I talk to affiliates after affiliates that are starting to make money in this business, and one huge common problem that I hear and see from these affiliates all the time is that they are not split testing anything and if they are, they are doing it so half-butted that its not doing them any good…then they have the audacity to complain that split testing doesn’t seem to work for them…

At first when I started mentoring and consulting individuals, I thought to myself, well maybe they just don’t realize how important split testing is, but than I realized that just about every single affiliate blog out there talks about split testing ALL THE TIME!  In fact, I’ve talked about it in depth several times on this blog and touching on each aspect of split testing, whether it’s split testing landing pages, or split testing ads, split testing offers and networks, or whatever!

I’ve explained in these posts, why you need to do it, how extremely important it is, and what types of benefits it will have on your campaigns, in fact so have a ton of other bloggers like Chad from CDF Networks in which he wrote a post entitled Split Test Everything!  Jonathan Volk wrote a post on Increasing Landing Page Conversions where he talks about split testing and it’s benefits and why you need to be doing it!

I could go on and on with posts all over the internet that talk about split testing, yet there isn’t a need for me to, simply  go to any affiliate blog and type in split testing, you’ll see that it’s a subject that is talked about all the time, yet very few affiliates seem to be doing it!

Instead, they launch a campaign in a niche like payday loans, it isn’t profitable and they move on to another niche and so forth over and over wondering why they aren’t making money!  Instead, find out why you campaign is failing, whether it’s your ads, landing page, keywords, etc and split test them!  What???  You aren’t tracking each of those things to find out where your problems are?  Then you’re an even bigger idiot!!!

Quit being lazy, quit making excuses and start split testing…  I promise you if you do, you’ll drastically see increases in your profits as an affiliate marketer!

Sorry guys, I love you all, but really felt like I needed to be blunt with this one!  Hugs and Kisses!

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Payday Loans, Weight Loss, Credit Reports, etc are considered Big Niches, although a lot of affiliates will call these “Saturated Niches”.  What they mean by this is that there are a ton of people promoting these niches currently and that creates a lot of competition and makes it harder to compete as bid prices are normally higher!

Most affiliates are told by other affiliates (often time other new affiliates) that they should avoid these niches because there is too much competition in them and they are too saturated! This is completely and utterly false, thus my reason for this post today…

Long Tail Keywords actually have Volume!

Big niches are more saturated and there is more competition, but there is also a ton more volume and keywords that work in these niches.  In smaller niches, if you start getting into the long tail keywords of 3 or more words, you very quickly realize that you’re just not able to get any decent volume, while in bigger niches, you are able to go into these long tail keywords and still rake in the volume because there are just that many more people searching for these products or services!

There are also several other big advantages to bigger niches that most affiliates don’t take the time to think about…

More Offers to Split Test

Another great feature of bigger niches is the fact that there are tons more offers to split test within that niche.  The reason that this benefits you as an affiliate is that it allows you to have more companies that are competing against each other and really trying to make sure their offer landing pages convert really well.  Because of this, it’s very easy in these bigger niches to have Offer landing pages that convert extremely well!

In a lot of smaller niches there may be only a handful of offers and normally out of that handful of offers, there will be one big player and a couple small players in the niche.  This means that normally you’re running the same offer as most affiliates (the big player) and they have no real competition thus they aren’t constantly working on their landing pages to increase the conversion rates and stuff!

Higher Payouts!

Because most bigger niches have more advertisers wanting you to promote their product or service, the payouts tend to be quite larger than smaller niches.  This isn’t actually an advantage but what it does is that even though bid prices may be higher in “saturated” niches because the payouts are larger, it normally works out pretty decently, now I’m not saying it allows you to jump right into the short tail keywords and walk away profitable, but it does give you as good of a chance as anyone else entering the niche!

Long Term Earnings

Another nice feature of bigger niches is the fact that most of them have been around for a while, and they are going to continue to be around for a while!  Smaller niches come and go and sometimes they come and go very very quickly!  Bigger niches also tend to be a little more stable in terms of the profit they make then smaller niches for the most part!  Jonathan Volk actually wrote a little post about this today, so instead of talking about it a lot, I’m just gonna link to his post about how niches that have been around a while are longterm.

Conclusion:

So while, a lot of affiliates recommend to new affiliates to stay away from the big over-saturated niches, I say go for it, in fact, in my one on one mentoring sessions that I occasionally do, I almost always recommend new affiliates to jump into a couple big niches as their first niches!  I know you’re shocked…aren’t ya?

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This post is a bit of a rant, but I also feel it is a very important thing that many people looking to get into the affiliate business don’t even pay attention to…

First off, realize that you aren’t going to become a millionaire overnight, in fact, you most likely won’t even make money for your first couple months of trying affiliate marketing…  I know that there are tons of products and services out there that promise to make you 5,000, 20,000 or even 50,000 dollars a month if you buy their product or service, but the bottom line is that most people will never make anywhere near that kind of money because they expect it to happen overnight.

When you are first starting out you need to sit down and make a plan, you need to make an ad spend budget and you need to stick with it.  You need to do some research, find out what others are promoting, talk to some affiliate managers, etc.  Basically get to know what it is you are going to be doing, because believe it or not, most people will simply sign up for a popular network like Market Leverage, pick an offer and try to promote it by throwing a ton of money into Adwords, Yahoo, or MSN.

Don’t fill up your ad accounts with credit cards, you are taking a HUGE risk by doing so, skip some of the extras in your life (five dollar cups of coffee) and use that money instead!  Once you actually get a niche making some solid earnings, then that is a different story!

