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Yanik Silver – Underground Seminar 7Yanik Silver – How To Create Raving Fan Customers

Would people tattoo your logo on their body like people do with Harley Davidson, JackDaniels, Hello Kitty or any other number of businesses people are in love with?

Probably not if you don’t have them rallying for a cause against a common enemy.

Us vs. The Infidels

People love to feel like they’re a part of a clique or a movement.

Think Apple vs. PC’s . . . Ron Paul and The Tea Party vs. the establishment . . . Netflix vs.Blockbuster . . . Entrepreneurs vs. the corporations . . .

People like underdogs so if this is part of your positioning this can work to your favor ifyou’ll use it.

Restricted Access

Marines as a group have a tighter bond with each other than Dead Heads. Their groupidentity has a more significant meaning because of not just any bum off the street cancall himself or be a marine.

So the more trouble or pain or more hoops you ask people to jump through in order toconsider themselves an insider, the more they’ll cherish being in your club.

You don’t have to make Marine or Mensa like demands but you want to have some kindof barrier to entry.

Pride Displays

People who’ve been in the marines like to let people know they’re a marine by puttingstickers on their car and a number of other not so obvious ways. People like to buyconcert t-shirts. People like to let people know their status in a clique.

Movement For Change

When you’re not only in business to make a buck but you’re also rallying troops to righta wrong, this can be highly magnetic to a certain audience. Yanik working with young

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entrepreneurs and having his mastermind donate their time to help these kids get offthe ground on the right foot is an example of something people have a good feelingabout supporting.

Compelling Origin Story

When people can relate to, enjoy, and have compassion for the reason you got into thebusiness, they’ll feel connected to you and your mission.

Let People In

When you communicate with your prospects and customers you want to go beyond thex’s and o’s of your business. Yanik talks about sharing with people his mistakes like thetime he fell through the ceiling, the time he was a driving F1 car and running over thecones, when he was Borat for Halloween, etc. You also want to share the highlights too.For him this would be hanging out with Richard Branson, his kids, etc.

Give People Heads To Hang on The Wall

People don’t go hunting for the meat. They go to bring home the artifact - the rack or thestuffed head - they can tell a story about. Yanik did this by sending his Maverick grouphome with bottles of Johnny Walker Blue with their names engraved on them. He alsodoes this by organizing the adventures they go on where they come back with picturesthat tell a tale. He also sends gifts at off times – not Christmas or birthdays.

Show Love

Give your rabid fans recognition public and private and they’ll love you long, long timefor doing so.

Be Fun, Hip and Cool If You Can Pull It Off

One business he highlighted was a barber shop that promoted “Free beer with hair cut”.They also made sure their environment matched their fun theme.

Here’s a list of books that do about a thousand times better job of describing this processthan Yanik could in this brisk 20 minute presentation . . .

Brains on Fire Primal Branding True Believer

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And if you want the PHD in this topic, you’ll definitely want to get your hands on these130 + pages of notes I took on Dan Kennedy’s DNA Game Changer seminar where hespent TWO FULL DAYS talking about in detail what Yanik tried to cover here.

Session 2: Derek Gehl – Killer ConversionTactics That Humongify Your Profits

The fastest way to get more money in the door is to turn more of your visitors toyour site into customers. And the only way to jack this number up is through . .

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Testing

Most business owners either know nothing about testing or what they know is wrong.

Most people are making changes to their site blindly and then guessing whether or not ithad a good impact because they don’t know how to track.

STOP THIS!!!

A/B Split Testing

If you don’t know shit about testing, this is the place to start.

This is where you split your traffic 50/50 to two pages that have one difference on eachof them that you’re testing and once you’ve pushed enough traffic through you end upwith a valid result.

Most people screw up when they first learn about this by testing multiple changes at thesame time. The only valid results come from testing one change at a time.

Multi-Variant Testing

Software like Google Website Optimizer allows you test multiple combinations ofchanges at once.

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So instead of only testing one change at a time, you cantest 3 headlines, 3 different pictures, 3 different buybuttons which would be 27 different A/B split tests of apiece.If you aren’t getting a shit-ton of orders, this is going to take you forever to come to avalid conclusion about which combination wins. He uses the term “Confidence Score”here which means you’ve had enough people go through the buying process that thenumbers you’ve racked up is high enough in volume that you can believe it.

Adaptive Multi-Variant Testing

At the time he was doing this presentation this technology was so new that he didn’ttrust it yet.

What this is supposed to do is quickly spot your promos that are horrible, kicks themout of the test, and re-diverts the traffic to other sites which reduces the time till youknow the winning combination.

His Favorite Testing Tools

Beginner on a Budget - Google Analytics & Google WebsiteOptimizer

For your stats Google Analytics can do pretty much everything a paid service can. Forsplit testing he recommends Google Website Optimizer.

The things he likes about these is that they’re free, they’re simple to use, and theyhave a ton of support you can access if you’re clueless.

The things he doesn’t like is that you can’t segment your visitors, there’s no heatmapping, and no paid support that allows you to solve problem with one call vs.scrounging through three forums digging for the solution.

