Which is the best email marketing platform, affiliate program, and shopping cart for you to use, based on your type of business and your time and money constraints? If you don’t know what those are, follow the links to learn about each part of your site infrastructure.

Whichever platform you choose, there are detailed instructions (or instructional videos) on the provider’s site to teach you exactly how to create an opt-in form (using their platform) and how to put that form up on your site or blog. So, I will not provide those instructions here. I will just provide you with details about the different email marketing platforms, so you can choose the one best suited to your goals or business.

Therefore, I’m going to put myself in your shoes (easy to do because I’ve spent years there!) and tell you the best real-life solutions for your particular circumstances. Being that I have been both chronically ill and am still the mother of three kids, and currently own three businesses (and have two dogs and eleven horses!) I think it’s safe to say I know what I’m talking about.

NOTE: In the very next unit, I’m going to help you make your decision in the section What Would Jini Do? So if you feel yourself getting overwhelmed by the choices here, know that is coming right up next! OR if you prefer, you can just skip right over there and do what I say without looking at all the options here!

For those of you who do want to walk through this whole process and gain a better understanding of each component and how they fit together, first you will have to decide on your priorities, taking into account:

What type of business do you have? – do you have a lot of physical products, so it’s very important that they are displayed properly, with good descriptions, great photos, video, etc.? Or do you have just a few digital information products ( like eBooks, videos, teleseminars, home study courses), so your shopping cart is not so important?

How much time do you have? – do you prefer to spend your time on marketing, getting affiliates, setting up email campaigns and testing opt-in offers? Or do you dislike that kind of work and would rather market yourself by writing blog posts, making helpful videos, being a guest on or hosting teleseminars? Do you need a basic email marketing and CRM (customer relationship management) system, or do you need something robust and complex?

How much money do you have? – Do you have an operating budget and some start-up cash to invest in your new venture or business expansion? This would enable you to set up with a decent solution right from the start, thereby cutting down the hassle factor of having to upgrade, or change systems to eventually get where you want to be. Or are you hoping to spend as little as possible to start and willing to go with a less-robust option, knowing that you might have to go to the trouble of upgrading your systems once you’re fully operational?

I’m going to present you with 3 different solutions below for your email marketing platform, affiliate program and shopping cart – depending on where your priorities are. I’m going to break these solutions up according to how much time and money each of them require. I spent about 20 hours researching each system currently offered in both the email marketing and shopping cart arenas and so rather than go into each and every one, I’m just going to present you with my conclusions and the best solutions I found.

If you find yourself getting bogged down with all the details, remember that in the very next module I’m going to distill all this information down and make it super easy for you to decide, so don’t worry!

TIP: If you ever want a quick way to do a basic search to see how one product stacks up against another (as many people have done detailed online reviews), simply type into Google: _____ vs _____. But spend a good chunk of time scrolling through the different opinions and try to find people who are not just shamelessly plugging a system for the affiliate commissions.

You can assess each of these systems (where I’ve combined the necessary components for you) based on what you can afford and what your priorities are for your business. Keep in mind that I have left the affiliate program optional at this point.

Remember, an affiliate program is a way to promote your own products by giving referring bloggers or websites a commission when they refer customers to you. However, if you didn’t want to set up an affiliate program yet, then a way around this problem is to offer people who sign up to be your affiliates a Coupon Code instead to give to their people.

Using Coupon Codes Instead of An Automated Affiliate Program

In this case, you would have to do everything manually: You would use your email marketing platform to create a sign-up form for affiliates. When someone signed up, you would go to your shopping cart system and generate a Coupon Code specifically for that affiliate. You would then email the dedicated Coupon Code to the new affiliate.

So let’s say Alpha signs up to be an affiliate of yours. Alpha would then blog about why he thought you were so great and how your widget changed his life. He would offer his readers (or his list) a coupon for 10% off if they buy your widget. Alpha’s customer, Sandra, then goes to your site, purchases your widget and enters her coupon code to get 10% off.

The back-end system of a good shopping cart like BigCommerce or 1ShoppingCart will then show you a list of the coupon codes that have been entered. You know that Code XYZ comes from Alpha and you see that this month, 10 people have bought using Alpha’s coupon code. So you now write him a cheque for his commission on those products – or send him payment using PayPal.

The downside of doing it this way (coupon codes) versus a proper affiliate program is that this way you have to manually track commissions and manually make payments to your affiliates. With a proper affiliate program, all of this, from sign-up, to tracking, to consolidating payments, is automated – no work from you involved. Proper affiliate programs also have built-in 1st and 2nd tier commission structures.

This means that if Alpha refers his friend Genesis to sign up for your affiliate program, Alpha will also receive a commission on Genesis’ commissions. Of course, you are in charge of whether you even want to have 2nd tier affiliates and also of what percentage you will pay out in commissions.

If you won’t have anything to sell for about a year, or you are going to base your site around selling other people’s products, then you don’t need an affiliate program for your own stuff at this time. Otherwise, it’s best to choose a solution that has everything you need, so you only have to learn one system and you only have to set up everything once, and you don’t have the hassle of transferring all your data to a new system because you didn’t plan properly from the start!

I’m also going to list the current prices for each of these solutions and will do my best to keep these prices up-to-date (let me know if I’ve missed a price change!). Remember to think long-term when assessing what you need, and also remember that your time will soon be worth money!:

1. BASIC Email Marketing & Shopping Cart Solution

GetResponse ($15/month) with PayPal (free) OR a 3rd Party eCommerce Site (cheap or free) – GetResponse is an easy, yet full-service email marketing platform that allows you to set up webforms for either your free offer opt-in, or your newsletter sign-up, or blog subscribers etc. and then allows you to email out to those people in an automated way – this means you don’t have to individually email people from your computer.

Automated emailing (also called autoresponders) means that you only write ONE email. You enter it into your platform, select the groups you want to receive the email and then press Send ONCE. This is how you can email two thousand people in about 5 minutes, with a couple clicks of your mouse. Mail Chimp is a completely free email platform, but the free version does not allow you to have any autoresponders – so you will still have to send every email manually, one by one. So if you have virtually no money, you can start with Mail Chimp, but know that you’ll need to switch to GetResponse as soon as you can.

GetResponse has instructional videos that show you how to set up your opt-in form and then also how to manage (email out to) the names on your list. You can email out your newsletter, or information emails, or emails with content attached. You can also do online surveys, video email marketing and put your opt-in (sign-up) forms on your Facebook fan page, provide social media ‘share’ buttons, etc. Here’s a quick overview (2 minutes) so you can see how simple it is:

I would only use GetResponse on its own if you are not planning on selling more than 2-3 products from your own site for at least one year. GetResponse also works great for people who make their money primarily from affiliate (commission) sales, or who only want to offer PayPal as a payment option, or who are using a 3rd party site to sell their products or services like eBay, Shopify, Etsy, or Bandcamp (more on these options in a moment). GetResponse basic level (up to 1000 subscribers) is only $15/month so it is a very cheap way to get started.

It is free to set up an account with PayPal and you only pay them a commission on each sale. PayPal is certainly easy and very cheap (free until you sell something!) if you want to keep cots low.

The good news is, GetResponse integrates easily with full-service shopping carts like Big Commerce, or 1ShoppingCart, along with the ability to take credit cards. So you can also start with just GetResponse and PayPal, or GetResponse and a 3rd party eCommerce site store, and then easily move your database across to one of these full-service shopping cart solutions when you can afford to.

There are other similar email marketing platforms like Mail Chimp (which is free to start), iContact, AWeber, etc. but none has the ease of use combined with the extensive functionality that GetResponse offers.

If you’re planning to go as minimal as possible, then start with either the free service from Mail Chimp or make your life easier by starting with GetResponse. Then sell straight from your site by either invoicing people directly using PayPal, or setting up automated BUY NOW links to PayPal. Or, choose a 3rd party eCommerce site and create your storefront (you’ll still need a PayPal account for this), and link to it or embed it on your site. So PayPal (or your eCommerce site via PayPal) is your shopping cart solution at this level and you do not have an affiliate program, nor can you use coupon codes, because you don’t have a full-service shopping cart.

eCommerce Site Benefit Breakdown

Using an external (3rd party) eCommerce site can be great for particular types of products, as many of them are set up for specific markets – for example, Etsy is for handmade, vintage, and craft items, while Bandcamp is for original music. Others, like Amazon, eBay and Shopify, are more general and sell just about anything.

