An affiliate is someone who sells another businesses products or services on their behalf and/or provides leads for that business and gets paid a percentage of what is passed on or sold. You don’t have to deal with warehousing, customer complaints, pricing and so many of the other hassles of running a business and you can paid as much as 75% of the sale. No wonder so many people want to get into this game.

Typically to succeed as an affiliate marketer you must have a very good informational site attracting visitors on specialized subjects with your interesting content. You have to draw a crowd and then sell products related to the same subject.

Here’s how it’s done:   

1. Build your site.

It’s best to pick a subject that you have an intimate knowledge of and pick a niche within that subject. As an example: If you’re an avid golfer and have an intimate knowledge of the golf courses through Europe because you’ve travelled through there you might want to start a site aimed at that.

You would then fill your site with as much detailed information about each course (maybe hole by hole descriptions, their on-site accommodation, clubhouse facilities etc), typical holiday paths, what to bring, where to stay, where to eat and everything else one might want to know about a European golfing holiday.

The idea is to become the expert in that niche area on the web.

2. Build your connections

Next you need to join the different affiliate programs for companies that sell products/services in that niche. Continuing with the example you might join an affiliate program for an airline that flies through Europe, accommodation booking services that book in Europe, golf courses, hotels, maybe Amazon or another book seller with direct links to their books on the subject. There are an endless number of possibilities.

The idea is to then tightly weave links to these suppliers within your information. Generally speaking an ad on the side of the page will not get as good a click through rate or a buy rate as a tightly woven link that is contextual.

On the page for ‘Golf Courses In Bavaria’ you might have a review of the day trips you can take in the area and within the text there are several links to a tour company that service the area that you personally recommend. This is a lot better than simply placing a banner ad on the side and hoping people will click it.

3. Build your traffic

Now you have a website with great information about your chosen subject with contextual links to your chosen products and services that have an affiliate program you need a whole heap of people who are interested in this niche area to view your website.

The most effective way to build traffic for an affiliate site is with search engine marketing, particularly getting listed in the organic search results. You’ll need to target keywords that your affiliate program’s sponsor isn’t targeting. They will be going for ‘transactional’ search traffic, whereas you’ll need to target keywords that are more ‘informational’.

Search engine optimization for these kinds of sites is actually a lot easier than for many other types of sites as you are, or will become, the specialist on that niche subject. Many other websites will want to link to you and the search engines are made to put the ‘authority site’ within that category at or near the top of their listings.

For more information please visit haydnomeagher.com

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