How To Build Better Marketing Messaging

How To Build Better Marketing Messaging

by | Jul 18, 2020 | Business, Guides, Marketing, Paid Ads

Here’s a powerful way to make your marketing stronger.
Write out an offer that your dream clients would love and be hard for them to say no to. Then see how close you can get to creating it. Once you do launch and promote it everywhere.
This sounds simple but so many sales are lost due to weak offers. Note when I say offer I do not mean price discounting. I mean a real sales offer.
Do you know what the only asset that matters in your business is?
  • It isn’t your Facebook page.
  • It isn’t your Instagram followers.
  • It is not your people
  • It isn’t any of your physical machinery or facilities.
So what is it?
It’s your client database and the relationship you have with them.
When businesses are sold this is ‘really’ what the purchaser is buying.
Clients pay for everything and you must treat them as gold. If you don’t have your own client database set up and actively market to it the best time to fix that is right now!
“I’ve always been intrigued by the reality where some clients are happy to pay more for essentially the same thing. The reason is because of how the value is postioned in teh service. I always ask this question.
Have you taken time to look at all potential clients for what you sell?
Have you identified those who can:
  • Benefit the most
  • Benefit the fastest
  • Pay the most
One of the easiest ways to grow sales and reduce headaches is to sell to the best clients you can. If you will do the research now your future self will thank you for it.”
Shenzu

Help Your Clients Discover Their USP

A USP is short for Unique Selling Position. This is a great way to identify the why and how the business is better than its competitors. An example may be that store A& B can deliver in 14 days but store C can deliver in 7 days that is a USP for store C.
Do your clients know the answer to this question?
Why should I buy from you over anyone else AND instead of buying something else with my money?
It’s a profound question and your answer must contain one key thing.
That thing is something they can only get from your company. Now this requires some digging and work but the rewards are there for you if you do it.
Once you can say you are the only one with X you immediately separate yourself from the competition and become THE choice for the clients you want.
So take 15 minutes right now and come up with your list of what clients get only from you.
Then review it and see what would be most powerful from a client perspective. Most importantly start using it in your marketing NOW.

18 Techniques That Improve Advertising Efforts



The purpose of all advertising is to take people’s existing desires and direct them towards your product or service. The old problem and solution pairing is a great way to start running ads with copy that calls out pain and provides the segway to the solution.


If you want to make your ads better you need to understand psychology and copy writing. But I know not everyone has time so to save you time here are some of my favourite advertising approaches.
All have been used effectively over many years. choose what you believe will work best with your clients.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and test different appeals.


Here are 18 Quick Fire Tips

1. News. If you have something genuinely new and different then use a news angle in your ads. Words like announcing, introducing or finally now you can XYZ.      
2. Arouse curiosity. Once a curiosity loop opens in someones mind most people feel the need to close it. I had a great example recently a Facebook ad asked me if I knew the one question to get more sales. I didn’t but was curious and clicked the ad to find out.
3. Tell a story. It seems widely known now that stories sell. So use them in your message. Especially if it’s a story of success for someone just like the person you are aiming the ad at.

4. Add scarcity but make it true. A risk something will end or run out triggers fear of missing out and makes us take action.

16. Sell it well and then take it away. If you can get people wanting what you have and then say who it’s not for this adds more motivation to purchase.
5.Create a common enemy. You can bring people across to your site by sharing a common enemy. A few examples that people use are ‘big business’, ‘the banks’, ‘big pharma etc. Notice how the labels predetermine you viewing them as bad.
6. Take a contrarian position. A simple example of this could be telling people not to use Facebook ads whilst everyone else seems to be telling them to use them. You can go really strong on this one if you’re comfortable with it. Be aware though you will get some flack so you need to be able to deal with that.
7. Create controversy. This is a strategy that has been used in Public Relations a lot. Brands like American Apparel have also used it to gain greater exposure. It’s not for everyone and again has risks of flack you need to be aware of.
8. It’s not your fault. If you can absolve potential clients of any responsibility for making mistakes in the past then they can embrace your solution. If they feel as though it was their fault it can be hard for them to move to something new.
9. Social proof. The more people who testify to the fantastic results they get with your business the better. It’s far more credible than anything you can ever say. Aim for video testimonials if you can with specific results they got from your business.
10. Risk reversal. In any purchase there is a perceived risk of making a mistake and this fear reduces sales. You can limit this ‘perceived risk’ with a powerful risk reversal guarantee.
11. Small yesses. If you can get someone to say yes to something in your ad and keep them agreeing along the way it makes it easier for get the main yes to your product or service.
12. Offer a magic pill. People want the magic pill. As much as I hate this it’s the reality of the market. You need to present your offer like a magic pill to get the most people saying yes.
13. Sell to their want not need. It’s amazing how there is always money for what people want. Even if you know what they need sell to their want first or you won’t get the chance to help solve their true need.
14. Offer a sense of community. We are all looking to belong in some way if you can add community to your ads and offers it can bring more people in.
15.Use the Zeigarnik Effect. In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. The easiest way to use is to give part of the information and then the rest can only be gained by clicking to another page or opting in for something. Don’t make it too hard though.
17. Enter the conversation already going on in their mind. If you can write your ad to what they are thinking about right now then they will click your ads in big numbers. But you need to dig in and really understand your market to do this.
18. Ask a compelling question. It’s really hard for us to ignore questions especially if they are on a topic we are interest in. So you could ask a question like ‘Do you know the one question all clients want answered?”. If they don’t they will very likely act to get the answer.
In summing up all of the above we are always communicating to the ad viewer self-interest.
If you keep even that in mind at all times you’re on the way to creating better ads and growing your business faster.

Bonus Tip For Clear Messaging

Are your words easy to understand?
The words you use to promote your business matter. If you use big words you lose people. If you use regular words then almost anyone can read your message.
The more people who read or hear your message the more clients you can get.
There is a simple set of tests you can use to make sure your message is well understood.
Yesterday I ran the profile a popular marketer in LinkedIn through these tests.
This person failed the tests.
In fact the writing requires a post-graduate education to understand it.
This is not an unusual case.
If you try and read it you know immediately it makes no sense.
So the solution is to get a Flesch Kincaid grade for all your writing.
You want a grade level of 7.5 or under and a reading ease of at least 60.
For the record this post has a grade level of 4.5 and reading ease of 84.9.


