Affiliate marketing is the ultimate level playing field.

Anyone can get started, and if they’re smart and hard-working, they can be making money in a matter of days.

All you’ve got to do is find a good offer, run some good ads, and watch the traffic convert into sales.

Right?

Well, maybe that used to be true, but it’s not anymore…

The Low Hanging Fruit Is Gone

It was definitely true in the early days of affiliate marketing, for several reasons; first of all, there was a lot less for sale in the online world, which meant that any affiliate marketer had a much larger share of voice just by virtue of being there.

The regulatory environment was also a lot more lenient, which means that it affiliate marketers had a lot more room to maneuver in selling their offers (it’s good that this has changed, otherwise the whole industry would have been in trouble!).

Most importantly, though, there was a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to advertising opportunities; keywords and phrases that had a lot of buying intent behind them, but that weren’t very competitive yet, and could be had for mere pennies per click.

And yes – when you can buy high-converting keywords for cheap, it’s hard not to make money.

But times have changed, and you can’t do that nearly as easily as you once could; most of the low hanging fruit has already been pulled off of the online tree, and the affiliate marketing game of finding the next hot opportunity has changed into a different game altogether…

It’s an Optimization Game

Now the game is about optimization – finding an offer that converts, and then optimizing every factor that you can control until you max out your deal value. Here are some of the factors that smart affiliate marketers will do split-testing on:

• Lead Sources – This is where the leads are coming from in the first place; you’ll find that your Google AdWords traffic converts differently from your SEO traffic, which converts differently from your Facebook ad traffic, and so forth. Not only that, but your cost per lead for each of those lead sources will be different. With enough testing, you can find the lowest cost per conversion.
• Ad Copy – The actual text of your ads will change both the cost of running the ad, the click-through rates on the ad, and the likelihood of the clicking-through traffic to actually buy whatever product you’re promoting.
• Landing Pages – The landing page is where the most testing is traditionally done. You can test everything, from your headline, to the page format, to the colors, to the trust seals, to your affiliate disclaimers, to when the buy buttons are presented on the screen – they can all make a difference to your conversion rate, and to your bottom line.
• Affiliate Offers – Finally, you can try swapping out the actual offer for something different. Maybe your leads are more interested in one brand of affiliate product than another, and maybe the second brand – even though the deal value is lower – will end up delivering more profits by virtue of a higher conversion rate.

When you’ve maximized your conversion rates and deal value, and minimized your cost per sale, you’ve got a smoothly humming affiliate marketing machine. And yes, doing that does take time, money, patience and skill – but once you’ve got it, boy is it a sweet deal!

That is, until Google stops liking you…

Until Google Stops Liking You

The trouble is that most of the major lead sources that most affiliate marketers rely on are owned by bodies like Google, Microsoft, or Facebook.

What does that mean for you?

You can work your way to the top of the affiliate marketing world through diligent split-testing, until you’ve got sales streaming through your marketing system at bullet-speed… until someone’s algorithm changes, and their engine stops liking you.

Then your affiliate business is dead in the water, and you’ve got to start from scratch if you’re lucky, and work your way off of Google’s blacklist if you aren’t.

So what’s an affiliate marketer to do?

The answer lies in the old adage that “the money is in the list,” but with a twist…

The Real Money is in the ENGAGED List

If you have a list of eager buyers, then you don’t have to worry about Google messing with your traffic sources – whatever happens, your followers will continue to follow, as long as you maintain the relationship, and keep on living up to your end of the bargain.

With a list of eager buyers, you don’t have to keep working off of one-off traffic, because you can sell more than one thing to the same person – and research shows that someone who has already bought something is eight times as likely to buy from you again!

You probably agree that a list of eager buyers is a good thing to have… but where can you get such a list?

The answer is that you’ve got to build that list yourself – and for that list to be as eager to buy as you want them to be, they need to be engaged. In other words, you need more than a list – you need an engaged community.

You need an audience.

How to Build an Engaged Audience, from Scratch

Building an engaged audience from scratch is part science, and part art. You don’t have to learn it all through trial and error, because others have already done that, and you can learn from their mistakes, and from their successes.

