How To Create and Use Affiliate Programs to Drive More Traffic To A Website

Website Traffic. Perhaps one of the most low-profile Internet marketing schemes is affiliate marketing. However, low-profile does not mean unsuccessful, because this type of marketing continues to play a significant role in e-commerce.

What is affiliate marketing?

In a nutshell, affiliate marketing works on a reward system, wherein one website drives traffic to another website in exchange for reward points. Basically, it works this way: if you are an affiliate (or associate) of an online-based company, you create your own website, which links back to that company. Any visitor to your site that you manage to re-direct to that company's website will earn you rewards points. The more points you have, the more rewards you can actually reap. Some businesses prefer this type of marketing scheme because it is a pay-per-performance package deal.

In the non-Internet based business lingo, this type of reward system is called revenue sharing.

How to Create and Use Affiliate Marketing Programs

For the first few years, online business owners only allowed for affiliates with their own websites (or at the very least, their own webpages.) These days however, anyone can become an affiliate by simply: engaging in online discussions (chats, forums, message boards, etc.); using e-mail marketing, using offline promotions; writing e-books; or writing ezine articles.

There are certain advantages though, of having your own website. One: some online businesses require their affiliates to have one. Two: since it is your site, you can creatively promote one or all your affiliate programs, all at the same time. Lastly: a website has greater potential to reach more customers than forums or e-mail marketing strategies.

How to Choose an Affiliate Program

Choosing an affiliate program is equally important. Don't grab the first one that comes along. You can visit Internet Affiliate Marketing Program Networks to compare and study different programs. Plus, most of the advertising merchants here will let new affiliates sign up for free. Choose a few of the programs that seem stable, and a few of those merchants with the longest history of sales and affiliate marketing success. Try not to be dazzled by the promises of millions of dollars, etc. etc. etc.

Once you've sized down your list, look into the quality of the products and services that these merchants are carrying. Your goal is to entice people to check out the goods. If you are not convinced of the quality of these products and services, what makes you think that your site visitors will be convinced as well? Besides, if the goods do fall short of expectations, your name as a marketer is on the line as well. Choose one (or more) which you think will be a credit to you, and not otherwise.

Creating the Site Itself

Once you've chosen from the affiliate program lot, you can either choose a program that can help you "build" your website by providing the necessary tools like banners, graphics and articles. If they can provide you with online training about how to effectively market their goods, then your life will be easier. If not, you then have to dedicate more time and energy into marketing your chosen product and goods.

Try to calculate if the time you spend creating product banners and articles is worth the compensation you will be getting from the company you've applied for. If it is not, it would be best to move on to another program.

The most essential key here is to create quality content in your site. People are looking to yours to see whether you can give them new insights or provide advice to their dilemma or verify a fact about something. A theme-based website will even bolster your reputation as an "expert" in your chosen niche, so try to limit your website to one theme only. Weave all your different affiliate programs in all your pages, but do so in a manner that will be attractive but not overwhelming.

At the end of your creative process, try to sit back and ask yourself if you are convinced with what you have on your site, and if you would consent to buying the products and services advertised within. If the answer is a "no," or a "maybe" then you may want to check out other sites to see how you can improve your own.

How to Choose a Domain Name that will Drive MORE Traffic to a Website

Website Traffic. Creating a website can be tricky, but choosing the right domain name is even trickier. A good domain name can drive more traffic to your website, and a not so good domain name may cause a stagnant website. The concept of having your own website is that it should effectively represent your purpose, whether it will be for personal or business use. Once you create your website, it follows that you should and must register your own domain name.

So what is a domain name? It is a unique alphanumeric name that gives identity to a website on the World Wide Web. A domain name has a maximum length of 67 characters, this includes the 0 to 9 numbers, English alphabet composed of 26 letters, and the hyphens. Hyphens in a domain name can only be used within and not at the beginning or the ending of the name.

Domain names have suffixes, and they are called Top Level Domain (TLD). Domain name TLD's are based on the category of organization that they are related to. The following are several of the most popular TLD's:

1. .gov for government agency
2. .edu for educational institution
3. .org for nonprofit organizations
4. .net for commercial network
5. .com for commercial business domain

Since domain names gives identity to a website, it follows that choosing the right one can be a bit complicated. Your objective is to opt for a name that is easy to remember, search engine optimization friendly, and more importantly a domain name that mirrors the content, and/or products and services that your website provides. At the end of the day your chosen domain name can make or break you.

