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� KICKASSMARKETING TACTICS

Beh ind the scenes

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INTRODUCTIONAffiliate marketing is a concept of many different tactics. Choosing one can be quite overwhelming. It all depends on your experience and skill set: you may be good at analyzing, writing, creative thinking, or might just have a huge circle of friends and followers on social media.

Affiliate marketing has different types for different people, but they all fit perfectly for the niche of educational technology!

So what are the main tactics?

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Related Affiliate Marketing 4

2. Unattached Affiliate Marketing 5

3. Involved Affiliate Marketing 6

4. Content Site Affiliate Marketing 7

5. Email/Newsletter Affiliate Marketing 8

6. Social Media Affiliate Marketing 9

7. Shopping Services Affiliate Marketing 10

8. Incentivized Traffic Affiliate Marketing 11

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Related Affiliate Marketing is when you have some kind of presence online and you use it to promote affiliate links or banners related to your niche, but the main feature is that you promote products you don’t actually use.

Many affiliate marketers use this type of marketing because they don’t have the time or willingness to try all of the products they promote, especially when they take on a lot of programs. It’s not a bad way to earn money, but it’s also not the best.

In the case of promoting online courses, trying them yourself is not only beneficial for building trust, but also for educating yourself and others. Educational technology is quite a rewarding niche for affiliates, because spreading and promoting it is part of a good cause. Especially in the case of free and affordable courses - it creates availability to sustainable education for all.

So have in mind, that if you don’t test the products yourself, your reputation is at risk. Even if you trust the person or the company behind the product, you can never be too sure whether it’s actually a good recommendation to make. If it’s not and your audience sees that, they won’t put their trust in you.

RELATED AFFILIATE MARKETING1

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This type of affiliate marketing makes no connection between you (the affiliate) and your audience (consumers). Unattached affiliate marketers usually use pay-per-click campaigns, are not involved in any niche and have no presence concerning the niche.

A marketer who chooses this affiliate marketing type often just embeds a link via Facebook and Google ads and then waits for someone to click on it and buy the product.

This tactic can be very rewarding for the educational technology niche if fused together with other tactics. But before implementing this technique, be sure to properly analyze the niche of online courses, competitors and main keywords. It’s safe to say there’s not a lot of analyzing, because the subject of educational technology is not very competitive and has a lot of space for creativity. It’s growing rapidly though, so it’s really beneficial to be the early bird who catches the worm!

Unattached affiliate marketing is really appealing because it’s just easy - it doesn’t require much effort or the build up of authority/reputation and is not time consuming. But have in mind that unattached affiliate marketing does not create connection or a relationship with your audience.

UNATTACHED AFFILIATE MARKETING2

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The term “involved” kind of gives the main aspect of this type away. Involved affiliate marketing is when you have tried the product/service you’re promoting and you truly believe it will help your audience in some way.

This kind of affiliate marketing is conducted via creation of content, and not so much through banners or simple text links. It makes the audience much more involved and interested in your recommendations. Educational technology is a great niche for involved affiliate marketing because education is a subject of great interest and the skills for technology are highly on-demand. People usually need reassuring and authoritative suggestions on which courses to try and where to enroll, so building an audience in the niche of educational technology can be very rewarding and profitable.

But it’s important to have in mind that successful involved affiliate marketing requires responsibility, time and effort. You usually have to talk directly to your audience, listen to it and create a solid connection. You’re not using your money to get money, it’s more like the use of your reputation to get commission but solve the audience’s problems, too.

INVOLVED AFFILIATE MARKETING3

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This is a more specific tactic. Affiliates of this type own sites like blogs, websites, portals, etc. and generate money by putting up banners on their sites or including text links in their written content or in the “resources” section.

Content sites can either be of general interest with hefty amount of traffic, or of specific niche kind of content with not as high volume of traffic but with much higher conversion rates. For example, owning a site or a blog in the niche of educational technology is an awesome idea. Why, you might wonder? Since this niche is becoming more and more popular (and useful, for that matter) it requires authoritative knowledge and honest reviews & suggestions. So if you’re already interested in this niche, why not become a voice of reason for others and generate money this way?

Yes, building your own blog or a site may require some effort and you won’t get a lot of traffic right away, but with time you’ll not only start making desirable amounts of money, but will also help people with such noble subject like education, too! How cool is that?

CONTENT SITE AFFILIATE MARKETING4

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Some may think that email marketing is dead, but it’s actually far from the truth. Email affiliate marketing is a very common and useful strategy. Affiliates own databases and lists of their target audience’s emails and regularly send out various offers, news, propositions and suggestions in the form of a newsletter.

A well written and targeted email has the power of creating a personal connection. But it shouldn’t be too long, boring or resemble impersonal and unwanted spam. Creating personal connection is especially important in the field of education, because people take their education seriously and want to make the best decisions possible.

If you don’t have an email list yet, you may wonder about where to start. It’s not so hard building an email list for an educational technology audience, especially if you have your own blog or a site. The best and quickest way is to put up pop-ups and banners on your platform suggesting some kind of discount, bonus, limited edition book, guide, course, etc. just for an action of signing up.

While using this type of affiliate marketing, it’s very important that the emails are collected legally and were requested by the users. If you want to know more about the most useful tools for email affiliate marketing, read the “Powerful Affiliate Marketing Weapons: Conquer Audiences With 19 Tools & Platforms” handbook.

EMAIL/NEWSLETTER AFFILIATE MARKETING5

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You probably already know that social media is a powerful tool for any kind of business if handled properly. The power of this platform regarding affiliate marketing is also outstanding.

Taking into account the volumes of audiences that platforms like Facebook and Twitter generate, it’s no surprise affiliate marketing via social media is gaining momentum. The niche of educational technology is no exception. There is a surprisingly huge amount of pages, groups and communities regarding this niche in social media. You just have to do a little research and find out if you want to use those communities for your benefit.

If you decide to become a part of educational technology communities or maybe even creating your own, money gaining will take time, but the conversion rate will be much higher than simply posting stuff on your account for your friends, who might not have any interest in the niche of online courses.Remember, it’s more rewarding to have a highly targeted small audience, than having a huge audience of no interest in the field of educational technology.

SOCIAL MEDIA AFFILIATE MARKETING6

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These type of affiliates have websites specifically designed to promote online purchases. They look like an online shopping site but the links for the products redirect the users to the merchant’s site in order to complete the purchase.

Examples of sites which provide shopping services are meta-search engines, price or features comparison sites, review sites, aggregators and so on.

SHOPPING SERVICES AFFILIATE MARKETING7

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Incentivized traffic can be described by visitors and users who have received an incentive (compensation, discount, etc.) for visiting a site or accomplishing some kind of action (purchase, registration, subscription, etc.)

These kind of incentives are usually in the form of actual or virtual money. Cashback sites affiliates, though, split their network commission with their users.

INCENTIVIZED TRAFFIC AFFILIATE MARKETING8

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As you probably noticed, there are a lot of different tactics of affiliate marketing, so before choosing one be sure to answer these questions to yourself:

• How much time can I spend on promoting affiliate products?

• Am I good at writing and creating content?

• Am I pleased with a decent amount of money made quite fast, or do I want to earn more money, but in the long run and gradually?

• Do I want to constantly communicate with users/audiences?

• Do I like the idea of spending money to possibly earn more money in the future?

• Do I like social media or more traditional ways of online promotion?

• What kind of tactic will work best for promoting online courses?

I hope these questions will put you on track towards becoming an affiliate marketing professional in the field of educational technology!

FINAL WORD

“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”

– Bill Bradley