WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or client brought by the affiliate’s efforts.
Affiliate marketing is very effective solution, because it allows you to advertise on a pay-per-performance model. Unlike other types of online marketing, such as pay-per-click and banner advertising, that require you to risk money upfront, affiliate marketing is strictly pay-for-performance.
Affiliate Marketing is the most promising and lucrative business model on the internet. There are millions of affiliate marketers but there is more than sufficient money for everyone out there.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. It is one of the few areas where you can start your online business with no money.
Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks and affiliate programs.One of the oldest ways to make money online, affiliate marketing programs continue to be one of the most effective methods; there are thousands of programs to choose from.
Affiliate marketing programs are frequently neglected, despite being one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing. Unlike other online marketing tactics, affiliate marketing isn't just about creative ideas, technology, and analytics. Affiliate marketing programs create and leverage a network of complementary Web sites -- targeting the same demographic -- to generate customer leads or sales on a commission basis.
In the other part, Affiliate Marketing Networks are one of the most interesting and highly popular concepts in online business. We can understand Affiliate Marketing Network as an intermediary body between affiliates and affiliate programs.
Affiliate Marketing Network is a third party that provides such services as aggregation and tracking to the affiliates as well as the affiliate program. It consists of a group of merchants and affiliates where the affiliates promote the products from the merchants in exchange of a commission.
Affiliate Marketing Networks are companies that manage affiliate programs for hundreds and thousands of merchants.
Affiliate Marketing Networks are generally free to join. However, there are certain requirements you must have, such as having your own website or newsletter.
Affiliate Marketing Networks are also great sources to find good affiliate programs and can help you get payments from different merchants through a single check. Affiliate Marketing can be hard. Like it or not it is not as easy as some gurus will have you believe and using push button software does not work. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great tools out there which will help you to simplify the processes you need to go through but if you don’t have a basic understanding of how and why things work you will find it difficult to make money.
My story is similar to many other people. I come from a Corporate background and for many years I tried and failed with Network marketing and Affiliate Marketing. Here are just some of the problems I experienced that I have since identified.
I did not invest enough time on learning the right way to do things
•I underestimated the time required and set unrealistic goals
•I jumped from product to product looking for an easy fix
•I did not plan properly and stick to a plan
8 Vital Mistakes To Avoid In Affiliate Marketing Business
Avoid these mistakes and you will succeed
Affiliate marketing can be an extremely profitable business provided you know how to stay ahead in the competition. The key to success is to learn from the mistakes other marketers have made before you and never repeat them again. Here are the top 8 mistakes most affiliate marketers make:
1. Not selecting the right merchant
It is important that you select the right kind of products for your affiliate marketing program but what is more important is to select the right merchant as well. If you have a merchant who is non-responsive or treats affiliates more as annoyances instead of business partners then you should not do business with such a merchant. Try looking for merchants who have an affiliate marketer protection policy, have good commission rates and have a good customer support system. This way, you can easily contact your merchant when you have doubts or clarifications. You can easily find out if a merchant is reliable – just ask him some questions, ask to provide some more information about the affiliate program, promotional tools. If merchant looks helpful then you can do business.
2. Laziness of trying out new promotional campaigns and products
Most affiliate marketers get so caught up in one particular segment that they fail to experiment with other niches. It is always in your best interests as an affiliate marketer to try selling and propagating products that belong to diverse verticals. This helps you expand your horizons and also get more exposure in the domains you are working in. Plus, you will be more likely to be perceived as an affiliate marketer of choice for future merchant programs.
3. Not having your own home page
Most affiliate marketers have gone on by directing their customers to the merchant site directly. However, today that does not work so good anymore as customers have become smarter. Instead, you need to direct your customers to your own home page of the affiliate site – landing page – and pre-sell the product yourself. You do not need to have a very complex looking site but definitely one that is clean and concise in its messaging. This gives you much more flexibility in tweaking your landing page’s text, so you can easily increase sales.
