Affiliate marketing has turned to be one of the most effective ways for content-driven sites to generate revenue without directly offering a product to it's visitors. It is only trough banners, endorsing texts and articles that the content site mentions the products he likes and uses. You can do the same with your mini-sites.
This type of marketing has an advantage for all of the three sides involved. It creates more opportunities for merchants to generate web sales, for affiliate sites to generate a lot of revenue and for consumers a way to find information about the products they want and need without being sold "in their face".
How does it work?
With Affiliate Marketing, a merchant recruits content sites to partner with them as affiliates in exchange for commissions. The merchant provides their advertising banners and links to their affiliates and assigns a commission for each click-through to their site, subscription to their service (a lead), or purchase of their products that is generated from the links.
Affiliates place the tracking code for these ads into their Web pages. Whenever a visitor to the affiliate's site uses these links to generate a click-through, lead, or sale for the merchant, that transaction is tracked online. If a product or service is purchased, the customer pays the merchant directly, and the affiliate is paid a commission for that transaction.
Why affiliate marketing works like a charm
Thousands of people all around the world would like to have an e-commerce enabled website. But most of them don't have the time, patience or will to go through the hassle of creating an exclusive product from scratch, learning every single detail there is to know about online advertising and e-commerce and then setting up a website to sell it.
Busy people like you and I have a very good alternative and opportunity in the affiliate business. Because you still can have a great website with as much content as you want and make tons of sales from it without having to go trough the hassle of building your own products. Plus most of the products you can sell from affiliate programs already have a proven sales record, they are high-quality products that people are already looking for.
It's all about the passion!
Affiliate marketing, just like any other type of selling is about the passion you feel for the topic you are building your website around. If you want to be truly successful with the affiliate programs you offer, you need to build a passion for your field (niche). The #1 mistake that most affiliate sites make is to think that they are selling products. It simply doesn't work that way... you don't want to sell products, you want to entertain them and you want to build a website that tells people about your passions, your interests and the things you like, you want to give them valuable information about the topic your site evolves around and then weave into that content and endorsement for a product or service that you like and use.
You want your visitors to know that you are just trying to give them good information about the topic that interests them (else they wouldn't be at your site in the first place). And if you feel a real passion for that topic, this will reflect in your writing... and if it does, people will perceive that passion and will be excited about it, and it will translate into sales for you.Writing about a product or service in the editorial content of your website is called writing an advertorial (this comes from the combination of the words "ad" and "editorial".
How to write a good advertorial.
Mass media channels like TV, radio, magazines and newspapers endorse products and services in their editorial content all the time. Creating a good advertorial is easy, all you really need to do is talk about a topic you like giving people all the information you know about that specific topic and weaving in a few words about a product or service that has helped you achieve in your area of interest.
Imagine that you know a lot about how to grow bonsai trees. You can easily set up a *great* website with all the information you have, giving specifics about how or why you grow your bonsai trees in a certain manner. You can also have information about the kind of clippers you use to trim your bonsai trees and why you use them, you can also tell your visitors about the top three books that have given you the most valuable information about bonsais.You can start a newsletter that gives out free tips and tricks about bonsai growing (we'll talk about this a bit later in this report).
That sounds like a great site to visit if you're into bonsai-growing doesn't it? When people find a site like this, they bookmark it and come back... they find this site useful and entertaining. Now let's imagine a second site. A site that's full of banner ads and graphics that are trying to sell some bonsai trimming clippers. Which of the two sites above do you think will get the most sales (even if they are both affiliate sites)?
You are absolutely right. The site with all the bonsai information will make the most sales. This takes us to the #2 mistake that most affiliate websites make: Building a mall.
Malls are an excellent idea in the brick and mortar world. They give you a practical way to shop by placing a lot of stores together in a single building... this way, you don't have to drive all around your town to look for a certain product. But it works a lot different on the internet! Here you don't have to drive all around to get to a certain place... everything is just a few mouse clicks away!
If you find yourself at a website that doesn't have anything of value to you, and it's just packed with banners trying to sell you everything under the sun: from shoes to computers to practical jokes... you just click the "Back" of your browser and you are gone from there. You wouldn't buy a thing in there would you? But for some strange reason, people think you will and they keep building sites like these.
That is exactly what you should not fall into! You want to sign in to only three or four affiliate programs that are related to your topic of interest and build a website that endorses those products.
Tips for building a good advertorial mini-site.
The first thing you need to learn is to work within your site. Advertorials don't look like they were coming from an outside source - like a banner ad (which is why banner advertising doesn't work). Banners and outside sources *sell* and people don't like being sold... at least not from a site like yours. If they feel like they are being sold, they will click the back button and you'll have lost them forever.
An advertorial is not a salesletter, don't fall into this trap either. A good advertorial is good information that encourages your visitors on something that you feel a real passion for. You want to fit the affiliate program (the ad) into the context of what you're doing. If you don't you're going to sound just like every other affiliate site out there... the ones that don't make any money! And you don't want your site in this category do you?
There is a good rule of thumb for balancing your advertorial website: The 80-20 rule. This means that the content of your website should be at least 80% of valuable information and just 20% (or less) of sales content. This is not an exact rule, but if you follow it, your site will never be out of balance and fall into the ugly-online-mall category.
How to choose which affiliate programs to join.
A great rule of thumb is: People don't buy from an affiliate site, they buy from you! If you create good will in your visitors, they will trust you and from that trust is where sales are really made. Are you beginning to see the true importance of your website? Your trust is on the line!
Not everyone does this, but my suggestion is that when you are thinking about what programs to join and what products to endorse is... only tell people about products you trust and use. That way, you can really tell them about the product on a firsthand experience.
If you don't do it this way, you could be advertising a really cheesy product that doesn't work. Do this and your image will go down and the trust that you have built will be lost. I'm pretty sure you know that trust is something that you can only earn once.
A good advertorial site "focuses" on building trust, giving out good information and talking about great products. And it does it in a me-to-you, no-hype, straightforward manner. If you grasp and understand this concept, you've won half of the affiliate battle! Here it goes again (just in case you didn't get it the first time):
Now that you know that your business is built on trust, let's talk about how to build that trust from your visitors and how to keep them as friends and turn them into customers. The real secret of doing this is...
Build your own prospect list!
Remember I mentioned this in the bonsai site example? Having an in-house opt-in list is one of the most valuable assets any business can have. You want to start your own list by offering a free ezine or a newsletter... you want to have your visitor's names and e-mail addresses so you can communicate with them constantly and build your trust slowly.
Some people try to do this by offering a free report that will be sent to the visitor with an autoresponder. This works sometimes, but you don't want the permission to contact visitors only once... you want a full permission to speak with them and become their friend.
Only trough frequent contact with your list is that you will earn their trust. Giving them good information will make them see you as an expert on the subject and this will earn you their trust. Once they trust you as an expert a good percentage of those opt-ins will feel comfortable enough to buy the products you recommend (You are the expert after all).
And if you keep giving them good information and treating them good as your customers, they will repeat-buy the products and services you endorse. And that's where the real value of your business is.
When a user first visits your website she will scan through it for 8-15 seconds. And if your site caught her attention she will stay an average of only 3 to 5 minutes in total... that's not a lot of time you know? Certainly not enough time to earn someone's trust and sell her something.
It is crucial that you get their permission and their e-mail address so you can follow up with them and build credibility. A good way to encourage them to do this is by giving them a freebie (like an e-book or a special report). You should tell them that if they want the free stuff they will get both - the e-book and a free subscription to your newsletter.
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