Affiliate Marketing Introduction

Affiliate Marketing has many different types of business models for you to choose, Pay Per Sale, Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead and even Pay Per Install, the affiliate lifecycle is based on referrals and one way or another you’re basically generating business for someone else.

Both sides of this equation will be crunching numbers, on the affiliate side you will be weighing up how much the Cost Per Click, Earning Per Click, competition, traffic acquisition, market reach ect.

On the advertisers side they will have a set revenue cycle that is calculated per generated lead or sale, these leads can also be washed and used again so the affiliate generally loses out heavily as the money stream is pushed through at least 2 to 3 layers and everyone down that line is getting paid, the affiliate is on the very tip of this stream which is why you can generate a lead for $20 and the advertiser can be making net of $400 on 1 in 5 with a life cycle of $10,000 for example/ This is why insurance and pharmaceuticals are so BIG, the life cycle of a valid lead can be worth thousands and thousands, $400-$500 a year for 20-30 years is a ton of money when you multiply it by thousands or even hundreds, a decent broker will make half a million a year easy and the affiliate only gets paid on the frontend, so once they hit submit you’re out of the game.

It’s like email submits it’s all backended strongly through co-reg, you get paid $2 or whatever on the front end freebie but once a lead completes the full backend they might be worth 100x to a 1000x times the $2, so you only need to hit maybe 1 in 50 to 500 before you can start to double up then rewash them though another system.

POINT, nothing is ever FREE in the affiliate industry except maybe Bogan Marketing: D.

But being an affiliate is a great way to get a taste of this business and how it all works, it’s a money driven industry that is still in its infancy but worth billions that will only grow and grow as mobile and streaming media takes over more and more households..

There is also no industry standards yet, I have only done internet marketing though RMIT university and scored 98% way back in the early 2000s then done another course in 2008 called professional marketing or something with a score of 99 out of 100 but you cannot fail it lol, so you don’t need to spend years studying if you don’t want too, it’s better to get hands on asap so you can move into other areas.

I think my outlay over the past 1-2 years on tools and training would only be 10-20k, so it’s not even close to expensive when compared to setting up another businesses, plus you can now do the majority of stuff for free if you’re just starting out, hosting is cheap, you can get free accounts for list building, I am giving you a ton of free tools too, so you will be fine.

A New Mindset

The only other discipline I think any starting affiliate should consider looking into is psychology, I studied psychology 101 way back in the day which was basically the equivalent to a first year psych student, it’s very important to understand emotions, cognition, group cognition and even impulse and personality as it helps you identify with markets and different personalities, I also think learning and communication behaviour is important to a degree, because you need to think outside the box when it comes to any form of asynchronous marketing.

The only other advise you really need right now is, become a total and complete realist, it’s ok to dream, however from a business perspective you must always deal in probabilities, most people tend to move into unrealistic fantasy when reality becomes too hard for them to handle, this happens to a lot of affiliates, they seem to get trapped in a self destructive cycle, you also get marketed too heavily from some of the best in the world that sell a story usually containing unrealistic connotations and huge failure rates, so some affiliates can hit pretty low points at times, so you need to understand that anything is possible, however nothing is also possible, so you MUST focus on the neutral ground, that’s probabilities and realism.

To make this clear, you can go and enter into the lottery, so it’s possible you will win 10 million dollars because you have a ticket, but you probably won’t, from a the realist perspective you will have well over a 1 in 45 million chance of ever winning.

It’s also important not to get emotionally attached to a business online, it clouts your judgment, makes you do, say and think stupid/idiotic even irrational things, and you can become unrealistic. FOCUS on what’s real, what you can control and always separate your ego and emotion from any business, you should be able to walk away anytime without it effecting your state of mind, you have to be able to move on quickly, because the opportunities are literally endless.

And don’t subscribe to the train of thought of chasing your passion, don’t move into markets you’re passionate about immediately, you might know a lot about a certain subject, however there is always someone smarter, better equipped and more advanced in each market, every market you target needs to come from the realist in you, it MUST be a pure business decision based on facts and nothing else.

The Sell from a Realist Perspective

This is one of the processes you may find yourself going through, I am going to use the affiliate industry as that is what we are talking about, this is an extreme example but it will help explain the process so you can understand and possibly relate to it better.

The seller will focus on the connection, common ground, understanding, urgency, scarcity, simplicity, solution and risk. They will try for a unique selling point or position. However some of them don’t have one, which can become obvious when they start to make outlandish claims.

They will introduce a problem, most people in affiliate marketing find money as a problem, a lot of affiliates seem to have money problems, especially new ones, money appeals to your ego, and greed, both areas a marketer MUST focus on.

You will find the headline is generally a statement, such as “Underground marketer reveals closest kept secretes to $500,000 a year online doing only 2 hours of work a day”

First, the person is no longer underground, probably never was, it’s certainly not a secrete anymore, but its floating around in your head, your impulse is ticking, what if this is real, what if, what if… Remember probabilities not possibilities.

