Affiliate Marketer’s Dream

This is the final presentation of the Affiliate Incubator Seminar and Russell did a fabulous job of "wrapping it all up" into a package.

He discussed how to take everything we learned and make it into a viable, on-going business. The Role of The Entrepreneur

• Create and provide value to people
• Create jobs for other people
• Earn a ton of money and pump it back into the economy

(I like this one!)

• Be the attractive character for the company (the person that attracts)

He then talked about creating systems for your employees (or outsourcing help). Frankly, I think this is a valuable step even if you are doing it alone. It gives you a clear idea of what EXACTLY is needed to be done for each step of a successful internet marketing business. There are 4 types of Systems: 1. Marketing (Traffic) Systems 2. Sales Systems 3. Product Development Systems 4. Employee/Customer Systems An excellent tip he gave was to use Camtasia to record each step of the system and then give that video to your outsourcing help. For example, if you use certain software or websites for a particular part of your system (let's say Keyword Research), make a video of which sites or programs you use and what to do. Some other systems he covered: Affiliate System (finding affiliates to promote your products) — He uses outsourcing help to scour websites looking for affiliates — Parasite marketing - use similiar and related companies as JV partners — Give your front-end to your affiliates. (increase their commissions on the front end - you'll make it up on the back-end) Web 2.0 System — You can own Google using Hub pages, Squidoo, US free ads, eBay classifieds, and Scribed eBay System — Add your autoresponder to your About Me page, then on the Auction ad page, tell visitors to go to About Me page SEO System Suggested www.SEObook.com. I checked it out - excellent blog. I suggest subscribing to the feed. He also suggested www.seomoz.org I used to use this site for all kinds of SEO checking. They are an excellent resource for free tools. I haven't been there in quite a while and they've completely revamped the whole site. Some of the free tools are not available except as part of the paid program, but a lot of them still are. Russell also suggested creating systems for articles (writing and submitting), blogs, forums, etc. All in all, this presentation really opened my eyes to what needs to be done. I have all the tools (or most of them). I have the knowledge. By organizing everything into step-by-step systems, I'll be able to create effective checklists of what needs to be done (either by me or someone else). I'll also have a better handle on how long it takes for each step. I do think this was the "missing link" I needed. I'll let you how I progress. GiGi

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To recap: We are on day 3 of the Affiliate Incubator Seminar

Next up was Gary Ambrose. He’s been around on the internet marketing scene since 1998 and is an expert in list building. He’s has his own autoresponder system called Email Aces.

One of the first things he said really struck a chord with me:

Stop chasing the money. Don’t become a “professional newbie”.

Boy, how many of us are guilty of that?

Other points made:

• List building is core to any building, but it is NOT the business itself.
• Photos convert well on squeeze pages.
• Build your list by specifically targeting buyers.
• Proven buyers respond to offers at a higher rate than non-buyers.
• If you charge $1.00 for a teleseminar, you’d get a higher response rate.

He then told us about an experiment he did called Nickel Mania. He offered a product starting at a nickel and had the price go up by 5 cents in real time. It created a sense of urgency when people noticed that the price would go up if they didn’t buy right away. However, he noticed that 80% of the visitors left when they saw it was less than $1. (perceived value)

Interest levels wane in people. You should target prospects when interest level is high.

80% of your profits will come from 20% of your education. Ain’t that the truth.

GiGi

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To recap: we are on Day 3 (Saturday) of the Affiliate Incubator Series.

Ewen Chia finishes up his 5 Step Program. If you did not read the first installment, read it here: Ewen Chia - part 1

We are on step 2 of the 5 steps. The 5 steps are:

1. Decide Your Market
2. Present Your Offer
3. Generate Traffic
4. Monetize the Backend
5. Maximize Conversions

Present Your Offer

• Select ONE affiliate offer
• Focus on branding and mindshare- become an ‘expert’
• Build relationships
• Focus on one thing at a time

Use a simple affiliate lead generator website to maximize sales, build opt-in subscribers and capture mindshare in your market. He then showed us an example of an opt-in page that had a 75% opt-in !! He uses PPC to drive traffic.

Some points for opt-in pages:

• Keep it simple - use curiosity
• Headline should provide the ultimate benefit
• Use a LITTLE hype
• Use plenty of headlines and subtitles
• Use 2-3 sentences max
• Highlight the name and email addresses in the opt-in form to increase conversions
• Make your SUBMIT button a call to action

He then discussed thank you pages, building a pre-qualified list with your own product, and adding one-time offers.

Generate Traffic

Three main types of traffic - paid, free and stolen. Only use a few CORE strategies and do conversion testing.

He then told us about a new website: http://www.tnx.net which is free to join to get traffic and sell links. I don’t know much about it and I couldn’t get their website profitability form to work in either of my browsers, so I’ll just pass it along to you.

