Success at Affiliate Marketing WithOUT a Website?
Many times I have heard “I don’t have a website so I can’t be successful at affiliate marketing.” – nonsense! While it is 100% possible to earn affiliate income without a website, I won’t lie to you and tell you that it will be easy; as a matter of fact, it can be downright difficult.
But before we go any further however, I do want you to know that if you have been putting off creating a site because A) you felt it was too complicated or B) you felt it would be too expensive, I have some really great free and easy alternatives at the bottom of this post.
But for now, let’s just assume that you don’t want to create a site.
Just remember, the way to become a successful affiliate is to get people to click on your affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, fill out a form, or whatever it may be that gets you a commission.
Therefore, the most important thing to do is to get your link in front of people right? There are a multitude of ways to do so but, again, they will take time because no matter where you go, how you participate, or even what you say, it will take time to build up trust in you so that someone feels comfortable clicking on your link.
First off, one thing that you can do is create a free eBook that you simply give away. Within this free eBook, you can simply add in your affiliate links so that as your eBook gets passed around (which should be encouraged), the more people will have exposure to it, and the more likely you are to get clicks on your affiliate links.
Obviously, this eBook would be on a similar topic that your affiliate links are promoting. You don’t want to write an eBook about soy candles and then promote golf clubs.
Participate in forums. Virtually any forum online will allow you to add a signature to your profile and this signature can then link off to your affiliate offer. That being said, you should pick a forum that again, is directly related to your affiliate programs’ topic. Once you’ve found these forums, you can then start posting but whatever you do, make certain that you are posting helpful information. If you create a new account and then start making posts on the forum that say things like “great post!” or “thanks for the information” or some other comment that doesn’t directly contribute to the conversation itself, you will not earn a heck of a lot of trust. It takes time.
PPC Marketing. Now, this gets a little “iffy” because if you don’t want to put out the money for creating a website you probably don’t want to have to pay the costs of pay-per-click advertising. Not to mention that Google will probably not let you advertise a direct affiliate link on their network; Facebook however (at least at the time of this writing) will. Not to mention, Facebook is a lot cheaper, and you can target groups of people by age group, interest, where they’re located in the United States, etc. So this is another option to consider as well.
There are lots of ways to market your affiliate link but without having a website but to be honest, it takes about 1,000% more work than if you have a website of your own. Plus, having a website of your own let’s you track how well something is doing for you – something that would be incredibly time-consuming without a site.
That being said, I want to give you some really cheap alternatives to start with. Each of these locations will let you build a website for free (although I do recommend that you have your own domain name if not now, at least a little bit further down the road), and these sites are so easy to use you’ll even surprise yourself!
How Important is Your URL to Your Site Rankings?
Filed under: Google, Online Marketing, seo, Web Sites
Your URL, also known as your website address plays a pretty big part in your search engine rankings. What you’ll learn here today is what that part is and how it might be affecting your own websites.
Let’s start with keywords. Since the very beginning of SEO time, keywords have always and still do play a very large part in where your website and its web pages get ranked within major search engines.
While the methods have changed drastically over the years, without keywords; the search engines wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do with your content. These keywords, no matter how they’ve been used over the years have remained a constant in helping the search engines determine where your web pages should be ranked.
Let’s look at a typical URL structure and how keywords play a role in your sites ranking.
Here’s a typical URL: http://www.Site.com/subdirectory/filename.html
It hasn’t been a very well-kept secret that keywords in your domain name and in your sub-directories’ names tend to help where your site gets ranked in the search engines. Depending upon how much significance the search engines’ algorithms place on keywords in these locations will determine where the site should be that day but even with that said, it still seems to be a pretty significant factor in rankings.
As an example, if you do a search for any term that would be considered highly competitive, you’ll likely see results on the first page of URL’s that have that competitive term contained within them.
“Internet Marketing” is a great example. On this first page you’ll see results where the URL’s contain that exact term either in their domain name or within a sub-domain such as http://internetmarketing.school.com.
Now, there’s a bit of a caveat when it comes to sub-domains because the search engines treat sub-domains differently than they do TLD’s or top level domains (those URL’s that end in .com, .org, .net, .edu, etc.).