Pros: What’s so handy about these sites is that they are already frequented by customers looking for what you’re selling (like selling your jewelry at a crafts store, or your music at a record shop), which could increase the likelihood of someone stumbling across your product in an otherwise immense online market. They also provide you with everything you need to start selling – you just have to customize your page (storefront), upload your products and descriptions, and link to the page on your site.

Cons: The downside of eCommerce sites is the commission they charge, combined with the PayPal processing fee; over time as you generate more revenue, you may find that the cost of a quality shopping cart system is actually cheaper than all these accumulated fees. Or, you might not find a site that caters specifically enough to your product or service. The main drawback of an eCommerce shop, is that your customers will be sent away from your site and may easily get distracted and end up buying someone else’s product instead. You also can’t customize beyond what their site infrastructure allows for, and you must sell within their parameters. These sites also require the buyer to have an account on that site – which will add one more annoying step in the process that might make or break that sale.

If you’re selling an eBook, or a solution-focused product or service (you’ve invented a great dog-door, or you do event catering), then PayPal is a better option until you can afford your own shopping cart. You have no real reason to send people through another site (although you might end up trying eBay or Amazon for your books or products in addition to your own site) just to buy your one product, especially if it falls outside the niche-range of well-known eCommerce sites.

Or try both: But if your product fits well within a niche on an established, high-traffic eCommerce site, by all means give it a try. Many people – such as craftspeople, musicians, artists, vintage or antique collectors, and more – find the exposure too good to pass up. And many products will sell well from both your site and an eCommerce site, which gives you the benefits of both. You have to weigh the pros and cons to figure out if your particular offering will benefit from the ease and exposure of an eCommerce site at this time, or whether it is not worth the time and money right now, if you’re short on both. Once your website is running smoothly and generating a good income, then you definitely should look to offer your products on eCommerce sites like Amazon and you may even find your customers requesting this!

2. MID-LEVEL Email Marketing & Shopping Cart Solution

1ShoppingCart ($34/month) – This is your solution if you’re on a tight budget, yet you need to have a good shopping cart, and you also want a good email marketing platform. The only drawback to this entry-level package with 1ShoppingCart is it does not include an affiliate program. Now, having said that, you can also purchase an affiliate program separately called Omnistar for $27/month. So then you will have a shopping cart, affiliate program and email marketing platform for a combined total of $61/month. So still a very reasonable cost.

The downside is that you now have to manage 2 different systems; 1ShoppingCart and Omnistar, so that will take you a bit more time than having everything in one system. Another important distinction with 1ShoppingCart at this level, is that you cannot embed your shopping cart on your own website. At this level, people will leave your site and your store will be hosted on 1ShoppingCart’s server. You will be able to custom-brand your store though, with your own logo and colors, so your customers will not feel like they have left your site. There will also be menu buttons on your store that link back to your own site – so it’s a pretty good solution at this price point.

If you can afford to step up to the next level of 1ShoppingCart ($119/month), you can then get the shopping cart, email marketing system and affiliate program all together. You will also be able to embed your store on your own site. This is definitely, 100% the best way to go if you can afford it.

I know if you’re launching a new venture, it’s very tempting to go with the cheapest option – because everything is so unknown and unproven. But I really encourage you to take a leap of faith in yourself, to invest in yourself and your vision. Let me give you an example from a fellow Freedomite of why this is important.

Lori Clarke started out using GetResponse for her email marketing and PayPal for her product sales ($15/month). She went to all the work of learning the GetResponse system, setting up her opt-in and email autoresponder series and then setting up the PayPal BUY NOW buttons on her product pages… and then 2 months later, started all over again with 1ShoppingCart ($119/month). What happened? I’m going to let Lori herself tell you her reasons for the switch:

“I switched because I found 1ShoppingCart was more intuitive and user friendly. GetResponse also wasn’t robust enough on the customer management side, and their customer service (to me as the customer) wasn’t as good as 1ShoppingCart. The other part of it was that I wanted to add an affiliate program and a shopping cart – by the time I would have paid for all three of these separately, it didn’t make sense; because by the time my business was generating decent money, I would have to switch anyway!

I needed to believe that my business was going to thrive and go to the next level. I needed to choose something that was reflective of what I wanted and believed my business could be. So although I didn’t have the funds, I let my belief drive me, not my pocketbook.”

Read that last paragraph over again… So definitely think about the long-term when you are choosing your email marketing platform. And yes, if you don’t yet have a vision, or believe that your business is going to generate enough money, then you may choose the cheapest (or free) option. That’s totally okay, but just know that it’s going to cause you more work down the road when you have to switch everything over to the more robust, efficient system.

3. TOP-LEVEL Email Marketing & Shopping Cart Solution

Infusionsoft ($299/month) – When my business outgrew 1ShoppingCart (when we were generating $10,000 in sales per month), we researched the market for CRM (customer relationship management) and email marketing solutions and we chose Infusionsoft as the best platform to be able to do everything we wanted, plus everything we might need to do in the future! Please note that Infusionsoft sometimes has an additional sign-up fee and sometimes not – so check for current pricing.

Infusionsoft goes way beyond the capability of GetResponse, 1ShoppingCart, or any others; but of course, since Infusionsoft can do so much more, it is also much more complicated to use and manage. So it requires a lot of time to both set up and manage ongoing. You either need someone in your business who loves techie marketing stuff, or you need to be able to hire someone to handle Infusionsoft for you.

We are still with Infusionsoft and while it is a complicated system and fairly pricey – it is well worth it. If you currently have a business that is already doing more than $60,000/year in revenues (or you plan to get there fairly quickly), you should definitely take a good look at Infusionsoft.

What’s The Difference?

The main difference between 1ShoppingCart’s customer relationship management (CRM) system and Infusionsoft’s advanced CRM system lies in the way their systems track and categorize opt-ins and/or customers. Here’s my General Manager, Justin Wade, on why he loves Infusionsoft so much! And remember, I don’t receive affiliate commissions from Infusionsoft, they are all donated to our fabulous charities – we recommend Infusionsoft so highly simply because they’ve made that much of a difference in operations for my health business, as Justin will now explain:

Data and Behavior-Based Marketing

The biggest difference between Infusionsoft and cheaper alternatives out there, like Aweber and Constant Contact, is the ability to collect more data about your customers which you can then use to automatically provide a personalized experience.

For example, let’s say you have a potential customer (also known as a prospect or lead) who has expressed interest in your products. This person then clicks on a link about PRODUCT A in an email you sent. Infusionsoft enables you to keep track of the fact that the person is interested in PRODUCT A and could then trigger other email, or email sequence, based on that click. Conversely, let’s say that the same customer also did not click on the link in that same email about PRODUCT B, within 30/60/90/X days. Infusionsoft can also check for this and communicate with the person accordingly.

This behavior-based approach is much more likely to make your prospects and customers feel connected with you and your business, because your have programmed Infusionsoft to figure out what your customers are interested in and engage them accordingly.

Keep in mind that you have to input the email sequences you want Infusionsoft to send out, based on which links are clicked. Infusionsoft doesn’t create anything out of thin air, it merely actions what you have mapped out and programmed it to do.

My autoresponder is just fine, though…

If you aren’t using Infusionsoft then you are robbing yourself of vital customer data, bottom line. Most of the autoresponders out there use a linear progression (i.e. Email #1 is sent today, #2 goes out in a week, #3 in 30 days, etc) and, as a user, you might say “yay, it’s automated!”. However, once you see the campaign builder in Infusionsoft it really becomes clear how antiquated and behind the curve the other guys are.

