If you have recently started an online business, you are no doubt facing the difficult task of trying to promote your website without sufficient capital to do much advertising. It is a catch-22; you need to spend a lot of money on advertising to launch an internet business so that you can make some money, but you need to make some money so that you actually have some dollars to spend on advertising.
To get money for advertising, you could take on a business partner who is willing to fund the company to get your marketing campaign going, or perhaps you could turn to venture capital to get started. However, unless you already have a lot of solid business contacts, raising money for an internet startup can be almost impossible.
So, what should you do? The solution to all your marketing problems might be an affiliate program. With an affiliate program, anyone who has a website can post an advertisement for your business on their website in the form of a banner or a text link. If someone clicks on that banner or text link and subsequently buys your product or service, you have to pay that affiliate a commission on the sale.
The reason why this is such an excellent marketing strategy is because an affiliate program costs you nothing. You do not have to pay to place your affiliate banner or text link on other websites because you are offering those other website owners a commission on every referral they make, but only if that referral produces a sale.
Not only does having an affiliate program give you an opportunity to make a tremendous amount of sales without spending money on advertising, but it also increases the number of inbound links to your website. The more links to your site, the higher your search engine ranking will be. So, a surge in your link popularity and an additional increase in sales resulting from an improved search engine ranking is a fabulous byproduct of having a popular affiliate program.
Now, you need to learn how to create an affiliate program and how to promote it. To create an affiliate program, you will either need to hire a web designer or programmer who has experience creating these sorts of programs, because they are not easy to set up. The job requires a lot of backend programming work, database creation, and payment tracking so that the referrals and sales that each affiliate produces can be tracked with a special code that is signed to each individual affiliate.
To promote your program, you will need to post ads for it on as many online affiliate directories as you can find. Some of these directories will charge you a small annual fee to be listed, others will allow you to list your program for free. There are literally hundreds or even thousands of different online directories where you can add your listing. The more listings you can create, the more affiliates you can potentially acquire.
I hope this information helps you get your online business off to a good start. The affiliates you recruit into your program are almost like your employees, they are doing your advertising work for you, and it does not cost you anything unless they make a sale. All those websites will be representing you, sort of like a commissioned salesperson. Just make sure you hire a competent web designer to do the programming work, because if there are any difficulties with tracking sales to your individual affiliates, you will have a huge mess on your hands.
Stop. Shock, horror. An article extolling duplicate content - off with his head.
To put a couple of other matters into context - I have no patience for the duplicate content generated by the myriad of auto site generators, article spinners or site scraper software. The sooner that sort of content is removed from the internet the better.
Private label rights (PLR) articles have a place in providing useful web site content but have no place in an article marketing strategy.
To see how duplicate content should be used to turbo boost your article marketing an example is in order.
I have a web site on Goal Setting - www.goalsetting.jkl.co.uk. Obviously I want to promote that site. Equally obviously I want to use article writing and marketing.
The techniques used in goal setting are very simple and almost universally applicable. So I write an article called something like "Goal Setting - 5 Techniques That Everyone Should Know". It's a good article - fresh, original and packed with good, solid techniques and information.
And it bombs. Very few web sites take it as content. Very little web traffic is generated. What has gone wrong?
There are quite a few reasons. The headline is hardly a benefit laden 'must read' for one. But that's not the biggest issue. The big problem is that while goal setting may be a universal problem all of us think of ourselves as individuals. Our problems are unique. Anyone who doesn't understand 'my' problem can't possible be able to help me.
So if you want your article to be read you have to show that you understand 'my' problem and tell me how your solution solves 'my unique problem'. Goal setting is simple and based on a few universal principals. So wholesale changes to the body of the article are not required. What are needed are changes to make it appeal to specific target audiences.
For instance you could change the title to "Goal Setting: 5 Techniques Proven to Transform the Live of Busy Teachers", or "Goal Setting: 5 Techniques Proven to Transform the Live of Busy students". Or auto mechanics, accountants, solicitors, chiropractors,... There really is no end to the possibilities for making this article call out more to specific target markets.
Simply changing the title/headline alone won't do the trick on its own. You would also need to change the opening paragraphs a little too. How about something like:
"As a busy teacher you don't need me to tell you how tough it can be to balance the competing demands of students, parents, colleagues, administration and the curriculum. Every day there are fresh demands, new legislation, new subjects to learn. It is a never ending treadmill. Goal Setting has been proven to transform the lives of teachers just like you..."
That becomes:
"As a busy auto mechanic you don't need me to tell you how tough it can be to balance the competing demands of customers, colleagues, vehicle manufacturers and government red tape. Every day there are fresh demands, new legislation, new subjects to learn. It is a never ending treadmill. Goal Setting has been proven to transform the lives of auto mechanics just like you..."
You get the idea. The interesting thing is that for a 600 word article you will have only changed 20 or 30 words at most. If the search engine gurus are to be believed that will mean all of your articles will get rejected by the duplicate filter monster. Yet this is simply good marketing practice.
Every marketer has done exactly this since marketing began. You tailor your basic message or offering to appeal to specific niche markets. Every salesman does it pretty unconsciously.
Give it a try. I guarantee that you will get each article on many more web sites and gather much more traffic than you would with the original article. It doesn't take long to do either. All we need is a little common sense among the article directories.
Both Jim Pretin & Seema Chauhan are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Jim Pretin has sinced written about articles on various topics from Insurance, Medicine and Homeopathic Remedies. Jim Pretin is the owner of , a service that helps programmers make an HTML form. Jim Pretin's top article generates over 33100 views. to your Favourites.
Seema Chauhan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Small Business, Affiliate Programs and Computers and The Internet. For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- . Seema Chauhan's top article generates over 2900 views. to your Favourites.