Affiliate Marketing Principles
Spend 75% of Your Time Marketing Programs
How important do you think it is to market your Affiliate programs? Well, most people would probably say that it’s quite important.
I would say that this is the main difference between success and failure for anybody marketing Affiliate programs. The more time you spend marketing your affiliate programs the more successful you’ll be… and the more money you’ll make.
‘Super Affiliates’’ spend 75% of their time marketing their affiliate programs. This means that they only spend 25% of their time working on their affiliate programs. The bulk of their time is spent in promoting them.
Now, compare this with most affiliates who spend about 10% to 20% of their time marketing their affiliate programs, and the rest of their time “fiddling.”
You may have read the statistics that indicate that between 80% and 90% of all affiliates make little or no money each month from their affiliate programs.
A big reason for their lack of success is…
LACK OF MARKETING.
Just because it’s an affiliate program does not mean that you do not have to spend time marketing it.
Treat each affiliate program you belong to as if it were your own product. This will force you to concentrate more of your efforts on marketing. By thinking like the “owner” rather than the “affiliate” you’ll automatically focus on what is important to make those sales.
In fact, you could say that you have to spend MORE TIME marketing your affiliate programs than if you were the owner of the product, because not only are you trying to get people to buy a product, you are also competing with other affiliates marketing the same product.
Spend more time marketing your programs than your fellow affiliates and you’ll earn more money. If others spend more time than you marketing their programs who do you think is going to succeed?
However, when I talk about marketing affiliate programs this doesn’t mean that you have to go out and spend a whole lot of money doing this.
There are numerous, effective, low cost and free marketing methods that work very well.
Try the following free marketing methods to improve your affiliate program results.
You may even become a Super Affiliate one day!
You’ve probably seen sites that sell a product or service and noticed that they also have an affiliate program, which you can join. There is often a link at the top left or at the bottom of the site, which says “Affiliate Program”.
Not only can you buy the product or service, but you can also sell it and earn a commission.
Well, how about using this very same concept for the affiliate programs you’re promoting. How about setting up your site like this but not actually developing the product or service yourself.
You can use this technique with 2 tier programs!
Not only will you directly earn commissions through the sale of products or services at your site, you can also sign up second tier affiliates to earn commissions for you as well.
Many of the best affiliate programs are ‘Two Tier’ systems. In fact, it is advised that you join affiliate programs that have two tiers.
So, how should you design your site to accommodate sales and promote affiliate signups? There are 2 ways to do this:
If you have a number of products or services that you are selling at your site, then underneath the “To Buy” affiliate link place a “To join affiliate program” link. Most likely your affiliate program will provide you with 2 different affiliate links, a “Buy” link and a “join program” link..
Chances are, people you sign up on the 2nd tier via your affiliate program link will also end up buying the product themselves. So, not only do you get a direct commission from the sale to this person you’ll also get 2nd tier commissions from any sales they make in the future.
Affiliate mini-sites
Set up a mini-site for each one of your main affiliate programs, so that you’re only reselling this one product or service on that site.
This would be a site with only two pages. On the first page place the link to the product itself. On the second page include a description of the affiliate program, and place the link to the affiliate program sign up page.
Your main goal is to actually direct visitors to the second page where they can sign up for the affiliate program.
Why?
You’ll get more commissions from signing up affiliates in your 2nd tier than from visitors directly buying the product through your affiliate link. This is because more people will be interested in the affiliate program rather than the product. However, when they join the affiliate program, many of them will actually buy the product or service.
In summary, think about using your site as an affiliate program site AND a sales site. It gives you two bites at the cherry, and having 2nd tier affiliates means you can be earning commissions for many years to come.
I saw a site today that had only four visible links on its home page. Three of those links were text links and linked to other pages within the same web site. Therefore there was actually only one link to a different site.
Is this site operating profitably?
I’m really not sure but the information on the site was very good, and this got me thinking.
Everyone is talking these days about link popularity and getting as many people to link to your site. Often this means you have to give reciprocal links back to them. The theory goes that the better your link popularity the better you’ll rank with the search engines.
Well some people appear to be taking this idea to extremes. Suddenly you’ve got 473 links to other sites all sprayed across your web pages. Your visitors are bombarded with banners and text links on totally different subjects.
So, visitors do not know what to click on next… Arrrrggggghhhh !
