How Affiliate Marketing Works: 7 Day Cash Finder
Today we’re talking about finding a niche, getting a market, finding offers, setting up a site, and making it work, all in just seven days.
This can work for any niche that you’re going into.
We’re going to teach you how to get and hold attention by
- giving people what they want
- listening to their needs, and
- putting your ear to the market
This is a system that I’ve used over and over to make this stuff work. If you use it, you will get results.
Day 1: Find Market, Evaluate Traffic
This is designed to find and extract cash from any market.
First, what is a market? It’s a group of people. You want to find people with similarities. You can also think of this as your niche. These people have things in common, such as interests, favorite things, desires, or ideals.
1. Find a Market
So the first thing you want to do is find your market and understand what they want. You want to see where your market is hanging out.
There are a bunch of ways you can go about this. You could do this with keyword tools, such as the Google keyword tool, to find out what people are searching for. You can look at trends and topics that are booming, which you might find from YouTube or just from Google.
You can check out Facebook groups. Your market may even be hanging out in forums. These are great places to go, too.
2. Evaluate Traffic and Competition
Once you find your market, you want to evaluate your market.
What’s going on in your market? What are people doing? Is it going to be expensive?
You can go to the Google AdWords Planner and see if it’s going to be expensive. Or, you can check out banner ads to see if it’s going to be expensive. You can look at YouTube. You can look at forums.
Don’t just watch what’s happening in these spaces. See if you can respond. See if you can write things and get in on the conversation.
For example, you could go to Facebook and find out what it takes to make a Facebook group. See what you have to do to get involved in a group.
See what you have to do to make stuff work, and ask yourself, “Is this going to be worth my time?”
Obviously, if there are only nine people in the group, it’s probably not going to be worth your time. If there are only nine people watching your video, it’s probably not going to be worth your time, either.
But if there are a couple thousand people searching for it, then maybe that’s something you can do. Maybe it’s something you can work at.
As you’re evaluating your traffic, you also need to evaluate the competition.
Ask yourself, “What is the competition like?” You have to look at the competition and the barrier of entry. What’s the pay per click competition?
Are there any Facebook groups? Is there new content? Are there any videos? Are there images? What’s showing up? Are there forums? And how do you get involved? Is there something you can do here? Think about all these things, and let the market tell you what to do.
It’s very important that you look at the barrier of entry and the competition. Because if you don’t do this, you’re going to get into a market where you spend more than you make.
3. Research the Market
This is where you focus on research. You ask yourself, “What are other people doing?” Look at those paid ads, and focus on them.
What are people responding to? What questions are they asking on forums? What kind of ads are they clicking on? What kind of stuff are they doing on Facebook?
Day one is all about your market. On this day, you should also be getting your domain name and hosting. You can do this over at www.GoHubSite.com. Your domain name should be something related to your market. I would recommend doing this before anything else, but it doesn’t matter too much either way. Just make sure you do this step.
Day Two: Test Market, Direct Link
Next, you’re going to find your profit. Where are you going to make money? How are you going to do it?
1. Find Simple Offer
To find your offer, you can go to OfferVault. Once you do this, you could test it with direct linking.
So let’s say you’re on Facebook, or Instagram, or maybe you’re on forums, or whatever it may be. You could set up a simple page, or you could set up a redirect, and just link people directly to the offer. Then you can just see if you get sales.
I’ve had people try this and they’ve done pretty well with it, which is really, really cool.
2. Set Up Ad Group
Now, once you find your offers, you want to set up an ad group and test.
You can do this a few different ways. You could go to MSN, you can go to a place to do banner ads, you can SEO, you can do videos, things like that.
Then you want a direct link to the offer. This is how you’re going to get paid.
Let’s say you were looking at an offer for refinancing. You might find that you can make $170 when someone signs up and gets a quote on student loan refinancing. So you could do research for the market on student loan refinancing.
You might ask, “What are people talking about? Are there any forums?” Maybe there’s some kind of student loan refinancing forum. You could post a comment about the top 10 ways to refinance, and then you can link to your offer.
You could direct link. You don’t even need a website. I would recommend that you have a website, but you don’t need one for this.
