These days, everyone claims that it is soooo easy to make money online and that social media is touted as a panacea for just about every marketing ailment. Neither is true. What is true is that there are things you can do to dramatically increase the likelihood of being successful in cyberspace.
Over the next little while, I’ll share some of the secrets that are rapidly becoming truisms for people in the industry.
To start, here are the first two tips for maximizing the return from your online affiliate marketing* efforts:
1) Promote products in categories where online buyers will eat them up the way Pacman ploughs through power pills, rather than choosing items that only get the occasional nibble.
At the moment the “hot” B2C categories are related to...
• Business Success
• Making Money Online
• Marketing
• Gambling (though you may want to stay away from this for a variety of business reasons)
• Dating
• Health and Fitness
• Weight Loss
• Self Improvement and Motivation
• Real Estate Investing
• Home and Gardening
• Pharmaceuticals
• Nutrition
If you business does not fall into one of these categories, don’t despair; there are plenty of ways you can still run a successful affiliate program.
One of the options available is the forming of relationships with businesses that complement your own, and becoming one of their affiliates to create new revenue streams for your company. Just make sure that you do not detract from your core business in any way.
2) Concentrate on one product niche at a time.
You can have multiple target audiences for this niche, and multiple approaches for reaching your prospects, but don’t confuse your audience by trying to be too many things to them at once.
Instead, stick to the basic marketing principle that says single-minded focus has the power of a laser when it comes to creating sales.
Not only that, but you need to really understand your online customers in order to build a relationship with them and maximize the sales potential of this relationship.
The next two tips will be in my next post, but in case you were wondering...
About Affiliate Marketing
If you are the online affiliate, your job is to promote someone else’s products and/or services. In exchange, you will receive a commission when your site visitors click on the link provided and purchase the product. The other site owner collects the money, ships the item(s) and handles every other aspect of the customer transaction. This means you should only choose to work with companies with customer service standards that match your own.
If you are the owner of a product or service with an affiliate program, your will pay sales commissions to people who drive traffic to your site that results in a sale. You will remain in control of every aspect of the transaction and product delivery process, including who can promote your product. Hint: The more generous your affiliate commissions, and the better your reputation good products and customer service, the more likely online marketers will be to actively promote your offering.
Whether you are an affiliate, or an online affiliate program manager, you will need to take action to be successful and, as you have heard me say so often before, “You must be prepared to go out on a limb because that is where the fruit is!”
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