Using Your Affiliate Program To Drive Targeted Traffic and Build Opt-In Lists

©2010 Doug Champigny, http://captain-affiliate.com. All Rights Reserved.

When first starting an online work-at-home business, most Internet marketers make two common mistakes with regards to setting up and running their own affiliate program – first, they wait too long to set one up and second, they don’t maximize it’s capability to build targeted traffic and build opt-in lists simultaneously.

So just when should an Internet marketing newbie start their affiliate program? As soon as they put their first product online, whether it be a master resell rights product or one of their own creation. There won’t be a stampede of traffic from affiliates looking to promote your product, but at least you should be able to attract a few and get the affiliate program running.

Using your affiliate program to build opt-in lists is another matter – this takes a bit more work, but also should up your conversion rate noticeably and help those in your affiliate program to make more money from your products.

Normally an affiliate program offers the affiliates banners, buttons, sample e-mail copy, tweets, etc. to promote the products. The latest development in affiliate marketing is to now include funnels that begin with a free gift of considerable value. Upload a free report, e-book, audio, video, etc, and put it behind a squeeze page so people have to opt-in to see it or download it.

That signup puts them into an autoresponder-based e-course that provides more useful information over 10-15 e-mails, along with pitches for the product. Do not use affiliate links in this e-course but just direct links to the salespage, since you don’t want to overwrite the affiliate cookie of the referring affiliate.

This arrangement gives more value to the prospect while giving the merchant more chances to sell the product, and can increase the affiliates’ chances of making the sale and earning more affiliate commissions. And have no doubt – the more money affiliates make from your program, the more ways they’ll find to send more targeted traffic to your sites.

These new affiliate funnels are not hard to set up for each of your products, but it’s easy to see how they’d really turbo-charge your efforts to build targeted traffic and build opt-in lists quickly, since each person who downloads your gift or watches your video is added to your opt-in list right from the start. And getting other to help you build opt-in lists is always a good thing!

About The Author…

Doug Champigny, a.k.a. Captain Affiliate, is a world-famous Internet marketing coach, mentor, speaker and the creator of the PowerStart Marketing 4-week Internet Marketing Crash Course. To learn more about Doug or to book him to speak at your next event, contact him through his blog at http://DougChampigny.com.

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