What is the most difficult task you face as an affiliate marketer? There are many but I am sure you will agree setting yourself apart from other affiliates sits near the top of your list. How can you differentiate yourself from all the other schmoes out there offering the exact same thing you are?
If you’re like most you rely on ad copy and marketing skills make customers think your offer is different. You track PPC campaigns and adjust your bids to scrape out positions and bump your competition into oblivion. You use redirection tricks and slight of word to eek out that extra customer from the competing ads. You do everything in your power to have the other guy’s ad not appear at all. What if you could stop all the scraping and bumping and actually be different?
Imagine being able to slide in next to a successful campaign of another affiliate marketer and start sucking customers right off their plate? Imagine sliding into a niche and immediately catapulting yourself to a top selling position? Well you can, and the secret is…
Before you discover this powerful tactic you need to have at least one tool in place. For this to work you need to have your own web space. I say space instead of site because you don’t need related pages with navigation and consistent graphics and all the other things that you need for a traditional web site. All you need is a place to put single pages and to put images for use in other “free” advertising venues.
On a side note, if you think having web space is an option to your affiliate marketing endeavors you’re wrong. You may be able to make some money but you’ll never excel and won’t be able to take advantage of many opportunities, including the one I’ll share with you shortly. If you’re not willing to invest $10 per month in your business you should just stop and figure out how to make more money with your job. Hostgator offers a great value with enough space and bandwidth to accommodate anything your affiliate campaigns can throw at it. It’s the web host choice of many marketers, including myself a 10 year web developer veteran.
So here it is, the tactic that will propel you past your competition.
Take advantage of affiliate program campaigns that allow you to offer incentives. Some of you may be groaning at this point as you think about the sites offering free iPods for trudging through a gagillion pages of offers and pestering your friends to do the same. I feel your pain, and that’s not what this technique is about.
No, you will find this tactic is much easier and more effective. What you need to do is find an inexpensive product or service that is highly targeted to the audience of your affiliate marketing offer. For example, if you are promoting an eBay success product that pays $30 offer to send a book about eBay that you can pick up on Amazon for $10. You’ll need to test different incentives for customer pull and conversions rates but with a little effort you will find an offer that makes you more profit even though you make less on each sale.
So there you have it. With your creativity and knowledge of your market you can go forth and dominate your niches. Seek out the affiliate programs that allow you to incentives some or all of your offers. Now go slam the market and live your dreams.