Secondly if they where only doing 2 hours a day then why aren’t they doing 10 and making MILLIONS.

Next off the line you will get hit with a personal story, such as “have you struggled to make monies online, I have too, until I discovered something that was so simple it was looking me right in the face, it slapped me so hard I fell off my chair, after 2 years I finally realize what I was doing wrong, don’t make the same mistake I did… blah blah”

This is the part where I start thinking World Vision because they’re going for the connection, common ground, why should I donate my money to this probable scammer when I buy a slab of beer instead and chill, they have already told me they have a secrete, they are underground and are mad lazy working 2 hours a day, which I know is all false, underground is an immediate, I don’t make monies because you never advertise the fact you’re underground, or they seller has a different concept to me on what underground really is, and that’s understandable, because in my case I am not your normal online user.

Extreme example is there any other way, I had to tone it down but this in my humble opinion puts some perspective on what I think is underground!

When was the last time you bought an ebook at the unbelievable price of $97.95 from an underground SEO genius that would XSS vulnerable scripts and inject backlinks to money sites for your underground SEOZ all automatically literally gaining you 10,000+ backlinks a day all on autopilot? Never right? So my point being guys that advertise they’re underground are about as underground as a jumbo jet in my opinion.

Anyway let’s get back on topic and discuss our surfaced underground marketer, next they will introduce the solution, however in this case it’s always a solution to a problem generally fabricated by the marketer and really only appeals to the lazy in us or just plain ignoramuses, that’s a ton of the population, me included, yeh I am lazy really lazy and procrastinate way too much, and I can be a real ignoramus at times.

After the solution you get hit with the next layer.

“I will give you my secret formula right now for not $199.95, not even $149.95, no you can have it all for just $89.00, but hurry, because this is being taken off the market forever in 3 days 3 hours 3 minutes and 33 seconds”

Scarcity and urgency is strong in the mind, people hate to miss out, and this is where you are talking right to the ego, the impulse, most people never live in the moment, they are always living in the past and future, that’s how you can make the money..

But that’s still not enough, we need more, now you start to get introduced to the BONUS.

“BUT as a special bonus if you buy right now” Or “if you’re in the first 50 lucky buyers right now ect ect…” you will get …..

“This valued at $299.95”

“This valued at $99.95”

“This valued at $49.95”

“This valued at $59.95”

“This valued at $29.95”

Now the lead is wtf, the ego is clicked, they will be felling a little bit desperate and might be starting to think I don’t want to miss out on this, so the seller/marketer continues to feed the ego, if the buyer has gone this far then the sale is getting close, it’s almost a sale,  just have to close it.

So the pitch is not over, it’s just getting warmed up, to really slam home the sale you get introduced to the risk factor, which is always zero and introduced to the buyers, not tire kickers, you introduce this later so the effect hits the right audience and is not wasted, they still had doubts in their mind, I don’t want to get ripped off though?

“Buy now at this special price and you can have a full refund for 60 days if you’re not satisfied, no questions asked, immediate full refund, I trust you and know you will love this blah blah, guaranteed 100%”

Ok so now the lead is thinking cool, I am not risking anything, I can’t lose. The lead now has complete peace of mind that the above outrageous product has zero risk factor, is getting hundred of dollars worth of free BONUS items (which by the way, will NOT EVEN RESEARCH) and if they don’t buy it right now it will be gone forever in 3 days 3 hours 3 minutes and 33 seconds.

That is the basic process. It’s always structured, always uses buzz and always removes the risk, you got a problem, I got a solution, it’s primitive and works.

Great products also use this method, you are looking at the universal standard format, once you get a buyer into the system it’s the best time to sell them again, this is a proven fact, which is why the upsell is strong and in some cases the actual product.

There has also been a major shift in the affiliate industry, continuity is now king, you will get locked into a time released product to stop the refund because you want the good stuff that’s later in training, all industry will move towards this as the technology becomes available, Google will be the king of this business model, they will lock down your entire digital existence, they will dominate cloud computing, I just have a strange feeling Google wants high bandwidth to remove the need for power hungry hardware for cloud computing, if I am right it will revolutionize computing just think of having your hardware

requirements dynamically being meet offsite anywhere in the world, your just basically using virtual computing, no upgrades ect….

Bogan Marketing Bookmarks

Before you even start the training download the bookmarks, this is a HTML file that you can import into your browser.

It contains a ton of bookmarks for affiliates.

Download them here then just import into your browser. After you download the bookmarks extract the zip file with a program like 7zip.

Open up Firebox and click bookmarks ,organize bookmarks.

You will be greeted with this screen, click import and backup then select Import HTML.

Now select from HTML file, and click next, browse to where you downloaded/extracted the bookmarks.html file and select it.

