Affiliate Partner Training
Dear Affiliate Partner:
Gone are the days when you could simply put a banner on your website and make a lot of money through an affiliate program. Most web surfers are immune to banners and suffer from what is commonly referred to as “banner blindness”. Banner graphics still have their place in the marketing process, but if you really want to make a good income from affiliate marketing you’ll need to take it several steps further. When you do, your message will set you apart from the crowd and you’ll start making a great income as an affiliate.
Our affiliate marketing guide includes 15 surefire ways to help you generate an income from the Christian Homemaking Affiliate Program. We want you to be as successful as possbile with your promotions and that is why we have provided this guide.
Thank you so much for putting your faith in us. We highly value your partnership in promoting the Christian Homemaking products and programs. May God bless the work of your hands as you share what Christian Homemaking has to offer.
Sincerely,
Blair Massey
Christian-Homemaking.com
Affiliate Marketing Guide
1. Get to Know the Christian Homemaking Products. You can do a better job of promoting a product if you are familiar with it and like it. We’re not just saying this to get you to try our products. Studies show that a personal recommendation based on good product knowledge is the number one way to boost sales.
2. Write Your Own Recommendations and Ads: You can always use any pre-written text provided in our Affiliate Center to see how it works for you, but it’s generally better to write your own recommendations and ads. They add that personal touch that will persuade people to find out more.
Tips for Writing Ads & Recommendations
- Be aware of Your target reader’s needs. Know which benefits (most important!) of the product or program will appeal to them.
- Share your experience. Give concrete examples of how the product or program has helped you. Don’t just say you love it…illustrate the benefits. Benefits are the emotional and physical results that the product or program to helped you to achieve. Here is an example of something a member wrote to us recently…
“Our home was a wreck. We were at our wits end with no relief in sight. I always felt ashamed of the way our home looked but I just didn’t know how to change things. You have shown me how to put God in the center of my homemaking, something I had never learned how to do. Now the clutter is gone, our home is organized and best of all we have peace in our lives. I praise God that I found your program. Thank you for showing me how to change my heart and in turn, change my home.”
Give Information, Not A Sales Pitch
They’ll get a sales pitch when they get to our website. Keep the tone informational, friendly and benefit based…gain the trust of your reader first. Your job is to warm up the prospect. We’ll close the sale.
More Internet Writing Tips
- Use a provocative, attention-getting headline. Ask a question, then give them the hard to resist benefits.
- Prove your claims. Don’t say, “It worked for me”. Say, HOW it worked for you. Explain results you achieved after using the product or program.
- Avoid excessive exclamation points!!!!!! It looks like insincere hype.
- Avoid excessive capitalization. WRITING IN ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS IS LIKE SHOUTING! Don’t yell at your readers.
- Keep it simple. People tend to skim while reading on the net and it can be hard on the eyes. Some ways to do this are to: break up your paragraphs into bit-sized chunks – use headlines and subheadings — write in short sentences with simple language.
3. Never Expect a Banner or a Graphic to Do All the Work for You: “Banner blindness” is a common phenomena as we’ve already mentioned. In other words, people ignore banners. Although graphics can grab the attention of a website visitor, text and information is what they’re looking for when they want to buy.
4. Create a Whole Page Recommendation Dedicated to the Product or Program: Now, we’re not trying to push our way onto your website by asking for a whole page. The fact of the matter is that full page recommendations really work.
Benefits of Full Page Recommendations
- Permits targeting specific keyword phrases to rank well on search engines.
- Commands your visitor’s full attention.
- Allows you to go into detail about why you like and recommend the product. Include product benefits, personal experiences, graphics and anything else you feel is relevant. You can NEVER give too much information.
- Helps you warm up your visitor to the product before sending them to the website for a sales pitch.
How to Use Your Full Page Recommendation
- Optimize your page for search engine visitors. Do your keyword research at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com to see what people are looking for and optimize your page for that. Include your chosen keyword phrase(s) in your title tag, description tag, page content, etc.
- Link to your full page recommendation from various areas of your website. Perhaps you’ll put a graphic and a little introductory information on your home page. Then, you can give your visitors the option of following the link to the sales website or reading more about your product review.
- Recommend the Christian Homemaking products or program to others in email or on message boards (only where allowed), and send them to your product review page. An affiliate link is often looked upon with suspicion and may not be allowed on a message board. Besides, you know these people; they want to know YOUR opinion. What they don’t want a sales pitch from us.
5. Write Articles on Related Topics to Draw in Traffic & Interest: Write articles about anything related to the Christian Homemaking products. You can include a subtle recommendation for the product within the article or in your signature line.
Article Writing Tips
- Provide “real” information and tips in your articles. Make sure it doesn’t sound like a sales pitch. Any recommendations you make should be added value to your article. The recommendation should not be its main purpose.
- Some marketers say to never put your recommendation or what you are selling in the body of your article. They say it belongs in your byline. But let’s be serious. People will read your article, but they don’t always read the byline. They are just grateful to get good information. As long as you write a highly informative article, your recommendation certainly has a place within the article itself.
