I read a great blog posting by Steven Aitchison this morning for beginning affiliate marketers titled “Your first $400 with Affiliate Marketing” where he really breaks down the entire process and clears up the misconception that only insiders with secret knowledge can make money through affiliate marketing.

I’ve linked to the posting above and really urge you to read it if you’re interested in affiliate marketing at all.

There are a few points I don’t necessarily agree with Steven on, for example I don’t think someone just starting out should stay away from certain markets like losing weight just because of the existing competition. In my experience, if you’re passionate and/or knowledgeable on any topic you can create content that builds a following of traffic to your site and converts into revenue for you. Seriously, if you’re really passionate about a topic you can bring something to the table that the most experienced marketers probably aren’t, and that will resonate with people online and allow you to carve a piece of the niche out for yourself.

Something that I don’t really disagree with anything Steven said on, but do think is a bad idea for someone just starting out is to use Google AdWords for driving traffic to your pages. Google AdWords can be a very effective way to gain visitors, but it’s a complicated system with literally tons of nuances that you must master before you’re going to do well with it. Most people lose a lot of money in the early stages on AdWords, and even experienced marketers will have campaigns from time to time that don’t break even. In my opinion, focusing more on some basic SEO for your site pages, perhaps generating some buzz for your site among online social communities and some free article marketing are the best methods for a beginner to use. Plus, the lessons you learn about your target market, site traffic (how it flows and converts), as well as how people are finding your site and responding to the content of your site and those articles you published will be of great value to you in moving forward for getting even more free (natural) search traffic and save you money on AdWords or other PPC campaigns you may run in the future.

Remember, article marketing is all about targeting keyword phrases that guide visitors to performing specific actions on your site (making a purchase). You can learn an awful lot about the market you’re trying to sell to and the keywords that work best if you track your articles, watch which ones generate the most traffic to your site and which ones tend to send the highest percentage of buying visitors to you.

One key point in Steven’s posting that I think everyone should read twice is the portion on Landing Pages. He not only hits the nail on the head in explaining what they are and how to best use them, but actually gives a live example. It’s rare for folks to share so much and I applaud Steven for his transparent approach here.

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Technorati Tags: AdWords, affiliate marketing, Steven Aitchison

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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by Sean Wallace

Whether you’re new to marketing or just new to online marketing you’ve probably heard about Google AdWords. It’s the only sure pipe-line for targeted traffic on the web, and those who learn to maximize it are making serious returns on their investments.

Using Google AdWords can seem easy on first glance. Pick a few keywords and phrases related to your site or product and bid for clicks on them. How hard could it be?

Well, it’s not hard, but it can be extremely costly and fruitless if that’s as far as you go. You see, there are others out there bidding on your same keywords and phrases, that drives the price up. In addition, without knowing how to narrow and target your keywords to their best potential you’ll be paying to drive useless traffic to your site. (more…)

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Webmasters seem to be in a tizzy over the new algorithm Google is using for evaluating advertisers landing page quality, which affects the cost of their PPC (pay per click) campaigns.

So far, and it really is too early to tell, but so far it seems this will likely force advertisers’ keyword bidding to become more focused and targeted.

This is something I’ve done all along and it seems to me in the end it’ll be better for both advertisers and consumers searching from Google. (more…)

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