The Pressures of Affilate Email Marketing! Aargh!

Can’t remember where I read it or who wrote it…

“Scratch a perfectionist and you’ll find a procrastinator” - source unknown (if you know post a comment)

So when it comes to email your list, promoting your affiliate products and offering quality content it’s so easy to get bombarded with these kinda questions:

• How often should I email (daily, every two days, maybe even 2, 2, 3 day patterns)…?
• Should I go for 80% quality content and 20% sales or 50/50?
• Do I pre-sell or sell?
• etc
• etc
• etc

Before you know it the job that’s supposed to set the shakles free, dump a load of cash in your pocket and let you spend that extra time doing what you want — because stressful, the pressure mounts and you don’t know what to do.

Analysis paralysis – simply because you want to get it right, get it perfect and … end up getting nothing done!

So here’s something I’d happily proclaim to each and every one of my subscribers:

“Sometimes I’ll email you daily, sometimes you won’t here from me for a week.  Sometimes I’ll just give you content and somedays I’ll sell to you day in, day out.  And somedays I’ll get it right and somedays I’ll get it wrong – I dont care.  The reason is simple.  There is no right and wrong when it comes to affiliate email marketing. ”

“There are only good results and bad results”.

“It is all about the results and when I get results – then you, my loyal subscriber, will be the first one to know so that it can be copied, tested and hopefully repeated to line your pockets and build a long term online affiliate marketing business”.

End of procrastination  : )

See you shortly and tell me if you think this is a load of non-sense or you got a better idea for me.  Always keen to learn!

Targetted Traffic at the Push of a Button

Quick tip – for years I put off building a list and stuck purely to having a website or pre-sell page.  I’d drive traffic to the site (usually using SEO or articles) and started to realise why I was always told I needed 100 hop links….

It’s because the average sales letter converts around 2 – 5%.  Getting 100 hops (recommended by the affiliate manager) was the surest way to motivate affilates and make sure they got some cash.

What does the average squeeze page (ie. designed to get people onto your list) convert at?  Since they are usually getting something for free (a pdf or newsletter) it’s much higher and typically around 10 – 20%.  Now – not only can your promote the same affiliate product, you can build a relationship to them and promote other products (including your own).

This was highlighted to me in a post by the (well paid) twenty-something Robert Plank.  He pretty much explains why you should build a list and the surest way to nurture it and NOT lose your subscribers.  In fact I think I do exactly what I’m not supposed to do by telling you about him – so our secret!

The hard work is without doubt at the beginning.  The time you are daunted by the technology, the pressures of creating quality content for your list and of course making money.  But think about it, if you created a product today – you’ve got a monster of a task getting thousands of people a) to that page and b) to convert to buyers.

If you’ve got a list of several thousand (and they’ve opted in so you know exactly what they’re interested in) and can share something that will help them – one email is all it takes and bang you got those 100 hops…. easy.

P.S.  Check out Robert Planks blog – one of his specialities is banging out quality sales copy super fast (it’s a simple systematic process you can follow) – even if you’re not interested – check out his free course for opting in for Fast Food Copywriting.  It’s day 2 or 3 where he shares a simple affiliate (or product creation) business plan that’s a no-brainer to follow.