8 simple ways to get more affiliate commissions flowing

8 SIMPLE WAYS TO GET MORE AFFILIATE COMMISSIONS FLOWING

© 2009 Workshopify, LLC. All rights reserved.

Dave Navarro's Affiliate Success Guide 8 Simple Strategies To Turn Visitors Into Tasty, Tasty Sales Thanks for joining my affiliate program! Naturally, I want to start paying you nice, juicy commissions over and over and over again, so let’s dispense with a few tips I’ve learned over the years I've spent getting people to buy my stuff online. I’m not "the expert on affiliate marketing" by a long shot, but I can definitely give you some good advice based on my experience. If you want to have the highest chances of selling more of my products, follow any (or all) the tips below.

TIP #1 – WRITE AN HONEST, DETAILED REVIEW OF MY PRODUCT AND POST IT ON YOUR SITE/BLOG. This is without a doubt one of the highest-conversion (if not the highestconversion) strategies ever. When people are on the fence about buying a product, the first thing they do is run a Google search for “(product name) review.” They will read one or more reviews, make their decision, and then click through to buy. You want to be the review they click through on. When you write your review, include as much detail as you can on what you liked about the product and what your results were from using it (this is basically the equivalent of a testimonial). The more powerfully you can communicate a reallife story of how the product was useful to you, the higher your conversion will be. One word of warning though – be honest about what the product did for you. This is not the time to lie to your readers, because if they’re burned once by you, you can guarantee they’ll never trust you again. And that means no money for you, no matter whose products you’re promoting. Be honest, keep it on the straight and narrow. Besides, you shouldn’t be promoting a product you don’t believe in, anyway. To make your reviews rank higher on Google, include the product name and the word “review” in your page/post title. Also include the product name and the word “review” in your first sentence of your content. It helps to use these words a few more times, more towards the top of the review than the bottom. It is also helpful to include the author’s name in the title as well. Here are some examples:   

My Review of Dave Navarro’s Becoming an Early Riser Program Becoming an Early Riser Review Dave Navarro Review Part 1 – Becoming an Early Riser

2|P a g e

Finding this useful? Get even more good stuff at http://thelaunchcoach.com/library

Dave Navarro's Affiliate Success Guide 8 Simple Strategies To Turn Visitors Into Tasty, Tasty Sales People search on the author in addition to the program title, so keep that in mind when writing your title. And if you link to your review from another page on your site, be sure and use the keywords in the actual link itself – Google loves when you do that.  Remember, nothing is as credible as your own experience. Get the products you promote.

TIP #2 – WRITE A “REAL-TIME” ACCOUNT OF YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THE PRODUCT. Since blogs often reveal the story of their author’s personal growth, your audience might be open to following your experience with the product that you want to promote. By posting multiple times about where you are in the program and what results you're seeing, you can establish credibility with your audience and present them with repeated exposure to your message. You can see how I did this with my “Freelance Smackdown,” where I put Christine O’Kelly’s eBook to the test and reported on my reports each week for a month. That article received a great deal of traffic and generated a lot of sales for Christine (and I wasn’t even an affiliate for that one).  http://www.rockyourday.com/freelance-smackdown/ When you use this tactic, remember that honesty is key here. Describe what’s working for you - and what isn’t. People are often (rightfully) skeptical about reviews that are all-positive and appreciate the honesty that comes when someone tells them about the rough spots as well as the good ones.

TIP #3 – LEVERAGE OTHER PEOPLE’S REVIEWS OF THE PRODUCT. Go ahead – Google my products and see what other people have written about them. If you happen to find that a name your readers would recognize has liked my product, you might consider mentioning that in your promotion. You’ll see this tactic used in print / television media where advertisers will say “As seen on Oprah,” or “As seen in Newsweek.” This is what we call a third-party reference, and it is an effective way to actually use your competitors' efforts to help you.

3|P a g e

Finding this useful? Get even more good stuff at http://thelaunchcoach.com/library

Dave Navarro's Affiliate Success Guide 8 Simple Strategies To Turn Visitors Into Tasty, Tasty Sales If a reader was on the fence about buying when they read your review, but they see a mention of some big names endorsing the product, they may be swayed to click through and buy, and then you get a commission. That said, there’s one important thing you’ll want to keep in mind to stay on the friendly side of affiliate marketing:  Don’t steal other people’s copy (copy = their sales text). If “Famous Person A” wrote a glowing report about my product, don’t take their copy and tack it on to your own page. It’s rude, and can even create some bad blood between you and those people (as well as their entire audience). Instead, you can simply make reference to the fact you saw they had a positive review or perhaps quote a single sentence. Maybe two, but I’d limit myself to one. That should be enough.  Same goes for title text. And pictures. And subheads. And everything else. Don’t rip off someone else’s hard work. ‘Nuff said.

TIP #4 – LINK TO YOUR REVIEW THROUGHOUT YOUR SITE WHEN APPROPRIATE. If there’s a way for you to bring up my products occasionally in your posts, you should definitely do so (but do this only where it seems natural to do so, otherwise your audience will feel like you’re being pushy). When you bring up the product, create a link to it but be sure to include keywords relevant to that link to improve its ranking power in Google search. For example, You can read my review of Becoming an Early Riser over here. will serve you better than You can read my review of Becoming an Early Riser over here. This is because Google looks at link text to figure out what its relevance is. There’s not much relevance to “click here.”

