This is a guest post by Debra on Affiliate marketing.You can read the guidelines for guest posting at our guest posting guidelines page.
Affiliate marketing, for many people, is a mysterious subject. After all, anyone who’s ever heard of it is likely aware that it can be a very lucrative pursuit. On the other hand, there are dozens of pieces of misinformation out there and no real guides to sort through it. This means that, for many people, affiliate marketing has become something that’s full of trial and error.
The truth is that it’s relatively easy to plan out a course of action for affiliate marketing, and having this roadmap in place can alleviate many of the headaches that are typically associated with it. Regardless of industry, almost every affiliate marketer has the same responsibilities that they need to pay attention to. It’s important to build rapport, write well, and keep the cycle going.
Building rapport might be the most important function of affiliate marketing, so it’s amazing to see how often it is overlooked by people who are just getting their start. Black-hat systems aside, affiliate marketers need to connect with their audience and establish their credibility before they ever try to sell a product.
This is easy enough to understand. Without any sort of rapport to work off of, there’s no reason for the site’s visitors to trust the marketer any more than they trust any other random person on the Internet. This means that when the affiliate marketer launches their site, it’s important to pay attention to the details that might otherwise be overlooked. Aspects such as color scheme and layout can be critical to conveying a certain image.
No matter how competent his advice, the vast majority of people wouldn’t buy financial instruments from an advisor if his office was messy and he had rainbow wallpaper in his office. The same principles apply to building a site for affiliate marketing – it needs to look reputable.
Going hand-in-hand with this is the need for quality content. In most cases, this means blogging. Entries to the site need to be written with a purpose. If Joe Marketer is in a program to sell different kinds of widgets and all of his entries are about different widgets, the audience will see right through this. Not only will they see that Joe only wants to sell them products, but they also won’t be engaged with the content. Visitors will be lost to the competition in the blink of an eye, and Joe Marketer won’t make a dime.
On that same note, it’s important to blog about more than just products. Marketers who are trying to sell electronics accessories should make posts that talk about relevant news happenings and the industry as a whole. This adds real value to the site while also building rapport. If the content is so good that people will want to read it on its own merit, then the marketing machine is working as it should. The existing audience will find the site too valuable to leave, and new users will trickle in as well.
That touches on another important aspect to keep in mind, which is that not every post should be related to the affiliate marketing efforts of the site. Ideally, only a small fraction of updates will deal with the marketing and sales side of things. The rest of the site will still be worthy not just of visiting but also of creating. By weaving the marketing posts into the rest of a well-crafted website, marketers will avoid burning their users out on being sold to.
Affiliate marketing is tough to crack at first, especially for people with no background in the subject. The gut reaction of most people is to take a hard sales mentality, but in the vast majority of cases this is only going to end up as wasted effort. By focusing more on quality and objectivity, and less on sales, marketers will find that the entire process can be handled much more smoothly.
About the Author:
This guest post is contributed by Debra Johnson, blogger and editor of nanny housekeeper.She welcomes your comments at her email Id: – jdebra84 @ gmail.com.