There are plenty of places where we can learn about an affiliate marketing business, but there aren’t many places where you can find someone to do some of the hardest work for you. Well, I may not have found that elusive source of free labor, but I know that I have unearthed what is probably nearly as good.
I do affiliate marketing, although I also sell my own information products and physical products. My online business is made up of a number of traditional sites and blogs. I rely quite heavily on search engine optimization (SEO) to secure traffic, but that is a long term strategy. In some cases, I have used PPC for affiliate products with success, but more often I am lucky to break even.
So, for me, as for all Internet marketers, traffic is a very challenging part of my business. Especially difficult are those times when I have to pass on a new affiliate opportunity because none of my websites are optimized to bring in targeted traffic for the product, so I face the age old question: How do I send my traffic to the vendor’s site?
My approach to directing traffic to the vendor’s site is just like many other affiliate marketers, I take them first to my own site, where I ply my skills of subtle persuasion. Then I just hope that I have been sufficiently convincing to get them to click the link that directs them to the vendor’s site so that I have some small chance of earning my commission. I would like to make that process a bit less involved and take the prospects to the vendors a little more efficiently.
I use content syndication for all of my sites. While I get some traffic directly from the articles, my primary reason for article marketing is its SEO value, which is considerable. There are two major problems with the traditional approach to article marketing, especially for the affiliate marketer. The first of those problems is that the top tier directories that publish and distribute articles do not allow links within the body of the article, contextual linking. Instead the links stand alone in a section that they call the author’s resource box, but which screams, “Commercial!” to our readers. Second, the major article directories do not allow affiliate links or even links to redirected pages or domains.
Finally, there is an article distribution service that solves those two problems and allows direct linking using our affiliate links which can be placed contextually within the article. It’s called My Article Network–and, yes, once you are a member, you can join its affiliate program.
My Article Network is something of a cooperative that brings site owners (publishers) together with article marketers. (That link will let you know what I have to say about it on one of my sites.)
Since I am writing for affiliate marketers, I’ll cut short the presell message and let sales page of My Article Network speak for itself. I’ve been using it for less than two months, and I am a complete convert to the system. In fact, I even set up four new niche blogs to make use of the free content that my colleagues provide. {(Go ahead. Click the link, you know you want to.)(Do it! You know you want to click the link. Come on…don’t you think I deserve it?}