Affiliate Marketing Website Or No Website, That's The Question

Do you want to make money through the Internet but you don't have enough experience or capital to start your own online business? You don't have to worry, for a lot of online marketing options exist for you to start with. One of these options, and shall I say the best, is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing provides first time online marketers like you the chance to market something online even without having your own product to sell. All you have to do is to sign up with an affiliate marketing program, which is usually owned by an online merchant or retailer, and start picking the products you want to promote. As an affiliate, you are paid by the merchant for your services on a commission basis, that is whenever you have directed a visitor to the merchant's site and the visitor actually buys something.

Becoming an affiliate in an affiliate marketing program is often quick and easy, and for most affiliate programs, signing up is also free. But despite these and all the benefits being promised by affiliate programs, many people are still hesitant to get into affiliate marketing. One of the reasons why a lot of people remain hesitant is the lack of a website to start marketing his affiliate products with. This now leads us to the question of whether a website is required or necessary in affiliate marketing or not.

Photo by by BitchBuzz, on Flickr

Many people say that one can do affiliate marketing even without a website to start with. Actually, one can really start promoting and marketing his affiliate products even without a website; and there exist a lot of ways on how this can be done. In fact, many affiliate marketing strategies that leads to success can exist without actually needing a website. Among these strategies are email marketing, offline promotions, writing e-books, writing ezines and engaging in online discussions like forums, chats, message boards and others.

*Email Marketing

Email marketing, or maintaining email lists, is actually the most popular affiliate marketing strategy that doesn't require the affiliate to maintain a website. In this affiliate marketing strategy, what you basically do is maintain a list of the email ads of your prospective customers and provide them with articles that are relevant with the affiliate products and programs you are promoting. Articles that you provide your contacts with need not always be promotional, for many individuals find such types of email annoying. Rather, it would be better if you provide them with something informative and just add small text ads that link to your merchant's site.

*Offline Promotion

There are many ways on how you can promote your affiliate products offline. Among the common medium used for such promotions are classified ads, brochures and flyers. Classified ads would generally work better compared to the other two because classified ads in periodicals often get a wider audience.

*Writing Free e-books

If you have a knack in writing, writing an e-book can be the best way for you to promote your affiliate products in the absence of an actual website. Just like in emails and newsletters, your readers would better appreciate your e-book if it is not too promotional but rather informative. Be sure, however, to make the contents of your e-books relative to the actual affiliate products you are promoting. And just like in email marketing, you can just place text ads or banners somewhere near the end of your e-book that links to the merchant's site.

*Writing Free Ezines

Ezines are publications or articles that aim to inform individuals about a particular topic. If you don't have a website and yet want to be an affiliate, you can well use ezines to promote your affiliate products or to insert links to your merchant's site. If you have a website, your ezine article may actually work well as content for your site. But since you have no website, you can just submit your free ezine articles to various websites that hosts ezines, like goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com and others.

*Online discussions (Forums, Chats, Message Boards, etc.)

With or without a website, you just can't ignore online discussions because they are great venues for marketing your affiliate products. In chats, forums, message boards and discussion boards with topics related to your products, you can easily find people who may be interested with the products you are promoting.

With all these strategies, it may appear that one really doesn't need to have a website to start marketing his affiliate products and promoting his affiliate programs. Well, starting in an affiliate program without a website may be easy, but getting successful in affiliate marketing without a website is another thing. While one can actually gain enormous success in affiliate marketing even without a website, it is a rare instance that "newbies" like you can reach the same levels of success.

Having a website is not really a pre-requisite in entering into an affiliate program, unless otherwise the program owner would require you to have one. But while this is so, I would still recommend that you have for yourself a website, if not now, then maybe at a later time. Having a website creates a lot of advantages in affiliate marketing. For one, it provides you a place where you can creatively promote not only one of your affiliate products but all of your affiliate products. With a website, you can also advertise your affiliate products to a wider market.

Again, having a website is not a requirement in affiliate marketing. But with the advantages that a website can provide, I'd rather have one for myself and make affiliate marketing a lot easier for me.

Marketing During Tough Times?

Marketing and sales are one of the most important components of a business’s survival in the market. While both are dependent on each other many people confuse marketing with sales and vice-versa which is a big mistake. Marketing involves designing a product according to the needs of the market and customers, promoting the product through advertising etc. and setting up a competitive price for the product. Marketing is a platform which drives sales.

Marketing is the backbone of a company’s future and launching pad for the sales. although on the books, marketing is an expense, it’s really not when you stop and think about it. What do you need to do to generate sales? You have to let people know what you do and what you can offer them. It’s called marketing.

So when times are tough, why would you stop using your main resource outside of referrals to get more money in the company? With that in mind, forget what your accountant labels marketing as, you have to treat it as an investment.

Allow me to go further on the subject to clear it up. In accounting, sure, marketing IS an expense. But here's what happens when marketing is viewed purely as an expense:

You think of marketing solely as an expense. When business gets slow, you cut marketing. Now you are letting less people know about your products and services.
Results: You get even less business.

If you think of marketing only as an expense, the odds are, your marketing is nowhere near as effective as it could be.



Here’s how you think of marketing as an investment. When you spend money and buy stock, that's an expense AND an investment. When you buy a rental property, that's an
expense AND an investment

When marketing is looked at as an investment, it is seen in a much different light. You start to require that it make money. You will begin to look for a return on investment.
For example:

You view marketing as an investment. Every time you spend marketing dollars, you track how much business it brings. Now you can see what's working and what’s not.
Try new things and get rid of methods that were working and now are not.
Results: You get more sales and waste less money.

You don't need to put in a lot of time to find out what works. Notice how other businesses track their response.

Every time you see a commercial that says "Mention this ad for a free gift," they are tracking how well that ad works. Every coupon you see is a way for a company to track an ad. Every time someone asks, "How did you hear about us?" they are tracking what works.

When your marketing is an investment instead of just another expense, you'll hold it accountable. It's a small but important change in viewpoint that can add to your bottom line. Try it. It’s a little more work but I am sure it will pay off… and save your marketing budget.