Tools Needed for Successful Affiliate Marketing: Part 2

This article is instrumental in revealing what is the minimum you really need in the way of services and software.

A. A mailing list

To become successful in making money on-line you need a list. How many times have you heard "The Money is in the List"? This is a very frequent buzz sentence. Well, it is true, you definitely need a list but:

What is a list?

What does it do for me?

How do I start one?

What are the restrictions like spam, eBay rules?

All these are legitimate questions for a beginner Affiliate. I'll answer them in a few sentences, I'll provide enough info to get you started.

First you need a reason to have a mailing list:

You want to be a successful Affiliate.

You want to sell your own Digital Product

You want to start an Internet Business of any kind.

You are a teacher, a mentor and you want to remain in touch with your students.

You have a lot of friends or associates all over the world and you want to keep in touch.

All those are legitimate reasons to have a list.

Note: Actually this is how the Internet was born. In a Switzerland Research Center, some professors want to remain in touch with their Master Degree students after they finish the degree and they go back to their home country. They want:

To monitor the activity, the publications, the progress they made after they got their Master Degree.

The students to remain in touch with each other.

The rest is history, we have now our beloved Internet and we cannot live without it!

To create your own mailing list you must have a form in a Website, Newsletter, E-zine (the e-zine is an electronic magazine), About Me page, in which you collect a minimum name and email address. Doing so you will collect emails from people who are interested in what you are doing/selling/advertising. This is what we call a Targeted Subscribers Mailing List. Using this technique you will get repeat customers and this is crucial, with just one sale per customer, you cannot get far enough.

How you will make money with your mailing list:

OTO - when a subscriber fills out the opt-in form to join your mailing list, he/she will first see your "One Time Offer" page before downloading your FREE Report. OTO is a sale page for a quality product, related with the free Report, which a subscriber will see only once. The Subscriber has the option to buy or not the OTO. Some subscribers will buy your OTO product, some won't, a real value OTO product will give you a better conversion. In both cases he/she will be redirected to your "Thank You Page" in where you have the download URL of your FREE report.

Back-end Links in your Thank You Page. After your subscriber has signed up he will automatically be redirected to your "Thank You Page" where he can download your FREE Report. But the Thank You Page can tell your subscriber that a confirmation email will reach his inbox soon and he must confirm to download your FREE Report. (there is a feature in aWeber asking the subscriber to confirm by email).

You insert advertisements, recommendations in your FREE Report and you will make it as viral as possible. Giving something for FREE it is a method to prove your credibility to your subscribers and give them an incentive for subscribing. While waiting for the confirmation email, your subscriber can click on any of your links that might interest him if you correctly monetize your Thank You Page. You can have Google AdSense ads, affiliate URLs. The best conversion is when you create all advertising around the same or related subject you have in a Report and/or OTO

Selling Advertising Space in your e-Zine

The building of your Mailing List takes time and effort in your part, but building a list must be your first priority. You have to start as soon as possible and you will polish your skills in the process. Eventually, you will get exactly where you want to be.

My sincere advice to you is take action, and don't try to be a perfectionist. You will get there at some point in time, but if you wait for the perfect product to be created, you will never get it! The best way to learn a process is doing it! I cannot emphasize this enough: taking action is crucial.

B. An Instant Delivery Tool.

If you sell Digital Products you cannot survive without an Instant Delivery Tool. Manual delivery of the download URL is out of question and it will look unprofessional. Just think: you get in bed at 10 PM, at 11 PM somebody around the globe buys your Digital Product. You will wake up at 7 AM, go to your computer at 8 AM and manually write an email with download URL, this is 9 hours later!
What happened if you have a hot DP to sell and over the night 500 people have bought your product? You will spend the entire day manually sending 500 emails! No way!

If you don't specify "Instant Delivery" for your Digital Product in your sale page nobody, I mean nobody, will choose to buy from you; you wouldn't get that far to have buyers.

The tool I work with is My Digital Dispatch (MyDD).

This is an Digital Product delivery software with rich functionality in addition to just instant DP delivery:

It will build a list of hungry prospects & send follow ups messages for you.