Close the manage bookmarks screen go back to Firefox, click bookmarks you should see a folder called Bogan bookmarks, have fun.

Setting Goals

Before setting out it’s a good idea to ask yourself a few questions, get some goals written down so you know what you want out of affiliate marketing.

How much money and time can you set aside setting up and testing?

Do you only want to focus on paid traffic, organic traffic, social traffic or all 3?

Do you have long-term or short term goals right now, what are your goals, write them down.

Be honest with yourself, if you want to make say a $1,000 a month on advertising how much are you willing to lose during the testing phase and what measures do you have in place to protect your investment?

You might only get 10% ROI, so as you can see the higher end is expensive, even on a 25% ROI at $5,000 you would be spending $20,000 I think lol, this is why it’s important you know how you want to generate leads, free, paid or both.

How solid are you revenue streams, are they long term or short, the less money you spend will generally equal the more time you will need to allocate, so money = time x original investment, more money and more time = more return, money doesn’t just buy clicks, you should focus on buying and building real market assets that will continue to put money in your pocket.

That’s where a structured business plan needs to take effect, multiple traffic sources and strategic market entry after you crunch the numbers and do the research, I will outline this in the market and keyword research training for you.

You enter a market when you’re ready, big business does this all the time, they can afford to wait and see how it unfolds, you can to if you’re planning and research is accurate. You might get impatient if a market is riding a trending wave, however that just makes the market more volatile and less accurate to predict, your competition will always over commit in these types of markets, big business usually just moves in and cleans up the scraps once it stabilizes.

It’s also not just about advertising budgets, spending money to make money is good, but spending money when you don’t need to spend money is stupid, especially when you can be spending that money elsewhere for a greater ROI.

You won’t outlast certain affiliates/business on any decent long term business level unless you start small and think different, example get your own products to market, unique sells, try and find something that will allow you to stand out.

Short term winners are great, but long term winners are greater, some affiliates/business only hit on the short term which can damage the long term from multiple angles, including market trust.

If you have a business model based around rapid deployment and quick in and out affiliate marketing, then purchased and display clicks is a big part of your business, no doubt, but you need to face the facts, the amount of traffic in PPC is extremely limited and no long term business model can survive on PPC alone, the number 1 click through on PPC will get the same amount of traffic as the 5th to 6th organic listing, these rankings can be achieved in some markets saving you thousands long term, market research becomes king for long term cash flow.

IN the above chart the highest CTR PPC ad is sitting from Rank 5 and down. Thats roughly 5% total traffic, 95% of the markets traffic is being generated FREE.

The quality of PPC traffic is also questionable when research is indicating the majority of adwords clicks are coming from kids, teenagers and non internet savvy users, it diminishes even more in PPV as they are mainly freebie hunters, PPC is lucky to obtain more than 5% of a markets traffic, if you’re using PPC for CPS marketing then there is major room for diversity if you own your own products.

I should also note it’s been reported that 17% of all PPC clicks are now fraud and 30% of fraudulent clicks are generated from bots, this is a massive growing problem for affiliates more so than any other type of online business model.

Diversity is KEY because marketing trends can change instantly.

So my advice is to think big but start small, assessing yourself honestly will pay off big time down the track, you need to have a clear path and realistic goals with a solid business plan, start writing down some goals, if you over commit yourself and aim too high you will be surrounded in markets that will tear you to shreds, which is why it’s very important you follow up by studying the later modules very carefully. I will provide you with everything I can for free to get you on the right track.

Install ROBOFORM

RoboForm automatically fills in forms and logins to websites at the click of a button, get it here, this is a must have tool for affiliates and is one of the best time savers on the planet, RoboForm will automatically remember all your passwords and form details so you will never have to fill in another form or lose a password again.

One you have installed RoboForm Click RoboForm, identities then new.

Add your name, select your county and click ok

Fill in all your personal details, everything so you don’t have to enter any fields into forms.

Now click the authentication tab, enter a user ID, password, password question and answer, then click save and close. You don’t need to enter all your bank or credit card details, were just using RoboForm to remember passwords and automatically login to websites and fill forms with our details.

I also suggest you go and get GoodSync right now, this will automatically backup all your login details and information ONLINE, this integrates automatically with RoboForm, you can even backup important files including email.

Managing Contacts

Grab the Affiliate Markets Contact spread sheet here

I also suggest you check out Pidgon, this nice little program allows you to connect to multiple messenger accounts.

Module 1 Affiliate Marketing Conclusion

Ok you should have some goals, all the bookmarks you need, RoboForm ready to roll and a spread sheet to manage online/business contacts.

SO make sure you have the 3 things below DONE!

Download the Bogan Marketing Bookmarks and import them into Firefox.

Download RoboForm so you don’t have to fill in forms or remember passwords ever again.

Download the Affiliate Markets Contact spread sheet here

Once all the above is done continue to Module 2 Affiliate Check List