How to Utilize these Powerful Web Tools to Funnel Traffic to Your Primary Website or Use them as a Stand Alone

Is your website pulling in the kind of targeted traffic you thought it would? Maybe your e-commerce site has way too many products on it and choosing which products to promote over the others is proving too much. Enter the wonderful world of mini sites, funnel sites, and one page sites.

Call them what you will, but these very simple and concentrated one page sites will literally act like a website on steroids and help you to achieve your main objective when it comes to online marketing; increasing your targeted traffic and increasing your bottom line. Gone are the days when all you had to do to promote your business was to spend your advertising dollars on TV, radio, or in print with the newspaper. Now the world in which we live is a digital one and because of the major search engines like Google, the rules of advertising have changed forever.

I wrote about this back in September of 2008 and the game, while it has changed a bit, has only changed more so to the digital side. In order to effectively get your business name out there and be successful you have to funnel a steady flow of traffic to your main website so that visitors will buy what you have to offer. But you also have to balance that with a healthy mix of interest so that those same visitors will want to spread the word about your business.

There is no better way to accomplish these goals than to have a strong single keyword rich mini site, funnel site, or one page site. When done correctly, these product specific sites will be custom made to target the exact traffic you want from the search engines and the best part is that these leads will come ready to buy. All you need to do is follow the process outlined in the Action Guide and begin to build yourself a super optimized one page site based on the most profitable aspect of your current business.

What you will find is that you will ultimately begin to build up a trust and rapport with the visitors that go to these mini sites and once a trust has been established you simply use the content within to divert them to your main site to show them the product or products that you want them to be buying. In other words, you are acting as the Pied Piper and leading them exactly where you want them to go. Think of it as being an affiliate marketer for your own products.

Now this should not be confused with the phrases doorway, gateway, or bridge pages. Why? These days those types of sites or pages are considered SPAM and what faster way to online death is there than SAPM? These types of tactics may have worked in the past, but Google and the other big boys of the search engines quickly grew tired of their manipulation of the rules and so the rules changed in relation to optimization all together.

In order to be successful with mini sites now there are a good number of factors that should be considered and to be successful you need to:

Grow Niche Oriented Traffic: By owning your own free, targeted, and motivated traffic you can grow your business and use your niche oriented traffic to fuel traffic for your primary site.

Diversify: If you are a small business owner you have to protect your income and build your equity by monetizing your traffic. Use new and improved models to help you diversify into other areas.

Build Equity: By building your list of qualified traffic via resources such as e-zines you will not only build trust over time, but your list will grow and grow. The end result is an increase in your online equity.

Increase Conversion Rate by Pre-Selling: Yes you can get a good number of visitors to your website by advertising, but that isn’t nearly as effective as getting the visitors to your site via an in-context link. In fact, the conversion rate can be 20-fold if the visitor is pre-sold and thus clicks onto your website versus just clicking because they were lured by advertisements.

Build Confidence: You can create a rapport between you and your visitors using quality, authoritative content. This will end up making you an authority in your given area of expertise.

The bottom line is that you have to have these funnel sites in order to constantly feed pre-qualified traffic to your current corporate or e-commerce site. Remember, the traffic you generate with these one page monster sites are yours and they are not dependent on a huge amount of money that needs to be spent by way of advertising. What’s more, your funnel sites will continue to grow over time producing more and more traffic which will ultimately mean an enormous gain to the all important bottom line.

 I have been inside taking a look at CJ recently and came up with a few key points:

Your Relationship with the CJ Publishers is the Secret to Success

A great way to drive more dollars to your bottom line is with an effective affiliate marketing program and there is no better place to set that up than with a reputable company like Commission Junction (CJ). CJ has been around for many years now and their reputation is a outstanding one which would explain why there are so many publishers (members of CJ that become participants in affiliate programs) that are on CJ all the time looking for great companies to work with.

