If you're an affiliate marketer, you've probably been told many times that it's not necessary to have a website to promote other people's products online. You're told to set up links and banners and write ads using pay per click methods to promote websites. Most of the time, you bring people to the merchant's website via your own affiliate link and hope that they will buy from your link the first time they see the product. However, doing this puts you at a huge disadvantage. There are 5 reasons why.

First, most people don't buy a product unless they are exposed to the sales letter about 5 or 6 times. By allowing the visitor to leave without capturing their contact information, like an email address and name, you lose the sale immediately. Now, if they do sign up for the newsletter on the merchant's sales page, then it's the merchant who would get to follow up with the customer and get the sale and you do not get any commissions that way. With your own website, you could set up an auto responder, grab the customer's contact information, build your own list, follow up on the customer with products embedded with your affiliate link, make the sale, and get the commission.

Secondly, it's extremely hard to track your sales without your own website. If you have a sales tracker, usually you can track sales by inserting some html code into the source code of the website. If you have no access to the html code of the merchant's website that you are promoting, you will not be able to tell which form of advertising is bringing in the most sales. You might be making money off sales, but you will be unable to focus on those advertising methods that bring in the most sales and maximize your profits.

Thirdly, you will not be able to change the sales page and sales letter to see what sales letter wording converts better into sales. People are often attracted by certain color patterns or sales letter patterns. Without being able to test these features that influence a buyer's decisions, you are at a huge loss.

Fourthly, having a website would make it easier for you to exchange links and banners with other people. If you want a banner of your website to be displayed on someone else's website, you must display someone else's banner on your website. You must have a website to exchange links. This way, if more websites link back to your website, it would increase your search engine optimization ranking, meaning that your website would appear higher up on the list of search engine results for a particular keyword typed into major search engines like Yahoo and Google. This brings free traffic to your site at no expense to you. To become a super affiliate and explode your profits, having a website optimized for search engines is a must.

Finally, if you are advertising your website using pay per click advertising schemes, you could create separate landing pages for different keyword groups. This way, there is a direct match between the keyword that the customer is searching for and the product you are offering. Also, on this landing page, you could request the customer to type in their email address and name so that you could contact them afterwards. Major pay per click advertisers like Google love it when your landing page contains the keyword typed in by the customer. But again, you need your own website to create them.

Many affiliates do not have a website because they are new and don't understand any html or they have no idea how to build a website and what steps are necessary. A very good place to go and get a website is Stone Evan's Plug in Profit site. First of all, you get an affiliate website setup for you free that is optimized to make money. You just follow three easy steps and your website would be setup for you in 24 hours. The website also comes with an auto responder so that you could capture your customers' name and email address and follow up on them if they have not purchased from you. Also, it comes with a 30-day success guide that walks you through the process of driving traffic to your site and earning residual income with the programs that you are affiliated with.

Copyright October, 2007 by Karen Chan

About the Author

Karen Chan is a part time internet affiliate marketer. She recommends that affiliate marketers get a website setup for free at: http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-11686 Also, anyone looking for work at home opportunities can visit her website at: http://www.123websiteprofits.com/