The Affiliate Masters Course is an intensive 10-DAY course on becoming a
High-earning affiliate champion.
How? By “building income through content,” the proven, C T P M way!
An affiliate business is one of the easiest ways to get your feet wet in e-business.
You send visitors (i.e., potential customers) to a merchant’s Web site that you are
Representing. If they buy or complete a required action (for example, fill in a
Form), the merchant pays you a commission. No fuss, no muss!
1. 10. DAY 10<br /> Monetize!<br />Goal-of-the-DAY… C T P M... It's finally “M” time! Implement your<br />Monetization plan.<br />You have a solid and growing foundation of high-quality content pages. You are<br />value-exchanging selectively and garnering quality in-pointing links from niche<br />directories. Targeted traffic is building.<br />Your PREselling efforts are becoming more refined as you build your “Brand of<br />One.” You are nurturing trust and credibility with your new (and repeat!) visitors<br />by OVERdelivering relevant, original, high-value information (through your site,<br />Blog It!, e-zine, etc.). People like your content... and you!<br />Now, your site is ready to convert those ever-increasing numbers of PREsold<br />visitors into income. How? By blending together your primary monetization<br />model with a few others, in order to create a diverse, stable online business.<br />In DAY 4, your focus was on “show me the money.” You needed to be sure of<br />the monetary potential. Now it’s time to “make me the money.”<br />There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to the question, “When do I monetize?” As a<br />general rule of thumb, do not monetize before you...<br />• have at least 30 pages<br />• have at least 4 relevant, quality in-pointing links , of which two should be<br />from directories (ex., DMOZ, Yahoo! (dir.yahoo.com), niche directories)<br />• have started to receive a steady stream of visitors (at least 20 per day).<br />Why wait? If you have less than 20 visitors per day, there is<br />nothing to monetize (unless you sell an expensive service or<br /> specialized product). But there are all kinds of potential downsides<br /> to adding AdSense ads and affiliate links too soon on your site.<br />Why risk it?<br />Does your site meet the above guidelines. If not, keep adding content and get at<br />least a few solid in-pointing links. Don’t worry about how much money you could<br />be making from those “15 visitors per day.” You are not ready for M yet.<br />Once you can say “yes” to the above 3 criteria, ask yourself three more<br />questions. These ones are “softer” (i.e., qualitative) but they are even more<br />important for your long-term success.<br />1) Have I created value for my target audience?<br />2) Does my content/information focus on the needs of my visitors first, rather<br />than my need to make money?<br />3) Does my site have a clear VPP and voice or does it sound like an<br />encyclopedia? You are not Wikipedia. Rewrite if you answer “encyclopedia.”<br />Write to PREsell. Do it now, before you realize you have to rewrite 100 pages!<br />Always remember...<br />You are a “Content Provider” first and foremost . You are not your<br />monetization model.<br />High-quality, relevant Content is what drives the CTP engine that delivers high<br />volumes of PREsold visitors who love you. Once you have a solid traffic base,<br />monetization is easy.<br />If an affiliate link or an e-book (your own creation, or someone else’s effort from<br />ClickBank’s Marketplace, for example) truly adds value to your visitors and it<br />won’t hurt your traffic-building potential (i.e., it might keep you out of a directory if<br />its editor objects to your site’s “commercialization”), then you might consider<br />monetizing earlier. But...<br />Really think it through, though .<br />Would you add this offering even if you were not being paid for it? Does it truly<br />help solve a problem for your visitors? Does it complement your site?<br />Make an objective judgment -- don’t rush just to earn a few dollars right now.<br />There is even some evidence to suggest that affiliate links on a “young site” can<br />hurt your site’s reputation at Google.<br />Be careful. Tread lightly. There is lots of time to blend in the M .<br />Bottom line?<br />Monetizing too soon will slow down your business-building process. Be patient.<br />Determine what your most important priority is right now and whether or not<br />Monetization is it.<br />So... ready to monetize? Great! Go back and review your DAY 4 plans.<br />You know much more about your Site Concept now. Different monetization<br />models may strike you as being appropriate.