Sunday, May 20, 2007

Your Online Business Needs An Affiliate Program

By: Jim Pretin

If you have recently started an online business, you are no doubt facing the difficult task of trying to promote your website without sufficient capital to do much advertising. It is a catch-22; you need to spend a lot of money on advertising to launch an internet business so that you can make some money, but you need to make some money so that you actually have some dollars to spend on advertising.

To get money for advertising, you could take on a business partner who is willing to fund the company to get your marketing campaign going, or perhaps you could turn to venture capital to get started. However, unless you already have a lot of solid business contacts, raising money for an internet startup can be almost impossible.

So, what should you do? The solution to all your marketing problems might be an affiliate program. With an affiliate program, anyone who has a website can post an advertisement for your business on their website in the form of a banner or a text link. If someone clicks on that banner or text link and subsequently buys your product or service, you have to pay that affiliate a commission on the sale.

The reason why this is such an excellent marketing strategy is because an affiliate program costs you nothing. You do not have to pay to place your affiliate banner or text link on other websites because you are offering those other website owners a commission on every referral they make, but only if that referral produces a sale. [Read full article]

No comments: