Free Affiliate Training

Welcome to the Sitetrail free affiliate training series on business development. Here you will learn proven ways of highly targeted B2B business development, which usually result in great conversion rates. The best part is you can run it all via your Linkedin profile or email address, you do not even require your own website.

Quick links:

Read about the Sitetrail B2B Affiliate Program

Sign up to become an Affiliate here

Please watch our introduction Video now:

Before we discuss “the 6 powerful methods for business development”, lets outline the underpinning strategy:  It is the use of relationship marketing as the most valuable aspect to you the affiliate. You will build valuable special B2B relationships that will last you throughout your entire career. Every contact your going to make within the industry is first and foremost added to your own network before you even introduce them to Sitetrail for service delivery. This will enable you to sell repeatedly to the same people for years to come, whatever services you add to your portfolio in the future.

Start here – essential training modules:

(Full training manual will appear only for logged in affiliates)

Successful publishers who are already experienced in earning $10K+ per month in commission, with suitable web traffic, need to only pay attention to procedural tips and targeting methods. Other affiliates who are new to the industry, will need to pay attention to all areas below.

Affiliates with any previous experience: please read this first:

Our new affiliates often perform better than those with experience – because they follow our training more closely. You joined Sitetrail to become  wealthy and successful. If you worked as an affiliate in other industries before, please stop doing what you’ve always done and pay attention to this:

Only targeted visitors will convert into a sale. For this reason, unrelated Facebook Blog traffic won’t work – in fact, it is the quickest way to get your affiliate account banned. We activaly monitor the bounce rates on your traffic and can quickly tell if unrelated and irrelevant visitors are being sent via a referral link.

Being successful as a Sitetrail affiliate is about targeting – it is not about blasting out information to the wrong people across Facebook and unrelated blogs.

Yes: You can write a highly relevant blog or website that contains content about our services – so people can discover it in Google search.

Yes: You may create a Facebook group for Chief Marketing Officers and promote our products and services there.

Yes: You can create links on blogs where HIGHLY relevant conversations occur.

In this training section we share with you all of the known methods that can get you started. All of this rely on personal relationships and targeted communication with important decision makers. Now all you need to do is study and execute it.

Essentials of targeted B2B business development:

8 Powerful methods for business development you will start with include the following:

1. Web outreach where we use geo-targeted search via Google
2. Web outreach where we approach known advertisers
3. Linkedin manual outreach where we search for specific decisionmakers
4. Linkedin automated outreach via sponsored in-mail
5. B2B email list marketing via Mailchimp
6. Attracting business with a good Linkedin profile
7. Create a Google Ads display Money Machine
8. Creating powerful information guides that attracts search traffic to your website

*There are several more powerful ways to market, but the above is a safe and proven starting point. 

In Web outreach with geo-targeted search on Google, we target specific business types by region. It does not matter if you target Doctor surgeries, hotels, technology companies or even big brands, the method is the same. Remember there are over 200 business types that we service. So even if we use Medical or Travel as an example, you should think broader.

You start by identifying a relevant service package on Sitetrail.com, as you can see here the product example we’re promoting is a medical press release package of 4 posts, costing $850. All we’re going to do is present this as an option to the most relevant businesses in the market to help them grow.

Let’s imagine you’re targeting Dentists and you’re going to work through all of the states in the US, then move onto each city in Australia and the UK to do the same. Starting with your first state or city, let’s use Los Angeles as an example. You’d search on Google for “cosmetic dentistry + Los Angeles” or “family dentist + Los Angeles” and you can work through the entire list of results on Google maps or other search results.

You will visit each of the websites on the results list and work through them. Let’s look at the initial approach when we make contact. Your communication should be brief and clear. No long letters because people are busy and don’t want to read things that seem too generic and spammy.

Your most common option is to send a message via the website contact form. Or sometimes by email when the email address is displayed. The most powerful subject line when you sell press release packages is usually to enter “Press enquiry” in the subject line.

