For the past few months I’ve explained numerous ways on how to go about bringing more business to your company. Now, naturally since this is Internet based, this is the main topic I’m going to stick to. For those outside of the Virtual World, your options are flyers, business cards, word of mouth, billboards (if you’ve got the cash for it), magazines, newspapers and other paper-based means that will cost you quite a bit of money depending on who you go through for these bits of advertising.
When it comes to the Internet? Sure, word of mouth is an excellent thing, even virtual business cards (that I’ve seen) but doing simple things like adding your website address to your signatures and even joining up with an affiliate program here and there, could really bring in quite a bit of money. I’ve joined up with a few affiliate programs in the past, this wasn’t to plug my own business, it was to plug others businesses. The reason I initially got into it was based on the fact that while I was drawing traffic to these other businesses, I was earning money because of my referrals to them.
Most affiliate programs are based on a commission structure, so the more you target to these companies the more money you’re going to make in the end. I was with one that started you off on 5% commission and then after you hit a certain number of referrals (say 20 people) you’re bumped to 10% commission. Eventually I got to the point of earning up to 30% per referral and figure if they happen to purchase something that was $100 through the business I referred them to, I was sent $30. Overtime this grew to about $500 worth of income each month, for literally just pasting a link up on my site.
Naturally I wasn’t the only one who benefited. In the amount of time I was involved with the affiliate program I sent them over $10,000 worth of businesses. Now, you aren’t paid just for someone going to your website it’s based on the referral I sent that lead to an actual sale. Internet terms for this would be “Referrals that Convert to Sales”, this is where the money is people.
For those running a business, getting yourself involved in an affiliate program where you’re paying people to link back to your website may sound like a complete waste of money but you only have to pay someone if the person(s) they referred are bringing business to your website, not just hits.
Something to keep in mind for future advertising techniques.