How I made my first $1 with affiliate marketing…

That elusive first affiliate dollar was sometime in early 2008, maybe 2007 I’m not quite sure and was a bit of a shock.  For the first time – theory turned to reality and it feels even better when you get your first check.  Unfortunately the physical payment took sometime.

Anyone familiar with Clickbank will know that you have to have 5 sales from different credit cards to receive payment.  The 5th payment was from someone’s PayPal account which didn’t count so I had to wait for sale 6 to get my money.  So the day the check from Clickbank finally arrived was a very good day.

What my first check taught me…

The best thing about my first sale wasn’t so much the monetary aspect, it was the proof that:

1. It was possible to make money with affiliate marketing and
2. I could see exactly what was working and why I’d failed for so long at my previous attempts in  various markets.

My first attempts were through article or bum marketing.  Reluctant to part with any money I’d find a hot market in Clickbank, write an article and post it on a Blogger blog and generate traffic using Ezine Articles.  A sound and well publicised method but I made no money.

Actually I did I actually made roughly $90 from one of my earliest attempts last week but that’s nearly 2 years too late!

What I changed…

I managed to part with some money and nope I didn’t buy hosting, I didn’t buy a domain name – I bought an eBook or Blueprint called the Conduit Method by Chris Rempel.  Now the strange this is that this blueprint on affiliate marketing has nothing to do with Bum or Article Marketing but the principles in it worked a treat.

They changed my outlook and approach to my entire ‘business’ (if you could call it a business back then) and I started to do things differently.

1. I quickly researched real feedback on products and choose those I had confidence in and yep they were in hot markets.
2. With the research – I created short, concise review pages with snippets of real feedback from forums and blogs.
3. Used a picture of the product on the blogger blog.

Now I had blogger review pages I was proud of.  They had quality information with genuine recommendations and I though they looked quite good (compared to the rubbish I was creating before that leaked traffic).

The final piece of the affiliate marketing jig-saw…

There was one last thing that made a massive difference – this was probably the biggest and most significant change I made.  As documented in the Conduit Method I targetted buyers and choose the keywords that were most likely used by the people who had the credit card in their hands and were ready to part with some money.

Having targetted lots of different ‘buying’ keywords I found that one in particular worked best – it’s generated 90% of my affiliate commissions, gets the best article click through rates and is repeatable.

Want to know what it is?  Get ready….

“Best”

That’s the keyword that got and still gets me most of my sales from those old blogger blogs in more than one market.  Articles that start or include “Best XYZ ebook” or “Learn XYZ in 10 minutes or less with the best XYZ course“.

Like I said – in more than one market – not only did it make me money, it was repeatable.

And now what…

I got some money, grew in confidence and achieved some results.  So now I finally committed and bought some hosting, bought a domain name and started to apply the Conduit Method properly.  The money I made was re-invested, I had some belief in affilate email marketing and myself and built on the momentum to earn more money, faster.

The moral of the story?

Find something that works and push it to it’s limit – milk that baby for all it’s worth and now you have money, experience and results.  Re-invest your money into better (or at least some) resources that build your business and boost your assets.

And if I was to do something different it would have been built a list and done the work faster.  I spent too much time thinking because I was too afraid of failure.  As a famous fighter once said – ‘Even monkey’s fall out of trees‘.

If you’d like to find out how you can use the Conduit Method for your own affiliate marketing you can check it out HERE.  It’s one of the best products I’ve ever bought – it’s what I’d call… wicked.

Finding secrets in sales letters…. and it’s nothing to do with copywriting

Here’s a cool tip I learnt from an audio by product creator and copywriter, Jason Fladlien.  It’s a cool tip you can use to write your own copy or I actually use it the other way around – as an affiliate marketer to get information that can be used to pre-sell new promotions.  It’s pretty simple, takes seconds and satisfies every information junkie out there.

Imagine a top selling music artist who wants to release a new album and make some serious sales.   What song do they release first?  Yep you got it – it’s the big hit (or at least the one they think will be).   Fans love the song, buy the album and fingers crossed the rest of the album is equally good.

Great copywriters do the exact same when they want to sell high ticket products.  In the sales letter they trigger an “Ah-ha” moment by showing some of their biggest guns.  You like the information, say “This guy’s good” and buy the product.

It’s more obvious in the bigger affiliate launches nowadays – for weeks on end, high quality, free information is being given away to entice people to buy.   And it works.

Here’s a slight twist – I’m into affiliate email marketing and push to earn some big bucks.  What’s the best kind of product to sell for hefty commissions?  A high ticket product right? What’s the best way to pre-sell it?

Yep read the sales letter and look for the information designed to trigger that “Ah ha” moment (check out the competitors too) and base your posts, your articles and your emails around it.  Great information for a great pre-sell that will actually help your readers.

Resources: Internet Marketing Millionaire

Credit where credit is due…