Keeping Your Marketing Message Clear

Your marketing message will be ignored unless…
The very first line contains one of the big 3 elements that grab attention.
Here they are in reverse order of power (my ranking):
Coming in 3rd is curiosity. You see this with click bait headlines if you’re curious enough you click. But what you click to can often be disappointing.
If you use it make sure you genuinely reward the persons curiosity.
Coming in 2nd is news. Especially anything to do with threats to our survival and loved ones. We are hard wired to tune in to any potential threats.
Coming in 1st is self-interest.
That is something that is relevant to what I most want right now.
It’s been said that we need to enter the conversation going on in the minds of our potential clients.
I’ve never seen better advice than this.
All three work and you should test them all in your market.
But if you choose one might as well start with the most power self-interest.
If your marketing messages, websites and social media profiles aren’t already applying these then the time to fix it is right now.
Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Posts vs pages for your affilaite site what is better? I hear this a lot and it doesnt really matter. But I prefer posts for affiliate sites because I can manipulate them into collections of posts and build my own category of posts that help build topical relevance to...

read more
How To Build A Social Media Strategy

How To Build A Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy Overview What’s the PURPOSE of Social Media? The goal of social media is to connect people to other people. When 90% of businesses do it you could be forgiven for thinking it is as awkward as teenagers kissing for the first time. Cringeworthy and...

read more
Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

How To Make Money With Blogging Blogging is a great way to build a business that allows you the freedom to work from anywhere in the world whenever you want. That sure does sound amazing, but it doesn’t just happen you have to put in the work. Blogging requires...

read more
Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2020)

Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2020)

by | Jul 6, 2020 | Business, Email, Guides

The most underrated marketing channel is by far email marketing. Almost every business can benefit from running email campaigns, there is also the repeat customer factor involved in email campaigns. I am a huge believer in email marketing and this article focuses on the best ways a small business can use emails to increase revenue.

The best email marketing software can be measured by various factors but ultimately my key factors will be different to yours and the next person after you. I like email marketing service features that allow landing pages, email templates, forms, email automation and a drag and drop builder for ease of use. These are the key features I look for in an email marketing platform.

How I would approach this would be to pick 3 key things you want from your email software and stick to that as your must-haves. Do not get caught up in all the shiny things an email tool can do, these are nice to have not mission-critical. When you get started with email marketing you can get a free trial before buying paid plans on the email software to test drive the software.

Most email software will sting you based on your list size, how many emails you plan on sending, and based on your number of subscribers. The alternatives listed below do more for your buck. Each has it’s own free email marketing free trial period where you can test the waters and email out to your subscriber list for an example. Great way to see if that platform is right for you.

In this article, I will provide you with an overview of email software that I have used and would recommend for small businesses.

Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service is Important?

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for small businesses. I would argue that the biggest return on investment is from sending emails. It takes a little time setting them up working the sequences and trigger points but you can build a new revenue stream when you get it working.

This is because email marketing is easy to manage, gives you full control, and allows you to establish direct contact with your customers. There are a lot of ways to harness emails to attract and retain new business.

Read my article on the importance of building an email list.

 

I do not think that the success of your email campaigns is dependant on the email software you use. They all do very similar things. Do you sacrifice having a nice dashboard and analytics view because the delivery is really solid or do you sacrifice solid delivery to have a nice clean dashboard view with easy to see analytics? that’s a question only you can answer.

My top 3 Features

  1. The numbers what are limits (subscribers & send rates)
  2. Deliverability 
  3. Sequencing & tagging of the emails

 

There are more but if I narrow it down to the key 3 things I need it is the above. All the other fancy features are nice but you can get them elsewhere if you needed to.

Secondary advanced features wish list for email marketing software:

  1. Forms
  2. Landing pages
  3. Email templates
  4. Drag and drop email builder editor
  5. Send rates per month
  6. Subject A B testing
  7. Allow affiliate and transactional email

 

What to Look for in a Good Email Marketing Tool?

A good email marketing service should enable you to create highly engaging email newsletters with an easy user interface (ideally drag-and-drop editor).

You should be able to easily send bulk emails that are personalised and targeted without a lot of work. This is also known as marketing automation. Good automation features include auto tagging, link click triggers, event based actions and features like A/B testing.

You must have some feature that allows list segmentation to split groups up based on where they signed up or what actions they take like for example this group all clicked the link to the PDF download and so on.

email sequence

Most importantly, a good email service provider ensures that your email campaigns do not end up in the spam folder. Deliverability is key or you will see very diminished returns on email if you can’t get the email in front of the people.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the most popular email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other.

 

I think that Campaign Monitor is absolute garbage and that their support team are not nearly as helpful as a lot of the smaller email marketing services out there. I have had a constant issue with a Shopify form and emails from Campaign Monitor. The support was almost robotic and I kept getting sent in circles. Enough on that , let’s talk about some of the great email marketing service providers available to you.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most well-known email marketing service providers in the world thanks mainly to their heavy brand awareness campaigns and a forever free email marketing service plan.

MailChimp comes with an easy drag-and-drop email builder, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking for analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on user’s timezones, and you can setup segmenting based on geolocation.

The best thing MailChimps offer besides the FREE plan is the ease of the connection between your website and the MailChimp platform. This is made very easy through an on boarding checklist.

You can integrate MailChimp with:

  • WordPress
  • Shopify through Zapier
  • Magento
  • and many more

I do not rate MailChimp as a contender in the marketing automation category. I will acknowledge they have a reliable email automation sequence feature but it lacks the creativity and insights other platforms have in the basic plan like Automizy.

While there are some features included in MailChimps “Advanced” plans when you dig into the guts of them you can see that they are not as advanced as advertised. This is not a dig at MailChimp but more of a realisation that MailChimp is aimed at more beginner level and medium-skilled users. That is great for you being a busy business owner you won’t need to stuff around with all the intricate details and functions just to send an 8 email series.

The support offered by MailChimp in my experience has been top-notch. I never had to wait longer than a day to have a problem resolved. I love the knowledge base and how-to guides they make it even easier using the platform.

MailChimp offers a free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. As you would expect this is a very limited plan restricting you to the most basic of features. The emails you send will include MailChimp branding.

Using a scale as you grow subscription plan common in most email platforms MailChimp is very affordable starting their paid plans at $10 a month. This allows up to 500 subscribers and then as you grow that you can increase the subscriber count.

 

 

Read How To Grow Website Traffic Guide.

 

Wishpond Emails & Social Media

www.Wishpond.com

There is a real thought for the user in how Wishpond showcases the campaigns and allows you to build the lead forms and the process of IF this THEN that type of functions. Featuring a drag and drop editor and one of the best form builders for email marketing software as far as design and usability goes.

If you manage emails newsletters and social media contests and campaigns then Wishpond is a great choice for your business. I really enjoy using this email marketing tool because of the deliverability rates, its so easy to use, the campaign features and once again sheer ease of use.

Features

Wishpond’s marketing automation suite makes it easy and affordable to nurture your website visitors and leads to sales. This is a REALLY powerful set of tools and it will enable you to automatically score and segment leads into lists based on activity and personal details, send personalized emails based on behaviour, and much more.

You will find A LOT of features packed into Wishpond.

