The Four Best Ways to Market Your Affiliate Program

If you look around the Internet, you would think the only way to promote an affiliate program is via banner ads. Everyone creates banner ads and invites people to place these at their site. Yet for many affiliate programs, the banner ad is simply a poor form of advertising. It encourages a limited response, is stuck on the top or bottom of the screen, and does little if anything for the affiliate, or your network. If you are going to use banner ads, be sure to drive them to one product page, or even better, to a sign up form where you can email them. These are the best methods to put banner ads into action. Okay, so what works better than banner ads for affiliate network? Here are some ideas: Email/ezine promotions to a qualified list: One of the funniest, common realizations at a recent conference was that customers do not buy until the third or fourth visit to a Web Site. Direct response marketing has been built on this fact for years, following up initial contacts with repeated messages inviting people to visit. Email is the best means to conduct this and to keep up with the volumes of email that come with a new affiliate program. Yet the real power of email comes in the endorsed mailing. When an ezine or list has been developed, with a trust between the writer and the audience, the endorsement is gold. It moves people from being strangers to being introduced to you personally. The unfamiliar is replaced by a recommendation from someone they trust. Response rates to email offerings are much greater; a recent article about the December Internet retail push claimed a 300% increase in sales via email than via other methods. This is the hottest, unknown affiliate promotion available. Text Links/Endorsement With Banner: PC World does an excellent job of increasing the response to their affiliate programs. PC World has an audience who buys online; over 90% of their audience have bought online. They are extremely selective with who they make their affiliate partners, for a good reason; they are good at selling advertising space, so little of this space is dead. When they do use affiliate networks, they favor a small banner ad that can sit in a side bar of the page, or at least not dominate the page. To the right of the small banner "button" is text that describes the benefits behind clicking on that banner ad. The text is a link, the banner is a link, and by combining the visual with a short text description, they are able to group affiliate programs on a single Web Page. It is an extremely effective method of offering more than one product on a page, without overwhelming the visitor. Once again, words do the explaining that pictures can