5 Affiliate Marketing Tips and Tricks

Whether you’re in a network marketing company or promoting Clickbank products or you’re in one of the various affiliate marketing programs like Elite Marketing Pro or MLSP, then you are competing with several other reps, affiliates and distributors and you have to have some affiliate marketing strategies to set yourself apart from from the competition.  That’s why I’ve put together these 5 Affiliate Marketing Tips and Tricks.

How am I Qualified to Teach You This?

That’s a fair question.  You don’t just want to be listening to affiliate marketing training or learning how to make money with affiliate marketing from anybody.  The truth is I have consistently been the #1 income earner inside of a very popular online affiliate program for several months.  I’ve spoken on stage about this topic.  I’ve won several awards and I’ve been featured in industry publications.  But most importantly, I’ve taught many of my students to be successful with these affiliate marketing tips as well.

 

Tip #1 – Create An In-Between

The first (and maybe the most important) of my affiliate marketing tips is for you to create an in-between.  Most affiliates are lazy and they just want to send traffic straight over to the product creator’s sales page.  This is not the best strategy, in my opinion, because you’re not building your own brand in the process and you’re not connecting the dots as to why the visitor should take the next step.  When you create a short piece of content like a blog post or a short video where you answer a question or solve a problem and give some value, you’re branding yourself as an authority, building your own audience and connecting the dots for your prospects.

If you want to know exactly how I do this and see some of my exact campaigns and “in-betweens” that helped me to create a multiple 6 figure income with affiliate commissions, check out my Affiliate Profit Formula Training here.

#2 – Do a Behind the Scenes Video Review

Doing a behind the scenes video review is a great way to create an in-between for affiliate products.  Yes, this implies that you need to buy the product yourself, but this should really go without saying.  (I guess I’m really giving you 6 Affiliate marketing tips, but I’m not counting “buy the product” because that falls under the category of affiliate marketing tips for beginners).  I’m amazed at the number of affiliates who try to promote products that they don’t own and use themselves.  You know what you call people who sell things they don’t believe in?  They’re called con-artists.  So buy the product.  It gives you added credibility and it makes selling much easier because you can’t transfer you’re belief in the product to another person if you don’t have any belief in the product.

#3 – Do a Comparison to a Related Product

This is one of my favorite affiliate marketing tips because doing a comparison to a related product is a great way for you to piggy-back off the popularity and search results of another product.  In fact, if you are an affiliate for both products, it can be a great way for you to promote them both (for example, you could do a review of ClickFunnels vs. Lead Pages).  The trick to doing this successfully is not to be skewed toward “your product” just for the sake of trying to convince them that yours is better.  Consumers are smarter than that and they’ll see right through you and it will hurt your credibility.  Instead, you want to do a very honest comparison, just giving the facts and showing the advantages and disadvantages of each one and then tell them which one you use and why.  If you want to see a good example of how I did this recently, check out this YouTube video where I compared two popular online attraction marketing systems.

#4 – Have your own Bonuses

You really need to have a way to incentivize people to buy from your affilaite link over all of the other people who are promoting that exact same product.  If you have your own product or course, you can give that away as a bonus.  If not, you can do a webinar or a group coaching with all of your referrals.  You could offer a free one-on-one coaching phone call or access to a private mastermind.  If you want to go into more depth on how I put together bonuses and see exactly how I create my affiliate promotions and campaigns, be sure to check out my Affiliate Profit Formula Training.

#5 – Build An Audience

This one relates strongly to the first of my 5 affiliate marketing tips I’ve shared with you today.  I’m here to tell you that selling affiliate products becomes so much easier when you have an audience of people that know, like and trust you.  Now don’t worry if you don’t have an audience yet (I didn’t have one when I started either).  But I built an audience by creating in-betweens like I talked about in tip #1.  When you create an in-between, you are branding yourself and creating a following … and that is your REAL business.  Your business is people and the relationships that you build with them.  So if you’re just sending traffic to an affiliate website without first branding yourself and getting them on your list, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.  Because they might not want to buy this affiliate product from you today, but if they like you and keep following you, they will probably buy another product from you down the road.

If you want more Affiliate marketing Tips and my complete Blueprint for affiliate marketing success, check out my complete step-by-step affiliate profit formula on how to make a full time income from home by promoting affiliate products.

Did you like these 5 Affiliate Marketing Tips and Tricks?  If so, make sure you comment and share …

To your success!

