Affiliate Alchemy: Creating wealth through marketing arbitrage

Dear Friend and Subscriber,

Over the past five years, we have established an airtight system for promoting a product on the Internet.

This process fully exploits the incoming traffic via a NameSqueeze^TM, adds sequential follow-ups, tests sales copy, and monetizes the abandoners (people who leave without buying) with pop-ups and pop-unders.

We have discovered how to use Google and Overture to determine sales potential, how to use "question-based selling" using the AskDatabase to query prospects, and how to create the best message-to-market-match.

However, up until now, we never revealed how to
use these techniques with affiliate marketing!

Here's why:

• In the past, most of our clients sold proprietary products, so we usually focused on making direct rather than third-party sales.
  
  
• The lack of control you have over affiliate promotions means all your hard work may be for naught due to a stupid mistake on the merchant's site (anything from a non-functional order link, to profanity in the sales letter).
  
  
• When you create a "wraparound" sales process using an affiliate link, you are ultimately benefiting the merchant, and they may take your ideas and incorporate them into their sales own process, diluting your worth and removing your competitive advantage.

Don't even have their own product!

In fact, some seem to create money from nothing in a bizarre mixture of alchemy and arbitrage, buying advertising on credit, running affiliate promotions to pay the bills, squeezing the names from the traffic, earning cash from the exit pop-ups, and generating pre-tax profits in the 40% to 50% range ... every single month!

Before we delve into the formula they are using, let's take a look at some of the existing strategies to promote an affiliate product, some obvious, and some you may not be aware of.

All these techniques drive the traffic into a specific page on your own site, as opposed to the affiliate link directly. This means ...

• You can advertise on Google or other sites that have a restriction on affiliate links.
  
  
• You can create your own Unique Selling Proposition and sales message, reducing competition.
  
  
• You ensure your tracking links are working through hard-coding.
  
  
• You avoid the dreaded AFFILIATE designation in your PPC ads.
  
  

1) Review page: This is where you send the traffic into a landing page that offers a review of the product you are promoting. In addition to the review, you can also include bullets, benefits, testimonials, even additional bonuses to encourage the sale:

• http://www.free-spyware-check.com/
  
  

• http://www.anti-spyware-review.toptenreviews.com/
• http://www.ratespywareremovers.com/
• http://www.dogtrainingreview.com/
  
  

• http://www.CREOnline.com
• http://www.acneremedies.net/
  
  

• http://www.body-designs.com/webstats/
  
  

Now let's take a look at incorporating the Cyberwave recommended sales process within an affiliate promotion:

• NameSqueeze^TM: All traffic should be driven into a specific NameSqueeze^TM page that sets up the sale and solicits the opt-in. That way, you get the benefit of branding by promoting your own domain, and you can advertise competing products to non-buyers over time.
  
  
• Follow-up: All prospects should be put through a minimum of 20 follow-ups, which head directly to your affiliate link, re-setting the cookie and re-promoting the sale. After that, you can also solicit them for a:
  
  
  1. House offer back-end: This is usually an offer you own or control, and present to people who don't buy from the affiliate promotion. In fact, many vendors use affiliate offers to build their list, knowing the commissions will cover the acquisition cost of the name.
     
     
  2. Affiliate back end: This is a competing offer, different from the original offer the prospect opted in for, but within the same category or niche.
     
     
  3. Generalized offers: You can also mail highly generalized offers to this list, for everything from making money, weight loss, even credit repair, provided the original list they opted into isn't overly focused on a specific niche.
     
     
• Exit pop-up: Ideally, this is a soft offer (no payment or credit-card required) that extends the relevance of the initial offer in a "no purchase necessary" manner.
  
  
• Pop-under: This is a hard or soft offer pop-under for a competing product or service. Using a pop-under means there's less chance the surfer will associate the offer with their original experience.
  

Now, let's take a look at a real example. There's a very good eBook at ClickBank called the Negative Calorie Diet. Take a look at the page before we continue.

This is a nearly perfect example of an offer ripe for this process, for several reasons:

1. The existing sales page has a very good conversion rate
2. There is no existing name-capture strategy
3. There are a number of competing soft offers for weight loss
4. There are a number of competing hard offers for weight loss
5. The topic is hot and in-demand
   
   

Market research with the ASK database

The above example is based on a specific offer we know does well. The Negative Calorie Diet is a top ClickBank seller with proven sales copy. It only makes sense to use similar copy (keywords and phrases) on our NameSqueeze page to ensure the flow is consistent.

But what if we wanted to promote a great product that didn't have a strong sales letter? The answer is simple· use the ASK Database! Rather than follow with copy we think is good, we would instead lead with copy we know is good.

For example, here's another high-quality ClickBank product, but it doesn't have a well-written sales page (at least, based on the sales ranking). If we wanted to promote this product, we may want to use the ASK Database to query our visitors first by sending them to a page that looks something like this.

Then, based on the responses, we'd create a NameSqueeze page and follow-up sequence that uses the exact words and phrases the prospects gave us in the ASK campaign. While this may not exactly match the copy in the sales letter, the overall theme is the same (losing weight), and the opt-in rate should increase.

Going beyond the vendor's sales letter

Let's say we want to match the ASK responses, the NameSqueeze^TM, and the sales letter to increase conversion rate even more. How is that possible? Simple, just re-write the sales letter and host it on your server.

Of course, you will need the vendor's permission, and you'll want to make sure you set the sales cookie with a tool like AffiliateCloner.com or a 1X1 pixel pop-up, but provided you set up the technology correctly, you could potentially increase the conversion rate so much, you might even ...

• Become the top affiliate for the product: Top affiliates can often times demand additional considerations from vendors, including increased commission, faster payouts (or bonuses) and special pricing for your customers.
  
  
• Use the product as an "arbitrage" page that pays for the traffic while you build your list: Invoke the above process, and literally get paid for building your subscriber base! They get the sales, you get the money and prospects.
  
  
• Buy the product site, lock-stock-and-barrel from the vendor: Since you are making more sales then they are, it's possible to negotiate a great price on the site as a whole, including the domain, graphics, and product in the rough.

There are at least two other potential revenue streams hidden in this process. Based on the vendor's desire to work with you, and your ability to drive sales, you may be able to negotiate the following:

• Buyer/opt-in data passback: If you can get the vendor to share the customer names with you, these can be sold or rented to others on a per-name basis, depending on the industry.
  
  
• Long-term revenue sharing: If the front-end product is being used to generate leads for the vendor, who is then selling a back-end product, you may be able to negotiate for a percentage of that as well.
  
  

Of course, if you are a good negotiator, and there's synergy between you and the vendor, you could structure any number of partnerships, cross promotions, or revenue sharing arrangements.

Conclusion

By now, you have probably realized how ineffective and inefficient sending your visitors directly to a sales page is.

And since there are dozens of ways to squeeze more money from your affiliate promotions, we trust you'll begin using these techniques immediately.


Respectfully Submitted,


Jonathan Mizel