Making Affiliate Programs Work For Your Website
| Category: Affiliate Marketing - Basics | Date: 2003-04-28 |
12 October 2000
Choose your websites content carefully. Make sure you like the topic, so that keeping your website current is an enjoyable hobby, not work. The more frequently you update your websites content, the better chance you will have of building a solid base of regulars who visit frequently.
Study your website traffic. Increasing hits is vital to a successful affiliate programs. Typical click-through rates are less than 5%, and click-to-order rates (the percentage of individuals purchasing a product or service after a referral from your website) on those click-throughs will rarely exceed 3%. Those figures add up to .0015 sales per impression. These figures will not necessarily hold true for your site, but if you are only receiving 100 hits a day, affiliate programs are not going to be providing a large income.
Promote your site. A few years ago all you had to do was submit your site to a search engine and sit back waiting for the traffic. Now it is difficult to get listed, let alone find yourself in the top 200 sites for your keywords. For example, few websites ever get a Yahoo listing. To improve your chances, have unique content on your site that will benefit Yahoo visitors. The best way to build traffic on a budget is to make sure you have great content and patience. If you have quality content, then news of your site will slowly spread and visitors will eventually come. You can make it easier for visitors to spread the news about your site with a free application from www.Recommend-It.com. But word of mouth takes time, so you still need to market your site.
Select appropriate affiliate programs for your website. 4yoursite.com has a good listing of affiliate programs broken down by topic. Almost all affiliate programs are free to join, so there is little risk in joining many programs. But its better to focus on a handful of referral programs at a time, so youre not blitzing visitors with dozens of ads and making your content secondary to banner ads.
Integrate affiliate programs with your content. If your site is about music, then you would want to offer a link to CDNow for each CD you review, for example. Text links integrated into content can have better results than banner ads.
Analyze results. Determine your click-through ratio and your click-to-order rates. You should be able to find out this information from most affiliate programs, but you may need to pull out a calculator and do the work yourself. Aim to get click-through rates of at least 5%. Adjust your promotional methods and see how it affects your click-through rates. Learn from your mistakes and from other websites. If you see an interesting affiliate strategy on another site, see if works for your site. Dont cut and paste from their pages, but understand their tactics and adapt them. If click-through rates are great but your click-to-order ratio is below 2% or 3%, then you may want to re-examine the program--unless you make a large profit on each sale. Low click-to-order ratios may be due to your links misleading visitors, so when they click through they are not interested in purchasing.
If you can rule out this possibility, then the affiliate website may not be doing an adequate job of making the sale. Immediate conversion after click-through is vital to your success; if those visitors return to the program site at a later date they will most likely not return via your website and you will receive NOTHING. Its a good idea to affiliate with a company that offers an impulse product or service or a website that knows how to make the sale.
Fine-tune your presentation. If graphical ads dominate your program promotion, then use a limited number of banner ads so visitors are not distracted from your affiliate banners. Viewers are conditioned to read left to right and then top to bottom, so consider a top right corner button or a banner ad near the top of your web page. Viewers may not scroll down your site if they are not impressed with what the top half of your index page has to offer. Grab the visitor with an attractive, fast-loading page that clearly presents the subject of your website. Do not make a visitor scroll down to the bottom of your main page to find out your website deals with pocket lint and its many uses.
Monitor new programs. Affiliate marketing is in its infancy. More merchants are unveiling associate programs each week. You may miss out on a great program if you do not monitor new programs being offered. Make use of affiliate program directories like 4yoursite.com to help connect you with compatible merchants.
Reinvest your earnings. Consider reinvesting a portion of your profits in promoting your website. Explore new marketing options and continue to support the ones that brought traffic to your site in the first place. If Goto.com sends you half your traffic, then make sure you have a budget for it. If direct email marketing put you on the map, then make it work for you again.
Share your experiences with others. Do any of your friends have websites? Do they want to try to build some additional revenue? Share your knowledge with them so they can take a stab at building a successful website. Teach them a few tricks you learned along the way. In addition to helping a friend out, you have a new website you can partner with--which can mean more traffic for you. Go forth and affiliate.
