An affiliate marketing program or campaign is essentially a situation where other website owners place advertisements for your business on their websites. These website owners are known as affiliates. It is important to understand how this type of marketing works.
In general, the affiliates are given code for your banner ad to be placed on their website and given the freedom to promote their own website as they see fit. In promoting their website they are also attracting attention to your website because of the banner ad directing visitors to your own website; in turn creating some top paying affiliates. Affiliate Marketing is compensated only when the affiliate produces a desired result. This means the business owner is not obligated to pay the affiliate unless the affiliate is successful.
Success may be defined by the best affiliate marketing method, generating traffic to the website, resulting in a sale or even resulting in the Internet user registering on your website or filling out a survey. It all depends upon the products or services that your business offers.
The compensation for affiliates is generally based on cost per click, cost per lead or cost per sale. Cost per click and cost per lead are usually paid in terms of a flat fee which is awarded to the affiliate each time an Internet user either simply clicks through the banner ad on his website or performs a specific action after clicking through the ad.
The questions that arise are “How do you currently market your Website? Are you actively making an effort to promote your Website? Are you a guest contributor on other high traffic Websites? Do you make comments on high traffic websites? Are you publishing your posts as articles across the web? Do you partner with other websites to cross promote one another? Who is your audience?
Do a little research on your most active subscribers, go to their websites, watch their tweets, etc. Try and find a common aspect amongst their interests and cater to them as much as possible without changing the identity of your Website. How big your audience is and how it will support an affiliate marketing campaign, matters a lot. Affiliate companies reserve the right to cease running ads with you if any one of many standards are not met, and that can include a minimum number of site visits and even a minimum amount of monthly clicks.
Where do visitors come from? Knowing who your top referring sources are will help you increase traffic by targeting similar sources that do not know about you yet. Analytics are crucial to any business, and by becoming an affiliate marketer you are running a business. Many forms of analytic tools are there to provide tracking that is completely free of charge. If you feel you need a more robust analytical tool, there are plenty to choose from; figure out what analytics you need and find a service capable of providing it.
Are people clicking links on your site? If you have not tested this, it’s highly recommended to do so you can get a feel for what your visitors respond to. Will ads be autonomous or will they be integrated into your posts? How will you do it (directly as a product review, or seamless in the story)? If you plan on mentioning a product or service in your posts and you want it to blend in and become a subliminal message for people to click through so here is an advice to practice. Write some articles and ask some friends to critique them, the last thing you want to do is turn off the visitors you have worked so hard to earn by “selling out”.
Are you prepared to have ads in prominent positions on your site? It can be a little unsettling for some to see their website have advertisements on it, especially when they are prominently placed to maximize their effectiveness and in turn increase that commission check. Nobody wants to be a “sell out”, but nobody wants to be broke either.
What do you want to advertise? Products, services or both? Again, make sure it fits with the look and feel of your website and is associated with the content being posted.
