Getting on other people’s podcasts is a great way to gain exposure and drive traffic to your offer. But how do you get the podcaster’s attention in the first place?
Here are some tips to getting interviewed and also being asked back again:
1. Listen to several episodes of the show before contacting the host. You want to know the show’s format as well as whether or not your concept fits into their market.
2. If you have done prior interviews, let the podcaster know this in your first contact. Direct them to your media page or to past interviews.
3. Have something to say. “Hey, I wrote a new book!” isn’t necessarily enough, unless it’s a book with new information that fits perfectly with the theme of the show. You can gain an edge by moving it up a notch – having a special event for charity, for example, could get you to the top of the list of potential guests.
4. Provide the interviewer a list of questions in advance, along with a sample of your product or book.
5. Tell your list about the interview and encourage them to listen in. This gives your host more listeners which they will appreciate.
6. Blog about the interview before and after.
7. Most important. Be knowledgeable in your niche. Be prepared to offer lots of great, usable information on the podcast. Do not hold back and simply tell them to buy the book. The more you give away and provide real value, the better the host and audience will appreciate you and benefit from what you are sharing. In addition, the audience will think, “If s/he’s telling this much for free, imagine what must be in the book!”
8. Be sure to thank the host and send them a gift.
9. Ask for a copy of the interview so you can use it in your own marketing.
85% of people suffer from low self-esteem, lack of confidence, or just a general feeling of not being “good enough.” That’s 17 out of 20 people who are afflicted with enough self-doubt to make success difficult and life hard.
It starts in childhood: Something is said that makes you feel inferior, or you interpret something to mean that you are somehow “less than.” You replay it in your mind until it becomes a fixed grove winding deeply throughout everything you think and everything you do.
Low self esteem and lack of confidence affects your life on every level. But so does finally learning – deep down inside where it counts – to really, truly, finally love yourself. It’s transformative. It’s simple. But it takes lots and lots of practice to overwrite all of that bad programming you’ve endured in the past.
I recently discovered a Kindle book that can totally change the way a person thinks about him or herself. The author hit rock bottom. He was sick of the misery and the pain.
So he got out of bed, staggered to the desk and wrote the following in his notebook:
“This day, I vow to myself to love myself, to treat myself as someone I love truly and deeply – in my thoughts, my actions, the choices I make, the experiences I have, each moment I am conscious, I make the decision I LOVE MYSELF.”
After that moment he began telling himself, “I love myself.” He said it when he woke up, throughout his day and when he went to bed. He said it like a mantra in his head, over and over again.
Things gradually changed for him. His body healed. His life got better. Fantastic things started to happen for him. And through it all, he kept repeating to himself, “I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself.”
Even if you don’t think this will benefit you, I want you to consider trying it anyway.
You don’t have to believe it, you just have to say it over and over again to yourself. It’s a practice. You won’t see a miracle the first day, but you will begin to notice subtle changes in the way you feel and the way you view your business, your connections and your life.
Despite being a quick read, “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It” by Kamal Ravikant has much more to offer than I can write here. I highly encourage you to get it, read it and let it be a reminder to love yourself and those around you more every day.
When you get an interview, don’t ask the reporter to print your website address in their article – you’ll just annoy them. They’re already giving you free publicity, and if you start pushing then they will do what comes naturally and push back.
Instead, give them a good reason to include your website URL in their story. Here are 5 different ways…
1. Identify your company by your URL. Instead of saying your company is My Really Cool Company, call it MyReallyCoolCompany.com.
2. Offer free information at your website. For example, if you’re a plumber then it could be a free report on “How Not to Get Ripped Off When You Hire a Plumber.” If you’re teaching people to make money from home, it could be “10 Businesses You Can Start For Under $100 and Run From Home.”
3. Offer a free service at your website.
4. Offer free software, free cheat sheets, a free quiz to determine if they have “x” problem, etc.
5. Hook them in the interview, reel them in on the website. Give the reporter several tips on how to solve a problem, and then tell him that his audience can find 17 more tips at your website.
Your goal is to make the reporter WANT to share your URL, rather than begging them to share it. This can make a difference in whether or not your website address makes it into the article as well as the effort the reporter makes in sending readers there. And when you provide the right incentive you’ll also find that far more of the audience members find their way to your website.
How do get you the media to come you? How do you get them to recognize you as a news source – someone they can call when they need your expertise on their story?
