Over the course of these articles, you’ve started to learn more about what affiliate marketing is and what it can do for you. You’ve also learned about finding affiliates, creating offers, and the importance of utilizing software to manage the process, as well as why it is important to create great looking landing pages for your affiliates. Now, we will look at the websites of the affiliates as well as what they are doing to send traffic and visitors to your site, where you can convert them into customers.

The Affiliate Website

Smart affiliates have targeted, niche websites, and that is exactly what you need for your company. You want to have affiliates that understand the product or service that you are offering, and you want to make sure that your affiliates are able to generate the right type of traffic. When they have content on their site that is high quality, focused on your audience and your types of products, you will have a much better chance of converting than if you were to choose just anyone to become an affiliate for your company.

A quality affiliate will have good blog posts and content on the site, and will be able to provide material that their visitors love and trust. That trust will lead them to try out the products that you are offering too. They generate sites that have a lot of content and even interactivity, as this is what keeps visitors returning repeatedly.

The affiliates that you choose need to know and cater to the target audience. They want to promote your service or product, but only if they believe in it. You will want to make sure that they have access to your product so that they will be able to fall in love with it and promote it to their visitors with confidence.

While the content of the website is important, you will find that most of the best affiliate sites also excel in other areas. For example, they will have quality navigation, good designs that don’t overpower the rest of the content, and an easy way to contact them. These are good design principles for all websites, not just affiliate sites!

When you are choosing affiliates, you may want to look at their sites and see what they have to offer before accepting them. Make sure that their site is able to offer all of the above and more.

Putting Your Affiliates to Work

Now that you have the tools you need to understand more about affiliate marketing and how you can choose the best affiliates for your products and services, you are in a position to get started.

While there are quite a few moving parts to affiliate marketing, it doesn’t take long to learn the basics, and your company is going to benefit greatly. When you consider the low cost of starting this type of marketing plan, and all of the advantages that it offers when you have top-notch affiliates and great products, you can see that there really is nothing to lose. Get started today and watch your sales start to take off!

Your affiliate needs to have your tracking URL to use when they are sending visitors and customers to your site. The URL tracks and reports which of the affiliates sent traffic to you and this is how you will be able to break down the reporting and paying of the various affiliates. It’s important to make sure that you understand a bit more about the tracking URL, what it is, and how it works. Unique URLs will have several parts, and some of them can be more complex than others are.

What Are Some of the Things in Tracking URLs for Affiliate Marketing?

As mentioned earlier, tracking URLs can have a number of different parts. Each of these URLs will be unique to the affiliate that is using it. This is so that particular affiliate will be able to receive the compensation that they are supposed to, based on the number of conversions for which they are responsible. The URL will have a unique affiliate ID that your software will be able to create. This will allow you to do more than just pay the correct affiliate though. It will also be able to simplify the process of making reports and seeing how each of your affiliates is doing.

In addition, the URL will have other sections as well, and it can become quite long and complex. Some of the other parts of the tracking URL include affiliate source IDs to determine the source of traffic, affiliate sub IDs, offer IDs, and transaction IDs. You may also have country or region specific information in the URL. It is possible for these to become unwieldy if you were to try to remember them. Fortunately, the software that you can use will not only generate the URLs that you need, but it will also offer multiple options when it comes to tracking them. Your company along with your affiliates will appreciate this.

Managing the Links

While you want to make sure that your affiliates have access to the full URLs that they are going to need, you should also make sure to let your affiliates know that having shortened versions of the URLs, through TinyURL or one of the other converters, can work as well. It provides a smaller, more manageable URL for them to link to on their own sites, and it will still contain all of the tracking information that you have in the longer URL. Some software for affiliate marketing can help with shortening links as well.

Once you start working with an affiliate network and affiliate marketing software, you will see that you have even more options when it comes to your links and many other areas of the business, as well.

As with all of the other aspects of affiliate marketing, you will find that this is far easier to understand once you start to put it into practice. With the right affiliate marketing software and by ensuring that you have some good offers, you will see just how easy it can be. In the next section, we will talk a little bit more about your affiliates as well as what they are doing with their sites.

Having learned more about affiliate marketing, making your landing pages more attractive to visitors, and some of the things that your affiliate marketers are going to need, you can now take some time to learn more about what an affiliate offer is and what it entails. Once you understand this, you will be ready to have marketers join your team and start helping to sell your products.

