There are basically two main ways to promote an affiliate website: paid PPC (pay-per-click) ads or free methods utilizing email, social networking and social bookmarking.
PAID PROMOTIONAL METHODS
“What, who and how do I have to pay to promote my affiliate link?
PPC Ads
Although we’ve already covered the behemoth of pay-per-click advertising, i.e. Google AdWords in Promoting Your Website, here’s a quick look at its main points and how it can help you direct traffic to your affiliate site. Google AdWords is an advertising program by Google that lets you create and place ads with relevant keywords and links. The keywords and link all relate to and point to your affiliate’s product. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising refers to that form of marketing whereby the ad-owner earns a dollar amount every time someone clicks on the ad. PPC marketing, such as that done via AdWords, is the number one paid marketing method to promote your affiliate links. You can see PPC ads when you search for Google – they appear in the sponsored ad section on the top or to the right of your browser’s screen.
FREE PROMOTIONAL METHODS
“I hear there are a lot of free ways to promote my affiliate links. Can you give me a rundown of the best methods I should be following and why?”
All free promotional methods are basically aimed at driving traffic to your affiliate website by utilizing great SEO, relevant content and enough hype. To do these three, you can employ a bevy of tools and strategies to get the most out of the net for sending eyeballs to your site. Here are the most popular ones.
Article Marketing
Article Marketing, covered in detail in Volume 4 Email Marketing and List Building is fast, popular, fairly easy to do and doesn’t cost a fortune. You can write the articles yourself, or hire a professional writer to write them for you. You can submit them to article marketing directories or submit them to your own website or blog. The way it works is that when readers see and like articles written by you, they will be more likely to click on your website link at the end of the article to find out more on the subject.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon have shown some potential to divert traffic your way. However too much shameless self-promotion can get you banned from submitting to these sites, so make sure to keep your submissions varied and not all from one site and not all should be promotional plugs.
Social networking
Similar to bookmarking, social networking works best when your content goes viral. What that means is that people like it so much that they pass around the link to their friends, who then pass it to their friends! Its word-of-mouth advertising, except in an online format! Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are very popular ways to spread content to your friends’ lists and they do not penalize you for self-promotion; in fact they encourage it! So go ahead and submit appropriate links to your profile pages on such sites; you have nothing to lose!
Blogs
Blogs are great for keeping your website ranked high on search engines because they are updated regularly and frequently (some bloggers update their blog multiple times a day!). Fresh, relevant content is always a good way to keep search engines and readers happy.
Forums
Forums are tricky places for beginners. It’s important to first get a feel for them and just read posts by others. Once you’re comfortable in the forum, you can begin answering questions and being helpful and posting entries. You can add a link to your website in your forum signature, but that’s about as far as most forum administrators will allow you to go. Most forum admins don’t like blatant self-promotion; they consider it spam. So take your time, post informative posts and people will generally come to see you as helpful and resourceful and click on your link if they are interested in what you have to say.
Joint Ventures
Joint ventures are partnerships that you can enter into with other webmasters of websites that are similar or complementary to yours. This enables you to exchange links and traffic with other related sites. Your visitors will appreciate being directed to sites that will have more interesting reading material available for them.
Newsletters
An excellent way to monetize your newsletter is by placing affiliate links and banners within its content. The basics of starting your own business newsletter have been extensively covered in Volume 4 Email Marketing and List Building.
Press Releases
Press releases are another great way to market yourself and get your story picked up by journalists. Writing a good press release is a new book unto itself.
Tele-seminars
Tele-seminars, along with video blogs (vlogs) and other multimedia presentations are all ways that marketers are driving traffic to their sites. Used in conjunction with the above techniques, they can form powerful medium for getting your message across on the crowded world wide web!
