MatthewWolfe.com

Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing’ Category

As you may remember, one of my New Years resolutions was to get back in to blogging with at least one post per week. I’ve got tons of ideas for new blog posts but I want to get a feel for what people like to read about. I created this cool little poll to get your opinions. If you wouldn’t mind letting me know what kind of topics you like to read about and respond to, I’ll have a better idea of what direction to take future blog posts.

If you are curious about how I made this poll and how you can implement one on your site, check out Blogpolls.com. It literally takes about 4 minutes to set up a poll.

Please make yourself heard in the comments below. If there’s something you’d like me to talk about that is not mentioned in the above poll, let me know.

Thanks so much for you input!

It has been a while since my last blog post. I have just been swamped with work. I am working through e-mails of people asking for help with their blogs or with their mailing list squeeze pages, while at the same time, I’m trying to get all of my videos recorded for The Wordpress Classroom. It has been quite overwhelming. At the same time I am trying to continue to generate traffic to my blog and to my squeeze page by commenting on other blogs, taking part in forums, having conversations on Twitter, organizing e-mails to my list etc. etc. I’m not complaining though! I am, however, giving you an excuse to why I may not have returned your or e-mail or why I haven’t been to your blog to comment yet. I promise I will get to them all. It just takes me time to get to it all. I need to squeeze some personal time in somewhere.

Anyway, enough ranting and giving excuses. I want to tell you how to make money. So many people seem to way over complicate the whole process. I don’t quite understand. The more I study it and the more I work towards building my income, the concept just seems easier and easier to me. Once I finally grasped the real trick to the whole damn thing, I just kinda smacked my head and said “Aha!, it’s so simple!”

I’ve had a couple of people come to me and say that they would never make any money on the internet because they don’t have a product. They aren’t creative enough to make one or they don’t know how to do anything, so what could they sell? But that’s the problem! You don’t need to have your own product! Who said anything about creating a product? It’s not necessary in the beginning! It’s really not!

Here’s the trick… Build a damn list! Build your mailing list by offering something for free. It doesn’t even have to be something that you created. It can be a product that you purchased that gave you resell rights or you can offer ?a contest for people to join your list and give something away. My recommendation though, is to create a short ebook, maybe 10 or 12 pages, about who you are, why you are doing what you are doing, and what you have learned. The book is free! People will sign up for it.

Now send some e-mails out that are nice and conversational. Get people to like you and get them to want to hear what you have to say. Don’t start promoting anything right away. Just send out friendly tips or things that you’ve learned in your journey so far. After you’ve got them hooked, you can start sprinkling in affiliate links. Start recommending products that you have used or that you think will create great value to your readers. Boom! You are making money. If your list likes and trusts you, you will start making money when you promote things that you honestly think will give them value! That’s the big damn secret! Build a list, get them to trust you, promote products that add value…

After that whole cycle has created some income for you, guess what… You now have an idea for a product to create! Create an ebook or a video tutorial about how you built your mailing list and how you made money with your mailing list… Give some of the secret away for free to build your list even more and then upsell them for the rest. Then, once again, you’ve got another product idea… You now know how to make money creating and selling your own products. The cycle continues.

Internet marketing is really that simple. (Ok. I oversimplified a little but that’s the whole darn concept!) No. Internet marketing is not fast. It does take time. But I do believe it can be really easy!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

So I just wanted to report some small victories of mine. I created this blog on July 1st. It has been online for exactly 21 days now. In that 21 days, I have managed to grab traffic reaching almost 100 visitors per day, I have built a mailing list of 21 people, and I have made almost $300 in affiliate commissions. $300 may not sound like a huge amount of money but considering that I am used to making between $100 and $150 per month, $300 in a 3 week period is a huge improvement!

I believe I have the Alex Jeffreys coaching class to thank for these triumphs. I have offered to help any student that needed it within the class, I have been very active in the forum, and I have posted on most of the people’s blogs who have given their link within the forum. I think that these three things have generated a ton of traffic for me. I have also began to post comments in blogs outside of the coaching, and I have started to become more and more active in the Warrior Forum again.

I have also noticed that my site has been getting ranked in Google for some pretty good keywords. The other day, I landed on page 1 of Google for the search term Hide Affiliate Links. That’s a pretty well searched keyword!

I feel like I’m really moving up in this online world! I have made some huge connections with some great people. We have already started to plan joint ventures for the future and I am really starting to feel like things are going to work out in my online business.

I think one of my biggest accomplishments, however, is managing to launch my own product that I created myself. I launched the first version of The Wordpress Classroom and it has gotten some amazing reviews and attention. I am so excited to see how that develops and grows. It is a really exciting time for me!

I think all of these small triumphs are what keep on pushing me forward. People need to set big goals and small goals alike. Accomplishing the small goals continues to give them the drive and motivation to keep pushing towards the big goals!

Here are some people that have really helped me out so far that I just really want to thank. Please check out their blogs, they are great people and everyone can learn a lot from them!

