One of the biggest mistakes made by affiliate marketers when they first set up is failing to recognise that they are actually starting a business. Consequently if you want to be successful you need to have the right mindset and manage your business accordingly, not doing this is the one of the fastest roads to failure.
If you look at it from another perspective you are establishing a marketing company and your websites and affiliate links are your assets which you can build to be as big as you want, you are only limited by your time and imagination.
There are a few steps you can take which makes you stand out from the crowd and avoid the stamp of being a “newbie” or unprofessional.
Step 1: Websites and domains
It’s important to have your own domain(s) and website(s) for several reasons. One is that you have complete control over what you choose to promote, and what ads and banners you want to put on your site. You can create an eye-catching professional layout or have someone do it for you if that is beyond the scope of your abilities.
Secondly you are able to have your own personalized email and you appear far more professional when you have your own domain, as opposed to having freebie hosting without a decent or keyword enhanced name. An extra benefit is that your website and domain are assets that can be sold down the track if you choose and if you have developed them properly. You can buy a domain for around $10 and monthly hosting can start as low as $6.00 per month, so it’s well worth the small investment.
Step 2: List building
All marketers know you need to get traffic to your website, to click on your banners and ads to make money, no clicks – no sales. But getting traffic can be hard work. Even when you get visitors to your site you generally only have one shot at nailing their business. What you need to do is build up a customer list so you can get repeat visitors. You can do this by creating a signup form on your website for your newsletter or offering a free downloadable gift or service in return for your visitor subscribing to your list. Once you have established a list you can email your customers with your offers and promotions on an ongoing basis.
Don’t just contact your list when you are selling something, try and share useful information or advice, try and build trust so your customers will know to value what you are offering them, and buy from you when you do have a promotion. It is generally accepted that your list has a value of $1 per customer, so again another asset to nurture and build.
Step 3: Traffic
The lifeblood of affiliate marketing is traffic, but not everyone can get on the front page of Google so where else are you going to get traffic? Unless you want to pay for it and that can be very costly.
A few methods you can explore are: writing articles, press releases, posting in forums, commenting or guest posting on blogs, offline advertising, and classified ads.
You don’t have to do everything at once, start off with one, master it then move on to another. It’s important to test your results, check to see which method is most effective and keep doing that.
Having an affiliate marketing business is all about repeating systems that work, so just make sure you develop a system first, then rinse and repeating the methods that work for you.
