Affiliate marketing is one of the most straightforward ways of generating income for your website, regardless of your subject matter. By signing up to product programs on behalf of a retailer, you can gain commission by introducing customers to these items. Here are three of the most effective ways to execute affiliate marketing on your website.
Discover the best programs
When considering the most effective ways to execute affiliate marketing on your site, the basic question you have to ask is what program or service do you wish to sign up to promote? To make the most effective use of your web platform as a way of drawing in potential customers, you need to look into products which will tie-in to your own subject matter. There are no hard-and-fast rules about whether it’s better to go with a larger retailer or a more specialized publisher because each has its own merits.
A basic Internet search for a CPA affiliate network will produce a list of potential retail partners. There are Clickbank and ShareASale and various others, but the most commonly known are eBay and Amazon. Depending on what type of product you wish to market, both these organizations offer a wide range of potential programs for you to sign up to. You have to find a balance between marketing items which are proven bestsellers, and uncovering a particular niche where are you are not going to be swamped by all the competition.
Advertising banners
If there’s one aspect of affiliate marketing that makes the model stand out from previous promotional schemes, it’s the way the emphasis on content has all but superseded the previous method of populating web pages with garish banners. But the latter has not been rendered completely obsolete.
One of the most popular – and lucrative – affiliate areas is online dating. These remain a highly effective conversion tool and are invariably linked to the merchant site’s free bets or live odds options. These can also be updated in real time, so if you are running a sport-orientated website which is affiliated to a slick, fast-moving dating affiliate, you will receive a generous commission every time you attract a visitor to click-through and sign up to the dating site.
Embed links
A crucial aspect of affiliate marketing you need to be aware of is, you are not setting yourself up purely as a salesperson. There is nothing more likely to do dissuade potential customers from actually alighting on any links if they appear to be listed on a web page under bold ‘buy this now’ headings.
What do you have to focus on is your basic web content. Whatever you are writing about, your articles need to be informative and interesting, encouraging site visitors to engage with what you have to say. The links provided by the retailer should almost be an afterthought, organically placed within the articles of your web pages so they don’t seem too obvious. As people are being drawn into your web pages by the content, this needs to be fluid, changing constantly as you post new items and reviews.
This is where you can also use your social media as an effective means of executing affiliate marketing. If you already have a large existing customer base, many of whom have subscribed to email bulletins and suchlike, you can invite them to review items and then share this information with their own platform. In this way, you can become something of an expert. Your goal should be to be seen as the ‘go to’ website for anyone wishing to find out more about your subject.
