Affiliate sales 101

Posted on by

Affiliate marketing is a very popular marketing tool people use to promote their product on the internet and can be a great way to promote your digital goods at practically no cost. The way affiliate Marketing works is that people otherwise, called publishers,are recruited by you to put an advertisement for your product on their website or social media profile that has a purchase code other called an HTML cookie attached to your product. Specifically, when someone clicks on the advertisement and purchases your digital product the sale is traced back to the affiliate and you and the affiliate split the revenue from the sale. Many people ask us how they can effectively build an affiliate network to reward people with a commission who sell their product. In this tutorial we will describe exactly how to effectively build an affiliate network and sell your products by rewarding people to promote them online.

In order to build an affiliate marketing network, you first need to sign up for an affiliate program. We have partnered with Clix Galore, which we feel provides a really good affiliate tracking service and is also free to join (note: you must give a $70 deposit which you get back once you finish using their program). After you have signed up, it is now vital that you recruit people to start promoting your digital goods. There are two main types of demographics you can recruit into your affiliate marketing campaign. The first type are individuals who are connected to your social media profiles and product niche. Whether they are fans of your digital goods on Facebook, follow your company on twitter, or even personal contacts on Facebook, this demographic makes a great group to recruit to your affiliate network. These type of promotions can include links to your website on a person’s facebook page, a tweet with your url on twitter, or even a blog post with an affiliate link back to your website. It is best to recruit people who are connected to your product niche such as fans of your Facebook page as they will in a likelihood have friends or connection who share their interest in your product niche.

The second group of publishers we advise you to recruit are people who have website that is related to your product niche and have them promote your digital goods with an advertisement on their site. For example, if you sell eBooks you could approach someone who has an eBook review site or if you sell extreme sports videos you could approach a website publisher who runs an extreme sports related website. What’s so great about this type of marketing is that you only pay people who advertise for you a part of your revenue, making this marketing strategy risk-free.

Now that we know how to successfully develop an affiliate marketing campaign it is important to discuss how you decide what percentage of your revenue you split with your affiliates. Ultimately the decision of how you share your revenue with your publishers is up to you. However, with that being said, we recommend that you do a 75/25 or 70/30 split with your publishers, in order to stay competitive with other people who use affiliate marketing strategies to sell digital downloads. In other words, you should give you publishers 25 to 30% of your profit from every sale that they refer. The reason you should give your publishers such as high commission is that the cost to develop digital goods is very low cost and high margin business. Therefore publishers need to be incentivized with a generous commission rate to feel like you are treating them fairly. Thus, as we can see running a affiliate marketing campaign can be a great low-cost, low-risk way to promote your digital goods.

How to run a PPC ad campaign and sell your digital products on Google Adwords

Posted on by

So far, we’ve discussed in our blog series on marketing your downloads, many different methods you can use to advertise your digital products. What most of these methods we’ve discussed have in common is that they require very little money but a lot of leg work. However, if you would like to run a paid marketing campaign, we at A Plus Download feel that Google Adwords is both the most effective and reasonably priced online marketing platform to spend your advertising dollars. This is because, with Adwords you can directly target people who are searching for the type of digital product you are selling. Consequently, marketing your product through Google is similar to search Engine Optimization, in that you choose a set of keywords or a search phrase to target. However, unlike SEO you do not need to rely on link building or on-site optimization to get your website listed on the first page for relevant keywords or search queries. This is because when you use Google Adwords, you are paying Google money in order to have your website listing on Google’s first page for a set of given keywords.

Therefore one of the key concepts we recommend A Plus Download users draw from this article is that using Google Adwords requires a lot less work but costs a lot more money. The way pricing generally works for an Adwords campaign, is that you pay Google a certain amount of money every time someone clicks on your ad. The prices are determined by a bidding system for the keywords you would like to use. Specifically, the more people bid on your chosen keyword searches, the more expensive the ad will be. The trick to effectively run a pay-per-click campaign, or PPC for short, is to choose keywords that are hyper-relevant to your product niche but not very competitive and therefore relatively cheap. Remember, as mentioned previously, it is always better to target your keywords at your exact niche because it will bring people who are directly interested in your digital goods and thus, it will generally be less expensive.

Translating Traffic to On-page Conversions

Posted on by

Effectively marketing your digital products through Search Engine Optimization and Social Media will increase the number of people who visit your website. The number of people who happen to visit your website is called traffic. While having large amounts of traffic is important, if you do not have a well designed website that can lure people down the sales funnel you will not be able to convert website visitors into customers. To effectively convert traffic into customers who purchase your downloads you need to effectively convey your message as simply as possible. Your potential customers need to easily navigate the pages and product descriptions, and the benefits need to be written both clear and concise. The web pages on your need to flow intuitively and you need to ensure your store and product purchase section is clearly marked and easy to navigate so people can easily purchase your digital products. If you use A Plus Download to sell your digital goods you can be certain that we will ensure that when a customer comes to our page to purchase your digital product we will make it as easy as possible for you to sell digital products.

