Making Back-End & Residual Commissions

Making Back-End & Residual Commissions

Residual income puts money in an affiliate marketer’s pocket without any work or effort on their part. It doesn’t get any better than that. Sales of back-end products allow you to get paid for work that you do more than once. The idea here is to work smarter…not harder.

So what are back-end products? They are products/services you offer to existing customers, i.e. to people who have already bought a first product (front-end product. lead product) from you.
Most online marketers make much more money selling customers the second, third, fourth etc. product than selling their first product. The reason is that people who've already bought from you once are much more likely to buy again.

Strategies like back-end offers shifts the focus from the short sighted "take the money and run" strategy that is so much in use on the internet today. You've seen these sites all over. The focus is on getting a massive amount of traffic and then selling visitors an over-priced product that doesn't deliver what was promised. They might make money in the short run but they will only sell to each customer once and will have to continue spending a lot of money on advertising to get new suckers to visit their site.

More successful sites focus on building a strong relationship with their customers. Your main goal shouldn't be to just make sure your customers are somewhat satisfied...you want them to be extremely satisfied. If you deliver the goods, your customers will trust you more. If you have their trust, you can sell them anything. When you send your very satisfied customers an email offering another product that they would be interested in, they will flock to your site to buy it because they trust you. Trust is everything.

Making Back-End & Residual Commissions

Making Back-End & Residual Commissions

Residual income puts money in an affiliate marketer’s pocket without any work or effort on their part. It doesn’t get any better than that. Sales of back-end products allow you to get paid for work that you do more than once. The idea here is to work smarter…not harder.

So what are back-end products? They are products/services you offer to existing customers, i.e. to people who have already bought a first product (front-end product. lead product) from you.
Most online marketers make much more money selling customers the second, third, fourth etc. product than selling their first product. The reason is that people who've already bought from you once are much more likely to buy again.

Strategies like back-end offers shifts the focus from the short sighted "take the money and run" strategy that is so much in use on the internet today. You've seen these sites all over. The focus is on getting a massive amount of traffic and then selling visitors an over-priced product that doesn't deliver what was promised. They might make money in the short run but they will only sell to each customer once and will have to continue spending a lot of money on advertising to get new suckers to visit their site.

More successful sites focus on building a strong relationship with their customers. Your main goal shouldn't be to just make sure your customers are somewhat satisfied...you want them to be extremely satisfied. If you deliver the goods, your customers will trust you more. If you have their trust, you can sell them anything. When you send your very satisfied customers an email offering another product that they would be interested in, they will flock to your site to buy it because they trust you. Trust is everything.

Other Notable Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Other Notable Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

It isn’t hard to set up a good website and start and affiliate marketing career. It isn’t hard at all to find affiliate marketing opportunities on the internet. However, it is a very simple thing to make deadly mistakes that will insure your failure to thrive at affiliate marketing.

One of the most notable affiliate marketing mistakes is to think that all you have to do is find the ones that pay the most, sign up, drive traffic to that site through your affiliate link and you’re all set right? Not exactly.

It’s great to choose an affiliate program that pays a high percentage, but that’s not most important thing to consider. It’s much more important to find a quality affiliate program that meets certain criteria. Here are three mistakes you don’t have to make:

1. You want to make sure the product is a proven seller. You don’t want to waste your time and money driving traffic to a site that doesn’t convert. Find one with a good conversion rate.

2. Make sure the site you become an affiliate for protects its affiliates, and has your best interest at heart. Look for one that provides banners, e-mails, and other tools you can use to promote the site. Also, make sure that there is only one payment option. As an affiliate marketer, you need to be sure that you will get credit for your referral. If there is more than one payment method, you can get shortchanged.

3. Do not choose an affiliate program that promotes an e-mail course. Nothing is worse than becoming an affiliate to a site that’s first goal is to capture e-mail addresses, and then tries to make the sale second. As an affiliate marketer, you need to capture e-mail addresses, then to convert that prospect into a sale. Stick with affiliate programs that aren’t focused on capturing leads because it’s simply not in your best interest. Build your own list, not someone else’s.

Choosing the Right Product

Choosing the Right Product

When you first start your online business, the first and most obvious question you will ask yourself is…what am I going to sell? Points to consider when deciding the answer to that question are:

· Is it light and easy to ship?
· Is it a digital good that is downloaded (e-book or software)?
· Is it perishable or fragile?
· Does it have to be seen and held (designer fabrics, perhaps)
· Is there enough demand to make your venture profitable?
· Does it have little competition from large online companies (niche products)?

