Affiliate Marketing Made Easy

 Affiliate

Marketing

Made Easy!

The Ten Step Guide to making over $100 weekly from

Clickbank.com

By Okonkwo Chigozie

The Ten Steps at a Glance

Step 1: Understand the affiliate marketing process

Step 2: Understand the marketing technique

Step 3: Create your various accounts

Step 4: Choose your niche or sub niche

Step 5: Choose your product or group of related products

Step 6: Create and Design your first blog

Step 7: Write your first article

Step 8: Post your article on your blog

Step 9: Submit your article to an article directory

Step 10: Repeat the process

Now let‟s get started!

Step 1: Understand the affiliate marketing process

Here‟s an illustration of the affiliate marketing process:

Paul just finished writing a book on fishing, and now he wants to sell it via the internet.

(The book is called the product and Paul who is the owner of the book is called the merchant.)

Paul decides that the best way to promote his product is to list it on a special website where members of that site can decide to sell his book for a percentage the selling price. (The members who decide to sell Paul’s book are called affiliates and the amount received for selling Paul’s book is called the commission.) From the illustration above, we can arrive at the following definition for affiliate marketing:

The process of selling other people’s product for a commission each time a sale is made.

That means you make grubs of money online just by selling a product someone else went through the stress of creating, and since commissions are as high as 50 to 75 percent, you even stand to make more money out of a sale than the creator of the product! What more could you ever wish for?

Step 2: Understand the marketing technique

Now just before you start jumping up and down and bumping your head unto the walls at the thought of earning a 50 – 75% commission on each sale, you need to decide on exactly how you intend to promote the product you wish to sell. I don‟t mean to burst your bubble, but there are probably already hundreds or thousands of other people promoting the exact product you wish to sell, so you need to come up with the right marketing technique that would help you beat your competitors to the sale. Lucky for you, I am about to reveal to you a

dead cheap way to do just that. This technique is based on the fact the most internet users go online for just

one reason – To get information! Not necessarily to buy it, but they will buy if they have to. With this technique, your job is to freely give the information seeker as much information as possible, while at the same time creating a

thirst for more information which the seeker would be willing and ready to pay for. That‟s enough of „my superior technical talk‟ now I will explain in English!

Peter needs information on how to learn French. He goes online to get it. As anyone with half a brain would, he starts his search at google.com (or some other search engine). He types in a phrase like: „learn French‟ or „Speak

French‟ and suddenly he is launched into a world of information. He clicks on one of the links; it is an article about learning French in just 30days. He reads and enjoys the article, he suddenly realises he has just moved a step closer to achieving his goal, so now he wants more information. He clicks on the links within the article and then he finds himself at a blog (or website) with so many other articles all giving more information about learning French that he begins to feel like he is already in „French heaven‟. Peter is now in love! First with the information he is getting, and secondly with the person who has been gracious enough to freely share such treasures.

As he continues to read, he starts to notice that all the articles have links which point him in the same direction – to another website. When he

arrives at this new site, he comes face to face with a one stop resource that would help

him learn French in the shortest time possible but it has a price tag. He wants it, he his convinced that this resource would be the final solution to his problems, so he does the only reasonable thing at that moment – He buys the

information! And another person at the other end of the world immediately starts to rejoice, that person is the affiliate.

Here‟s the process Peter went through:

Search Engine Article Affiliate‟s Blog Merchant‟s Site (Written by the affiliate) Peter then buys a product at the Merchant‟s site, and the affiliate (that‟s you) who got him there gets paid a commission. Yes! You can now start jumping

up and down and bumping your head unto the walls at the thought of earning a 50 – 75% commission on each sale. Well now you probably have a headache from hitting your head, so just wait until it subsides then you can continue with reading this manual.

