Why Affiliate Marketers Must Have a Website to Succeed
May 10, 2009
Both Alec and Remon like baking. Cheese cakes, butter cookies, pumpkin pies, banana rolls, muffins with raisins, you name it. So they make baking and selling cakes their occupation.
Every morning, they spend hours producing all sorts of bakery products and sell them in the afternoon.
Alec puts his cakes in a big basket, attaches it to the back of his bicycle. He rides about the town, ringing a bell as he passes the street lined with mansions and houses. On hearing the sound of the bell, mothers and wives would come out of their home to see what Alec has to offer that day, and purchase whatever they’d like for tea or supper.
Remon does the same.
True, Alec and Remon are competitors, but there is enough business for both of them. Alec is happy until one day…
Around the corner of the main street, he finds a new cake shop has opened. The sign says:
Remon’s Cake Shop.
Alec’s business drops and so does his income.
He comes to realize one thing: if he is to remain an equal to his competitor Remon, he’d have to own a shop too!
Back to internet marketing, a website in online marketing is the same as a shop in offline marketing.
Many people would start affiliate marketing without a website. This is possible as most program owners do not require affiliates to have a website to join. However, in the long run, owning a website certainly makes a big difference and can take your business to another level.
There are several benefits that a website can bring to an affiliate marketer.
1. A website provides you with an address at which people can contact you, so builds trust and a sense of reliability.
2. A website gives you a platform to display your products and services. Potential customers will know exactly what are being offered and may come back for something they want in future.
3. A website offers you the chance to provide additional information about the products you are advertising. In other words, it is a good place to pre-sell to the clients.
4. A website allows you to ‘brand’ yourself and gives you autonomy over what to sell.
You might change from program to program and from product to product, the URL you advertise will remain the same. You won’t be affected by companies that withdraw their affiliate programs or even close down.
When I first started as an affiliate marketer, I had a negative experience. I invested $40 in an affiliate program which allowed me to sell the same program to someone and earn the same $40 for unlimited times. Anyone who is more experienced in internet marketing would think that this is a scam. Well, not me.
I paid the $40, was given a code and a promotional link. After a couple of weeks, not only was I unable to make one sale, when I logged in to my account, guess what I saw? Not a trace of the program that I had joined! In its place was a page I’ve never seen. This guy had decided he had scammed enough money with this trick and changed to another. I even was not aware for how long I had been promoting this new webpage for him for free!
5. Owning a website is more economical in advertising, in terms of both time and money. Instead of promoting a number of affiliate sites, you’re driving traffic to only one site - your personal website.
Without doubt, building a website takes skills and money. The ideal case of course is start without a site, earn enough money from free affiliate programs, then invest the earned money in building and hosting your own website.
For those who are serious about building a business online and have money to spare, starting with a website is a good idea. And if you lack the skill, then building a personal blog can achieve more or less the same targets but takes less skill to accomplish.
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