At some point in your research about affiliate marketing, the odds are that you’ve come across some mention of keywords.  If you’re wondering what they have to do with your efforts to earn more money online, then you’re about to find out the answer to your questions.

When you are creating an affiliate marketing campaign, your goal is always to make sure that your message is placed in front of your target market.  To do this, you will want to ensure that your articles, websites, or other online pieces will be in the top of search engine and other searches whenever members of this target market perform a query.  The only way to make this happen consistently is through the use of relevant keywords, used naturally throughout your promotional materials.

For example, if you were selling purses for your affiliate merchant, then you will want to make sure that you are at the top of the search results when your target market is searching for purses online.  This means that you will need to identify the right purse-related keywords, and weave them appropriately throughout your articles, press releases, or other online marketing content.

Keywords can consist of either a single word – such as “purse” – or can also be key phrases – such as “black purse” or “designer black purse”.  They should be relevant to whatever it is that you are promoting, and should be used in a natural way within your content (lest you be penalized by search engines for unnatural or overuse of keywords).

Before beginning to promote any product, make sure that you use the techniques at http://HotProfitAffiliates.com to become familiar with the methods you require for properly using keywords to maximize the potential of your affiliate marketing.

A product endorsement is a great way to promote products online.  A great alternative to writing a product endorsement is to use a product comparison chart.

The product comparison chart is a side by side view of several products that list all the features and benefits of each one.  The best part of the comparison chart is that you can rate each product and include your affiliate links on each product!

Here is an example of a basic comparison chart layout you can try:

Comparison charts are know to convert sales well especially if you can write engaging reviews and make the chart appealing to your readers.  The more experience you have with the products your are promoting the more trustworthy your chart will feel to your readers and convert one or all of your products into sales.  If you can express your thoughts and findings in the first person your readers will truly believe what your are trying to say.  Honesty sells!

Give this a try and see if your sales increase.

Trevor

Instead of taking the traditional sales pitch to your visitors or list why not write a review or endorsement to promote your products.  It has been proven that honest and sincere reviews and endirsements will increase your conversion rates.

In order to for your endorsement to work you should have personal experience with the product.  When you write the review be excited about the product and deliver that in your message.  Most times you can purchase the product using your affiliate link and receive the product at a discount.  Also, you can use the cost of the product as a tax deduction later on.  Use, read or study the product so that you can write about it and know all the features.  Write about the good features as well as the bad.  You readers will appreciate your honesty.

Take time when you are writing your reviews.  Plan out what you want to say and how you want to say it to your visitor or list members.  If you can anticipate your readers thoughts and possible concerns about the product, address them in the review before your readers have questionable thoughts and leave your site.

The most important aspect of your review or endorsement is the personal flavor that you give to it.  By writing a compelling personal testimonial of how you benefited from the product your readers will feel like you are trying to protect them from other inferior products and relate to your experience.  People want products that will improve their lives and want honest answers and opinions.

As long as you are sincere and honest with your readers you will gain their trust and ultimately turn the into customers.

TIP: Watch some infomercials on T.V. to get some ideas on writing compelling product endorsements!

To your success…

Trevor

Now that we have created some content are creating our website for our visitors there are some “Must-Have” pages that you need to include on your site.

Many affiliates miss some of these basic pages which i nturn can cost them money and sales.  Take some time and create these pages properly.

1. Contact Page – This is an important page for your visitors.  When visitors take the time to submit questions to you they demonstrate an interest in your site and any product you are offering.  You should respond to your visitors’ questions in a timely manner to increase the chance of converting that visitor into a customer.

When creating your contact page avoid using clickable email links.  I would recommend using a contact form or text explaining how to contact you.  Contact forms will eliminate a lot of spam that is generated by email harvesting programs.

2. About Us Page – Many visitors want to know about the owner or group of the site or product they are interested in.  It is human nature to want to learn about others they don’t know.  It is important for your visitors’ to feel like they can know who you are.  If they feel like you are hiding behind the annonimity of the Web, your visitors will not trust you or trust the products you are promoting.

By having an “About Us” page on your site your visitors’ will feel more comfortable with you and will likely increase your conversions.  Try and include pictures of yourself and some of the reason why you created your website.  This gives an personal touch to the page and you visitors’ can relate to you.  They will help improve your credibility and trudt level with your visitors’.

3. Disclaimer - If you are promoting business products, healt related products or any product that may take claims about successful achievements you should include a disclaimer page on your site to protect your self against legal action by association your site with a particular product.

4. Privacy Statement – Every affiliate website needs to include a privacy statement to explain how information collected from your website will be used and protected.  This page has specific language that is used by the site owner to the site user which is legally binding.  The privacy statement will increase your vidsitors’ confidence and trust, will reduce liability and ultimately increase your conversions.

You can search and find templates on the Web to create these pages or you can use software programs to create the documents for you.  The About Us page will be the only page you will need to design completely.

I use a program called AutoWebLaw to create all of the above pages.  You can see this program here: http://www.trevormchaffie.com/Recommends/AutoWebLaw.

Till next time…

Trevor

To re-tool your content essentially means to re-use content your have previously used.  What we need to do is re-master it into new content.  You can do this by re-writing portions of content or use it in different ways like creating reports.

By re-mastering your content you create new formats of material you have already used and extend the use of it by reaching and increasing your audience.  You will create new users to your content and re-engage your current audience.

Here are some ideas on how to re-tool your content:

• Use articles and combine them into a report or ebook.  You can offer this as incentives to join your site or make it a full blown paid product.
• Break up your articles and use them in your autoresponder follow up series.
• Create audio recordings of your material and upload them to your site.  Many people these days would rather listen to articles and book than read them.  If you have a lot of content your can even create a podcast for your audience to subscriber too!

These are a few ideas…if you uses your imagination and get creative you can create many new uses for content you already have!

Till next time…

Trevor

Another technique you can use if you do not want to create your own content is to use articles that have been posted on article directories and the author’s allow you to use that content free of charge.  You can visit sites like ezinarticles.com, GoArticles.com or a number of other article sites. 

You can use these articles as long as you use them within the author’s guidelines and stipulations.  Most time these stipulations require that you use a resource box with the author’s information with a link back to their site. 

The problem with this technique is that you now have a link that leaves your site.  These link are nit usually affiliate link so you do not want to include link that do not make you any money.

The way that I use this technique is to use the ideas and concepts and then create my own articles.  This is easier than creating your own content as most of the work and research is completed for you.  Then you create your own articles in your own words and thoughts.

In the next post I will show you how to re-tool your content and create unique articles, posts, etc.

Trevor