SoloSavvy Blog for Solo Entrepreneurs » Alicia M Forest

Asking: A Key to Your Business Success

Alicia M Forest — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:42:08 +0000

Many small business owners like us have a difficult time asking for business. It’s not that we don’t want the business, but wouldn’t it be so nice if people just handed over their money for our product or service rather than our actually having to ask them for it?

And this is one of the most common ways that small businesses stay really, really small, and sometimes peeter out altogether. They don’t ask for the business, or they don’t ask for it often enough to create a successful and sustainable business.

Here are 5 easy ways that you can ask for the business that if you implement on a consistent basis will guarantee that your business – and your bottom line – will grow.

1. Ask what they want…

The #1 way to grow a profitable business is to offer what your target market wants. And the best way to find that out is to ASK them.

At least once a year, survey your target market, asking them specifically what their biggest challenges are and what products and services they are most interested in. Periodically ask your current clients and customers the same question.

Use their responses to develop your offerings and you’ll practically guarantee yourself a source of steady in^come.

2. Ask for the sale…

Once you’ve create the product or service that your target market has told you it wants, you have to put it out there and ASK for the sale.

Don’t just stick it on your website and hope people will see it. Put together a promotion plan for each product or service you put out, including email promotions, using your online networks, utilizing your affiliates, and even consider pay-per-click advertising.

Then periodically ASK for the sale again. Plan a year’s worth of regular promotions for each of your offerings and you’ll increase your in^come.

3. Ask for the order…

A simple but oft-missed tip: Make sure that on your sales page for your product or service, you ASK for the order.

Just flat-out ASKing for the order can increase your sales dramatically.

Aside: Have you ever been on a website ready to buy something but you couldn’t find the order link and ended up clicking away in frustration to go find what you wanted somewhere else? Don’t do that to your customer. Make your order link or buy button very obvious!

4. Ask for the referral…

Another way to build your business is to routinely ASK your current clients and customers to refer others to you. You can do this via a simple email that you send out periodically. You could also offer an affiliate program to entice people to refer your products and services to others for a small commission.

5. Ask for the recommendation…

Make a request of a colleague whose offerings complement yours to recommend you and your offerings to their list. Because the people on your colleague’s list already know, like and trust him/her, they are much more likely to follow his/her recommendation.

Now you have 5 simple ways to grow your business that you can put into practice today.

When Doing Less IS More in Your Business

Alicia M Forest — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:12:51 +0000

Are you working too hard in your business? If you’re an entrepreneur, you probably are, especially if you’re in the early stages of your business building. And you’re not alone.

Here’s an example from my own client files:

I was recently working with a client who was a real go-getter, very serious about being in business for herself, and marketing only to a more affluent clientele. She wanted to increase her reach into that market online. And she was considering adding article marketing to her mix.

At this stage in her business, she was already doing quite well. She was close to making 6 figures and charging 5 times as much as her counterparts – and getting it easily. But she wasn’t satisfied. She really wanted to break the $100k mark before the third anniversary of her business, which was coming up in just a few months.

When she asked me, “What is the quickest, most cost-effective way to regularly market articles?” and then told me she planned to do this work herself, I stopped her.

“You know, just because you can do this task, doesn’t mean you should…”

She was quiet for a moment before asking me to elaborate.

“I know your writing is high quality and of high value to your market, and I definitely think you should be getting that content out there, to the appropriate places that will bring you the highest return-on-investment for your efforts. But I don’t think you should be doing this yourself. It’s not a good use of your time or your energy. What do you think?”

After a bit more discussion, she agreed to hire someone to do this for her.

As you read this, did you think of perhaps one task that you routinely do (or that falls by the wayside because you can never just get to it) that you know is ‘below your pay grade’ and yet you continue to waste time and energy on it (even if that time and energy is just thinking about how you’re NOT getting it done?)?

This concept was (still is, from time to time) difficult for me to grasp when my own coach shone a light on it for me. But since I’ve tried to be aware of how much effort I really need to put into a task to get the result I want, it’s opened up space for things to flow more effortlessly and more quickly than ever.

Here are four ways you can do less and still grow in your business:

1. Email

Do you spend more time than necessary responding to emails? Do you write two paragraphs when a two-sentence response would suffice? Do you respond to emails that actually don’t require a response? Do you check email every 5 minutes (come on, fess up!)? What if you didn’t do any of these things and still had a handle on your inbox? You can, if you put the right system in place.

