One of the best ways to make great money online is with email marketing
and affiliate marketing. There is in fact, a way that you can merge both
of these together and start making a huge amount of sales. The first
step is finding a profitable niche and affiliate products related to
your niche to promote. The second step is creating a website that
highlights your niche and draws in visitors. The third step is to gain
traffic using several free and paid methods.
1. Finding Niche and Affiliate Programs
The first step is to find a niche in which you can profit from and
affiliate programs to start earning money. You can try heading over to
Magazines
just to start familiarizing yourself with all the different topics. If
you already have a niche in mind, search "(your niche) affiliate
programs" and spend some time choosing the ones that appeal to you the
most. If you don't have a specific niche,then one of the fastest ways to
find a niche is within affiliate programs themselves. I recommend you
join
Clickbank
as it is one of the largest affiliate marketplaces out there. Sign up
and click "marketplace" here you will be taken to all the affiliate
products; filter results by "gravity" which shows which products are
making the most sales and choose a product with a low initial sale to
high average sale ratio(this means the customers continued to spend on
the product after the initial payment). Another great affiliate service
is
Digiresults.
This site works basically the same as Clickbank with the only
difference that you have to apply first to market a product. Click
here for more help on finding a profitable niche.
Now that you've got your niche and affiliate tools, its time to create your website!
2. Creating Your Website
First, start by purchasing a domain; I recommend
Godaddy(choose
a domain name relevant to your niche and remember that .info is much
cheaper than.com) and set it up with a hosting company; I would
recommend
Hostgator (Click
here
for many Hostgator discount codes). Choose the "baby" plan for
Hostgator as it hosts unlimited domains or choose "hatchling" if you
want to stick with just one domain(I recommend baby as creating more
websites really helps expand your business and increase profits). Make
sure to change your nameservers so Godaddy knows your website is hosted
by Hostgator (Click
here
for how to change your nameservers). your two nameservers will be
provided by Hostgator once you've made your payment. After you've set up
your nameservers, wait a few hours for your website to recognize
Hostgator (you will know this when you enter your Url and Hostgator's
panel appears). To sign into your website type "(your
domain).com/cpanel". (you are provided with lots of passwords in the
process of making a website so make sure to store them).
Now you have to create 3 pages on your site, the squeeze page (which
will be the page visitors see when they visit your website, typically
promoting your product), the confirmation page (the page in which you
ask your subscribers to confirm their email and thank them for signing
up), and the download page(Here is where they download your product
which I recommend to be a free offer). First, begin to customize your
pages; id recommend installing WordPress on your site as it offers many
customization templates(Click
here for how to install wordpress). I would also mention some exceptional, but paid services, to customize your squeeze pages are
Lead Pages and
Optimize Press. One thing you can do to begin designing your site is to use
Fiverr,
a website where people will do just about anything for only 5$; you can
search people to create banners for your site or just design them
yourself if you have the knowledge.
You're squeeze page should pop out and have a professional look to
convert more visitors into subscribers; one recommendation is to create a
large sub-header with a promotional message, then include bullet points
detailing why and how your product can do what was stated in the
sub-header, then include a call to action(one example is "I could be
taking this down in the next few days so order now") . Click
here to learn about the different types of squeeze page designs and why they work and
here
to learn how to make a great squeeze page. The confirmation page should
be a simple thank you to your visitors for subscribing and asking them
to check their email to confirm. For the download page, offer a free
gift related to your niche. To upload files to wordpress just go to the
"media" tab and select upload(you will get a unique URL for your file). a
great website for free ebooks with resale rights is
Seymour Products, but I would recommend using
Odesk or
Elance
for some high converting PLR content(this will cost some money), or you
can just offer a product of your own. To add a nice looking download
button, paste this code on your page(replace with your own url's): "
<a
href="url of your ebook(this will be dispayed when you upload the file
on the media tab) e.g
http://yourwebsite/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/19_your_ebook.pdf><img
src="where you placed the image in your website e.g.
/img/downloadbutton.jpg" alt="downloadbutton"></a>".
After creating your pages, set the squeeze page as the front page(Click
on "Settings => reading" then check "a static page" and selct your
squeeze page). Also change your permalinks for better SEO by going to
"Settings => Permalinks" and check the option "post name" (this will
change your page URL to your page name). Now its time to get an
autoresponder; I would recommend
Aweber or
Getresponse
(these services are for building your list of subscribers and creating
follow up messages to promote future products; I personally use Aweber).
Create your list with your email address, name, and name of your
list(name it something relevant to your website). Create an Opt-in form
on any of these services (this is where your visitors sign up) and link
it to your confirmation page url (to add the Opt in form on your
website, select "create sign up form" in Aweber/Getresponse, personalize
your Opt in box, select "custom thank you page" and enter your
confirmation page URL; in the final step, copy the raw HTML code, then
go to "pages" on WordPress, click "edit" on squeeze page, hover down to
"Opt-in Options", check "activate Opt in" and copy the HTML code in the
"autoresponder" section); after this, choose "list settings" in your
autoresponder and select "confirmed Opt in". customize your confirmation
message and copy your download page in the "success page"box, where
they will be sent to after they confirm their email address and you're
good to go!