Step 3: Create your various accounts

In the previous step, we discussed and illustrated Peter‟s process: Search Engine Article Affiliate‟s Blog Merchant‟s Site (Written by the affiliate) Now here is your own (or the Affiliate‟s) process:

Write Submit to Post Article Create Links Get paid

An An Article on Your to the for each

Article Directory Blog Merchant Site Sale

In practical, the process goes a bit differently:

You decide on the product you wish to promote

You create a blog for that product

You write an article

You post that article on your blog and embed links to the merchant‟s site within your article

You submit the same article to an article directory with links leading back to your blog

Start with your next article So each time someone goes to a search engine and types in a phrase related to

the content of one of the articles you have submitted to an article directory, that article comes up. That person then reads your article and clicks on a link leading to your blog. If from your blog, the reader clicks on a link leading to

the merchant‟s site and then makes a purchase, you get paid a commission. Even if that person buys the product up to 20 days later, you still get paid! Before we go on, kindly permit a brief digression to enable me provide some

answers to the likely questions that might be racing through your mind right now:

Questions you might have & the Answers:

What is an Article directory? Website were you can submit your articles. Great article directories usually

house thousands of articles touching on hundreds of topics.

Why do I need to use an Article directory? Article directories usually have great search engine rankings.

That the means that when a related search is made at search engine such as google.com, an article you

submitted to directory is more likely to come up, than an article posted you posted on your blog. Search

engines favour article directories more!

Why can’t I link the reader straight from my article in the article directory to the merchant’s site? The

best article directories out there don’t allow you use affiliate links within your articles, but they would allow

you use links leading to your own blog or website.

Now that that‟s over with, let‟s move on quickly! Here are the websites you need to register with before you can

Start your affiliate marketing campaign:

ClickBank.com – The site were merchants submit their products for affiliate to choose from. Visit the site now and sign up for a free affiliate account. It is easy, just follow the steps.

Blogger.com – A site were you can create your free blogs. Blogs are free to set up and easy to use and that is why I recommend them. Go to blogger.com now and sign up for your own account. (Don‟t sign up here just yet! wait until we get to step 6)

Ezinearticles.com – This is a tested and trusted article directory. You need to sign up there too. There are also other article directories that are worth taking a look at such as goarticles.com, ideamarketers.com and buzzle.com, but I suggest your start with ezinearticles.com then maybe later sign up with just one more article directory.

By now you should be registered at all three websites and ready to move on. If you have any difficulties, just look out for the site‟s sign up instructions, and follow them. You‟ll be shocked at the simplicity involved.

Questions you might have & the Answers:

How to I get a foreign address to register at click bank? 1.) Use a relative’s address who lives abroad 2.) Get one of those virtual UK addresses where they can receive mails on your behalf and send them to you for a small annual fee. Do a search online and you are sure to find a reliable company that offers this service.

3.) Ask me to get you one (easygetjob911@gmail.com) - but it won’t come free!

Step 4: Choose your niche or sub niche

At this point you decide on a niche. A niche describes the group of people you want to sell to which in turn indicates the type of product you will be promoting. For example, you may want to promote a great product on acne treatment. That means you are in the „woman‟s health niche‟ as women would have the most interest in what you are selling. If you however decide to focus acne treatment for teenage girls, then you have chosen a sub niche. That is a niche within a niche. The first step to a successful launch of your business is to determine what

products you want to sell and who you want to sell to – your niche.

Which is the best Niche for you?

Only one person can answer that question – You! Remember you are going to have to write loads of articles on the product you wish to promote, so that implies that you must choose a niche in which you have a reasonable level of

knowledge and which you enjoy to learn more and write about. This extreme example should further illustrate my point: if you are obsessed with music, your radio is always on, you know the complete lyrics of all the latest songs in town, you know all the musicians in the world by their first name etc. Then it doesn‟t take a genius to know that you would do well in the „fun

and entertainment‟ niche and you can narrow that down to promoting „music and movie downloads‟ – A sub niche. Wow! That was a mouthful. ClickBank.com has all its products listed under niches and sub- niches. Just go to the home page and click on the „marketplace‟ link. The next page you see would have two drop down menu boxes. One showing the niches you can choose from and the other showing sub niches.

So: Which is the best Niche for you?

One in which you have a reasonable level of knowledge

One in which you have a reasonable level of interest, such that you are willing to learn more and research more.

One that is not over competitive – such as weight loss, money making, or internet marketing. These niches are dominated by the guru‟s and you might have a hard time finding your place. If you however have an enormous passion for a niche that happens to be highly competitive, you can decide to look into its sub niche.

One that has a broad appeal – Avoid very narrow niches. For example you can choose a niche on parenting and a sub niche on coping with your teenage child. But narrow it down to coping with your teenage son when he is between the ages of thirteen and fourteen and you have just doomed your campaign.

