Website Or No Website That’s The Question

Do you want to make money online but don’t have enough experience or capital to start your own online business? You don’t have to worry because there are plenty of online marketing options to get you started. One of these options and I would say the best, is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing gives first-time online marketers like you the opportunity to sell something online even if you don’t have your own product to sell. All you have to do is sign up for an affiliate marketing program, usually owned by an internet marketer or retailer, and start selecting the products you want to promote. As an affiliate partner, you are paid by the merchant for your services on a commission basis, i.e. whenever you direct a visitor to the merchant’s site and the visitor actually buys something.

Becoming an affiliate partner in an affiliate marketing program is often quick and easy, and most affiliate programs are also free to sign up for. But despite these and all the benefits that affiliate programs promise, many people are still hesitant to get into affiliate marketing. One of the reasons many people are still hesitant is the lack of website development company to start selling their affiliate products on. This now brings us to the question of whether or not a website is required or necessary in affiliate marketing.

Many people say that affiliate marketing can be done without a website. In fact, one can start promoting and selling their affiliate products even without a website; and there are many ways to achieve this.  These strategies include email marketing, offline promotion, writing e-books, writing eZines, and participating in online discussions such as forums, chats, message boards, and more.

*Email marketing

Email marketing or maintaining email lists is actually the most popular affiliate marketing strategy that does not require the affiliate to maintain a website. In this affiliate marketing strategy, you basically make an email advertising list of your potential customers and provide them with articles that are relevant to the affiliate products and programs you are promoting. The articles you provide to your contacts don’t always have to be promotional, many people find these types of emails annoying. Rather, it would be better if you give them something informative and just add small text ads that link to your merchant’s site.

* Offline promotion

There are many ways you can promote your affiliate products offline. Common media used for such promotion include advertisements, brochures, and flyers. Classified ads would generally perform better compared to the other two because classified ads in periodicals often get a wider audience.

* Free e-book writing

If you have a talent for writing, writing an e-book may be the best way for you to promote your affiliate products in the absence of an actual website. As with e-mails and newsletters, your readers will appreciate your e-book if it is not too promotional but rather informative. However, make sure the content of your eBooks matches the actual affiliate products you are promoting. And just like in email marketing, you can place text ads or banners somewhere near the end of the e-book that links to the merchant’s site.

* Writing free eZines

Ezines are publications or articles that aim to inform individuals about a specific topic. If you don’t have a website and still want to be an affiliate, you can use eZines to promote your affiliate products or link to your merchant’s site. If you have a website, your ezine article can actually work well as content for your site. But since you don’t have a website, you can submit your free ezine articles to various sites that host ezines like goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, and others.

*Online discussions (forums, chats, message boards, etc.)

With or without a website, you cannot ignore online discussions as they are a great place to market your affiliate products. You can easily find people who might be interested in the products you are promoting in chats, forums, message boards, and discussion boards with topics related to your products.

With all these strategies, it may seem like one doesn’t really need to have a website to start selling their affiliate products and promoting their affiliate programs. Well, starting an affiliate program without a website can be easy, but succeeding in affiliate marketing without a website is another matter. While one can actually achieve tremendous success in affiliate marketing without a website, it is rare that “newbies” like you can achieve the same level of success.

Having a website is not actually a prerequisite for joining the affiliate program unless the program owner requires you to have one. But even if that is the case, I would still recommend that you have a website for yourself, if not now, then maybe later. Having a website brings many advantages to affiliate marketing. For one thing, it gives you a place to creatively promote not just one of your affiliate products, but all of your affiliate products. You can also use the website to promote your affiliate products to a wider market.

Again, having a website is not a requirement in affiliate marketing. But with the benefits that a website can provide, I’d rather have it for myself and make affiliate marketing a lot easier for me.

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