Monetize the Back End

The majority of commissions are made on the backend. You should find 3 affiliate products to promote for your sales funnel or “profit pipeline” and have them ready before you set up your opt-in. The 3 secrets to success with your backend sales are:
Planning
Consistency
Follow Up

Maximize Conversions

Test and tweak your processes periodically. Build a strong mindshare and relationship with your list by emailing 2-4 times a month.
Have a relationship-building blog for your list.

He then talked about adding a bonus to digital products.

And of course, he finished off with yet another fabulous package deal.

There’s lots I didn’t cover here, so you can imagine all the information he gave.

GiGi

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To recap: We are on day 3 (Saturday) of the Affiliate Incubator Seminar.

Saturday - the last day of the seminar!

Rick Raddatz finished up his presentation. If you didn’t read his first presentation, it’s here: Rick Raddatz, Part 1.

Today he discussed various tools to use in your business. Some points made were:

Investing in tools will be the biggest ROI (Return On Investment) you can have in your business.

Use the internet to lauch projects, but use the cash flow from them to fund offline products. He specifically talked about his new offline project, Entreprenuer’s Vacation Club.

He also gave an example of how adding audio to a simple squeeze page changed the opt-in rate to 42%!

Another example given was how adding a silly video of himself eating a bag of chips and drinking a soda increased the opt-in rate on another squeeze page, Wednesday Minute. You should check out that video - it’s pretty funny.

Other points made:

• Don’t be afraid to ask your list for help.
• Don’t be afraid to re-engineer your marketing if something doesn’t work.
• Invest in coaching if you can’t come up with your own marketing solutions.
• Sometimes it helps to get a different opinion.
• Put yourself outside of your comfort zone.

Some of the products he has to make adding audio and video to your site easy are: Instant Audio and Instant Video Generator

He also has a brand new program that looks pretty cool if you want a program that does everything - Marketing Makeover Generator Definitely worth a look see - especially for the $1 trial!

Of course, then he wrapped up with one of those fabulous deals that includes everything. You guys really should go to one of these seminars.

GiGi

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To recap: We are on Day 2 (Friday) of the Affiliate Incubator Seminar. A great content-filled seminar so far, isn’t it?

Next up, the legendary Ewen Chia - making his first U.S. seminar appearance! For those of us in internet marketing and affiliate marketing, this was history in the making. If you are not familiar with Ewen Chia, he is considered by many in the industry as the king of Super Affiliates.

He began his talk by giving us his personal story and how he got into internet marketing. It took him 5 years of learning at night before he was able to “put the pieces” together. But it wasn’t until he adopted a new mindset and started believing that “failure is not an option” before things really started falling into place.

Yes, you have to take action, but you also have to take CORRECT action.

Here are some highlights of his talk:

The 5 Most Critical Factors to Success:

• Following a proven system and mentor
• Love what you do and the money will come
• Using the Power Of One to focus on one thing at a time
• Understand the business and build a strong foundation
• Aquire the marketing mindset

What he did:

• Followed a proven system
• Built a long term system
• Kept it simple

The Five Steps of Affiliate Marketing:

1. Decide Your Market
2. Present Your Offer
3. Generate Traffic
4. Monetize the Backend
5. Maximize Conversions

Decide Your Market

1. Find out what people are already buying
2. Find out what people want (gave several resources here)
3. Find out what people are searching for (more resources)
4. Inside Out Strategy - use sub-markets - the more you specialize, the more money you make.

He then mentioned a great affiliate program for the health industry that pays great commissions - Joe Bucks. I had heard of them before, but then forgot about them. Don’t you hate when that happens? Anyway, thanks Ewen for the reminder!

Unfortunately, we ran out of time, so his seminar will have to continue tomorrow.

I had a short “brainstorming” session with Terry Hudson, and then called it a day. Another long day, but I left with my head filled with new ideas on how to grow my business.

GiGi

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To recap: We are on day 2 (Friday) of the Affiliate Incubator Seminar.

Cathleen (from Free Internet Marketing Club)and I walked over to a local restaurant for lunch and were met by 4 other attendees. We had a nice chat about our various businesses.

Next up was Gary Ambrose and How to Work with the Top Affiliates.

Gary’s been a top affiliate marketer for years and this discussion was about how a business with an affiliate program should be treating their top affiliates.

I may not be someone’s top affiliate (yet!) but I can tell you, many of the affiliate programs I work with don’t treat their affiliates that well.
Time to look into different programs.

He talked about relationship based affiliate marketing and looking at your affiliates as potential JV partners.

It all starts with a good product.
Companies shouldn’t be using their affiliates to “test” products.
Promotions should be planned way in advance to give affiliates a chance to “warm up” their list.

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To recap: We are on day 2 (Friday) of the Affiliate Incubator Seminar.