Tyson’s Marketing and Success Blog
Skype: tzahner
Periscope: tysonzahner
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/tysonzahnerpage
Email: tyson [at] marketing-boot-camp.com

P.S. If you need more people to click on your ads, visit your website or open your emails, download these 10 Free Headline Formulas.

3 Secrets of MLM Top Earners

Having been an amateur (and failure) for many years inside of the home business profession, I learned the hard way what NOT to do.  But I’ve also been fortunate to see some great successes (speaker, trainer, award winner, featured on the cover of industry publications and a pretty good income to boot).  So I’ve definitely discovered the secrets of MLM Top Earners and what I’ve found is that direct selling top earners do things very different from amateurs.  In this post (and video below) I want to share 3 of those things with you so that you can become a top earner in MLM or any kind of affiliate marketing where you’re promoting somebody else’s products.

#1 – Top Earners Focus on Relationships First

While the amateur is focused on recruiting and making a sale, MLM Top earners are focused on meeting a new person, making a connection and building rapport.  They might meet somebody at the grocery store and just compliment them on their shoes and then find out what they do for a living.  Top earners who do this online are focused on providing education and value through good content.  Amateurs, on the other hand spam their link all over social media in hopes that a stranger will find it and sign-up to do business with them.  That will never work without a relationship in place first.

#2 – Top Earners Aren’t Addicted to the Outcome

With the amateur, every single prospect is the hinging point for whether they feel like a failure or a success in their network marketing business.  MLM Top Earners, on the other hand, have posture.  They know the value of what they have without the need for outside approval and they aren’t addicted to the outcome.  Every “no” they get is just another day at the office.  No big deal.  They recognize that their job is NOT to sell or recruit, but rather their job is education, understanding and collecting decisions regardless of what that decision might be.

When you shift your focus from seeing yourself as a “recruiter” or a “salesperson” to simply an information provider, this profession gets sooo much easier.  Start approaching people knowing the value of what you have.  Knowing that you’re doing them a favor by sharing what you have with them.  That you have the potential to change their life!  That you are about to share options with them that can give them freedom and help them reach their goals and live the life of their dreams.  They might say yes … they might say no … but that shouldn’t’ affect you emotionally.

#3 – MLM Top Earners Monetize People Who Say “No”

The amateur thinks that their network marketing company is their business.  Top earners know this isn’t the case.  (I covered this topic in more depth in yesterday’s post on How to Make More Sales).  But here’s the overview that you need to understand … even if you’re in one of the very best mlm top companies in the industry, your business is NOT your network marketing company.  You’re business is people.  It’s an audience of people and when you understand that and you focus on building relationships with those people, you have a whole new world of opportunities in terms of what you can sell.  MLM Top Earners like Randy Gage and Susan Sly are great examples.  If you go to their website, you’ll see lots of other products that they sell to their audience outside of their primary network marketing company.

For the brand new person who hasn’t yet made a name for themselves or had any success yet, this strategy of having an offer portfolio and selling additional products like training and tools and books and courses and systems might seem impossible.  But it’s not.  I did it before I ever created any success and before anyone knew who I was by promoting affiliate products (and I know several other MLM top earners in our profession who did the same thing).  If you want to know how to do this successfully, check out this training on how to make a full time income selling other people’s products.

The Benefits of Expanding Your Offer Portfolio with Affiliate Products

Affiliate products are a great way for you to:

• monetize the people who say “no” to your main offer
• attract targeted leads
• qualify people as being serious before you speak to them
• learn the skills of marketing on somebody else’s dime
• Make a name for yourself and attract the attention of product creators and industry leaders

To get started expanding your offer portfolio and promoting affiliate products the right way, be sure to check out this training.

Did you like this post about MLM Top Earners and their secrets for network marketing success?  If so, make sure you comment and share …

To your success!

Tyson’s Marketing and Success Blog
Skype: tzahner
Periscope: tysonzahner
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/tysonzahnerpage
Email: tyson [at] marketing-boot-camp.com

P.S. If you haven’t recruiting anyone (or less than 10 people), you should check out this free “Sponsoring Secrets” Training.

The Apple School for Network Marketers and Sales Pros

There’s no denying that Apple is an incredibly successful (and profitable) company, but how can you implement their business model to help you in your business?  Well in this post (and video below), I’m going to show you how to make more sales in your business and how to crush your competition by adopting the Apple Business model.

