Affiliate Marketing Segments – Opportunities vs Risks

Affiliate marketing has taken off by leaps and bounds over the past several years, and one of the most profitable segments in this ocean of opportunity is web hosting affiliate programs.  By just placing some banner ads on your website(s) you can share in the multi-million dollar industry represented by these hosting providers.

Of course, it’s not quite as easy as it sounds.  In order to profit through an affiliate marketing business, you first need to have a robust website to which you can draw substantial traffic.  You have to have content that will appeal to people.  It must be optimized so that the major search engines recognize it and place your site at the top of their lists on the basis of a variety of applicable keywords.

This optimization means that when someone types in a certain word, which covers the subject matter dealt with on your site, your site will be one of the first to come up.  Surveys show that people won’t page down beyond one screen when generating a list of “hits” on a search query.  You need to have your site coming up at the very least on that first page, preferably as one of the top three, in order to ensure a steady stream of traffic to your site.

Once you’ve got the traffic, and the quality content to keep them coming back, now it’s time to compare affiliate programs.  The web hosting segment is one of the most popular since it appeals to a large percentage of the population.  The web hosting segment has a high profit potential for affiliates.

Generally, it costs nothing to join an affiliate program.  For example, with the web hosting affiliates, you can even select the manner in which you would like to be paid for the leads you generate.  You can get paid on a cost per acquisition basis (where you get a guaranteed payment for each lead you generate) or a revenue sharing basis.

But it’s not all easy money.  True, most of these web hosting affiliates do deliver what is promised, but to determine how profitable such an affiliate arrangement will be, you have to read between the lines.  You are not being paid simply because someone clicks on the web hosting banner displayed on your website.  In order to get paid, they generally have to do far more than just click on a banner. They usually have to sign up as a client in order for you to get paid.

To determine how quickly your affiliate arrangement will become profitable, you have to determine the quantity and quality of the traffic being driven to your site.  Does the subject matter of your website tend to attract those people who would be likely to want to sign up with a web hosting provider?  If not, are you willing to launch another site that would appeal to them?  This is not as farfetched an idea as it might seem on the surface.  Many web entrepreneurs have multiple sites, all catering to different interests and pursuits, many of them quite profitable, with much of that profitability relating to affiliate programs.

There are plenty of opportunities to make affiliate programs work for you, and one of them is to custom launch sites that mesh well with the segment of network marketing affiliation you’d like to join.  So, if you hope to be a viable affiliate for a web hosting provider, you may wish to think about launching a website devoted to web hosting.  If you have the technical ability to do this on your own, then you will know how to draw traffic to the site via search engine optimization techniques, as well as building strong, robust content.  Then you can carefully select the best affiliate marketing program to join, and then place that web hosting company’s banners on your site.  If you are drawing people to your site that would have an interest in web hosting, then you should do very well with your affiliate marketing program.

However, don’t expect to get rich overnight.  Ideally you would only participate in the affiliate programs that would mesh well with your existing site(s)’ content.  So, if you don’t have a site devoted to web hosting, you have to determine if it would be worth the financial risk to launch one simply because web hosting offers some of the most attractive affiliate programs around.  It may be worth the risk, and the initial cash outlay, but then again, for the money spent to develop and launch a new site, it might be wiser to just participate in lesser profitable affiliate programs in other segments that more smoothly mesh with your existing site(s)’ content.

The final word about affiliate programs, regardless of the segment they may be in, is that they are not get rich quick schemes.  Sure they can be profitable, or even very profitable, but it often takes a lot of time and a great deal of hard work to see them begin to bear fruit.

For the patient business person, affiliate programs can be the key to a profitable existence on the web, just so long as you are willing to put in the time and effort to see them blossom into truly profitable ventures that will pay a robust income for years into the future!

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