by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

There is an abundance of business advice to be had which includes delegating certain tasks so you can focus on your business. Although this is great advice, what if you’re a one-person business and you work from home?

Although you can run a small business on your own, it takes planning and a lot of patience.

Beware of the pitfalls of working from home so you can be successful. Here are four challenges that you need to avoid.



What are some pitfalls you need to avoid?


1. NOT STAYING FOCUSED

It’s difficult to stay focused with distractions from television, family members, and dirty dishes. And, if you’re new to working at home, it’s hard to feel like you’re working, because your home environment doesn’t feel like your work in an outside office.

Solution: If you’re not an expert multi-tasker like some people and you find your productivity is suffering, you should come up with a more formally structured day, as in a traditional office setting where you would not do home chores or run errands during work.

Create a dedicated area as your office, one with a door, if possible. At the very least, a corner just for work so that when you go there your brain signals it’s time to work. If you find yourself stuck from time to time, try a change of environment such as a cafe for an hour or take a walk outside.


2. LOSING BOUNDARIES

Although you should take advantage of the flexibility working from home provides, remember how easily time can be ripped away from your workday. After all, your work is just as real as any traditional office job.

Solution: At a traditional office job, everyone appears to understand your work schedule, and you’re not expected to get everything taken care of in one day. However, when you’re working from home, all those boundaries seem not to apply.

Although you should take advantage of the flexibility working from home provides, remember how easily time can be ripped away from your workday. After all, your work is just as real as any traditional office job.


3. WORKING TOO MUCH

The stereotypical working-from-home in pajamas and easy days is not the reality. When you work from home, you work longer days because there’s no separation between work and home. You don’t have a natural stopping point nor do you drive away from the office, and days get longer because it’s hard to put aside your work.

Solution: As with most jobs, there’s always going to be more to do. You need to regulate yourself and be disciplined and set a boundary between your work and personal life. Although this doesn’t have to be every night, if you’re serious about working from home for the long term, this lifestyle has to be sustainable. You’ll need time away from the computer and the stress of work.


4. FEELING ISOLATED

Not being in a traditional office setting with day-to-day social interaction can bring on feelings of isolation.

Solution: When you’re working from home, you’ll need to create social interactions. You can:

Schedule lunch or breakfast get-togethers

Use social networks such as Facebook or Twitter as your virtual “water cooler” during the day

Use real-time communications like skype, phone calls, or chat instead of email

Get involved with local meetups or networking groups

Spend some time working in shared office spaces



In summary, find a proper work-life balance. Schedule breaks on your calendar and don’t miss them. Note your in and off hours on the calendar and in your chat tools.

Outside of work take time to unwind and spend time with your family. Pursue your hobbies, make plans with friends, and occupy yourself with things that aren’t work-related.

So, beware of the pitfalls of working from home and use these four challenges as a starting point for overcoming pitfalls.

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By Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

Affiliate marketing is more than just joining an affiliate marketing program, promoting a link, and hoping people buy what you’re advertising. Here’s a little background.

Affiliate marketing involves the following steps:

** The merchant has come up with a unique/revolutionary product.


** The merchant has validated and tested the product to see if there’s real demand for it.


** The merchant has created and launched the product simultaneously with an affiliate program.


** The merchant has found relevant affiliates and invited them to join the affiliate program or affiliates have approached merchants for a partnership.


** The merchant has assigned a unique ID and affiliate link to each affiliate.


** The affiliate promotes the brand/product and includes that link in relevant advertising such as blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, etc.


** When a visitor clicks on the affiliate link and visits the merchant’s website, a cookie is generated and stored in their browsing device. This cookie contains the affiliate ID and helps identify the affiliate as the source of the traffic to the merchant’s site. It also helps attribute the sale to the affiliate even if it occurs days or weeks after the visitor clicks on the link.


** When a visitor purchases the product, the merchant checks the sales record and finds the associated cookie, which identifies the affiliate who originally drove the visitor to the merchant’s website.


** When the merchant finds a cookie containing an affiliate ID, the corresponding affiliate is credited with a sale.


** The merchant pays a commission to the affiliate at the end of each payment cycle.



You can be a merchant or an affiliate. When you become an affiliate, the initial hard work is already done by the merchant, as laid out above. 


What are some common mistakes new affiliate marketers make?


New affiliate marketers tend to make the following common mistakes.


1. Over relying on organic traffic

Organic search engine traffic is great because it is some of the most targeted traffic you can get and it’s free although you’re trading time to create content. If you’re ranking high for keywords you can make lots of sales.

