How to Easily Increase Your Affiliate Commissions in Two Days or Less

How to Easily Increase Your Affiliate Commissions
in Two Days or Less
Mark Joyner, CEO, Aesop.Com

Clearly, the people benefiting the most from
affiliate programs are the companies running
them. My goal here is to help you - the
affiliate - earn more money. If you've gotten
past the idea that you can simply slap a banner
up on your site and start earning money, but
you're not sure what to do next, this article is
for you.

Allow me to cut right to the chase. Here is a
plan of action. This may seem like a lot of
work, but don't worry! At the very end, I'll show
you how to automate all of these steps. For now,
just read through to get a general idea of how
you need to proceed:

Day 1

Step 1- Vow to organize your affiliate efforts.
Begin with organizing all contact information,
payment information, and vital statistics about
your affiliate programs in one central location.
This may seem like a silly step, but believe me;
you don't want to spend your time digging through
emails for contact information and codes. You
should also know, with just a few mouse clicks,
how much is owed you by the various affiliate
programs in which you are participating.

Step 2 - Select one affiliate program on which to
focus your efforts for the next 3 weeks. In
order to apply some of the various principles I
will show you in a few moments, you need to
select one area of focus. It's best to select an
affiliate program that has several products,
instant online tracking of sales, instant
notification of sales, and the ability to segment
your promotions. Internet Marketing ProShop has
all of this and more.

Step 3 - Select three promotion methods and two
products to promote.

This is crucial. This will make sense in a few
moments. If you can't think of three promotion
methods, here are a few ideas:

An ad in someone else's eZine

A mailing to your own subscription list

A text link on your site with some ad copy

A banner on your site

A product review on your site

An FFA submission

Now, some of these methods are more effective
than others. But you don't need me to tell you
that. I'll show you how to find out for
yourself.

Step 4 - For each promotion method and each
product, develop two ads. So, since you have
three promotion methods, two products, and two
ads for each - you will have to write 12 ads
total. So, for each ad, let's give it a code.
If it's method one, product one, ad one, you can
call it:

M1P1A1

For method one, product one, ad two, you can call
it:

M1P1A2

For example, if you plan to promote my marketing
course 1,001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics
using ads in someone else's eZine, you will need
two ads. One would be M1P1A1, and the other
would be M1P1A2. If you also plan to promote it
using a review on your site, the first review
would be M2P1A1 (method 2, product 1, ad 1) and
the second would be M2P1A2 (method 2, product 1,
ad 2).

This is just one way to code your ads. You can
do this any way you like as long as you can
distinguish precisely which campaign these codes
refer to.

This sounds like a lot of writing. Don't be
daunted by this! Just crank it out. Don't think
too much about each ad. We'll find out in a
while which one is good and which one is bad.
You won't decide this - your customers will!
Don't be afraid to try something wild.

Now, when you promote each product, you'll need
to tie each promotion to the code you created.
With the Internet Marketing ProShop Partner
program, you can segment your campaigns by adding
an _code to the end of the URL you use to promote
each product.

For example, if you are promoting 1,001 Killer
Internet Marketing Tactics, you would use this
URL:

...../kt.cgi?sponsorID

To segment your campaigns, you would add your
campaign code on the end of that URL for each
campaign:

...../kt.cgi?sponsorID_M1P1A1 (for campaign one)

...../kt.cgi?sponsorID_M1P1A2 (for campaign two)

Note: The above method is only valid for our
affiliate program, so don't try this with any
other affiliate program. We don't know of any
other affiliate programs that allow you to
segment your campaigns, this way, so please use
caution here.

Step 5 - Before you finish for the day, promote
the product using your "ad 1" for each product.

You'll need to record:

Impressions. If you're advertising on a web
page, this will be the number of times your ad
appeared on the page - or the number of times the
page was viewed if your ad comes up each time the
page is viewed. If you're advertising using some
form of email, impressions = number of emails
sent.

Clicks. You should be able to get this from the
affiliate program you are promoting.

Amount Earned. Again, your affiliate program
should provide this information to you in real
time.

Now, in order to do a valid test, you'll need to
promote to a fairly significant number of people.
I would recommend that at least 300 people see
each ad. Otherwise, you won't have enough
information to make a valid judgment. Ideally,
you should hit about 2,000 with each ad, but your
resources may not allow for this.

*Learning point: If you're going to send an ad
via a newsletter, see if you can run a "split".
That is, get one ad sent to 1/2 of the list and
another sent to the other 1/2. That is the most
accurate way to compare the effectiveness of any
pair of ads.

Day 2

Step 6 - Run your "B" ads. Now that you have run
your "A" ads and have given them a bit of time to
take effect, run your B ads. Do this first thing
this morning!

By the end of the day, you should have some good
results from both campaigns to compare and see
where you stand.

By comparing and analyzing all of the information
you have just compiled, you will be able to start
to have a good idea about:

Which product seems to sell more. Which type of
campaign is most effective Which type of ad for
each campaign is most effective This short bit
of testing won't allow you to make clear
conclusions, but it will put you on the right
track. Immediately, you should start using the
ads that sell as much as you can. If ad A is
making you 5 cents per impression and ad B is
making you 5 dollars per impression - using ad B
just increased your affiliate commissions by
9900%! OK, that's a dramatic example, but you
get the point, right? If you aren't tracking
these things, you'll never know. If you track
and continue to refine, before you know it,
you'll have an arsenal of ads that you know pull
well to use over and over again. Once you do the
leg work, it's easy!

As you see, though, this can get quite complex.
How does one actually analyze these campaigns?
What if you have scores of affiliate programs and
quite a few campaigns for each?

Don't worry. As I told you at the beginning,
there is an easy, cost effective way to keep
track of all of these things with just a few
mouse clicks. It's called Affiliate Assistant.

I highly recommend checking this out as it will,
among other things, allow you to quickly and
easily implement the above plan in one central
location. With just a few mouse clicks you can
compare and analyze all of your various affiliate
ad campaigns so you'll know which are making you
money and which are wasting you time.

You could do all of the same things yourself with
a good database program and multiple
spreadsheets, but Affiliate Assistant will save
you quite a bit of time and money without having
to go through all that.

Either way, you should implement some type of
organizational and tracking plan like this for
your affiliate advertising efforts immediately.
The amount of time you put into this will pay off
exponentially in terms of higher commissions.

Article by Mark Joyner, CEO of Aesop Marketing
Corporation and creator of 1001 Killer Internet
Marketing Tactics - a *must have* tool for
anyone serious about doing business on the
Internet. Do yourself a favor and check this
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