One of the biggest mistakes made by novice affiliates is diving into their marketing campaign without a solid affiliate marketing strategy. What does it mean to have a strategy, and why is it so important? These are the questions we'll examine in this article.
Any affiliate marketing strategy worth its salt will cover multiple levels of planning. In other words, your strategy should include things like: how you will present your offer to your market, how you will drive market traffic to your web site, how you will convert your customers.
Why?
Quite simply, you must learn to think of the entire sales chain from beginning to end. Conversion is crucial to each step in the process.
For example, getting someone to click on your pay-per-click advertisement should be considered a 'conversion' because the individual has taken the desired action of clicking an ad that leads to your site.
Once that visitor reaches your site, you must determine how you will convert them into 'leads.' Typically, you'll capture the visitor's name and email address to an opt-in list. In order to do this, you need a strategy for creating an attractive opt-in page offer.

Yet another strategy comes into play when you've gotten the lead onto your list. Your follow up email series must be designed to convert that lead into a customer.

However, conversions on new leads will not make up the bulk of your profits. If you desire serious affiliate income, you also need a post-sale follow up strategy. What types of follow up offers will you send to your list of existing customers? This is important because the repeat customers are really your bread and butter.

Finally, think about how to expand your affiliate business. Do you want to remain in the same market niche indefinitely? If not, consider your long-term strategy. You can replicate your current affiliate model into another niche.

This will add an additional stream of income to your bottom line, and is a great long-term strategy for building your own affiliate empire.