News From the Front-Line

One of the best things about the Blue Book survey is hearing from affiliates world-wide. It is an opportunity like no other to get an understanding of what is working and what people are struggling with. This year we took it a stage further, asking several of our respondents to dig a bit deeper and to tell us how they got started, what works for them now and how they plan on succeeding in the future.

 Frank Terranova

Frank Terranova has been an affiliate since 2000 and claims to make over $100,000 a year (we only provided a very broadly segmented response choice to the question on income level, so take the figures provided as only the vaguest of indications). He promotes offers in all kinds of niches and also runs his own online marketing training business at www.mastermindpros. com.

What are the biggest challenges you have faced in affiliate marketing? The biggest challenge is change: online advertising and media is continually evolving so what works now may not work tomorrow. The challenge is to stay knowledgeable and informed. Maintaining your ability to be viable and profitable takes a commitment to work and to be aware of who your customers are. Only then can you provide your customers what they are seeking.

How did you learn to be an affiliate? I apply the skills I learned through a lifetime of executive management, executive consulting, sales training and trial and error.

What advice would you give to other affiliates? I would give advice in three main areas:

1. Learn then earn Affiliate marketing is a real business and you have to understand how it works. Don’t believe promises of easy riches or of effortless earning programs. Those are hyped up sales messages aimed at all those folks who are looking for something for almost nothing. There are a lot of skills and technologies that you need to master in order to do well in this business. Learn them.

2. Be careful what you promote. Think of this as a real sales job (it is) and that you are working on commissions (you are). If you take it seriously, then you shouldn’t mess around with networks or advertisers that don’t know what they are doing and/or that don’t offer you a good deal. Be as selective online as you would be offline in the brick and mortar business world when it comes to choosing who you want to work with and what it is you want to sell. Choose those that give you the best chance at success.

3. Diversify Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I like to remember the letters, RMTTE. They stand for Research - Market - Test - Tweak - Earn. Research what you want to sell, who you want to sell it to, where you find them and when they are there; then bring the product to market. Once the campaign has begun you should test how your strategy is working, tweaking or adjusting your campaign until you get it right so that you can finally earn.

How are you trying to improve as an affiliate? I am president of an online internet marketing training school so my staff and I are very focused on staying up do date on trends in the industry. I have always found it to be very helpful to have a brainstorming or what we brand as a mastermind group to bounce ideas around with. And professional training is always a good idea.

What could networks do better? Networks could do a much better job of protecting their salespeople (affiliates). I see so many sales and landing pages that carry office phone numbers or lead capture forms - what we call “outs” - all over the place. That is not right. I want sales pages and products that give the customer only the choices to buy or not to buy. Don’t take my work and my traffic and then turn it into your lead.

 Robert Herrie

Robert Herrie has been involved in online marketing for about five years and focuses primarily on lead generation. He says he definitely makes more than $100,000 a year. He has a number of different companies represented online, and likes to see at least $50,000 - $75,000 per year, per website. One of his web sites is www.centralmasshomewarranty. com.

What are the biggest challenges you have faced in affiliate marketing? Getting started is the hardest thing: making that first $100. For me, the week that I finally succeeded in making my first $100 was the beginning of a new life, but it took me three years and 176 websites created to get there. I just couldn’t find the right niche and so I just kept trying new ones. I worked 5-7 hours every days – more on weekends - and then finally figured out what would work for me. What changed things for me was someone telling me, “Stop learning. You already have all the knowledge you need. You just need to concentrate on applying what you know.” That may be the most valuable advice of all for newbie affiliates.

How did you learn to be an affiliate? Just by asking questions and learning from as many people as I could. Some information I listened to and some of it I discarded. You have to be selective. After that, it was just a lot of trial and error.

What advice would you give to other affiliates? Stick with it. And you will succeed. Even if, like me, you find yourself three years in and not making a single penny, keep going. Without commitment and effort you do not stand a chance in this industry. I’d also say that you should pick just one niche and stick with it until you make money. It is almost always better to learn more about one niche and to improve what you have already done, rather than start over in a new niche. But of course, finding the right niche and the right type of offers to promote is a big challenge, and even more so when you are just getting started.

