Friday, March 03, 2006

Creating Connections

One idea that I would like to introduce you to is that you can build a market to present the products and services of your affiliate merchants by creating connections between different online communities.

By different communities I am referring to forums, electronic bulletin boards, discussion groups and other online areas that you are a part of. Different blogging platfors are hosted by different companies and each company has built a community that has different characteristics.

There are numerous forums and discussion groups, some of which I have listed over on the right. Each group, each forum, each discussion board has a different group of people that frequent them. These people act collectively to create an overall personality of the site or forum. These two facts can be used to the advantage of those of us who do affiliate marketing. By combining different communities you can create an over all audience for you marketing efforts.

As an example, I maintain a blog on JournalSpace. This blog is titled Fitzgerald's Journal, it is where I write about the collectibles that I buy and sell. Many of the people who use JournalSpace are artist. They are primarily writers and poets or people who are interested in those two subjects. Because I am an affiliate for Amazon.com, BOOKSAMILLION.COM, www.ebay.com and several other book sellers it is easier to present the wares of my affiliate merchants to this group of people who are all ready interested in this subject. I recently presented some poetry to the group and also listed several of the books by the poet carried by my affiliate merchants.

Another example, I am a frequent visitor and contributor to the Yahoo Groups, MSN Groups and Google Groups. All these major web sites host groups for online sellers and most of the people who visit these groups are me small business people trying to learn to run their businesses better. This group has certain subjects that they discuss often and they are interested in certain services. Such as web hosting, web design, inventory systems, anyone who is an affiliate for these kinds of items could offer this group information about merchants who sell these services.

The key is knowing the personality of the online group or community that you want to market to. By knowing what it is that each group wants and there personalities, you can better tailor your affiliate program towards each group.

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