subject: Affiliate Marketing (doable?) [print this page] Affiliate marketing is a type of implementation-based marketing in which a business return one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.
The easiest way to clarify affiliate marketing is that it is a way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product, service or site.
There are a number of forms of these types of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site where they then buy something.
Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount per conversion. Conversions are generally tracked when the publisher uses a link with a code only being used by you embedded into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions come from. Other times an advertiser might give a publisher a coupon code for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.
There are many ways an informational website can earn online. One is through affiliate marketing while the other is Internet advertising. Which one is for you will depend on your websites reach.
Internet advertising is where a company pays you a fixed fee to have their banner ad or text plug posted on your website. This can be either a: fixed or permanent banner ad or text plug exposure; or in a banner ad rotation system where different ads are shown at a time. The lesser ads in the system, frequency shall be higher.
Charging a fee in this model would require you to justify that value of your websites traffic. It doesnt have to be high but the quality of the audience that you attract should fit your advertisers target market. Knowing this information is important in packaging an Internet advertising offer to your clients.
The philosophies making an online marketing is:
Focus: Mastering one online money making method and be good at it
Persistent: Leveraging your time effectively through proper time management
Consistent: Maintaining the quality and integrity of your site
Quality: Create great content that will promote your site and the things you offer
Things to do to be a successful Affiliate marketer
Only Choose a Handful of Good Products. The first mistake a lot of affiliate marketers make is that they register with too many different affiliate programs and try to promote everything.
Use Several Traffic Sources to Promote Products. Most affiliate marketers put up the ads only on their sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach but know that there are many other traffic sources that you can tap into and promote the products simultaneously.
Test, Measure and Track Your Affiliate Campaign. It is a very good idea to use different product promotion strategies so you can figure out what is working and what is not
Research the Demand of the Product. If you try to sell a product that is in low demand then chances are that you are not going to get many sales no matter how hard you try.
Stay Current with New Methods and Techniques. Affiliate marketing is a very competitive field and people are always coming up with new techniques.
Choose the Right Merchant. When you promote a product you also promote the person or the company who is behind the product so try to choose wisely.
Use Helpful Tools. If you are serious about affiliate marketing then try to find tools that will help you be more efficient.
For more information regarding this topic, please visit http://affiliatemarketingnow.org/
