An Affiliate Marketer is someone who actively promotes the products or services of one or more businesses, and receives commissions on sales generated through his/her referrals. A successful Affiliate Marketer is efficient and 'savvy', can locate a good business opportunity and extract it's full income generating potential. Applying Affiliate Marketing techniques to promote your business on the Internet can be very successful, once you understand some of the basics.
We estimate that around 5 million people are involved in promoting affiliate web sites. The majority of these, perhaps 75%, will not generate a single commission check. Approximately 25% will make supplemental income from their programs, relying on income from other sources, with only a relatively small number of affiliate marketers who are very successful. Therefore, what do the 'successful' marketers do differently and how can we apply their techniques to our Internet business? Broadly speaking there are six methods of promoting a web site on the Internet:
1. Through the Internet Search Engines.
2. Banner advertising, both pay-per-click and reciprocal banner exchanges.
3. Opt-in (subscription) email lists.
4. Ezines, article submission sites and reputable Business to Business resource sites.
5. Free-for-all link boards (FFA), classified ad boards and directories.
6. Unsolicited Email (Spam) Let us deal with the last two points first.
We do not advocate the use of unsolicited email, and recommend to all our clients that they do not respond to unsolicited email, only to 'unsubscribe'. FFA boards are becoming less effective, largely due to the decreasing numbers of people who actually read posted messages. FFA boards have evolved into 'automated' link sites where you submit your 'offer' to 1000's of boards through automated bulk-submission services, and you receive auto-responders from the board operators, advertising their services to you. Most of these auto-response messages are filtered out and deleted by the submission service before you get to read them, or are directed to a 'free' email address where they are dumped - automated submissions, automated deletions! That is not to say that they serve no purpose. FFA boards can enhance the 'link-popularity' of your web site, which can gain you valuable points with search engines.
Which leads us to answer the question posed above - "what do successful marketers do differently and how can we apply their techniques to our Internet business". The answer is to implement a short-term strategy, and then plan and implement a strategy for the mid to long term. An effective short-term strategy might involve the use of a combination of Banner advertising, opt-in email lists, and Ezines to get some traffic flowing quickly. The effectiveness of each will be largely dependent on your category of business and the marketing message you create to front your ads (your web copy).
At the same time you must implement your mid to longer term marketing goals, which will form the 'backbone' of your marketing strategy. The ideal vehicle for delivering steady 'targeted' traffic in higher volume and at low cost - 'Search Engines'.
Consider this. If I email my 'sales offer' through opt-in email to a subscriber base of 300,000 people, I can expect to pay anywhere between $1500 and $5,000 for a one-time mailing, depending on the target audience. Alternatively, for less than $1,000 I can register a domain name, setup some basic advertising web pages, have the pages 'optimized' to rank well on the search engines and host the site for a whole year. When traffic starts to arrive through Internet searches it will be targeted and will produce a far superior visitor/inquiry ratio than through any other advertising medium. Most importantly it is a sustainable and predictable flow of visitors, generated at a very low 'cost per visitor' rate.
Those businesses that plan for the long term will mostly be around in the long term. Those that do not, most certainly will not.
"Making it big without spending a penny on advertising" - we see very few ways of effectively promoting a business on the Internet these days without some costs. There are many places where your site can be advertised for free, but how effective are they? Be prepared to invest some money into marketing your business and try to seek out reputable services. Exercise caution whenever you see 'money for nothing' style promotions and do not gamble with your livelihood. Thoroughly test all your marketing campaigns so you can identify those that are successful and those that are not. In the same way, monitor the progress of your web site and record information about your visitors and how they found you. As a small or home based business entrepreneur, value your time! If you spend five hours submitting your site to free resource boards that bring you little or no business, remember that it has actually cost you at least $500.
Trust only to good fortune, never to luck!
Affiliate programs present a good opportunity to create a profitable business on the Internet. Most of the big corporations operate affiliate programs, Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.
Until now, setting up a fully functional self-hosted affiliate program for your business has been expensive, time consuming and very complicated, certainly enough so to deter most people from even attempting it.
The main problem is one of integration. The heart of any affiliate program is the affiliate tracking software. To function properly this software must be compatible with your web site host servers, your shopping cart software and your merchant account real-time processing Gateway. Establishing compatibility is important, equally so is having the skills and experience to actually configure the various software packages and make it all work together. Visit our latest web site and see how seamless integration makes a successful site - Visit here
Once the Affiliate program is operational, the logistical issues begin. Affiliate member management, order fulfillment and integration with your existing accounts and inventory systems - these can immobilize your new program very quickly.
There are service companies who host the software and basically lease it to you. Many years ago I setup an affiliate program for a client using 'Kowabunga' affiliate services. After a year or so we had a good affiliate base of around 2500 members, things were moving along quite well, then out of the blue Kowabunga's rates went through the roof. I terminated the agreement with them, exported my affiliate database and went the 'go it alone' route, utilizing software that we owned and operated on our servers.
This is the only way to do it in my opinion, assuming that you are confident of being able to find affiliates.
We recommend services/software from iDevAffiliate
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Clearly there are two angles on this, take the viewpoint of the program host and certainly there can be gains. As for the affiliate marketers themselves, it's become a really tough proposition to make money.
Here's why -
As a program host (the merchant, who uses an affiliate program to market his/her website), an affiliate program can be inexpensive to operate and can still be a good source of traffic. Naturally that depends on how you approach it. There are still program providers that can charge you $5,000 or more for setup, and take a hefty percentage of every sale generated by their 'network' of affiliates. But if you find yourself a sensible affiliate program provider, or even choose to go it alone, it can be inexpensive and effective. We offer affiliate program setup and integration for under $1000. For that you get the software (you own it, you'll never pay fees or percentages of your sales revenue), and full integration into your website. We can even manage it for you and help recruit affiliates.
As an affiliate marketer, typically around 99% of people who try it will never make a paycheck. You need to be marketing savvy and you need to work hard at it. I would always recommend joining an affiliate program that has a product which appeals to repeat-order customers and where the software is setup to pay you on all repeat orders. That way you start to make residual income from the program and are paid beyond your first order.
If you're contemplating using an affiliate program to improve your web traffic, check out our services using the navigation on the left - With our new Affiliate Program Integration Service, we're bringing the benefit of our expertise to you at a price you can afford. Other companies, and we've had personal experience of this, lease the software to you, then when you have an established affiliate network, they TRIPLE your monthly fees!
We sell you the software and install it on your web server, you own the software and we'll never ask you for another penny.
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Affiliate Marketing