2. Blog

Are you writing blog posts that are long? Maybe it even feels cumbersome to try to write a post the length of an article. Don’t – keep them short and pithy. Make sure your keywords are in the content and it doesn’t matter how long your posts are to the search engines – and your readers will probably appreciate shorter posts as well. Better yet, turn your weekly ezine articles into blog posts to save even more time and energy.

3. Website

Are you constantly updating your website? Does it really need to be revamped so often? More to the point, is this something you have to do yourself? No. Most virtual assistants can make website updates for you at a much lower cost to your time and energy than you doing it yourself.

4. Customer/Client Relations

Who responds to questions and comments from your clients and customers? Are you processing refunds, working out payment glitches, resending download links, answering the same questions about your programs over and over, or any other task that could easily be passed off to a capable assistant? You can quickly and easily train someone to respond to these inquiries in your voice by having them shadow you via blind-copying them on each email you send out. Then reverse the process and voila – another time and energy drain has been removed from your shoulders.

If you’ve been a client of mine, it’s very likely you’ve heard one of my mantras, “Done is better than perfect.” I usually follow that with, “And it’s never going to be all done.” So choose to cause yourself less stress and DO LESS. Experiment with this and see how much more productive you’ll actually be. Think of just one thing that you could do the easy way instead of the hard way, or delegate to an assistant, or better yet, take off your ‘must-do’ list altogether.

4 Easy Steps to Leveraging Your Articles

Alicia M Forest — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:05:16 +0000

Writing valuable content-rich articles for your target market and submitting them to article directories and other publishers is one of the best ways to market your business, become known as an expert in your field, and add subscribers to your list.

For example, if you regularly write an article for your ezine, you can get a lot more mileage out of it if you submit it to article directories and other online publishing services. And making every piece you write work more than once for you is one way to work smarter and not harder. That’s called leverage.

There are several reasons why you want to do this. One is to get your name and your business out there so people will learn who you are and what you do, and it helps to position you as an expert. No more keeping yourself a secret and hiding behind your computer!

Another reason is that your articles give people a taste of your style, what it is that you offer, and it gives them an opportunity to get to know you a bit without risking anything.

At the end of each article include a resource box so if people want to find out more about you and your business, they have that information at their fingertips. Once someone reads your article, if they like your stuff, they will likely visit your website and sign up for your Free Taste (your free offering that gets people on your list). And writing articles is one of the fastest (and FREE) ways to get lots of exposure, especially if a publisher with a large list picks it up!

Want to get started? Here are the 4 easy steps:

1. Write the article or recycle one you’ve already written, giving it a fresh edit (it never hurts).

Write or revise an article targeted at your niche that is full of valuable content. A couple of tips: Articles can be anywhere from 400-800 words in length for the best chance of being picked up (if you have a longer article, consider chopping it in half and making it two shorter articles). Also, articles with lists, steps, or mini-chunks of information seem to be the most read.

2. Add your copyright.

Don’t forget to protect your work by adding a copyright. At the end of each article, put a copyright notice with the date of when you first published the article. For example, Copyright 2009 Alicia M Forest.

3. Write the copy for your author’s box.

After your copyright notice comes what’s usually referred to as the “resource box” or “author’s box.” In order for others to publish your work, ask that they include this information at the end of your article, keeping what you provide in it whole and intact. As this is standard practice, you’ll find most publishers will honor this request.

Write 3-5 lines that entice people to find out more about you by providing the web address to the sign-up page for your Free Taste. Using this space to encourage people to join your list by signing up for your ezine or other free offering is another way to leverage your article.

A tip: Again, don’t send your article readers to your home page. Send them to a page set up specifically to add them to your list. For example, say “for more articles like this, please visit www.yourezinepage.com to sign up!”

4. Submit your article.

Although this is one of the most time-consuming marketing tasks, it can be made much simplier by either hiring a Virtual Assistant to do it for you, or by using an article submission service.

There are literally hundreds of websites that offer free content for publishers who are in need of quality articles for their own publications or websites. Here are some of the best ones:

www.ezinearticles.com
www.ideamarketers.com
www.goarticles.com
www.article-host.com
www.articlecity.com

Bonus step:

If you want to see stronger results from submitting your articles, contact directly those publishers of ezines and websites in your niche. Google publishers of ezines in your target market and then send a query to the editor/owner about submitting an article. Present yourself as a professional and offer your article for their use, provided the resource box remains intact. Paste your article under your message (attachments can get blocked, and if the receiver doesn’t know you it’s unlikely they will open and read it anyway).