While there is no “secret formula” to being a successful advertiser on CJ, there are many different steps you can take that will help you to ensure that your affiliate program is an attractive on for those who are looking. These include:

Competitive Prices: What are you offering to sell and what are your prices? You have to be sure that your prices are competitive with the rest of those in the industry you are trying to compete with. Publishers will simply bypass your affiliate program if you are too pricey as a higher dollar program is harder to sell. Take some time and do some research on different online businesses in your sector and also check out your competition directly on CJ.

Make it Easy: Remember that a publisher is going to want to work with a business that is easy to use. If your link takes the customer to a home page versus a landing page that is specific to what you are selling, then many potential buyers are going to be turned off. This will also deter publishers from joining your program. You have to appeal to the publishers because they are spending a great deal of their time and effort in promoting your products. Yes their vested interest is the commissions they earn, but put yourself in their shoes. If you were looking for affiliate programs to join wouldn’t you go with the ones that are to the point and didn’t require the traffic you generate to click a half dozen times to find a specific product? The publishers on CJ are very savvy and they will take the time to see how easy your program is to use so be sure that everything on your side is ship shape and to the point.

Reward Top Performers: Whatever you decide to have as your commission scale you have to reward those who reward you the most. Think about it, your top publishers are going to be putting a lot of money into your hands and you are going to reward them by giving them the same pay out as the publishers who barley produce anything for you? Take care of your publishers and they will in turn take care of you. Let them know that their hard work will be rewarded by offering a bonus. This works on two levels. The publishers that work hard will feel appreciated and the promise of a reward if extraordinary results are offered is an outstanding carrot to dangle in the face all of your publishers.

Update Always and Often: You should always be changing up your website and your offers that your publishers can use. No one likes to work with stale and stagnant companies. Updating your site on a regular basis shows the publishers that you take an active role in your performance. You should also be constantly updating your links, banners, and coupon offers that your publishers can utilize. This will allow them to update their marketing efforts for your products and that will mean more traffic generated and more products sold.

Trim the Fat: At times it may be necessary to cut some of your publishers who are underperforming as they can negatively affect your earnings per click (EPC). EPC is one of the top factors considered by new publishers who are looking for new affiliate opportunities and by keeping your EPC as high as possible you look as good as possible to those new publishers. You should always try to reach out and communicate with a publisher you are considering cutting before you actually do the deed. Maybe you can offer them some insight as to what can be done to better market your program. It is always better to try to turn a negative into a positive first.

Learn all you can: Again, you need to take an active role in the progress of your affiliate marketing program. Take advantage of the many free tools that CJ has to offer and read through all the tips and suggestions they have on how to further your program. Additionally you can look a t a growing number of blogs and articles that are all over the Internet and just waiting to be read. Nothing beats knowledge when it comes to building up your affiliate program, except for free knowledge and there is certainly plenty of that available.

CJ Web Services: Help your publishers engage the end user easier by utilizing CJ’s web services. You can choose to use link search services or use a product catalog search service and either will help your publishers find what they are looking for faster. Publishers can get the most up to date information available through your program by accessing CJ in real time and then they can distribute the information with their choice of an application programming interface (API). While this is certainly a great way to gain a boost in publishers for yourself it is important to note that for this step to be effective your information and program must be constantly updated and refined.

Communicate: Just as with any relationship, the key is good communication. You should take the time to communicate with your publishers and always keep a line of communication open. A great way to stay in touch is a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter. This gives you a chance to update your publishers on anything that is new and they in turn feel that you are not neglecting them.

What it all boils down to is making the publisher happy. Your publishers are ultimately an extension of your existing sales force. Because they are not getting anything from you other than a chance to make some commissions you have to realize that they are going to be looking for programs with a “What’s in it for me,” attitude and rightly so. By working with CJ and taking advantage of the many different programs they have to offer, you can ensure that your affiliate program will be successful and that your time as CJ Advertiser will spent wisely and ultimately effectively.

Quick note before the article:

Some of the best resources on affiliate and internet marketing come from the following marketers that have actually made a significant amount of money online. Because these professionals are my Facebook friends, I get a chance to follow them on a regular basis.

