Making your first $100 online is easy.
Actually that’s not quite true – actually earning your first $100 online IS pretty easy…and what I’m going to show you in this book makes it easier.;
What’s hard is believing you can do it, and sticking with the method.
Once you’ve made $100 then replicating the system is easy. You know you can do it, your sub-conscious belief system kicks into place and before you know it, pulling in $100 daily will be a pretty simple matter.
It’s that first step that takes some doing.
So much so that I think it’s easier to make $1000, $10,000 or $100,000 online that it is to make $100.
Take that first step, jump that first hurdle and you’ll never look back.
The best, simplest and easiest way to start is selling other people’s products as an affiliate. There’s very little risk, the setting up is quite straightforward with a little help (that’s what this book is for) and the results usually speak for themselves.
So let’s start with the first $100…
GETTING STARTED AS AN AFFILIATE
One of the easiest ways to get started in internet marketing is to
promote affiliate products. This means you get a commission for each sale of a particular product that comes from your link or referral.
It’s definitely the easiest route into making money online.
You don’t have to spend time and effort creating and marketing a product of your own, you don’t have to deal with customer service and recruiting people to sell for you…all that you have to do is find a product to promote and create a website or link “pre-selling” the product.
Many affiliates choose Clickbank.com to start out with, for a number of reasons.
They are incredibly easy to use, the merchants pay generous commissions, and their products sell well.
Clickbank describes themselves as a “leading retailer of digital products”; they do not sell physical products. Everything on their site can be digitally downloaded.
So to explain to you how to get started in affiliate marketing, we are going to use Clickbank as an example, although there are many other reputable affiliate companies as well, such as paydotcom, Commission Junction, Pepperjam, and countless others.
To sign up as an affiliate at clickbank, all you have to do is go to their home page at www.clickbank.com.
At the top of the page, you will see a link that says “sign up”, and you click on that link to create your affiliate account.
When you sign up, you need to give Clickbank your physical address, because they will be mailing you a check for your commission. They do not currently have an option to pay via paypal, but they HAVE just introduced a direct to bank account system. This makes things a whole lot easier if you live outside the US.
They will also ask you to choose a nickname. This nickname is how you get your commissions, because you are going to include it in a link called a hoplink. Don’t worry it’s not madly complicated – this is just a web address that people can click on that includes your nickname so when you make sales, Clickbank knows who to pay.
When You Choose Your Nickname, Choose Wisely
We’ll talk more about hoplinks shortly, because they’re very important. They are how you get paid.
Customers will be able to see the nickname in your hoplink, so keep that in mind when choosing it.
Also, once you choose that nickname, you will not be able to change it later.
Here’s how Clickbank works: when a publisher creates a digital product that they want to promote, they are going to want as much help selling that product as possible.
The best way for them to enlist an army of salespeople is to pay those salespeople, (referred to as affiliates), a generous commission. Generally they are going to pay most of the sales price to the affiliate. A product that sells for $37, for instance, will probably net the affiliate about $23 per sale.
A usual commission to an affiliate ranges from 50% – 75%
If a merchant pays too low a percentage to their affiliates, the affiliates are most likely not going to feel very inspired to promote the product, and the merchant’s sales will suffer.
There is a huge marketplace out there full of products that an affiliate can choose from when they decide what to promote.
From an affiliate’s point of view, it makes sense to spend their time and money promoting products that pay them well.
After the merchant creates their product (which is usually an ebook on any subject but could also be a service or software), they submit it to Clickbank for approval.
Clickbank will not accept any products that make false or misleading claims, or which promote illegal activity like spamming. They will also review a product for quality; Clickbank’s reputation is on the line with each product on their site, and it does not benefit them to accept a poor quality product that won’t sell well.
This is of course great for us as affiliates because we know that all Clickbank products will be of a certain quality.
How Merchants (the product seller NOT the affiliate) Get Paid
With each sale of a product, Clickbank pays the merchant 92.5 percent of the sale price, less a $1 stocking charge. (Merchants also have to pay a one-time set-up fee of $49.95 to open an account with clickbank if you fancy becoming a merchant)
If someone comes to the Clickbank website, looks through the ‘Clickbank Marketplace’ (you can find this link on Clickbank’s home page), and then buys the product after clicking on the merchant’s link, then the merchant gets paid the 92.5 percent of the product minus the $1 stocking fee.
