Beginners Affiliate Marketing Tips
Beginners affiliate marketing can be quite overwhelming. It is clear from the start that you have a huge learning curve before you will see your first commission earned. But what many do not realize is that they are their own worst enemy. By not knowing some vital “affiliate marketing tips” you can lose quite a bit of money right out of the box without even realizing it.
Below you will find some beginners affiliate marketing tips that are often over looked or unknown altogether.
1. Test URL’s – Never assume you have put your URL’s in your ads correctly. I have been advertising affiliate programs for years and still make mistakes with this. Always copy the URL from your ad and paste it in a browser and hit enter to make sure the URL goes to the site you intended for it to.
2. URL’s Capitalized – if you are using a URL and typing it out such as this: YourAffiliateProgram.com instead of this youraffiliateprogram.com then you need to know that some browsers will not parse this correctly from an email ad or even a web page link. I.E. included. As an advertising agent for many customers over 10+ years, I have seen this happen over and over. Don’t risk it. Always use lower case letters.
There is one exception to this and that is if a file name has been named with upper case letters or you have signed up with a username with upper case letters in it. Examples such as: youraffiliateprogram.com/FileName.html, .php, .asp etc. or youraffiliateprogram.com/?YourAffiliateUsername or ID then it must be used just as named and cannot be altered. This warning is pertaining to the main domain name part only.
3. Using Direct Affiliate Links or URL’s – using direct affiliate links in your advertising can mean less click through’s, to your web site, because of a possible block on the link. There are many major ISP’s that keep up with URL’s that have complaints on them. If there are so many complaints then this URL will quickly go on a block list. Then what happens is when you use this straight affiliate URL in your advertising as the advertisers send your ad out, many bounces come back with the warning that this message could not be sent due to a URL in the message being on a blocked list. It is always best to use your own web site to either forward to your affiliate URL or a quality tracking or cloaking system of some type. Again I highly recommend setting this up on your own site as well with something like Covert Affiliate Links or Protrack Manager.
One side note for tracking and/or cloaking software. Avoid having to use a ? in the tracking URL. This is a major problem with many free advertising sites and numerous other reasons I don’t have room to list here. A URL without a ? in it is always better.
4. Cloaking – also be aware that cloaking your URL can keep your affiliate id from being passed to the visitor. Cloaking is different then simply tracking a URL. Cloaking usually sets up a frame set itself making the site it lands on look as if it is from your own web site or the site of the cloaking software. Test any cloaker or tracking system you use before advertising with the URL. Because if your cloaking software or the site your are advertising on is using frames it can prevent your affiliate ID from passing on to the visitors that land on your site.
Check this by clearing your cookies and temporary Internet files, then use a URL frame breaker tester such as you find on many traffic exchanges and safe list sites. While your affiliate site is in the frame, go to the join page and make sure you are the referrer being credited. This will let you know if your cloaking software is doing more harm then good.
A good rule of thumb on the above is not to use the cloaking option on a URL that will be used in any framed environment, such as a traffic exchange or a credit based safe list. Ask any one you are paying to place ads for you, about this, if you are unsure. Any good tracking software will give you the option to cloak or not cloak a URL.
Use these beginners affiliate marketing tips to quickly become a pro affiliate marketer without worries of missing commissions due to you.
Sincerely, Debbie Ducker
Debbie Ducker
http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/beginners-affiliate-marketing-tips-732279.html
6 Comments to “Beginners Affiliate Marketing Tips”
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Just starting out in Affiliate Marketing, can anyone give some beginners advice (not just links?
I have opened an account with ClickBank and I have downloaded the Affiliate Masters Course e-book as well as the SiteSell e-book. I am just looking for some helpful advice on how to get started and some tips on how to be successful with it.
I am not looking for any links on affiliate marketing–I’ve seen just about all of them. But if you have your own website or blog as an affiliate marketer, I would love to take a look at it to see first hand what it looks like.
I know that to be successful with this you have to put in a lot of time–this I have, I do not work or go to school, and I really want to be successful with this.
If anyone considers themself a mentor in this field, I would really appreciate your help!!!! Thanks.
Hi Kell – welcome to the world of affiliate marketing!
I spent many years doing affiliate marketing poorly so I’ll share some of my experiences.
(1.) Be sure you have a PROFESSIONAL looking website. I have a website sitting at http://www.xspirulina.com that I paid someone in Serbia $50 to do. The purpose of the site was to see if the product would sell and at what price. Well, about 50% of the people who got to the first page left. Why? I don’t know for sure but my guess is because it looks like I paid $50 for it.
(2.) Do some research on SEO or pay someone to do it. This is worth GOLD. If no one can find your site then you’re not going to sell any items.
(3.) Have a good understanding of Adwords before diving in. I spent a fortune on Adwords when I first started without much to show for it. Why? Because I had a rosey outlook for things like conversion rates.
(4.) Know that very few people make a fortune at this. If you work hard and long — 5 or 6 hours a week for a full year — you’ll start to see returns. I’m an affiliate with Overstock.com and my website http://www.eHalfOff.com (or the redesign I’m working on at http://www.eHalfOff.com/online-shopping) makes about $0.04 per visitor I bring to my site. I hope to double or triple that with my redesign.
(5.) Know how people are finding you. It took me the better part of a year to achieve a high ranking for the phrase: discount shopping for eHalfOff.com. Most of my customers find me using this phrase. However, in the past 90 days, customers have found my site using over 500 different keywords and phrases. I use this data to help me determine which words and phrases to target next. You never know when you’ll stumble across a word or phrase that works well.
Good luck to you!
References :
Please feel free to email me if you have more questions: http://www.WebstoreSolutions.com (also under construction)
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