I recently got in touch with Andrew, the Affiliate Manager for autoanything.com, a leader in providing auto parts online. I wanted to get his thoughts on a few questions I had concerning the sellers side of affiliate marketing. Provided below are a few questions that were asked.
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Affiliate marketing can be exciting yet time consuming.  At times it can also get tedious and frustrating.  I’ve been marketing online for quite some time and I stepped into affiliate marketing a little over a year ago and have had a decent amount of success with it.  The thing I like most about affiliate marketing; no shipping issues and no returns.

Below is my list of affiliate marketing website tips and ideas.

3)  Become the affiliate of more than 1 single “related” company.  Choice is always good.  With valuable content this will help build your authority.  Using a single Affiliate Company can make your site look like a doorway.

4)  When writing about the topic, don’t ramble on; make sure the information will be useful to your readers.  Make it useful enough to come back to.

5)  Be patient with your link building.  Focus on your content and your website’s unique purpose.

8)  Dedicated Hosting IP will help engines see your time is dedicated to that one site.

9)  Also stretch out the life of your domain.  I prefer to keep my business domain expiration over 4 yrs.  Shows search engines your in it for the long run.

10)  Purchase and upload tracking software.  You may need to add code to the final page of the other website.  Work this out with the affiliate company you provide leads/sales to.     Implementing tracking and/or affiliate software will show your Affiliate Manager that you are serious and usually the Manager will help you get things tracking properly.  If they don’t, another company will.

12)  Earning trust will earn you more conversions.  I mentioned on #6 to register a Business.  If you’re a registered Business for over a year, consider registering with the Better Business Bureau Online.

13)  Continue earning trust by investing in mcafeesecure.com and etrust.org services.  These services will also help protect your site as well as insure privacy to your visitors.  This will also help your site earn credibility with the search engines.

14)  Design comes before marketing.  Make sure you’re set on all logos, site design, etc.  You cannot gain trust by changing your site’s template or logo once a week.  Keep your design changes minimal.  I’ve considered redesigning this site’s layout.  I won’t make a change until I find something I can be satisfied with for the long run.

15)  Use a secondary site for your grey hat techniques.  One grey hat technique I believe can bring some good business is paid reviews.  However the links that come with paid reviews can be seen as paid links which may affect your rank with Google.  Your main site may be the one that feeds your kids.  Don’t gamble with the site that feeds you.

18)  You should already know by now, you must build links as well as trust.  Links from directories, press releases, and related websites will help your rank.  For Directories like DMOZ, the only way to get an affiliate website listed here is by staying within the Strict DMOZ affiliate guidelines.

19)  Make sure the company site you work with are leaders with a competitive offering.  The internet makes it easy to shop around and people will do just that.  If your company has the best prices or the best service, the shopper will probably come back to make a purchase.  Cookie and IP tracking is used to keep tabs on who gets commission for the sale.  Cookies or IPs are usually set to expire in a month or even a few months.  This way if your shopper revisits the company site and not yours, you can still get paid depending on how long it took the shopper to return because of this cookie or IP.

22)  Consider offering a free service related to your affiliate services.

23)  The more times the average user will visit your page, they more likely they will bookmark the site.

24)  If you haven’t already, maybe its time to think “community”.

25)  No affiliate links should be present on the homepage.  For an affiliate website I will generally keep all affiliate links about 3 clicks deep.  Good content should be primary.

 
Check out some more seo tips.
 

The affiliate marketing programs provided by hotels are now getting much attention from the illegal adult entertainment industry.  Prostitutes are now labeling themselves as sexy affiliate marketers.  No longer charging up front for their services, they’ve been found standing outside high end hotels with laptops ready.

There are thousands of businesses looking for a better advertising solution.  Business owners spend anywhere from hundreds to thousands for advertising their products and services to the public.  Although all this money is spent on advertising, there is no guarantee anyone will call them.  Setting up an affiliate program for your company may be the best next step. Continue Reading »

Last Superbowl 2007, Audi and Godaddy each had a commercial spot. According to wikipedia, a 30 second spot during superbowl can run about $2.6 million due to the 90+ million viewers watching. So is it worth it? Maybe if Continue Reading »

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make an extra income online. Before I continue, an affiliate program is a program website developers can enroll in to earn commissions for leads or sales they generate for another company online.

Some of these programs can pay up to $40 for leads and hundreds for sales depending on the product or service your marketing. Loan affiliates can earn thousands monthly, maybe even daily if they get on top of the search engine ranks for some high traffic keywords.
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