Sunday, June 21, 2009

3 Necessary Tools for the High Rolling Affiliate Marketer

By Jeff G Hill

What does it take to succeed in Affiliate Marketing? What makes an affiliate marketing success story? Are there any shortcuts to Affiliate Marketing glory? All these questions float around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big. Many people refer to affiliate marketing as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, but it not always as easy as it sounds. To be a success you need to plan every action and execute it to the best of your ability. You also need to maximize potential earnings by utilizing the correct tools and resources that are necessary to succeed in this business. We have consulted with a few of the most successful affiliate marketers around and below are the top three tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1 - Your Own Website: The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Important Tool #2 - Incentives: The internet is an extremely competitive world. You need to be one-step ahead of your rivals to make sure that you get significant share of your market. Therefore, you must use everything within you power to encourage people to visit your website click through to the websites of the products you are promoting. If you build an opt-in email list you can gather prospects information. Offering a newsletter or better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can give them free software, training videos and other freebies that they will find helpful. This will build trust and when you email them information on new products you are promoting they are much more likely to buy.

Important Tool #3: Link Popularity: Every site needs traffic and with out it you will never succeed. The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. Attracting the right people to your website should be the first step you take. Do everything you can to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to improve your link popularity, you must begin an aggressive link building campaign.

One of the best ways to do this at no cost at all is by submitting articles, with your website's link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.

These are just three of the many tools that you as an affiliate marketer need to use to maximize your earning potential. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies that you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.

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