Affiliates – Stop Paying For Worthless Traffic!
Have you ever walked into a store, bought 100 of something, then walked out with only one or two of them – or paid for 100 gallons of gas but then only pumped 2 or 3 gallons of gas into your tank? Sounds pretty silly, yet thousands of affiliate marketers do the same thing every day when they buy traffic that goes directly to their affiliate links.
Are you guilty of this major affiliate marketing mistake? Do you buy Cost Per Click (CPC) ads, ads on social media sites, solo e-zine ads, banner ads on websites, premium listings in search engines or any other such types of ads, all linked directly to your affiliate links? Let’s take a look at why this is so glaring a mistake, in light of it being so common amongst affiliate marketing methods…
Typical results for online advertising of products goes as follows: you buy 1,000 clicks from a targeted source, and of that thousand visitors you get sales from 1 – 2% of them – maybe 4 – 6% for a great offer or a spectacular result of 10% if the product is unique, timely, priced right and comes with powerful bonuses, right? Sounds both good and profitable – and it often is.
But what about the other 90 – 99% of those clicks you paid for? These people read the offer and rejected it for whatever reason – yet you still paid for them to view the site. Now they’re gone and you’ve derived no benefit whatsoever from the majority of your advertising budget. Sounds a lot like those silly examples above, doesn’t it? But what option do you have when you’re trying to build a profitable affiliate marketing business, especially in the early days of your online business when you don’t yet have a viable opt-in list to build your commissions with?
The solution is not only simple & elegant, but works equally well for super-affiliates and those just looking to start affiliate marketing. Set up your own blog, post about the product or service, and link to the product using your affiliate link – then use your paid advertising to send targeted traffic to your blog post. Suddenly you’re deriving at least SOME benefit from every click you paid for with your hard-earned advertising budget! How?
- The people who would have bought anyway will still buy,
- Effective pre-selling in your blog post can double your conversions, making buyers out of some who wouldn’t otherwise have bought,
- Some may not buy that product, but instead end up buying something else they see in your sidebar ads or in another of your posts,
- Some may subscribe to your e-zine or RSS feed, giving you more chances to put your links in front of them,
- Some may not buy, but find your post or overall blog worthy of mention on their social media pages,
- Those active on social media sites may use easy links on your blog to follow you on Google+, Twitter, Facebook and similar sites, and
- 100% of that traffic has just seen your name, your blog and your writing, branding you worldwide over time!
Easy to see the impact this can have on your affiliate marketing commissions, isn’t it? If you don’t have your own hosting for a blog, get that & unlimited autoresponders in one great package from http://hosting4marketers.com or if you don’t know how to install a blog get a free secure WordPress blog installer here. And by making that one small change in your marketing technique you can potentially invoke and derive profits from all seven of those points and stop paying for worthless traffic – starting today!
Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketers, affiliate commissions, paid traffic, CPC, marketing, social media, ads, targeted traffic

Doug Champigny, The Success Lifestylist, is a world-famous author, speaker and mentor who has been helping corporations, companies, retailers, entrepreneurs and other individuals and organizations to achieve true success for over 30 years so far...
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8 comments
James Reilly - Follow this person as @uklsev on Twitter
on September 3, 2012 at 3:53 PM
Finally Proof that what i keep bashing on about other people are posting about. This is one of the biggest conversations ive been having this last few weeks with my subscribers on skype.
It’s important that even those that don’t buy from you, do give you something for your purchase, and a hit on your site from their ip, well that will do me fine, and if they bookmark, subscribe, like and even BUY then that is excellent.
James
The Captain on September 4, 2012 at 12:43 AM
Good to see you here, James – and thanks for taking time to respond! You’re dead on with this – and it’s compounded when they haven’t set up systems to cover the free targeted traffic first… Hopefully between us we can help more affiliates take these steps and increase their ROI from their paid advertising!
William T. Co - Follow this person as @WilQuote on Twitter
on October 6, 2012 at 12:09 AM
Yeah you have a point there! That way every bit of traffic gets some use, even if not directly to what you’re currently selling.
William T. Co´s last [type] ..In the Wilderness of Faith
Erica Stefanacci on October 27, 2012 at 8:16 PM
Great point and great post. I think so many of us make this mistake starting out. We are so quick to make the sale that we forget how profitable it can be to build a relationship first. Blogs are ideal for this. Thanks for the info!
Richard on November 20, 2012 at 1:16 AM
There’s no real financial incentive to pay for traffic. If you’re buying it via leads on one site, you’re narrowing your field incredibly quickly as you only target the visitors to a particular site. Given that you have to pay for the traffic and then make up the “loss” through selling on your own site, I just can’t see it making financial sense.
Richard´s last [type] ..Upgrading Memory in Macbook Pro 2008 Unibody
Ben on December 6, 2012 at 2:56 PM
I would never want to end up paying for useless traffic! Great point that so many people dont seem to get.
Ben´s last [type] ..Scroll Triggered Boxes – Why Should You Install One and How?
Julie - Follow this person as @createforcash on Twitter
on January 9, 2013 at 2:15 PM
Good advice, Captain. Makes me think about the whole process in a different way. You have to get everything you can out of your hard earned ad money.
Julie´s last [type] ..Set Long Term Goals Instead of New Year’s Resolutions
Sawicka - Follow this person as @SawickaSawicka on Twitter
on January 22, 2013 at 9:05 AM
Yes, I do agree 100% with your point of view. Own a website and review all about the product in our website is great and it could create high conversion rate better than one thin sales page.
thank you for your advice and point of view Captain
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