What would you like to promote? Affiliate marketing is no stranger to the internet, and certainly no stranger to network marketers, and article marketing is still a successful way to promote your business or blog online. Affiliate marketing offers a phenomenal opportunity for people who don’t have a lot of start-up capital or a lot of time to put together a giant campaign. Affiliate marketing has some very nice perks including no proprietary product, inventory, shipping or overhead, and no actual sales force. For the merchant, it can also be a cheap and effective marketing strategy.
What are affiliate programs?
Generally speaking, affiliate programs are marketing programs offered by advertisers or web merchants who recruit website owners and bloggers. Merchants provide banner ads, links, and buttons for website owners to place on their website to market the merchant’s products. In turn, the website owner or blogger will receive a referral fee or commission when a customer purchases a product that is delivered through an affiliate link. One of the most common types of affiliate links is pay per click (PPC – Pay Per Click); however, they have increasingly become intertwined with email and content marketing.
The product:
When you are looking for an affiliate program, there are a few things to consider before choosing which company to go with. The product must be of quality and it can also be a service. As long as it is a viable product service and offers something of value to the customer.
There are several types of compensation plans built into affiliate marketing programs, and one of them may be a residual program. However, not all affiliate marketing programs have residual programs built in. If you can find one with residual funds, then that would be the way to go. However, there are some that actually offer a significantly high commission rate that can offset the loss of residual income. There are also others that offer a multi-level marketing compensation structure. Now if you are familiar with multi-level marketing, that may be one avenue you would choose to examine.
But before launching into any multi-level marketing program, you must read it and do a thorough analysis. The last thing you want to do is join an affiliate program which will be a serious waste of time.
Choosing an affiliate program:
In 1994, there weren’t many affiliate programs to choose from and most of them revolved around offensive content websites. Today, affiliate programs have a higher standard and it’s a new way of doing business. There are many companies that have affiliate marketing programs such as Amazon, web hosting companies, domain name registrars and electronic websites, Apple iTunes, bit defender, panda security, PC health boost, Commission Junction, eBay Partner Network, Google AdSense , VistaPrint and the list goes on and on.
You can find an affiliate program for almost anything you want to sell. It’s a good idea to sell something related to your website, as long as you have one. Not everyone who signs up for an affiliate program has a website to run it. There are some who actually write articles and direct the URLs to their affiliate program.
Become an affiliate:
If you want to become an affiliate, it is not that difficult. Just go to the website of your choice and search for your affiliate link program. Typically what will happen is you sign up and get a unique affiliate id along with some banners and links. You then put them on your website so your potential audience can click on those links which, if they buy, will receive a commission. Just because you have signed up for an affiliate program does not mean that you are actually going to generate traffic to your website. You still need to do something to drive traffic to your website or affiliate link, such as writing attractive articles and becoming an expert in your field. These articles can be placed in article databases and are a safe way to drive traffic to your website or affiliate link.
What to look for:
When shopping for an affiliate program, try to look for high affiliate commissions, long cookies, and of course you want to get a great conversion rate. Two-tier programs that have the same structure as a multi-level marketing organization and can be quite lucrative. Organizations that make billions in multi-level marketing and direct sales are companies like Amway, which has been in business for 53 years, Nu Skin started in 1984, and Nature’s Sunshine started in 1972, so multi-level marketing has been around for some time. weather. Residual affiliate programs are definitely the way to go. You continue to earn money with that visitor month after month. The advantage here is that eventually your sales start to pile up where you are making more and more money instead of the individual sale where you have to continually earn money to stay on the same level.
Where you can go:
There are services that have a database of many companies that run affiliate programs, so you don’t have to run and search for each individual program. Companies like ClickBank where you register and select the affiliate program you want to support.
Marketing your link:
Now let’s talk about that affiliate link for a moment. Most affiliate links are extremely long, horrible, and some of them have special characters like a “?” or “=” sign. These links will not rank very well in search engines like Google and definitely cannot be added to pay per click like Google AdSense. What I would suggest is that you get yourself a domain name and redirect it to your affiliate offer. Let’s take as an example if I wanted to become an affiliate of a cell phone electronics company and had a website where I could write a review on a particular cell phone that I am trying to market. If it is more than one, then I could choose one or two products to write my articles. Anyway, I would try to register a domain name that may have something like cheap cell phones or something like that to help search engines determine what your product might be.
Increase your sales:
What if you don’t have a website and you want to increase your sales with affiliate marketing? what would you do? One way to market an affiliate program that I briefly mentioned is to write quality articles about the product being marketed. I really suggest this strategy to increase traffic and sales. There are multiple article directories you can post your articles to, but don’t post the same article to multiple sites other than the article directory and your own site, if you have one. Article directories can be a very good source of traffic due to their reputation and the number of visitors they have each month reading your article. Of course, some of those readers will click on your affiliate link to drive traffic to your affiliate program. I like Ezine Articles as an article directory, but there are others like; Goarticles, ehow, Examiner, Technorati, Thefreelibrary and much more, but that’s a good start. Don’t just read an article when researching and regurgitating the content of that article. Try to do an in-depth study to get a full understanding of what you are writing. Once you have that knowledge, try simplifying your article by using bullet points or a topic list. In order for people to click on your link, you have to be forced to do so, but the only way to do that is to write engaging articles.
Making money online with affiliate programs can be a rewarding experience if you know where to go with the right affiliate program and how to do the necessary research. Simply locating an affiliate program is not all you need to do, you have to weigh the seriousness of that affiliate program. First determine what it is you would like to sell and do your research. Hopefully you will be looking for something that accentuates your website or, if you don’t have a website, something that you know a lot about so that you can write your reviews.