SpeedieConsulting

Most companies will have web based facilities to promote their services or products, but there are other ways of earning a passive income from recommending and promoting other companies’ products and services. This can be done in any number of ways but online this kind of arrangement is called Affiliate Marketing.

Why should I get excited about Affiliate Marketing?

Let me share some recent statistics from e-consultancy. In 2006, Affiliate Marketing was worth £2.16 billion – an increase of nearly 60% on the previous year. In way of comparison, Search Engine marketing or PPC was worth £1.26 billion and Email marketing was worth £178 million on 2006.

So clearly Affiliate Marketing is a huge revenue stream for both affiliates and the merchants offering the programs. Affiliate Marketing, simply put, is the tool by which a merchant or product owner can use others to promote and sell their products for them.

In return the “others” or affiliates get paid a commission. You may have heard of this by another name such as: Reseller, Associate, or Partner Program. They are in essence the same thing.

Online, an affiliate program is a great tool for a business selling products as all the tracking is taken care of online and there is no paperwork. As an Affiliate you are basically referring people to the merchant and earning money when they buy something. No Stock, No Delivery, No refunds, No complaints!

How do I become an Affiliate?

To become an “Affiliate” – i.e. you want to sell other peoples products on your website – the best place to go is an affiliate network where lots of Merchants go to offer their products for sale.

Affiliate networks such as Tradedoubler (www.tradedoubler.co.uk) for example offer affiliate programs on behalf of Dell, Sony, Dixons, Figleaves, Direct Line and a huge range of other high street brands.

Just register as an affiliate (or publisher) then sign up to the programs relevant to your site. Then once you have been approved you can start adding affiliate links to your site in order to promote their products.

Here is a list of the Major UK networks

www.cj.com
www.tradedoubler.co.uk
www.omguk.com
www.affiliatewindow.com
www.affiliatefuture.co.uk
www.buy.at

Within these Networks you will have access to thousands of Merchants and hundreds of thousands of products.

In some cases adding some affiliate banners from some related “big brands” can earn you kudos with your visitors as there is a perceived association!

For the more specialised products and services, you may have to visit the sites you want to work with to see if they offer an affiliate program. Nightingale Conant, for example, have their own affiliate programmes, as does Amazon. To join these programmes simply visit their sites and sign up.

How do I promote Affiliate Programs without my site looking like a flea market?

Most of us work long hours and spend a considerable amount of money building our brands and our products, so I can understand the dilemma of how to best promote these programs without detracting anything away from your core business.

Here are a few ideas that I have used and recommend my clients use to add valuable content to their sites and also utilise Affiliate Programs.

1. Write Product Reviews.
An honest impartial review of another product or service is a great way to add content your site, and offers your visitors your opinion on a product. If you have a loyal fan base it is easy to refer them to your “recommended” products. Just make sure that you have tested or used it.

You may find you could get a free valuation copy to write a compelling review. Just add text links into the review that are your affiliate links. In this way they user can visit the site or product and if your review is helpful enough, they will buy.

This is a great way for those of us who don’t like to ask for a sale or don’t like selling.

2. Add a Resources section to your site.
It could be that you just build a directory of products and services and use your affiliate links to direct users.

3. Emails.
If you have a mailing list, you could send out an email about a given product or service or add advertisements into your normal email. Or if you have an autoresponder system, why not add Affiliate links into the course itself or a build a seperate email as a followup?

4. Build a FREE Report.
This is another great way to promote affiliate products that more and more of us are doing. Write a ten page report on your topic or subject and give it away to anyone who wants it. Don’t even ask for an email address. Let visitors download it – if it is a useful guide they could pass it around the web and suddenly your little Guide is all over the place full of your Affiliate Links! It takes on a life of its own and couldn’t be stopped even if you wanted it to!

5. Post Classified Ads promoting Affiliate products.
Visit Gumtree.com, craigslist.org, and others to setup free classified ads promoting these programmes. This way it doesn’t even have to touch your site.

6. Use your Email or Forum Signature.
Why not vary your email or forum signature and have some affiliate links embedded into it?

7. Build a Mini Site.
You could even build a separate site just with affiliate program links. Lots of companies do this with “name”recommends.com or something like this and this site has a list of recommended Affiliate products, even reviews in some cases.

The trick is to create your own adverts, in your voice and this will set you apart from everyone else and drive you more sales.

As you can hopefully see, adding Affiliate products to your income arsenal is a great way to develop a substantial passive income without detracting from your core business. You can even use Affiliate product sales as research for new products. If lots of your clients are buying a product that you could build your own version of and distribute yourself, then your affiliate sales have paid you to carry out the research to see if the product would sell.

Give Affiliate marketing a try now!