Ask Bob The Teacher

Affiliate marketing is one of the most important pieces to a successful online business.

In truth, it’s used by offline businesses, too, but it’s a bit disguised with promo swaps, discount coupons, etc.

Anyway, the trouble is most people who try affiliate marketing are getting it all wrong. You may be in this category (although you won’t be for long!).

See the usual affiliate marketing training guide tells you to go find a niche where a lot of people are buying stuff, pick up an affiliate link, and spread your links far and wide. 

Or they tell you to buy a bunch of pay-per-click ads (maybe they even give you "profit-pulling, time-tested" ads to run), and hope you make more in commissions than you pay out to our friends at Google. 

Now I don’t have anything against PPC (although it did cost me $4000 in 2005-06), but the trouble is this way of teaching is all about making money, and not about building an online business.

You’ll always be chasing new customers that way.

Instead, I want to encourage you to develop a relationship with the people who are going to be buying your recommended affiliate products.

And then (here’s the kicker) stay with them after they’ve purchased!

How do you do that? 

Well it all starts with how you first get them to find you. One of the best ways to build a relationship and get more affiliate sales is to document your progress or journey using the product you are promoting. 

My friend Scott Tousignant does this really well. He’s known as the Fit Bastard, and even though he’s already a certified fitness trainer up in Canada (eh), he knows how powerful affiliate marketing can be. 

So he’s spent the last year taking on fitness programs and testing them out. He then blogs about them (sometimes daily) as he’s using the product. Sometimes the products work out, sometimes they don’t. 

But every time, he gets sales and builds a better relationship with his list as they read his blog, post comments, and become part of his Twitter following. 

He’s also seen increases in sales of his own products while he’s been documenting what are essentially his competition’s products. (Although most are supplemental, like Jon Benson’s Every Other Day Diet Book).

So I encourage you to repeat Scott’s method with your favorite product (perhaps from my own list of products that typically have 50% commissions!). Try it out for a month, and document how you succeed (or don’t succeed) using a product. Use Squidoo, a free blog, or our favorite blog tool, Blogi360 (what runs AskBobTheTeacher). You can hold teleseminars to share your results as they happen.

Now if you really want to follow Scott’s lead, and you know that getting in shape, losing weight, etc., is something you’ve been meaning to do but never get around to, then pay attention to this.

Scott is holding his first fat loss & affiliate challenge with this same philosophy. 

He’s put his own products on sale (if you read this in time), and he’s holding a contest to motivate you to not only shed the pounds but to document your journey along the way. In fact, the winner is the person who takes the most action, not just focusing on overall weight loss. Of course, you’ll be an affiliate for Scott, too, so as you get success and others see how you do it, they’ll want Scott’s products as well. But they’ll be buying through your affiliate link!

With Scott’s help you can fatten your wallet while you blast off the fat.

I’ll be participating in it as well, as it starts next week. But you have to register before Wednesday night (tomorrow) if you want to win over $2400 in prizes. 

Whether you choose to participate in Scott’s program, or pick something else - take action today by documenting your journey with an affiliate product. You’ll be amazed at what it does to attract more customers!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. In this week’s Time magazine, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported on results from a study where people who kept track of what they ate in a food journal lost more weight. It’s all about holding yourself accountable by documenting what you are doing. Apply the same idea to Scott’s program and you’ll win on both sides!