| |
|
Guide to Affiliate Marketing - 10 Quick Tips
Affiliate marketing is a form of online advertising, where the advertiser only pays for
conversions (sales and leads). In other words, the affiliate marketer - you - sends visitors to the merchant's
website, and get paid when those visitors buys something in a certain period of time after the first visit.
Often, the traffic and sales are registered by a third party, an affiliate network specialized in securing the
objectivity of the tracking.
It can be very lucrative for the affiliate marketer to get commissions for sales. There are a lot of ways to
generate the traffic - banner ads or text links on your website, newsletters, running ppc ads on Google, Yahoo
and MSN etc. As a rule of thumb, you should have your own website on your own domain - this makes it a lot
easier to get accepted by merchants (merchants usually approve the affiliates they want to promote their
products). As another rule off thumb, banner ads don't work.
Affiliate marketing is quite complex, and it would be impossible on the limited space here to explain all
you need to know to succeed in affiliate marketing. Consider this a few tips intended to get you started
without committing too many serious errors.
10 tips about affiliate marketing
- Tight focus is generally the primary condition for success with affiliate marketing. Focus on a
specific target group, use specific keywords.
- Diversify: In affiliate marketing, it is wise not to expect anything to last. Your best
affiliate program may get closed, you may get hammered by Google and loose traffic, the merchant may get
bad PR and loose sales etc. The solution to this is to spread your assets and risks. Have several websites,
join multiple networks and programs in different areas, get traffic from different sources (search engine
optimization, newsletters, online and offline advertising, links from other websites etc.). Experiment. Try
a lot of different ideas.
- Test everything you do. Track the results. The ads, the copy on your web pages, the choice of
products etc. can always be more effective. It is always possible to increase your income a little more by
increasing traffic and conversion rates. If something doesn't work, kill it. If something works, focus your
efforts here - and multiply your revenues by investing more money, time and creativity in the area in
question.
- Presell the products - make your visitors want them badly. Recommend it in a personal way. Try
to attract visitors that are interested from the beginning (i.e. focus again). You should become a master
of copywriting (unless you have the funds to outsource this work, but then you probably wouldn't be reading
this article ;)
- Evolve - you can always learn more. Build on other people's experience. Check out my Affiliate
resources page at http://www.g2ow.com/affiliate-resources.asp section for inspiration.
- Own the traffic. Regular users on your website is worth a lot. Get your visitors to sign up for
newsletters, give them a reason to bookmark your website, add new content to the website every week, create
an rss feeds that entices visitors with rss-readers to visit etc.
- Cut your losses. Don't hang on too long to programs that don't give you a return fast. As a rule
of thumb (depending on the product and the quality of your traffic): if you send 150 visitors to the
merchant and don't get some kind of return, drop the program and find another product to promote. (Unless
you sell one Ferrari pr. 1000 visitors at a click price of 1$ and a provision of 10%...).
- Think longterm. Don't go for fast solutions. Don't promise anything the merchant can't keep,
don't risk your website traffic by using questionable seo tactics, only promote high quality products.
- Find the right affiliate programs. Look for fast payments, 2nd tier-options (where you get
commisions from sales generated by other affiliates referred by you), payment options (should be automatic
via paypal or bank transfer - avoid payouts pr check and specially programs where you have to invoice the
merchant - it's a drag when you run 50+ programs), customer service (they must respond quickly, you will
need it sooner or later), and long term cookies/lifetime commissions.
- Find the right products to promote. Your interests are a good place to start - if you have a
hobby or a special job, you know something that other people don't. Then you have the prerequisites to
build an interesting information websites to a targeted audience - and to choose and recommend quality
products that can earn you commisions. Find niches where the competition from other marketers is low.
Google Zeitgeist, hobby magazines, stock market trends, business newspapers etc. are good places to find
inspiration for new emerging products/markets.
(Was these 10 tips useful to you? Get 10 more free affiliate marketing tips at http://www.g2ow.com/affiliate-marketing-guide-2.asp... | Morten Nilsson is a succesful danish internet marketer, and owner of
http://www.g2ow.com - Guide to online wealth. The
purpose of g2ow.com is to provide in-depth information about possible methods of generating an
income solely through activities performed on the internet.
 How You Can Make Money as an
Affiliate
Read the amazing true story of how one woman, with no
previous business experience, earns 400,000+ per year ... selling other people's stuff
online. In her down-to-earth, sincere and often humorous style, Rosalind Gardner guides you through the entire
process of building an affiliate marketing business on the 'Net.
In 270+ pages, and more than 73,000 words, you'll learn how to pick the best programs,
negotiate a commission raise and save time, money and effort on everything from affiliate software to
web hosting. See exactly how she does it >> How Top Affiliates Make More Money.
|
 2,000 Business Plans with 110+ forms & templates + 1 year free web
hosting.
Choose your plan and start your business.
Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed Since 1997.
|
|
|
