Affiliate Marketing Isnt Just About Links

An all too common mistake newbies make when the first get into affiliate marketing is that they think that all they have to do is slap their links up on a website and hope that traffic will come their way. Guess what? It won’t happen.

The first mistake is that they think that their website doesn’t have to be interesting beyond their links. After all, they’re in affiliate marketing, not search engine optimization, right? What they’re essentially telling the search engines is that they don’t want to be seen.

Then they wonder why they’re not getting any traffic on their links. With a plain-Jane website, what else could they expect? They’re lucky if they get pocket change for their effort. More accurately, for their lack of effort!

What’s really horrible is when these newbies in affiliate marketing will have a page of nothing but links, and a lot of them at that. Honestly, there’s really no hope in attracting any traffic this way.

The first rule in building a website is that it has to have good search engine optimization to rank. This holds true for affiliate marketing sites. You have to at least have good keyword placement. You will also have to post content like everyone else. You will never get anywhere if it’s just a grid of shiny, flashing link buttons. Even worse, it won’t go anywhere if you have a mixture of buttons and text!

Now, about that grid of buttons. The average user isn’t going to be able to easily sort through these to find what they want. Simply put, they’ll see it and go away. The best thing to do is break your links up some over different pages. Put them in categories and have links to these pages. For that matter, there’s nothing saying that you couldn’t have several different websites for your links.

Back to the subject of content, don’t limit yourself to content about affiliate marketing. The fact of the matter is that no one is actually looking for affiliate links. You have to draw users to these links by having otherwise interesting content. In short, you have to have a business other than affiliate marketing to really pull it off.

That’s not to say that you otherwise have to profit off of your website. You could have a completely free of charge website discussing the pros and cons of hitchhiking while having your business links lining the sidelines of your page. That’s your choice, though it’s in your best interest to have content relevant to your niche. However, money’s going to have to come from somewhere else, at least at first.

Another helpful thing to do with your affiliate marketing links is to provide commentary on them. Most people, when they see an affiliate link, probably have no idea what it is or why they would possibly want it. Guess what? You’re a marketer, so you can’t just promote the product halfway and expect anything but a halfway result.