Affiliate Classroom Magazine: June 2009

Volume 5 Number 7 June 2009 AffiliateClassroom.com The journal of affiliate marketing and management best practices Expanding Your Affiliate Business Building and Monetizing an Authority Website Use Social Networks to Expand Your Affiliate Business Making the Leap from the Computer Screen Creating Your Own Products 2 Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 Download the black and white version at AffiliateClassroom.com. Table of Contents COVER STORY Use Social Networks to Expand Your Affiliate Business By David Long Social networks bring people together in a huge cyber meeting place and can really help you expand your affiliate business. This article discusses the rules and possible pitfalls for working with a social network and its members. PAGE 3 7 Building and Monetizing an Authority Website Although an authority website is a lot more trouble to build than the average marketing website, the expansion of your business will be worth the effort. Get started with this step-by-step guide. 11 Creating Your Own Products Product creation can be a very profitable venture and can quickly lead to promotional opportunities. This article examines the creation of a product from its conception and creation to its promotion, and sales and delivery. 15 Making the Leap from the Computer Screen Even though the Internet is your playground, don't underestimate the potential of the good old offline world. In this article, we will take a look at some of the available options. New to Affiliate Classroom? Click here now for a free introduction to affiliate marketing. This magazine is now brandable by our affiliates! To join our affiliate program and earn residual income by sharing this magazine with others, visit the Affiliate Classroom website and look for the link to our affiliate program. About Affiliate Classroom Magazine © Copyright 2009, Lurn, Inc.™ and the individual authors. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any portion of this publication is forbidden. Contact the Managing Editor to request permission to reprint articles. All contents of this issue, including design, photos, graphics, and text are copyrighted. All brand names and trademarks are the property of their respective holders. Staff, Helen Montgomery, Managing Editor Lurn, Inc.™ 100 Lakeforest Boulevard, Suite 610 Gaithersburg, MD 20877 Affiliate Classroom Magazine is published monthly by Lurn, Inc.™ Back issues are available at AffiliateClassroom.com. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 3 FEATURE STORY Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 JDavidLong@gmail.com Using Social Networking to Expand Your Affiliate Business By David Long MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and a whole lot of other less-well-known Internet names all fall under the heading of social networks. The reason is obvious. They bring people together in a huge cyber meeting place. That can really help you expand your affiliate business. The original impetus for those sites wasn't commercial (except, possibly, on the part of their founders). It was just to expand the potential of the web to allow contact and interaction between people (often total strangers) in a fun, safe way. As such, they were always wary of individuals who signed up solely for the purpose of making a buck off their huge membership. They all realized pretty quickly, though, that not only was that inevitable, there wasn't anything particularly wrong about it, if it was done the right way. So, the rules of those sites (or at least their interpretation) relaxed a bit. The result is a group of sites that allow commerce, or at least contact for commercial purposes, provided it's done according to their terms of service. When marketing via any social network, the basic thing to remember is not to abuse the trust both the site and its membership have developed. In other words, subtlety is the word of the day. The "Rules" The terms of service for each site differs a little bit from one to the next, of course. But, even without reading them all, you can guess what they contain. (I recommend that you do read them, however, before making use of the site for affiliate marketing purposes. Better safe than sorry. Here are the terms of service for Facebook.com, for example (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/terms.php?ref=pf). I won't take the space here to repeat them (look halfway down the page), but you'll notice the terms say nothing about forbidding use for commercial purposes. Quite the opposite — they discuss how your website or application can, must, or should use Facebook. When marketing via any social network, the basic thing to remember is not to abuse the trust both the site and its membership have developed. In other words, subtlety is the word of the day. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 4 SOCIAL NETWORKING Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 The "hard sell" is not appropriate on social networking sites because people don't go there looking to buy something. But, as with Google and a million other sites that people use for something other than shopping (even when it's an aid to shopping), no one objects to information, even when it's product or service oriented. Just keep it low key. In fact, many successful entrepreneurs have been using MySpace and the rest for years without a problem. Rosalind Gardner of Super Affiliate Handbook fame has a profile there, and she uses it as a sale vehicle (and uses it well). Kim Wingfield of Serpentine Hair (http://www.serpentinehair.com) is another vendor and Internet entrepreneur who knows how to take advantage of social networking. In both cases (and you could easily cite a