Affiliate Marketing Tips

The following are some affiliate marketing tips for people who are new to affiliate or INTERNET marketing.  We don't claim to be experts at INTERNET marketing but we have been marketing affiliate programs for a few years and have learn some Hard Lessons.  We thought we would pass on some tips based on our experience and thoughts on the subject.  Unlike many who claim to be experts we are not trying to sell anything, we are just trying to help others trying to enter the business.

The first thing to do is be patient and realistic.  You are not going to build a profitable INTERNET business over night. Like any business, it takes some money along with dedication and a lot of work to build a successful business.  The first thing to do is stay away from the get rich quick 'scams'.  The INTERNET is full of these things and they are all designed to make someone else rich. You will need to dedicate some time every week and it will likely take a few months before you start to see results.

The next thing to do is find good products to sell.  This takes time but it may be easier if you find something you like.  When you find a product you like and would purchase it at the price offered than it is likely other people will do the same thing.  It is good to find something that people continue to use so you can build a customer base and don't need to continually find 'new' customers.

The rest is all marketing and effective marketing is the trick to making money on the INTERNET.  We cannot tell you exactly how how to do this because we do not have all of the answers.  However,  we can give you some basic advice on good things to do and what to avoid. 

Don't use an affiliate website to market your product, build your own website.  Many people think they can sign up as an affiliate, get a Free Free Website  and sit around and collect money.  If it were that easy the company would not need affiliate's to market their product.  Potential customers need to find your website in order to purchase your products. In order for them to find your site you will need to spend time and money on advertising and link building.  Why not build links to your own website rather than an affiliate website?  If you have your own website you can always change or add products through links to your affiliate sites.  Also, many quality website directories and search engines will not accept affiliate websites.

With this in mind our affiliate marketing tips are the following:

1. Build your own website and link it to your affiliate sites.  Ideally you want to build a website with content that is targeted to your potential customers.  If you want to sell travel products than build a site with interesting information about travel or regions of the world.  A website with good content will get picked up by the major search engines over time and you will get Free traffic.

2. Shy away from purchased traffic and traffic building schemes.  INTERNET marketing is all about converting traffic into sales. Most free or purchased traffic will not produce any sales.

3. Budget your advertising money.  Use some for short term advertising and some for long term link building.  Good short term advertising is quality pay per click advertising or text ads on other websites. Long term advertising is link building with quality websites that may result in some short term benefit but will help with search engine optimization (SEO) in the long term.

4. Shy away from Free For All (FFA) link sites and in most cases classified ad sites.  FFA sites are a waste of time and we have not had good results from classified ad sites.  We have produced some results from good classified ad sites but you need to run featured ads or your ad will be mixed in with all the other ads and lost.

5. Write interesting articles with content that is consistent with your website.  You can publish articles for free in search engines and directories and add two or three links to your website in each article.  These links will stay around for a long time.  We still see links from articles we wrote 1 or 2 years ago.

6. Don't waste time and money on so called malls, ad blasting products or e-mail blasting.  If this information gets to anyone they are likely not interested because they get blasted with hundreds of e-mails and ads everyday.

7.  Try to find something interesting you can add to your site that will attract visitors and cause others to link to your website. 

8.  Work on building quality links from other websites that are related to your website.  If you are in the travel business than try to get links from other travel sites.  These are the most important links for good search engine placement.  You can purchase or sometimes exchange links if necessary.

9. It is also good to get links from website directories and discussion or forum websites.  Only place links in directories that have a category that matches your website or a niche directory in your line of business.

Build a website with good content, continue to add or change content and build good links and you will get good traffic and sales.  This process takes time but it is the key to success in INTERNET marketing.  It is hard to make money without some natural or organic traffic.  You will likely lose money over the long haul if you just rely on paid advertising because a lot of it is expensive and it is difficult to control the cost and measure the effectiveness.

We wish you the best of luck with your new business.  Please e-mail us at  info@free-affiliate-guide.com  if you think we should ad something to our list or if you have an INTERNET secret you can share.

Good luck with your business.