Most newbies start off their Affiliate marketing careers by doing lots of article marketing. Most give up because they’re not seeing immediate results from their efforts. However, after 585 articles on Ezinearticles.com, I’ve realized that article marketing is only the beginning of your article marketing, not the end.

What do I mean by this?

Well, there is a popular method out there called BUM marketing, where you write a whole bunch of articles daily to get lots of traffic. This traffic is usually very short-lived, with an article only providing you traffic for 3-4 days (at most).

Hence, setting goals such as “20 articles per day” is pointless if your goal is to make money only through article marketing. Why not instead focus on article marketing only in the beginning of your careers, as a jump-off point for creating a flagship blog – earning a steady revenue over time, like this:

Most of my income now is passive income. Even though I have not yet achieved the level of income that I want to (around 5 grand per month), I’m steadily getting there. But the best feeling is waking up and seeing sales come through.

Also love it when I get lots of sales without working for the entire day, such as the weekends. This is what every Internet Marketer is after: passive income. It all ties into our pursuit of absolute financial freedom.

Anyways, lets get back to Article marking. Here’s what article marketing SHOULD be used for:

Get Traffic for the LONG Term

My top performing article gets around 100 hits per month. And with a 15.1% click through rate, I’m getting around 15 hits from that article per month. That’s pretty good for an ezine article.

I suspect most people’s articles perform at a much lower level than that. But think about it this way, if you can get one article to send you 15 article per month, and you have 500 articles published, you’re getting 7,500 hits per month JUST from article marketing.

Now, frankly speaking, I’ve made the same mistake when I was a newbie – in terms of writing a whole bunch of crappy articles really fast. Some of them did help me get sales, but most stopped working for me after 3 days.

I’m currently not posting any new articles on Ezinearticles.com. But when I do, I’ll be sure to go back and look at my top performing articles and duplicate them. If I can write just 10 top performing articles, that’s 150 hits extra just from Ezinearticles.com.

BOOST your Reputation

Ezinearticles.com works hard to maintain a good reputation on their site. They’ve recently been cracking down on affiliate marketing because of all these newbie affiliates writing dumb articles.

So, your job should be write super high quality articles, and send it back to your blog. You can marketing to visitors on your blog as much as you want, but in your Ezine article, make sure that you are writing 100% quality content.

You will position yourself as an expert in no time, and hence be able to see higher conversions for your products from individuals coming form your Ezine articles.

BUILD Links

At the bottom of each of my article, in my Authors Resource Box, I write the following:

You have permission to publish this article in your web sites, ezines or electronic publication, as long as the piece is used in its entirety including the resource box, all hyperlinks (HTML clickable) and references and copyright info

So if someone is doing research for an article on their blog and comes across your site. They’ll be obliged to either link back to your blog, to the ezine article, or might even decide to reprint your material.

But you need to tell people this. You can’t just assume that just because you’ve written an article, people will start linking to you. You know what happens when you assume.

Bottom line is this: WRITE HIGH QUALITY ARTICLES AND FOCUS ON LONG TERM RESULTS

Analyzing an Ezine Article

Now lets go back to that Ezine article and see why it’s such a great article and what steps you should take to write high quality content. You can also implement these tips in your blog articles.

The article we’ll be analyzing is titled “Interval Training You can Perform at Home.” I wrote this article about 11 months ago, and it’s still performing really good. Look at the traffic it’s getting:

June isn’t over yet, so it’s safe to say that the article is getting 100 hits per month, at least. Here are the search terms it gets traffic for:

So as you can see, I’ve used a long tail keyword to construct my title and topic for the article. The long tailis a socio-statistical theory that suggests that the collective sales of products in low demand can exceed that of popular products and bestsellers.

In other words, focusing on low-search, specifically targeted keywords will yield higher results instead of constantly going after more popular keywords (especially when you’re just starting out).

So, instead of “Interval Training” I chose “Interval Training at Home.” I can also do Interval Training for Women, Interval Training for Obese People, or Interval Training for Athletes.

How do you find long-tail keywords?

