The answer here is pretty simple but there are actually three parts to it…

Number one is build a list of prospects you know are interested in what you’re planning to promote… Nothing worse than mailing non related offers / promotions to people who don’t give a damn they’ll just end up hating you! And it’s pretty easy to do if you start to segment your lists properly. To bring people in on these lists offer freebies or low price ‘entry’ products related to the higher ticket items you’re going to promote down the line.

So for instance if you’re gearing up to promote a high ticket launch for a course on copywriting, dig out some PLR materials on the basics of copywriting and throw up a squeeze page to “get the report for free” or at some crazy low price. All those interested who are on your main list are going to ‘digitally’ put their hands up and identify themselves by signing-up to download it. (And now you have a better targeted list to hit with your high ticket promos)

Next (I guess this should have been first) is make sure what you decide to promote is quality. Start with the promotion materials, then the sales copy (would you buy it?), then check the order process (could you order it… you’d be suprised how many vendors make buying their stuff harder than Japanese math) – Finally is it a good product. If you don’t think that’s particularly important, go ahead and promote crap a few times and watch your list fade away into the horizon.

Finally (step 3) offer a bonus… Most marketers are either too lazy to do it or not smart enough to do it. Add value, make the original ‘must have’ offer even more irresistible to your prospects. Not only will this increase conversion and bring in more commissions for you but it will also set you apart from other affiliates – Get known as the guy (or gal) that always sends relevant info (targeting), promotes quality products and adds value and people will start to buy more from your recommendations.

Sure that’s not a simple fix and it takes a little more effort but you’ll see your commissions go through the roof when you get rolling with it.

“Add value”…

Adding valueable bonuses and giving reviews are both two methods we use ourselves and they definately work for us…here’s why.

A savvy customer can pretty pick and choose where and who they want to buy a product from. Think about this yourself the next time you go shopping for a new pc or a new car. So where do you go? Usually people start by going to a familiar place or a recommended place. Somewhere or someone they feel comfortable buying from. 

So hopefully you’ve built up some trust or level of comfort getting people to listen to you via your newsletter, your blog, your video channel, your social network sites etc. Once you have their trust make sure to never abuse it by offering scams or poor quality products. If you start doing that your reputation and list responsiveness will go down very quickly- so avoid doing that. Don’t just promote everything under the sun because the commissions sound nice.

By giving very thorough product reviews you are helping to educate people about all the great benefits of the product as well as answering questions they may have in their mind. This helps to warm them up and get in the buying mood for what you are talking about. Using video for this works very well but you can also do blog posts or emails. You are also personally going over the product so you can be sure yourself if this is a quality product you want to endorse.

Then during or at the end of your review you also let them know you are offering an exclusive bonus to them if they buy through you. This should be something of value related to the product. Example: offering a free golf club set worth $500 as a bonus when they buy a new $5,000 golf cart through you. The bonus should compliment the main product. 

To increase your conversions over a short period of time you could make your bonus limited to just the first 30 people or just the first 72 hours.

So think about how you can add value to your potential customers when promoting a product rather than just thinking of how big the commissions are.

Sending out a recommendation to your list with a time limited exclusive bonus if they take the offer through your link often works well. If you’ve signed up to anyone’s list, you’ll often see that tactic, as it’s proven.

It’s like anything with presenting an offer – the more value you offer, the more likely the prospect is to take up the offer. Adding scarcity (time limited) to an offer nearly always increases response too.

But apart from that, offering usable information, or a tool (software for example), that is useful by itself, but even more beneficial if used in combination with a recommended purchase (affiliate link) – that can work very well.

If rather than just buying through your link, you’re genuinely helping them with a buying decision, they’re more likely to listen to you, and order through your link.

For example – putting together a tutorial that talks through how to build and profit from an opt-in list, listing some services and software helpful for this, and the pros and cons of each. If you list five opt-in list management services and offer an in depth review of each, it makes it much more likely they’ll click through your link to those services, rather than just ‘click here to find out more’. Product review sites online are very popular and people want help with buying decisions – give them this help with really useful content and honest reviews weighing up the pros and cons.

And a further example – for years I’ve given away website software that turns HTML into PDF, but it only works for sure with one web host. I give away the software for free, and link to the web host through my affiliate link. This has made me well over $10,000 in commissions from just that one affiliate program.

Offer a software bonus that is directly related and complementary to the product you’re promoting.

Software are very easy to create.

You can outsource the development on sites like Odesk.com, Elance.com, Scriptlance.com, Guru.com, RentACoder.com

All you have to do is your part… As an internet marketer, study the sales letter and the product you want to promote.

See if you can identify any manual work required that you can automate.

For example, if the product is an ebook that gives you thousands of sites to submit your articles and videos to, create a software that automates the submission process.

Or let’s say the product is about time management. You can easily create a software for time management.

Nothing beats coming up with a good bonus deal. If you want to get more commissions and win affiliate contests, the first thing to do is choose your battles wisely. Personally, I know my capacity. I know who I can beat, and who I find it difficult to beat.

There are a lot of product launches going on every week, and to me, that’s a good thing. This means I have more choices to pick the best JV contest – I take into consideration the prize money up for grabs, and a rough idea of the people I will be competing with.

Next, I look at the product. Demand and price. 2 important things. Do people need it? And are people ready to pay for it? And price. I avoid promoting products that are priced too low, and I also avoid promoting products that have no back-ends or OTO that credits their affiliates.

