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 Affiliate Information Welcome aboard! Now that you have signed up as Stan's affiliate through ClickBank, and you have your special affiliate link, you can start making money right away... Here's how: The most effective way to promote Stan's web site and digital products is through your own personal endorsement or review, together with a brief description of the product and a small image of the cover. In other words, what you think of the site, what interests you and what you think of the product. Is there a particular product that you think is very good? Tell people about it. Studies show this to be much more effective than a banner advertisement or simple link. Of course any product you are interested in, you can purchase using your affiliate link and receive a 50% discount. Of the14 products currently available, the top sellers are Creating Wealth Through Adventure with the Stan Grist System and the Ancient Deposits Modern Wealth package. Choose all 14 or any one that appeals to you and is related to your site. If you have a newsletter don't forget to include a promotion there... it's one of the very best ways to sell. Once your customer goes to Stan's web site using your affiliate link, if they purchase anything you will get a 50% commission regardless of whether you advertised that specific product or not. Here is an example of what your personal endorsement and promotion could look like. The links would naturally include your affiliate code, so don't forget to include it. Feel free to use this example and/or modify it to suit your personal style: "One of the most interesting sites I have seen is www.stangrist.com, Adventures Into The Unknown! Stan has an extensive web site about his own personal adventures and explorations: discovering lost civilizations, gold prospecting, diamonds, metal detecting, treasure hunting, and much more. He also has a library about explorers and fascinating subjects like subterranean tunnel systems, and cryptozoology. Treasure hunters, Explorers and Prospectors will find his site a gold mine of information and his Training Course is top notch, great reading and inspirational. I highly recommend it. A 100% unconditional guarantee is included. Check it out for yourself:
If you are interested in other products, feel free to copy the small ads and images and add your own comments. If you need help contact us: sg@stangrist.com For additional ideas from the experts, we have also included this marketing course below because it is the best there is. Following this advice will go a long way in helping you to become a highly successful affiliate and maximize your sales. We hope you enjoy it...
An Affiliate Marketing Course Designed to Maximize Your Success The following is an excerpt from Affiliate Masters 101 - by Ken Evoy
Intro to Affiliate Business Basics Being a GREAT AFFILIATE is *NOT* about selling... It's about PRE-SELLING. --PART ONE-- The goal of any business, including your affiliate business, is to maximize PROFITS. "PROFIT" is simply your INCOME minus your EXPENSES. As an affiliate, there are exactly two ways to increase your INCOME (i.e., the amount of money your business makes)... 1) Refer more visitors to the merchants that you represent. 2) Increase the Conversion Rate (i.e., the percent of visitors referred to your merchant who deliver the response FOR WHICH THE MERCHANT PAYS, whether that's a sale, or a lead, etc.). Simple, right? If you refer 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1% buy, you get paid for that one purchase. But if you send 1,000 visitors per day and 3% buy, you get paid for 30 purchases. Yes, thirty times more! So it's pretty clear how to maximize affiliate INCOME! :-) Of course, every business has EXPENSES, too. Maximizing PROFITS does *NOT* imply that you must minimize EXPENSES. After all, if you spend NO money or time on a business...You have no business! You *MUST* get the BEST POSSIBLE traffic-building and sales-converting results for every DOLLAR you spend... and for every HOUR you spend on your business. Time *IS* money. So don't count your hours as zero cost simply because it does not cost you "out of pocket." Assign your time a dollar value -- it will put your affiliate business on a solid, professional "business footing." Let's examine EXPENSES by asking two questions... QUESTION #1 What does it cost to build traffic to your merchants' sites? Traffic-building, no matter how you cut it, will cost you...in terms of both time and money. Spending DOLLARS is optional, but spending TIME is not. There are many ways, both