hundred more), these businesswomen know the power of Internet marketing. Both create a friendly, informative profile, useful commentary, and other non-cost content to sell their products. The results are high traffic, leading to healthy sales. Their method is simple: use social networks to give something valuable away. In short, it's the same method you use (or should use) on your website. Give valuable content (or free samples) away, and people will spread the word, along with seeking you out to buy what you offer. After all, being known by a lot of people may be satisfying, but you have to go beyond fame if you want fortune. You have to turn that "name recognition" into traffic and therefore sales. You can do that by giving social network website users a reason to do more than simply remember your name. Being known by a lot of people may be satisfying, but you have to go beyond fame if you want fortune. You have to turn that "name recognition" into traffic and therefore sales. Paid Ads Of course, the non-cost way isn't the only (and not always the best) way for every affiliate marketer to use social networks. Facebook and others have ad programs. (They're looking to make money, too, naturally.) Whether it's worth the cost to you can only be an individual decision based on your specific circumstances. Some guidelines may help you decide, though. Guidelines: The basic rule of thumb for whether to pay for ads on social networks applies here the same way it does for any other ad program: does it more than pay for itself? You can find out for sure only by experiment (assuming you have the Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 5 SOCIAL NETWORKING budget to try in the first place). Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 Whichever social networking site you use, it's important that it fit in with your marketing style and goals. That's really just an instance of the more general marketing principle that you want to target the right demographic in the right way. Rates vary from site to site (and within sites), so there's no formula that suits everyone. Develop your own by performing some simple arithmetic. Do you get more revenue back (plus a little) than you spend? No calculation could be simpler than that. You'll need to measure for at least a month to have enough data to make a reasonable decision. Perform a Personal Cost-Benefit Analysis: Remember to include in your calculation, though, the time you spend creating and maintaining that ad program. Everything you do there is time spent that could have been applied to doing something else, somewhere else, something that might bring a higher return. (Economists call that "opportunity cost.") Also, the decision is more than a hard-dollar one, of course. Often the positive word of mouth benefits you in the form of potential future sales, and that can be worth paying for. Select the Right Site for You: The other major criterion to bring to bear on your decision is whether your product, service, or style is amenable to a specific social network. That is, can you operate safely within the terms of service and achieve your affiliate marketing goals? Social networking sites differ in "tone," and so does one affiliate marketer's business model from the next guy's. Facebook, for example, started as a vehicle for college students to get in touch with one another, make new friends on campus, etc. It expanded to include people from all demographic groups, but the same friendly, easygoing style is evident throughout the site. Twitter, by contrast, while certainly a friendly vehicle, is intended more as a "how are you doing this second?" kind of site. It's a little edgier (though not hugely so). Whichever social networking site you use (and you'll want to consider, and even use, many), it's important that it fit in with your marketing style and goals. That's really just an instance of the more general marketing principle that you want to target the right demographic in the right way. Be sure you are aiming correctly, going after the group with the right message "spoken" as they want to hear it, as well as going after the right group. If you market DVDs, for example, Netflix has a community that can be perfect for you. Flixster is another worth looking into. If you're into photography, and perhaps sell cameras, Flickr is an obvious choice. For book lovers, and booksellers (or anything related to writing), Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 6 SOCIAL NETWORKING Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 Goodreads is a great place to investigate. Of course, there's nothing wrong with generic social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, either. The point is to try to match your interests, attitude, and products/ services to the right social networking site. There are so many out there, you'll have no end of worthwhile options. In each case, once again, be sure to read the terms of service and work within those guidelines. Getting banned represents a dead loss of your time and effort, as well as creates the potential for negative word of mouth, a big sales killer. It can be helpful to get a general overview of some of the top sites, so here's a place you can check: TopTenReviews (http://social-networkingwebsites-review.toptenreviews.com). It gives a helpful, at-a-glance overview of the minimum age requirement, the percentage of users under 18 years of age, rankings, and other useful information. Wikipedia has a few dozen listed with some useful info (such as Alexa Page Ranking), as well (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites). Try to match your interests, attitude, and products/ services to the right social networking site. There are so many out there, you'll have no end of worthwhile options. The Final Word So, expand your affiliate marketing efforts in a low-cost, high-return way by making use of social networks in a way that suits your goals. And, hey, you'll probably have a lot of fun doing it, too! About the Author David Long is a freelance writer and editor with over 20 years of experience. His PLR articles and eBooks have appeared on hundreds of websites. They cover topics that include Wine & Beer, Travel, Gardening, Health & Fitness, Pets, Stocks & Bonds, and dozens more subjects. He can be contacted for hire at JDavidLong@gmail.com. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 7 FEATURE STORY Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 Building and Monetizing an Authority Website By Kathy Jackson jacksokathy@gmail.com If you have higher goals as an Internet marketer than to just to survive and make a few bucks, you might want to consider building an authority website. An authority website is a lot more trouble to build, but the expansion of your affiliate marketing business will be worth the effort. The dictionary defines “authority” as: “an expert whose views are taken as definitive.” So an “authority website” implies that the webmaster is an expert on the niche topic. An authority website has more pages, more content, and more links that any other type of marketing website. The quality must remain high and the content must always be relevant and timely, so maintaining an authority website is more time-consuming than maintaining any other type of website. But the time is well spent, and it can certainly be financially rewarding. So here is a step-by-step plan for building an authority website: Before you build an authority website, you must have far more than basic knowledge about your niche. You must know all about it. Step #1: Choose Your Niche…Carefully It is better if you choose a niche with which you are already very familiar. Prior knowledge will greatly reduce your learning curve. Before you build an authority website, you must have far more than basic knowledge about your niche. You must know all about it. It’s equally important that you really love the topic, or at least like it a lot. You’re going to spend a great deal of time reading, writing, and thinking about it. If you aren’t really interested, burnout will happen sooner rather than later. How? Read, talk to people who are experts, gain personal experience, etc. You want to determine whether there is enough interest in the niche you choose to make it financially feasible. Surf the web. If a niche is profitable, it is being widely discussed on the Internet, and there are lots of marketers selling products related to the niche. Step #2: Research Customer Demographics A certain segment of the population is most likely going to make up the largest majority of your customers. You need to know who they are. Are Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 8 AUTHORITY WEBSITE Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 Quality is the most important factor in choosing product(s) to represent. If you promote a lousy product, you will quickly destroy any credibility you’ve established. (One “uh oh” erases all of the “atta boys” you’ve accumulated up to that point.) they men or women? Are they young, middle-aged, or old? Do they live an active or inactive lifestyle? What is their average income? What are their buying habits? Basically, you are going to have to engage in “profiling.” If you are familiar with your niche, you likely already have a good idea of who your customers are; but I cannot emphasize enough the importance of learning everything you can find out about your customer base. How? Visit forums and message boards that are related to your niche. Participate. This is the easiest and least expensive why to learn about your potential customer demographics. On the other hand, if you already have more money than you know what to do with, you can hire a demographic research firm to do the job for you. Step #3: Research Product(s) When you have determined your niche and have found out who your most likely customers are, the next step is to find a product or products to promote. (You DO want to make money, after all!) You can’t just go find a product on Commission Junction or ClickBank and start promoting it. You need to know everything about the product (s) that you promote. (If you have your own product, it’s even better!) It’s important to choose products that are of particular interest to your customer base. The more “necessary” a product is, the more you are likely to sell. How? Buy the products and actually use them yourself if at all possible. If that isn’t possible, then read every word on the merchant’s website and read every word of every review on the web about the product (s). The keyword here is “authority.” If you want to be an authority, then you must know all of the answers to all of the questions. Quality is the most important factor in choosing product(s) to represent. If you promote a lousy product, you will quickly destroy any credibility you’ve established. (One “uh oh” erases all of the “atta boys” you’ve accumulated up to that point.) So choose the products that you represent with care. Step #4: Design Your Website The idea is to design a website that will appeal to your customer base. If you really know who your customers are, this part will be much easier than you might have imagined. Basically, your website needs to be a place on the web where your customers feel comfortable. They need to feel that they are among friends who share their interest in the niche. How? • • • Simple website design is better than complex website design. Your website should be easy to navigate; don’t get “cute” Write a newsletter and ask visitors to opt in. (You can advertise your newsletter!) Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 9 • AUTHORITY WEBSITE Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 • • • • Keep the website focused on the user and his/her interest in the niche, not on products you are trying to sell. Your visitors will buy products because they trust you and the information you provide, and not because you have better written advertisements than the other guys. Provide information about the niche topic that is current, timely, and of interest to your customer base. And keep updating the information. Don’t get lazy. Yesterday’s news is, well, yesterday’s news. Present information about the product(s) that you are promoting in a conversational way rather than using a blatant “BUY NOW” strategy. Demonstrate how a product can solve a problem or make life better for a customer and provide the information about the product (s) in a logical order. Start with the most important or obvious facts but cover every detail. Include a blog and ask your customers to contribute to it. Include an RSS feed. Your visitors will buy products because they trust you and the information you provide, and not because you have better written advertisements than the other guys. Step #5: Develop a Strategic Marketing Plan The idea isn’t to tiptoe onto the Internet unnoticed. You don’t want to launch your authority website without any fanfare at all, and you don’t want a tiny little “pop and fizzle.” You want a BANG — a big, loud, and sustained BANG! You want the world to know that you have arrived. How? • Announce your website launch with a press release. The Internet is a big, hungry, word-eating monster. There are never enough words. There are many news channels that will happily include your press release in their daily publications. Send your press release via personal email to news media within your niche as well as to Google News, Yahoo News, etc. Start a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign. Advertise your FREE newsletter (or ebook or white paper or software, etc). Yes, you are going to spend a good sum on advertising but it will pay off in the long run. Be sure that you set an advertising budget that you can live with. A PPC campaign will build your opt-in list, your following as help to establish you as an authority in your chosen niche. Post to your blog daily. Don’t miss a day. This is the quickest way to get indexed. Submit your website to the Internet directories. Links pointing to your site make your site visible on the Internet and are of the utmost importance to having your website rank high in the search engines’ natural search results. Submitting your site to Internet directories such as Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org; click on the “suggest URL” link) and others is a free way to build a solid foundation of keyword-optimized links and tap into a new source of qualified visitors. Submit expert articles to article banks. When your website is ready to launch, start submitting articles and continue to submit at least one article every week to your industry’s websites, media, and the article syndication websites.\ Learn everything you can about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) • • • • • Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 10 AUTHORITY WEBSITE Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 and continually upgrade your website. Remember, a website launch is not an ending. It is a BEGINNING! Step #6: Monetize Your Website When you review products, you must be absolutely unbiased in your assessment. List the disadvantages as well as the advantages. When you compare products, the same thing is true. It takes time, patience, and some money to make an authority website pay off. But once you get an authority website making money for you, it will make a great deal of money, and it will do so consistently. The visitors to an authority website aren’t looking for products to buy. They are looking for information that will help them NOW. If the visitor trusts you and sees you as an authority, when you recommend a product that will solve a problem for the visitor, he will buy it. If you recommend a seminar or a webinar that will provide valuable information, the visitor will pay for the privilege to attend. So within your content, you recommend products that will solve problems for your visitors. You don’t promote the product itself; rather, you promote the solution to the problem that the product will provide. When you review products, you must be absolutely unbiased in your assessment. List the disadvantages as well as the advantages. When you compare products, the same thing is true. Monetizing an authority website is dependent upon the website owner building real credibility as an authority with a reputation of absolute honesty. There’s no shortcut. About the Author Kathy Jackson is a Texas rancher and a contributing author for several farm and ranch publications. She is also an experienced freelance writer of email newsletters, review copy, educational materials, and blog posts on a wide variety of topics, including many aspects of online business and affiliate marketing. Internet marketing is one of Kathy’s burning interests. You can read some of Kathy's articles on the Affiliate Classroom Blog at http://blog.affiliateclassroom.com. She can be contacted via email at jacksokathy@gmail.com. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 11 FEATURE STORY Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 Creating Your Own Products By Mark Thompson http://www.income-academy.com If you are a successful affiliate marketer, then it’s only natural that you might want to take your online business to the next level. The lessons you have learned and the skills you have mastered will be helpful in many areas of Internet marketing. However, one area in particular should be ideal for your skills, and that’s in creating your own products. Each of the stages outlined here is important in its own right; get one of them wrong and even the best product can be a complete flop. The first, most obvious reason for this is that product creation can be a very profitable venture. Additionally, you can quickly establish yourself as an expert in the niches you target by creating good-quality products. This can quickly lead to promotional opportunities; I have lost count of the number of interviews I’ve been ask to do as a result of people reading my products. To create a successful product, you need to go through four distinct stages, each of which we will look at separately — conception, creation, promotion, and sales and delivery. Each of these stages is important in its own right; get one of them wrong and even the best product can be a complete flop. Get all the aspects right, and you can generate a full-time income for yourself in a very short period of time. Stage #1: Conception The conception stage focuses on what your product will cover. Obviously, you can create your product about anything you want; but it should be something about which you have acquired a good deal of knowledge. If you use article marketing to promote affiliate products, you would be surprised at how much knowledge you have about the niches in which you promote products. This knowledge alone could be used to create a product. Digital products generally fall into two categories: products that are related to Internet marketing, and products that are not. Which area you target is up to you; both have advantages and disadvantages. IM-related products can make a lot of money for you; in fact, several Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 12 CREATING PRODUCTS Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 such products have made over $1 million in sales! (However, don’t expect to make anything near this with your first product!) The less positive side of IM-based products is that they tend to get a far higher number of refunds; 5%– 10% is normal. On the other hand, while you won’t make as much with a non-IM product, you will have far few refunds to deal with. Personally, I produce both types of products. The IM-based ones are based around the techniques I devised to make affiliate sales. I choose the non-IM-based ones as a result of monitoring the affiliate sales I make. Once I’ve made 100 sales of a product via article marketing, I know that there is a good market for it. I’ll then look at the niche and see if there is room for another product. After looking at the niche, if I decide an opportunity exists to make a sellable product, I move on to the creation stage. Your digital product can take many forms. Ebooks, videos, and audios, or a combination of any of them, are all good ways to create a product. Your products don’t need to take you a long time to create. Stage #2: Creation Your digital product can take many forms. Ebooks, videos, and audios, or a combination of any of them, are all good ways to create a product. Your products don’t need to take you a long time to create. You can create low-priced products and sell them via forums to start with. Then take feedback from these and create a much bigger product. My very first product was a series of five videos that showed people how to do simple SEO. It took me a few hours to promote and made about $700. My second was a 16-page report that I wrote in a day and sold in a forum for $10. I made over $3,000 in 48 hours. More importantly, I asked everyone who purchased my second product for feedback. Once I had the feedback, I then spent a month expanding the second product into a 120-page report. I improved the areas that people suggested needed improving and added other sections that buyers said would be useful. I then created videos to go with it and launched it on ClickBank, where it still sells lots of copies every month. If you decide that there is a niche that you can target, then the best way to create a product is to purchase the best-selling products currently in that niche. Read them cover to cover and take notes. Now you need to improve on those products and give your customers a much better product. Creating a product can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it. You could have a product on sale within a few hours of reading this if you wanted. Here are some ways of getting a product on sale. As you Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 13 CREATING PRODUCTS Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 go down the list, the time and level of difficultly increase, but so do the potential profits. • • • • • Purchase a Master Resale Rights product that comes with a sales page, and you have an Instant product for sale. If you want to take it one step further, you could get new graphics for the e-cover and the sales page. To take it further still, rewrite the ebook and the sales page, and you now have a unique product of your own. Create your own videos demonstrating how to do something. Write an ebook about a product and a create a sales page Don’t go overboard with personalization here. The key is to get the person to click on the link and opt in to your list. Finally, in this section I should point out the value of outsourcing, I always outsource the creation of the graphics and the sales pages of my products. I want the most professional-looking product possible, and professional graphics are a must. It is also possible to outsource the writing of an ebook. If you really