Are you an affiliate marketer promoting affiliate offers but not making many sales?

What’s the problem?

Not enough traffic? Clicks don’t convert to sales?

There could be many reasons you fail at affiliate marketing, but chances are you’re making 3 critical affiliate marketing mistakes.

Let’s look at those mistakes and the steps to fix them.

Mistake #1.  You’re not pre-selling your offer.  

Don’t simply put your affiliate link in front of your prospects expecting them to buy just because you said so, that’s a significant mistake.

Affiliate marketing is about helping your prospects make the buying decision.  You need to be telling them why your offer is the best solution for their needs, but most importantly, how it will benefit them.

Once your prospects can see the value in your offer then you can send them to the sales page.  Sending them there before then almost always results in a ‘goodbye’ click.

 Mistake #2: You’re Traffic isn’t Targeted.

The people you promote to have to be interested in what you are promoting.  So for example, promoting weight loss pills through a pay-per-click ad that says ‘weight loss diet‘ won’t make sales because the ad is attracting people looking for a diet, they’re not interested in taking pills.

Another classic example is putting offers in front of people who have no interest in the offer.  For example teeth whitening ads on a weight loss website or sending an internet marketing  subscriber list offers for anti-aging cosmetics.

The point is, you’ll get higher sales conversions the more targeted, or matched, your prospects are to your offer.

Mistake #3: You’re Not building a relationship with Your Potential Prospects.

Who do you think your prospects are going to take a recommendation from?  Someone they know and trust or someone they don’t know a thing about or have a trusting relationship with?

I would be taking the recommendation from the person I recognize and trust and so would  you.   So build that relationships with your prospects before you begin selling to them.

But how do you create those trusted relationships?

Communicate with your prospects regularly.  Help them to get to know you.  Offer them useful information on a consistent basis.

Do this by creating a regular newsletter, publishing a blog, and frequently interacting with your readers on social media.

The Success Steps for Promoting Your Affiliate Offers

Now that you have an idea of where you’ve potentially gone wrong, let’s  fix those mistakes and start successfully promoting your affiliate offers.

Step #1: Create a Mailing List.

Mailing lists are ideal because you’re attracting only the people interested in your topic, provided you’re clear on what you’re about.

This step for how to create your opt-in email list is to get an email autoresponder like Aweber that will collect email addresses, and help you manage and distribute your email to your subscribers.

To get sign ups for your mailing list, entice them with something useful, but free.  This could be a small report, video, tips list, e-course or anything you feel your readers will value, but it should be directly related to the affiliate offer you’ll be promoting.

Ask for the opt-in by placing a sign-up box on every page of your website.  I also recommend creating a squeeze page which is simply a mini sales letter that gives your prospects all the reasons they should join your list.

Never send traffic directly to your affiliate offer.  Your goal is send traffic to your squeeze page to build your list and start promoting.

Get traffic to your squeeze page using any or all of these methods:

• Write and submit articles to article directories.
• Find Guest blogging opportunities and submit your guest post
• Connect with people on forums using your signature
• Use social media like Twitter.com and Facebook.com.
• Leverage other peoples’ resources through joint ventures.

For more on creating and developing your email list, see simple ways to profit with email.

Step #2: Build a Relationship With Your Subscribers.

Once you’re connecting with targeted prospects from your email list, you need to build their trust.

So how do you create those trusted relationships?

Communicate with your prospects regularly through social medial and through email by offering them useful information on a consistent basis.  Don’t be tempted to send them ‘buy now’ offers, that won’t work.

When using email, establish your credibility by sending your list consistent, authentic follow up emails full of information they can use. Use your email autoresponder to do this.

Step #3:  Give Your Subscribers a Reason to Buy.

Your subscribers need a reason to buy.  Just telling them your offer is a great deal won’t cut it.

Be clear about the benefits of the offer you’re promoting.  To take this a step further, by making sure you know what your prospect’s issues and problems are and drive home how your product will resolve those problems.

I like to sweeten things a little by offering a special bonus of my own that I’ll give my viewers if they purchase through my affiliate link.

Final Thoughts

Chances are you’re fairly close to making those affiliate sales, all you need now is to connect a little closer with your prospects by helping them to know and trust you.

But first just make sure your audience is truly interested in what you have to offer,  next get in front of them often, building their confidence and trust in you, then give them powerful, ‘ hard hitting’ reasons to buy.

If you’re promoting Clickbank products, be careful of leaky links. 

Not all affiliate merchants care about their affiliates and will sometimes employ cheating practices to keep from crediting their affiliates with their rightful affiliate sale.

When trying to find the best affiliate marketing programs, here are 2 things you’ll want to watch out for in Clickbank specifically to help ensure you get proper credit when someone buys through your affiliate link.

Item #1 – Never  promote an affiliate product that has other advertising on their sales page.  That might seem like an obvious thing but I see affiliates promote products all the time with Google ads on the site and other unrelated products.

This is great for the product owner but not so much for you as the affiliate.  You’ll be sending people to a sales page with your affiliate link but you get nothing if the visitor clicks on ads or other product promotions.

Item #2: This is a little less obvious way of cheating affiliates so you’ll want to make sure you check this one.

Many affiliate sales pages have opt-in boxes in case the visitor isn’t ready to make a sale.  There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact it’s a good marketing practice, ...but, there are Clickbank merchants that use the opt-in to include their own cookies instead of crediting the affiliate who brought them the sale.

If the sales page your are promoting has an opt-in box, here’s what to do to  make sure you aren’t promoting a merchant that participates in this practice:

1. Sign up for the merchants newsletter or opt-in with your own affiliate link.

2. When you get the first newsletter, tips, guide or whatever it is, read it over.  Chances are you’ll have an opportunity to order so click the order box.   You’re not actually going to order, but you do want to get to the Clickbank order page.

At the Clickbank order page, scroll to the bottom and make sure your Clickbank nickname is at the bottom.  If it’s not, you won’t want to promote this product.

In fact, it’ a good idea to check  your affiliate link any time you promote a Clickbank product just to be sure your nickname is there.

In Summary…

It’s always a good idea to get as involved with the affiliate program as much as you can, so if they have an opt-in or newsletter check it out.  Read their newsletters, get to know the affiliate manger and use the product yourself.

Make sure it’s something you feel good about promoting, but also make sure you’re getting the credit for the sale too

One of the ways I like to promote affiliate products is with my own domain name.

This is not only easy to do, there are two great benefits.

One BIG benefit is that it cuts down on affiliate theft.  The other benefit is that you’ll get rid of that ugly affiliate link.

For instance, an ugly Clickbank affiliate link like this:   http://44e5cxm8x5i678433n19jhsd4je.hop.clickbank.net/

can look like this:

http://www.mydomainname.com

The downside, if you can call it that, is you’ll have to register a domain name to redirect your affiliate link to.   For me that’s a small price to pay for saving my affiliate commission and getting my links to look better

How Promoting Affiliate Products with your own Domain Name Works

The strategy works by simply redirecting your affiliate link to a domain name that you register yourself.    That’s really all there is to it.    The hardest part might be finding a domain name that you like.

But once you come up with a domain name it’s simply a matter of redirecting your affiliate link to that domain name, and you can do that right from your domain name registrar.

How To set up your affiliate link to Point To Your Domain Name

The process for pointing your affiliate link to your domain name is easy, so let’s step through it.

Step 1. Decide what affiliate product you want to promote.

Once you have an affiliate product or service that you want to promote, grab your affiliate link and keep it on hand.

Step 2. Register a domain name.

I use Godaddy to register my domain names simply because they are reliable, safe and they make redirects super easy, so I’ll be using them in my example.

Here are the steps to create a domain name:

1. Log in To Godaddy or create an account if you don’t already have one, it’s free.
2. Come up with a domain name that describes the product you’re promoting and register the name.   For example,  let’s say I’m promoting a weight loss program from Clickbank.   I might choose a domain name like www.slimandtrimyou.com.  A good rule of thumb is to choose a domain name that relates to what you are promoting and is easy to remember.

Step 3.  Redirect your domain name through Godaddy.

Once you have your domain name registered, go to your Godaddy domains page, click on the domain name you want to redirect your affiliate link to and click on the ‘Forward’ tab.  Once there, enter your affiliate link into the window.

