Affiliate Banner Ads Vs Content Links – Friends Or Foes?

admin    Web Marketing     Affiliate, Banner, Content, Foes, Friends, Links

Affiliate Banner Ads Vs Content Links – Friends Or Foes?

Okay, you’ve been dabbling with affiliate marketing a bit, but you haven’t had much success, and you aren’t sure if it’s the real deal or if it’s even worth your time.

Like most folks, you probably got into it because you had a website or two, maybe a blog or two, and you were looking for ways to create some income. After all, you had hosting to cover, and graphics, and last but not least, you wanted to justify all the time you were putting in.

So you went out looking for a way to attract a few bucks to the site and you came across a product that seemed fairly well aligned with your topic, and lo and behold, it had an affiliate program attached to it.

You signed up. Got your link. Got a couple banner ads and stuck them in the right sidebar of your website. And then you sat back and waited for the money to roll in.

How’d that work for you?

Not so well, I imagine.

How much time passed before you realized you hadn’t made any money? A week? A month? Six months?

Did you decide it was all a crock and give up? Or did you decide to keep the ads, figuring you had nothing to lose?

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest forms of marketing online. It certainly isn’t a crock. But it does require a degree of understanding and some honest effort. Slapping up a banner ad isn’t a bad idea, but unless your website receives hoards of traffic, it’s not going to bring in much in the way of revenue.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use banner ads. They can’t do any harm. And if you take the time to occasionally point your visitors in their direction, they can actually be fairly effective. The key with any affiliate link is making it apparent, putting it in front of your visitors, pointing it out.

With that in mind, here’s something that often works better than banner ads … integrate affiliate links into your content using the primary keyword as the anchor text.

For example, if your website is about type 1 diabetes, whenever that phrase pops up in your articles, link it to your affiliate product. Visitors are far more likely to follow linked text within the context of an article than a banner ad situated off to the right in a sidebar.

Is that all you need to be doing to be successful as an affiliate marketer?

No.

But it’s a good start.

If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it!