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Yanik's Hot Sheet December 2005
February 21, 2006
Dear,
Welcome to the next every once-in-awhile “Hot Sheet” and our first one in ‘06.
Lots of stuff going on….
First off, I’ve been traveling a bunch. After returning from Vail – I jetted off 2 weeks later for a guys-only “brainstorming” Vegas trip! I was hanging out there with Jeff Walker, Jeff Johnson, Jason Potash, Ed Dale, Jeff Mulligan & Mike Long. (Yeah okay – even Missy didn’t quite buy this was a brainstorming trip) ;)
Then I just got back from a fun week in Turks & Caicos playing beach volleyball. What a blast! I went last year for the first time and made a bunch of friends who I saw again this year so the party immediately kicked into high gear once we touched down in Turks and saw each other again. I feel like I never really grew up and it’s great to find some people to love to party like I do (read: drinking games, sneaking into people’s rooms at 4 AM, and lots of other undisclosed antics.)
And now I’m 30,000 feet up finishing up this issue on the way to Aruba with 2 of my Apprentices who won the contest for being the top performers. It’s great to see how they’ve easily surpassed 6-figures with their online businesses and this is just a little icing on the cake for them.
Here’s a little fun video of the Turks & Caicos volleyball adventure. Warning: This is for adults only - some of these shots are definitely are bit uncensored:
http://www.surefiremarketing.com/volleyball
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I’ve also got a Zak update – he’s doing great! The little guy is sleeping through the night like a champ. I’m talking 10, 11 and even 12 hours. Zak’s even sleeping in late and really taking to being part of our late-rising family. :)
Missy just arranged an entire professional photo shoot for the kid before I left. I’ll post some more pics here when they’re ready.
http://www.zaksilver.com/gallery/
The one I’m looking forward to seeing is me and Zak in my library reading “Wine Enthusiast” together. And then we got another shot with Missy and Zak reading “People” magazine together. The kid’s going to grow up knowing about “cult” Cabs from me if Jennifer Anniston is over Brad Pitt yet from Missy.
The other thing going on is that Missy and I are absolutely addicted to 24. We’ve got a little routine going on. At night when she’s feeding Zak – we’ll pop in the 24 DVD. Of course, my mind is always thinking marketing. And I believe this is one of the most innovative TV formats in some time. By creating this big “hook” or angle of the entire story happening over 24 hours and in real-time they’ve amassed a rabid audience. We’re on Season 3 with the killer virus…so if you’ve seen all of them – don’t email me with the spoilers :)
And finally my editor, AKA Missy, has decided to remain on “maternity” leave so if you catch any typos or errors in here I put them in here on purpose so you guys have something to look for ;)
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Alright, let’s get down to business with our first Hot Sheet of the year…
What's Yanik's Hot Sheet, you ask?
Good question.
You see, I spend tons of money buying new information (about $50,000.00 last year), checking out new products, attending seminars, reviewing material people send, reading a bunch of books and newsletters, etc. etc. So I've decided to share with you what's new, what's hot and what's going on inside this periodic newsletter.
You'll find this filled with resources, tips, and stuff I recommend. You'll only hear from me when I've got some cool stuff to share (unless you tell me to bug off by clicking the link at the bottom). :)
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If you're ready -- let's start...
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* * Yanik's Hot Sheet * *
February 21, 2006
Resources, tips, hints and recommendations for you to make a lot more dough and enjoy a happier and healthier life.
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Check it out - here's what you'll hear about inside:
- Underground II SOLD OUT
- Underground Secret Society open to subscribers
- Double-Sized Feature Article: How To Set Up A Powerful Affiliate Program
- Public Domain Goldmine Vol 8 On the Way
- Where in the world can you see Yanik speak?
- Books and Resources you should check out
All this and more inside this double-sized issue of Yanik's Hot Sheet. Ready? Let's go...
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Hot Sheeter #1: Underground Online Seminar II SOLD OUT http://www.undergroundonlineseminar.com ---------------------------------------
If you didn’t get a seat for the upcoming Underground Online Seminar II…I’m not going to say I told you so – but I did! ;)
Last year we sold out 5 weeks before the event and this year we’re sold out 6 weeks ahead of the date (even though we added more seats).
All of this is good news for the people that got in but bad news for you if you missed out. However, you can still sign-up for the wait list in the rare event someone cancels but you'll also be notified first when the limited edition release of DVDs (only 500) from this event are available. Details here -
http://www.UndergroundOnlineSeminar.com
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Hot Sheeter #2: Underground Secret Society Open to Subscribers http://www.undergroundsecretsociety.com ---------------------------------------
I would bet not many people know I publish a “real” print newsletter. Yes, it’s true and it’s so hush-hush that I haven't breathed one word of it or made it available to anyone except a tiny group of customers. (In fact, I still can't and you'll see why on the site.)
