Twitter Affiliate Marketing

Morning!

Unless you’ve been imitating Ye ‘Ole Fossilized Clam, you’re probably aware that Twitter is big stuff.  We’re talking Poised To Take Over The World…..big stuff (as you can see by the Twitter Budgies to the left – heck, visit them too at Twitter Budgie !).

And us entrepreneurs being, well, entrepreneurs, are thinking about making money with Twitter. 

The question is:  Piss off enough Twitter people, and they’ll think you’re just sending Twitter spam and unfollow you.

Okay, that wasn’t a question. 

Let’s continue:

Given that if you piss off enough Twitter peoples, they’ll think you’re just sending Twitter spam and unfollow you…how do you execute affiliate marketing safely and profitably on Twitter?

Glad you asked!  Here’s one nifty idea:

Ask yourself….how can you possibly intrigue Twitter peoples to RT your affiliate link?

RTs (ie, retweets) are very powerful indeed.  Basically an RT is someone ELSE tweeting what you just tweeted (making it a triple tweeting terrific treasure trove of dynamic data!.  Okay, a double one, that is, but "D" didn’t fit in as well as "T" back there).

So.  You really can’t tweet something like:

"OMG you HAVE TO READ THIS!!!  linklinklink  Please RT"

Well, okay, you could…but ask yourself.  Assuming the "linklinklink" is your direct affliate link for a product, you’ll be sending folks to a service/item about which they have no prior clue. 

Sure, it might set an affiliate cookie, but if that person doesn’t want to buy, it ain’t a’gonna put much moola in your pockets.

Remember, Twitter sends people to one link…and one link ONLY.

But….you can make affiliate money by MORE than JUST your affiliate link!

ie, if you had a blog on which you ran your own ezine (you DO have that, don’t you?  An autoresponder service is CRITICAL for making money online – here’s what I use) , you could possibly make FUTURE money by directing folks on Twitter to visit your blog instead of your affiliate link.

Why is that, I hear you ask?

Because on your blog, you’re going to blog about the affiliate product in question, silly! 

And I’m not talking about the usual standard thin-affiliate thingees you see a bazillion places online.  Even if you’ve never used/read/etc. the product, you can write your initial reactions and ideas, find forums on which the product is discussed, and close with:

"That’s my take – what do YOU think?  Click here to make up your own mind!"

And that "here" link would be your original affiliate link.

Let’s recap for a moment.  Your goal is to get as many people as possible to RT your affiliate link. 

But to do that, you must craft quality content AROUND the affiliate product in question…and then invite people to read your latest blog post.

For example, check out one of my diet articles at Anti-Aging Fountain of Youth For Other People Via Your Money!   It basically deals with stuff found in the skin of red grapes and how it’s being touted as a skin-care doo-hickey.  I’m not focusing on an affiliate product in this post, mind you, but I do include affiliate links to similar skin-care products via Amazon and eBay (and weave them in most naturally as well, I must say.  🙂  ).

Thus, when people visit that link, I can earn money if they click and buy from either:

• Amazon
• eBay
• Clickbank

or if they sign up for my newsletter as well.

This is simply one way to approach affiliate marketing on Twitter.  Remember, the power of Twitter is your network – you don’t want to alienate it!!  Instead, offer value FIRST while incorporating your affiliate links at the same time.

I’ll bet it makes you more money than the usual SagPie schemes.   🙂

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling

ps – speaking about Twitter, have you seen: