5 Must Have Traits of Affiliate Marketers - Are You Suited For an Affiliate Marketing Business?

Ask yourself these questions first before making the decision to go into affiliate marketing.

1) Do you enjoy the feeling of being self-employed?
You may have to work at home, all by yourself, with no co-workers to chat or socialise with throughout the day. If you think you are not the type to deal with this kind of loneliness, perhaps you should think twice about it.

2) Are you the type who is disciplined and focused enough?
When you work from home, there are all sorts of distractions around you, be it your bed, your TV and when you are working on the computer, the temptation to surf the net or chat online is always there. Are you able to switch off these distractions and concentrate on the real work you have to do (without having someone to watch over you)?

3) Are you patient and persistent in whatever you do? Do you have a strong belief in affiliate marketing?
If you know yourself very well that you are not the type who persists in everything you do, but gets disinterested in things easily, probably you are not suitable for affiliate marketing. This is worse if you only have a "no harm trying" attitude towards it because if you don't see any results fast, you will give up in a short time. Then why start in the first place?

4) Do you enjoy self-learning? Do you think it is important for continual learning?
Affiliate marketing can be carried out in many methods and everyone has their own success story. To start off, you would have to digest the fundamental concepts and find the method that is most suitable for your own affiliate marketing business. Along the way it is also important that you learn from peers and mentors who have gone through the same path. You also have to evaluate yourself consistently and seek to fine-tune and improve always. Never stay put once you have some success but look forward to learning something new everyday.

5) Are you aware that affiliate marketing is a real business which takes time to grow and perfect?
You might not find success early, but if you stay focused and continue to believe in your goals of building a real business out of affiliate marketing, it will be achievable some day. If you are hoping to get rich overnight with affiliate marketing, bear in mind that this could happen to a few lucky people, but not everyone. If you don't have the patience, probably you should just forget about it.

These five traits are just the tip of the iceberg of what you should expect of yourself if you are considering whether to go into affiliate marketing. So what do you think about it now? Are you still keen on it after answering these five questions about yourself?

Well to be honest, I would suggest you forget about affiliate marketing if the thought of what you have to do above disinterests you. But if you sailed through these questions and are still very passionate about affiliate marketing, you are probably really ready to take the plunge!!

Affiliate Marketing Tips - How to Create Email Marketing Messages With an Impact

When visitors drop by your affiliate website, they are most likely to browse around and do not usually commit to any purchase the first time. It's a pity if you get visitors that come and go without knowing who they are, and without having the chance to speak to them and create a relationship personally.

Conversion rates are often better when visitors are exposed to the product repeatedly for at least a few times. Even if you do not promote the product in your emails, just communicating with them will also make them feel that you are like an old friend and they will be more likely to buy from you if they ever need the product.

That's how useful email marketing can be when used appropriately with an opt-in list. But how do you write email messages that are able to create an impact on your visitors?

Here are 5 tricks you can use in crafting your email marketing messages that will certainly leave an impression on your customers!

1) Emails come in text and HTML formats. Of course a HTML formal email looks more attractive than a plain text one, but if you include too many images, your reader may lose focus and do not see the very important link that you are trying to bring across. Plain text emails on the other hand may look more boring, but if there are links in the message, they look pretty obvious. If you are trying to promote an important link that must capture your reader's attention, a plain text email seems a better choice.

2) Your email subject should be eye-catching enough. Work along guidelines to intrigue and entice your reader to open your email in the first place! Do not send emails with subject lines that just sound really "spam". It will most likely be trashed before it even gets opened.

3) Usually, most people read emails, especially long ones, by skimming through it first. Make a very powerful introduction to capture your reader's attention to encourage them to read the whole email thoroughly. Your point about sending the email should be explained early in the email. Also, do not write emails that are exceptionally long, as your reader may lose focus. Keep it short and sweet, but to the point.

4) Insert the links that you hope the reader will click at appropriate parts of the email message. At least two links should be put in an email message to encourage the reader to click it. This is because you need to make it easy enough for the reader to take action, rather than let them find the link themselves. Creating an urgency or suspense in your message content before referring to the link usually achieves a high click-through rate.

5) Add a dash of humor and personal touch to your email messages. Write all the email messages in the campaign yourself, so that as your reader receives your emails, they will find your own voice and style more and more familiar, like talking to someone they have known. If you also offer them great tips, they will tend to trust your recommendations better over time.

Email marketing is proven to have a direct influence on increasing online sales, so if you have not started, why not give it a try instead of sending all your potential visitors straight to your affiliate merchant's website. Creating your own email marketing list takes time, but this list eventually gives you the contacts whom you can "talk" to again and again even if you move on to promote other affiliate products.

To create an email opt-in list of subscribers with ease, just use an auto responder service, set it up and see it grow! Currently, I am using the services of GetResponse (you can check out the link on my right sidebar) and it has been a breeze to be able to send emails to all my subscribers with one click. Setting up a campaign is also very easy, as you can choose to send your emails out at intervals that you can preset with the autoresponder service. It is a huge time-saver that I appreciate and a must-have tool for every successful affiliate marketer.

Authored By:
Angela Tay