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Chapter 8: Selling While Grabbing Backlinks

What could be better than selling something for cash and also getting a backlink from it? Make a little moolah now and a little moolah later too. This is something you can do with your own affiliate marketing program. Mimic the big players like Amazon.com by creating your own affiliate program and having people backlink to your site for a commission. Setting up the program may cost you some time and money, but once it is in place you don't have to pay unless you make a sale. If you don't make a sale, the backlink is essentially free (not counting startup costs).

Sold on the idea, yet? Well, there is quite a bit to an affiliate program. You have to have a product or service that you can sell and then you have to have the capability to collect payment and track affiliates who are selling your products on other websites. If you thought developing a backlink marketing strategy was time-consuming, an affiliate program needs to be micromanaged to produce not only income, but to reward your high-performing affiliates. Getting backlinks is just the side benefit that comes from your marketing activity. After all, if you don't have an affiliate program that attracts affiliates, then you have no sales and no backlinks either.

The best way to get quality backlinks using an affiliate program is to offer something of quality on your site and to help your affiliates make money, thus keeping them happy. To do that concentrate you will concentrate on the affiliate program and not the associated backlinks. There are still some technical issues you will need to ascertain work in your favor with backlinks coming from your affiliate program, but a long-lasting program focuses on sales first (for you and your affiliates) and backlinks second.

What Should You Sell?

Just about anything can be sold on the Internet. There are laws that prohibit the sales of some items like alcohol, drugs, and other regulated industries. You will want to make sure that what you are selling is legal and that it can be sold on the Internet.

You also want to keep away from items that just don't sell well on cyberspace. Large items that take a lot of money to ship may eat into your profits when shipping costs increase. Or they may simply be unwieldy or too fragile to send via snail mail. Other items that consumers like to touch and feel before they buy might also not make good candidates for an affiliate program.

PHYSICAL ITEMS

If you decide to sell something that needs to be shipped out in physical form, you will have to start an inventory management system to track your products and deliver them on time. You may have to deal with irate customers who might end up with defective products or that receive products that get damaged along the way. You will also need to determine when an order comes in and how to process it so it gets delivered on time, regardless of whether there are problems with weather, the postal service, or your inventory.

If you don't have experience ever managing an inventory of products and shipping things via the postal service, it will be a steep learning curve. You will have to learn how to properly package your item. You will have to figure out where to buy packaging and include that in the cost of your item. You have to figure out how to get the best rates for mailing and include those in your quotes for shipping.

Changes in the cost of your products, packaging, and shipping can make you less competitive in the market and eat into your sales. In addition, you will also have to take into account the labor involved in processing orders for physical items that have to be shipped via the postal service. By the time, you are done, you may have less time to really do much Web marketing with those backlinks you generated or you will have to hire someone to take control of that area of your business. The focus will be on your product, and not generating money through other less intensive Internet advertising strategies.

DIGITAL MEDIA

Fortunately, you are trying to sell items in an affiliate program that is on the Internet. That means you can also pick something that you can deliver over the Internet and skip shipping costs all together (like digital media). This is the ideal way to do business on the Internet, if your affiliate program is being put forward as a way to harvest backlinks. You don't want to spend too much time becoming a retailer of products as much as finding ways to make money online without having to ship things to Timbucktoo.

Examples of products and services that can be done over long distances or in cyberspace are: eBooks, ghost written articles, freelance graphics design, courses, fortune telling, consulting services, coaching, business reports, music clips, art clips, online seminars and workshops, useful computer scripts, applications, software, advertising, hosting services, and much more! As long as you can provide a product or service in virtual cyberspace that doesn't involve you in extra inventory delivery headaches, you've got it made.

How To Establish An Affiliate Program

There are three different ways you can establish an affiliate program. One, you can go to an affiliate network and hire someone who manages programs and who will sign you up as an advertiser. Secondly, you can find some an Application Service Providers (ASPs) who will set up an affiliate program on their servers and change you to host the system. Finally, you can create your own affiliate networking program by using software that plugs into your own existing website and manage the entire thing yourself. We will go over each option below.

AFFILIATE NETWORKS

These offer the least amount of control, but the quickest way to link up to people willing to try your affiliate program to make money. It does cost you money to sign up and also on a rotating basis to keep the program alive. You do not get to work with your affiliates directly.