Making Money with Affiliate Programs – Part III

Nowshade Kabir
Whether you are a newbie to Internet or a proud owner of
a website, affiliate programs are great opportunities for
you to make money online. It is an interesting concept
that allows affiliates to develop a source of income and
the program owners to sell their products more effectively.

As an affiliate your job is to drive traffics to the
program owner’s site. You get a commission from each sale
made to a customer that originated from your marketing
efforts.

Once you become interested in making money through
affiliate programs and do some research you will come to
know that there are many affiliates, who consistently make
thousands of dollars month after month.

James Martell, who also wrote a handbook on affiliate
marketing, claims that he makes over US$ 40K each month
from his 30 over niche affiliate sites.

Phil Wiley lives in a remote area near Australia’s Great
Barrier Reefs but it does not create any barrier for him
to make a comfortable living from his online incomes.

Rosalind Gardner, author of the Super Affiliate Handbook,
made over US $400,000 last year alone by promoting different
affiliate programs.

There are numerous examples like these, but the question
is do all affiliates make that much of money? Is it truly
possible to make your living by promoting affiliate programs?

The truth is very few of thousands of affiliates are
successful in making good amount of money from affiliate
marketing.

If you follow the tips stated below scrupulously your chance to
become a super affiliate will increase considerably.

Try the product first

Don’t just start promoting an affiliate program because they
offer handsome commission! Internet marketing is a complex
and time consuming process! If you decided to spend your
valuable time and ingenious brain in promoting a product,
you better check out the product first. Try the product! As
a consumer if you feel that the money spent on the product
is really worth it, then you probably found a right affiliate
program to market.

Sell products consistent to your website’s content

If the visitors are coming to your site and spending time,
that means they like the content of your pages. If you offer
them something which is relevant to this content, chances
increase dramatically that they will check out that product.

Write ad articles and text ads for the product

Don’t use banners to promote your chosen affiliate programs!
Our eyes are so accustomed to see banners that in very rare
case, nowadays, we click on a banner. Use text ads instead!
But don’t just use the generic ads supplied by the affiliate
program owner. Spend sometimes in creating the text ads. While
writing the text ads, think how you can relate the content of
the page with the text of the ad.

Write articles about the subject matter of the affiliate
product and use links within the article. Studies show that
the ad articles have good click through response. You can submit
these articles to other websites and create a viral marketing
process for your affiliate program.
Get a domain name for the affiliate program

If you are getting result from promoting an affiliate program
and would like to get more serious in marketing this particular
program, get a domain name for this program and use it to
redirect to the link given by you affiliate program owner. Here
is why you should do this:

Many people don’t feel comfortable with the idea that you will
get a share from the sales made to them. A domain name convinces
many of this type of people that you are not merely promoting an
affiliate program, rather you have something to do with this
product or better yet, some even might consider that you are
not making anything out of a sale.

Redirect a buyer to a page with relevant products

If you sell a product of your own from a website, once the buyer
finishes the purchasing process, i.e. charging credit card,
redirect him immediately to a page with products that compliment
the product he or she has just purchased. The idea here is to
try to sell more products to the same buyer while he is still
in the buying mood.
Build mini sites for the niche products

One of the best approaches in promoting affiliate programs is
to build mini websites dedicated to these programs. Here are
the steps you should take:

* Choose a market segment
* Choose niche products for this particular market segment
* Build a content rich mini website specifically oriented to
this segment
* Promote related affiliate programs through this website

Use free materials, programs etc. to attract visitors

People love free stuffs! Especially, if there are values in
them! Many affiliate programs supply free materials like articles,
e-books, programs, etc. in order to help affiliates market their
products. Use these materials sporadically to lure customers.
If you don’t get any worthy free materials from the program
owners, search for free relevant materials on the Internet. You
will be amazed to see quantity of free e-books, articles and
other materials that you will be able to dig out!
Create exit Pop-Up pages with specific and targeted offers

If the visitor of your site is leaving, why not showing him a
page with highly specific targeted product offers? Best idea is
to create several pages with highly targeted products for
different pages. If the visitor browsed through a certain page,
that means the content of the page some how interested him. If
he decides to leave the site right after viewing this page, it
definitely makes sense to show him an exit pop-up page with
products consistent to the content of the page.
Build a directory of e-books, articles, and affiliate programs

Information is the number one reason why people spend time
online. It’s not always easy to create large amount of contents
required to satisfy the need of the visitors. Why not use
materials created by others for this purpose? Besides, you
can also use those materials to promote affiliate programs
of your choice. You can add materials to your directory
yourself and you can also ask visitors to submit their
materials in relevant categories.
Post Pay per click ad on the most successful affiliate program

If an affiliate program generates considerable revenue promote
this particular program more aggressively by posting pay per
click ad for this program.

Overture and Google Adwords are the best options available
for pay per click advertisement campaign.

Affiliate programs are great way of making money online!
However, don’t expect an overnight success! Like any other
business, here also you require proper planning and
persistence. Most super affiliates confess that, in general,
it takes one to two years of hard work to become successful
in this field. So do your homework before jumping in!

About the Author

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present
CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he
has wide experience in Business Consulting, International
Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace
with solutions to start and run online business.
You can contact him at mailto:nowshaderusbiz.com,
http://ezine.rusbiz.com, http://www.rusbiz.com