There are lots of good sources that can tell you a great deal about how to establish an affiliate marketing business. Unfortunately, it is much harder to find someone to do the actual difficult work for you. Well, I haven’t quite solved that problem for you, but I know that I have unearthed what is probably nearly as good.
I do affiliate marketing, although I also sell my own information products and physical products. My online business is made up of a number of traditional sites and blogs. I rely quite heavily on search engine optimization (SEO) to secure traffic, but that is a long term strategy. For some of my affiliate marketing, I have tried PPC, but rarely have I had success over the long haul.
Consequently, like many in affiliate marketing, increasing traffic at a reasonable cost is one of my most vexing challenges. It is particularly difficult for those times when I discover a new affiliate product but for which none of my sites are well optimized. How do I send my traffic to the vendor’s site?
My approach to directing traffic to the vendor’s site is just like many other affiliate marketers, I take them first to my own site, where I ply my skills of subtle persuasion. Then I just hope that I have been sufficiently convincing to get them to click the link that directs them to the vendor’s site so that I have some small chance of earning my commission. I would like to make that process a bit less involved and take the prospects to the vendors a little more efficiently.
I use content syndication for all of my sites. I employ that strategy primarily for its SEO value but also for the direct visitors that are sent my way. There are two major problems with the traditional approach to article marketing, especially for the affiliate marketer. First, the major article directories don’t allow contextual links within the body of the articles. Typically, the links are isolated below the article itself in a sort of no man’s land called the author’s box or the resource box. Second, the major article directories do not allow affiliate links or even links to redirected pages or domains.
At last there is a content syndication service thall allows both contextual linking and inclusion of direct affiliate links. It’s called My Article Network–and, yes, once you are a member, you can join its affiliate program.
My Article Network is something of a cooperative that brings site owners (publishers) together with article marketers. (The link goes to some specific information about My Article Network on one of my sites.) It’s another of those Callen projects that most of us who hang around online business for any period of time have come to know so well.
Since I am writing to and for the benefit of affiliate marketers, I’ll cut short the presell message and let sales page of My Article Network persuade you on its own. I’ve been using it for less than two months, and I am a complete convert to the system. In fact, I even set up four new niche blogs to make use of the free content that my colleagues provide. (Go ahead. Click the link, you know you want to.)(Do it! You know you want to click the link. Come on…don’t you think I deserve it?
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