This is Anik’s second presentation of this seminar. To look at his first one, go here: Anik’s First Presentation.

One note to some of those skeptics - so far, this seminar has not been about the “hard sell” at all. Most of the presenters are presenting twice and both presentations are content filled. Of course I would expect them to have a product to pitch at the end of their talk, as long as their lecture wasn’t just a sales pitch for their product, which none of these were.

That said, some of deals at this seminar were pretty amazing. I have more than enough tools, but if I was in the market for a comprehensive system on internet marketing, I would definitely sign up for a seminar like this one. Not only do you get great content and a chance to network, but you get some great deals, too!

Wow, that sounded like a sales pitch, didn’t it? Moving on…

If you remember in Anik’s first presentation , he talked about his first product that did so poorly. Not because it was a bad product, but because his target market weren’t buyers. So what did he do? Offered lead programs on his site. These come in various types, such as Cost Per Action, Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Trial, and Cost Per Click (typically adsense type programs).

Although I was somewhat familiar with CPA programs, I wasn’t aware of all the different types or all the niches that have them. Definitely something to look into.

He then covered the different types of Traffic Generation:

• Search engines - PPC and SEO
• Article Marketing
• Press Releases and Link Building
• Blogs
• Video
• Forum Marketing
• Solo Ads/ Buying Links

Have I heard a lot of it before? Yes, I have. Did I still learn new tips and resources? You bet!!

He then finished his presentation with one of the most amazing offers - a lifetime membership in most all of his products including Affiliate Classroom!

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To update - we are at the Affiliate Incubator seminar on Friday morning.

There was an early bird bonus given out this morning to one of the attendees that showed up on time. Then Stu and Russell asked for people to come up and give their “a-ha” moments from the day before. I was all ready to get up there - (I had several a-ha moments) but I’m glad I didn’t. It turned out to be more of everyone giving a sales pitch for their own business or in some cases, a lecture! Too bad, I don’t think that’s really what they had in mind.

On to the morning presentation - Stu and Russell - “How To Come Up With A Product And Leverage It”

Boy, talk about your a-ha moments - I’ve really been struggling to come up with products to use as giveaways for opt-ins, but they made it seem easy!

First they covered e-books and how to do research to write them. how to create an outline and how to outsource the writing of it. Lots of detail and sources here!

Then they talked about audios and videos - which are actually easier - and also covered lots of detail.

Next was: REPURPOSE or how to make a whole lot of products out of one e-book. Great ideas!

After all that, they showed how you could save all that time by using PLR products. I’m not much of a fan of PLR stuff, but they gave me a bunch of new ideas on how to use it.

After the presentation, I asked Stu if he knew of any good PLR Products for Health Related fields. He suggested Push Button Health. I checked them out - a surprisingly inexpensive resource! Some PLR niches I’ve seen are pretty expensive and most don’t let you have access to past products.

All in all, this was yet another content-packed presentation. Something for every affiliate marketer.

GiGi

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Write a Blog about it! I’m serious! I can’t believe how much work this has become. But it’s great because it’s forcing me to go over my notes carefully and to check out all the resources and links before I pass them along to you!

It was good I decided BEFORE going to the seminar that I was going to write a blog about it because then I was also forced to take good notes.

We were promised copies of the slide shows and notes from the presentations, but I haven’t gotten any yet and I didn’t want to wait for them.

Okay, where were we? I believe it was the end of the presentations on Thursday night. It ended around 9 pm and there was supposed to be an informal get together in the hotel lobby afterwards, but unfortunately I had to drive home. And since we had to be there early again the next day, I knew I’d better get some sleep. Plus I hadn’t seen my computer all day (talk about withdrawals!) so I knew I had a mass of emails to go through.

Perhaps one of the other attendees will stop by and leave a comment about the networking on Thursday night?

GiGi

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To recap: We are on the Thursday night bonus session of the Affiliate Incubator Seminar, 2007

Russell Brunson is one the co-sponsors of this event. If you’re not familiar with him, check out Dot Com Secrets. He’s become quite a big name in internet marketing and with good reason.

Here’s a photo of him wrestling during college.

During this session, he went through the whole process of how he did his sales funnel for Dot Com Secrets in what he called The Lifestyle of the Lead.

Key points to remember:

A business is not a product.

How much value are you providing to your customer?

We were informed that this presentation would not be included in the DVD of the affiliate marketing seminar and was a bonus for attendees only.

So why is it important to view everyone’s promotion methods?
Because everyone has a slightly different twist on how they sell and valuable information can be gathered from each one. All the basics remain the same:

• Have a plan
• Make it a business
• Build a list
• Provide value

I will tell you this - Russell has an incredible affiliate program with more training than I’ve ever seen - anywhere. If you are interested in learning about promoting products, you should definitely check out what he’s doing — Russell’s Affiliate Program. You’ll also be able to see his other products.

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