Craigslist
and Affiliate
Marketing
For people looking for an online community with a lot to offer,
Craigslist is a natural choice. With billions of page views every
month it's not a surprise that Craigslist has the ability to offer
many financial opportunities for the alert internet marketer
willing to learn how to cash in on Craigslist's popularity.
Internet marketers in the know use affiliate marketing to increase
their online profitability. Craigslist is beneficial to ecommerce
business owners looking for affiliate marketers to promote their
offers. It is also beneficial for people who do affiliate marketing
that are searching for new businesses to promote. This article
is
an
overview of locating affiliates to promote for you or to locate
affiliate offers to promote.
Affiliate Marketing Basics
Basically, affiliate marketing is a marketing
technique where
business owners pay someone (an affiliate) on a performance basis.
In conventional marketing business owners pay upfront for
advertising. No matter what outcome is produced by the ads.
Affiliate marketing is different in that business owners pay only
when specific actions occur. Businesses typically pay online
affiliates for performing one of three certain actions. This could
be paying-per-click (PPC), per sale(PPS), or per lead(PPL). All
three of these are also referred to as 'pay per action' or PPA.
In PPC affiliate marketing campaigns an affiliate
uses a coded
link in their email or website. Each time someone clicks the coded
link it goes to the business' website. The business can tell which
affiliate generated the click using the code embedded in the link.
The affiliate then receives the agreed upon payment. For PPC this
usually varies from fractions of cents to several cents.
With PPS campaigns an affiliate doesn't get
compensated just for
sending visitors to the sponsoring website. The visitor also has to
purchase something for the affiliate to get credit. Again, payment
varies. Typically ranging from several cents to several dollars per
sale or sales. This can be a flat rate or percentage of sales the
affiliate generates.
In PPL programs an affiliate gets paid if visitors
click through
the affiliates coded link and then follows through on giving the
additional information the sponsoring business wants. This could be
as simple as visitors sharing their email address for an online
newsletter, or as complex as filling out a loan application. Again,
payment varies, but is usually a flat rate.
Finding Potential
Affiliates
A business owner that is interested in locating
affiliates for
promoting their offer can use Craigslist to help them find such
affiliates. Though it seems logical to list affiliate opportunities
under the jobs category at Craigslist, it's important to know that
this goes against the sites rules for job postings. This simply
means that if you are looking to find affiliates you'll have to do
so by using different areas on Craigslist.
Any discussion forums that are related to your
offer are a way
to locate potential affiliates. If you use this method, though, be
careful to avoid spamming the forums with sign up links for your
program. Spamming techniques like this make you look unprofessional
to any potential affiliates and if the Craigslist moderators see
fit, they will ban you from the forums. Making a logical and
relevant contribution to discussions and getting to know other
forum participants is an ideal way to connect with potential
affiliates. Then you can add a link for more information about your
affiliate offer when you make posts.
Affiliate Opportunities
People who earn an income by being an affiliate
promoter for
business owners can locate new affiliate programs on Craigslist.
Even though there are rules against it, sometimes such listings do
end up in the jobs section. These ads will probably be removed
quickly, but it's possible to take advantage of them if you act
before they are taken down. Of course, some forum postings may
contain links to affiliate programs as well. Another way is to post
requests in the services or resumes section.
Other ways to earn money as an affiliate promoter
is to
become an affiliate for some of the more well-known Affiliate Programs. Affiliate Programs like Mike Filsaime's PayDotCom, Clickbank and e-junkie promote a great deal of e-Commerce (digital books, software, etc.) products. Other Affiliate Programs such as Amazon promote all most anything you could ever imagine - from ebooks to clothes to tools to "you name it".
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