  • Email Automation
  • Online Forms
  • Website Popups
  • Landing Page Builder
  • Contests & Promotions
  • Referral Suite of tools
  • Leads Database
  • Marketing Automation

You won’t find personalised content or any dynamic content features in Wishpond but considering everything else this tool does I would be happy to miss out on those.

Who is Wishpond Best For?

Wishpond is focused on business owners of small and medium-sized businesses as well as marketing agencies who want to offer an afford marketing automation platform to their clients.

Most small businesses could make this work for their business I have no doubt.  I highly rate this email marketing software and put it so high on my list because it is easy to use for any one just starting or seasoned professionals.

Integrations

Wishpond can integrate at the time of writing with just over 300 of the most popular platforms and I imagine this will continue to expand over time.

 

Wishpond offers multiple tools to enhance your online marketing efforts. It lets you integrate different features on your website to make it spectacular and attractive for visitors. You can build and publish mobile-responsive pages in minutes and integrate different forms with them. These forms pop up when a visitor is on the landing page.

You can easily run contests and promotions on Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms with WishPond. Also, it helps you to send personalized emails to the leads. It offers an efficient lead management system which monitors a lead’s activity on the website. This activity is later used to create a list which online marketers use to track their leads’ behaviour.

Lead management is the main feature of Wishpond as it offers multiple ways not only to attract leads but to keep them busy with product-related feed. Just as the website visitor knows more about your product or shoots an inquiry to ask a question, an invisible relationship develops between you and the customer. With each minute spending on your website, the visitor is more and more convinced to buy from you. This willingness is monitored through navigational patterns of the lead which are recorded by Wishpond.

Pricing

I was very lucky to have picked up a great price on a lifetime deal but for those who missed the boat and do not have any wishes left haha bad joke.

The price points are split into the following:

  • Basic Plan $49 month.
  • Most Popular Plan $99 month
  • Growth Plan $199 month

There is a free plan but very limited.

I like this platform for small business. Wishpond is great for small businesses because it can do a lot of what you would need in everyday marketing campaigns.

>>> GET WISHPOND <<<

 

 

Automizy Real Automation & AI

I want to highlight that I LOVE Automizy and how easy they made the entire process of signing up to getting something live.

www.Automizy.com

features of automizy emails

Create engaging newsletters with the Drag & Drop Editor, making the procedure a lot of fun. There’s a bunch of proven templates to maximise the engagement of your emails. Build forms and email campaigns with either template designs or drag and drop email designs making the designer one of the best email marketing options for you to get started at any level of user skillset.

Subject Line Tester

The AI predicts the performance of your subject lines, even before you distribute you’re emails. Subject lines play an essential role in view rate (indeed). The advanced features in this email marketing software are amazing I am so impressed with the ease of use for such advanced features. The automation sequences are so easy to build with a very popular layout and upcoming AI so you can make more from your email campaigns.

 

Visual Automation Builder

The automation builder is a great way to map out your campaign visually. You can schedule & send emails, based on the list the subscriber is on; link clicks in your previous emails, webpage visits, plus much more.

There are also ready-to-use automation templates that you should get started. This is hands down the best email marketing feature on this list I love this part of it so much. I can get lost in the sequences when they get a bit more complex and conditional so a visual design showing you what is happening is a sweet addition to an already super powerful email marketing tool.

Automatic Resend

Resend the unopened emails to customers, with some other subject line & without having to redo the entire process.

Several clicks so you reach out to individuals in the event they missed from your previous emails!

A/B testing

You can article 4 subject lines for your emails & set them up for automation.

Automizy’s machine learning algorithm will optimize and send the variation that guarantees the highest open rates for your emails.

Website Behaviour Tracking

You could send automated emails predicated on the visitors’ engagement (visits, clicks) on your website.

Think about sending a contact to the subscriber who just visited your pricing page with a discount coupon? Charlie, now that’s the way you close a sale!

Advanced Filters

There is an endless amount of Filters to build your automated emails campaigns better.

You may filter your subscribers & customers based on the tags, lead score, email opens, clicks, the date they subscribed, UTM parameters, bounce rate, activities &, etc.

By merely applying these filters, you’re sending laser-targeted emails to the right person, at the right time.

Campaign Analytics

With the detailed analytics, you can get a bird’s eye view of how your campaigns are performing.

You can see the open rate, click rate, delivery rate, hard & soft bounces, no. of unsubscribes, best-performing links, plus much more.

If you’re running A/B tests, you can also check how each one of the variations is performing.

Integrations

Automizy integrates with most of the industry-standard tools like Slack, Zapier, Salesforce, Mailchimp, LeadPages, and even more. Plus, there are a lot of zap templates for you to plug & play.

To hook up with other tools, you’re using; there is an open API from Automizy and I am super pumped about that.

While you are going to give attention to your content & marketing efforts, Automizy will look after engaging and converting your subscribers/customers.

Get Automizy AI Email Platform.

 

SendFox 

This is my pick for a small business email platform that won’t break the bank and gives you enough features that you can grow your business. The best thing about SendFox is the simplicity of the platform. This platform was built with the end subscribers in mind, using a features called a smart page it showcases your best work and is the most easy to use software on the list.

I spoke to David Kelly at SendFox about some changes to their forms and he had some plans for making them more appealing. He acknowledged that the forms were basic at the time but he has been hard at work building this platform out. The UI on the dashboard is very smooth and I am finding the minimalistic design to be a productive environment to work in. Another email tool using simple drag and drop editor you cant go wrong with SendFox.

sendfox is awesome

I like the smart page feature as a way to manage your presence online. This is my smart page, SendFox Page.

Pricing is your friend with SendFox with a lifetime single price payment of $49 this is a no brainer. You can send up to 50k emails per month and most small businesses will not be sending 50k emails a month. 

To upgrade from this plan it’s $10 for every 1k additional you want to add on. Although you could pay $10 monthly for 70k email sends per month if you needed to. Build your plan as you increase and build your email list.

This is hands down the easiest platform to set up and send emails. You should not need a developer to help with any setup. 

This is my pick for the best email marketing platform for small businesses. I just want to thank David and his team at SendFox for making something so easy to use at an affordable price. They are still building out the knowledge base and customer support hub. With pricing based on your needs it really does fill the hole in the marketing as an affordable option for sending emails to your subscribers.

 

Improve Your Email Deliverability

All the email newsletter tools that I shared in this article have great email deliverability rates.

However, there are a few things you can do to make sure that your marketing emails always get delivered.

Use a Professional Email Address

Email platforms like Gmail, Outlook, and others have algorithms that look for spammy behaviour. One of them is the sender address.

You should as a business be using a professional email address like [email protected]. If you are not and possibly using [email protected] or other free email address it does look a tad tacky and makes the business feel very man in a van small.

This also hurts your email marketing BIG TIME! You need a domain verified email address to get better deliverability.

Send Targeted Emails Based on Interests

I think this is the number 1 thing local businesses fail at with email marketing. As someone who invests in local business heavily, I am amazed at some of the emails I get from local businesses.