So the merchant does not have to pay any money to an affiliate in that case, because the customer found the merchant by themselves and bought directly through the merchant – they did not find the merchant through an affiliate or buy through the affiliates link.
You following this?
It’s pretty vital you understand so if not read the last few paragraphs again.
However, if someone goes to an affiliate’s web page and clicks on the affiliate’s link, which sends them to the merchant page, and then they buy the product…Clickbank pays the affiliate their percentage, say 70 percent of the product price, and then pays the merchant the remaining amount that they are due.
It may seem surprising that merchants would pay such a high percentage of their product’s price to an affiliate, but remember that this is very low-overhead product, so it’s easy for a merchant to be able to afford to do this. AND it encourages the affiliates to go out there and sell, sell, sell. The affiliate is the one spending his or her time and/or money promoting the product, and having motivated affiliates will vastly multiply a merchant’s profit margin.
And of course if a merchant pays your 70% of their product sale price for getting them a sale, it means they keep 30% of a sale that they wouldn’t have if you weren’t their affiliate.
It takes a bit of getting your head round but makes good business sense.
HOW TO CHOOSE A CLICKBANK PRODUCT TO PROMOTE
If you look at the screenshot, you will see that next to the “Home and “Sign Up” links is a link that says “Marketplace”.
Once you have signed up as an affiliate, clicon the “Marketplace” link to see all of the products tha has to offer, and pick one which you want to promote.
The categories of Clickbank products are:
It’s worth taking the time to click on each category to see what they have to offer, just to familiarize yourself with the clickbank marketplace.
So once you select a category to check out, you would click on the “go” button on the bottom righthand side of the screen, and you will be taken to a list of all of the products in the health and fitness category.
By default, these products are listed in terms of popularity – with the most popular products being on top.
Below is an example from the first page of the “health and fitness” category:
Now let’s take a closer look at the number one product on the health and fitness page below (please note that you, this can change at any time as new products come along):
The product is called “Fat Loss 4 Idiots” and it is a hugely popular downloadable diet plan.
First we’re going to take a look at the numbers in green underneath the product name.
roduct name.
“$/sale” means the average amount of money that you will be paid for each sale of this product, minus refunds. It is impossible to product how many customers, if any, are going to ask for refunds in any given pay period, of course. In my experience 5% is a high average.
“Future $:” – in most cases this will refer to money from an ongoing subscription that a customer signs up for. This is also called “rebill revenue”. If there is no subscription, this amount will be zero.
“Total $/sale” – The average amount that an affiliate will be paid per sale, including all rebills.
“%sale” refers to what percentage of the sales price goes to the affiliate. As you see, in the example above, 75 percent of the sales price goes to the affiliate, which is typical on Clickbank.
“%refd” number is how many of the product’s sales on Clickbank are referred by affiliates, as opposed to how many are made directly by the merchant.
It’s a good sign if this is a high number, because it means that affiliates are finding this is a profitable item to promote. If the merchant is doing most of the promoting, that means that affiliates aren’t making much money off of it for whatever reason.
And finally, a product’s “gravity” is a measure of how well a product is selling. It reflects the number of affiliates who have earned a commission from a product, and other factors as viewed by Clickbank.
Many affiliates shy away from any product with a gravity below 60 or 70. This isn’t always the case though because there might be stunning products in there which sell extremely well yet not many affiliates have heard about them.
Some affiliates also become concerned when gravity is too high – for instance, the product’s gravity in the example above is 609.
The concern is that there are so many affiliates promoting the product that the marketplace may become overcrowded, and it will be very hard to sell that product.
However, some affiliates believe that a crowded market is a sign that the product is profitable.
You’ll have to decide for yourself whether “gravity” matters to you in this case, although it’s a good idea not to pick a product with terribly low gravity, because there is usually a reason.
Once you have identified a few products that you are interested in, you will want to click on the link that takes you to the product’s pitch page. That is the blue link located to the far left on the third line below (‘view pitch page’).
The reason that you want to do this because you need to make sure that they have a good, professional looking pitch page. You don’t want to put your time and energy into promoting a product with an amateurish looking sales page that might not convert.
