Affiliate Marketing Tools

Affiliate marketing doesn’t demand much when it comes to financial investments. In fact, you can make good without spending a single cent. It has been done before, countless times at that!

But this doesn’t mean that that is the best way to do things.

Yes, you can earn as an affiliate without spending anything. But you can most certainly earn more if you’d spare some cash to buy essential tools that will make you more competitive as an affiliate merchant’s partner.

The Importance Of Having Your Own Website

Having your own website is like having your own headquarters in cyberspace. You have all the freedom to utilize your virtual house and lot anyway you wish.

As an affiliate marketer, you can use your website to host all of your affiliate links.

Now, why is this important?

Because as an affiliate, you will be given an affiliate link per product. Your prospects SHOULD click on your specific affiliate link so that any purchases they make will be credited under your account.

Affiliate links are what tells the affiliate system which commission goes to whom.

Since you will be dealing with hundreds of products, you will have an equal amount of affiliate links. This can be quite tricky. If you’re going to promote them individually, each affiliate link will require its own campaign.

But…

If you have your own website, you can have one main campaign to lead your prospects to your headquarters where all your affiliate links can be found. Everything will be centralized. Everything will be easier.

Can You Earn As An Affiliate Even Without A Website?

The answer is: yes, you can!

There are many other tools and tactics you can use to earn as an affiliate even without the benefit of a website. The process, however, will be a little more complicated and may produce lesser results, but you can still earn.

Let’s take a look at some alternatives…

• Write articles, submit them to the many article directories on the World Wide Web, and use a particular affiliate link in your corresponding resource box.
• Create blogs from free blogging services like www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com. Blogs are simplified content management systems, and in a way, they can serve as your website.
• Take advantage of free web hosting services on the Internet, but do bear in mind that doing so will populate your web pages with intrusive advertisements that may turn off your visitors.
• Use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to lead people to click on your affiliate link. This will cost you some money, however.
• Buy advertising space on popular websites to display your affiliate links. This will also cost you some cash.
• Buy eZine ads to display and even pre-sell your affiliate links. This will likewise require some financial investment.

Some of the means enumerated above may sound confusing right now, but we only mentioned them to prove the fact that an affiliate can still earn through affiliate marketing even without the benefit of a website. Do not worry. We will be discussing these ways, plus others, in succeeding chapters.

Again, though you can earn as an affiliate without having your own website, I’d seriously recommend against doing so. Building and maintaining your own website will not cost much, anyway, and the rewards you will gain are immeasurable, as you will soon find out. Many of the essential tactics in affiliate marketing are centered around your own website.

Important Considerations In Building Your Own Website

When you have decided to build your own website, you will need two things:

1. a domain name; and
2. a subscription to a web hosting service

Your domain name is your address on the World Wide Web. When choosing a domain name for your affiliate marketing campaign, please bear in mind the following guidelines:

• The domain name should be relevant to the field you are engaged in.
• The domain name should be easy to remember.
• The domain name should be catchy.
• As much as possible, choose the extension “.com” or if it is not available anymore, choose “.org,” “.info,” or “.net.” These are the acknowledged extensions that people never forget about.

You will also need a web hosting service. The one I use is JVDomains. Check it out for yourself and see what it’s about.

Basically, you should be looking for 3 things from the web hosting service you are considering. These are:

1. Storage space – or how many files you can store in your account. Do not settle for anything less than 50MB.
2. Bandwidth limit – or how much data transfer can be accommodated by the web hosting service. Do not settle for anything less than 15GB per month.
3. Excellent technical support – your website is your business partner. You would want it to be live all the time. In the event that it’s down, the web hosting service should provide IMMEDIATE assistance to bring it back up, as your business relies on it.

You Will Also Need An Autoresponder Service

One thing that is of utmost importance, which we will discuss in detail in a latter chapter (yes, it will take an entire chapter to tackle this essential tactic for your affiliate marketing success,) is email marketing.

Basically, much of your success will depend on how big and how responsive your mailing list will be.

What’s that? “Mailing list?” you ask?

Indeed, you will have to build a mailing list to convert casual onlookers into leads. Your sales will come from your leads, after all.

And what makes email marketing possible is a subscription to an autoresponder service.

I kid you not when I say that an autoresponder service is one of the most critical investments you will make in your journey towards the Promised Land of affiliate marketing triumph. So it is important that you choose a fantastic autoresponder service to give you solid ground to stand on.

I recommend Aweber, which is one of the most reliable autoresponder services available on the market today.

Grab a subscription right now, if you wish, as later on, you will discover how absolutely vital it will be for your affiliate marketing campaigns.

These Are Just The Basics

There are more tools that will elevate your affiliate marketing adventure to the next level, but we will deal with them as we tackle their corresponding strategies.

For now, it is important that you cover these basic tools as they are the foundation of your success in this field.