You want to appear as the authority in your field and a good source of continuing news content for them. For example, if you’re teaching fitness online and there’s a new study that says doing naked jumping jacks burn twice as many calories as doing them with your clothes on, you want the media to contact you for a quote or to answer a few questions.
And wouldn’t it be nice if each time you launch a new fitness course, you could get interviews in newspapers, in magazines, on the radio and even on television? Like a snowball rolling downhill – gathering speed and quickly growing in size – once you do get interviews you can leverage those into more credibility with your current and future customers. As you become recognized as an authority, members of the media will become more willing to run your press releases and do your stories.
Make no mistake, print media is still still very influential. These days we tend to talk about social media, social influence and so forth online. But we sometimes lose sight of the fact that there is a real world out there with print media – newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. And appearing in any of these media gives you instant credibility you simply cannot get through social media.
One thing that’s especially important to understand is why being in the news is vastly superior to advertising. When you purchase ads, it’s assumed you can say pretty much what you like as long as you don’t violate any laws. Is it any wonder people are immediately skeptical of advertising claims?
But when you’re in the news it’s an entirely different matter. Journalism is for the most part fact based – or at the very least, people believe it’s fact based. Viewers and readers assume what they hear in the story is true, that it’s been verified, and that there is no ulterior motive for the story (such as parting them from their money.)
In a nutshell, advertising raises defenses and news lowers defenses. As an aside, next time you write an ad, whether it’s a sales page, an email, etc., try framing it in the style of news and see if your conversion rate doesn’t increase. Fortunes have been made with just this tip. Think about it.
In the 1950’s the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. created new regulations to limit and govern the commercial content of television. The worry was that the lines between paid advertising and news were becoming blurred and consumers were being fooled. But then in 1984 the American President Reagan eliminated those regulations. Result? The infomercial. Now you had extra long commercials that were staged like talk shows, news shows, etc. with the sole purpose of selling products. And it worked better than anyone even dared hope.
What’s my point? Get you, your products and your website into the media spotlight. Or at the very least, make your advertising look and feel more like news than just another sales pitch.
There are two basic methods to getting into the news. The first is to be the subject of a news story. Examples might be that you’ve got an especially provocative, titillating or controversial product worthy of being news, or your business is holding an event to raise money for a worthy cause. This gets you into the media eye for short bursts of time, but each time you want to get back into the media, you need to come up with another brilliant, newsworthy idea.
The second method is to become an authority in your field – someone the media turns to for quotes, to answer questions, to explain information to their audience and so forth. This gets you into the news on a more frequent basis, although with less splash.
Both methods are good, and together they can create more free advertising than you could hope to buy in a lifetime.
If you’re thinking that you or your business could never be featured in news stories, you’re probably right. The very first thing you’ve got to do is get your head around the fact that you or your business can indeed be newsworthy. If Wayne Gretsky missed 100% of the shots he didn’t take, then you’re going to miss 100% of the media opportunities you allow to slip by because you’re not confident you have what it takes to be news.
There isn’t time or space here to give you the full run down on getting into the media – entire books are written on this topic alone. For example, Free Publicity: A TV Reporter Shares the Secrets for Getting Covered on the News by Jeff Crilley is in my opinion an especially good one.
What I can tell you is this: KNOW for a fact that you can get into the news, because you can.
Be ever vigilant for news opportunities, and when you see one, don’t hesitate to jump on it immediately.
Submit stories to your local newspapers, television shows, local websites, etc. This is well within almost anyone’s comfort range and it’s a great place to start.
Work towards becoming a featured columnist or editorialist in your local publications. Getting your smiling face and great advice in front of local readers on a weekly basis will get you business. Start by writing letters to the editor that do not sound like commercials. In our fitness expert example, you might note that you’re seeing more overweight children in the neighborhood, and offer 3 tips their parents can use to motivate their children into activity.
If you can retain ownership of your columns, do so, even if it means allowing the paper or magazine to run them for free. This way you can send those columns to other publications as well.
Let your local reporters know that you are an authority in your subject they can call on when they need help with a story. When they call, drop everything and be as helpful as possible. Do not appear self-serving – put their need to get the story accurate and finished ahead of your desire for publicity. 9 times out of 10 they will cite you as a source. “According to local expert John Smith, …”
More Tips For Getting Into The News:
– When pitching your own stories, keep in mind the question every reporter and news editor is silently asking: “Will my audience care about this story? If so, why?” Get familiar with the kinds of stories your target news outlets publish, and tailor your own press releases accordingly.
