Blaz Banic’s

Hi, today I’m gonna talk about how to become a super affiliate. I’ll just go right into the meat of it and spare you long introductions…

There are three things you should know in order to be a super affiliate:

1. You absolutely must own a quality, responsive list of targeted prospects
2. You must get to quickly evaluate what sells and what doesn’t
3. You must never promote products you’ve never tested before yourself

Seems simple enough, huh? Well, it gets complicated soon enough, so read on…

Let’s go through the first point in this article.

How does one obtain a quality, responsive list? Well, first of all you should know that a relatively small responsive list of about 1000 people can be far better than a list of 10000 untargeted freebie seekers! “Well, DUH”, you say? It’s not so obvious to many affiliate marketers out there, so I thought I should mention this. A lot of people make a mistake of thinking that simply by getting people subscribed to their list they will get rich…

Nothing could be further from the truth. I had to learn this the hard way. When I was starting out, I simply set up an autoresponder of some private label articles I got and put some affiliate links inside. I created a site with some good articles on them and invited people to subscribe to the newsletter for more information. The list grew and pretty soon I had about 200 subscribers. But the problem was… nobody was buying the things I promoted. What was I doing wrong?

I begun my search for an answer and now, after buying almost every book on Internet marketing and listening to countless audios, interviews etc., and of course, having some success myself, I can tell you what the main “ingredients” for a responsive list are: 

• A list must be targeted
• You have to build a relationship and trust with your prospects BEFORE promoting to them
• You have to put what you’re doing into a correct frame
• You must be perceived as an authority on the subject to your subscribers

Now let’s look at each of the points in detail…

A list must be targeted

This shouldn’t be too hard to understand. All this means is… decide what exactly you want to promote (”How to become a super affiliate part 2″) and create an opt-in page where you specifically target people that you think would be interested in the products you’re about to promote.

The more targeted you can get, the better the response you can expect. Be sure to explain exactly what your subscribers should expect when subscribing to your newsletter.

Build a relationship and trust with your prospects BEFORE promoting to them

This is an essential step. You should be very aware of this simple fact: People don’t buy products, they buy YOU. Read the last sentence again! That’s right. How often do you buy from people you’ve just met, and when you do — why do you do it? Would you buy a car from a sleazy guy who’s sort of pushing you to purchase and he unconvincingly promises that the car has never been crashed and that it was very well maintained? Not likely!

It’s the same in Internet marketing. People must trust you first before they’ll buy things through your link. If you seem like you’re just trying to sell something to them they will most likely unsubscribe very soon and you’ll loose a potential customer.

You can build trust by providing relevant and quality information to them and by answering to their questions. Here you should be careful though. Don’t give them too much as that way they might start to perceive you as a source of free info!!! This is to be avoided. You have to find balance.

Don’t wait too long before starting your promotions. A few initial emails with information is great. You can also send a teaser with the second mail saying that you just got your hands on a great product and after you’ve evaluated it you’ll tell your subscribers what it is… then in the third mail tell them all the benefits you got with the product, but still don’t tell them. Let them crave it for a while… Then in the fourth mail give them your affiliate link to the product and maybe offer a bonus for purchasing through you — as a token of appreciation for trusting you or something.

Put what you’re doing into a correct frame

Like I said before, you should always tell exactly what your prospects should expect from you. This includes telling them that from time to time you’ll send them reviews and recommendations for related products they can buy. This way they won’t immediately see you as a source of free information.

Be perceived as an authority on the subject to your subscribers

Last but not least, you should be perceived as an authority on the subject by your prospects. This is very important as if they perceive you as such, they will be much more likely to purchase what you recommend.

You can do this by writing an ebook on the subject and selling it online. You won’t believe how much authority you gain if you have such a thing to show to your prospects. Just by having a professional looking web site you’ll most probably be viewed as a guru! You can have everything done for you for a couple of hundred of dollars. Look at it as an investment. It pays off many times over! If you don’t have money to spend at the beginning, then I suggest you get a job and earn some before trying to make money from the Internet. You MUST make some sort of investment.

Nothing is for free! (except if you have a helluva lot of time on your hands)

Alternatively, you can write your own ebook, your own sales letter, create your own graphic etc. Most likely none of the things (except perhaps the ebook) will look professional and you’ll loose many, many points for that!

In Internet marketing a great deal is in appearances. Most of the great Internet marketing “companies” you see online are one guy owning a company. Sometimes he or she hires somebody to check their mail and respond to the customers. But mostly it’s just a single guy or gal like you and me that made a very different perception of themselves to us, the customers.

To finish this article, I’ll just tell you about a simple “trick” you can do to make your list responsive beyond your wildest dreams…

Like I said before, create an ebook and offer it to your existing list for a very small price ($10 or so, even $5 or $1 will do). Make sure you justify the low price — because they are your loyal subscribers. After they purchase your product, sign them up to a new list and have them automatically unsubscribe from the previous one. Now you have a smaller list, but this one is much more likely to bring you massive profits when you email them a promotion… after all, they’ve already shown you they have money to spend and they trust you enough to spend it on you!

You can very easily automatically unsubscribe people after they joined your other list with Aweber (link opens in a new window), an Internet marketer’s choice autoresponder service. Please don’t go for anything else. I’ve been burned quite a lot because I wanted to go cheap on the autoresponder.

Aweber is $19.95 a month — that’s $0.67 a day. Almost anybody can afford that and it will bring you so much advantage that it’s not worth going for anything else. Trust me on this one.

OK, now you know the first part of the secrets of becoming a super affiliate. Now start building that list!