Affiliate Marketing with Captain Affiliate » Affiliate Marketing Resources

Is Affiliate Marketing Becoming More ‘Push Button Simple’?

The Captain — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:56:41 +0000

Affiliate marketing has always been the easiest way to get started making money online, but it’s getting even simpler to start your own affiliate marketing business online…

Now don’t misunderstand – it still takes time, effort and money to get going, but at least the current trend is evolving toward ‘push-button simple’ resources that could really ramp up your affiliate commissions while shortening the learning curve dramatically. When I first started online full-time over a dozen years ago, you had to learn it all – and all on your own. No experts existed yet, and we ‘online affiliate pioneers’ had to pretty much make it up as we went along.

And while there are obvious advantages to being a ’senior statesman’ in affiliate marketing, the fact remains I REALLY wish that today’s tools had been around back then, that someone else had blazed the trails and already created these powerful resources so I could have just focused on making money online!

So what would I have done so differently? First, I wouldn’t have built over 150 websites – in fact I probably wouldn’t have built ANY static sites. I’d have focused instead on driving traffic to squeeze pages, both to build my lists and to build my affiliate commissions.

Now we know the best way is to offer a free report to attract targeted visitors who opt-in to our lists to download the free report. That gives you the virtual real estate on the confirmation page and download page to pitch your affiliate links, plus puts the targeted prospects into your pre-written e-course designed to sell them into that and other products, all on auto-pilot. You have to get the traffic to that squeeze page – the rest runs automatically.

But writing that report, setting up that squeeze page system and then writing the followup e-course still sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? And dealing with the autoresponders, squeeze page hosting, etc, just adds to it, right? Well Cindy Battye and Soren Jordansen thought so too, so last year they came out with ClickBank Pirate, a service that looks after all of that for you, leaving you free to just focus on driving the quality traffic to the video squeeze pages they set up for you. A MAJOR step forward towards making affiliate marketing push-button simple!

A huge leap, especially for those just starting an affiliate business – no need to learn HTML, PHP, FTP or any other refugees from their alphabet soup – they could simply sign up, get their links and go to town with it – and many new and experienced affiliate marketers have done just that and done very well by it – myself included!

But for experienced marketers who aren’t lazy (we’re a small but important group ), it wasn’t yet perfect… You see, while Soren & Cindy do a GREAT job at the automated followup – and the Captain doffs his cap to them for it – the fact remains the list is on THEIR server, under THEIR control. Yes, they keep putting new offers out to the people, ALWAYS using YOUR affiliate link, but then it’s not you who decides which offers to promote, and you have no way to promote your own products to that list. Hmmm…

So this year they developed an additional resource, much like ClickBank Pirate, that both goes great as an additional resource to CBP and addresses that issue too. Affiliate Silver Bullet gives you that many more squeeze pages to send people to, but also gives you the choice of having them host & run it all or downloading the components and running it on your own webspace, building your own list through your own autoresponders. And with services like Hosting4Marketers offering both hosting & autoresponders for just $20 a month, it’s really no big leap to choose that option once you have a bit of experience – experience easily gained pushing the ClickBank Pirate and Affiliate Silver Bullet pages they’re already hosting for you!

That makes that whole end of the biz push-button simple – but now what about the traffic-generation aspect – what’s new to help you build traffic, especially targeted traffic so vital to your affiliate marketing success?

First, you need a home base – your place on the web, your affiliate marketing base camp as it were. Once again, it’s become push-button simple to set up your own affiliate blog, thanks to the WordPress software and Alex Sysoef’s free secure blog installer – in fact, take the $17 upgrade there and installing blogs becomes a one-button simplicity – and that’s as push-button simple as you can get!

Turning that new blog into a powerful and profitable affiliate marketing blog IS NOT push-button simple, however – but don’t despair because at least it’s a lot easier than it was until recently. Mike Paetzold is an expert at all things WordPress and has been affiliate marketing for years now, and he’s recorded a 10-video set of step-by-step how-to videos on affiliate blogging called Profitable Blog Steps. While it doesn’t do the work for you, at least it shows you what to do, from researching your topic to picking your affiliate programs and CPA programs to creating your posts!

Even then, things like automating your sidebar advertising have become simple, using the new services like Jeff Dedrick’s Automated Traffic, which lets you choose various ads for affiliate products from ClickBank and then rotates them for you each time a new visitor hits your blog – sweet, eh?

Beyond that, article marketing, podcasting and video marketing all attract more traffic, more recognition and more signups, which is why we teach all 3 in the PowerStart Internet Marketing coaching program. And social media sites have become another major source of targeted traffic, and therefore affiliate commissions. Use guides like my Advanced Marketing on Twitter to learn the best and fastest ways to draw traffic from those sites. Use Squidoo, HubPages, and write Google knols – use my affiliate marketing knol and Internet marketing knol for examples.

So while affiliate marketing success as a whole isn’t push-button simple just yet, many parts of it now are and great guides exist for the remainder – check out the resources listed here and use them to help you build or start an online business of your own today!

About Captain Affiliate:
Captain Affiliate is the affiliate marketing alter-ego of world-famous Internet marketing mentor, coach and speaker Doug Champigny. Keep up online with Doug through his:
• Internet Marketing Blog;
• Internet Marketing Coaching Program;
• Affiliate Marketing Coaching Program;
• On Social Media Sites: Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, EzineArticles, LinkedIn, iTunes;
• Or catch Doug speaking at a Live Internet Marketing Event near you soon!

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, push-button affiliate marketing, simple affiliate marketing, starting an online business, starting an Internet business, Internet marketing, Internet marketing speaker Doug Champigny, marketing mentor Doug Champigny, marketing author Doug Champigny

Blogging For Affiliates – Free ClickBank Affiliate Marketing Software For Bloggers

The Captain — Sat, 08 May 2010 16:41:41 +0000

http://www.automating-traffic.com is in pre-launch right now, and to entice people to join their early notification list they’re GIVING AWAY great software for affiliates looking to build a money-making blog.

Since you’re reading this column, chances are you already know that making money with blogs is best done with affiliate marketing, and that’s exactly where this free software comes it – it lets you choose from a number of top ClickBank products in your niche and set up banner rotation – with tracking. This means that the banner changes with each visitor, rotating between those you chose to display. Your tracking will show you which attract the most clicks, allowing to drop under-performing ads and pump up the ones that are making you the most money.

And unlike the banner rotators of yesteryear that only handled 468×60 banners, these include those, 125×125 buttons most favored by bloggers, 250×250 buttons and various other sizes. These are all professionally designed graphics designed to generate the highest volume of clickthroughs, and will be updated as time goes on to ensure rates remain as high as possible.

But what hasn’t been announced is when the service will stop accepting free members, so I apologize if you’re reading this post at a future date and they’ve moved to a paid model – all I know for sure at this point is that as I write this, you can still get into the program and use the resources for free by going to the Automated Ads information page.

Whether you’re a serious online marketer, a marketing hobbyist or just someone who loves to blog, not taking the 5 minutes to sign up and then 2 minutes to set up your ad campaigns could mean you’re leaving a lot of money on the table – both when blogging and when building static sites. Watch the Automated Ads video that explains the service and then decide whether this great new free service is right for YOU and YOUR online activities, ok?

