Integrating Product Offers

Banners

This is the most obvious promotion technique - but probably also the least effective.

However, the effort involved in setting these up on your content pages and in your "community" pages is so small that they are worth doing.

Generally, rotating a series of banners is best as this exposes most messages to most visitors during their time on your site.

Although you can have several banners and/or buttons per page, I strongly suggest that you restrict yourself to one main page banner, with the possible addition of another button lower down the page.

The demo site pages are rotating banners for affiliate programs at Commission Junction. If you are only displaying banners from Commission Junction, you can use their "Smart Zone" function. This is done in your account management area on their site, and means you only have to put a single line of code on your pages - selecting which banners to display, their frequency and so on is done at Commission Junction.

However if you want to rotate banners from different sources, you will need access to a program to do this.

If you have access to a cgi-bin and are familiar with cgi/Perl scripts, there are a large number of scripts available that will allow you to manage a number of banner ads.

If you don't have access to this - or don't want to learn or maintain it - you can use a remotely hosted service like CGI for Me.

I must confess that I haven't been able to find many services like this - but CGI for Me is free and functional - so it meets our minimum requirements quite easily.

Finally ...

Step by Step

Go here, sign up and head for the "Random banner" option.

To get your choice of banners rotating, open a new browser window and sign into your account at Commission Junction and get the HTML for programs you have joined. You are looking for links that produce a banner (the "standard" size for banners is 468 x 60 pixels).

You will see that the code you are given is made up of 2 parts - a link (A HREF) and an image (IMG SRC). Highlight each part separately, copy it (CTRL +C in Windows) and paste it (CTRL +V) into the CGI for Me form.

Take the code given under "How Do I Use It?" and paste it into your pages - just two lines is all you need.

Text Links

If there is one thing you will have learned from Make Your Words Sell! (or its free NetWriting training course - see "Before You Start"), it is that words sell - not pictures. Although surfers do scan pages quickly rather than read every word, the right words can stop them in their tracks more effectively than any banner ad.

I'm not going to try to do in a couple of paragraphs what is dealt with in great detail over 300 pages in MYWS!, but suffice to say that carefully worded text links to your products and services can be extremely effective. Especially if they are in context within interesting content - which is where you come in ...

... inject your personality into the content areas of your site to create something that is unique and establishes a relationship with your visitors.

Endorsement

Text links are especially powerful if they include a form of personal (or 3rd party) endorsement.

Say what you know or what you think - if you don't know, ask others, look at magazine reviews, discussion forums - ask the experts.

The endorsement doesn't have to say the product is great in every respect - any aspect that is pulled out and positively identified will bring the product to life and personalize it for your customer.

Mailing List / E-Zine

Once you have built up a mailing list (see Build Contacts section), you have another great promotional opportunity.

Again, the watchwords are:

• Context
• Endorsement
• Personalize

If your mailing list thinks they only exist to be pitched at - they will unsubscribe faster than you can say "do I have a deal for you".

Give them information that is considered, explain to them why you think it's of interest, and share your take on things with them - and you will grow closer and closer.

Affiliates - E-Commerce for All?

The whole concept of affiliation is something that only became possible through the mechanics of the internet.

So it is relatively new and no doubt will experience the growing pains of any new commercial model.

However, some things are clear. Firstly, it is now accepted that a great affiliate program is central to doing business on the internet, so we will see more and more of it - and even better tools to manage the commercial relationships that result.

And finally - people are making anything from a little pocket money through to substantial fortunes simply by channelling affiliated product sales through their sites.

This could well be the basis of a whole new economy. It is certainly fundamental to the Practical DotCom Business model.

You can get free training on the subject delivered by email. All you have to do is send a blank email to tamspracticalselling@sitesell.net. If you didn't do it when you started through this guide - please do it now.

And - you should take a look at Declan Dunn's "The Seven Keys to Success for Affiliates", which is taken from his book Winning the Affiliate Game.

Declan is one of the most respected authorities on the subject of affiliate programs, and you will see his name popping up time and again as he is frequently asked to consult on the major new programs as they are released.

A good place to start is by getting a free excerpt from his work here.