Simple, use the same exact SEO techniques I wrote about in my free manual. Once you’ve found which primary Keywords you want to target, start creating 3-5 word phrases that increase the specificity.

For example, lets say I wanted to write about Big Biceps. Big Biceps is a tough keyword to target. So what do you we do? We start thinking of things that people would search about using those two words.

Here’s a few I though of off the top of my head:

• Big Biceps Workout without Weights
• Big Biceps Workout you can Do at Home
• Top 10 Exercises for Big Biceps
• How to Get Big Biceps Fast

The BOLD portions are the keywords people would most likely search for. You can also put in BIG BICEPS into Google and see what suggestions they give you. Here are the results I got:

Using this feature, you can come up with a whole slew of article titles fairly easily. For example:

• Get Big Biceps and Triceps at Home
• Big Biceps Routine for the Gym
• Big Biceps Workout for Women

I’ve been using this technique, along with looking at my Google Analytics data to boost traffic. I’m doing ok. I’ve increased my traffic by 7% so far, so my income might match or slightly increase from last month.

I will give you the full update when ready.

One Last Thing: Keyword Density

Ezinearticles.com limits how many times you can mention a keyword in your post. However, lets look at how many times I’ve used a particular keyword in that article:

• Interval Training – 4 times
• Intervals – 3 times
• Interval Workout – 1 time
• Interval – 1 time

So you don’t need to go crazy and put your keyword all over the place, but you should use them frequently. Try to make the article flow well. Get someone to check it for you if you need to.

Hope this little tutorial helps. For more clickbank marketing tips, grab a free copy of my 2 Grand per Month Clickbank Formula.

A few weeks back, I received this comment on my main blog: “you still havent updated livingchill.com. what a waste of time you are.”

Seriously? So what if I didn’t update this blog. When did I ever say that I was going to write every day or every week or anything? I think one status update per month is more than enough.

Anything else and you’d probably become extremely bored. I will update when I have something to report on. And what about the second part of that comment? I’m a waste of time? What the hell!

Am I making you wait for me or something? Am I making you pay for some service that I’m providing? No. Everything on this site is 100% free. I’m basically sharing what’s worked for me and what hasn’t.

I’m not saying I’m some sort of guru that you should follow around 24/7. Wow. I really hope that who ever that was that made that comment never comments on any of my sites ever again.

What really offended me was the fact that he went to my fitness blog to comment, instead of commenting on this site. I get emails when a comment is placed on this site. Just comment on livingchill.com if you have a question that is related to affiliate marketing.

Wow.

Anyways, a lot of you have been asking about back links. Well, one of the vendors, Vince Delmonte, created this small PDF to help out his affiliates with SEO. It’s a really great read and will most likely answer all your questions concerning SEO and getting back links.

You can download it (for free) here: http://www.vincedelmontefitness.com/affiliates/seo_secrets.php

Wow, haven’t posted on this site since May 7. Well, lets do some reporting here.

So, how much money did I make this month? $1581.14. I’m getting close to making 2 grand, WITHOUT a huge product launches. I’ve come to realize that a huge product launch will help you make a lot of money, but it’s futile to rely on just one major launch.

Major launches only come out maybe 1-2 times per year, however product launches come out almost every week. In the past month alone, there were about 3 product launches, and at least 5 promos that I participated in.

Not all of them were super lucrative for me. But even if a promo helps you earn around $100, that’s still great for your monthly total. Anyways, lets take a look at April and May 2010:

So based on these stats, I’m thinking I can boost my income at least 10%, or $1739.25. However, there were a lot of sales made for members sections and partial payments. For members sections, I would get a percentage of the sale as long as the individual stayed in the members section.

However, for the partial/deferred payment, the individual usually payed a trial amount – like $5 – and then would pay the rest in 21-30 days. As long as customers don’t cancel, I should be seeing all those commission payments coming through in June.

My estimate is $326. 34 in rebills. Add that to my previous forecast, and you get $2065.59. So I’ll finally surpass the 2 grand mark without a huge product launch. If a huge product launch does come around (it is, after all, the summer), then I can make even more money!