Technorati Tags: Automated Ads, affiliate marketing, ClickBank affiliate marketing, free affiliate marketing software, free software, free resources, blogging for money, money-making blogs, make money blogging

Hurry – Clickbank Pirate 40% Price Hike Tomorrow 6am Eastern

The Captain — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:00:20 +0000

Clickbank Pirate just launched a little over 24 hours ago – but response has been so phenomenal they realize how badly they underpriced it – and are planning to fix that PRONTO! Right now you can join Clickbank Pirate and lock in at their launch rates: $47 for the first month and then $27 a month thereafter. But that changes tomorrow morning, August 6th at 6am Eastern. Here’s the note they just posted in our JV area:

Both the inital payment and the monthly rates are going up by almost 40%, to $67 initially and $37 a month thereafter.

I’m of two minds about this – first, I like my readers being able to get into these sites and get the resources for the lowest price possible, but second I want to see the resource owners making enough that it’s worth their while to keep the site updated with fresh content regularly. And I have to admit, this resource is powerful enough, to me, to be worth the membership if I had to pay $97 or even $197 a month for it – after all, it doesn’t take many Clickbank affiliate sales to cover that off each month, and that doesn’t even include what I’ll make on the CB Pirate affiliate program itself!

Think I’m kidding? Look at the math…

Pick a product from those Clickbank Pirate affiliate sales funnels they provide you with that sells for $37 a month or more and pays 50% commissions or better, earning you at least $18.50 a sale. If your combined affiliate marketing efforts just get you an average of 1 sale per day, that’s 30 sales in that month, or $555. Your first YEAR’S payments are $67 for the first month, and 11 payments of $37 – a total of $474. So as long as in ANY ONE MONTH during that first year just ONE of their funnels brings you a sale a day, that one product, in one month, has covered your annual CB Pirate investment!

And that’s with just one of the funnels – they start you off with 6 and add from there. And those calculations are based on joining after the price hike tomorrow – if you get in at the launch rate, it takes even less to break even! Now obviously I can’t say you will make that, or anything – only YOU know what you’re capable of right now, how much effort you intend to put in and how much you intend to learn about professional affiliate marketing over the next year.
My point here is that as little as 3 sales of any one product per month can keep you in the black on this one!

For affiliates, of course, this can also be good news – as the price rises, so do your Clickbank Pirate affiliate commissions paid out to you through Clickbank itself. Get regular sales going every month their and you’ve got an affiliate commissions payment coming every two weeks, paid through the most trusted name in affiliate marketing: Clickbank!

The good news for you is that every Clickbank Pirate member is automatically enrolled in their affiliate program, and full resources are provided to help you make money on that end of this site as well – after all, the more you make referring new members the more they make too, so it’s in their best interest to help you sell more memberships every month.

So, lets cut to the chase here… Do I honestly think the Clickbank Pirate site is worth joining and worth promoting as an affiliate? No matter what I say people burned by others won’t accept it, so lit’s pretend you’re from Missouri and show you… Here’s how much time and effort I feel it’s worth ME putting into promoting Clickbank Pirate as an affiliate:

1) The links in this post are, of course, affiliate links.

2) Other blog posts I’ve done promoting Clickbank Pirate:

4 other blog posts and 3 videos on thisaffiliate marketing blog.
3 blog posts on my Internet marketing blog.
2 blog posts on my Clickbank Marketing blog.
2 blog posts on my Marketing BlogZine.
1 blog post on my Advanced Twitter Marketing blog.

3) Promotional videos created and uploaded to Simple-Clickbank-Profits.com, YouTube, Bebo and Motion Box.

4) New report entitled ‘Clickbank For Newbies‘ published and being given away for free; both the squeeze page followup pages and the report itself have ads for ClickBank Pirate prominently included.

5) Various tweets about Clickbank Pirate on both my @SuperAffil and @CaptnAffiliate accounts.

You see, unlike a lot of the ‘experts’ today, I walk the walk before I talk the talk. So far I’ve invested the time to do 13 blog posts, create 3 videos and upload them to a total of 5 different sites, published a new report and built the squeeze and follow-up pages, tweeted the links and e-mailed our opt-in lists a few times. And the site is only 32 hours old so far… longer-term strategies like article marketing will be brought into play next.

Mind you, this also shows why I say the amount of effort you put in plays a huge role in what you make from affiliate marketing – if you do any less than what I’ve shown there, don’t expect to get anywhere near the same results I do – and keep in mind that I’ve been in marketing & advertising for about 30 years now, offline and now online for the past 12 years.

But I’m not asking for your faith based on my extensive credentials, but based on actually seeing me DO exactly what I always suggest to you. Anytime you wonder whether an affiliate marketer is giving you the straight goods or just looking to make a buck off you, look around to see if THEY are doing what they suggest YOU do. The Captain may not reveal EVERY trick or tactic he uses outside of his high-end mentoring, but for every suggestion I DO make on how to promote affiliate opportunities it’s always easy for find examples of me doing them too!

So when I say you should be promoting Clickbank Pirate and the affiliate funnels you get with your membership, know that I’m right there in the trenches with you, both guiding your efforts and putting in the grunt time myself!

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing strategy, affiliate marketing tips, Clickbank Pirate, CB Pirate

Join The Clickbank Pirate Affiliate Program

The Captain — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:22:14 +0000

Clickbank Pirate launched 18 hours ago, and their servers bogged down all day under the weight of so many smart affiliate marketers charging to the site to join – it even broke down a couple of times, but was brought back up by their great staff in short order…

Being a super-affiliate, it should come as no surprise to you that I spoke to the site’s owners, Cindy Battye and Soren Jordansen, a few weeks before launch to get the inside information, and with what I saw I began promoting it as soon as they’d let me, at the start of the pre-launch. In my personal and probably biased opinion, it’s that good an affiliate marketing resource, and since it all revolves around Clickbank products I knew affiliates would love it. It even uses Clickbank itself, so affiliates know there’s no worry over being paid on time – Clickbank has never missed a single affiliate commission payment in it’s 10 years online!

A lot of other big names jumped on board for the launch too, some doing a lot better than I did but most not as well, since they had other launches to promote while I focused on bringing you what I felt would do you the most good – Clickbank Pirate. And as a targeted traffic expert, I was well rewarded for my efforts, bringing in commissions well into 3 digits in the first 12 hours the site was open. And the beauty of it is that those commissions are already sitting in my Clickbank account!

And now that it IS open, I suggest you get your Clickbank Pirate membership right now, and go look at their affiliate program with an eye to choosing which affiliate resources YOU’RE going to use to promote the site. They have a lot of them there, and you’ll probably want to create more yourself if only to help differentiate yourself from other CB Pirate affiliates. Now don’t misunderstand, my results sure aren’t typical, and you may make more, less, or even not make anything at all. Only use my results to see the site CAN make money for affiliates – how much others make as Clickbank Pirate affiliates depends mostly on them, they’re experience, background, effort, focus, etc. etc. If you’ve been doing affiliate marketing for any length of time, you know results vary from person to person and even from promotion to promotion for one affiliate. Even I and my super-affiliate buddies have made a killing on some and completely flopped with others…

I’m assuming the following scenario based on my 12 years online full-time to this point: most of the big dogs will now move on to the next big joint venture, and most of the new Clickbank Pirate members will focus mostly on the great affiliate funnels they get each month, since everything but driving traffic is already done for them. If that’s the case, you should have a pretty good field for marketing the CB Pirate program itself. I know I intend to go on promoting it regularly instead of simply pocketing my launch commissions and moving on…

Why? Because I think it’s the best there is at what it does, and that my readers, mostly affiliate marketers, can do well with it. When I find the best resource in any area, it’s my self-imposed duty to get that information to as many people who will benefit from it as I can. I do the same with Hosting For Marketers because of their web hosting, autoresponder and affiliate program package, Jeff Dedrick’s Viral E-book Explosion becuase of their free brandable e-books, and Socrates Socratous’ Resell Rights Fortunes because it’s the most advanced and easiest to profit from resell rights membership site. In fact, even mentioning them here is part of the Captain’s affiliate marketing strategy, since all use my affiliate links – as they should.