<br />No matter what your monetization strategy is, diversify to take full advantage of<br />your PREsold traffic. Introduce at least two or three income streams, improving<br />your chances of making every visitor to your site count.<br />Diversification also brings stability. Never put all your eggs into one monetization<br />basket. Add each income stream one at a time, weeks or months apart. Assess<br />each one. Optimize it. Keep building content while you focus on building more<br />targeted traffic for your primary monetizer.<br />Once one model is well-established, add another. Take your time. Running too<br />fast and adding a whole bunch of money-making schemes will get you nowhere<br />fast. Follow your plan, steadily and surely.<br />Monetization, if done properly, is not about adding a pile of affiliate links and a<br />ton of Google ads all over the place. Think it through. Remember your visitor’s<br />experience. Although you are building your business to generate revenue,<br />monetization is a careful, deliberate, and delicate process.<br />Keep two prime considerations in mind while monetizing...<br />1) Get into the mindset of your visitor. Match the unique needs of your audience<br />to the most ideal products and solutions.<br />2) Avoid jeopardizing the goodwill (i.e., the PREselling) that your customer-<br />focused content is building.<br />You want to please most of your visitors, not all of them. You will receive<br />a few complaints about ads or other monetization options that you offer.<br />As long as they are few and far between, ignore them. They are signs<br />that your balance is right. The complainers will never be customers,<br />merely greedy, cynical freebie-hunters. Don't take them seriously or<br />personally.<br />Effective monetizing is a constantly evolving process. And that brings us to your<br />Ongoing Goal…<br />Periodically evaluate your monetization strategies to ensure that you are still in<br />sync with the needs of your target audience.<br />Monetization is mostly about inclination (how much are you willing to find and<br />build new models?), motivation (even if you're willing, it can take some courage)<br />and circumstances (some folks need the income desperately, others are happy<br />with lesser amounts of passive income).<br />Folks who figure out monetizing (i.e., who graduate beyond AdSense and affiliate<br />programs) are the ones who start thinking about active ways of making money,<br />rather than just the more passive, infopreneurial ones. (Of course, there is<br />nothing wrong with the passive ones. Depending on your niche and your<br />inclination, they can do very well for you.)<br />On the next DAY...<br />Wait! There is no next DAY! You are at the end of your masters course. Bring<br />on the wrap-up!…<br />11. The Road To Success<br />What a long way you’ve come. Take a look! The Affiliate Masters Course has<br />helped you to...<br />• understand the difference between selling and PREselling ( DAY 1)<br />• develop your best Site Concept (DAY 2)<br />• brainstorm profitable topics (DAY 3)<br />• plan potential monetization models for your site (DAY 4)<br />• refine your Site Concept and registered your domain name (DAY 5)<br />• build a site that gets “the click” (DAY 6)<br />• generate free traffic (DAY 7)<br />• establish credible long-term relationships with your visitors (DAY 8)<br />• use statistics to know your visitors (DAY 9)<br /> • implement your monetization models (DAY 10)<br />As I said back in the introduction, successful business-building on the Net is all<br />about following the right process and smart work. Do things right the first time,<br />step by step... and good things do happen.<br />Remember, YOU have no brand. Amazon has a brand. Google has a brand.<br />You must build one. And there is only one way to build your “Brand of One”…<br />CONTENT TRAFFIC PRESELL MONETIZE.<br />That, in a nutshell, is what builds the core for a long-term, ever-growing business<br />with sustainable profits and true equity.<br />Please, please do not waste your time on playing the Search Engine<br />Optimization game. It’s doomed to “keeping up” with thousands of the smartest<br />minds on the planet.<br />Instead, leapfrog the SEO game players by “keeping it real.”<br />By following the CONTENT TRAFFIC PRESELL MONETIZE process,<br />your site will simply do better and better. And your online business will grow<br />bigger and more profitable!<br />Let those well-heeled advertisers pay for their traffic. You have the knowledge<br />(and with SBI!, all the tools all in one place!) to build your affiliate business as big<br />as you want. After all, it’s your road to success!<br />