If I signed up for updates about a vegetarian pizza range at my local pizza shop I want to know about all the veggie ranges of pizza that this store has. What I DO NOT want is constant updates about the exclusive meat range of pizzas.

There must be personalised targeting based on user behaviour as a minimum. Segmenting users into buckets based on behaviour and tagging users by the actions they take when you send emails is a must-have for your email software.

If you get this right your email marketing campaigns will see improved open rate and click-through rate which is a big factor in future email deliverability.

Email Marketing Software FAQs

Having helped thousands of users pick the best email marketing software, we have answered quite a lot of questions. Below are some of the answers to the most frequently asked questions about email marketing platforms.

Can I do bulk email marketing from my Gmail or Outlook?

You can but why would you want to do that? You should be using your primary domain associated email for better delivery and brand association.

The free options like Gmail and Hotmail etc are not designed for bulk email sending campaigns.

 

Which is the best free email marketing service?

If I was on a budget I would start with Mailchimp or Moosend for the free account services. These will be limited and feature the platform branding but as you grow you should be moving to a more pro version where you have more control.

This is not free but at a one-time price for lifetime access I highly recommend SendFox emailer at $49 one time. Get SendFox.

How much does email marketing cost?

Your email marketing cost will entirely depend on the number of subscribers you have, the number of total emails you send per month, and the email platform you use. On average, a small business email marketing costs is around $20 – $300 per month on email marketing given that they manage their campaign. If you use an email marketing agency, then your cost might be closer to $500 per month or higher.

Are there other email marketing platforms that are not listed here?

Yes, there are hundreds of email marketing services out there, but we have not listed them all here. We believe that creating a full email platforms list would create more confusion and cause choice paralysis for non-techy readers.

We have tried all the top major email marketing service including many that are not in our email platform lists above such as ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Ontraport, Mailjet, Campaign Monitor, InfusionSoft Klaviyo, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot by Salesforce, Sendloop, iContact, Moosend, Emma, TotalSend, SharpSpring, MailPoet, and so many more.

The top email marketing services that we have chosen to include in our list provide the best features for the best price and features.

 

Key Takeaway: The Best Email Marketing Service

In reality, email marketing platforms are a dime a dozen but there are some champions among the dirty dozen.

My Top Picks:

  1. SendFox
  2. Wishpond
  3. Automizy
  4. Mailchimp

My goals may not match your business goals so this is based on my needs and wants. I love how quick and easy to setup SendFox is and the functionality that Wishpond allows especially around contests and promotions. 

If you are a one-man in a van type business I suggest SendFox based on simplicity, time to set up and pricing.

For a local business, I suggest Mailchimp or Wishpond for the baseline features.

For eCommerce stores, I suggest either Wishpond or Automizy. This will help with store growth and engagement campaigns and product launches. With features like form embed, landing page, tagging and event based actions this is a must for ecommerce store email campaigns.

You should select an email marketing software that can scale as your business grows. I say this because I’ve been in that horrible position where my email software was great for small below 5k email lists but extremely expensive when scaling to 20k email lists. The migration from one to the other was a very stressful and draining experience. Some platforms now offer migration services between platforms and I think that’s been a long time coming.

 

I hope you have found this useful and now have an idea of what are the best email software options for your business. As always if you enjoyed this article and found it useful please give us a like share or comment below and thanks for reading.

 

How To Build A Social Media Strategy

How To Build A Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy Overview What’s the PURPOSE of Social Media? The goal of social media is to connect people to other people. When 90% of businesses do it you could be forgiven for thinking it is as awkward as teenagers kissing for the first time. Cringeworthy and...

read more
How To Build Better Marketing Messaging

How To Build Better Marketing Messaging

Here's a powerful way to make your marketing stronger. Write out an offer that your dream clients would love and be hard for them to say no to. Then see how close you can get to creating it. Once you do launch and promote it everywhere. This sounds simple but so many...

read more
Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2020)

Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2020)

The most underrated marketing channel is by far email marketing. Almost every business can benefit from running email campaigns, there is also the repeat customer factor involved in email campaigns. I am a huge believer in email marketing and this article focuses on...

read more

Take The Opportunity When It Presents Itself

Take The Opportunity When It Presents Itself

by | May 31, 2020 | Business, Guides, Lifestyle

One of the biggest mistakes I made starting out in business was chasing money. The focus, the driver and the motivator was money and thats wasnt the best thing to do it alienated a lot of opportunity. The opportunity to grow and expand this one because the numbers werent solid.

Because the direction my business partner and I were considering taking didnt have a proven track record and didnt make financial sense we missed the opportunity to pounce on the emerging gap in the market.
Money as a key metric in business isnt a good stat to be building a business around. Revenue and monthly reoccurring revenue and annual reoccurring revenue are great metrics to use to make data driven decisions for your business. Having the numbers visible is a great motivator when you track the right things.

“I don’t ever recommend just chasing the growth of the bank balance.”
When you make money as your primary metric you may develop tunnel vision on a number a very specific number. If you hit that number or dont come close you become fixated on that number and dont take in other variables that might be more profitable than pursing the magic number.
build a money generating portfolio
I am not a bean counter of the finance guy in any of my businesses. Ive been in more finance and accounting meetings than I have wanted in my time. While extremely boring and hard to focus during these meeting they were really beneficial for me to upskill my finance intelligence.

My experience with money is that outside of the business we dont talk about it with competitors, partners, affiliates and keep our cards to our chest. This helped me keep focus on our goals and not worry about competitor ABC who was chasing $500K MRR or what ever dick measuring number that they had fixed as their success metric.

I honestly can not stand loud mouth marketers or business owners who boast and brag about who much their business makes in revenue. This places a big fat red target on your chest. I also just as a human with good manners be bragging about myself. Be humble and know you are doing well without shouting it across the room.
If you do attend conferences you can look around and see these same people in deep financial substance abuse and trying every which way to find happiness outside their business. They focus on money because they dont have anything else to contribute.

Your business should be your dream hobby that you can not wait to get started on each day. The people you do it with should be your favourite people. Ive built many businesses with this in mind, who do I want to work with and does this fulfil me.
My success indicator is knowing we have a steady flow of money coming in, the number monthly and yearly is increasing gradually. Then when we are stable or growing I dont have money as a motivator because our system to grow that is working. This is where I have time to look for an emerging business or brand and speak with them about how they can do more and pass on some of our tips and strategies that helped push our business into the green.

