Presell don't sell

The whole point of affiliate marketing is that you presell products, you don't sell them. Trying to sell affiliate products, with banners and ads that scream 'Buy Me' are some of the biggest mistakes I see being made by affiliates. As an affiliate, your job is to get the prospect to the merchant's site, and let the merchant do the selling.

Be careful, though, when selecting banners and text ads from merchants. Some do not understand the need to presell either, and they will offer sales material rather than pre-sales material. Don't use it, write your own. That, then, is the first important tip for this year.

Get a website

Many affiliates do not have a website, and rely on Adwords to make money. This used to work, and can still work with impulsive buy products, but not with many products. The problem is simple - they don't trust the seller.

This has nothing to do with the internet, by the way, it is just a fact of life. People like to feel comfortable with firms they deal with, and need to have been in contact with them five to seven times before they are ready to trust them enough to buy their products.

If you send someone directly to a merchant's site from Adwords, you are invisible, and they merchant is a complete unknown. So you have little chance of making a sale. It is true that many seasoned marketers do, but believe me, the bulk of their income comes from elsewhere.

As an affiliate, you need to set yourself up as an expert in your niche, and that means you need a website. It does not need to be big. Five to ten pages are enough to do the job. Here, you give information, and get the prospects to sign up for your list so you can send offers to them.

So, my second affiliate marketing tip for this year is to get our own web site.

Write a blog

My third affiliate marketing tip is to write a blog. This can be added to any site that has Cpanel and Fantastico, which will install Wordpress for you in less than a minute. You can also get a blog at services like blogger.com and wordpress.com, but these have less authority than one you host yourself.

Straight away you can start posting to your blog, and you can write anything you like related to your topic. Not only is this useful, but it is fun.

So here are my three affiliate marketing tips for this year: Presell don't sell; get a website to support your affiliate business; and set up a blog.