There is another reason that you want to do this: you need to get to know the product as well as possible.
It is of course ideal if you buy the product, but in truth, there are affiliates who make a lot of money promoting products that they did not buy.
Whether yob it or not, you should read the “pitch page” to see what the merchant says about it, what they consider its strong points, and what customers are saying about the product in their testimonials.
How To Pick Your First Product
It’s a good idea to pick a product that is in an area that you have some familiarity with. There are so many high quality, profitable products on Clickbank that it doesn’t make sense to pick a product in an area that you don’t enjoy.
For instance, if you hate tattoos, it doesn’t make sense to promote the Clickbank Tattoo designs product. If you are blessed with a super high metabolism and have never dieted, a weight loss product might not be the best choice for you.
The best thing to do is pick a product that you would enjoy promoting and learning more about.
And you also want to pick a product that is on the first page or two of its category on Clickbank, and that has fairly high gravity – above 60 or 70, at a minimum.
Once you have done that, you are in good shape. And now that you’ve picked your first product, let’s talk about creating your hoplink, and then how you will go about promoting your product.
YOUR HOPLINK
Once you have selected a product, you will need to create what is called a “hoplink”.
This is the link that you will put on your sales page, or in your email and when someone clicks on it, it will take them to the merchant’s page where they can look over the product description and decide if it is right for them.
If the person then proceeds to buy it, Clickbank instantly credits the affiliate for that purchase.
You are going to want to put this link on several locations on your sales page, to make it easy for a customer to click on it. The link should be on the top, middle, and bottom of the page so the customer never has to hunt for a way to get to the merchant’s page.
The link contains your affiliate nickname, the publisher’s name, and the phrase hop.clickbank.net.
Let us say that your nickname is sellsalot and you are creating a hoplink for the Fatloss 4 Idiots product.
The hoplink would look like this: http://sellsalot.4idiots.hop.clickbank.net.
The HTML version would be:
<a href=”http://sellsalot.4idiots.hop.clickbank.net.
The way that you generate a hoplink is to go to the list of products and find the one that you want to promote.
In the example above, you will see that on the third line is a blue link which says “create hoplink.”
You will click on that link, and this screen will pop up:
You will fill in your Clickbank nickname. It is also a very good idea to create a tracking i.d., which can be up to eight characters, either numbers or letters.
The reason that you want to do this is because you will most likely want to test out different versions of sales letters, and the tracking i.d. will tell you where your sales came from. So you would create a different hoplink for each sales page – changing only the tracking i.d.
Make sure to keep a written record of which tracking id came from which sales page. Then, when you see where your sales are coming from, you can tell which sales page converts most effectively, and you can eliminate the sales pages that do not convert well.
It is very important that you always include your properly spelled clickbank nickname in each hoplink that you create. If you do not, you will not get any credit for the sale.
Now, let’s say for this hoplink, the tracking id that you picked says “version 1.”
Here is what your hoplink would look like:
All right, now that you have picked a product and created a tracking i.d., let’s move on to one of the most important parts of affiliate marketing: how to promote the product!
HOW TO MARKET AN AFFILIATE PRODUCT USING A WEBSITE
One of the most popular ways to market an affiliate product is by creating a website, and writing a sales page that pitches the virtues of the product.
To do this, you are going to want your own domain, which you can get from any number of domain name services like Godaddy.com or Namecheap.com
You are going to be reviewing the product, so the website name should reflect that. The reason for this is simply that reviews generate more sales than in your face sales pages.
A website name like “fatlossproducts” or “weightlossproductreview” would be good.
Then you are going to pick a hosting company, like Hostgator or Bluehost, so that you can host your website.
If you know how to design your own website, that is great – you can save a lot of money that way.
If you don’t, you can find website designers at places like rentacoder.com, guru.com, and elance.com.
You can also upload blogging software like WordPress. This has some advantages and disadvantages.
The main advantage of WordPress is that it is incredibly easy to add new content, and delete old content (what you say on your site)
The downside of WordPress – and any other blogging software – is that it is laid out like a blog.
You can always pay someone to reconfigure it for you, but it is pretty hard to make a WordPress blog look like a sales page.
Blogs do have their uses, but they do not make an ideal sales page because of their layout.