Thats my success metric, being free enough to share my knowledge with others who are just starting out.
I did’nt come from money and Ive never had big capital injections to buy and start businesses. I would grind and hustle my skills to build momentum and steadily grow a seed money allocation for new ideas or acquisitions. It takes a bit longer but I dont owe anyone anything and I am free to make what ever decisions I need to to grow that business without reporting into a board or a JV partner. This is not the method for everyone it takes commitment and dedication to the goal.
Ever since I built my first company Ive wanted to take an opportunity where I would have a job that provided fulfilment and made me feel satisfied. Ive got this thing where I need to be doing something all the time. I move fast and I am easily bored if theres no movement or anything for me to do. I often found myself after the growth period of a business and things had started to plateau a bit, I would start buying crap that I didn’t need or hiring people I didn’t really need just to keep busy.

I wasnt looking for new opportunities, I got a little com-placement. In one of my physical service businesses I was extremely passionate about building it and we actually grew it to 5,000 employees and one day I just lost all attachment to that business. I felt it had done its dash and I couldn’t give it anything else. I was bored and I was not enjoying the business that last week I was so excited to get to work.

My recap is we were so busy building relationships that we had taken our eye off the ball of business growth and just the day to day operations had worn me down. It was so sad losing all that organic energy where I could do everything everyday sucked down to the bare minimums and I struggled even filling the weekly roster.
The good news was I found a new opportunity and I pounced on it like a leopard catching its prey. I got to help businesses with a specific problem they had online.
Moving from a that physical services business and into online marketing was such a huge shift of ways of working It did take me a good 6 months to adjust. The sale of the services business was relatively smooth and I was out within a month. The opportunity of the next move wasnt on a countdown timer so I had time to manuvere and get my ducks in a  row.
In month 8 I grew that new marketing business 600%+ from $10k monthly reoccurring revenue to over 600% and all it took was focus. I needed a good 6 months to get familiar with how online marketing agencies worked and freelancing and tools metrics, the money verse expenses was so different from physical businesses.

But know this, the more I focused on the business opportunities the more my new business grew. I built a business that I wanted to work in and I hired people I wanted to work with. That was simple backend systems, and for revenue I targeted people I wanted to work with and that was automotive clients and ecommerce stores.
It was that simple!
I targeted people who were doing things I had an interest in and I could talk their language and know their industry. The immediate shift in business from taking that opportunity changed the business. It literally changed the way we worked fulfiling those services for these new clients. Such a breathe of fresh air for me to get that energy back and have that drive and focus to really sink my teeth into business.
The marketing agency was much easier to grow when I was the one calling the shots, making the plays at new opportunities and ultimately the one who was responsible for growth and failure. The business was not new to me but online  was, I had a great finance and accounting system in place and then for me it was learning online marketing.
Now to this day I love this stuff. There is no day Ive not wanted to get up and get online to help my team and my clients or assets grow.
IF you are an entrepreneur you are going to get your fulfillment and satisfaction from these. You will also slowly die inside without them.
  • Build a team of talented marketers
  • Build a service or product that you are proud of
  • Build a solution to other peoples problems
  • Solve the problem for your ideal customer
I know a lot of marketing techniques, tactics and ways of working but I often consult with my sopecialists on super advanced tactics for specific things I want to deliver or we require as a deliverable in business. I hire inelligent superstars at the one thing that they do, this gives me a great database of very targeted specialists.
One thing we do regulary is to look at our competitors and any competitors in emerging spaces and see how they treat their customers and audiences. Do they truly love their audience or are they just applying tricks and hacks to get by. The intelligence we get back from this allows us to exloit these opportunities because we have a system for customer journey and experience. Building for customers and not for money.

“I always build for the customer and towards the problem and solution. This is just how I learned marketing. Sell the solution to people who have a problem and do this with the ciustomer in mind and not the money they give you for that solution.”

Shenzu

I find it really interesting the number of marketers who are still trying to use tricks and indirect methods at trying to hide information around the policies on chargebacks and refunds. Focus more on making amazing things and move away from making crap products and you wont have to worry about your reputation or the payment processors and chargebacks.
This was an early morning post just after a workout so if its a bit shaky to follow along I am sorry for your eyes struggling to keep on track haha. I had a lot on my mind and wanted to press the point of taking opportunity. If I didnt take the opportunity to change careers from physical services to online marketing I think that during cornova virus I would of bene wiped out. I am also so thankful I can do what I do on computers to help people. I never work for cash or chase a pay rise, I am my own boss and I make my own hours.
If you are stuck I want you to start looking around at the next step or a new avenue for you to apply your passion powers to and forge a business around. This is the best time ever to do this. Look at the opportunity in everything that you do and you will never need money.
Thats my thoughts for today. As always if you enjoyed this share it and enjoy yourself. Peace!
Read more from the blog…
Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Posts vs pages for your affilaite site what is better? I hear this a lot and it doesnt really matter. But I prefer posts for affiliate sites because I can manipulate them into collections of posts and build my own category of posts that help build topical relevance to...

read more
How To Build A Social Media Strategy

How To Build A Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy Overview What’s the PURPOSE of Social Media? The goal of social media is to connect people to other people. When 90% of businesses do it you could be forgiven for thinking it is as awkward as teenagers kissing for the first time. Cringeworthy and...

read more
Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

How To Make Money With Blogging Blogging is a great way to build a business that allows you the freedom to work from anywhere in the world whenever you want. That sure does sound amazing, but it doesn’t just happen you have to put in the work. Blogging requires...

read more

Alternative Tips For Attracting New Clients To Your Agency

Alternative Tips For Attracting New Clients To Your Agency

by | May 7, 2020 | Business, Guides

Client Attraction Tips To Help You Get New Clients Into Your Agency

 

Clients, not everyone loves working with clients and I hear horro stories about this almost weekly. The end of the day the agency model depends on the clients to continue trading. What this article is about is some alternative ways to attract and sign new clients and some ideas for improving your process around this.

*Disclaimer I am not client facing and do a lot of my work through an account manager or someone who handles that client relationship. I know areas where I am not so strong and that is definatley client relationships.

ClickBucks does not take on clients.

 

Potential clients need one thing above all others. A valid reason to believe what you have to offer will work for THEM. You see we have all purchased products and services that haven’t lived up to the promises made. So we have become smarter at not getting burnt again.
The easy way to do this is say no.
But what hasn’t changed is our wish to fulfil our wants, needs and desires. So as a business we need to give potential clients a reason to believe that what we offer will live up to the promises made. There are many ways to solve this problem but an easy one is to find something new in your offer.
That way people can see that your offer has this thing and the others didn’t so it may work for them.
One question you can use to find the something new is.
What is something clients can only get from me?
It’s challenging but rewarding work and it is also highly profitable.

Things You Need To Do To Get Momentum

Even doing 1% each day works, but you need to do it more than once.
If you improve something you do to market your business each week by just 1% the impact over a year is enormous.
Here are a few 1% actions you can try:
  1. Do 1% more propspecting.
  2. Speak to 1% more people.
  3. Post more valuable content to social media
  4. Test sticking to one social media channel per week
  5. Contact 1% of your current clients for a catchup
  6. Focus on improving your Ad optimisations by 1%
  7. Focus on improving your website page content by 1%
  8. Improve your tool stack by 1%
  9. Review your expenses for improvement and use that saved $$ on advertising
Like Al Pacino said in the locker room scene in Any Given Sunday, Life is a game of inches. If you put in 1% focus each day you will start moving the momentum on that thing you are focused on.

