Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of five quick affiliate tips by guest blogger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also posted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

Affiliate marketing is not a “push button solution”… it’s just a different type of selling than product launch marketing or AdSense marketing.

You are not going to be able to just sign up as an affiliate to some program and expect to make money… you have to DO something with that link!

The big formula for internet marketing is:

List + Traffic = Offers.

When you sign up for something as an affiliate, that affiliate product or service is your offer. Once you have that offer, you need a list and you need traffic if you ever expect that offer to convert.

You’d be surprised at how many people forget this step!

For this reason, I don’t recommend promoting affiliate offers right out of the gate in internet marketing. Build up a list first, even if it’s built from a small $7 report or a free ethical bribe.

Join list building giveaways, place your signature link at the bottom of your forum posts, comment on blogs, leave testimonials for products you own, publish articles about your niche… do whatever you can to get as many eyeballs in your niche in front of that opt-in box. Add an e-mail subscription box to sites that need it, such as your blog.

Bottom line: build a list first, and then send offers to that list once you’ve built up 100 subscribers or more. Does that sound like a lot? Okay… then focus on 8 subscribers a day.

Do you think that with forum, article, blog, and giveaway marketing, that you could get a measly eight subscribers in a day? If you can, then keep it up for 12 days and you have yourself 100 subscribers primed and ready to receive your affiliate offers.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of five quick affiliate tips by guest blogger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also posted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

Stop being so lazy with affiliate marketing!

An affiliate program is where you can link to someone else’s offer with your special ID and get paid commission every sale you make. This process “seems” really hands-off and easy because there’s no product creation or customer support involved… just send traffic to a proven offer!

Here’s the problem.

Most marketers are lazy and don’t realize that affiliate marketing has its own disadvantages. It’s tougher to build a list using affiliate marketing, tough to convert and split test, and you have to devote most of your effort to pre-selling and marketing that affiliate product.

What the heck do you need to know about affiliate marketing in order to pull in decent results?

If you’re serious about affiliate marketing, setup a squeeze page that gets people on a mailing list first and redirects to the affiliate offer. Send traffic to that page using forum posts and articles.

Even if they don’t buy right away, you can keep broadcasting to that list every day with reminders about benefits for that offer… things they might have missed or even things you thought about the vendor didn’t.

For example, once I promoted an affiliate offer about how to create iPhone apps and I wrote a quick follow-up asking people… what if you thought of eBay or AdWords before anyone else? What if you registered even one or two English-word domain names like Business.com or About.com before anyone else? What would those be worth today?

What’s great about this is the product originator practically wrote your e-mails for you. You can copy huge chunks of the sales letters and add them as e-mail follow-ups… then add a call-to-action at the end of the e-mail so people can click your affiliate link to get back to the page.

Even if they don’t buy that offer, you can eventually hit them with a different but related affiliate offer as well.

When you sell anything on the internet… whether you do it using e-mail marketing, forum marketing, blog posting… if you sell e-books, physical products, e-classes, even a newsletter… the best way to sell anything is using direct response sales copy.

But not all of us can be world-class copywriters like Michel Fortin. I consider myself a pretty sloppy copywriter, and althought I can whip up a headline, quick story, bullet point list of benefits, testmonials, feature list, guarantee and a call-to-action… I will never be a great copywriter.  Gary Halbert can’t hold my attention for longer than a few minutes, I’ve never read Scientific Advertising, so how do I scrape by writing average sales copy?

The answer is: practice and resources. I’ve written enough sales letters that I know what my audience wants and how I can present it to them to maximize sales.  I rarely spend more than a couple of hours writing even 5 or 10 page sales letters, and some have converted as high as 19 percent for me.

Even if you don’t have the skill or the practice, you can still hit the following sites to produce an average sales letter, enough for a copywriter to rewrite it or critique it.

Site #1: Digg.com
As far as I’m concerned, Digg is THE best place to find niche headlines from popular, specific and benefit-oriented, but funny news items.  Go to Digg.com, type in your niche keyword and click Search.  Then refine the search to search by the title only (so your keyword is in the title), show all stories (not just front page stories), and sort by most diggs (so the news items “the people” like float right to the top).  Using the Digg technique, I helped a copywriter come up with this headline: “Man Wins Divorce Without a Lawyer In Sight!”  Makes you want to find out more, right?

