Affiliate Marketing - Tools and Techniques to Drive Traffic

Affiliate marketing is ideal to start an internet business working from home and is one of the fastest growing marketing channels on the internet. Affiliate marketing is in my opinion the #1 way to make a living online. But you have to treat it as you would any business as work is required for true success; there is no 'magic formula' or 'tool' that you click and everything effortlessly converts and you make money.

So, what is Affiliate marketing? It is another form of website marketing wherein businesses reward affiliates for each customer (mostly visitors or members to websites) introduced to the company or product website by the affiliate's individual marketing efforts. The general principle to make money is very simple: spend less to achieve an 'action' from a customer than what you get paid as a commission for that completed action. If you succeed, you make money.

There are many different methods to bring your potential customers to your vendors.

Direct Linking: is the method of creating a clickable ad which shows up along search result pages after certain keywords are searched. These ads, when clicked will take the potential customer to the client's website or 'landing page'. These ads come at a 'cost per click' expense which is paid to the search engine company, every time the ad is 'served' or displayed.

Landing Page: is the page which the potential customer is taken to immediately upon clicking an ad. There are multiple types of landing page types that can be used; they can be informational as well as giving a 'call-to-action' to either buy a product or submit some form of information i.e.: zip code, email address, age, ethnicity, or some other personal information the vendor is looking for. These actions result in the affiliate being paid (depending on the vendor requirements).

Squeeze Page / Opt-In: is a type of landing page where a customer is requested to enter in some form of personal information. The vendor is not looking for a sale in the terms of an immediate purchase, only for some information to be submitted. Although this 'opt-in' may be followed by an attempt to sell a product or service, it is generally not the primary goal of this page type to sell a product.

Text and Content Ad: usage is generally placed or 'served' on another website which is of specific interest and related to the ad. These ads can be text-only based and are generally only 3-lines in length or can be graphics-and-text based and more eye-catching. These ads can be served on matching websites to increase the relevance of the ad to the customer viewing the ad. I.e.: placing an advertisement about baby products on a website that already receives traffic naturally on its own baby products or services.

Review Sites: are a page which compares and contrasts different products and services that are common to each other. The webpage content is generally informative and attempts to give a visitor either biased information towards a product which is being promoted (in a means which appears to be unbiased). Remember this page is inherently a means of advertising and is generally attempting to promote a specific product or service.

Ezine Articles: are virtual magazine articles listed on a directory service which categorizes its articles according to the subject of the article.

Affiliate websites can often act as a 3rd party that customers use to seek out knowledge. This puts them in a very strong position when recommending suppliers through an affiliate program. Whether it is funneling leads to a vendor site via a landing page or creating a review site to compare different available offers. For example: Ikea has an offer giving away a free cushion to each person that visits their site and enters their e-mail address. Ikea will pay the affiliate $1 for each e-mail that is entered through the affiliate link. Use of  'organic' or unpaid advertising by creating a specific website, banners, landing pages, email creatives, portal pages, or forward people directly via pay-per-click ads to this offer using keyword driven ads.