Maximize Profits

1. Refer more visitors to the merchants that you represent.
2. Increase the conversion rate, the percent of visitors referred to your merchant who deliver the response for which the merchant pays, whether that’s a sale, or a lead, etc.

Yes, thirty times more!

So it’s pretty clear how to maximize affiliate income!

Of course, every business has expenses, too. Maximizing profits does not imply that you must minimize expenses, too. After all, if you spend no money or time on a business
 

Time is money. So don't count your hours as zero cost simply because it does not cost you "out of pocket." Assign your time a dollar value -- it will put your affiliate business on a solid, professional "business footing."

You have no business! You must get the best possible traffic-building and sales-converting results for every dollar you spend... and for every hour you spend on your business. Let’s examine expenses by asking two questions

Question #1
What does it cost to build traffic to your merchants’ sites?

Traffic-building, no matter how you cut it, will cost you... in terms of both time and money. Spending dollars is optional, but spending time is not. There are many ways, both offline and on, to drive traffic to your merchants’ sites. This discussion will show you the most highly profitable, time-and-dollar effective way to build traffic to your merchants' sites

Build your own Theme-Based Content Site, one that is loaded with high infovalue Keyword-Focused Content Pages which rank well with the Search Engines and get the click throughs to your merchants’ sites.

Let’s break that down. For your affiliate Web site to generate traffic to your merchants, it must do two things well

1. Rank well at the Search Engines, so that it pulls in lots of traffic. So far, though, that traffic is still on your site. Therefore, it’s not generating income yet - your visitors are just “looking around.” 
2. Get those visitors to click through to your merchants. (Some affiliate program models can actually place merchant offerings on your Web site. In this case, your traffic does not actually visit your merchant’s site. But you still have to “get the click” to generate income.

Question #2
What does it cost to maximize Conversion Rates?

Maximizing your CR (Conversion Rate) is simply a question of doing things right. There is no extra dollar or time cost to boosting Conversion Rates at your merchants’ sites. This discussion will show you how to achieve this goal, too. So, your goals, and your only goals, are.

• Maximize traffic to your merchants, spending only dollars and time that maximize profits.
• Maximize Conversion Rates. Do things right (no expense).

THE #1 REASON FOR LOW TRAFFIC AND TERRIBLE CONVERSION RATES? Spam

Think about it. What do you do when when you receive an unsolicited commercial email. Most people delete it without even opening the message. What few click throughs you may get will not often be in a mood to buy. If you are lucky, you may be able to achieve a Conversion Rate of 0.1% while taking a chance on running afowl of your mail server administrator and probably losing your email account.

Is unsolicited mail driving you totally bonkers? Spam is not going to go away. Several products are available to help you get rid of junk mail, none of them are perfect. The best I have found is MailBox Filter.

THE #2 REASON FOR LOW TRAFFIC AND TERRIBLE CONVERSION RATES? Banner ads!

The futility of banners was first revealed by studies of user habits. Retinal studies have shown that Web surfers actually avoid banners. Yes, their eyes look away! Click throughs have plummeted to under half-of-a-percent. And, for the few who do click...

The study went on to prove that banners are worse than futile, they are counterproductive. Affiliates who rely on banners have an average Conversion Rate of 0.5%. But those who use “in-context” text links (i.e., text links that are part of the content of the Web page) average over 3.5%! How’s that for a reason not to use banners?

Why does this happen? Banners are cheesy and hurt your credibility. Because visitors simply arrive feeling “pitched” rather than informed. So they arrive at your merchant's site in a resisting mindset, rather than with an open, ready-to-buy attitude.

Remember that example where you sent 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1% bought? If you rely on flipping up some banners, it will be more like 10 visitors per day and not one buys!

Conclusion: Don't use Spam! Don’t use banners!

Yes, I know banners are so-o-o-o-o easy. It’s always easy to not make money. That’s how all those get-rich-quick-guys do so well... the allure of easy money. No such thing.
 

I have revealed a lot about 5 Pillar Affiliates program and about its program stats during this discussion. But it is not the 5P Program that is important here - it's the lessons to be derived. This discussion is all about making any affiliate of any program more successful.