Affiliate Tip: Under the ‘advanced options’ I suggest selecting  ‘Permanently forwarding the domain name’ and check ‘Forward with Masking’.  The masking tab allows your domain name to remain in the address bar when the user clicks on your link.

Step 4. Once you’ve completed the redirect or ‘forward’, test out your new domain.   Type your domain into the address bar in Google and make sure it redirects to the affiliate product  you are promoting.

That’s it! Now you can promote your affiliate product or service by directing visitors to a clean domain name that will help discourage affiliate theft and it will look a lot cleaner

In the past I’ve used several strategies for making affiliate sales, but honestly, there’s really only one affiliate marketing strategy that outperforms for me every time.

It’s actually the combination of two strategies,  guest posting and email marketing.

Here’s exactly why.

Most people think affiliate marketing is about sending or referring people to their affiliate link for the sale.  If you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer you know that doesn’t work very well, and if you do happen to make a rare sale that way, you’ve just lost the potential of ever selling to that person again, and that’s not smart marketing.

I prefer to get the sale and the lead.

To do this I simply combine the powers of guest posting with email marketing in a specific way to earn myself sales but also build my email list.

These two strategies combined are powerful because guest blogging has the potential to bring readers to your opt-in list and your opt-in list has the power to persuade readers to buy, not just once but many times.

Setting Up This Awesome Affiliate Marketing Strategy

If you don’t already have and email opt-in list, I want you to create one, it’s not hard, in fact here’s how to create an opt-in email list.  Don’t worry if you don’t have subscribers, you’ll start accumulating them quickly with this strategy.

Next, start guest posting.   This is easier than it sounds, simply write guest posts for popular blogs in your niche.

Look for blogs  with a hefty readership. To find blogs in your niche that have a large number of readers, simply review the blog comments.

To help you find blogs that accept guest posts enter this code string into the Google search bar:

site:.com inurl:blog “guest post” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”

Next, contact the blog owners about submitting a guest post.  If  they are agreeable, write an informative guest post that their readers will find useful.   Here’s help for how to write a great guest post.

With your guest post, include your bio naming you as the author along with a link  to  your opt-in page.  This part is critical, your link should NOT take the reader anywhere but to your opt-in or squeeze page.

You may be tempted to take a reader to your home page or directly to your affiliate page, but if you understand affiliate marketing and the power of email marketing, you stand a much better chance of making an affiliate sale by building trust and reader confidence through your email communications.

If you can build a relationship with your reader and not simply recommend they buy a product or thrust them to the merchant’s site but instead help them make the buying decision, you have a far better chance of making a sale and establishing yourself as a knowledgeable trusted source in your niche.  That speaks volumes for your affiliate business.

Following Through for The Affiliate Sale

Once you start accumulating email subscribers from guest blogging,  it’s time to build trust and confidence with your readers using email, then you can watch your sales soar.

But how do you write emails that can effectively build trust, provide quality content and make a sale too?

First off you can’t simply write an email that’s friendly and helpful and hope a subscriber buys, nor can you just provide lots of great information and hope that’s enough.

Here’s what to do:

1. Make your email relevant to what your subscribers opted in for, in other words tightly focused to your niche.
2. Capture attention with attention getting subject lines, this is key.
3. Offer valuable, interesting content that readers find useful without giving away the store.  In other words you want your content to get your reader salivating enough that they’ll click through to your promotion.
4. Emails have to sound like you, they have to be personal, friendly, and different than anyone elses.
5. Email often but not so often that you become annoying.  There should be no large gaps between emails or your readers will forget who you are.
6. Present yourself as confident, creative and interested in your reader, helping them achieve their goal.

Here are some email examples that may spark ideas:

email marketing tips that build relationships

8 Ways your opt-in email marketing list will boost business

The Harsh Reality of this Affiliate Marketing Strategy

There is a skill to writing emails that produce sales.  Most people can’t simply start writing emails and be successful right out of the shoot, there are some strategies you’ll want to implement.

If you’re more than a little confused about how to do this, let me make a few suggestions that helped me.

