Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

The short explanation is that this is the process of selling other peoples products from your Blog or Website. Text ads, Banners, Reviews of the product you are marketing with a link to their site. If someone buys it from you, you'll earn a commission. So find some products you stand behind and READ UP on the subject. Let's get started!

Affiliate marketing IS the wave of the future. The Internet is the most important and efficient marketing medium in existence today and good affiliate marketers know how to take advantage of it.

However, just getting involved in the affiliate marketing game DOES NOT guarantee success. A lot of factors determine whether your entry into the affiliate world will create a marketing dynasty, will fizzle out unnoticed or will fall somewhere in between. There are a few steps you can take, however, that may lead you on the path to a successful affiliate marketing effort.

Becoming A Successful Affiliate Step One: Get Yourself A Good Website.


You can't display advertisers on your site if you don't have a site on which to do it. You could cobble together a site that's simply a blank page to slap ads on, but that isn't going to attract many advertisers or much traffic. If you really want to succeed as an affiliate, you need to put serious thought into what your site is going to be.


Do What You Like


Not that many people actually love auto insurance. That's okay. The point is not to pick your overriding passion but you should pick something that interests you, something that will get you to want to work on the site very day.

If you have always understood the need for insurance and the desire to get affordable insurance to those who need it, a site based around insurance may be for you. On the other hand, if you work in real estate, a site geared toward finding good mortgage loan rates and great deals on housing may be just right.

Take Your Site Seriously


Even if your affiliate marketing site has appropriate content, you don't want to just throw everything together. Remember that you are trying to attract people who may stop at a site for only a few seconds. As a result, you need an eye-catching design and interesting content. People won't stay on your site and click ads just because you want them to.

Creating a site is just one part of a successful affiliate marketing strategy. Once you have a site that you are happy with, you are ready to move on to other factors that will place you firmly in the affiliate marketing world.

You already understand by now that you can't have a great affiliate marketing setup without a great website. Once you've picked a topic dear to your heart, created an eye-grabbing design and filled it with content, what's the next step? Is it time to start loading up with advertisers?


Affiliate Marketing Step Two: Adding Links


What is link building? It's based on the idea that search engines are attracted to sites that have a lot of links to them. If other sites link to your site, the search engines read it as being important.

It makes sense -- if others who can actually read have recognized the importance of your site, the search engines should recognize it too. However, how do you build these links?


Link Building Tips


There are a number of ways to build links for your site. One of the best is simply to trade links. You agree to put a link to someone else's site on yours and they agree to do the same.

Do this enough times and you build a strong link network. In addition, posting to other sites with useful information, as either a guest content provider or a blog commenter, is another way to generate links.


The Importance of Links


Having multiple inbound links on the Internet can generate traffic in two ways: directly through the sites linking to you and through the added attention that search engines provide. Good links lead to good traffic. When you have good traffic, you are ready to add advertisers.



You have a great website and you've created some good linking relationships. Now you're ready for the fun part -- partnering with advertisers. Advertising affiliate partners are the way you monetize your site. Getting the right advertisers will determine whether your affiliate marketing campaign is a minor hobby or the foundation of a full-fledged enterprise.


How to Become a Successful Affiliate Step Three: Finding Affiliate Partners


Finding affiliate partners isn't hard to do. There are multiple websites dedicated to offering affiliate program opportunities. The challenge for you is finding the right advertising programs to bring maximum profitability to your site.


Metrics


You may want to start by generating metrics for your site. These are statistics generated for you by various sites. They reveal important information about the performance of your site. You'll learn how many people are visiting, the demographics of the people who are visiting, how long they stay on the site and which keywords are bringing them there. This can help you know what advertisers to try to bring on and help the advertiser know that your site will benefit them in bringing them new business.


Choosing Appropriate Partners



Some sites may happily put banners of any company that wants to on their site. However, your chance of getting a significant number of clicks in this situation is low unless your site is wildly popular.

You are much better off posting links to affiliates who offer a product connected to your site. So, if you have real estate articles on your site, there should be links to real estate companies or real estate lead generation forms. If your site gives poker tips, you can have plenty of online poker site ads on your pages.

The partnerships are how you make your money as an affiliate marketer, so choose them wisely. A brute force approach to this stage of the affiliate marketing process is easy and tempting, but probably won't yield as positive long-term results as a measured, thoughtful approach.

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