Sunday, August 31, 2008

Affiliate Program Results Aren't Fictional

By Denise Pavilstein


While it might seem like a fairy tale to would be Internet marketers, the reality is affiliate programs can pay off in a big way. The stories about super charged incomes resulting from the promotion of these programs are not all fantasy. Some people really do manage to make them shine.

One of the best ways for anyone to really see some great results from affiliate programs involves creating a website or blog that's dedicated to the program's niche. When creating a site or blog, however, the focus really needs to be on actually crafting a useful site. Producing a keyword stuffed, link farmed creation might pull in traffic, but it won't likely result in conversions or return visits. If a site is useful, appealing and gives a reader something, however, great things can result.

When creating a site or blog to target the theme, it is important to make sure there is a mechanism to collect visitors' contact information. Doing this and creating mailing lists from the collection can offer you a powerful tool for marketing down the road. Opt-in boxes on sites are the best way to go here. This is a basic form visitors choose to fill out. It asks for their names and e-mail addresses in return for freebies like newsletters, product reports, e-books, or some other relevant, useful item. Whatever route is taken for the enticer, make sure the freebie is useful and has affiliate links included.

A mailing list can be one of the most strong and affordable marketing tools a webmaster can create. A list enables direct contact, rather than waiting for visitors to return. It can be used to generate repeat traffic, to advertise products, services and promotions and even to simply share useful information about the niche theme the affiliate program fits into.

As powerful as mailing lists are, they are not the only thing that should go into an affiliate campaign to make it really pay off. The fact of the matter is the site or blog needs to offer relevant content, too. It is best to focus each individual site on a single topic or theme. Mixing up themes and affiliate programs can create a jumbled mess that might not result in traffic.

When crafting the site or blog, make sure it is keyword rich to pull in the desired traffic. Keyword research tools such as AdWords internal keyword tool or software like Ad Word Analyzer can be useful here. It's smart to select good keywords, phrases and themes. Don't go overboard with stuffing them into content, however. Relevancy and quality are top issues, or should be.

Take the time to actually build the site and its related content. Don't just switch around metatags. Focus on content, optimizing headers, footers, page descriptions and more. Content in and of itself is a very valuable tool for pulling in traffic and even conversions through an affiliate programs. The key here is that content needs to be keyword rich, useful, relevant and unique. If you can't write it, hire a good copywriter to do so.

Affiliate programs can pay out very well. It all tends to fall on how well content is worked to pull in traffic and search engine ranking. Advertising can be useful, but costly. Considering this, the search engine route is often the better one to take to boost traffic effectively. Traffic alone won't likely result in major revenue production. It all falls on how effectively webmasters capture visitor information and capitalize on this to create lasting relationships with those visitors.

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