Your offer, that is, the thing that you are selling, will be promoted through a URL. The URL will direct the visitors to your landing page. You could for example, provide an offer that gives your affiliates 15% commission on sales through the link that they have on their site. For example, if you are selling pet supplies, you can create an offer that will give the affiliate a certain percentage or a flat fee from the sales. We’ve gone over some of the other types of payouts that you can provide in an earlier section in the course. It can be helpful to reread that section to see what some of your options are when it comes to payouts.

How to Create an Offer for Affiliates

When you are setting up an offer, you will want to make sure that you have all the details in place so your prospective affiliates will know what it is that they are signing up to promote. You need to have a name that conveys what it is that you are selling, and you want it to be something that is easy to remember. In addition, you will need to have a short description of your offer. Because this description is going to be for your affiliates, it is a good idea to make sure that you lay out what the affiliates have to get visitors to do (sign up, make a purchase, etc.) in order to receive compensation.

Make sure your affiliates have access to your landing page as well. You want to provide them with the option of looking over your site to make sure that it is something that they feel comfortable sending their visitors to. In addition, when you are setting up your offer, make sure that your affiliates know what type of tracking software you are using to keep track of the conversions. They need to know that you are using high quality software so that they will be able to rest easy knowing that they are going to get paid.

Make sure that you put your offer in the right categories on the affiliate network sites as well. By ensuring that you are in the right category or categories, you will find that you have a higher quality of applicants to become your affiliates.

Your Creative Pieces for Affiliates

When you have affiliates working with you, it’s a good idea to provide them with quality banners, images, text links, and more that they will be able to use. Make it as easy as possible for your affiliates to put these on their pages.

The affiliates will be able to promote your products once you approve them. They will be able to log into your site with the affiliate marketing software that you are using, and that will provide them with the links, banners, and everything else they need to start. In the next section, we will discuss the tracking URL further.

In the last article in the course, we discussed some of the things that you can do with your landing page to help your affiliates. In this section, we will learn more about what affiliates do and why they are so important to your business. By learning more about affiliates and what they do in order to get customers to your site and help make sales, you will find that you will both be able to benefit.

What Does the Affiliate Need?

Your affiliates want to help sell your products and services, but they also want to have a product in which they can believe. They are trying to cultivate their own relationships with the people who visit their site and then go on to your company’s site. If they have a high quality product, they will be able to promote with confidence. Choosing the right affiliates who have experience in the type of niche you are in, and who have the ability to market for you, is going to be beneficial to all.

What Makes the Affiliates Happy?

When you’re working with affiliates, you will want to make sure that you have a good package to present, as mentioned in the previous chapter. You want to inspire confidence. A good landing page on your end and a good payout for their service can go a long way in developing a good relationship with your affiliates. You must be able to convert the visitors into customers and sales once they arrive at your site through your affiliates. You can return to Part 4 to learn more about some of the things that you can do to make that happen.

You must also want to have high quality tracking software if you hope to keep your affiliates. The software that you use to track the clicks and sales is very important to the affiliates because that is what will make sure they receive the right pay for their work. Choosing high quality software that is going to be easy to use is always something that your company has to consider when starting in affiliate marketing.

Your Affiliates Help Find the Right Customers

In most cases, affiliates are going to have specialties, and you will want to work with those who specialize in your niche. This will increase the amount of quality, targeted traffic that the affiliates have coming into their sites, and you will have a higher click-thru rate because those visitors will already be interested in the type of product that you are selling.

For example, if you are selling an information product on specialty gardening, such as roses, an affiliate that has a gardening blog, or a site dedicated specifically to roses, would be a good match. Visitors to that site will already have a predisposition toward buying such a product. The same is true of just about every different type of niche out there.

You always want to take good care of your affiliates because they will take good care of your company by sending along great customers.

Choose Your Affiliates Wisely

You always have the option of being choosy when it comes to picking your affiliates. They will apply to your site, and then you can choose the best of the bunch and choose only those who you believe will be a good fit for the type of product or service you have to offer.

What is Pinterest?

Social media is the fastest growing medium of sharing, and Pinterest offers this service to the public. Pinterest is a global sharing website that acts as a pin-board for its members. Typically, the idea of the website is to be a network where people can give updates on a bulletin board they consider as their own. The wild growth of the website has been expanding since 2010, and it has allowed people to express their ideas. Statistics show that for 2012, there has been a registration of visitors to as high as 7 million. As a social media network, it has certainly been considered as a wildcard. Pinterest started way back in 2009, and by March of the following year, they have shifted to an advanced beta system. Collaborating with other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook has made the website even more popular as the applications can easily be integrated to such websites, as well. Furthermore, apps for mobile gadgets such as iPhone and iPad are currently being constructed to give members a larger base to use the network.

