Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: Market Research
A critical phase in setting up any business in general and an online business in particular, is conducting the right kind of market research from the very beginning.
2 Critical Characteristics
The most common approach is to find a group of people who share a common interest. This is called a niche. The niche must have two important characteristics. One is that there has to be a large number of people with defined needs and wants and the other is there have to be products and services available to satisfy those wants and needs.
Keyword Research-separate browsers from buyers
The most common way people search on the Web is by typing in words that describe what they are looking for. These words are called “keywords” and can consist of a single generic term “shoes” or can be made up of several words, “light summer shoes”. Whatever the composition of the keywords, your task is to research and create a list of keywords based on the number of people looking and using the terms for the product or service you want to market. This will ensure that you develop a business that will have known steady demand and that you will be offering products and services people want and need.
Keyword Tools
How do you to that? You use certain tools that will give you data to look at. One key tool is called Wordtracker. They offer a free trial product you can use to see how it works. Another is the Google Adword tool. The trick is to start with a generic term, “shoes” for example, and then look at the list of related keywords that the tool returns. From there you can mine down using words on the list, “shoes” can lead you to “summer shoes” for example. Repeat the process and see what returns come up. Invariably with a retail product, brand names will appear and search numbers will show you what the daily search rate is along with monthly search rates from a list of all the search engines.
The real pros in internet marketing like to see about 100,000 searches in any given month for a generic term related to the product or service they are interested in.
As you mine down your keyword list you should end up with 100 to 200 keywords in your category that you will use to grow and develop your business. The standard for a niche is to see if you can find a term that gets 80 searches a day on the low end with not more than 30,000 web pages devoted to that product or service for that niche. That allows for you to find a way to compete and establish yourself as you start out.
Market Information Sources
Once you have determined what your market is, who your customer is and how you will reach you niche, you will want to confirm that your online business has a future. For that there are a number of sources that will help you in staying on top of your market. Among them are Online Publishes Association, a non-profit industry trade association that generates online advertising and media consumption data; ClickZNetwork, a great source of news and information in the interactive marketing sector; PRWEb.com the largest online press release newswire and eBay marketplace that publishes transaction trends on eBay.
Setting up Google alerts in your niche area and tracking them on Google reader is another great way to stay on top of you market.
Whatever you chose as your business, the proper market research in the early phase of your business development will make the difference between success and failure. So give it the time and effort it deserves as you set out to make your mark in affiliate marketing. Affliate marketing for beginners is a process of trial and error. You can minimize the time and cost with a the right approach and making the right decisions early on.
May Your Travels Be Prosperous
So you’ve offered the free report. So what’s next? THE BONUS
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Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: How the Bonus can increase your Affiliate Income
In the affiliate marketing business you will have plenty of competition regardless of what niche or market you chose to sell to. You will need to look for any edge you can to convert your site visitors into buyers. One way is to offer the free report or eBook. But you can go one step further and really make a mark. Offer a bonus. Your customer will appreciate the service and information and you will gain the trust and confidence you are working hard to develop.
What is a Bonus?
The bonus can consist of another report or eBook, a dvd or audio file or maybe a price discount on your primary product if your prospect buys through your affiliate link. This price discount can work very well on high priced items such as language software or training packages that can run into hundreds of dollars.
Competitor Product Launch
A typical super affiliate product promotion consists of the super affiliate launching his or her latest product through a network of fellow super affiliates. These affiliates all promote the product to their respective lists of customers thereby setting up a formidable sales funnel that can go to six, seven or eight figures in total reach. That is a really tough thing to compete against if you are in the same space.
Bonus Promotion
One way to compete against this type of marketing is to set up a special promotion for your customer who purchases through your affiliate link. Bonuses can take a number of forms. For example, you could offer a free seat at a Webinar on a subject of interest to your prospect with a well known expert; maybe yourself. A video demo of a product or service is another effective bonus tool. The video could come with transcribed notes that complement the package. That is becoming very common in the offerings of internet marketers today. Audio interviews with well known experts are also now commonly offered as bonuses in all sorts of promotions.
Pricing discounts are increasingly popular. A typical language package costs between $200 and $700. So a discount of $75-$150 is something that could easily be offered and an incentive or bonus to cement the deal.
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Want to Build Your Affiliate Income? – Add Free eCourses to Your Site
Image by Fuzzytek via Flickr
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
How to Ad Free eCourses to Your Affiliate Marketing Program
Your primary goal as an affiliate marketer is to give your visitors and customers the greatest value possible. You want customer loyalty not customer service to be the driving force behind your business. One way to do this is to offer giveaways. More specifically, you want to offer information that can help them solve a problem or get them where they want to go. An eCourse is a great way to do just that for your customers and prospects.
Free eCourse
A great thing about an eCourse is that it is something you build over a period of time. For example, you can offer a 3, 5, 7 day course on dog training, or whatever your product or service area might be. This information would be emailed over the period of time on a daily basis and give your customers just enough information to satisfy their need with just enough left out to have them wanting more. On the footer of your eCourse you would include your signature line with a link to your Blog or Web site. That is where you would have products and services to offer and create an income stream for your internet marketing program.
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