How to Easily Increase Your
Affiliate Commissions in Two Days or Less
Mark Joyner, CEO, Aesop.Com
Clearly, the people benefiting the most from affiliate
programs are the companies running
them. My goal here is to help you - the affiliate - earn
more money. If you've gotten
past the idea that you can simply slap a banner up on
your site and start earning money, but you're not sure
what to do next, this article is
for you.
Allow me to cut right to the chase. Here is a plan of
action. This may seem like a lot of
work, but don't worry! At the very end, I'll show you
how to automate all of these steps. For now, just read
through to get a general idea of how you need to
proceed:
Day 1
Step 1- How to organize your affiliate efforts.
Begin with organizing all contact information, payment
information, and vital statistics about your affiliate
programs in one central location. This may seem like a
silly step, but believe me; you don't want to spend your
time digging through emails for contact information and
codes. You should also know, with just a few mouse
clicks, how much is owed you by the various affiliate
programs in which you are participating.
Step 2 - Select one affiliate program on which to
focus your efforts for the next 3 weeks. In order to
apply some of the various principles I will show you in
a few moments, you need to select one area of focus.
It's best to select an affiliate program that has
several products, instant online tracking of sales,
instant notification of sales, and the ability to
segment your promotions. Internet Marketing ProShop has
all of this and more.
Step 3 - Select three promotion methods and two
products to promote. This is crucial. This will make
sense in a few moments. If you can't think of three
promotion methods, here are a few ideas:
- An ad in someone else's eZine
- A mailing to your own subscription list
- A text link on your site with some ad copy
- A banner on your site
- A product review on your site
- An FFA submission
Now, some of these methods are more effective than
others. But you don't need me to tell you that. I'll
show you how to find out for yourself.
Step 4 - For each promotion method and each
product, develop two ads. So, since you have three
promotion methods, two products, and two ads for each -
you will have to write 12 ads total. So, for each ad,
let's give it a code. If it's method one, product
one, ad one, you can call it:
M1P1A1
For method one, product one, ad two, you can call
it:
M1P1A2
For example, if you plan to promote my marketing course
1,001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics using ads in
someone else's eZine, you will need two ads. One would
be M1P1A1, and the other would be M1P1A2. If you also
plan to promote it using a review on your site, the
first review would be M2P1A1 (method 2, product 1, ad 1)
and the second would be M2P1A2 (method 2, product 1, ad
2).
This is just one way to code your ads. You can do this
any way you like as long as you can distinguish
precisely which campaign these codes refer to.
This sounds like a lot of writing. Don't be daunted by
this! Just crank it out. Don’t think
too much about each ad. We'll find out in a while which
one is good and which one is bad.
You won't decide this - your customers will! Don't
be afraid to try something wild.
Now, when you promote each product, you'll need to tie
each promotion to the code you created. With the
Internet Marketing ProShop Partner program, you can
segment your campaigns by adding an _code to the end of
the URL you use to promote each product.
For example, if you are promoting 1,001 Killer Internet
Marketing Tactics, you would use this URL:
..../kt.cgi?sponsorID
To segment your campaigns, you would add your campaign
code on the end of that URL for each campaign:
..../kt.cgi?sponsorID_M1P1A1 (for campaign one)
..../kt.cgi?sponsorID_M1P1A2 (for campaign two)
Note: The above method is only valid for our affiliate
program, so don't try this with any
other affiliate program. We don't know of any other
affiliate programs that allow you to
segment your campaigns, this way, so please use caution
here.
Step 5 - Before you finish for the day, promote
the product using your "ad 1" for each
product. You'll need to record:
Impressions. If you're advertising on a web page,
this will be the number of times your ad
appeared on the page - or the number of times the page
was viewed if your ad comes up each time the page is
viewed. If you're advertising using some form of email,
impressions = number of emails sent.
Clicks. You should be able to get this from the
affiliate program you are promoting.
Amount Earned. Again, your affiliate program
should provide this information to you in real
time.
Now, in order to do a valid test, you'll need to promote
to a fairly significant number of people. I would
recommend that at least 300 people see each ad.
Otherwise, you won't have enough information to make a
valid judgment. Ideally, you should hit about 2,000 with
each ad, but your resources may not allow for
this.
*Learning point: If you're going to send an ad via a
newsletter, see if you can run a
"split". That is, get one ad sent to 1/2
of the list and another sent to the other 1/2. That is
the most accurate way to compare the effectiveness of
any pair of ads.
Day 2
Step 6 - Run your "B" ads. Now that you
have run your "A" ads and have given them a
bit of time to take effect, run your B ads. Do this
first thing this morning!
By the end of the day, you should have some good results
from both campaigns to compare and see where you
stand.
By comparing and analyzing all of the information you
have just compiled, you will be able to start to have a
good idea about:
Which product seems to sell more. Which type of campaign
is most effective Which type of ad for each campaign is
most effective This short bit of testing won't allow you
to make clear conclusions, but it will put you on the
right track. Immediately, you should start using the ads
that sell as much as you can. If ad A is making you 5
cents per impression and ad B is making you 5 dollars
per impression - using ad B just increased your
affiliate commissions by 9900%! OK, that's a dramatic
example, but you get the point, right? If you aren't
tracking these things, you'll never know. If you track
and continue to refine, before you know it, you'll have
an arsenal of ads that you know pull
well to use over and over again. Once you do the leg
work, it's easy!
As you see, though, this can get quite complex.
How does one actually analyze these campaigns?
What if you have scores of affiliate programs and quite
a few campaigns for each?
Don't worry. As I told you at the beginning, there is an
easy, cost effective way to keep
track of all of these things with just a few mouse
clicks. It's called Affiliate Assistant.
I highly recommend checking this out as it will, among
other things, allow you to quickly and easily implement
the above plan in one central location. With just a few
mouse clicks you can compare and analyze all of your
various affiliate ad campaigns so you'll know which are
making you money and which are wasting you time.
You could do all of the same things yourself with a good
database program and multiple
spreadsheets, but Affiliate Assistant will save you
quite a bit of time and money without having to go
through all that.
Either way, you should implement some type of
organizational and tracking plan like this for your
affiliate advertising efforts immediately. The
amount of time you put into this will pay off
exponentially in terms of higher commissions.
Article by Mark Joyner, CEO of Aesop Marketing
Corporation and creator of 1001 Killer Internet
Marketing Tactics - a *must have* tool for anyone
serious about doing business on the Internet. Do
yourself a favor and check this one out today:
CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT ! |
