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How to be Successful in Affiliate Marketing

Whilst affiliate marketing is not, as some would have you believe, an automatic route to instant
riches, it can work well as a supplement to your existing income. Over time and with a sensible
choice of market category, it stands a very good chance of becoming a successful business in its
own right. Affiliate marketing creates a relationship between online `merchants` or `advertisers`
with products or services to sell and `affiliates` or `publishers` with available advertising space on
a website or network of sites. Most modern affiliate programs will pay on a performance basis using
a `cost per action` or CPA model which minimises the financial risk for the merchant. The desired
action ranges from the completion of a form, registration of detail through to, of course, a sale.

Almost anyone who starts in affiliate marketing expecting instant success will be disappointed when
the first few months are all work and no pay. The truth is that you have to invest significant
amounts of time in the affiliate marketing world before you can start to reap the rewards. With
these expectations in mind, the following are some of the key factors in being successful in affiliate
marketing.

By far the most important decision will be that of sector. A significant percentage of new affiliates
see the high earnings per thousand (EPM) figures in the various affiliate network statistics for
merchants in competitive sectors and decide that they want a slice of the action. Whilst there may
well be some niche opportunities in gambling, consumer finance or electronics, in general terms
these sectors are frighteningly competitive and it is extremely hard to attract sufficient traffic at a
sensible cost in order to drive revenues, Much the same can be said of mobile phones, voucher code
sites, shopping directories, price comparison and indeed any generalised retail site.

Thus the best results will come from finding a market niche in which you can become reasonably
established. A category in which you have considerable expertise and indeed passion will allow you
to achieve some level of recognition, maybe even dominance within a reasonable time frame. Either
way, your own site or sites should address the needs of your target audience in terms they will
understand and relate to. The more appropriate, comprehensive and informative the site, then the
greater chance of building rapport and loyalty with your target audience. In truth, it isn`t too hard
to identify niches - a few hours spent with the search engines will usually reveal plenty of niche
terms for which the results are not necessarily particularly relevant.

With a suitable category identified, you can now turn your attention to the choice of keywords. This
is absolutely vital as it will drive all of your online marketing activities. You are looking for search
terms that offer a balance between reasonable search volumes and the degree of competition.
Remember also that the more generic (and harder to rank for) terms will tend to attract less focused
traffic which may not monetise as well. It is better to rank for 100 relevant `longtail` (multiple word)
terms than a few generic ones. There are plenty of free resources including the Google AdWords
keyword suggestion tool that will provide you not only with the data on search volumes for given
terms but also the degree of advertiser competition and even suggestions for related search terms.

Having identified the right keywords, you need to build your site or sites around these. There are
plenty of online resources that explain the effective use of meta tags; heading 1 and 2 tags;
internal site navigation; code optimisation; cascading style sheets (CSS) and divisional layers;
images and ALT tags; and indeed the avoidance of `spammy` or `black hat` unethical; techniques
such as keyword stuffing and invisible text. If all of this seems daunting and you have the budget,
you may want to outsource the production of the site to a reputable web designer but in doing so,
ensure that you check their SEO credentials as many web designers produce beautiful but poorly
optimised sites.

With the site structure in place you can begin the never ending process of adding rich content and,
if appropriate, imagery to the site. Content should support the keywords for which the page code
and tags are optimised, ideally with a keyword `density` of 2-4% (2 to 4 occurrences per 100
words). The importance of fresh, unique, relevant content cannot be overstated: it is of equal value
to both your visitors and the search engines alike and is vital in all online marketing activities.

Once you have a suitable optimised, focused, content-rich site, you can begin to promote it. Online
marketing in today`s world is a complex, multi-disciplinary undertaking. The good news is that there
are endless resources available free of charge which will help you in directing your efforts. If you
have chosen a category wisely, you should see good results from search engine optimisation (SEO)
which requires you to keep adding fresh content and to attract links from other websites. Links
matter a great deal and the search engines will reward sites that have links both to and from other
relevant sites. This must be approached ethically - paying for links is against the search engines`
terms of service and is widely regarded as a `black hat` unethical technique. Stick to trading or
exchanging links with relevant (and only relevant) sites; link out to `authority` sites in your sector -
non-competing of course - and offer something of value to webmasters - a widget or perhaps some
free of charge content written for them - in return for an inbound-only link. Make no mistake, link
building is extremely hard work and many find it soul destroying but it is vital if you are to achieve a
presence for your target keywords in the search engines. You must also accept that all SEO efforts
are very much long term with the results generally measured in many months rather than weeks or
day

For some sites, if the budget is available, you may also want to use pay-per-click (PPC) paid search
marketing to drive targeted traffic. Again, the work you have already put into identifying the most
appropriate keywords should help in ensuring that the traffic you create through this approach will
be relevant and will monetise. PPC campaigns need careful monitoring and constant refinement in
ensuring that you are actually making a profit! Needless to say there is intense competition because
of the immediacy of PPC. Positioning in the paid results for Google and Yahoo, for example, isn`t
solely determined by the price you are willing to pay per click but by the click-through rate (CTR) so
the best written ads win. Look at the placement of the competitors for clues as to the best ad copy
here.  

In many sectors, you may also want to build brand and presence through effective social media
optimisation. This doesn`t mean simply creating a MySpace or Facebook profile. It is an ongoing
commitment in searching for relevant blogs, social media sites and forums; finding poorly answered
questions relevant to your sector and creating in-depth information in response to them on your
own site or blog. You can then post a summarised but useful response to the original post on the
third party site with a link back to the detailed information on your own site. There are many other
social media techniques including the dissemination of multimedia information via Youtube and other
social media hubs, all of which can create a perception of you as a valuable and knowledgeable
resource for the sector in question. As a result you may find others voluntarily linking to the
information you have highlighted. The opportunities are limitless: an entire industry has been
created around Twitter and you can expect other social media sites to emerge over time. The key
here is focusing on sites with audiences relevant to your target demographic.

Whether you have just started to learn affiliate marketing or are some way into the process, it
should be clear from the above that focus is king. With the right focus, the opportunities for those
who are truly committed are quite literally, staggering. But it will take time and a great deal of effort.
The important thing to remember about success in affiliate marketing is that, as in most areas of life,
it is a relative term. Set yourself achievable goals and blow through them!



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