Now type in just a short message as follows: I’d like to get you covered in Healthynewage online magazine and a few more of our partner sites where new prospective patients do their research. I look forward to discussing this with you in more detail”.

Now you’re going to wait for a response. While you have the website open, you can see if the Doctor, proprietor or important staff members are on Linkedin by searching for the practise name or staff names on Linkedin.com

You can quickly add one or two of these key people via a connection request. This is also an opportunity because you can copy and paste the EXACT same message we used earlier in the “add note” section when the request is sent. Remember this is how we build a lifelong base of clients we can stay connected to for repeat business for many years. So it is worth including this step.

Once you get a response from the prospective client, it will be either on your email or Linkedin address. Now is the moment to drive them to the website for a sale, for which you use a uniquely generated affiliate link from the most relevant package or product. Let’s look at a sample response you can send immediately to this client:

Hi Nina

Thanks for getting back to me. My team would be delighted to help you get coverage in a few important media outlets. Our editors would write up something informative that will connect with your target audience. We will also create a permanent link to your company website which will direct future visitors to you. Perhaps you also have a quote from a named individual you’d like us to include in the article.

Visit this link to get the process started right away and please keep in touch with me.

Kind regards

Michelle

Health journalist at Healthynewage

Digital media specialist at Sitetrail

Video Marketing | Pay per click performance marketing

Connect with me on Linkedin

Notice that in your email signature you performed several powerful tactics: First you included your journalist profile as a legitimate source. This is something special we can arrange for you if you’re our affiliate and you want a bit more legitimacy in the media world. Secondly, you included an affiliate link to video marketing and another affiliate link to pay per click performance marketing, both which are able to boost your sales for another related product. Lastly, you gave the client another opportunity to connect with you on Linkedin to create a lifetime relationship that will help you throughout your entire career.

At this point, the client can purchase the service which you will notice on your affiliate commission or the client may ask you another question, which you’ll answer based on the information on the product page or frequently asked questions we’ve prepared for you.

$$$ Opportunity notes:

We used the example of “Healthynewage.com” which is a package that we sell to the medical industry on Sitetrail.com. Think broader than this: You can substitute “Healthynewage.com” with “TGDaily” or “Equities.com” when you sell to Finance, Tech or Forex companies. Now that you have the above template and idea, you can apply it to ANY industry!

Next up, in web outreach for known advertisers, we do something similar than before, but we find our clients by looking on other sites where they advertised. Known advertisers have progressed the furthest down the buying funnel – and we know they already pay for advertising. This is the surest lead you can find.

Let’s look at the example where we target clients in the Health/Medical sector: we may find articles on WebMD or other health news webites too.

In fact if you’re smart, you will scan the media for Doctors with reputation problems and offer to help them improve that with our services. So consider a medical review site like Healthgrades.com.

Your most important ability here is to distinguish between advertiser links and authority links. For example, you may read an article that links to Dr. John’s cosmetic dentistry who is clearly an advertiser that you want to contact. But you’ll also see a link to Wikipedia and another to CNN, which are merely important media sites within the article so there is no point contacting them for advertising purposes.

Now once you identified the advertiser, send just a short message EITHER by email or via their site as follows:

“Hi Dr. John. I’ve noticed your recent articles on Webmd and PRNewswire. Ideally I’d like to get you covered also on Healthynewage online magazine and a few other targeted websites where new prospective patients do their research. I look forward to discussing this with you in more detail.”

Now you’re waiting for Dr. Johns response. Remember you can also add him on Linkedin and repeat the same message again as we’ve demonstrated before.

The moment you hear from Dr. John, just follow up with a more detailed message that will include your unique affiliate link for the most relevant service package and, important, we also include that same informative, powerful email signature at the bottom with more affiliate links:  

Hi Dr. John Thanks for getting back to me. My team would be delighted to work with you to get you coverage in a few important media outlets. Our editors would write up something informative that will connect with your target audience and will create a permanent link to your company website to direct future visitors to you. Perhaps you also have a quote from a named individual you’d like us to include.

