New to affiliate marketing

[Adrianpaul32]

Hi, just want to introduce myself to you. My name is Adrian. I live in Tampa Florida, and have just recently lost my job due to the recession. I have heard that you can make money being an affiliate, so I decided to give it a try. I just hope I am not throwing my money away. I am signed up with click bank, have a "so-so" product that I am trying to market, and I hope I am not throwing what little money I have away.

I am trying to use adwords.....not sure if I am doing anything right, as I haven't gotten any sales.

I need help, and don't know where to turn to.

Please advise.

Sincerely,

Adrian

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Adrian,

Welcome to 5 Star. I hope you'll understand that what I'm about to say is designed to help save you money and heartache and I'm not trying to burst your bubble. But if you don't know what you are doing and are tight on money you need to stop doing PPC right away. If you don't know what you are doing (both on the PPC side and also how to dothe affiliate marketing side) you are throwing money down the drain.

You are also wasting valuable time you need to spend job hunting IMHO. If you are in dire straights affiliate marketing is not the answer. It's easy to buy into the dream that you can make money at home with AM and you can... but it's not quick or easy for most people. It can take months to build up to any type of income at all and a large percentage of affiliates make less than 200 a month. You'll read success stories where someone makes it big after 6 months and they try to make it sound easy - but that's usually because they are trying to sell you something.

Now that isnt to say don't try affiliate marketing. I believe in it obviously. I just don't think someone in dire straights should be looking for it to provide immediate income. Try to find a job full time during the day and work on learning affiliate marketing at night is my best recommendation.

To start learning more about affiliate marketing, start reading all the stickies in the newbie forum to get a better understanding of how it works and to find out from other affiliates what TO do and what to avoid.

Ask questions as you go along. We're here to help.

 

[Adrianpaul32]

Thank you Linda!!!! Finally, I get honest answers. I am job hunting, don't get me wrong, but in this economy, it is very hard. So, I am trying anything that I can. The money that I am spending right now, isn't much, as my website only cost me $7.00. It is for a month, and I can cancel that site after that month. I am not locked in like many places have you. I am advertising on google adwords, without much success. I guess the market is already flooded with click-bank, and since people are saavy about it, makes it even harder for someone just starting to promote anything. At one point in time, I thought I could sell an icecube to an eskimo, and a fur coat to a jamican. Now I need to rethink my ideas, as I haven't sold anything to anyone.

I understand that to be successful, one needs to find a niche. A product that people want, yet have something that few are promoting. There in lies the problem. Everyone wants to sell you something, it is just finding the niche.

My biggest problem that I am having is how to market something. I don't even now what "organic" is. Or RMI or something like that. I just know what ctr, and cpc means. Like I said, I am new to all of this, but willing to make a go at it. How does one drive traffic to ones site? Probably THE biggest question in affiliate marketing. I know I could print brochures, business cards and the like.

Any advice will greatly be appreciated. I will be reading as much as I can on this site to help save me the trouble of having to find things out the hard way. I tried this once before, and found that it was unsuccessful. I think mostly in part, I was trying to market a product that millions are already doing. Too much competition. One can not successful campaign something that is already campaigned.

Thanks again.

Adrian

 

[Larwee]

Adrian, one thing you want to be sure to do is stay away from those ebooks that promise to tell you how you can easily make a million dollars a second just if you buy it.

You are probably thinking about ROI rather than RMI. ROI is Return On Investment.

Adwords isn't the best place for a complete newbie.

Organic refers to the free search listings. Learning Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be helpful to you in getting good positions in the search results. You can learn more about it in our Search Engine Marketing & SEO Forum http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/search-engine-marketing-seo-forum/

Here are several threads that will give you some great tips on increasing traffic

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/general-topics-affiliate-forum/10120-how-get-massive-amounts-traffic-your-site.html?highlight=traffic">How to get massive amounts of traffic to your site!</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/search-engine-marketing-seo-forum/4889-target-traffic-help.html?highlight=traffic">Target traffic help</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/general-topics-affiliate-forum/11566-best-free-method-youve-ever-used-marketing-your-business-online.html?highlight=traffic">Best Free Method You've Ever Used in Marketing Your Business Online</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/rss-marketing-blogging-forums/1195-get-traffic-2-your-blog-7-ways.html?highlight=traffic">Get Traffic 2 Your Blog - 7 Ways</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/general-topics-affiliate-forum/7913-increase-traffic-website.html">Increase traffic to website</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/newbie-affiliate-forum/9884-how-do-i-get-more-traffic.html">How do I get more traffic?</a>

Our Niche Marketing forum can help you learn more about selecting a niche. You should read the "Sticky" threads in that forum http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/niche-marketing/

This should be enough to keep you busy for a while and also help you learn a few more things that could be beneficial to you.

