How to Become a Super Affiliate

Generally, anyone making more than $10,000 per month through affiliate marketing can be considered a “super affiliate.” Here are a few tips on how you can go from beginner or intermediate to making five figures a month:

Attend Affiliate Conventions

ADTECH, Affiliate Summit West, Affiliate Summit East and many smaller conventions should be treated as mandatory events. Although you won’t necessarily learn much from the speakers, the main benefit of going to affiliate conferences is to meet other affiliates and super affiliates. Build relationships and ask questions, which might include:

* “What are your traffic sources?”
* “What kinds of offers have worked for you?”
* “What networks do you work with? How’s the service? Do they scrape (under-report leads)?”

Don’t expect affiliates to share their secrets with you until you have a good enough relationship with them. Until you are their friend, they won’t freely share their offers, traffic sources and tactics.

Experiment with Multiple Traffic Sources

Every affiliate has to go through a phase where they do some very heavy experimentation. Some affiliates find that the meticulous honing of AdWords CPCs, keywords, ad copy and landing pages to be their perfect match.

Others prefer the long-term brand building of search engine optimization (SEO). Others still prefer designing banner ads and creating graphical creatives, making money through the content network or through large media buys.

The sources of traffic are endless. In general, each affiliate will experiment with a variety of traffic sources and then land on one that really works for them. There’s no way to know which method will work for you without experimenting with a wide range of traffic sources.

Testing, Tracking and Scaling

No matter what kind of traffic source you end up using, you will still need to learn the skills of testing, tracking and scaling. Testing involves trying different versions of your headlines, websites, ad copy and offers. Even the same offer from different affiliate networks can test differently. That is why even if you are using a relatively static technique such a SEO, you still need to test offers, revenue sources and such.

Scaling is a whole other matter. Once you find something that works, how can you make the most of it? How do you turn one working campaign on AdWords into a working campaign on Yahoo, MSN, PPV, Facebook, SEO, banner ads and more?

These are three skills that every super affiliate has to master in order to succeed. In fact, many super affiliates succeed precisely because they are so meticulous about testing and scaling.

These three tips–to meet other successful affiliates, to test and find your ideal traffic source and to split test and scale meticulously–will take you very far if you follow them consistently.

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Author: jm

Joan Mullally has been doing business online for more than 20 years and is a pioneer in the fields of online publishing, marketing, and ecommerce. She is the author of more than 200 guides and courses designed to help beginner and intermediate marketers make the most of the opportunities the Internet offers for running a successful business. A student and later teacher trainee of Frank McCourt’s, she has always appreciated the power of the word, and has used her knowledge for successful SEO and PPC campaigns, and powerful marketing copy. One computer science class at NYU was enough to spark her fascination with all things digital. In her spare time, she works with adult literacy, animal fostering and rescue, and teaching computer skills to women.