Technology Toolkit

Affiliate links can generate great amounts of money for you.

But this only happens if you do a few things.

Write content that sells someone on why they need to have the product you are promoting.Create enough traffic to the link where the article is located. And actually promote the link itself so you do not look like an amateur.

Writing the content that sells.

Gone are the days where you could put a banner on your website or blog and create click after click. The same is true for writing a simple paragraph that basically says buy this.

And why is that?

Not only is the competition greater, but the average network marketer is a little more savvy than they used to be. With the market flooded with ebooks, programs, monthly subscription newletters and the like, networkers want to be sure that they are getting as much bang for their buck as they can. Although you can still have those spontaneous purchases, most people look to the person promoting the link to give them a little more information before they click that buy button.

So what can you do?

There are a few ways to promote your affiliate products that will entice people to feel more compelled to buy from you.

The first being giving good content- and not just on the product you are trying to sell. By sharing information that gives knowledge to people on a regular basis you will begin to build up a trust factor and will make your followers more apt to purchase when you recommend something.

You also want to find different ways to discuss the product rather than the typical “This product is good and you should buy it approach”.

You can do a review of the item citing both the positives and negatives. A comparision approach works too if you know of another similar product. An interview works great- either with someone from the company itself or someone who has used the product who has gotten great results. Make sure to give benefits and not just features- the benefits are what sells.

Creating the traffic to get the sales.

It only makes sense that the more people that you expose to your affiliate product the higher conversion you will have. Lets say you have a 15% conversion rate and that you make $20 on every sale. The difference between 100 people looking and 15 buying to 1000 people looking and 150 buying is a difference of $2700. Huge.

So how do you get the traffic?

Marketing yourself and your content will be the biggest factor in getting traffic through to your affiliate product. Sure you can just stick the information on your blog or website and hope the the few hits you have a day will turn into sales but lets get real for a second. Unless you have a big following with quite a few subscribers what you are going to make this way is going to be chump change. Some of the biggest successes and biggest failures out there hinge on the ability of the person to market the product that they have.

But where do you start?

Article marketing is a simple system way to increase your affiliate sales. Sit down and brainstorm on ten to fifteen different ways to approach your product. Write an article on each of these ideas and submit to several article directories. You can do searches on your product and market to get ideas about the questions people are asking or the information that they want to know.

Find some forums the target the market your product promotes. Start contributing on a regular basis– but don’t promote your product. Sound clear, concise, knowledgeable. Answer peoples questions and have your signature link go to your best promotion of your affiliate product.

Send an email out to your list with a survey attached. Have them read one or two of your posts and then send in their questions with the top question winning some type of prize. Not only will this increase your traffic, but it will generate some subscribers so that people can keep track of what you are saying. You will also have the added benefit of getting some new ideas for posts from the questions being asked.

Promoting the Link Itself

Believe it or not, the way the link itself is presented can make a difference to your pocketbook.

For instance, how many times have you been reading a post or an article about a product that interested you and you see the affiliate id on the end and have erased it and gone to the main site?

This can be done for many different reasons the top few being: the person looking at the information doesn’t know what an affiliate link is and distrusts the numbers at the end. Or they could just prefer to go to the main site so that you as an affiliate don’t get any of their information.

So how do you change this?

Try to show your affiliate links as little as possible. You can get a domain name for them and have them redirected to the link. Domain names are pretty inexpensive so if you just have a few affiliate programs that you use you can get one for each.

But if are promoting several programs you can also use affiliate cloaking programs, page redirections, and Word press plug in’s. If you are putting your affiliate link within your articles you can use anchor text and a link for a quick fix.

The bottom line.

You have to remember that in promoting an affiliate program you are running a business. The bottom line is that by using your full affiliate link you will lose not only sales but your professional credibility.