Increase your Affiliate Commissions in Two Days or Less
-Mark Joyner, CEO, Aesop Marketing Corporation
Clearly, the people benefiting the most from affiliate programs
are the companies running them. My goal here is to help you -
the affiliate - earn more money. If you've gotten past the idea
that you can simply slap a banner up on your site and start
earning money, but you're not sure what to do next, this article
is for you.
Allow me to cut right to the chase. Here is a plan of action.
This may seem like a lot of work, but don't worry! At the very
end, I'll show you how to automate all of these steps. For now,
just read through to get a general idea of how you need to
proceed:
**Day 1**
Step 1 - Vow to organize your affiliate efforts. Begin with
organizing all contact information, payment information, and
vital statistics about your affiliate programs in one central
location. This may seem like a silly step, but believe me; you
don't want to spend your time digging through emails for contact
information and codes. You should also know, with just a few
mouse clicks, how much is owed you by the various affiliate
programs in which you are participating.
Step 2 - Select one affiliate program on which to focus your
efforts for the next 3 weeks. In order to apply some of the
various principles I will show you in a few moments, you need to
select one area of focus. It's best to select an affiliate
program that has several products, instant online tracking of
sales, instant notification of sales, and the ability to segment
your promotions. Internet Marketing ProShop has all of this and
more:
CHECK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF
Step 3 - Select three promotion methods and two products to
promote.
This is crucial. This will make sense in a few moments. If you
can't think of three promotion methods, here are a few ideas:
An ad in someone else's eZine A mailing to your own subscription
list A text link on your site with some ad copy A banner on your
site A product review on your site. An FFA submission.
Now, some of these methods are more effective than others. But
you don't need me to tell you that. I'll show you how to find
out for yourself.
Step 4 - For each promotion method and each product, develop two ads. So, since you have three promotion methods, two products,
and two ads for each - you will have to write 12 ads total. So,
for each ad, let's give it a code. If it's method one, product
one, ad one, you can call it:
M1P1A1
For method one, product one, ad two, you can call it:
M1P1A2
For example, if you plan to promote my marketing course 1,001
Killer Internet Marketing Tactics using ads in someone else's
eZine, you will need two ads. One would be M1P1A1, and the
other would be M1P1A2. If you also plan to promote it using a
review on your site, the first review would be M2P1A1 (method 2,
product 1, ad 1) and the second would be M2P1A2 (method 2,
product 1, ad 2). This is just one way to code your ads. You
can do this any way you like as long as you can distinguish
precisely which campaign these codes refer to.
This sounds like a lot of writing. Don't be daunted by this!
Just crank it out. Don't think too much about each ad. We'll
find out in a while which one is good and which one is bad. You
won't decide this - your customers will! Don't be afraid to try
something wild.
Now, when you promote each product, you'll need to tie each
promotion to the code you created. With the Internet Marketing
ProShop Partner program, you can segment your campaigns by
adding an _code to the end of the URL you use to promote each
product.
For example, if you are promoting 1,001 Killer Internet
Marketing Tactics, you would use this URL:
..../kt.cgi?sponsorID
To segment your campaigns, you would add your campaign code on
the end of that URL for each campaign:
..../kt.cgi?sponsorID_M1P1A1 (for campaign one)
..../kt.cgi?sponsorID_M1P1A2 (for campaign two)
Note: The above method is only valid for our affiliate program,
so don't try this with any other affiliate program. We don't
know of any other affiliate programs that allow you to segment
your campaigns, this way, so please use caution here.
Step 5 - Before you finish for the day, promote the product
using your "ad 1" for each product.
You'll need to record:
Impressions. If you're advertising on a web page, this will be
the number of times your ad appeared on the page - or the number
of times the page was viewed if your ad comes up each time the
page is viewed. If you're advertising using some form of email,
impressions = number of emails sent.
Clicks. You should be able to get this from the affiliate
program you are promoting.
Amount Earned. Again, your affiliate program should provide
this information to you in real time.
Now, in order to do a valid test, you'll need to promote to a
fairly significant number of people. I would recommend that at
least 300 people see each ad. Otherwise, you won't have enough
information to make a valid judgment. Ideally, you should hit
about 2,000 with each ad, but your resources may not allow for
this.
*Learning point: If you're going to send an ad via a
newsletter, see if you can run a "split". That is, get one ad
sent to 1/2 of the list and another sent to the other 1/2. That
is the most accurate way to compare the effectiveness of any
pair of ads.
**Day 2**
Step 6 - Run your "B" ads. Now that you have run your "A" ads and have given them a bit of time to take effect, run your B
ads. Do this first thing this morning!
By the end of the day, you should have some good results from
both campaigns to compare and see where you stand.
By comparing and analyzing all of the information you have just
compiled, you will be able to start to have a good idea about:
a. Which product seems to sell more.
b. Which type of campaign is most effective
c. Which type of ad for each campaign is most effective
This short bit of testing won't allow you to make clear
conclusions, but it will put you on the right track.
Immediately, you should start using the ads that *sell* as much
as you can. If ad A is making you 5 cents per impression and ad
B is making you 5 dollars per impression - using ad B just
increased your affiliate commissions by 9900%!
OK, that's a
dramatic example, but you get the point, right? If you aren't
tracking these things, you'll never know. If you track and
continue to refine, before you know it, you'll have an arsenal
of ads that you know pull well, and you can use them over and
over again. Once you do the leg work, it's easy!
As you see, though, this can get quite complex. How does one
actually analyze these campaigns? What if you have scores of
affiliate programs and quite a few campaigns for each?
Don't worry. As I told you at the beginning, there is an easy,
cost effective way to keep track of all of these things with
just a few mouse clicks. It's called Affiliate Assistant:
READ MORE ABOUT AFFILIATE ASSISTANT!!
I highly recommend checking this out as it will, among other
things, allow you to quickly and easily implement the above plan
in one central location. With just a few mouse clicks you can
compare and analyze all of your various affiliate ad campaigns
so you'll know which are making you money and which are wasting
you time.
You could do all of the same things yourself with a good
database program and multiple spreadsheets, but Affiliate
Assistant will save you quite a bit of time and money without
having to go through all that.
Either way, you should implement some type of organizational and
tracking plan like this for your affiliate advertising efforts
immediately. The amount of time you put into this will pay off
exponentially in terms of higher commissions.
Mark Joyner
CEO, Aesop Marketing Corporation
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