The first paragraph of this article provides a brief overview of the topic. Affiliate marketing is a strategy where an individual actively promotes the products or services of one or more businesses and earns commissions from sales generated through their referrals. A successful affiliate marketer is efficient, savvy, and can identify and maximize a good business opportunity. Utilizing affiliate marketing techniques to promote your business online can be highly effective once you understand the basics. It is estimated that around 5 million people are involved in promoting affiliate websites, but only a small percentage are truly successful. This article explores what these successful marketers do differently and how their techniques can be applied to your online business.
There are six primary methods of promoting a website online:
Unsolicited email, or spam, is not recommended. It is advised that businesses do not respond to unsolicited emails, only to 'unsubscribe'. FFA boards are becoming less effective due to the decreasing numbers of people who actually read posted messages. These boards have evolved into automated link sites where you submit your offer to thousands of boards through automated bulk-submission services. Most of these auto-response messages are filtered out and deleted by the submission service before you get to read them. However, FFA boards can enhance the 'link-popularity' of your website, which can gain you valuable points with search engines.
Successful marketers 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 largely depend on your category of business and the marketing message you create. 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 is the 'Search Engines'.
Consider this: if you email your sales offer through opt-in email to a subscriber base of 300,000 people, you 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, you can register a domain name, set up 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.
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" is a myth. There are very few ways of effectively promoting a business on the Internet these days without some costs. 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. Monitor the progress of your website 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!
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