Promoting Affiliate Products (part 1- How To Get Started)

Cindy contacted me and posted this question as a comment on “Questions about WordPress Blogs”.

“Hi Greg
It was nice speaking with you today.
I have purchased my domain and want to get going on my opt-in page to offer the ebook. My domain is SuccessHisWayMentor.com
What is the next step?

Cindy

While this question doesn’t particularly pertain to WordPress Blogs, I am more than happy to respond to it for now since it is a very good basic question for beginners and is excellent material for anyone who wants to discover more about making money on the internet.

You can send traffic directly through your affiliate link if you like, but this is not the best way to make money as an affiliate.

It is a way to get started though in the beginning.

Some people make money simply promoting affiliate programs directly.  If you want to do this, use your affiliate link and:

1. Add a signature file to all your outgoing emails with
a quick classified ad and your affiliate link.

2. Add that same signature file at the bottom of any
forums you participate in on the subject (make sure
you provide good content).

3. Potentially write a short article on the subject and
submit to ezinearticles.com along with isnare.com ($10
for 5 article submissions).  Don’t have any links in the
article but add a link in the resource box with your affiliate
link.

All the above can help you earn a small amount promoting as an affiliate.

If you’re really serious about your affiliate business then you will want to have your own product or want to promote someone elses product as an affiliate.

As I stated earlier, for serious web marketers, It is best NOT to send the person directly to the website that you are promoting. This is especially true if you are using Google Adwords or some other type of paid advertisement.

I would highly recommend putting up you own lead generating web page. This can easily be done using an opt-in form.

To get started with an opt-in page there are a few tools that you will need.

Here are the preliminary steps in logical order to prepare to upload your opt-in page:

1. You will need a service to host your web page. I am currently using both hostgator and bluehost.

For Hostgator, I have a website at hostgator-special.com that allows you to get the first month for a penny.

However I prefer Bluehost for hosting your webpages.  Both services have a fantastico icon which will allow you to do some great things such as instantly install a wordpress blog. However Bluehost has a couple of extra features such as the file upload program that makes it easy for you to upload you files if you are just beginning. Hosting plans start at $6.95 a month.

2. Purchase your domain name.

When you sign up for a webhosting service you will be given the opportunity to register a domain name. The services I recommend like Bluehost and also Hostgator will allow you to register you domain name for free when you sign up for their hosting services.

When you sign up for a web hosting service It is best for you to register your default domain name under a name that will be useful to you for a long time. For example, My default domain name for my service is www.gregnemer.com.  So register your personal name or the name of your company when you sign up for a hosting service.

Shorter names are better. You will use them over and over again for logging on and uploading files to your web page.

As for affiliate domain names that you purchase, you can always forward the domain names for the websites that you want to promote to a specific page on your site.

If you look closely you will notice that “www.hostgator-special.com” is actually just a web page located at http://www.reallifepurpose.com/gregnemer/hostgator_special.htm.  I simply went into the domain name panel for the service that I am using and forwarded the name to the website address that I wanted it to point to. Whenever someone types www.hostgator-special.com into their browser it automatically goes to my web page.

So where do you purchase your domain names?

www.GoDaddy.com is the choice of most internet experts. They provide low cost domain names and the domain name control panel is very easy to use.. I like GoDaddy so much that I purchased a reseller site.  It is called Real Domain Success.com This allows me to set my own prices for domain names. As of this writing I have the prices set at 25 cents above my wholesale cost. (Final price-$8.99). GoDaddy sells the same domain name for the regular price of $10.69.

You may ask why  I sell the domain names so cheap?

I sell low cost domain names at Real Domain Success.com as a service to my readers and customers.

3. Sign up for an auto-responder service. An autoresponder service will allow you to capture email addresses and to send out correspondence to you potential customers. With out going into a lot of detail you will want to sign up for the very best follow-up email service available.  Most any of the top internet marketers will recommend the same service that I recommend- aWeber.

AWeber’s automated unlimited autoresponder follow up increases sales, lowers costs, builds lasting customer relationships, and increases your profits!

Let’s get started uploading your webpage

You will need a few additional tools, but let’s see if we can do this at no cost. I’ve listed a few tools at my most recent article called Free and Low Cost Web Pages, Blogs, FTP’s, and HTML Editors.

Let’s try and keep it as simple as possible and lets use…Part 2 of Promoting affiliate products (free optin template)