I had the opportunity to listen to my favorite Affiliate Marketing Momma Alice Seba last night talk about success with affiliate marketing and thought you might enjoy these notes.
Kelly McCausey of WorkatHomeMomsTalkRadio interviewed her on the Hot Summer Seminar Series for Moms.
Affiliate Marketing Q&A with Alice Seba
What is the difference between internet marketing and affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is simply selling other people’s products for a commission, making recommendations when people buy (or when you send a lead to a company). The company fulfills the order, does customer service, etc. There’s no inventory to clutter up your house, it’s an ideal business for Moms.
Internet marketing is doing business online…selling from your website, through PPC, etc or making money through Adsense, etc.
John Reese says you can’t be everything to your target market, so why not make recommendations for other products as well? It can be a component of internet marketing and smart marketers will include it.
Alice mentioned how people who got started in Internet marketing several years ago had to learn everything on their own but today there is tons of great information out there, we can learn from them and move ahead much more quickly. Alice has had incredible success in the last couple of years online and some have accused her of dating the guy who owns Google!
What skills would you say has contributed to your success as an internet marketer?
1) Continuing my education and applying what I learn.
Some people don’t educate themselves or they OVEReducate and yet don’t ever DO anything. Go to seminars, take courses, study what other successful people do.
Sign up for their newsletters, buy their products, see what they do. You want to know what other people are doing right so you can do it as well.
2) Diversification.
Selling different products, doing different promotion methods. Don’t just rely on search engines, PPC, message boards or whatever. Have different websites.
A word of caution: A lot of Moms come online and want multiple streams of income immediately…they’ll have 5 signature lines on their message board posts hoping one thing will pan out. When you’re just starting out make a focus, and find a target market.
Don’t ever rely on one way to promote your business. Go wide and expand.
3) Don’t be afraid to show your personality.
You don’t have to be formal, stiff and serious online. If you’re fun or have some edge to you, something different, you’re going to get more exposure and more attention.
Start putting your plans into action…it’s not expensive to start new websites or test new things. Go for it!
Kelly mentions how Alice reinvested in her business for the first two years. She was willing to take some risks with large purchases, attending seminars, etc. Some Moms are afraid to spend money but they won’t reap those kinds of rewards either.
Alice says don’t go into debt but be smart… put aside a percentage to reinvest. If you think you can’t afford stuff, think about what you’ll learn and what advances you will be able to make in your business.
Alice mentioned that home study courses can pay for themselves over and over and over again.
Questions Kelly gets from Moms
1) I have a large content website and make money from selling ads but want to implement affiliate marketing…How do I choose products to promote?
Alice: Selling advertising wasn’t the best model for me. If you want to make a good living and just sell ads, you need boatloads of traffic. It’s not easy even with a few thousand visitors a day. Time spent putting up ads, customer service etc. takes up time and is a lot of work when there are more passive ways to start building income online which is where affiliate marketing comes in.
Start with Google Adsense. Or maybe a combination of Adsense and ads. Test out whether having Adsense alone or with ads affects your income.
Add product recommendations at the end of your articles. Do full product reviews. Start writing how-to articles and recommend a resource that solves a problem at the end.
Same goes for mailing lists. Alice mentions that there are no ads in her newsletter. You have no idea if company that is advertising is legit or does what they say they will. Those can be a reflection on you. You can make more money recommending products than selling advertising.
If you already have traffic, see which pages get the most and add recommendations to those pages so you’ll see results faster.
Independent programs perform well…buy a product and make the recommendation. If you know a product that will work well for your target market, look to see if they have an affiliate or associate program.
As you become well known, people will come to you and give you their product and ask you to recommend their products.
2) I have no website, but want to get started affiliate marketing. How do I decide where to begin? Do I choose a product or a market first?
Choose a target market first. Frank Kern’s father told him: “People buy products. Products don’t buy products.” Find a market that is passionate and also willing to spend money on their passion.
Do the simplest thing: start building a list and make them offers, find out what they want and get to know the market. Don’t worry about having a perfect site. Make a simple, one page site. (More about how to make minisites.)
Alice said if she were to start today, she wouldn’t sit and wait for natural search engine traffic. She would start a PPC (pay per click, like Google AdWords) campaign to start getting subscribers and seeing if the idea is a viable one.
More Questions and Comments from Moms
1) What do I do next? Can someone hold my hand? I’ve listened to you before and you make a lot of sense but my brain goes to fuzz and I can’t implement things.
Kelly and Alice have a private mentoring forum to teach Moms how to make money in Internet Marketing. Mom Masterminds Business Mentoring
If you start participating in the forums there and asking questions we will give you encouragement.
Think about your target market and how you can serve them, start a PPC campaign.
2) I’ve been told that it would be a bad idea to put affiliate links on my site when I sell a coaching service. What are your views?
Alice: Not likely. Test it out and see what happens. Most people coming to your site for content are not going to buy your service, why let them go away? Offer them a product or something they will buy. You’re not going to turn everybody into your customer, why not let them become someone else’s customer and get paid for it?
You might want to have one site that’s just about you, that encourages people to sign up for your list etc, and have another site with content where you make those recommendations…you can’t be everything to everybody.
2) I know what I want to sell but don’t know how to start.
New to Internet Business Tutorial
Question from Alice:
Do you worry about everything having to be perfect first before taking action? Just get started…John Reese has an article called “How Crap Can Dramatically Increase Your Profits”…not to say you should sell garbage, but you can’t get anywhere if you don’t get started.
3) I know you started online with little or no experience, how did you jump in? Did you teach yourself html?
Yes I did learn html, I learned it badly! I learned Frontpage… but that’s not what I focused on. Learning html is not what makes money. I learned marketing. I picked up Ken Evoy’s Make Your Site Sell ebook and it cut my learning curve. So it was reading, studying, following what other successful people are doing. Don’t just study though, DO it!
4) I started with Site Build It! and got very confused but then found the Easy Site Builder from Internetbasedfamily and LOVE it. I’m just ecstatic about it.
Kelly McCausey mentions that next week’s Seminar will be about building websites and the pros and cons of different methods.
Thanks Kelly and Alice for all the awesome information!
Affiliate Marketing Resources:
LinkShare
ClixGalore
Commission Junction
Leadhound
Clickbank.com
Shareasale.com
Amazon.com (Amazon commissions are tiny but convert well. Look for info on their associate program)
Affiliates Alert
iDevDirect (for staring an affiliate program of your own)
CBMall
Free Affiliate Marketing Ebook
Mom Masterminds Business Mentoring
Easy Site Builder