Affiliate marketing. Seeking the way to success

After so many years in the web business, there is still a big challenge for me, which is the affiliate marketing. I've seen many people who are using a simple (hmm, it sounds simple but it isn't...) way to make money using affiliate and CPA programs. Most of these marketers use cheap ppc traffic which send to landing pages, or even directly to the affiliate web sites.

I have tried this too in the past, and actually I had some small success with ringtone offers from azoogle using traffic from goClick. But there is got to be something else in this type of internet marketing. I mean I have seen people making lots of money while spending a very small amount, and I am sure that I am doing something wrong as I can't do this continuesly(ok I know this is not even a word, but you understand :) ).

Today I read at this blog a nice success story from a guy who earned $11,000 in two months, and it actually motivated me to start over again with affiliate marketing.

What is your experience with this type of work? Can you share some tactics to work better? I am not expecting someone to post their favorite offers, but I want to find the way that this can work best.

I would love to learn more about this as well.



BTW, continuously is a word - just not the way you spelt it.  :-*

getting affiliate marketing right is a tricky business, I find it amazing those people who make large amounts from it, I tend to see it as a secondary thing, for example if we develop a web site we then suggest 2 or 3 reccomended hosts, normally we have some affilate marketing with them but its important that you actually use the product your marketing!

I think nothing works better then belief in a product regardless of how you sell, so I guess my advice is look at what services you use now paticularly hosting|domain registering that sort of thing and see if your service providers have affiliate schemes. Might not get you £11k but will help to think of it as addon sales and you know you are making a good reccomendation.

I will agree with that. So rule #1 is :

Affiliate with a product you know about, and be sure that it works

Perhaps rule #2 should be;
Always tell your visitors that its an affilated product

actually I think the same, but why should people buy from your affiliate site and not from the orig. site?

ease paticularly if the link is in front of them, emotional bond towards you, knowing they are helping you as well as themselves. Discounts several affiliate schemes allow the affiliate to offer discounts out of there share of the deal. addon to the addon do you offer something on top. nievity they don't relise they can get it elsewhere.

I guess ease is the obvious one though.

I would suspect if you add some value to the product you could become an effective reseller/affiliate.

Like in our cases if we are affiliates for Webhosting - having tutorials or a forum that provides more support and how-to type information would make going through our sites more favorable. I would think this could be especially true since even the better webhosting companies are failing when it comes to support - particularly for new webmasters.

I think it's also all part of the approach. I answered a forum post somewhere that asked about who people hosted with. I put a pure link to my webhost along with a clearly marked affiliate link with the link text "Why not?". While I didn't get any commissions, I did get a handful of clickthroughs and none of the bashings most get when posting their affiliate links.

I think being honest in general, can help you a lot. A honest review of a product you are using can bring in some sales/actions.

But when I say honest I mean it. Not like you are doing it with the purpose to sell something, but like you want to share information with other people.

Before some months, I was really pissed off with some pop up advertising networks, and I wanted to write about it, and let people know of a company that finally worked for me. That company has an affiliate program, so I added to the post the url of them with my affiliate id attached. This particular post brought me some affiliates, so I guess another rule would be :

Affiliate with products you are using, and be honest when you are talking about them

I can see why that post is bringing in some affiliate earnings: you are not only talking about how you like that one product but letting the reader know you have tried others as well.

So I guess another good pointer would be:
Don't just review single products, but compare them to the competing ones around

I'm a template monster affiliate for almost 2 years, while I have some sales in this time period I noticed that the "bigger" template shops doing almost everything to "hide" everything is looking like template monster.

Right I think that people decide to buy something they are often a little lazy or just like your site and doesn't care about that you're a reseller.

on the other site maybe I need to imagine that most of the internet users doesn't recognize a (professional) affiliate site or even know what an affiliate is...

I suspect that you are right Olaf about target customers for the Affiliate sales are those that are more inexperienced. I always find it interesting that "professional" webmasters are absolutely loathe to click on someone else's PPC ads. If the ad is for something I'd be interested in why shouldn't I click on it?

As long as buying from an Affliate doesn't add to my cost (the assumption that it does may be hurting some sales), I don't see anything wrong with ensuring they get their commission - unless of course I have been tricked into visiting their site though Black Hat methods.

On the other hand, buyers are afraid to buy from a company that they know nothing about. So if your affiliate site has no obvious connection with the affiliate can be a problem for suspicious customers.

I think thats why you can't convert the 100%; some customer will buy from the orig. site and some won't buy because they don't trust you :(

How much does your TemplateMonster affiliate site bring in? Was it worth it?

yes sure, I can't say it my biggest moneymaker and I'm sure I need to develop my website a little more.

Look there are a lot of template shops and you need something unique that people stay on your site and will buy a template