Affiliate marketing on autopilot

Once your emails are set up and each one has an affiliate link in it, you’re free to move on to another niche – or another portion of the niche. In this example, we’ve used dog training, so now you might head into the dog grooming sub-niche.

Or, choose a different evergreen niche like health, golf, or dating and use the same method to set up another autopilot sales system.

Over the coming days, weeks, and months, you’ll see your subscription list grow. You’ll see new sales popping up on your radar, and it will increase as new people join your list and word spreads of the great free, valuable information you give away.

In the meantime, after it’s set up (or after you outsource it to someone else), you’re free to go about your business managing other online business ventures or even just enjoying the money you’re earning on a regular basis.

Don’t get bogged down in one on one relationships with your list subscribers or worrying about what your subscribers will think when you blast a message out to promote another product.

If you want to work on your own newsletter and personal branding system, go for it – but that’s not what this system is intended to do. This affiliate money machine serves one sole purpose – to generate autopilot income and nothing else.

Also you need to grab your visitors email address so that you can target them with tips and affiliate links.  Let’s look at someone who’s already using the weekly promotional system. This site gives visitors the option of signing up for a weekly tip email.

That’s all you need to do – set up a simple site, stick an autoresponder opt in box up, and begin building a list that will receive weekly tips (with an affiliate link) in the email communications.

This site does a great job of giving away a lot of free information up front in the form of categorical articles – from dog biting to potty training. Some marketers mistakenly think they can save their good stuff for paid content, but you first have to build trust with your visitor and impress them enough to sign up to your list.

With a similar site in your niche, you’ll be able to command the respect of other sites that will link to you as a great resource, helping you build your list even more. 

The more your list grows, and the more sites you set up in this fashion, the more money you’ll make, period.

Notice how this compares to the hunt and peck method of article marketing where many affiliates are sticking a single article with a bio box up and hoping to cash in every day of the week?

It’s just not going to work without massive content creation, but with an autoresponder system, you can use plug-in PLR and not have to worry about:

1.)  Unique content

2.)  Acceptance by article directory reviewers

3.)  Link rules (like no affiliate links, number of links, etc.)

Instead, your content will be housed in private – delivered directly to their inbox and you can position whatever links you want wherever you want them in the body of the email.

“But what about people who get offended when you try to sell to them in every email you send out?”

Look – this system is meant to run on autopilot. Let it weed out those who are offended. You’ll keep plenty of subscribers who are content with the promotions as long as they keep getting decent tips in their emails, which you’ll do, of course.

Don’t sweat the unsubscribed list. Just accept it as part of the system and keep doing what you’re doing. Your earnings will reflect that you’re doing something right.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

How to make a website for affiliate marketing

It can be a WordPress blog on your own domain or a minisite with a squeeze page on it or a full-on content site with hundreds of articles – it doesn’t matter which one.

I’m going to buy a dot info domain – because I believe in them. Also, this is random and funny to see through a non marketer’s eye, but I asked several of my non-marketing friends about domain extensions.

I said, “You know how there are dot coms and dot nets and dot govs? What do you think of when you hear about a dot info domain? What initial thing would you consider that site to be?”

All of them said they’d consider it an information website - an authority site. They wouldn’t expect to see a sales letter there (consumers avoid sites they think will do nothing but sell to them if they’re just searching for information). They would expect to find valuable information there that’s not biased.

So let’s think about that, then. If you, as an affiliate, have a dot info domain and you construct it PROPERLY with good information so that when they land, they see value and get freebies (via an opt in), they’re going to have a good first impression of your site.

Find Affiliate Products to Promote

Head to my two favorite places – ClickBank and PayDotCom. Those aren’t the only two affiliate communities available – you also have the chance to market tangible items through sites like Amazon, for example.

In ClickBank, I can instantly see a whole list of affiliate options when I type in (in quotes) “dog training.” The ClickBank products you see almost all pay out at over $20.00 per sale. 

You want to go through and review each sales letter to see if you feel it will convert well. Then use the Create Hoplink to create a file of your affiliate links. You’ll want to cloak them, of course – but have the raw link on file for your own records. There are 30 products listed on ClickBank at the time of this writing specifically for dog training.

Next head to PayDotCom and check out what’s there. 

Now you can go with smaller, more niche specific products to promote, or go with a more broad dog training product that has a higher price tag (and ultimately more commission for you).

In the PayDotCom system, you see products specific to each breed, but you also see a $97 product with a 50% payout that covers dog training in general. You’ll want to pick and choose among the pages of product possibilities based on how you set up your email capture system to promote your free report.

If you have a site specifically for Pekingese dog owners, then go with that eBook. But mix it up and see if the higher priced product converts better with the same crowd. You want to give them many choices on what they buy. 

