Affiliate Sales and Marketing Info

There are many types of affiliate programs around today, and some aren’t even fully considered affiliate programs in the traditional sense. One that has taken the net by storm in the past couple of years is Pay Per Click.

Pay per click affiliate programs are the opposite of pay per click advertising, but the two rely on each other.

Pay Per Click advertisers pay money each time a prospect clicks on the ads they’re running.

Pay Per Click affiliates however, earn money each time someone clicks on ads they’re running. Effectively, they’re just renting out space on their websites for advertisers.

I don’t personally feel that pay per click income streams are affiliate programs, however.

The reason being, that with an affiliate program, someone is recommending a product or service to someone else. And if that someone else buys based on the recommendation, the person who made the recommendation receives income in the form of sales commissions. Long ago this was referred to as a kick back, referral or finders fee. Before online affiliate programs became popular in fact, many offline businesses offered the kick backs in the form of discounts and coupons instead of actual cash.

Pay Per Click income however, does not depend on anyone recommending anything.

In fact, most people who earn money with pay-per-click programs have little to no control over what ads are shown, which companies are being advertised, or which products are being advertised. All they are actually doing is selling ad space on their websites. And not quite that either, since they’re not paid for the ads to take up room on a page, they’re only paid if someone clicks on the ads being displayed.

Pay Per Click affiliate programs are used primarily by website owner. Someone creates a popular website based around articles and information, tips and advice, daily blogging, jokes, or even forum discussions. Then they place the pay per click code onto those pages, and they make money if any of their site visitors click on the ads.

Pay Per Click income is quite popular because it’s so easy.

Affiliates and website publishers don’t have to buy a product, use it, then write reviews and recommendations for it. All they have to do is drive large amounts of traffic to websites and web pages which have ads on them. And if there’s enough traffic sent to a given page or site, a percentage of people will click the ads. Thus the website owner can make money almost hands free once that page or site is set up.

This is the primary reason PPC has become one of the most popular ways to make money online. It’s rare to be able to simply talk about your deepest passions, hobbies, and day-to-day life and make money from it.

But that’s how many PPC affiliates earn a lot of money. They write informative articles, create forums based around their favorite topic, or create blogs and write about their day to day lives. Then they place the PPC code snippet into appropriate places on their sites, and generate traffic.

The hard part of making money with PPC as a website owner though, is driving enough traffic.

That traffic has to be targeted well too, or the visitors will not click the ads on the page.

It does you little good to create a site based around collectible figurines, then work hard to generate traffic from an investing or work at home forum. Yes there are possibly some people who are into investing and work at home that are also interested in collectible figurines, but you’ll have to work a lot harder to find them. If instead, you promote your website, forum or blog in a collectibles forum, or even a general hobby site, you’re likely to have much better luck with the number of visitors, clicks and money you make from your PPC ads.

Here are several tips that can help you increase the amount of money you earn from your PPC affiliate efforts:

1. Generate targeted traffic. See the example above, then be sure you’re promoting your site in the best places for the topic.

2. Customize your ads if you can. Using a PPC program such as Google AdSense allows you to change the colors of your ad blocks, links and text. Customize those ads to match your site. If you use blue links on your website, the ad links should be blue as well. If your website background is pink, your ad backgrounds should be pink too.

3. Place the ads where they can be seen, or where they’re the most useful. In many cases putting your PPC ads somewhere in the top half of your page makes a world of difference. They’re seen more and thus they’re clicked on more.

If however, you have a lot of informative articles, research reports and other information style content on your site and it’s written well, your visitors will likely read the content you have in place. If they read the content, they aren’t likely to see the ads at the top of your pages, so you should try putting a few ads at the end of an article. This gives them something to do once they’ve finished reading.

In an upcoming post I will discuss several of the leading PPC programs. Most people start with google adsense because it is quick and easy to set up.

One thing you simply MUST remeber, however, is to NEVER, ever click your own ads. If you do, Google will be fast on your heals to remove you from their program. And once you have been removed, you never get back in. Google is very conscientious when it comes to detecting and preventing click-fraud, so if you decide to enter the PPC revenue program, be sure to read and understand and comply with the rules before you begin.

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If you’re planning to create an affiliate based website, you might be confused about the best type to create. Which one works best? Which one is easiest? These are some of the numerous questions most new affiliate marketers have.

Here are some of the most popular types of affiliate websites.

One Page Sales Letter Sites

This is fairly easy to create. It helps if you’ve actually bought the product you tend to promote so that you can write a credible testimony about the product you are promoting. People will not click links from someone they don’t know or trust. And they will be more inclined to click your link and purchase the product you are promoting if they trust your opinion and recommendations.

One page ‘mini-sites’ are a great way to promote single products. By creating just one single page for your website, you keep visitors focused on taking just one action: Buying this product. The purpose of a one page site is to be sure your visitor doesn’t get distracted with other ads or content. You want them to buy what you’re promoting. Make sure you have a clickable ‘BUY NOW’ button in one or more areas of high visibility and include a ‘call to action’ to encourage the person to complete their purchase.

A one page product promotion site usually has a detailed product review, which is also known as a “pre sell”. In general a presell is much like a detailed review. It tends to be 1000 words or longer, and it explains what you like and don’t like about a given product. This kind of affiliate marketing site works very well, but it doesn’t get much in the way of organic search engine traffic so most affiliates include pay per click advertising or article marketirng to drive traffic to this type of site.

One Page Multi Product Site.

This type of site is similar to the one detailed above. The main difference is that you’re comparing and offering multiple product choices.

Generally you should have no more than three to five products on the page, though some marketers do well comparing as many as ten. I prefer to keep each page at just three products, because it helps to not overwhelm your visitors.

With a multi product affiliate site, you want to create brief product reviews and recommendations. You also want to compare similar products, so the visitor is not pulled into too many directions at once. You also don’t want them to be distracted by other, non related elements, so you wouldn’t put article content or misc ads on the site. Just put three to ten products with affiliate links for each.

Shopping or eCommerce Site

It’s actually fairly easy to create a full fledged ecommerce style shopping site with affiliate products. Some sites have just 10 or 20 products on them, but some have 10,000 or more. These types of sites are usually created using an affiliate datafeed and specialized software. (More on this topic in an upcoming post.)

Informational, Publication Style Website

This type of site can become quite large as it gets filled with information. Commonly, you’ll see sites built with articles on specific topics. The whole purpose of creating these types of sites is to help bring in natural organic search engine traffic and get to links from other websites related to the information you are presenting.

These types of sites tend to run pay per click advertising more often than not, but many also promote affiliate programs, too.

By drawing in targeted traffic to the articles, reports and related content, the webmaster draws visitors to specific topics. Once they have the reader’s interest, they then either recommend certain online merchants and stores, or they list those merchants and stores as related links.

With either format, the links are of course affiliate links. So if visitors come to the site to get information on a certain topic and they want to buy something related to that topic, they’re likely to click on one of your affiliate links. If they buy from that merchant of course, then you earn affiliate commissions.

There are other types of websites for promoting affiliate products. Often people ‘monetize’ the website of their brick and mortar business with carefully chosen affiliate products. (More about this coming soon!)

Whatever type of website you choose, you must keep in mind that it will take time to build up a customer base and it takes lots of traffic to your site before someone will actually click on your affiliate link. You must offer something of value to your customers, work hard to earn their respect, and then work hard to keep them coming back.

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