Upgraded Services – Adobe Sitecatalyst (used to be omniture),www.vertster.com, and clicktale.com

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Adobe isn’t super cheap because it’s a high end analytics tool but if you’re doing someheavy weight volume in traffic in sales it’s gonna pay off because you get paid support,you get the constant improving of it.

Vertster is what you’d use for your split testing. This software allows you to segmentyour lists. And it also measures results beyond conversion.

Clicktale is a great tool for heat mapping your site.

These services charge you according to how much traffic you’re ramming through them.They’re also kind of technical. But if you aren’t taking your numbers serious enough totrack and eventually pay for, you’re leaving money on the table.

What Do You Need To Be Measuring?

1. Your Sales Funnel

Every action that you want people to take should be measured for its effectiveness ingetting the result you want and constantly improved upon.

You need to know where your site is bleeding – which step is gaping open letting leadsand money flow away from you. The numbers when measured tell you exactly where thisis.

Metrics You Want To Be Testing . . .

Conversion

All google website optimizer measures is conversion. But that’s not good enoughbecause your conversion can improve but your cost of sale can also rise with conversionbecause you’re buying more expensive traffic. Conversion stats don’t paint the broadestpicture.

Gross Revenue Per Visitor

You want to know how much people are buying

Average Order Value

You can increase conversion but lower your average order value. If you only seeconversion though, you never see this stat.

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Net Revenue Per Visitor (Minus Cost Of Goods Sold: clickcost, commissions, product cost)

This is the number that shows you for real how much money you’re shoving into yourpocket. This is ultra important to know.

Most Significant: Projected Net Revenue (version X vs.version Y for Z period)

This almost knowing which one is gonna make you the most money.

You have to see BEYOND conversion. Google WebsiteOptimizer is handicapping so many businesses becausethey don’t give you these stats. It’s easy to make shittydecisions without having all the right data.

One Metric Alone Is Deceiving

Scenarios that can and do play out in your business . . .

Your conversion can rise but your average order value can plunge and this turns theincrease into a loss. If you’ve only got google website optimizer you’re congratulatingyourself not knowing the damage you’re doing.

Your conversion can dip but your gross revenue per visitor can rise which leads to anincrease in sales. With Google Website Optimizer in place you’ll see this dip and thinkyou need to go back to the control and bail on a site scheme that’s making you greatmoney.

Your gross revenue per visitor can increase but your net revenue per visitor tanksbecause the test leads to higher pay per click traffic in order to convert and this leadsto a lowered conversion of your low cost organic traffic. This is why you want a servicethat allows you to segment traffic streams. Every source of traffic costs a differentamount and has a different conversion rate. The most profitable traffic is free butdepending on only one source of traffic is dumb. So to shore up the business we go outand wrangle affiliate traffic, PPC traffic, banner traffic but when we send it all to thesame landing page and track it all lump sum, this doesn’t give you valid stats.

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Segmenting & Targeting Traffic

As of this recording Google Website Optimizer didn’t allow you to segment your traffic.

Something that you always want to remember is that all traffic is not created equally anddifferent sources responds differently. For example, affiliate traffic responds differentlythan organic search traffic to the same exact landing page.

You need to measure each source of your traffic and do whatever you can to make sureit’s profitable.

The big mistake information marketers make is beingundisciplined as a result of being in such a high marginbusiness where the beer flows like wine. So instead oflooking at how high is high, they look at broad stats andcash in the bank and never question their approach.Different sources of traffic should have different sets of funnels they run through.Vertster allows you to segment down all the major sources all the way down toindividual referrers so you can see how each source is converting.

What Do You Test?

First you have to determine what your sales funnel is. You measure it. Then you look forwhat piece is broken.

Also make sure you aren’t ever testing 100% of your traffic on a change. At minimum,you want to do an A/B split.

If your bounce rates on your landing pages are high, this is a blatant signal that this pageneeds to be tested against another version.

Heat mapping and click tracking tell how people cruise your site. His favorite tool thatdoes this is Clicktale. This is software that tracks where people’s mouse goes to on yourpage. Researchers have found that where people’s eyes go, their mouse goes which endsup making this software about as 85% as effective as actual eye tracking.

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What you might find when you use Clicktale is that you’re drawing eyeballs to stuff youdon’t want to. This allows you to rearrange what is where on your page so that what youwant in a prime location is in a prime location.

Click Maps tell you what people are actually clicking on. He’s found that most peoplewho are new to a site and it has an about page, that’s what they click first. Being that thisis the case, you want to engineer your About page to assist in herding people into yoursales funnel.

The evidence these two services give you great places to start testing.

Your First Fold Is The Most Important Place To Test OnYour Site

This will inspire people to leave faster than anything else will on your site.

If you pay for traffic or put a ton of time into generating it,you want to make sure that what they see when they showup gets as many of the right people to do what you wantthem to do.And this is why it’s crucial to cater and customize landing pages for each unique sourceof traffic. If you’re doing PPC you should have different landing pages for differentkeywords and groups. You want to match the mindset of the visitor showing up –affiliate traffic is warm – PPC is cold.

What To Test In Headlines

Unless you’re Amazon.com or some other mega brand even old people know about, yoursite needs to have a headline.