Lets compare last year and this year:

So last year, I only made $129.87 in the entire month! Now that’s a huge improvement! But more importantly, take a look at my average income. This year, my monthly average income is $1208.82, compared to $198.72 last year.

June 2009 is highlighted because I made the most money that month last year. Meaning that I should be able hit some pretty good numbers this month overall. The second highest is October. Also realize that I didn’t start SERIOUS affiliate marketing until May 2009.

The point is that anyone who is serious can easily make around $100 their first month. Then you just use the momentum to build up your affiliate marketing business and blog, as I’ve done.

I want to take this time, now that I have your attention, and talk about one thing: back links. A lot of my survey responses were focused around how to get traffic and back links. The back links part…I have no idea.

People link to me on a daily basis. Some of the sites are legit, others are automated adsense sites. But the bottom line is that here I am and I don’t know anything about building links. I haven’t had any formal SEO training, and I’m getting 20,000 hits per month with an Alexa ranking of 328,700.

That’s why I keep telling to start a blog around something they know about and enjoy. It makes the whole process easier. Just use the SEO and keyword research tips I shared with you in my free manual, and keep writing.

Keep blogging, and figure out what you’re good at. The information is out there, for free. Are you good at article marketing, link building, writing content, youtube marketing, social bookmarking, facebook, or twitter?

There are hundreds of different ways to make a sale. Keep experimenting, reading, and studying, and you will achieve your goals.

Anyways, back to the analysis -

So, I’ve only increased my traffic by .97%. .97% increase in traffic equals a 7% increase in sales. It’s quite obvious to me I know how to CONVERT traffic, but I just need more of it. At this point, perhaps simply writing on my blog isn’t enough.

I plan to do more guest posts, article marketing, and introduce more higher end products. I will also take another crack at social media. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to rely on twitter, social bookmarking, or facebook.

Perhaps facebook, since I’m more active on it as it is. I will have to study what trainers such as Craig Ballantyne, Funk Roberts, and Mike Mahler are doing on Facebook.

I want to end this analysis with a huge victory. The last time I posted, I stated that my income had stagnated at around 300-400 dollars per week and I wanted to break past the $500 level. Well, I’ve done it!

Check this out:

Yes! It’s actually past $600. I just hope I can keep this steady. I’m also experimenting with a new way of positioning the products that I promote on my blog using this simple to develop spreadsheet, designed to help you feature your top products at optimal locations.

I used to just place whatever product was last sold at the top of my side bar. But I realized that this was a huge mistake! I started this experiment on Wednesday, so…yea look at those stats starting Wednesday.

Will get back to you soon!

Everyone knows that the key to making sales with Clickbank products is to write product reviews, landing pages, comparison landing pages, or pre-sell pages.

Latest Screen Shots - Not Bad

Each of these pages offers a different benefit. However, the main idea is that you still need to see the product before you can write a believable review.

How do you go about doing it? Do you really need to purchase every single product that you review? The short answer is…no. So then, how do you write a review without actually seeing the product?

Starting out, I wrote reviews without seeing the product. It worked.

However, one day I contacted a vendor who’s product I was promoting, just to ask them a question about their product.

A few email messages later, they sent me a copy of their product. I was extremely excited to get a free copy of the product. Sure, I felt special. But that was when I realized the power of being an affiliate.

Vendors need us just as much as we need them. However, at that moment, I did not think to ask vendors for a review copy of their product. I just went on and depended on vendors to send me a review copy as I promoted a product.

Not anymore. I’m much more proactive about my business. In fact, just this past week I’ve contacted at least 10 vendors, and was able to get review copies of 8 products.

A good vendor will be happy to send you a review copy, or at least a sample of their product. But, there are some things you must keep in mind:

Tip #1: It Helps If You Have a Website

The moment vendors see my website, they know I mean business. They see all the product images on the sidebar. They browse through all the in-depth product reviews I write.

Vendors Know I Mean Business

They can see this site gets traffic. If they want to double check, they just go onto Alexa.com and check my traffic rank. But, you don’t necessarily need a high-traffic website to get free review copies.

If you don’t wish to spend $110 per year on hosting and domain name (which comes out to less than $10 a month), then you can use a free blogger.com blog.

