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Whether you’re an old affiliate or just started, this document is the starting point for any action you’ll take as an affiliate.

1. First Things First

If you’re just starting, take the following two actions:

1. Bookmark this page. Anytime you’re wondering what to do next or looking for new afilate ideas, remember, this page is your road map. It will have all the instructions necessary for you to become a successful affiliate.
2. Subscribe to this article. Scroll down to the bottom of this page and click “subscribe” and fill out your information. That will keep you notified of any updates or changes that are made to this page. This is important because as we get feedback from affiliates on what works well and what under-performs we will be passing that information on to you right here on this page. We want you to succeed so we’re always going to keep you informed.
3. Memorize your affiliate number. Your affiliate number is how the site knows who you send to it as compared to anyone else that just happens to come to the site. If you send someone to the site without your affiliate number and they sign up there’s no way for us to know you sent them. When you login to the affiliate area take note of the URL in the top right box labeled “Standard Linking Code”. Notice it’s the full website name (www.WifiSecurityGuy.com) with your affiliate number and “.html” added to the end. If you send that URL to people in an email and they click it the system knows you sent them and credits you for the sale when they sign up - and you get credited every month thereafter.

Now that you’ve got that out of the way, follow the rest of this page basically from top to bottom. The steps listed at the top are important learning steps for you to do first. They’ll teach you the basics of using the affiliate program and lay a foundation for more advanced things as you go along.

2. Overall Strategy.

There are two main ways you can build your list of accounts that pay you ever month. The first is by starting with inviting people you know to the website using special URLs you will create (more on that in a minute). The second is by increasing that list of people you know. The second way is the advanced way, but don’t let it scare you. Once you go through some of the simple strategies with the people you already know you’ll see how easy the second way really is. And don’t think you have to be super computer-literate to do it. Anyone with a basic knowledge of computers and the Internet can do everything listed here.

3. Make Your List.

We have to start with making a list of prospective people to send to the site. Your email address book is a good place to start. I have well over 2,000 email addresses in my address book. I got them all by never deleting any addresses, no matter how “unimportant” they were. In marketing it all comes down to numbers. The more contacts you have the greater the chances of your success. Don’t worry if you have a small address book (I admit mine is huge compared to most people’s), we have ways of expanding your list. But the first thing you have to do is create a list of people you’re going to email. As you meet more people in life, business, through friendship, etc, remember to get their email address and add them to the list. This list is going to be the key to your affiliate success.

You may want to save this list in a separate document, like by copying all the emails out to a word or text document, but this isn’t necessary. The bottom line is you need to have these addresses in one place that’s easy for you to manage. If you use your address book you may be able to sort your addresses by category, or by adding the addresses to a special “new” address book you can create, or by even creating an address “list” in your address book.

Another way to track your list is to create your own mailing list. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on mailing lists here, here’s a brief overview. A mailing list is something that “lives” on a mail server. It has a list of all of the email addresses “subscribed” to that list. Whenever you send an email to that mailing list, the server in turn copies that email out to every address in the list. If people no longer want to receive email from you, or the server has problems delivering email to certain addresses, it automatically “cleans” the list by taking those addresses off of the list. As you meet new people you go to the server and add those emails to the list and the next time you send out an email the new people will automatically receive it. It’s a simple way to track all of your email addresses, and it keeps you from having to send out hundreds of emails to all your contacts, you just send out one email to the email list address and it does all the rest. If you’re interested in your own mailing list, use the contact form and let me know so we can help you get that setup.

4. What To Email.

One thing I’ve learned in today’s fast-paced and interruption-filled world is people can’t take long advertisements. And most people will be turned off by an advertisement right away.

The best way to get people to purchase any service or product is by warming them up to it in small pieces. For example, let’s say you have a 10-minute long “ad” for a service. You can’t send that entire “ad” to them all at one time. Most people will read the first paragraph or so, realize it’s really long and they don’t have time for it now so they stop right there. Since you sent them the entire ad already you would be shooting yourself in the foot by sending the entire ad all over again. As soon as they see it’s the same ad they quit reading again. Eventually they just ignore your emails altogether.