Site #2: HardToFindAds.com
Michael Senoff’s Hard to Find Ads is like an instant swipe file.  He shows you random ads, most of them decades old, written by the most famous and best converting copywriters that ever lived.  You can take clever headlines, ideas and bullet points from these ads and rewrite them as your own.

For example, the first ad I found reads like this: “Top Medical Doctor Speaks Out!  An Open Letter to Anyone Who Wants to Lose Up to 20 Pounds in Two Weeks the Easy Way.”  If you were writing copy for growing organic tomatoes, you might say: “Top Organic Gardener Speaks Out!  An Open Letter to Anyone Who Wants to Grow 15 Pounds of Tomatoes in 8 Weeks the Easy Way.”  Obviously you’d change the numbers to whatever you can prove, but that headline is better than anything I could come up with from scratch.

Site #3: Amazon.com
Amazon.com isn’t just for buying books. You can use Amazon to find out several things: what KINDS of books in your niche are hot sellers right now.  You can also choose the top selling books and most of the time take a peek at the table of contents.  Bingo, instant list of bullet points you can hit on with the sales letter.  Amazon also gives you a list of keywords related to that book, to give you even more ideas for bonus reports, videos, and emotional hot buttons.  If all that wasn’t enough, you can read through reviews of the book and make a note of the terminology people in that niche tend to use.

Site #4: Archive.org
Look at one of your competitors’ sites in your niche.  Then look their site up on the Internet Wayback Machine to see how their page has changed over time.  The other day I was watching the TV show “Mad Men” about advertisers in the 1960′s.  In one episode, the men in the ad agency are talking about a magazine ad by Volkswagen.  The ad was ugly, and the car was ugly, and the guys were baffled because Volkswagen kept placing the same ad… so it must be pulling in money!

This is the internet equivalent of that.  If you know a site pulls in lots of sales, and it was written by a copywriter who tests the headline, phrasing, bullet points, call-to-action, offer, and so on… you can open up the web page as it looks now, and the web page as it looked 6 months or a year ago, and see what changes have been made.  If a copywriter kept tweaking the headline over time but kept switching back to one in particular, you know it’s a money-maker and you can look at what makes it such a great headline.

Site #5: Google Answers, Google Alerts, and (Your Niche) Forums
These sites “should” be a no-brainer for any copywriter, but so few people pay attention to them and as a result write very “flat” copy.  When you’re selling something, you’re selling a solution, which means you’ve fixing a problem.  People are in pain whether that pain means not having enough money, growing tiny tomatoes or not being able to play the piano.  Look at what questions people are asking in question-and-answer sites like Google Answers and in the forums in your niche by searching for your niche keyword plus the word “forum.”

Site #6: Google Insights, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Quantcast

Can you tell I’m a fan of Google?  The fact is, simply searching for your keyword in a search engine and seeing what ads appear on the right side is the perfect way to see what headlines pull the best.  That’s the most logical place to go and works wonders compared to pulling out a headline or a hook from thin air.

With those six free resources at your disposal, you have finally run out of excuses.  You can write halfway decent copy for your next promo e-mail, blog post, or sales letter just by seeing what great copy is out there, and “copying” it!

If you’re an entrepreneur, a marketer, or a small business owner, this is the place to get answers to your most pressing marketing and online business questions.

Hi. We’re Michel and Sylvie Fortin. Michel is a sought-after Internet copywriter while Sylvie owns one of the most in-demand freelance outsourcing companies on the web.

Yes, we’re married. But what you may not know is that, both individually and together as a team, we were instrumental in generating hundreds of millions of dollars online since 1992.

We were the “secret weapons” working behind the scenes of some of the most successful and most envied online marketers in the world, as well as some of the most profitable marketing campaigns in the history of the world wide web.

If you have a question about marketing online or off, this is the place. In here, we will answer some of the most burning questions marketers have. In fact, they will be your questions!

Yes, that’s right! You will be the one helping us generate content, because you’ll be able to ask your questions. If selected, we will answer it right here on this board. We might even have special guest experts, or even create videos to show you how.

Best of all, we will do it for… FREE!

We Might Surprise You, Even Shock You.

