Affiliate Marketing Made Simple
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
It's been a while since I spent any time talking about affiliate marketing even though it's something I do every day. A friend of mine asked me for a quick primer on affiliate marketing so I thought I'd share my thoughts with everyone who reads this blog.
I know from the many comments and emails that many of you are interested in driving more traffic to your websites, improving rankings, and making the most from your PPC and other online advertising.
I know from the many comments and emails that many of you are interested in driving more traffic to your websites, improving rankings, and making the most from your PPC and other online advertising.
Many of you have also shared your goal to generate revenue online through affiliate marketing. For those of you who may not be all that familiar with affiliate marketing, the concept is simple: get paid for selling someone else's product. You might be asking, "why sell someone else's product and not my own?" The reality is that affiliate marketing isn't for everyone but it's great if you don't want to deal with the hassles of running your own traditional business.
Selling physical products, either from a retail establishment or online with a website requires that you advertise, sell, and process orders - usually through an online shopping cart. Once you've made a sale, you need to package and deliver the product, support any calls that come in (product questions, shipping inquires, reship damaged inventory, etc.). The process is labor intensive and time consuming.
Enter affiliate marketing. When selling someone else product through an affiliate network the steps are quite simple. You begin by selecting an affiliate product, do some affiliate advertising, and send traffic to a vendor's sales page. When a prospect converts you get paid. Simple, isn't it?. The advantage to you is that you're earning revenue with no inventory, no customer service, and no hassles.
What's wonderful about affiliate marketing is that there are plenty of product to choose from and dozens of large affiliate networks that aggregate many advertisers into a single platform, making the process of finding relevant products easy. Different products and offers also have different payouts. You can choose to sell big ticket items with big commissions or smaller offers. There are even recurring offers that deliver a steady income to the seller month after month... my favorite!
Getting started with affiliate marketing is simple to do. Visit a site like Clickbank to find suitable offers and promotional links. All you need to do is start driving traffic through the links posted on your site and as prospects purchase items for the vendor's web page, you get paid. Most affiliate sites pay every couple of weeks by check, direct deposit, or via PayPal.
There are lots of ways drive traffic to your affiliate offers. Use your website, write and distribute an article, review the product on your blog, tweet about it, use PPC marketing, etc. There are many ways to promote different types of products. I recommend that you choose products that have a good commission ($25 or more) and are related to your content. If you have a web site about trucks, refer users to affiliate products such as truck parts. If you stay relevant, you'll get good results. Wander too far off course and your traffic will never convert.
Marketing Blog founder and top-selling author Michael Fleischner has been featured on The TODAY Show, ABC World News, and Bloomerg Radio. 
12 comments :
Thanks for sharing this post. Even though most in the marketing world know what affiliate marketing is, it's always refreshing to get a reminded of exactly what affiliate marketing is all about. I think you put it best by saying "you're getting paid for selling someone else's product."
It takes only common sense to hire a company that itself has a high ranking on the search pages. A company that can attain a top ranking beating its competitors is sure to do a great ob for its clients. To find an online marketing company, you can also Google with such industry terms as search marketing, on page optimization, pay per click advertisement or website optimization. If you are looking for a local company, also add the name of your city or locality with the search phrase.
Internet Marketing
I don't think affiliate marketing is simple, and easy.Without good review page, affiliate product is not easy to be sold.
This post gives common sense info and no real direction. You give broad overviews an no substance. You make it seem like getting traffic is effortless. People are having extreme difficulty and you are giving broad overviews giving months of work in one page articles. Everybody is saying to do the same thing without ever giving step by step core details of Internet Marketing.
Your topic was great! Thanks for taking a moment to draft such an interesting piece…
Yes Affiliate Marketing is also my favorite also. All the customer service and anything else straight to the company itself and not the affiliate (us). The monthly income is also what I look for. I believe the best way to get traffic is start a blog and be consistent with it. Post a blog everyday and insert affiliate links within the post.
great post. affiliate marketing is something i'm doing now and i have to admit that it does need a lot of effort and commitment.thanks
Internet marketing like conventional advertising technique blends technology and creativity to increase visibility of a particular product or service. However, Internet marketing makes a more cost effective key than traditional advertising in the sense that, it can enter a large customer base more easily and in a time and expense that is related with the generic advertising models.
Internet marketing like conventional advertising technique blends technology and creativity to increase visibility of a particular product or service. However, Internet marketing makes a more cost effective key than traditional advertising in the sense that, it can enter a large customer base more easily and in a time and expense that is related with the generic advertising models.
Affiliate marketing is work for me. Most people are not success because they choose the wrong product and use the wrong method to market it. Use the correct tools and methords can drive your earning better.
Well said about Affiliate Marketing.Thanks...
Small businesses like mine (a chiropractic office) rely on affiliate marketers to drive business to our sites also. Don't forget that services can be sold as well as products. I typically pay $40 per new patient to affiliate marketers. There is only so much marketing we can do on our own and still have time to treat patients too.
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