A better approach would be to break that 10 minute ad into 20 small 30-second chunks. There are several reasons for this. The first is they don’t get the feeling they are being sold something. A small chunk can be made to look “informative” not “intrusive”. Notice by sending the long 10-minute ad above they gave it 30 seconds or so and then diverted their attention to something else. Well by sending them only 30 seconds your email probably wont be interrupted. They see the small email, it plants an idea in their mind, and they move on.

Another advantage is if they ignore one or two emails (or don’t have time to read them) they won’t miss much. If they only catch 8 minutes of your total 10 minutes of small ads they will still get enough information for them to make an informed decision about the product or service you are bringing to their attention.

The best things to put in an email are a couple sentences encouraging them to look at this article, listen to this audio, or watch this video, and a link to that content. And always ask them for their feedback or ideas. If you can get them into a conversation you’re well on your way to selling them.

Here’s an email I used to let people know about the first radio ad:

Hello everyone.

Just dropping you a quick note. You’ve probably already heard about this radio ad, but just in case you’ve missed it I wanted to make sure you get it. You can listen to the ad on this page:

link to the radio ad

And of course for more information, go here:

link to the home page

You can personalize that by putting in their first name instead of “everyone”. Notice how short it is, and how it assumes they may have already heard about it - that gives the impression that there’s a “buzz” about the ad already (and there was - putting that radio ad up on the website doubled the website activity in just one day).

Sending the user to the site is very important. The site “sells” the product for you. If they get curious they will look around and learn more about the service. If you had the radio ad in the email you send them there’s very little chance they’ll go to the site.

5. How To Create A URL.

Don’t just copy and paste URLs from the site to your email list. It’s great that you’re going to send them to the site, but unless you send them using special URLs you wont get the credit for signing them up. And with all the advertising that’s going on, and all the other affiliates already promoting the service it would be impossible for us to know you sent them to the site and not someone else, or that they didn’t hear or see a radio/TV/newspaper ad and come on their own.

So, you need to create your own special links to send them. When they come to the site using your special links the site does two things to remember them as having come from you: (1) it sets a cookie on their computer and (2) it records their IP address just in case their browser doesn’t save cookies. When they sign up for the service the site will remember them by either their cookie or their IP address (or both) and give you the credit.

Now that you know the importance of creating your own links to send in emails, you can read this step-by-step article on how to create a link to any page on the site: Creating Your Own URLs. The page even gives a sample email you would send out.

6. How Frequently To Email.

Just like sending a full 10-minute ad in one email would be over-kill, sending too many emails close together will have the same effect.

You should send one email to your list once a week. If you email more frequently you run the risk of people getting irritated by your emails, if you email less frequently you run the risk of people forgetting what you sent them last time. You want the emails to “chain” together into one “long ad” over a period of time until they realize they need to buy.

Marketing research has found that it can take up to 17 exposures to a product before people make a choice to buy. Something like the first 7-11 times a person hears a regular ad, it doesn’t even register in their mind. So be patient and just consistently send an email on a regular basis.

7. You Got A Sale!

Once they come and buy take them off your list and start a second list: “convert to affiliate”. Now that they are using the service you want to get them to recommend the service to their friends. You’ll make $1.50 for each of those recommendations, and $1 for everyone their friends recommend. The incentive for them is if they just get 3 to sign up, their service is free.

Now you work the “convert to affiliate” list of emails the same way you did your prospect list. Send an email every week with a link to another affiliate-type page (not this one). They don’t need to know what to do after they are an affiliate until after they become an affiliate. Create links to the affiliate information pages that explain how they can (a) get a free account and (b) make money, as well as the different affiliate testimonial pages as they get added.

8. Coming Soon…

• How to operate your own mailing list.
• Getting large numbers of emails for your mailing list dirt-cheap.
• Creating your own website to promote Wifi Security Guy - why you need it to become a super affiliate and how easy it is to do.
• Tips and tricks from the most successful affiliates.

Tags: affiliate, Affiliate Info

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am and is filed under Ads, Affiliate Info, Audio, General, Hacker Tools, News, Print, Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.