On the other hand, it may take 3 to 6 months or more to get ranked for the keywords you want. So, while you’re churning out content on your site, build a brand or authority on social media channels or in forums where people in your niche are like to be.

Don’t rely on any one single traffic source, even Google which changes its algorithm quite often and can cause a loss in ranking.

2. Putting out content without a known purpose

There needs to be a reason for producing content. It should be targeted to people who are looking for what you offer.

3. Not building a list and monetizing it

An email or Facebook messenger list offers a way for getting prospect to get to know, like, and trust you. Once they know you they’re more likely to buy.

4. Constant emphasis on selling

Do not sell, sell, sell. Show how the product you’re offering will solve a problem they have or give them more time freedom, etc.

5. Sending traffic directly to your affiliate link

Send traffic to a landing page introducing the product you’re about to promote. The affiliate product sales page gives the details.

6. Not being consistent

Pace yourself and work on your business every day. Be consistent in your efforts.

7. Blogging for the sake of blogging

Have an end goal and a path for your readers to follow. Use a call to action and get readers’ contact information so you can follow up with them later.

8. Promoting too many affiliate products

Prospects will be able to tell how well you know your product from reading your content. the more products you promote, the less you know about each. If prospects begin to doubt your authority, this could impact potential click-throughs and sales.


In the beginning, choose one product to promote. Spend your time learning about the product and testing it out yourself. Create great content promoting its use. When you begin to see the benefits you can add another program or two to your plate.


How do you get started in affiliate marketing?


Step 1: Find a niche

The first thing you need to do to get started in affiliate marketing is choose a niche. This could be hobbies like travel, sports betting, photography, or anything you’re truly passionate about.

That could be financial products, health and wellness, lifestyle products like fashion, technology, or whatever.

Step 2: Choose a channel

After choosing your niche, you’ll want at least one platform or channel to use for your affiliate marketing. Blogging is probably the easiest and least expensive way to get started and can be used for product reviews and comparisons to promote affiliate products.

YouTube is another good platform and it’s free to start a YouTube channel and upload videos. The downside is there are so many other videos and creators on YouTube that it can be hard to get attention for your products, plus, creating and uploading videos will take a lot more time than blogging.

Instagram is a platform to consider. You can create images and videos to promote your affiliate products and you can pay for ads if you want, as with other platforms.

Whatever platform you choose, you’ll want to add a disclaimer to make it clear you’re sharing a promotion and may receive compensation. On your blog, link the affiliate product and in parentheses add “affiliate link.” On YouTube, include your affiliate link disclaimer in the video description. For Instagram, you can use #ad or #sponsored.

Step 3: Choose the products you want to promote

With your target audience in mind, choose high-quality products that will actually benefit them. Ask yourself if this product will improve their lives or if it’s something you would buy or tell a family member to buy. You’ll need to check out conversions and payouts for the product.

Step 4: Join an affiliate program

You can join an affiliate network or affiliate program. If you have a website and are creating content, you can use your site analytics to home in on your audience’s makeup and find products specifically for them that also give you the commission you want.


When you join an affiliate network or affiliate program, you have access to brands looking for affiliates and you also get tools to use for finding the right options. Some of the top affiliate networks include:

ShareASale
Amazon Associates
CJ Affiliate
Rakuten Marketing


When choosing an affiliate marketing program you must consider:

Commission type and amount
Cookie lifetime
Relevancy
Payment logistics
Creative assets and conversion rates
Competition

You must do your research before deciding on affiliate marketing programs.


Step 5: Create great content

The type of content you create depends on the platform or platforms you’ve chosen to use to promote your affiliate products, but there are some types of content you can depend on that include product reviews, case studies, tutorials, product comparisons, and a resource page that contains all your recommended products and links for them.

Step 6: Generate traffic

Now you need to generate traffic and build your audience. Although social networks work for the promotion of products to followers, building an email list is best in case social networks stop letting people use them.

The fastest way to grow your email list is by using a lead magnet (offering something free to visitors in exchange for their email addresses). This could be a free course, checklist or something else of value. Once you have email addresses you can follow up with subscribers offering valuable content along with promotional emails (affiliate link). You can research email marketing platforms to make the process easy.

You can use search engine optimization (SEO) which uses specific keywords that your target audience is interested in and create content around those topics and make sure your site is indexed by Google, Bing, and other search engines. Once you generate some money you can also use paid traffic.


Affiliate marketing is not just a walk in the park. It requires taking several steps and following through from sign up to generating income. This information will help you to avoid these 8 common mistakes new affiliate marketers make.