If you decide you do want to promote tangibles, go to Amazon and see what types of things are available in your niche. Conducting a quick scan for dog training, I find print books, dog training collars, DVDs, whistles, clickers and more.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Choose a More Narrow Niche

So you want to see how it would all work in a real niche? Let’s use dogs as our example.  Dog owners are almost fanatical about investing in knowledge for their four-legged friends – they buy everything from what breed to choose to grooming and training materials.

As an affiliate for the dog niche, here’s how you’re going to make this system work for you:

Choose a More Narrow Niche

Let’s not start out with “dogs” in general. Let’s drill down a bit and go with “dog training.”

You’ll need to drill down yourself. And yeah, gurus will promote all sorts of complex and expensive tools to help you find a narrow niche but let’s keep things cheap, shall we?

Go to the free Google keyword tool and type in the broadest keyword for the niche that you can think of. In our case, it’ll be “dog.”

When I type that word in, the very first result that comes up is dog training. There are also a lot of dog health topics, which would be another good drilled down niche.

I also like to then do a search for that narrow keyword phrase – dog training – and see what comes up. I’m looking for a couple of things. I want to know there will be info products I can promote and possible tangible products I can promote via Amazon.

On the tangible front, I see lots of searches for dog training collars, books, and DVDs. And aside from  the dog training books also working for info products, I see lots of searches for dog training classes, dog training advice, etc.

I could take it even narrower, focusing on puppies or an aspect of training like potty training or obedience training. But for right now, I’m not. I’m going to stick with dog training and branch out from there.

I clicked the download link to save this data in an excel spreadsheet – all 800 keyword phrases of it. I put it in a folder on my desktop.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System

I think the best way to learn a system is to see it in action, so in the next chapter, I’m going to walk you through it with a live case study that you can see as you implement each step on your own.

But let’s first go over the basics of how you’re going to pull this system together.

First, you’re going to want to choose your niche carefully.  Like I said before – go with something that delivers ample opportunity, like the dog niche, health niche, dating, or golf to name a few examples.

What makes a good niche?  When I search for a niche I ask myself these questions:

The 4 Layers of an Affiliate Marketing Simple System

You don’t need a ton of expensive memberships or fancy tools with a lengthy learning curve to make money as an affiliate online.  All you need are four basic concepts and systems to pull together.

1.) Ample Affiliate Opportunities

Don’t assume there’s an affiliate program for every niche topic out there. You want abundant opportunities to choose from, not a single half-baked product to promote that doesn’t convert well or barely pays you what your time is worth.

If you go to ClickBank or PayDotCom or a CPA network and find only 1 or 2 things to promote, then it might be wise to pick a different niche OR choose a different path – one that has you creating your own info product since competition is minimal.

Conduct this research prior to buying a domain or investing in content (with either time or money).

2.) A Home on the Web

Every good affiliate needs a hot spot to post their content and links. Everyone will tell you to stick with free web 2.0 sites like Squidoo or Hub Pages, but I’m telling your right now – you want your own domain.

Web 2.0 sites are great for backlinks and traffic but when you want to set the rules for yourself and ensure that one day you don’t wake up to find your whole site deleted without warning, then owning a domain is a necessity – not a luxury.

Some people will tell you to only buy dot com domains. I have a different opinion. I own dot info domains that do just fine in the SERPs. I’ve read other people’s posts on forums who have had the same experience as me.

3.) Authority Content

Your goal as an affiliate who prospers is to get them into your system for repeat sales, not one-time commissions.  To hook your audience for the long-haul, you need to learn how to provide a bit of authority and expertise that keeps them tuned in to what you have to say – even if someone else wrote it and you’re simply the middle man.

You get positioned as the expert without having to create a product and possibly without having to write a single word of content or conduct any research on the topic other than basic keyword volume and competition.

4.) A Communication System

Your communication with online customers comes in the form of an automated system that leaves you with a primarily hands-off business to run.

Autoresponders are the method of choice for most marketers because you can queue up over a years’ worth of emails to go out on autopilot and do the dirty work for you.

Those 4 elements above are all it’s going to take to build a financially secure affiliate empire. Now how you use these four components is where the difference between success and failure lies.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Introduction to affiliate marketing

There are far too many affiliates spinning their wheels and wondering where the money lies and not enough people putting a simplistic plan into operation that will provide them with passive residual income for months (or even years) to come.

You see it every day – posts in Internet marketing forums from people who can’t “get it” or someone who finally made their first sale (after months of trying with no luck).

They have no idea how to repeat that single sale, so eventually they’ll quit – like 99% of the other affiliates who can’t figure out what the Super Affiliates already know.

There are a million ideas you can tack onto this simple affiliate strategy. But what I’m going to divulge to you in the coming pages is all you need to succeed and generate profits for your online empire.