All 4 get another star too, since the affiliate programs for them can all result in residual commissions, allowing a successful marketer to build his commissions from them over time – and the Clickbank Pirate affilates can do the same!

CB Pirate affiliates also have the benefit of being able to push their affiliate funnels they get each month too, of course, which can boost their earnings that much more if they get good enough at it.

And as always, if you’re going to seriously promote the site, be sure to set up your own funnel for it – a free download & squeeze page and then follow up with your message. You can see my funnel, and download my new Clickbank For Newbies here.

Go on over to the site now, and become one of the Clickbank Pirate affiliates and members – you’ll see the affiliate resources link as soon as you log into your members’ area. And if you have any questions about promoting the site, leave a comment below, ok? The Captain’s here for you…

Technorati Tags: Clickbank Pirate affiliate program, Clickbank Pirate affiliates, CB Pirate affiliate program, Clickbank

Free Clickbank Affiliate Marketing Guide

The Captain — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:43:58 +0000

Clickbank Pirate has just launched, making it simpler to start earning money with Clickbank than just about any other affiliate marketing opportunity online. Since the program is also perfect for newbies, it’s generated a lof of new interest in the Clickbank Marketplace amongst the affiliate marketing community.

In the e-mail I receive from my e-zine subscribers and Twitter followers, Clickbank seldom came up until the pre-launch started for Clickbank Pirate, which opened to the public today. Now, after my blog posts about Clickbank Pirate here, here and here, my blog readers have joined in asking about Clickbank…

So, to help them, you and the rest of my readers, I’ve released Clickbank For Newbies, a complete starter guide to using Clickbank either as an affiliate or as a merchant. And to make sure it’s available to everyone who could use it, I’m letting everyone download this guide to Clickbank for free – for the moment. Once I have some testimonials for the e-book & feel the early action-takers like yourself have grabbed their copy, it’ll become a paid product – available to download only for a fee.

Make sure you download Clickbank For Newbies right now – click through right now to see if it’s still available for free! If it isn’t, it will still be available at a fair price on our Training For Newbies site, ok? But hopefully you’re reading this in time to download it for free!

Download and read the e-book, then let me know if you have any questions, ok? While I may not be able to answer every question individually, I WILL provide the answers on my Clickbank Blog so that others with the same question can see the answers too, ok?

I do have one favor to ask of you today, though – since I’m letting you have this powerful guide, Clickbank For Newbies, for free, would you mind tweeting this post so your own Twitter followers have a chance at it too? Thanks so much – just click here to tweet this post!

Technorati Tags: free Clickbank for Newbies, free Clickbank guide, Clickbank Pirate, training for newbies, free download, affiliate marketing e-books

ClickBank Pirate Affiliate Marketing Blogs Announced

The Captain — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:53:20 +0000

ClickBank Pirate Affiliate Marketing Blogs Announced
©2009 Doug Champigny. All rights reserved.

It was announced today that the Clickbank Pirate memberships will include 1-touch affiliate marketing blogs as a standard member’s feature when Clickbank Pirate launches Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 11am Eastern. In this video, Doug Champigny, AKA Captain Affiliate, gives a quick sneak peek video tour of the new affiliate marketing blogs from Clickbank Pirate:

(View The Clickbank Pirate Affiliate Marketing Blogs Video at full size.)

Clickbank Pirate is so impressive, as soon as I was granted early access to the members’ area I agreed to participate in the launch JV – and since this is an affiliate marketing training blog, you already know every link to their site is an affiliate link (After all, if I wasn’t affiliate marketing non-stop, what would qualify me to be your affiliate marketing mentor? ). But that gives you an idea of how strong the backend is on this puppy – I’ve yet to see an affiliate marketing site that I think measures up to Clickbank Pirate in terms of making it push-button simple for affiliates to handle all of the technical aspects of an affiliate sales funnel - for all intents and purposes, all that’s left for a Clickbank Pirate member to do is generate targeted traffic into their funnel…

Blogging For Affiliates: Post, Ping Tweet – Rinse & Repeat!

And now, with the announcement of these push-button affiliate marketing blogs, even the task of driving targeted traffic became somewhat easier – post to your blog including a link to your squeeze page, ping it and start tweeting the link on Twitter. Do another post, ping it, tweet it on Twitter. Post, ping, tweet – rinse & repeat! Clickbank Pirate sure makes affiliate marketing easier, doesn’t it?

Plus, your Clickbank Pirate affiliate marketing blog already has your affiliate ads embedded on each page, as you saw in the video above. Even if that’s all that was involved in Clickbank Pirate it would still be worth what little they’re asking for membership when the doors open August 4th – but that’s just one very small part of it! I’d be disappointed if I thought anyone reading this, or hearing of Clcikbank Pirate elsewhere, didn’t join upon launch if they have any intention of making money online or starting a work-at-home business full or part time.

Think about it… If one is new to affiliate marketing, this saves thm having to learn how to set up squeeze pages, set up autoresponders, write the follow-up e-courses, build their pre-sell pages and now even having to set up & optimize their own blogs! It takes months, sometimes years for a newbie to learn how to do all that, time that they aren’t earning what they could be and should be. Clickbank Pirate lets them have all that within 48 hours of becoming a member!

But there’s another reason I’m so fired up about Clickbank Pirate, besides making it easier for you, my affiliate marketing students, to start making money online and make money so much faster… For super-affiliates like the Captain and other seasoned marketers who already know how to do all that, this system lets us skip those steps, saving us both time and either effort or outsourcing costs and letting us focus on the part of the biz we love best – MAKING MONEY!

You see, for a real Type-A personality marketer, it’s the marketing we love – and the perks it brings when you’re so good at it. Sure, we know the technical junk is part of that success, so we do it – it’s a big part of what keeps us ahead of the rest of the pack. And don’t ever doubt it – if you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes! But this way we can stick to promoting our new Clickbank Pirate affiliate marketing funnels – blogging, tweeting, e-mailing, creating and distributing articles, videos, podcasts, press releases – all the true online marketing tactics and techniques.

And saving time by skipping the tech headaches helps us refine our skills too, since we’re spending a greater amount of time actually marketing. Plus our strategizing will improve, since our mindset stays locked on the marketing. If you’ve been affiliate marketing for any length of timed building your own sales funnels, you know that doing design, coding, FTPing, installing blogs etc requires an entirely different mindset – a headset of slower action, more attention to tedious details, greater frustrations – all of which means it takes longer to get back into your success groove when you get to return to your marketing activities.