But I’m going to open this up to 100 more Hot Sheet subscribers for the next 72 hours.
http://www.UndergroundSecretSociety.com/
I must warn you, membership is strictly limited and this may be the only time you'll hear about this.
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Double-sized Feature Article
Hot Sheeter #3: How To Set Up A Powerful Affiliate Program By Yanik Silver
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Affiliate programs (also known as reseller programs, associate programs, etc.) are an opportunity for you to get hundreds, even thousands of web sites all driving traffic to your site and making sales for you...
And the best part is you don’t pay until AFTER they make the sale!
That’s the opportunity (and it really is a great one) but I’m going to give you my realistic assessment from actually doing it. In only a few years I’ve built a sizable affiliate network of 28,422. Right now my affiliate program accounts for 50% of my traffic and 40% of my sales so obviously I’m very happy with the results!
It’s been a tremendous success starting with the first month. It brought in approximately $2900 in sales and I paid out $1400 in commissions. From my initial investment of $650 ($450 for software and $200 for additional design work) this came out to a $900 profit, or a 138% return on investment (ROI) in the first month. Six months later, it provided me with a 1900% ROI and I know it will continue paying off for many years to come.
Let me give you a little background first and then we’ll go into specifics of using this powerful strategy.
Amazon.com was one of the first companies to build an affiliate program and right now they’ve got approximately 150,000 affiliates working for them, just sending them visitors and customers. Their affiliates get paid every time someone clicks on their link and buys a book.
I believe Amazon.com created their own software to run their program – but now there are several companies that can provide you with affiliate software to run your own affiliate program.
There are two ways you can start your own affiliate program. The first way is to have a service bureau take care of nearly everything for you. They’ll handle recruiting (to an extent) and administrative functions like sending out checks, tracking, reporting, etc. But normally, you’ll pay a much higher percentage than if you did it yourself (which is the second way) – in fact, a very healthy percentage in many cases. If you don’t think you can handle some of the administrative tasks of running a program in house then you should consider outsourcing to a company like Commission Junction (www.CJ.com)
The second way is buy your own software and run it in-house (that’s what I do). ---------------------------- Affiliate Software For In-House Management ----------------------------
http://www.assoctrac.com/ (Platinum member Corey Rudl’s software)
http://www.synergyx.com (Software combines digital delivery, shopping cart and an affiliate program. This is what I currently use.)
http://www.1shoppingcart.com (Software that gives you an affiliate program, shopping, database systems and an affiliate program all together in one.)
It’s the software that is making the Web such an exciting and easy place to set up your affiliate program. It makes it completely easy to track 100, 1000, even 100,000 different affiliates’ sales. Try doing that in the offline world without a major headache. How To Build A Successful Affiliate Program From Scratch
1. Good Product This goes almost without saying but I’ll mention it again – you’ve got to have a good product that delivers on your promises. This is especially true if you want to attract ‘Super Affiliates’ (the top of the top affiliates – we’ll talk more about this in part 2).
2. Web Site With A High Closing Rate This is the #1 mistake I see most people making when trying to set up their affiliate program. They open it up before they know if their site even sells. Wrong! You need a web site that sells! Unless you have numbers that prove your site sells you shouldn’t move into marketing your affiliate program yet because you’ll simply succeed in getting top affiliates upset at you.
3. High Commissions Bottom line - the name of the game for most affiliates is how much money they can make. It’s a simple notion of opportunity cost. For top affiliates there is only a limited amount of space on their sites, endorsements, emails they can send out – if another program brings them $1.50 for email and yours is only making 25 cents – guess which one they’ll pick? No contest!
I suggest you give as much as you can to your affiliates to help motivate them. It’s much easier to do that for a digital product than a physical product. I give 45% to my affiliates. My affiliate program is also 2-tier. However unlike network marketing, it doesn’t expand past the second level. On my second level or tier, I pay 5%. For example, let’s say Bob is my affiliate. Bob refers John. And John also becomes my affiliate. When John makes a sale, Bob will get paid 5%.
I place a heavier emphasis and commission on the first level because I want my affiliates going out and making sales instead of trying to recruit more and more sub-affiliates under them.
4. Tools I try to provide my affiliates all the tools and assistance they need to be successful. This is absolutely critical. Most affiliate programs only give their affiliates a couple banners. That doesn’t help.