You will build credibility for you just using it.

It will create extra residual income from your signature or from your Thank You Page or from his affiliate program.

It provides multi level Digital Products Security.

This works perfect with eBay auctions.

You can have Unlimited Products.

You can have Unlimited email messages.

You can have customize Messages using variables from a drop down menu.

It is easy to set up (if you aren't handy enough with PC software download, and scripts, you can request them to install it on your PC).

It is one time purchase and it gives you the license to install it only on one PC.

It will keep a transaction log for you.

There are other instant delivery software packages but this one is: easy to use, affordable, and they have excellent custom service.

To use MyDD you must have a host with cPanel with the following components:

PHP Interpreter.

MySQL Data base.

Apache Web Server.

Ability to upload files (a standard FTP client).

The cPanel is the most common used control panel to administer your Website in your Host space. Using cPanel you can control pretty much all the aspects, and all the behind the scene aspects of your Website.

So, the advantage of having cPanel in your hosting account is that you can control:

Your own e-mail.

The upload of your files.

Your database, using MySQL to install scripts.

What people see on error pages.

Set-up password protected directory and more.

I know only 3 hosting companies, which have cPanel: Host Gator, Kiosk, and Lunar Pages. I am using Host Gator.

C. Autoresponder

An Autoresponder is an easy way to set up email campaigns, it is also a service you need for the automation of the process. Most marketers including me, will recommend aWeber. They have excellent services and the System will do a lot of work on your behalf.

This is what aWeber can do for you:

Unlimited campaigns, lists, follow up messages, and newsletters.

Reliable, 99.34% email deliverability, fast.

51+ Templates for newsletter and follow up design.

Easily create and ad opt-in web forms to your website.

Free training guides and videos.

Expert unlimited free customer support.

You also can use:

GetResponse.

ProSender.

ProAutoresponders (actually this is a Site which offers information about Auto Responders).

Whatever you decide to use you must be sure that they have unlimited campaign and follow-up messages.

D. Hosting with cPanel

We already know that it is a good habit to have a domain for each Digital Product you sell and, therefore, you need a host for your squeeze and selling pages.

The best host is one which has:

cPanel with the following components:

MySQL Data Base.

Standard FTP client.

Fantastico.

The perfect host from the three I already recommended is HostGator, because it has Fantastico as well and all other features you need for MyDD. (Fantastico is a Utility Program which the host must buy separately, and the majority of hosts don't do it). Fantastico will help you to install Wordpress, the very popular blog content management system, the easiest way.

HostGator offers a variety of plans; I suggest choosing the "Baby" plan, which will accept unlimited pages to host.

E. An HTML Editor.

You need a friendly HTML editor. Actually it is mandatory to have one because you will have to edit Web pages, Sales pages and modify them.

My advice is to learn HTML, or at list you need to understand it. I can't emphasize enough how easy HTML really is! If you go to Google and do a research on - FREE HTML Editor, you might find an endless list. I recommend a FREE WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor called NVU, www.nvu.com, they have a paid version, but the free version is all you need.

A Very Important Note: It is optional, but extremely important to have and use a Software Package to create and maintain your Websites. It is highly recommended not to rely on others, and pay for each enhancement and/or correction you have to make in your Websites.
When you need to:

Create squeeze and landing pages

Modify Websites for resale rights

Modify landing pages

Constantly add content in order to get Google's attention for ranking
as it is costly and unnecessary to use "services" of other companies to do all of the above.

There are really a lot of choices for Website design these days. You can get packages with a lot of functionality embedded in them, which will make your life easier. I am using XSitePro software package, it:

Creates any HTML document, a real time saver

Maintain HTML

Transfer to a server, just a push of a button.

You also can use:

Page Generator Insider (they have an excellent customer support).

Niche Creator (not recommended for newbies).

Microsoft Front Page.

Dream Weaver.

The last 2 are expensive and not that easy to use them!

In Summary: The knowledge is very important but to take Action is crucial. It's not the sword that wins the battle. It's the Warrior who's wielding it.