When it comes to affiliate marketing, one of the biggest points of confusion is where to advertise affiliate links.
I know that it seems like there are a million places where you can advertise, but the real “question behind the question” is knowing where it is effective to advertise affiliate links, because not every advertising medium is created equal.
First, you may already know that not every advertising medium out there is affiliate friendly.
If you’ve ever done pay-per-click advertising and competed with the person who owns the product you are trying to promote (or some super affiliate) you have experienced firsthand how unfriendly pay-per-click can be towards affiliates.
In addition, Google often seems to penalize affiliate marketers by having very tight restrictions on ad copy and penalizing squeeze pages that affiliates like to use.
What I’ll do today is share three tips with you about places proven effective when you are wondering where to advertise affiliate links.
The first place to advertise your affiliate links is on Facebook.
Facebook is a tremendously powerful advertising medium for affiliate marketers and one of the first places to go when wondering where to advertise affiliate links.
There are two ways to use Facebook when wondering where to advertise affiliate links.
- Your own Facebook page.
- Buying Facebook ads.
Placing your affiliate links on your own Facebook page takes moments but can really pay off.
The people who visit your Facebook page are interested in you. They want to keep up with you, share news and information, and are interested in what you like and don’t like.
Doesn’t it make sense some of them might become curious about how you are making money online?
It does, and they will click. When they do, you could make a sale!
This is totally passive advertising that costs you nothing but a few moments of time. Yet most miss this idea.
When it comes to buying advertising, Facebook is actually very affiliate friendly. Although technically it is a form of pay-per-click, they are unique in being effective for affiliates.
The beautiful thing about Facebook is that their advertising is super targeted when it comes to the ads you buy, and the ads are not very expensive.
Here’s an inside tip: Draw up an imaginary profile, some people call it an “avatar”, of the person that you want to reach before you start buying ads from Facebook.
Get really specific.
- Is this a man or a woman?
- What age range are they in?
- What part of the country, perhaps, do they live in?
- What are their interests?
- What type of things do they read?
The better a profile you can draw of your ideal prospect, the better a job Facebook can do in helping you match up to that prospect.
Facebook’s ads are so targeted that you could practically reach any 30-year-old women named “Mary” who like the color orange if you wanted to (not that you’d want to limit it quite that much!).
They do a better job than anybody I’ve seen at helping you match their audience to what you’re promoting.
So take a strong look at Facebook advertising and get really specific about who you want to reach, let them help you reach that person.
And be sure to post links to your affiliate offers on your own Facebook page as well.
The second place to advertise affiliate links is via solo ads.
Solo ads are ads in ezines that go out as a single blast, alone. That’s why they’re named “solo,” because they go out by themselves.
Solo ads can be highly targeted and highly effective.
- You can send solo ads to a list of buyers only.
- You can send solo ads to a list of people who only read articles about a particular topic.
- You can send solo ads to lists of people who have registered to receive something free.
- You can cast a wide net or a very, very targeted net.
It just depends upon how you want to approach it.
The beautiful thing about solo ads is that your ad stands completely alone. It gets the full attention of the audience who opens the email.
Solo ads are 100% affiliate friendly.
Your ad stands alone, it doesn’t compete with anybody else’s ad, and ezine publishers who sell solo ads (and other list owners who sell solo ads) just love to promote affiliate offers.
They love for you to promote your affiliate offer through their list, because it’s profitable for them with minimal effort.
It’s kind of like “renting” a list for a day because you make up an ad, you pay a small fee and your ad goes by itself via email to that person’s mailing list.
One word of caution: when buying solo ads be sure you know how and when the person selling the ads built their list. There are many shady solo ad sellers today, so be sure to ask questions up front.
I would be remiss if I didn’t share that the #1 resource for solo ads is the Directory of Ezines.
We’ve been helping members succeed with solo ads since 1997!
Another way to advertise affiliate links is to place ads on websites and blogs.
These could appear as banner ads, or text ads, or little buttons on sidebars.
When you are wondering where to advertising affiliate links, and you look at how many sites are out there, it’s easy to become confused.
So let me share one of my favorite sources with you.
The source that I really like for this is a website called BuySellAds.com
BuySellAds is a marketplace of people who own blogs and own websites that get traffic and are willing to sell advertising to the general public.
They’ve taken that inventory of available advertising space, and they’ve categorized and catalogued it so that if you’re interested in placing your ad on a blog that gets 20,000 visitors a month and it’s about recipes, you can do that.
If you want to place your ad on a blog that gets a million visitors a month and it’s about health, you can do that too.
So whether your budget is big or small, whether your niche is wide or narrow, it doesn’t really matter.
If you want to advertise affiliate links, BuySellAds.com can help you find places to advertise that you might not normally find.
If you go to the owner of a big website that gets a million visitors a month or more and you try to buy advertising from them directly, sometimes you might get the cold shoulder.
But if you go to a place like BuySellAds, where that website owner has registered and made his or her advertising available to the public for a fee, then you’ll get placement very, very quickly.
Knowing where to advertise affiliate links can be a little bit of a challenge sometimes, especially when you don’t have much experience or a big budget.
But let me tell you, there are some great places to advertise affiliate links, with reasonable costs where you can get results without busting your budget.
Try the sources listed here, and don’t forget to use that Facebook trick today.
I love affiliate marketing, and love my own affiliates too. That’s why I am committed to sharing what works in the real world with you and helping you find more and more places to advertise your affiliate links.
Because when you discover reliable places to advertise affiliate links you will have found a beautiful thing indeed!