Writing and submitting articles is one of the tried-and-true, if slow-and-steady, ways to build your list, become known as an expert, and offer value to your target market.

How to Make Your Email Promotions Sell More

Alicia M Forest — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:12:31 +0000

Just like writing a sales page for your product, program or service, writing successful email promotions can be easier than you think. There’s a science to it, more than an art, and to get you started, I’d like to share a tested formula for you to follow.

Taking the time to consider and answer the questions below before you write your email promotion will make it easier to write, easier for your reader to engage with, and easier to turn your prospect into a buyer.

Here are 5 essential elements to writing email promotions that will increase your sales:

1. Who’s your audience?

It’s important to know exactly who your audience is before you start writing the copy for your email promotion. Obviously, you’ll be sending your promotion to your list. But will it be for your entire ezine subscribers list? Or are you making an offer only to the people on your list who have bought from you before, your customers? Or are you targeting your one-on-one clients only?

Getting really specific about who you are writing your email promotion to will allow you to make it as personal as possible, and the more personal you can make it, the more sales you’ll make.

2. What action do you want to your reader to take?

Decide what it is exactly that you want your reader to do. Is it to subscribe to your ezine? Is it to join one of your group programs? Do you want them to invest in a new product or take advantage of a sale you’re having on an established product?

Choose only ONE thing for your reader to do (remember, ‘a confused mind always says no’) and they are much more likely to do it.

3. What benefits will your reader get?

If your reader purchases your product, how will they benefit? If someone subscribes to your ezine, what will they get out of it? If a reader signs up to work with you one-on-one, how will that make things better, easier, more fun or whatever it is that you can do for them?

Make the benefits your reader gets crystal clear in your email promotions. If you have more than one, use bullets to make them easier to read and digest, and that lead the reader smoothly to your call to action.

4. What’s your ‘take action now’ lever?

For each promotion you do, you want to choose and use a tactic for getting people to take action. We’re all procrastinators, so you want to strongly encourage your reader to take action right away.

Some tactics you can use are to offer a limited availability, a limited time, limit spots, special price, free shipping for a limited time, etc.

5. What’s your format?

Couple of notes on the format of your email promotions:

- Testing shows that HTML emails with bullets tend to generate higher response rates, as long as they are relatively short.

- Make sure your call to action (‘Buy Now’, ‘Visit This Page for More Info’, ‘Order Today’) is near the end of your email promotion, after your list of benefits and your ‘take action’ lever.

- Include contact information at the bottom of your email promotions, with an email address and/or phone number for people who have questions.

- Don’t forget your unsubscribe information as well, to comply with CAN-SPAM laws.

- Include a PS, which is the second most read part of any sales copy. One effective use of a PS is to ask for the order again, including the link.

Use these 5 elements as a framework for your next email promotion and track your conversion rates. You should see more results and make more sales by doing so!

Create Your Facebook Opt-in Box to Build Your List

Alicia M Forest — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:05:28 +0000

If you’re using Facebook as another way to connect with your target market and colleagues, kudos to you. But do you have a way for them to sign up for your email list?

There’s a simple application that allows you to set up an opt-in box right on your profile page. The application is called the “Profile HTML” application, and you also need the code for your opt-in form from Aweber or whatever list service provider you’re using before you follow the steps below. Just log into your account and copy the code for your opt-in form, then take the following steps:

1. Log in to your Facebook account.

2. Click on the Home tab at the top of the page.

3. Click on the Applications edit link on the right-hand side of the page.

4. Find “Profile HTML” application and click on it.

5. Paste the code for your opt-in box into the form box that says ‘your code’

6. Click Preview to make sure it looks ok, then click Submit to place it on your profile page.

Voila! It should show up on the left-hand side of your profile page.

Then in your “write something about you” box, point your visitors to the opt-in box to encourage them to sign up.

Simple Product Creation

Alicia M Forest — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:47:45 +0000

Once you’ve figured out your niche (or you’ve at least narrowed it down significantly), it’s time to figure out what problems they are struggling with, and what they want by way of solutions. Remember, if you will only ask your market, it wants to help you create the products it wants to buy!

How do you find out what your target market wants? There are several ways to get this information and use it to help you create an offering that will solve your niche’s problems and make a profit for you at the same time.