All you’d need to you’d need to do is get one sale a day at $170. And these people are looking to do that thing anyway, right?
This is what people miss. They don’t even pay attention to the fact that you could literally make money doing this stuff.
So if you get one sale a day, that’s $170 for $365 days a year. You could make $62,000 a year doing that. Remember, those results are not typical, implied, or guaranteed. I don’t know if anyone will sign up for the offer, but hey, it’s worth a try putting something up on a forum, don’t you think?
So day number two, we’re going to find our simple offer. Find an offer that really, really hits the market.
Now if you have your own site and you link them back to your own site, you’re going to make a bunch more and you’re actually going to build back links to your site while doing this, while making money.
It’s something that can happen really fast, because guess what? People are on the forums right now.
You could literally go to forums and you could see that there’s people on the forums right now.
Some of them will show you how many people are actually on the forum right now, which is cool.
3. Watch for “Profit Words”
Watch for profit words. Most forums allow affiliate links or links to your site, which is really cool.
You have to be careful how you use these links on forums. If you do it in a shady way, forums won’t like that. But if you’re providing value, you won’t have to worry about it.
And at worst, let’s say you do get banned from a forum. Does it really matter? You probably didn’t even know or care about the forum before today. So who really cares if you get banned?
But that doesn’t mean you should go out and try to get banned. You still need to provide value. But you can see why the easiest way to do it is to just get a domain name and point people over to it.
4. Evaluate Words
Number four is to evaluate words.
Profit words are words such as “student debt forgiveness”, or “refinance student loan”, or “buy this”, or “price of”, or “coupon”, or “discount”, or “ways to”. These are kind of like trigger words, which you’ll go through in the Sites course.
If you don’t yet have the simple sites course, I would highly recommend it. You can get it at www.SimpleSitesBonus.com, and it literally walks you through all the stuff you need to learn about affiliate marketing, which is crazy, right?
So evaluate your words, see the impressions, see if your forum topics get anyone looking at them. And remember that the gold is in the keywords. Okay? Very, very important.
Day Three: Locate Cash Niche, Build Lander
Now, you’re going to do what’s called extracting your cash niches. You’re going to go through, you’re going to test your market and you’re going to look at all your stuff.
1. Extract Cash Niches
Okay, so number one, you’re going to extract your cash niches. You’re going to look at your keywords and say, “What are people clicking on? What are they interested in?”
2. Build Landing Pages
Number two, you’re going to build your landing pages. This is important. You can build a simple landing page, get traffic to it, find out what people click on, and it’ll send them to an offer at the same time. You can make money while you learn about your market, it’s literally that fast.
You could set these up in very little time at all. I think my own record was 13 minutes. Within 13 minutes, we actually had our first results coming in.
When you’re looking at the data, you’ll see how many clicks you get, as well as how many impressions you get. An impression means that your ad was shown, but it wasn’t clicked on.
You may see that some of your keywords got a bunch of impressions in one day. That’s where the gold is.
That’s going to tell you people are searching for this. They’re seeing your ad. In this way, you’ll figure out what’s working.
And if you know the ones that are working, then you’ll get some money.
3. Segregate Ad Groups and Keywords
Now that you’ve build your landing page, you’re going to segregate.
Once you go through and see what ads are working and where people are clicking, you can segregate your ad groups and your keywords into different sections.
Here’s an example. You might find that instead of people just looking for weight loss, maybe they’re more specifically looking for a printable weight loss guide.
In this way you can segregate your audience based on keywords.
How do you choose the right keywords? We go through that in our keyword trainings. We have some on the YouTube channel, but if you want to go in detail, I would highly recommend you get the Simple Sites course at www.SimpleSitesBonus.com, and you go through the niche finding section. That will walk you through it all.
4. Test the Market
Next, it’s time to test your market.
You can also do this a few different ways. You can use analytics, or a program known as Crazy Egg. You can also do this with some of my plugins.
There’s something I’ve always wanted to do in my life, but I’ve never gotten the courage to actually do it. I’ve always wanted to stand on a street corner with a sign, and get people to do something I want them to (donate, for example). Just to see how it works.