Next steps: Visit this link to get the process started right away.

Kind regards

Michelle

Health journalist at Healthynewage

Digital media specialist at Sitetrail

Video Marketing | Pay per click performance marketing

Connect with me on Linkedin

$$$ Opportunity notes:

1. Remember that the example we used for Dr. John can be used for any other business: For accountancy practices, travel agents or financial services companies and so forth, you will find ideas on target businesses simply by looking at the categories contained within the online site or magazine for which we’re selling a package.
2. ALL sections on the following sites are great to find new advertisers: PRweb news section,  Forbes.com, Harcourthealth.com, Buzzfeed.com, Patch.com, Today.com, USAtoday.com and many more that you will find through research!
3. Look for new advertisers on different websites everyday and contact them immediately. The sooner the better. 
4. Even if JUST ONE client in 50 buys a $1000 package – you make $200 for the day, that is easy money!

Find the right people and tell them about Sitetrail services: The Linkedin manual search approach for specific individuals is a great way to bypass gatekeepers and to search for the right people by industry. It is free, or cheaper than automated advertising. But then again if you think of the value of your time, you would agree that paying a bit to boost it with automated advertising can give you a better return because it scales up your business and reduces manual labour.

*You will see below in the opportunity section that setting up a good profile for yourself and listing you as a Sitetrail marketing specialist is very useful. 

Now that you already know what sort of messages to send via web outreach which we did in the previous examples, you will use the same messages through the Linkedin platform.

Let’s look at examples of who are the right people to contact with Linkedin: Using a combination of role-based, industry AND location targeting, we’d search for roles like “Chief marketing officer”, “Chief executive officer”, “Media buyer”, “Marketing manager”, “Sole proprietor”, “Director of marketing”. Then in industry criteria, choose a list of industries relevant to your target market, as you can see here we picked medical devices and alternative health. In “locations” we specified the US, but really you can target more than 100 countries worldwide. Once you have a list of people, you can add them as a Linkedin contact and send relevant messages as an introduction note.

Remember that the value you get from this, is that you’re adding new contacts for future marketing efforts for many years to come– as well as existing sales you’re working on right now. Once you’ve built a good following of more than 1000 people, you can even write a short article each week on Linkedin that contains your affiliate links for a variety of products. Because whenever you write an article, all your contacts get notified on Linkedin.

$$$ Opportunity notes:

1. You can add credibility to your profile. First, add skills to your profile. Then, connect with Adriaan Brits here and ASK him for a Linkedin endorsement of those skills. 
2. If you contributed any articles to Healthynewage.com & Likedreviews.com magazines as an author, you can ADD Healthynewage as a current career/job on your Linkedin profile with the job role “Health author and influencer”. Look at the example of Tess Bryan on Linkedin. This can be used in your email signatures. 
3. If you are approved as a Sitetrail affiliate, you are allowed to add Sitetrail on your profile with one of the following job titles: “SEO analyst”, “PR specialist”, “Content Marketing Specialist”, Digital Marketing Executive”, “Media executive”. This can then be used in your email signatures. 
4. Bonus for high converters: If you contribute 10 good articles on an industry magazine where we have set up a writer profile, you can use the words “Journalist” on your profile, for example “Health Journalist”. This is incredibly powerful as marketing agencies all want to deal with journalists directly.

Let the right people find you automatically: The automated outreach via Sponsored InMail is for serious players who are interested in scaling up their affiliate operation. It is for people who don’t mind investing a little bit of money in their business in order to get better results and chase a higher return on investment. We do have affiliates who earn $1000 for every $500 they spend on sponsored inMail, whilst also building their permanent list of connections which will reduce the cost of their email marketing in future.