How are you trying to improve as an affiliate? I am learning every day. I watch my competitors very, very closely and I try to stay one step ahead of them if I can. This is not easy, so it forces one to keep on learning.

What could networks do better? The thing that disappoints me with all the networks is that they struggle to get back to you most of the time. Responsiveness is typically pretty poor. Once you start making money for them things tend change a little, but I feel that if they would offer more help to affiliates it would be a real competitive advantage.

 Ryan Stevenson

Ryan Stevenson started out in online marketing as a teenager over 16 years ago. He works full-time online, making over $100,000 a year. In 2010, he started developing and selling his own affiliate marketing products based on his experiences and knowledge as an affiliate.

What kind of offers do you promote? In general, I usually promote two different kinds of offers. On the one hand, I run a bunch of different Amazon affiliate sites that promote physical products in very specific niches. Then on the other hand I also run an Amazon newsletter and have developed my own WordPress plugin, so I promote internet and affiliate marketing related products through those email lists. I try to avoid following the crowd with most of my promotions, especially in the marketing niche because of the high competition.

What are the biggest challenges you have faced in affiliate marketing? When I first started with affiliate marketing, it wasn’t very hard to grab some great search engine rankings and convert it into easy commissions. Over the years, I feel like the biggest challenge has been to overcome and resist a lot of the low quality tactics that other marketers are using. To be more specific, I’m referring to automatically generated content or black hat search engine optimization tricks. It is easy to fall victim to this type of thing if you are not careful because the dream of earning a lot of money with minimal effort is pretty tempting for most people. However, I really feel like the true secret to success as an affiliate is to avoid these tactics. It requires a lot of hard work to do it right, but the rewards are more than worth it.

How did you learn to be an affiliate? I am self-taught. When I first started there really weren’t a lot of marketing products that taught you specific strategies to use to make money online. Most of that type of thing that did exist turned out to be some sort of scam. As a result, I basically just stumbled upon affiliate marketing. I was already somewhat experienced with computer and website programming, even as a teenager, so it really all got started when I made my first website. I did it for fun in the beginning. When I had regular traffic on the site, I started researching ways that I could monetize it, which led to affiliate marketing. I started with PPC and PPV ads, which was the main type of internet advertising in those days

What advice would you give to other affiliates?

1. Create Unique Content Stop copying other people. Affiliate marketing tends to attract people that want to make money without actually working. As a result, a large majority of them seem to copy the work of others for their promotions. This could be things like using automated blog content on a Word- Press site or using pre-made email sales letters provided by merchants. The fact is that affiliates that put in the effort to create their own unique content for a promotion are going to be the ones that have the best opportunity to earn the most money.

If you run an affiliate website, write your own unique content to target each product. Instead of just touching on general information, dig as deep as you can. When you can make some type of connection with your site visitors, you’ll find that your affiliate conversion rates will rise. They notice when you go beyond what other affiliates do to promote offers, and search engines will take more notice of you as well.

2. Be Patient & Persistent I also recommend that other affiliates work patiently. Some people expect to build a site with a couple of pages and start earning hundreds or thousands of dollars a month right away. Although it is possible for something like this to happen, most people are going to obtain their success more gradually. Too many people start projects and abandon them before they even have a chance to succeed. This causes them to jump around from one thing to another, investing time and money as they go. Unfortunately, this type of tactic leads to failure in almost all situations. Find something that you want to pursue and work hard on it until it is successful before you even think above moving on to something else. I learned this lesson the hard way many years ago, but it is much better to understand it from day one.

 3. Sell your Own Products But only when you are ready. While I still make quite a bit each year as an affiliate, over 35% of my income this past year was from the sales of my own products. Selling your own products is a lucrative industry, but I really try to advise beginners to avoid it. Too many people try to make their own products before they even have the knowledge and experience to back up their claims, which is a major reason why so many low quality marketing products are out there.