Get ahold of Lisa Preston’s free report on how to write niche emails along with some of her secrets to follow-up marketing.  Lisa is an old hand at doing this and has herself been wildly successful with helping others do it as well.

I also loved Michael Rasmussen’s free video tutorials. The info in these free tutorials is better than a lot of the information I’ve paid for in the past.

In Summary…

Don’t send interested buyers directly to your affiliate link, expand your reach by getting people into your funnel first with guest blogging and then promote to them over and over using effective email follow-up.

If you haven’t been able to make affiliate sales in the past or sales are on the dismal side, this strategy combination is one that could help you turn the corner with your affiliate sales.

One of my readers wrote in yesterday with this question:

Hi Liz,

I get a lot of email from people sending me information about buying software (we won’t mention names here) that costs $47 saying that with 3,4,5 clicks you’ll be earning loads of money?

Somehow, I think if that was true, they wouldn’t be looking for my 47.00. Am I right?  What can you tell me about this software?

Kathy

Without mentioning names, this is a software product that creates an email list that you promote Clickbank affiliate products to.

Is this an affiliate marketing Scam or is this a plan?

Anything that claims you’ll earn loads of money with little effort is a scam in my book.  But this is just one of many such products that promotes the notion that the internet can make you thousands of dollars with just a few clicks.

I love affiliate marketing and I’m a big proponent of building an email list, but no software product can build you a list that you can promote affiliate products to and voila you’re rich.

What products like these don’t tell you is that the email list members you’re promoting to won’t be targeted.  In other words, you might get a list of 500-1000 people or more, but what are the interests of these people?

If they are all interested in different things and you’re sending them all kinds of emails for various Clickbank products, how many sales do you think you’ll get?  Most likely few to none.  That’s because your emails have no focus, your subscribers don’t know you and they’re not familiar with the products.  They’ll be skeptical.

And what are you promoting anyway?  Just tossing various high commission Clickbank products in front of a list of subscribers is a waste of your time.  No one buys simply on recommendations alone, especially from someone they don’t know.

Affiliate marketing is about helping readers make the buying decision, not about telling them how great a product is and suggesting they buy it, but they also need to trust you and your suggestions.

It may be possible to make a few sales with a program like this, but I’d be willing to bet your income will be far less than the disappointment and frustration you’ll feel and the wasted time you’ll have put into it.

If you are promoting affiliate products through email marketing use the email marketing tips that build relationships.  That’s how you’ll create a lasting, profitable affiliate marketing business, not by using a piece of software that may bring you a few sales at best.

Build an Affiliate Marketing Business and Avoid the Scams

Here’s what I suggest for generating a solid affiliate marketing business and using email to promote affiliate products:

1. Find a niche in the market.  Find a topic of interest that you enjoy or are familiar with.
2. Create a website or blog around that specific niche topic.
3. Find 2 or 3 products that complement your niche on Commission Junction, Linkshare or from private affiliate sites that have products of interest.
4. Buy the products yourself and get to know the affiliate manager of the product.  Use and evaluate the product and write a product review.   This may be a small investment, but that’s what your business is, an investment.
5. Create your own targeted email list.  Encourage people from your website or blog to opt in to your email list by offering them something free in return, make it something related to your site’s topic that will interest them.
6. Promote your products to your list by helping them make the buying decision.  Help your subscribers solve problems related to your niche and build trusting relationships.

Affiliate Marketing Take Away…

Your email list doesn’t have to be huge but it does have to be targeted, meaning your subscribers need to beinterested in what you are offering them.  Promoting affiliate products to an email list of subscribers whose interests you know nothing about is of no value to you.

It’s not the size of your list that’s important, it’s the quality of the people on it.  I’d much rather have  50 people on my list that are serious about finding quality products,  want to listen to me and value my content and opinion, than 5000 people who are less than serious and have little interest.

If products like these grab your attention but you’re just not sure of their value,  don’t be afraid to question them.  Ask about what sales stats they can they give you,  how much money the average person makes with the program, etc.  If you can’t get quick, solid, definitive answers, move on.

However I don’t recommend building a list with software and automating your affiliate promotions,  affiliate marketing scams like these are simply a waste of your time and money.