It is the most powerful way to bypass any gatekeepers so that you can reach important decisionmakers and establish your own direct relationship with them. The purpose of using a sponsored InMail is to achieve multiple objectives: Firstly it is to sell multiple products and secondly to build the number of connections you have on Linkedin for future sales and relationships.

The typical structure of a sponsored InMail is to contain a brief and powerful introduction to your own Linkedin profile. Then snippets of information on various products. Lastly, as we do with email signatures, we add powerful affiliate links of other profitable services within the inMail signatures at the bottom of the Sponsored inMail campaign.

$$$ Opportunity notes:

We live in a networked age. Adding powerful people like chief marketing officers and CEO’s to your Linkedin profile will help you for many years. It is stronger than modern day freemasonry or any other fraternity that exists. Boosting this with Sponsored In-Mail is one of the best investments you can make in yourself and your own network

Be in constant communiation with the right people via email: The next sales tactic we discuss is the use of Mailchimp and powerful mailing lists to reach out to key people. As you build your list size and add only the most important and relevant contacts to it, you will be surprized at how your sales revenue will jump. The return on investment with this tactic is excellent.

The most important factor here is your mailing list. So here are the sources: Firstly, as you build your Linkedin contact list, you can export it and add those contacts to your mailchimp list. You can update your Mailchimp list every two weeks or once per month as you grow your Linkedin contact list.

Secondly, you can buy lists of important B2B contacts – AND you can add anyone you corresponded with to your mailing list so they receive newsletters.

The key to using Mailchimp lists are to keep correspondence personal by using people’s names through correct placeholders and data. I would encourage you to learn more about mailchimp by going through it’s training manuals.

You can use a combination of two communication options: Firstly, you can send long letters and information pieces similar to what you’ve used for a sponsored inMail.

Remember, you can also send brief messages by email similar to what we’ve explained earlier in web outreach.  Remember that great, informative newsletters sent out once per month will create trust, which you will further cement by selling Sitetrail services to the same audience.

Enable the right people to find YOUR profile when they search for specific services. Businesses trust Linkedin. When you have a great Linkedin profile, it appears in both Google/Bing search results, as well as within Linkedin. This is incredibly efficient – because you leverage both SEARCH and INFLUENCER power.

People who do this well, easily earn $500 to $1000/day from Linkdin – and, they sell repeatedly to the same clients, because of the high quality services we offer.

Here is how to use Linkedin profile building to attract business:

1. Job experience: You need to put good information about ALL Sitetrail services in your current experience. For example the profile should state: “High level strategic digital marketing consultant, delivering a full-spectrum digital services including Media buying, and press relations, pay per click on Google Adwords, Facebook and Linkedin, Video marketing and copywriting as well as monthly SEO plans” You should go beyond this and WRITE about each of these services. Look at how marketing agencies promote this, and put this in your profile – so that people who search for these services, find you – and start a conversation with you. NOTICE that you can also change your previous job profiles, to include Sitetrail services – so that you build up a history that is reliable.
2. Recommendations: ASK people who write a recommendation for you to include these services – so that others can see that you’re trusted to deliver this as an authority in your field.
3. Write short articles on Linkedin: You can write about EACH of the Sitetrail services – and include your affiliate link within the article. You can also TAG other important marketing people in your post, so they feel obliged to read it – and to deliver comments on it.
4. Comment on other Linkedin discussions: Find a discussion about Adwords, Press releases and any other digital marketing service, then deliver a useful comment on it. People will then see your profile and start talking to you about it. These are groups you need to join – and then post your affiliate links every day:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/62352  

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/100358  

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/51822

All of these ways rely on starting a conversation with people – and then to recommend a product or service via an affiliate link that they will buy.

The Google Display Network (GDN) gives you access each month to more than 1Billion user views related to digital marketing and business content. Remember that in competitive markets, there may only be 1000 search querries per month where people ask Google for a service such as “online PR” or “link building” – but millions more read about the same topic on the GDN. So if you used search marketing, you’d pay $4/click to get the maybe 100 people to your website, but with GDN, you can pay as little as $0.15/click to get THOUSANDS of people to your site. Cheap untargeted traffic will not convert – so again it is all about targeting and budgeting accordingly for higher quality traffic that is relevant.

