Affiliate Marketing Tips – Using Simple “How To” guides for Automated Traffic & Revenue
Is your website in dire need of a serious traffic injection? Do you suffer from measly commissions, or are they simply non existent? If so, then I’ve got something pretty cool for you today. The affiliate marketing tips I’m about to share are “old school”, yet very effective. Most online marketers completely ignore this strategy, which means less competition and more opportunity for you to dig in to this highly profitable method.
So what is this super duper strategy? It’s all about creating and sharing special reports. And believe it or not, these reports can build you a highly engaged email list while bringing in some juicy commissions at the same time.
What the heck are special reports?
Special reports are short reports that contain helpful information on a subject. The reports are anywhere from a few to 30 or so pages in length. The most popular ones are “how to” guides. They direct a reader, step by step, how to do something.
The biggest advantage of these small reports is that they work in every niche you can think of. People are always having trouble figuring out something and you could offer them help. Your main goal is to detect a problem in a certain niche and offer people an easy solution.
For example:
- How to get your first 1000 email subscribers
- How to create granny’s square patterns with free online tools
- How to prepare the best bait for bass fishing
- etc…
Creating “how to” guides doesn’t take too much time and they most definitely are versatile tools for building your online business. If you have knowledge about a certain subject, you can easily write them yourself. If your writing skills are absolutely terrible you could hire a ghostwriter to do it for you. Another good idea would be to use what I’d like to call the “cheat method”, or simply put re-purposing PLR content.
Let’s say you just want to create a 20-30 page report and you got the private label rights to a 80 page e-book. You can edit it down to a “best of” 25 page report by cutting out the 55 least helpful pages. That way your reader gets just the essence, the best parts of that 80 page book. What do you edit? Well since it is private label rights, you can change anything you want.
Don’t forget to add some affiliate links throughout your content, preferably evergreen products that come with recurring billing. Once people start to see results from a program that you recommended in your report, they are more inclined to stay with the program.
Marketing your special reports
If you are trying to build an email list, use these reports as a free giveaway for anyone who signs up to your mailing list. For this type of promotion, you might want to consider using a smaller report. A 10 page report filled with quality content is more than enough.
You can create a five-part course and use the first part as the free promotion. It is your hook. Once people sign up for your mailing list, you can grant them access to the other parts through emails that also advertise your paid products.
A great way to get a lot of eyeballs on your report is to give others an incentive to share your report. But how do you incentivize an average member of your audience? You offer anyone who shares it something highly desirable and valuable, such as another free product or a serious discount on a paid product.
Let’s pretend for a minute that you’re offering a free guide on how to lose weight fast. You can offer anyone who shares it with their friends another freebie, such as a low-calorie cookbook. E.G., “Share this report on Facebook or Twitter, and we’ll send you this awesome cookbook for free!”
You can use online tools like PerkZilla.com or Kingsumo.com to automate the process of handing out rewards for those who share your free report.
All of your special reports don’t have to go towards building an email list. Apart from your other products or services, you can sell special reports on your website. Many reports sell for between $7 and $27 a piece, but if you offer very valuable information, you might want to consider asking a higher price. You could sell single reports or create a whole sales funnel of highly related reports.
People love to learn about money-making opportunities. They will pay a good amount of money for any information that is a how-to guide to making money online in various ways. How have you made money? That answer could be a good subject for your special reports.
As your online business grows, you might want to create an affiliate program. This gives your customers a way to make money while growing your business at the same time. Offer certain special reports for free as an additional bonus when they reach a certain selling level in your affiliate program.
There are a number of ways to use special reports. As you continuously grow your digital assets, alternate the free promotional reports and continue to sell your entire line of products, creating combination offers such as Buy Two, Get One Free.
While your special reports are building you a highly targeted mailing list, they are also making you money. With such a low cost to create them, your profit margin is huge.
These affiliate marketing tips are not a shiny new bauble, but a method that brings in the paycheck for a lot of “old school marketers”. Don’t underestimate the power of this strategy.
As it goes, my buddy Jeremy just released an amazing course about these simple “how to” guides. He’s basically giving you his exact framework that has made him multiple 6-figures since 2012. You might want to check it out over HERE.