Instead create your own email list, provide subscribers with quality information directed at what they are looking for and develop personal interaction.  That’s when people will buy

If you’re an Amazon California affiliate, no doubt you’ve heard the recent news that Amazon has terminated all California affiliates.

This new Bill signed by Jerry Brown, governor of California, to collect Internet sales tax from retailers outside the state has resulted in Amazon terminating all California affiliates effective June 29, 2011.

I myself am (was) an Amazon affiliate, here’s the exact email I received from Amazon just last week:

Hello,

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011. Those California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned before today will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.

You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.

To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect your ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com.

We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. As mentioned before, we are continuing to work on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.

Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

The basic message of the email is that if you reside in California you can no longer promote affiliate products for Amazon.

This is certainly a blow to all California affiliates promoting for Amazon, but this is especially devastating to those Amazon affiliates who promote strictly for Amazon and no one else.

There are in fact some internet businesses that rely solely on their Amazon affiliate commission, some earning several thousands of dollars a month through Amazon alone with no other affiliate promotions to fall back on.

Personally, it sickens me to think that someone has lost the very source of their income to a law that is debatable as to whether it’s even constitutional or not, but that’s a blog post for another day

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that it’s done and the best thing for California Amazon affiliates to do is move forward and think about what they can do now to recover.

What California Amazon Affiliates Can Do Now

It’s not time to be discouraged and give up hope.  Here are a couple of things you can do:

- Consider Affiliating directly with  your best selling products or services

List your best selling products or services that you promote through Amazon and look for an opportunity to affiliate with those product merchants directly.

For example, there are several books I promote from Amazon that also have individual affiliate programs.

For those merchants that don’t have their own affiliate programs, ask them if they would consider creating an affiliate program.  If you are anxious to promote for them, they will certainly consider it.  I know I would if I had products on Amazon.

Also, Amazon is not the only ecommerce shopping site that has an affiliate program.  For example,  Barnes & Noble also has an affiliate program.  Many books, games and toys sold on Amazon are also sold on Barnes & Noble.

- Consider Promoting 100% affiliate Commission Programs

I prefer to go for the gusto right out of the shoot if I can, so finding affiliate programs that I can make 100% commissions on is my favorite way to do affiliate marketing.

These are affiliate programs that pay me directly and aren’t likely to go away or be dropped, at least I haven’t experienced a dropped program yet.

Here’s more on the topic of 100% Commission Affiliate Programs and Are They Worth It?

- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Affiliate marketing is how I earn a living on the web, it’s also my favorite form of passive income, but one of the things I was taught early on is to never rely on one source of income, which means I never promote only one product or only one merchant. In other words, build your business, or website around a topic.

This methodology gives you several opportunities to find niche affiliate topics and products that you can write about and effectively promote.

For example, the topic of skin care is popular among the over 40 crowd.  Building a site or blog on skin care over 40 is just one idea for a topic that might include several subtopics and provide you with several niche products to promote.  Topics might include things like removing age spots, make-up techniques, dark circles, diminishing age lines, etc.

Each of these sub-topics would give you an opportunity to write about it extensively and promote various affiliate products associated with each.  If one product drops off the scene, you still have other products and services that will help you continue to maintain your passive income.

To the individual earning several thousand dollars a month with one product or  merchant it might be a very lucrative business venture, but what happens when that affiliate source goes away?  You’ve just lost all of your monthly income.  Something to think about.

Have You Been Affected?

Have you fallen victim to Amazon’s  shut down of  California affiliates? If so, what will you be doing now?

What do you think about this latest ruling and what do you foresee for the future of Affiliate Marketing?

Let us hear your thoughts?

Three things turn affiliate marketers off the most:

• Stolen commissions.
• Low commission rates.
• Mot paying affiliates, either on time or at all.

I get around these issues is by looking for 100% commission affiliate products that pay me directly.

These affiliate programs not only pay me 100% commission, payment is deposited directly into my PayPal account.

Are these programs worth it?  I think so, but before you jump on board with promoting full commission products, you’ll want to read this first.

As with any product or affiliate program, not all of them are created equal.

There are full commission products that are good and there are some that are really bad, so you need to be able to recognize the difference before you start promoting them.

