subject: What Are The First Steps To Affiliate Marketing? [print this page] Affiliate marketing is a popular low cost online marketing technique. Basically, the business pays money to its affiliates for bringing visitors to the organization's website. This is pretty much like any insurance agent bringing customers to the insurance company. However, the process goes on online and is slightly different from the traditional method. There are several books on affiliate marketing for beginners, and also plenty of information and websites online which deal with this topic. The process is briefly introduced below.
For starters, the business needs a website, which is similar to the office of the insurance company. In an affiliate marketing system such a website is usually referred to as the merchant, brand, or retailer.
There are well organized networks containing offers from merchants for affiliates or agents. Such a network is also responsible for the affiliate getting the money. As of date, a hosting account with such a network can be bought by the affiliates, so as to facilitate the process.
Such affiliates link to places frequented by many people, such as social websites like Facebook and Twitter. Visitors on these sites click the page of the affiliate, and eventually the site of the merchant gets displayed there. This increases the chances of the visitor becoming a customer for the business. Effectively, the merchant uses the route offered by such affiliates.
Affiliates also use other methods of bringing in visitors apart from linking to networks. These techniques include paid-to-click, i. E., the visitor is paid for visiting the website that the affiliate shows. Other methods include e-mail marketing, display advertising, and search engine optimization.
With SEO, search engines pull out websites that have been clicked on the most. Ideally websites and blogs should have plenty of keywords that are used most often by Internet users. The presence of such common keywords increases the chances of getting more visits because of links established through the same words in other websites.
Having understood what is involved, it is now essential to know how to go about it. For starters you will need a website or a blog. The question here is what should be the content of this blog. It is necessary to consider what would draw visitors, and how to draw visitors. The advantages of each type option should be considered before building the blog.
Knowledge of HTML helps, but is not essential for building such blogs. There are several HTML editors and web publishing tools available these days which can help in building a good website. WordPress is one such tool. It is a free, and user friendly web publishing tool. It also has features such as templates. As one of the affiliates, you can access such tools from the hosting network. Most networks offer such tools. The theme is a crucial part of the blog construction. Installation of the blog on the network is often free.
You would also need a domain name, which needs to be registered. Having taken these few preliminary steps, the next step is to blog or write content regularly. Make sure that the content is filled with keywords which would be found on other related blogs and websites. Link your blog with your account on other popular social websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In.
After a couple of weeks, when the content is sufficient, add the link of relevant affiliates on your blog. Initially there won't be much activity because it takes time for the process to take off. Visitors to your profile may or may not visit your blog. Do not give up, continue blogging, and writing, so as to benefit from affiliate marketing.