How often has a great promotional strategy hit while you were marketing, only to be forgotten while you set up the next piece of virtual real estate? How often have you agonized over whether the article you just wrote should be submitted, used on your blog or put into your autoresponder followup? Or had a great idea for an e-mail, only to realize you already covered that topic in your e-course?

Well no more – now that the e-course, squeeze page and salespage are already completed for you, EVERY idea you come up with can be acted on immediately, put to proper use in your marketing effort! If you’re still not completely frothing ast the mouth to get in there, you need to stop and think… How much time have you spent writing your followup campaigns? How frustrated have you been trying to perfect your squeeze pages and get the autoresponder & followup pages in place? How much time have you lost worrying your salespage or pre-sell page into a suitable state – and what was the conversion rate on it when you were done??? And now for the biggie – if that time had been spent simply driving targeted traffic to professionally built squeeze pages and pre-sell pages, how much more would you have earned in the past year?

OK – so we both know this service is easily worth a few hundred a month minimum. But fortunately for us both, it’s not going to be anywhere near that high – in fact just a few affiliate sales through the Clickbank Pirate system each month keeps us in the black, and everything beyond that is profit, baby!

I could still go on and on – but before the Captain starts gushing like a virgin first mate, head on over to the Clickbank Pirate site and set sail on your own success voyage – just remember to bookmark this site and our sister site, Simple-Clickbank-Profits.com, for a stream of ongoing help in refining your affiliate marketing skills and keeping on the bleeding edge of affiliate marketing in general. Go on now – there’s nothing the captain would like better than seeing you pull into port a year from now riding your own success, mooring alongside us on our infrequent dockings at the port of the offline world!

Technorati Tags: Clickbank Pirate, CB Pirate, clickbank pirate affiliate marketing blogs, affiliate marketing strategy, affiliate marketing tools

ClickBank Pirate And ClickBank Affiliate Marketing Training Blog Launches

The Captain — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:01:38 +0000

ClickBank Pirate is set to launch on Tuesday, making affiliate marketing through the ClickBank digital downloads marketplace mush easier for newer affiliate marketers and much faster for experienced marketers and super-affiliates. This has resulted in my setting up a sister blog to Captain-Affiliate.com called Simple ClickBank Profits to provide additional related affiliate marketing training and resources to members of ClickBank Pirate.

ClickBank Pirate will be an affiliate marketing no-brainer must-have in every affiliate marketer’s online arsenal of professional tools and resources. Successful affiliate marketing now requires a complete sales funnel for each main product the marketer is promoting, including those from ClickBank. ClickBank Pirate will design, create and host these funnels for their members, covering some of the most popular ClickBank products. This removes all the technical skill requirements from the members’ activities, leaving them free to focus on the most important, and most enjoyable, part of our industry – the actual marketing!

While I have been mentoring you on affiliate marketing here on the Captain Affiliate blog and will continue to do so, ClickBank is big enough and unique enough to warrant it’s own training blog, so that’s why I set up the Simple ClickBank Profits Affiliate Marketing Training blog. Don’t misunderstand the title of the blog – using the information presented there will make affiliate mmarketing the ClickBank products simple when used with the ClickBank Pirate system, but there will still be a lot of effort required on your part. You still need to put in just as much effort, but the processess involved will be much simpler.

This is great news for you – you’ve never shied away from putting in the effort, so now you have the opportunity to get better results faster from your same affiliate marketing time and effort. Just as you surpass the results of those who don’t put in as much effort as you currently, ClickBank Pirate can increase that gulf exponentially!

So until launch on Tuesday, you have three simple steps to follow now:

Sign up for Free to the ClickBank Pirate Notification List
Read The Posts on the Simple ClickBank Profits Blog & Bookmark the Blog or Grab the RSS Feed
Be Sure You Have An Affiliate Account At ClickBank and that All Your Information there is Current.

See? I told you each step will be simple! ClickBank Pirate and ClickBank Affiliate Marketing Training from Captain Affiliate – What a Team!

Technorati Tags: ClickBank Pirate, ClickBank Pirate Launch, Simple ClickBank Profits, affiliate marketing blogs, affiliate marketing training, Captain Affiliate, marketing mentors

Captain Affiliate Becoming A ClickBank Pirate?

The Captain — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:34:26 +0000

Is Captain Affiliate to become a ClickBank Pirate? And what will that mean for you and your affiliate marketing efforts if I DO become a CBPirate?

ClickBank is the biggest affiliate products directory online, allowing affiliates to choose from thousands of products to promote. It is above reproach to date, and since it collects the payments and then pays the affiliates and merchants separately, is the choice for affiliate products to promote for many, many affiliates – if not most.

Yet strangely enough, I’ve done very little with ClickBank products til now, selling just a few thousand dollars’ worth each year. Or perhaps not so strangely, since most of my affiliate marketing efforts go to promoting products and services released by people I know, products and services I’ve been given access to in advance so I can be sure they’re both high-quality and relevant to you, my loyal readers and affiliate marketing students.

But it was recently pointed out to me that not teaching you about ClickBank meant I wasn’t giving you a full affiliate marketing education, in spite of this blog, our Affiliate Marketing Revealed and Affiliate Marketing Special Report web sites and the @CaptnAffiliate Twitter persona.

Granted, no one else is giving you as much free affiliate marketing training – but that’s not enough… If I don’t do all I can to educate you in making money online, I’m not living up to my goals with all this – to help create a team of super-affiliates bringing down huge affiliate commissions.

As I was planning how to best teach you to use ClickBank successfully, some friends showed me a new site they’re about to launch to make promoting ClickBank products much easier for newbie affiliate marketers, and much less time-intensive for the pros. That was all I needed to realize the time was right to start showing you the ropes, and to include using their service in that education.

Thus was the decision to launch Simple ClickBank Profits – a new site I’ll put together designed just to teach you how to market ClickBank products as an affiliate – and I guess I’ll have to become a ClickBank Pirate along the way too… Don’t misunderstand, a CBPirate isn’t a negative connotation – it’s just the newest term for a super-affiliate who’s marketing products as an affiliate through ClickBank.

So head on over now to Simple ClickBank Profits and bookmark the site – I’ll start pouring content into it tomorrow to help you get up to speed quickly with affiliate marketing using ClickBank – see you there!

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, ClickBank, ClickBank Pirate, CBPirate, simple clickbank profits, free affiliate marketing training, successful affiliate marketing

The Affiliate Marketing Formula That Works Best Right Now

The Captain — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:35:47 +0000

The Affiliate Marketing Formula That Works Best Right Now

Affiliate marketing, and in fact the Internet itself, is evolving daily – leaving it in a state of constant flux. So just how is an affiliate, especially one new to affiliate marketing who may still be working at a full-time job as well, supposed to keep up with it all?

First, of course, you should be re-investing in your online business, watching for new training resources from Super Affiliates that you’ve come to trust as providing good solid up-to-date affiliate marketing training materials. And in between, you should be subscribed to their e-zines (e-mail newsletters), visiting their blogs regularly, and following them at sites like MyBlogLog, Technorati and Twitter – especially Twitter since it’s always real-time.

How drastically does the affiliate marketing game change? Just a few years ago it was all safelists, free-for-all pages and traffic exchanges – now Web 2.0 techniques, like blogging and social networking are leaving the earlier strategies in the dust.

