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| Marketing Tips |
| NOTE: THIS PAGE MAY BE OUTDATED IN SOME WAY, SINCE I NO LONGER WORK IN NETWORK MARKETING. I DIDN'T MAKE ANY MONEY WITH IT. I LEFT THIS PAGE HERE JUST IN CASE IT CAN HELP SOMEBODY. PLEASE DO NOT REGISTER FOR PROGRAMS AND SAFELISTS FROM MY LINKS. TRY TO FIND SOMEBODY ELSE TO BE YOUR SPONSOR. Are you trying to make money with affiliate programs? You may find that it is not that easy. Here are some tips that may help you promote your affilaite programs. We will talk about: - Telling your Friends and Family - Leads and Advertising Coops - Little Marketing Program - Building a Website - Traffic Programs - Newsletters, Free Courses and Safelists |
| Telling your Friends and Family |
| When you find a great product and opportunity, it is normal to want to tell others about it. Companies have found that the best advertising is word of mouth, satisfied customers telling others about it. So now, most of them have decided to pay people to do that. That is great, as long as it doesn�t turn people into aggressive salesmen trying to make money at other people�s expense. So if you want to promote your affiliate programs, you should keep doing what you did before, you tell people about it, you show them the benefits of the product and you let them buy it if they are interested. You should also tell them about the downsides (even good things have some). Even if that may make you lose some sales, it is better than if they buy the products, don't like the downsides and blame you for not telling them. The first rule for a business that wants to last is the satisfaction of their customers. If they give customers something good, they will make money for years to come. That should also be your rule.That means you have to promote only good products that will give something worthwhile to others. You can fool people and make some money short-term, but you will lose your reputation and nobody will trust you afterwards. So with your friends and family, you can tell them about your opportunities if you think they have an interest in working at home or in the products of these companies. You can talk about one product to some people because you know this kind of things interest them, and talk about another product to other people. But if you begin trying to bother everybody with all your wonderful opportunities and to force your products on others who are not interested just so you can make money, they will get tired of it and of you and you may get to play in the NFL (No Friends Left). The companies you join may all tell you to tell your friends and family. They only want to sell as many products as they can, but you have to preserve your relationships. Especially in multi-level companies, you have not much to gain in pressuring people to join. And with the people you know, you should tell then that they must not feel any obligation to join or buy anything. If they join just to do you a favor or to get you off their back, they will not work hard at building their downlines, so they will not make money and they will blame you for it. If you have to push people to join, you will have to keep pushing them afterwards and usually, the more you push, the more they will resist. You only want people who join because they are enthusiastic about the products and who feel that you are doing them a favor. When I applied to be a sales representative, I was asked how I dealt with rejection. When trying to sell things, you will meet a lot of rejection. You may get one yes for a hundred nos. You have to learn to take a no graciously and say: "OK, that's fine" or "if you're not interested, there's no problem". Then you go look for the people who will have an interest in what you have to offer. Don't waste your time with people who are not interested. With the people you know, you can ask them if it's OK that you'll tell them about things you find and they can look them over and tell you if they are interested. They will be more likely to say yes if they know here won't be any pressure. You should make it clear that you don't want them to feel obligated to join or to join just to do you a favor and that they don't need to explain themselves if they are not interested. |
| Affiliates who make the most money have a personal website where they recommend certain programs or products. A website allows you to presell the product before you send people to a merchant's website. People surf the Internet looking mostly for free information. Like me, most people go away as soon as they see a website just trying to sell things. You have to give people some valuable information first, so you get them to see you as a friend and as an expert and then you can recommend some things that they can buy. You can make a page about a topic that interest you and put affiliate programs related to that subject on it. People will come to your page because they are also interested by that topic, so you have a better chance that they will also be interested by your affiliate programs as well. You can also make a list of your affiliate programs, like I did on my Work at Home page. That page is meant for people who are interested in building a home business. For the technical aspects, see my page about Building a Website. To find ways to get visitors to your website, see my page about Drawing Traffic. If you want to spare yourself all the trouble and the time to build a website, you can use Affiliate Showcase. It gives a list of nearly all the affiliate programs and you can put your own links in the programs that you have joined. But the people you refer there may not choose your programs. If you get a paid (rather expensive) website from them, you can advertise your products on your site and on the sites of the people you refer and you can have mini-sites associated with your site. |
| Building a Website |
| You can see my page about Working at Home for more about how affiliate programs work and my page about Drawing Traffic to your website. |
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| Leads and Advertising Coops |
