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A Masterclass in Affiliate Marketing and Joint Ventures
by Michael Cheney
Affiliate marketing and joint ventures are massive business on the Internet,
generating billions of dollars every single year. But what is an affiliate deal
or a joint venture? Well, quite simply, an affiliate deal or a joint venture
is a case where you sell other peoples stuff or they sell your stuff.
It is becoming common knowledge that only around one percent of visitors to
your website will actually buy from you. The other 99 percent will never buy
from you. This is on average the percentage across the board of retail websites.
So what you need to do is actually think about recruiting affiliates or join
affiliate programs so you can sell other peoples products and make money from
the 99 percent of people that won't buy your products or service.
What are the benefits of affiliate marketing and joint ventures? Well, if you're
selling other peoples stuff you get all the profit or a share of the profit
without the hassle of all the delivery and customer service. Plus, you're making
money from visitors who would otherwise just leave your site without buying
anything.
If people are selling your stuff then you make sales on a no risk basis. You
basically only pay them when they make a sale for you. It's like having a vast
army of sales people out there all promoting your product but you only have
to give them a percentage of the product profit if they make a sale.
Affiliate marketing is extremely easy to get started with. In a lot of cases
you can do it without even having a website. What you can do is join an affiliate
program, get a piece of code that has your unique identifier, and then start
promoting that product. You can promote it on Pay Per Click search engines or
advertising in ezines or newsletters or using banners. You could even promote
it writing articles. Then when people read this content or the ads, every time
they click on the link and buy you'll get a percentage. It really is that easy.
So what's the comparison then between joint ventures and affiliate marketing?
Well, with affiliate marketing if you're looking for other people to sell your
product online what you need to do is recruit a lot of affiliates.
You may be lucky and get what's called a "super affiliate" who makes
lots and lots of sales for you. But generally you'll be looking at the 80/20
rule; where 20 percent of your affiliates will be sending you 80 percent of
your affiliate sales. So you'll need a lot of affiliates to start generating
a decent amount of revenue online for them to be selling your product over and
over again. They'll be promoting it to their lists; promoting your product on
their site.
Alternatively, you can go down the joint venture route. This is where you contact
a large player in your sector who already has a large, extensive database or
mailing list and you ask them to conduct a joint venture with you. This normally
means giving them a larger percentage, but you will get a larger return because
they're an existing website marketing expert. They know all about affiliate
marketing. With affiliates you need to conduct a lot of training for them so
that they understand the principles and can actually market your product for
you effectively.
So affiliate marketing and joint ventures are a great way to get more revenue
from your websites. I wish you all the best with these techniques.
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