Promoting Your Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are a huge way to make money these days on the internet. There are, after all, a lot of companies out there selling a product. They are looking to sell as much of their product as possible. Setting up an affiliate program is a way to vastly expand their sales force, and the pay off is that you, as a webmaster advertising their products, can make some money in the process.

Being an affiliate can often pay off quite well, but the trick is that you cannot be totally passive about your participation. You can simply post the product to your site and sit back, and if you’re happy making some extra residual income, that might work for you (depending on your site traffic). However, those who really succeed as affiliates and make real money are very active promoters of the products they are selling. So, assuming everyone reading this has a website and wants to make as much money with it as possible, lets look at some proactive ways to maximize your income.

Create your own marketing materials. I’m not going to get into the techniques of writing ad copy, but the point here is to develop something unique. Most affiliate programs provide marketing materials for their affiliates. This is great for easy promotion. However, if all the other affiliates are using the same promotional material, then you don’t stand out at all. To get noticed, you can develop your own, unique marketing materials. If you are setting up a website just for your affiliate products, then customize your site rather than use any pre-packaged site provided. Create your own email marketing, banner ads, etc. You can even take it into print promo if your business model supports this (i.e. brochures, business cards, etc.). You can also write articles that promote the product(s) you are selling. The key there is to make the article useful while also promoting the product. You do not want a blatant ad, because nobody will be interested.

Use an Opt-In Mailing List. If you do not do a weekly newsletter for your website, start one. The newsletter should be useful and something people want to receive each week, but you can, too, use it as a medium for advertising. This is good marketing because the people who subscribe to your newsletter are interested in you and your information, and this is always much better to promote to than people who have no interest or never asked to receive email from you. That’s spam, in case you forgot.

Use Blogs to Promote. Blogs, to work, should be updated often. When they are, people will come to enjoy the blog and will visit often, especially if the content you include in your blog is engaging and unique. If this is the case, your blog can, too, be used as an advertising medium. Post to your blog about the affiliate program you are doing. You can even create good ad copy and email it to other websites which contain blogs and ask for a mention. Ensure that the sites you email fit the product you are selling. You wouldn’t want to email about some animal product to a site run by PETA, for example.
Use Advertising Banners. This promotional technique is the most obvious, really. Use a well-designed banner that properly engages the user to action. Post it on well-trafficked areas of your website. If you really want to expand on this concept, you can get other sites to post the banner, too.

Get Others to Promote. Just because you are selling somebody else’s products doesn’t mean you need to do what you can all alone. This is a very networked world. So, you can develop your marketing plan to include other websites. Find websites which are targeted to the product and find out how you can get some advertising up. Many sites charge very reasonable or cheap rates for advertising. It would mean a small investment up front for you to get your ad up there, but if you think the return from commissions from sales would be greater than the cost of the ad, then you should do this.

Affiliate programs can generate good revenue if you use and promote them correctly. While some make no sales or only a few extra bucks per month, those who are creative and proactive in their marketing can easily generate hundreds or thousands per month from their affiliate relationships.

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