offline and on, to drive traffic to your merchants' sites. This course will show you *THE* most highly PROFITABLE, TIME-and-DOLLAR-effective way to build traffic to your merchants' sites... Build your own Theme-Based Content Site -- one that is loaded with high info-value Keyword-Focused Content Pages which rank well with the Search Engines *AND* "get the click throughs" to your merchants' sites. Let's break that down... for your affiliate web site to generate traffic to your merchants, it must do two things well... 1) Rank well at the Search Engines, so that it pulls in lots of traffic. So far, though, that traffic is still on *your* site. Therefore, it's not generating income yet – your visitors are just "looking around." So... 2) Get those visitors to click through to your merchants. (Some affiliate program models can actually place merchant offerings on *your* Web site. In this case, your traffic does not actually visit your merchant's site. But you still have to "get the click" to generate income.) This 5-day course will show you how to achieve both parts. It makes sense, of course, that a web site is THE way to go. After all, this *IS* the Net! QUESTION #2 What does it cost to maximize Conversion Rates? Maximizing your Conversion Rate (CR) is simply a question of doing things right. There is no extra DOLLAR or TIME cost to boosting Conversion Rates at your merchants' sites. This course will show you how to achieve this, too. Remember, when this course talks about Conversion Rates, we are talking about the Conversion Rate at the sites of the merchants that you represent as an affiliate. So we are talking about *YOU* maximizing the percent of visitors (who you refer) who deliver the response FOR WHICH THE VENDOR PAYS, whether that's a sale, or lead, etc. If you think that it's impossible for you to change the sales-effectiveness of your merchants' sites, you are in for a big surprise. :-) So... your goals, and your *ONLY* goals, are... 1) Maximize traffic to your merchants, spending only DOLLARS and TIME that maximize PROFITS. 2) Maximize Conversion Rates. Do things right (no expense). Don't just do one. Do BOTH. Why? Because, as you saw above, your payment is determined by traffic MULTIPLIED by the Conversion Rate... NOT "added." Your PROFITS grow geometrically when you concentrate on maximizing BOTH traffic and Conversion Rates. I have spent quite a bit of time reviewing the difference between 5 Pillar Affiliates who refer high traffic to us AND who deliver high Conversion Rates (% of visitors who purchase) and those with low ones. THE #1 REASON FOR LOW TRAFFIC AND TERRIBLE CONVERSION RATES? Banner ads! The futility of banners was *FIRST* revealed by our 5 Pillar Program, both in our award-winning 5 Pillar Manual and in the Five Pillar Affiliate Reports. Retinal studies have shown that Web surfers actually avoid banners. Yes, their eyes look away! Click throughs have plummeted to under half-of-a-percent. And, for the few who DO click...We went on to prove that banners are WORSE than futile, they are COUNTER-productive. The 5 Pillar Affiliates who rely on banners have an average Conversion Rate of 0.5%. But those who use "in-context" TEXT links (i.e., text links that are part of the content of the Web page) average over 3.5%! How's that for a reason *NOT* to use banners. Why does this happen? Banners are cheesy and hurt your credibility. Because visitors simply arrive feeling "pitched" rather than informed. So they arrive in a resisting mindset, rather than with an open, ready-to-buy attitude. Remember that example where you sent 100 visitors per day to a merchant and 1% bought? If you rely on flipping up some banners, it will be more like 10 visitors per day and NO one buys! Beside the obvious futility of banners, I've spotted ANOTHER major point. This one is more subtle, but it's IMPORTANT. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. After banner advertising, it's the second most common error. And it's an even BIGGER shame because this boo-boo involves a lot of work... misplaced work. I mean, if you're going to fail, the best thing would be not to spend much time at it, right? ;-) Here it is... selling instead of PRE-selling.Yes, I agree, that's better than banners. But remember these folks put in a lot MORE work than tossing up a couple of banners. We'll see in a moment that it's *misdirected* work. (The good news is that this course will redirect those efforts into high-profit areas.) Time for a philosophical perspective...In life, the vast majority of people just keep doing the "same old thing." It seems easier that way. But it