Affiliate Marketing Basics - The Opt-in List

August 4, 2007

If you’ve ever experimented with slapping affiliate referral urls into Google adwords and driven traffic straight to the affiliate’s landing page, you’ve probably also experienced the Google Slap. This is the unpleasant effect of having all your great niche keywords ranging from $0.10-0.12 deactivated, and the minimum bid increased to a phenomenal $10 or so.

So the rules of affiliate marketing have changed, and I sincerely hope you’re still game to succeed at it. In the next series of posts (spaced not too far apart from each other), I’ll discuss some ways you can beat the Google Slap.

Todays Lesson : Building and Opt-in List

Landing pages and opt-ins lists are like the bread and butter of affiliate marketing success these days. Here’s a simple formula for success with affiliate marketing. Try it out and you will make a decent sale or two:

Targeted Adwords Copy & Keywords + Customized Landing Page + Opt-in List Retention = A Lead Generated + A Sale Possibly Made

You can never be sure that everyone who clicks on your ad will convert to a sale; but by acquiring your targeted traffic’s contact information you are effectively building a killer list you can market other products to. Not only are you gaining qualified leads, you’re also closing in on potential sales - It’s like killing two birds with one stone. So how do you go about creating an opt-in list?

There are many services out there that let you do so, but Zookoda is one of the better free e-mail marketing services. It’s geared towards blog owners who wish to run newsletters and those who wish to deliver targeted Go To Market campaigns for their reader base. The service also features a double opt-in feature which is critical for legal reasons, so that no one can say you spammed them.

I’m all set up to incorporate an opt-in list on Daily Moolah. Look out for it soon, and be sure to sign up!