To get you started, here are three things that you can do to convert your one-off affiliate traffic into a loyal list that will stick with you for the long-haul:

1. Start blogging and showing your true nature. The days of the anonymous affiliate marketer hiding behind a copied landing page are over; too many people have been burned by false claims, and for your prospects to trust your recommendation, they will have to know who you are. So tell them – start blogging, and give them a reason to keep coming back, so that even if they aren’t ready to buy now, they can start following you, and buy from you in the future.
2. Create a value-adding auto-responder sequence. People are justifiably careful about who they let into their inbox – so don’t just offer some PLR e-book and start marketing to them non-stop. Instead, give them something that they will get real value out of, and that will demonstrate to them just how trustworthy and credible you are (like we do with our free video course about how to Get More Cash Out of Any Business, Website or Blog).
3. Offer an incentive to buy through your link. Instead of just recommending your affiliate offer, why not give people an incentive to buy through your link? This is great for improving conversions, but the best part is that it gives you a good reason to keep on interacting with your prospects after they have made the purchase – which means that you retain control of the customer relationship, and you will have the opportunity to sell to them again in the future.

Of course, this is just the start, but if you start with this, you’re already three steps ahead of most affiliate marketers, and that much closer to the pot of gold at the finish line.

And if you need a little more help…

Yours Free: Engagement from Scratch!

All of these ideas are expanded with pages upon pages of details and ideas, which I compiled into my new book called Engagement from Scratch! How Super-Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same!

Today, the book is launching, and I’m very excited to be able to share it with you – for free!

Yep, that’s right – the book is free. You can download the entire book without paying a cent. Just visit the book’s website, click on the download link, and tell me what email address to send it to, and moments later you’ll the full-length PDF waiting for you in your inbox.

Prefer a hard copy? Spend a few extra bucks and get the paperback version so that you can read on the couch or in bed, and write notes in the margins.

About the Author

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, expert marketer, and the Freddy Krueger of Blogging. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark and Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on how to build an engaged audience from scratch.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. A New Advertising Frontier for Affiliate Marketers: TV Ads?
2. Outsourcing For Internet Marketers: Freeing Your Time & Increasing Your Profits
3. Google Panda Effects on Affiliate Sites

Getting Started

Before you begin building your website or hiring freelancers, you need to decide what your niche or subject matter will be. I would suggest selecting a niche that you are familiar with, enjoy, and that has a definite demand for continuous content.

The worst thing is to be three months into the project and realize the niche puts you to sleep. You need something that is exciting for you!

I decided to choose the mother of all niches, weight loss. I guess it’s fair to say I like a good challenge, but you have to manage your expectations and figure out what is realistic when it comes to achieving your goals, and how much effort and investment you are willing to put in.

Your content should always solve problems and answer questions that users are likely to be searching for in the various search engines. Doing plenty of keyword research is necessary so you can target long tail keywords and avoid hard-to-rank-for terms like “how to lose weight” or “lose weight fast.” As a new affiliate marketer you have to be realistic with what you can achieve. But the long term goal is one of residual revenue and an online property you can eventually sell to reap the benefits of all of your (and/or your outsourcers’) hard work!

For example, a recent article I posted is on how to make your body burn more calories, which is obviously a topic with significant search volume. Once searchers find it, strategically placed affiliate ads will take users to a weight loss or diet supplement website. See how that works? Find a market you can corner that’s not over-saturated with competition and you can start building from there.

Content Needs

The days of content farms are drawing to a close, with even EzineArticles.com losing over 30% of its traffic due to a recent update to Google’s search algorithm.

The path to the future is clear—create an authentic site with quality content and a positive user experience. Otherwise, your organic ranking days could be numbered!

Once you’ve chosen what your website will be about, it’s time to start generating some excellent content. The keys to improving the flow of traffic to your website are quality content and genuine inbound links (link farms are also on the swift decline).

Setting your website up as an authority on a particular topic ranging from auto repairs to weight loss, using unique, quality content that is well-written, will help ensure your content drives the “right” kind of customers to the websites you promote.

The goal is to get people to your site and then on to the vendor’s site, and that requires helpful information that’s related to the vendor’s content. If you’re not a writer, or if you simply don’t have time to create content for an entire website, utilize the services of a freelance writer. These services can be found at sites like Elance, where I’ve found some of the best business partners around. Try to find someone that is already familiar with your niche, who has a basic understanding of search engine optimization and who can freely post quality content onto your site without you having to.

A professional with these skills will be able to provide you with high quality content that’s sure to bring visitors to your website. Without good content that keeps readers coming back, your affiliate links and promotions may not generate any additional income.