Headlines the different sources of traffic see

The Length

Benefits/Emotional Hot Buttons

Colors

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“How To”

If someone came in from an ad that had a “How-To” headline, it’s important to continuethat conversation by having the headline on your page be a “How To” as well. Theyclicked with this in mind so keep them so cater to this.

Spelling Out Measurable Results

He’s found that headline that denominate a specific result you can expect to receive“Lose 10 pounds of belly fat in 90 days” will always out pull a broad and general claimlike “Lose Weight Fast”.

Negative Focus

People are trained to pay attention to negative headlines by the press.

After Your Headline Tests

Video vs. Graphics vs. Text

He’s found that no one modality completely dominates the other but that certainmarkets and certain traffic have their buttons pushed by different modalities.

Graphics can convey how something works easily and quickly.

He’s found that traffic that’s been warmed up by a referrer that comes from affiliatesand such, respond better to video than any other modality. Also, he’s found that coldtraffic that’s coming in from a banner or a PPC ad doesn’t respond as well to video. Thereason he believes this is so is because video takes more of time commitment to wait forit to load sometimes as well as to watch.

The company Basecamp increased their conversions on their site by switching from aheadline with a sub-headline and a description of what they did to a graphic that showedin pictures what their technology makes possible for you . . .

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This graphic allows you to get what they do in one glance vs. reading an entire page. As aresult of doing this, they increased their conversions by 14%.

Stuff To Split Test For Your For First Fold

Limit options to two things – Leave or do the one thing you want themto do.

You have to think about what you want them to do on that page – read, click a link, opt-in and then look for what is on the page that is derailing them from doing this and startpulling them out.

Showcase Other People Saying You’re Awesome

Customize According To Their Location

So one example of this is if you have a an offer for free shipping you’re leading with, youcan say, “Free Shipping to “Their City”. He’s found that people LOVE them some freeshipping and if this is directly relative to them because you’ve used technology to spotwhere they are, it hits home even stronger.

AVOID THE FOLLOWING MISTAKE LIKE IT WASHERPES . . .Kill any slow loading content that cold traffic will see. When you have only five secondsto suck someone into your vortex, you don’t wait those five seconds to blow by withthem looking at a buffering signal because if that’s the case, they’re gone before youeven had the chance to say anything.

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You’re going to better off with static stuff especially with people who have no clue as towho you are.

Order Button Tests

Only Let Them Order At The End

People have found this work better with a video salesletter than if they made it availableat the start or sooner. The only way to find out what your market likes is to test it.

In Key Sections Of The Sales Letter

By layering your buy button throughout the sales letter you’re trial closing essentiallyasking them if they’re ready to order yet or not. If they aren’t they can keep reading. Soyou could test putting after all your features and benefits, after your social proof, andthen at the end.

Order Button In The Top Right Header

He’s found that an ecommerce site selling multiple products needs to have the orderbutton right up top and easy to find.

Shiny, Bright, and Loud

A prime example of this is the “Belcher Button” which you see on any of our salespages…

What People Need To See When The Click To Order . . .

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Make sure that at the top of your order page you sum up the promise of what awaitsthem, the discounts they’re receiving, and your guarantee. Another good idea is to havetestimonials here.

You want to do this assuming that someone skimmed and missed everything you’resumming up here for them.

Pricing Aspects To Test

The only reason you wouldn’t test your prices is if you’re selling a commodity.Otherwise, you always need to be testing price because the market is always shifting.

Anytime he goes in to consult with a business, he can go in and increase the price –example he gave was going from $63 to $69 or $179 to $199 - and not have it hurtconversion at all.

Premium Option: Sell less units, charge more

Value/Volume Option: Sell more units, charge less

Payment Plans

If you make payments available, you always want to make sure the full payment optionis the most attractive unless you’re intentionally trying to make continuity income via apayment plan.

Bundle Products Together – Sell Them At High Prices

If you’re selling single products, you always want to look for other products to bundlewith it that you can offer them that add more value to the purchase once they’ve alreadymade the decision to buy in the first place. Once people have made the decision to buy,it’s about a thousand times easier for them to decide to buy more if it’s only put of them.

Guarantee

If you have none now get one. If you have 90 days, test extend it totwelve months or for a lifetime

His experience is that longer refunds convert better AND lower your refund. If you havea short guarantee period you give people the sense that you know something is gonna gowrong with this after 30 days from when they bought it. This means that if they aren’tabsolutely dazzled by it before then, which in most cases of information products theyaren’t because they haven’t even opened it, they’ve got to send it back before they find

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they’ve been burned . . . again. When you guarantee it for life, it implies you trust it’sgoing to be solid forever, otherwise you wouldn’t put yourself out there like that, so thebuyer can just relax and get around to trying it someday.

You can test only guaranteeing the bigger orders of what you sell

He’s found that in tests he’s done that people will pay more when you only offer theguarantee on the highest priced option.

