Many people start a blog in order to make money. There are many ways to make money on the internet and niche blogging or affiliate blogging is one of them. The idea is that you find a niche to blog about, write some great content for your readers, and then monetize your blog utilizing adsense or providing affiliate links to affiliate products. Each time someone clicks on your affiliate link and buys a product you will make a commission.
To be a successful affiliate blogger you need to be able to maximize your traffic and your conversions. There is no magic formula to it. There is just a system which requires consistent effort. There is no surprise to it, just good marketing practices developed from common sense.
With that being said, here are three subtle tactics that help improve conversions and sales with affiliate marketers today.
What are these three tactics?
1. It’s best to focus in on a unique online presence for each product you market.
That means at a minimum a unique blog post for each product. Depending on the product and niche you may want to dedicate an entire blog to the one product as well. It is best to have a site or at the very least a blog post focusing on each and every product and nothing more.
One great way to use your blog posts is to include a product review. You can approach this from many different ways as there are a lot of different ways to write ad copy from the “I was like you and has this problem until..” type ad to a review that is more “straight forward” such as the “This product isn’t for everyone. This type of review post when written well can pre-sell your reader helping with a higher conversion for the affiliate product.
2. Include a useful report. This will help you attain repeat traffic.
If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it they simply cannot be missed. The reason for this is that studies show it is often the seventh contact to a prospect that will result in a sale. The free report allows you to “recycle” your traffic and even generate new traffic.
You can place your ads in this report as one way to recycle traffic. The other is to ask your prospects to join your mailing list to obtain the free report.
List building means you ask for the prospect’s email address and in return provide them with a free report. At this point any time you email the prospect you are “recycling” your traffic. To go along with the statistics, the seventh time you contact them advertising a product they will buy.
By placing advertisements in your free report (such as at the beginning or end of your report), you are recycling traffic each time the prospects reads the report. Each time they see your ad, they may click back to your site. More if they give the report to someone else, that is a way to get new traffic.
3. Targeted traffic will convert better than non-targeted traffic.
Think about conversion rates. If your site is about dog training, who is more likely to buy, someone looking for dog training or someone looking for stereo systems? You want to attract the traffic that is looking for your site. That is what is meant by targeted traffic.
There are four great sources for this that should keep you busy: blog networking, forum networking, social networking networking, and Article Marketing.
With blog networking, you can search out blogs related to your niche and comment on various blog entries or even email the blog owner to see if you can write a guest entry for that person’s blog.
Forum networking is simply what it sounds like: you want to be an active participant on forums related to your site. Choose forums with high amounts of traffic. And you must make sure you can put your website in your signature and in your profile.
Social networking sites are huge these days and many of them provide various “groups”. Social network networking involves joining these groups and being a participant in these groups. Myspace, Facebook, and Yahoo Groups are three examples of where you can find niche groups.
For article marketing, that involves writing useful articles related to your website and posting them in one or more of the many article directories with a link to your website in the author’s resource box.
Always remember that only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product or get your services. If you can generate as much as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you can made 10 sales based on the average statistic. The better targeted your traffic, the better your conversation rate.
The tactics given above does not really sound very difficult to do, if you think about it. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part. Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end maintaining a good source of income and surviving in this business that not all marketers can do.
Best of luck!
