Seven Ways to Set Yourself Apart From Other Affiliate Marketers

Okay so you've read (fill in the blank with internet guru's name here)'s book and decided that affiliate marketing is the way for you to earn some extra money online. I mean after all, all you have to do is plug in your name and run their ads and collect your commission check and ride off into the sunset, right? Not quite. With so many people promoting the exact same program as you, in the exact same ezines or on the exact same websites, you need some ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack of affiliate marketers. Here are seven ways for you to do this.

1. Host Your Own Website.

I know I sound like a broken record, but it is absolutely essential for you to have your own website. For starters you can have a domain name that is easy to remember. I mean can you remember http://www.areallylongaffiliatemarketersurl.com/?pid=123/r=4(My apologies if that url actually belongs to someone, I just made it up on the spot for an illustration)? I didn't think so.

So if you can't remember it and it's your url, what makes you think your potential customer is going to remember it. Do you know what they are going to do? They are going to just chop off the stuff at the end and type in the main domain name and purchase the product from the main site. However if you have your own url, you could have a url like http://www.yourdomain.com which is much easier to remember and you can just point your visitors to your affiliate page in your website.

2. Write Your Own Ads

Email the owner of your affiliate program and ask if you can write your own ads. Most of the time they will not have a problem with this, but you need to check with them first. A lot of times when I publish my ezine, I have published the same ad two or three times and I wanted to email the advertisers and say if only you had used your own ad. People become immune to ads after a while and if they see the same ads over and over again, they may just skip over it altogether. Your objective is to get people to click on your link and if your wording is different they just might stop and read your ad and be curious enough to click through to your website.

3. Have some products of your own that are only available through your website.

Once you have your website going, it is important to have some products or services that your customers can't find at your affiliate site. You want your customers to keep coming to your site and the best way to do that is to have something on your site that they can't find on the affiliate site.

4. Cultivate your own list.

It's much easier to sell to people that you have already built a relationship with. That's one reason why it is important to build your own list. You may also be able to earn some money from your list in the form of advertising.

5. Buy the product you are marketing.

When you buy the product you are marketing, you can sell it better. You can tell the potential customer what a great experience you had with the product. This will make them interested enough to buy the product. You will also be able to provide support if necessary or write a tutorial on how to use the product that you are marketing.

6. Be totally honest

If you find out that the program you were promoting is a scam, stop promoting it and inform your readers about it. This will help you build credibility with your lists. We all make mistakes and admitting your mistake will boost your readers confidence in you.

7. Don't try to market everything you see.

With services such as clickbank, it is easy to become overwhelmed and try to market everything in the clickbank marketplace. That is not a good idea. It's better to focus on one market and market products that they would want. This is called niche marketing. The last thing you want to do is to bombard your subscribers with pitches for products. That is one surefire way to lose subscribers.

Affiliate marketing is definitely here to stay and it can become a great way to earn extra or even part time income. However, it won't happen overnight. Like everything else in life, you're going to have to put a lot of hard work into it. Good luck to you in your new venture.

DeAnna Spencer is the webmaster for Learn Small Business, a site that teaches how to run a small business for free. Visit today at http://www.learnsmallbusiness.com

In The News:


BBC Sport

ICC to invest $300 million to make cricket a global sport
Hindustan Times, India - 18 hours ago
From 2009, the ICC will pump almost $300 million into our 94 Associate and Affiliate Members that make up the developing cricket world," said ICC's new ...
ICC to invest US$300 million for non-Full Member nations CricInfo.com
ICC to invest US$300 million to develop cricket Economic Times
ICC to spend $300m to uplift game worldwide Khaleej Times
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{Earnings Roundup} {Office Depot shares plunge on report of sales ...
Los Angeles Times, CA - 3 hours ago
They included a natural gas pipeline explosion in western Australia that curtailed supplies to an Australian affiliate and the temporary idling of half the ...

Hurley: YouTube Looking for Affiliate Revenue Streams
NewTeeVee, CA - Jun 26, 2008
... dinner in Palo Alto, but he went onto lay out an argument that there’s also a growing opportunity to make money from direct response affiliate deals. ...

zanox Extends Market Leadership with Impressive Revenue Growth
Business Wire (press release), CA - 22 hours ago
Overall, the Berlin-based provider of affiliate marketing experienced 55 percent company growth, surpassing industry averages of 33.2 percent for the online ...

Sky News

ICC unveil £150m cash boost
Sky News, UK - 23 hours ago
It will help the growth of the game in countries like Turkey, Estonia and Bulgaria, who were the latest to be granted affiliate member status at the Annual ...

June traffic declines at Midwest Air
Bizjournals.com, NC - 20 hours ago
... no longer reports revenue yield or other revenue gauges as it had when it was publicly traded. The acquisition of Midwest by an affiliate controlled by ...

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AdCommunal Inc. Introduces a Revolutionary New Affiliate Network ...
PRunderground (press release), MO - Jul 8, 2008
While most ad networks are set up to take a percentage of an affiliates profits, AdCommunal only takes 20% of the revenue share, up to a maximum of $1000. ...

CNBC

Alcoa Shines, But Not So Brilliantly
Forbes, NY - 12 hours ago
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected earnings per share of 68 cents and revenue of $7.4 billion. In the year-earlier period, the company earned 81 ...
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Appeals court: EchoStar not barred from lease deal
The Associated Press - Jul 7, 2008
... respective affiliate's area, but it no longer has control over distant network programming provided by NPS and does not share in the revenue or profit, ...

Rush Limbaugh to get $38M a year for next 8 years
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