davepilgrim

"Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work toward them every day, will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor." - Brian Tracy

Build your list. Rather than constantly sending traffic to new affiliate offers, send that traffic to a squeeze page. It's far easier to share new affiate offers with your existing list than to rely on cold traffic.

An often overlooked Twitter 'hack' is to make sure the main website you want people to visit is in your BIO rather than just the regular space Twitter provides for your website link. People will only see the regular website link if they actually visit your full profile, but when Twitter recommends you to other users they will only see your bio... Usually people will decide whether to follow or ignore you based on whether your bio grabs them, without necessarily visiting your full profile, so getting the bio right is paramount. If you have a link in there, too, you can generate traffic from people who've never followed you or even visited your profile page!

Yes, I use Crowdire to manage my Twitter account... I agree, it's very useful

Pop-ups in TEs are really annoying. The situation is made worse because some of them also act as framebreakers, so when you click 'leave' you're never sure whether it's going to grab you by the lapels and haul you right out of the TE!

Very useful tip about the '7 views' rule... If you're surfing a site that has 25 very active members burning up 1,000 of your credits per day, maybe it's better to spread your time out over a number of different sites each day...

I've seen coaching systems out there that flat-out tell you to lie in order to sell products. So-called 'super affiliates' supposedly making big dollars from clickbank teaching that you should set up fake social media accounts and then lie to other users about the fantastic benefits you've had from Product X. Coaching their customers to pose as teenage girls and lie outright about having excellent results from the latest diet product on clickbank, for example, isn't just unethical, it's dangerous.

My favourite is one you didn't mention... Marketing Checkpoint

Ask yourself, what benefits do your referrals get if they upgrade? Are those benefits in themselves worth the upgrade? Is it worth upgrading even if they never get any referrals themselves, or must they build their own downlines to make the cost of upgrading worthwhile? If a program genuinely offers a great deal to upgraded members (more traffic, excellent products, etc) then your referrals will be able to see this for themselves. However, if you NEED your referrals to upgrade to make your own upgrade worthwhile, then people are going to be reluctant to take this step for themselves. Many programs avoid being classed as ponzis by offering products or services, but if those products or services are not worth the actual cost of upgrading, then really is the program any different from a Ponzi? I believe if you offer genuine quality and value first, then you won't have to spend all your time trying to prize the cash out of your referrals fists

How well Herculist works for you has a lot to do with what you're promoting there... I just checked my referrals for Mailsy for example, and more than a third of them came from Herculist, so it is definitely working for me!

I don't click on banners for credits either, but I'm always looking for new ways to drive traffic to my sites, so if a banner catches my eye, offering a great traffic deal, I'll click on it. And that is the thing... Scattering eyecatching, attention-grabbing banners all over various sites can help you attract new visitors to your main URL who are not necessarliy actively searching for your site. You'll see people doing it right here on Marketing Checkpoint... People don't get credits for clicking on the banners, but they click anyway for the info and services offered

How often do you yourself click on banners that grab your attention? I'm guessing the answer is quite a lot? I use banners everywhere... And whenever possible I like to promote landing pages that I know have my own banner on them... Banners can be far more effective than text ads... You just need to be a little creative

That the idea of 'giving away sales' might be unappealing to some, you are probably already promoting programs which pay you 50% commissions. The only difference between a program where you pass up every other 100% commission and a program where you keep half of every commission is that in the first one there is the chance that some of your referrals might pass up extra sales to you, whereas in the second example all you're doing is giving half your profits to the program owner with no chance of earning anything your referrals make. Looked at from that perspective, programs like AIOP start to make a lot more sense.

I've put together a list of my Top 10 traffic sources, tested and proven by me. I use these daily and they are all very reliable. You can check out my banner below to see them...

Yep, I've had literally thousands and thousands of extra credits from Traffic Codex both for sites I was already a member of and for new sites I discovered there. Definitely recommended

Well, right off the top of my head, one possibilty would be to join Herculist and get the instant free $5 signup bonus. OK, there is a slight catch, in that you can't cash out until your balance reaches $10, so that means earning an extra $5 in commissions, but you can do that even if just ONE of your referrals upgrades. Spend a full day promoting like crazy, giving away those free $5, and you should reach your $10 threshold in no time, especially since the upgrades are such INSANELY good value!

Just realised a week's gone by since I posted the original question, so I checked my stats and was surprised to find that the program which generated most referrals for me over the past seven days was TrafficG This traffic exchange has been around years but is clearly still providing far better results than most of the newer ones out there.

But what is working best for YOU right now?

Sakura Traffic is a new manual traffic exchange I recently discovered which is bringing me good results right now. In fact, it's generating me so much traffic it's right up there in my Top 10 traffic sources! Check it out... http://sakura-traffic.com/splashpage.php?splashid=6&rid=8073

I think the comment by aussiegold above is an excellent rule to bear in mind every day... "If you were the last person on earth to join this company, would you be happy with your purchase?"

Oh, you should NEVER use an avatar! lol On the contrary, I think it can be just as easy to build recognition with an avatar as it is with someone who posts their real picture. People will remember either good or bad experiences with you whether or not you use an avatar. If you rip people off or offer bad advice, using an avatar won't help you with that. Likewise, if you're trustworthy and reliable people will remember your name even if they don't know what you really look like.

Usually when I surf I'm surfing several TEs simultaneously... Having the sound on just ends up with several sites playing over each other and creating a cacophany of noise

A lot of sites are great at enticing free members, but then a lot of those members never log in again, which is such a waste. I much prefer promoting sites where the owner actively sends out regular emails encouraging members to sign in and use the site (and preferably upgrade). Even better are those sites which allow you to email your referrals. It is so frustrating looking at your referrals within a program and seeing that they haven't signed in since the day they joined, yet you have no way of contacting them and you know the site owner isn't doing it, either. I've actually stopped promoting otherwise excellent programs for this reason

I prefer that rare combination of a splash page that grabs immediate attention and summarises the key points of the program AND also allows surfers to sign up quickly and easily on the spot. That way you're not relying on follow-ups to get people to join. It's great to build a list, but if it's done in such a way that it stops people joining your program on the initial landing page, is it really an advantage or just adding extra steps to achieve your primary objective?

I thought it would be really useful if we could all share which program is giving us the best results each week. I don't just mean most traffic or commissions, I mean which has generated the most referrals for you in your primary opportunity. Post a link so we don't have to go Googling the best ones... To kick things off, here's my contribution... Mailsy has generated me more referrals this week than any other program