Blogging is one of the most widespread Internet activities, with everyone from corporate organizations down to individuals feeling compelled to keep in touch with their respective customer bases on a regular basis.
If you are already blogging about a subject which is dear to you, whether that’s to do with a hobby or something you are marketing, and can tell by your monthly stats this website is already keeping a decent audience engaged, the good news is you are already halfway towards being a successful affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing is not a new business model, but it is certainly popular. Basically, a retail organization will compile a list of products and make these available to third parties to promote on their own websites.
These are known as affiliate programs, and the benefits are twofold. For the retailer, all the activities traditionally associated with their marketing department are instantly deferred.
For the marketers, there is a terrific opportunity to get on the sales bandwagon by incorporating the retailer hyperlinks into their own blogs as imaginatively as possible in exchange for commission payments.
Here are the four steps you would take to ensure your blog is monetized.
Know your Products
The first issue to consider is the products. It would be better to choose items which you would be comfortable writing about in order to maintain interest amongst your blog readership.
There may be a temptation to simply choose to promote products which are proven bestsellers, and any glanced at, say, Amazon’s top 10 lists will give a fair idea of the type of things which are currently retailing well.
But it is far more important you are able to champion the products within the overall context of your blog.
Find the Best way to promote programs
This is the key point to keep in mind. You are not simply going to be plugging a list of products, like a glorified eBay shop. Rather, you want your blog content to paint an overall picture.
Keep reminding yourself, it’s not about the links, it’s about the imaginative and authoritative articles, and product reviews you can write to entice customers to take a closer look.
Harness Social Media
One of the most potent promotional weapons you have in your arsenal is to make full use of your social media contacts. This is where you can really get interest in your affiliate program to snowball.
Here are some excellent tips about getting the message across to your potential customer base about how exceptional these particular items are.
Purchase one of the units yourself. Make a short film of the items being used, together with a commentary where you demonstrate exactly what benefits they would be to any new user.
Then you can post these short clips onto your blog and ensure you include a share button. Encourage your followers to forward these across their own network, spreading the word.
Create Subscriber Lists
Customers always like to feel valued, so another terrific promotional idea is to create subscription lists. Offer certain incentives to anyone who signs up to these, such as regular bulletins about forthcoming products or enhancements to existing ones.
Once you have constructed an extensive email list, this becomes a valuable tool in itself. You can circumvent the need to draw customers into your articles by producing a single email which you can send out in one fell swoop.
By all means include links to the relevant purchase pages within this message, as this information will set much more comfortably within a news bulletin like this, rather than plastered across the pages of your blog.