How Apple Sold Me …

For many years, I was a devoted Windows user.  I swore I would never own a Mac computer.  I liked my Windows brand of computer.  I had no need for a different operating system.  I didn’t want to learn a new interface and yet, today I’m writing this blog post on an iMac and sitting right next to me is a MacBook Pro.  Yes, I swore I would never be a Mac Computer owner and today I own two of them.  How did this happen?  How did Apple do it? (and more importantly how can this strategy help you).

Well first, let’s look at how Apple acquired me as a customer and then I’ll show you how to make more sales in your own business with this exact same strategy.  The first thing Apple did was they realized that they were NOT a computer company.  Once they stopped competing with Microsoft as just another company that makes boxes with wires in it, everything changed.  When they realized that their business was not their product (computers) but rather their business was their audience and their ability to rally that tribe around a common belief (that people with passion who “think different” can change the world) … that’s when a whole new world of possibilities opened for them.

And this shift allowed them to bring a whole new set of products to market.  Most of you will remember when Apple came out with these cool little devices that would hold your entire music collection in your pocket … the ipod.  I didn’t want a Mac computer at that time, but I sure DID want an iPod.  So I bought one.  Then, Apple came out with the iPhone and I wanted one of those as well.  So I bought one (even though I was still a devoted Windows computer user).

Do you see what happened?  Apple found a way to monetize me even though I didn’t want their main product.  But then something very interesting happened … as I used these really cool new Apple products, I started to slowly but surely grow a liking to the Apple experience … the interface, the packaging, the user experience, etc. and I started to become curious about their main product (their computers).  I thought, “If I like their other products so well, I’d probably also really like their computers”.  So I bought one to try it out, and then I bought a second one and now I’m an Apple computer customer (even though I thought I never would be)

 

Here’s Why This Strategy Matters For Your Business

If you REALLY want to know how to make more sales in your business, it’s critical that you understand the idea of having an offer portfolio.

Apple was able to bring me into their world because they had other products that peaked my interest when their main product did not.  You have to accept that not everyone is going to want your main product or service or business opportunity.  Thems are just the fact, Jack!  So if you think your business is ONE product or ONE company or ONE opportunity, you’re walking on veeerrry thin ice and you’re going to have a difficult time becoming and remaining profitable.  And even if you are profitable with your current business, why wouldn’t you want to become MORE profitable by monetizing the people who say NO to your main offer?

I have found that one of the best, cheapest and lowest risk ways to do this is with Affiliate products.  You don’t have to create a whole new product of your own (which can be incredibly difficult and time consuming).  You can simply take a product that somebody else has created and promote it to your audience.  You just want to make sure that it’s congruent with and that it falls into the same interest category as your main product.  I’ll give some examples in the next paragraph, but before you go out and start promoting affiliate products to your audience, please understand that there are a few tricks to promoting affiliate products successfully (I know because I struggled for a long time before I started doing multiple 5-figures per month in affiliate commissions).  It’s not hard, but you have to avoid some common pitfalls that most people make when promoting affiliate products.  If you want to know how I do it and how I became the #1, Top income earning affiliate in a very popular online affiliate program, you might want to check out this training where I give you my step by step formula).

Examples:  How to Make More Sales in your own business with this Strategy

Allow me to give you a few examples of how this might work for you and how to make more sales in your own business with affiliate products.  Let’s say that you’re in a network marketing nutrition company and you sell supplements or vitamins.  Some of your leads will refuse to buy your vitamins and supplements because they are already happy with the vitamins and supplements they purchase at GNC (or elsewhere) so if that’s all you have to offer those people, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.  If however, you also sold let’s say a cookbook with healthy recipes or a course on weight loss, for example, you have now opened up the possibilities to make more sales and bring more people into your world.  FYI – you can find affiliate products like the cookbook and the weight loss course on Clickbank.com and you can get started promoting that stuff for free if you know how to do it.  Check out the Affiliate Profit Formula if you’d like me to show you how to do it properly.

Here’s another example.  Let’s say that you’re in a travel opportunity and you want to know how to make more sales of your travel product.  While some people will be interested in your travel product, others will not because they’re perfectly happy with Priceline right now or maybe they own a timeshare or some other travel savings program.  But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t buy other products from you based around travel.  If all you have is that one offer (your vacation club), you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.  Perhaps you could recommend a travel rewards credit card like the Southwest Rapid Rewards Visa and you get 5,000 Southwest points for referring a friend (that’s as good as cash if you travel a lot yourself) and you’re attracting people who happen to enjoy traveling (your target audience).  Or perhaps you could sell an information product on how to plan your next Disney vacation (you can find products like this on Clickbank.com).  These are offers that are congruent with your audience, but it’s a different product that would allow you to monetize the people who say “No” to your main product.

