Brand new here and have a question

[darrelldyer]

I am trying to get into article marketing. Ezine Articles told me that I can only have an affiliate link pointed at a main domain that I own. They said they do not allow sub domains or anything like that. Is there a way to not have to buy a new domain for each and every affiliate program that I want to promote? I see authors on there with thousands of articles and I know a lot must be affiliates. How do they do it without going broke buying new domains? Thanks from a newb.

Darrell

[yves]

Darrell,

You can use various web 2.0 platforms to direct your article link to such as squidoo, blogger and hub pages. Those sites are free to set up and you can promote your affiliate products there.

[Andyhenry]

Why don't you buy one generic domain and have different landing pages for each affiliate program?

i.e. You have a domain called BestStuff | Main

then for health link you setup a redirect page called www.beststuff.com/health.php/html which redirects to your affiliate link.

for food link www.beststuff.com/food.php/html

etc......

Just use this code on that page to redirect them:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;url=http://youraffiliatelink.com">

Andy

[James Schramko]

You only need to sell $9 a year plus reseller hosting to make a profit....

Besides, Linking directly to an affiliate program or a third party owned site from article directories is one of the dumbest ways to market online.

You should be building up links and traffic to your OWN site.

(Wordpress Blog / and or squeeze page)

[JonStein]

Darrell,

In reality, ezinearticles thought they were doing this to reduce spam and increase quality of articles, however what it actually does is prevent you from making a grave mistake.

The best case scenario is for you to build a presell page.

The problem with a redirect page is that you miss a valuable opportunity to monetize your readers when they click your resource box.

Here is what I do and it works well:

use a generic domain and then have each article point to a folder or page on that generic domain (similar to what Andy stated)

So if your article is about 'Bahama cruises' your resource box would direct to www. your-generic-website.com/bahama_cruises

On that page, you would present a presell (do a review, added info, examples etc) about the product you are offering with a link to your affiliate page boldly displayed on the page. You would also put in an opt-in box on the page (sidebar is good, do not make it a popup, popunder, onload, onexit, or such, that just screams 'hey i'm gonna sell you something, so gimme your details now!').

The optin box should offer a free ebook, or software or whatever that is along the same lines as the content or affiliate product you are offering.

This gives you an 'extra' opportunity to get your readers email, and even if they do not click your affiliate link, you may be able to sell them at a later time, because you were smart enough to get their email from the opt-in.

Take note that it usually takes more than 5 times before a customer makes a decision to buy a product. There are no 'INSTANT' customers.

What happens all too often is you lose the sale because the customer has gone on to another website, and since 'affiliate marketing' is extremely competitive, your visitor may happen upon another website that offers the same product and purchases it from them. This is a result of buyers always looking to 'validate' their purchase by seeing if it is available elsewhere, learning more, seeking a lower price, or better support.

The fact that you now have their email will give you a competitive edge against them buying from another source. You can use their email to encourage their purchase by redirecting them back to your page and offering them an added value with a free bonus, etc.

Hope this helps,
Jon