Affiliate marketing is most probably the key to the survival and progress of many cyberspace businesses. And this is why affiliates are being sought everywhere by almost every online company. One traditional marketing arm will not be sufficient for one online business who will be competing with other online companies which are offering the same products and services. Thus, affiliate marketing is very vital.
Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient.
But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing?
Many affiliates are not earning enough money and they find no significant activity going on in their websites. Is affiliate marketing a mistake? The answer is “no”. This practice is based on sound marketing concepts. And the major reason why most affiliates don’t earn enough money is that they have committed one or more mistakes.
Lack of preparation is also a reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a vendor or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is researching. The affiliate marketer must likewise research on the good-paying vendor before he signs up for an affiliate program. He must ensure that the merchants’ products and services match his interests so he can give his full attention and dedication to the program. He can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where he can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.
Many affiliate marketers fail because they lack the right strategies, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products in the most effective ways. As the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase—that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.
An affiliate must not do “hard selling”, which is basically shoving the product down the throat of the customer. An affiliate should leave the “hard selling” part to the website of the online business. The affiliate’s own website should not contain anything that resembles “hard selling”.
What an affiliate must do in his website is to “pre-sell”. To pre-sell is to slowly convince the visitor of the importance of a service or a product by having excellent, information-laden, and authoritative content. Then, the affiliate will “suggest” an action for the visitor, which may be to check out the service or the product.
An other reason for failing is finding the right traffic to send to your work. Not all traffic is equal, the most preferred is free traffic, on the other hand payed traffic can be more targeted to interest. Getting that traffic is or time consuming or if payed rather expensive. If you send your traffic direct to the vendor offer, your changes on earning a commission are very low. It is a wast of time and money.
To get started with affiliate marketing you don’t need to have a website of your own. The website can come in a next stage. Your first focus should be email marketing. Building a list of people who are interested in the kind of service or product you are recommending. To do so you just need a autoresponder service. Aweber is here the best choice. You can start building your first list for free, with excellent tutorials and help. You can find a complete video tutorial on Aweber on my website about “Website Traffic and Marketing”
With your research don and an autoresponder by the hand, you can start your first campaign. You need a good headline and some benefits on your landing page with the sign-up form in place. Further you have to write an email series in witch you present yourself and explain the benefits for the product, with a link to the vendors site.
By following this strategy you can build a long lasting relationship with your readers, providing you with a potential buyers list for future related products. And most of all your traffic will be well spend.
Conclusion
If you fail to make money as an affiliate, it should be wise to reconsider the way you conduct your marketing. This are the points you have to keep in mind.
- Do your research on the products you wish to promote, and research the merchant or vendor.
- Do research on what type of traffic you can afford to get visitors. If you should go for payed traffic, you should consider if the cost for traffic is worth the amount of commission you gain.
- Start building your prospect list. Get an autoresponder and start building a relationship.
- Keep on building your list.
Affiliate marketing is nothing that can make you rich quick, but with the right strategy you will have all the changes of becoming wealthy.