Affiliate Marketing Strategy: Choosing The Right Traffic Tools

©2009 Doug Champigny. All Rights Reserved.

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to make money online, and the usual starting point for most work-at-home online businesses. Since the product, web site, sales copy and often even sample e-mails are already created by the merchant, affiliate marketing success simply involves sending enough targeted traffic through your affiliate link to the merchant’s site.

There are paid options to drive targeted traffic, such as the Pay-Per-Click ads you see in the major search engines, ads on web sites and blogs, and solo ads and sponsor ads in e-zines in the niche. But most people starting out with any work-at-home business need to conserve what little investment capital they have, and as such should focus on the myriad of free methods of generating targeted traffic.

The first concern is to decide which traffic tools are right for each affiliate promotion you’re doing. Look over the salespage and decide whether this product or service is short-lived, like a 7-day sale, or liable to be around a long time, like say a dog training guide. Is it a one-time sale, or can you earn recurring commissions as when promoting a monthly membership site or ongoing service?

If it’s short term, focus on the fast traffic generators like Twitter, your e-zine, your blog and social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg. You want targeted traffic that hits almost instantly, and don’t need to waste time using long-term traffic methods.

If it’s going to be around a while, start by using those same short-term methods to get sales started quickly, then hop over and do some articles, a Squidoo lens and a Google Knol. That gets you the quick traffic from the former, and then keeps some residual targeted traffic going to the page from the latter. If the conversions are good, keep up the short-term til results start to taper off, all the while adding to your long-term efforts. If results aren’t great, let your long-term efforts to date suffice and move on to the next product.

If you’re promoting an affiliate marketing opportunity that pays residual commissions, pull out all stops. Do all of the above, plus record & submit some podcasts, videos and press releases, do either a recorded interview with the site owner or a live teleseminar, use the recording in giveaways, do a few e-zine swaps and maybe even create some viral e-books on the topic to help promote your affiliate links.

In short, there are a lot of ways to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing links for free – just be sure to use the right tools to match the potential returns, start off slow and if you see your affiliate commissions mounting, turn on the afterburners and maximize your return before moving on to your next affiliate marketing opportunity.

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About The Author

Doug Champigny is a well-known Internet marketing mentor, speaker and super-affiliate. For more on affiliate marketing read his Captain Affiliate Affiliate Marketing Training Blog. For more detailed information on 14 ways to drive free targeted traffic to your links, see Doug’s Top Traffic Tips training.

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Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing strategies, affiliate marketing tips, targeted traffic, building traffic, traffic tactics

Forum Marketing for Targeted Traffic

©2008 All rights Reserved.

Do you participate in any online forums, also known as message boards or discussion forums, which pertain to the topic of your website? If you don’t, you should start doing this immediately. Forum marketing, as it is known, is a very effective, free way to get targeted traffic to your websites from these powerful Web 2.0 sites!

Forum marketing is actually quite easy, and it doesn’t have to be time consuming at all, if you do it correctly. Start by doing a search in any search engine. For instance, if the topic of your site is diabetes, you would type in diabetes discussion in the search engine, and it will come back with a list of forums that are devoted to this topic. The ones that come back at the top of the list are the ones that you will probably be most interested in.

Next, visit those forums, and look them over. Are people there? Are they active? When was the last message posted? Is there spam in the forum? If there is spam, it is a good sign that the forum is not moderated, and this probably won’t be a good forum to participate in. Look for forums where there are discussions going on – current ones – and where people are really active.

Next, register for membership. In most forums, this is free, unless the forum is part of a paid membership site. Before you make a post, make absolutely sure that you read and understand the forum rules and terms of use! This is vital. You don’t want to do something in these important Web 2.0 communities that makes you look bad!

You see, with forum marketing you not only increase your website traffic, you also increase your own visibility, popularity and credibility in those communities, and you also create inbound links for your website. Forum marketing has many different benefits – so make sure that you read and adhere to the rules!

Next, see if you are able to create a signature file. This is usually found in the profile section of the forum, where you can change your profile. If there is, take advantage of it. Again, read the rules for the forum. Many forums will have rules that pertain to how long signature files can be. This is usually between five and seven lines in length, but may be as small as three lines.