When you choose keywords to optimize for, make sure to choose phrases that are relevant to your subject matter and related to your vendor’s subject. You should also make sure to use phrases that would actually be searched for in search engines. For example, instead of ‘how to lose weight with oolong tea,’ which is too wordy, optimize your keyword text to read ‘oolong tea health benefits‘ and create a page title around that phrase.

Posting Frequency

An important factor in building a reputable site for affiliate marketing is posting fresh content to your site often. You want your site to become an authority on a subject, which means you want readers to check in with your website often for new content. By posting content at regular intervals, your readers know when to come for new information. Think of your website like a television show—you want readers to know when to come back for the next episode.

An authoritative website has many pages of content, which you will build up over time. This can’t be done in a few days. Give your website an edge by having a large amount of content ready for posting when your website goes live, and then continue to post high quality content regularly.

Networking

In addition to paying for the services of a freelance writer, you immediately want to begin networking with other bloggers. Bloggers with similar content may be able to act as ‘guest’ writers on your blog and you can do the same for their website.

[NOTE: If anyone is looking to exchange guest posts with us, just send a message via the contact form on our site].

By acting as a guest writer on another blog, it builds your reputation, and your website’s, as an authority on a particular subject. It tells your readers that you’re not just trying to make money, but you actually know what you’re talking about too. And those back links you get by guest posting will also help give your website’s rating a boost.

Inadvertent networking is another great way to boost your ranking in search engines. By creating high quality content that provides helpful information, other bloggers will link to your website as a credible resource, which will also improve your search engine ranking. This is why enjoying your niche is important, since it will make it easier for you to keep pushing out great content and chatting with new people in the industry.

Starting an authoritative website is fairly easy, and with the right tools you can be up and running in no time. Find your niche, stockpile your content for frequent updates, build your website and start linking! It’s easier than you think, and who doesn’t need another avenue to earn income these days?

Good luck!

About the Authors

Michael Cecchin in a successful Internet Marketer, Entrepreneur, and professional J-O-B escapee based in Toronto. Michael owns a number of online properties in the diet and fitness niche and is currently exploring opportunities in other niches. He has been working full-time online for the past 2 years and claims the terrifying memory of cubicle life is what keeps him motivated to continually expand his online business and live the dream.

Alex Miller is an affiliate and SEO superstar, originally from the UK and currently living in Orlando, Florida. Alex started as an affiliate in the Forex and fitness niche while building his SEO credentials. His main projects are now in the SEO niche, helping other business owners improve their site rankings through white hat tricks and tactics unavailable to mortal men.

You can check out their own authority site at The Fat Loss Authority Blog.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Google Panda Effects on Affiliate Sites
2. New Affiliate Marketing Today Podcast: Membership Site Success with Ryan Lee
3. New Affiliate Marketing Today Podcast: Niche Marketing with Adam Short

If you’re a blogger who’s thought about creating and selling your own product, you’ve probably heard that in order to make sales you need to get a lot of traffic. What I’ve learned, though, is that there’s a difference between getting a lot of traffic and getting valuable traffic. There’s even a difference between getting a lot of valuable traffic and getting a lot of paying customers.

For some reason, people automatically assume that if you build up your traffic, via comments, email, social media, etc., you will automatically start seeing your bills get paid and your bank account grow.

I wish!

The truth is that converting traffic into customers is a lot more difficult than it seems, especially if you don’t have a solid product to offer up to that traffic. The following steps will help you develop and launch your first product, while keeping your readers happy.

Step 1: What are You Selling?

Sure, you need traffic in order to sell stuff, but how are you going to sell anything unless you have a good product?

You’re going to have a hard time converting traffic into sales if all you’re offering is a “me-too” ebook or the same PLR content as everyone else. Make sure you take the time to develop a product that can really solve problems and offer practical advice to your readers.

Step 2: Identify Your Market

Technically, you should do this part first, but as I’ve learned over the past few years, you sometimes won’t know your market until you’ve tried to sell something and failed.

I’ve had a lot of failed products, but instead of just quitting and closing up shop, I’ve learned to re-evaluate and adjust based on what I learned from my mistakes.

My Experience

For instance, when I had the idea to write Beyond Blogging (co-authored with Mike Cliffe-Jones), I didn’t have an audience in mind; I just had a general product concept.

From there, though, I spent time sending surveys and talking with my readers on Twitter and in my blog comments. This isn’t something you can skip—you have to really get in the trenches and hang out with your audience.

