BEST MARKETING SOURCES FOR AFFILIATE AND MLM PROGRAMS?
by: Cary Christian

Marketing your MLM and affiliate programs can be a frustrating task at times. It can also be frightening when you are considering spending a substantial amount on an advertising program you are unfamiliar with. How can you approach this task with more confidence in the outcome and less likelihood of wasting your hard-earned cash?

When you are marketing a program online you are attempting to sell a product just as if you were selling electronics, books or toasters. The market is different, granted, and you have to adjust for that, but the concept is the same. Therefore, you should apply the same concepts to selling your programs that online businesses use to sell products. Your primary consideration is to drive targeted, qualified visitors to your income opportunity. Which types of marketing programs satisfy this objective? We are going to take a look at some of the more common forms of advertising and see how they stack up.

1. Posting to FFA and Classified Ad Pages - These types of postings do allow you to target and qualify your market since your ads will make it clear what you have to offer before people visit your site. The problem with these types of ads is that people will only rarely see them. Most people post to FFA and Classified sites using automated submission services. Therefore, they never actually visit the site and see the ads posted there. Sure, some people will find their way to these sites and might see your ad, but the number will be very, very small.

Additionally, your ad will likely remain on these sites for a very short period of time. Maybe 30 minutes. This is also due to the use of automated submission services. As more ads are placed, your ad drops further and further down the page until it finally drops off completely. If you use an automatic submission service like WorldSubmitter where you can queue up five to ten ads and mass submit them one after the other, you can probably keep your ads displaying for up to five hours. This can bring you some visitors. But the bottom line is that you should not count on this type of marketing to fuel your business.

2. Hosting FFA and Classified Ad Pages - The idea here is to be able to send out confirmation emails when people post their ads to your site. Of course, the confirmation email includes your ad. You can pick up anywhere from 200 to 2,000 email leads per day using this method. These leads are generally targeted leads since the majority of people posting to FFA and Classified Ad pages are pushing their own MLM and affiliate programs. The problem is that very few of these people will ever read your email confirmation/ad. Most of them post using a junk mail address. Your confirmation/ad is either ignored, mass deleted or is deleted as it hits their mailbox.

You will get some response from these ads, but not many. In our
testing we found we got about a one half of one percent response rate advertising programs that were free to join. This is not bad for cheap leads. If you are going to use them, we would recommend you use this type of leads to push your free programs or to offer free incentives to visit your paid sites. One large caveat, however: you run a greater risk of s p a m complaints using these types of leads and the danger is becoming greater every day!

3. Traffic Programs - These are the start page and surf for hits programs. You can build up an avalanche of hits to your site using these programs if you build your downlines. However, these hits are not going to be very responsive since most people who see your site will be surfing for credits and not necessarily paying a great deal of attention to the sites being viewed. (There are some exceptions, however. Some of these programs employ unique techniques that draw more attention to your site).

These programs will get you some massive amounts of exposure and, once your programs are set up and your downlines built, they won't take much effort on your part to maintain. We believe these are good programs to participate in if you have the patience to work them. You need to make sure your site is attention grabbing, so if your MLM or affiliate site is showing all over the place because there are so many affiliates, you should consider creating your own site to set yourself apart from the crowd. You should add a bookmark link to your site to allow people whose attention you do grab to bookmark your site easily and come back later.

You will not be able to rely on traffic from these sites alone to fuel your profits. You will get some response and you might even make a sale, but you'll need to use other forms of marketing if you want to be successful. Using them to build downlines in other free programs works well and you might be able to use them to build a subscriber list if you have something good to offer.

4. Guaranteed Traffic Programs - These programs produce a guaranteed number of hits to your site for a small fee. An example would be 5,000 guaranteed hits for $24.95. The problem with these hits is that they usually come from pay-to-read email programs or pay-to-surf programs where the company's members are visiting your site to get paid a very small amount of money for the visit.

These leads are somewhat targeted in that the companies get member's preferences for the type of emails they want to receive or the type of sites they want to view, but members' often check off a lot of categories so they can maximize their earnings. They are not visiting your site because they are interested; they are visiting because they are being paid to do so.

If the visitors are coming from lotto or other gaming sites, pass. The visitors will be totally worthless.

In general, we do not feel this type of advertising is worth paying for. You'll get the same results using traffic programs for free.

5. Pay-Per-Click Search Engines - With these, you bid a certain
amount for keywords or search phrases to obtain a high listing in the search results of these companies. These are highly targeted, well qualified leads. You should definitely participate in these programs if you want to drive quality visitors to your site. See our article in the January 10th Peak Small Business Newsletter for more information on how to use them. You can it here:
http://www.peakconsultinginc.com/newsletters/sbnl_jan1002.htm

6. Opt-in lists and email leads purchased from quality providers - These lead sources will provide you with high quality leads and should generate substantial traffic and sales for you. Along with pay-per-click search engines, these sources can form the backbone of your marketing efforts. Just make sure you are purchasing leads from a reputable company. There are many companies that sell leads that have been harvested from the Internet. Avoid these at all costs.

7. Safelists - These can be a good for getting signups to free programs. We have found them to be particularly useful in generating signups to list-building programs like FreeNetLeads and FreeMailer2000. Don't count on them to make sales however. Also, refer back to last week's article for tips on how to use them.

8. Building your own opt-in list - This is by far the best advertising strategy you can employ. You don't have to have an ezine or newsletter; you just have to be able to periodically send your list some information of value. You can also use FreeNetLeads and FreeMailer2000 to build a list in the beginning until you determine a workable strategy for building a more traditional list.

9. Placing ads in targeted ezines - If you target properly and choose quality ezines, you'll be very happy with the results you get from your ads. This is still one of the premier methods of marketing affiliate and MLM programs.

There is a natural tendency to go with the least expensive and free sources of advertising when promoting your MLM and affiliate opportunities. Always remember that the true cost of any promotional activity is the cost per sale. While pay-per-click search engines, building an opt-in list, placing ezine ads and purchasing quality leads may seem more expensive, they are the only ways to generate enough sales to become profitable. All of the other advertising methods should be used only to supplement and enhance your efforts.


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