Netalot

Now that you have chosen your affiliate program, have set up your supporting web presence and have created your links to sales pages and posted your ads, what next? How do you actually promote your program so that you can start counting your earnings?

Most internet marketers already know that a blog or your own site is a good place to start ones internet business with. This type of online presence gives you the space to write about your niche, accumulate a following or tribe, have guest writers on your topic and in general make yourself known as an expert in your field.

You might wish to put a short eBook together on your topic and tie in your affiliate product or service into the book especially with embedded links. You will want to give this away for free to collect a list of people who are prepared to receive e-mails from you as well as drive traffic via these embedded links to your sales page.

Your blog or site will also provide you with the space you need to place the advertising and banners for the product you hope to sell to your visitors. It will also give you the space to write reviews on the product and explain to readers how best to use the product once they have bought it through your affiliate link.

The next marketing tool to use are forums. Sign up to forums that offer conversation on your topic and that deal with issues related to the product or service you have signed up to sell.

If you are trying to send more potential customers to a dating site, then you might want to join forums dealing with relationship issues. Promote your affiliate link in your signature. Remember to add value to the forum by offering advice and helpful information. Spamming will just give you a bad reputation.

Use social bookmarking sites to help you spread the word about your blog, your niche and the products and services you have signed up for. New articles that you post to your blog can be bookmarked. This can spread interest by opening up your blog to new readers.

Add to this social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to allow you to connect to new readers and fans. The aim here is to write such good content that your friends on these networks will promote your articles and help you spread the word.

A further option would be to create hub pages on sites such as Squidoo. These sites allow you to set up a one page site to promote your niche. Some even provide you with an additional source of revenue in that they place revenue sharing advertising on your page.

There are several further benefits to having such a page on another site. It is easier to set up than if you put up your own blog. It also saves you the hosting and domain name costs if you are considering setting up your own site. Besides this you also benefit from the pagerank that a site such as Squidoo has and you benefit from excellent search placement.

Then there is Pay Per Click advertising. This involves creating campaigns through search engines and promoting the merchant’s website directly through your affiliate link.

As you can see there are a fair number of ways in which you can promote your affiliate business and which will help you to sell products and earn a living.