Karmic Consulting ☻ | Fresh. Karma. Daily.

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The most common question I seem to get via email these days is "how do you maintain your good looks well into your thirties?" My answer? Drink lots of water, watch at least a half hour of Keeping up with the Kardashians every day and 20 minutes of Vipassana meditation first thing in the morning, and then again before bed.

The next thing that people ask is – "how can I convert more of my Craigslist leads?" Simply stated, if you are using Craigslist primarily as an affiliate marketing channel, you are most likely making the whole process a whole hell of a lot more complex than it need be. If you are promoting affiliate offers from Clickbank, for example, you are probably finding your conversions are 1 in 200…or even less. Why? It's quite simple. Even on far more targeted traffic Clickbank coverts pretty badly (depending on the type of traffic you sending it could be 1-2%) so it should be no surprise that far less qualified clicks emanating from Craigslist are simply converting at a low percentage. The key, in my opinion, is too simply re-arranging your priorities as it pertains to each visitor.

For an example – most of the people I speak to (who are able to get their leads to stick, which is a small percentage of you) are still not making any money, or at least enough to justify the time or opportunity cost. Why? Because they are primarily re-directing to an affiliate offer – without collecting the name, without doing ANYTHING in between to develop a relationship with this particular CL customer. How can you change this? Very easy.

• Find good converting affiliate programs on Clickbank and CJ like always.
• Find programs that have a good opt in sequence (simply by signing up for a bunch yourself)
• Put an opt in form on your own landing page rather than redirecting to the affiliate directly on visiting your ad URL
• Offer them the VERY same e-course that the affiliate is – simply by taking the EXACT same message sequence that you are getting, and plugging it into your own sequence.
• (* note – obviously you want to re-write it a little bit – but simply compile the spirit of each email in the sequence into your own words..this is NOT unethical – you are SELLING their product, and they WANT you to make sales using their materials, many top performing programs will offer you a sequence to use for this very reason)
• When they opt in – if you are using Aweber or another commercial grade auto responder, simply put YOUR affiliate cookie in the "thank you" page – sending them to the affiliate AFTER you've got their name.
• Now you're previously worthless Craigslist click is actually on your LIST – which means you are building a real business, PLUS they are cookied with your affiliate link as you forwarded them to the affiliate offer once the squeeze was completed in your Aweber admin.

You can email these folks the sequence you lifted from the affiliate merchant, plus you can send your own personalized modifications, additional messages, etc as you see fit. On top of this, you can send them OTHER offers that may suit their needs better if they don't buy the one you are offering. I.e. – "if you didn't like this diet eBook Joe – how about some popular diet programs before the sizzle of summer sets in and you find yourself avoiding the beach yet another year?"

This is called being *somewhat* more strategic in your marketing mindset – rather than simply throwing stuff against the wall (your CL clicks directly to the affiliate offer) and hoping something sticks (you make a commission). Without question, this is the key to making real money on CL, and anywhere else for that matter online.

There are of course, far other even easier ways to make a few bucks with each ad you run, especially with content pages that are wrapped with high paying contextual ads, think adsense arbitrage through the creative Craigslist lens, but we'll cover those another day, plus they really are tantamount to a small minded mindset as well, i.e. – you aren't going to liberate yourself from real life with this strategy, although you may make some easy money where before you were making none.

I've got some really exciting plans for this blog ( I think) for May….so you may want to stay tuned as I plan to put my money where my mouth is and illustrate how to build a real business online, that anyone can emulate, with up, down, pass or fail real time results that you can watch, mock or follow. And totally without a net – sort of like when Criss Angel did the whole helicopter stunt in the Nevada desert with only fish hooks holding him to the aircraft. Only I'm afraid of heights and my own blood makes me nervous, so this is probably a better stunt for my skill set.

Stay tuned.