– Anticipate trends in your field of expertise and the larger implications of those trends. In other words, be on the forefront of news whenever possible instead of chasing it. Show how this new trend will affect the readers of the publication.
– Be the odd man out. If a story breaks and everyone in the media is in lockstep on what this story means, take the opposite view. If a reporter is looking for something different or even just to balance out their own story, they will be anxious to talk to you. Note: Be sure you can back up your point view with facts or examples.
– Know what a reporter has written before approaching them. Tell them you enjoyed their article on propagating ferns when you pitch them an idea to write about the exotic plants you’re selling by mail. A little honest flattery and attention goes a long way to getting your own free publicity.
– Forget small talk. Are you calling a reporter to pitch your story? Or is she calling you to get your perspective? Get to the point. The reporter will appreciate that you respect they’re under a deadline.
– Do the reporter’s work for them. When you send out a press release, make it read like a story in the newspaper. You’ll be surprised how many times they will print it just as you wrote it.
– Relax. Sometimes your stories will be picked up, other times they won’t. It may take time to get recognized as an expert reporters can call on – simply continue to get your name out there.
Have fun with this. You may find it slow going at first, but persistence pays off. And the more publicity you get, the more you will get because publicity begets publicity. Something you do today such as sending out a press release or making contact with a reporter may not pay off for days, weeks or even months. But as long as you are offering newsworthy stories and/or expert help in your niche, continuous effort nearly always gets rewarded.
One of the biggest objections to product creation is finding a great idea for a product…
Believe it or not, YOU are often your greatest source for profitable product ideas, and you’re about to discover how to generate more profitable business ideas than you will ever be able to use. Below you’ll discover 7 different ways to generate your own ideas, how to know if your ideas are likely to work, and how to test your idea to see if it really is going to make you money.
First, let’s talk about a (not so) surprising revelation – you already HAVE ideas. In the last month you’ve probably had product ideas for ebooks, videos series, memberships sites, etc. The fact is, finding ideas isn’t the hard part of product creation. Sometimes all you need to do is PAY ATTENTION to what’s happening online and all around you, and then write those ideas down when you get them.
So what’s the hard part of product creation? No, it’s not creating the product. It’s the step just after having an idea and just before creating the product, and it’s called: Choosing one idea and sticking to it, despite all of the other distractions.
This is of course followed up by continuing to stick with the idea all the way through until completion. I’ll bet you that you already know from your first hand experience that perseverance until completion is truly the difficult part of the product creation process, or any business undertaking really. Compared to that, getting an idea can be a piece of cake.
Here’s a thought that will take some of the stress out of choosing an idea and then seeing it all the way through to completion: Even a less than stellar idea – seen through to the end – will become an asset and a character builder. Let’s say you choose your idea and you run with it. You stick to it all the way from inception to final product creation and product launch. But it doesn’t perform the way you hoped and you don’t get the sales you anticipated.
You still have an asset you can use for multiple purposes. You can repackage your product with a new cover and new sales letter, and see if it sells better that way. You can use the product as a give away to build your list. You can enter your product in giveaways and joint ventures to also build your list, and good reputation in the marketplace. You can use it as a bonus when you sell other products you’ve created, or affiliate products. You can sell resell rights, master resell rights or private label rights to it. You can publish it on Kindle, and so forth.
Incidentally, there are numerous cases where a book did not sell well and the publisher simply changed the title and cover, and it then sold like hotcakes. So it might not be your product at all – it could simply be your product’s name or the marketing you’re using to sell your product.
Your product is also a character builder for you regardless of how well it sells because you’ve now proven to yourself that you can choose an idea and stick with it to completion. This skill alone can make you a very wealthy person, and is the real missing ingredient for most wannabe entrepreneurs.
Don’t believe me? Imagine two people: One person skips from idea to idea and rarely ever sees them through to completion. The other person completes one idea after another. Unfortunately, the second person creates 4 products that don’t sell very well for every product that sells like gangbusters. After a few years, the first person has 2 or 3 products completed (if that), while the second person has close to a hundred products created, 10% of which sold like crazy. Who would you say was more successful?
So how do you generate killer ideas? Here are those seven ways I promised:
1. Solve problems. If people need money, show them how to get it. If people need to lose weight, show them how to be thinner. If people have back pain, show them how to get rid of it, etc.