The better you become at learning display advertising – the higher your profits will be. It is all about targeting users through the right keywords and a range of other advanced targeting options you will learn about.

To embrace the opportunity to master display advertising and there are several places you can learn:

1. Linkedin learning: Take both the (a)Beginner and (b)Advanced Adwords course.
2. Go through Google’s free training resources here
3. Do a lot of reading on conversion rate optimization and display advertising

Strategies affiliates can use with display advertising:

Strategy 1: Use a consultant buffer site:

Use Google Display Ads to send targeted visitors to your own website. This can be a consultant website where you present yourself as an expert on the topic. On your website, people can subscribe to a newsletter or “sign in” to access a valuable piece of information or be encouraged to connect with you via Linkedin. Finally, on your website, various Sitetrail services are shown and discussed, each with your unique affiliate link which sends the user to Sitetrail where the deal will be closed.

Strategy 2: Send traffic directly to a Sitetrail product/service page:

Use Google Display Ads to send targeted visitors directly to Sitetrail products/services by adding your affiliate links as the landing page to the display ad. Simply monitor your affiliate dashboard on Sitetrail to see how the visitors convert and log back into Google to make changes to the campaign.

Budget considerations:

When using highly targeted keywords, the conversion rate for GDN traffic is usually around 0.9% in B2B marketing. It is important to consider this in your planning. The average single sale commission on Sitetrail.com is $200, however around 40% of customers incur repeat sales, with an everage customer liftime value of $4500, which is worth $900 to affiliates.

Based on our insider knowledge and the assumption that your campaign is optimized well, these are realistic predictions:

0.9% of visitors will each earn $900 for you as affiliate.

If the cost per click on GDN is $0.40:

1000 visitors produce 9 sales @ $8100

Less cost of $400

Affiliate profit: $7700

If the cost per click on GDN is $0.60:

1000 visitors produce 9 sales @ $8100

Less cost of $600

Affiliate profit: $7500

If the cost per click on GDN is $1.50:

1000 visitors produce 9 sales @ $8100

Less cost of $1500

Affiliate profit: $6600

Simply put, with a bit of work and by developing a deep interest in display marketing, scaling up to 10 000 visitors per month can earn you $75K. Is it worth mastering the craft of display advertising? You know the answer!

$$$ Opportunity notes:

1. The above budget samples are very broad. Smart GDN operatives will understand local factors, for example a campaign that is concentrated around San Francisco, London & Singapore through Geo-Targeting, will cost $4/click to get those high spending decision-makers, but will produce a customer lifetime value of $25 000 as a result. Your understanding of international markets and economics, applied to pay per click targeting can rely on various models and theories that may prove itself during optimization.

2. If you use a buffer page – the GDN campaign can be leveraged to build your Linkedin contact base as well as your email list, which are business assets that will stick with you for a lifetime. Think about making an effort on this level because it will serve you well over time. 

Owning valuable information sources in the form of websites, with highly targeted traffic is possibly the most passive and profitable method.

Content is created around the services you promote – where you have carefully researched successful business models on the web to build out your revenue empire.

This requires good research skills and a strong financial commitment to turn it into a 7-figure business.

Now we can share with you the success recipe from an affiliate who earns $21 000 per month. We asked them what level of effort they invest in order to generate their income and this was their answer:

Web outreach using geo-targeted search via Google: 50 mails per day

Web outreach targeting known advertisers who appear on other websites: 15 mails per day

Linkedin manual outreach where we search for specific individuals: 10 new contacts and mails per day

Linkedin automated outreach via sponsored in-mail: 1000 inMails per month

B2B email list marketing via Mailchimp: 2 monthly emails to 1500 people

Their expense is $650 for 1000 inMails and they hired a remote admin assistant for $1000/month. So they literally spent less than $2000 monthly to generate $21000 in revenue.