4. Not following up with customers
Customers have so many options to choose from so why would they purchase from your affiliate site? This is why you need a good follow-up system in place. Make sure to send a reminder email or just pick up the phone and speak to your customers. This helps garner trust and credibility and customers will be likely to purchase from your site once they know you are taking the extra effort to persuade them. Make sure you have an e-mail list of your customers. This way you can keep in contact with all of them and when you release your new product – you can easily blast an e-mail to your list and make sales instantly.
5. Not having other income earning avenues
As an affiliate marketer you always need to have options around as far as income earning is concerned. Therefore, try and look for sources like article marketing, ebooks, viral marketing techniques, forum marketing, blogging, having your own website etc. These sources of referrals will go a long way in keeping you protected during especially lean periods as they will continue to garner customer interest and money for you. Cultivate each of your selected traffic sources. However, make sure to stay with your strategy for some time and don’t just jump from one to another.
6. Signing up for too many affiliate programs
Many affiliate marketers get extremely tempted to sign up for as many affiliate programs as possible. However, this will most likely do more harm than good. When you select too many products to promote you lose focus and direction. Then, it can be difficult to direct your attention to a winning marketing strategy which in turn will hamper profits. Select only a few good looking affiliate programs and work on them and stay focused. This will bring you much more profits.
7. Not having patience
Affiliate marketing is like any other business and requires patience to succeed. You need to wait it out before you start breaking even. Don’t believe these ‘overnight rich’ promises, they are complete nonsense. Affiliate marketing requires efforts and patience to succeed… It takes learning, testing and trying until you succeed. But when you achieve the success, believe me – it’s really worth all those efforts.
8. Not selecting the right affiliate network
There are many affiliate networks, however only a small number provides affiliate marketers with all tools required to succeed. You need to have a good affiliate link protection, commission payment system working like a clock-work, you need to be protected so your affiliate commissions could not be stolen. You can Join the LinkShare Referral Program for free!
It is an affiliate marketing network that was designed with an affiliate in mind. It protects your affiliate commissions, allows you to track all your advertising campaigns and keywords, websites that bring sales. It was designed to help affiliate marketers succeed, so if you are not doing affiliate marketing yet, you can easily start it today.
The 5 Keys to Success in Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing Success in 5 Steps
One of the easiest and fastest ways to make money online is to start of with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when you promote someones else's product and you earn a commission every time someone buys through your link. To be successful in affiliate marketing, you need to have 5 things in place.
1) A good product to promote! Join LinkShare Today!!! You can also sign up for affiliate programs through Clickbank, Commission Junction, or Amazon, pretty much all major companies have some sort of affiliate program that you can sign up for. Don't just pick the first thing that you see, do some research on the product to see if people are buying.
2) A domain name, and hosting. You can use free blogs like blogger, or yola but there is always a possibility of your blog getting shut down without warning. So you want to have your own domain and web hosting. You need to have a blog or a website. This is where you send your traffic that you generate so they can see your affiliate offer. This website can either be dedicated to one product or it can be a review style blog with multiple products. Your website is where you sell the people on the product, you want to highlight all of the advantages of the product, you want to make them buy.
3) An autoresponder, this is used to capture the address of visitors who come to your website or squeeze page. This helps to build your list. Once you capture their address, you want to build a good relationship with that list, so that you are able to market to them over and over again.
4) A squeeze page or capture page, this is where you put your "bribe" which is typically a free offer that you give to people in exchange for their email address.
5) Social Networks, I know it sounds strange, but social networks are a very valuable resource for affiliate marketers. For example, when using social networks like facebook, you can create your own fanpage or group or use someone elses. Marketing your product to a group in the same niche is very powerful and you can yield some great commissions from this technique.
Using these five keys should ensure your success in affiliate marketing. Although I left out traffic as one of the key elements, this is also very important for your success as an affiliate marketer.
