Anti-Guru: Internet Marketing blog

Affiliate Marketing is becoming more and more difficult business to make a living from.

And why?

Here are some reasons:

1. The competition level is getting really high. Hundreds of people began internet marketing career everyday. Nowadays 9 out of 10 “make money online” ebooks deal with affiliate marketing. 95% of people who try to become marketers fail, but still this 5% is going to fight with you over commissions and sales.

2. More and more people are aware of affiliate links and they hardly click on them. Something between 20-40% of affiliate sales are lost because of people simply copying and pasting direct links in their browser.

3. Internet is a global thing now. People from all over the world can start their marketing careers and nothing will stop them. They are going to compete with you. And if some affiliates from North America or Europe will not be happy with $1000 in monthly commission, third world marketers will. And they are going to work much harder for this money.

4. Black Hat Methods. Nowadays BH marketers take in 70% of affiliate sales. And it is going to be more in the future. So if you don’t do black hat you will lose out. If you don’t know how to write a cloaking script, you will have no chances for beating these guys. You will spend half of the day writing your article or adding links to your sites, and they will create 10k of google optimized websites with a click of the mouse.

I didn’t write this post to put you off. There is still a lot of money to be made by you as an affiliate. These are just things I have noticed and I decided to share with you.

David Kowalsky

I don’t know if realize but there is a breakthrough coming. This is going to change the way you think of affiliate marketing.

There is a huge general niche that many affiliates haven’t noticed. It is “How to do/fix/rid of/ something”

The number of people typing “how to …” in search engines is increasing every day. So if you haven’t started your “how to …” campaigns you are loosing out.

Some of the big players have already noticed this niche. There is a new article directory HowHub.com It is ran by the guys from articledashboard.com and it is getting more users and traffic everyday.

There are thousands small niches that you can make money on using “How to…” marketing.

So don’t be a loser and get on this niche while it’s hot.

You will thank me later.

And believe me it is going to be hot for a really long time.

Enjoy,

David Kowalsky

Very often people ask me what is the secret for succeeding at affiliate marketing. For me the answer is simple and obvious.

“Find out what people want and sell it to them”

It may seem simple but yes, it’s all about researching the market.

If you still doesn’t know how to research a niche you may want to read my “How to choose an niche” post.

Do you have any problems that you want to solve? Does your family or friend have? What do they need to feel better?

Nowadays I don’t look for niche the standard way. They just come to me everyday. I talk to people, watch tv or read a book and it just hits me. Voila I deliver info “A” to the group “X”

Most of marketers forget that people love buying stuff that will help them feel better etc. If they have a problem to solve they surf the net in a “ready to do what it takes” state of mind.They are even going to pull out their credit card to make themselves feel better.

So, if you are a guy or girl that will be able to state the same questions the might have, on your landing page. People will be glad to purchase the product you recommend.

This is it. That’s the secret.

So don’t jump on the first hot product that everybody promotes. Find your niche, there are millions of them.

Help people solve a problem or find the info and they will help you make money.

It’s a win/win situation.

David Kowalsky

If you want to succeed as an affiliate you must master the art of preselling the product to your visitors.
Most affiliates do the mistake of hard selling the product to their prospects and they put off their visitors by doing so.

Your job as an affiliate is to appear as an authority or the guy who had the same problem/ need and found the solution.

Your landing page should be a teaser copy to get people interested in the product and make them click on your affiliate link.

You must find out what your visitors really want and recommend a product that will “HELP” your visitors.

Remember that is not your job to make the sale. You just need to get people interested and the vendor should do the selling.

Never appear as you are pushing the product. Nowadays many people know what affiliate marketing is and they will not click on your affiliate link if they realize that you want to sell the something.

You must appear as a friendly person that just want to help your visitors.

You should deliver as much info as possible about the product. This way your prospects will not need to search the web for more reviews. They will more likely purchase right away.

Never and I mean never claim that the product is perfect. This will seems unnatural. Just claim that this product was the best one you have ever found.

David Kowalsky

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

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

There are several ways to make money online.

I am going to start with affiliate marketing because it is one of the easiest ways to make money online.

The simplest way to make money online:

AFFILIATE MARKETING:

Affiliate marketing is basically referring people to other people stuff. You get paid if somebody purchase an item, fill out a form or take any other action required. It is one of the easiest ways to make money online.

Most of affiliate programs are free to join and you can start promoting someone’s products in exchange for commission.

The products you can promote are anything from gadgets, books, cd’s, ebooks, software etc. The possibilities are limitless.

Commissions range from 1% to whooping 75% depending on products and affiliate networks.

The most popular affiliate networks are:

www.clickbank.com - they offer affiliate program for ebooks, software and other digital stuff. This is one of the best and most popular networks. Commissions can be as high as 75%, up to $100 per sale you generate.

www.cj.com - Commission Junction is a great network as well. They offer affiliate programs for physical products and much more. Many of big brands like Forbes, Yahoo and Ebay use CJ to manage their affiliate programs.

You will find many interesting affiliate programs to choose at www.associateprograms.com/directory/

It’s finally happened. After four years of making a killing profit online I have decided to reveal my methods to the public.

I am going to discuss everything that concerns making money online.

I will reveal the exact methods I use to make $50k a month.

No need to buy lame ebooks, “next big thing” products or pay for anything at all.

Everything is available here.

It is time to slap gurus.

Enjoy!!!