In doing that, I learned what my audience wanted, which was a product that was inspirational, wasn’t a typical “how-to” blogging book, and had information and advice they could use right away. I used my research to create my product specifically for this group of people, instead of trying to make my book “everything for everyone.”

Step 3: Respect Your Audience

Some people are successful using “hit and run” sales tactics, but that’s not my style. Quite frankly, that shouldn’t be the style of any blogger that wants to build a long-term relationship with their audience. Blog audiences are fickle, and if they start feeling like your values aren’t in line with theirs, they’ll drop your blog in a heartbeat.

How To Build Relationships While Selling

Building relationships is easy, but it takes time and dedication. It starts in your comment section, by providing your readers with replies and feedback to their questions or concerns.

From there, you should make sure your email newsletter so that it provides maximum value to your readers. Keep in mind that value doesn’t always mean commercial-free content. Sometimes, value means relevant affiliate offers. People don’t mind this as long as you aren’t contacting them only when you have something to sell.

Finding the balance between selling and relationship building is tough, and will likely take some trial and error to get right. Some people will absolutely never want to be sold to, and it’s OK if you lose a few people as long as the vast majority of your audience sticks with you. If you get lots of feedback that people aren’t interested in what you’re selling, you might want to consider whether your product is really addressing the needs of your audience.

How I Sold to My Readers

When I started selling Beyond Blogging on my site, I spent a few weeks telling my subscribers and my blog readers that I was working on a really cool book.

I built up anticipation over time so that they not only knew it was coming, but so that I could pre-qualify them ahead of time.

Once the launch started, I gave my readers a head start to an early link and a discount code. They appreciated that I rewarded them for being a regular reader of my blog, reinforcing our relationship.

Although I sent reminders every few days until the end of the launch, I never acted desperate or forceful. Again, readers responded well to being treated like we had a valuable relationship, rather than just being targets for sales.

Lastly, I didn’t harass them or annoy them if they didn’t buy. When the launch was over, I simply added an email to my autoresponder sequence and went on with my blogging as usual.

If you spend all of your time promoting products, people are going to get tired of hearing from you. If you mix it up with good advice, you’re not only helping them, you’re creating a need and a desire to learn more. It’s like building blocks. You’ve got to build them up one level at a time.

The Results

When all was said and done, we sold 5 figures in the first 24 hours, and doubled that by the end of the launch. Our names were all over the blogosphere, and people were asking their favorite bloggers to do a review, without us having to prod them. That’s some true social proof.

From there, we’ve built a strong customer list that still wants to do business and is ready to learn more. Our next step is to use what we’ve learned to take them to the next level with a more advanced product, resulting in a second product with a built-in audience.

When it comes right down to it, you need traffic, but you also need to make sure you’re making something worth buying. Don’t go with big ideas—go with what people need. Once it’s ready, launch with as much hype as your audience can tolerate, while still maintaining the integrity of your relationships. After all, we’re building businesses here—not selling used cars!

What strategies have you used to turn your readers into customers? What mistakes have you made that you’ve learned from? Please share them in the comments!

About the Author

Nathan Hangen teaches people how to build digital empires, helps them rock through their workday, and works with small businesses to implement digital marketing campaigns.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Welcome to the ClickBank Blog!
2. Video: Using ClickBank Hoplinks in a Blog
3. The Importance of Relationships in Affiliate Marketing

One of the things I get asked a lot is where to begin as an affiliate marketer.

It can all be so overwhelming. There are so many different ways to get traffic, build sites, and pick products to promote (these are the three components of any affiliate marketing effort). In addition, some of these traffic and site building options can be expensive and highly technical, requiring a lot of training and expertise.

My goal in this post is to highlight a way to get started as an affiliate that’s relatively easy, risk-free, zero cost, has a great chance to make your first money online, and doesn’t require any technical knowledge or experience.

We’re going to use ClickBank for our product, a BlogSpot blog for our website, and search engine optimization to get traffic. If you’re totally new to search engine optimization and want a very quick introduction, you may want to check out this video.

Step 1 – Find 10 products you’re interested in promoting

• One of the best parts of being an affiliate for ClickBank is that it’s so easy to get started because there are thousands of unique products to promote. Once you have a ClickBank account, go to the Marketplace and browse it to find products that you have an interest in and/or that you or someone you know would buy.
• Make a note of the products, including their Pitch Pages and the custom HopLinks you’ll use to promote them (you’ll get these by clicking the Promote button next to the Marketplace listing). It’s a good idea to save this information in a text file on your computer.