Remember people are lazy, so you’ve got to give them everything that they need. I created something called my “Affiliate Tool Box” for my affiliates to provide them with all the tools they needed to promote the program and do really well. We provide our affiliates with text links, sample emails, banners, articles, etc. etc. You can see my example here – www.surefiremarketing.com/tools/
Once your site is making sales and your affiliate program is set up – it’s time to announce it and really put everything into overdrive with Super Affiliates. That’s what we’ll cover now plus, I’ll let you in the backdoor of the very successful and innovative Kennedy Inner Circle affiliate program that I head up.
Welcome back to Part II. Last month I gave you an introduction to why Affiliate programs are one of the most powerful online marketing weapons in your arsenal. In this month’s article I want to share with you some of the advanced affiliate strategies and secrets I’ve been using.
The first step to any kind of successful affiliate program is to make sure your site actually sells. This is critically important! Once you have a proven sales process on your site and you’ve double and triple-checked your affiliate software is working correctly – you can start promoting your program.
Announcing Your Affiliate Program
You should start with your existing customer base. Simply send out an email announcing your program and providing the link where they can sign up. I had a feeling my affiliate program would take off because I had customers emailing me asking if I had an affiliate program they could join. (That’s definitely a good sign.)
Next, you can announce your affiliate program to the different directories of affiliate programs on the Web. I announced my new affiliate program to about 20-30 affiliate program directories.
Below is a list of Affiliate Program directories you should submit your information to:
Directories of Affiliate Programs:
Also, if you don't want to announce your program to all these sites (plus others) there is a service called Affiliate Announce (www.affiliateannounce.com) that will do it all for you.
The top place you definitely need to announce your new program to is associateprograms.com run by Allan Gardyne in Australia. Your announcement's listing needs to stress the benefits to affiliates for signing up. Good benefit-driven copy is important.
What you want to create with your affiliate program is a set of raving fans or 'evangelists'. You'll be surprised at how much affiliates talk about their best programs or what they're promoting now.
When my program first got underway I was lucky enough to get some people that are endorsing it as their best of the best affiliate programs. And not only that, but I started getting endorsements from people that owned emails lists that numbered in the thousands. So everything just seems to snowball when you get past the initial start up.
But there is one way to make your program and profits grow even quicker...
Super Affiliates
The most difficult and elusive affiliate to recruit into your program is called a 'Super Affiliate'. And these are the top 1% of 1% of all affiliates who can instantly shoot your profits through the roof. These super affiliates are people who control the search engines or Ezine owners with thousands upon thousands of subscribers, or a webmaster who gets mega traffic to their site, or marketers who own a huge customer list.
One good way to recruit these people is to do a search under your search terms in the main search engines and then contact the web site owners who come up in the top 10.
Another great ways is simply networking. At a recent seminar in Boulder I was fortunate enough to meet several heavy-hitters who I signed up for my affiliate program. Trust me, it's much easier when you've got numbers behind your site to prove they can make lots of money.
You want to stay on these guys and keep following up with more and more success stories and stats from your website and other affiliate partners.
Okay now I want to show you 2 new discoveries I’ve been using with our affiliate programs…
New Affiliate Discovery #1: Viral Ebooks
Viral ebooks are designed so that people will (hopefully) keep passing them along over and over again. And in the process build your list and sell your products if done correctly. I believe in the future you’re going to see less and less overtly commercial messages on many of the top-visited websites. Instead you’re going to see a lot of ‘branded’ content being distributed.
For example, if you sell a dog training video you could create an ebook giving some great ‘what to’ info but not the exact ‘how to’ training that dog owners would want to pass along. This ebook then directs interested people to buy the full video series at your website.
This is pretty good – but let me show how to combine affiliate marketing and viral ebooks and make this even more powerful. You let affiliates give away this new ebook with their links ‘branded’ and ‘embedded’ inside. So if anyone clicks to buy the product they get the commission. Now they have an even greater incentive to provide the ebook to their visitors. But let’s go one-step further. You should also give the affiliate the opportunity to have a link built into the ebook that directs people to their site. Now that’s double the incentive.
