YOUR DOMAIN
A Domain Name of Your Own
Here is your first statement as an affiliate marketer. Complete this
sentence:
"My website address is www.__________. com"
That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Domain name registration is THE
business of the Internet. Domain names exist because of the Internet and now
have become as valuable as physical real estate.
Why invest in registering your own domain name when there are many affiliate
programs that supply websites to their representatives? There are several
reasons why it is more to your advantage to have your own website address:
- Website content management
- Marketing method flexibility
- Administration freedom
Website Content Management
The advantage of using the ready-made or "replicated" affiliate
marketing website that is provided by the company that you have agreed to
represent is that it is an easy way to do business. All you have to do is
advertise your referral link.
The disadvantage of operating your affiliate marketing business in this
manner is that you have little or no control over the design and contents of the
website. In the early years of affiliate marketing on the Internet, it was easy
to have an affiliate marketing website on the search engines index.
As affiliate marketing programs gained in popularity, search engine companies
began to remove these replicated websites, because the content on all of them
was exactly the same. Now it is almost impossible to submit a replicated website
to a search engine and have it listed.
Choosing your domain name to incorporate a keyword that relates to what you
have to offer is extremely important. Your domain name is your primary marketing
tool.
Marketing Method Flexibility
Now that search engines have begun to remove replicated websites from their
listings, a lot of the related marketing methods are following suit. Affiliate
marketing is enough of a challenge, but it is almost impossible to distinguish
yourself from other affiliates if you are using exactly the same website design
and content.
It is important for you to have targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing
website based on your product or service.
To accomplish this, your marketing efforts must be focused only on the people
who are most likely to purchase the products.
Having your own domain name and website, allows you more flexibility in how
and where you advertise. It gives you the ability to focus on what interests
your prospective buyer.
Administration Freedom
After your domain name, search engines are your most important marketing
tool. With millions of websites on the Internet, this is the first resource that
people use to find what they want to learn or purchase.
The fact that you create a website does not automatically mean that thousands
of people will come to see what you have to offer, you have to combine the
information that search engines use to index sites with the information that is
of interest to your target market to create a balance that works in the best
interests of your affiliate marketing business.
The way your site is designed can make a huge difference in how quickly the
search engine index your site into their directories and what position it holds
among the thousands of websites in your category of products and/or services.
In most cases, a replicated website is beyond your administrative reach, you
do not have access to change anything about how the website is designed. The
advertising sponsor decides whatever title, keywords and description used.
Choosing Your Domain Name
At this point, the advantages of having your own domain name should be very
clear. It will allow you to step away from the massive numbers of affiliates who
are marketing for your advertising sponsor and focusing buyers’ attention on
your website by using a keyword in your domain name.
Having in-depth knowledge of the benefits of your affiliate marketing product
or service will help you to identify keywords that could be used in the search
engines to use in your domain name.
It is a good idea to run a search engine request on each of your keywords
individually and as a phrase. The number of times that the keyword is requested
shows you its popularity with the general market.
In addition, there are several keyword popularity tools available. The AdWords
Keyword Tool is one of the best you can use.
Registering Your Domain Name
With your keyword list you can create several different domain names to check
for availability to register.
I invite you to try my own domain registrar, Domaindiscount24,
which, as of this writing, offers .com domain registration as low as $5.88.
Domain name registrations is one of the most profitable online businesses,
the fee you will pay for this service can sometimes be included in a web hosting
package as well. If you choose this option, make sure that you fully understand
the web hosting features that will be provided will be sufficient to support
your affiliate marketing website functions.
Once you have chosen a domain name registrar, you can check the availability
of the domain names on your list and do not be surprised if many of your choices
are already taken.
As you work through the registration of your domain name, you will begin to
get an idea of the competition you are facing in the marketplace at large.
Locating Your Affiliate Marketing Website Online
Registering your affiliate marketing domain name is the first step in having
an online business, now you have to find a reliable web hosting service.
Try to resist the temptation of using a free web hosting service. Most of
these services require you to have advertising banners on your pages that will
only confuse your visitor and may conflict with your marketing strategy.
Web hosting services do not have to be expensive. As we mentioned earlier,
there are many domain name registrars that offer service packages on web hosting
and some even provide marketing tools like search engine submissions, website
design and visitor traffic building software.
Choose your web-hosting provider carefully because your web hosting company
is your silent business partner. Your website has to be accessible to Internet
users in order for your business to make money. If your web hosting service goes
offline, so does your business.
I invite you to try the web hosting company I operate, Hostgator.
