Much has changed with Affiliate Marketing in selling hard goods through affiliate websites today.
The search engines do not rank any sites without good content. Gone are the days of slapping up a site, loading it with banners or even text links, and simply promoting other merchant sites. It takes a lot more time to develop a site with relevant content so the search engines will rank such sites and slim-content affiliate sites seldom make the front pages of the search results.
As has been discussed so much in the last few years, website traffic only happens as a result of content. And a blog tends to portray content better than any static pages. Blogs are dynamic. Good ones are constantly providing new content. They provide meaningful solutions to what readers are looking for when searching the internet.
This does not mean Affiliate Marketing is not alive and well. Today, many blogs are selling something. Almost any topic known to society has its niche where people have interest in that topic. Good content about the niche will attract readers and, therefore, will attract motivated customers.
Some blog writers offer their opinions or reviews of other products. As an affiliate, blog writers earn commissions from readers who opt in and purchase the other products. However, recent changes to the FTC guidelines now require bloggers to disclose their relationships with the other products.
Another form of Affiliate Marketing happens simply with direct advertising. Most blogs have pure advertising on their sidebars and, of course, they are affiliates of those advertisements. When readers click on those ads, their affiliate link is carried with the reader to the advertising site. It should be more obvious to the readers that these are affiliate arrangements.
So as blog writers create content and attract traffic, they send readers to their affiliate sites. There are many products that only exist because of the affiliate linkage with the bloggers. But as mentioned in other posts, internet marketing of any type always involves advertising, marketing and a product. It is such a big world so eager for information and blogs earn money online.
Many products are only informational. The rise of how-to manuals on the internet and other e-books serve every niche known. And anybody can write an e-book about something they know that someone else may not know and sell that information.
Some products are indeed real products. How else would Amazon exist? Simply become an affiliate of Amazon and they have products for any niche. And finally, there still are all the real product websites where one can become an affiliate and earn commissions from the largest retailer, Wal-Mart, to the endless list of smaller retailers. But again, traffic comes to the blog because of good content within the niche. That is what is searched for by the readers.
To learn more about Affiliate Marketing and how to make money on the internet, follow my blog as I unravel the truth. Feel free to contact me or comment on this post.
Jerry
P.S. To get a jump start on setting up your own blog and for starting an online home business, you should go see these guys.
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Tue, Nov 10, 2009
Affiliate Marketing