don’t like writing, then this is worth considering. Stage #3: Promotion Promoting your products properly is vital. Promotion has two effects: it generates sales, and it gets you affiliates who will make sales for you. You can promote your products in many ways; article marketing, pay per click advertising, and forum posts are a great way to get sales initially. By attracting affiliates, you can let them do all the promotion work. Initially you should also post about your product on JV blogs and in Internet marketing forums. You may find members who have an existing list of subscribers in your niche. Don’t be afraid to give away review copies of your product; these are great for getting reviews and even testimonials for your sales page. Also consider doing a press release about your product. These can be great for getting interviews and getting word out about your product. Stage #4: Sales and Delivery The final piece of the puzzle is delivering the product to your purchasers. Don’t be tempted to use email for this. Buyers expect to be able to get their purchases immediately. I have one product that is set up to be delivered via email once the customer confirms their email address; it’s a nightmare! Unfortunately, as it’s a weekly product, there is no way I can change it. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 14 CREATING PRODUCTS Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 There are a number of sales and delivery methods you should consider. The prices of these vary; for example, ClickBank charges you $49.95 for the first product you add and $29.95 for additional ones. They also charge a fee on each on sale. Others, such as PayDotCom, charge a small fee for each sale. Still others, such as e-junkie, charge a small monthly fee irrespective of how many products you sell. The benefit of using services like these is that they have a sales process in place that is tested and works. It’s up to you to decide which method best suits your product. When determining how to sell and deliver your product, take into account how you receive your money and how many affiliates you are likely to get by using that service. When determining how to sell and deliver your product, take into account how you receive your money and how many affiliates you are likely to get by using that service. Some Advice Learned the Hard Way If you create a digital product, make sure that you use some sort of download protection software. I don’t dare think about how much money I lost when I launched my first big product because I didn’t use download protection. Also, don’t take refunds personally. Some people are serial refunders — they buy every product that looks good to them, and soon thereafter, they ask for a refund. To make it worse, they will add comments such as “This is the worst product I have ever seen.” Ignore comments like that, and trust your product. Above all else, don’t let those last two paragraphs discourage you. Creating products really is one of the best ways to make money online. It also gives you a great feeling when you check your stats and see you made lots of sales of a product that you created. To quote a noted product maker: Just Do It! About the Author Mark Thompson spent many years working in an IT consultancy in London. Following a re-evaluation of his goals and lifestyle in 2004, he sold everything he couldn't fit into the family car and moved to rural Spain, where he now pursues a variety of online ventures. Visit his website http://www.income-academy.com to learn more about the benefits of his low-cost online business coaching. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 15 FEATURE STORY Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 Making the Leap from the Computer Screen By Katalin Torok www.mktg.idared.net Even though you have developed your business with the web user of the 21st century in mind, there are still lots of people out there who are more comfortable in the offline realm. You have built a successful online venture, and you are ready to take the next step. As an online entrepreneur in the rapidly evolving Web 3.0 era, you have dozens of business models and trends you can consider. But even though the Internet is your playground, don't underestimate the potential of the good old offline world when it comes to expanding your online business into new territories. In this article, we will take a look at some of the options available for diversifying an online business with offline markets and aspects. Sell Your Content in Offline Form You have built a website and developed content for it that is highly relevant to your niche. Even if you are not yet an authority on your subject, your content is an asset with market value. If you want to start small, you can approach offline publications in your niche and offer your articles for reprint, or offer to write articles on your niche. Being published in offline media will provide multiple benefits. By getting your name out there, you are directly promoting your existing online business. You will also start to establish yourself as an authority on your chosen subject, while in the best-case scenario you are also being paid to do so. The next step towards marketing your content offline is publishing it yourself. Even though you have developed your business with the web user of the 21st century in mind, there are still lots of people out there who are more comfortable in the offline realm. Do some market research and find out if your audience would be interested in consuming your content in printed form. You might find segments of your target audience whom you cannot reach with online-only offerings, but who will gladly accept, and who is ready to pay cash for, your useful guidance in printed form. Here are a couple of ideas to start with: • • You can create a collection of articles and turn them into a reader on your subject. If you have a well-rounded collection of content, rework your website content into book form. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 16 COMPUTER SCREEN Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 If you already have ebooks or online courses, offer printed versions of these in order to reach new audiences. There are websites dedicated to self-published authors, where you can upload a file of your book and the book is printed on demand whenever someone orders it. (You can order in bulk at a discounted price any time you need to sell wholesale yourself or need copies for promotion.) Do a web search for "print on demand" to find out more, or check out these service providers who can help you publish your book one copy at a time: • • • • Blurb (http://www.blurb.com) Lulu (http://www.lulu.com) CafePress (http://www.cafepress.com) Booksurge (http://www.booksurge.com) To start your own shop, you might see an unmet need in your niche's marketplace and develop your own unique products to fill it. Or you can become a retailer of existing products, some of which you have been advertising already. Developing an Online Store Running an affiliate site can be thought of as running an ecommerce store without inventory and order processing. When referring orders to online merchants as an affiliate, your commission is a share of the retail margin from the merchant. But what if you wanted to go after the entire retail margin? To do that, you need to become a merchant yourself, and start selling your own inventory of products. What to Sell? Chances are you already have a niche that you have been working on, advertising a carefully chosen slice of other merchants' inventories of goods. To start your own shop, you might see an unmet need in your niche's marketplace and develop your own unique products to fill it. Or you can become a retailer of existing products, some of which you have been advertising already. How to Sell? Opening an online store is easier than ever, thanks to easy-to-use software solutions and service providers. However, before you take this step, do your market research and consider the legal implications for your business. Find out about the legal requirements for operating an ecommerce store in your locality, relevant consumer protection rules and terms of your payment processing vendor. As an affiliate, you have the affiliate manager on the merchant's side to help you sort out the legal side of advertising their wares, as you are only a mediator in the transaction. By becoming a merchant, you are on your own when it comes to compliance with the laws and rules that regulate online selling. Dealing with your own inventory and your own customers, you need to carefully plan and execute two new aspects of your online business: the logistics of order fulfillment, and customer service. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 17 COMPUTER SCREEN Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009 You need to consider the scale of the shop you are building: Drop shipping provides the best of both worlds. You can concentrate on the online aspects of selling on the Internet without maintaining physical inventory, while your drop shipper partner fulfills the orders. • • • How much inventory can you comfortably handle? Who will be packing and shipping orders? Who will handle customer service inquiries and order tracking? Drop Shipping Drop shipping, a hybrid of being an affiliate and an online merchant, provides the best of both worlds. You can concentrate on the online aspects of selling on the Internet without maintaining physical inventory, while your drop shipper partner fulfills the orders. In exchange, they take a cut of the order value in addition to the wholesale price of the product. It works like this: 1. You develop your online store and fill it with product information. 2. Customers place the orders in your online shop, and send the payment to you. 3. You notify your drop shipper partner about the order and have them ship the merchandise to the customer's address in your name. You pay the drop shipper for the cost of goods and fulfillment. To your customer, the ordering process and delivery is completely seamless. They never learn that you didn't fulfill the order yourself. While drop shipping provides many benefits, it also comes with its own unique set of risks. By outsourcing the order management portion of your business, your trustworthiness and reputation in the eyes of the customer relies on the drop shipper's quality to do its job. If something goes wrong, even if you had absolutely nothing to do with it, you will be the one dealing with the complaints, and your business' reputation will suffer. Therefore, if you opt for the drop shipping route to manage your store, be extremely cautious in selecting your partner(s). In this article, we covered a few ideas on how you can expand your online-only business into the offline world. Diversifying your business with multiple income streams not only provides opportunities for increasing revenue and profits, but you will be better prepared to face uncertainties and difficult periods in the marketplace. About the Author Katalin Torok is an independent marketing consultant with a focus on Web 2.0. Her website and blog contains many helpful tips at: http://mktg.idared.net. Thanks for reading! In our next issue, we’ll talk how to become a super affiliate! AC Magazine is always free -no squeeze page, no email address required! Download your copy at the Affiliate Classroom website: AffiliateClassroom.com. Affiliate Classroom Magazine, June 2009