2. Answer questions. Again, you’re showing them how to do something. For example, if people are asking how to build a website, run an affiliate program or use a shopping cart, answering their questions can be the basis for a product topic. Sometimes the question might be answered with software. For example, if people want to know how to drive traffic and you’ve created a plug-in that drives traffic, you have an answer to their question (#2) that solves their problem (#1.)
3. Make a process easier. For example, every marketer needs sales letters. If you can develop a software, service or system that makes it easier to get sales letters, you might have a product winner.
4. Improve something. If you’ve got a method for growing organic vegetables that makes the vegetables bigger, tastier or more plentiful, you’ve got a product.
5. Do something faster. Maybe you know how make tomatoes grow twice as fast, or you know how to build a good list faster than anyone, or you have software that cuts the time it takes to perform a task – those are all viable product ideas.
6. Make something cheaper. Can you teach the contents of a $997 course for only $27? Or can you show people how to do something cheaper? Maybe you can demonstrate how to grow herbs for a fraction of the store cost – this could make a great product.
7. Find the hidden desire or need. For example, there are tons of products on how to do each aspect of online marketing yourself. But there might very well be a hidden market of upscale buyers who would rather pay someone to develop an online business for them.
Great product ideas are all around you, and within you. As has been said, great ideas are a dime a dozen, but people who act on them are one in a million. Be the one, and go make your million!
The P.S. in marketing originally came from direct mail promotions. Prospects would often go straight to the bottom of the sales copy to find the price before reading the letter. By inserting a powerful P.S., the marketers were often able to pull people back into the copy and read the entire message.
Today we use P.S.’s in online sales letters and emails, but the purpose has changed slightly. After all, we usually don’t put a price in an email, and the price in an online sales letter is often hidden in the copy. If your sales letter does prominently display the price at the end of the letter just prior to the P.S., then I highly encourage you to use what we call the Recap P.S., where you recap the greatest benefits to your offer. Again, this should draw them back into reading your sales message.
When the price does not appear at the end of your sales message, such as in an email, you have much more flexibility in what you place inside your P.S. Make no mistake – the P.S. is still very powerful and people will sometimes scroll straight to the end of the letter and thus read the P.S. first. But now you can use it to different purposes besides recapping the greatest benefits. Here then are 10 different P.S.’s to consider using. And no matter which kind you choose, always follow it with the link you’re promoting.
1. Use a testimonial. A testimonial is a great way to overcome your readers’ doubts and get them to click the link. And it can also be a sneaky way to restate a benefit at the same time.
For example: “P.S. Since using the abc product my life has changed dramatically. I now have total confidence that I can accomplish anything I set my mind to. In the last month I’ve received a promotion and a big fat raise, and I negotiated a very favorable deal on a brand new house that saved me $80,000 off the market value.”
2. “Oops I forgot.” This can be almost anything you want, so long as it’s important.
Examples: “P.S. Oops, I forgot to tell you, this is a dimesale and the price is rising rapidly.”
“P.S. Oh, forget to tell you that everyone who orders by midnight gets to have lunch with The Guru.”
“P.S. Hey, I forgot to mention that this is the exact same information I used to get the phone numbers of 17 beautiful women in one evening.”
3. The extra discount. You’ve given them the benefits in the email, now get them to take action with a discount offer.
“P.S. The next 5 people get a 25% discount just for opening this email. How cool is that?”
“P.S. When you order by midnight tonight and you use discount code BBB, you get $20 off the sale price. But you must order by midnight and you must use the discount code, no exceptions.”
4. The treasure hunt. Tell them exactly where to find a golden nugget of information or the biggest benefit of all.
“P.S. As soon as you’re on the page, read the headline and then scroll to the big yellow box with the cherries. Third cherry down – that’s the exact method I used last week to earn $4,390 in 22 minutes.”
5. Give them a visual to look for. If you have something really enticing on the page, tell them to go find it – in a round about way. Yeah, I know this one is hokey – but it flat out works.
“P.S. Did you see the treasure chest above on this page? Well, that was just to alert you about the 10 money saving tips you’d be crazy not to review right now and make sure you’re taking advantage of.”
6. Bait the hook. Use your P.S. as bait, emphasizing the greatest benefit or main selling point from a different angle. Let’s say your product teaches people how to make money online.
“P.S. While this product will make you an absolute money magnet on the Internet, it will also instill a new confidence in you that carries over into every facet of your life, making you more successful in everything you do.”