Step 2 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool

• Go to Google’s external keyword tool.
• For each product you picked in Step 1, enter the most generic keyword that applies to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a product on how to cure tinnitus, use the keyword “tinnitus” and click the Get Keyword Ideas button.
• Go over to the Match Type drop down box and select Phrase Match.
• Sort the list in descending order of global search volume by clicking on the column Title.
• Make a list of any keyword that is between 10000 and 30000 global monthly searches, and that has something to do with your product.
• At the end of this step, you’ll have 10 lists. Some of these lists may be empty, as it’s possible that there won’t be any keywords that meet our criteria.  We’re being very careful about selecting only the ones that will work for us, so have patience and don’t get discouraged.

Step 3 – Evaluate the competition for SEO

• Now we need to see if it would be possible for us to actually rank in Google for terms that would drive traffic to the product we’re going to market. For each keyword identified in Step 2, head over to Google and type the keyword in quotes. For example, if the keyword phrase was “cure tinnitus,” you’d type “cure tinnitus” into Google.
• You’ll see the search results and the words “Results 1-10 of about xx,xxx” on the right hand side. If the xx,xxx number is less than 100,000, move on to the next step. Otherwise, discard this keyword.
• Do another Google search by typing inurl:”keyword phrase”. For example, for our keyword above it would be inurl:”cure tinnitus”. Take a look at the number of results again. If that number is below 1,250, this keyword is a winner. Make a note of it.

Step 4 – Pick the keyword you want to start with and build a BlogSpot blog

• We’ve picked a BlogSpot blog for 2 reasons: it’s easy to build a nice-looking site quickly, and blogs rank very well in Google.
• In general, pick the keyword phrase that has the highest search volume, the lowest competition numbers from step 3, and seems to be the best fit for someone looking to actually buy your product. There are really no wrong answers here, just go with your instinct using these criteria as a guide.
• Build your BlogSpot blog. Sign up and watch the tutorials on how to create content like posts. When setting up your blog, make sure that the blog title is your keyword phrase.
• Make sure that the blog address (URL) also contains the keyword phrase you’ve picked in some way. So in our example, best-tinnitus-cure, my-tinnitus-cure, etc., all work just fine. Dashes are fine anywhere, so with a bit of creativity you should have no trouble coming up with a name that’s not been taken.
• The goal of your blog is to inform and to sell. Provide valuable content from the Pitch Page of the product, as well as outside resources. Add your HopLink to the actual product using text and possibly images. You can often get images from an affiliate page for the product, which can be found in the product’s Vendor Spotlight in the ClickBank Marketplace.
• Important: Never make up any information about the product! I encourage you to buy the product or have someone you know purchase the product, so you can give a truthful and accurate opinion of it.
• The exact steps to build out the site are too extensive to go into here, but an example should do the trick.  Check this page out.  It will give you a great idea of what we’re after.

Step 5 – Do some link building

• Link building is the key to search engine optimization, and the best way to quickly get included in search engine results for the keyword you’re targeting.
• The process of getting a backlink is a bit different for each option listed below, but you can’t go wrong here.  The idea is to do three things: get a link to your site, use your keyword phrase in the description or tag when you’re using a bookmarking site, use your keyword phrase as the “anchor text” (the text that’s clickable…that is the actual link to your site) whenever possible.  Don’t worry about getting this perfect…any link is better than a perfect link, and you can do no harm!
• Blog comment posting is a popular way of getting backlinks.  Here’s a nice page that explains how to do it.
• Social bookmarking can be a great way to build backlinks to your site.  Here’s a huge list of them! Just set up an account with them and add your site.
• Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. are great places to put up a small amount of content and then to add a backlink to your site.  Here’s a nice list of these types of sites.
• Also take a look at this guest blog post I did previously for other ideas.

Try to build at least 5-10 backlinks every single day! This will give you the quickest results.

Conclusion

The most important part of this process is the keyword research in steps 2 and 3.  If you have trouble finding the right keyword phrases for the 10 products you selected, go get 10 more and try again. Have patience. If you stick it out and find the right keywords, the rest will usually take care of itself.

After a while… it could be days, could be weeks, you should show up in the Google search results and people will click on your links to the ClickBank product and you’ll make your first money online! Best of luck in your affiliate marketing efforts.

