Make Tons of Money with a Funnel and a Hose

Affiliate marketing can be boiled down to two aspects, 1) the Funnel and 2) the Hose. Now don't go off running to your nearest hardware store to buy a funnel and a hose. These are descriptive concepts and I will try my best to describe them in this blog. What you should know is that ALL affiliate marketing follows this basic principle.

The Sales Funnel

Over the years the funnel has changed, I like to think of them as two types the traditional and the modern.

In a nutshell, the sales funnel is called a funnel because you are taking a large audience and squeezing them to a sales page.  This is the traditional "Funnel".  Picture a funnel with a wide top where the audience enters and a narrow spout where the audience comes out.

The modern "Funnel" is more of a "Filter" than it is a funnel. Ultimately the result is the same, but it is slightly more focused and less obtrusive. The idea is to take a large audience and filter out the uninterested readers from the interested readers so that you can get better conversions. Having the audience pass through a series of filters and refining your filters as they pass so as to get better returns. This successive filtering is also known in the industry as "up-selling".

It is not uncommon to use both types of funnels, The traditional funnel is used to drive the traffic to the modern funnel.

The Hose

Think of a hose. A flexible tube used to convey fluids to desired destination.  Hope you were not thinking of the other type of hose. "To cheat, or deceive". because that is not what affiliate marketing is about at all. The secret to a good hose is to master rhetoric. The hose is used to convince the reader into buying a product or to make a purchase with your affiliate. Again, and I stress this because it is extremely important; DO NOT try and deceive your audience. The hose is used to direct your audience to your affiliate's site. The site of the company that will make the final sale. I should point out, selling your own product is not affiliate marketing.

Okay, so how do you make a funnel and a hose?

The funnel is all about gaining traffic. You can have a narrow funnel and a wide funnel. A narrow funnel could be a simple blog about a specific topic. A wide funnel could be using social media sites to draw attention to a landing page or blog. Most social sites frown on using affiliate links directly on their site. Read the terms of your affiliate membership, often they forbid the use of posting direct links on social media as well.  There are 1,000's of ways to make a funnel. The principle is always the same. Get an audience to view your affiliate ad. 

In Summary

The width of the funnel is determined by the number of  places viewers can see your funnel. The traffic is the number of people that fall through the spout. The spout can open up to a hose or to the affiliate site directly. Also, you can have a hose or many hoses lead to a funnel. Finally, if a person makes a purchase from your affiliate link, that is a conversion. Your goal is to have as many conversions as possible, because each conversion is money in your pocket.

Afifliate Marketing in 6 Easy Steps

Six Easy Steps to Making Money Online

There is no income like passive income. Write a review, a blog, or a sales funnel site and then just sit back and let the money role in -- right? Don't you wish it were that easy. I know I do. If you have never done Affiliate marketing but wanted to give a try, here are few quick steps to get you started.

1. Join an affiliate network
2. Get a website
3. Write review, a blog, or create a club
4. Find a relavent ad from your affiliate network
5. Cut and paste the ad's html onto your website
6. Wait - let the money role in

The Steps In Review

Step 1 - Join an Affiliate network: This is an easy step because there are many to choose from. What you want to do is find one that has merchants that sell products that are related to your content.

Step 2 - Get a website: Another easy step, There are many cheap hosting companies some are free. For the website itself I use a Content Management System or CMS like WordPress for all kinds of websites. WordPress is especially easy to install and there are a gazillion free plugins and themes to expand the functionality and visitor experience.

Step 3 - Write Stuff: Unless you are an experienced writer, this step is perhaps the most problematic to beginners. Not just from a technical point of view, but also from a psychological point of view as well. It is very common to get "writer's block" or the jitters for fear that no one will like your writing. If you can survive these hiccups, writing will be second nature. In a nutshell, just like any other discipline writing improves and gets easier with practice.

Step 4 - Find an ad: This step is very easy but can be time consuming. Don't worry too much about picking the best ad -- you can change it later if you need to.

Step 5 - Cut and Paste: Literally cut and paste. The affiliate network will generate the necessary HTML to display your selected ad and include tracking code so that your account will be properly credited. You just copy the code and paste it right on your website.

