Affiliate Marketing Without a List—Doomed to Failure

Affiliate marketing without a list is a lot like fishing in a swimming pool.  You may have all the right poles and tackle, but you’re not likely to catch anything.  It may be that someone occasionally throws a bass in your pool out of pity, but again, it won’t keep your family fed.

Listbuilding is Essential for Successful Affiliate Marketing

How do you think that the top dogs of affiliate marketing sell so much stuff if they’re not listbuilding?  You can evaluate their pages all you want, and chances are they aren’t any better than yours, except for one thing—they have an opt-in box.  Even if you have an opt-in box, you’re not going to get anywhere if no one knows about it.

The only thing that separates you from them is the relative size of your lists.  They can sell a gazillion widgets because they have a stocked pond to fish from.  Now, let’s talk about how you can turn your swimming pool into a fishing pond.

Building Your List by Driving Traffic to Your Website

The first thing you need to know is how to start building your list.  You do this by driving traffic to your website.  Having an opt-in on your page isn’t enough.  You have to make people see it.

Exposure is the key element here.  Apart from having the essentials on your website, your entire work is making people see it.  To do this, you need to make use of Web 2.0 properties by article marketing, blogging, sending out press releases, and making joint ventures.

Article marketing and blogging are your proverbial workhorses.  Keeping a steady stream of content going to your blog and to article directories will, at the very least, put links to your site on Google’s page one.  Press releases and joint ventures are in the realm of giving your traffic a “shot in the arm.”  They can be more difficult and expensive to negotiate, but the payoff is worth it.

Don’t Be Discouraged if Your Early Product Promotions Bust

Probably the greatest killer of newbie affiliate marketers is that if their first few product promotions don’t convert into much money, they quit.  If you get stupid rich the first time out, great.  If you don’t, which is more likely the case, then it’s no reason to quit.  Success in the early days of your affiliate marketing career isn’t so much based on money but on what kind of list you get.

The thing of it is that if you get a reasonably healthy list in the beginning, you can keep it when you promote a product in the future.  From this point on, your list will tend to expand, which ultimately means that each future project you take on will become more successful than the last—as long as you can keep your list happy.  Granted, there will be people coming and going on your list, but as long as you keep an overall increase going, you will soon join the ranks of the top affiliate marketers.