At A Plus Download helping you sell your digital products is important to us and we will guide you every step of the way to ensure you acquire as many customers as possible.

How to market your digital downloads using SEO part 4

Posted on by

Our Final part in the series on SEO is about on page optimization or optimizing certain elements of your website so both keyword targeting and link building will effectively shoot your website to the first few pages of a Google search and help you sell digital downloads. The number one most important thing you have to consider when optimization your website to sell digital downloads, is to make sure the title tags of the different pages of your website reflect the keywords you would like to target. Title tags are titles you put in your html source code when you or your web developer builds your website. When search engines find relevant content for people who search for specific keywords they use the title tags, body of the website and the number of relevant links to find and rank the most appropriate pages for the searcher. Therefore, it is important to make sure the title tags you use when building or changing your website, reflect the keywords you are trying to target. Additionally, do not repeat words in your title tag when optimizing your page such as putting “sell digital goods, sell digital downloads, sell digital products,” google will recognize this tactic as keyword stuffing and potentially penalize your website.

Not only is optimizing your title tag keywords important for SEO but also making sure your keywords are place in the body of your content. This is because, as mentioned previously, search engines look at both the title tags and to a lesser extent the body of your web page content to deem how to rank your website. Besides optimizing the keywords on your website to boost your website rank in google searches it is important to interlink your web pages on your site. This is different than getting inbound link from other pages because you are just making sure your pages link to each other. Interlinking your pages will boost the SEO value of your site because when Google looks for websites that are relevant to a users search query it’ll make it easier for google to find the exact relevant page on your website and will help you sell your digital downloads. To learn more about how to sell your digital downloads register for your 7 day free trial with A Plus Download and call us at 1-866-862-6594.

Marketing your digital downloads using Search Engine Optimization part 3

Posted on by

In our last blog post on optimizing your websites in order to sell your digital downloads we focused on how one should do keyword research and pick words which will correspond to the keywords your potential customers use to find products related to your niche. In this blog post we will discuss how to help your website rank high in Google searches by acquiring one-way inbound links. Once you have chosen your keywords you need to build in-bound links in order to rank your page high in Google’s search engine. Building in-bound links or having other websites link back to your website is important because Google judges the value and therefore how high your page will rank based on the number of links you have related to your niche. In other words, the more links to get back to your website, from websites that have similar content and use similar keywords, the more likely you will rank on the first page for your particular keywords. There are many ways you can get other websites to link to your website and we will go over only a few of them.

One of the best ways to get in-bound links to your website is to submit your website to Social Bookmarking directories. Social Bookmarking directories are websites where people submit content they find on the Internet for other people to discover and vote on what is most interesting or relevant, they are kind of like people driven search- engines. If you submit your website to these directories we suggest that you set-up a blog on your site and submit interesting blog posts related to your digital download niche. Remember to always include a link back to your site in the submission and if you can use hyper links and include links in the keywords when you describe your submission. If you cannot include hyper-links than just give a url link when you submit your blog posts to Social Bookmarking websites. Additionally when you submit to Social Bookmarking sites you need to give them interesting unique content, if you just go about submitting your website’s URL you will probably be blacklisted from the directory for spam. It’s okay to advertise your digital downloads and provide a link as long as its not shameless self-promotion.

Another great way to build links is to submit your blog posts to article directories. Similar to Social Bookmarking websites, article directories allow people to submit articles so people can learn more about a specific topic. These directories are a great way to boost your website ranking because you can use your own content and keywords in the article providing your website with high quality links. Like Social Bookmarking, try to include the links to your website in the keywords of the articles you submit. This is because Google gives prominence to links that are wrapped in keywords related to your website, particularly that are included in your title tag and body. Remember shameless self-promotion in SEO could get you in trouble, so do not try to advertise your service within the article itself and base it on a relevant topic.

Finally another tried and tested way to build links to your digital download website is to message people who have websites that are in your niche (for example, if we take the mystery books for young adults, websites related to mystery eBooks or eBook review sites) and ask them to link back to your digital download website. You can provide and incentives for them such as giving your digital good for free to them and a certain number of their readers. In any case building links by contacting other webmasters is a great method to rank your webpage it may take a lot of time and/or word but the results will definitely pay off. A Plus Download can help you sell your digital downloads please contact us at 1-866-862-6594 to learn more about how we can assist you in selling digital downloads.

