How to Begin Succeeding with Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is huge and continues to grow. Will you join the bandwagon & cut a piece of the money pie?

[I:http://zaneblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/MichaelCraven2.png] Affiliate model is one of the easiest, maybe after Adsense. You don’t need to store inventory, you don’t need to hire customer support. All is taken care of. Just grab a link, drive traffic to the merchant and make money. Sounds simple and is simple. However, results are not immediate and you can lose money easily too.

Affiliate marketing has one huge drawback and that is low margins. Payouts on affiliate networks are usually low. And it makes it much harder to successfully promote the products and make money. But if you aren’t ready to invest large amounts of money into retail business, then read how you can make money with affiliate programs.

Networks vs. Private Programs

Depending on the industry you’d like to join, there are 2 ways to go about it. Whether you join a private affiliate program of a company. Or work through affiliate networks like Clickbank, Commission Junction and so on…

If you’re driving traffic to many small programs, then working with a network makes sense. You get one paycheck for all the work. Less hassle and easier management. Plus you’re usually safe as the networks won’t screw you over and pay the commissions owned. Sometimes though, merchant can go out of business and you’re out of commissions.

Private programs are riskier, because you don’t know who you’re dealing with. But they may be in the niche that no affiliate network has products in. It means small or no competition at all. You can go into the market and make your money by ripping all the profits.

Promoting Affiliate Campaigns

It’s an art on its own. So many small details to talk about, it’s hard to cover 1% in one article. But basically it comes down to marketing. How are you going to promote these programs? Will you drive traffic directly or will you build email lists and upsell them later?

Whichever method you choose, you need to think about targeting. It’s all about laser targeting. Find out who your customer is, where they hang out, what they like to do. Their age, sex, marital status. Why are they on your site and what’s their biggest frustration you can solve? When you know that, marketing is so much easier and more profitable.

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