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by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

Because your business strategy is in place, you should have already determined your audience.


Your audience should be a determining factor when deciding on an ideal blog post length as well.


You need to consider these questions when determining your audience and your ideal blog post length.


** Which social media platforms do your audience share content from the most?
** What types of media sources are they following?
** What types of content are they sharing?
** How long are the blog posts that they are engaging with?


Word count is not a standalone ranking factor. It only has value if the content is of great quality.

A few years ago, the average blog post was usually somewhere between 500 and 800 words or even less.

Now long-form content is dominant.

There is no magic number for every post every time.



What is the average length of a blog post?

Although there is no average length per se, there are suggested lengths for different industries.

Financial technology (FinTech) – 2,000 – 2.150 words

The topics in this industry are fairly complex so they require a lot of depth. For adequate coverage, you should aim for between 2,000 – 2,250 words with a significant number of data-driven images like graphs and charts.

Finance – 2,100 – 2,500 words

Research has shown these numbers to be ideal for the largest volume of organic traffic in the finance industry.

Manufacturing – 1,700 – 1,900 words

The manufacturing industry includes chemicals, textiles, machines, and heavy equipment. There might be differing opinions regarding the word count. But, on the whole, 1,700 – 1,900 is a safe number.

Sales – 2,500 – 2,700 words

Sales is a wide umbrella covering many different areas. The most successful posts in this industry have a high word count.

Retail – 1,500 – 1,700 words

Retail drives the U.S. economy, whether it’s massive chains or mom-and-pop stores.

Online retail has experienced massive growth over recent years, and like manufacturing, the retail industry can involve a lot of different types of content.

So, 1,500 – 1,700 words or even less is sufficient to explain a product or service.

While images are always important across the board, for retail-based articles they’re especially critical.

Real estate – 1,800 -1,900 words

Real estate is an incredibly competitive industry in which you’ll need to specialize in a few strategic areas and be able to deliver expert advice to your readers.

You’ll need to master local SEO.

Home and garden – 1,100 -1,200 words

The word count for this industry is much lower than for the rest because these types of posts are more visual-centric and use lots of pictures and how-to videos to demonstrate their products.

Tech – 800 – 1,000 words

 Most tech articles are a short commentary on a product, technology developments, or events, so 1,000 words is a reasonable count.

Gadgets – 300 – 500 words

After talking about long-form content being best, this seems incredibly low.

There are always exceptions. You probably don’t need to go on and on about a new gadget. Just be practical and cover the background, key features, nice images, pricing, etc.

You want to give readers a clear idea of what to expect if they buy it.

Marketing/advertising – 2,500 – 3,000 words

Just about everyone in marketing engages in content marketing. Which means a lot of content.

In this area, giving value with a high word count will help you to stand out from the competition.

Healthcare – 2,000 – 2,150 words

Healthcare is a huge industry. Not only are there major publications, but there are so many scholarly articles that feature original research from top universities.

To get your content noticed and shared, you must create top-level articles that are filled with valuable data.

Fashion – 800 – 950 words

As with tech gadgets, there’s no need to over-state fashion content. This number of words will allow you to adequately discuss fashion trends, styles, or industry models.

It goes without saying; be sure to include plenty of images.

Recruiting – 900 – 1,000 words

This industry content tends to be statistics-heavy but fairly short.

Food – 1,400 – 1,900 words

There are a whole lot of people writing about the food industry, and food blogs have increased.

Be sure to include beautiful images to make an instant connection with readers.

Travel – 1,500 – 1,850 words

This should be long enough to entirely cover topics like travel tips, destinations, useful gadgets, and more.

Film – 1,500 – 1,700 words

This industry keeps growing. To stand out you have to create substantial, long-form posts.


Producing content is not all about length. There are other variables that determine the success of your blog articles.

** Substance – The most basic consideration is what you’re trying to say. It may require 150 words or 10,000 words.

** Style – Of course, writing styles vary and will affect your content. Some styles will use content that is short, brief, and to the point, and other times it’s conversational and interactive. The style will affect the length of your content.

** Frequency – It takes time to write good content. Some bloggers post once a week while others put out short posts daily. The frequency depends on how much you can manage.

** Format – Your format has a great impact on its readability. You should break your content into small sections so readers can easily skim it. You can do this by using lots of subheadings, a few images throughout the article, and short paragraphs.

** Purpose – What is the purpose or purposes of the article? You may want to spread brand awareness, drive social engagement, provide education, grow email lists, or improve SEO. All these are sub-goals related to your ultimate goal of making conversions.

