After much thoughts, research and hard work, you have finally started off your online business venture. Affiliate marketing basically resides on the principle of crowd sourcing. The more number of visitors or potential customers you bring to your website means the more number of opportunities of exposure to your company’s product or service. If you are an affiliate to a particular brand, your compensations completely depends on the traffic you route to your marketing website which in turn is redirected to your client’s website. So, basically affiliate marketing means directing traffic to your website and then redirecting it to your client’s site.

So, for a successful affiliate marketing business venture, the key is to ensure that your website receives the adequate amount of traffic or visitors and will help you stay ahead of your competitors. These can be achieved by various internet advertising methods such as the search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing or display marketing.

Before researching on how to increase the traffic to your site, it would be better to know how a potential customer ends up at any site. A person, who is searching for any particular product or service over the internet, retorts to a search engine such as Google. And he types in a keyword related to his search. Naturally, he glances through the first page and clicks on the website link that appears in that page. So, it is quite clear that traffic can be directed to your website by publicizing and advertising about your website to improve its rank on various search engines, which eventually ensures that your website attains a high rank.

It is at this point, the concept of Search engine optimization (SEO) takes the center stage. SEO is basically a technique employed to enhance the visibility of your website in various search engines. They redesign your website in such a way that its contents matches with the services offered. A detailed market analysis has to be followed to find the best action course for your website campaign. It is to be kept in mind that the rank of your website is not achieved overnight. You have to work on it continuously and you will see a visible improvement in the rank in a couple of weeks.

Paid search engine marketing is a slightly more costly but effective marketing tactic which ensures a solid increase in the traffic to your website. You pay for every click through to your site. So, it goes without saying that you have to use effective campaign optimization skills to ensure that your money is not being wasted. E-mail marketing is much of a direct marketing tactic. It aims at effective campaigning of potential customers to visit your site and thereby creating an opportunity to sell your product or service. But the thing to keep in mind is never turn this email marketing into a SPAM, which will obviously have an adverse effect on your website’s ranking. A detailed research on these various techniques will ensure a solid improvement in the amount of traffic that is directed to your website which in turn ensures a successful online affiliate marketing business.

If online marketing is such the rage, why do agents still mail real estate letters? Well, in a word or two…it’s because direct mail marketing still works!

If you’re an agent you need to market your services. You won’t get any business if people don’t know that you’re in business…and a multi pronged approach is arguably the best approach. For example, networking, handing out business cards and distributing flyers will work to your benefit.

And although mailing real estate letters is not as glamorous, or appealing, as internet marketing it can still be an integral component of your marketing plan. People still like receiving mail delivered by the postal service, despite being bombarded with more junk mail than they care to receive; so why not give them what they want?

There are other advantages to mailing real estate letters, but in this article I’ll only address three of them; decreased workload, residual payoffs and increased income. Let’s take a closer look at each to see how they can benefit you.

One. Decreased Workload – This should be an obvious one, as once you’ve written one letter you can mass mail it until your heart is content. Plus, with just a little bit of imagination you can take one letter and generate scores of other letters from it. Once you’ve done the work once you can reap the benefits for as long as you’re in the business.

Two. Residual Payoffs – A thing about letters is that they can sit around a person’s house for weeks before they get around to responding to them. And that’s okay, because they still have more shelf life than a phone call, which can be forgotten just as soon as the call is ended. In fact, it’s pretty common for prospects to call months after receiving letters, which I call “long tail marketing”. The point here is to not get discouraged if you don’t immediate results.

Three. Increased Income – Real estate sales and marketing is a numbers game and a direct mail campaign can help you spread to hundreds of people that you can potentially leverage into leads that result in listings and sales. Fifty letters a day times five days a week will result in 250 contacts per week. How many leads are you generating right now?

Summarily, real estate letter marketing campaigns can help you increase your business, to generate more prospects, get more listings and earn more commissions.

Donald Trump said, “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.” With affiliate marketing you can make good money but you will have to work for it. That is to say, you had better learn to enjoy the “game” that is online affiliate marketing. It is not as easy as merely cooking up a winning product or punching in a smart keyword buy on Google.