The best way is to do your research. The most critical research to do is to join the conversations that your market is having:

Here are two ways to do this:

1. Simple: Ask them!
Ask your prospects a simple, open-ended question, like “What’s your biggest challenge with building your business online?” or “What’s the one thing you’d like to learn more about that relates to balancing your work and family life?” Tailor the question to your niche and use the information you receive to help spark ideas for new products and services.

2. Almost as Simple:
Do a simple survey that asks 1-10 questions using a survey tool like Zoomerang or Survey Monkey. This allows you to ask more specific questions to elicit more specific responses. Doing a survey like this really helps you to NOT waste your time creating offerings your target market simply doesn’t want.

Once you’ve figure out what your niche’s problems are, you can create or find the solutions to solve those problems. Your solution can be packaged in a variety of ways: an ecourse, a PDF manual, an ebook, an audio download and/or CD, group programs, teleseminars, e-manuals, etc.

3-Step Process to Creating Products:

Here’s a very simple process to follow to create a product to add to you funnel quickly:

1. Do a free or paid live class on your product

Once you’ve done your research and you’ve chosen a topic your target market is interested in knowing more about, offer a 1-hour teleclass on that topic. Cover three points and offer your solutions. Most important is to make sure you record the teleseminar, as this is what leads to a product for you.

As you’re designing your outline for the class, do so in a way that creates notes for your participant. (If you’re a member of my Coaching Cafe, you know that I give very detailed class notes, so you know what I mean by this).

As the end of your live teleclass, you’ll have the recording and notes to then…

2. Package it virtually.

Now you have the audio recording and notes to offer as a bundled product and…

3. Package it into a tangible product.

You can then take it up a notch and turn it into a physical product and offer it that way as another income stream for you.

And here are some of my other favorite tips for simple product creation:

- If you don’t have a list or access to a list, you can offer a free class on a topic and then charge people for the product down the road, or afterwards.

- Another option is to have someone interview you on your topic to create your product. You can offer the questions along with the interviewee’s questions. This is a good strategy if you don’t think you can get enough people on a call.

- You can record any live classes or workshops you’re holding as well, and re-package those presentations virtually or tangibly.

- Try to record everything so you always have the option to offer it at some level down the road.

- Promote your teleclass to your list, via colleagues who are willing to spread the word (especially if it’s free) and at teleclass listing services.

- Promote on the discussion lists and groups that you’re a part of, promote it there with permission and on the appropriate day.

- Pricing: If this is a new process for you, if you’re offering your topic for the first time and sort of feeling out your market, go with the lower end. If you’re putting together a 90-minute class with lots of comprehensive step-by-step information, charge more.

- When it comes to creating your big-ticket item, they can be created from all these little products along the way. So, if you were creating a product a month or every other month, that gives you 6-12 products at the end of the year that can be packaged together into your big ticket item.

How to Leverage Your Time & Talent to Help More People and Make More Money

Alicia M Forest — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:00:15 +0000

Before my business evolved into what it is now, I was trading my time for money, dollars for hours. As a website designer and developer, I charged by the hour. As a writer/editor, I charged by the hour. As a public relations and marketing consultant, I charged by the hour.

Do you see the problem here?

There are only so many hours in the day, right? And if I wanted to pay the rent, I needed the majority of them to be billable hours, which left little to no time for marketing. As you can imagine, without the time to market my business, I struggled to get clients.

But I don’t struggle anymore, and here’s why: it’s called leverged income – multiple streams of leveraged income – that enables me to work with much fewer (but more of my ideal) clients one-on-one, and gives me much more time for marketing and growing my business with a lot less effort.

Okay, so what exactly can YOU do to step struggling, to stop trading time for money, so you can actually work less and make more?

Here are three quick tips I’m delighted to share with you:

1. Use the funnel method of marketing.

I talk about this constantly, but it’s such a powerful model (that actually works) that I want as many businessowners as possible to embrace it. If you set your business up within this system, it will automatically do your marketing for you. And it’s the best kind of marketing – the “set it and forget it” kind!

2. Stop trading time for money…

…and start creating products that will bring you leveraged income. You can create products from knowledge you already have, in a way that is easy to package and deliver, such as an ebook. Taking your expertise and bottling it actually allows you to help more people than you ever could one-on-one, and it lets those prospects who might not be able to afford your one-on-one fees an option of still working with you, just in a different format.

