MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS the 'Affiliate Way'

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An Affiliate Marketer is someone who actively promotes theproducts or services of one or more businesses, and receivescommissions on sales generated through his/her referrals.A successful Affiliate Ma...
An Affiliate Marketer is someone who actively promotes theproducts or services of one or more businesses, and receivescommissions on sales generated through his/her referrals.A successful Affiliate Marketer is efficient and 'savvy',can locate a good business opportunity and extract it's fullincome generating potential.Applying Affiliate Marketing techniques to promote yourbusiness on the Internet can be very successful, once youunderstand some of the basics.We estimate that around 5 million people are involved in promoting affiliate web sites. The majority of these, perhaps 75%, will not generate a single commission check.
Approximately 25% will make supplemental income from theirprograms, relying on income from other sources, with only arelatively small number of affiliate marketers who are verysuccessful.Therefore, what do the 'successful' marketers do differentlyand how can we apply their techniques to our Internet business?Broadly speaking there are six methods of promoting a web siteon the Internet:1. Through the Internet Search Engines.2.
Banner advertising, both pay-per-click and reciprocal bannerexchanges.3. Opt-in (subscription) email lists.4.
Ezines, article submission sites and reputable Business toBusiness resource sites.5. Free-for-all link boards (FFA), classified ad boards anddirectories.6.
Unsolicited Email (Spam)Let us deal with the last two points first. We do not advocatethe use of unsolicited email, and recommend to all our clientsthat they do not respond to unsolicited email, only to'unsubscribe'.FFA boards are becoming less effective, largely due to thedecreasing numbers of people who actually read posted messages.FFA boards have evolved into 'automated' link sites where yousubmit your 'offer' to 1000's of boards through automatedbulk-submission services, and you receive auto-responders fromthe board operators, advertising their services to you.
Most ofthese auto-response messages are filtered out and deleted bythe submission service before you get to read them, or aredirected to a 'free' email address where they are dumped -automated submissions, automated deletions! That is not to saythat they serve no purpose. FFA boards can enhance the'link-popularity' of your web site, which can gain you valuablepoints with search engines.Which leads us to answer the question posed above - "what dosuccessful marketers do differently and how can we apply theirtechniques to our Internet business".
The answer is to implementa short-term strategy, and then plan and implement a strategy forthe mid to long term. An effective short-term strategy mightinvolve the use of a combination of Banner advertising, opt-inemail lists, and Ezines to get some traffic flowing quickly.
Theeffectiveness of each will be largely dependant on your categoryof business and the marketing message you create to front yourads (your web copy). At the same time you must implement yourmid to longer term marketing goals, which will form the 'backbone'of your marketing strategy.
The ideal vehicle for deliveringsteady 'targeted' traffic in higher volume and at low cost - 'Search Engines'.Consider this. If I email my 'sales offer' through opt-in emailto a subscriber base of 300,000 people, I can expect to payanywhere between $1500 and $5,000 for a one-time mailing,depending on the target audience.
Alternatively, for less than $1,000 I can register a domain name, setup some basic advertising web pages, have the pages 'optimized' to rank well on the searchengines and host the site for a whole year. When traffic starts to arrive through Internet searches it will be targeted and will produce a far superior visitor/inquiry ratio than through any other advertising medium.
Most importantly it is a sustainable andpredictable flow of visitors, generated at a very low 'cost pervisitor' rate.Those businesses that plan for the long term will mostly be around in the long term. Those that do not, most certainly will not."Making it big without spending a penny on advertising" - we seevery few ways of effectively promoting a business on the Internet these days without some costs.
There are many places where your sitecan be advertised for free, but how effective are they?Be prepared to invest some money into marketing your business and try to seek out reputable services. Exercise caution whenever you see 'money for nothing' style promotions and do not gamble with yourlivelihood.Thoroughly test all your marketing campaigns so you can identify those that are successful and those that are not.
In the same way,monitor the progress of your web site and record information aboutyour visitors and how they found you.As a small or home based business entrepreneur, value your time! If you spend five hours submitting your site to free resource boardsthat bring you little or no business, remember that it has actuallycost you at least $500.Trust only to good fortune, never to luck! Article Tags: Unsolicited Email, Long Term Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com.