What works via direct response or in traditional branded campaigns cannot be directly applied to online affiliate marketing. You have to stay tuned to WIFM (what’s in it for me) at all times. The affiliate marketing distribution channel is filled with consumers who seek unbelievable value –miracles even. They want to get skinny, have whiter teeth and get a “free” gift when they join the Gevalia coffee club for seemingly almost nothing or they will click away.

Here are three main ideas I suggest you digest before getting involved with affiliate marketing as an advertiser:

1. Do not expect to make a profit by selling a product. The nature of this form of distribution and communication prevents strange, new niche products from getting attention or more importantly, conversions on their own merit. The first sale will be a loss leader. If you insist on making a sale via performance marketing (when you pay affiliates only when they make you a sale), you need not only a traditional ad spend (or an appearance on “Oprah”) but also a way of monetizing the back-end, in other words, an up-sell. As in “would you like fries with that?” How about a shiny, green garden hose to go with that ShamWow? Affiliate marketing is best viewed as a form of speed dating. You have to look enticing enough to that new customer for her to agree to go on more dates with you i.e. visit your website and join your mailing list. You need to have a system in place before you work with affiliates so that you are ready for that giant traffic surge.

2. Your product or service must appeal to a very wide demographic. This is the best way to feel like you are shooting at fish in a barrel. Successful performance marketing campaigns answer our most base desires -the need for social and financial stability right NOW. If you have already built a brand and have a heritage to maintain, then you have a little more breathing room in terms of the kind of product you offer up. If you are launching something totally new, you had better promise to make me sexy and/or rich overnight.

3. Your best bet is a lead gen campaign but, be prepared to do several tests before you get it right. The beauty of this form of advertising, branding, direct marketing, however you prefer to structure it, is that you can do much testing at very little risk. Just keep tweaking the form. Maybe a yellow “submit” button converts better than red. Perhaps your subject lines lack pluck and verve. Be open to the process. Also know that you need to have a great website or a talented call center to make the most of a lead generation campaign. If you are not concerned about making a sale instantly make sure your website is user friendly and that your campaign performance has measurable goals so you can monitor your progress.

Performance marketing online with affiliates does not create spam, people do. Understand it and use it for good rather than just trapping consumers in acai berry, weight loss pill renewals. Affiliate marketing offers a highly effective way to get qualified traffic to the right product, immediately. Once you learn the rules of the game you will love the results.

If you read my first installment you saw that I had jumped head first into the Market America arena because of my belief in some of their products due to the relief I received from a persistent medical condition. Unfortunately my jump in left me unprepared, uninformed and ill-equipped so I have spent the last month figuring out what I was doing, where I was going, and that it was predominately wrong. I will try to outline some of the obstacles that I have encountered, and provide some insight which will hopefully allow anyone in a similar situation avoid the negatives and find the positives.

My Number ONE mistake

When you are going to jump into something like this, try to get your spouse on board BEFORE you do it. My mentioning this should obviate the fact that it is not something that I did. This has led to the battle of the decade between myself and my wife and has made our start with this endeavor less than pleasant, to say the least. What I had jumped into with the absolute belief that I was doing something with unlimited positive potential, turned into a nightmare with me trying to do everything I could to get the process started, and my wife fighting me every step of the way. Although I was anxious and willing to take the steps needed to, what I believe will, change our lives for the better, she believed she was “happy” with the way things were and became belligerent in her objections to every aspect of “our” (I thought) new home based business and anything and everyone associated with it… including the person that “got me into it”. This being my sister, of course, made the situation unbearable. The more I would do to try to get started, the more she would do to sabotage my efforts. Receiving negativity, ridicule and criticism from partially informed and unenlightened acquaintances is one thing, however, living with and coming home to it every day it is quite another. One of the reasons that people get divorced has been demonstrated to me in a very personal manner. Needless to say this has been a major obstacle which has taken a lot of time and effort to get beyond (hopefully), and quite possibly could have been avoided if our individual goals had been addressed prior to my committing to the business.