One of the best things to do when you are getting ready to design your sales page, or have someone design your sales page for you, is to look at the sales page of your competition, and tell your designer which sort of page you like. It’s not a good idea to make direct copies though – you could get into trouble.
But how do you find these sales pages? That is very easy.
Go to your favorite search engine and type in the name of the product that you are going to be promoting.
Most, probably all, of the results that come up, are going to be sales pages designed by affiliates who are promoting the same product.
It’s a good idea to spend a few days studying sales pages for numerous Clickbank products. This way, you are learning from people who are already out there selling.
You should look at the headline at the top of the sales pages and see how they entice their readers to keep reading further.
You should look at where they place the affiliate links.
You should look at the color scheme and graphics.
And you should definitely ask yourself: which of these sales pages would make me want to buy? Those are the sales pages that you should emulate and be inspired by. Note that we’re saying “be inspired by”, not “copy”.
The typical sales page is going to take one of two approaches.
In both approaches, the page looks like a review page. In one approach, you will present yourself as someone who has used this product, who had a problem that they needed solved before they discovered this product, and who found that the product worked really well to solve their problem.
The key to a review page like that is not to sound too gushing or overly enthusiastic, or you will sound as if you are writing an advertisement rather than an honest review, and lose the trust of your readers.
It is best, in fact, if you can find some minor flaw in the product.
Yes, that’s right, a flaw.
You do not want to trash the product, or you will not be able to sell it. (If you truly don’t like the product, then pick a different product to promote! There are many excellent, high quality products out there; there is no need to promote a product that you don’t like.)
What you want to do is pick a minor flaw that will not take away from the product’s effectiveness.
For instance, if you are promoting “Fat Loss 4 Idiots” you could say something like “Most, but not all, of the recipes, were very good. There were a few recipes that I wasn’t crazy about, but the way the fat melted off me…I really didn’t mind!”
This reinforces that the product does what is says that it does, but it does not sound like an over-the-top “advertorial” – an advertisement disguised as an editorial.
For a product like “Run A Car on Water” you could say something like: “This product was a little complex to put together and it really took me a while to understand the science behind it.
However, once I was able to understand it, I hired a mechanic to build and install the system for me, and I have nearly doubled my gas mileage!”
So that is one common type of review site.
Here is the other kind: you write a product review page in which you review at least three similar products, all in the same category.
You give the page a name that reflects that, like “bestfatlossproducts” or “trafficproductreviews.”
You will rate each product using some type of rating system, often using stars – say, from one to four stars or one to five stars, with five stars being the best.
You will put the product that you recommend the most on top.
Now, here is a way to make some more money: Put an affiliate link with your clickbank name on EACH product.
Someone may have found your page because they are researching the second rated product that you mention, and they may have their heart set on that product.
So you will want to say that the first product was great and it was the best at doing what it was supposed to.
The second product was also good but not quite as good, or it cost more and did the same job as the first product.
If you are reviewing two dog training products, for instance, you could say that the first product was extremely comprehensive and had so much information that you literally would never be able to read it all.
The second product is geared only towards puppies. It is excellent if you want to learn how to train a puppy but has no information on training an adult dog.
The third product isn’t very good and doesn’t have that much information, and is not well written.
Now, here is an important question: Do you have to actually buy all three products?
Well, in a perfect world, you would buy and try all three products for your product review page.
However, this could get quite expensive, especially if you expand and have a lot of product review pages.
There are ways to get around buying each of the products. You should not lie and claim that you used a product that you have never used, but here is what you can do.
You can get a LOT of information about the product from the merchant’s sales page. This is an example from the popular Sit Stay Fetch home page. Sit Stay Fetch, as you probably guessed, is a dog training ebook, and also has a series of videos.
The sales page tells you that the book will teach you to solve over 25 dog behavior problems.
It also tells you that if you buy this ebook, it offers unlimited dog behavior consultations with the Sitstayfetch team.
It tells you that you can download this ebook instantly.
And on another page of the website it actually tells you specific dog problems that are addressed AND it tells you what page addresses those problems!
So, without buying this ebook, you could very legitimately describe its contents and the problems that it can solve for dog owners.
Here is another example from a clickbank product, No Nonsense Muscle Building.
