January 18, 2010

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing uses one website to drive traffic to another website and is a widespread form of online advertising and promotion along with a form of generating online income. One person (known as the Affiliate or Publisher) promotes both services and products to potential customers in exchange for commission or revenue sharing. By driving more traffic, sending referrals, signing up subscribers and/or customers etc; your earning potential increases.

Affiliates use various techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO), network marketing, social networking, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, display advertising, publishing reviews, offering comparison shopping and directories. Popular, active sectors of affiliate marketing include adult, gambling, retail industries, mobile phones, finance, travel and entertainment along with unique, niche sites in all sectors.

Regardless of which market you choose understand that it takes time to see the results of your work. Once your website has been established and made available for online viewing it also needs to be indexed by the search engines which can take weeks, if not longer.

In the meantime you need to start getting people to your site so they can in turn click on those affiliate ads you have placed. No traffic =  no clicks = no money! There is no magic code available for driving traffic to your site however, which means you have to revert back to the basics of marketing by asking yourself. What does my customer want? and How can I give it to them?

I've found that focusing on a favourite hobby or passion is a popular way to begin because you yourself have a high level of interest in the topic therefore know what others may also enjoy. For example; if you love Halloween like I do then you could set up a blog that shares your ideas. You now have to ask yourself...What do my viewers (a.k.a potential customer) want to see, know, read about, learn, watch and buy that is has to do with Halloween? Then give it to them!

Offer content that is unique, original and of quality to your viewers whether it is in the articles your write and in the affiliate ads you place on the site. You want to give your customers/viewers the information they are searching for not irrelevant drivel or copy/pasted, plagiarised fluff. As you create more valuable, wanted content the viewers will find your site based on the information you are providing. The more you write about a specific topic the more keywords you generate around the topic. The 'topic' keywords, as they are repeated by both you in the articles and those searching with the search engines will then prove to the search engines that your site offers what it says and is worth checking out! Posting affiliate ads on your sight ought to pertain to Halloween in some way, as this would be one of the ways you would be generating your income.


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