How to Succeed at Affiliate Marketing

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by Alex Fox

1. Introduction

If you have chosen merchant programs that reward you by paying a commission on sales or leads, then you must be proactive in marketing your merchants. You cannot assume that just because someone comes to your site, they will click on one of your merchants' banners, and then buy something from that merchant. There are a number of obstacles to making a purchase on the Internet, and you will often have to break them down for your visitors before they will complete a sale.

2. The Obstacles

One of the greatest problems facing affiliates is that many merchant sites are not conducive to making sales. They are often difficult to navigate, or make the purchasing process too complicated. There is little that an affiliate can do about this, other than to be careful to select merchants whose sites are professional and easy to use. Another problem is that people using the Internet are becoming less responsive to advertising banners. This is perhaps a natural response to the many misleading banners on the Internet For this reason, text links have become more effective than banners.

3. Pre-Sell to the Customer

Since many merchant sites do not make it easy for a visitor to make a purchase, it is important that affiliates do not place a lot of reliance on merchants to complete a sale. The affiliate must try to send the visitor to the merchant's site in a purchasing frame of mind. In other words, the chances of a visitor making a purchase from a merchant are greatly increased if you actively promote the product or merchant on your site.

Your promotion could involve providing a text link, supported by an explanation or personal recommendation of the merchant or product, especially if you have previously used that merchant or product.

4. Relationship Marketing

One of the important factors in making a purchasing decision is trust. Is the merchant and/or its product reliable and capable of delivering good value? Trust, however, is not something that is easily earned, so you need to establish a relationship with your visitors before they are likely to become customers.

5. Stay in Contact With Your Visitors

In order to establish such a relationship, you need to be able to contact your visitors. The natural way to do this on the Internet is via email, and the best way to find a visitor's email address is to ask him/her for it. Invite your visitors to subscribe to the mailing list for your newsletter, promotional offers or site updates. Your mailing list is perhaps the most valuable asset in your online business, because every person on the list is a potential lead acquired in an ethical manner.

6. Find Out About Your Visitors

Even better than inviting your visitors to subscribe to your mailing list is to ask them to complete a survey form on your site. In this way you can get more detailed information about your visitors in order to select appropriate merchants and products. The survey form could be a condition for entering a competition, or for using a free service on your site.

7. Deal With Information Ethically

You must never pass your visitors' email address or survey results to any third party without their specific permission, otherwise you have breached the ethics of Internet marketing, as well as the law in certain countries.

If you would like to sell or rent information to third parties, place a "check box" in your mailing list or survey form. The statement next to the checkbox could be something like: "I would like to receive promotional emails from other companies offering products or services compatible with my interests".

8. Using Your Visitor's Information

Many sites invite their visitors to use a free service (such as search engine submission) which can only be used after the visitor has given his/her email address. As soon as the service is completed, the service-provider will often send the visitor an email thanking that person for using the service, and inviting them to pay for a higher level service. The service- provider has given the visitor a useful demonstration which the visitor will hopefully appreciate enough to pay for the upgraded service.

This is a good example, firstly, of finding out about your visitors. The service-provider knows that someone must have a strong interest in that type of service if they are prepared to give their their email address in order to obtain it. Secondly, having obtained the email address, the service-provider has used it to promote a higher level service.

The same principle applies to all information provided by your visitors. The more you know about your visitors and their interests, the more you can target your products, services and (importantly for affiliate marketers) site sponsors.

Relationship marketing involves both the marketer and potential customer learning about each other, so that ultimately the customer wants what the marketer provides and the marketer provides what the customer wants.