Sub Domains
Sub-DOMAINS are treated by the search engines as a completely new website. For instance, if you owned http://www.school.com – this is your main TLD or top-level domain. If you created a sub-domain such as http://internetmarketing.school.com this, at least in the eyes of a search engine, is a brand-spanking new website. This further means that if you want to take advantage of the traffic and reputation that school.com already has, it will be much more difficult to do so.
Instead, it would be more advantageous to you to create a sub-directory instead of a sub-domain.
Sub Directories
If it’s not at all possible to find a domain name that contains the keyword you want to use then your next best option is to create a sub-directory that does contain that keyword. An example would be http://school.com/internetmarketing. This sub-directory is NOT treated as a separate domain and thus has a better chance of ranking well.
Your Domain Name
Your domain name, URL, website address or whatever it is you wish to call it, is your main website address. Using the above example, this would be http://www.school.com.
It’s no secret that keywords contained in a main URL or top-level domain do get a bit of a rankings boost when it comes to the search engines. But you need to be careful here. It used to be that if you registered a domain name such as:
http://keyword-keyword-keyword.com that you’d get a rankings boost. This is no longer true.
Search engines like Google count not only the number of characters in a domain name but also take into account the dashes in a domain name. When in doubt, do NOT use dashes and instead try to come up with a domain name that contains your keyword such as http://internetmarketingschool.com
File Names
What you name your files is also an important factor. Let’s say that you wanted to focus a page on local internet marketing within the internet marketing sub-directory. In this case, you’d use http://school.com/internetmarketing/local-internet-marketing.html.
What you DO want to avoid is something spammy such as http://school.com/internet-marketing/local-online-internet-marketing-for-businesses-all-totally-free.html
Whenever someone comes across this in a search engine results page, they’re likely going to avoid it like the plague simply because it just looks spammy; whether or not this was your intention.
Keep the file name short and to the point.
So all in all, here’s what you’ve learned:
- If you can use a keyword in your TLD without creating a tremendously long URL, it is advantageous to do so.
- If you can’t find that perfect domain, instead use that keyword in a sub-directory.
- Sub-domains are treated like brand new websites.
- Name your files accurately but keep them short and to the point.
Google in Iowa – Helping Businesses Get Online
Filed under: Google, Local Online Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Ranking, seo, Web Hosting, Web Sites
This content has been re-posted from WirthMarketing.com. If you work with local businesses you may be interested to know that Google has been rolling out this service on a per-state basis rather quickly. They currently have multiple domain names registered for the separate states. The information here holds true for most programs.
You may have heard today on the news that Governor Branstad says the state of Iowa will partner with Google to help companies develop an online presence. Google has recently begun to roll out this service to various businesses across multiple states including most recently in Texas.
The program is called Google’s “America Get Your Business Online” program and it is rolling out on a per-state basis right now. For example, we’ve recently seen “Texas Get Your Business Online” and we can assume that the name of this new program will be “Iowa Get Your Business Online”.
This program is meant to help local business owners get a website presence, get them listed in Google Places and get them advertising with Google’s AdWords program and Google is partnering with Intuit in the process.
Currently, Google is rolling out informational meetings in Des Moines, Council Bluffs, Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Pella and doesn’t have all of the information yet listed online for the Iowa segment of this service, but we can be relatively certain that the same pieces of information will be given to Iowans that has been given to other states who have already been a part of this Google product.
The reason Google is offering this and partnering with Intuit is because according to their statistics, 59% of Iowa businesses do not have an online presence; in other words, a website for their customers to visit while 97% of consumers look online for local products and services.
That being said, here’s what Iowan’s can expect from the “Iowa Get Your Business Online” program.
- A free, easy-to-build professional website.
- Free customized domain name and hosting for one year.
- A free local business listing on Google Places.
- Free tools, resources, and local events.
All right, so now you know what Google is offering, let’s look at the details:
About Websites and Hosting with the “Iowa Get Your Business Online” Program
With this program, Google is partnering with Intuit and as such, there are some rules that we can assume Iowa will need to abide by (if this program follows the same protocol as other states) in order to participate. Based on the Terms and Conditions for the program, here is what we know:
- This service is only available to businesses not individuals or consumers.
- You understand that this is only for small businesses and you get one domain name and one website.
- It’s only available to new customers to this particular service.
