When I first started out online, I remember trying to create web sites that would sell products for commission (affiliate marketing) but I didn't have much success. Sure I made a few sales here and there but really the time:reward ratio didn't stack up...

In retrospect I went about it all wrong. What most beginner internet marketers do (and what I did) when trying to make money online from affiliate marketing is create a web site with pages that are solely designed to send traffic through their affiliate links.

This is known as thin affiliate marketing. The alternative to thin affiliate marketing is encourage people to sign up to you list by offering a free gift of perceived value through what's called a "squeeze page".

A squeeze page is simply a one page web site that has is built for one reason only - to get visitors onto a mailing list. A decent converting squeeze page will convert at 20% (ie. 1 in 5 people will enter their details) although it is fairly commonplace to get much higher conversion rates. My squeeze page here currently converts at 37%.

So why is email marketing so important to internet marketing? Allow me to explain...

The Marketing Rule of 7

Consumer analysis shows that the average shopper (both online and offline) needs to see a product or brand 7 times before taking action.

There are both subconscious and conscious elements to this rule, but I won't go into all of these for fear of this sounding like a research paper! What I will say, though, is that one of the main reasons why consumer will not part with their hard earned cash on first viewing of a product is trust...

A recent survey by JupiterResearch shows that approximately "Approximately 85% of the online consumer base are concerned about transacting online". That doesn't mean they won't purchase online, it just means that they do their due dilligence first.

And this is where build trust and a relationship with people really can help bolster your commissions. When sending traffic directly to the sales page of a product you have a very limited ability to build trust in the eyes of your target market and that's going to cost you sales.

Repeat Buyers

It's far, far cheaper to nurture your current leads into becoming buyers and then into becoming repeat buyers than it is to generate new leads. Again, this is true in the online and offline world.

The "thin affiliate" model doesn't allow you to capture the names and email addresses of prospects and buyers and as a result you'll lose out on a lot of revenue.

Profit Funnel

Very closely related to the point above, a profit funnel can potentially scale your income up to incredible new heights. The reality is that you'll be very unlikely to make a decent living online simply by selling $27 e-books unless you launch a best selling information product.

A profit funnel is all about nurturing current leads and customers and encouraging them into taking that next step with you. An example profit funnel would encourage subscribers to making an initial low value purchase of a product less than $97.

Buyers would then be moved into another promotion campaign with the view to selling a mid-range $497 product before finally being promoted a high end $1997 product or higher.

Profit funnels like this are incredibly powerful income multipliers and this is how a lot of the top internet marketers out there are able to bring in $1 per visitor to their web site. By offering a series of such high value propositions they are able to increase their value per visitor to way above the guy next door who only sells low-level e-books.

Growing Your Assets

In any business, offline and online, it is always preferable to build up valuable assets where possible. You'll find that a highly targeted and responsive mailing list online is a hugely valuable asset to have. In fact, I'd even say that it's the number one asset of your business...

Your web site and domain names are both important assets, but can be replaced. A highly targeted list of 5,000 customers can't be easily replaced. Of course there are exceptions to this rule - if a company has built up a highly valuable brand and then loses the domain that would be catastrophic.

Leverage

Closely related to my point above, if you have a valuable asset like a large targeted list of prospects then you can use it to create joint ventures. Leveraging assets of other people is one of the quickest ways to grow an online business.

There are many ways that you can put together joint ventures from your list. One is to do something called an adswap (simply put, I email your list and you email mine) and another is to take it a step further and do what's called integration marketing or "piggyback marketing" (similar to an adswap except the ad is permanently in the email marketing follow up campaign).

Do not underestimate the power of having something to bargain with. A list of 1,000 people can easily be grown to a list of 5,000 within the space of a few months through simple leverage.

Instant Traffic Generation

You probably already know this but traffic is one of the most sought after things on the internet. It is the life blood of any online business, which is why it's often very hard to get in abundance.

With an email list you can do a "broadcast" at any point in time and generate instant traffic to a new product launch or promotion. Again, this is hugely valuable, especially as an affiliate marketer who's looking to promote the next big launch.

The Bottom Line is this...

You are losing money by not buiding a list - I consider an email marketing campaign the most important component of an internet marketer's business. Don't do what I did and waste a couple of months not building a list...

You can get started by signing up for an Aweber account (the industry standard) here...