I’ll stop there as I think you get the idea.
Now please do yourself and your business and take 1% more action on something before the end of the week.

“I’m not really a client facing guy I do prefer the background operations of client work. But I do enjoy the assist where I will help a account manager with a technical pitch or a really unique opportunity where they need some out of the box thinking. In essence the client wants the expert advice from the professional. As long as you can confidently demonstrate that you are the boss at what you are selling they will have confidence to give you their money.”

Shenzu

Would you like to know what I believe the most potent and underused marketing weapon is?
If you didn’t say yes and you own a business please call a doctor and make sure you’re OK. 😂
It isn’t curiosity like I used in the opening line though that is powerful.
I believe it’s a word you don’t hear often.
>> Consistency.
In other words doing the things you need to do to drive your business every single day.
Some days you will do them and seemingly nothing happens. That’s the why life is.
Other days you’ll strike gold. But unless you do the things that matter consistently you will have substandard results.
My number one thing every business should be doing daily is running prospecting systems to bring in new clients.
This doesn’t have to be one of those 60 step sales funnels the gurus are so fond of.
It can be as simple as reaching out to 10 people a day and having helpful conversations with them. 
Multiply that by 52 weeks a year and if you are doing it even half right you will get some decent clients coming in. 

Quick Method To Attract New Clients

One of the fastest ways to get a bunch of new clients is to access other people’s audiences.
That is find someone who already has a great relationship with a group of clients you’d love to have. Make sure they are non-competing of course.
For this to work well you must make sure you have something to offer that is great for their clients and ensures they gain status by passing it on. Not everyone will go for it but those that do can bring you in a ton of new sales.
If you’re stuck for ideas on finding people with your potential audience ask questions on Reddit or Quora and monitor teh comments you will get some unique tactics this way and potentially introductions to new clients or people who have complimentary skills to you.
Make sure you include what you offer and what a great client looks like for you

What Can You Do To Lower The Risk For A Client?

The lower the risk a potential client feels the easier it is to say yes to doing business with you?
In challenging times the businesses that reduce risk the most will perform the best.
What do you do to reduce risk for your clients?
Here are some ideas:
> Provide a minimum result guarantee
> Provide batches of leads upfront
> Provide 1 week of work free
> Provide 1 month free
> Help get them $$ upfront before they pay you

The Key Takeaway

 

There’s never been a better time to reflect on your unique selling position, systems and offering to take stock and answer some of these key questions.

How can I make it better?

Here’s some examples to get you started.

How can I make my ads better?
How can I make my website better?
How can I make my social posts better?
How can I serve my clients better?
How can I make my product/service better?
You can also apply this powerful question to your self.
How can I make my health better?
How can I make my skills better?
I think you get the idea.
What I am going to do is to ask you to takke stock and take action. Start with your why and then set your self a task to answer the questions raised here and come up with a better offering.
And finally…Which question will you work on today?
Read more articles on the blog…
Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Posts vs pages for your affilaite site what is better? I hear this a lot and it doesnt really matter. But I prefer posts for affiliate sites because I can manipulate them into collections of posts and build my own category of posts that help build topical relevance to...

read more
How To Build A Social Media Strategy

How To Build A Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy Overview What’s the PURPOSE of Social Media? The goal of social media is to connect people to other people. When 90% of businesses do it you could be forgiven for thinking it is as awkward as teenagers kissing for the first time. Cringeworthy and...

read more
Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

How To Make Money With Blogging Blogging is a great way to build a business that allows you the freedom to work from anywhere in the world whenever you want. That sure does sound amazing, but it doesn’t just happen you have to put in the work. Blogging requires...

read more
10 Tips To Be Productive Online

10 Tips To Be Productive Online

by | Apr 19, 2020 | Business, Guides

Do These 10 Things To Get More Done and Increase Productivity

 

I found in my early days of online marketing that I would open tab after tab after tab and click down the rabbit hole. Taking control of my day helped me get serious and move past roadblocks while buildingva team of likeminded goal orientated ninjas here at Click Bucks. Ive compiled 10 tips for you to use to build and grow and effecive team.

 

Tip <h1> Tackle the BHAG First

BHAG stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal or big hairy ass goal. This refers to doing the bbiggest meatiest hardest thing you need to do first. Another reference is swallowing the frog. I like to tackle the hardest things first to get them done and from me subconciously putting the off because they are hard to do.

Tip <h2> Make a List For The Day

This will help you prioritize whats the focus verse what just needs to be done. I find visualising the list of what I need to do in a day helpful. We as humans love lists because we can cross things off them and feel a slice of accomplishment when we complete the mini tasks on that list.

Tip <h3> Remove Distraction

This was a real big one for me when starting out. I needed clear focus and having dogs and no supervision I would find myself at the fridge more than I needed to be and wandering from the computer to go play with the dogs. How I tackled this was to create a space that was work only with a door I could close.

I would also block out time chunks. Hard core tasking for 60 minutes then 5 mins of free time then back into it with another sprint session with a small reward at the end. This helped me chunk out my day so I could operate effectively and give myself small rewards for completing micro goals.

Other tips: put your phone on silent or flip it over. Sign out of Facebook and try to limit the number of tabs you have open at once.

 

Tip <h4> Assign Tasks To The Team

I often have to review my task list for a backlog that builds up being the leader means I review a lot of work and this is a squeeze point in the operation so I give allocate a time to review and assign tasks so that the work can be done. Dont hold onto things assign it out or outsource what you cant do or dont have time to do.

 

Tip <h5> Clearly Define What Things Are

This is a great tip for helping others work with you. I often move so fast its hard for my team to keep up and I find that I do two things that slow them down:

  1. Spell everything like an ape
  2. Leave brief notes so vague they just dont understand

What Ive done to fix this is slow down when creating the brief notes for teh team. I write it out and think does this capture everything they need to know and will they understand what this means. Its ok to have teh idea in your head but passing that onto someone else who may not be an all round marketing weapon can be hard.

Write your brief notes, take a breath and reread it. Make it clear and include reference links and linked things they may need. 

I use the following project management tools for making sure my projects are managed effectively:

  1. Asana
  2. ClickUp
  3. Google Sheets
  4. Integromat

For more Tools that might help your team check out the marketers toolkit here.

Tip <h6> Move Impact Tasks Forward

I like to review the task list of my team each day and opush forward the tasks that help me complete goals or are what I call impact tasks. The impact tasks help me move something closer to complete. These can have a huge impact on the project but also team morale and momentum two things that need to be given boosts every now and then. 