TIP #5 – PROVIDE VARIETY IN YOUR ON-PAGE AD IMAGES. People tend to develop something called “ad blindness” – a phenomenon where they tune-out certain ads after seeing them over and over again. The way to cure ad blindness is to switch up your strategies every so often: 4|P a g e

Finding this useful? Get even more good stuff at http://thelaunchcoach.com/library

Dave Navarro's Affiliate Success Guide 8 Simple Strategies To Turn Visitors Into Tasty, Tasty Sales  Change ad images periodically. I provide multiple images for each product I sell and you should consider rotating them out monthly. Seeing a variety of images can help keep your readers’ attention where you want it.  Offer multiple locations for ads. You can have a 125x125 ad in your sidebar, or perhaps the occasional wide banner ad at the end of a post. Look at other successful blogs to see how they place ads and consider using their strategies for your own site. You can pick up the latest banners here:  http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/affiliates/

TIP #6 – CONSIDER OFFERING A BONUS OF YOUR OWN FOR BUYERS. If you have products or services of your own, you can package them as bonuses for people who purchase through your link. This can provide that final nudge that pushes people over the edge to make the buying decision, and doesn’t have to cost you a penny. For example, if you have a $25 dollar product of your own and you offer it as a bonus for my How To Launch The **** Out Of Your Ebook product (which has an almost $40 commission), you can make a profit giving your product away as a bonus. It’s like getting paid $40 for your $25 product. Another angle is giving away a more expensive product. If you have a $50 product that you offer as a bonus, you’d still make about $40 on it via my affiliate program after a sale. It’s kind of like running a sale on your product without having to lower the price of it. What you want to do here is make the bonus relevant to the product you’re offering. If you sell a luxury car care manual, it may seem a weird fit for a bonus – but you’re welcome to try it if you think your audience would respond. As my products are of a personal development / business development nature, the best performing bonuses are ones that already appeal to that audience. Another thing you can give away as a bonus are services – for example, if you’re a coach or freelancer, you could give away an hour of your time or a consultation as a bonus. But exercise your judgment with this strategy, because each sale commits you to a block of time for the customer. On the other hand, if you’re

5|P a g e

Finding this useful? Get even more good stuff at http://thelaunchcoach.com/library

Dave Navarro's Affiliate Success Guide 8 Simple Strategies To Turn Visitors Into Tasty, Tasty Sales just starting out this could be a useful way of generating some initial “customers” to add to your references or portfolio.

TIP #7 – WRAP YOUR AFFILIATE LINK IN AN ON-SITE WEB PAGE (BUT DON’T HIDE IT). When someone puts their mouse over a link on your site, they’ll see the link destination in the bottom of their browser window. Sometimes people get “turned off” when they see a complicated affiliate link like this: https://www.e-junkie.com/affiliates/?cl=22925&ev=8c117ae018 They may feel that clicking on a link like that is like being sold to - or even a weird malware link - and you don’t want that to be a barrier. A way to get around that is to create a redirect – basically a web page that immediately forwards them to the affiliate link – but looks nicer because it’s an on-site link. For example you can make it so that a page like this: https://yoursite.com/product-name/ will forward them to your affiliate link instead. This is extremely easy to do as well. All you have to do is make a directory on your site that has the product name in it, and create a page called index.html with (only) this text inside it: Then all you have to do is upload the page to that directory, and refer to the new, neater link (https://yoursite.com/product-name/) instead of the affiliate link. Quick Tip: Some people consider “masking” a link unethical, as if you are tricking someone into giving you a commission without disclosing it (though I’m not sure why earning a commission is so distasteful to some people). On the other hand, just as many people would have the opposite opinion, saying that it’s a natural evolution of marketing. You can save yourself the arguments by simply disclosing that you are an affiliate. Disclosure isn’t hard in a review, either – if you’re taking an hour or two to give a writeup, it’s not rude of you to let people go to the product via an affiliate link. Remember, the purpose of making your link look cleaner isn’t to trick someone – it’s to give them a more streamlined experience. 6|P a g e

Finding this useful? Get even more good stuff at http://thelaunchcoach.com/library

Dave Navarro's Affiliate Success Guide 8 Simple Strategies To Turn Visitors Into Tasty, Tasty Sales

TIP #8 – USE SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS TO PROMOTE THE PRODUCT - SPARINGLY. Twitter and other social media applications can be used for successful affiliate marketing, but you need to be very, very careful not to do it wrong. Handling this incorrectly cold kill your Twitter audience and brand you as a spammer. Naturally, you don’t want that, so here is some advice on how to do it right.  Follow Lynn Terry at https://twitter.com/lynnterry. This woman is all class – one of the early internet affiliate marketers and someone who knows how to do relationship marketing right. Follow her and watch how she promotes without being a spammer, and you’ll learn more than I can ever tell you.  Don’t simply post an affiliate link – it’s unlikely your audience will want to be “sold to.” A better strategy is to link to your personal review of the product. If you have an audience of followers who value your opinion, the occasional link to your review won’t come off as spammy.  Incorporate regular product reviews into the rhythm of your social media conversations. If products are something you regularly talk about in the course of your messages, they won’t appear “out of place” when you want to introduce a new promotion. When using Twitter and Twitter-ish applications for affiliate marketing, remember that the value of those services to your followers is conversation – not selling. Give enough of the former and it will be easier to incorporate the latter. Again, thanks for joining my affiliate program! I’ll be updating this guide as time goes on, so keep your eyes peeled for more great tips that can help you generate more affiliate sales month after month after month. Now get to it – and I look forward to sending you plenty of commissions over the next few years! Dave Dave Navarro The Launch Coach

7|P a g e

Finding this useful? Get even more good stuff at http://thelaunchcoach.com/library