Shotgun approach

Professional affiliate marketing can be accomplished in many different ways, but the safest way to start affiliate marketing is to take a shotgun approach to your online activities as an affiliate.

Whereas a rifle fires a single shot with great speed and power, a shotgun uses less force but spreads out a pattern of shot that expands further the greater the distance. And that’s exactly the same pattern your marketing strategies should embrace online for maximum effect.

Rather than count just on your pay-per-click campaigns, your e-zine or your blog, spread your efforts (and the risks) over a much wider mix of affiliate promotion resources. Yes, you need to have your main focus on building your targeted opt-in list, but use every tool at your disposal to build it, especially the free tools that have been shown to work well in affiliate marketing.

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These free tools include your affiliate blogging, social networking sites like MySpace, FaceBook and the like, micro-blogging sites like Twitter and web 2.0 sites like MyBlogLog, Technorati, Squidoo, HubPages, Google knol, etc. Yahoo Buzz and Google Buzz are also both powerful affiliate marketing resources when used properly, as is any site where you’re able to contact those people who have chosen to follow you.

The affiliate marketing shotgun approach has numerous advantages over other systems, like:

- Casting a wider net – the combined reach of the resources above is FAR greater than any single approach could be;

- Business Networking – you’ll make a lot more contacts both in your niche and in the affiliate marketing world by covering all of the bases;

- Spreading the risk – if all your efforts are concentrated in one area and for some reason that area doesn’t respond to an offer, you’ve made little or nothing. Since each of the resources above has a somewhat-unique community, you stand a better chance of one or more finding your affiliate offer appealing;

- Multiple signposts – Think of each link back to your blogs, squeeze pages or affiliate offers as a signpost, guiding people to the spot you’d like them to arrive at via your link. The greater the number of these signposts you have out there in a larger number of areas, the greater the chance new people will stumble across them in future. A TV or Radio ad is gone as soon as it’s over, a newspaper ad is around for a day or a week, a magazine ad is around for a month or a quarter – but your resources on the Internet can be there for years and years, with a growing potential audience each day;

- Powerful backlinks – each of the sites and resources mentioned are spidered, in whole or in part, by the major search engines. Since each backlink they find can help your search engine rankings, over time your accumulated mass of materials will help your blogs and squeeze pages rank better, thus increasing your traffic once again and hopefully your affiliate marketing commissions along with it!

To own and operate your own affiliate marketing business you should be thinking long-term, building your base of operations as you go along. Take the shotgun approach to affiliate marketing for your best shot at affiliate success!