guarantees the "same old results." So in the long run, it's actually much, MUCH harder. In the movie, "The Renaissance Man," Danny De Vito's character makes a profound statement..."The choices we make dictate the lives we lead." To paraphrase..."Where you are today is the result of all the choices and actions that you have made in your life." When he said that, I remember thinking, "You know, he's right. Except in rare cases of extraordinarily good or bad luck, everyone basically ends up where they are as a result of choices they make and courses of action they take." People tend to blame a lack of success in life on "bad luck" or "poor timing" or other people. And yes, at times, that can be accurate. A heck of a lot of factors beyond our control *can* blindside us. In the long run, however, as long as we PERSIST in our efforts, these factors tend to even out and De Vito's statement remains valid. Now, here's the good news... E-commerce is simpler than life. Due to its digital nature, there are fewer variables... so the outcome is more controllable. Which means that we can boil De Vito's statement down to "The #1 E-commerce Reality." This Reality is almost self-evident, yet it's so easy to forget. Your success with *ANYTHING* you do in the world of e-commerce flows from it. Internalize it and act upon it, you'll succeed. Yes, it's THAT fundamental. 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*." So...When I see some Affiliates with CRs over 10% (and a few over 20%!), I figure that those with CRs at 1-2% or less could be multiplying their sales five-or-more-fold. How? *NOT* by working harder, but by simply channelling their motivation in a better direction... Let's continue with the case of Affiliates who make "great efforts" but so-so-results... As I reviewed many of these affiliate sites (those that are getting sales but have CRs under 2%), I realized that almost half were basically one big sales letter. Which means that these affiliates are SELLING (with sales copy) when they should be PRE-selling (with great, and related, content that is of value to the reader). There's really not much point in straight SELLING off your site -- that's what your merchant's site is for. Picture this... A visitor arrives at an affiliate's site that is really just one, big sales site. Put yourself in these visitors' shoes for a moment. They don't see inspiring, editorial content -- they see a sales effort. BUT THEY WERE SEARCHING FOR CONTENT! People resist sales efforts, so your click-through actually goes down. And if they do click, what do they see when they arrive at the merchants web site? More sales effort. And, in some cases, many of the words on your site are similar to the words that they've just read. Result? Poor Conversion Rate. If your site is basically a "bunch of sales letters," you have not yet built your credibility and likeability with this visitor. Your visitor ends up feeling "pitched." And then feels double-pitched *IF* she clicks through to your merchant's site...That's why the CR actually goes down. To make things worse, as she "smells" a sales effort, she becomes less likely to click! So referred traffic drops, too. Women now represent 50% of all surfers. And they control approximately 80% of all shopping dollars. To reinforce this in your mind, we'll use the feminine pronoun to talk about readers/visitors/customers. To keep things simple and even, we'll use the masculine pronoun when referring to affiliates. OK, let's see... Referred traffic down. And Conversion Rate down. But these are the two ways to increase your INCOME (that we talked about right at the top today's lesson). We're going in the wrong direction! Conclusion? Don't SELL! Instead, warm your visitor up for your merchants by PRE-selling them with great content that they value and respect. They'll click-through with pleasure, arriving at your merchants' sites in an open-to-buy mindset. It's your PRE-sell effort that will boost your traffic-to- merchants *and* Conversion Rate. Which in turn maximizes your INCOME. This brings us to our second philosophical premise and the end of Part One... "The #1 Affiliate Reality"... "Your CR will literally vary from 1% to 10% (and at times, as much as 20%!), purely because of... 1) *HOW YOU REACH* your visitor, and 2) *WHAT YOU SAY* to her, and 3) *HOW YOU REFER* her to your merchant." Your CR depends upon what *YOU* do and how *YOU* do it. You do NOT need Lady Luck, Sir Serendipity or anyone else. There is *ALWAYS* a reason for how well you do, and that reason always relates to *WHAT* you do and *HOW* you do it. Once you realize this, then you *KNOW* success really is DO-able. Some people DO succeed... big-time. But not necessarily the first time. Just keep trying until you find the right approach. To quote Calvin Coolidge..."Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." Of course, the goal of the 5-day Affiliate Masters series is to reduce the amount of trial-and-error-PERSISTENCE that will be required before you find *YOUR OWN* successful formula! :-) Why is "The #1 Affiliate Reality" true?... Because *HOW* you reach your customer, and *WHAT* you say once you reach her, and *HOW* you refer your visitor to your merchant DIRECTLY affects your visitor's *MINDSET* when she arrives at your merchant's site. A POSITIVE mindset turns into a PURCHASE with amazing regularity. A NEGATIVE one is near-impossible to overcome. And THAT is what "HIGH-CR affiliates" have known all along. ************************************* "They refer people to their merchants in an 'OPEN-TO-BUY' frame of mind." ************************************* "Your CR will literally vary from 1% to 20%, purely because of... 1) *HOW YOU REACH* your visitor, and 2) *WHAT YOU SAY* to her, and 3) *HOW YOU REFER* her to your merchant." Some people e-mail us after reading this course, refusing to believe that we have affiliates who can generate a Conversion Rate (CR) of over 20%. Actually, the monthly record is 26%. Do they do that *EVERY* month? No. But we know it's not a fluke. Why? Because, although each affiliate's CR may fluctuate in any given month, a "high-CR" affiliate does not suddenly become a "low-CR" affiliate. The good ones score high, and make significant dollars, every month. --PART TWO-- Your strategies and actions as an affiliate directly affect your Conversion Rate. This section deals with how to PRE-sell effectively. (Later in the course we will cover traffic-building in more detail.) Let's look at examples of how "LOW-CR affiliates" create NEGATIVE mindsets by making HOW-YOU-REACH, WHAT-YOU-SAY, or HOW-YOU-REFER boo-boos... 1) *HOW* to Reach Your Visitor... Free-For-All Sites (FFAs) are a great example of *HOW NOT* to reach people. For the most part, they have become so seamy and useless, that no matter *WHAT* you say, you're doomed from the start. I made a request to all 5 Pillar Affiliates for FFA success stories some time ago... not a single success story! Compare this with how smart and open-minded your visitor feels when *SHE* finds *YOU* via a Search Engine! 2) *WHAT* to Say to Your Visitor... Don't write a site purely devoted to "hard-selling" your merchants' products. Imagine a visitor who hits your site and reads an immediate sales pitch. That person will RESIST because she does not know you. Then, *IF* (and it's not likely) she clicks to your merchant, she gets *ANOTHER* sales pitch on your merchant's site ==> Negative x 2! In other words... NEVER DEVOTE YOUR SITE TO ONE COMPANY'S PRODUCT LINE. No matter what you do, no matter how sincere you are, this kind of approach always ends up "smelling" like a sales pitch. It simply makes no difference that you honestly love the products -- your visitor will mistake your devotion for SELLING. It's far better to develop a concept that relates to that company's products *AND* to other products from other companies that are COMPLEMENTARY. Develop related content that PRE-sells. Then "get the click" through "in-context" TEXT links. 3) *HOW* to Refer Your Visitor to Your Merchant... Banners are the best example of *HOW NOT* to refer your visitor to your merchant (unless it's for products that you are *not* so proud to recommend -- a banner is an ad, so you're not putting your personal endorsement upon it). In plain and simple language... people feel "pitched" when they click on a banner. And people who feel "pitched" are difficult to convert into a sale. Now for a critical ACTION STEP... Review your site or whatever other means you are using to REACH, TALK TO, and REFER visitors to your merchants. Put yourself in your customer's BRAIN. What will she think, how will she feel, at each of the 3 major STEPS above? If you're doing everything perfectly, congratulations! You must have a high CR. If you don't have a high CR, or if you see some big MINDSET mistakes.... Consider how much higher your CR would be if a visitor found you in a bona fide manner (ex., as a result of doing a search on a Search Engine), then became "your friend" (or your "trusting admirer" if you do a truly awesome job!) because you provided excellent content, and finally was led to a context-appropriate RECOMMENDATION (more on RECOMMENDATION vs. SALES PITCH below). The BOTTOM LINE? Always consider how these actions affect your visitor's mindset... 