I’d want to see, okay, did people respond to this sign? Then maybe I’ll use this sign to do this. And things like that.
But interestingly enough, that is metaphorically what you’re doing on the internet.
You’re standing there and saying, “Hey, this is what’s working, this is what’s not working.” You’re figuring out, “Hey, this is what people are responding to.”
Day Four: Test Offers and Design Opt-in Form
Day four is all about evaluating the results. What did the results tell you? Because here’s the thing, the results you get are going to teach you everything.
1. Evaluate Results
So, first you want to evaluate your results. You want to focus. What are the results telling you?
Because here’s the deal.
You can go and theorize about your market all day long, but until you actually get in your market and figure out what happened, you won’t find true success.
2. Ask the Market What They Want
Number two, you want to ask the market what they want.
What does your market want? You can literally ask them. This is something I did on an old page of mine. It was a simple little page, and I basically asked them, “Hey, what’s a question you have about internet marketing?”
That was the reason I took a business from around $250 to making millions. That’s crazy, right? All I did was ask the market what they want, and then I responded to it.
This is going to put you light years ahead. Most people don’t listen to the questions the market has. If you do, you’re going to win.
3. Build Opt-in Pages and Thank You Pages
Next, you want to go through and build opt-in pages and thank you pages. These should be based on the answers and information that you get from your market.
Keep in mind that you can provide even more value not just from asking the market questions, but answering them as well. You don’t have to, but why not make a sale? If 100 people ask you about a specific topic, and you personally answer them all, then you could just simply point them to an affiliate offer.
How many sales do you think you would make? You’d make money, and if you record your answer, you could even make an FAQ out of it.
But most people don’t do it this way, and it’s easy. It’s so easy that no one wants to do it. But you have to. You just have to go do it.
4. Test and Find Out What They’re Clicking On
Now you’ll do even more testing. Make sure that you’re tracking your links so you can do this well.
Talking to your market is going to make you the best marketer in your niche. Hands down. Talk to them, listen to them, figure out what they want.
Most importantly, you should actually “give a crap” about your market. You should actually care about them. That’s very important, and it’s the simplest way to think about it.
Day Five: Find Out What the Market Really Wants
This is where you get in and really figure out what your market wants. You’re going to get in and really figure out what your market wants. You’re going to evaluate everything and look at the questions that people have been asking.
1. Find Out What Your Market Really Wants
Here is another example of how you can go in and find out what your market really wants.
You may know that in addition to my affiliate marketing business, I also have an alcohol addiction channel. One day I went onto this channel and got some traffic for around 30 cents a click. I ended up spending around $2,000 total for this traffic. I got 3,000 people to fill out a detailed form on their struggles with alcohol.
2. Find Out What They Really Respond To
Because I got so many people to respond, I learned so much that day. Now, I’m not dominating that market in terms of cash yet, because I don’t want to mess with that market. Since it’s a market that’s personal to me, I want to make sure I give them really good value. But that is still the best $3,000 I ever spent.
Imagine if you 3,000 different surveys full of people’s needs relating to your market. This is better information than you could ever get from spending $1,000 on some kind of product.
3. Look at Keywords, Traffic Offers, and What They Click
As you’re figuring out what people respond to, you should be looking at keywords, traffic offers, and what people click on.
Use your different sources of information to compile data. People who own forums have a lot of data. People who own Facebook groups have a ton of data. What do you have that provides you with data about your market? What can you do (or get) to give you that data? It could be as simple as going to a forum and seeing which topics get the most clicks.
What people click on is the key. If you know what people click on, you win, always. Always, always, always, you win.
4. Look at How They Respond to Your Opt-in Page
Make sure you also look at how people are responding to your opt-in page. This can give you really valuable information. Are people opting in? What are they doing? If they are, figure out why they’re doing it. If they’re not, figure out where the problem is.
Maybe it’s the content, or the design. Whatever it is, use it to give you more data so that you can flip it around, and then make it work for you.
5. Move Stuff Around to Fit Your Market Needs
As you’re learning what works, you may have to move stuff around on your site to fit the needs of your market. So be flexible.
