Affiliate Marketing - What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing involves finding and promoting products for
commissions. You find a suitable product, then create a sales
pitch(most product owners will provide one free) for it to present to
friends and/or other prospective buyers. You provide them with a link
on where to buy the product. If they buy, you get a commission.

Note here that you do not need to own any product. You even don't need
to know how it looks(although it's good to know what you are
promoting). All you need is to find people who are interested in a
certain product, find the product and refer it to them through your
link.

 

Affiliate Marketing is basically promoting other peoples products for
commissions. You need to know where to get these products, how to get
your links to the products that you wish to promote and then where to
promote them to make sales hence commissions.

 

If you want to do affiliate marketing, the following are areas
(marketplaces) where you can get products to promote:

1. Commission Juction

2. Ebay

3. Amazon

4. Affiliatebot

5. Regnow

6. Click2sell

7. Paydotcom

8. Hotelclub

9. Overstock

10. Clickbank

 

Sometimes, affiliate marketing is refered to as Modern Data Entry. See why here.

Below is a brief of some current marketing strategies that are hot in
the market now.

As you may have noted, internet trends change within a very short
period of time.

Keep checking all sections of our website for regular updates.



Marketing Methods

A. Free Marketing Methods

1. Using existing lists


Do you have a website or blog through which you have been capturing

peoples emails? These emails can be used to market your affiliate

products. Simply send a polite email to this list letting them know

about your new product(s).


2. using friends lists


Friends lists are personal emails in your email accounts, IM lists, and

other personal webmail accounts. It also includes your phone contacts

and other contacts. You may use these to make sales on your products

especially if you are promoting something that you feel could help your

friends in your personal lists. However, caution should be exercised to

avoid annoying your friends and as a result loosing them.



3. Social Media Marketing e.g. using twitter, myspace and facebook


Social media is one avenue where you can easily create raving fans of

your product who buy and also become returning customers. They also

become your voice out there. If what you are promoting is worth enough,

people will love it and shout all over about it. This gets you even

more sales.



4. Using common interest social groups


Basically, this is same as social media marketing. All you do is join

interactive social websites like swom, blastoff, peoplestring and

geostring and tell other affiliate marketers what it is that you are

doing. Some will get interested in your products and will buy, making

you good commissions.



5. Using craiglist


Craigslist is one of the most popular classified ads site worldwide.

Posting to it can create you excellent traffic to your website making

you very good sales commissions.



6. Using signature lines

These appear within your email(usually at the bottom). Every email you

send out will have your recommendation and a link to purchase.



7. using Reverse Email Marketing




8. Using opt in to websites and your gmail account




9. Word of mouth

B. Cheap but paid methods

1. Using domain forwarding- godaddy


2. using autoresponders and list creating- e.g.by use of aweber


3. using fliers, posters, business cards, post cards, road side signs,

and car door magnets etc.




C. Other methods

1. Using newspaper adverts


2. using affiliate programs - like by registering your product with

clickbank, paydotcom and so on so that affiliates can promote it on

your behalf.


3. Using opt in email lists - like dollarmines, herculist, GotAsafelist


4. pay per click (ppc) - Google Adwords, facebook, yahoo etc


5. Solo Ads - these are ezine advertisements.




Here are some more details about each of the above areas:


A. Free Marketing Methods

1. Existing Lists

If you have been doing email promotions for your products, you must

most likely have created a huge list of some of
the prospective buyers or actual buyers of your products. These are

what are said to be existing lists. However, not many people
have these lists and so this method may not apply for every person.

2. Friends list

If you have an email address, then you definately have a friends list.

All email contacts in your personal email account qualify to
be in the friends list. Just send them an email inviting them to have a

look at what you are promoting. Most likely, some will buy and you
will earn some commission from these sales.

3. Promoting to the public

If you have looked around, there are some inexpensive notice boards

where you can place your offers or details of the products you are
promoting. You may also use notices in places like gathering areas (

churches, conference halls, schools etc) and you are bound to get the
attention of quite a good number of people. This method is especially

quite effective because not many people use it.

4. Using Twitter

Twitter is a social network that is currently spreading like fire. It's

such a strong network that it can not be ignored by any marketer
who wants to make a good income oline. Apart from being a social

network, it has a very effective monetization potential. You can check

it out at http://www.twitter.com and register.

To monetize through tweeter, it works together with other related

programs like tweetlater, twellow, twollow, search.tweeter.com among

others.

These programs help you to automate tweeter so that it automatically

brings new people to look at what you are promoting. The set up for all
these programs will be detailed in a while below.

5. Using craigslist

Craigslist is a classifies ads site which recently scored 93% as the

most popular classified ads site in the world. That simply means you,
as an affiliate marketer cannot ignore it. Previously, you could not

sign up with craigslist from some countries but recently, it has become
active in most. Check it out at http://www.craigslist.org
Details on how to register to it will be provided hereafter in a while.

6. Using Signature lines

When doing internet jobs, its always important to have a gmail account.

If you dont have it, get it here http://gmail.com
Gmail is the most business friendly email address at the time. The

reason is that you can change its settings such that you are able to

include a signature line at the end of every email you send

automatically (showing your opportunity of course!) or event

automatically send responses to people who have emailed you. Check the

details of customizing your gmail account below.

7. Reverse Email Marketing

By now, I guess you have registered with opt in email lists. These send

you a great number of emails from members who try to presell to you

what they are promoting. Instead of sending a mass email through this

opt in list, just read through some of the emails you get and then

respond to them showing some interest in the opportunity. This way, you

get to have the personal email of the opportunity poster. As a result,

send this person your opportunity asking them to compare it with what

they are offering. You are sure to have your email read!

You can say something like: I visited your website and was impressed by

your product. I was just wondering if it works like this(put your link

here) and hope to get more details. Please let me know more.


8. Using opt in to websites and a gmail account.

Most websites will alow you to have a sneek peek at their website if

you just give them your name and email address. Get a gmail account to

use with these opt ins.
However, customize the gmail account such that it autoresponds to the

website's response with your opportunity (more details later)

9. Word of mouth

We all know how word of mouth is. So powerful, so effective it beats

all the above strategies. However, you must have great products to

avoid a bad reputation. Again also always do a follow up with your

current customers so that you may have return sales.
 

----------------------------------------------------------------