Beside the obvious futility of banners, there is  another major point. This one is more subtle, but it’s extremely important. After banner advertising, it’s the third most common error. And it’s an even bigger shame because this boo-boo involves a lot of work, misplaced work. I mean, if you’re going to fail, the best thing would be not to spend much time at it, right?

Here it is... selling instead of PREselling.

Some affiliates have really made great efforts in creating sites to promote their merchant's products and are building some sales and traffic. But when there is a low Conversion Rate (i.e., CR under 2%), you know that something is amiss. Great efforts deserve greater results than 1%.

Yes, that’s better than spam or banners. But remember, these folks put in a lot more work than tossing up a couple of banner ads. We’ll see in a moment that it’s misdirected work. 

In life, the vast majority of people just keep doing the “same old thing.” It seems easier that way. But it guarantees the “same old results.” So in the long run, it’s actually much, much harder.

In the movie The Renaissance Man, Danny De Vito’s character makes a profound statement:

People tend to blame a lack of success in life on “bad luck” or “poor timing” or other people. And yes, at times, that can be accurate. A heck of a lot of factors beyond our control can blindside us. In the long run, however, as long as we persist in our efforts, these factors tend to even out and De Vito's statement remains valid.

Now, here’s the good news

E-commerce is simpler than life. Due to its digital nature, there are fewer variables... so the outcome is more controllable. Which means that we can boil De Vito’s statement down to “The #1 E-commerce Reality.”

This Reality is almost self-evident, yet it’s so easy to forget. Your success with anything you do in the world of e-commerce flows from it. Internalize it and act upon it and you will succeed.

Yes, it’s that fundamental. And that leads me to:

When some affiliates have CRs over 10%, you can figure that those with CRs at 1-2% or less could be multiplying their sales five-or-more-fold. How? Not by working harder, but by simply channeling their motivation in a better direction.

A review of many of these affiliate sites (those that are getting sales but have CRs under 2%) reveals that almost half were basically one big sales letter for their merchants and products. Which means that these affiliates are SELLING (with sales copy) when they should be PREselling (with great, and related, content that is of value to the reader).

There’s really not much point in straight selling off your site, that’s what your merchant’s site is for. Picture this:

A visitor arrives at an affiliate’s site that is really just one, big sales site. Yes, I know that their words are sincere but put yourself in these visitors’ shoes for a moment. They don’t see inspiring, editorial content, they see a sales effort. But they were searching for content!

People resist sales efforts, so your click-through actually goes down. And if they do click, what do they see when they arrive at your merchant's site? More sales effort. And, in some cases, many of the words are similar to the words that they’ve just read.

Result: Poor Conversion Rate.

If your site is basically a bunch of sales letters, you have not yet built your credibility and likeability with this visitor. Your visitor ends up feeling “pitched.” And then feels double-pitched if he clicks through to your merchant’s site. That’s why the CR actually goes down.

To make things worse, as he “smells” a sales effort, he becomes less likely to click! So referred traffic drops, too.

Referred traffic down. And Conversion Rate down. But these are the two ways to increase your income, that’s what we talked about at the top of this chapter. We’re going in the wrong direction!

Conclusion? Don’t SELL! Instead, warm your visitor up for your merchants by PREselling them with great content that they value and respect. They’ll click-through with pleasure, arriving at your merchants’ sites in an open-to-buy mindset.

It’s your PREsell effort that will boost your traffic-to-merchants and Conversion Rate. Which in turn maximizes your income.

This brings us to our second philosophical premise and the end of Chapter One.

The #1 Affiliate Reality:
Your CR will literally vary from 1% to 10%, purely because of:

• How you reach your visitor
• What you say to him
• How you refer him to your merchant

Of course, the goal of this discussion is to reduce the amount of trial-and-error persistence that will be required before you find your own successful formula!

Why is “The #1 Affiliate Reality” true?...

Because how you reach your customer, and what you say once you reach him, and how you refer your visitor to your merchant directly affects your visitor’s mindset when he arrives at the merchant. A positive mindset turns into a purchase with amazing regularity. A negative one is near-impossible to overcome.