Affiliate Web Site Pros, Cons and Getting Traffic
With the web these days growing at a substantial rate, just
about everywhere you turn on the web, you will see offers to own
your own web business. Many of these offers are legitimate
businesses with real products and items waiting for you to open
one of their affiliate sites and start selling. They can sound
very good, get you excited, tell you that you can make tons of
money and sometimes be under $100.00 dollars to start. But there
are some important things you should consider before you buy.
Pros:
Affiliate sites can be a good thing if you're looking for a low
maintenance way to have a business on the web, like if you're
retired or like to travel a lot. They can also produce a fairly
good income 24/7 once you become established and if you know
where you can pick up some local traffic just through friends and
neighbors.
Cons:
But there are downfalls to having an affiliate site, and the most
important one is you probably won't have much control over it,
sometimes none at all. First, you may not have control over the
ad banners that appear on your site, you probably won't have
control over the content, links or text links and on some of
them, you may not be able to control the keywords or optimize the
site for the search engines, or possibly even see your daily
traffic or check your stats (how many visitors you have gotten
and how many items you have sold).
First of all, do some research on the company to be sure they
are indeed legit. But one of the things they won't tell you as
they are trying to sell you a web site, even if they are a
legitimate company, is that even the big time companies with web
sites consider themselves a top notch site if they make one sale
out of every one-hundred visitors. As the matter of fact, this is
what companies web sites aim for. Traffic is simply just not an
easy thing to build up. A web site is not like putting a
convenient store on a corner and everyone will see it as they
pass by, and stop. If you do not advertise in some form, no one
will know you're on the web. The old adage "if you build it, they
will come" just isn't true when it comes to opening a web
site.
Getting The Traffic:
Of course getting some heavy duty traffic will become your main
goal when you open a web site, and it doesn't matter how good it
is or what it is selling. But web advertising can be flat out
expensive, even scary. When you run a search for web advertising,
you will find all kinds of bargains and promises to get heavy
traffic to your site, and some of these are legitimate
businesses, while others are mostly full of wind. Once you have
your site and you begin searching the web for advertising,
there's one old adage that you should always stand by, "If it
sounds too good to be true, then it probably is". Don't fall for
so-called bargains such as "100,000 visitors to your site for
only $39.95!" Because it's not just the traffic you need, it's
the quality of it.
If you pay for 100,000 traffic hits to your site that are
pretty much forced to land on your page, more than likely you
aren't going to land a sale for it. There are plenty of
advertisers that will do this. Such as persuading you sign up on
a traffic building list where people are forced to click on your
link, just so they can earn a credit for it to get traffic back
to their own site. Or joining and paying for an MLM type traffic
builder where the member simply passes their site around to other
members who desire more to sell than to buy. These sites can have
as many as 25,000 members (so claimed), but all they are really
doing is advertising their sites to other members while trying to
make money from one another. As far as I have seen, normal
outside web traffic or non-members rarely see these
advertisements, if ever. Watch out for what can also be called
FFA ads (free for all). They make it sound really good to join
these, but when you place your ad in the rotation, you must give
them your email address, and you will get literally slammed with
everyone else's ads in YOUR email box.
Personally, I think the best advertising for any web site is
word of mouth. Start locally by spreading the word and grow from
there. Use flyers, penny saver papers and of course business
cards and spread them all over your town, and county if
necessary. Put a magnetic sign on the side of your car and give
relatives and friends some business cards to pass around. All it
really takes to get started, is a few people who know a few
people and so on. But above all, don't get discouraged, because
it can take up to a year or two for a website to really take off.
The most important thing is traffic, traffic, traffic (but
QUALITY) traffic. Because the more you get, the bigger chances
are of getting bigger and better sales. Good luck!
R.L. Young is the owner of National Wholesalers, a wholesale
website open to businesses and the public and to help those who
would like to have their own home business. Mr. Young began web
marketing in the fall of 2002 with many experimentations and much
research in web marketing, advertising and sales; including
studies with affiliate web sites, and always learning more. Visit
National Wholesalers at: http://www.natlwholesalers.com
 MORE AFFILIATE REVENUE RESOURCES updated Thu. February / 09 / 2012
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