The secret to making money with affiliate programs is three-fold.
1. INCREASE the traffic to your web site. The typical ratio for click-throughs (visitors to your site who click on an ad link) is 1 in 100. If you have 100 visitors, ONE of them may click through. If you have 500, your quintuple the number of visitors who'll click through to your affiliate programs by a factor of 5.
Strategies:
There are the obvious ones, of course. Optimize your site to attract search engine attention, and submit it widely. Another tip that works very well: provide free content. You can submit short articles to email newsletters or for web sites, which is often recommended. Don't overlook posting to forums that cover your subject area. One post on a widely read forum with a link to your site can bring hundreds of first time visitors, and every one of those is a potential referral to your affiliate programs.
2. RETAIN the traffic to your web site. Once a visitor is on your web site, you want to keep him there - and bring him back. The more pages he sees, the more times he returns, the higher the chances are that he'll eventually click on an ad and buy from one of your affiliate programs. The number of *regular* visitors that your site has are a powerful tool for increasing your ad rates as well. A subscription site that boasts 10,000 or more subscribers who visit several times a week is a mighty enticing attraction to an advertiser.
Strategies:
The very best strategy for retaining the visitors to your site is to make it 'sticky'. Give first time visitors reasons to return over and over by giving them exactly what they want - information and an interesting experience on your web site. It can never be said enough - content is king. Whether that content is forum posts, articles, polls and contests, or tutorials. Solicit email addresses for newsletters, ask them to sign up for a forum with interesting information, and offer them a newsletter. The more ways that you connect with the visitor, the more likely they are to return, and the more often they return, the better the chance that they'll visit your affiliate programs.
3. PRESELL your visitors before you send them over to your affiliate programs' web sites. By creating a relationship with your visitors, you can increase the conversion rate of your referrals by as much as 150% or more. By establishing yourself as a trusted source of information on a product, you increase the chances that your visitors will actually buy something from your affiliates.
Strategies:
If you've done the last step, you're well on your way to establishing your web site as a great place to get good information about your topic. Now take it a step further. Instead of linking ads directly from your content pages to your affiliate programs, offer your visitors a choice of links: read our review or see the product. Those that go directly to the product are ALREADY interested. For the others, a short review explaining why YOU personally like the product can be just the nudge that helps them decide to buy.
Author Resource:
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