Affiliate Masters 101
The Basics of a Successful Business

This is a review of the key points made by Ken Evoy in Affiliate Masters Course (AMC). Ken's comments are highlighted in Yellow and all the comments, discussion, supplementary ideas and links to other information will appear following the points extracted from the course.

If you haven't already started the course, some of these points won't make much sense to you.

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Being a GREAT AFFILIATE is *NOT* about selling... It's about PRE-SELLING.
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Some people refer to this concept as "warming up the customer".

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Ongoing Goal... Deepen and focus your under-standing of this material. Re-read it once per week for the next eight weeks, monthly after that.
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Also, we'll explore additional issues and sometimes even plant controversial ideas to help you think about the material you're learning.

After-all a true Master of any subject is not just someone who has memorized all the facts but someone who can put theory into practice -- especially as Ken states in his next point ... .

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The goal of any business, including your affiliate business, is to maximize PROFITS. "PROFIT" is simply your INCOME minus your EXPENSES
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This, of course, is a fundamental truth of business, but the AMC only scratches the surface as far as the keeping of accounts and records.
When you're just starting out it may not be important to go too deeply into this subject which terrifies many people, but as your business starts and grows it will become more important.

To try to lessen the terror which some people feel over this just think of accounting as a way to keep score. You want to know if you're winning or losing in the game of business, and a good accounting system will let you know where you stand.

Today, keeping track of your business is not a tedious and boring process of writing columns of numbers into pages and pages of ledgers like it was in the past. There's a lot of good accounting software around to help run small businesses.

Personally I like QuickBooks because of it's low cost, flexibility and good reporting features even though I don't care for their customer support. The reason that I keep on using QuickBooks and even up-grading from year to year is that it is such a good product that it doesn't need much support. Click on the QuickBooks icon at this site.[Quicken Home and Business for Windows]. Don't confuse QuickBooks with Quicken. They come from the same company but they are different.

Other accounting programs which I've seen, and which I would consider using if I weren't already used to QuickBooks include: MYOB (Mind Your Own Business) [MYOB], Simply Accounting [Simply Accounting], and Peachtree Accounting [PeachTree.com].

Spend some time in choosing this kind of software because once you get started with one, it becomes difficult to switch to a different brand. You get used to doing things in one way and it may be cumbersome to switch to another. There is no universal portability in accounting software even though you may be able to export and to a more limited degree import limited certain reports or data.

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Maximizing PROFITS does *NOT* imply that you must minimize EXPENSES.
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Sometimes you may even want to buy the most expensive product or service because you discover that the superior results you get more than pay for the extra cost.

When you're learning it may be a good practice to struggle with low cost or free alternatives, learn to do some things manually instead of using "power-tools" because of the learning value of the experience NOT because you are wanting to save money.

Once you know what needs to be done, and maybe have done it a couple of times manually you are in a much better position to judge what is a GOOD value and what is not.

What triggers a visitor to click through?

Joseph Sugarman one of today's most famous direct marketing experts, has written an article on how to trigger a successful sale through the power of psychological triggers. Although we are not wanting to "sell" per se, we do want a visitor to take some action -- the principles are the same. Click here to read "The Triggers of Success"

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THE #1 REASON FOR LOW TRAFFIC AND TERRIBLE CONVERSION RATES? Banner ads! Don't use banners.
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It's obvious Ken has little appreciation of Banners yet there are some people who claim differently.

Scott Covert uses banners in a different way to that which Ken is objecting to and has experienced considerable success. He started with a $50 test in mid-1998 and has generated over $1 million in product sales over the web using almost exclusively banner ads. He's written about his experience and describes how you can design and create banner ads in 3 minutes even without artistic ability. He has examples of banners that got a 3% to 6% click rate, and more. Click for more details

If you've checked Covert's material out and think it might be suitable for your site you can become an affiliate now by clicking the button below. I'd recommend you do this if for no other reason than to get his ideas. Scott is enthusiastic, creative, helpful, and . . . successful. (I do hope you want to learn from successful people.)

When you click below, you'll first be asked to enter a "RevShare ID." Simply choose a short user-name that you wish to use to identify your account.

