Increasing Your Commission

[Rodney]

Through affiliate marketing, you can sell products for other businesses who are only too happy to have you sell stuff for them. Here are some ways for you to increase your commission.

1. First, select a specific product to promote. Choose one that is easy to sell, for example, computer games, beauty products, or clothes.

2. Create a website or a b web blog, you will do all your selling and promoting in there. But do your homework and research what works the best for you. There are blogs you can have for free also. Write an eBook and give it away as a free gift. People like to receive things for free. You offer an opt – in form for people to sign up in, and keep their email addresses for future references.

3. Make an online newsletter where you promote your website, your blog and all the products you promote. This is to create a relationship with your customers, and they get to know you personally, and they will trust you more.

4. When you get really busy, you will not be able to respond to the people personally, and the email addresses will be for too large. So, get an auto responder to handle that.

5. To advertise website even more, write articles and provide a link to your website.

6. You can learn a lot from forums and how this system works. Also, you can promote your website there too.

7. If your money is still tight, use the free classified ads online.

8. Use a portion of your commission to pay for pay per click advertisements and more.

Otherwise, use your imagination and create other ideas to advertise your website and you products.

 

[Elphas Mdluli]

Nice share Rodney.

 

[elcidofaguy]

My approach is to offer highly relevant additional bonuses for free in return for the affiliate sale. If possible with a discount from the vendor. That way if people visit other review sites etc. many will return in order to get the extras.

 

[ericplotz1]

ericplotz1

I actually have a question regarding this.

Now I haven't done much affiliate marketing lately because I've been working to build my business. Brick and mortars last forever.

What turned me off of affiliate marketing was all of the changes back in 2012. We had a site receiving around 200k visitors a month, and most was from FB. We all know FB changed their algo and Google changed their algo not too long after. When that happened, we lost over 70% traffic, and dropped from a PR5 to a PR2.

Yeah it was pretty devastating.

We were making so much money from this one site, we lived kinda ignorantly. We thought we would just go along building sites like this and be rich. SMH we were very wrong.

I say all of this to say that we didn't spend too much time learning how to further scale up because we were making BANK.

Which brings me to the question.

For most vendors, in my recent experiences with CPA networks i.e. Peerfly, incentivized offers are prohibited, at least with all of the vendors I've promoted for. I go for the higher payouts.

Do you offer the incentive before getting the first click? Or....

Do you capture the email and send the incentives via auto-responders?

And what networks allow this? DO you know any off-hand?

 

[elcidofaguy]

elcidofaguy

Hi Eric - Great questions! From my experience most platforms are okay with offering a bonus incentive such as a free ebook or something but in all cases its rebates which are disallowed...

In some cases I've seen that the vendor have issues with Adwords as they want to reserve that for themselves... But offering bonuses seems okay by me.... I've never had a problem on CB, JVZoo, CJ ... By far I've had the best results on CB...

The way I do it is to have different sites which are interconnected... So for example:

1. Website which is a simple landing page which collects emails in return for free bonus.... Use FB ads for that as you can imagine they never rank on the serps.... In addition I have some blogs which offer a free bonus for signing up to a news letter... So you can kind of say its all over the place.... ads and organic.... But the key here is that I'm building many lists within a niche, interest etc.... On these sites I tend not to bother promoting products directly.... its all about providing value and getting emails....

2. For the rest I have specific sites which promote an affiliate product... e.g. CB where by I'm offering a bunch of bonuses in exchange for the affiliate sale.... Offer on the landing page with a blog hanging off it which can capture some traffic/helps with ranking on serps... Normally I use an exit capture which can lead to sites listed in (1) with capturing emails for a free bonus or a pop up for newsletter signup.... as its still important to get the leads if the traffic is cold... As a lot of people will not be persuaded to buy the affiliate product on first visit but are happy to sign up to a list.... As a rough estimate direct sales is approx 2-4% versus email at approx 20% (40% on a recent campaign) being typical...

In addition I check the vendor site and if they offer a discount (normally you can find it when you exit the site and see an exit capture for an offer)... From there I figure out the discount URL which I use on my offer pages... That way my website can have the headline - "30% discount plus these exclusive bonuses ...." ... A lot of people actually look for <product bonus>, <product discount> etc.... So I target these on the serps....

3. which leads nicely to the third type of site which bypasses the vendor and straight to checkout... and use these mostly now a days versus your typical review site approach... and with these you can also use on adwords....

4. I also use a lot of youtubes with promoting sites listed for (1) and (2)... and other methods such as web 2.0, wikis etc... Any where and every where I can get traffic...

I hope the above architecture makes sense... Basically I do both approaches... What I've noted is my email list conversions are much higher through sites under (1) than direct affiliate sales on sites listed under (2)... Noting with email capture I point them to my promo sites under (2)... or sometimes to directly to a vendor site using my aff link...

As you can see my approach captures prospects and also actual buyers .... So answer to your question is both... Just realized that took a lot of rambling to get there.... I hope that makes sense....

I've actually developed an online software which does the bonus automation and email captures etc through available API's... Its a subscription based software which I spent almost a year developing... with a bonus catalog numbering more than 1000 and now recently launched!... I'm planning on posting it here within the special offer section very soon... So you'll be able to see this in more detail.... But in sum you can offer bonuses and then validate receipts in real time via available API call.... capture actual buyer emails as well as prospects..... integrates with any autoresponder, campaigns created within minutes which would normally take days to weeks of effort....

[EDIT] - Just posted the WSO here...

 

[blueclcl]

Hi Rodney

Nice post!

I also find promoting products in the embarrassing niche works well for finding products to promote. Problems where people are embarrassed to ask someone face to face.

How to lose man boobs, get rid of herpes, is my wife sleeping with the milkman, can't get or keep it ** and so on..

If I am going to build my list first ( which you should ) then guest blogging is also a good way to drive traffic.

 

[WebsiteIntegrations]

I try to promote relevant stuff on my site but so far it seems the only affiliate link I have success with is to WHMCS - I am into the 4 digits in earnings off that one while I am lucky to make money from any other affiliate link. (well i guess i do ok with themeforest affiliate links too - problem is i then spend it all there too! lol)