Affiliate Marketing on the New Internet

The days of posting affiliate links everywhere that lead directly to the sales letter have long since passed. In their place, we have complicated pre-sales tactics, squeeze pages, email lists, cloaking, tracking, advertising, SEO & domain optimization. Where once you could have earned hundreds with nothing more than a link on a forum, you now spend days developing a content-rich website to carefully place your affiliate links – if you even put them on your website at all.

Its easy to see that the game has changed, but what does that mean for you? How do you do affiliate marketing on “the new internet”?

Essentially, there are three steps to effective affiliate marketing: Pre-sell, lead capture, motivate. You have to pre-sell your visitors both on yourself and the affiliate product, capture the lead information to market to them in the future, and motivate them to click on your affiliate link. There are more steps involved, but each one of them can be categorized under one of these three main steps.

How do you pre-sell? Keep in mind, you aren't simply pre-selling the product, you are pre-selling yourself, too. You have to show your visitors why you are credible, why they should listen to you about this product, and why they should buy through your link.

The trick to this is to change the perception of your advertising, and offer real value with it. Instead of “I like this product, buy it through my affiliate link”, try sending out special emails about “great deals” you find. If a hosting company is offering 50% off, email your list right away about the sale. You're offering them information that is valuable to them, in exchange for their click. And because there is no selling involved (you're sharing a great deal you found), they're more receptive to the offer when they reach the page.

You also have to pre-sell the product. Sometimes this could be as simple as a recommendation, like “I use this product and it is the best on the market.” That will work if you have a lot of credibility with your readership. Other times you have to go a bit farther, and promote the actual benefits of the product. But remember, the new internet is all about the soft-sell using content, so don't get carried away with pre-selling the product. Just give your visitors enough to get that “click”.

The lead capture is very important in affiliate marketing. In fact, if you do nothing else in this article, capture your visitor's information. Its easy, it takes only a few minutes to setup, and the rewards can be huge. There are two basic ways to do this, and each have their place.

The way most marketers capture information now is with an opt-in box on a content rich site, sometimes in the form of a popup. It always offers something valuable to potential subscribers, and motivates them to “buy” your offer with their email address.

The other lead capture method popular among affiliate marketers is the squeeze page. In its simplest form, it is just a single web page you direct traffic to and offer something free that relates to the product you are selling. People give up their information, and then are passed along to the sales letter for the product.

You can then market other affiliate products to this list of subscribers, and produce even more profits out of the same number of visitors.

No matter where you place your links, whether it be on a blog, content site, in an email, or even just a forum signature, you have to motivate your prospects to click on that link. Otherwise, you can't possibly make a sale. Offer your prospects a compelling reason to click. A discount works well, a bonus, or even just a recommendation from you. Test different motivators, and find the one that works best in your niche. Test everything you do, and you will always come out ahead.

Affiliate marketing has changed a lot in the past couple of years, and has really become a whole new ball game. Just remember the three steps – pre-sell, capture, & motivate – and you'll do just fine.