OK, so there are many, many ways to make sales as an affiliate. This is by no means a comprehensive list, am I am by no means the ultimate guru… but hopefully this page will give you some ideas to help you get started and grow your business!
Brand New to Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative and it can also be a great way to learn valuable skills that you can use to grow your own larger internet business down the road.
I got started as an affiliate, and made great supplemental income while still working a full time job. But more importantly I learned things like how to buy advertising online, how to split test, and later on how to create web graphics and websites.
These skills allowed me to quit that job a couple of years later and start LH Golf, which has been an awesome, life-changing adventure. I earn more money than I ever have and I get to set my own schedule in the process… I can’t imagine ever going back to a 9-to-5 now!
But first a quick disclaimer: Maybe you’ve heard that affiliate marketing is a way to get rich quickly on the internet. And yes, it is technically possible that you put up your first ad and start making money right away while doing almost no work…
But if you go in with this attitude I can almost guarantee you will fail.
Like anything else, the harder you work, the more success you will have.
Take this seriously.
View it as your business, and more importantly view it as investing in yourself and learning a skill set that will pay dividends for the rest of your life.
OK, so how do you get started?
Paid Advertising
Affiliate marketing CAN be as simple as buying advertising on websites and using your ClickBank hoplink as the destination URL.
When someone clicks on your ad and purchases our product, you will be credited with the sale and automatically earn a commission through ClickBank.
The beauty of paid advertising is you can get started without a website of your own, without an email list, and basically without any web presence at all. Done right you can make some money and it is a great way to dive in and start testing some ads out right away.
Of course the name of the game is earning more in commissions than you spend on advertising…
The key is finding the balance between inexpensive traffic and high-converting traffic.
There is one simple formula to keep in mind when doing this:
Cost Per Click (CPC) / Conversion Rate (CR) = Cost Per Action (CPA)
Let’s break it down piece by piece…
CPC is what you are paying in advertising costs for every click on your ad.
Now depending where you purchase ads you may directly pay a specific CPC… you may pay a cost per thousand impressions (CPM), or you may pay a cost for a given time frame (e.g. $500 for the week). If you are paying a CPM or cost for a given time frame, your click thru rate (CTR) is going to be very important. The more clicks you get, the cheaper your CPC since you are paying a fixed price for a given number of impressions.
Conversion Rate is the percentage of leads that you send over to our website turn into sales. The important thing to understand here is that the CR will vary widely depending on the traffic source. If you place an ad on a website for golfers that are actively looking to improve their games… you might see a high conversion rate. If you place an ad on a website for people shopping for used cars… well you’d expect a lower conversion rate.
CPA is what you are paying for every conversion, so as long as your CPA is less than your commission per sale, you will make money.
So for example if you were paying $0.30 per click
And the conversion rate was 1%
Your Cost per Action would be $0.30 / .01 = $30.00
Now the math is pretty simple.
And it illustrates the importance of being able to track your advertising. You NEED to track how each ad is performing.
ClickBank has a built-in tracking ID feature when you create your hoplinks.
You can also use google’s free URL Building tool:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
I used to use a spreadsheet where I would name each campaign and keep track of which websites, ad locations, banners, ad text etc I used each time so I could sort all of my campaigns and zero in on what was working and what wasn’t.
Where to find advertising spots:
There are tons of places to advertise online… google, bing, facebook, youtube, pulse360 the list goes on and on. Each site has it’s own policy regarding affiliates that you will want to look into.
Golf is an extremely competitive market and you will see lots of people advertising golf products. This is both a gift and a curse… it means that advertising costs will be driven up by the competition and it will be harder to stand out from the crowd… but keep in mind the reason there is so much competition is because there is a LOT of potential money to be made if you figure it out!
Because there is so much competition on the major advertising sites, you might have better luck finding some “under the radar” ad spots.
I highly recommend testing out the various advertising networks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advertising_networks
I’ve personally had a lot of success in the past with blogads.com, but I’m sure many others have some hidden treasures inside as well.
You can also simply visit websites you want to test out, and figure out where you can buy ad space. Look at the ads that are already on the site.
If you see the little blue triangle in the top right of the ad, you know it is served by google and to advertise in that particular location you will need to buy the ad through adwords.
Many websites also have an “advertise with us” link in the footer or elsewhere on their site. Do a page search (usually control+F or command+F but depends on the browser) and search the page for “advertise.”
Below is a typical “Advertise with us” link.
Some sites handle their advertising directly, in which case you can negotiate with their ad rep for ad space. Tell them you want to test some ads and start with whatever you are comfortable with.
Finally if you can’t figure out how to buy ads on a site you can always simply email them and ask!
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