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10 Tips to Earn More Affiliate Income

I love affiliate income. You get payments coming into your Paypal account or checks in the mail, all for promoting someone else’s product or service. They’re the ones who deal with product creation, all the customer service, and all the merchant account issues.

Yet affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as some people make it out to be. You can’t just post a few affiliate links and hope money comes flowing in. If only it was so easy!

Here are 10 tips to help you earn more affiliate income.

1. Look for Continuity Income

While you can make very good money promoting one time sales, try to find some continuity programs to add to the mix. Even better than receiving checks in the mail is receiving a check from work you did a year or more ago. It’s one of those ways you can generate long-term passive income in your business. You can have income coming in that meets all your needs from work you did in the past. Excellent way to grow everything else you want to do today.

2. Build Your Business First

This is more work, but I always recommend you build your OWN authority site in the market you’re working in. Don’t just send visitors directly to the affiliate site. That works in the short-term but over time you want to build your own equity in the field. If one program disappears, promote another. As you grow YOUR business you can promote multiple related items. Instead of earning one check for your effort, you earn multiple.

3. Run an Opt-in Email List

This fits with #2. Build your opt-in list and your business. I’ve worked with several affiliates where our lead was getting them signed up for their list. Then we split tested affiliate programs to see which one was best for promoting immediately after someone joined our list.

4. Write Case Studies and Reviews

The “easiest” way to promote is to simply send out the ad copy the affiliate program provides you with. The only problem is this is also the worst way to promote. Instead the best promotion is one where you can write a case study of using the product yourself. What results did you have? Or what results did someone you personally know have? Second best is to simply review the product – give your opinion on what is both good or bad about it.

5. Offer Special Incentives

Why should someone buy the product from your affiliate link instead of anywhere else? That’s right. A unique selling position can apply to you as an affiliate just like any other business. Do an interview with an expert (such as the product owner) to give away to all your buyers. Or create a quick report you wrote to go with it. On a higher ticket item you could even include a consultation or some other type of personal service as a bonus for those who buy from you.

6. Leave Footprints on Other Sites

You’ve been told to write and submit articles. You’ve likely heard you can produce videos to promote affiliate links. But have you realized that those who do best are ALSO creating links to these footprints. For example, everyone knows that ezinearticles.com often ranks well on the search engines, but to help boost your article’s rank you should generate a few incoming links to it (such as submitting out another site using automated software linking back to your ezinearticles.com article). Then the resource box of your ezinearticles.com is linking to your site – passing more authority on to you in the end.

7. Track EVERYTHING

At the very least get Google Analytics installed on your site to see where your traffic is coming from. In addition you should ALSO be split testing your landing pages, review pages, and opt-in pages using a tool such as Google Optimizer. No matter how much we talk about traffic everything really comes back to conversion. The person who can convert best can spend more time and money in bringing in traffic (with better conversion you get “more time” by being able to hire more outsourced workers).

8. Hide Your Links

My favorite way to hide affiliate links is by buying a domain name and having it cloak. So when you visit http://www.MyArticleTraffic.com notice how it keeps that URL in the browser window, but it is for article submission software I’m an affiliate with. You probably don’t want to do this for every affiliate link you promote so you can always use a plug-in like Pretty Links to shorten affiliate urls on your blog.

9. Outsource Work to Others

With the emphasis on your own site, emails, and footprints all over the web you need a lot of content. Producing it all yourself becomes unmanageable as your business grows. Instead find the activities you enjoy the most and outsource the other work to others. You’re in an affiliate BUSINESS. Treat it like one.

10. Create a Low Cost Product

This one is a little more advanced technique but it is one of my favorites. Create a low cost product such as an ebook, audio interview, short video course, etc. Promote an affiliate program (or a couple of programs) in the course. Now you can build your own customer list through your product and make money off the backend through the affiliate programs you’ve included.

We can even move this to another level by selling reprint rights to the product you created. Now you have others out there promoting your course…and you’re earning the backend income from those who purchase from the affiliate links. If you find a two-tier affiliate program you could even have a higher reprint rights level where you allow them to sign up under you and change the affiliate link. Then you’re getting the overrides from their promotion.

