6 Copywriting Tips for Affiliate Marketing Newbies

Copywriting is the one skill that all affiliate marketing newbies should learn. As an affiliate marketer you communicate through words and if those words aren’t effectively conveying your message, then you’re in for a long, bumpy and unproductive ride.

Here are a few copywriting tips to help you get started writing in a way to get the right attention:

1. Know your target market. Good copywriters know exactly who they’re writing for – and to – before starting. They speak directly to ONE person and keep that same person in mind at all times. If you try to reach too many people with your copy you’ll end up missing your target altogether and even worse not reach anyone at all. Decide exactly who you’re writing your copy for and stick to it.

2. Use headlines that intrigue. Use clear headlines throughout your copy to guide the reader. Your main headline should be in bold and large letters to grab the readerís attention. It is often the headline which can either make or break your copy. Use a benefit-focused headline, which explains in powerful detail how you can help solve the customerís problem. Then use sub-headlines throughout the copy to keep the reader intrigued so they will keep reading.

3. Don’t use big words. Online writing is different from the writing you did in English class. Throw out the text book and forget all those rules your teacher taught you. Online writing is casual and should convey emotion and a clear purpose. Speak to the reader as though you’re sitting down with them, chatting over a cup of coffee. Avoid big words and long adjectives like the plague or risk boring (and losing) your prospects.

4. Be persuasive. You may love your product thatís great but you’re biased. Your customers want to hear about unbiased people who have used your product. Include customer testimonials, if you have them. Remember that not just any testimonial will do – the more information you can include the better. Try to include the person’s full name, city, state, website URL and if possible a picture of that person. A video or even audio testimonial is better yet. The more information your testimonial includes the more persuasive and believable it will be.

5. It’s not about you. In fact, it’s not about you at all. Effective copywriting is concerned with and focused on the needs of the customer. This is a big first lesson for affiliate marketing newbies. The writer doesn’t really matter! Of course, you may want to add a little personal information about yourself in order to build a connection with the reader and explain why they should trust you, but even in this case it’s all about what you can do for them. Go through your copy, does it contain a lot about what you think, then it’s time for a serious re-write. Your writing should always be about the customer and the benefits to them.

6. Don’t forget the call. The call to action that is. You must guide your readers and tell them exactly what you want them to do. If you want them to click over and purchase your weight loss product, then say so and say it in a clear way that promotes all the benefits of your products. For example “Click here to learn how you can lose those last 10 pounds and keep them off for good”. Be precise in your wording and always include a call to action that leaves the reader with no doubt as to what to do next.

If you follow these 6 tips, you’ll find that you can have success at copywriting – even as an affiliate marketing newbie.

Ten “Must-Know” Acronyms for Affiliate Marketing Newbies

Affiliate marketing newbies take note. You will quickly discover that visions of acronyms and affiliate marketing terms are haunting your sleep. Relax, you’re not alone. It’s not the least bit unusual for affiliate marketing newbies to experience acronym overload at some point in the learning process. Well we’ve been there too, and we understand the need to have one place to find the definitions of those acronyms that are most relevant to this business.

We’ve discovered that there’s a whole new lingo that all affiliate marketing newbies need to learn. In the following quick reference guide we share the ten most common acronyms. We’ll provide updates periodically, so stay tuned.

1. CTR – Click-Thru-Rate – The percentage of people who actually click on a banner.

2. PPC – Pay Per Click – This is when you get paid each time a customer clicks a certain link.

3. RSS Feed – Really Simply Syndication, Rich Site Summary, Raw Data Feed Site Summary – You have certain reader programs (Google Reader, Internet Explorer has a reader) that allows you to subscribe to the RSS Feeds of different websites and see the updates on those sites as soon as they make them.

4. SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Used to ensure that a website ranks at the top of a search engine result. This is a popular marketing technique that uses articles, keywords and other methods to help ensure the website is within the top results and thus more likely to be seen by searchers.

5. CPA – Cost-Per-Action – Refers to a click, lead or sale. For example, a merchant offers its affiliates $0.30 per newsletter sign-up. Even if the visitor doesn’t buy anything, the merchant will still pay you for the “action” or in this case, the newsletter sign-up.

6. CR – Conversion Ratio – The percentage of clicks, views, etc., needed to achieve a specific action (sale, lead, etc.). Translation: If one out of one hundred visitors to your website signs up for your report or newsletter, your website has a two percent signup ratio for that item.

7. SEM – Search Engine Marketing – Promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). Methods include: search engine optimization (SEO), paid placement, paid inclusion, digital asset optimization and contextual advertising. This term is also used to describe an individual (Search Engine Marketer).