How Top Earners in MLM Use This Strategy

One group of people who really know how to make more sales by using this strategy are top earners inside of the network marketing profession.  Go look at the websites of people like Randy Gage or Susan Sly and you won’t see their main network marketing company listed anywhere on their website, but what you will see is an offer portfolio of many other products and trainings and tools and systems that they can sell to their audience (because they’re smart enough to know that many people in their audience won’t want to join their primary network marketing company so they monetize them in other ways … and guess what … it’s also one of the ways that they attract and qualify targeted leads who are serious and who they want to recruit and work with in their primary company).

When I realized this strategy, EVERYTHING changed for me.  But the problem was that I didn’t have my own courses or books or tools to sell to people.  So I joined systems like My Lead System Pro and Elite Marketing Pro and I promoted their products as an affiliate to generate leads and make commissions so that I could afford to stay in business.  And I’ve been pretty darn profitable with this strategy.

I’d love to show you exactly how I do it inside of my Affiliate Profit Formula.  Check out that training here.

Watch Today’s Video

Did you like this post about how to make more sales?  If so, make sure you comment and share …

To your success!

Tyson’s Marketing and Success Blog
Skype: tzahner
Periscope: tysonzahner
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/tysonzahnerpage
Email: tyson [at] marketing-boot-camp.com

P.S. If you haven’t recruiting anyone (or less than 10 people), you should check out this free “Sponsoring Secrets” Training.

Do You Have Unsupportive Family Members?

If you’ve ever had to deal with unsupportive family members or friends or even an unsupportive spouse as you try to build your business, it can be very challenging … not only to maintain the relationship but to keep your motivation up and keep striving toward your goals.  You might even find yourself asking yourself, “why doesn’t my family like me?”  Today’s blog post (and video below) will help you to deal with unsupportive family members and friends and help you to not get derailed by their criticism.

First of all, you should know that it’s totally normal for you to experience criticism on your way to the top.  There are no successful entrepreneurs (that I know of anyway) who made it to the top without naysayers and people who doubted them … yes, even unsupportive family members.  And second of all, it’s quite unlikely that your friends dislike you but there could be a few reasons why they are voicing their opinion in a negative way and it’s important for you to understand things from their perspective in order for you to respond appropriately.

Why they Criticize You

 

In my experience there’s really two reasons why unsupportive family members will criticize you.  #1 – They care about you and they don’t want to see you fail or get hurt and #2 – Your averageness makes them feel more comfortable in their own averageness.  Regarding the second point, there’s a great quote that helps me to put unsupportive family in perspective: “Common men love other common men because they justify each other’s averageness.”

#1 – Do they Have What You Want?

Before you let an unsupportive family member or friend squash your dreams, ask yourself if they have what you want.  If you are seeking financial freedom or time freedom in your home based business and Uncle Joe is broke or he’s stuck in a job that he hates, you kind of need to take Uncle Joe’s advice with a grain of salt.  Remember Uncle Joe doesn’t put food on your table and your unsupportive family member, Uncle Joe doesn’t have the life you want.

#2 – Don’t Get Defensive

When responding to unsupportive family members, you have to keep their perspective in mind and try not to get defensive.  When you get defensive this can lead to fights and arguments and even destroyed relationships.  So unless you want to be estranged from family, take my advice here.  One of the best ways to handle an unsupportive family members criticism is to use the “Feel, Felt, Found” strategy.  Watch the video below on this page to see an example of how to do this.

#3 – Produce some Results

The best way to shut up any naysayers in your life is simply to prove them wrong.  Go out and take action.  Produce some results in your home based business opportunity or in your entrepreneurial efforts.  Use their criticisms as fuel and motivation to succeed so that you can come back one day and say, “I did it … I told you so”.

If you need a blueprint for success in your business so you can start producing results fast, feel free to register for my Free Webinar where I show you exactly how I recruited 1000 reps and created a mutliple 6-figure income all in less than a year.

Watch Today’s Video

Did you like this post?  Did it give you some ideas on how to handle unsupportive family members?  If so, make sure you comment and share …

To your success!

Tyson’s Marketing and Success Blog
Skype: tzahner
Periscope: tysonzahner
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/tysonzahnerpage
Email: tyson [at] marketing-boot-camp.com

P.S. If You’ve Run Out of People to Talk to About Your Business, This Free 10 Day Bootcamp Teaches you How to Recruit Using the Internet

How to Make More Sales Online

(by Treating Your Prospects Like Children)

Yes, you read today’s blog post title correctly.  In today’s blog post (and video below), I want to show you how to make more sales and recruit more reps … both online and offline by using the same persuasion tactics that parents use with their children.