About the author

Steven Clayton and his partner Tim Godfrey are the creators of several best-selling Internet Marketing information products, including Commission Blueprint 2.0, Niche Blueprint, and SEM Business Blueprint. You can get more great advice and information on their blog.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Moneywords: Your Key to the Keyword Kingdom – Part 2
2. Choosing the Best Keywords to Promote ClickBank Products Using Search Engines
3. 5 Killer SEO Tips to Get Backlinks

The new regulations cover all sorts of third party testimonials and endorsements—by consumers, experts and celebrities. If your promotions use customer or consumer endorsements, the FTC requires that the results described must be typical or, if not, you should “clearly and conspicuously” disclose that the results presented are not typical. Also, such customers should be “bona fide” buyers of your product, and not, for example, a fictitious person or your cousin who is doing you a favor. For expert endorsements, the person involved should have special knowledge that qualifies him or her to make the endorsement, e.g., if you use a doctor to sell a diet plan, that doctor shouldn’t be an eye doctor, but have special knowledge in the area of nutrition.

Also, the FTC requires all endorsements to disclose any “material connection” between the vendor and the advertiser. For example, if an affiliate runs a website offering an “independent review” of two products and gives a favorable review of one, they should disclose the fact that they are receiving a commission from the sale of that product. These rules also apply to third parties, such as bloggers, who receive a free product and are asked to do a review. Under the new FTC rules, not only should the blogger disclose he got the product for free but the vendor who gave him the product should make some effort to make sure that the blogger makes that disclosure.

Please review these new rules yourself and if you have questions, please ask your own legal counsel. ClickBank cannot and does not give legal advice to our vendors or affiliates, and our approval of your product does not constitute an approval of any specific marketing, promotion or endorsement used to sell the product.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. New ClickBank Podcast: Rules for a Rock Star 8-Figure Internet Business with Ryan Lee
2. Client Contract Change Summary
3. Important Guidelines for ClickBank Vendors

Last week, I attended the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. It’s a great event for learning about the latest advances in online marketing, and is filled with people who are serious and passionate about learning the best methods for achieving online success. Although only a small portion of the event and sessions are geared towards affiliate marketing, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about writing, selling, expanding their sphere of influence, and who wants to make some great networking connections.

While there were a lot of nuts-and-bolts marketing tactics taught at the learning sessions at BlogWorld, there was a recurring theme that popped up in several presenters’ speeches and panels: the importance and power of cultivating relationships.

Without exception, building strong and mutually beneficial relationships with your customers (or potential customers), clients, partners, industry peers, or anyone you’d like to work with, can be the difference between success and failure.

Why You Need to Work on Relationship Building

For a lot of new affiliate marketers, when they first get started, they jump right in to things like writing articles, creating ads, building landing pages, etc. While this is of course very important and necessary, I believe that spending a significant portion of time trying to build relationships can have a far greater long-term impact on potential success.

I’ve met and spoken with quite a few of ClickBank’s top-performing vendors and affiliates, and nearly all of them have connections with other top people in the industry. Some have collaborated on creating a product, some recommend products to their customers from vendors they know and trust, and some form “mastermind” groups to develop strategies and offer each other assistance. Almost no one gets to the top alone, without having received significant help and advice from other people at some point.

Not only is the advice and help you can receive extremely important, but having strong relationships can create opportunities and open doors you didn’t even know existed. It’s the same as it is for job hunting- it’s often not what you know, but who you know. You could end up getting invited to be an exclusive partner for a project, getting tipped off to a fantastic product to promote, or being introduced to other potential partners in your space.

Relationships are About Giving

At BlogWorld, author and marketer Chris Brogan discussed how the only relationships that really work are ones where both parties benefit. This is an extremely important point, and one where I think many people who are trying to create relationships with important people in their space run into problems.

If you’re new to a space, whether it’s affiliate marketing or any other industry with some established experts, immediately begging for help and going straight to the most influential people with requests for personal assistance is probably a bad idea. Best case, you might have someone take pity on you and give you a stock answer they’ve given to a thousand other people and then forget you completely. Worst case, you become a memorable annoyance to them and they do their best to avoid you altogether. Their first impression of you may end up being negative, and it’s hard to overcome this later.

How to Introduce Yourself Without Being Annoying

Instead of immediately asking for help, first become an information sponge and soak up all the information you can about a topic, whether it’s in books or on forums, blogs, Twitter, podcasts, or wherever. If you dedicate a substantial amount of time to just learning about a topic, without trying to first take action, it’s pretty amazing how quickly you can get up to speed and start really participating in the conversation and even helping other people.

