Promoting Affiliate Programs – 5 Steps To Getting Started

Obliviously, if you are going to be promoting affiliate programs, then you need an affiliate program to promote. Will you promote your own affiliate program or someone else’s affiliate program?

Step 1. Develop or find an affiliate program to promote.

In today’s Internet marketing people are getting started with an online business by promoting affiliate programs that others have developed. And, they are being quite successful in doing so. There are many affiliate program data banks that you could search. ClickBank is one of the largest and better known.

The ultimate objective is to develop your own affiliate programs to.

Step 2. Obtain you own web site.

In promoting affiliate programs you need your own web hosting account. Most owners of affiliate programs provide a web site that host the sales letter for their program. However, you do not want to use this free web site as your primary promotion site. You want to have control over all of your content and your business. With your own web hosting account you will also be able to examine your web traffic statistics.

Many people want to get started without obtaining a web site and web hosting. And indeed, there are affiliate programs that will allow you to do this. However, you are in an Internet business and the Internet runs on web pages.

Therefore, you really should not expect to run an online business with out obtaining web hosting. A good web hosting company will allow you to host more than one web site when you purchase the appropriate hosting package.

Step 3. Subscribe to a good autoresponder system.

More important than getting traffic to your sales page is getting traffic to a lead generation system. This should be hosted on your own web site. You build what is commonly called a squeeze page on your web site. Your autoresponder company will generate the code that is necessary to put a sign up form on your squeeze page. Your objective is to get traffic to your squeeze page form and get people to fill out the form

When they do your autoresponder will collect their name and email address and build a database of subscribers for you. You are building a list. I’ll bet you’ve heard that the money is in the list.

You now develop a series of messages to send to your new subscribers. This series of messages is also stored in your autoresponder. The first message should be a welcome letter. Using your messages you begin to build a relationship with your subscribers. Give them useful and informative information. Your Subscribers are like gold to your business.

If you teach them what you know about your niche, over time some of them will spend money to buy your affiliate programs. You give and help and when they trust you they will likely order the affiliate program that you are promoting.

Step 4. Get traffic to your site.

You got your lead generation system established. Now you need to get someone to fill out that form so that they can start seeing your messages.

There are many ways to get traffic to your squeeze page. If you offer something free, an informative incentive, some of your traffic will sign up using your opt-in form.

One of the quickest ways to get traffic to your squeeze web page is to use pay per click. Using Google AdWords ads your can quickly get a lot of traffic. This can be expensive if not monitored. Your are bidding on how much you will pay each time someone clicks on your ad.

When someone clicks on your ad you will have to pay, even if they do not fill out and submit your form. In this case, you do not get a subscriber, but you still have to pay. So, you need to monitor your traffic and make sure you are getting a good return for your money.

That being said, you will generally get a lot of subscribers so this is a good and a fast way to build your list. Your results per click may be low but you generally will get a lot of clicks so you will get signups. Just watch your cost.

Another way to get traffic to you site is to submit articles. This is a long-term strategy. This method takes a while to get the traffic to your site. There are many web sites, called article directories, which will publish articles that you write.

If you write unique and quality articles these directories will publish your article. In exchange for the information that they get to publish on their site, they will allow you to place your own ad, called a resource box, at the end of your article. In this resource box you place a link back to your web squeeze page.

The directory promotes your article along with many others and over time some of the reader’s will click through to you web site. These visitors are pre-qualified. They already know a little bit about what you can provide. Having read your article, they decided to take a closer look by clicking on your web site link.

Step 5. Provide useful information to your subscribers.

I discussed this a little bit earlier but it needs to be emphasized in a step of its own. This is important and cannot be overly emphasized. Your subscribers must fell that they are getting quality information from the messages that you place in your autoresponder.

Some will tell you not to send them sales letters. This may be good advice for the first couple of messages. But the whole purpose for building the list is to make money. If you do not sent them sales message, how will they buy from you?