8. HTML – Hyper-Text Markup Language – the authoring language used to create documents on the internet and to define the layout and structure of web documents using various attributes and tags.

9. URL – Uniform Resource Locator – the global address of documents on the internet specifies the protocol identifier and the resource location name (IP address or domain name) which are separate by a colon and two forward slashes.

10. ISP – Internet Service Provider – a company that provides access to the Internet for a monthly fee. Service includes a modem which allows you to log on to the Internet to browse, and also allows you to send and receive email.

Affiliate marketing newbies: These are important acronyms to know and understand. They are critical not only to online marketing but also to everyday life on the world wide web (WWW) in the 21st Century.

Stress Management for the Affiliate Marketing Newbie

When you’re just starting out as an affiliate marketing newbie, you might find yourself completely overwhelmed by all there is to learn and all the things you want to accomplish ASAP to be successful. How do I know this? Ha!! You should see my “to do” list. What I realized over the last few weeks of filling my poor brain with info on SEO, keyword searches and Google Wonder wheels is that you can definitely overdo – and take on a lot of unnecessary stress in the process.

Stress can never be completely avoided in life, but as an affiliate marketing newbie you can deal with it better if you know why it comes up. When you find yourself overwhelmed with the stress of the new learning curve you’re on, just remember this saying from the famous Chinese philosopher, Lao-tzu that:

“The journey to a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

Simply put, it is better that we finish our tasks one at a time rather let them overwhelm us to the point that we don’t make progress at all.

Here are a few ways to manage your day to reduce the stress of trying to juggle a number of different and unfamiliar tasks at one time:

1. Plan your day out. Know what needs to be done and follow the time-frame you set for each task. Stress occurs every time you don’t keep with your schedule and postpone work that piles up and ends up taking longer to complete.

2. Order your tasks. Figure out what needs to be done first, whether it’s article writing, keyword research or searching for great backlinks. Establish your own guidelines that allow to prioritize upcoming tasks. This way you’ll be able to focus on what needs to be done first, next and so on. Even though you’re an affiliate marketing newbie, you’ll soon learn how to best schedule your work so it all gets done – even the grunt work that you don’t enjoy!

3. Know when to delegate or outsource. There are always people who have the skills that we don’t have. Take me for example. I have worked to set up one niche affiliate marketing website. It took forever. I’m great at adding content but the technical part of putting a website together is just not my skill-set. I’m glad I learned this early and am prepared to outsource this kind of work when it comes up. When you realize that you need help to get something done, find a free lancer who can help.

4. Limit distractions. Some people work better with the radio blasting, others need complete silence. Whichever one you are or even in between, make sure to surround yourself with a comfortable environment that will help you concentration and inspire you to be more productive.

5. Know when to take a break. Nonstop work without a break cause stress that will catch up with you pretty quickly. Everyone has a saturation point. If you reach yours, it just means that you need to give mind and body a rest. Taking a break, spending time doing something you enjoy will help you refresh and come back to your affiliate marketing newbie tasks with renewed focus and determination. As my mom always used to say:

Take care of yourself!

These stress management tips can really help you make the most of your learning curve as an affiliate marketing newbie. And here’s one last suggestion. Surround yourself with people who can be part of a strong and ongoing support system. I’m lucky that I’m part of an incredible mastermind group that includes my sister and two good friends – each one an affiliate marketing newbie. We talk regularly and support one another to minimize stress and maximize our joint success as we learn online affiliate marketing.

We Love Making Money While We Sleep

OK, I’ve heard the hype that affiliate marketing can make you money while you sleep. Well it’s true!!! I woke up this sunny Saturday morning, turned on my laptop and lo and behold, there was an email from one of our affiliate programs saying that we made $50 overnight. I called my sister and fellow Extreme Newbie with the news. We couldn’t believe that we made our first money while we slept.Wooo Hoooo!!!!!

Now you may be thinking that $50 isn’t much. But guess what. If we made $50 last night while we slept, ya think we can do it again? We flat out know we can through affiliate marketing. But it’s not for the faint of heart.

Getting started in affiliate marketing requires a lot of grunt work – and we’ve been doing it, day in and day out since we started this website and our Internet marketing business. Success is starting to dribble in and one day soon – we know that the dribble will become a flow.

How do we know that? Well what we have here at Extreme Newbies is a little special combo called faith and believing. This combo gets us up each day, keeps us at our computers for hours, has us learning things we never thought we ever want to know let alone become passionate about. There’s a saying we live by now:

Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe. ~ Gail Devers

If you’re thinking that these two Extreme Newbies are overly optimistic – think again! What we are is relentlessly optimistic and more focused now than ever because guess what – we really like making money while we sleep!

How about you?