subject: Affiliate Marketing And Your Budget [print this page] Affiliate Marketing And Your Budget Affiliate Marketing And Your Budget
Copyright (c) 2011 Lawrence HamiltonAs with any business start up, you have to create a budget. Only you know what you can afford to spend on any endeavor. You must avoid the pitfalls of putting everything on a credit card or PayPal, and then discover you are in debt to the point you cannot move forward any longer until you find the funds to pay off your current financial obligations. That would put the brakes on your success. With that established, be aware that it is going to take some money to build your business. How do you market the niche you have chosen? What avenues do you take to ensure potential customers see your site? There are so many ways to spend money on this aspect of your business that it is essential you establish a plan, set up your budget, and stick to the parameters of the model you create. You can pay money on Google every time someone clicks on your site hoping to get one of the top spots on a specific page. You can set a daily budget for that, but that is potentially very limiting and could become more expensive than it needs to be. There are several ways to get traffic to your site without spending more money than I personally feel is necessary. You have options, and you need to learn what those options are so you can make intelligent decisions when it comes to creating your budget. How much do I have available to spend, and where can I get the biggest bang for my dollar? It all comes down to common sense and knowing what your options are so you can make the smartest decisions for your personal situation. We all have different passions, and those passions are what you want to promote. With all these avenues available, it is very difficult to disseminate how to go about being effective within one's budget. This is just another aspect of learning before you jump into something blindly and start spending money with the mere hope that it will work. There is no "magic" or "instant" cash register or system out there. You first learn, you budget wisely, make good decisions and then you will begin to earn. So what are some of the venues you can use to start your on line business and keep your budget within your means? Write articles - One great method to generate traffic is to write articles and submit them to online article directories. There are free submission sites for articles and there are sites for hire. You need to do the proper research to find which is best for you and where you would be most effective. The article must be closely related to the product you are trying to promote, but you don't need to be a professional writer in order to produce a good article. If your budget allows it, you could outsource your articles, but you will usually pay a modest fee for them. It might serve you well to outsource one article so you can see what a good article looks like. That way you will have a template to start producing your own articles. The one thing to remember when writing an article is to keep the language simple. Any individual reading your article should be able to clearly understand it, as the age of complicated writing is nearing its end. In an effort to be effective, you have to be both clear and concise. You do have to realize that the rule of thumb with writing articles is to submit 6 - 8 per month. Writing articles takes time to have any significant effect, so you have to be diligent and persistent with this method. You must also have good content that your readers feel is valuable to them. Subscribe to ezines - Most ezines you subscribe to will allow their readers to submit articles. Most allow submission of articles at no charge. You have to do some research and find ezines that exploits the topic of your affiliate product. It does little good to go on a garden ezine if you are promoting health products. Don't go overboard with the number of ezines to which you subscribe, as that will become an organizational nightmare for you to figure out which articles you submitted to which ezines. This becomes especially difficult if you decide to promote various affiliate products or services. Create a blog - This is certainly free, but a blog has some inherent problems you will have to overcome. You certainly need to keep it fresh with updated information so people visiting it don't see the same stale data every time. You need to learn a little bit about HTML code so you can put banners and ads linking them to a website promoting your affiliate product. You also should learn about FTP (file transfer protocol) so you can offer free gifts like an eBook or an information PDF that helps people make decisions on whether your product is right for them. You need to ensure your blog has a very professional look so you don't appear like you put it together in ten minutes. Your prospects need to gain confidence in you, and you need to be able to develop a relationship with them by answering their queries and letting them know why you use the product you are promoting. The other inherent problem is getting traffic to your blog. How does one market a blog to get a stream of traffic? There are several ways, and most of them do involve a modest expenditure. You might think about solo ads, classified ads, feature ads, banner ads, etc. in ezines. Do your research, however, as all ezines do not charge the same. My rule of thumb is to never spend more than $3.00 per thousand recipients for any type of ezine ad You have to carefully determine what you can afford for how many people you can reach. This method, however, can have a very positive effect on your traffic results. Website - Regardless of what you may have heard, you can create a website on your own without spending a dime. You do have to go to a free web design site like Kompozer to learn how to do this, but it is very doable, user friendly, and easy to learn. The issues many don't realize about creating a website are that there are going to be costs associated it, but it is extremely minimal. You have to create a domain name (name must be related to your product), and you have to purchase your name(s) through a domain site like GoDaddy. Then you have to have your website hosted. You can pay for a hosting service or you can find hosting services that are free. Then, just like a blog, you are going to have to determine which way is best for you to get traffic. You will hear that using the right combination of keywords and long tailed keywords can get your website or blog high up on the page chain in Google, but I assure you that is not a method that guarantees you any success for traffic. You need to develop a game plan that is right for your on line business to get the traffic you need to ensure a sustainable income. Auto Responder - Not everyone needs to have an auto responder system, and they do cost money in almost every instance if you desire a quality system. Once again, you have to do your research to find what fits within your budget. The idea behind an auto responder is for you to develop an E-Mail list so you can stay in touch with all your prospects that opt in to your affiliate product. They may not buy (and probably won't right off the bat), but if you continue with solid follow up with your prospects, they will discover how passionate you are about your niche product. Any auto responder system will offer tutelage on how to develop that E-Mail list you will need to create.Affiliate Marketing can deliver very good results. But if you really want to make bigger commissions, you'll want to join a system that teaches you how to be successful with an at home business. Those so called turnkey systems never offer what you really need. You need answers to your questions regardless of your skill level, rapid response solutions when you make mistakes, and blueprints for success. There is far more to learn about Affiliate Marketing than most people realize.What you need to do is find the product, develop your plan, create a budget, and have the determination and persistence to bring everything to fruition. I wish you the best in your endeavors.