I frequently have people tell me, “I’m just not a salesperson”.  Well … let me ask you a question.  Have you ever convinced somebody to go see a really good movie or to buy a book that you loved and referred?  Or more appropriately for today’s post, have you ever convinced a child to do (or not to do) something that you wanted?  If so, you’re a salesperson.

 What is Sales … Really?

You’ve probably heard this before, but sales is nothing more than the transfer of belief from one person to another.  So if you want to know how to make sales in retail or how to make more sales on facebook or recruit more reps into your network marketing business, stop thinking of it as “selling” and start thinking of it the way that parents persuade their children to do the things they want them to do.

If you have children (or if you know anyone who does), you know that parents are really good salespeople when it comes to their kids.  They “sell” their kids every day on why they should eat their vegetables or why they should do their homework or clean their room.  Those persuasion techniques that you use with kids can be transferred over to the sales process for your product or opportunity and they can be used with your adult prospects too.  Let me give you a few examples …

Example #1 – The Gravel Garden and my 7-year Old Son

Just this past weekend, I took my family on a short weekend getaway to St. Louis.  We went to Six Flags and the Arch and Busch Stadium and a few other things.  Well, one of the things that we did this weekend was that we went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens and one of the things we saw was a gravel garden.  (see the image below …)

As I called my 7-year old son over to take a look, I immediately realized that if I didn’t warn him not to, he was going to jump in the gravel and try to kick the rocks and mess up the lines.  So as I called him over, I said, “Zane, check this out … and Don’t jump in the rocks”.  In other words, I thought ahead preemptively about what my son might do and I took care of this thought before he could think it himself or act on it.  This is the same thing you have to do with your prospects when overcoming objections and it’s one of the first things I recommend you start doing with your prospects if you want to know how to make more sales in your business.  If you can answer a prospects objections before they ever ask them, you’ll be in a much stronger position to close the sale.

Example #2 – Magic House vs. Science Center

On the last day of our little mini vacation, we were trying to decide on whether we wanted to go to the Magic House or to the Science Center.   My son, of course, wanted to go to the Magic House (and what kid wouldn’t … that sounds WAAYYY cooler than Science Center, right?), but my wife and I wanted to take the kids to the Science Center so we needed to “sell” him on our agenda.  Do you want to know how I did it?

All I had to do was tell him that they have a dinosaur exhibit with a dig site at the science center and he was sold.  In other words, I knew my son’s currency and I used it to persuade him to do what I wanted him to do.  I talked to him about things that HE was interested in and not the things that I was interested in.

Most people who want to know how to make more sales talk to their prospects about all of the things that interests them (the features) and not the things that interests the prospects (the benefits).  Think of it this way, do you think I would have been as effective with my son if I told him we should do the science center because it was more educational or because it was closer to our hotel?  NO!  Because those are things that I was interested in and not things that my son (my prospect) was interested in.

 

The Lesson to Be Learned

So here’s the big takeaway from these two little stories and this is really how to make more sales in your business.  The only way I could read my son’s mind and know his currency is by knowing HIM.  As his dad, I am immersed in his world every single day and I know him as well as he knows himself (if not better).

As you might have guessed, I also happen to be immersed in the world of my target market.  I know how they think.  I know what their biggest pains and fears and desires are.  I know their motivations, etc.  When I know these things, I can talk to them in a way that makes them feel that I know them better than they know themselves.

So if you want to know how to make more sales or recruit more reps or if you want to market your product on the internet, it all starts with immersing yourself in your prospect’s world and getting to know them better than they know themselves.  Only then can you answer their objections before they voice them.  Only then can you know what their currency is and talk to them about the things that THEY are interested in instead of the things that YOU are interested in.

If you’d like 10 Free Headline templates to help you get into your prospects mind and generate 30 to 50 leads every single day on autopilot, download these 10 Free Templates.

 

Watch Today’s Video

Did you like this post about how to make more sales?  If so, make sure you comment and share …

To your success!

Tyson’s Marketing and Success Blog
Skype: tzahner
Periscope: tysonzahner
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/tysonzahnerpage
Email: tyson [at] marketing-boot-camp.com

P.S. If you haven’t recruiting anyone (or less than 10 people), you should check out this free “Sponsoring Secrets” Training.