The last two characteristics are the ones that can be hard to pin down. Here is a generally accepted method of arriving at an idea of how heavy the demand and competition is for a product.

If you have a special interest in some products that meet the above criteria, great, but don't limit your investigation just to items you like. You are looking for a niche product with relatively good demand (enough to make it profitable), but without heavy competition.

One way to see what the demand is for products you are interested in is to look at search engines to see how frequently people search for the product you are considering.

The result of all this research should be that one or more products will fit into a niche market - products with some demand, and relatively little supply. For the best results, focus on one niche product category, and offer a wide selection. That way, you can become the best online source for that particular category. For example, instead of offering general craft supplies, offer the widest possible selection of needlepoint kits. This strategy will also allow you to rank higher in search engines because you can optimize your pages for fewer, more specific, keywords.

Choosing the Right Product

Choosing the Right Product

When you first start your online business, the first and most obvious question you will ask yourself is…what am I going to sell? Points to consider when deciding the answer to that question are:

· Is it light and easy to ship?
· Is it a digital good that is downloaded (e-book or software)?
· Is it perishable or fragile?
· Does it have to be seen and held (designer fabrics, perhaps)
· Is there enough demand to make your venture profitable?
· Does it have little competition from large online companies (niche products)?

The last two characteristics are the ones that can be hard to pin down. Here is a generally accepted method of arriving at an idea of how heavy the demand and competition is for a product.

If you have a special interest in some products that meet the above criteria, great, but don't limit your investigation just to items you like. You are looking for a niche product with relatively good demand (enough to make it profitable), but without heavy competition.

One way to see what the demand is for products you are interested in is to look at search engines to see how frequently people search for the product you are considering.

The result of all this research should be that one or more products will fit into a niche market - products with some demand, and relatively little supply. For the best results, focus on one niche product category, and offer a wide selection. That way, you can become the best online source for that particular category. For example, instead of offering general craft supplies, offer the widest possible selection of needlepoint kits. This strategy will also allow you to rank higher in search engines because you can optimize your pages for fewer, more specific, keywords.

Other Notable Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

Other Notable Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes

It isn’t hard to set up a good website and start and affiliate marketing career. It isn’t hard at all to find affiliate marketing opportunities on the internet. However, it is a very simple thing to make deadly mistakes that will insure your failure to thrive at affiliate marketing.

One of the most notable affiliate marketing mistakes is to think that all you have to do is find the ones that pay the most, sign up, drive traffic to that site through your affiliate link and you’re all set right? Not exactly.

It’s great to choose an affiliate program that pays a high percentage, but that’s not most important thing to consider. It’s much more important to find a quality affiliate program that meets certain criteria. Here are three mistakes you don’t have to make:

1. You want to make sure the product is a proven seller. You don’t want to waste your time and money driving traffic to a site that doesn’t convert. Find one with a good conversion rate.

2. Make sure the site you become an affiliate for protects its affiliates, and has your best interest at heart. Look for one that provides banners, e-mails, and other tools you can use to promote the site. Also, make sure that there is only one payment option. As an affiliate marketer, you need to be sure that you will get credit for your referral. If there is more than one payment method, you can get shortchanged.

3. Do not choose an affiliate program that promotes an e-mail course. Nothing is worse than becoming an affiliate to a site that’s first goal is to capture e-mail addresses, and then tries to make the sale second. As an affiliate marketer, you need to capture e-mail addresses, then to convert that prospect into a sale. Stick with affiliate programs that aren’t focused on capturing leads because it’s simply not in your best interest. Build your own list, not someone else’s.

Telling Good Traffic from Bad

Telling Good Traffic from Bad

Everyday that goes by you can bet that any serious website owner is wondering how to get more traffic to their site. This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet.

Wild promises of high volume traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters. The problem is that high volume doesn’t necessarily translate into a high sales rate.

The visitors who come to your website as a result of  a desire to find out more on a specific, niche topic, not as a result of exit traffic or membership in a safe list where members simply pitch each other.  Good traffic comes from people clicking links on topics targeted to their interests and getting directed to a website containing information they want and expect as a result of clicking the link. The bottom line is that when you get right down to it the best and most dependable sources of targeted traffic come from links that people click.

Being able to determine which clicks actually result in sales is vital. To track conversions from click to sales, depending on the type of shopping cart software you are using, you can then create a custom order confirmation page - i.e. the page that is displayed once the transaction is complete. This is very easy to do if you're using a payment processing service such as PayPal.

It's well known that each search engine and each web site has a particular type of user (age, interests etc.), and they'll all have different triggers leading them to purchase. All of these things are important for you to know so that your advertising dollars will be spent in the most advantageous places.