetResponse and I can totally recommend it to you. An alternative would be Aweber.
There are also tools which are for free but I wouldn’t recommend them. They may be better to start with but with a bigger list, the other tools are better. And then you have a huge effort to change your provider so you better choose the right tool from the beginning.
Step 2 – The optin box tool
An email marketing tool is of course not enough. The people need the opportunity to sign up for your email list. So they need some kind of optin box. You can either build a landing page or place sign-up boxes on the side of your website.
This is easier than it sounds. You need to create a sign-up box within your email marketing tool and paste the resulting code into WordPress in a text widget. Now you have a sign-up box where people could sign up.
Step 3 – The foundation
As basic as it sounds but you need a foundation where you can place your sign-up box.
This is usually a website your visitors can visit. (See here how to create one)
There are several places where you can collect the email address. This can be a landing page or a sign-up box in your blog article.
Step 4 – The freebie
Nobody is giving away his email address for free. So you need to make them an offer they are willing to give their email address for. This is called a “freebie”.
Your freebie can be
- a pdf report
- a coupon
- free video lectures.
or anything your customer is giving his email address for.
Step 5 – The presentation
It doesn’t matter if you have a landing page or a sign-up box on your blog. It is not enough to have a small note referring to your newsletter.
As I said with the help of your email marketing tools you can create sign-up boxes and place them on the right side of your blog.
Of course, it is important that you present them your freebie. A compelling headline, maybe the product cover, and a call-to-action are here the right ingredients.
Step 6 – The first autoresponder
If you collect email addresses you shouldn’t stop there. With the help of autoresponders, you can send out follow emails. So, for example, you can send them out your most read articles which could be helpful to them.
I would suggest to send them around 7 emails in two weeks. That is not too much that they think you are a spammer but enough to build a relationship.
Step 7 – The traffic
The best freebie and the best autoresponder is nothing without leads. And you can’t get leads without traffic. So traffic should be your number one concern if you want to build an email list.
There are many different traffic sources but if you want to know more you can have a look here and here. Of course, you should always get quality traffic which is interested in your freebie.
Step 8 – Sustainability
So that you readers won’t forget you, you need to send out a newsletter regularly.
Newsletters are not the same as autoresponder because newsletters are always sent at a specific time, regardless of the sign-up date.
Even if you think that this is too much work for this small number of leads.
If you are still not using email marketing stop everything you do and work on these 8 steps! Email marketing can make the difference between small money and big money.
Now I want to hear from you!
Are you using email marketing? Is one step missing or too much? I would love to hear your opinion so please leave a comment below 🙂
Why you lose money without split testing
If you are not using split testing stop with everything you do. Because with every hour you don’t use split testing you lose money.
What is split testing?
Split testing or A/B testing is a method to compare the effectiveness of two different methods. In online marketing, you usually compare the conversion rate of two different landing pages. But you can also split test the subject line of an email or the headline of a blog article.
To split test your landing page you need two different version you want to compare. The half of the visitors will now see landing page A and the other half Landing page B.
Why should you do that?
Simple answer: because you don’t know how good a landing page does convert. That’s why you should try different versions of it to get the best possible conversion rate of your landing page.
It is even more important for sales pages. If you want to sell a product you want to have the best converting page possible.
For every visitor, you have to pay (money or time) so if you don’t want to waste your money or time you should try to optimize your landing pages.
Especially if you set up PPC campaigns like Google Adwords or Facebook ads and you have to pay for every click you want your website as high converting as possible.
What can you split test?
If you have a landing page you have many options you can split test. Let’s have a small overview of the things you could test:
- Headline
- Text color
- Content of the text
- Arrangement of the text
- Color of the sign-up button
- Position of the sign-up button
- Sales video
- Sales text
- Color of the website
- The price
- And a lot more…
All the factors play a crucial role in the conversion rate of your landing page. There are online marketers who were able by changing the color of their sign up button to double their conversion rate.
That’s incredible right? By changing the color of the button they doubled their profit!
How to start
Of course, you can’t split test all these factors at the same time. That’s why you need to go step-by-step. So start by creating two different landing pages where the call-to-action button is different.
After split testing, you can create a new landing page with a different headline.
And then you change the text.
And so on and so on…
You can continue until you are happy with your conversion rate.
How to create a split test
You have to options if you want to split test. You can either make everything by your own or you can use software for that.
That’s your decision but I would use software because it saves time and money. I can recommend to you different tools I have worked with.
If you are using GetResponse for email marketing you already have the option to split test different landing pages.
There is also the possibility to use advanced plugins like ThriveThemes or OptimizePress.
I’m pretty sure there are many different possibilities and I don’t think you can do much wrong.
Now you need to send traffic to your landing page. To compare the results you can use this free tool: http://getdatadriven.com/ab-significance-test
This will show you which version of your landing page has the better results. Of course, the number of visitors shouldn’t be too small to have relevant data. Also, the traffic sources of the two pages should have the same quality.
When does split testing make sense?
Before you start testing everything on your website you should check these requirements:
Your offer should fit your target group
If you have a product for pets and you get traffic from people who are interested in baseball the conversion rate will be very low. Also, even with split testing, you’ll not receive very good numbers. So check if your offer fits your target group.
You need an adequate amount of quality traffic
Only with a sufficient number of visitors, you can really compare two websites. If you only had 20 visitors per page you can’t say if one page is better than the other.
Also, if you have a lot of unqualified traffic it is also hard to compare the two websites. So try to get a lot of quality traffic so you can compare your two websites.
