Anti-Guru: Internet Marketing blog

Affiliate Marketing is the kind of business where standards are very low. Most affiliates will recommend anything to make a sale. They will write “unbiased reviews” about product they know nothing about.

It always makes me laugh when I visit “make money online” review sites. All these guys claiming they make thousands everyday thanks to product “X” etc.

But when I take a look at their sites I know it is a lie. Their sites look crap, they are missing essential components, so I will never trust a guy who claims to make a lot of money online but cannot build a proper website or it looks he cannot afford to pay anybody to do this for him.

It easy to say: “OK I see no problem because there is 8 week money back guarantee on the product I recommend”

So, I will answer you. But how many people try to get a refund but their emails never get answered. It happens very often with products being sold on clickbank.

Most customers don’t know that it is clickbank, the payment processor, that they need to contact for a refund.

I will tell you one thing.

If you decide to be unethical just to make a quick sale you are not building a business.

This is something that took me some time to learn. But I am glad I finally did.

Let’s take clickbank for instance. You get a customer’s email every time you make the purchase.

If you recommended a crap product you will not want to contact your customera because it will get them even more pissed off.

On the other hand what I do and what most people should do is. I recommend only highy quality product that I tested or I know they are good from other source (forums, non-affiliate review sites).

What I do after the purchase I contact my customer saying that I am the affiliate who reffered them to the product and I tell them that they can contact me if they have any questions regarding the product.

I also encourage them to sing up to my mailing list so they will receive valuable info in the future.

This way I make my customers even more happy and in most cases they will buy from me in the future.

It is a win/win situation.

Your customers will feel they are not left alone and you will build your opt-in list.

Affiliate marketing can be a profitable way to make money online, so please don’t limit yourself to

making just one-time sales from every customer you get.

Being honest and ethical pays off.

Anti-Guru

Branding yourself is one of the quickest ways to become really successful Internet Marketer.

You may ask yourself what I mean by branding yourself. The simplest answer is become a guru in your niche/field.

There are thousands of gurus who make millions online just by appearing as an authority. They don’t even need to make money on their niche. They simply make money because people believe they are great, so these gurus can steal money from suckers offering coaching or mentoring programs.

In contrary of what most people think branding yourself, appearing as a guru.authority is not really difficult.

There are several easy ways to brand yourself:

• take part in discussion at online forums, provide good info and there will be many people who will click on your signature link
• create a free course containing valuable info
• create a good quality product
• start a blog and provide great content

These are just some of your choices.

Remember one thing:

“The more you give away, the more you will get back”

So, conclusion is. Give away or sell great products/info and people will be happy to buy from you over and over again.

Deliver some freebies and people will feel they owe you, so they will buy from you to give you back.

David Kowalsky

Many people out there have great problems when trying to choose a niche. There is a simple formula that will help you make profitable campaigns and make customers happy .

When looking for a profitable niche one should find a hungry crowd.

Promote products that offer a quick problem solutions,
because people who have a specific problem to solve very often
surf the web with “purchase ready state of mind”

They want to solve the problem now, no matter what.

Great niches for this kind of people are:
panic attacks products, acne remedy, registry cleaners etc.
They all offer solutions to certain problems.

Before setting up a site go to product sales page and
find the specific problems that potential buyers have.

Find answers to questions your potential buyers may have, create website around this and you will be on a good way to start making money.

Another good idea is to go to Internet forums in your niche and absorb the language, read about problems people have.

This will help you understand your potential customers better. You will appear as one of them.

People are more likely to purchase from people that have or had similar problems to them.

Now go take an action and find your profitable niche.

David Kowalsky

One of the greatest obstacles people encounter when trying to make money as affiliates is choosing a niche.

The first thing you need to do before choosing any niche is checking if it can be monetized, if there are people interested in the topic who are willing to pay for info/help/product.

There is a very smart tool that allows to check internet trends.

It is www.google.com/trends. It is very easy to check what people are searching for, what interest they have.

It is a very powerful info to use. Once you know there is a crowd of people searching for a specific term, you can start looking for products to promote.

Another research should be made at adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

You will be able to check search volume and advertiser competition. If there are many advertisers for your keyword it probably means that money can be made on this niche.

There is a great tool that will help you get the most of Google keyword tool. It is Keyword Elite.

It helps you keep track of your competitors’ adwords campaigns. You choose a specific keyword/phrase and it will spy on other advertisers.

And why would you want to spy on your competitors. It is because if you know that somebody runs campaigns for a specific keyword for a really long time, let’s say one month, you can be 90% sure that this advertiser is making money on this campaign.

David Kowalsky

Every year thousands of people try to start their online business but 95% of them fail.

Some don’t have skills others are not willing to work hard.

There are stupid mistakes that most newbie affiliates make. I hope you are going to avoid them thanks to this post.

Mistake 1.

Nearly 90% of Internet Marketers start their career after purchasing one of “get rich quick schemes”

They do what they are told to do and start promoting the product they bought. The guru shows them they way, they know nothing about affiliate marketing but the guy who sold them scam ebook shows them the way to “online success”

It is all bullshit.

People start promoting the product they didn’t actually like but this is the only way to make some money for them, because the guru showed them how to promote his crap ebook.

So poor people spend hundreds/thousands of dollars on adwords bidding on expensive keywords like:

“make money online” and “home business”

They let potential visitors know that there is ebook/program “X” and what happens next.

Your visitor will start searching the net for more reviews of the product you recommended and he/she is going to click on 20 other affiliate links before the purchase.

So what happens?

I even if visitor to your site ever buy a product recommended by you, there is a very slim chance that you are going to get any commissions because other, more smart affiliate will get it.

It is a win/win situation for a guru who sold you an ebook because he doesn’t actually cares who gets affiliate commission. He just wants more suckers who will decide to bid on expensive keywords and let people know about his product.

Mistake 2.

I never understand people who bid on product name on adwords. Let’s say you promote “ebook X”

You bid “ebook X review” on adwords and what happens. You send a potential customer to the site were you are just another person who praises the product. Your visitor already “knows” everything you told him because he already read dozen of “unbiased affiliate reviews”.

There is a very slim chance than anybody is going to click on any link at all. Your visitor is going to click away to google search results again.

The only way to make good money when bidding on product name is a situation when you give away some bonus in exchange for ordering via your link.

Mistake 3.

This is probably the biggest mistake most newbie affiliates make.

It is NOT TRACKING CAMPAINS.

You must always track your campaigns. Use Google conversion tool for checking which of your keywords are converting and which are not.

Use Google Analytics to check where your visitors come from.

Use some link tracking tool to check which of your clicks get high click thru rates.

Use simple and free service at snipurl.com

Mistake 4.

Not split-testing. You should always split-test your campaigns. Test your ad copy, headline, website copy to get maximal conversions.

It has happened many times to me that I was able to increase my profits by over 500% by doing simple split testing.

You may want to use A/B test script (just Google it) It always you to show different landing page for every second visitor. It allows you to use different headlines, copy etc. Make sure you use different tracking ID for both landing pages.

I hope you have found this post useful.

/antiguru