Internet Marketing School

Affiliate Marketing - Affiliates involved in Internet Marketing tend to be experts with both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing, this is due to the nature of what they do- ie. Get traffic to their site or the program they promote, as such there’s a whole sub-industry, built around helping make an affiliates job easier.

Before we go on to looking at top tools for affiliates we need to have a look at the kind of things an affiliate would need before they get started.

First, they need to know the basics of HTML, after all this is the most basic ‘internet language’; they also need to understand, at the very least the basics of marketing, after all the bottom line is this is about marketing products and brands, affiliates, particularly those focused on Search Engine Optimisation, also need to know how to write high quality Search Engine Optimized content.

So, the top 5 Affiliate Marketing tools comprise the following:-

1. Wordpress (www.wordpress.org): I can’t sing its praises enough, but it cuts out a lot of the headaches. You can essentially create a blog in a few hours and start writing, and this includes customizing both the front end and back end. You have two ways of using this, you can keep it as an open and on going blog, or you can write, then ‘close off the blog’ by creating a ‘front page’, given the level of functionality it’s pretty much the perfect tool for affiliates. Here’s a few examples:

• www.shoppinglinks.org.uk
• www.bargainflightsto.co.uk
• www.bloggersnetwork.co.uk

2. Firefox (www.firefox.com): This is the worlds best web browser, its free to down load so you have no excuse, like wordpress, its very customizable with tools affiliates can use, these plug ins allow you to find out all sorts of information and add plenty of functionality to your browser. You can find plugins for Firefox here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

3. Keyword Tools: Theres a whole range of these out there but you’ll be able to find free tools that will help support your On-Page SEO, and whats more these are fantastic as they provide you with a lot of information:

• http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php
• http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/keyword-density.html
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

4. Dreamweaver / Photoshop: These are really two tools, but they help with design and layout for both images and websites, as they are both WYSIWYG editors, you don’t need much technical knowledge to get started, the down site ic they can be quite costly.

5. YouTube.com: I personally love YouTube as there’s loads of videos about Search Engine Optimization and Affiliate Marketing you can find for free, for content you’ll find videos on virtually any subject and product so it helps to provide you with content. Loading videos allows you to get linkbacks from youtube so its good for SEO, and little know fact but when you put a video from YouTube on to your site, you get linkbacks from it again good for Search Engine Optimisation.

These are really my top tools and these would differ from person to person but regardless, keep focused on the objective of marketing and providing information to your users and you’ll see traffic and sales increase gradually and steadily.

This valuable article was contributed by Ken Cheung (United Kingdom). Ken Cheung is a Part time affiliate (www.dj-music.org.uk, www.bloggingnetwork.co.uk, www.affiliateblogger.co.uk) and an Affiliate manager for Altogether Ads (www.altogetherads.com), a UK based affiliate network, which is part of Altogether Digital (www.altogetherdigital.com) a full service digital agency and member of The Engine Group (www.theenginegroup.com).

Edited and published by the Internet Marketing School team.