- Not sure what to write about? This is a common problem. Here is an idea to get you started, but you are encouraged to come up with your own ideas, too: Write a list of your top 5 home management tips. Include a short explanation of each tip. Number each tip in your article. Add an opening paragraph and a concluding sentence and there you have your article.
- When writing your articles, always keep your target reader and her desires in mind.
Getting Your Articles Published
Of course, you should publish your articles on your website and in your newsletter. You can also find other web publishers to run your articles as well. Many will not mind the inclusion of an affiliate link, as long as your article contains good, solid content.
Hide Your Affiliate Links in Your Email Articles
If you’d prefer to keep people from seeing that your recommendation comes with an affiliate link, you can do the following:
- Redirect a page from your website to your affiliate link, so it will read something like: www.yourdomain.com/keeping up/ but it will send visitors directly to the membership sales page with your affiliate link. Check if your hosting control panel allows for easy redirects.
- Send traffic to your full page recommendation. That way, you don’t have to include your affiliate link in the article.
Where to Send Your Articles for Publishing & Consideration
We have compiled a short list of places that accept Ezine article submissions. Be sure to read all the submission guidelines before sending your articles.
www.EzineArticles.com
www.GoArticles.com
www.IdeaMarketers.com
www.ArticleCentral.com
www.GreatArticlesforMoms.com
www.Amazines.com
Make your articles available from your website. Include a note in your articles which states they are available for reprint as long as your byline and links remain intact.
Offer your articles to members of your networking groups or people you know that have newsletters targeting your market. Generally, you should not post your articles to groups unless they specifically allow this. Just let them know you have some free content that may interest them.
6. Promote the Products in Your Opt-in Newsletter: People buy from people they know, like and trust. If you have an opt-in newsletter list, tell them about the Christian Homemaking products and programs. If you have a letter from the editor section, why not tell your readers about the product and how it has helped you. Your personal recommendations will go a long way in boosting your sales.
7. Promote Christian Homemaking products on Highly Trafficked and Relevant Pages of Your Website: Check your website statistics to see which pages visitors view the most. These are great target areas for your promotions, especially if they are relevant to our product line.
8. Promote Christian Homemaking Products and Programs in Your Signature Line: If you frequent message boards or belong to email groups that allow signatures, tell people about the great products you found. Include your signature in all your business and personal emails, too.
9. Offer a Freebie With Purchase: It doesn’t hurt to give your visitors a little incentive to buy the products. You could give out a free consultation, a free e-book– whatever you think your visitors would like–when they make a purchase. Just ask them to forward their email sales receipt to you. Email receipts do not include credit card information, so it should be safe to forward this information.
10. Promote the Christian Homemaking Products and Programs on Your Thank You Pages: After a visitor has made a purchase from you, give them a recommendation for the Christian Homemaking products on the thank you page. They are about to leave your website, so this is a great time to give them this extra information.
11. Promote the Christian Homemaking Products and Programs on Your Custom “error” (404) Pages: You know that page that shows up when your visitors enter a URL in wrong? Don’t waste this space; use it to promote an affiliate product.
12. Promote the Christian Homemaking Products in Your Thank You Emails: Whether you’re saying thanks for joining the newsletter or for buying a product, always give your email recipients a product recommendation. This is the perfect opportunity for a backend sale.
13. Try an Exit Window or Pop up Window: Annoying or not – pop ups work. Stick with one tasteful pop-up targeted to your website visitor and you’ll see great results. Here’s a simple pop up window script.
Create an html document that will serve as your pop-up document. Then insert this javascript code into the page where you want the pop up to appear.
Place the following script between the <head> </head> tags of your HTML document: (make sure to specify the URL of your HTML document and a width and height for your pop-up)
<SCRIPT>
<!–
function WindowOpen() {msg=window.open(‘http://www.yourdomain.com, ‘Sample’, ‘toolbar=no’,
‘location=no’,
‘directories=no’,
‘status=yes’,
‘menubar=yes’,
‘scrollbars=yes’,
‘resizable=no’,
‘copyhistory=yes’,
‘width=0′,’height=0′);}
//–></SCRIPT>
Then this part goes in the <body> tag of your html document:
<body onLoad=WindowOpen()>
14. Autoresponder Courses: Create an Autoresponder course on a topic related to the Christian Homemaking product or program you are recommending. Include lots of great information about the topic and subtly promote the product at the end of, or within, your lessons. You can deliver the course every day for a certain period, once a week or whatever frequency you choose.
You can set up an autoresponder course through aWeber. This is the same service that we have use at Christian-Homemaking.com for the last six years. It is very reliable and easy to use.
15. Promote our Affiliate Program to Your Friends & Colleagues: You can use the same tips above to promote the affiliate program to others. Remember, you receive 2% commissions on the sales of any affiliates you refer to the program.
These are just a few of the ways you can promote the Christian Homemaking products successfully and inexpensively. Make sure that you check back to the Affiliate Center often for more tools and material that are to come. We want to help you be successful!