The campaign builder could be regarded as an autoresponder but that would be sort of like calling an iPhone “just a phone” or a space shuttle “just an aircraft”. Each campaign contains a variety of different elements which can include a limitless amount of interconnected autoresponders, webforms, etc. Where traditional autoresponders operate in a straight line, Infusionsoft operates as a fully interconnected logic web. The key is being able to inject automatic decision-making processes into this web based on what your customers do.

For example, let’s say John buys a book from your store. Most autoresponders would just send John some emails about similar books and maybe a coupon code at some point. Fairly standard stuff. With Infusionsoft, you can set it up to check for (and act on) things like:

• Has John purchased from us before?
• If so, how many times? How recently? For how long?
• If not, how did he find out about us?
• What has John clicked in the emails we’ve sent? How long ago did he click?
• Does John own any books from the same author? Which genre(s)? Are they eBooks or physical copies?
• Has John received any coupon codes? If so, has he used them?
• Has John filled out any surveys at our site? What did we learn about him?

And the best part is, you can use any or all of the above pieces of information together or separately to customize John’s experience as your customer. How? The answer is Tags.

Tags are Infusionsoft’s way of labeling a customer based on anything and everything he or she does. This includes, but is not limited to, clicks, filling out forms/surveys, and purchases (or lack thereof). Tags can be applied for any behavior. As an example, if your company carries the ACME brand and Wile E. Coyote is your customer, he might have the following tags:

ACME Purchases

Signed up for “7 Ways to Catch a Roadrunner” e-mail series

Clicked blog post link – What You Need To Know About Jet-Propelled Unicycle Operation

Filled out “Look out below! Crucial info about safety from falling pianos”

Purchased Explosive Tennis Balls (under an ACME brand category)

Purchased Anvil (under an ACME brand category)

Purchased Jet-Propelled Unicycle (under an ACME brand category)

89th Order

Purchased within the last 30 days

So let’s say you are now carrying a new ACME product and want to target the specific customers on your list who might be interested. You can use Infusionsoft to sort by people who have purchased ACME products in the past and you can set up an autoresponder to send out some emails. Here’s where the personalization comes in… Let’s assume you sent the original email to 100 people. In order to separate people who are REALLY interested from people who are potentially interested, you can set Infusionsoft to check whether any of the 100 recipients clicked your product link in the 7 days that will pass between the first and second emails. For people who purchased your new product, the system can be set to stop the campaign entirely (or send the customer over to a cross-promotion autoresponder… or send the customer an email in 30 days asking for product feedback…). For the people who clicked, you can send another email immediately with additional information if you’d like to capitalize on their interest. For the others, you can automatically send them into a separate autoresponder which will contact them in X amount of days as a last ditch attempt to connect. With each subsequent email, you can further segment this group of people based on clicks, purchases, etc. and use additional autoresponders to upsell, cross-sell, and/or side-sell to your heart’s content. The possibilities are endless.

Another great thing about tags is that you can use them to trigger autoresponders. As an example, you could set up an autoresponder which sends some emails about you and the services you have to offer over the course of X amount of days. If you’re at a tradeshow and meet a new business contact, you can add the person to your Infusionsoft contact list directly from your laptop, tablet, or smartphone and then just apply the “New Tradeshow Lead” tag that you set up to trigger the aforementioned autoresponder. Infusionsoft would then execute the autoresponder for that person and send out the emails about you.

Who are my customers and where did they come from?

If you are using any type of advertising then you’ll definitely want to know if people are finding you as a result of your advertising efforts and Infusionsoft makes this really easy. It uses a function called “lead source” which basically labels any and all of your customers based on where they came from. Whether you are running campaigns on Google or sending out paper flyers, Infusionsoft tracks this and makes it easy to get the information you need.

Another customer metric that is thrown around a lot is called Lifetime Customer Value. This is simply the grand total amount of money that you expect a customer to spend with you. For example, let’s say you sell some sort of product that assists with vasectomy recovery. Your Lifetime Customer Value in that case is probably going to be really easy to calculate because you aren’t likely to have many repeat customers. It gets a lot more difficult if you are selling something like spices or clothing where people might make frequent purchases spanning years. Not to worry, Infusionsoft makes this information readily available so you can look at who is spending how much and on which products in order to assist your strategic decision-making.

API and Technical Stuff

Infusionsoft has a fantastic API. What is an API? In computer programming, an application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. An API expresses a software component in terms of its operations, inputs, outputs, and underlying types. In layman’s terms, an API allows a piece of software to talk to another piece of software and exchange information. For example, if you have ever used FedEx or UPS to get real time shipping quotes while shopping (or for your own business) then you witnessed that system speaking to the FedEx or UPS system via the API. If you use a shopping cart like Big Commerce, Shopify, Volusion, etc. and want to use Infusionsoft as your back end marketing juggernaut, all info will pass from your cart system to Infusionsoft via the API. Using a proprietary 3PL system? No problem, that will communicate with Infusionsoft via the API as well.”

Can you see the value of a robust CRM system? The more tailored you can make your marketing, the more you can provide your people with what they want, and the less you bug them with things they’re not really interested in. Hence, your sales increase and your ‘unsubscribes’ from your list decrease.

Infusionsoft is the only automated CRM system I know of that can do automated tagging, multiple tagging and then automatic removal from groups and adding to new groups based on the person’s actions.

You can also search your database to segment it up according to multiple parameters. Let’s say I want to see how many people in my list (database) live in California, New York, Michigan and Oregon AND have purchased only blue pens AND have bought in the last 3 months. Infusionsoft can search my database and pull that list for me in seconds.

These are just two of the advanced CRM elements that Infusionsoft enables you to do and there are many more. I just wanted to give you enough of an idea so you understand WHY it’s worth paying extra for this system and worth spending the extra time on set-up. Sometimes Infusionsoft charges a set-up fee (in addition to the monthly fee) and sometimes they don’t, you will just have to check.

Now, here comes the only downside to Infusionsoft – their shopping cart is not great.

Infusionsoft and BigCommerce ($339/month) – So you can either use Infusionsoft’s shopping cart (which is decent, but not great), or you can go with a really awesome shopping cart system called BigCommerce. Again, we did a thorough review of shopping cart systems when we upgraded our LYTG Holistic Health Shoppe – which sells over 350 products – and we chose BigCommerce, rather than using Infusionsoft’s.

We especially like BigCommerce because it allows your customers to do all kinds of cool things like compare similar products, create a wish list, view special offers or featured products, watch videos (without leaving the product page), leave product reviews, and so on. It also has an “abandoned cart” function that tells you when people added stuff to their cart, but then didn’t follow through with that purchase. You can then have an autoresponder sent to them offering them a discount or free shipping if they want to complete their order.

BUT, when you are first starting out, or you only sell digital products, you absolutely can use Infusionsoft’s shopping cart. And after you’ve been running for about a year, you can look into upgrading your shopping cart to BigCommerce if you need it.

At that point, you will need to also purchase an API (application programming interface) to get all your ongoing purchasing and order info to transfer automatically from BigCommerce to Infusionsoft. When you need that, contact Ian (my husband) and he’ll tell you exactly what you need to do: ian@listentoyourfreedom.com

Now, before you get completely confused, know that I am going to boil all these options down for you and make it super easy to make your choice! Keep reading for help deciding how to make it all work for you.

Note: Remember that all the affiliate commissions from links throughout Listen To Your Freedom go to our amazing charities – so please click through to these sites, rather than typing in the the URL. Join us in paying it forward!

How Do I Choose My Site/Customer Infrastructure?

