I want to talk about something that is an absolute must if you plan on making a decent living from affiliate marketing. Email marketing is still one of the best ways to build your affiliate business.
That is, when it’s done right. Most people don’t really know what they’re doing and end up wasting their time completely. In that sense, it’s not much different than most methods.
Great when you get it right, but it’s easy to go wrong. But after this email, you won’t have to worry about that. Stick to the fundamental principles I will write about and you will be right.
The first thing you need to understand about email marketing is that your main goal is to build a relationship with people. If you think it’s about being able to bombard people with sales messages over and over again, think again.
Because bombarding people with sales is a great way to get rid of all your subscribers. Sure, you’ll want to send out sales pitches from time to time, but if you don’t give people a reason to stay on the list, they’ll leave and you won’t make any more money.
So focus on building a relationship with your subscriber and you’ll do much better in the long run. And the best way to do this is to give them really good content.
Give them things that THEY (not you) find really valuable. If you’re working in the muscle building niche, you may want to send them workouts or diet plans, or some solutions to problems they’re having.
One of the most successful niches I have had is learning Spanish. I had people sign up for free lessons and hired someone to create really good lessons with audio components for a few months.
It was something I could have gone and sold to people, but I didn’t charge people a hundred and they really appreciated it. So when it came time to promote an affiliate product, people were:
A. I am more likely to open my email.
B. Really listen to my advice and buy what I recommended.
So when you create content for people, try to create things that are so good that you can charge money for them and people will buy them.
I have seen some affiliates create unwanted content and I think that the fact that they submit material regularly will help them build a relationship with their subscriber.
Well, they are right, they are building a relationship, but not the relationship you want to build with your subscribers.
As a general rule of thumb, send at least 5 content-rich messages for every sales email you send. If you’re doing this correctly, your sales pitch should help the subscriber, so what you’re doing will actually look good when you only do it once or twice a week, rather than every day.
I’m sure you’ve been on a few email lists before being bombarded with pitch after pitch. Think about how you felt when people did that to you. Did you want to follow their advice and buy what they recommended? Or did you just want to hit the unsubscribe button?
Now think of another email list you’re on that offers a lot of useful content (*hint hint*) and think about how you feel when that person recommends something to you.
Another thing I want to cover is how often you contact your list. I find that when people initially sign up, it’s good to email them every day for the first 6-7 days.
Send them really good content during that period and then switch to emailing them every 4-5 days after that. If you go and count how often I email you, you’ll find it’s about every 4-5 days.
A good formula for determining how often your affiliates send hard sales is to send 3 or 4 really good emails and then send an email that sells them something.
As long as it’s something useful and you’re not harassing them into buying things over a long period of time, it should be well received.
Also, try to make each lesson around 1000 words. 500 words is usually enough for an article, but it can be difficult to deliver tons of content within 500 words.
I think 1000 words (doesn’t have to be exact) gives me a lot more room to provide quality content, so try it out for yourself. It will help the subscriber more, so you will do better.
Remember to focus on providing value to the user and you will go a long way. That’s really the key.
And also, if you’re going to do email marketing, you’ll need some way to send all of these emails. I use a service called Aweber, which manages all my lists, allows me to queue emails for people and send emails to my lists whenever I want.
It’s not too expensive and if you can’t get your money back each month you should consider reading this email again because you must be doing something wrong.