MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS the 'Affiliate Way'
An Affiliate Marketer is someone who actively promotes the
products or services of one or more businesses, and receives
commissions 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 full income
generating potential. Applying Affiliate Marketing techniques to
promote your business on the Internet can be very successful,
once you understand 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 their programs, relying on income from other
sources, with only a relatively small number of affiliate
marketers who are very successful. Therefore, what do the
'successful' marketers do differently and how can we apply their
techniques to our Internet business? Broadly speaking there are
six methods of promoting a web site on the Internet: 1. Through
the Internet Search Engines. 2. Banner advertising, both
pay-per-click and reciprocal banner exchanges. 3. Opt-in
(subscription) email lists. 4. Ezines, article submission sites
and reputable Business to Business resource sites. 5.
Free-for-all link boards (FFA), classified ad boards and
directories. 6. Unsolicited Email (Spam) Let us deal with the
last two points first. We do not advocate the use of unsolicited
email, and recommend to all our clients that they do not respond
to unsolicited email, only to 'unsubscribe'. FFA boards are
becoming less effective, largely due to the decreasing numbers
of people who actually read posted messages. FFA boards have
evolved into 'automated' link sites where you submit your
'offer' to 1000's of boards through automated bulk-submission
services, and you receive auto-responders from the board
operators, advertising their services to you. Most of these
auto-response messages are filtered out and deleted by the
submission service before you get to read them, or are directed
to a 'free' email address where they are dumped - automated
submissions, automated deletions! That is not to say that they
serve no purpose. FFA boards can enhance the 'link-popularity'
of your web site, which can gain you valuable points with search
engines. Which leads us to answer the question posed above -
"what do successful marketers do differently and how can we
apply their techniques to our Internet business". The answer is
to implement a short-term strategy, and then plan and implement
a strategy for the mid to long term. An effective short-term
strategy might involve the use of a combination of Banner
advertising, opt-in email lists, and Ezines to get some traffic
flowing quickly. The effectiveness of each will be largely
dependant on your category of business and the marketing message
you create to front your ads (your web copy). At the same time
you must implement your mid to longer term marketing goals,
which will form the 'backbone' of your marketing strategy. The
ideal vehicle for delivering steady 'targeted' traffic in higher
volume and at low cost - 'Search Engines'. Consider this. If I
email my 'sales offer' through opt-in email to a subscriber base
of 300,000 people, I can expect to pay anywhere 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 search engines 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 and
predictable flow of visitors, generated at a very low 'cost per
visitor' 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 see very few ways of effectively promoting a
business on the Internet these days without some costs. There
are many places where your site can 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 your livelihood. 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 about your
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 boards that bring you
little or no business, remember that it has actually cost you at
least $500. Trust only to good fortune, never to luck!