It can be really hard to make any headway as an affiliate—especially if you’re new. How are you going to get your links in front of people? There are tons of other affiliates trying to do the same thing you’re doing. You can drive free and paid ads, sure. But one of the best ways to get people to take a look at your content, click through your links, and buy what you recommend is to release free reports.

People love content. They need content. They read content to learn things and to find solutions to their problems. They often buy content and infoproducts to find these solutions. Again, it can be hard to stand out in a crowd when you’re trying to sell content—especially if you’re new.

The solution of releasing free reports that contain your affiliate links solves all of the above. You’ll get your links in front of people. You’ll attract people who want and need solutions—and you’ll stand out from the crowd because they can get your great content for free.

We’re not talking about any old content—we’re talking about fantastic content people would otherwise pay for. If you expect to make sales, then it’s really important to focus on quality. You’ll be building relationships and truly helping people through the free content you put out. They need to know they can trust you and the things you recommend. You might not be there sitting next to them as they read the book, but they can almost feel like you are because of the way you write and release your freebie content.

If you’re going to write great content that people want to download and learn from, then it’s really important to understand your audience. What are the people of your niche actively buying? What are their biggest sticking points and problems? Figure this out and you can do very well with this content.

Once you know what people want, you can deliver that to them. You can research and investigate the solutions they need. You can lend your voice and personality to them, through your writing, in a way that no one else can. That’s invaluable—and they’ll love you for it.

How do you get started? You have to choose a niche where people are actively spending money. You have to research the niche, as we’ve talked about.

Then, you have to figure out what you want to write about. Choose a very specific, very narrow topic you can easily write about. Write about the topic in a way that will create content people will otherwise pay for.

You can also work backwards with this. Choose the product you’d like to promote as an affiliate first. Make sure it’s something that’s actually selling really well—and that it would be a good fit to promote within the body of a free report.

By the way—you don’t have to write a huge volume of content for people to download for free. You can write a quick report and insert your affiliate links. A report of 3,000-5,000 words can work just fine. If you focus, you can finish this report in a day or so.

Make sure you outline your free report ahead of time. That will save you a lot of time, stress, and trial and error when you’re trying to write. Keep your content well organized and easy to follow for those who are reading it and learning from you.

Don’t be afraid to be open and use your personality within the content. You don’t want to be boring and dry—you want to be you! That’s how you’re going to win the reader over and make them feel like you’re really on their side as you share your ideas and solutions with them.

It’s important to write in real connections with the product you’re promoting as an affiliate. How does it connect with the solutions you’ve included in the book? Does it take things further? Does it cut the process down and make it easier in some way? Is it an upgrade? How is it related?

Think about this—it should be a natural thing for the reader to want to buy the product you’re promoting. If you can’t answer why your reader would want to buy the product you’re promoting,

Video marketing is one of those things we should all be doing more of to get more website traffic, but few take the time to do enough of. It’s no wonder— in years past it was a matter of buying expensive equipment and taking pretty much all day long to do one video, complete with a lot of editing and processing time.

These days, we have it pretty easy— especially when it comes to using tools like YouTube and Google Hangouts. I’m not going to get into everything there is to know about video marketing. My goal is to give you a few options you can run with to record 20 awesome videos that will help earn you fans, customers, and search engine traffic.

Coming Up With Video Topics

It might seem impossible to create 20 videos to publish on YouTube in just a short time (you can even challenge yourself to do it in a day or two!), particularly if you’ve created videos in the past that took a while to create. There’s definitely something to be said for sticking to quality and making sure you’re putting out high quality videos people are actually going to want to watch. But, that doesn’t mean you need to spend hours and days on each video.

There are certainly going to be some videos you create in your business that are meant to be extra special. They will take longer to create but will do very special things for you, too. That’s not what this is about. This is about creating 20 YouTube videos that focus on 1 highly focused topic each and can help drive great traffic for you.

Which topics should you focus on? That’s completely up to you, of course, but I suggest you brainstorm the top 20 pressing questions your customers and readers tend to ask you. How can you help your audience? Use that line of thinking as a way to figure out which 20 topics you should tackle.

Conversely, think about what you want to promote. Do you want to drive people to a specific squeeze page? In that case, you’ll likely want to focus your 20 videos on that specific topic.

Or, maybe you want to promote a specific product. Brainstorm topics that will allow you to offer a lot of great content related to that product but that will also readily relate to the product you’d like to promote.

There are no “right” answers here. You’ll probably be surprised at which of your videos perform and really take off and drive a lot of traffic after these 20 videos have been released and have time to catch on in the search engines.

The point is that planning ahead is very important. It’s not as easy to just sit down and create 20 videos on a whim with no plan in mind as it is to create them after you’ve taken even just a few minutes to brainstorm and get yourself excited about what you’re doing.

Go ahead and get your list of 20 topics. Then, write that list of 20 topics in the form of titles for your upcoming YouTube videos. Think about what will make sense to the people who will be searching for your videos— you want to pay attention to keywords but also to titles that will be attractive for them to click on when the videos appear in the search engines.

Your Options for Creating Videos

There are a few different options for creating videos very quickly.

You can record yourself on your phone or using a flip cam or video recorder or whatever you have. You can create talking head videos, take the camera with you to various locations, or whatever fits in with the content you’re creating. If this option fits you, you most likely know it.

Screencast videos are an option for those who would like to video record something on their computer screen. This is great if you’re showing people how to do something technical. This can even be as simple as to type something on your computer screen and using screencast software to record yourself talking about it. com (free), Camtasia Studio, and other options are available to help you get up and running very quickly.

It’s time to find the best information for your book. You need information, facts, stories, and more that will “wow” your reader. The great news is that good research can happen very quickly.

I'm very aware that "research" is not a very sexy topic. In fact, it might be the case that you'd rather do anything else but research. But you’re reading this in the hopes that I could help you get past this dreadful task successfully.

That's exactly what I aim to do – I also aim to make research fun. There's no reason to dread research – it can even be exciting because you can quickly gather the very best information just by using the web.

I want to make it clear, once again, that good research doesn't have to take a long time. If I say it enough, you’ll believe me, right? You certainly don't have to spend months or even years on it. When many people think about research, they picture themselves surrounded by books that they have to dig through for hours, weeks, and months. You can actually do effective research in just minutes. The trick is that you have to know where to look.

Part of the problem is that people think they have to read everything they can get their hands on as soon as they start researching a topic. That's not the case at all. In fact, that is an extremely inefficient strategy. What you really should be doing is only researching what is directly relevant to your topic. Take that a step further – you should only be researching and reading what is directly relevant to the book you're writing right now.

Of course, you do need a general knowledge of your topic to get started with. You have all the time in the world, your entire life in fact, to learn the other parts of your topic.

Many people get an idea for a book and are gung ho to write it at first, but then they get mired in the research. They read this and read that... And they read every single word of this and that. That just slows you down and makes you very inefficient.

Some people believe that you can't possibly write an excellent book if you don't know everything about a topic. They believe that you're not a true expert, in that case. Those people are very wrong. For one thing, no one knows everything about a topic.

For another thing, it's so much better for you to have an in-depth knowledge of the exact topic you're focused on than it is to follow all the rabbit trails to know everything there is to know about it. Specialized knowledge is often better than general knowledge.

Again, give yourself the background knowledge overview, but then focus more of your energy on the specifics. Ideally, you already have a very specific idea for your book. So it makes sense then to very specifically research only the exact topics you plan to write about.

You couldn’t get through all of the research out there even if you tried. The thought of doing that is what scares many people away from researching and writing. It doesn’t have to be like that. Focus, research faster, pull out the best, highest quality information, and wow your readers. Cite your sources, add your unique insight, and you’ve got a great book on your hands.

Learn to scan and skim what you read. Only pull out the most important points. Learn to be quick and efficient as a researcher – that's what you have to do as a prolific writer.

I think you'll find that if you follow this method then you’ll end up knowing more about your topic over time than most of the other experts out there. Your books will also be better because they’ll be so much more tightly focused.

If you tend to be a perfectionist, then this advice is particularly applicable to you. You can't be perfect – not in your research nor your writing. Focus, focus, focus. Focus on quality and the specifics of what you need and get it done.

Find and use the research you need and leave the rest. Scan and skim through, only focusing on the most directly relevant points.

Habits and Goals Together

You might be wondering what you’re supposed to do if you want to change certain habits but you really haven’t given any thought to whether or not they attach to goals you have. What if you just know that you procrastinate too...

People desperately want others to tell them what's going on and how to think. It doesn't matter which industry it is or what topic you're talking about, this is something that’s universal. If you can become a news bringer and a thought leader in your niche, you can make great headway as a marketer.

The way this is done is by becoming a news bringer in your niche. Essentially, you are going to position yourself as a thought leader and expert in your niche. You are going to keep up with and deliver the latest news in your niche.

In some cases, you’re even going to create the latest news. If you think about it, the people you consider to be gurus are those you wait with baited breath to hear the latest news from. If they tell you something has changed, you believe it. If they tell you something is new, different, and really works, you believe it. If they tell you that you must buy something, you believe it.

You believe it because they have trained you to believe that they are thought leaders. They have trained you that they are newsmakers. They may or may not be in reality. But that is what you are truly going to become for your readers and the people in your niche.

