If you plan on running cost effective affiliate marketing campaigns and building an auto-pilot business that makes you money month after month, it can’t be stressed enough how important it is to get an “autoresponder” early on in the process. (In case you missed it earlier, an autoresponder is an online service which allows you to collect names and email addresses from visitors to your web page through an “opt-in” form like the one pictured to the right).

Autoresponder Opt-In Form

How Does an Autoresponder Work?

 The process is simple – a potential customer comes to your site, signs up for your free newsletter (or some other bonus). You then follow up with product offers through a series of pre-loaded emails.

Your autoresponder is completely automatic to the point that, once you have your series of follow up emails ready to go, you don’t have to do anything at all. People give you their name and email address and your emails go out to them at regular intervals. It is truly a “set it and forget it” system.

The Mistake Almost Everyone Makes

 Unfortunately, the tendency of almost every new affiliate marketer is to take a “wait and see” approach to incorporating an autoresponder, for two main reasons. First, they don’t really understand what it is (hopefully the explanation above has taken care of this issue) and secondly, they are concerned about the cost (less than $20 per month).

The cost objection is short sighted when you consider that an autoresponder will generally increase your sales by an average of 100% (or, in other words, double them).

Let’s look at a hypothetical example to illustrate just how incredibly valuable an autoresponder is to your marketing efforts.

Say you had a web site where you promoted an ebook on how to take care of German Shepherd dogs. And let’s say the ebook sold for $40 and your affiliate commission was 50% or $20 per sale.

The $$ Is In Your List

Let’s further assume that you are running pay-per-click campaign and paying an average of 20 cents per click to bring visitors to your web site and that you are bringing in 100 visitors per day for an advertising expense of $20 per day (.20 per click x 100 clicks per day = $20).  In the case of this particular ebook, you might expect that 1% of people who visit your site will make an impulse purchase on their first visit. So, at 20 cents a click, and one sale per every hundred clicks, you would have one sale each day with a cost per sale of $20 (which is equal to your affiliate commission). Although you would be making one sale every day, your site would actually run at a slight loss each month after taking into account your hosting costs.

Now, consider the same scenario with just one change – the addition of an opt-in form where you are offering a free ebook on German Shepherd diet requirements. (For now, don’t worry about how you would create such an ebook. It’s easy and we’ll discuss it later!)  Now, you would still have the same 1% of people buying on impulse for $20 and your advertising cost will still be $20 per day. BUT, instead of forever losing the other 99% of your visitors, you could expect another 5 or 6 of them to sign up for your free bonus ebook.

Your autoresponder sends them the link to their free bonus ebook (which they then download) and AGAIN reminds them of the benefits of the $40 ebook you are promoting. Then, a few days later, your autoresponder sends out another email with some other helpful information and highlights even MORE benefits of the $40 ebook. (You might repeat this with 5 or 6 follow ups in total.)

So, back to the simple math for a second. Let’s assume that your autoresponder follow up messages resulted in an average of one more sale per day. You have now doubled your sales and thus, your affiliate commission revenues, to $40 per day. Your advertising expenses are still $20 per day, meaning that your monthly net revenue (after advertising costs) is $600 ($40 per day in affiliate revenue – $20 advertising costs per day x 30 days = $600). And your only additional expense is just $19.99 per MONTH for the autoresponder.

So, you are spending $19.99 per month to earn $600 in profit. That’s a whopping 2,900% annual return on your investment!

And, it gets better. The above result is for just one web site. You can use the same autoresponder service to promote other products at no additional cost. Got another site that sells a self-hypnosis quit smoking program? Great. You just create a separate opt-in form and series of follow up emails for those potential customers and, presto, you’re collecting their names and addresses on a separate email list. Your additional cost? Zero! It’s included in the $19.99 that you’ve already paid.

And, in case that wasn’t enough, all of the above is just the tip of the iceberg. Not only does your autoresponder allow you to make additional sales of the original product you are promoting – it also lets you to follow up with all sorts of additional offers at a later date that might be of interest to your customers which creates recurring future income, all on auto-pilot which is what you are ultimately trying to build with your online business. So, if it wasn’t already obvious, it should be crystal clear now. An autoresponder is a key component of any successful affiliate marketing business and one of the few expenses that is more than worth it’s weight in gold.

I’m Not Using Pay-per-click Advertising, So I Don’t Need One, Right?

Wrong.  Even if you are  running your affiliate marketing business on a shoe-string budget and relying on totally free methods to get traffic, an autoresponder is well worth the cost because, quite simply,  you will make WAY more money with one, which is the whole point right?

You may have heard the internet marketing expression “the money is in the list”.  Although it’s a bit of a cliche, it’s 100% accurate.  A mailing list will make you money month-after-month.  It’s an affiliate marketing business’s lifeblood and its one tangible asset.

Which Autoresponder Should You Use?

There are several autoresponder services available but there are two in particular that we like (Aweber and GetResponse) because they are supported by Wordpress which makes them very easy to incorporate into your website without any programming experience.

Aweber also happens to be the most popular choice among affiliate marketers with GetResponse coming in a distant but still very respectable second.

Both have video set-up tutorials, great customer support and offer a risk free trial so you can try them out and it won’t cost you anything if you decide that it’s not for you.

Aweber

GetResponse

Once you have subscribed for an Autoresponder and set up your first email list, the following video will show you how a quickly and easily create your own professional looking opt-in form on your Wordpress site.

===> Video Tutorial – Incorporating Your Autoresponder  <===

Not Ready To Commit?

If you’re not 100% ready to commit to an autoresponder, take Aweber’s 30 day free test drive.  There’s no obligation and you’ll still be able to follow along and learn what is arguably the most important area of affiliate marketing.

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