Affiliate marketing strategies - Website or no website?

The rapid spread of the internet, has meant the emergence of new ways of marketing products. Affiliate Marketing is one of this new ways. Affiliate Marketing does not require you to have your own products; you only need to sell products, which have been already developed and proven. So if you want to make a few bucks from the Internet and do not know where to start, I would say start off with Affiliate Marketing.

All you need to do sign up with one of the many Affiliate Marketing Programs, which is usually owned by a Merchant or a Retailer. Once you sign up, you are ready to rock and roll. You have to start promoting the products and services and the Merchant will pay you based on the sales you make or on the traffic you drive to the Merchants web site. Isn’t this simple, you startup costs, no development costs, yet you have a business, where you can start making money almost immediately.

Many people are hesitant to get onto the bandwagon, despite the numerous advantages of Affiliate Marketing, but this hesitation is mainly due to their lack of knowledge of Websites. To have or not to have is the proverbial hamletian question, to these people. Be assured, you can do affiliate marketing, without even having a website. There do exist a lot of ways, on how to do this. Some of these ways are, email marketing, forums, chats, message boards, ezines. You can start off using any of these methods, to promote your products and then graduate to using a website.

Email Marketing
A simplistic way, yet a, very effective one. For this you need to build, a database of email ids, of your prospective customers. Once you have the database, send them articles that are relevant, to the products and services you are promoting. The articles you send to people need not be promotional, as many people find such mails, very very annoying and might put you, on their block list. Provide them something informative, on the products and how using them will benefit or profit them. However you can embed text ads, into these articles that you send out and link them back, to your merchant’s website.

Offline Promotion
Classified ads in periodicals are a great way, to promote your products offline. They work better, compared to other options available for offline marketing, as they have a wider audience. There are other options like brochures, flyers which can be used to do offline promotions.

Writing Free e-books
Informative E-books, are a great way to do promotions. If you are good at writing, try your hand at writing an e-book. Let the book be relevant to the product and services you offer. Your reader will be very appreciative, if the e-book is not very promotional, but informative. Again the best way is to place text ads or banner ads, in the end of the e-book, which links back to your merchant’s website.

Writing Free Ezines
Ezines are online magazines, which essentially focus on one particular topic. You can use Ezines, which have ads embedded in them. This is a great way of promoting your products and services. Submit these ezines to various websites and include links, into this ezines to your merchant’s website. There are numerous sites, where you can find ezines, www.goarticles.com , www.ezineartciles.com and others.

Online discussions (Forums, Chats, Message Boards, etc.)
On these mediums, you find a lot of people who are really interested, in the products and services that you offer. Whether you have a web site or not, you can ignore these mediums at your own peril, because they are a great avenue, to promote your products. Do not be surprised, if your conversion rates are real high.

With so many ways to promote, do you really need a website?
The answer actually is, it is better to have a website. A website offers numerous advantages, over all the above ways of promoting your products and services. Some affiliate program managers, do insist on having a website. With a website, you can literally promote hundreds of products with little effort. Imagine using all the above ways, to promote a hundred products. Not only is it time consuming, but it is not an efficient way to operate the business. Besides a Website gives you a much broader reach, than let’s say email marketing or other ways.

All said and done, if I were you, I would get myself a website even, before I sign up with an affiliate marketing program.