Lots going on in the world today. Still fighting the COVID-19 pandemic (numbers are finally going down), Trump's second impeachment (will this be “must-see TV” – I don't know and I won't be watching), and it's FREEZING up here in the PNW. Could get a couple inches of snow.
Snow day!
Except the kids aren't IN school. They're “distance learning.”
Anyhoo…let's talk affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Think of selling something. It could be something you make yourself or somebody else made it. If the latter, it's affiliate marketing.
Of course, I'm really simplifying this. Is a retailer an affiliate marketer? I guess, according to the definition above.
According to Wikipedia,
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.
Wikipedia.org
So a vendor makes the product and provides you with a tracking link such that if you market said link, and a customer buys the product from the vendor using your link, you get credit for the sale. This is most often as a percentage of the final retail price, but sometimes is offered as a “bounty” in whole dollar terms. Amazon does this a lot with their subscription-type services like Audible Plus (click the link to see what I mean).
If you sign up to Audible Plus, using the link above, I get $5 if you sign up for a free trial and $10 if you sign up to a paid plan.
You, as a customer, don't pay any more than you would if you hadn't gone through my link. Amazon pays me for referring you to their site, service, or product.
Make sense?
In the internet marketing world, there are plenty of ways to affiliate market. There are networks like Linkshare that have affiliate marketing programs inside. You sign up to Linkshare, find programs you want to promote as an affiliate, and then you apply individually for each affiliate marketing program.
For example, you could sign up to be a Microsoft affiliate. Whenever you sell one of their products, they pay you a commission.
As an affiliate marketer, you never have to hold any inventory, and you don't buy the product (or service) wholesale and then sell it for retail.
You simply refer a potential customer to the vendor site using a special link you get from the vendor or from the network. If the customer buys from the vendor, the vendor gives you a piece of the sale.
That's it.
It's a great model to get started with because you don't need to create a product, which is hard. It really is. Imagine manufacturing an XBox. LOL. Not easy.
But you could easily sell XBoxes via affiliate marketing.
I suggest ALL budding internet marketers try affiliate marketing first, before ever trying to create your own product or service. You may find that you can earn quite the comfortable income from affiliate marketing alone.
Moving on…
What is Content Distribution and Why Should You Care?
Content distribution is simply publishing any content you create to your own website AND other websites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Why would you want to do this? Because those big social media sites have a much larger audience than you do. You can reach many more people using those sites than you could if you relied solely on getting traffic to your own website.
That's the WHY. Now for the HOW.
There are many ways. The easiest (and cheapest) is to manually post to each site. Take your link and a small excerpt and paste them into Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, and any others. Click “post” or “publish” and you're done.
You can also use a service like Hootsuite or Publer to semi-automate the work for you. You make one post and the service sends those posts out to all the social media sites you've authorized and they autopost them to the individual social media sites.
It takes you less time. But there is a tradeoff. Facebook, for example, gives a lot more “weight” to the posts you make yourself versus the posts those services make on your behalf.
Don't believe me? Do a test: Make one post manually to Facebook and them make a similar post using a service. You may be surprised at the difference.
In any event, you want to distribute your content to get as many eyeballs on it as possible. But don't go nuts. A handful of social media sites that you post to on a regular basis is better than nothing. However, trying to post to 17 different social media sites would offer very little incremental return.
Stick to the big guys like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If you do video, include YouTube in your mix. (Video is HUGE and will NOT get smaller.)
You can also add in a couple niche-specific sites if it makes sense.
You won't get TONS of traffic doing this, but you will see a bump in traffic.
And that's a good thing!
Miscellaneous Ramblings
It's so damned cold here. I have a relatively new house with great insulation and energy-efficient HVAC and water heater. I've set the thermostat down to 60. It runs a lot at night when it dips into the teens and twenties.
Snow is in the forecast. Nothing like what they are getting in the Midwest and East right now…but snow nevertheless. It's enough to really mess up the roads and cause the heating bill to run through the roof.
I don't want to talk about the politics of the impeachment, but I do want you to pay attention to the marketing of it. On one side, you have a team who are dedicated to punishing the ex-president. They will provide compelling evidence to make their case.
On the other side, you have a team seemingly dedicated to defending the ex-president. They will argue process.
There is a famous quote by Carl Sandberg. It goes like this:
If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.
Goodreads.com
Both sides could be right. It will be interesting to see how each side pleads its case. But you can bet they won't be debating anything. Both sides will tell their story. The stories won't even be remotely close. They won't even have the same theme.
And in the end, it won't matter. There will be no conviction. At least 17 Republican Senators will have to agree with the prosecution. That's IF no Democrats cross over.
It. Won't. Happen.
But it will be interesting to watch how each side plays the game. There will be marketing (i.e., persuasion) lessons here.
The article was originally published here!
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