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One of the best ways to earn a substantial monthly income is to promote other people’s products and services for a portion of the profit from their sales. This is commonly referred to as affiliate marketing. Many product owners have their own affiliate programs and affiliates can simply promote a URL or website address that’s got their affiliate ID in it.

Is this the best method to promote affiliate sites? Or should an affiliate have his or her own website? Here are a few things to think about regarding having your own website.

1) Unique web presence

Having your own website means that you also have your own unique web presence. You can basically create your own identity and stand out from the rest. This lets you create a unique website that’s not one of millions of the same old template. People like change and it helps to be different. Create your own web identity and it will help you catch your prospect’s eye.

2) Can help build your own list

Simply sending visitors to your affiliate websites through your affiliate URL is not good marketing. At the least you simply MUST get the visitor’s name and email address and build your own list. Having your own list means that you get to contact them at regular intervals and promote your products to them on more than one occasion. Also this gives you a chance to create a repot between the visitor and yourself. This leads to increased credibility on your part and will help you close the sale in the end. You simply MUST have your own website to build your own list.

3) Can easily add and subtract products

You might start out by promoting 1 affiliate product at first. But eventually you’ll branch out and expand into multiple products. Many of them can be related. If you don’t have your own website you’ll end up having a bunch of affiliate URLs to promote. And guess what? You will be alienating one product promotion from the other. The smart thing to do is create a website with a common theme and promote multiple products along that same theme. This way any promotion or advertising you do will funnel prospective buyers to any of your affiliate products. This will greatly improve your chances of making a sale. Plus if you feel that some products aren’t working out, you can simply take them off your website easily.

4) Can pr-sell

Have you ever tried to bake a cake? If you haven’t, ask your mom or grand ma if she shoved the cake into a cold oven. She’ll tell you that you first have to pre-heat the oven before you bake the cake. Promoting affiliate products is similar. You have to first “pre-heat” or pre-sell the IDEA of the product and get the prospect into a buying mood before you send them to the main sites. Once you pre sell them, the main website can help close the sale. Writing you own product reviews is one way of pre selling. You can’t pre-sell without having your own website.

5) Easy URL makes for easy remembering.

Which of the following URLs will you remember is a month’s time?

http://www.KrazeCar4U.com/cgi-bin/?aff=123321&pid=53325&tk=ffsg

or

http://www.CoolCars.com

If you picked the first, then you need to get out more. Because 99% of the time, people will remember the second one. Why? Because it’s short and easy to remember. Many affiliate URLs take the form of the first one. Too complicated. Hard to remember. And this means that people will rather type in www.sKrazeCar4U.com rather than the whole URL. This means that YOU don’t get paid because they didn’t visit the website using the full URL.

Now consider the second URL to be your own website. The URL is simple and catchy and people will remember it. And you can promote many car related products from it. See the advantage of having your own website?

6) Get personal with them and introduce yourself

If you saw me on the street one day and have never met me before, what’s the first thing you’ll say?

“I can refinance your house with a low interest rate blah blah blah”

or

“Hello. How are you. I’m ( your name ) “

Now if you used the second method, which is what any sane person would do, and you turned out to be a banker, I just might have come to you for advice and maybe even hire you to be my personal banker some day.

If you used the first method I would have totally ignored you. And that means NO sale for you.

You simply must create a personal welcome “aura” around yourself before you can promote something to a total stranger. You first have to introduce yourself to them before you can pitch your offers to them. Having your own website will let you do this and in the end, help you close many more sales that would have been pitched to deaf ears.

7) Can do backend sales

The best money comes from backend sales. Backend sales means that you first sell a low cost product and then follow up with a more expensive yet related item later on. Many people will buy from you a second time, much more easily, than the first. So you can easily sell them more expensive items and increase your profits. You can’t do this unless you had your own website AND your own list. If you aren’t doing back end sales, you are missing out on 80% of the profits.

So the bottom line is YES in order to successfully become an affiliate marketer and promote affiliate products, you simply must have your own website. I hope you realize the importance of it by now and cash in on it right now.

Khemal Dole owns and operates
http://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely FREE
service that teaches many beginners and even
experts how to work at home.
Sign up for his FREE 14 day Work At Home Beginner’s Course and learn how real people make money from the internet.

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It is important to remember that the customer doesn’t necessarily see things in the same way we do. This point was brought home to me one day while I was shopping with my daughter, Stefanie, who was two years old at the time.

As I stooped down to tie her shoelaces, I immediately realized why she was becoming so irritable. She could not adequately see the toys that were displayed on the shelf above her head. At this point, I decided to pick her up and to continue shopping with her in my arms. The pleasant change in her behavior was quite apparent and welcomed.

Stefanie’s experience taught me two lessons that I am passing on to you today:

* In dealing with children, with customers, and with people in general who may be from different cultures, we do them and ourselves a great service when we take the time to see their uniques situation from their very special viewpoint.

* Developing an emphatic attitude means listening, really listening, to what they are say. (I’m not referring to the superficial listening we are so prone to do by mouthing words to someone while our eyes and ears are glues to the TV. I’m referring to emphatic listening: listening with our eyes.)
They might just happen to be our neighbors, friends, customers, co-workers, or employees are saying. And it means trying to feel as they feel. It’s like the song says, “Walk a mile in my shoes.”

To help you get into their frame of mind, imagine yourself in their limited experience and highly dependent situation. This will enormously increase your satisfaction and enjoyment of living and, at the same time, make you much more attractive to others as they recognize your sincere attempts to understand them and help them with meaningful solutions.

We all need strong egos to cope successfully with our world, but we need empathy, too. If we want to be successful in business as we are in life, then we must get into the other person’s shoes and see the world from where he is standing.

Remember: When you maximize your potential, everyone wins. When you don’t, we all lose.

© Etienne A. Gibbs, MSW

PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in ezines, newsletters, and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Although advance permission is not required, please notify us at execandgroup-consulting@yahoo.com when you use this article.

Etienne A. Gibbs, MSW, Management Consultant and Trainer, conducts seminars, lectures, and writes articles on his theme: … helping you maximize your potential. He offers management, marketing, and parenting resources at his Maximizing Your Potential blog.

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