Affiliate Marketing 101

So I’m starting my second week of my internship with J. The purpose of my work with him is to increase my understanding of affiliate and viral marketing as well as develop skills in HTML and search engine optimization. I will be responsible for two websites: the reconstruction and organization of tinderboxblog.com, and the complete rebuilding of mymountaineers.com, a site for WVU fans. Today I began working on outlining and reconfiguring the home landing page for the website tinderboxblog.com. I’ll get to the methodology of this in my next post. First, let me begin by going over the research portion of the job.

Just like anything else in your professional life, knowing what you’re getting into is crucial. To be honest, when I started I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what affiliate marketing was, let alone how to develop a website based around it. Just about all of my previous marketing work had been in public relations. The most technological work I ever did was create a theatre playbill using Publisher. Yikes! I knew, however, that my computer skills would develop over the course of the summer, so I wasn’t too worried.

J gave me a couple websites to look at, which in turn I will give to you. Normally I’m a little skeptical when it comes to information on the web. After all, anyone can publish anything, so needless to say there’s a lot of bull out there. These sites, though, are defiantly legit.

The first is Commission Junction (http://cju.cj.com). You will need to register with them, but trust me, it’s worth it. It will take you 30 seconds, and you’ll have access to insightful articles written by top notch industry professionals. CJ gives affiliate marketing advice based on the perspectives from both the publisher’s and the advertiser’s points of view (quick note: in online affiliate marketing the “publisher” is the website, and the “advertiser” is the business that is advertising on the website). It’s a great affiliate marketing 101 website, and gives you a basic, but knowledgeable, understanding of what you’re doing.

The second article I checked out was about an eye tracking study done in 2004. The website was: http://www.poynterextraorg/eyetrack2004/main.htm. The study is actually pretty interesting because it gives a look (pun!) at where people’s eyes go in sequence on a website. Keep in mind that results from the study are not 100% consistent. Not every single person looks at the top left of a website first. It’s just a generalization, but it’s a thing to keep in the back of your mind when you’re laying out your website. For more information on eye tracking, see http://eyetools.com.

Finally, I took a look at www.sitepronews.com. This deals with search engine optimization. As you look around, pay close attention to articles written about SEO (search engine optimization), SE Tactics, Web Design, and Web Writing. This site’s helpful because it introduces you to how updating content (especially original content), having a multitude of related links, and having strong keywords can help get you more exposure on search engines through natural search. When you’re developing a website, natural search on search engines is an important factor in its success.

Look over these sites, and I promise you that you’ll have a better understanding of how to do affiliate marketing, and online marketing in general. You will have to read around a bit; one article isn’t going to make you an online marketing guru. However, if you do some reading, you’d be surprised at how much you will learn.