Affiliate Marketing Success
As an affiliate marketer, your main objective is to sell the products and or services offered by your partner merchants. Unless you can do this, you can never hope to make a significant amount of money with affiliate marketing programs. So how do you boost sales? All things being equal, you have to increase your site traffic before you can get more sales. By the law of averages, the more people that are in the know of the products you are offering, the more products you will sell.
Here are three tips that can help you boost your site traffic:
1. Optimize your site for the search engines, SEO. The most successful sites on the Internet are the ones that are seen the most. There are many ways to achieve increased visibility on the Internet, but the best method is that of search engine optimization. A future article details how to help with SEO. In general, the purpose of SEO is to help your site get higher rankings on the search engines. If you have ever used a search engine, such as Google, you will notice that any keyword search will return thousands, if not millions of results. Most people won't bother to browse through page after page of results; they will prefer to look into the sites already shown on the first page. Statistically speaking, the sites listed on the first page will get the highest amount of traffic, putting those sites in a better position to make money.
2. Provide fresh content. Your site must be constantly updated if you expect your visitors to keep coming back. Your site must have useful content, as well as tools that will help your target audience. Make your site as easy to navigate as possible, and be sure that your links work the way that they should. There is nothing more frustrating than a “broken” website, and once your site has been labeled as such, chances are slim that people will want to come back.
3. Build an online community. Join some forums and meet people. Build relationships with your potential customers. You are able to put a signature file in many of the forums so be sure to put a link to your site in your signature. Make your visitors feel welcome and appreciated, and they are likely to come back. Be interested in solving their problems and they will thank you with their business.
More help about Affiliate Marketing
Making your affiliate marketing program work is really not that much different from operating a traditional business. The only way you can keep your customers is to treat them right. As long as you treat your customers with respect and exert effort in trying to meet their needs, you will find that they will be more than willing to help you with yours.
Affiliate marketing is greatly promoted on the internet as the answer to new found wealth. When in reality almost ninety percent that join up as an affiliate earn less than a hundred dollars a month. The Affiliate marketer isn't hurting though because everything they offered was geared to make sure they always win. It's best to remember that the ninety percent who are receiving little value financially are the financial life blood of the marketer.
They purposely design their website "squeeze" page to lure the gullible into believing in the dream of making lots of easy money. Offering free this and free that to help make the small investment required seem like a real deal. Now in all fairness there is the ten percent that achieve that higher income. However, they succeed because they know it's a highly competitive arena and understand what internet marketing practices it takes to succeed.
Many times the more successful affiliate marketers offer a free website as part of their road to wealth package. Oh, they keep their word all right. They will provide easy access to getting a domain name, web hosting, and the installation of the free website. However, it's usually a one-page website designed and optimized to benefit the affiliate marketer not the new affiliate. On top of that the marketers don't care if the new sign up understands what he is doing.
There's no "Before You Start" manual offered explaining established internet marketing technique. Even the hosting, which is an additional cost, is often also owned by the affiliate marketer. Those ten percent who are doing will either have enough capital to have well designed websites made or know how to make one themselves. To succeed as an affiliate, you must have a good website.
In order for an affiliate to earn income from their new one-page website they need one crucial thing. Customers! And on the internet that only happens if you get "traffic". This is when the small investment ends and the novice finds out that they have to again dig deep into their wallet. To make things worst most free websites have the HTML code search engine optimized to benefit the affiliate marketer. The internet newbie doesn't realize this having no understanding of the mechanics of websites.
Also even though they have access to the websites control panel it's meaningless. They have no way of making changes to their advantage unless they already own and know how to use an HTML editor which most folks usually don't. The novice affiliate is pretty much forced to use pay per click advertising to generate any traffic to their sight causing again more drain on the finances. The point being made here is that being an affiliate can be very profitable but it's not an accident.
Anyone who wishes to improve their income by being an affiliate needs to be patient and do their homework. Don't be sucked in by promises of wealth. One doesn't have to be a webmaster but they do need to understand how affiliate marketing works. There are hundreds of digital eBooks and paperbacks available to assist one on their research in this area.
There's also reputable software products that are specifically designed to assist the new affiliate in their endeavor to be more profitably productive. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a part of the American dream of moving on up. Go for it. Just be careful so that when all is said and done it doesn't end up being an expensive nightmare instead of a dream come true.
Article by:
Brian Walters SEO
Skype: tuneup_bj
Brian Walters MarketHive
http://brian-walters-online.com/
http://briansmarketing.net/
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member