How to choose the best affiliate marketing network?

There are many horror stories about affiliate programs and networks. People have heard them over and over again, that some are even wary of joining one. The stories they may have heard are those related to illegal programs or pyramid schemes. Basically, this kind of market does not have real, worthy product.

You do not want to be associated with these schemes. It is obvious you want to be with a program that offers high quality product that you will readily endorse. The growing number of those who have joined already and are succeeding immensely is proof enough that there are reliable and quality affiliate programs out there.

Why participate in an affiliate program?

Website Models For Online Business

A registered domain name would give you an address in the virtual world. A web hosting service would give you a lot. It’s time to build your house.

But there are many kinds of houses, with each type serving a particular need. In the same light, there are many kinds of websites, and each type would also serve a particular need. Our goal right now is to determine the kinds of websites you could create to best serve you affiliate marketing concerns.

As an affiliate, here are a number of website models you could decide to employ. Let’s take a look at them.

A Review Center

You could create a website, preferably using a blogging software like that offered by www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com , which seeks to review the products that are released in the market. Here’s the deal, though. Review the products you are promoting. Naturally, you’d want your reviews to be favorable for the affiliate merchant’s offerings. So stress the beneficial points of the products so that your visitors may be encouraged to click on your affiliate link and be redirected to the affiliate merchant’s sales page.

An Affiliate Mall

An effective way of promoting your affiliate links is through an affiliate mall. You could make your website into an online catalogue of sorts. Display the products you are promoting, and attach your affiliate links. Provide a short but encouraging description for each product. Also include a small image of the product itself (as an affiliate, you are allowed to use the affiliate program’s images for your promotional campaigns, so you won’t be violating any copyrights by doing this).

This setup is quite empowering for your visitors. They are given the option to choose which among the products you are pre-selling would be most advantageous for them.

A Content Site

Content is king on the internet. People surf the World Wide Web in search for information. If you have the information they need, then you’re in business. You could focus on unique and quality information for your website, and include your affiliate links by way of recommendation or direct announcement.

There are many kinds of content sites which you could decide to build:

• a news site which offers the latest information on the market you will be catering to;
• an information hub containing guides and general information about the same market;
• a download center for valuable products you’re freely offering (this is great for a viral marketing campaign, which we will discuss in subsequent lessons)

An Opt-In Page

You will not be able to win all of them. You won’t even be able to win a majority of them. The best thing you could aim for is to gather the “yes” visitors, try your best to change the mind of the “no” visitors, and capture the contact information of the “maybe” visitors so that you could continue to convince them for a future sale. And this you could do with a mailing list.

By having them subscribe to your mailing list, you’d be able to contact them at any time, with new offers, or perhaps with some valuable tidbits that would warm them up to purchase what the affiliate merchant is selling. All you need is an account with an excellent autoresponder service, which you could integrate in such a page so that it will capture prospective leads on auto-pilot.

You could employ this strategy on any of the website models we have mentioned above, or you could make a web page specifically designed to capture the aforementioned contact details.

Time and time again, internet marketers have claimed that to do business in the World Wide Web, you’d need your own website. Your own website, they say, is your headquarters in cyberspace. It’s your very own digital store where you could lead potential customers and where you offer the products you have for sale.

Though it’s true that having your own website can greatly aid you in your quest to achieve success in the online field, a website is not the end all and be all of internet salesmanship, particularly in the line of affiliate marketing. Yes, you could make a living online as an affiliate even if you do not have the benefit of your own website!

How is this possible? How can this be done? Read on, dear friend, as we discuss alternative strategies that will allows you to make the most out of your affiliate marketing campaigns without having your own webpage on the net.

Affiliate marketing is a program whereby the affiliate can earn some generous commissions for every successful sale they manage to refer to the affiliate merchant. The affiliate’s task is merely to pre-sell the affiliate merchant’s goods. The sales page, the payment processing, the digital delivery, and post sales services shall be the responsibilities of the affiliate merchant.

The affiliate only has to refer people to the affiliate merchant’s sales page. This can be done by making people click on the affiliate links exclusively provided for the affiliate. Now, these affiliate links are very important. They are like the markers for the affiliate program. They will tell the system that a visitor was actually referred by the appropriate affiliate.

Marketing the affiliate merchant’s goods without the benefit of a website entails marketing the affiliate links in a variety of channels that would serve the affiliate in lieu of a website of his own. This can be done through the following techniques:

• Article marketing. We all know how powerful affiliate marketing can be in link building campaigns. But instead of providing for links to your own website, you could provide your affiliate links instead. Article directories allow you a resource box per submission, where you could tell your readers about yourself as well as leave a link of your choice. Now, you have to remember that some article directories do not allow affiliate links in the bodies of the articles themselves, but affiliate links are perfectly allowed in the resource box. Great places to start your article marketing campaign are www.ezinearticles.com , www.goarticles.com and www.isnare.com .

• Forum marketing. Online communities, or forums, are likewise great channels where you could promote your affiliate links. Membership in pHp 2.0 based forums gives you a signature box where you could advertise your links. Use this to advertise your affiliate links. For every post you will make, your signature box would appear. Post a thousand messages, and you’ll have a thousand pages advertising your affiliate links! Want to know the forums which are relevant to the subject serviced by the affiliate products you’re promoting? Use the tool at www.link-advantage.com/search to find the appropriate online community.

• Advertise in eZines. This may cost you some cash, as many eZines charge for advertising space. Nonetheless, you could expose your affiliate links to highly targeted prospects using this approach. Imagine if the eZine has a list of 10,000 people. You’d immediately be able to reach 10,000 quality leads with one advertisement. Again, you don’t need a website. Simply use your affiliate link in your ads.

The absence of your own website is never a bar to online success. Most of the strategies we have discussed here can be accomplished without spending a single cent. If you do not have the financial resources to register a domain or to subscribe to a web hosting service, you could still achieve success with affiliate marketing. Joining an affiliate program is free. Promoting your affiliate links can likewise be availed of without any charges. Good luck!

While not right for everyone, there’s one method of marketing on the internet that is overlooked by many…affiliate marketing.

One of the more prolific ( and most successful) affiliate marketing systems available today is the one from Amazon.com. In your travels around the web, I’m sure you’ve seen something like the bar to the right more than a few times.

This has turned into a very successful marketing tool for Amazon, because the legions of people spending time, money and effort promoting and marketing their products only get paid when a sale is made.

“Sure, Dave,” I hear you saying, “I already know all of this. What does that have to do with me?”

If you’re not using affiliate marketing with your online business, you should. And if you don’t think your online business is compatible with affiliate marketing, you haven’t spent enough time “outside the box” while thinking it over.

If you sell a product (as Amazon does), then affiliate marketing seems obvious, but if you sell a service you can still take advantage of the power of affiliate marketing, because what you’re really selling is your expertise.

So why not write an ebook in your area of expertise?

This isn’t the frightening prospect you think it is. True, you may want to hire a professional writer to put your knowledge into the proper form, but it will take less time than you think, and accomplish several things:

1. It will increase your standing as an “authority” in your field.
2. It will lead people to your website that might not otherwise find it.
3. It will lead to an additional revenue stream!

When it comes time to start up your affiliate program, there are services available that take care of the process for you, with Clickbank being one of the largest. After that, you can also let your present customers know through your regular email newsletter that an affiliate program is now available, giving them the opportunity to make money while promoting your product.

This can lead to an increase in sales, because the best salesperson you can have is a satisfied customer.

Here’s my question for you…have you used affiliate marketing, and what were your results?