It is extremely difficult to get started in affiliate marketing. This is because there are already a lot of people doing it. In order to survive you have to beat your competition. There’s also a lot of information out there about how to do affiliate marketing, so it can be confusing. Here’s one trick that almost no one else is using.

Affiliate videos

No one would deny the power and popularity of video. The reason it’s so pervasive is because everyone loves it. It’s so much easier to keep people’s attention with video. So why wouldn’t you use it in your affiliate business?

Here’s how to use videos for affiliate promotions:

• Testimonials
• Walk-throughs
• Ordering
• Sneak peak

Record your testimonial

This one is super simple. Just turn on your web cam and talk. It doesn’t have to be professional or polished. Listening to your honest endorsement makes your viewers feel comfortable buying. In truth, mistakes and mess-ups just make it more believable. You really can just click record and start talking. Use one of the other ideas if you’re feeling shy.

Record a walk-through

This one is a little more subtle. Basically you’re doing a tutorial on how to use the product. And while they watch you use it, they think, “I should buy that.” If it’s useful, then what you’re teaching just makes people want it. So just make sure you’re demoing a good product.

Do an ordering video

This technique is super powerful. Do a screen capture of the ordering process. Nothing inspires your viewers to buy like watching you do it. First of all it’s what’s called “social proof”. Once they see you doing it, they feel more secure. It also build your viewers trust. They are much more likely to take your advice to buy when you’ve taken it yourself. And let’s not forget about good old fashioned envy. It’s simple – you have it. Now they want it. You can add some extra punch to this by ending with: You’re gonna have to place your own order if you want to see the members area.

Record a preview of the members area

This is a great way to build value. You do a tour of the members area. You show them the entire contents of what they get. This one also helps to remove the skepticism. It’s much easier to trust they’re getting something if they actually seen it.

You can do this!

You don’t need any special training for this. Anyone can create stunning videos with some easy-to-use software. Really, the software does all the work. So you don’t have to worry about the technical part of this at all. Keep focused on the rewards:

• Increase sales You’ll earn more affiliate commissions when you add video. People like video, so start using it.
• Less refunds Less of your commissions will be clawed back, too. Your customers will know what they’re getting into ahead of time. So less of them will ask for refunds.
• Beat your competition! Adding video is so simple. But only a very small percentage do it. So, you’ll be way ahead of the crowd.

Get started right now and take your affiliate marketing to the next level. It’s your profit that’s affected by not taking action.

Secrets of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. Affiliate marketing means that all you do is send hits to someone else’s website, they do everything else (make the product, design the sale page, handle the billing and support, etc.), and you get a percentage of the sale price as your commission (usually 50% or more for digital products).

Here’s just a few benefits

1. You’re able to start almost instantly without having to make a product, write the sales page, design the website, create marketing materials, or set up the ordering, billing & delivery system.
2. It runs on auto-pilot for you because you don’t have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
3. There’s no risk for you, because the product owner has already done all the research, development and testing.  So you already know that the visitors you send will result in commissions for you.

Obviously affiliate marketing makes sense – these benefits make it a clear winner!

There is one major drawback…

Once you send your visitors to the product sales page, they are gone forever. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. That’s fine for the product owner because she can sell to them again and again, but you can’t.

How can you avoid this pitfall?

What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product website. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you’re a super star affiliate, you’ll provide high-quality content before sending them to the product website.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
2. You’re generating good will by giving them high-quality content. This way, they are much more likely to make a purchase when you send them to the sales page.

Here’s what you’ll need to create affiliate tools like this:

1. A squeeze page, and even better, a video squeeze page.
2. One or more content-rich “warm up” pages
3. An email series with at least 5 high-quality content emails

The video squeeze page is where you’ll direct your traffic instead of directly to the product sales page. It captures the name and email of your visitors and puts them into your autoresponder, which then begins sending out the 5-part email series. Then it redirects them to your content pages after they subscribe to your email series.

The content pages provide valuable information for your visitors and make them more receptive to the sales message that you’ll link to from inside the content. While they’re reading the content you’ve provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.

There’s no doubt it’s worth the effort to put a system like this in place, because doing so will increase your profits by 500% or more.  And after you get it all set up, it runs on total auto-pilot. You just refer people to your lead capture page, instead of the product sales page.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. With a service like that, you don’t have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. On the plus side, you’ll save a ton of time and money vs. trying to build this yourself. Plus you can get started instantly. The downside is that other people will be using the same affiliate tools as you. But the internet is pretty big, so this isn’t much of a concern.

The other route you can take is to hire people on Elance to create and implement the various aspects for you. Either way, it’s an important step you need to take if you’re going to be serious about your affiliate marketing.

Sometimes it’s more about the package than the content. And sometimes a presentation sells a product more effectively than describing it, no matter how great it might be.

Here’s what I mean:

I’ve been lucky to experience some extraordinary things in my life, and you can read about it by exploring the About tab at the top of this page. But if you want to be exhilarated, just run over to
Gil’s page. You’ll be wowed out of your socks — not because he’s 39 and he’d rather go to the beach than a pool, but because of the way he tells it.

Gil’s “25 things about me” entry is nothing less than a great example of a natural talent to tell a story in a way that propels the ordinary to “wow.”

He makes you want to know more, without leaving you exhausted (or bored or revealing too much about himself) by just reading about his exploits.

I’m not psychic, but I could get away with claiming it, because my prediction for his future is going to be right: His future is going to be bright!