Find graphic guarantee seals to use

Test showcasing your guarantee either in the top fold, right beforeyou ask them to buy, or on your order page

Social Proof

Facebook “Like” Button

Tweet Button

Digg Button

You want all of these buttons to have the counter next to them. Especially if it shows thenumber and then stalks their Facebook profile and shows you people they’re friendswith there who have also ‘Liked” it. This allows for you to get the third party indirectendorsement from their friends.

Testimonials: video vs. photo vs. written

Videos are the best ones to have here. Not as hard to get as they used to be with webcams, phone cams being cheaper to access than ever. If you can’t get a video one, youwant to gun for a written testimonial with their picture next to it. If you can’t get apicture, then you just roll with the words.

Celebrity In The Industry Endorsement

Derek Gehl is a nobody outside of an internet marketing discussion or seminar. But he’sa big somebody in these areas. Having him endorse anything internet marketing relatedwould boost your cred with this market in a huge way. You always want to look for waysto make your celebrities relevant to your audience.

Security Seals

McAfee, Hackersafe, etc.

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He’s found that if you’re in the tech niche, these heavy duty endorsements aresignificant but he’s also known of people in non-tech niches, that you can make astatement on a seal stating that your site is 100% verified and secure (because it is ifyou’re using a shopping cart) and it has the same effect as if you paid the super high feesto McAfee.

Better Business Bureau Seal

His testing has proven that the only places these security seals ever have any impact onconversion is when they’re tested on your order page. Don’t put these seals everywhere.

Opt-In Offers

Entry Pop-up - Popupdomination.com

These guys use light boxes. We love this! It’s kicks ass! Watch for using these on salespages though because they can decrease your response.

Opt-in in the top fold on left vs. right margin

Top right has usually tested best for him.

Newsletter update vs. One Time Offer

A one-time offer like an app, a report, a video, etc. is what he’s finding is out pullingNewsletter offers. And the cool thing is you can let people know when they opt in to gettheir report that you’ll be staying in touch with a newsletter so you get the best of bothworlds.

Headline/Copy

You’re looking for the one mega benefit they’re going to get for opting in. Can’t becomplicated. Needs to be sexy.

Submit Button

This is your call to action so it’s definitely something to test.

Video

He believes everyone should be using video somewhere – whether it be your salesletteror your testimonials or these other ways. He’s found that you always want to go withauto-play, video that starts automatically when the page loads.

Videospokesmodel.com

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This is a technology that allows for a person to walk out of the side of your site and givean introduction to your visitor. You go to their site, and for $500 bucks you can pick outa model, give them a script, they shoot the video professionally and then send you all theinfo you need to be able to plug it into your site. He’s found that in a big broad marketthis can be effective but not in the small world.

Sundaysky.com – multi-SKU ecommerce sites

Information marketers have long used video more than ecommerce sites. There’s sitesnow that are recording demonstration/pitch videos for each of the products in their line(shoes, equipment, etc.). This service allows you to have someone shoot the videos foreach of your products for you. If you’re selling a set of skis for $1,000 bucks it’d makesense to do this more than it would for the $5 dollar pocket hand warmers.

Video salesletter vs. Traditional salesletter

You always want to split test this.

Video salesletter with a traditional salesletter underneath it

Test the length: Different markets and different traffic have adifferent attention span

Screen Capture vs. Direct To Camera (infomercial style)

Screen capture works well for selling information. But if you’ve got an object like a shamwow you’re trying to sell, letting people see it in action (infomercial style) is a thousandtimes more compelling than talking about what it can do. If you do go with theinfomercial style, you gotta make this look professional all the way down to the persondoing the demo to the quality of the video (easy now to do HD).

Random Stuff To Test

Free shipping

People love them some free shipping. You can raise the price of the product to cover youpaying for shipping and reap the benefits of more sales.

Adding shipping insurance (insureship.com)

This is an actual legit insurance company that will replace something that got lost whenit was shipped. It’s something the customer can just check off and add to their order andyou end up making a couple of bucks each time they do.

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Having an image of your digital products and bonuses (ebooks, boxfor software, CD covers, etc.)

Sans-serif fonts

Font you see in print – books, newspapers, magazines - is in serif. Font you should beseeing online is Sans-serif. The older your market is, the bigger you want your font to be.

Light/white background colors free of patterns

He’s found this always works better. Test it.

Add a dollar value to anything you’re giving away

Add as much detail as you can to your testimonials

Name, city, profession, picture, etc.

Hand Drawn Graphics (copydoodles.com)

This can work in your screen capture videos as well as your traditional sales letters.

If you sell multiple variations of something, show it

If you’re selling socks and they come in three colors, show the three pairs of socks on thesame page instead of thinking they’ll go to your drop down menu and do it themselves.

ALWAYS TEST – NEVER STOP TESTING – NO MATTERIF SOMEONE TELLS YOU IT’S THE DEFINTE TRUTH

If You Redesign Your Site Do You Do It One Element At a Timeor Redesign Fully and Test?

If you’re going to do a complete site re-design using best practices, do it all at one time,but you still want to split test the traffic you’re getting to the new and the old site. If thenew one wins you’re golden. If not, you know you’ve got work to do.

What kind of role does web chat have in the conversion process?