About the Author
Chad LaFreniere is webmaster for 4yoursite.com
:To contact see details below.
http://www.4yoursite.com
Choose your websites content carefully. Make sure you like the topic, so that keeping your website current is an enjoyable hobby, not work. The more frequently you update your websites content, the better chance you will have of building a solid base of regulars who visit frequently.
Study your website traffic. Increasing hits is vital to a successful affiliate programs. Typical click-through rates are less than 5%, and click-to-order rates (the percentage of individuals purchasing a product or service after a referral from your website) on those click-throughs will rarely exceed 3%. Those figures add up to .0015 sales per impression. These figures will not necessarily hold true for your site, but if you are only receiving 100 hits a day, affiliate programs are not going to be providing a large income.
Promote your site. A few years ago all you had to do was submit your site to a search engine and sit back waiting for the traffic. Now it is difficult to get listed, let alone find yourself in the top 200 sites for your keywords. For example, few websites ever get a Yahoo listing. To improve your chances, have unique content on your site that will benefit Yahoo visitors. The best way to build traffic on a budget is to make sure you have great content and patience. If you have quality content, then news of your site will slowly spread and visitors will eventually come. You can make it easier for visitors to spread the news about your site with a free application from www.Recommend-It.com. But word of mouth takes time, so you still need to market your site.
Select appropriate affiliate programs for your website. 4yoursite.com has a good listing of affiliate programs broken down by topic. Almost all affiliate programs are free to join, so there is little risk in joining many programs. But its better to focus on a handful of referral programs at a time, so youre not blitzing visitors with dozens of ads and making your content secondary to banner ads.
Integrate affiliate programs with your content. If your site is about music, then you would want to offer a link to CDNow for each CD you review, for example. Text links integrated into content can have better results than banner ads.
Analyze results. Determine your click-through ratio and your click-to-order rates. You should be able to find out this information from most affiliate programs, but you may need to pull out a calculator and do the work yourself. Aim to get click-through rates of at least 5%. Adjust your promotional methods and see how it affects your click-through rates. Learn from your mistakes and from other websites. If you see an interesting affiliate strategy on another site, see if works for your site. Dont cut and paste from their pages, but understand their tactics and adapt them. If click-through rates are great but your click-to-order ratio is below 2% or 3%, then you may want to re-examine the program--unless you make a large profit on each sale. Low click-to-order ratios may be due to your links misleading visitors, so when they click through they are not interested in purchasing.
If you can rule out this possibility, then the affiliate website may not be doing an adequate job of making the sale. Immediate conversion after click-through is vital to your success; if those visitors return to the program site at a later date they will most likely not return via your website and you will receive NOTHING. Its a good idea to affiliate with a company that offers an impulse product or service or a website that knows how to make the sale.
Fine-tune your presentation. If graphical ads dominate your program promotion, then use a limited number of banner ads so visitors are not distracted from your affiliate banners. Viewers are conditioned to read left to right and then top to bottom, so consider a top right corner button or a banner ad near the top of your web page. Viewers may not scroll down your site if they are not impressed with what the top half of your index page has to offer. Grab the visitor with an attractive, fast-loading page that clearly presents the subject of your website. Do not make a visitor scroll down to the bottom of your main page to find out your website deals with pocket lint and its many uses.
Monitor new programs. Affiliate marketing is in its infancy. More merchants are unveiling associate programs each week. You may miss out on a great program if you do not monitor new programs being offered. Make use of affiliate program directories like 4yoursite.com to help connect you with compatible merchants.
Reinvest your earnings. Consider reinvesting a portion of your profits in promoting your website. Explore new marketing options and continue to support the ones that brought traffic to your site in the first place. If Goto.com sends you half your traffic, then make sure you have a budget for it. If direct email marketing put you on the map, then make it work for you again.
Share your experiences with others. Do any of your friends have websites? Do they want to try to build some additional revenue? Share your knowledge with them so they can take a stab at building a successful website. Teach them a few tricks you learned along the way. In addition to helping a friend out, you have a new website you can partner with--which can mean more traffic for you. Go forth and affiliate.
About the Author
Chad LaFreniere is webmaster for 4yoursite.com
:To contact see details below.
http://www.4yoursite.com
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