Once you feel like you at least understand the conversation and are starting to form an opinion on the topic, starting contributing before you start making requests of people. If you follow an influential blogger in your space, start leaving thoughtful comments on their posts. Give your opinion on the subject, or offer up something you’ve learned in your research that could help others understand the topic better.

As a blogger, I can tell you that there’s nothing more satisfying than receiving comments on a post that show that someone has really thought about what you’ve written and is engaged with your ideas. If your comment shows me you’re really here to participate, and aren’t just commenting to get a link to your site, I’m far more likely to want to know more about you and listen to what you have to say in the future. I’m also a lot more likely to respond if you do ask me a question or make a request of me in the future.

This holds true all the way up from small bloggers to the most influential people in Internet and affiliate marketing. Before you can expect to get anything out of a relationship with people in your industry, you first have to show them that you’re willing to be authentic (don’t pretend to be interested just to get their help) and to give back to the community they’re a part of.

This is especially the case if you want to engage with someone who’s already achieved some success and is too busy to give significant time to every newbie who comes along. You’re going to really have to stand out as someone who’s worth their limited time. A great way to do that is by helping the same people they’re trying to help, and ideally, actually helping them too.

While I certainly can’t guarantee that you’ll develop a great relationship with the person or people you want to work with even if you do everything “right,” your chances of getting respect and becoming an influential person in your space will be much higher. For example, many bloggers and affiliate marketers who are now successful in their own right started out by commenting frequently on blogs or forums in their space. Even if the person you’ve approached doesn’t end up engaging with you, you may find that other people will seek you out and want to work with you, creating opportunities you never knew existed.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. New Affiliate Marketing Today Episode: Building Relationships in Affiliate Marketing
2. How Not to Use Twitter for Affiliate Marketing
3. Affiliate Marketing: Creating A High Content Authority Site for Affiliate Sales

If you’re a ClickBank vendor but have no clue how to design your own Pitch Page for your product, this video from Gideon Shalwick of Become a Blogger will walk you through the steps of creating a Pitch Page using the popular free blogging software, WordPress. It’s one of the best and easiest ways to quickly create a great-looking Pitch Page!

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Video: Using ClickBank Hoplinks in a Blog
2. Tech Tuesday: Free Affiliate Tools Page Plugin
3. Pitch Page Design Success Using the Block Approach

If you’ve wanted to create your own blog but weren’t sure how to get started, Become a Blogger’s tutorial videos will walk you through every step of the blog creation process. Be sure to check them out!

Take a look at these related posts:

1. How to Create a ClickBank Pitch Page Using a Blog
2. Protecting Your Hoplinks
3. ClickBank Video: Create a Customer-Facing Ad

In my job, I speak to our largest publishers and affiliates pretty much every day. Just the other day after a conversation with one particularly successful publisher, it struck me that there is a common thread that runs through all successful publishers.

While their businesses may be different and the areas of their specialization may be diverse, they all have very similar habits. As I continued my conversations with these publishers, I jotted down the common habits that distinguish these successful people, and here they are for your enjoyment and edification:

1. Stay close to your passion: The most important thing is to create a product about which you are passionate. That passion and commitment to the subject matter will show through, as will the lack of depth and insincerity if you are merely recycling material you may have found elsewhere. Being passionate about your topic will also help tide you over in lean times when sales of your product suffer a dip, as even the most popular products do.

2. Work hard: Contrary to all the hype you hear about making money in your sleep, the most successful publishers will tell you that they work extremely hard at their products. Whether it’s creating updated versions of their products, staying on top of their customer service or putting together material for affiliates, it is serious work. The good news is that you’re working for yourself; you can usually choose the hours you work, spend time with your family and devote time to your hobbies and passions. And the rewards for the hard work are handsome indeed – not just a pat on the back by the boss.

3. Don’t be afraid to pick an obscure topic: Passionate about the migratory patterns of the monarch butterfly? Write an ebook about how to attract them to your garden. Consider yourself an authority on the arcane topic of growing miniature Bonsai trees? Write an ebook on the best how-to tips for cultivating a Bonsai garden. The beauty of the long tail ClickBank model is that no matter how obscure your topic, there are affiliates who would like to promote the product and customers who will gladly pay for it. You don’t have to write another Internet Marketing ebook – unless that’s your passion.

