Affiliate Marketing Tips

We hope the following information can help you get going down the path to affiliate success. We also believe it will save you time and money in the process. We understand that some of the suggestions may appear obvious, but sometimes it's nice to have someone tell you that the obvious answer is also the right one.

Stick With What You Know
Finding a topic has to be the #1 question we hear from our clients. It is our belief that it is best to start with what you know best. Although following this strategy may not be the most profitable initially, it will however be easier for you to build your website and it's a subject you will most likely remain interested in. That means you can add your own personal touch and opinions to the site. If you try to build your first site from something in which you have no personal interest, the site will soon become boring and tedious. We highly recommend that you stick with what you know and build on it from there.

Banners: Too Much of a Good Thing
Banners are not a secret and all powerful way to generate internet millions. Although many a website I have seen where the owner must stongly disagree based on their use of pages full of banners. You worked so hard to come up with intelligent and interesting content, why turn off your visitors with acres and acres of annoying and ugly banners? Don't get us wrong. There is still a specific and important need for a banner advertisement here and there but don't rely too heavily on them.

The Ultimate Merchant... NOT!
There is no perfect merchant or affiliate program. Again refer to tip #1 and stick with what you know. It is going to take a lot of testing and research to find which affiliate programs will have the highest return on your investment based on your website content. Start out by finding programs that offer products or services in your topic or industry and make sure you closely monitor your results.

Diversify Your Merchants
Select a few to several merchants in your topic or industry. By promoting 5-6 merchant's products or services on the same site, you will give your visitors a wide range of destinations and resources. Doing this provides you with vital information on what your visitors need, and can provide you with valuable data on how well these merchants perform against each other side by side.

What is the Best Affiliate Network, You Ask?
Everyone has their own "opinion" to this question, and ultimately there is no right answer. This is especially true when you consider that many great programs don't even belong to a network. Every network has its advantages and disadvantages. We recommend you make a selection based on the tools provided and merchants available. Sometimes joining a specific network is necessary because they have a merchant you really need. Try a merchant from all the primary networks, test to see which performs best, and then focus your time accordingly.

What are Content Sites.
If you visit affiliate marketing forums you'll hear people talk about "content sites." These are sites that provide potentially educational and topical content about the products they are promoting, or appear to promote products as a side focus. Content sites are easier to build when you know about the products you are promoting, or the merchant makes content available to you. However, don't forget the goal of your site is to make your site visitors click off of your site onto a merchant's store. No click-through means no sale.

What are Data (Product Info) Sites.
Data driven sites are generally limited to pure product data, prices, images, descriptions, there's no illusion of education here. It's all about promoting the product and making the visitor get off your site as fast as possible and onto the merchant's store. Data driven sites generally require access to data feeds and some knowledge of programming or access to software (or scripts) which can produce web pages from the data feeds.

Parasites and how they affect you.
You will see a lot of sites that talk about "Parasites", "ParasiteWare" and "ScumWare." All of these are applications that can redirect, overwrite, or intercept your visitors (and therefore YOUR commission) and change your visitor into their visitor. The majority of these masquerade as shopping support software, file sharing applications, browser help objects (BHOs), and even hidden applications installed on a user's PC via drive-by installs or in bundled software packages. Most ParasiteWare also has various traits of SpyWare.

Building your first Site.
It does help to know HTML and the ability to use graphics software. Knowledge of these areas gives you the ability to add small touches of class to your site. However don't be discouraged if you have no skills in these areas. It is not always necessary to be skilful as there are a number of tools and merchants around that can help you get your first site up and launched. These include page generation tools and fast launch sites. These tools are great for getting rolling but always remember to do some customization of anything you get automated to ensure it is uniqueness to you. Search engines and directories will remove duplicate content.

Buying a domain name.
Geocities and Homestead undeniably have their place in the Internet world; however, registering a domain with them generally is not a very wise decision. Many search engines and directories won't list such sites because of their transient nature. In addition to the pitfall of not showing up in search engines, some affiliate managers will skip over your site as they deem it to be a "Personal home page." It is best to get a top level domain (TLD) name and some cheap, but reliable, hosting. When considering a domain name, first think about what you are going to promote and then base your domain name on it. Don't buy the domain name first and then later think about what you'll promote on the site.

Work at it.
While it is the ultimate aim of every affiliate partner not to have to do any work, the reality is, especially early on, there's a lot of work to be done. Whether it's in the site's design, updates, education or reading stats, there is a lot to do. The pay-offs aren't instant and it can take a fair few months before you're even making enough to even cover your costs. It takes perseverance, dedication and patience to succeed, don't quit if your first attempts don't pay off.

Educate yourself.
Education is an immensely important part of affiliate marketing. There is a heck of a lot to learn. Educating yourself on basic principles of HTML, programming, data feed manipulation, creating custom links, or learn how to identify a good niche in a way that others have overlooked. The affiliate forums are certainly one of the best places to start this education. Invest in and read affiliate marketing books by affiliates such as James Martell

The next step.
Once you have that first site up and it's making money, then it's time to start to expand. Using what you have learned by building that first site, move on to a new project. Leave the first site to keep making money, making adjustments, and any needed updates, but generally letting it do its thing. Your next site is likely to be a site in an area you've seen other affiliates having lots of success. It makes sense to follow the money, but remember it can be a crowded market place when everyone is after the same thing. Don't overlook small niche products, items that might not get the huge traffic but should convert well due to limited availability or being in a special interest group. These markets can often be far less crowded and easier to make quick sales on compared to the bigger more crowded programs.