With all of the advice that I will share with you on affiliate marketing, you should probably consider this piece of advice to be the most important: Make your website successful first, and then set up your affiliate program. Here’s why: Some people set up their website at the same time they set up their affiliate programs. As a result, they use affiliates and the guinea pigs for their business. And if the website that was created doesn’t convert, then you have wasted your affiliate’s time and money, making them never want to do business with your company in the future. But if you can make your website successful, and then you can tell your affiliates that X percentage of your website visitors turn into buyers, then this can be a really appealing motive for people to join your affiliate program.

So here is how to do things the right way for tons of free traffic: First of all, keep in mind that some of your affiliates may end up using pay-per-click advertising in order to drive traffic to your website. Let’s pretend that an affiliate on average will spend $20 in pay-per-click advertising for every 100 visitors they send to your website. This means that most of your affiliates will be happy with a $30 return for each $20 that they invested. Now, if your profit per visitor to your website is 40 cents, then you would be making about $40 profit for every 100 visitors to your website. This means that 75% of your profit would need to go to pay for your affiliates. If it is hard for you to tweak your online business so that your affiliates can make these types of returns, then you will want to improve your business before setting up an affiliate program.

When becoming an affiliate marketer, there is really no reason why you should lose money or see very small returns on your investments, because as an affiliate, you have a power that the creators of a product do not have.  What is this special ability?  Well, as an affiliate it is my belief that you have greater power to convince someone to buy my product than I do, so if you know how to use this power correctly, then you can do a majority of your affiliate marketing without spending any money in advertising.  You see, even though I own my own products, I am also an affiliate marketer, and that is basically because it is a smart thing to do.  When I do my own affiliate marketing, I don’t spend money on any advertising, and in this article I am going to share with you a few ways that you can do the same.

The first thing that you will want to do as an affiliate marketer in order to avoid spending money on advertising will be to learn many of the free traffic generating techniques that are available across the web.  What I am mainly referring to is learning how to implement article and blog marketing with your affiliate marketing.  This works extremely well.  What you will basically want to do is create a blog that will review many of the products that you decide you want to promote.  Also, you will turn great blog posts into articles and distribute these articles on the web. 

The only problem with the article marketing is that you are going to want to place your affiliate links in these articles so that you get paid.  Don’t do this!  If you write and distribute a bunch of articles with a bunch of affiliate links in them, then your articles will get rejected by the article directory sites.  What you need to do is give and honest review on the product in your article, and then send people to your own website through a link that you place in the “about the author box.”  You will get the traffic to your own site by giving people a compelling reason to do so.

This is what I may do if I decided to review a product on internet marketing.  I would first give my review on the product, but I would make sure not to give away the website’s name in my review.  At the end of the article I would give a compelling offer related to the review so that people would visit my site and then click through my affiliate link.  This is what my offer may say:

Daniel Pereira professional reviews a number of internet marketing products available on the web.  In order to learn more about the amazing 123 product, and to receive and incredible XYZ bonus, just visit him at www.yourwebsite.com/amazing123product.    

Now, do you see why this pattern should work?  If you give that honest review in the article, and then save your pitch for your “about the author box,”  then most article directory sites will accept your article as an honest review of the product in question.  Then, if you get that traffic over to your own website to learn more about the product, then chances are that the person will click and buy through your affiliate link.  As a result, your advertising for the product was free, you are getting free website traffic, and you are making affiliate commissions.  Also, if you can get that reader to your website, then you can possibly get that reader on an emailing list of yours.  If you can do this, then you can sell them a number of different programs that you have reviewed.

Daniel Pereira and Dan Dimit are experts at driving free traffic for your online businesses.  Get free eBooks, conference calls, and a free mini course, all designed for driving free traffic to your websites (a $197 value).  Just us at our home page at www.TheFreeTrafficFormula.com.  

Today I want to actually mention a few advanced techniques that will give your affiliate marketing profits, without spending money on advertising.  As simple as these techniques may sound, you’ll be surprised that very few people are using them.  Therefore, I consider these techniques to be advanced or not as well known.  The first of these techniques that I would like to share is video marketing.  I believe that people get the wrong idea about video marketing and therefore don’t incorporate it with their affiliate marketing.  You see, in video marketing, you can actually get your videos easily ranked above many articles and blog posts on the web.  A simple search can prove it to you.  Yesterday I searched:  Ford Explorer 2009.  I was expecting the number one search result to be a review of the new model.  The #1 spot on Google was actually a YouTube video talking about Ford Explorers.  The listing that ranked second was a blog post about the vehicle. 

Here is the cool thing about using video for your affiliate marketing:  Generally, it is o.k. to have an affiliate link for the product in review in the description for your video.  In other words, if you get the number one spot for a review, most video sharing sites aren’t going to care that your affiliate link is right there in the description.  This is the complete opposite from article marketing.  If you write a great review for a product and then add your affiliate link to the article, then your article has really great chances of being rejected by the article directory sites. 

O.K., here is one more advanced technique for your affiliate marketing, and yes, this technique also allows you to create affiliate commissions without spending money on advertising.  This technique is taking the time to create a great viral eBook.  A great viral eBook can potential reach out to millions of readers across the web.  And many great viral eBooks have the following:

·         First of all, really exceptional content

·         Second, it normal contains links pointing back to your own websites

·         Third, it normally will contain at least a few affiliate links that teach people more on the same topic.

So, if you can create an eBook with these features, not only will you drive free traffic back to your websites, but you will create additional affiliate commissions for yourself.  Just make sure you don’t overdo it with the affiliate links.  If it is obvious that you created an entire book around affiliate links, then your “viral” eBook won’t become a very viral.  But if you limit yourself to a few great affiliate links while providing spectacular information, then that one book that is given away for free may just make you the more affiliate commissions than all of your other combined affiliate efforts. 

Daniel Pereira and Dan Dimit are experts at driving free traffic for your online businesses.  Get free eBooks, conference calls, and free software, all designed for driving free traffic to your websites (a $197 value).  Just visit our home page at www.TheFreeTrafficFormula.com.