1) *HOW YOU REACH* your visitor, and 2) *WHAT YOU SAY* to her, and 3) *HOW YOU REFER* her to your merchant. Get inside your visitor's head -- realize how she will feel each step of the way. Whatever you do, consider the impact on your visitor -- if it does not make her *MORE* "open to buy," don't do it. PRE-selling is really all about selling YOURSELF to your customer, every step of the way. You reach the right folks in a proper fashion, you deliver valuable, appropriate editorial content, and you RECOMMEND visitors to your merchant *AFTER* they have come to respect and like you. Your CR will soar. Why does PRE-selling work so well? Because a sale via ANY Affiliate Program is really a *TWO-STEP PROCESS* -- it requires the delivery of two "Most Wanted Responses," yours *AND* your merchant's. As an affiliate, what is *YOUR* MWR? No, it's NOT to get the sale. That's the second STEP -- it's your merchant's MWR. *YOUR* MWR is to...GET THE *CLICK* (the click-through to your merchant) WITH THE VISITOR IN AN OPEN-TO-BUY MINDSET. Let your merchant's site do *its* job and get the sale. I remember when I used to tell my star baseball pitcher, Joel Leonoff... "Joel... you don't have to strike 'em all out. You've got a great team behind you. Let them do their job." Same goes for your merchants... Let them do their job. Top Affiliates all provide useful content -- they PRE-sell. Then they let the rest of their team get the sale. It's a TWO-STEP process that builds to the sale... STEP 1 --> *YOU* PRE-sell to get an *OPEN-TO-BUY CLICK* to your merchant. STEP 2 --> Your merchant gets the sale. So, whatever you do, however you do it, it should always pull your visitor one step closer to delivering *YOUR* MWR... Get an *OPEN-TO-BUY* click. "Ken, if I leave it up to the merchant's site to get the sale, I still don't see how I have any influence on the Conversion Rate. I'd much rather SELL the visitor on my own site. Let's say that you have a large, high-traffic site that is all about Web marketing, and that has lots of high-value content about marketing and selling on the Net. If you write a terrific review about "the BIBLE of selling on the Net," Make Your Site SELL!...You are *NOT* SELLING, you're PRE-selling. After all, your high quality, content-filled site, has already done a great deal of PRE-selling your visitor. And your review itself should be a fair reflection of your feelings about MYSS!, written in such a way that you address the major benefits for those readers who are assessing if they need it. Do this right, and your CR will zoom. But if it reads like a "hard-sell sales pitch," you'll quickly lose credibility with your audience. On the other hand...Let's say that you do NOT have a MEGA-content, ultra-high traffic site and a widely read e-zine of an Allan Gardyne or Ralph Wilson. But you DO really love the merchant's products -- that's why you're so proud to represent them. After all, you'd never just want to "push stuff" on people, products that you do *NOT* believe represent true value-for-dollar. Make Your Knowledge Sell! Create, publish and sell what you know... Bottom line?...Do *NOT* represent merchants who simply bribe you with a high commission to recommend overpriced products...Short-term gain like this results in long-term pain. Your REPUTATION is your foundation. Build it on ROCK. Let's focus on your VISITOR's mindset. Up above, I said...Get inside your visitor's head -- realize how she will feel each step of the way. Whatever you do, consider the impact on your visitor -- if it does not make her "open to buy," don't do it. So maybe *YOU* see an honest site that tries to share the benefits with your visitor. But your *VISITOR* does not know you or your motivations. She might very well see a straight sales effort. With no other true content, it would be hard "for an outsider" to see it any other way. It does not matter what YOU see. If your VISITORS basically perceive a straight sales effort for your merchants, you're SELLING, not PRE-selling. That means that the TWO-STEP process is now SELL-SELL...Redundancy = Turned OFF customer = LOW CR. But if you develop great content that leads to the click, you become a friend making a RECOMMENDATION rather than a stranger making a SALES PITCH. And if you create a truly great site, you'll actually become a trusted EXPERT making an ENDORSEMENT. Recommendation = Turned ON customer = HIGH CR. In other words, don't PUSH your visitor to the click, make her WANT to click. It makes all the difference if your visitor feels that it's HER idea to deliver *YOUR* MWR (the *OPEN-TO-BUY CLICK*). "But can you give me a CONCRETE example of using content to PRE-sell?" You want "concrete"? OK, concrete you get...Let's go back to the example just above. You love the merchant's products! And want to create a Net marketing site. Whoa! My first recommendation... Do *NOT* create another Web marketing site. There are zillions of them. If I was to get the idea today, I would not do it. Too, too crowded. It would be almost impossible to become so well established today. However... Where do you find a great concept for your site?...Inside YOU! Because you do know stuff other people don't... things people would pay to know. You might have learned it "on the job" or through your hobby. There's a good chance that you don't even realize what you know. It's often right under your nose. But, as you'll see, everyone *IS* an expert about something. For now...Here's a real CONCRETE, non-Web-marketing, example that *will* succeed... It's all about creating a Theme-Based Content Site that is loaded with Keyword-Focused Content-Rich Pages. Your theme?...You love concrete. Yes, cement! It's been your hobby, your passion, for years... Concrete statues. Concrete painting. Decorative concrete. Concrete in the garden. Repairing concrete. The various types of concrete. Hand trowels. Things to do with cement blocks. Concrete trade shows. Concrete and swimming pools. Concrete molds. Cleaning concrete. Ready mixed concrete. Concrete countertops. For this example, I had to brainstorm topics for concrete. But I know nothing about it. I chose it because it was the first thing to enter my head. But I could develop topics about concrete forever. More about brainstorming and developing HIGH-PROFITABILITY topics tomorrow. Anyway, let's say that you decide to create a THEME-BASED site that is all about concrete. Your home page explains how your site is "THE" site for everything concrete, from structural to esthetic. You also, of course, create HIGH-VALUE content-jammed Keyword-Focused Content Pages. For example, your page about concrete statues explains all about how to make striking statues for the home and garden. You could even expand it into an entire "Statue Section," with a page on the history of concrete statues and another one about how to market and sell the statues that the visitor makes. The main point, though, is that you create truly excellent, HIGH-VALUE content that delivers what your reader sought at the engines. And you also weave RELEVANT, "in-context" TEXT links right in the content, as appropriate. Links to... o Books about the topic (ex. concrete statues if that's what the page was about) o A garden supplier for concrete molds, trowels, etc. o Naturally, a concrete supplier! o And so forth. See what's happening? By writing about a niche that you know and love, the content is easy. I'll show you how to ALSO write it to score well for the engines later in the course. By providing great content, you PRE-sell your reader, increasing your click-through (traffic to your merchants) and your Conversion Rate (sales). And by diversifying your affiliate programs among several RELATED and EXCELLENT merchants, you develop multiple streams of income from one site. *THIS* is the way to go. OK, we can summarize today's session into a KEY LESSON to take home. I am giving it this title...The Road to Becoming a Master Affiliate The more I researched successful Affiliates, the more PRE-selling techniques I found. But, no matter *HOW* they do it, they all accomplish the same thing in the end... "They refer people to their merchants in an 'OPEN-TO-BUY' frame of mind." What's the KEY? PRE-selling. Not selling. You must, must, MUST know... HOW TO PRE-SELL! Basically, The Affiliate Masters 5-day course delivers THE single most productive approach to affiliate income. It will show you how to PRE-sell your way to a CR of 5-10%.*AND*...At the same time, maximize traffic to your merchants' sites. If you're building terrific traffic to your site... *AND* if your site is getting a great click through rate (CTR) to the merchants that you represent... *AND* if you are converting a high percentage of them into sales...Isn't that the roadmap to becoming a high-earning affiliate champion? Let's summarize the WHOLE point of PRE-selling with this question...Which Would *YOU* Respond To...A Stranger With a Sales Pitch or A Knowledgeable Friend Making a Recommendation? This was an excerpt from Ken Evoy's five part free affiliate marketing course. For more information please visit his site by clicking here.
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