Yet another dumb question. . .

[jkgourmet]

I'm just full of 'em. (and other stuff, too - but that's off topic)

I'm setting up my Aweber account. I'm reading Lynn's ClickNewz! article on this. I read the section about knowing your main objective with this mailing list and it says "You can follow up with buyers from your site, for the purpose of offering customer service and making back-end sales."

Okay, if I'm ONLY doing affiliate marketing, do I get a buyers actual email address? (Hell, I'll send them all thank you notes!!!) Or would this only apply to sales made for products that I am marketing?

I'm thinking that the merchant isn't going to share that email adddress with me, so I really have to make it worthwhile for people to sign up for my email opt in. Yes?

[MaryGallagher]

From what I've learned, for every new targeted reader who lands on your site, you want to capture their contact information BEFORE they click on your affiliate links or away from your site. So, the first 'call to action' is to get their attention with some content matching what they have searched for, then invite the reader to opt-in to your own mailing list with something of interest to them.

That's what I understand to be the point of a 'squeeze page' or opt-in box, no matter whether you focus on affiliate marketing or create your own information products or run an e-commerce store. Collect the name to build a relationship with your reader through the autoresponder.

Make sense? When Aweber notifies you that someone opted in and wants to hear from you, that feels good! You can then develop the next 'call to action' to promote those affiliate products that you know will appeal to your readers.

So, the process that I understand from listening to Lynn is: (correct me if I'm offbase here or am missing something, guys?)

• a natural progression based on keyword search by a reader,
• then we're found,
• we provide relevant content and keep their attention,
• we then find out what our readers want by asking &
• by staying in contact with them,
• invite interaction,
• pre-sell affiliate products related to what readers want,
• make it easy for visitors to get the product
• right when they want it for easy conversion.

It's starting to get a little clearer to me as I spell it out like this. Thanks for asking the question, JK!

Best,
Mary

[retta719]

On the buying part, it depends on the program. Some programs do provide buyer's name and contact info while others do not. In most cases though I think it's that they do not.

[Lynn Terry]

When your visitor clicks on the affiliate link at your site, they are taken to the merchants website. That is where they make the purchase, and so the merchant owns the list of buyers.

As an affiliate you can set up a mailing list of your own, offer something of value to encourage visitors to subscribe, and use that list to build a readership and pre-sell products.