Ten Ways To Maximize Affiliate Income
By Donna Knight
Any business, online or offline, that doesn’t require an initial cash investment, is a win-win situation. That’s what makes affiliate programs so enticing. An affiliate program allows the affiliate marketer to act as a middleman between the consumer and the merchant. When the affiliate marketer refers a successful sale, they earn a commission. These percentages can add up to a substantial amount of money.
If you spend enough time in internet marketing circles, you’ll find many individuals who were able to give up their day jobs because of success in affiliate marketing. This was made possible when the amount they earned in affiliate commissions far exceeded their job income.
If you want to enter the potentially lucrative world of affiliate marketing, there are some things you need to know. You definitely won’t achieve success if you go about it in a haphazard way. Here are ten tips to help you maximize your affiliate commissions and profits.
1. Focus on a particular area of interest or niche market. One mistake I see many affiliates make is they try to sell products that cater to wildly different target markets. It’s better to concentrate on one specific field and study its’ advantages and disadvantages compared to other niches. For example, if you choose dogs as an area of interest, research to find the places where dog lovers hang out online. Then look for an affiliate program that offers products which cater to their desires.
2. Choose an affiliate program wisely. Your goal is to choose the most profitable affiliate programs. Stick with higher commissions whenever possible. Promote products people actually want. Additionally, you should also consider the credibility and reliability of the company offering the affiliate program. Do they actually pay, and on time? Are their products worth selling? Read the terms of the affiliate program very carefully before agreeing to them.
3. Build a content-filled laser-targeted site. You will primarily sell the affiliate products in your mailing list. But if your site does not attract many visitors, sales conversion is virtually impossible. Create a site that focuses on the market you are targeting; Fill it with rich, informative content that people love to read.
4. Promote your site. If you believe the line “build it and they will come†applies to your website, you’re in for a rude awakening. People will not automatically know about your site just because it’s there. The way people find out about your site is when you advertise it on and off the internet. Submit it to search engines, exchange links with high traffic sites, and promote it in online forums and discussion groups. Tell your friends about it. Get business cards made to promote it. You have to spread the word about your site because no one else will do it for you.
5. Promote the product. Once a consistent flow of visitors starts, it’s time to promote your favorite affiliate product. This is usually done through a sales page on your site. A sales page is an article full of praises for the product. Things like “it changed my life,†“the secret that they don’t want you to know,†“be a millionaire in one week,†and such are typical for sales pages. But they work. Hire a professional copywriter to write sales copy for you.
6. Don’t be anonymous. You’ll find many people trying to conduct business in anonymity on the internet, but this is a mistake. People would rather deal with a name they know, rather than a username or YourDomain.com Support. Give your real name. You could choose to keep your contact information undisclosed or use a P.O. Box address, however, until you are sure you’re dealing with a trustworthy party.
7. Build a network. Befriend other affiliate marketers. Share information about the best deals, the most effective strategies, and perhaps, even some lists of potential buyers. By referring others, you could end up with referrals yourself, even from competitors. There is enough wealth to go around. You can get much further in your success by knowing the right people than by trying to do everything on your own. Anyone you meet could end up helping you out in the future when you need them. Networking online is just as beneficial as networking offline.
8. Build a list. It’s all well and good if you get visitors and you make some sales, but what about the future. One way to ensure future sales is to make repeat visitors and repeat customers. You do this by building a list. Always encourage your visitors to sign up for your mailing list. A lost sale and a lost visitor who joins your list could become a future sale and a repeat visitor.
9. Hide your affiliate links. This is not a matter of being sneaky. It’s a matter of increasing your affiliate marketing sales. Your affiliate link ( also known as your referral link) is how you make your commissions so it’s very important to do anything you can to increase the number of people who click on it.
You can use services such as shorturl.com to shorten and hide it. You can run a script on your site that helps you hide it or you can use an affiliate software program that helps you mask your link. There are multiple choices, but using your bare affiliate link is usually not the best choice. This makes you vulnerable to affiliate hijacking. That means that people will go straight to the main site, such as http://whatevermerchant.com, instead of http://whatevermerchant.com/?aff=you. The painful result is that you will lose a sale.
10. Multiple streams of affiliate income. While you don’t want to join a bunch of unrelated affiliate programs, you do want to create multiple sources of affiliate income. Join multiple programs so that if a target prospect is not interested in one product you’re introducing them to, they might be interested in another related product.
One solution is to join an affiliate merchant network such as http://www.linkshare.com or http://cj.com. These are two of the most popular merchant networks. Not only are there hundreds of affiliate programs but there are lots of related affiliate programs in networks like this.
Joining affiliate programs is free, so there is no risk involved as long as you remember to stay focused in your marketing efforts and choose the affiliate programs wisely.
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Donna Knight is a Website Promotion Specialist and Website Builder. She has built over 200 websites and helps new site owners promote their site cheaply. Visit her Internet Marketing Tools blog at http://www.DonnaKnight.name
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Copyright (C)2005 Donna Knight. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted to post this article in newsletters, free ebooks or websites as long as the article and resource box remain intact.
The Affiliate Masters Course.