Your site must convert
That sounds confusing, right? Because we want to improve the conversion rate. That’s true but it is hard to compare two websites who don’t have any conversion at all.
If you sign up to GetResponse you already have a number of different tested landing pages where you only need to change the text and maybe the pictures. That’s very good for everyone who doesn’t have a lot of experience in website design 🙂
As you can see it is very important that you start split testing your website. Because we don’t know how good a website converts. Maybe we think the landing page is perfect but you never know how your visitors think about it.
With split testing, you can save yourself a lot of money and you can easily earn more profit. Now I want to hear from you. Do you already use split testing? What experiences have you made?
YouTube: A huge source of traffic
When you start learning about internet marketing, you’ll find that there are a lot of different subjects for you to tackle. These include the likes of SEO, of social media marketing, of writing press releases and more. You’ll have to learn about autoresponders and email marketing, about how affiliate marketing and about link building.
But something that often gets overlooked is video creation. This is strange, bearing in mind that video can have an incredibly profound impact on your brandís visibility as well as your sales and is one of the most effective ways to stand out.
So why do people tend to ignore it? One possible answer is simply that it is too complicated and difficult for many people to understand ñ so they’d rather just overlook it!
Why Video is SO Important for Your Internet Marketing
But it’s this difficulty that makes video production such a powerful marketing tool. Simply put, anyone can create a blog and anyone can create a sales page. When you build either of these things, you could still just be someone working from their Mum’s basement.
Video creation, on the other hand, requires expertise and expensive equipment. To make high-quality videos, you will need a good camera, a great lighting set-up, a good microphone, editing software and know-how. All of this communicates that you are a serious business with serious money to invest and that professional sheen is what will inspire trust in your visitors.
What’s more, is that video allows you to talk directly to your audience and to use both your own voice and music to persuade them to make a purchase. Video is naturally more engaging and it makes people feel as though they know you, all of which is incredibly useful from a marketing perspective.
When creating video there are several ways you can use it as part of a marketing campaign. One is to add a video to your homepage or your sales page. Either of these things will help you to immediately grab attention and increase conversions. Another option is to create a YouTube channel. This makes it very easy to reach a big audience and can even be highly profitable on its own. A video getting 100,000 views a month can easily earn you in the region of $200!
How to Get Started
To get started, you will need to invest in a small amount of equipment. You need a camera with good autofocus and the ability to record in at least 1080p at 30fps (ideally better on both fronts). Even more important is good lighting, so invest in a soft box or another professional lighting solution.
The smartphones of today already have a very good camera so if you have one of the newest smartphones you don’t have to invest in a camera. If you want to raise the quality of your videos you have to buy a professional camera, but the smartphone should be enough at the beginning.
Sound is also very important. An H1 pocket recorder paired with a lav mic will make a big difference at a low price point. You’ll then need to edit all this together in a piece of editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro.
It all sounds a lot but trust me, it is more than worth the investment in terms of what you’ll get back out of it!
How to write a SEO friendly article
Ask 100 people and you will probably get 100 different answers. The problem is that a lot of marketing experts are still stuck in the past when it comes to the best strategies for getting a post to the top of Google and this results in a lot of low-quality content and a lot of wasted time.
The best way to make an article SEO-friendly is actually quite simple, so read on and let’s dive into what you need to know!
Provide Value
To understand how to write the best SEO-friendly article, it pays to get inside the mindset of Google a little. What is Google trying to achieve?
The answer is simple: it wants to serve its users by linking them to the very highest quality and most relevant content that it can find.
Thus, any signals that you can send to Google to show that your content is high quality and relevant, will ultimately result in a boost to your SEO. The question is just how you go about doing that.
One example is to include outward bound links to other useful resources, relevant to the content of your site. This shows Google that you’re interested in providing as much information as possible to your readers, it aligns you with high-quality sites and it provides references to back up your claims (suggesting accuracy).
But what this shouldn’t mean is that every article needs at least two outward bound links. This is entirely missing the point as it will create a predictable pattern on your site that will look like manipulation. Link out when it is relevant and useful and don’t be cynical about it.
It’s also for this reason that Google likes to see long content of around 800 words+. While reports vary, it is generally thought that the ideal content length for SEO is approximately 1,800 words and this will improve your chances of being featured as News.
Keywords
It’s painful to see, but some SEO companies still think that a good SEO article is one that has the same keywords repeated over and over, to the detriment of the reading experience. This is one of the fastest ways to have your content flagged as spam, if not by Google, then by the human readers on your site.
Instead, keywords should be used very sparingly. A density of around 1-2% is recommended but only when that is appropriate and when it fits with the content naturally. This is one reason to write longer-form content though, as longer posts are going to have more space for repetitive keyword use.
It’s also important to recognize that synonyms and related terms are just as important, if not more so. Try to write around the subject and let related terms enter your content naturally. This is something you can expect to play a bigger and bigger role in future. If you want to know how to find keywords that are easy to rank have a look here.
Readability
Finally, space out your content and use lots of headings. Use large fonts and a narrative, user-friendly structure. This will help to keep people on your pages for longer and thatís one of the other things that Google looks for when ranking content.
When your average time on page is higher, Google tends to send more traffic to your site because your content seems useful. That means if you write articles for real users you write articles for the Google bots at the same time.
So keep your quality and your readability high and Google will reward that with lots of traffic!
As you can see it is not that hard to write SEO friendly articles. What has been your experiences? Would you add something? I would love to hear from you so leave a comment below 🙂