You can always include a link back to your sales site or blog. But in the end you will also need to send them messages that are sales letters.

Every once in a while you will want of promote a new affiliate program or one that you really believe will help them in their efforts.

Generally, in this case you will use the broadcast feature of your autoresponder.

The final step. Get started!

When will you do it? Until you get started you will get nowhere. You have to start somewhere. Start with the information provided here. Also, the chances are good that you have an abundance of additional material on you hard drive. Use some of it. Subscribe to my list building eCourse.

Learn as you implement things. You can refine, rearrange, improve, and implement new things as you go along. Just bite the bullet and get started.

Here are 4 Great Ways to Enhance Your List Building Efforts

1. Make sure your website content is good.

Improving and adding to your blog content or a regular basis will help in your list building efforts. It will also help you in your efforts to persuade your visitors that you are knowledgeable in your niche.

Make sure that your information is useful and that it meets needs. Then it will be of value to your visitors and this will help you to build your list.

Make sure that your opt-in box or signup form is on every page of your blog. Make sure it is located in a prominent place on each page. You want to take advantage of every possible opportunity to build your list by giving your visitors as many chances as possible to subscribe to you opt-in list.

2. Free items.

You can improve the chances of your visitors signing up by offering them something for free. They provide you with their name and email address and you provide them with the free offer - eBook, eCourse, etc. Many times this free offer will be just the enticement that someone needs and it will improve your list building efforts.

3. Drive more traffic to your website.

There are many ways to do this. I will mention two here.

For long-term traffic, write and submit articles with your resource box at the end.
For fast traffic try Adwords.

In both cases you are trying to build your list so drive traffic to your squeeze page. Hopefully, that they will fill out and submit your subscribe form.

4. Use testimonials.

Many people like to here what other people like about what you are offering. So add a testimonial to your squeeze page. This could encourage your visitor to opt-in to your list.

List building is important to your success. Continue to search for ways to encourage your visitors to join your list.

Increasing Traffic With Article Submission

In promoting affiliate programs with articles, what should be included in your article?

First, you really should be promoting affiliate programs by submitting articles. Doing so can greatly improve your Internet marketing success. This happens because submitting articles can increase the traffic to your site. Many affiliate marketers use it as their primary traffic generation method.

When you are submitting your articles to article directories or posting them on your blog, you should be concerned with keywords, keyword phrases and keyword density.

However, you still want the quality of your article to be high. Therefore, make sure that in your attempt to accomplish keyword emphasis, that you do not make your article uninteresting for the reader.

Keyword emphasis is essential for search engine optimization, but more important is the readability for your visitors. Return visitors are important to your success so make your article is interesting and easy to read.

Since having a high ranking in the search engines is also important to the traffic that you receive to your site, you need to strike a good balance when trying to accomplish keyword emphasis. Try for around 3-5 percent keyword density.

Another thing that your article must have is a good subject. If the subject does not attract the attention of your readers, they may not read your article. Then, they will not click thru to your site. Also, they will not post the article on their site so that you have a link back to your site.

All of this is important to increasing your traffic.

Also essential to obtaining traffic is good content. The best way to measure good content is to answer the question, “Does this article help the reader with solving a problem?”

The fact is that people like to find solutions to their problems. They also like to see content on your blog or website that is relevant to the subject of your site.

If you provide useful information your status as an expert will be enhanced. Your readers may return for more. If they do, they will expect good content that they can use.

A resource box is critical if you will be submitting your article to article directories and/or ezines. You won’t need this if you article is posted on your blog or included in your own newsletter.

However, your reason for submitting it to article directories is so that you can get additional traffic to your site. So, be sure to include a link back to your site.

If your article impresses your reader, they may click the link and visit your site. Any visitor is a potential customer.

Hopefully, these tips or suggestions will help you in efforts at promoting affiliate programs by driving more traffic to your website or blog.