The Effect that Pinterest has for Online Marketing

Technically, when one speaks of what Pinterest can offer the online marketer then one must consider what online marketing is doing to this strategy. As a matter of fact, online marketing is preferred over traditional marketing techniques because of the way it attacks the market it is intended for. Conventional advertising is often quite costly, and for many, they are offering their ads to all the viewers rather a specific market. In reality, the market base of the companies is clearly shown already on the websites. Hence, instead of sending the adverts to an entire market, they could send it to those consumers who may potentially become their client. For this reason, Pinterest can provide the online business a market where they can send their ads to. Plus, just like any online marketing tactic, this is a cheaper and faster way to reach millions of users worldwide.

Social Media Marketing and Pinterest

Twitter and Facebook are two of the most popular networks, and with the emergence of Pinterest as a top contender for the market, social media marketing is fast becoming a hot and well-liked trend in the World Wide Web. Social networking generally offers an avenue where people can post their ideas and their hobbies. For this reason, it has become easier for companies to look into their target market. Typically, the effects of the social network on marketing have also given way for a more visual adaptation. Pinterest has the concept that pictures are generally these windows to the art and creativity of the person. By having these images placed on a more appealing pattern, it could draw in the prospective consumers. The concept of using photos to market a product is a debated issue, but for Pinterest, it has so far worked for their members. Nevertheless, there are loyal users who state the website composes of two important elements for social media marketing, and that is the use of visual aids, and the statements of who they are. Ideally, the major objective of any online business is their ability to drive in web traffic. Social networks have definitely increased the number of visitors of many online organizations. However, it must be remembered that Pinterest is a visual presentation of the company’s products and services. Thus, it means those business enterprises whose products are not physically seen will have a harder time drawing in the market.

How Does Pinterest Help Different Industries

Registered members of Pinterest have drawn different conclusions as to how the website has helped them in the social networking market. As business on various industries, they can easily set up their profile boards where they can display their works of art. Essentially, as a visual display, most visitors will be more likely drawn to visiting, buying, or using the product, service, or attraction. Here are some popular industries and how they can garner the customer base from Pinterest.
Interior Decorating – Getting ideas for home decoration is quite hard to imagine. With the help of the website, one gets a visual aid that is perhaps critical to the success of the business. Photographs and images of the home decorator can easily be pinned on the bulletin board. Thus, it means there is the possibility that one could potentially get their own ideas from the pin-board. Typically, the industry will get more customers by offering more ideas found on their main website.
Restaurant and Culinary Industry – Menu and dinner inspirations can easily be posted on the board as well. Social networking means giving the user the benefit of a market where they can showcase their arts. Being a chef is one of them, and being a member to Pinterest will mean the ease of posting the recipe and the image of the finished dish. In fact, the business of restaurateurs is mainly for the physical description of the dish rather than a worded content about its ingredients. Capturing the attention of the consumer with savory and delectable images is more than enough to turn them to loyal clients.

Travel industries – travelers will want a physical description of the very place they want to visit. With the presence of the pinned images, one can visually see the destination before they get there. Plus, it would also be a great way to plan ahead the trip. An actual itinerary based on the places and attractions that have captured the viewer’s attention. Again, this is an industry noted to place a higher value in the physical assets of the location rather than the history behind it.
Retail industry – the fashion industry is perhaps the most notable market where the Pinterest website has gained popularity. Women, in particular, want the opportunity to actually view the product before buying it. Fashionable items with small captions are the best way to gather enough attention and draw in a huge crowd to the main website.
Real estate market – selling a house will mean taking the time to see the assets it offers. Realtors will usually have this image of how they want to portray a real property, and Pinterest has given this opportunity to the market. As an advertising style, most brokers will display breathtaking images of the house to initiate the interest of the buyer. Eventually, they can use the platform as a way to get in touch with these interested customers.