Let’s look at the components of recent successful strategies that have made affiliates the most in commissions and prizes and continue to be ultra-effective right now, shall we?

First, almost without exception Super-Affiliates have their own opt-in lists they e-mail offers to; lists tightly targeted to whatever niche they’re operating in. If, for example, they operate in the Internet marketing, travel and Forex niches, they’ll have separate lists targeted to each of those three niches.

And that’s a win-win for the super-affiliate – their lists drive traffic to each new affiliate promotion they attack, and each new promotion is used as another opportunity to build those lists even further. They’ll offer a free download or a free video as an incentive to get targeted people to join their list – that download or video is packed with value, but still functions mostly as a pre-sell vehicle for their current promotion.

So they’ve now gotten the new targeted prospects onto their list, and warmed them up to the subject, service, niche or person they’re currently promoting. A few e-mails later those new prospects will most likely follow an affiliate link to the site being promoted, thus raising sales even higher. The super-affiliate has added more targeted prospects to their opt-in lists by providing great free content upfront, and made more money on the promotion because of it.

On the biggest launches, especially launches for high-ticket items, competition among affiliates is much more excited – and while the tactic above is still employed very successfully, something more is needed to get onto the leaderboard and end up at or near the top of the heap. Once again the answer is providing additional value-added content of good use to your prospective buyers.

If you’re on the mailing list of many top Internet marketers, you’ve recently been deluged with e-mails every time a big new high-ticket launch is announced, especially if there’s a contest for the affiliates. Notice how many of them offer bigger and bigger bonuses if you buy the item through their link? They wouldn’t keep doing that if it didn’t work, but it does – big time!

Why is it so successful when it’s so transparent a ploy? Because the customer doesn’t care WHY the bonus is being offered, they just care that they’re getting the product they want to buy and a lot more helpful resources to go with it for no extra cost. This makes the purchase more valuable to them because it provides them with more of what they want and need – they could care less about your affiliate marketing commissions.

So when we boil it all down to basics, what’s working best in affiliate marketing right now is delivering value added reasons to buy through your link while using that extra content to build your targeted lists for future promotions. Since the business never stands still, not too far down the road that will be replaced by the next system, but for now this is where you want to focus your affiliate marketing efforts!

That’s why I love the new MRR and PLR membership site from Socrates Socratous that launched this week at http://www.Resell-Rights-Fortunes.com – the first membership site that’s searchable by both keywords AND the products rights at the same time. For the first tactic above, a keyword-targeted search just for resources you can give away gives you the free report or videos to offer as an incentive for prospects to sign up – and by using one that’s based around the same keywords as the products you promote, you ensure that signups are from your target market audience.

Similarly, now you can do a search for keyword-targeted resources that both can be bundled together and can be used as a bonus for paid products, and compile your big bonuses to give away to those buying through your affiliate links, providing you with the necessary bonus package to offer for that big launch.

At this point in time, Resell Rights Fortunes is one of the most powerful resources for anyone even THINKING of getting into affiliate marketing, and a must-have tool for the arsenal of anyone targeting super-affiliate status. And if you’re already making money as an affiliate, take the OTO at the site and take the lifetime membership – you’ll have access to the site for as long as it’s online without ever paying another cent, a very valuable bonus should cashflow get a bit tight at any point down the road.

Oh yeah – and they have a killer affiliate program themselves, so take the lifetime membership or the monthly plan, and use the affiliate commissions to repay yourself for the outlay! All I ask is that you buy Teri & I a drink the next time you see us at a live seminar or convention for pointing out so valuable a resource and showing you how to use it!

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing tactics, affiliate marketing strategies, super-affiliate strategies, online marketing strategies, work-at-home business advice, work-at-home tips

2 Free Videos Teach Affiliate Marketing List Building Secrets

The Captain — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:08:46 +0000

Yesterday we discussed the need for affiliates to be building opt-in lists for affiliate marketing success. As the next installment in the Captain Affiliate’s List-Building for Affiliates series, today I want to show you two powerful free list-building videos from my friend Socrates Socratous.

What makes these two free list-building videos so powerful? First, the list-building technique in the first video doesn’t cost a cent to implement, while the second has a minor cost but goes on to show how to make up to a 3,000% profit on that tiny investment – all on autopilot! And secondly, these are totally new methods of building opt-in lists for most affiliate marketers – in fact very very few online marketers of any stripe have seen these list-building secrets!

The first video shows how to harness the power of major software sites to build affiliate marketing lists quickly – not only does Socrates show you how to tap into this major targeted traffic stream for free, he’s even giving you free software to use to build your list there!

This is a truly set-and-forget list-building system… You spend an hour or two setting it up, then it runs on autopilot for months, even years, bringing in thousands of targeted prospects to subscribe to your lists – over 3,000 subscribers so far from the one in the video alone. And you can set up as many of these little ‘list-building engines‘ as you like, depending on how serious you are about being successful in your affiliate marketing online!

The second video teaches you how to build opt-in lists using eBay – the Internet’s original e-commerce phenomenon. It used to be that list-building, or any affiliate marketing for that matter, was easy on eBay – upload digital itmes that included your affiliate links and watch your affiliate marketing commissions roll in! But that all changed when eBay changed the rules, prohibiting the posting of digital downloads in their auctions and buy-now set-price sections. Suddenly list-building on eBay was history, eliminating the most powerful list-building technique then used by a great number of affiliates and other work-at-home Internet marketers.

Well, Socrates researched the situation – and using the same ingenuity that led him from a tiny village in Cypress to his current home on the ocean in California, he found the solution! Once again using eBay to build opt-in lists is not only possible, but extremely powerful! In the example Socrates shows you in this video, a tiny $10 investment got him over 400 opt-in leads – and made him a profit of over $300! And once you experiment and get the hang of it, there’s no reason not to be running a few of these concurrently using his eBay list-building secrets!

So take time RIGHT NOW to watch these two free videos – the list-building secrets revealed in them can add 5 or 6 figures to your income this year – IF you pay attention, make note of the systems used, and then put them into action. List building secrets are no different than any other great teachings – they’re useless to you until you internalize them, embrace them and then utilize them!

That’s it for today, kiddies – two of the most powerful free video tips on list-building for affiliates you’ll find anywhere online. Oh, a word to affiliate marketing pros - at the end of the eBay video Socrates talks about a new site launching next week. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION!!! I’m already beta-testing his new site, and it’s going to be huge – you’ll want to promote it as an affiliate and use the resources in it to make even more money with less effort, so be sure to watch til the end of the list-building on eBay video too!

Technorati Tags: list building for affiliates, affiliate marketing list building, list building secrets revealed, free affiliate training videos, free marketing tutorials, free marketing info, online success, work-at-home success, work-at-home secrets, work-at-home help

List Building A Necessary Component Of Successful Affiliate Marketing

The Captain — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:33:11 +0000

Every super-affiliate has a powerful opt-in list they can send their affiliate marketing promotions to. And every other affiliate wants to achieve that same level of affiliate marketing success. So it’s obvious that effective affiliate marketing has to include several successful list-building campaigns, preferably running simultaneously to ring forward the income horizon from your lists.