Marketing your digital goods using Search Engine Optimization part 2

Posted on by

In this next few sections on Search Engine Optimization we will teach you the basics of how to begin an effective SEO campaign in order to help you sell your digital goods and get your website to the top pages in Google searches for your product niche. When you start a Search Engine Optimization campaign you have to know the type of keywords that your target audience will search for when they are interested in your digital goods. For example, lets say your are selling eBooks, you must find what type keywords people search for when they want to buy eBooks in your niche. To do this you can use a variety of services, we suggest you use Google adwords keyword tool to search for appropriate keywords. So assuming you are using Google’s keyword tool you would enter a number of keywords that you think people would use when they want to purchase your eBooks (you can get keyword ideas by entering keywords in Google’s search a finding what phrases appear under the search bar). Your goal when picking keywords using a keyword tool is to find phrases that are less competitive but more relevant to your particular niche, in other words finding the long tail. So lets say you are writing detective eBook novels for young adults, and you put in the keyword tool “buy eBook” and “buy detective eBooks for young adults”. The first set of keywords “buy eBooks” might have exponentially more search traffic than buy “young adult mystery eBooks” but the former would be a lot more competitive and a lot less relevant to your target market. Thus, it makes sense to target keywords related to your niche which are less competitive. This concludes our discussion of how to do keyword research in order to effectively begin an SEO campaign to sell your digital goods. In our next blog post we will teach you how to improve your ranking in Google by increasing the number of one-way inbound links to your website. To learn more about you can advertise your digital goods with A Plus Download please check out our website and register for our 7 day free trial. We charge no monthly fees and have excellent customer service.

Marketing your Digital Downloads using SEO

Posted on by

When you decide to sell downloads it becomes necessary to effectively target your audience. In the next few blog posts we will discuss different marketing strategies you can use to boost the sales for your digital downloads. In the first part of this series we are going to go over how using Search Engine Optimization or SEO can dramatically help boost the sales of your digital downloads. Search Engine Optimization is basically using different strategies to rank your website, within the first few pages (preferably the first page) of a google search for your type of product. There are three undeniable facts which make Search Engine Optimization one of the most important strategies you can pursue when selling your downloads. Firstly, over 90% of people who search for your digital download will not go past the 1st page of a Google search. This means if you do not rank your website on the first page when a potential customer searches for your digital downloads, you are losing most of your potential clientele. The second fact is that the more traffic you generate, the higher your sales conversions will be for your digital downloads. Consequently, ranking your website on the first few pages is vital to increasing your traffic.

The third fact is that ranking on the first few pages of google searches (besides Adwords) is one of the only ways you can advertise to people who are directly seeking your product. Unlike traditional forms of advertising where you place a random ad in some form of media such as a newspaper and hope that people who want your product make a purchase, SEO allows you to target people who are searching for your product. The fourth fact about SEO which makes it such a great way to market your digital downloads, is that not only is Search Engine Optimization one of the most effective online marketing strategies but it is also one of the cheapest. That’s right you can do very effective SEO and rank your pages very high in search engines with a little bit of hard work and no money. You do not need a lot of money to run an effective SEO campaign as we will discuss in the next section. However, what you do need to do is create a lot of content and build a lot of one way links to your website all of which can be done on a shoestring budget. A Plus Download can help you market you digital download and help you with your Search Engine Optimization campaign. Register for your 7 day free trial to start marketing your digital goods.

Selling Digital Downloads: the perfect new year’s resolution

Posted on by
In this blog series we will teach you how to sell downloads online. Digital downloads are a billion dollar industry. The growth of digital goods will reach $36 billon by 2014 and if you have ever contemplated selling digital downloads now is the time to start! It is is easy to learn how to sell downloads online all you need is a good idea and the determination to implement it. When you sign up with A Plus Download we take care of all the technical stuff such as hosting your digital product, customer service, subscriptions and making sure your downloads are secure at all times. When considering what type of digital download you would like to sell, think about what your skills are and what you are good at: are you a brilliant musician who can turn soothing rock tunes into mp3’s, or maybe you’re a writer with a creative streak who wants to break into the eBook industry. Also when you choose to sell downloads online, research what types of digital products are high in demand and relatively low in supply. You can use google analytics to see what kinds of themes people are searching for online and then you can tailor the topic for your digital download to what you think is both popular and is relatively low in supply.

 

While you can make a lot of money when you sell digital goods, you must put in a lot of work or all your efforts will be for naught. When you decide to start selling digital downloads you need to remember that if you do not make a high-quality product or people will not have a reason to purchase it. The quality of your content  is in our opinon the most important factor that determines how successful you will be when you sell downloads. High quality content will always keep you neck-and-neck or put you directly ahead of your competitors (yes, no matter your topic is you will have other people who are selling digital downloads to the same target market). So go run with your talents and passions, make a high-quality digital product and then register for our free 7 day trial.  A Plus Download makes selling digital goods easier than ever and that is why when you register with us we will do our best to get your high-quality digital product into the hands of potential customers. Stay tuned to our next blog post where we will show you how you can use marketing strategies to sell your downloads online.