Sure, you might jump up a couple of places in the search engine results but is it really worth it?
Also, there is a real possibility that the Search Engines will actually dump your site.
It’s theme-focused links which actually improve rankings with the Search Engines, not random, unrelated links from Link farms and link exchanges.
With so many links these sites are not focused.
So, what’s the answer here?
This will mean they’ll actually stay longer at your site.
The ‘stickiness’ of your site will improve. They may even come back because they’ve learnt a bit more about you and your web site.
They may even bookmark your site for future reference.
Now, this is what you’re really trying to do … get the visitor to come back, because people rarely buy on their first visit.
Now, compare this with a site that has lots of links. The visitor sees dozens of links to dozens of different sites. They quickly scan the home page and see a link that takes
their interest and click on that link.
Now, they’re on someone else’s web site, and they’ve completely forgotten the name of your web site, the one they were just on. You’ve not only lost a visitor, but you’ve also lost a potential customer.
These people are less likely to come back to your site, because they cannot even remember its name.
Here’s a method to focus your web site.
Use fewer links on your home page.
Put some of the links that were on your home page on your other pages. This will make people click from your home page to one of the other pages of your web site.
Then make sure each link is related to what you are discussing on that particular page.
Be more focused.
People will stay longer at your site. They will not be inclined to click off your site on the first link they see. Get them interested in what YOU are offering, not what someone else is offering.
Less links means more profits.
There are many thousands of affiliate programs on the net that you can join. Every man and his dog have one. But how do you decide which programs to join?
There are two schools of thought here. First you can take the scatter gun approach, which is quite popular on the net, and join as many programs as possible. This ensures that at least SOME of them will pay off. Well, that’s the theory at least.
The alternative is to take the targeted approach. Join some leading affiliate programs in just a few areas and put more effort into promoting each one. First, do some affiliate marketing research by reading as many articles as possible. This way you’ll narrow down the options.
There are pros and cons to both the scatter gun and targeted approaches, but why not do what everyone else is not doing. It seems to me most sites are taking the scatter gun approach. For example: We have 3,000 affiliate programs listed on our site. We have the largest selection of affiliate programs.
Focus? Find your own niche. Find a particular area that you’re interested in. If (for example) your interest is in selling rare papyrus from Egypt and you find that there is only one affiliate program dedicated to this, join it. Focus your affiliate marketing strategies on this one product. You’re not thinking about selling papyrus from Egypt one minute and then how to sell long distance phone calls the next.
With fewer products and services you are able to focus more energy and effort on the products and services that you have a genuine interest in. You may even become regarded as an expert in this particular area because of your specialist knowledge.
There are many webmasters doing fine promoting their hundreds or even thousands of affiliate programs, but the market for the scattergun approach now appears to be very cluttered.
This is where the specialists enter - the new breed of Webmaster who focuses only on particular products or services.
Alternatively, your focus may be on one area, and you select only the best-selling, highest-paying commissions for that field. Then you target customers with your highlevel affiliate marketing techniques.
There is room for the specialist to succeed.
Target your affiliate programs. Pick just a few.
Concentrate all of your time on marketing these programs, and because you’re so passionate about the product or service that you’re selling, you will drive more targeted traffic to your affiliate program.
It’s called focusing.
How important do you think it is to market your Affiliate programs? Well, most people would probably say that it’s quite important.
I would say that this is the main difference between success and failure for anybody marketing Affiliate programs. The more time you spend marketing your affiliate programs the more successful you’ll be… and the more money you’ll make.
‘Super Affiliates’’ spend 75% of their time marketing their affiliate programs. This means that they only spend 25% of their time working on their affiliate programs. The bulk of their time is spent in promoting them.
Now, compare this with most affiliates who spend about 10% to 20% of their time marketing their affiliate programs, and the rest of their time “fiddling.”
You may have read the statistics that indicate that between 80% and 90% of all affiliates make little or no money each month from their affiliate programs.
A big reason for their lack of success is…
LACK OF MARKETING.
Just because it’s an affiliate program does not mean that you do not have to spend time marketing it.
Treat each affiliate program you belong to as if it were your own product. This will force you to concentrate more of your efforts on marketing. By thinking like the “owner” rather than the “affiliate” you’ll automatically focus on what is important to make those sales.