So go to the clickbank.com marketplace right away and get choosing. I‟ll just sit here quietly until you are done.

Step 5: Choose your product or group of related products

Now that you have decided on a niche, it is time to pick a product to promote. Go to clickbank.com and click on the „market place‟ link. Use the drop down menus to select your niche and sub niche (if that‟s what you want), the click

on the „Go‟ button. The next page would reveal a list of products you can choose from.

The screen capture above shows the first two products to choose from in the „Home & Family‟ Niche and the „Marriage‟ Sub Niche. Now your job is to go through the product list and select a product you feel

you can confidently promote. Here are some guidelines for selecting a good product:

Make sure it‟s a product you feel comfortable about.

Make sure the commission percentage on sale is about 50 – 75% -

There is no point putting in the same effort for lower commissions.

Go for the higher commission when you can – If there are two products

you like, you might consider going for the more expensive product with

higher returns. But avoid products that appear over priced.

Check out the Product‟s website – Read through the site, do you feel compelled to buy the product? Does the site have a good layout? Are the texts easy to read? All these factors affect conversion, and you should consider them.

You can choose a two related products. For example in the product in the screen shot above can be combined with a product about getting your Ex. Girlfriend back or Getting back lost love.

Avoid products with very low gravities. Gravity is a calculation that

indicates the popularity of a product, the gravity of the product in the

screen shot above is 355.46 and that is pretty high.

Step 6: Create and Design your first blog

Now that you have chosen your niche and your product/products it‟s time to get cracking. You need to create a blog which would serve as a „house‟ to your affiliate links. Here‟s how: Go to www.blogger.com and click on the „sign

up‟ link. Once your account is created you would be guided through the process of creating your first blog.

Choose a name and address for your blog that relates to your product as much as possible. For example, my blog were I promote romance products is called Dee’s Romance Blog and the blog address is www.deeromance.blogspot.com. Getting the name right helps your search engine rankings, and also makes your prospective customers more receptive as they already have an idea of what your blog is about before they get there. Since there are thousands of blogs out there, a good name might sometimes be difficult to find, but just preserve and you would surely arrive at a name that makes your heart skip a beat. After you‟ve got the name part sorted, blogger would prompt you to select a template for your blog. Choose one in which the text is easy to read (No one truly wants to strain their eyeballs just to read what the heck you‟ve got to say), and one that depicts the theme of your blog. For example a pink background may not go well with a blog dedicated to Men‟s health and

fitness. Get the drift? Once your blog is created, go right to the dashboard and you can „fool around‟ a bit with its many features.

Design your blog

Try to give your blog a neat look. The layout tab gives you access to the functions with which you give your blog „the look‟.

Above: The blogger.com dashboard with the „layout‟ link circled.

Click on the layout link. Then click on any of the „Add a Gadget‟ link.

Above: Clicking on the „Add a Gadget‟ launches a pop-up box with lists of options

Next you‟ll see a pop up screen which provides you with different elements with which you can spice up your blog. Check out my blogs for more ideas on how to give your blog that great professional look:

www.relationshipsmadeinheaven.blogspot.com

www.deeromance.blogspot.com

www.getbackmylove.blogspot.com

Questions you might have & the Answers:

Where do I get the pictures and banners to insert on my blog? Most merchant sites have an affiliate

section. In this section you would be provided with banners, text links, e book covers etc. Just copy the

graphics you need to your desktop, and then upload to your blog using the „add a page element‟ feature.

How do I remove the navigation bar at the top of my blog? At the top of most blogs, there is a navigation

tool bar that takes your visitor to the next blog when clicked. This is a fantastic way to lose your hard earned

traffic – am sure you don‟t want that. Follow the link below for detailed information on how to hide the

navigation toolbar: http://alabiforum.com/index.php?topic=121.msg3814;topicseen#msg3814

.

P.S: www.alabiforum.com is a great place to learn a lot about internet marketing and general success.

You should take time out to become a member today.

Step 7: Write your first article

Now that your blog is all set up and ready to shine, it is time to write your first article. I have trained many people who are terrified at the thought of

writing their own articles. They say things like 'I don't have it in me' or 'I am not a

good writer'. To this people, my reply is always “Do you talk to your friends? Then you can write.”