3. Raise your fees.

Once you start offering products and start bringing in leveraged income, raise your one-on-one fees. Now don’t gasp! What will raising your fees do? It will allow you to gracefully let go of some of those less than ideal clients and let you work with more of those whom you are best suited to serve. The increase in fees will, at the very least, offset the loss of revenue from the clients that have dropped off, but ultimately you will bring in more revenue by taking your business to a higher level of quality and commitment. It will also give you more time to create more products!

Structure your business around this model and you will enjoy working with more of your ideal clients and customers, create more income by way of packaging your knowledge into products, and give yourself more time to spend building your business and creating your life to the highest vision of it you can imagine.

How to Tame the Niffler in You

Alicia M Forest — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:32:13 +0000

What’s a Niffler, you ask?

Well, if you’ve read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, you might remember that a Niffler is a critter that hunts treasure. Once it finds one treasure, it moves on quickly in search of the next prize.

Do you do the same thing in your business? Meaning, are you a constant gatherer of the things that you think will move your business ahead, but not so much the implementer of them? Do you get distracted by anything and everything that’s new in your industry? Do you come up with one great idea after another, but you never fully commit to completing one of them?

Yes? I hate to break it to you, but there’s probably a bit of Niffler in you! You could also call it distractibility-disorder or failure-to-follow-through or fear-of-success/failure, or focus-challenged… but personally, I like having a bit of Niffler in me. It means I’m still passionate about what I’m doing, I’m still excited about learning new things, and I’m still interested in what’s happening in my industry, which lends to my ultimate success.

But what can happen is that all those ideas and thoughts and half-completed projects don’t move my business forward. For example, when I started my own business almost 8 years ago ago, there was a fraction of the business-building technology and tools available that there are now. And it’s so easy to want to jump on the cutting-edge bandwagon. But at some point, if I didn’t focus on actually completing things, I’d still be spinning my wheels instead of driving in the fast lane.

So, how do you tame the Niffler in you?

The strategy that has worked the best for me (not 100% of the time, but close enough) has been to keep an Idea Log. The one I have now is just an old-fashioned composition book, and whenever I have a new idea or thought about something I want to do related to my business, I just jot it down in my Idea Log. Then I go back to working on my current project that I am committed to completing. I know my ideas are saved there for me so I won’t forget them, and eventually I do go back and refer to what I’ve written and choose some to work on.

What this also does, besides helping me to maintain my focus, is it stops me from wasting time on ideas that ultimately don’t fit into my business. Many ideas end up almost self-selecting themselves out by virtue of time. So by keeping my focus on the ultimate treasure, I don’t get side-tracked by fool’s gold…

If you think you have a little Niffler in you, try this idea and enjoy a dramatic increase in your own productivity!

3 A-has from Ali Brown’s Online Success Blueprint Workshop

Alicia M Forest — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:57:53 +0000

Me: I’m done…. (to hubby after arriving home from Ali Brown’s Online Success Blueprint Workshop)

Him: With what? (read: uh-oh…)

Me: I’m done with thinking, playing, being small. I know I’ve been saying this for awhile, but it really became clear to me at the workshop – I’m so done with the piddly stuff. No more…

…and on (and on..) the conversation went. Here are three of the main shifts in my thinking (and feeling and being) I’ve made from my experience at the workshop.

1. I’m not a joiner…

That may surprise you, if you know me at all. I love people, I love being a part of ’stuff’, and my daughter definitely has my ‘I’m afraid I’m going to miss something…’ gene…

And I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve literally left my house on only 3 occasions in the last three years (while I focus on tending to two little ones) – and thus ‘it’s the hermit life for me’ has become innate, but it became very clear to me how much an individual I am at this event – in a good way. Meaning that I’ve become very comfortable and confident in my own skin, in who I am as a person, both personally and professionally, without even realizing it.

Mindshift: My success is not based on the 5 people I surround myself with. It’s based on me.

That being said…

2. I’m not a competitor…

If you’ve been reading this ezine for awhile, you may have read my ‘Turn Your Competitors into Collaborators’ article (maybe even more than once, as I keep reprinting it due to the amount of positive responses it always receives).

So, although this wasn’t necessarily a new ‘a-ha’ for me, being at this event and meeting so many success-driven AND purposeful business owners validated my belief in abundance, that there is more than enough for everyone – and then some.

Here’s something that Ali said that summed up how I feel very succinctly:

Mindshift: I don’t compete. I don’t compare. I just am.

Yup. Take that one to heart, please – it’s incredibly freeing.