7. Urgency. We touched on this in earlier examples. If the price is increasing or the product is about to be pulled, you’ve got a reason for them to hurry over to the url or order page.
“P.S. The price is rising with every sale.”
“P.S. Only 99 of these will be made available, and 82 of those have already sold.”
“P.S. Donate by midnight tonight and every dollar you send will receive a matching donation, doubling your contribution and enabling us to help twice as many kittens.”
8. Don’t Decide Guarantee. The most difficult part of making a sale can be getting them to DECIDE to buy, right? So remove that step altogether with your guarantee and emphasize it in the P.S. Your goal is to remove all risk from their decision making, so that it appears they really aren’t deciding anything today. Highly effective.
“P.S. Remember, there is no need to decide today. Try our miracle wax product free for 30 days and if you’re not thrilled with your car’s shine, you’ll pay nothing.”
9. The Bonus. Use your email to cover the product, and then in the P.S. you introduce the bonus you’re offering when they purchase from you.
“P.S. Take action today and I’ll personally send you The Giant Offline Marketing Course for free. This is the exact same course I sell for $197 (show proof of where you sell it) and I will not be offering it for free ever again.”
10. More Proof. Are you making a claim that’s difficult to believe? Offer some kind of evidence or proof.
“P.S. Don’t take my word for it – Harvard’s 5 year excitability study shows abc product outperforms its closest competitor by 71%.”
“P.S. Millie Walker of Hope Springs Eternal, N.J., tried abc product and her sunflowers were 3 times the size they were the previous year.”
The P.S. is one place you can get creative, have fun, and even be silly. Some marketers tell a quick joke in the P.S. Some use more than one P.S., using a P.P.S and even a P.P.P.S.
The one thing to keep in mind: The P.S. is valuable real estate – use it wisely.
If you write a quality email newsletter then you know that it takes a lot of works to produce. So isn’t it extremely frustrating when you look at your stats and see that only a small percentage of your subscribers even cared to open your newsletter and read it?
Here are 3 reasons why newsletters don’t get read, and the corresponding tips for making your email newsletter eye candy that your readers can’t wait to devour…
1. Too many product pitches. If your newsletter only pitches products, your readers will get tired of always being promoted to. Instead, give them some great content that is helpful; information that they can USE and benefit from without having to purchase anything.
This way they’ll become accustomed to opening your newsletters for the great content, and when you do pitch a product, they are more likely to read it and respond.
2. Your content is boring. Whoa, that one hurt, didn’t it? No one likes to think they’re boring – yet we might be and not even realize it.
The solution? Tell stories. Nothing captures attention like stories do. I once had a teacher in school who tried for weeks to pound dates and names into our heads. It was his first year teaching, and he just couldn’t figure out why we were doing so poorly on the tests. Finally he started telling history in story form, many of the students grades shot up overnight.
See what I mean? 😉
3. Your newsletter is hit and miss. This week you send it out on Monday and next week you send it on Wednesday. Then you miss two weeks, and finally you send it out on Friday.
Let’s face it – people get used to routines. Their favorite show is on Thursday night at 8:00 pm and they know it. Their newspaper arrives every morning at 6:00 am and that’s when they expect it. Their paycheck arrives every other Friday at 3:00 pm, and that’s when they look for it. And your newsletter should be no different. Pick a schedule and then stick to it, no matter what.
Sometimes the answers are right under your nose. For example – what makes one person fail while another succeeds? The answers is often small differences that seem ordinary and mundane, yet are magic at creating consistent and long term success.
Successful people…
1. Know their purpose. If you’re working towards your true purpose, it’s no longer work, but passion. Find your passion and you are halfway to achieving success.
2. Read stuff. No, we’re not talking about surfing the web here. Instead, find the information that will help you in your quest to get ahead and then read it.
3. Question almost to the point of being annoying. Question to clarify and to improve your comprehension. Question to find new methods, new techniques and new ways of doing things. Just because something has “always been done this way” doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way.
4. Ask for help. Going it alone is the macho Lone Ranger way, but even he had Tonto to help him out. Need help? Then for crying out loud, ask.
5. Have a big circle of friends. It’s hard to ask for help if you don’t have people to go to. Build a vast network of friends and associates, both in and out of your niche and Internet marketing.
6. Outsource. Whether this means hiring people locally or on the other side of the world, get others to perform tasks you’re not good at. Otherwise you’re just wasting your time to achieve mediocre results.
