Problems For Affiliate Marketing Beginners and How to Solve Them - Part Two!
Affiliate marketing requires that a beginner be willing to do the work needed in order to be successful. If you read Part One, you know the first steps are:
*Find a starving market
*Find a product and do the research necessary by doing keyword research, determining if the product seller offers good support material and investigate your competition.
*Set up a website or blog
If you've accomplished all of that, it's time to start driving traffic to your website or blog and get your affiliate marketing business off the ground. This is where the rubber meets the road to success. After all traffic = sales. Without traffic you have no chance to make sales. Actually it's traffic + conversions = sales.
There are two sources of traffic:
*Targeted: Targeted traffic consists of people who are interested in what you're offering and are more apt to buy. There are two types of targeted traffic. Those that you go after through advertising,etc.
and those that come looking for you because of something they saw, perhaps on the internet. This type of traffic will help you succeed with affiliate marketing.
*Non-targeted: Non-targeted traffic consists of everyone else on the internet that may just be looking around at what's there. This is not the type of traffic you should be after so your approach to getting traffic has to be more specific.
There are basically two sources of traffic:
*Paid traffic is just what it says. You pay for traffic by using pay-per-click with the search engines or some other form of advertising. Ezine advertising, buying mailing lists, etc. These approaches can work, but require a commitment of money. If you have more money than time, this is a faster way to build traffic for your affiliate marketing business.
*Free traffic can be found by writing articles, posting on blogs and forums, etc. These approaches are very productive, but require a commitment of time and are not as fast as paying for traffic.
If you have more time than money you need to roll up your sleeves and develop a plan of action. You need to give some thought on how much time you can commit to your affiliate marketing business. If you're working full time and have a family, there will be sacrifice. You have to take time from somewhere.
If you have a family, I suggest you sit down and tell your family what you're doing and why. It's important to get support from the very beginning. You need to find a place to work so that you won't be disturbed while you're working.
If you have a spare room or office, you may even put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your door. I know this sounds harsh, but this job is going to require a commitment from both you and your family.
Where should you begin?
I would start by committing to write a minimum of two articles a week and posting them on a minimum of 5 article directory sites. Finding article directories is easy, just type in article directories in Google and surprise, there is a list for you. If you're reading this article, you've already found one.
If you're concerned that you can't write, don't be. Writing is just telling somebody something that you know about. The internet is full of free advice on article writing for non-writers.
I would find 3 or 4 forums or blogs in your area of interest and post comments to those at least 3 or 4 times a week. Just respond to questions if you can or ask questions if you can't. It's not rocket science.
Whatever you do remember, quality is king. Always provide high quality in all of these areas. If you don't provide good quality, people won't click through to your website and your affiliate marketing business will fail. Your articles should provide your URL in the resource box and your forum or blog posts should have your
URL in your signature.
My advice is, find a person you're comfortable with and work with them for at leas 2 or 3 months. Give it time. It's easy to get discouraged and quit, but you'll be cheating yourself out of a very good business opportunity.
*Find a starving market
*Find a product and do the research necessary by doing keyword research, determining if the product seller offers good support material and investigate your competition.
*Set up a website or blog
If you've accomplished all of that, it's time to start driving traffic to your website or blog and get your affiliate marketing business off the ground. This is where the rubber meets the road to success. After all traffic = sales. Without traffic you have no chance to make sales. Actually it's traffic + conversions = sales.
There are two sources of traffic:
*Targeted: Targeted traffic consists of people who are interested in what you're offering and are more apt to buy. There are two types of targeted traffic. Those that you go after through advertising,etc.
and those that come looking for you because of something they saw, perhaps on the internet. This type of traffic will help you succeed with affiliate marketing.
*Non-targeted: Non-targeted traffic consists of everyone else on the internet that may just be looking around at what's there. This is not the type of traffic you should be after so your approach to getting traffic has to be more specific.
There are basically two sources of traffic:
*Paid traffic is just what it says. You pay for traffic by using pay-per-click with the search engines or some other form of advertising. Ezine advertising, buying mailing lists, etc. These approaches can work, but require a commitment of money. If you have more money than time, this is a faster way to build traffic for your affiliate marketing business.
*Free traffic can be found by writing articles, posting on blogs and forums, etc. These approaches are very productive, but require a commitment of time and are not as fast as paying for traffic.
If you have more time than money you need to roll up your sleeves and develop a plan of action. You need to give some thought on how much time you can commit to your affiliate marketing business. If you're working full time and have a family, there will be sacrifice. You have to take time from somewhere.
If you have a family, I suggest you sit down and tell your family what you're doing and why. It's important to get support from the very beginning. You need to find a place to work so that you won't be disturbed while you're working.
If you have a spare room or office, you may even put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your door. I know this sounds harsh, but this job is going to require a commitment from both you and your family.
Where should you begin?
I would start by committing to write a minimum of two articles a week and posting them on a minimum of 5 article directory sites. Finding article directories is easy, just type in article directories in Google and surprise, there is a list for you. If you're reading this article, you've already found one.
If you're concerned that you can't write, don't be. Writing is just telling somebody something that you know about. The internet is full of free advice on article writing for non-writers.
I would find 3 or 4 forums or blogs in your area of interest and post comments to those at least 3 or 4 times a week. Just respond to questions if you can or ask questions if you can't. It's not rocket science.
Whatever you do remember, quality is king. Always provide high quality in all of these areas. If you don't provide good quality, people won't click through to your website and your affiliate marketing business will fail. Your articles should provide your URL in the resource box and your forum or blog posts should have your
URL in your signature.
My advice is, find a person you're comfortable with and work with them for at leas 2 or 3 months. Give it time. It's easy to get discouraged and quit, but you'll be cheating yourself out of a very good business opportunity.
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