OK... affiliate / niche marketing from my very own stand point of view:
Niche Marketing can basically be divided to three basic rules:
1. Find a hungry market that are having similar problems / enjoying similar hobbies.
2. Find out what they want.
3. Give it to them.
Sounds simple isn't it??
As continuity from the thread I created in The Fast & The Furious section which is:
RM40k to RM50k per month... enuff to own Ferrari F430 or Audi R8
which has been giving me a couple of headache answering PMs of people asking me what I did...
This is what I do for a living- Niche / Affiliate Marketing.
So it is good to have this thread around... so I'll explain roughly what affiliate / niche marketing is.
And how it can make you rich without having anyone chasing to cut your head like what happens with MLM.
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HOW DOES NICHE / AFFILIATE MARKETING WORKS?
Here's how everything works:
Internet are a massive hub of collecting customers... if you are a company selling something to the masses.
This is because a lot of people turn to uncle Google to seek for information.
This includes buyers as well.
Let say for example... I'm looking to buy an iPhone 3GS.
I would turn to uncle Google first and seek for information on the net.
The same thing goes if you are having problems.. for example you are getting married next month
and you want to lose all the extra weight before the long awaited day. You'd turn to the internet first
for information. Doctors comes later...
At times these people stumbled across a really good offer that corresponds to whatever
they are looking for. Be it iPhone3GS or an ebook about losing weight in 14 days.
What happen at this rate??
Either two things:
1) They'd turn off their PC and go to the shop to buy their iPhone 3GS or ask doctors for
information on how to lose weight in 14 days.
or..
2) They just decided on the fly that they'll get it straight from the internet. They take out their
credit cards... make payments.. and wait 1 to 4 days for the shipment of their iPhone3GS to arrive
or in the case of the ebook... they received instant download link to the ebook on how to lose
weight in 14 days.
However... internet are way too big to conquer. No matter what sort of advertising method a company
uses... it is literally impossible to capture all the traffic to their offer / products / promotion.
That is where we as affiliate marketing comes in...
These company... let's name a few... maybe Adidas, Apple, Nike, Versace, blablabla... will create
an affiliate system so that other people.. like me.. can join and help them promote their products..
for a bit of percentage / commissions on each sale I help them made.
However...
Some big companies don't like the hassle of creating their own affiliate system... so they join available
affiliate network like Commission Junction, Share-a-Sale, Clickbank, and so on.
And people like me... join those affiliate network.. look for products to sell and advertise it / show it
to relevant target group of people in a market / niche.
For example.. if the product is about home gardening... I promote it to those people who wants to
do home gardening.
If the product is about acne... I show it to those who wants to lose acne.
If the product is a digital camera or DSLR camera... I show / promote it to other niched people that
are interested with DSLR camera.
This is affiliate marketing... and to those who have been asking / flaming / whatever about what I do
in the thread in The Fast & Furious section... this is what I do for a living.
Is this business realistic then???
Let say you are promoting some ebook from Clickbank about dating called 'The Magic of Making Up'.
This ebook gives out commission of USD 30 (if I'm not mistaken) for each sale I made.
The book is for people on the verge of divorce or to those who want to make up back with their ex.
Breaking up in dating world are a heated issues... millions of searches are being done in Google
just about this issue alone.
So it corresponds to the first rule I stated above: 1. Find a hungry market that are having similar problems / enjoying similar hobbies.
The problem here is they are having difficult times in their relationship.
Next stage is: 2. Find out what they want.
So... what do they want. A five minutes simple research on a couple of forums including Lowyat.net hinted that
they want their relationship to be back like how it was before.
So what I do is... show them the way to 'The Magic of Making Up' offer... help them decide to buy (there are strategies for this)
and voila... I just made USD 30.
Now this is a world wide problems... agree??
In some part of the world this sort of problems has resulted in a lot of suicide.
These people in this niche are emotionally disturbed... so what we do is we help them
get better by re-uniting them with their ex... in the process we make money.
It's a beautiful system that affects life isn't it. In the process as well... we feel satisfied and happy.
Now imagine... I made one sale everyday.
Each months I'll be making USD 30 x 30 = USD 900.
Did I ever mentioned that this is a very hungry and serious topic.
Making 3 to 5 sales a day is pretty easy actually.
Let say 3... that would mean I'll be making USD 30 x 3 = USD 90
USD 90 x 30 = USD 2700 from this one niche alone.
Now.. one basic principles of niche marketing is...
NEVER PUT ALL THE EGGS IN ONE BASKET.
In essence... don't rely on just one niche. Go and do
more...
So I promote things to teach Forex.. home gardening.. how to write a resume..
and one physical product which is a chandelier.
4 niches.
Assume I made similar amount of money from all 4 niches...
that makes it 5 niches.
5 x 30 = USD 150 daily earning.
150 x 30 = USD 4500 monthly earning.
Convert to RM = RM 15,xxx per month.
See the potential now??
What if you have 10 niches??
What about 50??
What about 100??
You could literally quit your daily job right???
THIS IS THE BEAUTY OF NICHE / AFFILIATE MARKETING.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
For the sake of reference... from now on this business will be referred as IM
which is an acronym of Internet Marketing.
1. Where to look for product bro?
There are a lot of affiliate networks available out there...
they range from:
-Clickbank (Digital Products only - like PDF or program)
-Commission Junction
-eBay
-Share-a-Sale
-LinkShare
-Walmart
-Amazon.com (so far my best affiliate network... you could find almost everything here... the only thing I hate is Amazon's commission percentage... among the lesser compared to the other network).
2. How about advertisement? How do you advertise your promotion?
I don't intent to do full explanation here as this aspect it self could
cover almost 40 pages of this thread.
But just to touch the tip of the iceberg... there are 3 main method which
is:
- Pay-Per Click (Google AdWords, Yahoo! or MSN Ad Center)
Basically.. we pay Google for every clicks that we get. Our ads
will appear on the right side of the search results of Google's page.
Or.. you can opt for Content Network. What is that?? A giant turkey??
Well.. ever heard of AdSense?? Basically we let them AdSense player
to pick our ads and show it on their websites.
-BUM Marketing
FREE METHOD!! Still the best huh??
You write a couple of articles that contains value that are related to
your niche.
Post it to article directory or social networking page like ezinearticles (Page Rank above 5)
or Squidoo.
Your articles... if lucky.. will be picked up by Google and be shown within
the 10 search results.
You don't pay a single cent... but this takes time. A lot of it.
That's the weakness of free method.
-SEO
Stands for Search Engine Optimization.
This one a bit complex to explain. Basically you create an Search Engine
friendly website... and do some legal tricks to make your site appear
on the first page of Google.
Free method... which is good... but took extremely long time.. which is bad.
3. Cakap senang... I've been in IM for about 2 years and keep on failing.
How about all those failures??
There are a lot of reason for this.
Usually.. the reason would be lack of motivation or... you quit too early.
It's already 5:15... need to pick up my girlfriend... so I'll continue this later.
Have a good day yeah...