About Affiliate Programs

I often get asked the question of what Affiliate Marketing is when I send proposals to potential clients.

In its simplest form, affiliate marketing is commission-based marketing. From the perspective of the seller, it is creating a program to pay commissions to those that market your products and services for you. From the perspective of the marketer, it is marketing a product or service and making a commission for each sale.

There are numerous services out there that manage affiliate marketing programs to ensure everyone involved is treated fairly: Google Affiliate Network, Commission Junction, AvantLink, LinkConnector, etc.

Nearly everyone with a website can benefit from participation in affiliate marketing programs. It is a simple, easy and effective way for websites with great content such as magazine sites and blogs to make money. It is also a great way for small businesses to market their products and services because there is no cost unless sales are made.

Of course, this is just scratching the surface of affiliate marketing. There are strategies and plans. Which company should you sign with? How do you get started? How do you make your efforts most effective? Is it right for your business or website?

Why Your Site Needs a Blog

It may seem like every website now has a blog. If you are wondering why, well, the answer is simple. Blogs are one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase a site’s search engine appeal, and people want expert websites, not just the facts.

While no one knows the exact algorithm used by search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo to rank websites and pages, we do know some of the key components in ranking well.

  • Keywords. How often are the words your audience is looking for appearing on your site and pages? Are they included in the meta tags?
  • Links. Do you have appropriate links to other sites? Are other sites in your industry linking to your site?
  • Fresh Content. Are you adding fresh content to your site regularly? Did you put up your site with valuable information and then forget about it?

Unless your site has all three of these components and each one done well, the site isn’t ranking as well with a search engine as it could.

The easiest, fastest, and most effective way of boosting your ranking is to add a blog to your site and USE it. By creating quality posts with appropriate links, keywords, and meta tags, you can start increasing your search engine rank and in turn site traffic pretty quickly. With a posting plan and schedule, you can compete with other sites and increase your site traffic.

And bear in mind that when you start using ads to promote your business or products, that you can better show your ads when the competition’s ads are NOT showing.  Read more about it here.