By
Adewale Atewogbade
Affiliate
programs are currently and for the foreseeable future some of the best methods
for making money on line. If you are interested in finding out why this is so,
then keep reading.Viewed from a very narrow perspective, an affiliate marketer
is basically an Internet sales person. The difference between affiliate Lara
Pearson and John Doe who sells widgets for Acme Corporation is that Lara works
for herself, is not paid any salary and can represent as many companies or
programs as she can handle.
When
Lara joins an affiliate program, she has effectively decided to advertise or
recommend the products and/or services, of the company she selected. Anytime
Lara's recommendation leads to a sale she is paid a commission that is
commensurate with the terms of association of the company she is working with.
Most affiliate programs are free to join and the commissions paid by some of
them are just amazing. If
I have piqued your interest and you are determined to become an affiliate, then
the following eight easy steps constitute your road map to success.
1.
You have a decision to make. If your visions of affiliate marketing include
getting rich quick, you may be partially right but getting there is half the
story. The rewards are great but the path to success is littered with
innumerable time bombs. You must realize that being an affiliate is not your
ordinary hop on the wagon kind of job. Your ability to succeed will depend on
your commitment, resourcefulness, intelligence and entrepreneurial
capabilities. In other words be prepared to do some hard tackling once you've
made up your mind.
2.
Get some basic HTML education. Hyper Text Mark up Language is the most basic
web programming language. Possessing an understanding of HTML and perhaps PHP
will put you ahead of the pack. You can get a lot of sales information from the
companies you represent but they will not teach you how to write your sales
letters design your web pages or blogs or post your links on your advertising
sites. A good free resource for learning the basics of web programming can be
found at http://www.w3schools.com.
3.
How to target your potential customers? Target is the keyword here and if you
do not already know anything about PPC, then you will soon find out. So, if you
have an MBA or have invested in a class on small business management, you might
have some knowledge about methods for advertising and marketing your products.
If not, then one of your primary objectives will be to learn how to create ads
that convert to sales. Most affiliates learn on the job. You can start with
yourself and use what you think will convince you to buy a product. Also,
virtually all the affiliate companies will give you samples of ads you can use
to sell their products.
4.
Look for free affiliate programs with mentoring. The best things in life are
free including the air we breathe, and of course some affiliate programs that
provide free mentoring programs for their affiliates. Most will offer a section
for new affiliates that can get them up to speed on the efficient promotion of
their product or service. Some programs will even give you free versions of
their product to help you better understand how to promote it.
5.
Choose your marketing tools. The Internet is rife with a multitude of
advertising methods. Pay per Click seems to be the most efficient but it costs
money, and sometimes a lot of it too. There are other methods that cost less
and yet some others that are free. The problem with the free methods is that
they take quite a while to generate any sale. Most affiliate programs will give
you examples of where to place your ads.
6.
Start building your campaigns. This is the culmination of steps 1 to 5. For
most affiliates a first attempt does not always produce the result they
expected. Do not despair. Persistence eventually pays off in affiliate
marketing, and since you've chosen to promote products from free affiliate
programs, your investment is minimal.
7.
Launch! Posting your ads is the easiest part of the whole process, depending of
course on what advertising method you are using. Having posted your ads, all
you have to do is to sit back, relax and see what happens.
8.
Analyze the results. Tracking your results is the most important part of the
steps. Here you need to check how your ads performed. A positive result means
you should repeat the process. If you are not getting any sales however, you
might need to do some tweaking and also consider creating 3 to 4 different ads
for the same product and checking to see which one you want to keep. Virtually
all affiliate sites create reports of your activities that you can use to track
your progress.
Article
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