We’ve been giving our affiliates the opportunity to brand and customize several of our ebooks using a proprietary “on-the-fly” PDF creator at www.viralebookcreator.com. This technology is not available for sale but it might be in the future. For now, there is a bulkier and less graceful way of doing it at www.viralpdf.com
New Affiliate Discovery #2: Dead-End Links
More and more people are getting more hip to the fact that many products have affiliate commissions. So if a website owner or a newsletter editor makes a product recommendation – people are reluctant to click on a link that looks like an obvious affiliate link or they will simply cut off the affiliate id# portion to go to the root domain. (i.e. www.domain.com/x=affid=1234)
That’s why last year I created special domains for some of my key affiliate partners who were promoting a rights package I offered. I went to www.MakeYourNameStick.com and registered a brand new domain that let me manage unlimited sub-directories (yes, even I could figure this out because it’s a control panel). For instance, I registered www.megaresellrights.com as a domain with the sole purpose of letting top affiliates use it. Then I went ahead and set-up a bunch of different sub-directory names like – http://first50.megaresellrights.com and http://firstfifty.megaresellrights.com, etc instead of the much longer, uglier and easily recognized affiliate link of - www.surefiremarketing.com/first50/?3493
And the other really slick thing is the “dead end page” we set up if someone types in www.megaresellrights.com directly. It tells them they have to type in the full URL. This way affiliates feel safe that nobody is ‘hijacking’ their affiliate links. (Side note: I picked this up from T.J. Rohleder)
Now since this worked so well – I’m using a variation of technique to run Dan’s affiliate program for the Gold membership..
We set up each of our partners with their own domain name like www.dk3monthspecial.com/trial/ or www.dk3monthspecial.com/freebie/. You’ll notice each of sub-domains is a word that actually makes sense and not an affiliate id#. We are using the dk3monthspecial.com site as the main site with the dead-end page if someone tries to bypass the sub-domain.
Plus, something else that really works well is having an endorsement and picture from the endorser right at the top of each person’s page. This takes some customization work – but it’s worth it.
The results from Dan’s program so far have been extremely encouraging. The pages have a 12.8% sell through rate once someone hits the page. Dan’s affiliate program is also interesting because we pay affiliates on a recurring basis after the special 3-month trial is over. However, affiliates don’t like to wait for commissions so we engineered an immediate upsell to occur after a new member signs up for their 3-month trial. This way an affiliate can make immediate commission on products offered plus recurring monthly commission on the membership. And top affiliates have been paid $1,500 - $6,000/month in commissions.
Frankly, my affiliate program is the single biggest traffic and profit generation source I use in my business. If you follow the information from last month and this month – you can be on your way to building your own powerful affiliate network.
Copyright Yanik Silver
-- Note: If you’d like to reprint this article you have permission to do so as long as the copyright information and the resource box below remains with the article --
Resource box:
====================================================== Just 32-years old, Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on creating automatic, moneymaking web sites…and he still doesn’t know how to put up his own website.
He is the author, co-author or publisher of several best-selling online marketing books and tools, which can be found at www.SurefireMarketing.com
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Hot Sheeter #4: Public Domain Goldmine Volume(tm) VIII is coming
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Public Domain Riches Gold Mine Volume VIII is coming soon. It’ll be released within 2-3 weeks...
The previous volumes of Public Domain Riches Gold Mine were in such demand that volumes I, II, III, IV, VI, & VII all SOLD-OUT within 3 weeks of their release! (Actually more specifically only Vol. 7 took 3 weeks because it was over the holiday season – every other volume was gone in 2 weeks flat!)
The Gold Mine package contains 35 ‘how to’ works in 35 different high-demand and high-profit potential niches. Plus, just about everything you need for each niche including keyword analysis and market research.
In case you missed out – you can get first chance when we release Volume VIII with 35 all-new and totally different works by heading here – http://www.PublicDomainGoldMine.com
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Hot Sheeter #5: The Info Marketing “Players” Gathering
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In June I’ve decided to hold a complete “tell-all” event on information marketing and how I’ve successfully earned millions from everything from $17 ebooks to $14,500 Apprentice programs and everything in-between. Details will be forthcoming but this is going to be one event you don’t want to miss.
Just like my Internet Copywriting seminar I did the previous summer – this will become the end-all-be-all standard for info marketing (online and off). And the price tag will reflect it. Admission will be a hefty $5k.
But I’ve had a crazy idea to make it totally free for you with one catch! If you have a success story of brining in over $25k online using my resources that you will document and share – you’ve got a spot. Now that means the only way in the door or you can pay the full $5000.00 price tag. And that’s why this is called the “Players” Gathering.
Look out for even more details on this shortly. I’m sure there are going to some pretty annoyed people out there but I’ve got a bunch of reasons for doing this “my way” and you’ll hear about them soon!
In the meantime if you want in – start thinking about and putting together the “proof” you need to show me you’ve done well with any of our materials & tools. And if you still haven’t made it work – this would be the perfect incentive to give it another go.
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Hot Sheeter #6: Where’s Yanik Speaking Next?
