It's well-known that there's a need for affiliates to build their opt-in lists, and that failing to do so is the main mistake made by affiliates. But to be successful as an affiliate, both for making money online and for building your opt-in list, one very important skill must be mastered - the most important skill for successful affiliate marketing.
In fact, this one skill is the main ingredient in the success of all online businesses, and the most important tool in your affiliate marketing skills toolbox: the ability to drive massive amounts of targeted traffic to your links! Whether you're sending that targeted traffic to a free report on a butterfly-marketing type of site, a free download to entice them to join your list, to your blog in whatever niches you operate in or directly to your affiliate links, the number of targeted visitors you can mobilize quickly is going to be directly reflected in your affiliate commissions.
The good news is that many of the most powerful tools and techniques used by traffic masters are free, or require a very low investment - one that can often be made back on the first couple of affiliate promotions you do after including the new tool into your marketing mix, leaving you with pro tools with no net cost in short order.
The bad news (for some) is that it takes work - true effort - both to learn these various promotional techniques and to apply the tactics to any given affiliate opportunity. If you thought affiliate marketing was a way to make a lot of money online with little or no effort, you're sadly mistaken and have probably been reading the salespages of online scammers, not professional super-affiliates. None of us got to where we are today without a lot of effort, even those who are able to outsource a fair bit of what they do - just learning what's needed and how it must be done is necessary before you know what to outsource!
Now this doesn't mean you'll have to use every one of the traffic generation strategies in every affiliate marketing promotion you get involved in - far from it. Some techniques are short-term, bringing in targeted traffic almost immediately but then tapering off or stopping altogether, while others take time to build momentum, but can keep supplying visitors for weeks, months or even years. Tweets on Twitter are a good example of the former, while article marketing and video marketing are better examples of the latter.
So it stands to reason that if you're promoting a 3-day sale, or even a week-long event, you'll want to rely on your short-term, immediate-response tools. If you're promoting a product or service that will be ongoing, especially one that pays residual commissions, you'll want to use them all. Start with the techniques that bring instant traffic, then shift your focus to the mid- and long-term sources to ensure you continue to make money from your efforts for that opportunity. The higher your recurring commissions the less time you need to focus on making quick bucks, and the greater amount of your affiliate marketing activities that can be focused around list-building, pre-selling and getting involved in pre-launch joint-venture opportunities.
Start right now, today, and set the goal for yourself of learning as many different ways to drive targeted traffic as you can using both free and paid traffic sources. As your knowledge grows so should your ability to mobilize targeted visitors almost on demand, and that's one of the biggest keys to achieving the super-affiliate status and big affiliate paydays you're dreaming about now!
Author Resource:-
Doug Champigny is a well-known marketing coach, speaker, super-affiliate and targeted traffic expert, and the author of the Captain Affiliate Affiliate Marketing Training Blog. For more advice from Doug on driving targeted traffic, visit the Top Traffic Tips website.
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