The sad part is that I did not learn from previous experience as it is not the first time we have gone through this. A previous venture that I entered into put me into a position of wealth and power, but with my wife as my enemy led me to walk away from it to “salvage” my marriage. I have regretted that decision every day since and am determined and confident that WE will succeed together this time.

Additional miscues

Although I have spent endless hours online researching countless opportunities both through my own searches and then offered up in the resulting onslaught of junk mail, upon entering the Market America family I began to institute activities that I believed needed to be done to get started, without reading the “getting started guide”. I read the career manual, attended a number of seminars, and began prospecting for interest in products both in person and online with limited success. I was immersed in my efforts, attempting to do it myself while admittedly overly distracted by the aforementioned situation. I purchased numerous products both to sell myself on, and also try to sell my wife on to “convince” her of the validity of the company, the product lines and thus potential for earnings. For me it reinforced my belief, but as the saying goes, you can’t sell a drowning man a glass of water, even if it’s the best water in the world. This was not the right way to get started.

The company has a 16 year history with a proven track record, and the guide is supposed to be followed in order to emulate the people that are already successful in the company. I didn’t even notice that I had the guide until I was no longer distracted. I should have known there was a simplified set of directions. The career manual, while much thicker and in depth, may be the blueprint for the business, but is not the blueprint for getting started.

Some needles in the haystack

While in my distracted state I spent countless hours trying to find the way to get myself started. In the process I came across a couple of gems which while not directly related to Market America and their plan, are nonetheless worth mentioning as I believe they have contributed to my progress, helped in resolving my number one obstacle, and will ultimately assist in our efforts to build our business to as far as we desire. The first of these is a series of emails I received from Joshua Valentine. I don’t remember how I got onto his list, but the free information he provided in his emails was both informative and enlightening. Although I have not gone on to partner with him in the business the emails were directed at, I sincerely appreciate what he provided and look forward to seeing him at the top. The second of these gems is a free bootcamp that was offered by Mike Dillard at Magnetic Sponsoring. As with Joshua, the information provided in the free bootcamp was very informative, but in this case led me to purchase his product, and also additional products from him including Blackbelt Recruiting and Traffic Formula 2.0 which will without a doubt provide me with an unfair advantage over anyone lacking the knowledge contained in them.

My take on my decision to sign up and what I have learned thus far

Although off to a somewhat rocky start, I am sure that I made the right move. Market America has some good people, and some not so good, some that just want a little extra income, and some that want to go all the way. And some eventually drop out, it’s not for everyone. You get out of it what you are willing to put in just like in any other business.

My exposure to the company thus far however has been overwhelmingly positive, you just have to read the directions and look in the right places to get linked up with the best people that are in line with your goals. JR Ridinger, the founder of Market America, is truly a man that believes in his vision of what the company can provide to anyone willing to follow the plan that has made a great number of properly motivated people wealthy beyond anything they could have attained in a traditional job. We intend to be among them. When have you ever seen a privately owned company volunteer to be audited every year and provide that to anyone that wants to see it? They do it. What company gives the people at the bottom the opportunity to out-earn the people above them if they have that motivation? They do it. What company has multi-millionaire people with guaranteed residual income working directly with teams of new entries? They do it. Invaluable training is available to those willing to “just show up”. One of the themes that they try to drill into you is – You have to decide who you are and what you want, write your goals down. Make your short term goals attainable, and your long term goals will become your reality. And lead you to believe it by showing where they came from, a corrections officer, a body shop worker, a waitress from a restaurant near where I grew up. Real people that are living the dream.

Unfortunately if I sound like a cheerleader for the company now to you it is because the atmosphere that is generated by the people of the company that are already successful because they followed the plan is contagious, and I just went to a seminar with Andy Docos as the featured leader, and he is inspiring! But am I being brainwashed? Will this work to help us attain our goals? I’m certainly not a guru yet but we are making progress…let’s see if it lasts until my next update.