7 Reasons Why Affiliate Marketing Rocks!
Affiliate marketing for me is one of the best ways to start making money online. Below you will find 7 reasons why I think affiliate marketing ROCKS!
Don’t get me wrong, there is one huge downside to affiliate marketing and that is ‘competition’.
The reason there is so much competition in affiliate marketing is due to the low entry levels, just about anyone can get started promoting something or other.
That being said, I love it and the competition just makes it more fun when you out-perform them.
1. No Start-Up Costs
Most affiliate programs are free to join. You can start by registering with Clickbank, PayDotCom and Commission Junction and be promoting your first product or service within minutes.
2. No Website Required
You can promote your affiliate links in articles you’ve written, forum posts and signatures, videos, PDF reports, PowerPoint presentations, you name it you can probably do it.
NOTE: There is a skill to marketing using the above methods and spamming should never be considered an option. For ethical affiliate marketing training visit John Reese’s Opportunity.com.
3. Rewards Can Be High
The potential rewards in affiliate marketing can be very high. If you find the right program and the right way to promote it you can be on to a real financial winner.
4. The Product Owner Does The Selling
Okay, as an affiliate you can pre-sell a product to help increase the conversion rates but, in the most part, the product owner does all the work.
They pay out for testing their sales page, the copy-writing that will ‘sell‘ their product and so on, in other words, the hard work is done for you. Your main goal is to encourage someone to visit the product owners website.
5. The Product Owner Handles Customer Care
If a person purchases a product through your affiliate link you get paid. Not only do you get paid but you also don’t have to worry about the hassle of customer services.
If the product receives a lot of support tickets about installation, compatibility issues or anything else, it is the owner who has to respond to each issue, not the affiliate.
That said, it is worth making sure you only promote items that are going to benefit your referrals and not upset them in any way. If you promote a shady product with shabby customer care then you as an affiliate will tarnish your own reputation.
6. Affiliate Marketing Fits Into Your Current Online Business
In most cases, if you already have a website, it will be tailored to a particular market. You can instantly increase your sites revenue by adding affiliate products and promotions to your site that compliment your current products or services.
If you have an information site then adding product reviews that are tailored to your niche can also see you earning a nice affiliate commission each month.
7. Something For Your Area of Expertise
Finally, nearly every niche is covered with a product or service that you can promote as an affiliate. This makes it so much easier for you to promote something in an area that you already have an established presence and level of expertise.
To your affiliate marketing success,
Karl Foxley
P.s. You can get your hands on a wealth of affiliate marketing training material and be the first to find out about the latest affiliate marketing niches and products by joining Opportunity.com.
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Hey Karl!
The affiliate marketig model is pretty wel established for ecommerce or online companies already well versed in Internet Marketing.
But I’m becoming more and more interested in the concept of applying social media and Internet marketing techniques to LOCAL businesses (see my commentluv link).
My question is this – let’s say I convinced a local business owner that I could drive people to his webiste and let’s say that business owner HAS an ecommerce checkout page. How can we setup our own “local” affililate network so that the owner knows the lead/sale is coming from me.
What about if there’s NO ecommerce site? How can I track visitors that I send to the local business website or that visit the store based on a blog review, etc.
I read something about a DIY affiliate network but I can’t recall what it is.
And if no ecommerce site – how can I link my efforts with increased instore visits/purchases for a LOCAL business?
Thanks in advane!
- Don
.-= Don Power´s amazing last blog ..Going Local – How do You Use Social Media to Boost Local Business? =-.
Hi Don,
You can create any link that has an extension, let’s say, yousite.com/localbusinessname and have that redirect to the local store website. You can then track your clicks based on that URL.
We often use coupons to track a campaign as these are printed out by a customer and taken to the store to track certain purchases (the coupon has an attached incentive, percent off total order or particular product etc).
You can also track phone conversions, http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/02/two-cool-integrations-telephone-leads.html and http://www.freshegg.com/call-track-id.htm will shed some light on that.
Hope that helps for now, sorry for the quick answer but I’m getting away for the weekend.
I’ll take another look at your question when I get back.
Regards,
Karl