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Affiliate
Marketing Articles home : Guide to affiliate marketing - 10 quick tips
Guide to affiliate marketing - 10 quick tips
by Morten Nilsson
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. s 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.
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10 tips about affiliate marketing
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1. Tight focus is generally the primary condition for success with affiliate
marketing. Focus on a specific target group, use specific keywords.
2.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.
3. 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.
4. 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 ;)
5. 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 for inspiration.
6. 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.
7. 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
commission of 10%...).
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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...
About the Author
Morten Nilsson is owner of www.g2ow.com - Guide to online wealth. The
purpose of G2OW.com is to provide free, in-depth information about possible
methods of generating an income solely through activities performed on the
internet.
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