You need to realize that you are probably most likely going to lose money for your first couple of months and you need to plan accordingly to that!  You need to come up with a budget of how much you can spend, even if means you can only spend a 100 bucks a month.  You have to start somewhere and build up!

You also need to make sure you understand and know how the niche you are promoting works.  How can you promote a product or service if you don’t even know what the heck it is or does???

Pay attention to what other affilaites are doing in a niche, if there are a billion affiliates using review style landing pages to promote weight loss and one affiliate using a fake blog, why in the world would you start with a fake blog as a landing page?  Pay attention, jot down what you see, and make a plan!

The bottom line is that unless you come spend some time figuring out where you want to get to and how you are going to get there and do some research and then make a plan, you will probably fail horribly in this business…

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In order to succeed in affiliate marketing you need to first realize what you are selling.  Many affiliates, that are just starting out, in this business believe that they are selling a product or a service, however, most of the times this isn’t true!  In fact, I believe that 80% of the time you can sell someone something before you even tell them what it is you are selling!

So naturally the question then becomes, if you’re not trying to sell someone a product or service, at least not in the beginning, then what exactly are you trying to sell them?  It’s actually quite simple!

You are selling a need, want, desire, or emotion.  You see, people aren’t as complicated as we sometimes think they are and selling to them is even easier.  If we can figure out how they tick.  Now of course this does change from niche to niche, so with each niche you’ll have to figure out what you’re trying to sell.  Over time however this becomes much easier to do!

Let’s start with the niche Weight Loss and use it as an example.  Most affiliates start with this niche by trying to figure out what product they are going to promote…  They look at things such as the payout, conversion rate, offer landing page, etc.  Then pick a winner based on that criteria…  After they pick their offer, most people then start to build their landing pages, ad copy, etc around that offer trying to make sure they sell it the best they can…

Now of course you are selling a weight loss product, but that doesn’t mean you have to promote a weight loss product.  Most people that are looking to loss weight is (obviously) overweight!  They obviously feel bad or ashamed for being overweight…if they didn’t they wouldn’t be looking at weight loss products.  (I know some people do it for health reasons, talking about the majority here)

So instead of trying to sell the product by talking about the product, why not sell the product by talking about their emotions and how your product can solve them?  If you can convince these people that you can give them hope, make them feel happy and good about their bodies, etc.  You stand a much better chance at getting them to buy your product or service.

So instead of focusing on the product you are now focusing on your customers emotions.  So what else can you focus on?  Just emotions?

Absolutely not!  You could also sell fantasy’s, dreams, opportunities, solving a problem, etc.  Pretty much anything…In fact, most of you are already selling your products and services by using those means, but a lot of people don’t realize they are, so instead of focusing on those reasons for selling, they focus on their product or service.

Realize you aren’t selling a product or service but instead you’re selling what they product or service could do for your customer and you’ll be a huge step ahead of most affiliate marketers I talk to that are just starting out!

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One of the worst, yet also sometimes best, thing about working on the internet is that fact that things change very quickly.  This is especially true in affiliate marketing.  I’ve seen niches come and go in a matter of weeks!  Now of course, most of us are looking to make a killing using the internet and working from home, however, we are also looking for this income to last us as a career so that we never have to work another 9-5 job again!

The chances of becoming extremely successful in this business is already a thing that a lot of people fail at, however, becoming successful and then making money for a long period of time can also be a huge barrier for people to overcome!

You see, making some good money using the internet in my opinion is actually the easy part….Turning that income into a revenue stream that lasts for years becomes a lot tougher!  So what exactly do you need to do?  There are several great sources for creating lasting residual income, some of them can be tied in with affiliate marketing, some can’t.

If you are strictly an affiliate marketer and that’s all you like to do to create your income you’ll probably want to skip over this post or just skim it for the parts about AM…However, realize that if you want to make GREAT money and you want it to be an income that lasts for any long period of time, you are going to have to become an internet marketer instead of just an affiliate marketer!

• Mailing Lists – I personally use Aweber to build all my mailing lists for several reasons, but the bottom line is they are one of the best (in my opinion they are the best).  Their prices are very very reasonable and very affordable as well.  Mailing lists are a sure fire way at creating a beautiful residual income stream.  Most mailing lists can be sold to over and over for years if done properly and as long as they aren’t abused.  For ideas on how to make money with a mailing list, check out john chow’s post about it!

• Subscription Sites – Subscription sites are another great example of an income stream that can become very residual if it’s done correctly.  One of the great things about Subscriptions is that they can be added to almost any type of site that is offering just about any type of service.  They can be added to forums to offer members extra features or private forums, they can be for a learning site where you charge members a monthly price!  Basically if you’re not using subscriptions you could be potentially losing out on a ton of money!  For more information on subscriptions and ways to implement them check out the post by Shoemoney.

• Affiliate Offers That Pay Monthly – Some affiliate offers actually pay you every single month that the person you referred stayed a member.  Some companies in the make money online niche that do this is Aweber, Shoemoney tools, Wordze, Wordtracker, etc.  These offers give you a certain percentage of the price that the users you referred pay to them each month.  So while it may cost a bit to get them as members, you could find that some of these people you refer will stay members for a very long time for these sites and thus you’ll make some great residual income!

There ya have 3 different types of residual income that you can now work on getting set up, and if the response is good on this post I’ll even maybe do a second post about residual income on some more ways to get it going.  Also, this post wasn’t made to share with you exactly how to do each of these types of incomes, but instead was just to educate you on some things you may not be thinking about!  Read the articles I linked to and do a search for some more or leave a comment and I’ll be glad to answer it!

Peace,

-Derek-

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