Super Affiliate Strategies Part 3
by Rich Hamilton, Jr

In our previous Super AffiliateStrategies articles, we went over ways to increase your web site's clickthrough ratio. Today we are going to take an entirely different approach, thistime we are going to be promoting affiliate programs outside of your web site.

I realize that there are a lot of affiliates that don't have their own web siteand are looking for effective ways to promote their affiliate programs. Youdon't need to have your own web site to send targeted traffic to your affiliateprogram. In this article we are going to go over a few ways to effectively andprofitably promote any affiliate program. In order to generate large affiliatecommissions you need to send targeted traffic to your affiliate program, hereare a few ways to do so:

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click advertising is a great way to send targeted traffic to youraffiliate program. Before you start promoting an associate program with pay perclick advertising, you need to make sure that it offers a high commission percentageand has a conservation rate of 2% or higher. If your associate program doesn'toffer either one, then you shouldn't be using pay per click advertising. If theassociate program you are promoting doesn't offer a high commission percentagenor have a high conservation ratio, then you won't make any money with pay perclick advertising. There are plenty of associate programs out there that offerhigh percentages and have excellent conservation rates.

If you are considering promoting more than one affiliate program, which manypeople do, including myself, then you should promote products that are not inindirect competition with each other. If you promote products that are inindirect competition with each other such as online marketing books, you wouldbe using the same keywords, which would mean one ad is going to do better thanthe other. When you're using the same keywords for more than one ad, yourvisitor could favor one ad over the other. Basically, your click through ratewill be evaluated between the two ads instead of one. Instead of having onestrong click through rate, you could have two weak ones. Your click throughratio plays a major role in your ads position.

The trick to having success with pay per click advertising is writing a killer adand selecting appropriate keywords. When selecting your keywords, you shouldn'tpay more than $0.05 per click. Instead of increasing the cost per click of yourad and chance losing your shirt, you can find very cheap high traffic keywordsthat product excellent results. If you're considering using pay per click toadvertising for your associate program, then I recommend that you get AdwordAnalyzer. Adword Analyzer is an amazing piece of software and it will help youlocate those overlooked and neglected high traffic keywords.

Ezine Advertising

Advertising in ezines is one of the best and easiest ways to send targetedtraffic to your affiliate program. Even though pay per click may accuratelytarget your market, they cannot target it precisely link ezines can. I'm nottrying to discourage you from pay per click advertising, but with a great adcopy and carefully selected keywords its capabilities can be too broad. Ezineson the other hand, are precise in targeting a market and have a list ofpre-qualified subscribers. A pre-qualified subscriber is when someone hasvoluntarily subscribed to receive additional information about a particulartopic, making them qualified and easy to market to.

With so many ezines to choose from, it makes it hard to select a quality ezineto advertise in. The best way to find quality ezines to advertise youraffiliate program in, is by using Directory of Ezines. There are free ezinedirectories on the web, but you get what you pay for. Most of the free ezinedirectories are saturated with discontinued ezines or are outdated. Moreover,with the Directory of Ezines, the ezines are always kept up to date, providingyou with the latest information and new ezines everyday, making it a valuableresource.

Targeted Opt-In List

Another way you can promote your affiliate program is by renting targetedopt-in mailing list. Renting a targeted opt-in list is a quick access to exposeyour affiliate program to hundreds, even thousands of people that have opted-into receive more information in that field. By renting a targeted opt-in listyou will have to use a third party source. If you decide to use a third partysource it is imperative that you find out how they are gathering the emailaddresses for their list. You want to use a third party opt-in list that hasbeen gathering their email addresses properly. That way you know that thepeople have given permission to receive more information and didn't use a emailextracting software to harvest them.

I'm going to be straight with you, renting targeted opt-in lists can getexpensive. The bigger the list is the more it's going to cost you! It's a goodidea to start small and then gradually increase if you are successful. Thereason you want to start small is because you want to see how successful yourcampaign is going to be. You don't want to go with a large list, if thecampaign isn't going to do well, that's a good way to lose money. You will needto conduct some tests before you start your campaign. Here are a few thirdparty list providers you can use, Postmaster Direct, List Universe, andE-Target.

About the Author:

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of http://www.ElitesMarketing.com and the Author of Inside Internet Marketing. His book will showyou how to ignite your sales by unlocking the absolute truth to marketingonline and how you can turn your web site into a moneymaking powerhouse withoutpaying a cent for advertising. http://www.InsideNetMarketing.com