Here's a priceless tips for article writing:

 View your article as a conversation with your best friend. Give a thought to what you would want to tell your friend about that topic, and just start writing. Don't over analysis, just write! After you are done writing, then you can cross the T's and dot the I's.

 Make sure you do a spell check when you are done, and check the grammar you use. This would make your articles more appealing.

 There are points when you would wonder “What other topic can I possibly come up with?” This is the time to search for inspiration. If you are in the entertainment niche, you can spend time reading entertainment magazines, or watching entertainment TV. Just get a vibe of the latest news and then write about it.

 Make your articles 250 -300 words. Ezinearticles.com requires that submitted articles must have at least 250 words. So instead of writing one

very long article, try to break your thoughts down to smaller articles with fewer words.

 Learn from the gurus – The best way to improve your article writing skills is to learn from those who have mastered the skill. Go to Ezinearticles.com read articles that are related to your product. Take note of the way the articles are written, how the headlines are structured, and how readers are prompted to click on the links at the

bottom which lead to the writer‟s websites and borrow their ideas. Study as many articles as you can, I assure you it will be time well spent.

 Seek article ideas from books, e-books, magazines, journals and other articles. Just be creative in re-presenting such ideas in your own articles.

Step 8: Post your article on your blog

Once you are done with your article, there are two things you need to do with it. First is to post it on your blog, and the second is to submit it to an article directory- ezinearticles.com in this case

(Refresher: Your aim is to take visitors from your articles submitted to a high ranking article directory to

your blog and then to your merchant’s site and Step 8 marks the final stage of the cycle.)

Let‟s start with posting your articles on your blog. From the blogger.com dashboard, click on the button that reads “New Post”

This would bring up a text editor just like the one shown in the screen capture below.

Make click on the „compose‟ tab, and type in or paste your article into the text field. Don‟t forget to input your article title in the box provided at the top. When you are done typing your article, you have the option to preview, save

as draft or publish your post. Once you are satisfied with your work, choose the „publish post‟ option to take you take your article live.

Adding links to your blog post

Remember the second leg of your aim is to take a visitor from your blog to the merchant‟s site via your affiliate links. Next I will show you where you get your affiliate links and how to incorporate them into your blog post.

You get your affiliate links from the marketplace at clickbank.com. Go to the marketplace and search for the product you are promoting. Once you locate it, click on - create hoplink.

Clicking on the link launches a pop-up box. Enter your nickname (i.e. the username you use to log into your clickbank account) and click on the „go‟ button. Two links are then created for you, they look like this:

http://yournickname.productname.hop.clickbank.net/ and <a href="http://yournickname.productname.hop.clickbank.net/"target="_top">Click Here! </a>

The first link can be used when adding a uploading a picture or ebook cover using the „add a gadget‟ feature. Just copy and paste the entire link into the space provided for your affiliate link, and you are good to go.

The second link can be used as text links within your post. As an example, let‟s take a phrase from one of my articles which has a text link within it:

„I just stumbled on this wonderful resource that sums up all the steps needed to help you

put a stop to cheating. Check it out here, and let me know what you think.’

Can you spot the text link within the phrase? Such a link is designed to take the reader to your merchant‟s site via your affiliate link. Here‟s how to do it: When you are done typing your article into blogger‟s text editor, click on the

„Edit HTML‟ tab to switch from the text editor interface to the HTML interface.

Locate the phrase to which you would like to add the text link. In the case of the example above you‟ll see this:

I just stumbled on this wonderful resource that sums up all the steps needed to help you put

a stop to cheating. Check it out here, and let me know what you think.

Delete the words „click here‟ in the second link above and replace them with the words you want in your text link. In this case: <a href="http://yournickname.productname.hop.c lickbank.net/"target="_top"> Click Here!

</a>

Becomes:

<a href="http://yournickname.productname.hop.clickbank.net/"target="_top"> Check it out here </a>

Be careful not to tamper with the brackets or any other word else you might „break‟ the link.

Now from the initial phrase delete the words you want converted to a text link, and replace them with the new link you have created: I just stumbled on this wonderful resource that sums up all the steps needed to help you put a stop to cheating. <a

href="http://yournickname.productname.hop.clickbank.net/"target="_top">Check it out here</a>, and let me know what you think.