But full-time affiliate marketers are relatively rare – even most super-affiliates have their own products to market too, or are running membership sites or affiliate coaching and mentoring programs. Some of us are involved in all aspects of the above. And since affiliate marketing is the easiest and least expensive way of starting a business online, the bulk of all affiliate marketers are newbies – some of whom still aren’t even aware that building your targeted opt-in list is one of the cornerstones in the foundation of every successful affiliate marketing business. In an earlier post I refered to affiliates not building a list as The Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistake Of All, and from the comments left by the affiliates who read the post you’ll see every one of the agrees.

There are a number of ways to build your opt-in list as an affiliate, and you should be using as many of them as your wallet and time availability will allow you to. That doesn’t mean go deep in debt to build your list – there’s no need to. Start with the free resources proven to build lists, then use the money as it comes in to try some of the more expensive methods – but keep your free list-building activities going on throughout, since there’s never a good reason to turn down free targeted traffic or free targeted opt-ins – even at the top of the affiliate marketing game, we still love them all!

Over the next few days the Captain is going to bring you a number of ways to build your affiliate lists, so be sure to bookmark this blog and return regularly, or better yet subscribe to the Captain Affiliate RSS feed if you have a feed reader you use. Some will be free methods, some will have a price attached – but all are tested and true methods of building your opt-in lists. Use as many of them as you can, and stay with them – you’ll see your lists growing daily and along with them, your affiliate marketing commissions.

For today, the Captain wants to point you to two necessary pieces of software – neither is free, but both are very reliable and powerful. First up is your professional autoresponders – the software that keeps track of the people on your list, and sends them your e-zine or e-course each time. Obviously you can’t send out 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 e-mails in a day manually, so professional autoresponders are a must.

Your choice of autoresponders is critical – avoid the free services like the plague! Either they tack other people’s ads on top of your mailings, like the big places do with their free accounts, or they are small-fry who will eventually go broke and your list will disappear right along with their system. I recommend Hosting4Marketers.com, the service I use for over 80% of our daily mailing.

Why them? Because they’re the most reasonable of the pro services, and give the most bang for your buck. For about $20 a month you get hosting for up to a dozen small sites (You’ll see why you need this in future list-building posts), unlimited pro autoresponders, and even an affiliate program of your own should you decide to sell your own products later on. And your rate doesn’t rise as your list grows, like it does at the services that only give you the autoresponders.

The second piece of software you need is a way to capture subscribers when you send people to your affiliate links. This software is called the Power List Pro, and it lives up to it’s name… Not only does it give you a number of popups you can use on your own site, but you can use them on other people’s sites too, believe it or not.

Here, let me show you… Here’s a link to one of my friend Liz Tomey’s sites – don’t worry, it opens in a new window. See my opt-in form at the top-right of this blog? Now follow this link and wait a couple of seconds to see what happens – then close that window and c’mon back to read on. Here’s the link: Proof That It Works.

Pretty nifty, eh? So now you can be building your own list each time you promote an affiliate link – how sweet is that? So arm yourself with those two tools – your Hosting4Marketers.com account and your copy of the Power List Pro software, and play around with both til you get the hang of them.

Tomorrow I’ll start showing you EXACTLY what strategies to use to build tightly-targeted, highly profitable affiliate marketing lists – see you then!

Technorati Tags: Affiliate marketing lists, building affiliate lists, affiliate list building, getting subscribers, getting opt-ins, getting opt-in subscribers, e-mail marketing

Automated Profits And List-Building For ClickBank Affiliates

The Captain — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:14:01 +0000

Here’s another advanced Affiliate Marketing Power Tip from Captain Affiliate: There’s a new affiliate marketing tool for ClickBank affiliates that lets you automate your profits and list-building through ClickBank – and automatically increases your affiliate marketing commissions too!

If you’ve been paying attention to the affiliate marketing and joint venture partner contests lately, you know that they’re being won by affiliates and partners who are offering related bonuses, right? But why only use that system for contests – especially if you could use it to make money on every ClickBank promotion in every niche you operate in?

Until now, the hardest part about offering bonuses to ClickBank buyers was that as the affiliate, you don’t get the info on who bought through your link added to your autoresponder, and you had to deliver every bonus manually – either by looking up your sales and e-mailing those people, or by getting your buyers to then e-mail you their receipt so you could send them your bonus – complicated, faulty and a pain, right?

That’s why the Captain was so stoked to see Jeff Czyzewski’s new CB Bonus Domination package – it puts all of that on autopilot for you – delivering the bonus, adding the person to your autoresponder – the whole bit! No more fussing around tying up all your time for one lousy affiliate promotion after another… Now you can be operating – and profiting – in every niche you promote ClickBank products to at the same time – automatically!

Jeff’s put a great video together about his CB Bonus Domination package, so head on over and watch the CB Bonus Domination video right now, ok?

(Smart affiliates will see right away how well this system could utilize our free Daily ClickBank Product Alerts to crush affiliate marketing competition – when the alert shows a new rising star on ClickBank in one of your niches, immediately set up your CB Bonus Domination promotion for it and be making affiliate commissions and building your niche mailing lists before most other ClickBank affiliates even know the product exists! )

Technorati Tags: CB Bonus Domination, automating ClickBank Bonuses, affiliate marketing software, ClickBank affiliate marketing, advanced affiliate marketing, ClickBank profits, Jeff Czyzewski software, Jeff Czyzewski program, Jeff Czyzewski

27 Proven Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Marketing Commissions Now!

The Captain — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:20:40 +0000

Anyone who’s been in affiliate marketing knows who Jimmy D. Brown is – an amazing marketer who, in spite of his laid-back style, was one of the first super-affiliates to make 6 figures a year – and more! And he single-handedly created the entire e-book system we all use, so this is a true pioneer we’re talking about here…

Well, after being an affiliate marketing expert for over 10 years, Jimmy has brought out a new e-book just this morning, called Affiliate Pay Raise. In it, Jimmy discusses exactly how to give yourself a raise in your affiliate marketing – in fact he shows you 27 proven ways to increase your affiliate marketing commissions right now, so you see more money in your very next cheque!

Here’s how Jimmy describes it:

* * * * * * * * * *

This 40-page manual is jam-packed with meaty affiliate marketing ideas, including…
- 27 guaranteed ways to increase your affiliate commission checks regardless of what program you are promoting.
- How to score big with affiliate marketing even if there are thousands of other people promoting the exact same product you are promoting.
- Simple things you can do to boost your affiliate commission income by merely making a request.
- How to get bigger commissions by making tiny strategic decisions that are almost too simple to mention but are amazingly overlooked.
- A special “kind” of ezine article that always leads to extra orders through your affiliate link.
- The one thing you’re prospects are always looking for and how to use it in order to easily persuade them to order the product you’re promoting.
- How to promote multiple offers at the exact same time to get extra sales without extra effort.
- 5 quick tips for separating yourself from the same old “cookie cutter” affiliate marketing that others are using … and how it leads to additional orders.
- The “big commissions” formula complete with examples and an actual email template you can swipe and use to put this formula into practice immediately.
- The real reason why so many affiliates have small checks and what you can do in order to sidestep this barrier all the way to the bank.
- The “30 day free training program” strategy that virtually guarantees extra orders through your affiliate link in MULTIPLE programs.
- How to promote your favorite affiliate program using a simple ebay™ strategy.
- The “work together” method that you and other affiliates can use to see a spike in ALL of your commission checks.
- The affiliate marketing “shift in thinking” that will allow you to do everything in this report without doing anything at all.

