Many people venture into Internet affiliate marketing a bit nervous about what theyre doing, but they are very excited about the possibilities before them. This was the case with my girlfriend. She started a site about one of her favorite topics: books! Naturally, when a person thinks of books, they think of Amazon.com, and after a bit of prodding from me, (shed probably tell you after A LOT of prodding from me,) she really got down to the business of creating her site using images and links from Amazon. She put a great site together, complete with reviews, links to, and recommendations about all of her favorite books. She created a lot of unique content for visitors, and used FrontPage to put the site together. (As a side note for beginners, FrontPage is the kind of program that, if you sit down with it for a while, and you know Microsoft Office programs, you really can figure out how it works. This is especially true because of all the tutorials you can read online about how to make the program do the things you want to do. So, back to the story.) My girlfriend then signed up for the Amazon.com affiliate program, (Amazon actually calls it an associate program), and began creating individual product links to resell the books shed reviewed. Six months later, shed not spent a lot of time with her site, but was getting about 10-15 visitors/day from Google and other search engines, and eventually, she made her first affiliate sale! This was awesome, and resulted in about $10 in commissions to her. She made her first $10 of passive income! Today, its 6 months later, she recently renewed her site for another year, and its left her wondering; Okay, Ive made some income from my site, so what now? There are many people who find themselves in this position today. Theyve made some money on a web site from affiliate programs, or from their own products, but they dont know what direction to go in next. The next direction to go, is to take your site a bit more seriously. This doesnt mean that you cant have fun working on your site, or that you have to increase the amount of time you spend working on it every day. What it does mean is that you have got to inspect what you expect. If you dont know how people are ending up on your site, what theyre doing while theyre there, and what causes them to leave your site, then you can expect to continue wondering Now what? as you go through the process of building your site. However, if you inspect and know what your traffic is doing, and how it comes to your site, then you can change your site to more effectively meet the needs of the people who visit your pages. When you give your visitors what theyre looking for, theyre more likely to purchase, which means an increase in commissions and income to you. So here are three simple things to review, and some tips for increasing your traffic, your sales, and ultimately, your income. #1 Review Your Site Its time to step up your web design, copywriting, and sales skills a bit. Check out your web site, and have some friends check out your site. Have everyone try to take an objective view, as a new visitor would, to viewing your site. Web Design Does every page of your site have a |
