Tag: success in affiliate marketing

Avoid the Path to Affiliate Marketing Failure




The lure of affiliate marketing

An increasing number of people are lured into affiliate marketing and you might very well be one of them. This lure is the result of affiliate marketing being one of the most effective means of generating a full-time income via the Web, without the need for a huge investment of money to get started. The business of affiliate marketing is primarily based on agreements between merchants and affiliates, as both groups benefit from the arrangement.

Similar to other business types, success in affiliate marketing depends on the affiliate’s advertising, promoting and selling strategies. Everyday, as the affiliate marketing industry expands, competition heightens as well, so an affiliate marketer must be creative enough to employ unique and effective ways that will convince potential buyers to purchase, or avail themselves of, the merchant’s products and services being offered by that affiliate.

Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient; but there is still a great deal of failure experienced by a large number of affiliates, and those not familiar with the business often wonder why. However, when they understand that affiliate marketing is a “you-get-out-what-you-put-in” kind of business, the explanation for such failure becomes more apparent – although there are other less apparent reasons.

Preparation begets success

The most critical aspect in any affiliate program is advertising; but many affiliate marketers fail in this area because they either refuse or are unable to put in the time and hard work required to excel in this most important aspect of the affiliate marketing business, or any other kind of business. And although it helps to be lucky, a business person cannot merely rely on luck to succeed as an affiliate marketer, but rather to understand that the business of affiliate marketing is much more than just directing customers to a website.

For example, if you are interested in becoming an affiliate marketer, and want to earn big money, you have to devote the necessary time and a great deal of hard work, as well as to invest the money necessary to promote those products and services entrusted to you by the merchants from whom you expect to receive commission payments.

As mentioned earlier, there is very stiff competition in any kind of marketing, and affiliate marketing is no different; but commitment to your objective, hard work, and consistent promotional activity will help you keep pace with that competition and operate a profitable affiliate business. On the other hand, if you are uninspired, unmotivated and/or unwilling to do what it takes to achieve success, the results you get will be unacceptable due to unpreparedness; because lack of preparation is almost always the reason for failure in affiliate marketing, whether the individual is a merchant or an affiliate.

When research is a success tool

Keep in mind also that part of preparation is research; and this is true for merchants as well as affiliates. Merchants must be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for their affiliate program; and in order to be sure that they have the best choices, they must have exhausted all means in looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites (theme and content) are compatible with the products and services they provide.

Affiliates must make sure that visitors to their websites match those customers whom they’ve targeted as most ideal for the content they provide, as well as the kind of products/services they promote; and the affiliate marketer must likewise research good-paying merchants before they sign up with a particular affiliate program. In addition, an affiliate must ensure that a merchant’s products/services match his/her interests so that s/he can devote full attention and dedication to the program.

An affiliate can obtain valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where s/he can get tips from more experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and select products with high conversion rate.

The website is a very important tool in the overall affiliate marketing strategy; and as an affiliate marketer, you should plan carefully on what kind of website you’re going to have; from a catchy and memorable domain name to the design, lay-out, content, and ads, your website must be conducive to the kind of affiliate business you expect to conduct if you expect to succeed.

Marketing to your targeted audience
List-building the easy way

Some visitors to your affiliate website will be particular about what they see at first glance and therefore, if they consider your site to be unattractive they won’t read through the content, even if your site has many interesting things to say and offer. Conversely, there are visitors who want information more than anything else; and affiliate marketers with “rich-content” web sites will usually be the ones who attract this group of visitors and prosper as a result, because the content improves traffic to those site.

Websites with high quality content and relevant keywords as well as valuable and useful information about a particular product, as opposed to empty and hyped-up advertisements, —allow their owners to earn big in affiliate marketing even when they’re asleep. An important point to remember is that if you can’t sustain the interest of your site visitor, you won’t be able to lead him/her to your merchants’ site; and no click-through (to a merchant’s website) often means no sale and thus, no income for you.

Selecting a top level domain name is crucial to the success of the affiliate program. That having been said, there are many affiliate websites that do not appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites; meaning that major search engines and directories would think of your website as transient and thus, they won’t list it in the directory; so before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote.

Knowledge creates a competitive edge

However, the domain name is not always the website title, and many affiliates fail to attract visitors because their websites are not appropriately named; and even when they feature the exact products customers are looking for, those customer might think the site is not relevant and therefore won’t enter the site.

Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more about his/her business on an ongoing basis; because there is still a lot to learn, so any affiliate marketer who expects to achieve success must continue to educate him/herself so s/he can improve marketing strategies. Many fail because they don’t grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning a quick buck; but if you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, you must take time to learn the ins and outs of this business.

Continuing to improve your knowledge, especially about the basics of affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques will certainly provide some of the motivation and staying power needed to achieve success. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your website users and how different merchants compete with each other.

Keep on trying; and don’t get disappointed if your first attempts do/did not pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating huge incomes through affiliate marketing, and as a result of this attraction, they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business. When they don’t get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others.

When you sign up for an affiliate program, don’t expect to achieve instant success and get rich quick. Make sure to work on your advertising strategies and other pertinent aspects of the affiliate marketing business; but most important, be patient, because you will never know how much you can get if you don’t persevere.

To Consistently Grow Your Affiliate Checks


Dispelling an affiliate marketing myth

The promise of earning profits without really doing much of anything has attracted a sizeable number of individuals to the Internet in general and affiliate marketing in particular. However, the questions that arise as a result of this perception are these: Does affiliate marketing really work this way? And does anyone believe that s/he can earn a profit without really doing much?

Such a perception is derived from a description of affiliate marketing that is only half true. That all an affiliate is required to do is simply place merchants’ ads on their websites and then virtually do nothing but wait for someone to click on one or more of those ads and later collect his/her profits. Easy, right? Well, not quite! Many affiliates earn almost nothing from their affiliate programs simply because they do nothing. They fail to grasp that affiliate marketing is but another form of marketing and, as such, affiliates definitely need to market their merchants’ products in order to earn.

Successful affiliates in any program simply don’t sit there and wait for money to come in, because there is no money in simply sitting and waiting. If you want to achieve success in affiliate marketing; and if you want to consistently grow your affiliate checks, you’ll be compelled to do something. To think of creative and unique ways of promoting your merchants’ products and services. Think of ways to induce your website’s visitors to click on the link or ad provided to you by your merchant. In other words, think of ways on how to increase your affiliate sales!

Become a product expert! Get hosting!

So if you’re new to affiliate marketing and you try to follow the easy go lucky route that most unsuccessful affiliate marketers follow, then you’re definitely on the wrong track. But we’re not advising you to stop right there. Rather, we want you to take some steps to make your affiliate program work better and gain more commissions for you. How? The paragraphs which follow consist of a few guidelines that may help you to continually grow your affiliate business while increasing the size of your affiliate checks

You can promote do a better job promoting your merchants’ products and services if you are thoroughly familiar with them and their uses; and in order to gain such knowledge, the best thing you can do is purchase your merchants’ products yourself. This way you can tell your customers about your first-hand experience using the products. You can even write a testimonial or a personal endorsement ad about them; but even you are unabler to purchase the products, you can at least research them.

Get your own web hosting space or at least purchase a domain name that is short, easy to remember and relevant to the topic of your website. You certainly wouldn’t expect a visitors to remember a very long and incomprehensible URL; because if that’s the case you also wouldn’t expect them to visit your website any time soon; which would mean less traffic for your site and the less chance for your affiliate ads and links to be clicked.

Write affiliate ads and maximize networking

It is also a good idea to create a private website and offer access to it to anybody who clicks on any of your affiliate ads. Visitors usually get interested with these private websites; and you must keep in mind that private websites also provide you with a venue to promote your back-end affiliate products.

Many merchants usually wouldn’t mind if you write and design your own ads for their products, as long as you obtain permission from them and present them with a copy of the particular ad before posting it on your site. This gives you a greater advantage over a lot of other affiliates who might be advertising the same affiliate products.

If you previously ignored chat rooms discussion boards and forums, then it is time for you to start focusing your attention on these sources of leads via increased exposure. You can start your own chat or join an existing chat related to your product. You don’t have to promote your affiliate product at once, but find the chance to advertise and promote it as you go along. The same would be true for message boards, discussion boards and forums.

Create a free ezine or newsletter

Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim is to inform a group of people about a certain subject. In your ezines and newsletters, you don’t always have to promote your merchant’s product since doing so could greatly annoy your subscribers. Rather, find a way to insert your affiliate ads and links on some portions of the letter; but don’t forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.

These are but a few guidelines on how you can increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks. Of course there are several other tips which can be incorporated into your marketing strategy if you think they would work; we won’t discourage you from utilizing them. What’s important is that you be able to find a way to attract more traffic to your site; induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site; and be able to promote your merchants’ products even outside the boundary of your website. If you can do these, there’s no you shouldn’t be able to grow your affiliate marketing business.