Use coupon code "404PAGE" and build your website today for only 1
cent!
Take your website design cue from the audience you want to attract: if the
product or service you are promoting is targeted toward musicians, then your
website theme should reflect this.
Developing the Picture of Your Business
From your side of the story, having an affiliate marketing business online
can be compared to putting together pieces of a puzzle to produce a picture. The
"picture" in this case is the image that comes to mind when your
domain name information is displayed on a search engine listing.
The easiest way to begin developing this picture is to create a unique
website to promote each separate product or service you are marketing.
Displaying a large number of unrelated affiliate links all on the same website
can detract from your credibility and generally this approach does not encourage
visitors to click your affiliate link. If your affiliate marketing program is
focused on office supplies, your website content should be solely about office
supplies.
Designing your website to be "search engine friendly" starts with
understanding and applying the criteria that search engines use to create their
index. Be careful here, because there is too much information available about
this vital subject that is either outdated or can cause you problems.
You have to keep the viewpoint of the potential buyers in mind throughout
this process. Remember, there are many other affiliates promoting the same
product or service. You must exploit every opportunity to attract to visitors to
your affiliate marketing website.
Knowledge of your domain name is your first marketing contact. On its own, it
should be able to motivate a person interested in your product to your website.
Visitors to http://www.saveyourmoney.com,
already have an idea of what the website has to offer.
On the other hand, when someone visits your page from a search engine
listing, they will see a brief description of your website content, which is
generated by the "meta tags" on your web page.
The three pieces of information that search engines take from the source code
of your web page to use in creating your listing on their index are:
- The title of your website
- The keywords
- The description
This information creates an expectation in the visitors’ mind that you must
meet or else they will leave your site. Internet users are very smart, and a
large number of them shop online regularly. But a word of caution here, getting
visitors to your site using keywords that are totally unrelated to what you
really have to offer on your site is a practice that can get your listing
removed and banned from the search engine index.
As you begin building your affiliate marketing business, keeping your domain
name as your focal point will prove to be very effective in all of your
advertising efforts. The keyword that you use in your domain name should be used
throughout your website content, as well as all of your on and offline
advertising.
Finding the Balance between Content and Graphics
Building your affiliate marketing business around your domain name is much
more effective than using a general approach.
The more specific your focus, the easier it is to get your advertising
message to prospective buyers.
Most affiliate marketing programs offer banners or text links embedded with
your referral link that you can use on your website. However you should be aware
that using these graphics is not always the best idea because they will cause
your site to load slowly. Besides this fact, Internet visitors are being faced
with advertising graphics at every turn.
What your visitors really want to see what new information you can offer
them; what makes your site different from the other websites that they have
visited. How well you meet the expectations of your visitors and deliver
information that is of interest to them can have an impact on whether your
visitor clicks your referral link or not.
The informational content of your website should be compelling articles about
the products or services you are offering through your affiliate marketing
programs. They should outline the benefits that the visitor will enjoy through
its use.
Using highlighting to draw attention to the special features of your product
or service, gives you the opportunity to ask your visitor to take action and
make the click on your referral link.
Article headlines can be used to encourage the reader to continue reading,
contact you for more information or direct their attention to a specific feature
of your affiliate marketing program.
Writing content articles is one of the best ways to target the market you
want. There are a number of article submission services that will distribute
your articles to other websites to be used as content, giving your site
increased exposure on the Internet, which will increase your link popularity and
in turn your search engine ranking. By submitting an article to these services
weekly, you can rapidly build targeted visitor traffic to your site.
Making the Most of Your Website Visits
At this point, the building your online affiliate marketing business is
moving along nicely. You have selected programs, registered your domain name,
secured web hosting services and now you are building your website.
Once your affiliate marketing website is launched you will start making
money, right?
Right, that CAN be absolutely true. And if that is the result you are looking
for, pay attention and study how to put all of these pieces together that are
outlined in this e-book.
If you use the resources that are listed here, it will help you to generate
an income right from the launch of your affiliate marketing business website.
You can accomplish this if you do some careful planning of the features on
your website, make a narrow selection of a customer base, organize your
promotions and prepare customer service tools. You can start announcing your
affiliate marketing website services and products months before your website
goes "live". Building excitement around an upcoming event within your
market segment is one way to generate interest in your affiliate product or
services.
Exposing your domain name to potential visitors to your website might well be
the simplest part of online marketing process. The right mix of informative
content and graphic images linked to your referral id code are necessary
components of your website. And at this point your visitor makes their first
decision about your site: is this what they are looking for?
