New to Internet Marketing? Try Affiliate Product Marketing
March 30th, 2008I keep pushing affiliate marketing because it is marketing you can start doing right now. In fact, it’s where I would’ve started 2 years ago if I’d known I was being steered in the wrong direction with the first venture I struck out on, Coastal Vacations a.k.a. Coastal Synergy Group.
When you market affiliate products/services, that is all you do. You are marketing for a particular company to help introduce and sell their product. The company deals with the inventory, product development, customers, customer issues, refunds, shipping, and everything that would go along with being the owner of said company. You drive the traffic to your affiliate sales page and then it’s out of your hands from there. Some companies pay you for the amount of click throughs they get whenever a possible customer visits. Some pay you a percentage for sales made when a person used your affiliate link to purchase from that company. Your affiliate link has a special number, usually on the end of your link, that specifies that the sales and referrals were made by you, therefore you get the credit.
Scroll to the bottom of the page of any given website and chances are there is a link at the bottom labeled, “affiliates.” Most affiliate programs are free to join and they offer sales tools for you to use in the marketing of their products.
When I first got started, I was trying to market my own product in the travel industry niche, but I had no idea where to begin. I had been taught that I was supposed to call people and direct them to the information on my website by giving them my website and email addresses, so that was the only exposure my sites were getting. I wasn’t taught to optimize for search engines, about keywords, anchor text, or anything in the way of website exposure besides calling people and trying to make them go to my website and “review the information.”
People do stuff on a whim, for instantaneous gratification. Information they gave a shit about yesterday, they could care less about today, and that’s if they even remember that they scheduled an appointment with you. Chances are, they filled out many forms online the previous day and they aren’t going to remember you and your product from the all the other products they may have filled out request forms for. They requested your info, right? So you call at the scheduled time the following day and get these responses: “I didn’t request any information,” “You have the wrong number,” “Uuuuhhh. . there’s nobody here by that name. . .” “I’m no longer interested,” they hang up on you, they never answer the phone, the person telling you today that you have the wrong number, is the same person you spoke to the previous day and you know it because you recognize their voice. How discouraging is that?!?!
Affiliate marketing is extremely profitable and so easy to put into effect, I can’t believe more people aren’t working from home on their computers doing the same thing. There is so much money to made on the internet and affiliate marketing will help you tap into that money source. If there is a niche, there is an audience.
Don’t take me wrong, I’m not saying you should give up on developing your own product/service. I’m only saying affiliate marketing and sales is a great way to get started, gain momentum and keep it going so you can be earning money and getting established on the internet now, and not 10 years from now. In the meantime, develop your own product/service. At least this way you can still work from home on your computer and still allow yourself the time and money it takes to develop your own product.
Hey folks, just a suggestion. I really want to see people succeed. I believe it is morally wrong that any person should have to drag themselves to a stupid job they hate everyday, when there is a better, easier, hugely profitable way to kick the shit out of anything a dumb job can offer. I always knew there was a better way and I found it. Come along, I will help you find your way, too.
Andrea McClure