When I started out as an affiliate, I wanted to be an “autopilot affiliate”. To me this meant automating the whole process of selling affiliate products. Little did I know what this actually meant and how difficult it would be. At first I built websites in an attempt to get traffic – the all important ingredient of any affiliate business.
Without traffic you can kiss your income goodbye from affiliate marketing. You just don’t get anywhere without traffic. But traffic isn’t the only ingredient in an affiliate business. That traffic must convert into sales. This is usually done by converting traffic first into leads, and then converting leads into sales. See how to increase conversion rate on your e-commerce website.
Autopilot Affiliate – The All Important List Building
List building is a pretty important step in building an affiliate business too. An autoresponder is an important piece of software for an affiliate marketer. It helps automate the process of marketing to a subscriber and keeping in touch with them about your products.
On a website, a visitor has only a small “window” of opportunity with which to purchase a product from you. But once you get them to subscribe to your email list, you extend this time period considerably. People can purchase a product from you years after having signed up to your email list. That’s how important it is to have one. So if you want to be an “autopilot affiliate” make sure you start building an email list.
The “Pre-Frame”
Pre-framing refers to the step before someone joins your email list or purchases a product from you. The pre-frame sets up a customer and “frames” the product in such as way so as to inform the (potential) customer of the value of a product.
Some affiliates miss this step out and get people on their list in a multitude of different ways. For example, let’s say you give away an ebook about affiliate marketing. Then you try and sell a course which teaches affiliate marketing. The book in this case is the pre-frame, even though you give it away once someone joins your list.
Another example of a pre-frame is with a video advert. Video adverts are great for certain training and education products. A 5 minute video is a much better way to pre-frame certain products as an affiliate. Compared to a short text advert, a video can do a much better job of pre-framing a product or service you’re trying to sell as an affiliate.
Autopilot Affiliate – The Customer Journey
To “autopilot” affiliate marketing, you need to get a lot of steps right. You need to pre-frame your product, lead your customers into your sales funnel and deliver a product which fulfils their needs. Doing this in the right way gives the customer a context which is congruent all the way through the sales funnel.
If, for example, one video (on an advert) talks about one thing, but the next one (on a landing page for example), talks about something else, you lose the customer because your videos don’t naturally follow each other. Or if you appear in a video advert, but on your landing page someone else appears, your customer may click away because they lose the thread of your initial conversation.
Having a good context which is congruent all the way through the customer journey is important. If you get this right, it’s much easier to generate sales. If your leads join your list from a number of different websites or landing pages, which are all different, it’s very difficult to continue to conversation where you started off.
Autopilot Affiliate – The Follow Up
Following up with your subscribers once they join your list is pretty important. Even though most of your subscribers won’t even open your first email! Yep! Something like 40% of subscribers open their emails. That means you lose a massive 60% of people who don’t even get your emails.
Some will enter their email address incorrectly. Some will just want your freebie and if you give it over before they open their email, there’s no need for them to do so. Others will lose the email in junk or spam filters or simply ignore or forget that they even subscribed.
But despite all that you’ll still get about 40% open rate for your first email. As your email series goes on, less and less people will open then on a regular basis. But you don’t need everyone to purchase from you if you’ve got a great product range. You’re looking for the 3% who will go “all in” and value what you have to offer.
Your Product Range
After the pre-frame, the sign up and the email series comes the sale. With a good range of products you should be able to make back a good return on investment. With a product range, you offer the lowest value product in your range first. The low priced entry level product should be what you sell from your email series.
Once you’ve done this, your product range should be set up to “up-sell” other more expensive products which offer more value to your customer. (You can access a great product range by signing up on this website and joining a online business community – see the sign up form to access the free videos).
A good product range gives you the ability to sell digital products and earn up to 50% commission on a sale. You can also earn commissions on a regular basis from recurring commissions for membership sales.