Tip <h7> Move Quick To Complete Tasks Forward

When you have tasks on your list that will take less than 3 minuites to complete either do them yourself or assign to your fastest worker and get them done and off your lists. These are quick wins that can add up and add momentum to your productivity.

 

Tip <h8> Improve Your Process When You Can

Im a big fan of constant optimisation in processes and techniques. This is no different, review how you do things and make improvements where you can. This will be really valuable when you start workingw ith teams. If you pick up a new technique that cuts down implementation time by 5 minutes work that into your process.

Share these wins with your team and encourage them to contribute. As you grow your team you will find this culture to save you money and build a string team culture.

 

Tip <h9> Apply Parkinsons Law

To reference someone moe famous than me “Don’t give more time to a task than you absolutely need to”. This rings true the more complex you make a task to be the bigger it gets and the bigger it gets the more time and resources it takes to complete it. Keep it super simple and allocate the tie that it needs to be done and keep it to that rule.

Tip <h10> Like Nike Just Do IT!

The best advice I can give you is just do it, dont put it to the side and move it back. Take the bull by thehorns and get that thing done. This give syou momentum and removes something that you needed to do from you list.

 

This is just a list of productivity tips that can help you get more done each day and help your team be better at delivery of thier tasks. I hope it helps you get more stuff done each day.

Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Posts vs pages for your affilaite site what is better? I hear this a lot and it doesnt really matter. But I prefer posts for affiliate sites because I can manipulate them into collections of posts and build my own category of posts that help build topical relevance to...

read more
How To Build A Social Media Strategy

How To Build A Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy Overview What’s the PURPOSE of Social Media? The goal of social media is to connect people to other people. When 90% of businesses do it you could be forgiven for thinking it is as awkward as teenagers kissing for the first time. Cringeworthy and...

read more
Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

How To Make Money With Blogging Blogging is a great way to build a business that allows you the freedom to work from anywhere in the world whenever you want. That sure does sound amazing, but it doesn’t just happen you have to put in the work. Blogging requires...

read more
How To Beat Amazon Affiliate Commission Drops

How To Beat Amazon Affiliate Commission Drops

by | Apr 15, 2020 | Affiliate, Business, Guides

Amazon made some big changes early this morning causing ripples throughout the affiliate community. I honestly think if you didnt see this coming then you need to now take control of your revenue. I made big moves away from Amazon in late 2016 after they blundered a big investment in Amazon FBA and made some bogus claims against my Amazon associates account. 

I opened my eyes and looked for other alternatives. They do exist and they are always better to work with than a huge corporation who at any moment can screw its affiliates. Funny enough the screwing happened in the early hours this morning.

 

Summary of what happened:

assive fee changes for some categories on the Amazon Associates program, starting on 21st April.
Home improvement, Garden, Pets,Beauty and more go from 8% to 3% Ive added a change table so you can see what the commissions were and what they are as of 21st April 2020.
To change table  by Amazon – Heartbreak link

The Opportunity For Amazon Affiliates To Pivot

Amazon associates program is not the only revenue stream for affiliate sales. There are so many more opportunities available and Ill show you some of the better places to get affiliate deals setup.

I would suggest taking the approach of diversify your revenue stream just like COVID-19 taught us that things can change. Never leave all your eggs in one basket, make moves to secure multiple revenue streams and this works for affiliates as well. Look at using multiple affiliate programs to monetise your websites.

Think of these platforms like Landlords:

  • Google
  • YouTube
  • Amazon
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Bing
  • Pinterest

You dont control them, you cant control them. All you can do is play by their rules and hope they dont change the rules on you after you have invested time and money building your empire around their goal posts. These are goal posts that move when they say they need to move.

Google will make algo updates and ruin yoru organic strategy overnight.

Facebook will create social engagement changes so you can no longer bait people to click and share your pormotions.

Instagram will hide your engagement metrics so people have to do more things to engage with yoru content making it less rewarding for them.

YouTube can ban your account because you posted more videos in one day than they think you should. The list goes on about how you can loose everything because of these platforms changing their goal posts.

I actively search for new affiliate programs every 6 months in my niches and I would ask you to do similar. Book a date in your calendar and set it to 6 month reoccurring and do the searching you will be suprised at what you find.

My Advice: Consider expanding your site’s potential profit by diversifying your affiliate networks.

Amazon being a big orange bag of dried up apricots is not the end of the world. In fact there are other alternatives and I went through this process when I swore off Amazon when they F#@cked me over back in late 2016.

Here is a roundup of the affiliate networks I would suggest you look at joining to get that loss of revenue back while still selling from your site you were using with Amazon. Each network has strengths and weaknesses and different terms, I found most are decent enough and when you can verify traffic results and sales your almost set to renegotiate your percentage of commission that you get for a sale #winning.

Check them out below.

How to find affiliate programs?

I would always start by searching Google first. a simple query like “Pet food affiliate programs” is a good starting point.
you can search Google using the term “<brand> affiliate” and you will have a range of affiliate program options in most cases. 
Like to have the tech do that for you? I have a solution. You can also try searching platforms like odigger.com and  affi.io.

 

10 Other Affiliate Networks and Programs

 

Clickbank

The staple in naffiliate marketing and where I began my journey into promoting other peoples products. Clickbank is a well-known name withmore than 20 years online maketing history they are the belly of teh beast. Clickbank has developed a reputation for relatively high commissions ranging 10-75% and a name that pays on time everyy time. They say they have reach of more than 200 million customerbase

Clickbank comes with a learning hub for beginenrs, very functional analytics dashboard, extended oppotunity for partnerships and has many reoccurring commissions offerings.

This is a great starting point for beginners and really should be in everyones marketing arsenal.

CJ Affiliate by Conversant

CJ Affiliate are a big player with a LOT of offers. They are a massive affiliate network that works with and promotes products and companies all over the globe, I am suprised by some names that keep popping up in the dashboard of local companies near my home city. Its a suprise to see but just goes to show the power of online marketing.

I love the simplicity of the affiliate dashboard and search functions for finding those winning offers. They have history and expereince o their side and it shows. Great expereince with them so far and Ive been really impressed with thier dropshipping component. They have extended features for more expereinced affiliates called “premier” where you can earn $10k a month and upwards. 

This is free to sign up to and a great starting point for beginners, the more expereinced marketers will thrive with this platform.

 

Rakuten Marketing

Hosting a library of household names think Best Buy, Lacoste, Wal-Mart, Macy’s, and the like this is a one stop shop for affiliates who want to promote more retail type offers. Think big machine style affiliate marketing, they say they have pushed over 120 million orders a year and growing.

They have sme high profile industry awards thrown their way thanks to mThink, they picked up Best Affiliate Network seven years running. 