Alright, I think I have given you enough information and ideas to make a good decision about the infrastructure set-up that balances your needs and your budget, or, to reconsider your current system and weigh in with your needs, cash-flow, and plans for growth. So again, take a look at your priorities, before making your decision from the options I gave you in the last unit. Remember, you need to take into account:

1. What type of business do you have? – do you have a lot of physical products, so it’s very important that they are displayed properly, with good descriptions, great photos, video, etc.? Or do you have just a few digital information products (ebooks, teleseminars, home study courses), so your shopping cart is not so important? Or are you planning to, or do you already use, an eCommerce site like Bandcamp, Etsy, or Amazon?
2. How much time do you have? – do you prefer to spend your time on marketing, getting affiliates, setting up email campaigns and testing opt-in offers? Or do you dislike that kind of work and would rather market yourself by writing blog posts, making helpful videos, being a guest on or hosting teleseminars? Do you need a basic email marketing system, or do you need something robust and complex with added CRM (customer relationship management) capability?
3. How much money do you have? – Do you have a decent operating budget or some start-up cash to invest in your business? This would enable you to set up with a decent solution right from the start, thereby cutting down the hassle factor of having to upgrade, or change systems to eventually get where you want to be. Or are you hoping to spend as little as possible to start and willing to go with a cheaper, less-robust option, knowing that you might have to go to the trouble of upgrading your systems once you’re fully operational?

The Bottom BOTTOM Line

If you’re still not sure, after reading the What Would Jini Do? section below, or you just want the no-think option, then go ahead and sign up for 1ShoppingCart (Premium Package $119/month). Look, you’re obviously serious about turning your passion into a business, or taking your passionate business to the next (and next-next!) level, or you wouldn’t be here on LTYF! This package will safely take you up to revenues of $100,000/year before you’ll need to switch to Infusionsoft. Just go do it. And then you can click over to the next unit.

For those of you who still want more of the WHY, keep reading…

What Would Jini Do?

In case your head is whirling by this point and you’re a step away from screaming, “Just tell me what to do, for god’s sake!” I will now break it down for you as if your business were my business. SO, knowing what I know now, if I were just starting or revamping an online business, here’s the platform and shopping cart I would choose, depending on my circumstances:

Scenario 1: I have lots of time (or am able to hire someone to manage my CRM and email marketing system). I have a decent amount of money, and plan to have less than 30 products. I want to be able to do everything from an affiliate program to targeted marketing campaigns. A decent shopping cart is all I need and having everything in one system is my top priority: Purchase InfusionSoft ($299/month + possible signup fee)

Scenario 2: I don’t have many products to sell, or my products are all information (digital), or affiliate products (i.e. I’ll be selling other people’s products), so I don’t need a fantastic shopping cart, but I’m totally into marketing. I want to get into complex marketing campaigns, Google Adwords campaigns, SEO-driven campaigns, etc. I need to be able to split-test, test headlines, test opt-in offers, test markets. I intend to make more money off of 5 products than most people make off of 100, because I’m a marketing maven! And I’m willing to spend the substantial amount of time it takes to set this up and manage it: Purchase InfusionSoft ($299/month + possible sign-up fee)

Scenario 3: I have lots of time (or am able to hire someone to manage my CRM and email marketing system), a decent amount of money, and more than 25 products. I want to be able to do everything from an affiliate program to targeted marketing campaigns. I can’t afford an automated API yet, but I can afford to hire someone each month to import my customers from my shopping cart to my email marketing platform. My shopping cart is very important to me and must be the best: Purchase InfusionSoft and BigCommerce ($339/month + possible Infusionsoft sign-up fee)

Scenario 4: I have some money, but not much time and I have more than 10 products. I want to have an affiliate program along with my email marketing platform and a decent shopping cart: Purchase 1ShoppingCart (Premium package $119/month)

Scenario 5: I want to keep my costs really low and I can do without an affiliate program for now, but I definitely need a decent shopping cart and a decent email marketing platform: Purchase 1ShoppingCart (Plus Package $34/month)
Bonus: I will be able to upgrade to 1ShoppingCart Premium package as soon as I decide I need it (and have an affiliate program) without having to move my database or do any additional set-up!

Scenario 6: I want to spend virtually nothing to start, I don’t need an affiliate program, and I only have a few things to sell: Purchase GetResponse and PayPal and/or an eCommerce shop ($15+/month)
Bonus: I will be able to add 1ShoppingCart as soon as I feel I need it (and have an affiliate program and/or CRM) and I can import my database easily and automatically (all at once) from GetResponse to 1ShoppingCart.

Scenario 7: This is going to be a zero-cost operation at first, but I realize I need to start building my list (database) immediately and then have an easy way to sell my eBook when it is ready: Mail Chimp and PayPal (Free)
Bonus: I will be able to add 1ShoppingCart eventually (and have an affiliate program and/or CRM) and I can then import my database from Mail Chimp to 1ShoppingCart. Or I can upgrade to GetResponse first, so that I can host autoresponder emails, and then upgrade to 1ShoppingCart.

Choose and Implement Your Platform!

You can visit each of these 4 options (click on the name to go to their site) and take a look at their pricing, watch their summary video for a quick overview of how each platform works and what it can do for you, and then make your choice!

GetResponse:

1ShoppingCart:

InfusionSoft:

BigCommerce:

*Notice that most of these weblinks are affiliate links. ALL of the affiliate commissions from Listen To Your Freedom go to our amazing charities. Remember to put your affiliate links everywhere in your stuff – in documents, your blog, pdfs, sidebar links, emails, etc.

I strongly recommend you become an Amazon.com affiliate because their program is just so easy to use – Amazon calls this their “Amazon Associates” program. This means, that whenever you link to a product on Amazon (a book, DVD, etc. ANYTHING that is sold on Amazon), and someone visiting your site clicks on that link, you receive a commission from Amazon if they purchase it.

But here’s the great thing I discovered, if the person clicked on my affiliate link to a book (for example) but before they checked out, they also added a blender to their cart and then purchased both, I would get a commission on both!

Amazon’s affiliate program only takes about 10 minutes to sign up for and it’s completely free. You can sign up here:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

Once you’ve joined the Amazon affiliate program, there are two ways that you can use your site to generate commissions on sales of Amazon products:

1/ You can easily add relevant Amazon products to your existing blog posts or Pages.

This is the super-quick and easy way to generate some extra, automated income by mentioning or recommending Amazon products. This means that if you’re already blogging about the new blender you bought for your green smoothies, or the educational toy you gifted your nephew, you can add the product – and perhaps 2 or three more good products in the same category – right into your blog post.

Once you have your Amazon Associates account set up, you simply go to the product you want to show in your blog post and click on Link to this Page, then you can choose whether to just grab the plain link code, or the code that will have a picture of the product show as well:

Is that super easy, or what?!

For example, here’s a list of my recommended business books and you can see that they are all affiliate linked to Amazon.

Here’s a video where I show you exactly how easy it is to add Amazon affiliate links to your regular blog posts, or site pages:

Having shown you how simple it is to get started this way with Amazon affiliate links, I also want to point out that unless you are linking to high priced products, you have to sell a LOT of product to make any money this way. Also, your affiliate link is only active for 24 hours, or until the person clicks on someone else’s Amazon affiliate link!

So the more people who use Amazon affiliate links (and it is growing daily), the more important it becomes to catch people at the place where they are finished researching and are actually ready to buy. Darren Rowse sums this up beautifully in his Amazon Associates Tips article:

Another big factor in the equation of Amazon conversions is the intent that your readers have when they visit your blog. Why are they there and at what stage in the ‘buying cycle’ are they at?

I began to think about this just over a year ago as I looked at the growing traffic on my photography site but realized that my Amazon earnings didn’t seem to be keeping up with the traffic growth that I was experiencing. What I realized is that DPS was a blog that was largely writing about ‘tips on how to use a camera’ and that as a result it wasn’t really drawing readers to it who were in a ‘buying mood’. In fact a survey that I did found that many of my readers had recently purchased a camera and were on my site specifically because they wanted to learn how to use it.

As a result I added to the mix of new content on the site more articles relevant to people buying a digital camera. I wrote tips with advice on buying cameras, reviews of digital cameras and equipment etc. This culminated in a whole new section on the blog devoted to ‘gear’.

Slowly this has attracted new readers to the blog – readers who are researching their next camera purchase – readers who are more likely to click a link to Amazon and who once there are more likely to make a purchase.

This is where search traffic can convert with affiliate programs – ie when you’re writing content that people in a ‘buying mood’ are searching for.”

I use Amazon affiliate links in my blog posts, but I make very little revenue from them. I don’t mind though, as I consider it a service to my reader to show them exactly what product I’m talking about.

