First Steps in Affiliate Marketing

I haven't posted for nearly a couple of weeks but it hasn't been due to laziness; I've actually been working long and hard on changes to my sites. Now I'm finally in position to start blogging about what you need to consider if you want to make a go of affiliate marketing.

You may also notice that I've started adding links and stuff to this blog so that it's clear what it is about and to provide some useful content. This will continue, probably until I reach overload.

Anyway back to Affiliate Marketing. What is Affiliate Marketing anyway? There are many definitions. Wikipedia says Affiliate Marketing is " is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing It then continues further.

I don't like that definition because it makes no sense unless you already know what an affiliate is. I consider Affiliate Marketing to be pre-selling; that is the art, craft, practice or science of presenting goods and services before a selective audience that should be pre-disposed to purchase the said goods or services.

This leads to my first piece of advise to potential affiliates. Don't try to sell snow to eskimos or combs to bald men. To expand on that I'll give you example that may be a bit out of date now.

If your site is all about your pet hamster you may want to place ads on your site that relate to hamsters. Things you would be most likely to sell would be things that your audience, in this case, people who like hamsters, would be likely to buy. These would include hamster cages, bedding, feed, toys etc. You may also find that people who like hamsters also like guinea pigs and rabbits so maybe rabbit hutches will sell. The latest electronic gadgets or in-car accessories are unlikely to shift in massive numbers not because these people don't drive or have ipods but because that is not what they are thinking about if they have reached a site about a hamster.

Ok, so now we know that affiliate marketing involves advertising and selling. The key thing about affiliate marketing that separates it from multi-level marketing, pyramid selling schemes or franchising is that the affiliate never has to see the goods they are selling. This means that the costs can be very low and the rewards can be pure profit. Don't think this means it is easy - it isn't.

Back when I started in affiliate marketing the web, and it seemed the world, was a lot simpler. Most programs were pay-per-click whereby the affiliate provided more of a referral service for the merchant's site. It was simple, you just placed a banner on a prominent part of your site and expected about 1% of viewers to click it, and it worked for a time.

There are still some per-per-click programs around but outside that adult arena they are few and far between. Adsense killed a lot off as well, but I'll discus Google Adsense another time.

These days most programs rely on sales to generate commission for the affiliate. This is fairer because the more the merchant benefits for the work of their affiliates the more the affiliate benefits. But just sticking banners on an existing site isn't enough anymore.

With merchants providing XML feeds of their entire stock for affiliates to use the name of the game now is building a site with the sole purpose of selling stuff. So now our hamster example wouldn't matter. The best way for our hamster fan to make money would be to build a virtual pet shop using content generated from the affiliate programs of real pet shops' websites and maybe link to it from their page about their hamster.

I'll leave it there but return to this theme in my next post.

If anyone is reading this stuff let me know otherwise it feels like I'm talking to myself, which I do a lot as I spend too long alone whilst working on the computer as it is. I can answer questions about affiliate marketing if you have any.

I'll end with a gripe, which is really a warning. One of the reasons I was so busy is that I found that some merchants whose programs I had joined through a respected affiliate network had in fact left that network some time ago and as result the programs had ceased and I was sending traffic to dead links. I had to check out where the programs were now hosted and apply to join them again, sometimes await approval and then change the code on the web pages. Some programs had completely gone and I had to remove them. This could have been avoided had I received an email saying the programs were ending. All programs start, thrive and eventually end; that is life and I'm not griping about that. Most affiliate networks will notify affiliates if programs are about to end. In this case notifications were not sent. So my warning is this - If you join a program check it frequently to make sure it is still active otherwise you're wasting your time.

Speak soon.