How Can I Promote My Affiliate Programs?

The thought of being able to make money online with affiliate programs may have sounded like a great business opportunity to you. The thought of being able to work at home in your own internet business, without having to worry about the things that have traditionally come along with running a business, such as inventory, storage, packing, shipping, complaints, returns, phone calls, emails, checks and credit cards,  just to name a few, must have seemed like the greatest business idea you had ever come across!

    Now that you are all set up with your affiliate programs however, you may be wondering, what can I do to generate traffic to my affiliate links?  Lets explore some of the ways we can accomplish this.

    The first thing you will want to do is to have a webpage with brief descriptions of all of your affiliate programs along with your affiliate links accompanying it. The reason for this is, for the most part, you will want to promote your own website as opposed to your individual affiliate links. Your webpage dose does not have to be fancy. Once you have accomplished this you will have a huge advantage over simply attempting to generate traffic to your individual affiliate links.  

    Start a business Blog. A Blog, short for, Web Log, is a great way to promote yourself as a knowledgeable person. People will begin to believe in you and will eventually trust you. Just make sure to post a new article every day so that people will keep coming back to read your latest article. That will breed familiarity. People will buy much more readily from people who they know and trust. Another reason to post every day is that, although it won’t be long before the search engines find your Blog, you can ping the search engines every time your Blog is updated and search engines L-O-V-E new content! Make sure to have a bio along with a link back to your website. Your bio should contain a brief description about you such as, [ John Doe is the owner of yoursite.com. John specializes in helping people to work at home in their own home based business. To learn about the different business opportunities John has to offer you visit his website at www.yoursite.com].

    Write and publish your own business articles. This is the greatest form of free advertising available. By writing and submitting articles, along with your bio at the bottom of each of your articles, you will not only have more and more non-reciprocal links pointing back to your website but most importantly the search engines will begin to spider your articles(read them word for word.)  When people type into a search engine, keywords or phrases, that match what is in your articles, they will show up on the search results along with a link back to your website! Make sure to insert keywords into your articles that are relevant to your website such as business opportunities, affiliate programs, work at home, home based business, etc. The more relevant links there are pointing back to your website the higher your page rank will be. A higher page rank means your website will show up higher on the search engines results page, so keep writing those articles!

    Ezines are email newsletters that people subscribe to on every topic imaginable. Find Ezines that are relevant to the business you are promoting such as business opportunities, affiliate programs, work at home, home based business, etc.  Most Ezines will accept advertisements. This is not spam because the subscribers have agreed to accept offers from time to time as part of their subscription and can unsubscribe at any time. With Ezines it is better to advertise your individual affiliate programs along with your affiliate link as opposed to your website with a link back to it.

    Email lists are another great way to advertise your individual affiliate programs. These are people who for whatever reason have agreed to receive certain offers. Find lists that are relevant to what you are promoting such as business opportunities, affiliate programs, work at home, home based business etc.

    Pay-Per-Click(PPC) advertising such as Google AdWords is a form of advertising for the first time in history were you only pay for advertising if people are actually interested in your ad, since you only pay if someone is interested enough to click on it! These are ads that show up along with the regular search engine results. In the case of Google AdWords for instance the ads appear overhead and also on the right side. This form of advertising however requires a deep technical understanding to make it cost effective, otherwise, it will suck up your advertising dollars in no time!

    Promoting your affiliate links dose not have to be expensive. It all depends on wether you would prefer to spend time, money or some sort of compromise between the two. You have various options available to you and what path you decide to take is entirely up to you.

The 10 Most Important Things a Webmaster Needs to Know When Picking a Retail Merchant Affiliate Program

I write a lot about what I look for in an affiliate when managing programs for various merchants. It always amazes me how many signups I get from sites with no affinity to my sites and also who never ask me a question about the performance of my merchant’s site. If you don’t know some of these basic facts about an affiliate program you are going to place advertising for on your site, then you are really not doing your job well.

So here are the 10 most important things you need to know about a retail merchant’s site:

1.    Make sure the site is the site professionally designed. First impressions are important. Nothing will turn off the visitors you refer to a site than to have them see an ugly site on the end of a link you have asked them to go to. You lose credibility with your visitor, something you never want to do.

2.    Make sure the ecommerce shopping cart is easy to use. We still have lots of clunky shopping carts in the marketplace. These hinder conversions and mean you won’t do well with the offer. How do you tell? Go buy something and see if you think it’s easy to use. You’ve seen more than most people, use your experience.

3.    Make sure your site has a close affinity to the merchant site. Don’t sign up for an affiliate program just because they have a large payout. If your site is all about “cats and dogs” and you refer someone to a residential lending site, what do you think your chances of conversion are? Low, low, low… so don’t do it. Refer visitors to sites that match your site in content and voice. You’ll get higher conversions making up for someone else’s supposedly higher payout.

4.    Check to see if they are selling any brand name products. Having brand names does make it easier to sell online. Having a branded category name is even easier. Does that mean you have to have a brand name to be successful… no. It just makes it easier.

5.    Ask them what the conversion rate of visitors to sales is. Depending on the conversion rate and the average sale price I can give the retailer a pretty good idea if he is going to be successful in attracting affiliates. A 1% conversion rate can be good depending on what you sell, and I have some customers that run at 4% as well. Likewise, an affiliate must look at the affiliate conversion rate to determine which program will do the best for him. How do you find out… ask. Good affiliate managers will tell you and you will learn which ones to trust very quickly.

6.    Ask them what the average price per sale is on the site. Low priced items are not affiliate favorites as they have to drive lots of traffic to earn any money. A retailer with at least a $60 average sale is a bare minimum. Many times it may be a packaging issue, but if the retailer hasn’t figured it out by the time you show up… don’t expect them to get them to package their products correctly.

7.    Check if they are selling a unique product. This goes to the competition. When I hear the phrase: “Well… there’s really nothing quite like it on the Internet”, you should I know that the merchant has not done any online research. There is competition in virtually every segment of every product type on the web. Sometimes unique is good, sometimes it is a little too “niche-y”. If your site has affinity to a niche product you should be fine, if not don’t stretch too much out of your comfort zone.

8.    Make sure the merchant is able to offer a competitively priced retail product. He doesn’t have to be the cheapest for sure. But if the competition is less expensive and they don’t have a value proposition to support the pricing model, you will have trouble getting sales.

9.    Similar to #7: Make sure the merchant isn’t allowing others to sell the same product less expensively than you are able to sell if for. Some retailers are actually the manufacturer, so he may have lots of margin in his products. This is okay as long as he doesn’t offer favored deals to other affiliates.

10.    Work with merchants who offer an aggressive affiliate payout. I’ve got this last because if any of the first parts are not in order, high payouts won’t do you any good. Also, brand names many times prescribe low payouts to affiliates, since they are… so well known. You might be better off with an aggressive competitor that really values you.

11.    Bonus Answer: Find Affiliate Managers you trust. Find affiliate managers that promptly answer your questions and respond to your needs… such as getting you paid promptly. Building these relationships will enable you to more quickly determine if the program fits you.

And now once you are loaded with all of this data, your site will have appropriate highly converting product links from good retail merchants with management in place to make your life easier.