| Many of the programs you join may offer you to buy leads or participate in advertising coops. Leads: Leads give you the names, e-mail addresses and often phone numbers of people who answered ads to start a home business in the last days or weeks. So these people have expressed an interest in working from home. Contacting them is a little touchy. You risk being accused of spamming if you write to them. You may be advised by your company to call them first and e-mail them afterwards. That is legal, but this annoys many of them. You're very lucky if you get 5% of these people to join your program. Free leads: You can use programs giving you free leads. You get a chance to write to them about your programs every week. There are 3 similar programs. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THESE PROGRAMS FROM MY LINKS SINCE I NO LONGER WORK IN NETWORK MARKETING. TRY TO FIND SOMEBODY ELSE TO BE YOUR SPONSOR. Free Net Leads Free Mailer 2000 Adviserbot This program is different. It gives you 30 freeleads in the form of the names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of people who responded to targeted advertising to start a home-based business in the last 2-4 days. You then have to find a way to approach them without spamming. You can also pay to get more leads. 30 Free Leads Advertising coops: If you participate in advertising coops of a particular program, you will usually get people who see an ad for that program and who then join a free trial. But those ads are usually rather general, so there's no guarantee these people will be interested by the kind of products your program offers. You can expect a low rate of paid sign-ups from this too. If the ad mention the kind of products, the people who respond may be more likely to join afterwards. Depending on the price and the kind of ads, it can be advantageous to advertise that way. |
| Traffic Programs |
| These are a quick and easy way to draw traffic to your personal website or to the individual websites of your programs. You can see more about them in my page about Drawing Traffic. |
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| Newsletters, Free Courses and Safelists |
| Most people will come on your website for a quick visit and never come back. To keep contact with them and get them to know you and trust you, it is a good thing to have a free newsletter or a free course that they can get through e-mail. This must contain valuable information, not just plugs to buy or join things. But if you give them something worthwhile, they will be more inclined to buy from you. The 3 programs mentioned above give you free leads. They are like multi-level newsletters. You get to send a newsletter not only to the people who come to your site, but to the people they will refer to the program as well.Here they are again and here again PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THESE PROGRAMS FROM MY LINKS SINCE I NO LONGER WORK IN NETWORK MARKETING. TRY TO FIND SOMEBODY ELSE TO BE YOUR SPONSOR. Free Net Leads Free Mailer 2000 Adviserbot You can also advertise in other people's newsletters. Some will let you do it for free, others will charge a fee. A safelist is a mailing list where you can send e-mails about your affiliate programs. You also get e-mails from other members, usually a lot. I don't think anybody read all the messages, but they may read a few. Try to write a subject line that will stir interest. Many of them have a fee, but you can join many of them for free. You get to e-mail less people and less often than the pro members. Here are a few to get you started. Some where people have to get credits to send ads (that makes people open more ads) PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THESE PROGRAMS FROM MY LINKS SINCE I NO LONGER WORK IN NETWORK MARKETING. TRY TO FIND SOMEBODY ELSE TO BE YOUR SPONSOR: Snazzy Ad Credits Ad Tactics Safelister Some "regular" ones: (PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THESE PROGRAMS FROM MY LINKS SINCE I NO LONGER WORK IN NETWORK MARKETING. TRY TO FIND SOMEBODY ELSE TO BE YOUR SPONSOR.) Brenda's Reality Herculist Business World List Kiosk All Downline Train for Success Avalon MaxTraffic Exchange Tidal Wave (this one costs 5$) You will find other lists on these lists. Be on the lookout for new lists offering free exec or pro memberships unitl they reach a certain amount of members like mine: Act Now You can also start your own. |
| You can get a reminder there to click every day |
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| E-books |
| There are a lot of ads advertising e-books that will tell you the secret to make money on the Internet. I suppose they all have some good tips, but you can find most of them elsewhere for free. I don't think anybody has the one right formula. A book may be worth paying 20$, an e-book costs practically nothing to produce, so it is usually sold for 5$. Paying more than that would require to be sure it is really worth it. First read all the free e-books you can find at Build Referrals. You can many other useful tools there as well. |
| Spamming |
| Spamming started out as some people sent bulk e-mails to a lot of people to advertise their products. Now of course that is annoying and people complained about it. So now there are laws against spam and many companies have strict laws against it and it often even includes sending any advertisement that has not been sollicited, even if it was an individual e-mail. So sending an e-mail to anybody containing one of your referral links can be considered spamming unless the person asked you for it. Many companies will then just put you out of the company if they get a spam complaint. Theoritically, you can write to people you know, but if they find you annoying with all your business opportunities, they could make a complaint too and you could be in trouble. I do not recommend bothering everyone you know with your programs since they may feel a certain pressure to join or have to explain why they don't want to join. So as a rule, you should be very careful when you send referral links through e-mails. Unfortunately, that means you may have to refrain from sending a link to someone that might be interested. But what you can do is ask permission before sending your links. Ask people if they are interested to get more info about your product without naming it. You probably won't get many replies back though unless you target people that may be interested by that kind of products. Some people write to people that have affiliate sites with things like : "I have a home business too, maybe we can help each other." Apparently, you can get away with that, but I simply hate that. I responded to such a e-mail once when I was beginning and looking for more affiliate programs, but then I found better ways to find these programs and I don't respond to that kind of e-mails anymore. I know some people consider it spamming. You won't be thrown of the company if you haven't send your links and the name of the company, but you can lose your e-mail account. You can refer people to your personal website instead of to your affiliate merchant's sites, but then you could lose your website if you spam. You'd better use the other means described on this page. |
