As with any business, you need to decide how you are going to market or promote your services or program, and what your budget is. Affiliate marketing is no different and there are many free ways to generate traffic to your site but for these to be effective, you need to invest time.
Don’t overstretch yourself, work out what your market is and experiment with the many different methods.
Make sure you develop a strategy that you feel comfortable with in terms of budget and a realistic estimate of time you can invest.
Internet Marketing Strategy
To promote your web site is always going to be ‘work in progress‘. The good news is that there are a range of promotion techniques and services you can utilise to make the job a little bit easier.
Slow down, develop a plan and work at it steadily. If you want to know what works, follow great examples! Who’s successful in your industry? Who has consistent top 10 positions in the major search engines for your chosen keywords? What do they do?
Treat your web site like a business and write a plan to ensure your success. Use to plan when developing your own strategy:
Determine what it is you’re going to market
- Be passionate about it
- Choose an area of interest to you
- Is there an online market for your product or service?
Build an effective web site
- Get you own domain
- Namecheap are very reliable and inexpensive for domain names
- Get a reputable web host
- Host Gator is a good starting point
- Either build in-house (learn HTML) or outsource
- WordPress is an excellent way to go
- Plan your site design – stickies and paper still work fine!
Set-up an automated sales system
- Make sure your web host has a secure server
- Source a reputable online payment processor
- Get eCommerce software (check the forums for what’s best)
Develop a mailing list
- Use an autoresponder service
- I recommend AWeber
- Develop a newsletter
- Keep in touch but don’t send SPAM
Automate Your Business
- Use affiliate software to automate as many of your processes as you can
Drive targeted traffic to your site
- Develop a linking strategy
- Submit to classified ads
- Embrace social media
- Keep adding quality content to your site
- Consider Pay per Click if budget allows but don’t overstretch and learn PPC first
Test and Track
- Be prepared to change advertising
- Try text and graphic combinations
- Use a tracking system
- Use Google Analytics. It’s free and very good!
Follow Up
- Join affiliate programs
- Up-sell to your customers
- Do joint ventures
- Set-up your own affiliate program