If you do want to derive the bulk of your income from Amazon referrals, then understand you will have to experiment and test quite a bit to find out what works. Read through the different options below and then also check out Darren Rowse’s article series on the topic – before you decide whether to base your site on this method.

In earlier days, it was more common to make more than $1,000/month from an Amazon affiliate site. But now, you have to work pretty diligently to make more than $100/month, so you may choose to focus on individual product affiliate programs (where the link is valid for 30 days or longer). This is how my kids average $200/month from affiliate sales (with no ongoing promotion or blogging) on their RadiationEducation.com site – by linking to two independent stores.

2/ You can also base your entire site monetization around Amazon products

Featuring Amazon products and getting your site visitors to purchase from Amazon (and then you receive a commission) might also be the ONLY way you make money from your site. You might choose this option if your site topic aligns nicely with one or two Amazon product categories.

In that case, you might just want to focus on blogging and videos to provide value, build relationship and trust, and get your search engine rankings (where Google or Yahoo will list your site in search results) and then generate your income from Amazon sales.

I can see this model working nicely for websites based around topics like cooking, baking, crafts, gymnastics, hockey, health, dental health, sports performance and nutrition, etc. Basically, any topic or niche where Amazon carries a good number of products related to, or useful to that niche. But remember, you must link to high priced products, or it will be very difficult to generate enough money from your Amazon links.

But always keep in mind the golden rule: GIVE away help, solutions, hope, entertainment etc. And then your shop is just one section of your site – not your entire site! Firstly, because you will never be successful competing directly with Amazon, or Zappos, or any other big retailer. But also, because your shop is composed of affiliate products, even Google requires that you give value to people or they will give you a low search engine ranking, or ban you entirely. This short (less than 2 minutes) but sweet video explains exactly how Google views your shop site and what you need to do to keep Google happy:

So let’s say you like the idea of deriving much or all of your income from Amazon affiliate sales – and don’t forget, you can always start with this model and then change it as you develop your own products and programs – how exactly do you set up your site to provide this?

Depending on your budget, you could use a free WordPress theme like this one, called Magazine Basic, whose layout functions nicely as a shop:
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/magazine-basic

Here’s what the Magazine Basic WordPress theme looks like when it’s used as a store for Amazon products:

You would then either manually add the products one by one, or a faster way is to use a paid plugin like WP Zon Builder.

A good WordPress Amazon integration plugin will allow you to build a stand-alone store in minutes, like Alex does in this video where he shows you how he built a site in about 10 minutes using WP Zon Builder and his own design. This video is also valuable because it shows you how to set up an Amazon affiliate site in a way that gives value to visitors, and doesn’t just hawk product:

Or, you can purchase a WordPress theme for your blog site that is specifically geared to selling Amazon products and has nice graphics and design already included. Do a keyword search for “wordpress themes for amazon affiliates”. Some popular ones are Azon Profit Store, WP Zoner, Candyzon and ProReview.

Keep in mind there are two elements here needed to have an Amazon storefront site:

• The WordPress Theme used to display the products
• The WordPress plugin used to integrate with Amazon to automatically grab and display the products with your affiliate link

You can use a free theme and a free plugin. Or you can use a paid theme and a paid plugin. Or any combination of each.

As an example, a great step-by-step free tutorial showing you how to set up a store using the free theme Magazine Basic is here:

http://winkpress.com/amazon/build-amazon-store-with-wordpress-for-free/

Amazon Storefront Types

Here are some ideas for different ways to set up your site if you want to make the bulk of your revenue from Amazon affiliate sales. Or perhaps there is another large store that you want to carry affiliate products for as well.

Of course, on each of these examples you can also carry Google Adsense ads on the site to generate ad revenue, and/or have links to other sites of yours where you sell things, or other affiliate linked ads. Remember, for all of these, your blog posts would create the traffic to your site and also position you as an expert:

1. A Stand-Alone Review Site – There are several different types of reviews you can put on your site:  your personal reviews, other people’s reviews, or YouTube or video reviews. Even though you don’t have Buy links on the site, each product you review (or related products listed under the review) links to Amazon (using your affiliate link so you get commissions), like this one:
2. A Niche Store – Amazon sells just about everything, so there are thousands of products and niches to choose from. Go shopping on Amazon and you will find many great ideas. Choose a niche (very specific, narrowly defined category) based on your top interests or passion. The Comfortable Office Chairs site is an example of a niche store site:
3. A Content or Review site AND A Separate Store Site – this would actually be two sites, with different URLs. The reason you would do this is to position your content or review site as an unbiased source of information. Many people trust information more if they think the person isn’t selling anything.

So one site focuses on content and the other on products; both work together and they point to or link to each other.

Health guru Daniel Vitalis has set up his sites in this way (although he mostly sells his own products). See the two screenshots below. By the way, note how difficult it is to read the light colored font on a black background! Remember this when you choose your site colours.

Here’s Daniel Vitalis’ main site www.DanielVitalis.com which contains his blog (content), but note the Shop Now link in the right hand column:

This main site then links to his Shop site www.surthrival.com:

Interestingly, I went back to look at Daniel’s site a few months later and he has done a complete re-design – his shop is now black text on a light tan background – much better!

4. A Content or Review site with a Store as a Separate Category – With this format, you would have a normal content site (blog, pages, posts) about your niche, and then have one Page called Store, Products, Shop, or something specific; as in this case where it’s called T-Shirts & Great Things.  Put all of your products in that section and link to them from the content areas:

Brene later changed her site from this format (above), to a format that enables her to list even more Amazon products – by creating a page called Brene’s Favorites. And on that page, she has 4 photos, each representing a category of product that she’s enthusiastic about – see the large photos on the left hand side:

If you click on any of those categories, like PHOTOGRAPHY, instead of a list of products with an Amazon affiliate link, she now sends you off her site and straight to her Amazon Storefront:

So she kind-of has a stand-alone store, but it’s not on her site. This option would work well if you had a strong following like Brene does. Brene’s site visitors are not likely to leave her site, stay on Amazon, and then wander off and forget about her. They know her, love her and will be back to her site many times.

BUT, this kind of store (which still works using affiliate links) can also be embedded in your site pages. I’m wondering if Brene knows this is possible… In my opinion it is always better to keep people on your site for as long as possible, that’s what I’ve done on my Art site, where the store is embedded on my site page called PRINTS. Note that this is not an Amazon store, but Amazon does have a storefront you can embed on your site in the same way:

If setting up your own Amazon store appeals to you, all you need is to register for your Amazon Associates account and then it’s also free to set up and get started! All the details are here: Amazon aStore.

For those of you who are artists or photographers, the store and plugin I use on my site above is FineArtAmerica.com.

We’ve also used this same plugin for another site Ian (my hubby) runs called LegendaryFootballGrounds.com:

Note: There are many ways you can feature or sell products from 3rd-party sites right on your own site’s SHOP page and I give you lots of good options right over here.

5. Niche Checklist Sites – Very similar to a Niche Site, but even more specific in that you use an effective copywriting trick. Examples: Top 5 items needed for a camping trip, Top 10 products needed for survival, Top 8 things children need for school, etc.

A site like this would also do very well with a Pinterest or Facebook page where you could share great pictures or videos – that hopefully would go viral and increase traffic to your site.

Here’s an example of a site whose niche is Top 10 everything! Note how the site is further monetized with ads at the top and right side. Personally, I think the ads are way too big in relation to the content, and I’ll bet they would increase their revenues if they put the focus more on their content:

6. A Stand-Alone Store – A site mainly dedicated to products of your choosing that you think would interest your readers. You would do blog posts about various products and why you like them so much, or why they’re the best (which would also drive traffic to your site). For example, if you were a raw foodist you may feature juicers, blenders, books, dehydrators, yoga equipment, natural cosmetics, etc. In addition to your store, every blog post would also feature one or more affiliate products.
7. Build a Hub store – Where many of your content sites point to one store site. Like spokes on a wheel pointing to the Hub. With this kind of set up, you can have a Shop link on each site, but you can also simply link individual text (for example an author, or name of a product category, eg. Chest Freezers).

