How to use a Snowball to Guarantee Yourself the first $300,000: The power of ONE
You might wonder how a snowball can help you out in a hot market. One would think it would melt and turn into something without as much value, however we are really referring to the “snowball effect” and staying away from a “snowball’s chance in hell”.
As a small handful of snow can continue to get bigger and bigger as it is rolled around or heads down a hill, the snowball effect can be either disastrous or extremely beneficial in the world of online marketing and affiliate sales, depending on how you set your Empire up.
Using the skill set established in the previous posts in regards to building your network (even if you did it at home marketing in your skivvies!), you should be able to make your first $300,000 online.
The key is to start small in this task, just like the snowball! You need to put minimum time and minimum money into this in the beginning, where you will then see your commissions and profits start to increase exponentially. A major way to start small is by only having 1, yes, ONE, person promote something for you. Trying to go with the big bang in the beginning and getting everyone to promote your product can be major issue to deal with when you are starting out online.
By getting some traffic to your site before hand, you can start your snowball. It is suggested you start with as many free methods as possible, while implementing some select paid options as time goes on. The goal is to test your conversion rates and find out when they look good. They do not need to be great, just good at this point. This is when you can ask one of your network friends to help out.
Suggested traffic sources:
- Forum marketing- leave good posts and your signature behind
- Article Marketing- creat quality content and an appropriate author bio with links
- Solo ads on another 3rd party website
- PPC, or Pay Per Click through google adwords, Facebook ads and more.
- Social Media- FB, twitter, linkedIn etc.
- Banner Ads on another 3rd party website (If results from this are good, then it is definitely time to get an affiliate helping you promote as well)
Remember, you do not want to burn a bridge that has bigger bridges after it. If you mess up a relationship with one person, this might have consequences down the road with people they are connected to.
Tracking: So how do you know if you are converting “good” or not. An easy comparison between Sales and visitors can give you this info.
Suppose you have 2 sales for 100 visitors/click, this would be a 2 % conversion rate. What you also want to know, as will your affiliates, the EPC or earnings per click is an important number to have available.
Lets say those 2 sales were for a $50 product with a %50 commission. Thus $100 was earned in the sale and $50 paid to the affiliates. If you then take the 100 clicks it took to get the $50 commission, it is determined that the earnings per click calculates to $0.50.
Depending on the market and product, this could be a great EPC, or a weak one. You can easily ask your network what they think a good EPC would be for that market to assess you value. You can also ask your network, what a good EPC would be that would excite them in the products they promote.
So up to this point you are still testing your numbers and it is now time to ask only a few, not hundreds, but only a few friends in your network to review your product, site process etc., and give details and suggestions in how they think you can improve your site etc., in an effort to improve the conversion and EPC rates. DO NOT ASK THEM TO PROMOTE FOR YOU YET!!!
Now you can take their input, tweak your sites and test again. When the numbers improve, which they should, this is when you can approach the 1st person. Thank them for the great advice (telling them how it helped to improve your conversions by a factor of X). When you contact your network with the improved results, you start to salt their interest in the idea that they helped you improve your product and you are likely to get one of them to want to promote it, especially seeing that they know the conversion rates etc.
The Snowball Effect: This is where the snowball grows. Once your first affiliate is achieving good results, you can easily ask them to refer you to 3 people in their network who could also check out the program and review it to provide feedback in an effort to improve the conversion rates yet again.
You need to follow the same process with this new contact that you followed with the original person who was in your network.
- Contact them through skype, email, Facebook etc. to say hello and how your friend referred you to them
- Have them submit a review of what could be done to improve the site
- Retest with their ideas and send them a big thanks with the results (this is where they start to take on some ownership and get more interested in the product and potential for promoting it for you.
As you get this new person in repeat this process with them as well once their conversions are good, by asking them to refer a few from their network as well.
This is where we see the growth. Where you had once started small, your network and empire starts to grow exponentially
1You + 1 friend/person turns to 3 people, turns 9 people, turns to 27 people, turns to 81 people…
Now this has only been an overview of what you can easily do by starting out small to develop your empire. What you really need to do to compliment this information and give deeper details is to make sure you read Anik Singal’s Empire Formula book.
In summary, NEVER start by seeking out affiliates first. Test your own conversions and seek the help of a few in your close network, only asking their suggestions in improving your site. Once you make improvements and share your updated results you can easily attract one of these in your group who will be willing to help out and promote. When they have good results, ask them for a referral for a few of their contacts and repeat the process.
As is the previous posts, you will have to put work into being successful. As they say, “you get out of it what you put into it.” By working hard, the spoils of your labors will start to show through.