We won’t hold anything back. Yes, we are positive people. But don’t kid yourself. Life is not all roses. In fact, if you’re not successful yet, chances are you’ve been duped, carrot-dangled, or distracted at some point. And we’re sorry to say, but a lot of it is your own fault.

So be prepared, because we will be going off on rants from time to time.

If you’ve read Sylvie Fortin’s scathing and highly controversial exposé on the stupid mistakes marketers make, Internet Marketing Sins, or Michel Fortin’s white paper on the decline of worn-out, overhyped sales tactics online, The Death of The Salesletter, you know we don’t sugarcoat or pull any punches.

We’ll try to keep this blog clean. But we will be blunt. We will be straightforward. And we will peeve a few people off. So if you’re faint of heart, this is not for you. Consider yourself warned.

However, if you’re ready to hear the solid, unvarnished truth, and you’re ready to make an honest living online using proven strategies and tactics, then stick around. You might learn a thing or two.

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Whether you’re an entrepreneur, an Internet marketer, or a small to medium-sized business owner, Marketers Board is definitely the place to be.

This blog is not your typical blog. It’s a sounding board for marketers, where they can get tips, advice, and ideas to help build and grow your business using the Internet.

On here, we will answer some of the most pressing questions marketers have. Not only that, but users will have a chance to submit their questions, too!

With the help of brief, step-by-step tutorials, occasional streaming video lessons, and interactive, on-demand content, Marketers Board will offer straightforward, no-nonsense advice to guide you in your marketing efforts.

Sometimes we will be blunt and unabashed, and we won’t hold anything back. If you’re going down the wrong path, if the strategy you’re implementing has been proven not to work, or if you’re about to make some of the stupid mistakes we see marketers make, we’ll make sure to give you our opinion.

Who Are Michel and Sylvie Fortin?

Michel is recognized as one of the top copywriters on the web. For example, one of his clients generated over a million dollars in a single day with his copy. Another generated over a million in just one week. Many others have generated handsome profits with his help.

His wife, Sylvie Fortin, owns one of the largest outsourcing firms online. She still handles much of the customer support work, product creation, and marketing campaigns for these top marketers.

Since 1992, they were both instrumental in generating hundreds of millions of dollars online for themselves and their clients. They have worked with many of the Internet’s most successful marketers, entrepreneurs, and businesses spanning 200 different industries and niches.

Their client lists read like a who’s who of the online marketing world. They include Shawn Casey, Yanik Silver, Armand Morin, Jay Abraham, Kirt Christensen, Stephen Pierce, John Reese, Mark Joyner, Corey Rudl, Ryan Deiss, Frank Kern, and too many others to list here.

Also, Michel and Sylvie often speak on stage at events around the world. And they have coached tens of thousands of people all over the globe on building successful Internet businesses and creating moneymaking websites. So they do know a thing or two.

They “Preach What They Practice”

Michel and Sylvie Fortin know what it takes to build a successful business on the web.

In fact, they own hundreds of websites and Internet businesses themselves, ranging from blogs and membership sites, to selling software and hard goods. More importantly, the vast majority of their businesses create passive revenue for them, even without any work or involvement on their part.

For example, last year Sylvie had breast cancer. Luckily, she’s in complete remission now. But during those long months of chemo and radiation therapy that followed her surgery (mastectomy of her left breast), they were able to take some time off and still make money, hand over fist.

They’ve worked with clients who made themselves rich. Extremely rich. The kind of rich that is so awe-inspiring, it makes you wonder if what they did was legal! But at the same time, they’ve witnessed countless failures, too, including some of them of their own.

Working closely with their million-dollar clients, they are privy to — and often the brains behind — a lot of what goes on “behind the curtains.” They have the inside scoop on what works, what works really well, and what doesn’t work at all.

Working behind the scenes, they both have a leg up on things. As a result, they provide you with a different angle and a unique perspective other moneymaking programs don’t have. It’s like tapping the minds of the most successful and envied entrepreneurs on the web.

Here’s Your Chance to Pick Their Brains!

Marketers Board will the go-to place for getting answers to some of your most burning questions about: marketing, selling, researching markets, sourcing products, designing websites, blogging, generating traffic, creating products, and a lot more.

So stick around. Subscribe to be notified when new posts and updates are made. Enter your email in the box on the right, and click the submit button. You’ll be glad you did.