OKAY! Are you buzzing with ideas for how to link to Amazon products from your own site?

Now that you know all the different ways you can sell Amazon products on your site or blog, you’ll start noticing how everyone is doing this!

Again, it doesn’t matter whether you have your site up yet or not, you can still think about the different ways you might want to feature Amazon product affiliate links…

When you read through the different types of Amazon Storefronts in this unit, did any idea in particular stand out or appeal to you? Here they are again:

Stand-Alone Review Site – Tablet example

Niche Store – Office Chairs example

Content or Review site, with Store as separate Website – Daniel Vitalis example.

Content or Review site, with Store as separate Category or Page – Brene Brown example, Jini’s art site example

Niche Checklist Site – Top Tenz.net example

A Stand-Alone Store – Garlic Health Store example

A Hub Store – different content or blog sites all pointing to one store

Brainstorm now the different ways you would like to set up Amazon store products on your site – this is an important step in figuring out the design of your site. You can brainstorm in writing, or even make a sketch(es) of the way(s) you think you would like to feature Amazon products (hint: Think about what YOU like or enjoy and then do that!):

The Required Legal Stuff

One last important point: if you are going to have any kind of affiliate link on your site, or make any kind of recommendation that may lead to some form of compensation, you are legally required to clearly state that on your site. And I’m going to make it super easy for you to do that! You can simply copy/paste these legal disclaimers onto your own site, after changing the site name to your own.

If you haven’t built your site or added affiliate links yet, you won’t need this until you are ready to get your site up – but just make a mental note of it and download the file to a folder on your computer called: NEW WEBSITE.

1. Affiliate Disclosure on Site or Blog

Here’s the short disclosure statement that needs to go on every page of your site – you can put it in smaller font at the very bottom, or in a box in your sidebar on the right or left hand side, as long as it’s legible – go ahead and swipe it (copy/paste) to use on your site.

If you are going to have your blog sidebar appear on every page of your site (other than the homepage) then you can just have this Affiliate Disclosure statement as a Text Widget in your blog sidebar:

*******************************

Some of the services recommended on this website provide compensation to [my-site]. All recommendations are based foremost upon an honest belief that the product, service, or site will benefit my site visitors in some way. Read the full Compensation Disclosure for more details.

*******************************

2. Affiliate Compensation Disclosure Page – Full Legal Text

The underlined text in blue above (Compensation Disclosure) then links to a separate page, post, or pop-up that lists your full Affiliate Compensation Disclosure.

NOTE: Wherever you see [my-site] or [my-site].com in the text below, that means you need to delete the highlighted text and replace it with your website URL.

So if your website address is ListenToYourGut.com

then [my-site] becomes: ListenToYourGut

and [my-site].com becomes: ListenToYourGut.com

Use the Edit –> Replace function on Microsoft Word to make all these customizations in a few seconds.

Click here to DOWNLOAD the .doc version of this Disclosure, making it easy for you to customize it.

Affiliate Compensation Disclosure

Some of the web sites, products, and services I recommend provide compensation to [my-site].com in the form of referral fees or commissions. [my-site].com also gets compensation for display advertisements served from Google’s Adsense network. This allows me to provide all information to the end-user for free. It is my belief that the site will grow so long as I provide the most useful advice available. My promise to you is that all recommendations I make are chosen foremost for their ability to save you money, time, or hassle.

The Legal Stuff…

GOOD FAITH RECOMMENDATIONS

I recommend web sites, products, and services on [my-site].com based in part on a good faith belief that the purchase or use of such products or services will help my users. I have this good faith belief because (a) I have tried the product or service mentioned prior to recommending it or (b) I have researched the reputation of the Provider and have made the decision to recommend the Provider’s products or services based on their history and reviews. The representations made by me about products and services reflect my honest opinion based upon the facts known to me at the time a product or service is mentioned on [my-site].com.

YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONDUCT YOUR OWN INVESTIGATION (PERFORM DUE DILIGENCE) BEFORE USING OR BUYING PRODUCTS OR SERVICES FROM ANYONE VIA THE INTERNET. THIS INCLUDES PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SOLD ON THIS WEBSITE AND ALL OTHER WEBSITES.

MATERIAL CONNECTION

Unless otherwise expressly stated, you should assume that all references to products and services on [my-site].com are made because material connections exist between the website’s owner (“Owner”) and the providers of the mentioned products and services (“Provider”).

POTENTIAL BIAS AND DUE DILIGENCE

The Owner’s opinion about a product or service may be partially formed (consciously or subconsciously) in part based on the fact that the Owner has been compensated or will be compensated because of the Owner’s business relationships with the Providers.

In some instances, the Owner and a Provider will have a business or personal relationship that does not involve the Owner receiving compensation related to products and services mentioned on [my-site].com. However, the nature of the relationship is sufficient to establish a material connection between the Owner and the Provider.

Because there may be a material connection between the Owner and Providers of products or services mentioned on [my-site].com, you should always assume that the Owner may be biased because of the Owner’s relationship with a Provider and/or because the Owner has received or will receive something of value from a Provider.

Perform your own due diligence before purchasing a product or service mentioned on [my-site].com (or any other website).

COMPENSATION

The type of compensation received by the Owner may vary. In some instances, the Owner may receive complimentary products, services, or money from a Provider prior to mentioning the Provider’s products or services on [my-site].com.

In other instances, the Owner may receive a monetary commission or non-monetary compensation when you take action based on the content of [my-site].com. This includes, but is not limited to, when you purchase a product or submit personal information to a Provider after clicking on an affiliate link on [my-site].com.

THIS POLICY

The Owner’s goal is to make your experience using this website a pleasant one. If you have any questions about products or services mentioned on this website, please contact the Owner and have those questions answered prior to making a purchase of such products or services.

Website Owner Contact Information:

[my mailing address]

Please note that the content of this page can change without prior notice.

*******************************

Click here to DOWNLOAD the .doc version of this Affiliate Compensation Disclosure, making it easy for you to customize it.

Aside from selling your own products, programs, or services, you can also sell other people’s items that fit your niche and are high quality. Be sure that you do not sell anything that does not reflect your standards of quality, or it will downgrade your reputation and garner you negative press.

Most sites that have successful products or services for sale will have an affiliate program. An affiliate program is simply a system whereby you receive a commission for helping generate sales of someone else’s products. Here’s how it works:

If you wanted to be an affiliate for Listen To Your Freedom, for example, you would promote Listen To Your Freedom on your site. This could be done a number of ways:

• You write a blog post about the program and place a banner ad or text affiliate link to the program in your blog post
• Have a banner ad (graphic/photo) on your website for the program
• Have a text ad on your website for the program, or at the end of all your blog post(s)
• Post to your Facebook page or wall about Listen To Your Freedom and use the banner ad or text affiliate link
• Have a text ad on your YouTube video (in the ABOUT video description section of your video) for the program

Then, when anyone clicks on any of these banners or text affiliate links (from wherever you’ve put them), they will go to Listen To Your Freedom.com and they will be tracked as they navigate through my site.

If they purchase (at any time) the commission on the sale will go to you. Tracking of affiliate links is done by using cookies, so as long as the person has not cleared their cookies, you will receive the commission if they buy, even if they buy a year later.

Note: Which reminds me, either go sign up for the LTYF affiliate program now, or make a note to do so once your site is up!

Text Affiliate Link

Here’s an example of what a text affiliate link can look like, from my Bluehost affiliate account:

CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM

You see how the text is blue and underlined? Hover over it with your mouse and you’ll see that it is a live link (hyperlink), if you click on it, you will go to Bluehost’s site.

Here’s what the code looks like that creates this hyperlink:

<a href=”http://www.bluehost.com/track/ infomedia1962″>CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM</a>

If you would like to change the text that displays for this link, simply replace the text portion CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM with whatever you would rather say.

Affiliate Banner Ad

A banner ad is simply a graphic (image) that links to the recommended site with your affiliate ID embedded in the link code.