Again, without giving his secrets away, the author of this ebook does give you a long list of techniques that he is going to give you which will show you how to build muscle quickly.
And he spells out what he does NOT do, with a list of what he calls Dirty Little Lies that various people and industries spread when they claim they can help you build muscle.
So you can say on your sales page that this ebook does NOT rely on fad supplements or liquids, etc. etc.
And you can do this for every product that you plan to review, whether you will be writing a negative or positive review. Go to the sales page, read the information, and you will have enough facts to tell your readers what the product does.
Here’s a final tip: if you can’t afford a web page to begin with, there are some free sites that will allow you to create a web page. www.squidoo.com allows you to create what they call a “lens”, which is a web page, and many affiliate marketers use squidoo to test out products.
The downside of Squidoo is that you do not own your domain name; your site is hosted by Squidoo and your domain name will have Squidoo in it; for instance, if you name your lens dogtrainingsecrets, the website address would be www.dogtrainingsecrets.com/squidoo.
Also, Squidoo lenses have advertising on them which can distract from your sales message.
There are other sites that give you free hosting and template design, including www.weebly.com, and www.blinkweb.com.
They both have paid upgrades which allow you to direct your own domain name there.
The advantage of using those sites is that for a simple website, you won’t have to hire a graphic designer; you can use their premade templates and upload any graphics that you want.
Now, in our next chapter, we’re going to talk about how to drive traffic to that sales page, and some other methods of making affiliate sales.
HOW WILL PEOPLE FIND YOUR SITE?
Creating a website with your affiliate review page on it is all well and good, but how will people find your site? There are several different ways to drive traffic to your site. One common method is by using Google adwords.
Now, the proper use of Google Adwords would fill another ebook entirely, so we are just going to touch on it briefly here.
It’s not extremely difficult to learn, but it does take some practice and trial and error before you get it right.
The snapshot below shows a list of sponsored links that come up when you type in the words “dog training book” on the google search engine.
You would find these links to the right of the actual search results. These are all paid advertisements.
By the way, the fact that there is a list of links is a good sign. It means that people are making money promoting dog training books.
If you type in a phrase and there are no sponsored links associated with it…that’s not a good sign. It is a pretty sure that there’s no money to be made in that area. It’s rarely – VERY rarely, an undiscovered niche.
Now, look at some of the titles on the list; “TopDogTrainingReviews.Net”; “Top 4 Dog Training Books”…you can bet that those are sites that were created by affiliate marketers.
When you use Google Adwords, you create an adwords campaign and are charged every time someone clicks on one of your ads.
The best way to learn about Google Adwords is from the source; go to www.google.com/adwords and visit their learning center. It is worth spending a day or two going through their many adwords lessons, to learn how to set your campaign up correctly.
Here is one tip that will be useful to you as an affiliate: when you create a review page, do not just make it a one page website. Google will charge you more for each keyword phrase that you bid on if they perceive that your website is low quality. And they perceive one page websites as low quality.
So what you want to do is create maybe five or six other pages and link to them. Just put the links in an unobtrusive place where they will not distract your visitors from your sales page message.
The links can lead to a page with your privacy policy, a “contact me” form, and a couple of pages with information about your products – say, weight loss or dog training or downloading itunes or whatever your site is about.
In addition to Google Adwords, or instead of Google Adwords, some people use article marketing to promote affiliate products.
Here is briefly how this works: you write an article for an article directory site. The article does not have to be long; between 300-600 words will do it. You are writing a helpful, informative article about the same general topic as your affiliate product.
For instance, if you are promoting a dog training ebook, you could write about how to stop a dog from digging up the back yard, or how to stop a dog from chewing.
You cannot be overly promotional in your article or the article directory will not accept the article. They want articles that provide useful advice, not advertisements.
So how does this help you, writing a purely informational article?
First of all, you get to include what is called a “resource box” or “bio box”, depending on the directory. In that box, you can link to your sales page. You would say something like: “Fed up with chewed up shoes and furniture? For more tips on dog training, visit….” and put in the link to your site.
And secondly, some sites allow you to include an affiliate link directly to the merchant page. Some article directories expressly prohibit that, however, and ONLY let you link to your own site. So make sure that you check the individual article directory’s terms of service before you try to include an affiliate link.