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Second most common error ... selling instead of PRE-selling.
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The #1 E-commerce Reality:
"NOTHING happens by accident in the world of computers, the Net, and customer response. There is always a reason for what happens, good or bad, and that reason is *YOU*."
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Although there is a lot of doubt about the value of FFA links, they may have some value, but not what you might expect. What? Some people claim they can help boost link popularity--which is increasing in importance for search engine ranking.

I don't give FAA's much priority but the following testing process seems to make sense and may be useful if you want to give them a try.

Start by defining some goals, such as:

• increase your link popularity
• drive some traffic to your site
• discover which FFA submitters work
• avoid the spam that will come from the FFAs

1. Create a compelling ad. Although the chances of getting noticed at are very slim you still need to try to create something catchy and unsual that can hold it's own against hundreds of screaming ads.
   
   
2. Find FFA submitters. Since you're not likely to want to submit several thousand pages manually, use an FFA submission script. There are many free FFA submitters available.
   
   
3. Create doorway pages. Although doorways are not generally a good practice they have a special use to test the submitters by giving each submitter a unique link. Make your doorway a simple jump page that takes the visitor automatically to your site's main entrance page. Save it as "page1.html", then make as many copies as you need for each FFA submitter you are going to test, rename them (page 2, 3...) and upload them your site's main directory.
   
   
4. Get a free email address to receive all the promotional email you'll get back from the submissions. (If you submit to 20,000 pages, you can expect to receive 20,000 emails). Try www.Hotmail.com, www.netaddress.com etc.
   
   
5. Copy, paste and submit, using a unique doorway page address for each of the submitters, and remember to submit your "new" email address
   
   
6. In a couple of days open up your Special Junk Mailbox and delete all your mail.
   
   
7. About a week later look at your site's logs for hits on your doorway pages See which page (i.e. which submitter) generated hits.
   
   
8. Use JimTools' Link Popularity Checker (www.jimtools.com/link.html) or a similar service and check popularity of each of your doorway pages and discover which page has the most links leading to it. This should give you a good idea of the real effectiveness of FFA pages and different FFA submitters.
   
   
9. Pick the most successful submitter and use it every a week or so, using your real domain name and a genuine destination page.
   
   

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Get inside your visitor's head -- realize how she will feel each step of the way -- if it does not make her *MORE* "open to buy," don't do it.
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Notice how Ken refers to your visitors as "she"?

He's not doing this to be cute or politically correct. First, it is statistically clear that female users of the internet are increasing faster than male users. Next, by using the female pronoun, Ken is subtly encouraging you to think outside of normal, "traditional" manners of thought.

The future of e-commerce will belong to people who can be creative in adapting new technology and techniques to old established habits and customs in a profitable manner.

Will you be one of those people? If you follow Ken's example you will have a good chance.

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If your VISITORS see a sales effort for your merchants, then you're SELLING, not PRE-selling.
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Sometimes you might THINK that what you're doing is not a sales-pitch, but it is your visitor who decides whether or not they want to click through. They have no way of knowing what you were thinking when you were putting your site together, but if you are getting visitors but they are not going to buy something needs to be changed.

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Develop great content that leads to the click, and become a friend making a RECOMMENDATION rather than a stranger making a SALES PITCH.
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You know that you don't have to believe everything Ken says just because he's the expert and is supposed to know it all.

Here's an idea: Instead of just taking what is taught to you in the course as the true and only way, take the information and experiment with it.

For example, write two pages for a particular merchant...one in which you SELL, SELL, SELL in every way you know how, and another in which you use the approach taught in the AMC. Set a different tracking link (this is explained further on in the course) from each page to your merchant and after some time has gone by you will be able to see for yourself what is the BEST method.

Your experiments might lead to a new approach or even revolutionize web-marketing, and I'm sure Ken and all the other marketing gurus would encourage you to do this.

Right now, if your goal is to get going into a PROFITABLE business in the fastest way possible, start with proven success formulas, then try other approaches when you're off to a flying start.

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Where do you find a great concept for your site?... Inside YOU!
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Decide to create a THEME-BASED site that is all about something you just love.
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Create truly excellent, HIGH-VALUE content that delivers what your reader sought at the engines.
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Weave RELEVANT, "in-context" TEXT links right in the content, as appropriate.
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Selling Hard Goods using SBI