The affiliate Masters Course | Page 3

lots of targeted traffic. So
far, though, that traffic is still on your site. Therefore, it’s not generating income
yet. Your visitors are just “looking around.” So...
2) Get those visitors to click through to your merchants. (Some affiliate
program models can actually place merchant offerings on your Web site. In this
case, your traffic does not actually visit your merchant’s site. But you still have to
“get the click” to generate income.)
It makes sense, of course, that a Web site is the way to go. After all, this
is the Net!
http://blogorbuild.sitesell.com/
And there are loads of other ways for affiliates to drive targeted traffic to
their merchants, both offline and on.
SiteSell’s 5 Pillar Program provides all the tools, information and
strategies you need to PREsell effectively and generate substantial
commission income.
http://affiliates.sitesell.com/

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You can easily apply these marketing theories/strategies to your other
affiliate programs as well.
OK, that wraps up expenses and traffic-building. Now for our second question
about expenses...
Question #2 -- What does it cost to maximize Conversion Rates?
Good news! Maximizing your Conversion Rate (CR) is simply a question of
doing things right. There is no extra dollar or time cost to boosting CRs at your
merchants’ sites. This course will show you how to achieve this goal, too.
Remember… when this course talks about Conversion Rates, we are
talking about the Conversion Rate at the sites of the merchants that you
represent as an affiliate. So we are talking about how you will maximize
the percentage of referral visitors who deliver the response for which the
vendor pays, whether that’s a sale, or lead, etc.
If you think that it’s impossible for you to change the sales-effectiveness
of your merchants’ sites, you are in for a big surprise.
Your primary goals are...
1) Maximize targeted traffic to your merchants, spending only dollars and time
that maximize profits.
2) Maximize Conversion Rates. Do things right (no expense).
Don’t do just one. Do both. Why? Because, as you saw above, your payment is
determined by traffic multiplied by the CR... not “added.” Your profits grow
geometrically when you concentrate on maximizing both traffic and Conversion
Rates.
I have spent quite a bit of time reviewing the difference between 5 Pillar Affiliates
who refer high traffic to us and who deliver high Conversion Rates
(% of visitors who purchase), and those who deliver low ones.
The #1 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
Banner ads! No content!
Retinal studies have shown that Web surfers actually avoid banners. Yes, their
eyes look away!

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Our study found that 5 Pillar Affiliates who relied solely on banners had an
average CR of 0.5%. But those who used “in-context” text links (i.e., text links
that are part of the content of the Web page) averaged over 3.5%!
How’s that for a reason not to use banners?
Banners are cheesy and hurt your credibility. If visitors happen to click through
(a big “if”), they arrive at their destination feeling “pitched” rather than informed.
They have a resisting mindset, rather than with an open, ready-to-buy attitude.
Remember that example where you sent 100 visitors per day to a merchant and
1% bought? If you rely on flipping up some banners, it will be more like 10
visitors per day and not one person buys!
We reveal a lot about 5 Pillar Affiliates during this course. But it is not the
5 Pillar Program that is important here -- it’s the lessons to be derived.
This course is about making any affiliate of any program more successful.
Conclusion?...
Don’t use banners.
Yes, I know “they're so-o-o-o-o easy.” It’s always easy to not make money.
That’s how all those get-rich-quick-guys do so well... the allure of easy money.
No such thing.
I must repeat… don’t rely solely on banners.
If you simply must use banners, save your “in-context” text links for super
companies with wonderful products that deliver true value to your reader.
Beside the obvious futility of banners, I’ve spotted another major point. This one
is more subtle, but it’s important… extremely important.
The #2 reason for low traffic and terrible Conversion Rates?
After banner advertising, it’s the second most common error. And it’s an even
bigger shame because this boo-boo involves a lot of work... misplaced work. If
you’re going to fail, the best thing would be not to spend much time at it, right?
Reason #2 is...
Selling instead of PREselling.
Some 5 Pillar Affiliates have really made great efforts in creating sites to promote
our SiteSell products. And they are building some sales and traffic. But when I

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see a low CR (i.e., CR under 2%), I know that something is amiss. Great efforts
deserve greater results than 1%.
Yes, I agree that these efforts are better than banners. But remember… creating
these sites takes a lot more work than tossing up a couple of banners. We’ll see
in a moment that it’s misdirected work. (The good news is that this course will
redirect those efforts into high-profit