4. Collaborate: An amazing number of our very successful publishers collaborate with one another, offering suggestions and helping each other. Internet marketing is not all cut-throat competition, it would appear, as the successful publishers have proven that it is better to collaborate constructively than to compete destructively. Consider joining a Mastermind group in your specific area of interest or subject matter. There is a lot of good information that is shared at these groups.

5. Price your product right: Top publishers have figured out that a lower price is not necessarily more attractive. In fact, one publisher told me that his product converted much better at a price of $67 than at $37. In the digital product world, with no other cues to the quality of the product, price is often seen as the indicator of value. How do you figure out the optimal price for your product? That brings me to the next habit of successful publishers.

6. Test relentlessly: Another trait common to successful publishers is that they test everything extensively. The price of the product, sales page copy, the colors used on the site, the size and color of buttons, testimonials, audio, video – everything. Seemingly something as trivial as the font used on the page or the color of the ‘Buy Now’ button has a significant effect on conversions.

7. Be generous with your commissions: Successful publishers realize that affiliates make the difference between success and failure for publishers. Since publishers have no fixed costs, and only pay commissions when their products sell, being generous with commissions makes business sense. The most successful publishers seem to offer commission above the 50% mark with a good number of them at the very top end at 75%. See Bob Dunlap’s post on offering generous commissions for more detail.

8. Provide impeccable customer service: Our most successful publishers tell us that they will usually go to any lengths to provide exceptional customer service. And if the customer is unhappy, give them a refund – no questions asked. Affiliates quickly discover publishers that have excellent customer service and line up to promote their products. As it is often the affiliates’ reputation that’s on the line, they tend to guard their reputations,and will shun products if they feel that the publisher doesn’t have satisfied customers.

9. Believe in yourself and your product: Another common trait amongst the top publishers is their passion and near fanatical belief in, and enthusiasm for, their product. That kind of belief and confidence is inspirational and infectious, and comes through in whatever you attempt. People can’t help being moved by it. After all, would you buy something from someone who isn’t completely sold on it himself? Enthusiasm sells.

10. Do not be deterred by failure: Every one of our top publishers will tell you that before they hit upon the product that made them successful, they had a few (or more than a few) that were duds. But they learned from their failures and figured out what not to do. And undeterred, they picked up and went on.

By emulating the habits of the most successful publishers, you too can belong to the growing group of ClickBank success stories.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Seven Habits of Highly Successful Affiliates
2. Publishers: Get Increased Visibility and Sales
3. Tips to Becoming a Successful Internet Marketer

This past weekend, Bob Dunlap, our director of marketing, and I had the pleasure of attending the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. The event has grown tremendously since last year. Attendance was great and many important figures from the blogging world spoke at the sessions. Sessions covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from blog widgets to SEO to using blogs for affiliate marketing.

One topic that many of the sessions addressed was how to more effectively make money from blogging. After attending several of these sessions, it became clear how mainstream blogs have become, and how they are an effective tool for anyone wanting to make money online, regardless of their niche. In fact, many of the speakers focused on how blogging in a niche is actually more effective for traffic generation and monetization, because niche visitors will be more motivated to buy a product you recommend, especially if you provide valuable content and information to them.

In addition to reinforcing the potential effectiveness of blogs, especially for small businesses who are looking to get more traffic and highlight their brand, many of the sessions talked about how bloggers can take advantage of social networking to drive even more traffic and increase visitor loyalty. We learned some impressive, often free, tactics for achieving this, and plan to share them with our ClickBank clients in the months to come.

If you haven’t already created a blog to highlight your product or products you promote, you’re missing out on the ability to communicate directly with your target audience. There’s no better time to get started, and soon you can be marketing more effectively than ever, often without spending much money at all. If you already have a blog and want to find out more about how you can use ClickBank in conjunction with your blog to dramatically increase your profits, check out our ClickBank for Bloggers page.

In addition to being able to help our ClickBank clients more effectively use blogs to boost their business, we’ll be using what we’ve learned to improve the ClickBank Blog and make it as useful as possible for our readers. Please comment and let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see more or less of in the blog. We hope to see you next year at BlogWorld 2009!

Take a look at these related posts:

1. How to Turn Blog Readers into Loyal Customers
2. Affiliate Summit East 2010 Recap
3. The Importance of Relationships in Affiliate Marketing