After I pick a product to promote for the week (yes I’m going to go full force on this), the next thing I do is prepare a bonus deal. Sometimes it’s products I already am selling but make a good combo for anyone who buys through my link. Sometimes I offer rebates (though rarely) and I save this for high ticket products. Sometimes, I do BOTH.

I have a website called http://www.splendidbonusdeals.com/ which started out only in November 2008. It updates periodically, and having my own time-to-time bonus site bagged me top places (getting first place and top 3 more frequently now) for numerous JV contests already, even though I was up against bigger players.

A bonus to buyers, based on the product itself.

With big launches you see many big names offering a bonus for buying through their affiliate link, but a lot of the time these bonus offers are hardly related to the product itself, and give the impression that they’ve just been thrown together as an afterthought.

If you can get access to the product before the launch date then make the time to read through it and understand it.

That will allow you to either write an additional report to go with the product and “add value” to it, or to find a suitable “related” bonus that will compliment the product.

It also means you understand the product, so you could potentially ask the product owner if you could interview them about the product, which is then an ideal bonus to offer.

As a second tip, focusing more on recurring commission affiliate programs will also make a massive difference to your monthly income over time!

When you are trying to sell things (if you are using a mailing list), make sure that you include something that is yourself. Don’t be shy about letting people get to know you a little, give them an actual person to connect with.

You don’t need to go completely over the top, nobody wants to hear about your bunion operation – or the fact that your cat has fleas, unless they are into that stuff I guess.. lol, and if they are – then give it to them! But, basically – share a bit of your personality 🙂 People like to know that they are dealing with a real person, and more likely to buy something from someone they feel they know and trust.

Also – don’t be scared to sell things. If you are worried about mailing your list about products, start off small. Add a P.S. into your emails – trust me.. you will make a sale or two – and before long you will forget all about worrying that you are going to offend a subscriber.

Oh – and be real. Don’t be fake just to make sales – people will see straight through that.

Based on my experience, you need to carefully select the program you’re promoting so that it matches the needs of your subscribers (they know you and they expect something from you). If you’re into the bird feeding niche, don’t try to sell them a dog related program.

Then make your offer unique and make them a deal they can’t refuse. Pack your promo with bonuses and goodies so that it adds to the overall perceived value of the product you’re promoting and that you’re the only one to propose such a value (make your offer unique)

Three factors will help you INCREASE affiliate commissions (in order of importance):

1. more traffic

2. qualified visitors

3. powerful preselling

4. higher converting products

5. higher commissions

Think again about combining all the above into a systematic guideline.

That’s more than 1 tip 🙂 

Pre-sell your offer by actually using the product and providing a genuine story about it that is well documented with hard core proof of your result.

Adding a bonus is the favorite way to do that in a launch scenario, but long term the best method is integration marketing, ad swaps and log in offers still bring in huge benefits over the long term, and allow me to carry on making commissions from products long after the hype of the launch is dead. and its a do it once earn forever solution.
 

I don’t really do a lot of affiliate promotions. When I do, the thing I find most effective for information products is to tell them exactly who will – and who will not – benefit from the product, and why.

For software, teaching them a process that will help them make money, and pointing out how the tool in question will make that easier, is usually a pretty solid strategy.

Either way, I try to engage people’s imaginations in directions that encourage them to stretch, and do it toward goals they can actually believe in and reach. Some people like to pitch the dream. I like to encourage the next step.
 

Use a domain redirect for your URL.

When you join an affiliate program, you get a long, silly looking URL like http://www.iClickUniversity.com/899837.php?fhwuifyfgg

If you promote the raw link, people are hesitant to click on it because they instantly know that you’re promoting the website and you’re trying to sell them someting. So you lose click throughs.

If you use a domain redirect, you promote a normal domain like http://www.iClickUniversity.com and it automatically redirects to your affiliate link, but people click on it because it looks like you’re just recommending a website, not promoting an affiliate link.

For me again two things – honest reviews of the software ie I have used it here’s the pros and cons and then the second one is to add quality bonuses. I usually go for more physical bonuses ie coaching calls etc. Lots of people get overloaded with more and more software etc so for me the physical bonus works really well

Look at the big picture. Don’t just choose to promote products with a high percentage commission, take your time to analyse all the stats. You can make more money from products which have above average sales conversion rates.

A video review of the product you are promoting works well. What works even better is if you can invest in the product itself and record the process of you buying it. This installs a greater trust of what the customer will get and of you.

When promoting an affiliate offer a great way to increase commissions is to offer an additional bonus that is complimentary to the main offer. Many times a nice bonus will push people over the ednge into paying customers.

My favourite tip to help people increase their affiliate commissions is to make sure they monetize their email list signup process. A lot of people make the mistake of using the default pages in their autoresponder instead of creating custom pages that will allow them to earn some affiliate commissions.

Some suggestions for increasing their commissions during the signup process include offering unannounced bonuses (which have one-time-offers when somebody signs up for free) and suggesting a recommended product that your subscriber may be interested in purchasing (through your affiliate link of course).

Offer a relevant bonus and buyers a Fast Start Guide for the product as many people don’t know how to get started with stuff. I surveyed my entire list and getting a product walkthru was voted the #1 item they wanted from my affiliate promos (yes, ABOVE a bonus).