My wife, Emma, has become an expert affiliate marketer without even knowing (or trying). I just got off the phone with her and once again, she convinced me to do something that I normally wouldn’t do.  I realized that if I can just learn what she already does so well, I can make a ton of money online.

Here are 7 things that makes her great at affiliate marketing.  If you are looking for ways to improve your tactics, then this article is for you.

1. Be an Expert - One of the main reasons why I listen to my wife is because of her expertise in the area.  She is amazing at cooking, and when she recommends using a certain tool or an ingredient, I listen.  In affiliate marketing, showing your expertise is important to get visitors to listen to your advice and buy that product you are pitching.  Without the perceived expertise in that area, no one will ever buy a product you recommend because you have no credibility.
2. Call to Immediate Action - I see the “call to action” advice everywhere, but not many people actually advises for immediate action.  I know that I tend to forget things when I don’t do it right away, so getting the reader to buy or submit their email address immediately is very important.  If they wait too long, it might be some other site’s cookie that gets the credit when your pitch actually made the sale!
3. Reminders - It normally takes a few reminders for someone to take action.  My wife would talk to me over the phone, email me and sometimes follow up with another call just to make sure I followed through on my promise.  In order to get visitors to take action, setup different places to remind people about the product you are pitching.  Write about the product you would like to pitch, then follow it up with a banner ad and perhaps another article telling your readers your experience with the product.
4. Show Confidence - My wife is extremely confident and it shows because when she speaks, people listen.  Show it in your tone when you write about the product you are recommending.  The last thing you want is to sound like you aren’t really sure whether they should buy or not.
5. Build Trust Way Before You Need to Call for Action - People buy a product from a trusted source, especially when its done online because there are too many scams out there.  Build that trust with your articles regularly and your readers will naturally follow your advice on products you pitch.  Otherwise, you will have to rely on an amazing one time pitch to accomplish the same task.  It’s the difference between a cold call and telling your friend about a new product.
6. Write Your Article For Your Readers - My wife will never try to convince me to buy a wallet because she knows I’m just not interested!  If your readers come to your blog because they love food, then don’t try to pitch a digital camera.  Focus your affiliate marketing on products and services that serve the needs of your readers.
7. Show By Example - Once your build trust, then letting your readers know about your experience and how you use the product is a great selling tool.  Write a review, talk about what you like and dislike about it and your readers will be intrigued and want more.
8. Don’t be Pushy - Give your readers every reason to take action but at the end of the day, let them decide.  There will be lots of people who just aren’t interested so don’t try to push them into making a decision!  Let them know how great the product is but if they choose to miss out, then let them be.  The worst thing you can do is be pushy and turn the readers off.  I know my wife would never push me too hard and us being happily married is a testimonial of that!

Thanks Emma!  I think all of us will become better affiliate marketers by following what you do so well!

If you check every performance metric of your blog more than 10 times a day, you are just like me, wasting so much of your precious time.

With the advance in server and bandwidth technology over the years, statistics reporting have become much more instantaneous.  I use sitemeter to track stats on one of my blogs and the results are live!  In most measures, this is a great thing but what ends up happening is that I keep logging on and checking to see how the blog is doing, how many visitors there were and where these people were being referred from.  At times, I log on 5-6 times an hour and it is absolutely the worst best time waster (well, at least right behind twitter)!

As I think back, I should spend more time updating my blog and doing something productive for my blog instead of checking those statistics that does nothing but make me even more impatient about my traffic growth.

So starting from today, let’s stop checking your, my, and our stats!

Start Small
Completely kill our addiction right off the bat is very hard, so let’s start small by not checking one full day this week.  In the second week, increase it to two days and finally gradually increase the days so that you are only checking your statistics once a week.

What you can do instead of checking your stats
Here’s a bunch of things you can do to improve your blog instead of wasting your time checking stats:

• Write Content
• Read other people’s blogs and learn from them
• Keep yourself updated on your niche
• Update your Blog Design
• Add new features
• Write down ideas for future blog posts
• Write More Content
• Comment on other blogs
• Network with your fellow bloggers

Does this sound familiar?
Did any of you check your stats constantly but were able to stop yourself from doing so?  What made you change?  We’d love to hear about your experience!