Your signature file should contain your name and your website address, first and foremost. If there is additional room, you can add your business slogan, or your city and state, or other contact information, if that is something that you want to be made available. Another powerful idea is to add the link to your opt-in form for your e-zine. If there is no way for you to set up a signature file, just create one in a text document on your computer, which you can copy and paste from.

Now, just start participating in the forum discussions. If there is an introduction section, introduce yourself. Look for questions that you can answer, or posts that will allow you to add information. Always use your signature file at the bottom of your posts! Do not spam the forum, though – be sure every post is legitimate, on-topic and helpful.

Most forums will not allow you to blatantly advertise your website, business, or products in your posts, and most frown on the use of affiliate links as well – sometimes even in your signature file. Don’t do this. Instead, just use that signature file, and you will be pleasantly surprised at the targeted traffic that comes to your site as a result of your participation in those busy forums.

For more information on Forum marketing, download the amazing Massive Traffic Bootcamp bundle created by Web 2.0 traffic expert Doug Champigny, available at our sister site, www.TopTrafficTips.com Don’t miss out on all the free targeted traffic the Web 2.0 technologies can deliver to YOUR web sites, blogs and affiliate links.

Technorati Tags: forum marketing, targeted traffic, Internet marketing, Web 2.0 marketing, Web 2.0 expert Doug Champigny, forums, building traffic, Massive Traffic Bootcamp, Doug Champigny

In the ninth century Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian mathematician, introduced algebrac concepts and Arabic numerals while he was working in Baghdad. During the time Baghdad was the international center for scientific study. Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi’s process of performing arithmetic with Arabic numerals was called algorism. In the eighteenth century the name evolved into algorithm. Algorithms are a finite set of carefully defined instruction. Algorithms are procedures that are used for accomplishing some task which will end in a defined end-state. Algorithms are used in linguistics, computers, and mathematics.

Many people like to think of algorithms as steps in a well written recipe. Provided you follow each step of the recipe to the letter you will have an edible dinner. As long as you follow each step of the algorithm you will find the proper solution. Simple algorithms can be used to design complex algorithms.

Computers use algorithms as a way to process information. All computer programs are created with algorithms (or series of algorithms) that give the computer a list of instructions to follow. Computers usually read data from an input device when using an algorithm to process information. In order to be successful algorithms need to be carefully defined for a computer to read them. Program designers need to consider every possible scenario that could arise and set up a series of algorithms to resolve the problem. Designers have to be very careful not to change the order of the instructions; computers cannot cope with an algorithm that is in the wrong place. Flow of control refers to how the list of algorithms must start at the top and go all the way to the bottom, following every single step on the way.

Some terms that are used to describe algorithms include natural languages, flowcharts, psudocode, and programming languages. Natural expression algorithms are generally only seen in simple algorithms. Computers generally use programming languages that are intended for expressing algorithms.

There are different ways to classify algorithms. The first is by the specific type of algorithm. Types of algorithms include recursive and interative algorithms, deterministic and non-deterministic algorithms, and approximation algorithms. The second method used to classify algorithms is by their design methodology or their paradigm. Typical paradigm is are divide and conquer, the greedy method, linear programming, dynamic programming, search and enumeration, reduction, and probalictic and heuristic paradigms. Different fields of scientific study have different ways of classifying algorithms, classified to make their field as efficient as possible. Some different types of algorithms different scientific fields use include; search algorithms, merge algorithms, string algorithms, combinatorial algorithms, cryptography, sorting algorithms, numerical algorithms, graph algorithms, computational geometric algorithms, data compression algorithms, and parsing techniques.

Internet search engines use algorithms to aid in search engine optimization. Google’s web crawler’s use a link analysis algorithm to index and rank web pages. In an attempt to prevent webmasters from using underhanded schemes to influence search engine optimization, many internet search engines disclose as little about the algorithms they use in their optimization techniques.

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Doug Champigny is a well-known Traffic Master with over 100 websites and a number of blogs under his control, including the Top Traffic Tips Blog and the Top Traffic Tips Bootcamp. Doug has also authored numerous e-books on increasing traffic for Internet, niche and affiliate marketing. Be sure to bookmark his sites for the latest in targeted traffic generation to bring a flood of traffic to your web sites and blogs.
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Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, search engine algorithms, search engine info, web site traffic, blog traffic, building traffic, Doug Champigny