Here’s what a banner ad can look like and again, I’m going to use my Bluehost affiliate account as an example – and I’m going to choose the same ad that Pat Flynn has on his site (we’re going to talk about Pat in just a minute), because I know that one has worked well for him:

So, the image shows you what will appear on your webpage or blog post, when you copy/paste the code onto your page.

Easy-peasy, so when I go to add this banner ad to my blog post or the sidebar on my site, the only thing I paste is this:

And then the only thing that appears on my site or in my blog post is this:

And when people click on that banner ad, they go to Bluehost’s site. And if they purchase anything I will receive the commission for it. You see how this is automated revenue? All you do is set it up and it keeps earning you money whether you’re sleeping, or on vacation, or driving your kids to school.

Begin At Any Time!

Unlike Google AdSense, or other scrolling/rotating sidebar advertising programs that could have a negative impact on your search engine rankings IF you add them too soon – affiliate ads can be added to your site at any time.

Affiliate ads or affiliate links (in a blog post, for example) are simple hyperlinks – the same as if you linked to a charity website you liked, or a dog training tips site, or YouTube. So search engines are not going to ‘mark’ your website as having a lot of ads compared to content – which obviously, is not a nice site to send people to!

So you can go ahead and use affiliate text links, or affiliate banner ads as soon as your new site is up, or your new blog is added, or your existing site re-designed.

Choose Products That Fit Your Niche

When choosing which programs and products to affiliate with, you just want to be sure they compliment what you are offering and won’t be taking sales away from your own products and programs. Affiliate commissions usually range from 40 – 70 percent. If that sounds like easy money, don’t forget that you have to work just as hard to market someone else’s products as you would to market your own.

Why do product creators give away such high affiliate commissions? Firstly, you are making the sale to customers they might not have otherwise reached, which is more money for them as well as you. Secondly, keep in mind how much commission a physical shop owner would earn off goods they sold through retail sales (usually 40 – 50 percent). The biggest difference with affiliate sales is that you don’t have the hassle or cost of warehousing, shipping, or handling the products.

Of course, some people never create their own programs or products, they simply affiliate and receive commissions on selling other people’s products. This model is similar to a retail grocery store – which doesn’t manufacture its own packaged foods, but merely sells other vendor’s foods.

Pat Flynn is an online entrepreneur who does just that. He has two sites where he sells his own programs and services, but he has another site (SmartPassiveIncome.com) where he just shares all his Internet business tips and tricks and all the sales on that site are generated from affiliate commissions.

Pat has a large variety of affiliate links (commission sales links) on his SmartPassiveIncome.com blog. These links are to various training programs, marketing tools and other people’s products or services. But amazingly enough, his top affiliate earnings are from a simple banner ad he carries for Bluehost – which provides website domains and hosting. His own products on his other sites generate him roughly $6,000 per month, but just his Bluehost affiliate commissions generate him $30,000 per month. Note how his Bluehost affiliate banner is the same one I used in my example above:

Now granted, Pat’s blog has a ton of traffic (visitors to his site) as he provides stellar content and has been doing it for many years, and he also links to Bluehost in some of his blog posts. But it just goes to show that you never know what will generate you the most income until you try it and see. So don’t be afraid to test out products and services that you think might fit with your site visitor’s needs or interests.

You can either find good products to affiliate with by doing keyword searches on your niche, or search for companion products you think your niche might like. When you find a good website, test their product and if you like it then sign up for their affiliate program. Or you can use an affiliate program warehouse, like Clickbank.com and search there for products or programs your site visitors might be interested in.

If you want to carry ads for a variety of online merchants, then ShareASale is a good place to start. ShareASale requires you to only register once and you can then host ads for companies like Adidas, Craftsy, Mens Trunk Club, Gymboree, etc. Here’s how simple it is:

Affiliate Link To Stuff You Use

Another great way to choose which products or programs to affiliate with is by simply recommending the items that you use yourself!

Let’s say you do a blog post on your great new blender – then show a picture of the blender, which is linked (via your affiliate link) to the shop where your reader can purchase the blender.

There are many stores that cater specifically to very targeted niche markets; like art stores, saddle shops, knitting stores, fishing gear, bike racing, longboarding, the list is endless. Since this is your area of passionate interest, you likely already know the best online shops to purchase from. So simply sign up for an affiliate account. Don’t be afraid to email the site admin and ask if they have an affiliate program – as many do not make it obvious.

Here’s a great example of an artist, Nowlenn Petitbois, who has an affiliate account with a huge art shop (DickBlick.com) and here you can see she has done an excellent tutorial video and then has all the products listed that she used in the video – and each product is an affiliate link:

Another way to feature products is to have a ‘favorites’ or ‘stuff I love’ page. Again, this is where you feature all the items that you use often, or that have made a big impact on you – things that are worth sharing.

Again, these things will be niche-specific, but they can also be your favorite books or favorite music, your favorite custom boot manufacturer – anything that is really personal or specific to you. This is your tribe, remember? They want to know personal stuff about you, and they also want to emulate you.

Kelly Rae Roberts is an artist who has sold over $10 million worth of retail products (via licensing deals) in the last 3 years and here’s how she presents her mix of favorites – the affiliate links are split between Amazon.com and DickBlick.com. Note how she has written a little blurb next to each one, explaining how she uses it, or why she loves it – this makes her list useful and valuable, not just salesy:

When you’re ready to actually create a list of favorite or recommended items like this on your blog, be sure and check out these detailed how-to instructions: How Do I Feature a List or Recommended Items on My Blog?

Your Turn to Brainstorm!

Even though you may not have your site up yet, let’s take a few minutes now to brainstorm some ideas and ways you might want to incorporate affiliate links (free money!) into your site and blog.

Here are some questions to start your brainstorming process…

Are you going to write blog posts about your favorite stuff, or equipment you use – and then make each of the products you recommend an affliate link? What kinds of things do you want to write about?

List here the sites you can link to that have products you like – mark which of these have an affiliate program, and which you have to check whether they do. Tip: The link to a website’s affiliate program is usually in the site footer (at the bottom), or sometimes you need to email them to inquire.

Okay, now that you’ve put your own ideas down on paper, here are the other important things you need to know in order to make money from affiliate commissions.

Don’t Overcrowd Your Site Pages!

The top mistake that nearly everyone makes with affiliate links is to cram as many as possible onto the sidebar or homepage of their site.

I guess they’re hoping that if they have a ton of ads on there, eventually their site visitor will click something. But it is completely the wrong strategy. Why?

• It looks like you are desperate – please, buy something, anything!
• It reduces trust in you – if your primary message is “buy, buy, buy,” then your site visitors get the message loud and clear that you don’t care about them. You are just trying to sell to them.
• It’s confusing and takes away from the message and solutions of your site. Remember the golden rule; always GIVE value first. Give help, give solutions, give hope. People buy from people they trust or feel a connection to.

Too many affiliate links also means there are a dozen ways people can leave your site and go engage with someone else’s site – who may have a better customer funnel than you. If that’s confusing to you, think of it this way – you do want to make sales with your ads and affiliate links, but it’s just as important to keep your site visitors engaged with YOU and your site. If you put too many ads on your site, you run the risk of them getting distracted on other sites, and spending their money there instead of with you.

Take the example of Pat Flynn I gave you above – this is a guy who has a huge amount of daily traffic, yet he has only 4 affiliate links (banners) on his blog. For myself, I don’t have any affiliate links in the sidebar of my Listen To Your Gut site: all my affiliate links are inside my blog posts – so I am always giving information and value, and then the referral to purchase or learn more.

This is because I already sell 300+ products of my own on that site! I don’t need or want to send people away to other sites to buy, unless it’s for specific things that I have no intention of providing myself. But even on a site like that – you still have to keep the same principle in mind, of not overcrowding and looking too selly.

Let me give you an example from a test we ran on our Shoppe. Even though this is my site shop – which is obviously meant to sell product – the helpful information still needs to take precedence over anything else. And I’m going to tell you exactly how we tested and discovered this fact!

