Affiliate Marketing Strategy: Choosing The Right Traffic Tools

Jul 10, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Training, Targeted Traffic Generation

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to make money online, and the usual starting point for most work-at-home online businesses. Since the product, web site, sales copy and often even sample e-mails are already created by the merchant, affiliate marketing success simply involves sending enough targeted traffic through your affiliate link to the merchant’s site.

There are paid options to drive targeted traffic, such as the Pay-Per-Click ads you see in the major search engines, ads on web sites and blogs, and solo ads and sponsor ads in e-zines in the niche. But most people starting out with any work-at-home business need to conserve what little investment capital they have, and as such should focus on the myriad of free methods of generating targeted traffic.

The first concern is to decide which traffic tools are right for each affiliate promotion you’re doing. Look over the salespage and decide whether this product or service is short-lived, like a 7-day sale, or liable to be around a long time, like say a dog training guide. Is it a one-time sale, or can you earn recurring commissions as when promoting a monthly membership site or ongoing service?

If it’s short term, focus on the fast traffic generators like Twitter, your e-zine, your blog and social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg. You want targeted traffic that hits almost instantly, and don’t need to waste time using long-term traffic methods.

If it’s going to be around a while, start by using those same short-term methods to get sales started quickly, then hop over and do some articles, a Squidoo lens and a Google Knol. That gets you the quick traffic from the former, and then keeps some residual targeted traffic going to the page from the latter. If the conversions are good, keep up the short-term til results start to taper off, all the while adding to your long-term efforts. If results aren’t great, let your long-term efforts to date suffice and move on to the next product.

If you’re promoting an affiliate marketing opportunity that pays residual commissions, pull out all stops. Do all of the above, plus record & submit some podcasts, videos and press releases, do either a recorded interview with the site owner or a live teleseminar, use the recording in giveaways, do a few e-zine swaps and maybe even create some viral e-books on the topic to help promote your affiliate links.

In short, there are a lot of ways to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing links for free – just be sure to use the right tools to match the potential returns, start off slow and if you see your affiliate commissions mounting, turn on the afterburners and maximize your return before moving on to your next affiliate marketing opportunity.

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About The Author

Doug Champigny is a well-known Internet marketing mentor, speaker and super-affiliate. For more on affiliate marketing read his Captain Affiliate Affiliate Marketing Training Blog. For more detailed information on 14 ways to drive free targeted traffic to your links, see Doug’s Top Traffic Tips Training.

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Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing strategies, affiliate marketing tips, targeted traffic, building traffic, traffic tactics

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7 comments

Mike Paetzold - Follow this person as @mikepaetzold on Twitter
on July 10, 2009 at 5:37 AM

Great explanation of the different uses of traffic and I agree on things that can create residual income it pays to pull out all the stops.
Mike Paetzold´s last blog ..PLR – Use It For Your Ezine Content

Luca Di Nicola - Follow this person as @rsonline on Twitter
on July 10, 2009 at 7:41 AM

Thanks Doug, your title says it all – Affiliate Marketing Strategies. There are so many ways to get traffic to your affiliate promotion but knowing what works and what to do next is not always clear. You’ve layed out a number of things to do and how to follow up.
Thanks
Luca Di Nicola´s last blog ..How To Use PLR Content To Build a Relationship With Your Readers

Joel Osborne - Follow this person as @JoelOsborne on Twitter
on July 10, 2009 at 3:50 PM

Good advice Doug!

We need to be careful to not put to much time into something at the beginning if we are not sure what the results will be. Like you mentioned, if sales start coming in from a few promotion you’ve done, then ramp it up and do more. But don’t spend hours upfront in case sales aren’t that great.
Joel Osborne´s last blog ..Top Traffic Tips Simulcast

Earl Netwal - Follow this person as @EarlNetwal on Twitter
on July 10, 2009 at 6:05 PM

The appeal of residual income is so strong, I wonder if I shouldn’t spend all my time just promoting such deals and skipping all the rest?
Earl Netwal´s last blog ..Breaking Barriers Starting with Basic HTML

Lonnie Minton - Follow this person as @AffiliateBus on Twitter
on July 10, 2009 at 7:24 PM

Thanks for this discussion on selecting traffic methods. Short term, long term, application, etc. all have a bearing on what to use. You have done a good job of breaking down when to use some of the traffic methods. I had never thought of using different methods for the residual programs. Good tips
Lonnie Minton´s last blog ..5 Places To Find Content For Your Internet Marketing Efforts

Andre Arnett - Follow this person as @learningaffil on Twitter
on July 10, 2009 at 7:25 PM

All very good tips and explanations of ways to get going with affiliate marketing. I had only thought of a few of those so I did learn of a few more great things I can try to drive that traffic to my sites. Thanks.
Andre Arnett´s last blog ..Top Traffic Tips Seminar Price Increase

Alex Sysoef - Follow this person as @thespotter on Twitter
on July 14, 2009 at 9:20 AM

Great tips Doug, I never actually consciously thought about the life of the promotion and actually did something similar to what you describe. Nice to see it clearly categorized.
Alex Sysoef´s last blog ..How To Get Paid Blogging About Your Hobby