Tips for Affiliate Marketers to Survive and Thrive in the Online Business World

Affiliate marketers are always on the lookout for profitable markets - the ones that result in the biggest paychecks. Sometimes they think (and desperately hope) that there is a magic formula to be discovered just around the next corner. Of course, it is a bit more complicated than that because in business, whether off-line or online, we need to use good marketing practices that have proved their worth over time.

Fortunately, there some are tactics that have a history of having worked in online marketing generally and continue to work in online affiliate marketing in particular.

I will outline three major marketing areas that you need to understand and use in order to increase sales so that you thrive in your online affiliate marketing venture.

1. Use a unique website to promote each individual product that you are marketing. Do not simply put them all together in one site in order to save money on buying domain names and webhosting. That is false economy. As a beginner affiliate, it is better to have one small site per product that you are promoting. However, if it is your intention is to build an authority review site, then of course you will have many products in a particular niche together in one big website.

• Always include product reviews on the website so that your visitors will understand the specific feaures of the product and what it can do for you if you buy it.

• Testimonials from users who have already tried the product are also powerful because they let potential buyers know that both you and your product are trustworthyand need to be included in your site. Check that these customers will allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are promoting.
• You can also write articles describing the product and its uses. Be sure to include them on the website on their own page. Make the pages of your site compelling and include calls to action at strategic points. Headlines are crucial and need to rouse the reader's interest and stimulate their desire to buy. Highlight important points. In other words, make it easy for your readers to scan the text quickly and find all the most important information about the product to stimulate a sale or an opt-in.

2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible position the offer in an opt-in box near the top of your page where it will immediately catch the visitor's attention. If the page is long, include another opt-in box at the end of the page. Many readers hate having to scroll back to the beginning of the page again and you may miss out on collecting contact information of the ones who navigate away because they already have forgotten about signing up for the free report.

• Use an autoresponder to collect the sign in information as well as to create messages that are emailed to the visitors who opted in to receive the free report. This is how you will build your list - and as they always say in the business "the money is in the list"! The names on your list are your prospects for future sales on products you are selling. According to current research, a sale is usually closed on about the seventh contact with a prospect.

Only two things can possibly happen when someone visits your web page: a sale is closed sale immediately or the prospect navigates away, never to return again. By collecting a list of names and email addresses you broaden that scenario. Now you can email your prospects directly with information and offers and you can remind them of the product they thought they wanted.

• For the emails you write for your list, focus on things like how the product can make life easier and more enjoyable. As far as possible, avoid using the word free because there are still some spam filters around that filter out those kinds of content classifying them as 'junk mail'. You need to convince those who signed up for your free report that they would be missing out if they do not buy your products and services.

3. Target traffic that is interested in your product. A person who has no interest in your product is not going to spend any time or money at your website. They will simply navigate away immediately. Targeted traffic, on the otherhand, will spend time - a little or a lot depending on whether what you say interests them at all.

• To bring interested people to your website, write articles and reviews about the product and publish them in ezines and article directories. They will be directed to these ezine articles after doing a search for information on the topic in one of the search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Be sure to include a link to your website in your article, so that anyone interested in following up on what they have read will be able to reach your site and buy from you.
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  Two articles per week of between 300-600 words in length is something to aim for. By writing and submitting articles, it is possible to get as many as 100 targeted visitors to your site in a day. The more targeted visitors you have visiting your site, the more sales you are likely to make over time.

Once you have worked out what works best for you as an affiliate marketer, you can simply duplicate those processes with any number of products and websites and end up making a very good living.