It’s something to test but at this point in time, he didn’t believe web chat would increaseconversion because he feels he’d rather get serious potential buyers on the phone and

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take the order and answer questions that way otherwise you might have a bunch ofpeople who end up wasting a lot of your time going back and forth.

He’s been testing live chat for years on different businesses and never been able to makeit work. But someone in the audience piped up and said that the person who asked thequestion should test it because they were making it work. You gotta test your specificoffer and market to know what will happen for you.

Session 3: Derek GehlAffiliate Programs

New Guidelines For Building a Profitable Affiliate Program

Affiliate traffic is some of the best traffic almost any business can have. The onlybusinesses it won’t for are those who don’t have the margin in what they sell to pay theaffiliate.

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Once upon a time, the person who built the affiliate program had the leverage in therelationship. That ain’t so now. Affiliates have figured out that because they have theeyeballs, they have the power. Without eyeballs, your mega-affiliate program isworthless.

So now, you have to do everything you can to reach out to and build relationships withtop affiliates and show them how it’s in their best interest to test your offer.

Affiliates are awesome because they allow you to reap therewards of all different styles of traffic, without having tohave been an expert in all of the methods of leadgeneration that brought them to the affiliate in the firstplace. Awesome leverage! The affiliates go out and mastergenerating Facebook, organic, banner ads, etc. and youjust kick back and accept the end result of their workwhich is a qualified lead.

You Want Quality – Not Quantity

Back in the day it was cool to have a jillion affiliates.

Now that the industry is becoming regulated by the FTC and advertisers are being heldaccountable for the actions of affiliates, it’s now more important than ever to focus onthe quality of your affiliates.

This means you need clearly defined rules that your affiliates agree to play by.

The Two Different Styles of Affiliates

1st Expert Affiliates

These guys master all the ways there are to generate leads and because of this they’reable to find the people you want, send them your way, and get you sales . . . consistently.

If you create a sexy offer these guys believe will make them a ton of money, they cancrack the code on finding you a ton of great leads.

Credible people who do this are hard to find, woo, and keep on your team.

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2nd Businesses Who Have Eyeballs You Want

This source is good for a quick surge – this is the traffic you see exploited in productlaunches - the circle jerk you see in the internet marketing world is a great example ofthis. Businesses who share the same customer but are not head on competitors.

This source isn’t day in, day out consistent because once their list has seen you, that’s it,they’ve seen you.

The way these relationships work out long term is if you get to inject yourself into theirsales funnel. So for example, your product or service is a part of their back end now andwhen they buy your offer (or go through you ongoing launch process) this now putsthem on your list.

This can be a fantastic source of buyers, not just leads. And you want to customize whatyou offer for someone who has potential to be a mega partner. A great example he givesis if he approached Aweber to create a back end email marketing course to offer to theircustomers, he would want to make the examples showing them strategies that allow

them to maximize Aweber specifically.

5 Factors That Contribute To a Successful AffiliateProgram

1. Rock Solid Affiliate Software

If affiliates can’t trust they’re gonna get paid what they earned because your software isshit, they’re gone. You need to make sure it provides rock solid tracking of all thechannels that feed into it, phone, fax, mail, and especially ADVANCED pay per clicktracking.

A lot of major affiliates major in pay per click traffic and you need to be able to trackeach keyword to point of sale. Of course, this allows you to get rid of the keywords thataren’t doing anything for you. Your software needs the power to let your affiliatesoptimize their campaigns so they can get the best results for you.

You also want it to be two-tiered. This allows affiliates to recruit other affiliates.

Campaign Identifications:

You have to think about this in terms of how you’d like to measure traffic if you went outand bought it. You want to be able to know how much you’re spending and how muchyou’re getting back in return individually for each ad.

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If your affiliates can’t do this you’re not giving them the best shot at winning.

REPORTING IS MEGA IMPORTANTAffiliates live and die by their numbers so if you’re playing with their livelihood, theycan’t be bothered with you. Their numbers are all they have to go on in order to finetune a campaign in order to make it profitable for you and them. And if you’re goingheads up with another company who also has an affiliate program but is lame and theydon’t provide this, this is your edge up on them.

You want reports that show detailed sales and clicks

You want to be able to show them how many clicks they got, how many sales came in,how much money has come in as a result. This allows them to see how much moneythey’re making opposed to how much they’re spending.

You want reports by country

Foreign markets are a topic of interest for affiliates because the U.S. market is socrowded. Some affiliates don’t market here; instead they focus on the U.K. but if youcan’t tell them anything about traffic that’s generated anywhere but in the U.S., you'redone immediately with that affiliate.

You want reports that track by campaign ID

Your software needs the ability to segment the traffic by source. You need to be able totell people for example Bing is doing X, Google Adwords is doing X, and organic is doingX.

You want reports on Landing Page stats

This helps you know what pages on your site are converting the best which allows you toaxe the ones that are stinking up the joint. Don’t just dump all your stats into one barrel.If you need these tools to make the profitable decision, so do they.

You want reporting on down line stats

This applies if you’re two-tiered. You want your affiliates to be able to reach out andcoach their down line if they’d like to.