** Audience – You have to create content based on what your particular audience needs and wants. It should be based on their passions, interests, and their problems.

** Medium – When you post a video, meme, or infographic, word count doesn’t matter. With an infographic, you might use around 100 words to introduce the topic.



Why is long-form content best?

You can cover your topic with a level of depth that’s clearly impossible in a shorter post. So, long-form is perceived as high quality.

As most people don’t read word for word, long-form content is perfect for skimming. What people do is scan and check out headlines, subtitles, and bullet points, and look at the images.

Research shows that most visitors only read about 20 percent of an article.

It seems that creating content with a high word count leaves readers feeling as though they’ve just read something very impressive when they’ve finished.

Short, thin content can’t provide this certain sense of satisfaction.


As long as you provide value to your readers, they’ll appreciate a short or long article. So, use this information to determine the ideal length for blog articles that works for both you and your reader.


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by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

Creativity is using imagination or original ideas in producing artistic work. Creative writing is using words in an artistic way to express emotion.

There are different styles of creative writing including fiction, memoirs, poetry, movie and television scripts, plays, and songs. However, in digital marketing creative writing refers primarily to copywriting and storytelling in which you can use text-based and audio-visual formats for creative writing.


How Do You Write Creative Content?


You can use the following five tips to get started:


1. Define your brand or purpose

Give your brand or product purpose. Give it a human touch that is more than a name, logo, color, or tagline. What is the core philosophy, and what does the brand or product stand for? What kind of emotional response or reaction does it produce from your target audience?

Answering these questions will help you talk about what you’re offering effectively through creative writing, whether that’s a blog, impactful videos, or some other way.


2. Use storytelling to build an emotional connection

People love a good story.

They like hearing about interesting people who have overcome challenges that we can all relate to.

This technique can be used in an email series, on a landing page, or in a short video. Whatever the format, it should include three basic features:

Opening – Show how the character of the story had a normal life until something happened to change that.

Conflict – Show how his/her life was threatened if s/he didn’t respond to the problem. What did this journey look like as the challenge was undertaken?

Dialogue – Start a conversation about the journey.


3. Use interactive content

Don’t limit your creativity to blogs or articles. Now there is no shortage of interactive audio-visual options to use in your creative writing. This type of content is quick to scan and easily engages your target audience.

Some of the formats you can use are:

Images
Videos
Quizzes
Polls
Memes
Infographics
Calculators and tools
Webinars
Image sliders
Surveys


4. Use fewer words

Unlike a play, novel, or movie script, in digital marketing creative writing is usually short-form content because people generally have a short attention span. They want information immediately.


5. Read

If you’re not an avid reader, it’s a good idea to develop a reading habit because creative writing calls for inspiration from different sources.

Reading makes you empathetic as you can step into the characters’ shoes and understand their feelings. You can incorporate these feelings into your creative writing, and of course, reading also expands your knowledge and increases your vocabulary.

You can familiarize yourself with the creative writing of authors and experts by reading short stories, fiction, poetry, or anything that inspires you to think creatively.


What Else Can You Do To Get Started With Creative Writing?


1. Acquaint yourself with literary devices

Literary devices or literary techniques are specific structures that writers often use to add meaning or create more compelling stories for the reader. Some common examples are metaphor, alliteration, hyperbole, and imagery. These techniques can give the reader a greater understanding and meaning of the writer’s intent.

There’s no limit to creativity when using literary devices since they provide wide-ranging creative freedom which can generate impactful writing. Start practicing with metaphors, alliteration, and imagery and you’ll soon begin unleashing your creativity.


2. Use your own writing style

Analyze your writing to understand your strengths and weaknesses. When you write you want your target audience to recognize you. Is your style descriptive, persuasive, or maybe humorous while getting your point across? You should take the reader on a journey that includes a beginning, middle, and end as mentioned earlier – opening, conflict, and dialogue.

The goal of creative writing is to find new ways to tell stories that can surprise and delight audiences. 


3. Challenge yourself

Every element of your writing requires unique thought processes. You can research writing exercises online and use them to improve your writing skills. Your readers will appreciate content that flows smoothly and effortlessly. It takes practice, but you can use these tips to get started with creative writing.


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by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

If you already have an online business that is making money, you know the basics of Internet marketing and growing your business. There are still many people who are unsure about launching a business on the internet and what to expect, and many have a website without any real online presence.


Why do you need an online presence?

There are many ways of making money online, but if you have your own product or service, you need to advertise so people know you exist.

