The Question Is: Web Site or No Web Site?

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 7:49 PM by Robert Barry

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Would you like to make money via the internet but you’re not sure if you have the experience or capital to get started? There’s no need to worry because there are many options that exist for you to get started.

One of these options, and probably the best, is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing provides first time online marketers like you, the chance to market something online without even having your own product to sell. All you need to do is sign up with an affiliate marketing program, which is usually owned by an online merchant or retailer, and start picking the products you want to promote. Once you become an affiliate, you are paid by the merchant for your services on a commission basis. That is, whenever you direct a visitor to the merchant’s site and the visitor actually buys something.

To become an affiliate in an affiliate marketing program, it’s generally quick and easy, and for most affiliate programs, signing up is free. But despite all this and all the benefits being promised by affiliate programs, many people are still hesitant to get into affiliate marketing. One of the reasons why many people remain hesitant, is the lack of a web site to start marketing his/her affiliate products with. This now leads us to the question of whether a web site is required or necessary in affiliate marketing or not.

You’ll find that many people say that one can do affiliate marketing without a web site to start with. Actually, anyone can really start promoting and marketing their affiliate products without a web site; and there are many ways on how this can be done. In fact, many affiliate marketing strategies that can lead to success can exist without actually needing a webs ite. Among these strategies are: email marketing, offline promotions, writing e-books, writing ezines and engaging in online discussions like forums, chats, message boards and others.

Email Marketing
Email marketing, or maintaining an email list, is actually the most popular affiliate marketing strategy. That is one method that doesn’t require the affiliate to maintain a website. In this strategy, what you basically do is maintain a list of the email ads of your prospective customers and provide them with articles that are relevant with the affiliate products and programs you are promoting. Articles that you provide your contacts with should not always be promotional, because many individuals may find such types of email annoying. Instead, it would be better if you provide them with something informative and just add a small text ad that links to your merchant’s site.

Offline Promotion
There are several ways how you can promote your affiliate products offline. Among the common medium used for such promotions are classified ads, brochures and flyers. Classified ads generally work better compared to the other two because classified ads in periodicals often get a broader audience.

Writing Free e-books
If you have a knack for writing, writing an e-book can be one of the best ways for you to promote your affiliate products without an actual website. Just like in emails and newsletters, your readers would better appreciate your e-book if it is not too promotional but rather informative. It’s important, however, to make the contents of your e-books relative to the actual affiliate products that you are promoting. Just like in email marketing, you can just place text ads or banners somewhere near the end of your e-book that links to the merchant’s site.

Writing Free Ezines
Ezines are publications or articles that ideally aim to inform individuals about a particular topic. If you don’t have a website and want to be an affiliate, you can use ezines to promote your affiliate products or to insert links to your merchant’s site. On the other hand, if you have a website, your ezine article may actually work well as content for your site. But since you have no website, you can just submit your free ezine articles to various websites that hosts ezines, like goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com and there are quite a few others.

Online Discussions(Forums, Message Boards, Chats, etc.)
With or without a website, you shouldn’t ignore online discussions as they are great venues for marketing your affiliate products. In chats, forums, message boards and discussion boards with topics related to your products, you can easily find people who may be interested in the products you are promoting.
With these strategies, it may appear that one really doesn’t need to have a website to start marketing their affiliate products and promoting their affiliate programs. Starting in an affiliate program without a website may be easy, but becoming successful in affiliate marketing without a website is another thing. While you can actually gain enormous success in affiliate marketing even without a website, it is a rare instance that “newbies” can reach the same level of success.
Having a website is not really a pre-requisite in entering into an affiliate program, unless the program owner would require you to have one. While this is so, I would still recommend that you have a website for yourself. If not immediately, then possibly at a later time. Having your own website creates many advantages in affiliate marketing. Primarily, it provides you with a place where you can creatively promote not only one of your affiliate products but all of your affiliate products. With a website, you also have the advantage of advertising your affiliate products to a wider market.
Once again, having a website is not a requirement in affiliate marketing. But with the all the advantages that a website can provide, I’d recommend having one for and making affiliate marketing a lot easier.