The most important in thing is that posts provide useful information that teach the reader something. An affiliate website must provide value to the visitor. If web marketing posts are just full of affiliate links and don’t provide useful information, Google will consider it a “thin affiliate site” and won’t show it to anyone. A good post should give the reader “ah-ah” moments when they feel they have learned something valuable.
Two Types of Websites for Promoting Internet Marketing of Affiliate Offers
The two best types of affiliate websites:
- Authority sites that are about a specific subject. The subject could be something like how to lose weight or how to prepare for a future disaster. These are known as “prepper sites” or “survivalist sites”.
- Review sites that review products in a particular niche. These are most often reviewing eCommerce products (such as a site that reviews woodworking tools). However, they can be in a wide range of niches. Other examples include sites that review the best credit repair services or the best travel insurance.
Web Marketing of Affiliate Offers for Authority Sites
So, how do you get your affiliate links into an authority site? One of the most common ways is through banner ads. This is not the best way and should not be the only way. It, however, a tried and true way in online marketing of generating extra affiliate sales. This is in addition to the techniques we will cover below. One of the limitations of banner ads is that you have limited real estate for them on your website. This is especially true when the visitor is using a cell phone. This is important because around 78% of Americans use a smartphone.
Also, avoid overloading your website with banner ads in every possible location; it can be very annoying to visitors and can drive them away. On a desktop, the banner ads can go into the side bar, or into a “below header widget area” at the top of the page. They can also go into an “above footer area widget area” at the bottom of the page. On a cell phone, the banner ads in the side bar will all go to the bottom of the page below the content. These will usually be ignored, even if your visitors do scroll to the bottom.
There are also slide-out advanced ads that slide out from the side. Slide-out ads block what the visitor was reading, so they force the visitor to pay attention to them. You have to be careful to test whether you get enough sales from slide out ads. You need to be sure it is worth the visitors you lose by annoying them. Banner ads can also be in content ads. I am going to talk about in content ads in depth a little later, but first will talk about a plug-in that allows you to make the most of your website’s real estate.
Here is a website page showing a leaderboard ad and a side ad.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
AdRotate Is A Advanced Ads Plugin That Helps You Get More Internet Advertising Value from Limited Space
As discussed above, you only have so much space to place banner ads (especially on cell phones). In any case, you don’t want to distract and annoy your visitors with advanced ads in every nook and cranny. A neat solution is an advanced ads plugin called AdRotate. What AdRotate does is rotate different ads within the same space.
A strategy I like to use in online marketing is a “leaderboard banner ad” in a sticky below-header widget area. A sticky below-header widget area stays in view at the top of the page, even when the user scrolls down. It’s like freezing the top row of a spreadsheet. It’s great because the ad will always be seen, even if the visitor is using a mobile device. You can program AdRotate to show several different ads from that always visible spot. A new ad will rotate into the location after a given amount of time.
Another way that AdRotate is useful is that it allows you to track statistics on which ads are being clicked on, and which are not. This helps to tell you which ones are performing best, and you can perform A-B tests so you can tweak and enhance your ad placement and other factors.
AdRotate can be used in any of the locations discussed above. By the way, it is beyond the scope of this post, but the locations (such as side bar, slide-out or below header) are called widget areas. Not all website themes have all of the widget areas I discussed above. Choosing a website theme that has the widget areas you want is probably the most important consideration in choosing a website theme. Choosing a theme will be the subject of another post.
Clik here to view.
Features of the AdRotate Plugin
Using In Content Ads for Web Marketing
My favorite type of ad is in content ads. You don’t necessarily need an in-content widget area. You can just use an ordinary line of text and put your affiliate link in any part of the text you want. If you wanted to use AdRotate, you would either need a theme that has in-content widget areas, or an advanced ads plugin that ads them.
You have complete freedom to put the ordinary text type in content ads wherever you want and they will be seen on cell phones.
You should always make it clear to the visitor that an in content ad is an ad and not part of the content. The in content ad must be clearly different than the regular content and must be called out as “sponsored”. Failing to make it clear what is an ad and what is regular content can get you in trouble with the FTC and get your site de-indexed by Google.
Here is a typical example of how that is done
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Web Marketing Using the Entire Post as Pure Content
I am now going to discuss a different form of internet advertising and that is to use no ads at all, with the exception of an ad offering a lead magnet in return for joining your email list (that is a subject for another article).
With this strategy, you don’t want to have ads because you want to build your visitor’s trust in you. You want to make sure that your content provides value and have at least some posts that have no affiliate links whatsoever. In fact, some of the most successful affiliate websites have no affiliate links on the website at all, but instead have advanced ads that offer lead magnets to get people to join their email list. They make their money by selling the affiliate products in the emails. Usually, the products they sell in the email are very high-priced products.
The art of selling high-priced affiliate offers is best done with a lot of patience and restraint. Most (or even all of the website posts) don’t have an affiliate link and neither do most of the emails. This is an advanced strategy and is not suitable for beginners.
Web Marketing Using the Entire Post to pre-sell an Affiliate Offer
In this type of internet advertising, you may or may not have the type of banner ads discussed at the beginning of this post. It may be better to not have them because you are focusing on building trust. The post pre-sells one particular affiliate offer.
In some posts, you are basically reviewing a product and it is better if you include some disadvantages (if there are any) or negative aspects about the product. This will help prospects to place even more trust in what you are telling them. Of course, you are promoting the product so you want the review to build to a recommendation to buy and an affiliate link or two or three.
In some posts, you focus on providing information and just mention products that you recommend (with an affiliate link) somewhere in the post. In this type of web marketing, the product recommendation is just an aside and not the focus of the post.
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