Wed, Sep 15 2010
Recently Stephen Markas snagged the “Quirk of the Week” crown for being Quirky’s highest social seller. Like a true champ, he immediately reached out to us about sharing his secrets for success with the Quirky community.
When not racking up the referrals, Stephen runs the popular iPad blog iPad Accessories and is a professional marketer and marketing consultant. He’s also a recovering artist, amateur rock climber, and self styled globe trotting hippie.
Try out his affiliate marketing tips below, and you could be raking in the referral dough too! And don’t forget to give him props for this great guest post.
As a professional marketer one of the most attractive things about Quirky to me is the potential to make money as an affiliate through their social sales feature. Affiliate marketing can be a great thing — you don’t have a great idea for a product, you don’t have to ship anything, you don’t even have to invest a single cent to make money! All you have to invest is your time. However, time is a commodity many of us are very short on these days. If you are trying make it as an affiliate marketer, how you spend your time is going to mean the difference between success and failure.
There is an Islamic story about a giant ship engine that failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a youngster. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.
Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed! A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.
“What?!” the owners exclaimed. “He hardly did anything!”
So they wrote the old man a note saying, “Please send us an itemized bill.”
The man sent a bill that read:
Tapping with a hammer: $2.00
Knowing where to tap: $9998.00
Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort in your life makes all the difference. Now, that proverb is applicable in so many aspects in one’s life. When it comes to making social sales at Quirky as an affiliate marketer, how and where you direct your efforts will largely dictate whether or not you make any money. Affiliate marketing is all about finding the buyers — uniting a shopper with the product they want.
Twitter and Facebook: As has already been stated, Twitter and Facebook are two excellent places to go to find people searching for advice on products to buy. Search.twitter.com can be an excellent tool to find people searching for advice in real time. For example a quick search there for the word “compost” reveals a number of individuals wanting to learn about composting, but complaining about not having space to do it! How nice of you to suggest the Keiro to them! You may even get a thank you once you tell them they can make money themselves by committing to buy it in pre-sale! Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
Niche Communities: Thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, no matter what your interest is you can find a group, community, or forum full of like-minded individuals. These small niche communities are perfect places to make social sales. Look at a Quirky product for sale and ask yourself, “What kinds of people would find this useful?” Make a list. For example, look at the HydraDuo. This is one invention I can’t wait to see go into production (second only to the Waffler!) Who would find this useful? Runners, weight lifters, travelers, the list goes on. Next you go out and find some of the major communities, forums, and blogs for these kinds of people. A quick search for running forums reveals a number of great communities to start with.
Now you’ve found your target audience, next comes selling to them. Selling is an art unto itself, and would be a blog post (or two!) all of its own. It is essential that you don’t come off as a marketer, spamming the forums with links and pushing products. Instead, make yourself a valuable contributing member of their community. Perhaps you could create a forum topic “What’s the best water bottle for running?” and list a few water bottles including the Hydra Duo in some of your favorites. Or once you have built up some trust on the forum, you could post a review of the Hydra Duo, mention how amazing it is, and how it needs to be made, and how buyers can make money by committing to buy it in pre-sale! Use your imagination, be creative, and try different things.
These communities come in many shapes and sizes, and a creative marketer will find ways to reach the individuals there and show them how awesome Quirky products are. If you can’t find a community for a product, then you could always create using free services like Ning.
Find the places where people are asking questions and seeking advice, look for ways you can unite a searcher with a product, think outside the box and avoid the herd at all costs… and you just may find that your social sales start going up!
Got any tips of your own to share? Head to the forum to continue the discussion!
Many of my friends have gone to the site with my original link, but never registered at that time. They would simply go to Quirky days or weeks later without using the link, then register and order.
