So what exactly is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative, increasingly popular stream of income for online entrepreneurs. Being successful in affiliate marketing includes choosing your affiliates wisely, staying focused, and creating a solid business platform that will invariably grow with proper attention. Sometimes we get excited by a business opportunity and forget how to carefully implement a plan to succeed. Here are five additional strategies that the online entrepreneur can use to be successful in this growing industry.

1. Choose Your Industry Extremely Carefully

Marketing gurus always advise online marketers to do what they love and they will be successful. Not only is this true, but in affiliate marketing it is very important. If an affiliate marketer chooses to market a product or service that they are passionate about, it will reflect in their blog posts, forum posts, and in their customer service interactions. Customers are a peculiar lot and tend to buy when they see and feel genuine passion in the seller’s voice.

2. Use Multiple Merchants

As an affiliate, representing a themed product is fine, but representing several merchants about a themed product is even better. This means that instead of marketing one protein drink made by one merchant, the affiliate can market protein drinks distributed by several merchants and increase his chances of sales. This will likely work best under different domain names as it can be awkward to represent several products by several merchants on one site. Diversity is the key and the affiliate marketer would do well to expand his target market as wide as possible without creating conflicts.

3. Choose Crafty Domain Names

This does not mean the cute or silly domain names that won’t get a second look (such as eyecandy.com for a sunglass affiliate). This name might be cute but… well… do you really think of sunglasses immediately? Crafty domain names and websites include names that tell the customers what to expect. Make the domain names something that is catchy, yet professional, and create a website that is user-friendly and where the customer is sure to return again.

4. Continuing Education

I know that not everyone likes to do work in an industry that requires them to constantly keep learning- but I’m assuming if you’re in this field, you’re probably an entrepreneur of some sort and seek out constant learning. In affiliate marketing, various industries are always changing and improving their services and products. It is in the best interest of the marketer to stay abreast on all developments that their affiliate sites represent, including their competitors. To continually stay educated in the respective industries, the marketer can do several things to increase his knowledge. This includes:

• Subscribing to the affiliate’s blog or newsletter.
• Subscribing to news alerts in that affiliates industry.
• Reading, subscribing to, and networking with other blogs and bloggers in your field.

5. Network, Network, Network

This cannot be stressed enough although many online marketers are deficient in this area. The crux of any business lies in how effective the marketing strategy is and determines how sales will go. In affiliate marketing, affiliates must market their business to interested, targeted markets if they want to see sales increase. Several ways to market include social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Guest blogging and article writing are also avenues to network with others. Another idea that is underestimated is giving away free downloads or products as samples. Giving the customer an idea of what to expect from your affiliate is a great way to close the deal and make the sale. Effective networking opens a channel to do all of these things and help your business become successful.

Keep up these tips and you’ll be a rockstar affiliate marketer in no time. Just don’t get too excited and lose sight of what exactly you’re working towards.

5 Tips for Affiliate Marketing

by Robin Wauters on October 7, 2009

If the Internet has made one thing crystal clear, it’s that physical borders and geographical distance are no longer necessarily an absolute barrier for conducting business.

More and more companies are getting accustomed to the idea of being able to do business with companies on the other side of the world using nothing but digital communication means, or to have entire business units or projects led by teams made up of people located all over the globe.

Hence the popularity of services such as oDesk and Elance, websites where you can outsource given projects to registered programmers, designers, writers, legal experts and whatnot. Another player in this market is GetAFreelancer, an Australian company that’s been offering freelance jobs online since it was founded back in 2004.

Today, the company is announcing that it has changed its name to the far better-sounding and undoubtedly more memorable Freelancer.com. They bought the domain name from a private individual who used to run a magazine called Computer Freelancer over 15 years ago, for a ’six figure sum’. All in an effort to increase its visibility and profile.

GetAFreelancer CEO Matt Barrie tells us that the site recently hit a big milestone and now boasts over 1,000,000 registered professionals and businesses from 234 countries and territories worldwide. Over 475,000 jobs have been posted on the website to date, for a sum of over $43 million.

Not too shabby for a bootstrapped venture.