Sunday, February 15, 2009

Need to Market Your Product? Affiliate Programs are Key

By Glenn Fraley

Glenn Fraley of GCF Marketing is looking at so many emails daily about people that just know how to set up and affiliate program for your products. So, to try to get some help out there for those seeking it, here is a few good ideas to keep in mine.

At this point, we should all agree that you have to market the products you have to get the sales you need to generate income. So, having an effective strategy for advertising is an absolute must have. So, joining an affiliate program is probably one of the best ways to get there. However, you might now be in business and, for a good reason or another, you've decided that doing the affiliating yourself on your own is the best way to go. Or, you could even just be getting a start at it and developed an independent spirit that tells you to go do it for yourself or just not to do it period. In either case, you are able to begin your own affiliate program marketing your products on the internet. So, we can have an overview of how this can be done.

It would be really hard for you to try to sell maps on a website that had mainly conversations about southern living styles. You need to focus on finding websites that will promote traffic open to viewing your product that you have for sale. So, instead of contacting a website discussing whale tracking when you sell trolling motors, you want to find websites that are about fresh water fishing, or boats and accessories since these will be more suited to give you the traffic of potential buyers of your merchandise. They key concept to grab onto here, is that you must have matching like for like and creating a list of potential affiliate marketers.

Once you have your list, you will need to develop a solid sales letter to send the webmaster of each site. When you do this, be sure to include all of the selling points for your proposal, and information on what commission you are offering for sales generated by them. Proofread the letter carefully, as this is your one chance for a good impression. Send the letters out.

So, either of the following here will work. You just need to decide if you want to handle full responsibility of tracking sales generated with the commission amounts to pay, along with cutting and sending out the checks. Or if you want to enlist the services of an outside third-party affiliate tracker. The outside company will handle all of the tracking and distribution of the commissions for you.

No matter which way you choose, running your own affiliate marketing operation to sell your products will give you the control over where and how the advertisements are placed, and over who will be directing traffic to your site. Be aware, though, that this is more work than having an affiliate program run it for you. But if you know what you want, this is how it's done.

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