The Most Important Skill For Successful Affiliate Marketing
The Most Important Skill For Successful Affiliate Marketing
©2009 Doug Champigny. All Rights reserved.
We’ve been discussing the need for affiliates to build their opt-in lists, and talked about the fact that failing to do so is the main mistake made by affiliates. But to be successful as an affiliate, both for making money online and for building your opt-in list, one very important skill must be mastered – the most important skill for successful affiliate marketing.
In fact, this one skill is the main ingredient in the success of all online businesses, and the most important tool in your affiliate marketing skills toolbox: the ability to drive massive amounts of targeted traffic to your links! Whether you’re sending that targeted traffic to a free report on a butterfly-marketing type of site, a free download to entice them to join your list, to your blog in whatever niches you operate in or directly to your affiliate links, the number of targeted visitors you can mobilize quickly is going to be directly reflected in your affiliate commissions.
The good news is that many of the most powerful tools and techniques used by traffic masters are free, or require a very low investment – one that can often be made back on the first couple of affiliate promotions you do after including the new tool into your marketing mix, leaving you with pro tools with no net cost in short order.
The bad news (for some) is that it takes work – true effort – both to learn these various promotional techniques and to apply the tactics to any given affiliate opportunity. If you thought affiliate marketing was a way to make a lot of money online with little or no effort, you’re sadly mistaken and have probably been reading the salespages of online scammers, not professional super-affiliates. None of us got to where we are today without a lot of effort, even those who are able to outsource a fair bit of what they do – just learning what’s needed and how it must be done is necessary before you know what to outsource!
Now this doesn’t mean you’ll have to use every one of the traffic generation strategies in every affiliate marketing promotion you get involved in – far from it. Some techniques are short-term, bringing in targeted traffic almost immediately but then tapering off or stopping altogether, while others take time to build momentum, but can keep supplying visitors for weeks, months or even years. Tweets on Twitter are a good example of the former, while article marketing and video marketing are better examples of the latter.
So it stands to reason that if you’re promoting a 3-day sale, or even a week-long event, you’ll want to rely on your short-term, immediate-response tools. If you’re promoting a product or service that will be ongoing, especially one that pays residual commissions, you’ll want to use them all. Start with the techniques that bring instant traffic, then shift your focus to the mid- and long-term sources to ensure you continue to make money from your efforts for that opportunity. The higher your recurring commissions the less time you need to focus on making quick bucks, and the greater amount of your affiliate marketing activities that can be focused around list-building, pre-selling and getting involved in pre-launch joint-venture opportunities.
Start right now, today, and set the goal for yourself of learning as many different ways to drive targeted traffic as you can using both free and paid traffic sources. As your knowledge grows so should your ability to mobilize targeted visitors almost on demand, and that’s one of the biggest keys to achieving the super-affiliate status and big affiliate paydays you’re dreaming about now!
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About The Author:
Doug Champigny is a well-known marketing coach, speaker, super-affiliate and targeted traffic expert, and the author of the Captain Affiliate Affiliate Marketing Training Blog. For more advice from Doug on driving targeted traffic, visit the Top Traffic Tips website.
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Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing success, affiliate marketing skills, making money online, building traffic, targeted traffic, driving targeted traffic
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6 comments
Mike Paetzold - Follow this person as @mikepaetzold on Twitter
on July 2, 2009 at 5:51 AM
Driving traffic is a skill you need to have. Using more ways is even more important because if one fails you still have others.
Mike Paetzold´s last blog ..Traffic Tips Seminar – Can’t Miss Event
Brett McEllhiney - Follow this person as @bmcellhiney on Twitter
on July 2, 2009 at 8:03 AM
Great post Doug!
Traffic and listbuilding are two of the most important parts of your online business.
Anything that you can do to improve either or both of these will only impact your business in a positive way.
Fail at these and your business will not last for long.
And yes, it does take a lot of work.
Brett McEllhiney´s last blog ..Is There Nothing You Can’t Do With a WordPress Blog?
Luca - Follow this person as @rsonline on Twitter
on July 2, 2009 at 4:19 PM
Thanks Doug, yes the most important skill to learn is how to build your own subscriber list. I’m now taking the time to learn as much as I can to accomplish that. It does take work but in the long run it makes all your other Marketing efforts worth while.
Luca´s last blog ..Top Traffic Tips Seminar – Learn How To Play In Loads Of Traffic
Andre Arnett - Follow this person as @learningaffil on Twitter
on July 2, 2009 at 6:54 PM
Driving traffic is oh so important and list building should be right beside it. To master those two skills can cut down the learning time for internet marketing. I also like that you said that before outsourcing it would be good to learn the skills. That says a lot. Thanks.
Andre Arnett´s last blog ..Are You Ready For The Top Traffic Tips Seminar?
Lonnie Minton - Follow this person as @AffiliateBus on Twitter
on July 2, 2009 at 8:40 PM
Doug, a great post. There are many things that the internet marketer must learn. But you have hit on the key place to put the most emphasis – getting traffic. Thanks for this tip.
Lonnie Minton´s last blog ..Two Top Internet Marketers Talk Traffic Tips
Earl Netwal - Follow this person as @EarlNetwal on Twitter
on July 6, 2009 at 11:15 AM
List building is a slow process particularly at first. And it definitely requires work. For me in addition to needing to learn a lot of techniques, the biggest barrier was creating my own product that I was then able to offer in free giveaways. Now this isn’t necessary to build a list – I had been using some MRR product that had giveaway rights, but when I had my own product, I somehow felt as though I was earning my list.
Earl Netwal´s last blog ..Your Business Can Climb to the Top of the Search Engines