Rakuten manages the quality and reliability of products and services being promoted. I found this platform a little clunky to use and staying on top of it was a chore. Useful to be part of and you can find amazing offers that do convert really well.

This is good for beginners who want to test the general retail sales offers and clothing etc. Really decent network of offers available but I just found the dashboard clunky, that does not mean the program stinks. Very much worth your time to join and start promoting sales offers.

eBay Partner Network

If you’re already familiar with Amazon’s affiliate network platform, adding eBay’s affiliate program into the mix should be fairly easy to do. With 1.2 billion listings on eBay, there is certainly a wide array of options to choose from, and potential to make money. For Australians eBay is the choice to buy online before Amazon.

On the flip side, eBay’s payment structure could be a deterrent, as the percentage commission in comparison to other programs is smaller (50 to 70 percent), and partners are only paid monthly. This is part of why the platform doesnt have my undying support. I would say use it more but the payouts and structures are not enticing enough for me to focus efforts on here.

This is best for those who liked Amazon associates program. Very similar experience and offerings.

Ive used this damage report before and I have a feeling that 2020 will be the year that I absolutely wear the colour out of this image. Every week its like getting a speeding fine when driving on the freeway. 

Avangate

I like promoting digital info products and downloadables. This is where Avangate comes in to play, a very simple to utilise platform that removes a lot of cumbersome fiddling with settings and crap you just dont need to be doing.

They have a decent sized database roughly 22,000 software products available. They pay pretty good commission rates and have a pretty extensive network of partners. This wont be the best fit for people selling physical products.

 

Shareasale

Shareasale has been around for 18 years and works with more than 4,000 merchants across a wide range of product categories. I like this platform for the range of options it provides. Ive made a lot of money with Shareasale and find them a solid platform for affiliates.

The actual support team are legends they actually take time to help you and keep it real. No slick sales or anyone pulling te ewool over your eyes, the typical internet marketer and affiliate manager stereotype. I give them props for doing a great job consitantly.

Great for beginners to advanced.

GiddyUp

Billed as an “exclusive performance marketing agency,” GiddyUp works with “innovative and disruptive brands” around the world. This site is particularly attractive for affiliates who are working in more obscure or highly specific niches.

Their GiddyUp Publisher program allows affiliates to get weekly Net 5 payments on every offer, and all campaigns are tested and optimized before they go live.

JVZoo

JVZoo is a software as a service (SaaS) company that focuses mostly on online or digital products. It is free to sign up and use JVZoo, and their “newbie-friendly” site design and signup process help facilitate and teach those who might be fairly new to affiliate marketing how to really get going without a lot of risk.

Some of the benefits of using JVZoo are up to 100 percent instant commissions one of the only platforms where you will be getting 100% of the sale. Dashboards show real time tracking of your commissions and alerts on purchase notifications.

This platform gets a bad wrap because a lot of vendors are sharks, they create software thats not complete so that it can be resold in 6-12 months rebranded for another cash grab. Ive lost count of software Ive purchased through JVZoo where Ive had to contact the vendor about support or functional assistance because the domain is down or the logins not working or the entire screen of the dashboard is messed up. All fun with JVZoo.

This network is a headache but it also does have some sweet deals available. You just need to know how to spot the sharks from the actual marketers.

This is for beginners and advanced marketers. Please check your vendor and offer before putting your name behind it as a suggested action from me.

Avantlink

Avantlink is all about data, customization, and better understanding the relationship between the products you promote, how you go about marketing them, and making adjustments so as to better reap the benefits of your work. The Avantlink network is connected with hundreds of merchant partners to work with across different fields, so many different kinds of affiliate marketers may find options there.

With dedicated international affiliate networks, product-level tools, and custom tracking links, you can make sure you are being focused with your time and efforts.

FlexOffers

FlexOffers connects you with more than 12,500 affiliate programs and lists just on 5,000 premo advertisers. You can find a host of categories to promote using FlexOffers.

Apart from its partners, FlexOffers also has a sleek interface for tracking your account, as well as on-call support for publishers.

 

skimlinks affiliate program

Skimlinks

Similar to Sovrn, Skimlinks will create affiliate links in your content automatically for you. For content that’s created without your involvement (like a forum), this might be a good option.

You can also insert links manually as well. They currently have over 24,000 merchants they work with, so I recommend you signup for this one as well. They have a wide range of niche markets.

Bonus Affiliate Marketing Tactic

Another strategy I’ve used is to contact individual companies and ask about their affiliate programs. Not every company will have an affiliate program but if you can explain the benefits to them you can often twist their arm and get them setup with a program.

Some companies run in-house affiliate programs, which means they have a select few affiliates that they work with. Such companies can be quite profitable to work with as you’ll be competing with way less affiliates.

reaching out to these companies to set up a private affiliate deal with them. These can often be worth far more than going with an affiliate network’s offer, as the payouts can be higher.

If they don’t have an affiliate program, you can offer to set one up for them using a tool like http://reversion.com/

Diversifying Your Affiliate Networks Matters

Being in the online business world, you probably already know that things change pretty quickly and that having flexibility is key to success. When it comes to affiliate marketing, that remains true.

If you haven’t already, expanding your potential profit by diversifying your affiliate networks is a great way to build in additional revenue streams for your business. Before diving into any one in particular, make sure to do some research on the program or network to confirm its legitimacy, potential for profit, and alignment with the types of products and services highlighted on your website.

 

Despite the affiliate program you use you should have a niche where you have the knowledge and advantage to produce great content that you can layer monetization opportunities over that content to make you money. Your business goals can bend a little to accommodate the alternative affiliate marketing network that you have added. This will be a new opportunity to try new things and it might just be the wake up call that you needed. Thanks Jeff.

The learning from this move by Amazon remains the same as I say again and again diversify your revenue streams, and do not forget to diversify your traffic channels. This works for using several affiliate networks to make money from yoru website because if one (Amazon) goes down you will still have 2 or 3 programs making you money until you can replace the one that went down.

This is a smart lesson for website owners and online marketers to be more involved in your asset management. Take more control of your asset to keep it future proof against thrid party interference.

Read more articles…

Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Pages or Posts For Your Affiliate Website

Posts vs pages for your affilaite site what is better? I hear this a lot and it doesnt really matter. But I prefer posts for affiliate sites because I can manipulate them into collections of posts and build my own category of posts that help build topical relevance to...

read more
How To Build A Social Media Strategy

How To Build A Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy Overview What’s the PURPOSE of Social Media? The goal of social media is to connect people to other people. When 90% of businesses do it you could be forgiven for thinking it is as awkward as teenagers kissing for the first time. Cringeworthy and...

read more
Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

Building A Blog In 5 Simple Steps

How To Make Money With Blogging Blogging is a great way to build a business that allows you the freedom to work from anywhere in the world whenever you want. That sure does sound amazing, but it doesn’t just happen you have to put in the work. Blogging requires...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest