Step 4: A Product to Promote - Affiliate Marketing

To be able to make money online, you must have something to promote or sell. Chances are that you do not have your own product yet, if you have only just started your online business. 

This should not keep you from starting to earn money, though. Every day that you wait and do not take action you lose money, because you could make a sale every single day, even if you do not have a product of your own.

There are thousands of affiliate programs out there. I am almost sure that you will find a high-quality product in your niche that you would enjoy to read or watch (if it is a video series) yourself. That’s exactly what you are looking for. A product that is really valuable to people in your niche because it addresses their questions and concerns.

Another factor of importance is the affiliate commission that you can earn. You can even find sellers who will give you as much as 75 % or even 100% of the front-end product sales. This is not because they do not want to earn money themselves, but because they know that it is with the upsells that they can make the big money. So the 100% affiliate commission is your payment for promoting the seller.  It is a win-win situation for both of you. The seller gets more customers who have proven to be willing to spend money online; you can make money without having a product of your own.

Once you have identified a product, that fulfills your criteria, join the affiliate program and start your first campaign.

With most affiliate programs you get a made-for-you squeeze page, so you do not have to bother setting up a sales page.

A very good method to increase sales is to set one of those affiliate squeeze pages as confirmation page of your autoresponder subscription. By default in many autoresponders your subscribers would only see a simple "Thank you" page. But they also give you the possibility to insert your own "Thank you" URL. 

Why miss out on this extra chance to make some money?

To make it easier for you to find your first affiliate products, here are some affiliate marketplaces where you can find high-quality products:

Clickbank

JVzoo

Payspree

PayDOTcom

Step Three: Your Own Squeeze Page

The next important step to your online success is a squeeze page/ capture page that converts well. There are different ways to create such a squeeze page.

1. If you chose TrafficWave as your autoresponder you are lucky, because there is an integrated free capture page creator and TrafficWave also hosts your squeeze page for you for free.
   The tool is quite simple to use. There are a lot of templates to choose from and the opt-in form for the respective autoresponder campaign is integrated automatically. So even if you do not have any programing or HTML experience you can set up your squeeze page within minutes.
   In case that your autoresponder is Getresponse, you also have an integrated squeeze page tool there. I have never tried it, though, and therefore cannot tell you whether it is as easy to use, as it is not free. Getresponse charges an additional monthly rate for the use of the squeeze page creator. Probably other professional autoresponder sites also make the necessary tools available to you, to set up a squeeze page. Just check back with your provider.
2. You can find a lot of free squeeze page creators by a simple Google search. Basically those tools will do the same for you as the capture page creators integrated in your autoresponder account. The main difference is, that you will have to insert the HTML or Javascript code for your opt-in form there manually.
3. If you are promoting a product or service as an affiliate, very often you will get made-for-you squeeze-pages from the affiliate site of the company. This of course is the easiest way to get a capture page; it is less flexible, though, than the other possibilities as the use is limited to their product/service.
4. The last possibility to create a squeeze page is only an option for you, if you do know how to set-up a website yourself and how to integrate the HTML or Javascript code for your opt-in form. I will not explain this here in further detail, because if you are this advanced, you will surely not need my explanation. ;)

Now that you know, where you can get a squeeze page from, we still need to have a closer look at the content.

A problem with many squeeze pages is that there is way too much text. The best converting capture pages are limited to the essentials: A title, a subtitle, a SHORT text, an image (optional) and, most important, the opt-in form. As far as the opt-in form is concerned you should also limit yourself to what is absolutely necessary. The more information you ask from the visitors of your site, the less subscriptions you will get. The best converting squeeze pages are those, where you just have to insert your email address. So unless there is a really good reason why you need more information from your subscribers, you should not ask for more than just the name and the email address.

Here are some examples:

Self created
http://mindpower4.wix.com/pre-launch
 

Provided by the company

http://offer.myaax.com/4602/

Created with TrafficWave tool

http://lcp.trwv.net/lcp/mindpowerteam/teamatlantis/47004

Second Step: You Need An Autoresponder

As I said before: There are many people out there who want to make you believe that you do not need an email list to be successful online. 

Don't you believe them a single word!

You need a list to stay in contact with potential customers and buyers and to build a relationship based on trust with them. 

With your autoresponder you get the chance to provide valuable information to your potential customers and thus build credibility and an expert status in your niche. And this is also one of the most important rules that you have to respect: Do not spam your list. Do not try to sell something in every message you send out, but give your potentials information for free that is very valuable to them.

Having explained why you should absolutely have an autoresponder, we should talk about the different options to get one. I have three different autoresponders that I work with. And everyone has its advantages and disadvantages.

1. An autoresponder software installed on one of my websites
   This is great, because I bought the software once (for only about $ 50) and can use it without any limitations now. The software is not really up to date, though, and therefore the opt-in forms have a somewhat old-fashioned look.
2. Getresponse
   The Getresponse autoresponder is really modern and offers a lot of templates and features. Furthermore you get really good list building training for free there. The lowest monthly rate is for up to 1,000 subscribers. Once you get more subscribers you have to pay more - this is no problem in the beginning but as you list grows, it can be quite expensive.
3. TrafficWave
   TrafficWave offers all the features you need from an autoresponder, but there is more. E.g. you can set up a capture (squeeze) page that is hosted by TrafficWave for you in just a few very simple steps. One more advantage is that no matter how many autoresponder campaigns you create and how many subscribers you manage in your lists: the price always stays the same. What I like most about TrafficWave, though, is the affiliate program. If you want to make money online, why only use an autoresponder as a customer. You can also promote your autoresponder. And with the commission of just three new users, your own TrafficWave account is paid for.
   And it get's even easier: If you join Team Atlantis, they will even help you get those three PAID referrals that will pay for your own account. If you want more information on Team Atlantis and TrafficWave, just click HERE.
   

Now that you hopefully have your first free giveaway and your autoresponder all set-up, we will talk about what a squeeze page should look like next time.

First Step: Create Your FREE Gift as Incentive for New Subscribers

I know, for many of us, creating content is the biggest challenge when it comes to building an online business. And content is, what you need everywhere: blogs, forums, article directories, email campaign and also products.

Now first of all: Your free product does not have to be a 200page ebook. A short report on your topic and/or a checklist (but make sure that it is valuable to your subscribers) are enough. And there are various possibilities to get this report.

1. If you have already produced content for other purposes (blog, article, etc.) you can re-arrange the information and create your very own giveaway.
2. You can search for PLR (Private Label Rights) content, that allows you to claim authorship. But you have to make absolutely sure that it is high quality content that you use - this is more often the case with paid offers.
   There is a lot of free PLR content available - but the quality most of the time is not good enough. You can use free PLR ebooks or reports, though, and re-write the content to create your free giveaway.
3. You can hire a ghostwriter to create your free giveaway for you. It is easy to find a cheap author on one of the many freelance platforms. The more input the author gets from you on the content and structure of the report the cheaper it will be and the BETTER the quality.

Something else that is important: Have fun! :)

How to Get Started With Your Online Business

Now there are a few things that you really cannot do without, if you want to earn money online. So without going into much detail, I want to list the essentials of every internet business here today. 

Within the next days and weeks, we can then discuss all these tools and I will explain how to set it all up step-by-step.

So what do you really need to get started with your online business?

1. A FREE giveaway to entice people to sign-up for your email list.
2. An autoresponder to build your list and to send mailings to your subscribers
3. A squeeze page, where you will send the traffic so that people subscribe to your list
4. A product to promote - this CAN be your own product, but you can also start by promoting other peoples products as affiliate
5. High quality, targeted traffic so that you get subscribers and hopefully also sales

Now actually, that is all for the moment. Once you have created or found your free giveaway and set-up the squeeze page and autoresponder, it has to become your daily routine to drive traffic to your landing page.

You could buy traffic - but make sure it is targeted traffic of high quality - or you can use a lot of free traffic sources, which require your time and effort, though.

