In the previous article, I looked at what affiliate marketing actually is.
By now you have seen that affiliate marketing provides a huge income earning potential.
So, here I am going to look at 3 things you must-do if you want to be successful in this arena.
Although it seems that affiliate marketing is one of the easiest forms of starting and running your own business there are some things that you must do to increase your chances of success.
All successful marketers will follow these steps and if the leaders do it then so should you.
1. Have Your Own Website
These may seem obvious but a large number of affiliate marketers still don’t do this.
That is to have your own website and not to use any “standard” site provided by most companies.
There are several reasons for having your own site:
• The search engines will not rank cloned sites. That is if you use the site provided by the product company which has the company URL and your affiliate code then the search engines will ignore it.
• By having your own site you can add lots of content. It is important to remember that most people go online to look for the answer to a problem or for more information. Therefore, you should be adding value to your site by giving them the answers to their problems and they will then buy your solution. It is true that you need to give your visitors lots of free and valuable information as part of building your relationship with them Once you have that relationship you do not need to sell – they will come and buy.
• You can design it to look attractive and easy for customers to buy from you.
2. Competition
Affiliate marketing is very competitive and you need to make sure your site is a magnet not only to attract customers but also to make sure they stay on your site. There are some things you can consider doing:
• As said in the previous point you should be providing your potential customers with free and valuable information.
• A newsletter is a good tool for reminding customers you exist and of course, it means you can get a name and email address. This means you can then use the email to send information and as part of an affiliate marketing campaign. Remember do not send too many offers as readers will get fed up and go somewhere else.
• If you can offer other free stuff that may be of interest such as software tools or services that you can offer.
3. Reputation Building
One of the things that the search engines use to rank a website are links to your site from other sites. I am sure you are aware of why rankings are important – the higher you’re ranking the more likely you are to be found by potential customers. That is the better your ranking the closer to the top of the search page you will appear.
There are several different ways to get links to your site. One of the easiest is to use the free valuable information you are providing and then submit that material to article sites. When you submit an article you also have what is called the resources box in which you can put a couple of links back to your site.
This has several advantages – by publishing articles you are seen as an expert, you increase the chances of being found as your articles can now appear in the search engines from more than one place and you build links. As your reputation as an expert in your area grows, with more articles being submitted, the more likely other sites are to use your information and link back to your site.
This means you will be adding more value to your customers and will be building links back to your site that the search engines will love.
There are many tools that can be used of which these are only 3 but they are probably the first that you should consider when starting out in affiliate marketing. You should start with your website work by adding valuable material and then publishing that material on other sites. By doing this you will get a good start in your affiliate marketing career.