The More Visual Features Pinterest Offers for Marketing

Pinterest has lately showcased a strong of improvements for their profile pages. This is to increase the interest of the public to the use of their services. One of the major changes they have made is near the profile page section. This is noted as the re-pin from portion, which indicates the frequent re-pins that one has. For ordinary people, and for business organizations, they can use the tag as a way to gain more followers or perhaps to get new friends. Businesses will have major use for this additional feature in the profile as they can hook with new potential clients. Navigation of the profile information is another improved adjustment for users. By placing the followers and the “followed” pins on a single bar, the user can easily track his most frequently visited profiles. Initially, this is a feature that permits the user to look into the core information of the member. Companies that use Pinterest can have better management of their followers and any new sign-ups to their main profile. Gathering information on a single bar will alert the business for any potential changes they could use to their advantage. An Activity button has also been recently added by Pinterest on the profile page. This allows one to see streaming movements of their followers. It can help view the things that some friends have been doing. Typically, it also displays the amount and frequency of pins and comments these friends are doing online through the website. Online companies using the website as a marketing tactic can define the interests of their followers as quickly as they post or pin an image. Furthermore, it can allow one to track the activities he has also been doing.

Effective Ways to Use Pinterest for Marketing

A first thing to consider in using the website for effective marketing is to place the “Pin It” button on the image of the main product or service. This is a great way for one to widen their reach on their market as the images of the products and service they offer will be more visible. Links on online selling retailers with the button will ensure that visitors will become customers. Plus, it is a great way to increase the possible effects of affiliate marketing easily because it increases social awareness to the brand. Followers on Pinterest can also post the said image on their bulletin boards for faster and quicker access to the product seller. As a marketing expert, Pinterest can actually help a simple product become more interactive. By using the photos one has of the product, they can truthfully arouse interest to the company by making things more mysterious. Ideally, the main thing to look into is to use the website to increase the physical description of the product. Online contests are also considered as great ways to gather attention. If one is selling or marketing a product, it would be a pronounced idea to use Pinterest as a way to capture more customers with the promotion. It would be wise to consider using the images on the website as the material to spread the name of the company. The more the images are spread online will mean the higher the potential of increasing sales and profits for the company.

Best Pintrest Infograph – We have researched and found the best pinterest infograph is below. For easier reading, click the image.

Infograph designed by Column Five Media and published by Intuit

Best Pintrest Videos

Some of the best pinterest videos are below.

Best Books on Pintrest

One of the best books on Pinterest is The Ultimate Guide To Marketing Your Business With Pinterest (Social Media for Profit) by Gabriela Taylor

We feel that affiliate marketing is one of the best marketing tools you can have in your marketing arsenal to grow your business, however, content marketing is another great tool that should be explored. Delivering pertinent information and data is seen as an advantage for many businesses online. For that matter, the use of content has evolved as a way to gather and engage users to patronize and use a particular service or product. Hence, content marketing is developed as a method to capture the attention of the audience without necessarily having any words to encourage a purchase. Technically, the term is defined as the method by which relevant and useful content is created and distributed as a tactic to capture the attention of a targeted audience.

Usefulness of the data is the main organizational thought behind the campaign, and to remove it would often mean informational trash that is worthless to the reader. Marketing without content is even more useless for the public. Ideally, the way words will be delivered to the reader will be in many forms. Blogs, articles, web content, and podcasts are only some of the most common mediums for such transference of data. Words come with the highest amount of persuasive power in the market, and it will be the tool that will captivate the attention of the online user.

The Flaws of Traditional Marketing

Traditional or conventional marketing strategies have the same objective as that of content marketing. Technically, the drive is to ensure the retention of current customers and to draw in new ones to the product or service being offered. Awareness and visibility seems to be two of the foremost reasons for the use of such techniques. Television, radio, and print ads would be the three common mediums for such a method of advertising. However, there are some flaws the marketing experts have seen with the campaign.

Perhaps the most seen flaw in the technique of traditional marketing is the fact there is no targeted audience. Typically, anybody and anyone can view the ads without any specific market. Concept wise, the purpose of the ads for conventional marketing is to place a higher value to product. This is quite disadvantageous as most customers want to be valued by the company and manufacturers.

Timing would be a flaw that is found on most conventional print and television ads. Usually, this is the element where a company would have continuous ad placements on TV and in print when the offer is already expended. The problem with traditional ads is one cannot simply stop the ads as they are paid in full by the company.

The costs of the traditional marketing are also quite expensive. For example, television networks have higher price ranges for a spot on the TV shows. The price range would usually vary according to the time where the ads will be placed. For new and start-up companies, this flaw would often mean higher capital for marketing strategies.

Examples of Content Marketing

There are several forms of content marketing, and each will present its own features for the user. Here are some of the most commonly used techniques and formats for the strategy.

Blogs – these are types of websites were a person can potentially place his personal opinions about a product or service. This is a great method for companies to showcase their expert opinions on the product or service. Regular updates to the blog must be maintained at all times as the payoffs can be quite big.

Newsletters – these are versatile types of marketing tactics as they can be in the traditional form or on the web-based digital formats. Online newsletters will serve as the best way to keep the public informed of the new highs of the product or service being offered.

Web Content – this form of content marketing is the initial phase in the strategy. Typically, content is placed in the main website as a way to captivate the attention of the user. These types of content are usually the most informative as they place the features and product data on a space meant for it. Hence, consumers get instant access to the website as quickly as possible.

White Papers – perhaps a formal type of content marketing, the white papers are seen as reports with a persuasive approach to its voice. However, a major disadvantage of this method is that it is quite long, and often, the details inside may get useless over time.

Why Use Content Marketing

Internet marketing, and in particular, content marketing offers the distinct advantage of a targeted audience they can cater to. Most of the online ads are placed on specific websites where interested users are bound to click on the link, and eventually may buy the stated product or service offered. By catering to the audience the product is meant to, it will have a higher chance of being bought.

Content marketing tries to place a focus on the interests of the public rather than placing the product or service on a higher note. Usually, the ads will portray in a more specific way how the consumer can benefit from using or taking such product or service.

Online and content ads are immediate and real-time, which means one gets to inform their audience of the halt to the promotion. Considering that the World Wide Web is global and has a 24-hour timetable, it means people have this opportunity to get the latest details on the products. Websites for content marketing are generally free as anyone can build up a web page from scratch. On the other hand, for those companies that want the aid of expert marketers, the charges will definitely be cheaper than the conventional marketing schemes.

As a whole, the strategic platform offered by content marketing nowadays has a global reach. Hence, if one intends to reach millions of targeted buyers, it would be wise to use this medium as it encompasses a vast audience in a worldwide market.

Strategies for Content Marketing

Successful content marketing tactics will be those that use a hub that is flexible and mobile. The latter being the ability of the company to update the medium anywhere and anytime. With the necessary hub, the business organization can be on its way to develop a regular and frequent capability to connect with the public. Blogs and websites would best suffice as a platform where information could be displayed and used by the online market.

A second strategy for a successful campaign is to have an authentic and real content method. For example, a business that focuses on music and entertainment would best garner the attention of the market by presenting their content with videos or music blogs. The idea is to showcase to the audience the personality of the company.

Ideally, an evergreen content is essential for the success of the business. The idea behind the foundation of the content is that it must be timeless. Longevity is what this marketing tactic is all about. Content crafted in such a way will mean it is useful for the future prospects on intends to capture.

Headlines would also form an important part of the campaign. Magnetic titles are the best way to engage the online user to read the content. Reality states there are volumes of information online, and the presence of a great title is one that will get the online user to read the entire article from start to bottom.

Typically, content that is enticing means that it will be a solution to the problems of the audience it is targeting. This is the best way to draw readers to patronize the product and the company. As much as possible, it would be wise to indicate in the article the different benefits one would gain from the use of the product. As a marketing tactic, positive thoughts and reviews would help, but it is essential that a sales pitch must be avoided.

Resources for Content Marketing

CMI or the Content Marketing Institute – brought upon by the needs of the online public to access information and strategy about content marketing, CMI is a tool that guides aspiring businesses in their goal for visibility. CMI also opens up as a ground where the brightest minds in the industry will gather and give their own insights to their success. For more details, their website, http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com, would be more than sufficient to give information. Content Marketing World is also hosted by the company. This is the annual gathering of the world’s famous and topmost online marketers.

Content Marketing Today – this company provides business organizations over 25 years of experience in the field of marketing. It offers a driven mission to be able to bring their clients as a brand that will meet their demands. The website, http://contentmarketingtoday.com, offers the latest news and updates to the content strategy. Ideally, the website offers a range of different ideas about the perfect content marketing tactic for the formats of blogging, eBooks, Videos, e-Newsletters, and Websites.

