As an affiliate marketer, your job is to find as many targeted individuals as possible in order to help advertise for your affiliate partners. The ultimate goal is to get people to click on your unique affiliate links and have them make a purchase. Those new to affiliate marketing usually want to know all their options and find out all of the different affiliate marketing advertising methods. As a full time affiliate marketer, I thought I would share some insight into how I have personally used different affiliate marketing advertising methods to grow my business.
So, let’s get started!
Blogs & Websites
The number one way I personally earn revenue through affiliate marketing is by advertising on my websites and blogs. The trick here is to find a targeted niche. You also want to attract people who are ready to buy, but just need a little more information before making their decision.
Check out one of my affiliate sites at Drive-Safely.net. You’ll notice a lot of reviews on that site including these reviews of radar detectors. As you go through the different radar detector reviews I have listed, you’ll notice that these aren’t just any plain reviews. I’ve included a lot of information about each individual radar detector along with videos and ratings. That way, when someone types in “radar detector reviews” into Google and land on my page, I can help them to quickly compare and determine which radar detector is best. You’ll also notice links that lead to Amazon.com. Those links contain my affiliate code, so when someone makes a purchase, I get a commission.
This very website also earns money through affiliate marketing. From time to time, you’ll see advertisements that are very specific to affiliate marketing and those who are attempting to enter the industry. Since I am attracting a highly targeted audience to this site (people who want to become affiliate marketers), those advertisements receive a high click-through-rate (CTR) which means I am able to earn a higher amount than I would if I simply advertised to a general group of people without any common interests.
By far, this is the most effective affiliate marketing advertising method for me personally and for the vast majority of other affiliate marketers. While it is POSSIBLE to advertise in other ways (I’ll get into those ways below), having a website is essential to my business.
Affiliate Marketer Advertising On Social Media
I am a HUGE fan of advertising on Facebook. The reason I like Facebook so much is because you can get extremely targeted. If I wanted to advertise for an affiliate product or service, all I would have to do is advertise specifically to people who have “liked” affiliate marketing. I can even customize who my ad shows to based on age, location, and other interests. Plus, advertising on Facebook is much cheaper than using less affiliate friendly alternatives like Google Adwords. While there are other social media platforms you can advertise on, I have personally found the highest amount of success with Facebook.
When creating a Facebook ad, you must keep a few factors in mind in order to ultimately find success with your ad. First, you must use a very eye-catching picture. Images of faces or brightly colored images work great. The image doesn’t even have to be related to the product or service you are selling, you just want to grab their attention. You also need a great headline. I personally prefer to use a question in the main headline. So, for example, I might have an image with a persons face on it just to get peoples attention, then I would have a headline that read something like “struggling with affiliate marketing?” For those who answer “yes” in their head, they will read the actual text in the ad, where I would give a solution and a call to action such as, “learn how this little trick can make you thousands. Click here now!”
From there, those who are truly interested will click on the ad and end up on a landing page. A “landing page” is simply a page that you send people do in order to make a sale. You can either send people directly to your affiliate partner website or you can send them to your own site and try to sell them on the product or service there. You can easily create awesome looking landing pages using a service called LeadPages.
Just remember that all of the factors above must be optimized over time in order to bring down your cost per click (what you pay when someone clicks on the ad) and increase conversion rates. When optimized properly, advertising affiliate marketing products on Facebook (or other social media platforms) can be extremely effective and profitable.
Using Email Marketing For Advertising Affiliate Products
Most of the affiliate marketing experts out there will tell you to create an email marketing list as soon as you can. This is sound advice and I couldn’t agree more. There are a couple ways to create an email marketing list as an affiliate marketer.
For starters, you can have email signup forms on your blog or website. You can’t just have a signup form and expect people to give you their email address, though. You must provide people with value in exchange for their email address. You’ll notice on this site, for example, that I give away a FANTASTIC e-book for anyone who signs up. Not only is the e-book more than worth it, but people can easily unsubscribe anytime if they don’t like what I’m sending them. So, make sure you offer something of value and don’t spam your email list. You want people to know that whatever you’re sending them is good information that they will want to read. From time to time, when you do advertise, it won’t be seen as spam because you’re simply offering recommendations and being helpful like always. Another example you can look at is my website DogFoodInsider.com where I will send people dog food recall alerts by email if they sign up.
Another way to get email signups is to utilize advertising such as what I mentioned above with Facebook. Instead of directly advertising to your affiliate partner products or services, you can send people to a landing page with an email signup form offering free information or services. Once people have signed up, you have the ability to advertise to them over and over and over again. This is what makes email marketing such a cost effective marketing method, plus, email marketing has a great conversion rate.
Place Affiliate Links In E-Books
If you go to my site SharkSider.com, you’ll notice an email sign up form so people can receive a free e-book. Not only can I grow my email list by offering the free e-book, but inside the e-book I can also have affiliate links for people to click on.
This is a very popular thing to do on the Amazon Kindle Store. People will write e-books and give them away, because they know they will make money on the “backend” as people click on their affiliate links which are embedded into the e-book.
This affiliate marketing advertising method is a bit more time consuming, but it works well. The main thing you must do, especially if you are giving the book away on Amazon, is to actually write something that truly helps people whether they click on your affiliate links or not. Otherwise, people will rate your book poorly and the downloads will stop.
Direct Mail / Offline Advertising Methods For Affiliate Marketers
It seems like everyone has forgotten about the traditional advertising methods that were used before the internet became so powerful. There was once a time when direct mail advertising or advertising in local newspapers was considered to be one of the best advertising models. That actually holds true today, possibly even more so than it once did. As fewer and fewer companies use these methods for advertising, it gets cheaper and cheaper for the rest of us. Don’t be afraid to use traditional advertising methods because they still work in a big way. In fact, direct mail advertising seems to be making a comeback.
Conclusion
There really is no limit to where you can advertise. From posting flyers to working with local businesses and having them advertise for you to even radio and television ads, the sky is the limit. For most of us without a lot of start-up capital, the best way without a doubt is to create a website or blog. Once you begin getting some revenue from your website or blog, you can then re-invest into other advertising methods.
As with all types of affiliate marketing advertising methods, you will need to do a lot of experimenting. None of the above advertising methods should be thought of as easy or risk free. The only real way you will learn the best affiliate marketing advertising methods for your specific niche is to try everything and see what sticks. When you find the winner, ramp up your efforts in that specific area and cash in.
