6 tips to successful affiliate marketing

By ZEESHAN KHAN

Do you have a website? Would you like to use your website to earn money? If you answered yes, one option is to become an affiliate. Below are some tips on how you can get started and on your way to becoming a successful affiliate online.

1. Join affiliate programs of products you know and trust. You can find thousands of affiliate programs, each promising to be the highest converting or offering the biggest payout. But in the end, the best converting programs will be the ones that you are able to confidently recommend to your visitors. Write a personal review of the products to show your authority and build trust with your customers.
2. Focus on building traffic to your site. Work on your SEO so your site ranks organically in search engines. Then try a PPC campaign and have your ads linking to relevant content on your site. Just be careful of Trademark policies of the merchants that you’re an affiliate of. Many companies will not allow you to bid on their brand names, so make sure you read through the affiliate agreements carefully.
3. Write good content. Customers don’t want to just see ads. They want to know why you are recommending products and you need to convince them why they NEED the products. Use a combination of banners and text links to find what works best on your site for your customers. Make the product promotion natural and not a big sales pitch.
4. Disclose your affiliate relationship. The FTC requires that affiliates disclose that they are compensated if a customer purchases through their links when they are writing a recommendation or review. Here’s an example of the disclosure required: Tigerking1992.blogspot.com
5. Do lots of testing. Find out what works for you. Try promoting different programs and see which your customers respond to best. Try rotating different banner placements on your site to see which converts better. Use Google Analytics and affiliate reporting to measure click-through and conversion rates.
6. Get to know your affiliate managers. A good affiliate manager will be happy to take the time and review your site, give you feedback and work with you to promote their brand. If you can consistently generate a few sales per month, ask for a bonus or commission increase. Then use that bonus to increase your marketing spend and drive even more sales! It can be a win-win for both you and the company you are promoting.

Affiliate marketing takes time to grow, so don’t expect the sales to come overnight. As with any other business venture, you have to put in an effort in order to reap the rewards. While you can find many “get rich quick” programs online stating that all you have to do is become an affiliate and you’ll be an instant millionaire, they always have a catch.  But by following the above tips and working hard at it, you can be very successful at affiliate marketing.