Some of the better article directory sites are:
Ezinearticles.com
Goarticles.com
Buzzle.com
isnare.com
Articlecity.com Associatedcontent.com Articledashboard.com Selfgrowth.com Articlealley.com Easy-articles.com Articlerich.com Article99.com Bestsyndication.com Articlesbin.com Americanchronicle.com Articlecafe.
Writing one or two articles won’t make you rich. Article marketing takes some time and effort. You will want to write at least 3-5 articles a day – yes, a day! – to promote your affiliate product, and do that for about a month before you can relax and rest on your laurels.
If you hate writing, you can go to sites like elance.com or guru.com and hire someone to write articles for you relatively cheaply.
Another way to promote your affiliate products is to go on to relevant forums and post helpful comments – again, not overly promotional – and include a link in your signature that leads to your web site.
Forums do not generally allow you to link directly to a merchant page. Your “signature” is created when you are creating your profile. You do not to have a signature. However, if you want to, you can create a link and put it in your signature, which is the line which will appear under every post of yours.
We can’t emphasize enough that on a forum, if you appear at all self- promotional or ‘spammy’ you will be at best ignored and at worst banned. You need to do the same thing that you do with articles – say something helpful and informative.
One word of advice – don’t ask questions that contradict what your signature file says.
For instance, on internet marketing sites, don’t ask for the best ways to make money online if your signature file links to a “make money online” site.
And if you are on a dog training site, don’t ask questions about how to train a dog if you are promoting a dog training ebook.
This sounds like obvious advice, but people on forums do it frequently and it causes them to lose all credibility. If you are presenting yourself as an authority, you need to sound as if you know what you are talking about.
And finally, viral marketing is an excellent way to promote your site.
To do this, you would write a short report that is relevant to the product that you are promoting.
For instance, if you are promoting a diet ebook, you could write a five page report with a title like “Top 10 diet tips” and give it away on diet web sites and on diet forums.
In the book would be the affiliate link to the product that you are promoting.
You could do the same with any type of product. For a dog training ebook, you could write a report with a title like “Five ways to deal with an aggressive dog”, or “Five Biggest Dog Training Mistakes.”
For a fitness ebook you could write a report such as “Five Ab Flattening Exercises” or something similar. You get the idea.
Conclusion
Many people have quit their jobs to become full time internet marketers as affiliates.
Reading this book was the easy part. Now you have the real challenge ahead of you – DOING IT.
If you follow the methods in this book you’ll make your first $100 online. The techniques and processes I’ve just explained will feel weird and alien the first time you do things. You’ll get some things wrong and have to start again and all in all it’ll be a steep learning curve.
Stick with it and you’ll see the profits come in. There’s more to it than that though.
If you see this method through to the end – that is until you’re actually banking the money that YOU have made online, then I promise you your life will change.
You’ll see the potential of the internet and a huge feeling of pride will swell up inside you because YOU have taken nothing but an idea – this book – and turned it into cold hard cash.
That puts you in the 5% of people who actually do something with information.
I said there were more rewards than your first $100 though, and there are.
Once you realize for yourself that this method works (and I can tell you it does a million times but you won’t really believe me until you’ve done it for yourself) then you can replicate the system as many times as you like and turn that $100 into $1,000 or $100,000
You can quit your job, go full time on the internet or whatever you want.
It’ll free you from someone else (ie your employer) deciding what you’re worth and put control of your own earning power firmly back in your own hands.
That’s a rare thing in today’s world.
I think you’ve realized by now that the real secret to this book isn’t earning $100 – it’s about changing your life, becoming your own person and taking back control.
You do this and you’ll never ever look back.
Once you realize for yourself that this method works (and I can tell you it does a million times but you won’t really believe me until you’ve done it for yourself) then you can replicate the system as many times as you like and turn that $100 into $1,000 or $100,000
You can quit your job, go full time on the internet or whatever you want.
It’ll free you from someone else (ie your employer) deciding what you’re worth and put control of your own earning power firmly back in your own hands.
That’s a rare thing in today’s world.
I think you’ve realized by now that the real secret to this book isn’t earning $100 – it’s about changing your life, becoming your own person and taking back control.
You do this and you’ll never ever look back.
Best wishes.