If a bunch of people are clicking on something, you might want to move that to the top of the page. If no one is clicking on something, you might want to stick it near the bottom. Or, you may even want to remove something altogether.
Day Six: Plug in More Profit Centers, Backend
On day six, you’re continuing to find more relevant ways to make money.
1. Find More Relevant Profit Centers
Here you are still finding more relevant profit centers. What else can you do? How can you get creative? How can you find other stuff for people to click, or buy, or otherwise do what you want them to do?
2. Test and See Which Ones Work
When you find your offers, make sure you are still testing and seeing which ones work. What offers are people responding to? This is very important.
Some people just want to stick offers at the top of their pages because they have a high payout. But this isn’t just about getting a good sale one time. This is about having a high conversation rate.
Not all offers are created equal, and not all offers are going to work for your market.
For me, I’d rather get a dollar a click on something that gets a good conversion, with something that fits my market, than make 10 cents a click on something that pays a lot.
I’m just saying. That may not be your mentality, but it’s valuable to think that way. Not all offers are going to convert. So, you have to focus and test and see which ones work.
3. Find the Best Placement of Profit Centers
For number three, you’re also finding the best placement of your profit centers. This goes beyond just figuring out which profit centers you’re going to use. Just as important, you’re going to think about the design, and decide where they should actually be placed on your pages.
Should they be on the front page? Or perhaps on a thank you page? Should you have a pop-up?
Each of these have pros and cons, and you should be aware of all of them before you use them. For example, pop-ups can sometimes feel invasive, but an in-line pop-up is often much more successful than a hijack pop-up. Be intentional with each decision you make at this stage.
4. Look for Backend-Related Offers and Newsletter Content
Next, look for backend-related offers and newsletter content. Are there offers you can give people that would be more successful at this stage? Perhaps offers that don’t work well just on your opt-in page, or don’t do well standing alone?
What can you send to people? Can you provide some value?
In the old days, someone would respond to a magazine ad, and then they would get a series of letters. Can you do something like that here? Let’s say that someone signs up for your newsletter, and you send out a bunch of automated messages to them. Each of these have some sort of tip that they can use in their market.
For example, let’s say someone joined my email list at my alcohol recovery channel.
I could send emails that say, “Here’s tip number one on how to stay sober,” “Here’s tip number two,” and more like that. Then I could also give offers and provide links back to my blog. Very simple.
The more good content you have, the more money you’re likely to make, so be sure to keep this in mind.
Day Seven: Follow Up Sequence, Backend
This is the last day of your program. Here’s what you want to do.
1. Create Autoresponder Follow up Sequence
On day number seven, you’re going to create an autoresponder follow-up sequence. You can use Aweber for your mailing list, and you can send out messages from your autoresponder as emails to your followers.
This might be where you implement ideas that you found on day six. You can give tips in your emails, and then provide a link back to your blog.
For example, maybe one day you can give out a PDF. The next day you can send a video. Each day you can send out something with an offer. You can give more tips and add more value each time.
When it comes to sending out your messages, there are two different ways you can do this. One is with your autoresponder, where you can plug in messages and offers to go out automatically. I have autoresponder follow-up sequences that sometimes have 500 messages, or maybe they have 30, or maybe they have seven. They automatically go out, and they bring people back to my site. And then I can look at what they’re clicking on.
If you choose to do a broadcast email, that just means you send out a message that’s not part of a follow-up sequence. Maybe you want to make a special announcement to everyone on your mailing list, and you don’t want to interrupt the flow of your autoresponder messages. That would be a good time to send a broadcast email.
2. Create Backend Profit Centers and Follow Up Profits
Now that you’ve created the autoresponder sequences and broadcast emails that you want to send out, you can incorporate your profit centers for the backend that you already found. This is where you actually implement that information into your emails.
3. More Testing
Number three is all about testing everything you’ve done so far. You work on your layout, you check your opt-in rate, you look at your bid prices, your follow-up, and everything like that. Remember that the fortune is in the follow-up. The key is to test, test, test. Then repeat.
As you get this process down, use it again to build more sites.
To learn more, go to www.AffiliateMarketingDude.com.