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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Choose partners you FEEL GOOD about representing. Your recommendations reflect upon who you are.
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Rotate the search techniques used (Search Engines, Affiliate Directories, Back end Providers) when looking for affiliate partners.
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Search for one of your keywords, plus the word
"affiliate" to find either merchants *with* affiliate
programs or content sites that *are* affiliates.
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If a merchant site has an affiliate program that fits your concept, note what kind of merchandise they sell and the URL of their "join page" into possible partners for that keyword
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Review content sites and follow their links out and add to your possible- partners and ideas-for-content notes.
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Use ALTAVISTA LINK TOOL - http://www.altavista.com/- [enter "link:ZZZZZZ.com" (zzzzz.com being the URL you're researching]. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Linked-to merchants already have affiliate programs -- check them and add those that fit to your list of possible partners.
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Most Popular Affiliate Directories
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Try to figure out how to make Vstore, or ePod fit into your site
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ePod.com http://www.epod.com/
puts mini-web-sites (that you choose) in
your site with a single HTML tag.
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Counter the risk that a merchant, backend provider, or affiliate intermediary may go out of business by diversifying among as many programs as possible *that fit with your site concept.*
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Feature only the *FEW* merchant partners that are highly relevant to the Keyword-Focused Content of each page.
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Pick the best-of-breed from each category of merchant.
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If you plan unusually heavy support for a given category of product, you might want to represent the best TWO merchants.
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Best results come from a small group of quality programs.
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Critera of quality products
excellent
complement or enhance each other
fit your concept
from a rock-solid company
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Avoid too much emphasis of any single program without some special reason.
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PLUS SIGNS to look for in an affiliate program
High quality
Good site that sells effectively.
Ability to link straight to individual products.
Pay-per-sale and pay-per-lead are good.
Accurate, reliable real-time online accounting
Detailed traffic and linking stats
Notification by e-mail when a sale is made
Traffic-building and sales-getting tools
Newsletter that educates, trains,and accounts for amounts earned
Professional marketing materials available
Affiliates receive discount on products
good commissions at least 10%(hard good) or 20% (digital good)
No charge to join, no need to buy the product.
Lifetime commission
Two-tier program which pays you on affiliates who join because of you.
Lifetime cookie: the cookie that links a customer to you should not expire.
Restricted number of affiliates.
Monthly payment, with reasonable minimum.
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If a program lacks ALL plus signs that is a MINUS SIGN. Others:
- Slow and/or poor support.
- Unethical conduct of any kind.
- Reports of late (or lack of) payments.
- Allow spam, or seem to spam themselves.
- Defective joining process
- Clauses in the agreement that you find unacceptable
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Watch for "Pay-per-click" method of payment. No purchase or lead-generation necessary but it's open for abuse and merchants may cancel or change the program.
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Alta vista and Google have cancelled their programs
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Watch for Multi-tier commission or MLM, which is legal but the incentive switches from selling products to signing up people -- investigate extremely carefully before you invest a lot of time in these.
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Other things to watch for:
Lack of info about affiliate program.
Dead links on merchant site.
Unclear anti-spamming policy.
Promotes "get-rich-quick" gimmicks.
Financially unstable company
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If your concept is so narrow that enough profitable partners aren't available investigate the next concept on your "short list" of Site Concepts.
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Do *not* feel that you must have your entire business worked perfected before you start -- Rome was not built in a day.
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The two biggest mistakes new entrepreneurs make are
OPPOSITES
FIRE-READY-AIM -- starting with little or no preparation
READY-AIM-READY-AIM-READY-AIM -- so much "polishing" that the project never gets started.
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If you choose a narrow subject area choose a niche that you can broaden. Remember the future -- you can always broaden your concept if you "fill" your niche.
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You'll be much more effective if you stick to what you know and love.
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If time is a limiting factor keep subject area narrow.
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Choose site concept that seems to have greatest profit potential
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Read what others are writing about, and any ideas that you have had. Do you want to cover similar topics (nothing wrong with that, especially if you do it better!), or do you see a niche or approach that has not yet been done?
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How many solid affiliate programs fit well with your concept?
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It's hard to win a "Top 10" ranking in search results for broad-concept keywords like "fashion" ... the narrower the better.
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Best to start narrow, with enough profit potential using mentioned factors and THEN broaden the concept.
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The more you keep your theme "pure," the better you will do.
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Develop your concept keyword into a "Valuable
PRE-selling Proposition" ("VPP"): *What* specific and high-value information does your site deliver?
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Include Valuable PRE-selling Proposition in your domain name. If possible your VPP should BE the domain name.
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