13 Tips to PROMOTE Your Affiliate PARTNERS

There is a lot more to affiliate marketing than just setting up an affiliate account, dropping your website into cyberspace, and sitting back as the cash rolls in. Yes, it can be easy, and it is definitely creative and fun, but it is a business, like any other, and you need to be qualified for the position and have a good handle on what you’re doing in order to survive. If you are Net-savvy and have an established site with good traffic and/or an e-zine with a large number of subscribers, you can succeed in Affiliate programs.  However, even without these two components it is still possible to sell other peoples products and make money. Here’s how:

1. Build your database by creating your own opt-in email system. You need a good database in order to have people to market your affiliate products. This allows you to have contact with people who have some interest in the product you are promoting.  You can capture email addresses by offering something for free at your site, which the visitor must “subscribe to” by giving you their information.  I do caution you however.  The more information you ask for up front the lower the ratio of subscribers there will be.  If all you ask for is an email address and first name, you will have a better chance of getting the valuable information for your database than asking for a last name, address and other demographic information.  Of course, if the item you are giving away has no value to the prospect, you will have very little chance of capturing email information in the first place.

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2. Get automated.  Sign up for affiliate programs through Clickbank, Linkshare, ShareASale, Commission Junction, PayDotCom and others to make the program seamless. This will allow you to do the marketing so necessary to promote the products and make the sales.

3. Market through ezine ads. These ads can be place in your own ezine and in other popular ezines to drive traffic to your affiliate link.

4. Write articles on a subject relevant to the product you are promoting.  Submit these articles to article submission sites and ezines as well as posting on your own site and in your own informational distribution channels. Focus on publications your target market is interested in and reading.

5. Create an email course to which you put links to the product in each message.  This can be done in the body of the course (provided it is relevant to the subject matter) or in the resource box (signature file) at the end of the course. Set up your course using an autoresponder system by which it gets distributed automatically at set intervals when someone signs up.  An example might be a 7-day ecourse on relationships or book authorship, or even the topic of loosing weight. The Affiliate Masters Course by Ken Evoy is an excellent example of this method.  In his own words the Affiliate Masters Course “leads you step by step, day by day through a flawless process… … from developing a site concept … to brainstorming hundreds of profitable, related keywords … to building that themed site full of money-earning keyword-focused content pages… to attracting targeted, motivated traffic that clicks on your recommendations, and buys from the merchants you represent.”  And best of all, it’s free.

6. Get affiliates to sign up under you and let them do the work of selling.  The commissions may be smaller but the reach will be greater. This is an excellent way to build your passive income stream.

7. Write an ebook and give it away.  Market your distributors throughout the book or at the end in the resource section.

8. If you have your own products to sell, offer one of your affiliate products as a back-end sales item.  For instance if you sell an eBook or other informational product, when you’ve made the sale, mention your affiliate links in the thank you, in your autoresponder message, when you ship the product, any way that will give the customer another opportunity to purchase from you.

9. In addition to using the marketing tools provided by the distributor to promote the product or service (which can include brochures, copy, graphics, media releases and more), create your own.  Think about it, everyone else is probably using the same materials as you, so when you create your own, you stand out from the crowd and have a better chance of making the sale.

10. Create a content-rich site filled with resources that keep the visitor coming back often.  Sales will go up as relationships develop and soon, the visitor or prospect becomes a lifelong customer.

11. Give the product your own stamp of approval.  Write personal recommendations based upon your own research and experience with the product.  Endorsements motivate people to buy.

12. Optimize your website.  Have pages with product reviews.  Study and research keyword phrases and learn the process. Or hire someone who is skilled at Search Engine Optimization freeing up your time to explore other avenues of promotion. If people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.  Update your site often with fresh content. This not only helps with the natural search engine indexing, it gives visitors a reason to return again and again.

13. Most Affiliate Marketing Experts will agree that you must spend 75% of your time promoting Your Affiliate Program. It’s the difference between success and failure for the affiliate.

These 13 tips will help you successfully market your affiliate programs. Although there are many other ways to market your affiliate programs, if you only did these and did them well, you would make money – lots of money.  And isn’t that the point?

In my next post I will share key takeaways from the South Florida Internative Marketing Association, recent workshop on Affiliate Marketing.

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