Three Old-Fashioned Affiliate Marketing Techniques That Still Work

Now that we’re officially engaged upon the second decade of the wild and woolly 21st Century, it’s tempting to declare that we’re in a “whole new world.” As an affiliate marketer, there certainly is a whole lot of newness going on.

Facebook and Twitter give affiliates two new, vastly important channels to distribute affiliate links and promote products. Google’s continuing ambivalence towards affiliates—should we let these people make money or not?—creates an environment where tremendous changes to this business can happen at any time, suddenly.

But despite this rampant and ongoing newness, as affiliate marketers we must always remember to use the techniques that are proven to work and have stood the test of time.

Here are three old-fashioned affiliate marketing techniques that still have killer conversion rates:

1. The Personal Recommendation

The best thing you can do in the affiliate marketing business is to make good use of the word “I.” There is nothing more potentially profitable, in the affiliate marketing world, than someone who is trusted and respected when they speak from the heart.

Keeping your product recommendations personal will help you sell more of your affiliate partner’s products than any other technique we’ve ever encountered.

If you got the lap band and are sending us to your doctor, show us the before and after pictures, tell us a little bit about your kids, and tell us about how your husband wants to make love to you numerous times per day now, whereas before the lap band he wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole. Be funny. Make us know you and like you.

Merchants absolutely swoon over web copywriters who have mastered the use of the word “I” and thereby managed to create a trusted, respected persona. These merchants know from experience that people who have a personality send over the warmest leads.

Never let an obsession with distribution technologies such as Twitter make you forget that the Web is a place where real people want to interact with real people—affiliate marketers who remember that make far more money than those that don’t.

2. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Yes, the prices of keywords on Google AdWords and elsewhere have skyrocketed over the past ten years. And yes, there are people who game the system, infringe on trademarks, and do other shady stuff with pay-per-click advertising. And yes, you can get a lot of publicity for free or cheaper through Facebook and Twitter.

But still, for our money (and we spend quite a bit of it), there’s no better way to bring prospects to your site than PPC advertising. There just isn’t.

Well-done PPC advertising—defined as: make likely buyers click, make everyone else not click—is a fantastic method for bringing in targeted traffic. Especially when you’re just starting out, PPC is pretty much the only proven method to ramp up fast.

PPC ads for affiliate marketing purposes are not nearly out of style, and probably never will be.

3. Negotiating Higher Commission Rates Based on Performance

One thing that for sure will never get old, no matter how old it gets, is making more money from affiliate marketing. To that end, the final old-fashioned point that we’d like to offer at this time is to always keep in mind that everything is negotiable.

If you’re a high-performing affiliate for a particular merchant, don’t be shy about asking for a higher commission rate than that merchant is posting on the site. There is always some decision-maker that you can get to who has the power to approve such an arrangement.

Prepare a written statement detailing what you want to be paid and why it’s in their best interests to pay you exactly that or more. No businessperson is going to object to such a document, in fact they will probably be impressed that you are so bold.

Of course, before doing this, you’ll want to make sure that your traffic and conversion numbers show, in no uncertain terms, that you’re asking for a raise, not a hand-out.