AFF - How to Start Affiliate Marketing - Building Opt-In Lists For Affiliate Marketing

When they first start affiliate marketing, the biggest mistake most newbies make is sending their targeted traffic directly to their affiliate links. Once you've put in the effort to catch your prospects' attention, if you send them directly to the merchant's salespage they'll either buy or they won't - but either way they're gone from your sphere of influence. To make any additional sales to them you'll have to find them and convince them all over again.

Instead, use your ability to build traffic to send targeted prospects to a free resource you offer them as an enticement to join your opt-in list. By offering a free download that's tightly targeted to your niche, you've made sure that the people requesting it are qualified leads, and you can now invite them to check out your current offer and further offers as time goes on. Just be sure you have a different report and opt-in list for each niche or sub-niche you market in, as your affiliate marketing leads should be as tightly targeted as possible for maximum results.

So just how do you go about building opt-in lists for affiliate marketing? Start by writing a 10-12 page report or recording an audio or video, that covers a topic of vital importance to your target market. No fluff allowed - they're going to judge you initially by what they get from it, so be sure it's good, solid, actionable content. Turn it into a.PDF file and then make a.ZIP file from it.

Next, you build your opt-in page, known as a 'squeeze page'. Usually this consists of a headline, 4 or 5 bullet points describing the report and then your actual opt-in form. You'll get the coding for the form from your autoresponder service when you set up the list these affiliate marketing leads are to be added to.

Your next page is the 'confirmation' page, which simply tells the prospect an e-mail has been sent to the address they provided, and they need to click the confirmation link in that e-mail to be forwarded to the download page. This 'double opt-in' system has evolved into the industry standard, as otherwise people could put in anyone's e-mail address to get the gift, and you'd end up spamming the owner of that address without knowing it. Double opt-in forces the prospect to confirm that it's really their e-mail address before forwarding them to the download page.

Which, of course, is the final page you need to build in your sign-up or 'squeeze page' system. Give them the link to download the gift, instructions on how to open and read the file, and congratulate them on their wise choice. Of course, also let them know you'll have more helpful information and resources on that topic that may be of interest to them, so they should watch for those e-mails hitting their inbox soon.

Upload the whole system to your web space and test it thoroughly yourself before announcing it publicly. Once it's in place and working properly, start using every legal and ethical method of getting the word out about your free download. Tweet it, add it to your streams at FaceBook, Google Buzz and Yahoo Buzz, blog about it, etc. If you can afford it and the niche is sufficiently profitable, add in paid resources like solo ads and pay-per-click ads. From this point on, your success at building opt-in lists for affiliate marketing depends mostly on how much targeted traffic you can drive to your page.