In order to grow your business online, you need a steady flow of targeted customers and prospects visiting your website and sales pages just as you do with a brick-and-mortar business.

There are many sources for free and paid advertising that include:

Social media
Search engine and directory listings
Marketing offline
Content marketing
Blogging
Google My Business on Google
Google Adwords
Email marketing


Paid ads can become really costly very quickly so you have to watch them very closely, especially if you’re just starting out unless you have an unlimited budget.


What else is necessary to grow your business?

In order to grow your business you need:

1. Targeted traffic

Targeted traffic is a visitor that falls within the niche of your website. For example, if your website is about athletic wear and someone lands on one of your articles after doing a search for “best athletic wear for women”, that visitor is targeted. Targeted visitors are people who are genuinely interested in your products or services.

You can buy traffic, use free sources, or both. Paid traffic includes pay-per-click, solo ads, ezine advertising, and banner advertisements.

2. Product or service

Included in these internet marketing tips for home business, of course, is something to sell. This can be an actual physical product that is shipped to buyers or a digital product that can be instantly downloaded to their computers.

If you don’t have your own product, you can find good ones to sell as an affiliate marketer. Click bank, JV Zoo, and Deal Guardian are a few to check out. Just make sure they are good products that solve problems for people. This is especially important for your prospective buyers. You want them to trust you and your recommendations.

3. Marketing funnel (sales funnel)

A Sales Funnel for your Online Marketing

You must use effective advertising. This includes a lead capture page (LCP) with a lead magnet (a freebie or a discount you offer in exchange for names and email addresses) for visitors to fill in to get more information about your products/services. When they fill in the form they’ll be directed to a link to get what you’ve promised.

Now they’re on a list you’ve set up at your hosting company so you can follow up with them and establish a relationship in order for them to get to know, like, and trust you. This process of advertising, using an LCP, and a follow-up system is your sales funnel.

You need a follow-up strategy for people who do not buy from you the first time they visit your site. A marketing funnel serves that purpose by capturing visitors’ information and adding them to a list of prospects to be contacted at a later date. They may like what you’re offering but need more time to get to know and trust you before buying. Once you have a prospect’s information you can remind them of your products and services in a number of ways that include email marketing, online webinars, and social media.

So, using these internet marketing tips for home business to start or grow your business, you’ll be able to establish your online presence to let people know you exist, get targeted traffic to your website to grow your business, advertise your product/service, and follow up with your prospects.


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by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

Copywriting involves the creation of textual content for the needs of your target market. It’s broad and includes written content for blogs, advertisements, product catalogs, emails, print media, and websites.

It requires communication with your clients to know what they want and the reason for the copy you’re writing. Understanding your target market or the audience for whom you’re writing is a must.


You need the following for copywriting:

1. A computer or a smartphone
2. Internet connectivity
3. A document app or writing tool like Google docs, Draftable.com, and access to a content management system
4. A tool for checking plagiarism, like CopyScape or another
5. Tools for checking grammar and sentence structure, e.g., Grammarly


What does a copywriter do?

Copywriters write for the internet, and their content is informative for businesses and is designed to guide readers in their own research.

A copywriter is a lot more than just a wordsmith.


As a copywriter you:

Obviously, write
Research
Interview
Edit
Proofread
Plan and implement marketing campaigns, and much more.


The kinds of things copywriters write include:


White papers. Non-government white papers are about 1,500-2,500 words and are informative, educational documents that explain the origins of a problem and how it might be solved. Often that solution will be linked to what the client sells, but the majority of the white paper will be objective and useful. These tend to be gated behind a form, and are used for lead capture.


Case studies. These are short articles explaining how you’ve helped your customers.


Blog posts. These are generally a bit more informal or opinionated, but this varies from client to client.


Emails. Email campaigns are for attracting interest, raising awareness, and prompting an action. They should be short, enticing, and informative to help turn leads into customers.


Social media posts. Social media also requires copywriting for those limited-character tweets and clever Facebook updates.


Website copy. Writing for the web requires a whole other skill set, although many copywriters have it.



Today, it’s essential to have a SEO copywriting strategy for your business. It may be even more important than your social media strategy.


SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of improving your website to get more organic traffic, free traffic from people performing internet searches.


You may have to change your website design, content, and other non-technical features to get better results. Your website should be designed to attract traffic, without you having to pay for it.


This is a way you can continually get traffic, and it pays off in the long run. SEO is used to get your website’s landing pages to rank on a search engine’s first page of results for a particular word or phrase.