How do you create the latest news? One of the best ways is to develop and publish your own case studies and results. This might seem simple, but it's something that very few marketers take the time to do. There are so many people out there who really want to know if something works or doesn't work. It's so simple to test a certain method and publish it on a blog or in a report and give it to people as a list builder or viral marketing technique. You can show people, in real-time, whether something works or doesn't work.

If you develop and publish your own case studies and show people the results, they'll come to love and trust you. That's because so many marketers only deliver theories as to what works but don't really present it in that way. They just expect people to believe that what they are telling them is true. By showing people the actual facts of what works and what you have followed through with and tested, you'll be standing out in a really great way.

You can develop and publish case studies using other people's methods or using your own methods. It's even better when you use your own methods because then you can really make a splash in the market. You can even test your own theories by expanding on other people's theories. Make your own tweaks that you can add your name to. You can then showcase your results, publish them, and again, make a huge splash in the marketplace.

When you run and share your test results, people will pay attention. That's the kind of thing people love to share on their blogs and on their social media accounts. It's also the kind of thing that can go viral, leading others to spread your name far and wide.

People are always desperate to know how to get more traffic. You’re probably desperate to know how to get more traffic. Well, publishing your own case studies and test results based on strategies is one of the best ways to get people to naturally want to share your content. People love to find data like this, and you're handing it to them on a silver platter.

Essentially, when you are a newsmaker, you want to do the dirty work yourself. You want to become the primary source of information, data, and content that others will want to share. This is a phenomenal way to really stand out for just about every niche out there. Of course, it works especially well in marketing niches or any other niche where data and testing is prevalent.

No matter which niche you’re in, you want to be on the cutting edge of everything that is happening. You should subscribe to alert services for the latest news in your niche so you can immediately report on those things on your blog and on social media.

People in your niche want to find people who will tell them how to think. That might seem strange,

You want to be able to write a great sales letter. That’s no secret– if you can write great copy, then you can earn more money and grow your customer base, snowballing that from short term success into long term success.

That’s not enough for you, though. You don’t just want to be able to write great sales copy. You want to be able to write great sales copy in a very short period of time. The truth is that you really admire those who can very quickly knock out copy that converts.

What’s the trick to writing great copy? Is it even possible to write great copy in two hours? Can you write great copy in even less than two hours? Sure you can.

I’m going to tell you the exact method you can follow for getting things done. But first, let’s talk about why you’ll be able to make this happen and why and how it’s possible.

When most people sit down to write copy– especially when they aren’t ‘copywriters’ – there’s a certain amount of fear and intimidation there from the start. They assume it’s going to be a difficult and long process.

There’s also the fact that it can take some time to learn the ins and outs of writing copy. You can’t get away from the fact that it’s both an art and a science. There’s a certain something there that either makes the copy convert highly… Or not.

So, you start out with this fear and this sense that maybe you’re in over your head. You’re trying to remember all the pieces that you’ve learned, whether you’ve actually written copy before or not.

Most people are also highly inefficient. Even if they know how to write copy and have done so dozens of times, it’s probably the case that the actual process is inefficient.

That might be you. Whether you’ve never written copy before or you’ve written dozens of sales letters before, it could be taking you days and days and days to write a piece of copy that could be taking you just a couple of hours.

If you want to write copy in just two hours, then you have to streamline your process. You’re going to cut the fluff when it comes to writing copy. You’ll focus only on the pieces of writing copy that really matter. You’ll follow a format (or develop your own) that allows you to hit on the most important elements of copy.

You’ll be following a template. Now, when I say ‘template,’ that doesn’t mean your copy is going to be dry or boring or seem formulaic, even though you will technically be following a formula. The framework, or formula, you work from is going to allow you to open up your creativity and speak to your audience… while ensuring you hit on all the ‘copy’ points you need to hit on.

The fact is that there are certain copy elements we know work when it comes to writing sales letters. These are proven to convert time and time again– they’re what we call ‘time tested.’ So you’ll use these time tested elements in your copy as a matter of course, while being creative and passionate with how you actually word the letter to your audience.

Yes, It Is a Letter

Before we go any further, I want to address this point. Part of what’s going to help you write great sales copy in two hours or less is developing a new mindset around writing copy.

You’re writing a letter.

You can write a letter in under two hours, right? You can even write a fairly lengthy letter in under two hours– I’m sure of it.

And what you’re doing when you write sales copy is you’re writing a sales letter to your audience. You’re addressing your audience as if they’re ‘one’ person you’re writing to.

You’re going to address your letter to ‘Dear friend,’ or something similar.

You’ll include an introduction, body points, and a conclusion. You’re going to pour your heart into this letter, knowing that you can help the reader.

To Help the Reader, You Have To Understand the Reader

If you’re going to write a letter in two hours and really help your reader, you have to understand your reader. This is something you can do within your two hours… But true,