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Posts Tagged ‘Affiliate Marketing’

When I first started out in online marketing I was attracted to the idea of spending time and effort putting up sites that made money passively and residually. Despite what all the hypey sales pages and get rich quick people say there is nothing easy about it. The concept is simple – drive traffic to a your links, they click, they buy and you get paid. But simple and easy are not the same thing.

In practice driving enough targeted traffic to a good site that is well optimised to convert visitors to not only click through but click through and buy is by no means simple let alone easy. This is why there is a very well known saying that rings true for anyone serious about making consistent and decent money from affiliate marketing. It is also the part that bugs me about this whole business:

“The money is in the list!”

What this means is that in order to really do well at affiliate marketing you need to build a subscriber list and promote affiliate products though a newsletter. Makes perfect sense doesn’t it? You put your efforts into online lead generation then sell not just one but many affiliate products over a period of time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disputing the effectiveness of this method – I know how effective it is. This is my issue with email affiliate marketing:

If you are not genuinely an authority and ‘go-to’ person with a real passion and knowledge for your “niche” then you have no business running a newsletter about it

There you go I said it and I know a lot of people will disagree with me and that’s fine. I know there are plenty of people doing very well from email marketing and they will be the ones who should be doing it. There are also a huge number of people who are really struggling to build their lists and make any money from them. Many who have fallen into the popular trap of trying to promote affiliate products to other marketers. I’ve been on these subsriber lists and seen the desperation in the messages telling me I’ve simply got to have whatever it is they’re punting at me – every single day until I’ve unsubscribed.

My Experience of List Marketing

By now you’re probably thinking that I’m some disgruntled, failed list marketer with a beef about making money online. And to a point you may be right because I spent about 2 years dabbling around in various niches, putting up sites, driving traffic, capturing leads, writing autoresponder series’ and sending out broadcast messages. I made a few sales but nothing like what I intended to. So after a while I came to the realisation that I had an internal conflict inside myself that was holding me back. I was not 150% confident and behind what I was doing. It did not feel right for me to be promising these website visitors the solution to x, y and z on my opt in pages.

There was no solid foundation to this business and that’s why it crumbled. And if you are struggling trying to make money online by marketing products in niches you know nothing about and have no genuine interest in then you’re probably in the same boat.

Becoming a ‘percieved authority’ and/or learning enough about a niche to market confidently is very very hard work. Mutiply that by all the niches/sites/lists you need to get into to make a full time income and you’ve got a real job on your hands. In order to make it with list marketing you have to provide content and value that is so good that your visitors and subscribers will open and read your messages and maybe click through and buy.

Afilliate Marketing Without a List

Having said all that I’m still in the affiliate marketing game and making money. Not as much as if I were to do it the list way but that’s not my game plan. After about 4 years of scrabling around online I’ve settled with Chris Rempel’s conduit site method. It’s good, it’s solid and it’s providing value.

In short the concept is that you put up review/info sites about specific products and companies. Your target visitors are right at the final stage of the buying cycle where they’ve decided on the product they want to buy, how much etc. They are doing their final bit of online due diligence on this  company/product before they make their purchase.

They find your conduit site which provides them with a quick lowdown on the company/product, the company contact details, the price, the return policy and some real feedback and a rating. If they decide to continue with their purchase they click through – and buy

No list, no compelling content or learning how to become an expert soap maker/scrap booker/herb gardner/fitness guru/online millionaire. No autoresponder series, no copying and pasting some guru’s suggested mailing then blasting it out to a bunch of people with your real address at the end of the email.

Just attract traffic that is about to buy something, provide them with the exact information they’re looking for to complete their purchase – they click – they buy – you get paid.

Simple – yes

Easy? – no

Worth it? – Works for me!

Click here to find out more about Chris Rempel’s “lazy affiliate” conduit site method.