7. Don’t look back – much. If you wallow in the past then you’re stuck in the past. Look back only to find lessons on what works and what doesn’t.
8. Plan. What’s your vision? What are the goals you need to meet to reach that vision? And how will you achieve each of those goals? Write it down and refer back to it often.
9. Are flexible. Things change. You might find an easier way to achieve one of your goals, or you might learn that your original plan has major flaws. Don’t be bull-headed. Be flexible. Water can get past anything precisely because it is so flexible.
10. Prioritize. We tend to do things in order of time or ease. For example, you’re more likely to tackle the 30 minute task rather than the 2 hour task, or do the easy thing before the difficult endeavor. But once you prioritize and do the most important thing first, you’ll find that success naturally follows.
11. Are persistent. You didn’t reach your goal in a day or a week? They said no? Things aren’t turning out as you thought they would? So long as you don’t quit, you cannot fail. Even blind squirrels find acorns when they persist.
12. Know that failure is just a stepping stone to success. This is directly tied to #11. Just because you fail does not give you a reason to quit. Give yourself one hour for a pity part, then analyze WHY you failed and move on. Remember all the failures that went into inventing the light bulb – Edison didn’t stop until he found the right way because he knew that every failure got him that much closer to his goal.
13. Get outside of their comfort zone. You’ve never done it before? You’re nervous? You’re shy? You’ve got butterflies in your stomach and you feel like you’re going to throw up? Congratulations! You’re about to do something that is going to stretch your abilities and get you one step closer to realizing your dream, so thumb your nose at fear and just do it anyway.
14. Aren’t Scrooges. Whether it’s sharing credit, sharing your techniques for success or the fruits of your labors, share with others. It will come back to you 10 fold in the future.
15. Recharge. All work and no play makes Jack or Jill a dull burnt out person. Take time to rest, get enough sleep, and spend one day a week doing something totally unrelated to your work – you’ll come back feeling refreshed and with new energy.
As an online marketer, there are 3 kinds of speed you need to focus on to be successful.
The speed of your customer service. If a customer emails you today, you need to answer today. If you can’t, hire a virtual assistant. If you can’t do that, then at least set up a help desk that lets customers know what hours you work, so they know when you will be getting back to them.
Your website speed. How long does it take for your website to load? For every second added to a website’s load time, the conversions decrease by a shocking 2% to 7%, and page views are reduced by 1% to 2%. That’s per SECOND. In addition, Google factors in loading speed when determining the ranking it’s going to give your website. I’m not going into a technical tutorial here, so I suggest you Google how to make your site load faster and take it from there – or suffer the consequences.
That sounded dire. Sorry. I’m eager to get to my third point, and that is:
Your own speed. When you have a great new idea, how long does it take you to act upon it? When your customer gives you a brilliant new product request, do you begin today? Tomorrow? Or do you put it off until never? When you’re in the shower and you have a brilliant thought on how to increase subscribers, do you put it into action now? Or will you “get around to it?”
I’ve found that if I don’t act within 24 hours on a new idea, I will almost certainly never act on it. In addition, if I do act but I wait until I get it perfect before rolling it out – it gathers dust and becomes a total waste of my time and resources, along with a an almost imperceptible blow to my confidence and self esteem.
I have a theory, and it’s this: Each time you have a brilliant idea but don’t act upon it, you’re one step closer to dying the death of a thousand cuts. Sure, one or two is no big deal, but they add up. Pretty soon you’ve got a long list of brilliant ideas that never saw the light of day, and you’re business is stalling.
Speed to paramount to success. You almost can’t have one without the other. I encourage you; take something you’ve learned or thought of today, and begin work on it RIGHT NOW. Outline what you need to do to get this idea off the ground, and then do the first thing on the list. When that’s done, cross it off and do the second. Have it done by tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow.
I guarantee; you’ll become addicted to speed and your business, your confidence and your income will thank you.
If you want to know anything, ask someone who’s already been doing it for awhile. In other words, someone who actually walks the walk instead of just running their mouth.
So who better to ask what new affiliates should do than seasoned affiliates? Here are some suggestions from the pros themselves:
Provide lots of value. The key to getting visitors to return to your website time and time again (and buy from you time and time again) is to provide useful content they need and / or want.
So what’s “useful?” That depends on the topic. If you’ve got a website on how to drive web traffic, then naturally giving them lots of great info they can use on how to get more traffic is going to be useful. However, if you run a humor site, then providing content that is genuinely funny might not be “useful” in the traditional sense of the word, but it’s what your visitors want.