Content Converts – three basic services are offered by the company to business enterprises that want to grow a following online. First, they will give the simple steps on how to give the most compelling content that captures the attention of the online user. Second, they will provide ideas on the design of the website that retains online visitors and makes them read the content. Lastly, the company intends to give a definite explanation that will tie in both content and design in one shot. Eventually, Content Converts will ensure that a profitable business is achieved by the online marketer. For information regarding the techniques that increases web traffic, their website http://www.contentconverts.com will give the latest on these strategies.

Idea Launch – as a content marketing website, the company has moved to promote the forward-looking technique of online advertising. Founded by Byron White, the business has expanded to being one of the most trusted when it comes to content management for the websites and the campaign. The most basic service offered by the company is this Writer Access that gives business organizations the privilege of an expert professional author that will do the hard work. The website of the company is http://www.idealaunch.com.

Content Marketing Infograph – We have researched and found the best content marketing infograph is below.

Infograph Source

Best Content Marketing Video – Some of the best content marketing videos are below.

Gary Vaynerchuk explains why content is King. Learn from one of the leading experts in social media more about what is content marketing.

This video explain what is content marketing and is a good supplement to this guide so that you gain more of an understanding about content marketing.

Best Content Marketing Blogs

CopyBlogger – This is an excellent resource for learning how to write great copy.
Link: http://www.copyblogger.com

Influentail Marketing – This is a great blog that focuses on sharing ideas about marketing and PR
Link: http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/socialmediabio/

Web Strategist – This blog you can help you learn strategies to improve your content marketing
Link: http://www.web-strategist.com

Content Marketing Books

One of the best books on content marketing is Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business by C. C Chapman and Ann Handley

NOTE: It is available in audio book format.

Best Content Marketing Ebook – The best content Marketing Ebook we have found is from Hubspot.com and it is called: 100 Inbound Marketing Content Ideas
Download this eBook from here.

Now that you know the options that you have with the various types of offers, including lead generation offers and product offers, you will want to learn a bit more about what you can do for your affiliates in terms of making your landing pages friendly and more conducive to nailing those sales. Here are a few of the things that you will want to consider when you are trying to make things even easier for your affiliates.

Creating a Great Landing Page

Your affiliates are going to be sending customers from their pages to yours, and you have to make sure that you have a good landing page if you want those visits to translate to sales. You have to consider the look of the landing page for starters. It’s important to have a professional looking site with high quality graphics. If you are selling products, you certainly want to have nice quality photos, as well as information on the product specs or a well-written description.

Make sure that you have a call to action button and shopping carts that are easy for the visitors to use. The customers are not going to want to go through to many series of pages just to order your product. By streamlining and making things simpler for your customers, you will find that it translates to more sales. Your company and your affiliates will certainly appreciate this.

It is also important to have quality content on your landing page, and that includes the headlines that you use to draw those visitors into becoming customers. Something that you have to remember with your landing page is that it is going to be a work in progress. Things that may work for some companies might not work for all of you. You will be able to keep tweaking your page to optimize it.

A Few More Tips to Help Your Affiliates

Your affiliates want their visitors to trust them, and that means that you have to offer a quality product. You can offer some type of guarantee with your product or service, which will help to foster that trust on those who visit your affiliates’ pages. Add some testimonials from pleased customers to your page, and offer customers the ability to return the item or to cancel a membership without hassle. You will find that this is going to increase customer trust, and they will be far more willing to try your service or product. Affiliates will appreciate this because they will have a higher chance of earning once the visitors leave their sites and head to your landing page.

Another idea that you might want to try in order to build up business for your affiliates is to have the occasional special or limited time promotion. Visitors to the affiliate site will feel more of an urgency to click through and buy the product when they are able to get it at a better price or when it comes with something extra. Promotions that are time sensitive are always a good option.

The idea behind affiliate marketing is enlisting the help of other web users to promote and market your product for you; in exchange these web users (affiliates) will get a commission for all their efforts. By itself, affiliate marketing is a powerful tool, however, add social media to the equation and the result is a super affiliate program that doubles your revenue and increases sales in no time.

The Power of Social Media

The social connections created by social media has opened a new way for you to communicate with your current loyal customers and also get new customers who have never heard of you. With this in mind, Omnistar Affiliate Software has now launched an easy way for your affiliates to share their affiliate links in social media platforms like facebook and twitter. All you need to do is create the share message something like “get this awesome product”. Now, when your affiliates choose to tweet or share this message in their twitter or facebook, their affiliate link will show up and all their friends and followers will now know about your really awesome product. Easy, right?

To get more information about how your business can grow using social media go to the GYB (grow your business) section of our site where you can watch How To Videos and Learn More secrets on how you can grow your business.

Understanding affiliate marketing is quite easy. Now that you know the basics of what constitutes this type of marketing through the previous sections of this course, we can now explore more about what options you have when it comes to affiliate offers. You will find a couple of basic categories, and most companies will fall into one of those. We will discuss each type so that you can see which one is going to fit your needs the best.

Product and Service Marketing Offers

As you can probably guess from the name, this type of offer is used to send customers to ecommerce sites where they will be able to buy your products or sign up and pay for any type of service that your company might be offering. In this type of offer, the customer is going to be paying for a product or service. Your customers will also be able to get more information about what you are offering through the affiliates. This is the classic type of offer that many people think of when they think of affiliate marketing, but it isn’t the only one.

Lead Generation Marketing Offers

With this type of offer, your affiliates are gathering leads for you. They will use things such as newsletters, email sign ups, or even surveys to help gather those leads that your company will then be able to use to help generate sales. One of the other ways that some companies are gathering this information is by offering free e-books that their affiliates will be able to offer to visitors. By signing up for the e-book, the affiliates gather that information and funnel it on to your sales team.

Pay for Your Affiliates

If you want to have a great affiliate program, you are certainly going to need to know how you are going to pay your affiliates, and you want to offer them a fair amount. You will find that when you are able to offer competitive pay for their services, you will start to attract better affiliates that will be able to help you grow. The best way to determine the price that you are going to be paying for your affiliates is to look at similar programs through the affiliate networks to see what the market price currently is.

Of course, when you are determining how much you are going to be paying your affiliates, you are also going to want to make sure that you are still going to be profitable. Determining your profit shouldn’t be difficult. For example, if you are selling a product for $20, and it costs 10% of that, or $2 to make the product, you will want to make sure that you are giving your affiliates enough to keep them happy and so that you will still be making a high enough profit on your products.

You also have to determine what constitutes a payment. For example, cost per conversion, or CPA, means that you will pay a flat fee per product sold. Cost per sale, or CPS, means that you will provide your affiliate with a percentage of the total sale. You can also choose hybrids, such as a CPA plus CPS, so they receive both. Cost per click, or CPC is a payment that you give to affiliates for each click that comes to your site through their efforts. A similar option is cost per thousand impressions, or CPM, which pays your affiliates for every thousand impressions they have.

Now that you have seen what some of the benefits of affiliate marketing are for your company, you need to understand all of the different pieces that must go together in order for your affiliate marketing to work. If you already have your product ready to sell on the web, along with a high quality website and shopping cart, the only other thing that you are going to need is good tracking software for your affiliate program. The software will help you to manage the program far more easily than you could do on your own. Once you have those pieces in place, you will need to make sure that you know about the different components that make up affiliate marketing.
 

The Moving Parts of Affiliate Marketing

You are the Advertiser, the company that is selling a product or service that needs to have better visibility and higher sales. The Visitors are, naturally, those who are going to be the ones to whom you are trying to sell your products or whom you want to sign up for your services or read your site. You probably know these visitors by another name as well: Customers. In affiliate marketing, you also have the Affiliates. The affiliates are the ones that have websites that target the type of visitors and customers that you want to have, and through their sites, they help to funnel those visitors to your site. For their services, they receive part of the revenue that they send to you, the advertiser.

You also have to consider the Affiliate Network. The networks are the ones who are going to connect your company with the affiliates. You can think of them as the middlemen. They are the ones who are going to find affiliates who want to advertise your products or services. They offer a great service since it means that your company isn’t going to have to spend time and resources just trying to find suitable affiliates who will be able to advertise your products and services for you.
 

The Nuts and Bolts of Affiliate Marketing

When you start your affiliate marketing program on your site, you will have to use tracking software that will let you manage all of the moving parts. You will have a tracking URL that your affiliates are going to use on their own sites. The link will have an ID number for each affiliate that is working with you, and they will lead right to your products. When a visitor purchases a product or service, or goes to your site, the software tracking system will be able to keep tabs on the affiliate responsible for the sale so that you can make sure that he or she receives compensation. As you can imagine, trying to do this without specialized software would be all but impossible.

Now that you know a bit more about how the software works, and the different pieces that make up your affiliate marketing, you can head on to the next part in the course.