Effective Affiliate Marketing

Just putting banners on your web site can and does work, but not necessarily the most effective method of selling.  People will click on images and banners, but marketing research has shown that effective text links will sell more than images and banners.

For example, being a gourd artist, I am signed up to newsletters and visit web sites, and email groups, and one of the newsletters we received had an article in it about art design and what captures the eye.  It spoke repeatedly about how effective good design in artwork was, and along with the brief lesson was the mention of a book that really took the idea to the next level, and of course the name of that book was linked via an affiliate link.  I knew exactly what this newletter was all about, but it was educational to me, and I wanted that book, and you know what, I purchased it and at the same time of learning about effective artwork, I also learned more about my own business of Affiliate marketing.  For a $15 book, that was a valuable lesson learned.  I immediately took something I had only sold one of in 6 months, and purchased one for myself, then uploaded the results of my purchase and showed people what this item could do, and within 3 days I had sold 2 of them and have sold about 6 of them over the past 2-3 months.  If I could effectively do this on all 600 pages of the Gourd Reserve, my work would be easy. :) Unfortunately for me, the Gourd reserve is already established and it is a lot of work to rewrite 600 pages, when I'm already making money on other affiliate sites we've created, and as stated before, crafts are not big money makers so we focus our time in other areas.

By all means, continue to use affiliate banners, they work too.  Go to The Weather channel.com, and see the big advertising b locks that annoy the heck out of you on the right side of the page, there is a reason why they continue to put these items there.  But don't just rely on banners, get products, promote products, make people interested and give them a reason why they just have to try this item.

One more effective marketing technique, but it is more work because you have to stay on top of it daily, and that is sales, coupons, and rebates.  People love to save money!!  If they can save $2500 on a new car they have been looking at, you have made 50% of the sale right there. Why do you think web sites like pricegrabber.com and some of these other price comparison sites exist.  As effective as they may be, they have flaws that working a site manually can overcome.  Our primary income comes from a site that promotes only hand selected sale items, and nothing more, and you have seen what we can do with that site.

The realm of affiliate marketing is only limited to your imagination, and in time and experience you will get brilliant ideas that will boost your sales and commissions, you will develop your own plan and your own design for making extra money. However, not withstanding what we've said, we have purchased a few books on the subject ourselves, and have found some better than others.  We do recommend reading at least one affiliate marketing book if you think you want to go in this direction to make money.  It can be discouraging, but it does work and can be quite successful if you work at it.

Last but not least, experience.  I can only teach you so much, and there is only so much you can learn from a book, but there is something about experience and working it that will teach you so much more than anyone else can give you. Hard work pays off.

Another potential income source is by direct Advertising