Now switch over to the „compose‟ page or the preview page and you should have something like this:

I just stumbled on this wonderful resource that sums up all the steps needed to help you put

a stop to cheating. Check it out here, and let me know what you think.

Now you can repeat the process until you have about 3 to 4 strategically positioned text links within your article. You can also take a second look at any of my blogs to see how I use both links effectively.

Once you are satisfied with your work, click on the „Publish Post‟ button, and then the „View Blog‟ to see what your article looks like. P.S: To make

sure you‟ve got it right, place your cursor over the text link and look to the bottom left of your browser, you should see the address an address with your affiliate link within it.

Step 9: Submit your article to an article directory

This is an all important step, because getting it right means you get to send lots of highly targeted traffic to you blog and getting it wrong means well … that you just wasted a whole lot of your

valuable time which would have been time better spent if you had decided to watch some stupid low budget movie instead. At this point, I will assume (or pray) that you have decided to use ezinearticles.com as your major article submission directory and have signed up for a free account since step 3.

Now log into your account and from Article manager drop down menu choose the option that reads Submit a New Article. The Article submission page comes up next. See below:

Text field descriptions:

1. Select the category/sub category under which you want the directory to list your article. Feel free to take your time and choose the category and sub category that best describes the content of your article.

2. Type in the title of your article. Always put loads of effort into getting attractive titles for your articles because that may just make a world of difference between the number of people who look past your articles and does who click to read on.

3. Keywords are a major indicator of the content of your article. Choose keywords that best summarize the content of your articles. For example, if your article is about running your car on water, then you could use the following as keywords: run car on water,run your car on water,save money on gas etc. Just get creative and choose whatever

suits you best.

4. Type in a summary of your article. I usually copy and paste the first paragraph of my article as an abstract or teaser, ezineartilces allows that. But that means that you must make the first paragraph of your article extra-exciting to prompt visitors to read on. Here is an example of a captivating opening paragraph from on of my best converting

articles:

You'll agree with me that are millions of articles out there on how to

catch a cheating spouse, but it is an uphill task to find just one article that

seeks to help or gives answers to the one who does the cheating. That's

why this article is one in a million and a must read for you...

5. Type in (or paste in – whatever) the body of your article. Ezinearticles does not allow you include links in the body of your articles, so don‟t bother. Just give great content and move to the next field.

6. The resource box is a provision made for you to „advertise‟ yourself. In the resource box you are allowed to insert links leading to your blog or website. There are many creative ways of luring readers to click on the links leading to your blog. Review as many articles as possible to discover what style makes you happy. Here‟s a sample of the resource box I used in the article I referred to in (4) above:

7. It is always a good Idea to preview your articles before submission. It is good practice to click the „spell check on preview‟ click box before previewing your article. This would help you reduce errors to the minimum.

8. Happy with your job so far? Then what are you waiting for? Click on the „Submit This Article‟ button and then give yourself a great big pat on the back for a job well done! Depending on your Author level your articles may

take between 2 to 5 days to get approved. Once your article is live you can check out your article statistics by following this path: Author tools > View My Article Reports.

Step 10: Repeat the process

Congratulations! You have completed the cycle You have written an article - submitted it to a high traffic article

directory - pointed readers from the directory to your blog - and finally to the merchant‟s site. You can now sit back and watch yourself make about $10 in a month to three month. Oh no! There was no typo there. That is all you can hope to make if you do not repeat the cycle. Don‟t fool yourself that coming up with an article every once in a while would give you the income you desire. You can keep it that way if you just want a hobby, but if you are in it for the cash, then you need to write and post articles regularly. I recommend you write one article a day or at least five in a week, and since you are promoting products within a niche that you love and know, I guess coming up with that many articles would be a walk over for you. I am aware that at the beginning, article writing might be a bit of a

challenge for you, but if you keep at it, you‟ll get better and before long you‟ll start to get the gains of your perseverance. Before I begin to sound like a motivational speaker, I guess it‟s wise for

me to end this report here! I sure hope this report has been a blessing to you, and would change your life for the better. Here‟s to your affiliate marketing success

written by   Okonkwo Chigozie

ybarrister@yahoo.com