SEO copywriting is writing copy with this in mind and maximizing your opportunity for getting free traffic to whatever website, landing page, or offer you have.


SEO is not something that you do once and expect it to keep working. It’s an ongoing process, and you should be ready to keep investing your time and effort in it.



What skills does a copywriter need?

There are certain skills a copywriter must have which include:


Attention to detail: You need to be able to evaluate your work or copy from an objective point of view. This is necessary to properly proofread and edit your work in order to improve or enhance its quality.


Writing: Everyone can write, but not all can do it well. You don’t have to be a top-notch writer before you can attempt copywriting, although improving and fine-tuning your writing skill goes a long way in helping you become a good or even great copywriter.


Creativity: Creativity involves being imaginative and able to view things from different perspectives. Clients rely on the creativity of copywriters to make a copy interesting or engaging to a target audience. When you are creative, the development of copy ideas is easier.

Listening: You must be a good listener to be a good copywriter. By understanding your client’s needs and requirements you can more clearly meet their needs. Being a good listener helps you to become an authority in copywriting.


Along with the proper tools and setup, you need to use a SEO copywriting strategy in your business.



Your Complete Business System

by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

You can find many tutorials on the mechanics of blogging, but, there is more to writing great blog posts than just the process.

You need a great topic, headlines that offer readers the answers to their concerns, engagement, streamlined text, and more.

You must write in a manner that keeps your readers engaged, so that they don’t just take a quick glance and move on.

You can use this three-part article as a guide.




Get Your System With Autoresponder Here

by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

If you’re looking for an alternate stream of income, affiliate marketing may be your opportunity.


Affiliate marketing is a growing industry and is set to grow even more by 2024. More than 80% of advertisers use affiliate marketing.


The most popular niches are Fashion, Sports & Outdoors, Health/Wellness & Beauty, Travel, and Home & Garden, in that order. Due to covid, Travel may have dropped down the list a bit.


Amazon Associates is still the largest affiliate network.


In the past, affiliates were traditional bloggers or media publishers who had websites they could use to promote and review affiliate products. They tried to earn an income by promoting multiple brands from a range of popular affiliate programs, and even competing products.


Now, influencers are the stars of the internet. Data suggests consumers trust an influencer over an advertisement or traditional celebrity endorsement. Genuine influencers only promote products they like and trust.




What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is an advertising model for publishers to earn a commission by promoting a product or service made by someone else.


You don’t have to worry about high startup costs, as affiliate programs are normally free to join.


In affiliate marketing, you refer a product or service by sharing it on a blog, social media platform, podcast, or on a website. You (the affiliate) then earn a commission every time someone purchases through the unique link given to you to use for advertising that product or service.


Commission rates vary according to the company and the offer. There are some programs that offer a flat rate per sale as opposed to a percentage.


There are several types of affiliate marketing in existence, and some are used strictly for generating income.


The best type of affiliate marketing is one that is honest and genuine and in which you become a trusted source on the topic.




If you’re thinking about working from home, here are some business ideas to consider.


What are the pros and cons of affiliate marketing?


Pros


Affiliate marketing is a no- to low-cost business venture you can profit from.


It’s easy to execute, as you have no developing, supporting, or fulfilling of offers to do.


It’s low risk since there are no costs to join programs and you can generate passive income.


With successful affiliate marketing, it’s easy to scale your earnings without hiring additional help, and you can introduce new products and services to your current audience and build campaigns for additional products while your existing work continues to generate revenue.


Know that great affiliate marketing is built on trust. It’s best to only highlight things that you personally use or would recommend. Becoming a great marketer for a certain product requires a lot of work, even when the product interests you or fits within an existing hobby.



Cons

Affiliate marketing requires time and patience. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. You’ll need to research the most relevant and credible products to promote. You have to spend time blogging, hosting virtual events, publishing free content on social media, and doing other lead-generating activities.


Since it’s commissioned-based, you have no boss.


Temporary browser cookies are used to track people’s actions from your content. You’re paid when the desired action is taken by someone.


Affiliates have no control over the program. You must obey the rules and guidelines set by the company as to how to present their product or service.



How do affiliates get paid?


There are five common ways affiliates get paid:


Pay per sale – earn a commission for each sale you make.


Pay per action – earn a commission for a specific action.


Pay per install – you’re paid for every installation you generate from your website traffic
promoting mobile apps and software so that people download or install them.


Pay per lead – pays every time someone signs up for something. This method is common for beginners, as it’s easier to generate leads than to sell products to an audience.