Any good, quality, ‘affiliate focused’  program will almost always require you to purchase the product first, not all of them do, but many do.

That’s actually a good thing.  If you’re a customer focused marketer, that’s what you do.  Otherwise you’re simply in it for the money and that’s not how you’re going to find success, just my personal opinion

The same is true for 100% commission products.  The good ones require a purchase.  However for those that don’t, I highly recommend you do your due diligence and buy the product anyway, use it and honestly evaluate it.

Why Offer 100% commission Affiliate Programs?

There IS a method to the madness of offering 100% commissions. Typically it’s because the marketer wants something in return, and in most cases it’s to build up their mailing list.

That can actually be a sweet deal for you if, and only IF, the product or service being promoted is truly worth it, many are not

Some  products promoted are purely a lure to get affiliates to promote them so the product owner can build their email list, and what they are offering is JUNK.   The goal is purely about getting email subscriptions than it is about offering a quality product.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with boosting email subscribers  as long as the product is a good one.  And therein lies the problem. There aren’t many quality 100% commission products out there.

I’ve been checking them out and I return more of them than I recommend.

It will take me a lifetime to go through every 100% commission product out there, and I don’t intend to, but I do look out for them and on occasion I do find a good one.

Incredibly enough,  I’ve only found two products so far, and honestly their quality has impressed me just as much, if not more, than the commission.  I look at it this way, since these products are paying full commission into my PayPal account, that means I am also responsible for refunding their money should my buyer return the product.

Since I don’t want a PayPal account full of returns, I’m looking for quality

How 100% commission Affiliate Programs Actually Work

Many of the affiliate programs use affiliate scripts that make it easy for affiliates to inserts their PayPal email into their affiliate link.

For example an affiliate link may look something like this:

http://www.productname.com/?e=yourpaypalaccountemail

Jonathon Leger actually provides access to these affiliate scripts in his $7 secrets guide that is also itself a 100% affiliate commission product.

These scripts will keep track of which affiliate sent the visitor to your sales letter so that the PayPal link can be modified to the affiliate’s PayPal email address and get 100% commission sent directly to their PayPal account.

What’s happening here is the product owner is making money on a one time offer on the backend and on follow-up emails.

For affiliate programs that want to pay less than 100% affiliate commissions there are other affiliate scripts that are more robust and will create a more comprehensive affiliate program setup.

One thing to note when using these scripts through PayPal is that PayPal does not do split payments between accounts.  So for instance if an affiliate program wants to offer the affiliate only a 50% commission,  PayPal won’t do that.  Payments going through PayPal have to be sent in full to only one party.

So affiliate programs that pay only 50% might look like this:

• Sale #1 goes to the Affiliate
• Sale #2 goes to the Product Owner
• Sale #3 goes to the Affiliate
• Sale #4 goes to the Product Owner
• and so on…

Just something to be aware of  when promoting.

Here’s how I evaluate a good 100% commission product:

- Consider the source. Who created the product and what is their reputation on the web?

Do some checking, don’t just look at the commission amount and jump on board.

A case in point is an Online Business Ideas guide I promote for Willie Crawford.  The guide is pure quality for $27 jam packed with useful information, but it also comes from Willie who has been online for over ten years and is someone who’s honest, knowledgeable and highly admired by his followers.

That’s exactly the kind of person you will get quality products from.

- Buy the product even if it’s not required. You can’t know how good something is if you don’t use it and experience it yourself.

- Ask the affiliate manager what the return rate is. Don’t be afraid to ask this question, it’s valid and pertinent.  If you don’t get a response or the affiliate manager hesitates in telling you, that’s a red flag.

- Find out what the CTR or click through rate is for their affiliates. The click-through rate is the ratio of the number of times a visitor clicks on the affiliate links to the number of impressions.

For example, if 1 out of 100 people who visit your website clicks on your affiliate link, the CTR is 1%.

- Be sure that your commission is instant. Your commission may not go directly into your PayPal account, you may have to wait for payment as is the case with most affiliate programs, so be sure that payment is instant.

The real beauty of 100% affiliate commission programs is that with just one sale you’ve made your money back on your purchase.