* * * * * * * * * *

This really is a no-brainer – it’s simple enough for newbies, yet complete enough to help seasoned veterans of the affiliate marketing arena. And he’s letting it go cheap enough there’s no excse not to read through it and see what tactics you’ve been missing, and just where you can increase your affiliate marketing profits right away.

Pick up your copy of Jimmy D. Brown’s Affiliate Pay Raise right now – after all, you DO deserve to make more from your affiliate marketing, don’t you?

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, Jimmy Brown affiliate marketing, affiliate pay raise e-book, profitable marketing, Jimmy D Brown, Jimmy D Brown e-book

Instant Secure Blog & Plugin Installation – Free!

The Captain — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:15:32 +0000

In these days of Web 2.0 affiliate marketing, there’s no doubting that a blog is the fastest way to boost targeted traffic to affiliate links in any given niche – which is a blessing considering WordPress blog software is free. Installing it through your cPanel is fairly painless, but as I personally experienced, the automatic blog installs are great targets for hackers – we had three of our blogs hit in 2008 alone.

So as I watched WordPress expert Alex Sysoef develop his Expert WordPress software, I was quite impressed that it used a secure setup that didn’t include the standard installation codes. But what really caught my eye was his decision to include all the latest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugins to go with it.

Now blogs are already powerful affiliate marketing traffic tools – they allow you an easy platform to keep your readers updated with fresh content, they get indexed in the major search engines like any other web site, but then they also get listed in blog-specific directories, and in such massive traffic generators as Technorati and MyBlogLog. But it’s only when coupled with the latest SEO plugins that your blog really starts to rock as a targeted traffic generator – and Alex Sysoef’s Expert WordPress installs these for you too.

Best of all, this tool is a newbie’s dream – no technical knowledge is required whatsoever to install secure, optimized WordPress blogs with it, and Alex STILL includes videos to demonstrate exactly how to complete the 3 steps required. I sure wish this software had been available 4 years ago when I first started blogging!

So obviously it’s a no-brainer that you want this software as part of your affiliate marketing routine, that you want to install WordPress Blogs & their SEO plugins automatically. So once you see all the features of Alex Sysoef’s Expert WordPress software, I’m sure that you’ll be as surprised as I was that he’s giving it away for free. And that he has an upgraded version with more features that’s available for a low monthly investment.

Alex Sysoef’s Expert WordPress software really has to be the best traffic-generating software aid for affiliate marketers I’ve seen in the last year or two – I give it 5 out of 5 and suggest you download it now while it’s still free! Put your affiliate marketing – and any other blogging you do – into the big leagues today!

Technorati Tags: free seo software, free seo help, free seo downloads, Expert WordPress, WordPress Blogs, Alex Sysoef’s Expert WordPress, affiliate marketing, affiliate traffic, affiliate success, targeted traffic, Alex Sysoef software, Alex Sysoef

The Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistake Of All

The Captain — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:02:59 +0000

Affiliate Marketing? If so, are you making the biggest affiliate marketing mistake of them all?

We all know that going the affiliate marketing route is one of the easiest and most lucrative ways to make money online, and it can continue to add a large percentage of our income for as long as we’re working online. But most affiliates, even the big dogs, could be making a lot more money from affiliate marketing than they are, due to this one big mistake…

To listen to an Audio Version of this affiliate marketing article, click this arrow:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Most affiliate marketers fail to add a steady stream of highly-targeted action-taking prospects to their opt-in lists! Think about it for a moment – you place your affiliate links in a lot of places – on your sites, your blogs, in articles you distribute around the Internet, even on your accounts at LinkedIn, Twitter, MyBlogLog, Technorati, YouTube, etc.

Hopefully a lot of people click those links for you and buy the product you’re recommending – but then what? They’re gone, whether they bought or not – and in most cases you have no idea who they were or how to contact them again. Opportunity lost…

But what if instead, when people clicked those lnks, YOUR pop-up opt-in form showed up over the merchant’s site? Now obviously not everyone is going to opt-in, as with any site, but every one who does is a bonus for you – someone who already clicked one of your links and took action – what could be more targeted than that?

Now, if you’re new to Affiliate marketing that may seem a bit complicated – so let me show you what I mean. One of my favorite programs to promote to new affiliate marketers is 5 Day Cash Machines by Liz Tomey. Not just becase Liz & Jamie are close friends, but because she actually shows how she took a complete newbie and had her building a list and makng money her first 5 days online – pretty impressive, right?

But more important, look what happens when you go to the site through our link: Liz Tomey’s 5 Day Cash Machines! Go ahead – click that link, let the page draw in and wait a few seconds… Violla! Our pop-in form, light-boxed over Liz’s site!

Pretty cool, eh? Easy to see how this one makes you more money quickly, since you’re getting new signups from the same affiliate marketing efforts you’re putting in now – and keeps the merchant’s page open throughout the process. If I were to tweak the page the signup form takes you to, I’m sure I could monetize it more heavily too!

And it’s all done with push-button simplicity using the Power List Pro software – as you’ll see on that page, it’ll even create simple pop-ins for you if you’re not familiar with the process. It even has a function to create list-building JVs with other marketers – but you’ll have to read about that on the site, as it’s outside the scope of this article.

Now before you rush off to download and start using Power List Pro, let me explain when you WOULDN’T want to use it…

Most obviously, you wouldn’t use it to send links to your existing e-zine readers – why distract them with a popup when they’re already on your list? You want to use this on your blogs, sites and social media exposures, to move some of your followers there onto your lists, right?

Secondly, stick to products being sold through services like ClickBank when you’re using this software. More experienced affiliate marketers and web designers will recognize this as an advanced system of framing, meaning the person stays on YOUR site while viewing the merchant’s salespage. Once the buyer reaches ClickBank they get bounced out of the frame – but by then they’ve been cookied with your link and it’s too late for them to change it.

On the other hand, affiliate systems that work with PayPal and similar systems cookie the visitor as soon as they get to the salespage – being in a frame stops that from happening, as it becomes a ‘3rd party cookie’ since it’s not being delivered by the site they’re actually on. When they progress from there, they hit PayPal still in your frame, and the order won’t even process, never mind get credited to your account.

It’s important to note that this is true of ALL link cloaking that uses frames – save it just for ClickBank and use a simple PHP redirect for the others. So don’t let that stop you from using this powerful list builder – just remember to only use it for ClickBank links.

As I said above, there are more list-building functions to >Power List Pro than what I’ve covered here, but this is the most important use for affiliate marketing. Check out the other features listed on the site too, but be sure to download Power List Pro now & make it a daily part of your affiliate marketing strategies – and watch your opt-in list – and profits – skyrocket!

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing opt-in lists, building affiliate marketing opt-ins, Power List Pro software, Power List Pro program, getting opt-ins, getting subscribers

Affiliate Marketing Using Your Own Website Or Blog

The Captain — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:56:26 +0000

It is true that as an affiliate marketer, you are not required to have your own website or domain name. You can choose, instead, to market the products and services using your affiliate links and/or replicated affiliate websites. However, you will find as you delve deeper into the world of affiliate marketing that having your own website and/or blog is essential to your success.

