Affiliate Marketing Blog

How can an affiliate program create the exposure that you need? How can people be rewarded for their contribution to your advertising efforts?

When a quick buck is to be made, abuse is not far behind. Pay per click internet advertising has been around since search engines came about. The real issue is: What is a click worth to you as a vendor? If it is a competitor hiring mongrels in India to click on your ads and run down your advertising budget it is highway robbery!

Why not reward those who drive traffic to you when a sale is made instead. This has been the business model for yonks and it's amazing it has taken all that time to emerge into cyberspace.

The issue was a technical one: How to track a sale back to the person who recommended you in the first place? The answer is called a cookie. It is a short piece of information stored in your web browser as you visit a website. If you come back a few days later that data is still there and can be matched by the page you are re-visiting. That's how websites can remember your username and password. In the case of an affiliate program that's how we can remember who to pay commission to when you purchase something from us.

How is that a better system? When you open your blog or website to advertising you have precious little control over who will peddle their wares on your page. How would you feel if you are an expert in mountain biking and your blog is being defaced by ads for tattoo parlours and psychic readings?

With an affiliate program you have total control on the quality, quantity and appearance of the links you provide for the people you wish to promote. It can be an ordinary hyperlink anchor, a clickable image or an article on your blog.

If you use social media rather than being a webmaster there are tools to insert a post on your facebook page or a tweet on your twitter account. Only when you feel so inclined do those links appear - you need to log in to your account for the process to take place.

Lastly you would want to see some statistics on how your links are performing if no sale is forthcoming yet. The ability to click on your ads to test the system end to end gives confidence as you can see the logs tally each activity.

Website promotion has had a trailblazing evolution jumping from one phase to the next and leaving behind those who just caught up with the previous schemes.

When marketing folks first took over from html techies the net was thought of as just another mass media like radio and television. This was the rule of banner ads - in-you-face advertising messages with animated gif bitmaps or flash content.

Over time people developed a blindness to those ads and they became less and less effective.

Later we saw the advent of reciprocal links and the proliferation of "link farms" whose only reason in life was to show Google as many links as possible in order to build up the exposure of their clients.

Reciprocal links are the cyberspace reincarnation of the old "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine". Google caught up with that too and unsavoury operators used to cheat you by removing your link soon after or making it invisible to the search engines.

Then came the advent of the blog. As many people discovered the appeal of this cyberspace soapbox each article was open to comments as people discovered the interaction of social media. That was the perfect opportunity for planting links all over the place. Not just a kind and relevant contribution but a blatant attempt at corrupting the original message with free-for-all adverts promoting gambling, pornography and whatever else.

The clampdown was swift with the advent of no-follow links which allowed people still to include links in comments but these were deemed invisible to Google who no longer tallied these for your overall ranking.

At the same time the AdSense ads alongside organic searches on Google were taking over. People were told to monetize their website by adding a copious amount of those. To help things along it was very tempting to ask friends and relatives to click on the ads featured on your site assuming they were doing it from a different IP connection to cover your tracks.

Genuine advertisers were incensed at the poor results having to pay for each click whether it generated sales or not. It was hard to explain why people would click on the ad but barely stayed a second or two on the advertised site. Click fraud is a big issue and is threatening Google's business model.

Finally the era of affiliate programs emerged. Big names like Amazon and eBay are in it so it must be good... for them that is. Just like Google there is no need to make them any more wealthy than they already are. On the other hand you can participate in an emerging enterprise by driving traffic to it. This is what affiliators.biz is all about.

People don't want to hear about you until they desperately need what you have to offer. Yet they don't really know what they want until somebody tells them. So here is the catch-22. You need to be relevant but people don't tell you in advance what they are looking for.

The tyranny of the internet is that your good content goes to waste for lack of exposure. The person who suffers the most is the small business proprietor trying to gain a critical mass of backlinks for their website to receive the traffic it deserves.

The person who spoils it all for everybody else is the sleek operator who manipulates keywords to be seen ahead of everyone else. They use a crash and burn technique where by the time the search engines have figured out their scheme they have moved to another target to repeat the process.

Email is no longer a reliable form of communication because you never know if some keyword in the subject or even the body of your text has been intercepted by some zealous anti-spam filter. We now live in a world where machines are telling us what we can and can't do!

Affiliate programs are a stench to most blogging platforms. Again the concept is sound but the application has ruined it for all. After the blatant cheating for pay-per-click advertising it was thought that a better reward was to pay a commission for each sale a third party would refer to your website. But suddenly we were inundated with poor articles planting links to some other dubious offers.

There are three favourite fields for marketing exploits: health, wealth and lifestyle. Besides wondrous slimming pills, crazy eat-all-you-want diets we are now to deal with get-rich-quick schemes and New Age connect-with-your-inner-guide wizards.

Another method which had its days was link exchange. A website A would promote a website B and B would somehow return the compliment. Again, a good idea which was soon to be abused. People never bothered to carry links that would be relevant to their visitors. Instead they had a rebirth as a link farm, channelling ever diminishing traffic to all manners of people. If you were involved, you reputation would soon take a hit because of your website being seen in a bad neighbourhood.

Next bookmarking was the go. Unless you belong to an unseen clique of conspirators you will never make it to the front page of Digg or Stumbleupon or Reddit You desperately need people to retweet your story, quote your blog and write (good) reviews about you.

So it seems the spin doctors are still very much active online and their clients don't care how it's done as long as they get the results.

The bane of network marketing opportunities has been the fact that distributors compete against each other without any mean of differentiation since they all promote the same product.

Further there is much confusion whether you should approach a new prospect with the product or with the business opportunity selling that same product.

Affiliators does not require you to build an impressive network of distributors under your care. It does not require you either to build up inventory and deliver products door to door.

The commodities at stake are purely online services and you are being paid a commission each time a subscription is sold referred through your efforts.

Affiliators allows you to leverage your internet presence by driving traffic to the websites available through this scheme.

You can write or acquire articles to post in your blogs; you can publish links on your Twitter and Facebook accounts. It's all about increasing your word of mouse!

This is not a get-rich-quick scheme - more a steady-as-she-goes endeavour. You don't have to run meetings in your home or at an acquaintance place to coax strangers to sample products they could buy at the supermarket. You don't have to drive around the suburbs to deliver merchandise and keep up the loyalty of your customer base.

All you have to do is spread the word among the people you know, the people you reach and the people who read your stuff...

You can do it whenever you are online, whether at home minding children or in the city at work during your lunch break.

Obviously some knowledge of the services you recommend will definitively help. You can be upfront about the fact that you derive a financial interest in the process. In fact a satisfied customer being the best form of advertising, the best thing you can do is publish testimonies of people you know. These referrals will add credibility to your page and highlight details of the customer experience that only a personal feedback can deliver.

There has been many expectations that the web would revolutionize our existence for the better. The downside is that we suffer from information overload. Yes the world is your oyster but now droves of people outside your village clamour for your attention too!

If you are well connected with a charismatic personality it will show online and offline. People always like to talk about the latest things (fads, trends?) Whatever you recommend can have sway with people who respect your opinion. If not it is never too late to start.