Affiliate marketing is a great way to start making money online. It’s easy to find a profitable niche and affiliate programs that offer products you want to promote. Then you can start an online business with minimal investment. Your startup investment may be registering your domain name and paying for a hosting plan.
I think affiliates must have their own web site designed for a specific niche. You can earn revenue without it but you can (and will) multiply your earnings by having one. I also mentioned before that some of the affiliate networks (most of the CPA networks) required you to have your own website.
Affiliate URL vs. Your Domain
If you only promote your affiliate links, you will lose sales. People need easy to remember and short domains. They would never type in an address like http://www.trackingsite.com/?ref=8555412&pid=10257855&sid=7151521. Affiliate URLs are complicated and almost impossible to remember so people will try the www.trackingsite.com URL. If you’re lucky, cookies will save your commission. Are you lucky enough?
Consider you have your own website with a simple and catchy domain name. People will remember it and they will follow the links from your site. And yepp, it makes you money.
Affiliate links vs. Redirects
You can save some of your sales with redirection techniques.
What is not looking natural (and our affiliate links are definately not…) is looking suspicious. People don’t like to click on affiliate links and some of them make sure they access the site without using your affiliate link. They will not click on that scary link.
You will get more clicks on your redirected link (www.yoursite.com/youroffer/) than on your affiliate link. I’m sure.
Track your visitors – Increase your conversion rates
If you are serious enough, you want to carefully monitor your visitors. You want to know where they are coming from, how they can find you, what keywords they are using etc.
Having your own website and a free Google Analytics account makes it easy to track your traffic. It will allow you to check which keywords are driving traffic and wich terms are causing your visitors to leave your site. It also helps you adjust your strategies to increase your conversion rates.
Sell more affiliate products
Almost forgot the best… Your site provides you a place where you can promote all of your affiliate products (within one or a few niches). Your visitors can also buy other products once they are on your site. (E.g. You can set up comparison pages and give your customers what they want. They will be more than happy 
)
If you have your own site, your possibilities are endless and you have complete control over your projects. (E.g. I like to build review pages for different products. This way, I can presell my visitors on a product before I redirect them to the sales page.)
It costs you less than $10 per month and you can host more than one (so called additional or addon) domain per account. Does anyone here earn huge amounts from affiliate programs without having a website?
If you would like to reduce your startup costs, you can host your site free for 3 months. 3 months is enough to receive your first payments;)
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Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Online.
