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Affiliates' Biggest Mistake

by Steve Yakim

Let's take a look at the reason why 98% of all affiliates fail. If you don't know you are making the affiliates' No. 1 mistake, how are you going to fix it?

You and almost every seller of affiliate products are making the same mistake. When you promote a product from any affiliate program, who do you think is the one who really profits?

Your answer is most likely both you and the affiliate program owner profit. After all, you earn your commission and the affiliate program owner gets the remaining profit from the sale of the product. Both you and the affiliate program owner make money.

This is not a bad arrangement except that you almost always lose your lead whether a sale is made or not. What this means is that you are forced to focus on a one-time sale and spend most of your time chasing new customers.

Were you able to build a list?

In reality you helped build the affiliate program owner's list. This is a list that you are not allowed to use. As an affiliate, you do not have access to all the names and email addresses of the customers that purchased the product that you paid to advertise. All you get is a short record of the transaction and the amount of commission you earned.

There are 3 outstanding disadvantages you are facing because you don't have access to this list...

1. It doesn't give you any options for promoting other profitable affiliate programs to your customers.

2. It doesn't allow you to sell a product you have created yourself.

3. It doesn't allow you to sell any products you have purchased reprint rights to.

Like all the Internet gurus say, the fortune is in having your own list that you can promote to over and over again.

Let's suppose you got a very good conversion rate of 7% on the product you advertised for the affiliate program. What happened to the other 93% of the visitors that went to the sales letter and didn't make a purchase? After all, you worked hard to get these potential customers to the sales letter, and you are just going to let 93% of these prospects leave without a purchase.

In other words, 93% of your work was a waste of your time and effort. By simply promoting an affiliate program and allowing the affiliate program owner to build their list and business while you LOSE out on thousands of dollars in profits because you didn't maximize the benefits of your efforts.

This is the number 1 BIGGEST MISTAKE being made by most affiliates that is costing them THOUSANDS of dollars in profits. The Internet gurus keep telling you to build a list. But did you notice that even though they tell you to build a list, they don't give you the tools or knowledge you need to build your list.

Finally revealed are the tools, and knowledge you need to stop making the number 1 BIGGEST MISTAKE being made by most affiliates.

A Typical Affiliate Sales Method

In a typical affiliate sales method, which is probably the method YOU are using, you place an ad with the link to the affiliate site. Your potential customer clicks on your link to the affiliate owner's sales letter. If the customer makes a purchase from the affiliate owner's sales letter, you make a profit.

But if the customer does not make a purchase you don't make anything. Plus, whether a purchase is made or not, any future contact with that customer is gone and you have to start the process over again.

I now hope you understand the importance of building a highly targeted customer list. Every time a potential customer comes to your website and leaves without you capturing that person's name and e-mail address, you are potentially losing thousands of dollars in profits.

I know you want to make money, but it is more important that you collect each person's personal information than to make a sale. There will be plenty of sales if your sales letter does its job and presents a unique offer and closes the sale.

The person may not like or need the product you are trying to sell to them. But they may be interested in many other products that you are selling.

Steve A. Yakim's (That's Me) Power Affiliate Sales Method

The only thing that the typical sales method has in common with Steve's Power Affiliate Sales Method is: you place an ad. But the ad you place has a link to a capture page instead of the link to the affiliate owner's sales letter.

The capture page records the visitor's name and e-mail address and offers a bonus to the visitor. This is where your list begins. Now, after the visitor's name and e-mail address is recorded, the visitor is sent to the affiliate owner's sales letter.

If the visitor does not make a purchase while at the affiliate owner's sales letter, your effort is not lost. You now have the capability to follow up with additional offers to this visitor because you have their name and e-mail address.

Just because you have collected the visitor's name and e-mail address, the visitor can still be a potential buyer and may purchase from your follow-up ad and still be a source for additional profits from other targeted ads you present to the customer.

To sweeten this whole plan, when the visitor makes a purchase you make a profit but you still have the customer's name and e-mail address and you can still use follow up offers. That is the best of both possibilities.

Now this is where everyone else's sales method ends. But with Steve's Sales Method you receive another very powerful tactic. You have spent time and money to advertise the affiliate owner's product and the customer has decided to purchase or not to purchase the product and is leaving the sales letter.

When the customer closes the sales letter, he or she sees an exit popup that you have placed there when the customer went to the sales letter. This popup directs the customer to the sales letter of one of your products or another affiliate program.

What this means is that you have now presented 2 different products for the same time and money as it cost you to formerly present the one product. You have effectively doubled your opportunity to make a sale with no extra cost or effort.

If you want to triple your production, you can add another popup to another product. You must be very careful not to abuse all of this extra power and put too many exit popups.

You now have the power to send the customer anywhere you want. I will diagram Steve's Affiliate Sales Method so you can see the big difference between the typical sales page and Steve's Affiliate Sales Method.

Now you can see just how powerful Steve A. Yakim's Power Affiliate Sales Method really is. Stop making the affiliates' #1 mistake!

I now hope you understand the importance of building a highly targeted customer list. Every time a potential customer comes to your website and leaves without you capturing that person's name and e-mail address, you are potentially losing thousands of dollars in profits.

I know you want to make money, but it is more important that you collect each person's personal information than to make a sale. There will be plenty of sales if your sales letter does its job and presents a unique offer and closes the sale.

The person may not like or need the product you are trying to sell to them. But they may be interested in many another products that you are selling.

How are you going to tell them about these other products or future products that you will be able to offer if you did not collect the customer's information when they visited your website?

I will tell you the answer just in case you still don't get it!

YOU CAN'T! Unless you were able to capture the visitor's name and e-mail address, you will never have another chance to sell this person another thing.

In other words, you absolutely must capture your visitor's information to be successful on the Internet. It is the most important process in Internet Marketing.

There is an absolute proven equation for success on the Internet that is...

subscribers = future customers

Did you know that 42% of the people that have bought from you one-time will make other purchases from you again and again? But NOT if you didn't collect their name and e-mail address.

Victoria's Secrets (my wife's favorite), Sears, J.C. Penney, IBM, Compaq, Linksys, and the list goes on and on and on (just like the energizer bunny), they all find that it is important to capture their customer's names and e-mail addresses.

So there can be no possible way you can expect to be successful if you don't collect this kind of information. If you do not want to bother with this very important step for success, you need to stop reading now because Internet Marketing is not for you.

Now that I think I have made my point, I will get down off of the soapbox.

Steve Yakim has been on the Internet since 1996 and has several Internet businesses of his own. He also packed several careers in different professions into his life and he hasn't finished yet. He has a Bachelor Degree in Micro Computer Network Management and is a certificated Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He says that is almost as much fun as when he was a professional magician, touring around the U.S.A.!

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