This article may be republished and freely distributed as long as the author's box at the end is included. Affiliate marketing can be as easy as promoting someone else's link in your own email. And it can be more strategic and involve setting up a website, autoresponder series and more for a complete promotional campaign. Here are some top tips to help set up and run a well-rounded affiliate marketing operation: Affiliate Program First of all, research and find free affiliate programs with a variety of products for you to promote and ones that allow you to participate without purchasing anything. A popular place is Clickbank.com with many top-selling categories of information products. Others are Commission Junction at cj.com and LinkShare? at linkshare.com, both with products and services offered online and off, for those interested in selling real-world items like pet supplies, flowers, gift baskets, etc. Other popular affiliate programs such as SFI at https://www.moreinfo247.com/9249141/FREE are free to join initially, but require a minimum purchase for full participation in the compensation plan. SFI is a well-known affiliate program that operates world-wide with a wide variety of products. Autoresponder Series Next you need a good automatic means for communicating via email. Popular autoresponders are Get Response at http://www.GetResponse.com/index/jeremyfive , Aweber Communications at http://www.aweber.com and 1ShoppingCart.com. These have excellent setup and management instructions with support practically round the clock. Learn how to set up a subscriber form to capture email addresses and other information you'd like to contact your clients and leads, even offline with postal mail. Then learn to create (or hire someone to create via online bid sites like Elance.com) a series of messages to lead shoppers back to your sites. Hint: the magic number is 7! People need reminded up to 7 times to return and buy. So load at least 7 messages! Articles Write articles on a regular basis about each of your affiliate products and submit them to online article directories, article submission services, ezine publishers and website owners in your niches or fields of interest. Don't make them advertising pieces, but rather stories or news discussing features and benefits for readers. At the end, add your byline with affiliate link and / or other contact information. This can increase website visitors, leads as people subscribe through your autoresponder forms, sales and website links, increasing your search engine rank for better positioning when people conduct website searches. Website / Newsletter / Blog Although many affiliate products and services come with their own websites, super affiliate marketers who earn the bigger affiliate bucks use their own websites to attract visitors first, then send them to their affiliate sites. This way, you can capture your own contact information to use yourself and track and monitor your own shoppers instead of blindly sending them elsewhere to click someone else's sites. Popular means to stay in touch to bring these shoppers back to you plus build rapport include setting up a blog and sending out a regular newsletter with information. People can subscribe to your blog via an RSS feed to receive your news announcements and articles that point them to your affiliate links. Ditto with an ezine or postal newsletter. Interaction In all you do, invite interaction from your readers and website visitors. Get to know your audience and build rapport. Would you prefer to buy from a stranger? Or someone you know? Ask for feedback with your articles. Conduct surveys on your blog, ranking articles for popularity. Invite your readers to contribute their articles. In summary, affiliate marketing can be as easy as promoting someone else's link in your own email. But it can be more strategic and offer both your affiliates and you much greater rewards. So reach out with your promotions and develop a well-rounded affiliate marketing strategy. And go for a win-win! |