3. I’m not your average mompreneur

Ok, this one wasn’t a huge relevation, but what was was that I got to meet a bunch of other ‘not your average mompreneurs’ at Ali’s event, like Alexis Martin Neely, Sheri McConnell, MaryPat Kavanagh, Sarah Robinson, Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, and several others. (Google these amazing women to find out what they’re up to…)

I’m grateful to be in such amazing company, and to know that this special group of women I’ve had a passion for supporting when I first started out in 2004 with www.EntreMoms.com is finally coming into its own. Amen!

Mindshift: I’m not the only one who is building an empire while raising a family.

So what do these mean? For me, it means that the vision I had for my business when I started out was too small. It means that there’s an opportunity for me to make a much bigger impact that I ever conceived possible before. It means that I’ll be making bigger and better decisions about ‘what next’ going forward.

It means I’m done playing small. What about you?

4 Simple Steps to Starting Your Affiliate Program

Alicia M Forest — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:19:04 +0000

I was one of those online businessowners who was hesitant to add an affiliate program to my business building efforts. But once my clients and customers starting asking me if I had one that they could join, I knew it was time to bite the bullet and conquer this particular piece of technology.

Now, of course, I wonder why the heck I waited so long (talk about leaving money on the table!). It couldn’t be simplier to get started with your own affiliate program. You can get very elaborate, but the basic set-up is easy, and once you do one campaign, the next one is a piece of cake.

(And after just generating about $1000 in affiliate commissions myself by sending just one pre-written email to my list, I’m a huge fan of promoting other people’s valuable products and programs too.)

If you’re not yet familiar with what an affiliate program is, it’s basically an easy way for your clients and customers to tell other people about your products and programs, by way of a special link, that rewards them with a commission on each sale they make for you. Basically, they get paid for referring clients and customers to you.

The great thing about affiliate programs is that they’re very easy to enroll your clients and customers into, because it’s a win-win proposition. They make a certain percentage in commission for each sale, and you make a sale you might not have otherwise.

And if you write the marketing copy for them, whether it’s for an email promotion or a simple graphic that your affiliates can post to their own websites, you’ll make it amost effortless for them to promote your offerings.

For you, besides the benefit of having a sales force on your team that you only pay when they make the actual sale for you, you don’t have to pay for advertising that may or may not pay off. It’s like Google Adwords. With Adwords, you only pay Google when someone clicks on your ad. With an affiliate program, you only pay when your affiliate makes a sale.

Here are 4 simple steps for harnessing the the power of your raving fans (via an affiliate program):

1. Choose Your Tool

Most shopping cart systems (like 1ShoppingCart) offer an affiliate program as part of their service. Or you could choose a stand-alone affiliate system. I like and use 1ShoppingCart’s affiliate tools because they intergrate with the rest of the technology I use in the cart as well as with some of my other systems, which makes tracking and managing my campaigns easier. And 1SC’s ‘look and feel’ is very familiar to online buyers, which helps attract potential affiliates.

2. Choose Your Tier

Then you’ll need to decide whether to offer a 1-tier program or a 2-tier program. Simply put, a 1-tier program is set up so that you pay your affiliates for any sales they make on your behalf. A 2-tier program is set up so that you pay a small percentage of any sales generated by affiliates they referred to your program. To start out, I suggest keeping it simple and choose a 1-tier program, as you can always add a second tier later.

3. Choose Your Campaign Method

For each product or program you want to offer an affiliate fee on, decide how you will promote it, whether it be via unique affiliate links, banner ads, or other product graphics with the affiliate links embedded.

Regardless of how you’ll format your links, you’ll want to provide promotional copy for your affiliates to use. It’s much easier for your affiliates to promote your offerings when all they have to do is cut and paste an email you’ve already written for them (and you’re really the best person to do that anyway, since you know your offering the best).

If you make the process of promoting as easy as possible for your affiliates, more of them will take action and promote your offerings, and you’ll both make more money.

4. Choose Your Commission

It’s important to pay your affiliates a great commission for each sale they make for you. Frankly, the more you pay, the more you’ll earn, because your affiliates will be much more motivated to promote for you. Not only do you make a sale that you wouldn’t have otherwise, you also now have a new client or customer, who is likely to become a repeat buyer (because as much as 40% of people who have bought from you once will buy from you again).

There you have it – 4 simple steps to creating your own affiliate program. Now the next time someone wants to refer someone to you for your product or service, you can thank them by way of paying them an affiliate fee.

Need help creating and managing your affiliate program? Join your colleagues is a fun and informative learning and DOING environment here.