• Josh Bartlett – He helped me come up with the idea for the Wordpress Classroom. He is also helping me design the layout for the new version that will be released shortly! Me and Josh bounce ideas off each other for hours at a time sometimes! This is one smart dude!
• Joe Fier – Joe was my business partner before I started the coaching. Me and him support each other 100% and we are constantly doing what we can to help the other. He is usually the first person to comment on any blog post that I make and the guy has got some mad graphic design skills!
• Marcus Passey – Marcus has got so much passion and drive to be a success online. I think that is why we relate so well! He is just a motivational guy with a great attitude and outlook. This guy is going to go far!
• David Chamberlain – This is another guy that I spend hours at a time just bouncing ideas around with him. He is a smart guy and he always offers me help and advice. We promote each other’s blogs via the social bookmarking sites and I just think he’s going to be a great friend and contact going in to the future.
• Rob Willis – Rob helps me with ideas all of the time too. He always has some good ideas and he always sends me cool tools and resources to check out.
• Alex Jeffreys – My coach and mentor. This guy is one cool, down to earth dude. He is basically a marketing genius that has helped get me organized and on track. If it wasn’t for Alex, I would still be out there buying up every ebook that promised quick riches. He knows his stuff, he stays up until ungodly hours of the night to help people, and he’s just an all around nice guy

There are so many other people that have helped me here and there. I realized half way through making that list that there’s no way I’m going to be able to list them all in one post. I will make sure that everyone who has helped me along the way will get their due thanks. Anyone I haven’t mention, Thanks So Much!

This experience has been amazing and it’s just getting started!

I don’t know why I call these sneaky marketing tricks. They are really tricks that help you earn commissions but add value to your customer.

Offer a complement.
The main trick that I like to use involves adding a complement to the product that you are trying to sell. If you remember in my previous post about how to make a WordPress theme, I offered to personally create the theme for anybody who signed up through PowWeb. This little technique can be used for so many different products. I am a fan of the theme creator Artisteer, so I offer free tutorials and personal help to anybody who purchases through my link. If you can think of creative ways to complement the product that you are trying to sell, you can gain an upper hand against the competition selling the same product.

In the past, I have also pushed products through Clickbank. This method works extremely well for digital products as well. The trick that I like to use is that I look for areas where the e-book or digital video product may be lacking a little bit. I then explain to my readers how this product lacks. But then I offer a complement to the product to offset the deficiency. It is an insanely powerful marketing method. The whole idea behind this method is that you are grabbing people who would buy the product anyway but convincing them to purchase it through you instead of somebody else.

Offer your product for free.
The other technique that I commonly use is to flat-out offer a really great product for free. Give the people who are going to be reading or using this product extreme value. When somebody accesses your product and they see what great value you offer, they are going to want more, and they are going to want to purchase your follow-up products. This technique also relates to list building. You offer your product for free in exchange for an e-mail address. Once people realize the great value that you are giving to them for free, you will have them on a mailing list to offer your follow-up products. This technique only works if your free product is truly a great product. If you offer the people a crap product, they are going to think that your paid product is crap as well.

Only promote products that you feel strongly about.
Many online consumers have an ability to see past insincere product promotions. It is important to promote products that you have used and that you feel strongly about. This works in two ways. First, it is so much easier for you to write about it because you feel strongly about it and you understand its worth. You can honestly recommend this product and feel confident that the people you are recommending it to will enjoy it as well. Besides, if you are offering a complement to the product, how will you know what to offer or how to offer it if you do not really know what you are promoting? The second reason this is important is because most online consumers can feel your passion and your sincerity towards the product. It is so much easier to sell a product. When you know exactly what you are promoting and exactly how your customers will benefit from it.

Use some of these “tricks” and watch your commissions grow. Have any other tricks or want to let me know how these have worked for you? Please leave your comments. I love the interaction.

Yesterday I discussed Affiliate Links and gave you some ideas of where to get started. Hopefully you went and checked out some of those options and maybe found some products that you think you can promote on your site. Today, I’ve created a video to show you how to clean up those affiliate links so they don’t look so ugly.

As you can see it’s a real simple process. You are going to log in to your WordPress dashboard, download a plugin called GoCodes, and use that program to hide your affiliate links. This will keep people from stilling your links and throwing their own code in them. It will also give readers the impression that they are just clicking around inside of your blog, as opposed to clicking on affiliate links. This plugin has worked wonders on my other sites. Like I said, I keep the link hiding to a minimum on this site. (Full Disclosure… Remember?)

Anyway, please comment below if you found this helpful at all. I really do appreciate all the interaction I have been receiving from people. I like to know when people find what I’m giving them valuable. Please comment. Share your thoughts, questions, better ideas, etc. below!

Tomorrow I will be giving you some awesome free tools for internet marketers. I will also give a progress report on my coaching with Alex Jeffreys. Trust me, good things are starting to happen!