In your autoresponder there is an option to create "follow-up messages"
(these are messages that will be delivered periodically promoting your
products to your subscribers). Include a good subject line to make sure
it gets opened and try to set a feeling of trust and friendship with
your subscribers. You can either choose to give valuable information and
then promote your affiliate product at the end, or talk about your
affiliate product that you will recommend in that email and why they
should purchase it. Try to keep your subscribers engaged so that they
expect another email from you soon. Click
here to learn how to make great follow up messages.
Some useful advice after gaining significant subscribers is to make a
separate list called a "buyers list" in which you will include all the
people who have bought from you and the current list will be known as
the "freebie" list. What this does is you can use monetization
techniques and cpa offers to convert a freebie into a buyer, while you
promote recommended products to the buyers list as they will be more
responsive to buy.
Now that your webpage is up and running, you need to take ownership of the site in the large search engine's. Visit,
Google Webmaster's,
Bing Webmaster's, and
Pinterest Site Verification
to get your website verified and improve it's visibility(these sites
explain how to verify). I would also recommend to submit your website to
various search engines using these free tools:
Submit Express and
Entireweb.
Gaining Traffic Forum Marketing
Now there are many methods of getting more traffic: one of them is by
forum marketing. What this is is you find a forum relevant to your
niche(try searching "(your niche) forums") and actively participate in
them. Every time you post on the forum, your signature(which you can
include your links in) will be displayed and be viewable to all members.
Some members may be enticed to click on your links and thus you gain
more traffic(make sure to post quality posts and not spam).
Reddit Reddit
is a very powerful website to gain traffic to your site. It is divided
into many sub-reddits, each with its own topic. What you need to do is
find a sub-reddit relevant to your niche. After doing this, participate
in the forum and let your account age for a few days in order to prevent
your website post to be marked as spam. After you've waited a few days,
click "submit link" and enter your website, then make sure to write a
catchy title that will attract redditors to click on your link.
Solo Ads
The next traffic method is solo ads. What you do is you buy a specific
number of clicks from a seller(example: 100) and create an email swipe,
which is a message with a subject line and a body promoting your site(
Click
here
for information on making a great email swipe). After this, the seller
will promote your email to their list and provide you with the clicks. A
great site for solo ads is
Udimi.
Make sure to spend some time researching the sellers and find one that
delivers what he promises or even overdelivers; also one who has a
responsive list, because you don't just want clicks, you want
subscribers and sales.
Facebook, PPC, and Fiverr
Another great form of increasing traffic is using Facebook ads. A good
idea is to make a Facebook fanpage of your site and start promoting it
(Click
here
to learn how to get more likes to your fanpage). After this you can
start creating your ads. Click on "create ad" and there will be many
categories (clicks to your website, boost your posts, promote your page,
etc) you want to click on "clicks to your website". Now its time to
select your audience. Try to really narrow down your targeted audience;
more is not better, you want to target a specific audience that is
interested in your product(under "behaviors" you can choose people who
have made online payments before). Now you have to make a bid for how
much you pay for each click(the ad manager will automatically show a
suggested bid). Now its time to choose an image and create your message
that will really attract clicks(Click
here
to learn how to make great ads). One of the best PPC's (pay-per-click)
is Google adsense, just set up your ad and your click price and you're
good to go (this may be costly at times and you have to get approved
first); other great PPC's are
Bidvertiser,
Media.net, and
Chitika. Once again, you can also use the service
Fiverr
to promote your site. Try to look for services that will tweet or post
your website in popular pages, write guest blogs on sites about your
site, will post your site on popular social media sites etc. Make sure
to also spend time researching these gigs and finding one that may work
for you and your niche(do not pay for traffic towards your site, as
these are useless clicks that will not convert into sales or
subscribers).
Writing articles
Writing articles can also be a great way to get recognition for your website or product. I recommend
Hubpages and
Ezinearticles.
If you are not skilled in writing articles or don't have the time, you
can hire very cheap writers that will create quality articles at
IWriter (as always, spend some time looking through the writers and try to go for the higher ranked writers).
SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the foundational methods to
get more traffic as it increases your page rank on search engines like
Google so that your site becomes better known. To learn how to increase
your page rank i recommend a great website called,
Source Wave which includes great training videos on SEO, backlinks, and more and it is completely free.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is also a great way to promote your products. Start by
posting quality content on your niche, promoting your YouTube site and
gaining a steady fanbase. If making your own videos is not for you, you
can always make a review YouTube channel and post many different videos
of people reviewing your product.To download the review YouTube videos,
simply type an "ss" before "YouTube" in the URL box, then download it
there, upload to YouTube, add your affiliate link in the description
(use
Bit.ly to cloak it) and publish to YouTube (making your own original content is far more likely to gain many views).
Ad Swaps
After you've gained momentum and have a few hundred subscribers to your
list, it's time to take the next big step in gaining traffic by ad
swaps. What you do is you find someone with a similar list size and
niche as yours and swap promotional messages; you promote their website
to your list of subscribers and they promote yours, hence the swap. This
is a great way to earn thousand of new subscribers with an interest in
your niche. One of the best websites for this is
Safe Swaps (be wary this is a paid website).
Click
here to also look for options for free classified ads.
Conclusion
This guide is a basic way of setting up your first website and promoting
it. Be sure to look up more information and not only expand your
knowledge, but put in the effort to make it work through trial and error
which is crucial to becoming successful in internet marketing. Be sure
to post any other advice that I may have missed and I wish the best
success on you and your web business!