And as you can imagine, now that you have your own product, you can run your own affiliate program. Even if you gave away 100% of the sales to affiliates, you’d be making money on the backend.

Check out the Ultimate Interview Product Solution for more information on developing your own product quickly using other people’s information.

Written by Terry · Filed Under All 

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Comments

15 Responses to “10 Tips to Earn More Affiliate Income”

  1. semmy @ minisite design on September 24th, 2009 2:26 pm

    wow Terry thank you very much for your affiliate article.. this is what I’m looking… thanks Terry!

  2. Joseph Ratlff on September 24th, 2009 2:28 pm

    Nice set of tips Terry, I’ll be linking to this post soon. :)

  3. Darren Scott Monroe on September 24th, 2009 3:43 pm

    How about actually use what you are promoting? Tie it into #4 plus I also do audio testimonials and sometimes video examples.

  4. David Stillwagon on September 24th, 2009 9:56 pm

    Great tips especially about becoming an authority site.

  5. Vic Boxwell on September 25th, 2009 9:19 am

    Hello Terry,

    Thanks for all the great tips. You always give away useful, and quality information that anyone can understand and apply. There’s no fluff or BS with you. Only straight talk. These days, that carries alot of weight, and I “Thank You.”

    Sincerely,

    Vic Boxwell
    Rockville, MD

  6. Tal Fighel on September 25th, 2009 9:35 am

    Nice tips Terry. These are all good points especially the one that talks about building your own link.

    Thanks,

    Tal

  7. Doug on September 25th, 2009 10:22 am

    Terry, do have any suggestions or prior articles on how to set up an affiliate program with a company that does not have one in existence? I would like to hook up with a software company and sell their product online but I don’t know how to make the connection of being credited when a customer buys the product.

  8. Tal Fighel on September 25th, 2009 10:35 am

    Terry,

    I made mistake in my last post.

    I sald: These are all good points especially the one that talks about building your own link.

    Should have been: These are all good points especially the one that talks about building your own LIST.

    Tal

  9. Cheapest Minisite Design on September 25th, 2009 2:49 pm

    Terry,

    Great list you got there for increasing our affiliate income. My personal favorite is number 1, which is to promote a continuity offer rather than a one-time sale. I find it so much more worthwhile and profitable doing so.

  10. Shane on September 26th, 2009 2:39 pm

    Terry,

    Thanks. This came at just the right time. I’m building my blog site tomorrow (Sunday) and you spell that model out pretty clearly. I’ve got my feet wet with affiliate marketing, but haven’t made any real money. The REAL money comes in the list. And that’s what I’ll be doing.

    Thanks for all your updates and articles. You have a great blog for me to model from.

    Shane

  11. John Tan on September 28th, 2009 11:34 pm

    Hi Terry,

    I love the 1st point that you mention look out for Continuity program because the amount effort being use to promote a one time sale product and a continuity program is the same so why not promote something that we can leverage on our effort.

    Great tips!
    John Tan

  12. sam on September 29th, 2009 4:27 am

    Do you think it is important to hide links, I have always thought that it is best to not hide my intentions when linking as it may have a bad effect on my site. I like your advice and think that it is really helpful for anyone looking to be successful. Do you have a favorite affiliate network and why?

  13. Terry on September 29th, 2009 7:46 am

    Hi Sam,

    We’re not talking about deceiving anyone or declaring that you’re not an affiliate. I’m simply saying you need to hide the links because they’re so long AND because there are some people who would remove your link to replace it with their own (to buy from themselves or a friend). I do not have a favorite affiliate network. For what I promote I normally find a product I like and then look for the affiliate program after to find if it is worth promoting financially.

  14. Sakura Hasegawa on September 30th, 2009 8:10 am

    Hi there..

    Thanks so much for posting those tips in your blog and sharing it with the rest of us. I’m sure it’ll prove to be useful for those people that apply them in their lives. I hope to see more posts such as this coming from you.

  15. Marius Popa on October 15th, 2009 8:36 am

    I had very little luck with opt-in emails. For some reason, I never managed to sell anything to those people. Maybe because I was offering a free product when they signed up?

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