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As you might have noticed I don’t speak that often. I’m cutting way back on my speaking this year but I’ve got 2 events on back-to-back weekends that you might consider attending
#1: GKIC Super Conference 2006 http://www.dankennedyoffer.com/yanik/
I will be speaking at Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer’s MARKETING & MONEY-MAKING SuperConference March 31- April 2nd in Chicago and I would strongly recommend that you attend.
I’ll be speaking on the entire day devoted to “Everything Internet” with my friend Derek Gehl, CEO of the Internet Marketing Center.
Check out the incredible line-up Bill Glazer has secured for this event - http://www.dankennedyoffer.com/yanik/
* * #2: Big Seminar Atlanta 2006 http://www.bigseminar.com/yanik/
Big Seminar7 hosted by Armand Morin has become the undisputed heavyweight networking event for Internet marketers (apart from my event of course) ;)
It’s been several years since Armand got me on stage so I’ll have some new goodies to share. I’m sure I’ll see some familiar faces there! http://www.bigseminar.com/yanik/
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Hot Sheeter #7: Books, Tools & Resources You Need to Check Out
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Here are the latest books I’ve read that are worth mentioning….
“Mindmapping in the Workplace” by Tony Buzan. I got this book as a holiday present from my friend Bill Harrision of FreePublicity.com. He knows I’m a huge fan of using mindmapping for all kinds of aspects of my business and even my personal life. This has some cool practical uses for mindmapping in your business (though some aspects were clearly written for employees and not that relevant).
The people who have seen my proprietary mindmapping technique for sales copy were blown away. It’s featured in my: http://www.ultimatecopywritingworkshop.com
I’ll be sharing a great deal about mindmapping for info marketing at my Players Gathering in June. --
Creativity : Flow and the Psychology
of Discovery and Invention
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Why would my overweight and out-of-shape buddy Ryan Deiss run 13.1 miles (21.0779 kilometers)?
Furthermore, why would he also give away $331 in free special reports (including an AdSense guide he's never-before revealed to the public)?
The reason may surprise you... http://www.drivingtraffic.com/13miles/
* It’s pretty cool*
** “NO BS Internet”
If you've got an offline business and need to get up and going online OR if you're ready to make more from your online ventures - you've still got time.
However I must warn you that window of opportunity is closing pretty damn quickly!
You see, the "Big Boys" with deep pockets are waking up to incredible power of the Internet. And they've got their sights set on dominating the online marketplace and muscling you out of the action.
I've teamed up with top Direct Marketing expert and my good friend Bill Glazer to create a program that many people have been asking for. It's designed to give you a realistic way to profit from simple online methods to attract new customers & generate more sales...no matter what business you're in.
It's called "The NO B.S. Online Tele-Coaching Program" http://www.NoBSInternetSuccess.com
(Good news - there are a handful of charter subscriptions left!)
The next call is February 28th with Dave Dee on how to extract maximum money from tiny lists. You’ll still have time to get in there LIVE if you’re quick.
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Phil Wiley’s forum is back in action!
http://www.affiliatetalkforum.com/index.php
One of the top forums on the net (formerly top 5000 in
traffic according to Alexa) is back. Phil’s forum was hacked but now it’s back.
I pop in every once in awhile
* * Becky Hagel emailed me with a sad tale of someone trespassing on your land and shooting her dog, Simon. Incredible. She’s holding an auction to raise funds for the Humane Society and I’ve donated one of our best-selling products: http://simonsfundraiser.org/auctions/viewforum.php?f=1
* * Bob Serling recently did some short (but power-packed) interviews with a few of the top people in online and offline marketing. Experts like Bob Bly, Joe Vitale Randy Gage, Clayton Makepeace, Jeff Walker, Sean D’Souza, John Carlton, David Garfinkel, Paul Myers, Bob Scheinfeld, Shel Horowitz, John Jantsch, Bob Serling and yours truly. If you want grab all 15 interviews for free check out http://www.directmarketinginsider.com/DoubleContest.php (sorry the contest is over)
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Well that does it for this issue of Yanik's Hot Sheet. Thanks for reading and here’s wishing you and yours a very happy, joyous holiday season and prosperous 2006!
All the best,
Yanik Silver
P.S. Have you seen all our newest happenings?
http://www.PublicDomainGoldmine.com Volume 8 is coming out shortly
http://www.UltimateCopywritingWorkshop.com Why is this the world’s most expensive copywriting course?
http://www.PublicDomainRiches.com/leap/ (new 8-week program)
http:///www.InstantInternetProfits.com (new 6-week program)
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