Super
Affiliate Strategies PART 3
By : Rich Hamilton, Jr (www.insidenetmarketing.com)
In our previous Super Affiliate Strategies articles, we went over ways to
increase your web site's click through ratio. Today we are going to take an
entirely different approach, this time we are going to be promoting affiliate
programs outside of your web site.
I realize that there are a lot of affiliates that don't have their own web site
and are looking for effective ways to promote their affiliate programs. You
don't need to have your own web site to send targeted traffic to your affiliate
program. In this article we are going to go over a few ways to effectively and
profitably promote any affiliate program. In order to generate large affiliate
commissions you need to send targeted traffic to your affiliate program, here
are a few ways to do so:
Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay per click advertising is a great way to send targeted traffic to your
affiliate program. Before you start promoting an associate program with pay per
click advertising, you need to make sure that it offers a high commission
percentage and has a conservation rate of 2% or higher. If your associate
program doesn't offer either one, then you shouldn't be using pay per click
advertising. If the associate program you are promoting doesn't offer a high
commission percentage nor have a high conservation ratio, then you won't make
any money with pay per click advertising. There are plenty of associate
programs out there that offer high percentages and have excellent conservation
rates.
If you are considering promoting more than one affiliate program, which many
people do, including myself, then you should promote products that are not in
indirect competition with each other. If you promote products that are in
indirect competition with each other such as online marketing books, you would
be using the same keywords, which would mean one ad is going to do better than
the other. When you're using the same keywords for more than one ad, your
visitor could favor one ad over the other. Basically, your click through rate
will be evaluated between the two ads instead of one. Instead of having one
strong click through rate, you could have two weak ones. Your click through
ratio plays a major role in your ads position.
The trick to having success with pay per click advertising is writing a killer
ad and selecting appropriate keywords. When selecting your keywords, you
shouldn't pay more than $0.05 per click. Instead of increasing the cost per
click of your ad and chance losing your shirt, you can find very cheap high
traffic keywords that product excellent results. If you're considering using
pay per click to advertising for your associate program, then I recommend that
you get Adword Analyzer. Adword Analyzer is an amazing piece of software and it
will help you locate those overlooked and neglected high traffic keywords.
Ezine Advertising
Advertising in ezines is one of the best and easiest ways to send targeted
traffic to your affiliate program. Even though pay per click may accurately
target your market, they cannot target it precisely link ezines can. I'm not
trying to discourage you from pay per click advertising, but with a great ad
copy and carefully selected keywords its capabilities can be too broad. Ezines
on the other hand, are precise in targeting a market and have a list of
pre-qualified subscribers. A pre-qualified subscriber is when someone has
voluntarily subscribed to receive additional information about a particular
topic, making them qualified and easy to market to.
With so many ezines to choose from, it makes it hard to select a quality ezine
to advertise in. The best way to find quality ezines to advertise your
affiliate program in, is by using Directory of Ezines. There are free ezine
directories on the web, but you get what you pay for. Most of the free ezine
directories are saturated with discontinued ezines or are outdated. Moreover,
with the Directory of Ezines, the ezines are always kept up to date, providing
you with the latest information and new ezines everyday, making it a valuable
resource.
Targeted Opt-In List
Another way you can promote your affiliate program is by renting targeted
opt-in mailing list. Renting a targeted opt-in list is a quick access to expose
your affiliate program to hundreds, even thousands of people that have opted-in
to receive more information in that field. By renting a targeted opt-in list
you will have to use a third party source. If you decide to use a third party
source it is imperative that you find out how they are gathering the email
addresses for their list. You want to use a third party opt-in list that has
been gathering their email addresses properly. That way you know that the
people have given permission to receive more information and didn't use a email
extracting software to harvest them.
I'm going to be straight with you, renting targeted opt-in lists can get
expensive. The bigger the list is the more it's going to cost you! It's a good
idea to start small and then gradually increase if you are successful. The
reason you want to start small is because you want to see how successful your
campaign is going to be. You don't want to go with a large list, if the
campaign isn't going to do well, that's a good way to lose money. You will need
to conduct some tests before you start your campaign. Here are a few third
party list providers you can use, Postmaster Direct, List Universe, and
E-Target.