Previously, a product page in our Shoppe looked like this – note how the product information is right there, along with a “Jini Says” tab for my personal notes on the product:

Then we were approached by a company who guaranteed an 8-12% increase in sales for a 30-day trial period – or our money back. This company said they increased store sales by adding recommendation sidebars and scrollbars, like “customers also bought…” or “our customers also viewed…” So we said, sure, let’s test it.

So after installing their ‘recommendation’ sidebars and scrollbars, here’s what that same product page looked like:

What do you think?

And do you think sales went up or down?

First let me tell you what I thought when I viewed the changes:

“It just looks to me like one giant advertisement. I FEEL: sell, sell, sell! It is confusing. There is way too much stuff competing for my attention on this page.

I know what I want, that’s why I clicked on the MucosaHeal, but WHERE is all the info about MucosaHeal??

Ads for other products is NOT what sells our products. Information/education is why people buy from us – and that is now not the focus AND requires effort to find.

HOWEVER, I do like the “Our customers also viewed…” sidebar. I think that is interesting, does not distract from the product and actually adds to the page.

So, my recommendation would be to:

– Move the “Our customers also bought…” scrolling window to the end of the product description – way down at the bottom of the page.

– Keep the sidebars on the right and left as is.”

Well, those were my thoughts, but it’s always good to test your views and assumptions, so we let the shop run for 2 weeks like this first.

Then we looked at our sales for the two weeks before we made the changes, versus the two week period with the ‘recommendation’ elements as you see above. Let me tell you what we analyzed in order to determine whether this new format worked, or not.

Sales Metrics

Now, in order to determine if sales go up or down, you don’t just look at the dollar amount sold. Because your site traffic (people coming to your site) may be higher one week than the next, or higher in one month than the other. Instead, you look at your customer conversion rate. This means, that out of all the people who viewed your shop, what percentage purchased something?

Well, after we switched to this ‘recommendation’ format, sales decreased. Our conversion rate dropped from 11.23% to 6.73%. This means that with our original product pages, 11.23% of people who came to our site purchased something. With the new product pages – which featured all of the recommendation elements – only 6.73% of the people who came to our site purchased anything! In addition, overall sales figures (the dollar value of goods sold) dropped slightly from previous levels.

So remember, that when you are assessing the effectiveness of a sales or marketing strategy, you need to look at both metrics to get an accurate picture of what the effect actually is: You need to look at overall sales figures and sales conversion rates.

But we didn’t just can the service, we first deleted the big scrolling window of products from the middle of the page, but kept the sidebar recommendations, to see what effect that would have. Our conversion rate went back up again and even increased a few points. This showed us that it was worthwhile having the recommendations in the sidebars, but NOT where they detracted from the main information people were looking for.

That’s why I advise you to not overuse affiliate banners and ads, but keep them relevant to the information you are giving and don’t cram too many on your page. Or, place the ads at the bottom of the page or blog post – like Nowlenn Petitbois did in the example above. And speaking of Nowlenn, did you notice how she didn’t just give the name of the product and hyperlink? But rather, she gave the name and showed a picture of the product. Remember that visuals are always more appealing than just text – Kelly Rae Roberts did the same thing, and so did I in the screenshot of one of my blog posts I showed you at the very beginning of this unit.

Always select your ads or product promotions to appear somewhere that doesn’t distract from your content, or become annoying, or make your site look cheap and cluttered. Here’s a video from experienced AdSense user, Darren Rowse, where he shares some of his testing and experience. His same advice also holds true for any kind of affiliate ads:

Never be afraid to test things! Just make sure you keep accurate records before, during and after. Do you think Pat Flynn tested a lot of different ways to present his affiliate banners on his site? You bet he did!

Sure you can often shortcut your testing by looking at sites that are similar to yours and very successful and then just copy them – swipe away! But there will come a time when you start to wonder if something else might work better, and it’s always a good idea to test when you feel a nudge in a certain direction.

Okay, now let’s move into our next possibility; aside from affiliating with sites you love and buy from yourself, an easy way to get started with affiliate programs is to sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program.

Once you have set up your YouTube channel and uploaded a few videos, you can choose to have advertisements added to your videos – for which you get paid based on the number of views or clicks. When you add advertisements to your videos, you get to share in the ad revenues generated.

You can choose whether the ads are full-screen and play before your video starts (don’t do this unless you have very strong content to hold people so they don’t get annoyed with the ad and click away), or just appear as a banner along the bottom of your videos. You can also choose to have ads appear on your channel page.

These ads are controlled by the Google AdSense program, so you have some control over which types of ads can appear on your videos and channel, which is nice.

Every time a viewer clicks on these ads, you receive a few pennies. Bit by bit, it can add up and it is worth doing. I add new videos very infrequently, but I still make anywhere from $170 to $200/month in revenues. Not bad for free money. Keep in mind though that some of my videos are quite popular with over a quarter million views. When you are just starting out, you will earn much less – but many people have figured out how to make a living entirely off YouTube monetization, so it’s definitely possible!

It is super easy to participate in YouTube’s ad revenue program – you simply go to your Video Manager, click EDIT, click Monetize my video and then select the kind of ads you want to display with your videos:

Keep in mind that YouTube changes its systems very frequently, so right now, this is what the monetization process looks like, but that may change 5 times in the next year! It doesn’t matter though, as YouTube is great at providing very clear instructions for everything.

You can see in these next two screenshots the different types of ad formats you can select. I used to run Overlay ads on my videos, since these were the least obtrusive. The Overlay ads appear in a small rectangle at the bottom of the video and you can click the X anytime to close them. Here’s what an Overlay ad on your video looks like:

However, YouTube then decided to really push the TrueView In-Stream ad format and so drastically reduced the commission for the Overlay ads. TrueView In-Stream ads are those that appear the very start of the video, in full screen and you have to wait about 4 seconds before you can click “Skip Ad” and get to the video itself. When my ad revenues plummeted to less than 50% of what I was previously earning, I decided to switch all my videos with 10,000+ Views to the TrueView ads. Here’s what a TrueView In-Stream ad placed before your video looks like (note the “Skip Ad” option):

The reason I am not running TrueView ads on my less-watched videos is that I don’t want to give people a reason to click away. If your video shows even a few thousand views, it provides social proof that your video is worth sticking around for. But when you’re trying to build Views on your videos, if you only have 42 views on your video, is someone really going to sit through 4 seconds of advertising to see if your video is any good?

On my other two channels (for my horse stuff and my art stuff) I am letting my videos get to 1,000 views before I will monetize them. But you can and should test this for yourself. Maybe monetize one of your new videos, but not the other and see if it makes a difference to your video Views.

Don’t worry, I provide plenty of instruction on how to create excellent videos for YouTube right over here.

Here is the type of content you can have in your videos that will enable you to monetize them – most of this is just common sense, but I thought I’d grab the info for you from YouTube anyway:

You must meet these minimum requirements in order to monetize your videos on YouTube:

• Your content is advertiser-friendly.
• You created the content or have permission to use it commercially.
• You are able to provide documentation proving you own commercial rights to all audio and video content.
• Your content complies with YouTube’s Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. YouTube reserves the right to disable monetization for accounts that do not follow our guidelines.

Examples of content that may be eligible for monetization

• You filmed your cat and there is no background music.
• Your video contains royalty-free music, and you can prove commercial use rights by using a direct link to the terms.
• Your friend created content for your video and states in writing that you may use and make money from it.
• You created original music yourself and are not signed to a label.

Examples of content that would NOT be eligible for monetization

• Your video has music you purchased on iTunes or content you taped off of television (i.e. you don’t have a license for this copyrighted music or content).
• You sing a cover of your favorite song without express permission from the artist.
• You edit together a compilation of content created by others. Content with violence and/or nudity meant to shock and disgust.

So whether or not you’re ready to produce videos right now, it’s definitely worth knowing about these options, as they may have a bearing on how you plan your site, business, or products.

So let’s move onto one more monetization tool that you can utilize right now, or the second your site or your new blog goes live – in fact, you can use these tools in your very first blog post! Click here to find out more about affiliate programs.