Affiliate Marketing and Social Network Sites

The growth of social networks has given Affiliate Marketers worlds of new opportunities to make contacts, expand their own personal social network and promote products to a different client base in new ways. Static website are almost a thing of the past, and waiting for Google Rank or paying for Adwords is sure to make you broke!To start, what is a social network? Most people think of MySpace and more recently Facebook. While these are social networking sites, and Affiliate Marketer must embrace a broader definition:

?Any website that provides a way for users to interact - such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, etc.?

Unlike the days when Google Search and Adwords would send targeted ?ready to buy? customers to your website, social networking sites take a little more work before you can even consider directing people to a sales pitch (social bookmarking). Social networking sites often have strict rules about selling, posting links etc. Make sure you are aware and comfortable with them before you start posting. Most sites will let you post to them with a signature that can contain your URL. Use it. Post often, but don?t spam.

Remember that your post content is what will gain you the reputation on the site that may eventually lead to sales. Personally I take 2 approaches to this:

I am extremely helpful and friendly and try to answer ever question I can with a thoughtful and helpful answer. I try to take the extreme opposite or unpopular view from the majority of the posters. Never become insulting or aggressive. Present well thought out and researched answers that will make people think. I find that my ?negative? posts drive about 50% more traffic to my sites than the positive ones, however, sales number are about even which means I get a better ROI being positive and helpful.

When posting to blogs, keep your comments short and provide your web link with a descriptive in the comment text. Most blogs will link your ?username? to your website, but that won?t drive much traffic. If comments are moderated you will actually need to spend some time writing something, but it usually doesn?t need to be more than a short comment to be allowed by the moderator. If your comment is more than about #10, don?t bother unless you have a nice piece of ASCII art or something else that will draw attention.

File sharing can be a good source of traffic. Create an e-book (or re-brand one that has no copyright) and share it on P2P and torrent sites. Make sure to include links to your site or some sort of promotional material to drum up visitors. Don?t expect many sales of traditional Affiliate products this way, but if the product you are promoting is well respected and related to the topic, you might get a few (Last year I had a lot of success with an e-book of Video Game Cheats packaged with Affiliate links to Video Game pages on Ebay).

Martyn Carver is a successful Affiliate Marketer and webmaster of http://retire-with-millions.com and http://testosterone-zone.com