Pay per click – earn a commission on every click on your affiliate link. This method is used by big merchants desiring to build brand awareness. Customers don’t need to sign up for or buy anything, just to visit the merchant’s website.


What are the top affiliate networks?


The top affiliate networks are:


Affiliate Future
AvantLink
CJ Affiliate
ClickBank
FlexOffers
LinkConnector
ShareASale


To work from home with affiliate marketing starting today, decide on a niche, choose a platform, find relevant marketing programs, create valuable content, and follow FTC guidelines.



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by Rahimah Sultan

Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.

The marketing world moves ever so quickly. Keeping up with these changes isn’t always easy, although it’s vital to stay ahead of them, in order to succeed and maintain a sense of relevance with your audience. It’s no longer enough to create a brand, product, or service and expect it to sell.

In order to start seeing success with your marketing strategies, you need to stop pushing your products on people and instead focus on the needs and desires of your target audience. Instead of focusing on a message for them to buy your product, be more focused on the features your ideal customer is looking for. People want to be approached as individuals. So, focus on building relationships and providing value, then deliver your pitch.

Due to big data and the internet, you’re now able to create hyper-personalized experiences based on what customers do online, thus enabling you to build better long-term relationships with them. This, in turn, leads to more brand loyalty and larger revenue opportunities down the line.



What should you do now?

In the past, effective marketing tactics were about using the right platforms for promotion, targeting specific audiences or demographics by using keywords and hashtags on social media sites and using retargeting campaigns on those sites where possible.

Going forward, business owners will be required to take risks, listen more intently when engaging with customers online, and invest in their branding in order to remain competitive.



What are some changes you need to be ready for?

1.  Know your purpose

Purpose overrules product features. Why are you doing what you’re doing? If you have a big idea or a problem you want to solve, then that is your purpose.


2. Know your customer

 They are at the center of everything. Knowing your customer personas and dividing them into clear segments allows you to specifically target each segment.


3.  Create a personalized and relevant customer experience

As soon as they choose to connect with you, consumers expect a seamless experience from your business. You can do this only if you utilize the power of technology and data. These two things will help you create a personalized and relevant customer experience when existing and prospective customers interact with you.


4.  Be sure marketing remains at the center of your growth strategy

Marketing messages need to be personally relevant and aligned to an individual’s situation and values, as opposed to demographics, such as age and gender.

Marketing begins with knowing your customer segment. Using segmentation and personas can bring deeper insights to media strategies, and creative marketing approaches can be carried through the entire customer experience.


5.  Use digital tools to make interactions more personal

Embrace digital technology. Digital tools allow you to make interactions more personal. You may even be able to deliver personalized products, depending on your product or service.


6.  Get serious about the potential of social media platforms

If your business relies on online sales, getting serious about the potential of social media platforms needs to be at the top of your list.


7.  Use a multichannel strategy

How do you interact with your customers? You may use chatbots, contact emails, and a phone-based contact center. All of your channels are equally important, as they impact the customer’s opinion of you or your organization.


8.  Focus on delivering a mobile strategy

The mobile experience for your customers should be at least as good as a desktop-based website. The key elements of a successful mobile site are simple navigation, clear site-search options, and quick load times.


9.  SEO is more integrated

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the oldest and most valuable forms of digital marketing. Since algorithms have continuously become smarter and more contextual, your SEO needs to be focused on integration that provides an outstanding and meaningful experience to users, and less on “hacks” and “tricks.”


10. Look for opportunities to partner with influencers in their space

Influencer marketing continues to grow. Since the influencer is endorsing the product, influencer campaigns naturally provide context and relevance.


11. Focus on what really drives your business growth

You need to become more strategic and focus on what really drives your business growth. As automation, AI (artificial intelligence), and machine learning take away a lot of the grunt work of digital marketing, you must become more strategic, as the options in digital marketing continue to grow.


12. Assume Facebook will continue to dominate

Facebook isn’t going anywhere. It has billions of users and the numbers continue to grow every month.


13. Be sure your website is optimized

Websites continue to get faster. Although website traffic is overwhelmingly mobile, most websites still don’t have fully mobile-optimized experiences. Speed will become ever more important.


14. Become more focused

You should become more focused and do fewer things better. With the explosion of digital marketing options, many businesses are spread too thin across too many channels. The smart thing to do is focus on dominating one channel.


The majority of business growth comes from the foundational tools used in digital marketing. It’s easy to become distracted by shiny new digital objects. Although marketers love new trends and want to be on the leading edge of new technologies and platforms, you shouldn’t forget to focus on your foundation. Optimizing your base digital implementation will more than likely provide a better return on investment than experimenting and getting distracted with every new tool.