Bottom line: Give them what they want and they’ll come back for more.
Here’s a little trick: Instead of focusing on “making money,” focus on creating value and the money will come.
If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life. Are you still “getting ready” to be an affiliate? Make the decision to just do it. So what if your website isn’t perfect or your emails aren’t perfect? I’ll let you in on a little secret: They never will be, no matter how long you wait. So just jump in and start swimming – the water’s fine!
Do it with passion. You can be an affiliate in ANY niche – so why not choose a niche you’re passionate about? It’s far more fun to review a product or write a blog post on a topic you love, rather than one you feel complete and total ambivalence for.
Watch out for the picture in your head. You imagine sending out one email and getting a 50% response rate, or doing one PPC campaign and raking in $10,000. Then it doesn’t happen. Then you get discouraged. Then you procrastinate. And pretty soon you’re out of the business entirely. Why? Because reality didn’t match the picture in your head.
Here’s the news: That picture in your head is what you’re shooting for – it’s not what’s going to happen the first day or maybe even the first year out of the gate. Like anything else, you work your way up in affiliate marketing. You get better. Your list gets bigger. Your website gets more traffic. You become more attuned to what works and what flops like a dead mackerel. And one day, you finally match that picture in your head. But it doesn’t happen overnight.
Worrying won’t change the outcome. You write an email to your list and you worry you’re saying the wrong thing, you worry you’ll make a stupid typo, you worry no one will open it, you worry no one will buy the product you’re promoting, you worry you’ll get hate mail or everyone will unsubscribe… etc.
What a colossal waste. I can tell you from experience that worry has never once changed the outcome. Worry is a useless emotion that will drive you bonkers if you let it, so just let it go.
Thinking you’re too late. There are affiliates out there making six figures a month – maybe seven figures. You should have jumped on the affiliate wagon 10 years ago, now it’s too late. Right?
Wrong. You have to start somewhere and sometime. Right here and right now is absolutely the best place – it always is. And if you think that just because you’re starting from scratch, you can’t be effective as an affiliate – bear this in mind:
“If you think you are too small or too new to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” That’s a quote from Betty Reese.
Mosquitoes only live for two weeks – guaranteed they don’t worry that they’re “too late” to bite the bejeebers out of you – they just DO it.
Think of it this way – Those who went before you have laid the ground work for you to be successful.
Comparing yourself. This goes right along with thinking you’re “too late.” If you’re trying to compare yourself to the mega-watt affiliate who pulls down six figures a month, you’re just hurting yourself.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” -Theodore Roosevelt
Knowing and doing are two different things. Getting your first affiliate payment is like getting your driver’s license – you’ve only just begun to become a great affiliate or driver. It’s when you’re driving your car every day, or getting paid every day, that you’ll find you know what you’re doing and you’re actually DOING it.
Know your partners. Before you sign up with a network or an affiliate program, do your research. See if someone has had a problem with them, if their products are good, if their customer service is stellar, and if they treat their affiliates well.
Focus focus focus. You’ve got 5 different niches and 7 outstanding ideas and you’re going in 12 different directions at once. Know what happens when you pull someone 12 different directions, or even just TWO different directions? They either don’t move, or they get pulled off balance.
Build one website at a time. Make it profitable. Work on it some more. Once you have a very firm foundation, then and only then should you consider going in a second direction.
Optimize for ONE search engine. If SEO is your method of traffic generation and you optimize your website for Google, don’t get smart and then optimize your website for Yahoo or Bing – you’ll get penalized for this by Google. No, it’s not fair, but it is fact.
Only promote products you are familiar with. If just one time you promote a product you haven’t tried yourself, and it turns out to be a lousy product, you’ve just ruined your reputation with everyone on your list who either bought that product or already knows it’s junk. Why risk it? Only promote products you can whole-heartedly recommend.
Test everything. Even if the biggest guru gives you what sounds like the best advice, it still might not work for your niche / website / audience. So never assume and always test.
Establish trust. This runs throughout everything you do, whether it’s the information you impart, the products you offer, etc. The more transparent and trustworthy you are, the more people will trust you when you suggest they make a purchase.
Become an authority in your niche. Whether you do it by creating your own products or by surrounding yourself with authorities is up to you. Best scenario – do both.
Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to make money online because most of the work is already done for you. Apply these secrets and start getting paid like the pros. 😀