- You agree that the information you share with Google will also be shared with Intuit.
- That said, Intuit’s terms run a couple of pages long which you can view here but I have pointed an interesting piece of information from these terms that you can read a little further down the page.
Now this can get just a little confusing because within previous frequently asked questions for other states it says:
“I have several small businesses. Can I get a website for each of my businesses?” Yes, eligible small business owners can get a free website, domain name, and hosting for one year for each of their small businesses.
But the terms and conditions for the program state:
You understand and agree that this offer of the Services is only available on the basis of one website and one domain per small business.
Based on this information, we can only assume that this will be based on a review of the businesses and Google and Intuit will determine how to divvy these domains and websites out.
What if you have a domain name already? If you already have a domain name then you can move it to Intuit if you wish. However, if you already have a website up and running you cannot move the contents of that site to Intuit and use this free hosting. You have to start from scratch which may or may not be a good thing for your website depending upon how long you’ve had your current site and how well it’s doing in the search engines.
If you’d like a shopping cart on your site, they offer this as well but you’ll need to upgrade and pay the additional fee for this service.
Probably one of the biggest catches is that the website you receive is only 3 pages. If you want more pages than that you can upgrade to the Business Lite Intuit account for $7.99 / month and if you want the shopping cart as well, that starts at $19.99 / month.
Keep in mind that these are the prices listed at the time this was written and they may have changed in the meantime.
With this Google program, you do get the first year of the three page website, hosting and a domain name for free and after that time you can then choose to keep it for a cost of $4.99 / month for the hosting and $2.00 / month for the domain name.
That being said, domain names usually cost about $11-$15 / YEAR depending upon where you get your domain name from. Intuit is charging you $2.00 a month or $24.00 a year.
As far as web hosting goes, there are also other places online like HostGator which give you web hosting for around $9.00 / month (far, far less if you pay for a year in advance) and which doesn’t limit you on the number of web pages you can have. However, this also means that you’d need to design your own site or have someone do it for you (at HostGator you can choose from a wide variety of templates or even install a WordPress blog on your site for free with a few clicks of your mouse).
By the way, if you decide to get hosting at Hostgator, use the coupon code of kristinewirth at checkout and you’ll get 25% off!
In addition to Hostgator, there are places like Webs.com or Weebly.com which, like Intuit, also offer a way for you to build your website from a template, and all of which are also very affordably priced.
It really comes down to whether or not you want to save yourself $83.88 (which is the first free year using this program) and you’re happy to have a 3-page website.
About Google Places
With this program, Google is offering you a free listing in Google Places. Now, this is something that you can do for yourself today for free already so it is uncertain as to whether or not they’ll create the Google Place page for you. In other states’ documentation of this same program, the information contained on Google Places as far as what they’re offering to do is a little vague.
About Google AdWords
Google AdWords is a program that let’s companies advertise on Google websites. You may have seen many of these advertisements yourself when doing a search in Google. They are the ads that run alongside the right of the page and sometimes at the top of the page. With this program, Google is offering local businesses a $75 advertising credit to market their business online.
Now, the way it works with other coupons is that you cannot use an advertising credit if you’ve already opened up a Google AdWords account in the past. It is uncertain if they’re waiving this fee for this program but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.
Intuit Terms and Conditions
While the terms and conditions for Intuit run a couple of pages long, there was at least one thing that stuck out to me. Namely:
Item #4. Trial Period. If you registered for a trial use of the Services (“Trial Period”), you must decide to purchase the Services within the Trial Period in order to retain any Content (defined in Section 6) that you have posted or uploaded during the Trial Period. If you do not purchase the Services by the end of the Trial Period, your Content will no longer be available to you. To be very clear, after using the Services during the trial period, if you decide not to purchase the full version of the Services, you will not be able to access or retrieve any of the data you added/created during the trial.
Essentially I read this as in the event you don’t follow through and eventually purchase the services, you lose everything that you have created over the past year; including content that you’ve written.
It is my suggestion to take a look at all of your options first before deciding to jump in on this deal.
Kristine Wirth of WirthMarketing.com and KristineWirth.com in Altoona, IA has been working with online marketing and search engine optimization for over 11 years. She provides consulting services and courses that help small business owners find a presence online quickly and easily.
