You’re dead wrong if you think you know anything about being an affiliate. The tactics of the past few years just don’t work anymore. You need to adapt and change or perish.

The big lie

You’ve been told it’s easy to get started as an affiliate. This is partially true. There’s no doubt it’s easier than starting your own business. But “easier” doesn’t mean “easy”.

The cold hard truth

To top it off you’ve been given false information. The first thing you’re taught is to pick some great products. Next do some keyword research. Then buy some keyword ads that send traffic to the product. And finally get a fat check for all the sales. But, it’s all wrong.

Forget keywords

This method worked a couple years ago. But the competition has shot the price of keywords through the roof. So, throw it all away.

A brand new formula

All is not lost. Here’s how to win at this game.

• Start using CPA marketing
• Instead of researching keywords, research demographics
• Do image ad marketing

Do CPA marketing instead of product promotion

CPA means Cost Per Action. It’s far superior to product promotion. Because your visitor doesn’t have to buy anything. You earn a commission for having them perform an “action”. Like completing a survey. Which is much easier than getting them to buy something.

Utilize demographics data

Don’t waste time researching keywords (see below). So spend your time doing demographics research. Once you’ve picked the CPA offer to promote. Then go to a site like Quantcast.com. And find your target demographic.

Do image ad marketing

So far, you’ve got your CPA offer and your target demographics. You can advertise directly to them on display networks. And use images as your ads. And you don’t need to know or buy a single keyword. The biggest advantage is price. Keyword ads are expensive, but image ads are still cheap.

In closing

This is truly a quick cash concept. Because you can start CPA marketing for free. It’s much cheaper to do image ads than keyword ads. You can use demographics to target your ideal prospect. And getting them to take an action is much easier than making a sale.

Yes affiliate marketing rocks, but it’s really hard to get started. And that’s because you have a lot of other affiliates to compete with. What you need to do is come up with methods no one else is using. And the sea of information about this doesn’t make it any easier. But here’s one tip that almost no one is talking about.

Video marketing

You can’t deny that video is powerful. The reason it’s so pervasive is because everyone loves it. It’s so much easier to keep people’s attention with video. So using it in your affiliate promotions is a no-brainer!

Examples of how to use video for affiliate marketing:

• Testimonials
• Walk-throughs
• Do an ordering video
• Do a preview video

Testimonials

This is probably the easiest of all. Just turn on your web cam and talk. It doesn’t have to be professional or polished. Seeing a real person on the other end helps your viewers make a buying decision. And honestly, if you mess up it just makes it seem more authentic. You really can just click record and start talking. And if you don’t want to show your face, use one of the next ideas.

Do a video walk-through

This is a great way to promote something without selling it. You’re taking the role of teacher and showing how to use the product. And while they watch you use it, they think, “I should buy that.” If it’s useful, then what you’re teaching just makes people want it. So just make sure you’re demoing a good product.

Ordering

This one is killer! Record yourself placing an order. Nothing inspires your viewers to buy like watching you do it. First, it’s social proof. Once they see you doing it, they feel more secure. This also makes your viewers trust you. People believe you’re giving them good advice if you take that advice yourself. And let’s not forget about good old fashioned envy. People want what they see you getting. You can add additional juice to this one with: If you want to see the inside, you’ll have to order it yourself.

Record a preview of the members area

This is a great way to build value. What you do is record a tour of the back end. And show them everything they get by ordering. This one also helps to remove the skepticism. It’s much easier to trust they’re getting something if they actually seen it.

You can do this!

No special skills are required. Some very easy to use programs make the videos for you. Really, the software does all the work. So you don’t have to worry about the technical part of this at all. Just focus on the benefits:

• More sales You’ll earn more affiliate commissions when you add video. People like video, so start using it.
• Less refunds Less of your commissions will be clawed back, too. Thanks to you people know what’s inside before buying. So less of them will ask for refunds.
• Beat your competition! Adding video is so simple. But only a very small percentage do it. So, you’ll be way ahead of the crowd.

Get started right now and take your affiliate marketing to the next level. Not using video is detrimental to you business. So do it!

Learn Top Affiliate Secrets

If you want to get started quickly and easily in internet marketing, then affiliate marketing is for you. What “affiliate marketing” means is that you just refer visitors to someone else’s website, they make the sale and deliver the product, and you get a percentage of the sale price as your commission (usually 50% or more for digital products).

Here’s just a few benefits

1. You’re able to start instantly without having to create a product, craft a sales letter, design the website, come up with support tools, or set up the ordering, billing & delivery system.
2. You have basically zero investment of your time because they handle the billing, support, maintenance, etc.
3. There’s no risk for you, because the product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So you already know that the visitors you send will result in commissions for you.

There’s no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!

OK, but it’s not all rosy…

After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of those visitors again. Most of them will not buy on their first visit, which means you’re losing over 90% of the traffic right off the top. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

How can you avoid this pitfall?

What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product website. By getting their contact info, you can follow up increase your odds of making the sale by sending them back to the product owner’s website multiple times. And if you want to do it like a pro, you’ll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
2. You’re generating good will by giving them high-quality content. This way, they are much more likely to make a purchase when you send them to the sales page.

Here’s what you’ll need to create affiliate tools like this:

1. A Video Squeeze Page (with video)
2. At least a few pages of great content
3. At least a 5-Part Email Followup Series

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you’ll send them to your lead capture page first. It captures the name and email of your visitors and puts them into your autoresponder, which then begins sending out the 5-part email series. Once your visitors have been subscribed to your email series, they are sent to your content pages.

The content pages provide valuable information for your visitors and make them more receptive to the sales message that you’ll link to from inside the content. And at the same time, the email series begins following up with them to get them back to the sales page, in case they don’t buy on the first visit.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it’s well worth the effort of setting it up. After setting it up, you simply send visitors to your squeeze page instead of the sales page. And the rest runs on auto-pilot.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. With a service like that, you don’t have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. On the plus side, you’ll save a ton of time and money vs. trying to build this yourself. Plus you can get started instantly. The drawback is that you won’t be the only one using these affiliate tools. But the internet is huge, so this shouldn’t really affect you.

Another way to accomplish this is to hire “outsourcers” through a website like Elance to build and put your system together for you. The important thing is that you start using affiliate tools like the ones described here right now! Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and money.