You want REAL TIME reporting on pay out stats

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These guys probably don’t have an infinite budget so the better they know how muchmoney is coming their way and when, the better they’ll know how much more they caninvest in bringing more traffic in for you.

Here’s a list of the software he recommends . . .

First consider what you’re getting with your current shopping cart:

Infusionsoft, 1 shopping cart, office autopilot all have affiliate software that comes withthem. And it’s accurate but it’s not as rich as what you’ll find below.

Easy & Fast But Kinda Expensive Options:

Clickbank.com – these guys take a cut of every sale you make as a result of thenetwork of affiliates they expose you too. So with this option you’re not only paying acommission but you’re also paying a cut forever.

ShareASale.com – Unlike clickbank which is free, these guys have something like a$400 dollar set up fee they charge.

Scalable and Hulking Options:

Directtrack.com – pricey – Clickbooth’s entire CPA network is run on this software.You’ll like these guys or hate them.

iDevDirect.com – cheap –

2. A-Z Systematized Promotional Tools

This is all about the tools your affiliates need to go out thereand get your money for you…

Banners – every viable shape and size:

He doesn’t like these but feels they’re necessary to arm affiliates with. Another thing hefound is that banner blindness had started to fade and now more traffic was coming inas a result of using them. Now there’s more blindness to PPC ads.

World Class Images Of Your Products: (white background a must)

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You need this whether you’ve got a digital or a physical product that they can put ontheir site.

Low Class Product Images:

This is more important to have than the world class option. When affiliates send apersonal endorsement of the product to their list and the product image looks like it wastaken on their dinner table, and this makes it appear as if they actually bought it andtook this picture themselves which lends more credibility to the offer. He’s found thesephotos work better for affiliates than the glamour shots.

Broad Video Reviews:

Logos & Icons:

Website Templates:

The only time he likes to provide these is if he has a person who only has one channeland he wants to re-direct traffic. These templates are not for SEO and PPC optimization.

WordPress Templates:

Everyone is using this nowadays. This is cool because these sites can be customizedeasily and they can have these up quick.

Unique To You Content:

Everyone you’re asking for a favor from is lazy. Especially affiliates. These guys don’twant to write content for you so they won’t. So, you gotta provide unique articles peoplecan put on their sites.

3rd Party Product Reviews:

One of the reasons affiliates don’t run product businesses is because they’re lazy.

What’s kind of a kick in the nuts is that the top affiliates won’t use any of this stuffbecause they’ll go out and create their own. These guys know “generic” doesn’t win inthe affiliate game. But you still need to do all the work for all the affiliates who are onlyO.K.

3. Proven Converting Offers/Tools That Payout Big Bucks

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REMEMBER THIS: Top affiliates are going to judge you by what happens the first timethey send you traffic. If the conversions aren’t stellar, they’re leaving you. This meansyou have to test and refine your marketing on your dime before you bring a big boy tothe party.

You need to be able to make your marketing profitable. If you can’t even make itprofitable to people who know and like you, what in the hell makes you think cold trafficwill accept it?

When you do find an offer that works, start out with some of the B and C players. Oncethe results hold up with these guys, then you roll it out to the big boys.

One thing the big players are gonna want to know is yourE.P.C. – your Earnings Per Click. This is the number thattells them how much money is being brought for everyvisitor you get to your offer. This is the most importantnumber to them.

Types of Offers You Can Present To Your Affiliates:

Cost Per Click (adsense)

This is where you can pay them for sending you clicks. DON’T DO THIS unless you’resupremely confident you can convert the traffic.

Cost Per Action (Very Popular)

This is what drives the humongous networks. This is where you affiliate gets paid whentheir traffic takes an action like signing up for a trial offer (some people are paying $50-$60 bucks just to take the trial on a health supplement for example) or makes someother commitment. When you do this, you must have a back end and you must know themath is gonna work out in your favor.

Cost Per Sale (Best for Merchants)

This is all about paying someone for a sale.

Affiliates usually want to be paid 50% of the sale. If you’ve got a physical product tied toa bunch of overhead, this isn’t always possible.

If the affiliates are pushing traffic to something with a high margin (informationproducts, software, health supplements) they’ll want 30-60% and they’ll need it in order

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to cover their traffic nut. The big players are gonna know your margins roughly andthey may demand a higher pay out.

With a site like Amazon that’s selling commodities, 5-15% is the average pay out.

The thought of getting recurring revenue sounds nice, but not in the face of the certaintyof receiving money in an upfront lump sum. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bushI guess. He’s tested this over and over again and found they always want all their moneyupfront.

4. Getting Off Your Ass To Recruit Bad Ass Affiliates

You’ve got two paths you can take here . . .

1) Do It Yourself

This is the inexpensive and slow route. If you look in affiliate forums, you’ll find affiliatemanagers there.

Where do you find them?

www.Warriorforum.com – the affiliate who like to push internet marketing infoproducts gather here.

www.Wickedfire.com – This is where the people who hate the guys in the warriorforum hang out. This where you’d go if you’d go with health supplements or otherphysical products.

www.Abestweb.com – These guys have a great forum and there’s a good balanceof guys who sell info and hard products. There’s a lot of people from the UKthere.

www.Affiliates4u.com – Same as abestweb. Good mix, lots of UK action there.

www.Digitalpoint.com and www.sitepoint.com - This is what’s exploding forgoing beyond selling to English speaking people because a lot of foreign affiliatesgather here.