However, any business is an investment. And I’d rather you spend your money on setting up a decent looking blog rather than on PPC. I still haven’t conquered PPC marketing, and I’ve been doing this longer than you (I’m guessing).

Tip #2: Be Nice and Be Honest

Don’t send out an email and say, “May I please have a copy of your product?” On the flip side, don’t say, “It would be really nice of you to please, maybe, if possible, but you don’t really have to send me a review copy.”

Be professional, but be honest. If you’re a beginner, say that you’re just starting out and you want their product to be one of the first products you promote.

I just Think this Image is Cool

Here is a sample email template for individuals who already have a few products on their website:

Hi (Vendor Name),

- (Your Name)

Here is a sample email template for individuals who have no products on their website:

Hi (Vendor Name),

#3: Look for Brand New Products

There’s a four-month window you should be familiar with: 1 month before the product is launched, and 3 months after the product is launched. Three months after a product is launched, there is very little guarantee that the product will be able to give you sales.

Open the Window at the Right Time, and You could be Looking at the Solution to all your Financial Problems

This is the biggest mistake newbies make. They try and sell products with a high gravity. Yes, high gravity means that lots of affiliates are making sales of the product.

But high gravity also means that it’s been around for a while. Very few vendors are able to get 100+ gravity within a few weeks. So, keep a look out for brand new products.

This is also the time when vendors start looking for affiliates. They want lots of affiliates sending traffic to their site 1 month before the product is actually launched.

You really shouldn’t start promoting a product that’s not going to be released for another 3 months because if you send traffic to the website, and the vendor is capturing emails, then you have 60 days to make a sale, or else it won’t be credited to you.

1 month before is the best time, since the buzz about the product will be at it’s peak. On launch day, you can easily grab 5-10 sales for a high end product, or 20-30 for a lower end product.

There are three ways to seek out new products:

Method #1: Instant Affiliate Accelerator

Antone Roundy has a product called the Instant Affiliate Accelerator. The product helps you perform a lot of affiliate marketing tasks such as delivering bonuses and creating squeeze pages.

But, the product didn’t really work for me, so I canceled my membership. However, they kept me on their newsletter. Antone’s weekly newsletter is a great resource to find new products.

He focuses on four types of products:

#1 – Rising Stars

Reminds you of Kindergarten

These are products that have seen a boost in their sales, gravity, and are offering high commissions. They also see low returns. Usually, these are the products that have just experienced a huge launch.  This is where you want to choose most of your products from.

#2 – Falling Rocks

These are the products that are doing poorly in the Clickbank marketplace. Their commissions are not that good, sales are plummeting, and refund rates are rising. It’s not uncommon to see a product a rising star one week, and a falling rock the next. If a product you’re promoting is on the Falling Rocks list, abandon immediately!

#3 – Dinosaur Killers

These are the products you want to avoid like the plague! The focus is mostly on refund rates. The market has clearly rejected the product, and if you’re promoting them, it’ll damage your reputation.

#4 – New Products

This is just a list of brand new products. This is where you will most likely find a product that is about to be launched. Most of the new products are still in the testing phase.

I’ve also found vendors of new products are the most difficult to convince to give away a free version of their product. This is because for most this is their first product, and they are not seasoned Internet marketers yet.

Method #2: CBengine

If you do not want to sign up for Instant Affiliate Accelerator (I think there’s a 14-day free trial), then you can simply use the myriad of free Clickbank – tracking websites such as CBengine.

Is this your Goal? Then do your Research!

These websites will give you listings of brand new products, and specific information about the product. Frankly, I don’t use the websites too much, so I can not tell you how best to use them.

However, I thought I’d mention them.

Method #3: Relationships with Vendors

I advise you to get on the mailing list of as many vendors in your niche as possible. Now, I’m not talking about their affiliate newsletters. I’m talking about their customer newsletters.

Most good vendors will have an op-tin form on the front page of their site. Get on that newsletter. This is because most vendors stick together, and you can get a sense of an upcoming product launch if all of a sudden you’re getting emails from a vendor promoting someone else’s product.

In addition, some of the vendors who’s products you’re currently promoting will eventually create a new product in the future. If they know you by first name, and if you’re making them at least 3-5 sales per week (very doable), then they’ll most likely contact you and inform you of an upcoming launch.

There are more than enough methods here to 1) help you choose the right products and 2) to get your hands on a review copy of the product you’re promoting.

Getting a review copy will also help you make a better decision on what products you want to spend more time promoting. I feel kind of guilty not promoting a product once I have a review copy (unless the product is an absolute piece of junk, in which case the vendor should be punished for being so lazy/sinister (whatever you want to call it)).

Can you Imagine this Lady Writing a Fitness eBook?

But on a side note if you come across a product that you do not agree with 100%, then write a review of it, put it on your site, and let it sit there. If the vendor asks you why your sales are low (which they won’t, ever), then you can just say you’re trying your best.

Of course, this strategy is only useful for people who have a guilty conscience. If you don’t care, then you don’t care. Sometimes not caring is better for your business.

For more Clickbank Marketing Tips, check out my free eBook, The 2 Grand Per Month Clickbank Formula (click here).

My Clickbank eBook is now available: http://livingchill.com/the-2-grand-per-month-clickbank-formula/

There are three primary aspects to success with any online business: 1) Traffic, 2) Conversions, and 3) Repeat Business. Unfortunately, most affiliate marketers focus too much on conversions. Yes, it’s true that you must absolutely find a product which converts.

However, once you find a product that converts you need to figure out how you’re going to get repeat business from that person, and then find similar individuals to come to your website. Hence, your marketing plan should be structure in the following order: 1) Conversions, 2) Repeat Business, and 3) Traffic.

The second mistake most affiliate marketers make is completely ignoring the concept of repeat business. Repeat business is very vital, and is truly the only way you’ll be able to automate your business and earn passive income.

Most individuals do not realize was true passive income is. I drew a little chart to help you out:

This chart, of course is just hypothetical. But I want you to get the main idea here: As your business grows, you spend less time on it and your revenue gradually grows. So, when you started out at working 40 hours per week, you made around $40 per week, or $1 per hour.

If you set the proper steps in place, then over time you will be able to spend even less on your business, as little as 5 hours, and earn around $240 or $48 per hour. Once again, I just created this chart on the hypothesis that each week you’ll raise your revenue by 50%.

Of course, things don’t work that way.

Passive Income = Passive Traffic + High Conversions + Repeat Business

The first step to passive income is following the right product. This will probably be the most difficult aspect of your business. I was lucky to be able to find a handful of products from beginning that already converted for my site.

In the beginning, don’t worry about how much traffic it takes to convert a product. Just find something that converts, whether it gives you $50 per sale or $5. The best way to go about this is to find multiple products, around 3-5, and promote all of them at the same time.

If you’re using a blog format, as I did, you can simply write 10 articles for each product, post them on your blog, and see what happens. Underneath each post, link out to the product, and place a tracking code so you know which article converted the sale for you.

You’ll generate traffic through SEO primarily. But you can also send social media, ppc, forum, and referral traffic to your website.

Once you get a single sale, stick to that product. Look at your clickbank stats and see how many hops it took you to convert that product. For example, lets assume that it took 200 hops for you to convert a particular product.

This means that 200 people saw the product’s sales page, but only 1 person decided to buy. This means that the conversion rate is .5%. Your goal now is to get that conversion rate up to 1%. The first step is to create a landing page.

Go back and locate the initial article that converted the sale. Convert this into a landing page. Here’s an example of an article I used to convert sales that I transformed into a landing page: http://shahtraining.com/hundred-bodyweight-exercises/

As you can see, this landing page doesn’t follow the traditional approach of a landing page. But it works, and that’s all that matters. But to convert into a landing page, you’re going to actually have to elaborate on the product just slightly.

Especially if the vendor has some sort of up sell, simply talk about it. Include product features and benefits, but write it such a matter that it becomes a part of the article itself. Hence, it’s not just a random sales pitch.

There’s relevancy there.

