Today, Friday the 13th, the long-awaited Affiliate Black Book is finally available.

This is without a doubt one of the best programs on affiliate marketing ever. It’s not about “lazy marketing” or “cute tricks.” You have probably purchased crap products who make such promises and although they sound good, you know they don’t work in real life.

The affiliate black book is different. It’s the real deal. As far as affiliate marketing goes, I have always made the most money by following the advice from “X.”

(more…)

Get your landing page wrong, and you can lose a ton of money. But get it right and you can be well on your way to the lifestyle you want. Let’s get rollin’…

Mistake #1: Having a confusing design.

What do people like more? “Ugly” pages or “beautiful” ones? It’s not a question of beauty. It’s a question of simplicity, clarity and usability. Simple sells. Most “ugly” websites tend to be very simplistic (which is good). That’s where “ugly sells” came from.

Avoid having distracting links above the fold - put them at the bottom of the page instead. What you want is “eye-pleasing but dead simple.” Which brings us to…

Mistake #2: Not using “eye candy.”

A picture equals a 1000 words. Just having text can be simple (as it should) - but it’s also boring. People are short on time and they make decisions within nanoseconds. A picture (also known as a “hero shot”) can convey the message and the “good feelings.”

(more…)

I know tracking doesn’t sound “glamorous.” BUT:

If you don’t track, your campaign is almost DESTINED to fail

If you track, you can take a “so-so” campaign to super profitable!

I’ve had campaigns where my most profit came from the source I would LEAST expect. If you are not tracking your advertising and you start now, I can almost guarantee you are in for a few surprises .

Ok, some tips:

If you are an affiliate for someone else, by FAR the best method is this: Send the merchant an email and tell them to add your conversion code on their thank you page. That way, everything is getting tracked down to the individual keyword.

Some of the merchants will agree right away. Some may need some more “convincing.” You can always wait till you have made a couple of sales for them before contacting them. Trust me, once they see that you are actually making them money, the $$ signs will appear in their ayes and they will fall in love with you. They are almost guaranteed to put your code on their thank you page.

If you want to do everything “solo”, without emailing the merchant, you can still do this. You can add a tracking ID at the end of your advertising URL. For example, Clickbank has the variable “tid.” If you are promoting a dog training course and you are linking directly to the merchant, then you can track like this:

(more…)

Often, people starting out with affiliate marketing look for the holy grail for success. But they are either hit with information overload or tend to take the wrong path.

A lot of time is wasted looking for secrets, short-cuts and quickies. I would like to throw some cold water on your face; there is no such thing as a “secret.”

The information is out there in the open — true, tried and tested — for you to take action and succeed right now. For now, there are three things that could catapult your affiliate marketing business:

1. Reinforce your marketing efforts by testing

Pay Per Click ads will place you in the elite group of affiliates who rake in the big moolah. However, successful affiliates didn’t just jump into it and became overnight successes.

There’s something most people miss: testing your ads. Testing is paramount. Test the ads until you get results( the links, the copy); test landing pages (consistent with the ad? Do they have a strong call to action?); test your ad and page combination with various offers and tweak the time your ads show up - weekdays or weekends?. Try different strategies and see what works for you.

(more…)

Here’s the 3rd and final part of this affiliate series. If you missed the first 2 parts, here they are again:

10 Deadly Mistakes Affiliates Make and How to Fix Them - Part 1
10 Deadly Mistakes Affiliates Make and How to Fix Them - Part 2

On with the show…

Mistake #9: Not “owning” the process as much as possible

You can just get your affiliate link and advertise it as is. You can make money doing that. But you will make much more if you become a “part” of the process. Here are two quick tips to do this:

- Register a domain and redirect it to your affiliate link. Then, advertise that domain where appropriate. It looks much less tacky and opens up more promotion opportunities for you (Like Yahoo Answers or forum posting for example).

(more…)

Don't throw your money into the blender...

Ok, moving on:

Mistake #6: Not adding a twist or offering extra value

True, you want to see what other affiliates do first and then try to emulate them. But just because this shortcut is available, it doesn’t mean that you should become TOO lazy (lazy is ok, too lazy is uncool).

(more…)

Avoid going the wrong way in your affiliate promotions

Many affiliates will choose keywords like:

(more…)