Since I’ve started the O`Bannon’s Leap blog the biggest question I receive is “what advice do you have for affiliate marketing on a low/no budget?”
While I don’t specialize in affiliate marketing, I do make a substantial secondary income with it each month (typically between $700.00 and $800.00) so let me offer here what I can about how I do it, and more importantly, how I do it without ever spending more than $25 per month on advertising.
To be clear, it’s not that I can’t afford to spend more on advertising, or that it would be a waste of money to do so since I believe it would raise my income if I did. The thing is, as I mentioned affiliate marketing isn’t my primary focus so I simply don’t invest a lot of time or energy into it. I started doing it because I saw it as a cross-merchandising tactic to generate some additional income, sort of the way that your local grocery store probably has the Bakery department near the frozen foods section, because they know “cake and ice cream” go together and if you’re there for one you might be encourage to buy the other if it is highly visible.
Since I come from a retail background, cross-merchandising is a natural thing to me. It’s an easy way to offer more items of value to people, increase my own profits, and all while not having to invest a lot of time or money into it.
So, what’s my secret for making money on affiliate marketing? It really isn’t a secret at all. It’s the same underlying principals that the majority of successful businesses have employed since the beginning of time:
1) Under-promise
2) Over deliver
3) Be honest
That’s really it, and it’s very simple to apply to online efforts. Make sure the product(s) you’re marketing are of real value for the cost. Test or use them yourself first. Afterwards, ask yourself if you’d be willing to spend the money for them or not. If there’s any hesitations then you shouldn’t be promoting them to others.
Be honest in your marketing copy–never resort to “Get rich overnight for $1″ advertising tactics–they’ll hurt you far more than help you in the long run. Tell people what you really think of the product, and why it is of value for the money in your opinion.
Make sure the product actually provides everything it offers. Do this while testing or using it yourself before promoting it. If the supplier’s web site says the eBook will “even cook your Dinner”, it darn well better do that if you’re going to risk your reputation with it.
While these ideas may be counter to what many others say about marketing, and without a doubt they won’t lead to instant millions for you…what sticking to these principals will do is build a steady and growing base of loyal followers (buyers) who trust your recommendations and will even begin telling others to trust them for you.
Okay, so where am I spending my money though each month for advertising that works? The same place most people do, PPC (Pay Per Click) venues like Google’s AdWords for example. The key is in finding how to spend the absolute least amount of money (and time in my case) to get the maximum amount of qualified traffic.
How to do that is a little beyond the scope of this posting, but I’ll tell you where I got some great tips from, Chris Mcneeney’s “Affiliate Commandments“. Mcneeney is the author of two record selling programs, “Affiliate Project X” and “Day Job Killer”, and he knows this stuff inside and out.
“Affiliate Commandments” is a 16 page eBook that takes you from start to finish on maximizing your AdWords (PPC) efforts. PPC marketing isn’t rocket science, but like anything else, knowing what you’re doing (and why you’re doing it the way you are) will ensure you aren’t wasting a penny of your budget, or a moment of your time on doing it wrong. For such a small eBook, it’s the most concise and thorough walk-through for AdWords I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a bunch). At the time of this writing “Affiliate Commandments” is priced around $10, I think it would be a deal at 5 times that cost for what it provides, and suggest that if you’re serious about affiliate marketing online you should invest the few dollars and take a couple of hours to read, re-read and digest this eBook.
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