But don’t risk your reputation or your wallet on promoting crappy products.    We all want to be profitable but be a quality source of support and benefit to your readers and followers first.

The Art of How To Promote Affiliate Products

As an affiliate marketer, find the best affiliate marketing programs.  That doesn’t mean find just any products to promote.  Products should be of quality in nature and offer good customer service.

Once you find great programs and products, your next step is to pre-sell your products or services.  That means your job is to help your visitor make the buying decision.

Never send your site visitors directly to a product site.  People are much more responsive to affiliate marketers that help them in their buying decision.   A good affiliate marketer will warm arm visitors up by demonstrating why a product or service is worthwhile,  show them where the value is in the product and help them understand why it’s worth buying.

Promoting affiliate products with pre-selling works even better if you can do these 5 things.

1. Write a review of of the products or services you are promoting

Writing a great product review helps your visitors to emotionally feel the benefits of a product by demonstrating how you like the product yourself. Yes, this means you should use the product or service yourself first.  This is really the only way you can communicate to your viewer  the small intricate details of using a product.

I equate it to sleeping on a Swedish foam mattress.  Sure I could say it’s soft and comfortable, but could I effectively explain how that mattress benefits my body when I sleep if I don’t actually sleep on it myself?  I could tell them what everyone else tells them but the real value is in helping them make that buying decision based on what kind of sleep they’ll get.

In other words, if you haven’t used or experienced a product or service yourself,  it’s a lot harder to express to someone how it could change their life.  You’ll only be able to elaborate on the basic features.

Don’t believe me?  Try writing a review of a product that you’ve only read about but haven’t used,  then get the product and use it.  Compare notes and you’ll see what I mean.

Once you’ve created your product review, send it to free article sites like goarticles.com and EzineArticles.com.  Include a call to action in your resource box that encourages a click to the page on your website that promotes your product or service.

Note: Don’t send the same review you wrote on your blog or website to the article sites.  If viewers reads your review on the article site and your resource box sends them to the same review on your website, they won’t appreciate that.  Instead send separate articles to the article sites.

See how to write a product review that truly connects with your readers.

2. Promote Your Affiliate Products with a Squidoo lens

Create a Squidoo lens and post your product reviews and various articles there as well.

Squidoo is a totally free social marketing tool that you can use to promote yourself, your products or your affiliate products.  Social marketing on Squidoo is a powerful way to increase your visibility.

Using Squidoo to promote affiliate products is ideal because Squidoo already gets good page rank from Google.  You won’t have to wait for your Squidoo lens to get indexed as the main Squidoo site is already indexed meaning your Lens will get picked up quickly.

3. Join popular marketing forums such as Warriorforum.com, and make frequent contributions to their most popular threads

Forums like the Warrior forum have tremendous visibility so asking questions, contributing to discussions and offering your personal insight will help you gain personal as well as product exposure.

Forums like these won’t tolerate spam so use discretion.

Create your ‘signature’ in your forum profile so that it includes a link to your website’s page for the product you are promoting. That way, every time you make a post, anyone who sees it will see your signature giving you the potential for a click on your link.

4. Promote Affiliate Products With an Audio Interview or a Podcast

Try doing an interview with the affiliate product owner and putting the audio on your blog or website.  Start by composing some great interview questions and strive to provide as much content as you can in the interview.

At the start of your interview mention the address of your product page so that listeners can get more information on the product, then when the interview is coming to a close mention your product page once again.

5. Create a Video and place it on Youtube.com

If you’re clueless about how to create a video yourself, Susanna Hess has an excellent free video course that will have you creating great videos in just 4 days, I highly recommend it if you’ve never created videos before.

Here’s a clever way to promote affiliate products with videos you’ve created.  It’s a nifty strategy for embedding your affiliate link within your YouTube video.

Step 1. Create your video and place it on YouTube

Step 2. Go to linkedtube.com and type in your video ID

Step 3. Type in your affiliate link where it asks for the URL

Step 4. Give your video a hover title and text

Step 5. Copy the code back to your website

That’s it, your done!

For more on how to promote affiliate products and just overall good advice and training, the Super Affiliate Handbook is still a top resource and reliable reference for reaching super affiliate status.