Jeremy Schoemaker
Missy Ward
Aaron Wall
Jim Kukral
Maria Harrison

Affiliate Marketing

No matter what business you are in and no matter how successful that business is, anyone can benefit from setting up an affiliate program on their website. This will allow others to help you sell your products and services and in return you give them a commission for their efforts. In general, if they sell nothing for you, you pay them nothing. Affiliate marketing offers a true win, win for both you and those that get involved with your affiliate program. But how do you get started and how do you make your affiliate program a smashing success once it is going?

When just starting out a popular method of launching an affiliate program is with the do-it-yourself method. In this way you determine a wide variety of important variables that will be included in the program and by doing so you can often save yourself some time and money. While you are considering this option you will have to choose between having custom software built for your website or renting the software you will need from places such as RentACoder.com or ProjectSpring.com which will allow you to receive bids from programmers who will be able to meet your affiliate programs needs. Just starting out I recommend such affiliate networks as shareasale.com and comissionjuction.com as these site take a good amount of the guess work out of the process.

Once you have decided which direction you want to go for implementation of your software you will want to consider the three of affiliate marketing software features which include:

Control: Probably the most important feature that you will consider is the control panel. Any administrative control panel should feature detailed reports on each and every affiliate marketer that is involved in the program so that you can see who is generating what for your affiliate program. Likewise, there should be detailed reports available for the marketers so that they can see what is and isn’t working in their affiliate marketing efforts with your program.
Configuration: In order to be able to customize payment schedules and commissions which will include per lead, per sale, or even per click, you must implement proper configuration. Configuration is also a key issue when you offer a multi-tier affiliate program as it helps track percentages that will be paid out to each tier.

Communication: Communication is the glue that will hold your affiliate program together. This includes speaking with your participants regularly via e-mail or otherwise to keep them abreast on any changes to the program, new products or services for sale, incentive programs, and just general support. The more advanced affiliate marketing software will usually feature dialog logging so that you can review communications at any time and see which marketers are producing best for you.

Once you have implemented your affiliate program and have participants enrolled you may notice that at a certain point your program goes stale. At this point you no longer see a growth of your affiliate program and this can be very frustrating. The good news is there are ways to cure this that may not be as difficult as you think.

The cure starts with you taking a look at your website and how your affiliate program works as far as organization and structure go. Here are some key tips that will help you assess the mess and fix it:

Leaks: Leaks are external links in your website that do not credit your affiliates for a sale they generate. An example of this is a phone number that is listed on your website that can lead to a sale. Unless you have a way to credit your affiliate marketers with this type of phone sale, stay away from it. Allowing non-commissionable activity to occur on your website is disrespectful to your marketers and will spell certain disaster for your affiliate program.

Terms of Service Agreement: Also known as a TOS. This is often copied by one affiliate from another, many times word for word. This is a mistake that can cost you dearly. You need to take the time to craft your own custom TOS to ensure maximum protection and potential for your affiliate program.

Management: Many affiliate programs are not managed at all and are on auto-pilot so to speak. Remember that your affiliate program is not an advertising campaign but rather a marketing campaign and should be treated as such. That means that you need to be available for your marketers no matter what their needs are. This type of management will help your affiliate program soar. You should also be sure to manage the program itself and not your marketers. Remember, although they work for you, you are not their boss and treating them as such will have many a marketer turn and run. Motivate through opportunity and not through fear.

Adware and Cookie Overwriting: BHO (browser helper object) plug-ins that prompt the overwriting of competitive affiliate cookies are more abundant that you may think and are found in many different affiliate networks both big and in-house. These often come in the form of a charitable foundation or scholarship fund but they will more times than not hurt the campaign. No matter what their sales volume is, they will end up hurting your campaign because serious affiliate marketers will steer clear of programs that have these types of uncouth affiliates involved.

Creating and managing a successful affiliate program is a great way to get some increased traffic to your website and some increased sales as well. Once you have everything in place though, you must be sure that you are doing everything in your power to maintain the program to ensure that it will continue to pay you dividends for as long as you have the program current.

Here is a great video of a guy getting into affiliate marketing a few years ago and all his excitement:

http://revver.com/video/748173/frank-sianos-top-affiliate-challenge-audition/

Go for the GOLD!