In fact, you could say that you have to spend MORE TIME marketing your affiliate programs than if you were the owner of the product, because not only are you trying to get people to buy a product, you are also competing with other affiliates marketing the same product.
Spend more time marketing your programs than your fellow affiliates and you’ll earn more money. If others spend more time than you marketing their programs who do you think is going to succeed?
However, when I talk about marketing affiliate programs this doesn’t mean that you have to go out and spend a whole lot of money doing this.
There are numerous, effective, low cost and free marketing methods that work very well.
Try the following free marketing methods to improve your affiliate program results.
- Write your own articles
- Use ezine ad swaps
- Use sig files in your emails
You may even become a Super Affiliate one day!
Affiliate Marketing Techniques That Get Results
These are techniques that (when used consistently) bring good results.- Spend time trying to get a higher ranking in the various search engines for your web sites. Learn as much as you can about search engines and make it a weekly task to try to improve your rankings in them.
- The word "free" and especially when written "FREE" is over used. Use it only occasionally on your site. For example you could use it to give away a free EBook or free article you have written.
- Spend 75% of your time marketing your web site and affiliate programs and 25% of your time working on them. Most people spend about 10% to 20% marketing their web site and affiliate programs. Then again, most people online do not make any money.
- Use text links rather than banners for your affiliate programs. Text links have a much higher click through ratio. People have trained themselves to ignore banners.
- Write you own articles and post them on a separate page on your site. Then submit them to the following article resource sites:
http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.htm
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm - Check your clicks and sales regularly at your affiliate web site. If you see a slowdown in clicks and/or sales then alter your marketing tactics. Try something different. Do not continue using the same techniques if they’re arenot working.
- Use Newsgroups, but do this in a clever way. Stand out from the crowd. Use Newsgroups to announce new articles that you’ve written. However, make sure that you read the rules of each newsgroup before you post to it, and never, ever spam.
- Do not use graphics that will slow down the loading of your web page. If your selling or pre-selling information is predominantly text, your site will load much faster. My site has one graphic on it. That’s right, just ONE.
- Subscribe to a number of newsletters, which are related to the theme of your web site. You can always get a lot of valuable affiliate tips from good newsletters.
- Post articles that other webmasters have written on your site, but ask them first. You can even do your own review of other people’s articles.
- Find out whether any affiliate programs you belong to have articles on their site, and find out if you can post them on your site. Then include your affiliate link back to the affiliate site at the end of the each article.
Be an Affiliate Site AND a Sales Site
Are you just a sales site reselling affiliate products and services?You’ve probably seen sites that sell a product or service and noticed that they also have an affiliate program, which you can join. There is often a link at the top left or at the bottom of the site, which says “Affiliate Program”.
Not only can you buy the product or service, but you can also sell it and earn a commission.
Well, how about using this very same concept for the affiliate programs you’re promoting. How about setting up your site like this but not actually developing the product or service yourself.
You can use this technique with 2 tier programs!
Not only will you directly earn commissions through the sale of products or services at your site, you can also sign up second tier affiliates to earn commissions for you as well.
Many of the best affiliate programs are ‘Two Tier’ systems. In fact, it is advised that you join affiliate programs that have two tiers.
So, how should you design your site to accommodate sales and promote affiliate signups? There are 2 ways to do this:
If you have a number of products or services that you are selling at your site, then underneath the “To Buy” affiliate link place a “To join affiliate program” link. Most likely your affiliate program will provide you with 2 different affiliate links, a “Buy” link and a “join program” link..
Chances are, people you sign up on the 2nd tier via your affiliate program link will also end up buying the product themselves. So, not only do you get a direct commission from the sale to this person you’ll also get 2nd tier commissions from any sales they make in the future.
Affiliate mini-sites
Set up a mini-site for each one of your main affiliate programs, so that you’re only reselling this one product or service on that site.
This would be a site with only two pages. On the first page place the link to the product itself. On the second page include a description of the affiliate program, and place the link to the affiliate program sign up page.
Your main goal is to actually direct visitors to the second page where they can sign up for the affiliate program.
Why?
You’ll get more commissions from signing up affiliates in your 2nd tier than from visitors directly buying the product through your affiliate link. This is because more people will be interested in the affiliate program rather than the product. However, when they join the affiliate program, many of them will actually buy the product or service.
In summary, think about using your site as an affiliate program site AND a sales site. It gives you two bites at the cherry, and having 2nd tier affiliates means you can be earning commissions for many years to come.