Clickbank – This is a network where a ton of affiliates can see your offer. But justposting and hoping people beat down your door is a fool’s errand.

Shareasale.com -

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Commissionjunction.com – This is more ecommerce type offers – not so much infomarketing driven.

DIRECTORIES:

Abestweb.com

Affiliatescout.com

Affiliateprograms.com

All the top listings you’ll find here have been paid for. This means the guys you see at thetop aren’t necessarily the best. Those are the guys who paid. He found through his teststhat he got almost zero affiliates out of paying to be listed high here.

BEST PLACE TO FIND AFFILIATES –Conferences

Affiliatesummit.com (east and west)

This is the top one to attend, specifically Affiliate Summit West.

Affconevents.com

Affiliateconvention.com

You don’t need a booth. Affiliates don’t go booth to booth. So unless you’re rolling in thedough, don’t go pay for a booth at these events. If you’re on a budget you’re gonna getthe best bang for your buck going belly to belly with these guys working the crowd.

And this doesn’t mean you just go pitch. You want to go have a good time befriendingpeople with a common interest – making money online. And if there’s any way you canhelp them with information/resources you know about, do it. Same thing goes for theforums.

Go forth and be cool by being helpful and fun. Get known for that, then move forward inthe midst of a relationship by soft selling them on what you’ve got which will naturallycome up in a conversation when they ask, “What do you do?”

A great place to do this is at all the parties they have during these summits which is oneof the main reasons these people gather – to let their hair down with friends. Buyingpeople a drink will get you WAY further than just handing them a brochure and runningyour elevator pitch on them.

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2) Hire a Pro – An experienced affiliate recruiter

Not cheap but its way faster because they can get you in front of the people who makeshit happen that you’ve never even heard of.

If you’re doing big volume this is definitely the way to go.What also cool about this option is that you don’t pay anaffiliate manager a salary – you pay them based onperformance.

These guys know where to find the affiliates and if you aren’t one, its gonna be some legwork to find them. Speaking their language and gaining their ear is going to be hard.That’s why finding people already swimming in this lake and letting them is the path ofleast resistance.

5. Nurture Your Relationship With These People To KeepThem On Your Team

Affiliates need a lot of tender love and caring love.

The big dog affiliates are motivated by the dollars until they build a relationship withyou and enjoy dealing with you as a person. Then, as long as you bring value into theirlife, they’ll stay loyal to you over time.

Initially the only thing that’s going to make a mega-affiliate give you test when they’realready making nice money with your competitor is a kick ass payout on your offer. Abribe you could say. They have to see a bigger brighter future with you.

All of your stats could be amazing but if the other guys paying them 60% and they’remaking decent money, and you’re only offering 50%, they’ll stick with the 60%.

An example he gives is bringing someone in by paying them 90% for 90 days. He’sfound that most affiliates are so lazy or maybe happy with you that when you switch to50% after the 90 days, they stick with you.

NO ONE WANTS TO BE THE GUINEA PIGAffiliates don’t like to think they’re the first ones pushing traffic to your offer or . . . thatother people are avoiding it for a reason.

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The solution to this is to disguise yourself as an affiliate who’s promoting it in PPC orpaid ads. As long as they can see someone else besides you believes in this, they’ll jumponboard if everything else is right.

You have to be the one to make this snowball effect take place. You need to create yourown affiliate site, buying PPC ads, whatever it is they do so that when they stalk youroffer they can see something that looks and smells like something they would do as afellow affiliate.

And you have to make sure and set up affiliate id’s too so when they click through theyidentify those links as affiliate links.

How To Reach Out To Affiliates

Belly to Belly or a Personal Introduction:

This works best at conventions, seminars, or other gatherings.

Or, where a juiced in affiliate manager earns their weight in gold when they connect youwith the perfect partner for you.

Provide Value in Conversations in Forums:

The rule here is no pitching. Only helping. If you’re helpful it’s inevitable that someone’sgonna ask you what you do and then and only then can you talk about what you do.

Personalized Emails That Make Love To People’s Eyeballs WithPromises Of Riches:

Canned messages that you’re just cutting and pasting their name into will get shit on.And trust me; they know when it’s cut and paste. You want to do you research and givethem a specific reason why you think they’d be the perfect affiliate for this offer. Youwant to know what they’ve accomplished specifically and compliment them on what yousincerely appreciate about that.

Affiliates Love Chat More Than Email:

This could be Skype or any number of other tools you can use to chat. You gottaremember these guys live in front of the monitor so you want to meet them wherethey’re at.

Phone or FedEx:

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He believes 1 in a 100 people are gonna answer the phone cold. The only way I’drecommend going for phone is after you’ve got their attention on a Skype chat or otherchat tool and they’re interested in hearing more about what you offer.