As you consider these proven methods you may add your own unique set of marketing channels. It is certainly recommended that you use all the methods mentioned here and over time consider scaling up your results with a more automated approach. We do have affiliates who run paid Facebook campaigns to target chief marketing officers and industry professionals as well as those who use Google Adwords pay per click, the choices are endless.

If you start this business with zero cash, you will have to put in some manual work to do web outreach but then as you re-invest in your business, change over to automated solutions. If you are ready to invest a bit in your affiliate business – you know that you can start immediately with automation via sponsored inMail campaigns.  Always remember: In B2B marketing it is not those who make the most noise with the masses that will win. It is those who establish relationships with the most relevant decisionmakers. Technology and social business channels like Linkedin give you the power to be in one location and establish those relationships anywhere in the world. That is also the beauty about working with Sitetrail.com.  Be consistent every day and prevail over distractions in order to reach your ultimate goal. We’d like to wish you every success in your business development efforts.

Using the Sitetrail system to create affiliate links: 

Our Affiliate tracking system is highly reliable and easy to use. Please note the following carefully as this will ensure your deals get tracked and paid accurately. Let’s get started:

Step1: Open any product page(for example this page) Then select the URL link and copy it.  (Right click and copy for PC users).

Example link:

https://www.sitetrail.com/product/4-x-premium-edu-guest-posts-with-do-follow-links/ 

Step2: Now you need to be logged in as an affiliate. Enter the affiliate area and make sure your screen is open under the default tab called “Affiliate URL’s”.

Step3:

• Paste the link within the PAGE URL field as per the image below.
• Notice you can also add a campaign name to keep track of your best performing campaigns.
• Now click on “Generate URL”

The system will then generate a “referral URL” containing your unique tracking information as per the following example:

www.sitetrail.com/product/4-x-premium-edu-guest-posts-with-do-follow-links/ref/2/?campaign=Sponsored-InMail-January

(You will copy the above URL and use it in your marketing efforts for the product)

Many of our affiliates post links on targeted landing pages that contain relevant content. This will only be successful IF you have a website with more than 3000 visitors per month. You can also build high quality landing pages about products – and even add affiliate links in relevant industry reports and e-books that you circulate via Amazon. The key criteria is that there is contextual relevance.

If your website is about digital marketing services – linking to Sitetrail services is perfect. 

If your website is about camping, travel or whatever – linking to Sitetrail services is NOT appropriate

DO create a website relevant to the people and businesses you’d love to serve!

Policy notice: Please note that posting links on unrelated pages is not allowed and will result in a review of your affiliate status. This is part of our quality prerequisites and anti-spam policy.

If you follow our training tips and work hard you will no doubt earn a $$$$$ serious income $$$$$. You may feel that your country enabled you to do this – in which case feel free to pay your taxes where you live. However many of us do not feel so. For this reason, you may want to do a trip abroad the first time you earn more than $5000 for the month. A nice trip to the Bahamas, Mauritius, Cyprus, St. Vincent or even Bulgaria is what you need to quickly set up a bank account and foreign trading entity. Do your own research on this and you will find that many of these countries have a tax rate between 0 and 10%.  Remember all we need is an email address associated to your Paypal account – and that Paypal account can be in any country in the world! You can therefore change your tax jurisdiction anytime you like without needing to notify us or any of your employees.

Our relationship with affiliates is one of the most important aspects of the business: If you’re successful – we are. We therefore make every effort to run modern, up to date systems that will calculate and attribute your commissions accurately.

Payments schedule: Monthly

Payment method: Paypal

Commissions: 

Affiliates earn revenue on every sale they make. For the majority of our services and products the amount per sale exceeds $200, depending on the price customers are charged – which you can see from the product information. Our fixed rate on most products is 20%. In case of recurring services, you receive 20% on the first payment and thereafter 10% each month that the service is renewed.