Affiliate Program Blues

Affiliate Marketing has most assuredly become one of the most popular ways to attempt to harness the Internet’s power to generate personal profits for both web masters and web novices. After doing research into all that working as an affiliate marketer entails, you decided to take the plunge and join an affiliate program that felt like a perfect fit. It has been several months since signing up for your affiliate marketing program and still, no profits to speak of. It is time to go through a simple checklist to make sure you are doing everything you can to ensure your success as an affiliate.

As an affiliate representing a merchant’s product or service, an excellent promotional idea is the posting of content in the form of an endorsement or a review. Having first hand experience with the product, you will be able to tell of its many advantages and features, encouraging others to try it for themselves. Have you posted a detailed review or endorsement of the product you are representing? Remember, you will actually do your merchant a disservice by posting a fictitious account if you have not actually tried their product, and readers could pick up on any endorsement or review that is not above board. Other forms of content work well on an affiliate site as well. Discuss issues that relate specifically to the audience you are targeting. For this reason it is most helpful to choose a product that speaks to you in some way; speaking to your target audience would then translate as writing for people that are indeed like you and share your interests. Have you used social bookmarking and syndication sites in ways that will help you get your content and affiliate links out there? Bookmarking each new piece of content you post to sites such as Digg, Ask, and others, will help with building a web of links across the Internet. It is also helpful to run a search to find a list of syndication sites that are available to authors that would like to have free help in spreading their original content throughout the Web. These sites, provided your content is original and well written, will distribute them to different sites across the Internet, making them available to a wider audience than you could ever reach alone. Posting your content and links on social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, in appropriate sections can also do wonders for coaxing viewers to your site and clicking on your specially generated affiliate links. As always, before spreading your links around, make sure they are indeed working properly or all will be for naught.

By working to make sure your links are reaching the widest audience by utilizing all the tools available for free on the Web you will be doing all that you can to ensure your affiliate marketing success.