To be honest, I’m doing some background tests in my article and blog writing just to see if a well known theory works. So many of us take on this Internet marketing challenge and produce “me too” blogs and articles. I reckon that to truly stand out, you have be bold, do a little something different and stand out from the crowd.

Anyway, let’s get back to the blog post of affiliate marketing….

I’m not gonna lie and say my journey has been smooth, plain sailing and without a few hiccups cause I’d be lying. But I reckon that in order for us all to improve we have make mistakes and test the hell out of everything. Like children do I suppose. Well, affiliate marketing is no different.

Affiliate marketing has got to be the most easiest of ways to start and grow a successful business out there and when I say easy, once you’ve mastered all of the secret ninja tactics the guru’s won’t tell you you’re made. You’ve just got to find out what those tactics are.

The Bobby Basics

In this brief post I’m gonna walk through the bobby basics of affiliate marketing and how you can get started and get ahead.

The very first tool you need in your armoury is the ability to learn and be trained. This may seem a little obvious, but there’s so many of us out there that literally just skip from one million dollar project to the next without even finishing the first. I’ll hold my hands up and say I’m one of them. Learning the tricks of the trade is an important element of this and your willingness to recognise what will give you faster and unique advantages over your affiliate colleagues out there is paramount to your success.

I read a lot of Chris Rempel’s stuff (link at the bottom of post), and the reverse niche engineering idea he mentions literally changed my whole affiliate marketing business around. Copy and learn from the best and you won’t go far wrong. What’s this reverse engineering you ask? In a word a few words, copy and mimic the best affiliate marketers out there and promote the same products they promote in a similar fashion. Niche marketing is ok in a highly profitable niche, but if you’re promoting topics with ok traffic and an average affiliate payout you’re gonna waste a lot of valuable time with very little results. Been there got the t-shirt.

I’ve marketed different things from “devilled eggs” to “recipe ideas” and fell flat on my face. I’m not saying you can’t make money from these types of markets, I’m saying that there are much better markets to target with better profit margins.

The second thing you’ve got to have is the ability to invest true time and effort. Trust me, if this was easy, everybody would be doing it. I know I’ve tried and failed a few times, but now using the reverse engineering technique and using OCI’s (I’ll talk about this in another post later) I’m starting to see the fruits of my labour. This is going to take up a lot of your time. if you can afford to do so I’d outsource a lot of the mundane tasks. if you can’t afford to do that, then you’re gonna have to do it all yourself. I still do 80% of the tasks needed. Not because I want to, but to keep abreast of what’s new and different techniques you can use to grow the business.

Please take note:

Just because a search term has a lot of traffic doesn’t mean the people searching that term are going to buy anything. This is a hard lesson I learned late on and regret not finding out about this sooner. For example:

People searching for “authentic designer bag” and “authentic designer handbags” bring up completely different results. Both searches have similar traffic but out of the two keywords, one is 10X more profitable than the other. Powerful stuff eh! Within the last few weeks I’ve just realised just how much time I’ve been waisting on low value search terms.

The third thing you need is self-determination.  Not only are you up against individuals, you’re also up against large corporations, million dollar budgets and very complicated clever software. In order for you to survive and thrive you’ve got to be determined. The ability to motivate yourself is one of the hardest attributes out there. I’m willing to keep motivated and help motivate you if you’re willing. the first step is to actually join different groups and join in discussions. Ask questions and be prepared to give answers. If we help each other with interesting blog posts and giving lots of useful information we’ll contiually learn and keep up that self-determination.

Have Discipline And You’ll Succeed!

The fourth thing you’ve got to have is discipline.  You’ve got to treat this like a business. Take it seriously and you’ll reap the rewards. Set targets and follow them to the rule. Don’t set targets that are unachievable with very little affiliate marketing knowledge. Try and go slow and consider making $10 a day and then progress to $25 to $50 etc.

Stay Optimistic Please!

The fifth and last thing you’ve got to possess is optimism.  Negative attitudes will kill your business instantly. If you’re serious about affiliate marketing you’ve got to stay positive and be optimistic. Most of your loved ones won’t even know what “affiliate marketing” is and will be negative about the topis from the start. “The big unknown”. Don’t let this get you down, keep making smaill simple steps and you’ll start to see some results within a few weeks.

Over the next few weeks on my blog I’m going to show you just some of the little elements I’ve been testing and show you what I found works and what doesn’t. There’s obviously gonna be many factors involved. But I’m hoping it’ll be an honest review of my success and failures.

Useful resources I’ve talked about:

The ‘Reverse Selection’ Blueprint by Chris Rempel http://www.thelazymarketer.com

Google keyword tool: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

Would do you guys think and would more posts about my experiments like this be helpful?

DesDrec

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