I started out with article marketing promoting a child anxiety product that pays a $66.55 commssion.

I made a few sales that way in the first two weeks, but then I learned about list building.

I switched to the IM niche and started building my list through outsourcing and writing my own articles, forum sigs, blog comments, traffic exchanges, safelists, giveaways, ad swaps, buying solo ads, guest posting, PPC, etc.

I didn't really have any luck until my list got to be about 500 subscribers or so, and then I started promoting products that paid $20-$30 commission.

I also started to buy up MRR products and make "bundles" of 25-50 products and sell them for $19 as an OTO.

I joined Safe Swaps and set up the OTO and that produces a lot of OTO sales.

Once my list got ot be 1000-1500, I started making 1-2 CB sales every day, and then a few times I made 3 sale sin one day, but today for the first time I actually made 4 sales.

I also get an occasional sale on the anxiety product and some other products I wrote articles for, but mostly it's through my list.

Basically, I just followed traditional marketing principles to get traffic, and built my list that way. The only really "new" thing I did was set up a Facebook Fan Page and then advertsie it on Facebook. I put an opt-in form right on the fan page with a video.

Also, I never promote those "magic push button" products or those junk softwares that promise to make you "$101,578.97 in 30 days!" That's total BS and none of those really work. Instead, I go through Clickbank and carefully select products that look like they really work, and then I buy them to make sure. I NEVER promote a product that does not work or that I don't like myself. I wouldn't want it done to me, and so I won't do it to others.

And I NEVER use those crappy email subject lines that you see everyone doing like, "You just made a sale!", or "Your download is ready", etc.

That's basically it.

Just traditional principles that work coupled with honesty.

That's great Kayden,

So nice to see that honest and ethical marketing is alive well and profitable. I hope to follow in your footsteps soon.

All the best,

Christina

Hey, Congrats!

This is very encouraging since I am seriously considering trying list building again.

You might want to read more thoroughly instead of skimming in the future - the OP revealed in one of his posts on this thread that he was promoting a child anxiety product, and that he wrote everything himself, including his autoresponder series.

I hope no one over looks this comment.

It took me 2 years.. yeah.. 2 YEARS to start building a list.

Don't be like me.

P.S. I'm thickheaded.

Way to go
Sounds as if it won't be long before it's routine.

And done with ethics too!

A name to note I think...

Yes, it's a great product. I've been given a review copy, and I went throught he whole product, and most of it is done by mediacal professionals.

It costs the buyer $97 and the affiliate gets $66 per sale. I've done very well with it. Really, I only need to make 4 or 5 sales per week at that rate to make quite a bit of cash.

All of this is outside my list, which is in the IM niche. This is actually the very first product I started promoting as an affiliate, and decided instead of going with other products to just pour all of my effort into this one.

As I said, I have a keyword list I cultivated of about 325 long-tail keywords, and I pick one every day and write an article on it, then I post it to 100 different directories and submit it to a site called Social Monkee, which gives me 100 backlinks from social media in less than 2 minutes (I have a premium account there).

So, I post the article to EZA, and then rewrite the article and post to all of the other directories and link back to the original EZA submission. So all of my EZA submissions to promote this product (53 counting yesterday) have over 200 backlinks each. Not to mention the other 100 or so directories that get their own views and clicks.

The product has been steady converting at one sale every 60 hops (I've been averaging 75-100 hops per day). It's got an awesome sales page, and it's a great product. Add those 2 properties to quality article traffic, and you have a recipe for success. I also post an answer or two every day in Yahoo Answers, and that brings some targeted traffic.

Also, I don't use a landing page. I bought a .info domain and set up a redirect.

To answer your first question, I only used the Google Adwords tool. I just punched in a series of different terms, saved the results to an Excel file, then went in and copies the term and the search results and pasted them to a text file. I did that with 3 or so different terms, like "child anxiety", "child anxiety disorder", and "child anxiety attacks", and I just copied all the results until I had a list of 300+ keywords.

I don't even look at the search competiton now, I just go down the list and pick the next keyword, do about 15 minutes worth of research, and pump out a 400 word article. They aren't masterpieces, but they are just enough to "wet the reader's whistle".

The product is right in the CB Marketplace, I just picked a product with over a $50 commission in a niche that I thought I could rank in. Originally, it's the commission rate that caught my eye, and once I investigated, I liked the product and the sales page so I chose it.

As far as CB acceptance, I just filled out the form and got ccepted within 24 hours. That was about 4 months ago. don't know if anything has changed.

I don't use a blog. I bought a domain and redirect right to the sale spage, although I do have a blog set up that I also post all of my articles too just for added traffic.

Well done Kayden, I wish I too had realized the importance of list building that early! Thanks for sharing the list building techniques too - I am in the middle of trying many of them myself so I hope it works as well for me as it did for you!

Congrats Kayden! Thanks for your insight about yahoo answers. Good stuff!

Awesome results there.

I myself have seen some of my students get their first $100 day and I know the exhilaration that comes with the thought that "oh, my work paid off, I'm actually moving forward!!"

Though I haven't seen many people who start off with list building immediately! That's just awesome, and I really recommend you doing whatever you are doing right now. Expand that list, perhaps make it more targeted, get your list members to feel special by providing tips, freebies. Build your reputation as a marketer and people will start to place more and more trust in you.

(The funny thing is most newbies are afraid of building lists because it seems like a huge vast alien object in yet another gargantuan part of IM) For that alone, I congratulate you!

Funny things might happen once in a while though. You might get unsubscriptions, competition from a fierce marketer, so you'll have to learn how to get past these stuff, and expand your business further!

Leverage, and always leverage.
All the best.