 

[Niche48]

Must say adwords is not something I would recommend for a beginner

I think having your own website or blog [free with blogger], may be a more viable option

With good SEO, you can build up the traffic to your site and make your sales pitch from there

Sympathy on your recent job loss

 

[Adrianpaul32]

Thanks Niche. I have been tracking my adwords for the last few days. I have a ton of impressions, and few if any clicks. I have it set for 10.00 a day, and still get nothing. Frustrating. What I am finding, is that I am trying to market something that has been marketed to death. So.....have to find a different product. I should have researched this material further, but instead dove in head first on a hope and a prayer. Now, I have to find a niche, a hot seller. Something that has not been marketed to death. I know many here will say, find your passion, and you will make sales. You become the expert on what it is that you are selling, and people will see it in how you word it. They will see your passion in it. Well, when you are "Joe the Plumber" with not many skills, and not having a lot of skills, it becomes harder to be an expert at anything. I can say I am an expert at losing jobs...LOL, but that is not something I could sell. I was trying to market a site that has a gravity rating of 384. Waaaaay to high. I need something in the low 100's that still is a sellable product. So, back to the drawing board for me.

I see a lot of people doing this blog thing. I don't even know how a blog works. I will have to look into that as well. I don't want to give up, as right now, this is all I have to hang onto. Sad but true.

Thanks for all the support people. I will keep plugging along, and hopefully, I can find something, somewhere, that I can be successful at.

Sincerely,

Adrian

 

[Larwee]

Adrian, you seemed to be determined to stick with ClickBank. There are many other options besides ClickBank and it is possible that some of them could work out much better for you.

There are a variety of thoughts about ClickBank. You can read several views here http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...2-clickbank-not-good-place-newbies-start.html

Our RSS Marketing & Blogging Forums could be help you in learning more about blogging http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/rss-marketing-blogging-forums/

 

[Adrianpaul32]

I am open to suggestions. I will be checking out the ezines, blogging and I think its called paydot.com? I don't want to stick with clickbank, as I have heard a lot of negative reviews on it. I have to remember, that I can market a product without having a website, using hop links or whatever. I feel like I am such a n00b on all of this. I am trying to use the search feature here for specific info, and having a hard time with that as well. I will keep trying though.

 

[Linda Buquet]

"Well, when you are "Joe the Plumber" with not many skills, and not having a lot of skills, it becomes harder to be an expert at anything."

One of the other ways to do it is think of something you've always wanted to learn about or something you'd really like to do. You don't have to be an expert. One of the reasons people say to start with something you are passionate about is because it will seem less like a J.O.B. to create content. But it can be something you WANT to know about does not have to be something you already know about.

Keep in mind too that info products are just one small part. There are millions and millions of retail products like luggage, guitars, vitamins, etc. Every major retailer from Walmart to Office Depot has an affiliate program.

But don't start with a product, start by finding a niche and then find products people in that niche would be interested in.

I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU A HOME WORK ASSIGNMENT.
Work through the example at the link in the 1st post. Just steps 1 - 4. Then stop.
http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...g/5558-how-pick-your-1st-niche.html#post15325

Then come back and tell me after you've done it and have a list of 3-5 possible niches and I'll tell you the next step. (Don't tell what niches, just tell me when you are finished.)

 

[sandi]

PPC

I agree, my niece started out paying for PPC and lost an arm and a leg. She didn't research anything just bought a website and thought it would earn money. It didn't.

I haven't even looked at PPC myself, I have found the more I learn the more there is to learn!

I would start off slow and read and digest everything you can.

Very often it is the simple things that bring home the bacon!

Good luck

 

[Rob_TID]

Adrian, affiliate marketing won't make you rich overnight. In fact it will probably pay less than you could make flipping burgers even after a year of solid effort. The results will come (and it looks like Linda is going to walk you through the process so you're VERY lucky there) but don't expect riches soon.

If I were in a position where I needed some cash asap, I would head over to the marketplaces at sitepoint, digitalpoint, wickedfire and a few other online marketing forums and offer my services as a writer. Those guys are always looking for new and original written content. If you can write fast, you could easily make enough to pay rent and the food bills. You would have to start out only charging 1 or 2 cents per word, but if you can write fast, that shouldn't be a problem and you could increase your prices after you get a reputation.

More importantly, you start to work for (and learn from) guys who are making money online. A lot of the writers at those places have gone on to become affiliates after learning the ropes of what happens with their content.

It's a slight variation of Linda's "get a job" option, but I think it is better as it allows you to learn about this whole thing.

 

[sandi]

That's a good point Rob, I think they pay around $5 an article, it doesn't seem much but heck if you can zip them out you can earn some good money.

And, if you do that in-between looking for work and in the evenings, you'd be laughing. Something is better than nothing right?

Also if you have someone else at home that can help you then even better.

What I have found is you are only limited by your imagination.

 

[genuwine4532]

I agree with Linda completely, PPC is not for newbies and it really is very complex and needs to really be understood or else you can lose tons of money and very quickly.

 

[kbhuffaker]

Hi Adrian,

I wanted to give you some words of encouragement and I must say that the advice Linda gave is probably some of the straightest shooting I've heard when it come to AM. This is a time consuming business and you should have a passion with it. I'm quite new to Am myself and the reason I started looking into AM was to have a second source of income just in case i was to loose my job. Let me say to you that AM takes a lot of time but you can do it for very little money if you want to. You get advice from forums such as this one. Give the ideas a try and if you fail, which you probably will at least the first time, get right back up and try again! Keep trying until you get the hang of how it's done and then hopefully you will be making some $ by then. The first things I did was to learn how to write articles for my niche and then how to get qualified backlinks. But like Linda said, spend most of your time finding an 8 to 5 job if things are tight. Then spend your spare time, 1 or 2 hours a day, learning and putting that knowledge to work. Good luck and ask questions when you need help.