Once you’ve done this, go back and change back all the links of all the articles that you published earlier and point them back to your new landing page. Now you suddenly have 25-50 articles pointing back to your landing page.

This will help improve the SEO of that particular page, hence generating even more valuable content to your landing page. Over the next few weeks see how many sales you make from page. Each week, measure your conversion rate.

If after a week, if you’re not at 1% conversions, then make little tweaks in the page to improve conversion. Here are some ideas:

• Adding video
• Adding testimonials
• Elaborating on one aspect of the product
• If it’s an eBook, copy and paste the table and contents
• Elaborate on one specific benefit

Remember, your landing page should try to get the prospect excited about the product. Hence, they’re already in “buy mode” when they get to the vendors page.

There you go. I’ve just provided you with a blueprint of how to get you first few clickbank sales. Now go do it!

Next time, we’ll go deeper into the idea of getting the income more passive.

There are very few guides out there that do a good job of teaching affiliate marketing. Most are sites used to sell other affiliate products. And even most affiliate products are pure BS. They don’t reveal all those little tips and tricks that REALLY make a difference in your work.

Lets start with the first lesson: Landing pages. Landing pages are absolutely crucial to making affiliate sales. I learned this out too late. I thought that I could just send traffic straight to a vendor’s site and that would be fine.

This is a huge newbie mistake. This is because a vendor has no idea where the traffic is coming from. They’ve created their landing page based on the source of traffic that THEY’RE focusing on. For example, the majority of vendors have their own PPC campaigns that they have tweaked to match up with their landing pages.

There are really only a few affiliates that tweak their landing pages to make it easy for an affiliate to sell a product. But even then, it’s important to create your own page, whether it’s a pres-ell or review page, that basically “fills in the gap” between the potential customer and the vendor’s landing page.

For example, lets take a look at a recent landing page that has converted for me. This landing page has only been up for a few days and has a conversion rate of 1:28. This means that out of every 28 people that click to the vendors page through this landing page buy the product.

However, how many people actually click through to the landing page? According to my google analytics, 73 people landed on the page, and 28 of those people clicked out. This means that the page has a 38% click through rate, with a 3.6% sales rate (sales/#click through).

We can also just simplify and say that 1 out of 73 people that land on the page buy the product, or 1.7%. Which is still good. So, if I want to make 5 sales a day, I need to send 365 people to that page. Since I know that the landing page converts, I’m just focusing primarily on sending traffic.

We’ll talk about traffic generation another time. Lets delve deeper into why the landing page works.

To begin, here’s a screen shot of the page above the fold:

As I’m writing this, I’m also analyzing my own landing page. So, this helps you, and me. Take good notes!

Well, first of all in terms of good things, we have a video there. People love videos. Most people will click on the video right away and start watching. Is it a good video? Yes it’s a good video. I picked out the best video I could find by the vendor of the product I’m promoting and placed it so it can be viewed right above the fold.

All that text above the video is just introducing the product. And at the end of the paragraph I say, “Here’s a sample workout.” I’m giving people a taste of what to expect before I send them off to the vendors site.

Here’s a few things that I could change:

• “Truth About Abs” on side bar is distracting. I could get rid of the side bar on this page.
• I can also see if there’s a way to shorten the header, so that the page starts earlier. Meaning even more room above the fold.
• Finally the “Get Leaner, Stronger, Bigger…” is too scrunched up. I don’t even know if I need that.

Lets look at what the page looks like after changing the headline and getting rid of the side bar:

I like it! I might even be able to break up that beginning paragraph so it makes it easier to read. I won’t take another screen shot of that. Now, underneath the video, you see, “Click here for more information.” Instead of having one link at the bottom, it’s a good idea of have at least three links spaced out through out the landing page that links back to the vendor.

I saw a lot of vendors do the same, at it works! After watching the video, a prospect that be instantly interested in the product and go straight to the vendors site. Or, they can continue reading the review. One thing I want to experiment with is to see if I would get any sales just by having the video there.

Nothing else, just the video. In that case I can’t call the page a “review.” I would literally have to say something like, “Click here for a free Workout.”