How are you trying to improve as an affiliate? Over the last few years, I’ve really been trying to step up my game as an affiliate by thoroughly researching offers that I want to promote and being picky about the ones that I actually decide to promote in the end. There are so many things out there that you can promote as an affiliate. If you try to promote all of them, even within a specific niche, you can easily find yourself overwhelmed and overextended. Instead, I am searching for high quality products developed by people that take pride in what they do. This is always something that I have strived to do when developing my own products, so when I promote something from another merchant to my customers they are expecting me to only promote other high quality products. It is hard work trying to stay on top of it, but the results are absolutely amazing. This is how people can break out of 1-5% conversion rates and get into really lucrative promotions that deliver 15-30% conversions.

What could networks do better? I think it is hard for the bigger networks to provide good service. Amazon has a great program but their generated affiliate links don’t convert well for me. Clickbank is big and popular but they seem to provide minimal customer support and charge vendors high monthly fees for a decent level of promotion. And while Commission Junction probably ranks as one of the more high quality networks in my opinion, their downside is the lack of reporting when it comes to refunds. I’m finding that smaller networks can offer better service.

 Chaim Maizlits

Chaim Maizlits is based in Israel and has been involved with affiliate marketing for about four years. He promotes mostly CPA offers in the financial services sector together with some offers through Clickbank. He is also in the process of developing a few CPA offers of his own.

What are the biggest challenges you have faced in affiliate marketing? Focusing! Staying on target is probably the hardest part for me. In this business there are so many opportunities that you come across every day. It is very important to keep focused on just one thing.

How did you learn to be an affiliate? I am totally home schooled. That means lots of hours on the Internet and a lot of hard work trying and failing. Trial and error is the best way to learn.

What advice would you give to other affiliates? I tell new affiliates to set themselves two or three things to get accomplished in the next four days, and then just totally focus on getting them done. If they come across something new that they think mightbe useful, then I tell them to write it down and not look at it until they have finished what they set out to do. The other key is to find a niche and then stick to it. Always test and improve on what you are doing, and then once you are successful, only then should you move on to try another niche.

How are you trying to improve as an affiliate? I split-test everything and then improve from there. I dedicate at least a few minutes every day to learning new things. You just can’t stand still if you wish to remain successful.

What could networks do better? I think that networks should use and be actively developing the advanced technology of affiliate marketing. That means they should be constantly evolving and introducing new ways to promote their advertisers.

 Jean Kelsey

Jean Kelsey has been an affiliate for three years. She focuses on CPS campaigns promoting wellness products and services that help people to feel better & live longer.

What are the biggest challenges you have faced in affiliate marketing? There are far too many websites that don’t take a good, honest approach to selling and this makes it harder for the rest of us. Often a customer gets scammed online and then automatically assumes that other offers must be scams also. I think that merchants and networks could be much proactive in guiding affiliates in the right way to promote particular offers. There are a lot of people who want to be affiliates but fail because they’re not sure how to start. More guidance would help them too.

How did you learn to be an affiliate? I did a lot of research, made connections on Twitter and then built relationships with successful affiliates. It was the guidance of others that allowed me to succeed. In many cases, they helped me and I helped them without even asking.

What advice would you give to other affiliates? There is such a wide selection of products and services to promote that you have to choose very carefully. You need to evaluate your strategy and find those offers that compliment what you are doing. Go the same route as a customer and also learn all you can about the company and product you are promoting. The more depth you have, the better.

How are you trying to improve as an affiliate? I am working on the presentation of products and services so that potential customers have more clarity on why they should buy. One gets little or no guidance from most merchants and so often it is necessary to review just how best to educate the customer so they can make informed buying decisions. If customers feel that they are able to make smart choices, then they will return.

What could networks do better? It seems as though everyone now has their own affiliate tracking platform but nobody wants to invest in actually supporting affiliates with help, guidance or even responding to emails. Affiliates are the front line – networks really need to understand this. I also think that networks could do more to provide technology solutions for things like link cloaking and discreet social media links. Networks have the resources to develop these sorts of tools so why not give them to their affiliates?