Do's and Don'ts in choosing a Domain Name

Obviously, a domain name should be related to your websites content. If you're selling shirts then do not choose a name such as pants.com. Choosing unrelated names will confuse site visitors and frankly it doesn't make any sense at all.

A domain name as discussed earlier should be easy to remember. So choosing too long of a name is a No-No. Which is better yourshirts.com or your-shirts-in-different-styles-and-colors.com?

However, a short name is also not advisable, because a short name will not have much impact in driving traffic to your website. Try to purchase a domain name with few keywords with relevance to the content of your website. Which is better yourshirts.com or shirt.com?
Integrating keywords in choosing a domain name will help, because it will result in a higher ranking on search engines. Which is better yourshirts.com or yoursite.com? With yourshirts.com you can immediately identify that the website is about shirts as opposed to yoursite.com wherein you are at lost as to what the website is all about, you will loose potential website traffic if you do it that way.

How Relationship Building Can Drive Traffic to a Website

The only traffic known to man that is wholly accepted with open arms is, of course, website traffic. Every website owner loves traffic because the steadier the flow, the more probable that it will result in earnings. But the fact of the matter is that it is hard to achieve, let alone maintain, especially for new internet marketers and website owners.

Do not let this stop you from realizing your goals. You should be able to cleverly utilize all obtainable techniques to drive traffic to your website. There are lots of ways, and one of them is to build a long lasting relationship within the World Wide Web's vast community. In this article we will discuss two of them:

Relationship Building with Customer

The credit should go to e-mails, because since its conception the communication practice hasn't been the same. Whether existing or would be customers, you should always try to communicate with them in such a way that they will feel important and not stalked. It is advisable to adhere to the best practices in achieving that much needed website traffic and traffic conversion. By all means, try to avoid spam e-mails, which will only result to receiving hate e-mails, or even crashing the website's internal e-mail system.

An average user has at least two to four e-mail accounts, and they log in more than five times in a day. It is not surprising that before anything else some of them reach first for the mouse to check for incoming e-mails every morning. That alone translates to exceptional probabilities for website owners. To utilize the e-mail to catch the attention of prospective customers and to build a powerful long lasting relationship with the existing ones will definitely drive traffic to your website.

Towards the end of each day, e-mail does not only change our routines, it also has an impact of the very way we communicate. A marketing technique that uses e-mail promotions will give you a chance to get to know your customers. Moreover, you achieve visibality into the type of content that customers are interested in, and by providing these contents you are developing a progressive customer online relationship.

Relationship Building with other Websites

Other websites in reality are also your competitors, especially if you provide the same products and services or if you have similar contents, but as the saying goes - "No Man is an Island". Even in this cut-throat world of "who-gets-it-first", relationship building is still essential.

It would surprise you that building relationships with other website owners can drive traffic to your website. But also keep in mind that you just do not build your relationship with just any other website, you should always bear in mind that there should be a level of similarity in the content that both websites provide.
At the end of each day, relationship building is all about the quality of the content that your website provides, it is more than just backlinks and page ranks, and oftentimes that is what some people tend to forget.

How Long Does It Take To See Traffic Results From Blogging?

You can see your first traffic from blogging literally overnight, mostly from your initial pinging, Will it be a lot of traffic? Not necessarily. If you post at the right time of day for your site, you may see as many as 100 visitors come to your blog in its first day, due to a new blog post, just from pinging. You can see more than that if you let your existing traffic know about your blog.

After a certain number of posts, to lay the foundation of an active feed, you will also start to see a trickle of traffic from promoting your RSS feed or blog in directories and feed-specfic search engines. That can happen as soon as three days in, and sometimes after 7 to 10 days. The timing you can expect will depend on your blog.

You can see your first search engine results from blogging in as little as a week. With the combination of methods I teach, it really does take just a week to start seeing your initial first page rankings. Will this mean that suddenly thousands of people come to your site as a result of that ranking?
Not yet.

The first results are like poking a hole in the side of a dam. A little trickle of traffic will come flowing out - that’s the immediate, apparent effect. The slower, more dramatic effects happen over the course of the first 80 - 180 days, depending on the difficulty of your keywords, your volume and frequency of quality content, and your persistence in keeping up your linking efforts.

The one thing you’ll need to understand about blogging for business reasons is that when your intentions are tied to your business, you aren’t going to get a lot of general b2b traffic, or general consumer traffic, which means you probably aren’t going to become one of blogging’s superstars. But if you really take the time to know your client base, you will become admired and respected by them, which is what really matters.