Step 6 - Wait: You can just sit back and relax. Go to the beach. Let the money role in. Okay, that is overly exaggerated. If luck is on your side, you could strike it rich and do nothing else. On the other hand, if you are like most affiliate marketers, you will need to go back to Step 3 or Step 4 and repeat. You must remember to review the effectiveness of your ads and make adjustments to maximize income. It is important to also remember that some ads expire or get outdated. Sometimes affiliate programs get suspended or dropped. If you are new to this game just be aware. Do not let this scare you off. After all, it is not difficult to replace an ad if you know how to cut and paste.

Affiliate marketing is a fun way to make money provided you follow the two golden rules: 

1. Don't lie, cheat or scam.
2. Don't support products that lie, cheat or scam

Affiliate marketing has received a bad reputation with the FTC because of Affiliate Marketers that do not follow the golden rules.  Make sure you are familiar with the local laws where you plan to do business.

The Number One Marketing Secret Revealed

There is one primary key to success as an on-line marketer that is shared by each and every super affiliate. You know the marketers that gloat about how the beach is their board room, or how they are trading their latest hot car for the forth time this week.

Besides all the hype they shell out in the hopes that you will think that what they are about to sell you will give you the same lifestyle as they have, there is one thing that they deliberately leave out. If they were to tell you what that secret was it would most certainly burst their own bubble.

I was reluctant to write a blog about this secret, but my readers deserve the truth. After all there is a reason why I subtitle this blog Hints and Secrets. Today's blog will be the icing.

Before I tell you though, I want to give a run down on how the masters do their stuff.

It all starts with getting an email list of anyone who is interested in making easy money. Sure there are skeptical people out there, but that's OK. You can set up a website with an available Domain Name that suggests making money. At this point you don't even need a product because you are only fishing for emails of interested people. The interesting part is that only the serious potential customer will be willing to leave their email thus increasing your probability of conversion.

Next the super marketer will send out an email. The email will start off telling how successful they are which does three things: 1) Stresses the reader on the fear of what they do not have, what they want, and how the writer already has it 2) Builds on belief and trust that they are experts in generating ways to make money to give the reader the things that the reader wants, and 3) Offers something inexpensive (or deeply discounted) so that the seller can get a commitment from the reader. Better yet -- time limited.

Next, comes the offer of free or paid seminars, it makes no difference. They talk about how rich they are -- again. They then entice the audience with the idea that they know something that the audience doesn't. For added value they offer some true and insightful advise but they always leave the audience wanting more -- you will need to buy their product if you want to figure out the missing piece.

You buy the product. Full price. They got you! it talks more about building your self-esteem and how you can sell just about anything yet it still leaves out the one secret, perhaps the next product will give you what you need to know.

By this time, maybe 5%* have already figured out the one big secret on their own. the other 95% fail. Using the 5% successful customers as testimonials and fuel, the others are convinced that it was their own fault, perhaps they just didn't understand, and will either drop out or buy the next big product in the hopes to catch what it was that they had missed. The next product comes along and does more self-esteem building and how you need to find your niche.

The cycle continues . . . (Can you say recurring revenue?)

Ok, now the big reveal: Although they say you can market ANY product, super affiliate marketers don't market ANY product. Super affiliate marketers only market their OWN product. They tell you you cam market in ANY niche. This is true as long as the niche is "A Secret to Make Easy Money". It could be about making easy money selling products (your own) or trading options (your own system), trading Forex (your own system). They do not lie. They do give helpful information for a price. This secret is held close to the chest, because if you actually did it, you would be a competitor not a customer.

* 5% is an arbitrary small number and has no statistical basis, actual values may be higher or lower.

Getting Rich With Affiliate Marketing

One of the first things that needs to be debunked is the idea that all affiliate marketers get rich. This is by far the furthest from the truth. In fact less than 3% of affiliate marketers make it to the break even point. It would be extremely easy to blame the lack of fortune on affiliate marketing itself. Unfortunately that is not true, because affiliate marketing is not the problem.

The problem is not affiliate marketing, it is more the misinformation on the internet that leads people to believe that it is 1) easy and 2) a get rich quick scheme. I have often had a need to repeat myself: Affiliate marketing is marketing and marketing is a lot of work. Good marketing won't get you rich quick, only great marketing will.