Basics Of Affiliate Marketing

One of the very first affiliate marketing companies was Gillette, yep, the razor people. The Internet was not even really started at that time, but still these visionaries knew affiliate marketing would be the way to go. 

You can almost think of each affiliate marketing effort, including those with ClickBank, Commission Junction, etc., as tiny “JV’s” or Join Ventures, the only difference is that in these JV’s, you never meet the partner you are doing the venture with, because the intermediary, such as ClickBank, does all the orchestrating for you, you just put the right code on your site.  

Everyday, we encounter affiliate marketing on the internet. If you have ever clicked on a text ad or banner, you may have patronized affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing provides an avenue for both the advertiser and the publisher to make money. The publisher displays the ad to get the visitors’ attention and the advertiser makes a sale from that display and pays the publisher.  

Visitors are more interested in what a site provides that we may give them credit for. If you sell sporting goods on your site, visitors might click on your ad for a Hockey School. You may ask why. The reason is simple.  Website visitors find anything that pertain sports on the site as relevant. In fact, this habit of website visitors is the entire basis of cross selling – a marketing effort in which users are presented with collateral or matching offers.

For example, if someone buys a computer, you show him a printer as one complements the other. 

In affiliate marketing, it is imperative that you track ad performance, such that you are able to tell what is working and what is not. There would be little point in puting a ladder against a wall if you didn’t know which wall you were going to paint. There are many softwares and tools to help you track the performance of your affiliate efforts but no matter what the tool, you are looking at how customers are referred to your site and how they got there. Tracking information will help you to decide on efficient or effective marketing campaigns.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, ClickBank, Commission Junction, Join Ventures, Hockey School, ad performance

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