Success for the affiliate marketer comes down to finding the most targeted eyeballs for the offer you want, lead generation. In this chapter we want to emphasize the top ten ways to get those eyeballs on the affiliate link you offer. There are literally hundreds of ways to market your affiliate offer, but in this chapter we highlight ten that are generally easy to do and essentially cost-free strategies. More importantly, they have been put to good use by successful affiliates. Drum roll, please…
Guest blogging
The advice you often get from marketing people about your affiliate business is to do some blogging. But for beginners it usually means starting from scratch and without an audience. Is there a way to short-circuit this process?
Don’t get us wrong — blogging is good, especially for beginners. But we think guest blogging is important, which involves contributing content (an article or perhaps a video or audio) to someone else’s blog.
why so? You’re exchanging: you provide them with content, and they, in turn, provide you with a ready audience. For example, if you have an affiliate link for a great pet product, why not give some great content to a pet blogger who has thousands (or more) of readers (or subscribers) looking for something for you? Want to get great exposure? If thousands of people see you and (especially) your affiliate link, that’s a huge boost for you (and your potential affiliate profits)!
The best way to find guest blogging opportunities is to go to your favorite search engine and do a specific search for “guest blogging” + “[your topic]”. There are also online blog directories and lists such as Blogarama Bloghub and Best of the Web’s blog directory. If you want to consider blogging as a serious component of your affiliate marketing business, check out the latest edition of Blogging for Dummies by Amy Lupold Bair (published by Wiley).
SEO strategy
Getting people to find you and your offer online (in this case your affiliate link to an appropriate offer) is a key approach for you. When people are searching for a product or service, it indicates a potential intent to purchase the product or service. Search engine optimization (SEO) helps you by optimizing the content on your site so that visitors can find you more easily during their searches. The better affiliates execute SEO strategies on their blogs, sites, opt-in pages, etc., the greater the chance that customers will click on your affiliate offer.
Getting a “pre-sold” prospect — a potential, already qualified buyer for a product or service — to come to you is truly the holy grail of affiliate marketing. After all, if they’re going to buy anyway, they might as well do it through your affiliate link.
For more guidance on SEO strategies, go to Chapter 10; You can also see the SEO resources in the appendix.
Social media marketing
In recent years, social media has become the common beast it is today. Almost everyone (including the Pope) is on social media. Getting an account with places like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and other popular social media platforms is usually free. Being on social media is now a natural part of the communication environment, and affiliate marketing is really about communicating the value of your affiliate link or offer to as many people as possible.
Some examples of affiliate marketing on social media are:
You are in a Facebook group whose members are pet owners, and you are active as an affiliate of merchants in pet products and services.
You’re posting books about nature and the environment on Pinterest, and each image has an affiliate link to that book on Amazon.
You are a skier and in a meetup group for skiers, and you are affiliated with a skiing products merchant.
On LinkedIn you post a great article on job search strategies, and in that article you have affiliate links to job hunting resources.
As the latest controversy on Twitter over, say, the organic umbrella stands, you share your thoughts on the matter.
The only things that limit you here are your enthusiasm and creativity!
Don’t be too forceful or too aggressive with your affiliate marketing on social media. Consistent, enthusiastic salesmanship is a huge turn-off on social media, so find out how to do affiliate marketing in a soft-sell, friendly, and reasonable way. Presenting the right offer to the right market in the right way results in maximum affiliate success. After painstakingly building a following on Twitter or LinkedIn, the last thing you need is for them to “unfollow” you.
ience perceives as obnoxious sales pitches. How quickly can you say “backfire”?
To discover the right marketing approach in social media, you can find great resources in Chapter 9 and the Appendix.
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