Getting visitors is the actual work of each and every internet marketer. And it can be hard work, too. But do not be afraid. If you just do not give up, you will succeed in the end.

Do You Want To Earn $ 1,800 While You Sleep?

No, do not worry. I have not turned around and become one of those gurus who promise that you will make hundreds of dollars while you are sleeping …

I have read the like of above question quite often in the offers of binary options robots. They promise to achieve success rates of 75% - 90%. A lot of those trading bots are free to use. All you have to do is open an account with one of their preferred brokers, fund that account, activate the trading robot, and wait for your bank account to burst with money.

That's the theory: Don’t get me wrong. I am sure that if you took the time to learn something about binary trading and trading signals, and if you were to put in some effort, you can surely make money with binary trading.

My experience with those free trading bots tells me, though, that you cannot make money with them, even if their sample accounts displayed on the squeeze pages seem to make thousands and thousands of dollars.

For one thing, the sample accounts trade incessantly. And they use very short term options (e.g. 5 minutes). In this way, they get an incredible amount of trades per day. In fact, in those sample accounts, you hardly ever see a lost transaction.

Unfortunately this was not the same for me. Once I had set up the account with the broker, I had to fund it with $ 250. During the sales process I was promised several times, that my money would always be MY money. But after funding the account, I found out, that the minimum limit for a withdrawal was between $ 100 and $ 250 depending on whether you wanted to withdraw money by credit card or wire transfer. The fee for a withdrawal was between $ 25 and $ 50, and a levy of 10% of the account balance was to be charged for any withdrawal requested before the account reached a turnover of 200.

So you can see: The moment that I had funded that account, only part of the money was still mine.

But this was not the worst thing about my experience with the trading bot. While the sample account showed at least 4 to 5 trades per hour, as all the trades were rather short term, the bot only realized 4 to 5 trades per day with my account. And it never reached the promised success rate of over 90%. Actually my success rate was well below 50%, which meant that I was losing money every single day. 

So before the first week was over, my initial deposit had not turned into thousands of dollars as promised, but had just evaporated.

Therefore, if you want to try to earn money online with binary options, do not rely on any of those free trading bots, but learn everything you can about market signals and trade yourself.

I am quite sure that the only person who will make money with a free trading bot is the person offering the robot. I am sure that the affiliate commissions from the brokers for a new account that is opened are quite generous.

So I really cannot recommend to use one of those free binary trading bots!

Without a List You Have No Business

Time and again, I hear that it is not important to have an email list. People selling those easy money making systems want to make you believe that you can earn a lot of money without any effort. So list building does not fit into the picture. 

But do not believe those false prophets. An email list is not important ... it's VITAL to any business online.

There are three different ways to build an email lists:

1. You can buy a list
   But actually a bought list is not only absolutely useless, as you will hardly generate any sales with such a list, you might get into real trouble with it. All your mailings have to be CAN-SPAM compliant. And as the members of a bought list have never opted in to receiving information from YOU, you violate the law. For every single email that violates the CAN-SPAM Act, though, you may be fined $ 16,000. So if you send out a lot of mailings to a list you bought, you might be fined more than you could ever pay in your lifetime.
2. You can build a list of prospects
   One of the best and easiest ways to build a list of prospects is to have a FREE giveaway. People love free stuff. And if you provide high quality content for free, you do not only get more members for your email list, but you also build your credibility as an expert in your niche. If you have a powerful sales campaign in place, you can make quite a lot of money from your list of prospects, as they will be prepared to spend money on your products.
3. You build a customer list
   Your customer list includes everybody who has already bought something from you in the past. This is your most valuable list, because people on this list have shown that they are prepared to spend money on your topic. A very good possibility to add members to your customer list is to offer a product for less than $ 10, as a lot of people will buy products in this price range without thinking about it too much.

As you might have experienced yourself already, getting targeted, highly converting traffic to your website is hard work. Therefore it is important to make the most out of the people who have already shown interest in what you provide.That's why you absolutely need an email list.

“The money is in the list” – is not just a slogan of some internet gurus. It actually is true!