But for sure one of the ways to break through all the digital clutter is to hit someone witha package. A Fed Ex – The one thing you can guarantee will always get opened. If you’vegot an address this is a sure way to get a look. But make sure what they see when theyopen the box, not the envelope, the box, is enticing. You can give them your product;you can give them a gift, something that wows them.

You want to be creative and you want to be persistent. This is a common trait of affiliatemanagers. They don’t quit. They know all the other chumps coming at these guys willquit after not getting a return call or email on their first try.

How To Shine In The Eyes Of Affiliates

Have multiple payment options for how affiliates get paid

Foreign affiliates don’t want a check. Having to wait weeks to cash a check can kill thecash flow for an affiliate who’s spent tens of thousands of dollars driving you traffic. Thismeans you offer these guys wire transfers. They like this.

Pay PPC affiliates more often

For anyone who’s buying traffic, pay them earlier than anyone else – weekly or everytwo weeks. When they’re spending $50-$100K a week on traffic they don’t want to waita month to get that money back into play.

Text notifications

Have texts sent to your affiliates sent to them every time they got a commission.

Use geo-targeted offers

Foreign markets are huge being that the pond is flooded in the U.S. with competitors.When you do this though you’ve gotta to go all the way and customize landing pages –everything that’s in the funnel for that country. This means registering domains under.co, .uk and converting all the language to their terminology including using poundsinstead of dollar. These customize offers convert better for the affiliates

Have promo codes

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This gives people a special discount link they can send out to their traffic. This could befree shipping or something like that. This makes feel people like you’re going out of theway for them.

Have offers available in multiple languages

Spanish is huge in the U.S. now. Think about how many more people speak Spanishoutside the U.S. You want to get all your marketing converted to the language by aproper native translator – not Google translate.

Customize content and design sites for the top dogs

Give the top guys the best tools just for them. These guys are good at getting traffic. Letthem do what they’re good at and pay someone else to do the other shit that makes thetraffic convert better.

Contests with kick ass prizes

Cash for services rendered isn’t enough. People are getting used to being offered hugeprizes for being top earners. If you’ve got an offer that runs consistently and not just in alaunch format, give the winners a prize every month.

Consistently Stay In Touch With These Guys

You should know the birthdays, the hobbies, how many kids these guys have, andeverything else on Harvey Mackay’s 66 question list to know about the VIP’s in yourbusiness.

These people should be able to get in touch with you personally or the exact person theyneed to deal with consistently in your office.

He’s found that affiliate take more action on short communications vs. long affiliatenewsletters.

Tools For Staying In Touch

MSN, Skype, and Yahoo are the most favored tools for chat. If you’re not using chatnow and you want to do affiliate marketing, get on board. They love chat. Their chat IDis one of the best ways to get a hold of these guys.

Email and then phone is the least popular.

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Ways To Earn Loyalty

Personalized Christmas Gifts

You can send engraved watches or better yet stuff suited to his unique hobbies.

Personal Birthday Gifts

Baby Shower Loot

Bonuses For Sticking By Your Side

Going Far Beyond Goal or Expectations

One thing the big affiliate networks do is rent out the Playboy Mansion. These guys areprobably the Playboy Mansion’s biggest customer.

Gifts are a kick ass idea because they are beyond the business transaction of just payingthem what they earned.

The Quickest Way To Burn Relationships With Affiliates . . .

Don’t pay them. Or, short them on what you owe them. They’re gone whether it’s yourfault or not.

The Dark Side of Affiliate Marketing

Be on the Lookout For Affiliate Fraud

Stay away from some countries. He flat out suggests that you never accept an affiliatefrom Nigeria. Every time he’s given them a shot, they’ve been a fraud. But othercountries like Israel and India have some super sharp affiliates. He says it’s worthmaking the trip to the conventions they have there and going to meet these guys.

Be on the Lookout For Gift Card Fraud

CPA offers are set up to pay you for leads that accept a trial offer of what was beingoffered and the money is to be paid on the back end. They found out that people whereputting thousands of dollars on those charge cards you could get at Wal-Mart and thensigning up for trial offers with these cards and having the offers sent to a bunch ofrandom addresses and then when it came time to bill the card again it’d be empty. Onecard that had a hundred bucks on it could equal 20 orders on just that card and if you’re

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getting a $50 dollar commission this means you’ve turned $100 bucks into $1,000dollars.

This means you always want to get the number sequences for gift cards and have thoseseparate from every other payment option if you sell subscriptions. Lots of people likethe idea of shopping online with these cards because they aren’t tied to their bank and soif someone gets the number or the card, they can only do damage to the extent of what’savailable on the card.

Be on the Lookout For Cookie Stuffing

This is where someone advertises for one word and they set an iframe that’s 1 pixel by 1pixel and he does it on all of his competitors affiliate links so he gets the traffic thatcomes to this page and stuffs the cookie into a ton of affiliate offers into the person’sbrowser.

Here’s how solve the cookie stuffing problem:

If you ever have an affiliate that has almost no traffic but high conversions, this tells youtheir cookie stuffing. They’re cheating. You need to look at the source code on their pageand search for an iframe. You should be able to find it quickly and see how they’recookie stuffing for all kinds of affiliate programs into your browser.