This is where the first part of "visitor retention" comes into
play. You want visitors to explore your site, become interested in the products
and services from your affiliate marketing programs.
But your visitor will have to leave your site at some point, and once they
leave your site what can you do? Not too much, unless you have given them a way
to interact with you.
This is the second part of using visitor retention strategies in your
affiliate marketing business.
To retain and keep in contact with your visitors once they leave your
website, let’s look at two of the most popular methods of interacting with
your website visitors.
Giveaways and Subscriptions
With all of the work you have done to get visitors to your affiliate
marketing website, the task now shifts to making their visit one they will
remember. Your objective is for the visitor to click your referral link, and one
way you encourage them to do this is to give them something that they want
without obligation. The idea is to extend the reach of your website content and
give them a link back to your website.
A giveaway is a single item, for instance, it can be an e-book, an article, a
software program or an incentive like a discount coupon.
A subscription is an item that your visitor will receive at regular
intervals; newsletters and ezines are two of the most popular types of
subscriptions. Choose what you will giveaway or write about with your keywords
in mind. Remember that whatever you use should be related to your affiliate
marketing program website.
Forums
With the "plug and play" software available through most web
hosting services and from independent software vendors, you can create your own
discussion group or forum for the users of your affiliate marketing product or
service.
Internet users are community oriented, giving them a place where they can
share and exchange information that is important to them, gives them another
incentive to visit your site regularly.
Giveaways, subscriptions and forums all give you the means to interact with
your website visitor while they are on your site and after they leave. The best
position for these offers or signup boxes is close to the top right or left
corners of your web page and designed in a way that they are easily seen.
Make sure that all of your offers are "opt-in" where the visitor
gives their consent to you to send email messages to them.
In addition, in accordance with the CAN-SPAM Act, each commercial email must
include a means for the subscriber to "opt-out" or cancel their
request to receive email.
These three areas of promoting your affiliate marketing program serve as
"lead generators" helping you to build a list of the people who are
interested in what you have to offer on your affiliate marketing website.
Underlying all of these efforts is the understanding that very few people
take action of any kind on their first visit to a website. Be proactive in your
approach to your visitors and make it easy for them to return - encourage your
visitors to bookmark your site for future visits by incorporating a link at the
top of your website to do this.
When a visitor requests a giveaway or becomes your subscriber, it opens the
door for you to communicate new information about your products on regular
basis. However, avoid the "hard sell" approach. Remember that most
people are interested in improving the quality of their lives, i.e., saving
money, having more leisure time or increased income.
Focus your attention on how your product can solve a particular problem that
your visitor may have.
Offering a special discount for your subscribers is a wonderful incentive to
bring you visitor to your website again and (hopefully) purchase from your
website.
Keep the tone of your email conversational, in the same manner you would talk
to a friend. In the wording of your e-mail avoid using the word "free"
that has become one of the most famous "spam triggers".
In addition to the value of each of these ideas on their own, linking them to
each other may provide you with even better results. For instance, here is an
example of how to link your offers together to maximize the number of people on
your mailing list:
- A newsletter subscription box on your website homepage
- A newsletter subscription box on each of your website pages
- A link to your giveaway on the subscription opt-in page or confirmation
e-mail
- A text link to your giveaway or subscription signup page at the end of an
article on your website
- A hyperlink to your subscription signup page on the thank you page of your
giveaway offer
Your giveaway or subscription in an "exit ad", a form of pop-up
advertising that is activated when your visitor leaves your site.
If you decide to offer a giveaway and/or subscription to your visitors, you
can make this task very easy for yourself if you deliver this content through an
automatic mailer or auto responder.
Auto responders make it easy to always stay in touch with your subscribers,
because you can schedule your mailing at regular intervals. Many affiliate
marketers focus their attention on getting the sale, but it is even more
important to contact your customer service after the sale is made.
Auto Responders and Subscription Services
Aweber
Get
Response
Whatever you do, make sure that you provide quality content to the visitors
who have given you their valuable contact information. You can find hundreds of
e-books to giveaway to your visitors at Free
E-books.
Remember, your website visitors do not know you; you have to build trust with
them. By giving them something valuable you can continue to build their interest
in your affiliate marketing program, so that eventually, they will click your
referral link and make the sale.
Once you have a few sales on your affiliate marketing account, it can be
helpful to request the permission of some of your customers to display a
testimonial from them.
A satisfied customer's words underscore the benefits your have been promoting
from actual experience of using the product or service.
Testimonials from business customers that include links to their site can
improve your affiliate marketing website link popularity as well as boost your
credibility by reinforcing the quality of what you are offering.
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