To listen to an Audio Version of this affiliate marketing article, click this arrow:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

With your own website, you can use your own domain name to promote the products and services, instead of affiliate links. People tend to avoid affiliate links when they see them in ezines and on forums. But they don’t seem to have an aversion to visiting a person’s website or blog.

When you promote affiliate products and services using affiliate links, you can only promote one product or service at a time. This means that in order to make the income you want or need to make, you will be spending all of your time marketing – every free minute you have will be marketing.

However, if you have a website, you can promote the website, and not the products. First, people like free information. Fill your site up with that, and along with the content, throw in banners and links to the related affiliate products and services. It is much easier to promote one website or blog than it is to promote ten or twenty affiliate products or services.

Having your own website and domain, for each niche that you are doing affiliate marketing in, makes you appear more professional, and helps to establish you as an expert. It also gives you the ability to write your own sales copy so that you don’t have to depend on the sales copy provided by the affiliate manager or merchant.

This, in turn, gives you the ability beat your competition – those affiliates who are selling the same products and services that you are selling. You can present the material and the product or service in a way that they can’t unless they have their own website or blog. For the best place we’ve found for hosting an affiliate marketing website or blog, visit Hosting For Marketers.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing websites, affiliate marketing blogs, promoting, links, selling

Successful Affiliate Marketing Is Not Free

The Captain — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:45:48 +0000

Successful Affiliate Marketing Is Not Free!

While it is true that it doesn’t have to cost anything to be an affiliate marketer, most successful marketers understand that in order to become successful, they must be willing to purchase the tools that are needed for that success. Don’t be alarmed! Affiliate marketing is the least expensive business you can possibly get into.

To listen to an Audio Version of this affiliate marketing article, click this arrow:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

There are certain tools that will allow success to come to you a bit easier. The first tool is a domain name. For each niche in which you will market products and services, you need a domain name that relates to that niche. If you are selling cat products, you need a domain name that suits a site about cats. If you are also selling skin care products, you need a domain name that suits skin care information.

You will also need website hosting for each domain name. You can choose to purchase a server that will allow multiple domain names to reside on the same server, which is your cheapest option if you will have a large number of domain names. You can also get webhosting for each individual domain, which may be the least expensive option for fewer domains.

The next most important tool that an affiliate marketer needs is an autoresponder. You need this tool to manage the email list or lists that you will build. It is best to have an autoresponder that will allow you to have multiple lists. There are free autoresponder services available, but you will find that they are not usually worth the price (free), and paying for an autoresponder service is your best bet.

All tolled, your overhead each month should not run over $100, and it should be even less. Domain names are paid for either yearly or every two years. Hosting can be paid for on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis, as can autoresponders. Choose the payment option that saves you the most money, which is usually a yearly payment.

The service that Captain Affiliate uses most, for example, gives you webhosting for up to a dozen sites, unlimited pro autoresponders and even your own affiliate program manager so others can sell your products as affiliates too, all for about $20 a month. Chek out their site if you’re looking for the best hosting for affiliate marketing!

Technorati Tags: website hosting, web hosting, hosting for affiliate marketing, affliate marketing tools, affiliate marketing resources, webhosting, domain names, autoresponders

Affiliate Marketing Using Twitter – 7 Twitter Tips

The Captain — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:40:27 +0000

7 Great Twitter Tips for Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to make money online, and Twitter is a great way to increase your affiliate marketing sales. Just be careful so your Twitter experience is a pleasant (and profitable) one

Here are 7 tips that affiliate marketers should keep in mind

1. Be personal with your tweets. Don’t send out the same tweet over and over or to different people. If people are tweeting about needing holiday presents, don’t send, “Hey! Shop at my site www.blahblahblah.com” to everyone! Tweets should be personal, not canned.

2. Be genuine with tweets. Don’t try to be something you are not.

3. If you do send a sales link, send it as a natural part of the conversation. If you chat with people, eventually they will ask what you do (or you can drop subtle hints) – then you can mention it.

Continued at: 7 Great Twitter Tips For Affiliate Marketers

Twitter is an amazing & powerful tool that should be included in EVERY affiliate marketer’s strategy – done right, a single tweet can lead to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in sales. Be sure to visit The Road To Twitter Success to learn how to master this hot Web 2.0 social networking site and use it to maximm advantage in your affiliate marketing strategies.

Technorati Tags: Twitter affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing using Twitter, using Twitter for affiliate marketing, Twitter, Twitter Tips, affiliate marketing, affiliate marketers, affiliates

The Easiest Affiliate Marketing Sales

The Captain — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:16:11 +0000

The easiest affiliate marketing sales to make are continuously eluding 95% of all affiliates – not because most affiliates don’t approve of them or choose to ignore them, but because they are outside the realm of most affiliates’ experience.

I’m talkin, of course, about affiliates commissions made on the backend after someone downloads a free gift. The affiliate either gives away the gift or refers prospects to a free gift, and makes their affiliate commissions on anything the person then buys, either through links in the gift itself or from the One-Time-Offer on the download site.

Let me give you a prime example of each…

Twice a year, the big FreePLR giveaway offers great free products with unrestricted private label rights from some of the best-known names in Internet marketing. After joining the FreePLR Affiliate Program, you, as an affiliate, send your link to your list telling them about the 20 free gifts from people like Willie Crawford, Jeff Dedrick, Doug Champigny & Nicheology’s Paul Evans. Once your referral signs up for the site, they are shown a $47.00 OTO for 50 additional e-books they can download. Should that person decide to take that OTO, your affiliate commission is 50% or $23.50 for each sale.

This is very powerful for you as an affiliate – your subscriber wins because you showed them where to get 20 free PLR products, the site wins by getting a new member and a new sale, and you win from both happier list members AND the commissions from the OTO sale.

Will every referral end up taking the OTO? No, of course not. But that’s no different from any other affiliate promotion you do – only a small percentage of prospects you send to any one offer will buy, and this is no different. So why not remember to promote the higher-end giveaways like the FreePLR event, both to give your list great free resources and to boost your affiliate earnings?

The second option works equally well – you give away a free resource that has your affiliate links already branded inside the e-book. Since you’re the one giving away the e-book, you can choose to leave it online year-round – just schedule any promotions you do for it to run between the giveaways you promote, as opposed to at conflicting times.

Now don’t worry – it’s not like you have to create these e-books yourself… There are various places you can get them already ready to go, provided by the merchant themselves and ready to brand with your own affiliate links. The source I like best for them, since it covers a number of topics and a number of different affiliate programs, is run by well-know Internet marketing ‘big dog’ Jeff Dedrick.

His brandable e-books site provides numerous brandable e-books for you to give away after inserting your own affiliate links in them. In fact, Jeff even provides the squeeze pages for you to give them away from! This basic service is free, and there are higher-level services available too if you decide to opt for one of the paid levels of membership. To see what all’s available free, just take a look at Jeff Dedrick’s Viral E-Book site here.

So there you have it. Affiliate marketing will never be easier than just giving away free resources. I’m sure by now ideas for promoting these through your mailing lists, article submissions, blog posts, tweets, podcasts and videos are running through your head – after all, what can be easier to promote than valuable products for free.

Making money as an affiliate just doesn’t get any easier than this, so why not add a few of these to your current affiliate promotions and boost your affiliate commissions almost on autopilot? To get started, join the FreePLR Affiliate Program here, then get your free brandable e-books from Jeff Dedrick’s site here.

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