What’s Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is
promoting a company’s goods or services in exchange for a commission whenever a
product is sold. It is one of the popular ways to make money on the internet. Most
affiliate marketers do their business through blog websites or social media
sites like Facebook, Youtube etc.
So for
instance, Youtubers make videos in which they recommend particular products to
their audience and also provide affiliate links via their description boxes that
often lead to a site like Jvzoo. When someone clicks on their link and buys,
they earn commission money. Below are some of the popular ways that Affiliate
Marketers use to promote their products
- 1. Product review blogs:
Product review blogs
are blog sites that present information on particular products. They also give information on the product's benefits
(pros) and possible disadvantages (cons) and whether it’s worth it to buy (value for
money).
A review-based blog can help you
promote a certain product effectively as you are at liberty to write freely on your blog. You are more likely to drive customers
who are really interested in purchasing the product.
Hence the product reviewer
is like the middle-man between the consumer and product owner. Review blogs
help customers to make up their minds on whether they should go ahead and
purchase the product. This is done by giving detailed information on the
products being promoted.
As a product reviewer,
you will write about a product and then provide a link to where it can be
purchased. A positive customer review might just bring you results that other
marketing efforts may not. As a matter of fact, positive reviews can help
people understand how the product works, thereby allowing them to make informed
decisions before buying.
You can see examples of review blogs by simply searching on google product reviews, e.g search "Wealthy Affiliate reviews" to see blogs that review this affiliate product. Other bloggers may recommend it and others may not.
And you can see their reasons for recommending certain products. By so doing they earn affiliate commissions if their readers decide to buy.
- 2. Email marketing:
Email Marketing is
essentially using email to promote goods and services to potential consumers. This is done with the help of Email auto-responder services which deliver series of emails or newsletters to subscribers as a way of providing valuable information.
In addition, you can then promote certain affiliate products and services with the help of email campaigns. A
better way of doing this is by developing relationships with potential
customers or clients.
This relationship can be built if you provide valuable
information to your subscribers and eventually they come to trust you as a
reliable authority in your particular niche.
Email marketing allows businesses to keep their customers informed and adapt
their marketing messages to their customers.
Affiliates that have huge email
subscribers in their niche can help with more sales or conversions. You can buy solo ads from networks like Udimi to boost your sales and conversions, but more importantly you can also build your own email list by driving solo ad traffic to your own opt-in and squeeze pages. That way you get to keep life customers and earn value for your money. This is a better way of doing it than driving the traffic directly to your affiliate links. This is how Email Marketing generally works.
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- 3. Creating Ads
Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the popular types of ads affiliate marketers use to promote their affiliate products. There are PPC networks online where you can create your ads as an advertiser to boost web traffic to your site and hopefully convert that traffic into sales.
Other platforms that provide PPC services are search engines like Google and Bing. In these places you get to bid on relevant or
targeted keywords related to the product you are trying to promote. As an advertiser you pay a fee each time one
of your ads is clicked.
Basically, it’s a way of buying traffic or visits to
your website. This is a good strategy for reaching your targeted audience
provided that you have the budget for such an investment.
PPC lets you target web
visitors with relevant ads whenever people search for particular phrases that
match your targeted keywords. PPC allows you to be at the top of search engines provided you have the money to make such investment and it is not always a guarantee that your ads will perform well and you could potentially lose all your money.
Although the competition is fierce depending on which keywords you bid on, there's always a probable chance of success if you know what you are doing. Your ads get to be viewed by people looking for the answers to the questions
that your product or service can solve. It is important to learn and understand these things before making such investments in the advertising industry.
Apart from search engines, popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Youtube allow advertisers to place ads on their platforms subject to community terms and conditions. By so doing, you reach a wider audience within your specific niche and boost your web traffic, conversions and sales.
Other types of ads you may want to consider include pop ads, push ads, CPM (Cost Per Mile) and url shorterners like pretty links. All these types of ads have specific networks that allow advertisers and publishers (bloggers or site owners) to buy and earn ads respectively. You can do a google search to learn more.
Here are some ad networks you may want to consider if you decide to invest in ads:
- 4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Another popular technique
of marketing affiliate products but also the most difficult in my opinion is Search
Engine Optimization. SEO is the art or skill of improving the visibility of a
website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” organic search
results.
After a search is made, the results are shown and ranked based on what
the search engine (Google, Bing etc.) considers most relevant to users. SEO
doesn’t bring results instantly but it can be extremely rewarding over time.
Imagine your website being accessed by thousands or possibly millions of people
looking for the exact product you are offering, your sale conversion could be
unlimited.
There are thousands of articles and learning materials online that deal with SEO. If you decide to go this route and willing to be patient before seeing results in your affiliate career, this can be an amazing way of promoting affiliate products.
Sites or web pages that promote affiliate offers like for instance email auto-responder services such as Getresponse and rank well on search engines more likely make a lot of money. That's how rewarding if your content is that good. Make sure you take the time to learn what it takes to rank well in search engines and apply your knowledge to leverage your marketing needs.
- 5. Social Media
Social media marketing
is the use of social media platforms to promote a product or service. It involves
creating and sharing content on social media networks in order to achieve your
marketing objectives. Social media is the biggest and powerful sector on the Internet at the moment.
Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc are
accessed by millions of people from all walks of life interested in particular
topics. These could be potential customers you can easily reach, develop
relationships with and possibly be a problem solver to their needs. This means,
as an affiliate, you need to be actively using social media sites to promote
yourself and your websites/blogs.
There are niches and sub niches you can target on social media. Facebook has groups and pages that you share information with, Twitter has Lists, and Reddit have sub-Reddits. Just make sure you provide more value in your interactions and avoid spamming or else you risk being banned and your account terminated all together.
Apart from the sites I have mentioned, you may also want to consider Q and A sites like Quora where people ask questions on all sort of things. You already know you specific niches and sub niches, so you can answer questions on various things people ask and promote or recommend affiliate offers as solutions to problems or needs that people face or lack respectively.
And just reiterate my earlier point, make sure you don't spam the social platforms with or sorts of offers. Answer the questions genuinely to stand the chance of having your answer become popular and more people will view what you are offering. Make sure you read the community terms and conditions to know which behavior is not tolerated. This is another interesting way affiliate marketers use to promote their services and products.
See also:
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