Fewer Links = More Profits
Have you got too many links on your site?I saw a site today that had only four visible links on its home page. Three of those links were text links and linked to other pages within the same web site. Therefore there was actually only one link to a different site.
Is this site operating profitably?
I’m really not sure but the information on the site was very good, and this got me thinking.
Everyone is talking these days about link popularity and getting as many people to link to your site. Often this means you have to give reciprocal links back to them. The theory goes that the better your link popularity the better you’ll rank with the search engines.
Well some people appear to be taking this idea to extremes. Suddenly you’ve got 473 links to other sites all sprayed across your web pages. Your visitors are bombarded with banners and text links on totally different subjects.
So, visitors do not know what to click on next… Arrrrggggghhhh !
Sure, you might jump up a couple of places in the search engine results but is it really worth it?
Also, there is a real possibility that the Search Engines will actually dump your site.
It’s theme-focused links which actually improve rankings with the Search Engines, not random, unrelated links from Link farms and link exchanges.
With so many links these sites are not focused.
So, what’s the answer here?
Fewer links might mean more profits.
When your visitors come to your site and see only a few links there will only be a few places for them to click on. This means that they’ll spend more time reading the actual content on your site.This will mean they’ll actually stay longer at your site.
The ‘stickiness’ of your site will improve. They may even come back because they’ve learnt a bit more about you and your web site.
They may even bookmark your site for future reference.
Now, this is what you’re really trying to do … get the visitor to come back, because people rarely buy on their first visit.
Now, compare this with a site that has lots of links. The visitor sees dozens of links to dozens of different sites. They quickly scan the home page and see a link that takes
their interest and click on that link.
Now, they’re on someone else’s web site, and they’ve completely forgotten the name of your web site, the one they were just on. You’ve not only lost a visitor, but you’ve also lost a potential customer.
These people are less likely to come back to your site, because they cannot even remember its name.
Here’s a method to focus your web site.
Use fewer links on your home page.
Put some of the links that were on your home page on your other pages. This will make people click from your home page to one of the other pages of your web site.
Then make sure each link is related to what you are discussing on that particular page.
Be more focused.
People will stay longer at your site. They will not be inclined to click off your site on the first link they see. Get them interested in what YOU are offering, not what someone else is offering.
Less links means more profits.
Scatter Gun or Targeted Approach?
Here’s an affiliate marketing question. Should you join every affiliate program you can find, or just a few?There are many thousands of affiliate programs on the net that you can join. Every man and his dog have one. But how do you decide which programs to join?
There are two schools of thought here. First you can take the scatter gun approach, which is quite popular on the net, and join as many programs as possible. This ensures that at least SOME of them will pay off. Well, that’s the theory at least.
The alternative is to take the targeted approach. Join some leading affiliate programs in just a few areas and put more effort into promoting each one. First, do some affiliate marketing research by reading as many articles as possible. This way you’ll narrow down the options.
There are pros and cons to both the scatter gun and targeted approaches, but why not do what everyone else is not doing. It seems to me most sites are taking the scatter gun approach. For example: We have 3,000 affiliate programs listed on our site. We have the largest selection of affiliate programs.
Focus? Find your own niche. Find a particular area that you’re interested in. If (for example) your interest is in selling rare papyrus from Egypt and you find that there is only one affiliate program dedicated to this, join it. Focus your affiliate marketing strategies on this one product. You’re not thinking about selling papyrus from Egypt one minute and then how to sell long distance phone calls the next.
With fewer products and services you are able to focus more energy and effort on the products and services that you have a genuine interest in. You may even become regarded as an expert in this particular area because of your specialist knowledge.
There are many webmasters doing fine promoting their hundreds or even thousands of affiliate programs, but the market for the scattergun approach now appears to be very cluttered.
This is where the specialists enter - the new breed of Webmaster who focuses only on particular products or services.
Alternatively, your focus may be on one area, and you select only the best-selling, highest-paying commissions for that field. Then you target customers with your highlevel affiliate marketing techniques.
There is room for the specialist to succeed.
Target your affiliate programs. Pick just a few.
Concentrate all of your time on marketing these programs, and because you’re so passionate about the product or service that you’re selling, you will drive more targeted traffic to your affiliate program.
It’s called focusing.
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