subject: Can You Promote Your Affiliate Programs Without A Website? [print this page] Most successful Internet marketers will tell you that you absolutely must have your own website in order to sell affiliate products but this really is not the case. While it is true that owning your own website certainly improves your chances of being a successful affiliate marketer, do not allow this to prevent you from starting your affiliate campaign without one. Once you have started to bring in some commissions from your efforts, you will be able to increase your marketing campaign and create your own website or blog should you wish to.
Quite simply, there are ways to do almost anything online and that includes promoting something with no site of your own.
When you become an affiliate for a particular product or service, it will already have its own sales page or website provided by the owner of the product or service. You will be given a special unique code by the vendor which will indicate to them when a product has been sold through your efforts. This special unique code will be in the form of an affiliate link. Therefore, you will be able to direct people straight from your link to the vendor's sales page or website, negating the need for your own sales page or website.
It's very important to protect your affiliate link so that people do not thwart your attempts at making money online. Some people just don't like the thought that someone else may benefit from their purchase and find out how to go directly to the seller rather by taking out the affiliate code part of the link than buy through your link in the way you intended even though it does not affect the price that they pay.
The way to get around this problem is by using a tool known as 'link cloaking'. There are several programs that you can use for free online (just type in 'free link cloaking' to your favourite search engine) and they are simple and effective to use. Basically you insert your affiliate id link into the software and it will generate another code that will still send your links to the vendor without revealing to the customer the original vendor sales page link.
It is basically a redirection service that sends people through to the exact destination that you want your potential buyers to go to and is possibly the single best asset you can have to protect your affiliate links
In order to be able to get your affiliate link 'out there' for it to have a chance of being clicked on, you can apply some free marketing methods such as writing articles and submitting them to article directories, make use of free classified sites, bookmarking sites and social networking sites. This list is by no means exhaustive but it will give you some great ideas to get started and before long you will start to see the benefits rolling up in the form of your first commission check.