Anyways, lets see what the next part of the page looks like:

So, you see a lot of text here. There are three things I want to you to notice:

“Why Should You Purchase Bodyweight Exercise Revolution”

That’s what prospects want to talk about. Talk about the benefits. Share you personal experience. Compare it to the other products. Since people coming to my site know that I review a lot of different products, they trust me to tell them what differentiates this from any other bodyweight product out there.

One tip when choosing which product to promote is promote something that’s truly unique. Don’t promote a copy cat product because it’ll be tough to convince prospects why it’s better than any other product out there (because it’s really not). And price doesn’t matter.

Just because something is cheaper doesn’t mean they’ll buy it. This is the section where you should spend the most amount of time on. Drafts, drafts drafts. But still keep it short, to the point, and make sure to use lots of bullet points. I’ve found that bullet points make a page much easier to read.

“Click Here for More Information”

Here we see the link back to the vendor’s page again. But, just in case they’re not convinced, we’ll give them more information:

“What is the 4×7 Progressive Method?”

There you go! This is what makes this product unique. No other product talks about this method. So, take a look at your product, pick out that one thing that really makes it unique. Something that prospects will really care about, and blow it up. Talk about it without actually giving away EXACTLY what it is.

Tough to do, but you can do it!

Ok, so the image is cut off at the top, but it’s a really cool image with the author doing one of the unique exercises I talk about on the landing page. Underneath we see another link back to the vendors page. The last part of the page is “Product Features and Free Bonus.”

Most people start their review/landing page with the features of the product first. That’s not a good idea. This isn’t some Best Buy you’re walking into where you need to compare computer specs and prices. This is one single product, and you’re trying to sell it on an emotional level (what else did you think marketing was?).

So, build it up. Build it up with benefits and unique information that a prospect will care about. Finally, show them what the product actually features, and then the final thing that will help them click that “buy” button is…the bonus. Large corporations and banks do it all the time.

My mom and sister rushed to commerce bank to get free piggy banks when it first opened. Grocery stores, department stores, and retail outlets give out free stuff all the time in exchange for certain purchases made. So why can’t you do the same?

It doesn’t take the long to make a bonus product. If you’re familiar with your niche, you can literally create your own product within a half hour. Mine took 15 minutes. And guess what, it’s good. But, it only makes sense to the prospect if they buy the product.

Hence, the bonus product is NOT a stand alone product. It’s not super detailed. It’s supplement. So, for example if a product features a 12-month fat loss program, you can say, “I’ll give a months worth of free training!.” And all you need to do is follow the same pattern as the 3 months featured in the product, and create a program that’s harder than the previous 3 months.

Of course, with fitness products, you must always place a disclaimer. And be careful. Don’t prescribe anything too crazy. I’ve trained a few people here and there. I’ve also looked at the product myself and tried some of the workouts, so I have a pretty good sense of what the customer just went through for the past few months.

Anyways, make your bonus, good and add one last call to action. Mine is: “Click here to Grab your Copy of Bodyweight Exercise Revolution Today!”

Future Steps:

I’ll leave this landing page the way it is, without making any further changes for a few weeks, until I hit my target of generate 365 hits to to the page. Then I’ll review my conversion rates and see if there’s anything else I can change to improve them (if they in fact need to be improved).

It was fun sharing this with the rest of the world. I know there’s a combination of beginners, intermediates, and advanced affiliate marketers reading this. So, if you have any question or comments, please feel free to leave them below.

CB-analytics and similar sites are great research tools, but at the end of the day to choose the right product you need to be an expert in your niche.

If you know about your niche, then you can easily spot a BS product just by reading the sales page.

Hop data is updated every hour. However, the analytics are not 100% accurate. You will see some crazy numbers sometimes.

But overall, I think the CB hoplinks system is trustworthy. I’ve usually seen crazy numbers when I attach a tracking code to the hop link.

If you’re getting a 100 hits to a landing page, either from article marketing, or ppc, but only a few people are actually clicking out to your product, then you need to change your landing page.

But you’re getting people to click out to the vendor’s page, but still do not see sales, then your landing page is fine but your product sucks. In that case switch the product up after around a 100 hops