As you move forward, I hope you keep these 14 marketing trends for the future of your business in mind as you continue to build and grow.


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Affiliate Marketing is a branch of Internet marketing where the advertisement publisher gets paid for every customer or sale provided by him.

Affiliate marketing is the basis for all other Internet marketing strategies.

Affiliate marketing is still alive and increasing in popularity. Even if you’re just finding out about this business model, there’s still a lot of money to be made.


What is the goal of affiliate marketing?

For a business affiliate marketing is a means of acquiring customers and an alternative to advertising.

Affiliates are salespeople working for commissions.

In affiliate marketing, affiliate management companies, in-house affiliate managers, and third-party vendors are effectively utilized for email marketing and search engine marketing for the success of products.

Web traffic can be traced with the help of a third party or owners of the affiliate programs.

Originally, affiliate marketing involved lots of spamming, false advertising, trademark infringement, etc.

Since the invention of complex algorithms and advanced security, it’s safer to do business and shop online. This even led to better scrutiny of terms and conditions by the merchants.

As affiliate marketing opened up more opportunities, it also increased marketing competition.

Due to this pressure, in-house affiliate programs for merchants were replaced by outsourced programs. The companies that offer this service have expert affiliate marketing and network program managers who have various affiliate program management techniques.

These affiliate networks have publishers associated with them who help with the advertising.


What is the origin of affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing was started by cdnow.com which had music-oriented websites. They placed a list of music albums on their site and paid others to put those links on their websites when a visitor bought an album through their site. The first company to link with cdnow.com was Geffen Records.

Two months later, a woman proposed an offer to Amazon to sell their books on her website for a certain percentage. They liked the idea and started the Amazon Associates Program. It was more of a commission program where they received a commission if a visitor clicked their links and banners on other’s sites and bought something.

Since its inception, the affiliate network has been adopted by various businesses like travel, telecom, gaming, personal finance, education, mobile, subscription sites, and retail.

The compensation methods used are Cost per sale (CPS), Cost per action (CPA), Cost per mile (CPM), and Cost per click (CPC).

The first two are the main methods used today. This is because in CPM and CPC, the visitor that turns up on a particular website might not be the targeted audience and a click would be enough to generate a commission.

CPS and CPA require that the visitor not only click on the link but also buy something or sign up for some service, which proves that the visitor is in a targeted audience. Only then does the affiliate get paid.

So the affiliate should try to send as much targeted traffic as possible to the advertiser to increase his/her returns. For this reason, affiliate marketing is also known as performance marketing. It totally depends upon the performance of the affiliate.

The affiliate team can be differentiated from a sales team by the nature of their jobs. The job of the affiliate team is to get targeted traffic to a certain point, then the sales team must influence the visitor to buy the product or service.

This is a very effective method because the money is being paid only when results have been achieved. The publisher incurs all the costs except that of initial setup and development of the program, which is incurred by the merchant.

Many businesses credit affiliate marketing for their success.

You can still make money with affiliate marketing in 2022.


Affiliate marketing may be your opportunity to make money online. You can earn money by connecting with brands and promoting their products. It’s free to join, and you don’t need special skills.

You must choose products that you use and can genuinely back, keep your product list short, and use various sources of traffic to generate sales for the product like your FB page, website, blog posts, emails, and other free tools. Be sure your website is correctly linked and positioned in search engines.

Spend time on research so you can choose a good program to earn good, fair pay. Your early commission rate may be low. A 10% commission rate is considered high.

If a product has just launched, and you know what you’re doing, you can write a review of it. If the review is ranked on the first page of Google as soon as possible, then you may have struck gold.

Before you decide to promote a product, know if it’s new and selling well.

Amazon will let you know by ratings and reviews.


If you’re a beginner and want to monetize your website, one of these three programs is a good starting place.

Amazon

Amazon is a global brand that is trusted and recognized by everyone. You make money on anything you sell, although they don’t have a Paypal option to pay you.

ShareASale

Share-a-sale is a network with many companies that use it to sell products. There is a search feature for finding things related to your niche. When you find what you’re looking for, you can join as an affiliate for that one specific product/item/service. They also do not have a Paypal option to get paid.

ClickBank

ClickBank is one of the more popular networks and has been around for quite some time. It has cleaned up and stopped accepting junk products.


The programs mentioned above are 100% Free to join, easy to use and when done correctly, have great commission payouts.

If you’re just starting, be patient, and you can earn with affiliate marketing in 2022.


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