Do Affiliate Marketers Need Websites?
Do you want to make money with an Internet business but don't
have enough experience or capital to start your own online
business? You don't have to worry, since a lot of online
marketing options exist for you to start with. One of these
options is affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing provides first time online marketers like
you the chance to market something online without having your
own product to sell. All you have to do is to sign up with an
affiliate marketing program, which is usually owned by an online
merchant or retailer, and start picking the products you want to
promote. As an affiliate, you are paid by the merchant for your
services on a commission basis, whenever you have directed a
visitor to the merchant's site and the visitor actually buys
something.
Becoming an affiliate is often quick and easy, and for most
affiliate programs, signing up is also free. But despite these
and all the benefits being promised by affiliate programs, many
people are still hesitant to get into affiliate marketing. One
of the reasons why a lot of people remain hesitant is the lack
of a website to start marketing affiliate products with. This
now leads to the question of whether a website is required or
necessary in affiliate marketing or not.
Many people say that one can do affiliate marketing even without
a website. You can really start promoting and marketing your
affiliate products even without a website; and there are a lot
of ways this can be done. Among these strategies are email
marketing, offline promotions, writing e-books, writing ezines
and engaging in online discussions like forums, chats, message
boards and others.
Email marketing is actually one of the most popular affiliate
marketing strategies that doesn't require the affiliate to
maintain a website. In this affiliate marketing strategy, what
you basically do is maintain a list of the email adresses of
your prospective customers and provide them with articles that
are related to the affiliate products and programs you are
promoting. Articles that you provide your contacts with need not
always be promotional, since many individuals find such types of
email annoying. Rather, it can be better if you provide them
with something informative and just add small text ads that link
to your affiliate site.
There are many ways you can promote your affiliate products
offline. Among the more common mediums used for such promotions
are classified ads, brochures and flyers. Classified ads
generally work better compared to the other two because
classified ads in periodicals often get a wider audience.
If you have a knack for writing, developing an e-book can be the
best way for you to promote your affiliate products without an
actual website. Just like emails and newsletters, your readers
would better appreciate your e-book if it is not too promotional
but rather informative. Be sure, however, to make the contents
of your e-books relative to the actual affiliate products you
are promoting. And just like in email marketing, you can just
place text ads or banners somewhere near the end of your e-book
that link to your affiliate site.
Ezine articles are publications that aim to inform individuals
about a particular topic. If you don't have a website, but want
to be an affiliate, you can use ezines to promote your affiliate
products. If you have a website, your ezine article may actually
work well as content for your site. But if you have no website,
you can just submit your free ezine articles to various ezines,
like those found at goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com and others.
With or without a website, you just can't ignore online
discussions because they are great venues for marketing your
affiliate products. In chats, forums, message boards and
discussion boards with topics related to your products, you can
easily find people who may be interested with the products you
are promoting. It is considered bad form to make forum posts
just to advertise your affiliate site, but you can use carefully
placed references to your site without invoking the ire of the
forum moderator.
With all these strategies, it may appear that one really doesn't
need to have a website to start marketing his affiliate products
and promoting his affiliate programs. While one can actually
gain enormous success in affiliate marketing even without a
website, having a website can help you reach better levels of
success.
Having a website is not really a pre-requisite in entering into
an affiliate program, unless otherwise the program owner would
require you to have one. But while this is so, having a website,
if not now, then maybe at a later time, can help you with your
affilate businesse(s). Having a website creates some advantages
in affiliate marketing. For one, it provides you a place where
you can creatively promote not only one of your affiliate
products but all of your affiliate products. With a website, you
can also advertise your affiliate products to a wider market.
Again, having a website is not a requirement in affiliate
marketing. But with the advantages that a website can provide,
you may find that you would rather have one and make your
affiliate marketing a lot easier.